nasa

Space radiation may be to blame for corrupted memory used by the Curiosity Mars rover's flight computer, resulting in software glitches that interrupted the flow of science data Wednesday and prompting ground controllers to switch over to a back-up computer Thursday, NASA officials said.

Engineers are reviewing telemetry and diagnostic tests using ground systems to figure out what went wrong and how to restore the original computer system to normal operation.

"We were in a state where the software was partially working and partially not, and we wanted to switch from that state to a pristine version of … Read more

SpaceX engineers readied a Falcon 9 rocket for a launch tomorrow on the company's second operational space station resupply mission, a commercial flight to deliver more than 2,300 pounds of science gear, station equipment, spare parts, and crew supplies to the international lab complex.

If all goes well, the unmanned Dragon cargo ship will return to Earth on March 25 loaded with some 3,000 pounds of no-longer-needed hardware, broken components, and experiment samples bound for laboratory analysis.

"Quite a bit of work has been done to get to this point, by the SpaceX team, by the … Read more

An innovative X-ray telescope operated by NASA, working in concert with a European Space Agency satellite, has directly measured the rotation of a supermassive black hole lurking at the heart of a distant galaxy, researchers said Wednesday.

The observation confirms predictions made by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity regarding gravity's ability to twist and distort the fabric of the cosmos and gives astronomers a powerful new tool to probe the evolution of galaxies and the black holes that now appear to be a common, if not required, feature.

"The result we're announcing today is that … Read more

Mars has established a pretty pervasive image for itself. It's the big Red Planet. It's the Clifford the Dog of space. You don't confuse it with all those other, less glamorous, planets. Still, Mars isn't all that it seems. Scratch the surface and it appears to have more in common with the skin tone of an elephant than the ruddy glow of a tomato.

The Curiosity Rover recently broke new ground by drilling into a rock sample, the first time such an activity has been accomplished on a planet other than Earth. What lay beneath wasn't the familiar rust color of the surface, but a decidedly dull gray.… Read more

NASA has suffered budget cuts and freezes the past several years, but apparently things are looking up for the U.S. space agency. Today, NASA announced that it was creating a new organizational division geared toward investing in space technology, equipment, and exploration.

"A robust technology development program is vital to reaching new heights in space -- and sending American astronauts to new destinations like an asteroid and Mars," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "A top priority of NASA is to invest in cross-cutting, transformational technologies. We focus on collaboration with industry and academia … Read more

Earth's first space tourist won't be outdone by a few fancy NASA rovers with their cutesy names, sky cranes, and whatnot. So like the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, make the unprecedented 500-day round-trip journey to Mars to join 'em.

That's the insanely ambitious plan that Dennis Tito, who was the first private space traveler a little less than 12 years ago, will announce in more detail next week.

A release from Tito's newly formed Inspiration Mars Foundation teases "plans to take advantage of a unique window of opportunity to launch an historic journey to Mars and back in 501 days, starting in January 2018."… Read more

The Curiosity rover's powerful impact drill has successfully collected its first subsurface sample, about a tablespoon of powdered rock that will be fed into the spacecraft's on-board laboratory instruments for detailed chemical analysis, project officials said Wednesday.

The drill is the last major system on the rover to be tested since landing in Gale Crater last August and the successful collection of subsurface material marks a major milestone in Curiosity's quest to find signs of past or present habitability.

"Curiosity's first drill hole at the John Klein site is a historic moment for the MSL (… Read more

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This week on Crave, William Shatner has some choice words for J.J. Abrams, and we toss one back in the greatest drinking game ever invented. Cheers! Plus, we dodge a bullet the size of a football field as an asteroid nearly collides with Earth. Phew. … Read more

It was a busy day for planet Earth. Asteroid 2012 DA14, a 45-meter wide space rock, sped past the Earth a mere 17,100 miles overhead. In the Ural mountains of Russia, a 15-meter wide, 7,000 metric ton asteroid hit the Earth's atmosphere, creating a 300-kiloton shock wave that injured more than 1,000 people and shattered 1 million square feet of glass.

What are the odds that an asteroid impact will destroy your being in a given year? Slim -- 1 in 74,817,414, according to data compiled by The Economist. For comparison, the odds of … Read more