News Archive / Tagged: Science Mission Directorate

• New Horizons to remain a planetary mission through decade’s end

  Laurel KornfeldOctober 11th, 2023

  NASA's New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015 and Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth in 2019, will remain funded as a planetary mission through the end of the decade, according to a recent announcement by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

• NASA town hall shares updates on science missions

  Laurel KornfeldOctober 2nd, 2020

    At a community town hall which was broadcast live on September 10, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate provided updates on the agency’s many ongoing and upcoming science missions.

• Kepler data reveals Earth-like planet in star’s habitable zone

  Laurel KornfeldApril 21st, 2020

  Scientists who took a second look at data returned by NASA’s Kepler space telescope have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star.

• New mission given the go-ahead to search for beginning of universe and possibly life

  Laurel KornfeldFebruary 17th, 2019

  A new space probe designed to observe hundreds of millions of galaxies to gain a better grasp on how the universe evolved has just been given the greenlight. This new spacecraft is also being developed to search for water and organics, the elements necessary for life as we know it.

• NASA announces James Webb Space Telescope Independent Review Board members

  Jim SharkeyApril 12th, 2018

  NASA recently announced the formation of an external Independent Review Board for the space agency's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The board will study a variety of factors impacting the mission's success and reinforce NASA's strategy for completing the observatory's final integration and testing phase, launch phase and commissioning.

• NASA delays launch of James Webb Space Telescope to 2020

  Laurel KornfeldMarch 28th, 2018

  The highly anticipated launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been delayed to May 2020 due to the need for extensive testing and integration of its parts, which the agency says it now recognizes will take longer than previously anticipated.

• Earth’s first selfie

  Heather SmithMay 26th, 2014

  In celebration of Earth Day on April 22, NASA asked “Where are you on Earth Right Now?”  Receiving 36,422 individual photos from people on every continent, including 113 countires and regions, NASA created the “Global Selfie” mosaic which was released almost a month later. The photos were posted  with the tag #GlobalSelfie on popular social media websites […]

• Cassini spies the ice-giant planet Uranus

  NASAMay 9th, 2014

  NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured its first-ever image of the pale blue ice-giant planet Uranus in the distance beyond Saturn’s rings.

• ULA selected to launch Solar Orbiter mission in 2017

  Paul Scott AndersonMarch 19th, 2014

  NASA’s next-generation mission to explore the Sun, Solar Orbiter, will be launched in July 2017 using an Atlas V rocket, it was announced yesterday. The rocket will be provided by the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which was awarded the United Launch Services contract after a competitive procurement which selected ULA from several possible launch providers.

• Dawn Creates Guide to Vesta’s Hidden Attractions

  Press ReleaseDecember 19th, 2013

  Some beauty is revealed only at a second glance. When viewed with the human eye, the giant asteroid Vesta, which was the object of scrutiny by the Dawn spacecraft from 2011 to 2012, is quite unspectacular color-wise. Vesta looks grayish, pitted by a variety of large and small craters. 

• NASA’s Chandra helps confirm evidence of jet in Milky Way’s Black Hole

  Press ReleaseNovember 23rd, 2013

  Astronomers have long sought strong evidence that Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, is producing a jet of high-energy particles. Finally they have found it, in new results from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope.

• Study finds climate link to ‘Atmospheric River’ storms

  Press ReleaseNovember 12th, 2013

  A new NASA-led study of “atmospheric river” storms from the Pacific Ocean may help scientists better predict major winter snowfalls that hit West Coast mountains and lead to heavy spring runoff and sometimes flooding.

• It’s complicated: Dawn spurs rewrite of Vesta’s story

  NASANovember 9th, 2013

  Just when scientists thought they had a tidy theory for how the giant asteroid Vesta formed, a new paper from NASA’s Dawn mission suggests the history is more complicated.