NASA has selected the University of Hawaii in Honolulu to maintain and operate the agency’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea in Hilo, Hawaii. The Management and Operations of NASA’s IRTF is a hybrid firm-fixed-price contract with an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity…

NASA’s 2024 Human Lander Challenge (HuLC) Forum brought 12 university teams from across the United States to Huntsville, Alabama, near the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center, to showcase their innovative concepts for addressing the complex issue of managing lunar dust.…

This labyrinth – with a silhouette of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes at its center – is used as a calibration target for the cameras and laser that are part of SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for…

NASA’s public competitions can catalyze big changes – not just for the agency but also for participants. Bronco Space, the CubeSat laboratory at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California, matured more than just space technology as a result of…

Technological innovations make headlines every day, and NASA’s In Space Production Applications (InSPA) Portfolio of awards are driving these innovations into the future. InSPA awards help U.S. companies demonstrate in-space manufacturing of their products and move them to market, propelling U.S. industry…

The Space Science Institute, with funding from the NASA Science Mission Directorate and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, provided unprecedented training, support, and supplies to 15,000 libraries in the U.S. and territories in support of public engagement during the 2023…

Nazmus “Naz” Nasir is a software engineer by day, and an astrophotographer by night….and sometimes by day as well! This April, Naz participated in NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie 2024 project, photographing the total solar eclipse. He posted online a spectacular video composed of stabilized and…

NASA has released two white papers associated with the agency’s Moon to Mars architecture efforts. The papers, one on lunar mobility drivers and needs, and one on lunar surface cargo, detail NASA’s latest thinking on specific areas of its lunar…

It might appear featureless and unexciting at first glance, but NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations of this elliptical galaxy — known as Messier 105 — show that the stars near the galaxy’s center are moving very rapidly. Astronomers have concluded…

Earth planning date: Tuesday, June 25, 2024 As documented in a previous blog last week, we continue to juggle power constraints as we focus on analyzing our newest drilled sample on Mars: “Mammoth Lakes 2.” Today, the star of the…

Upon the rover’s arrival at Bright Angel – where Perseverance encountered unusual popcorn-like textures – it was so exciting to see all the interesting features in the rocks of this interval! In particular, these rocks contain an abundance of veins…

Leadership from NASA’s International Space Station and Commercial Crew Programs, as well as Boeing, will participate in a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT Friday, June 28. NASA and Boeing continue to evaluate Starliner’s propulsion system performance before returning from…

NASA has awarded a contract to Leidos, Inc. of Reston, Virginia, to provide mission support for the agency’s International Space Station Program, Artemis campaign, and more. The Cargo Mission Contract 4 has a total potential value of $476.5 million, with…

Katie Burlingame is an ETHOS (Environmental and Thermal Operating Systems) flight controller and instructor in the Flight Operations Directorate supporting the International Space Station. Burlingame trains astronauts and flight controllers on the International Space Station’s environmental control systems, internal thermal…

A new custom virtual reality flight simulator built by NASA researchers will allow them to explore how passengers experience air taxi rides and collect data that will help designers create new aircraft with passenger comfort in mind. Wayne Ringelberg, a…

A team of seven NASA Kennedy employees was recognized by the White House for charging ahead with the expansion of the agency’s sustainable electric vehicle (EV) fleet at Kennedy Space Center. They did so at minimal cost to taxpayers while…

Derek Bramble has served in a variety of mission and program support roles over his 14-year career at NASA Langley.  He currently serves as an HR Business Partner in LaRC’s Human Capital Office, where he works closely with a number…

Mars rovers can only make exciting new discoveries thanks to human scientists making careful decisions about their next stop. The Mars 2020 mission is aimed at exploring the geology of Jezero Crater and seeking signs of ancient microbial life on…

Landing rovers and helicopters on Mars is a challenge. It’s an even bigger challenge when you don’t have enough information about how the parachutes are enduring strain during the descent to the surface. Researchers at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center…

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image presents a visually striking collection of interstellar gas and dust. Named RCW 7, the nebula is located just over 5,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. Nebulae are areas rich in the raw material needed to…

Experienced spacewalkers, university students, flight controllers, and NASA team members at all stages of their career recently came together at Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) for an anniversary celebration that looked to the future as much as the…

The San Francisco Bay Area has a new and interactive way to learn more about the innovative work of NASA’s Ames Research Center.  A newly redesigned NASA Ames Visitor Center at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California, reopened…

The 23-year-old orbiter is taking images that offer horizon-wide views of the Red Planet similar to what astronauts aboard the International Space Station see over Earth. NASA’s longest-lived Mars robot is about to mark a new milestone on June 30:…

On Saturday, June 1, 2024, thousands of community members attended the Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) Community Day hosted by Christopher Newport University in partnership with Newport News Public Schools in Virginia. The event showcased many different facets of…

Who knew Earth’s upper atmosphere was like alphabet soup? NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission has revealed unexpected C- and X-shaped formations in an electrified layer of gas high above our heads called the ionosphere. While…