News Archive / Author: Jim Sharkey

Jim Sharkey is a lab assistant, writer and general science enthusiast who grew up in Enid, Oklahoma, the hometown of Skylab and Shuttle astronaut Owen K. Garriott. As a young Star Trek fan he participated in the letter-writing campaign which resulted in the space shuttle prototype being named Enterprise. While his academic studies have ranged from psychology and archaeology to biology, he has never lost his passion for space exploration. Jim began blogging about science, science fiction and futurism in 2004. Jim resides in the San Francisco Bay area and has attended NASA Socials for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover landing and the NASA LADEE lunar orbiter launch.

Articles By Jim Sharkey

• NASA’s OSIRIS-REx discovers surprises on asteroid Bennu

  March 20th, 2019

  NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has taken images of asteroid Bennu that show particle plumes erupting from a surface more rugged than previously expected.

• ArianeGroup, CNES seek to develop a reusable 1st stage demonstrator

  March 13th, 2019

  Increasingly fierce competition in the commercial launch market has driven established launch providers to seek ways to become more flexible and innovative.

• Rock and a hard place: InSight experiment encounters setback

  March 7th, 2019

  Even successful robotic missions can encounter obstacles. This appears to be the case with NASA's Mars InSight lander and its self-hammering "mole."

• NASA’s InSight lander places heat probe on Martian surface

  February 24th, 2019

  Having placed a heat probe on the surface, NASA's InSight Mars lander is one step closer to taking the temperature of the Red Planet's interior.

• Farewell Opportunity: NASA ends efforts to contact silent Mars rover

  February 13th, 2019

  NASA said efforts to regain communications with the Opportunity Mars rover have ended, concluding one of the agency's most successful missions.

• ESA’s ExoMars rover named after Rosalind Franklin

  February 12th, 2019

  The European Space Agency announced that its ExoMars rover will be named Rosalind Franklin. It and a Russian lander are scheduled for a July 2020 launch.

• NASA’s Parker Solar Probe begins 2nd orbit of the Sun

  January 31st, 2019

  Parker Solar Probe is pulling back the curtains of our parent star and is well on its way to rewriting humanity's understanding of how stars work.

• Juno snaps photo of two giant storms

  January 24th, 2019

  NASA's Juno spacecraft captured an image of two massive storms in Jupiter's turbulent southern hemisphere during its most recent close pass.

• Hubble camera shut down following anomaly

  January 10th, 2019

  Operations of Wide Field Camera 3 on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have been suspended following an anomaly, the space agency said.

• OSIRIS-REx spacecraft enters record-breaking orbit around asteroid Bennu

  January 2nd, 2019

  Almost overshadowed while New Horizons was zipping past Ultima Thule, another spacecraft went into orbit around an asteroid, albeit a little closer to home.

• InSight team creates Martian rock garden, lander begins work

  December 22nd, 2018

  Using tools ranging from rakes and shovels to augmented reality headsets, engineers with NASA's Mars InSight mission have built a Martian rock garden which recreates the lander's new home on Mars. This allows engineers to practice placing science instrument on the surface using InSight's Earth-bound twin - ForeSight.

• NASA’s InSight lander flexes arm, ‘listens’ to Martian winds

  December 12th, 2018

  NASA's Mars InSight lander has been getting to known for its new home at Elysium Planitia and preparing for what it will be doing there. As it turns out, one of those things - is listening.

• Opportunity: All’s quiet on the Martian front…

  December 4th, 2018

  While the Martian skies have cleared of the dust that enveloped much of the Red Planet, NASA's Opportunity rover remains silent in Perseverance Valley. The rover was last heard from on June 10, 2018. As of November 27, the mission team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) had sent 359 recovery commands in a effort to wake the rover.

• NASA chooses Jezero Crater as landing site for Mars 2020 rover

  November 21st, 2018

  Selecting a landing site is a crucial step in Mars mission planning as the scientific value of an area must be weighed against any potential hazards.

• Once used for Shuttle landings, iconic runway cleared for horizontal launches

  November 10th, 2018

  KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — With the close of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, the future of the facilities that supported the program was in doubt. The mantra of Kennedy Space Center becoming a "multi-user spaceport" was drummed out at every event where the center's future was discussed. With every passing day, that mantra appears to becoming a reality.