NASA engineers Thursday successfully completed the first series of tests in the early development of the J-2X engine that will power the upper stages of the Ares I and Ares V rockets, key components of NASA's Constellation Program. Ares I will launch the Orion spacecraft that will take astronauts to the International Space Station and then to the moon by 2020. The Ares V will carry cargo and components into orbit for trips to the moon and later to Mars.
The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) is presently testing a Swedish space gym. The aim is to counteract muscle atrophy and osteoporosis in astronauts. Astronauts who spend a long time in space can face problems when they return to earth. Weightlessness atrophies the muscles and decalcifies the skeleton. It doesn't help to "pump iron." Barbells and dumbbells are also weightless on a space voyage.
New research on the Antennae Galaxies shows that this benchmark pair of interacting galaxies is in fact much closer than previously thought -- 45 million light-years instead of 65 million light-years.
Astronauts on board the space station now their very own tricorder. While this 21st century version isn't as versatile as its 24th century counterpart, made famous in the Star Trek television series, it will help keep the ISS crew healthy. The real name of this device is LOCAD-PTS, short for Lab-On-a-Chip Application Development [...]
Okay, now astronomers are just showing off. See the three little multicolored dots in the upper right of this image? That's NASA's WMAP satellite, seen from a distance of 1.5 million km. The photograph was taken from the 2.2 meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile. Apart from demonstrating some impressive [...]
Talk about dedication! Volunteers in Russia are testing the ability of humans to breathe argon-enriched air, as part of a research program that simulates a manned trip to Mars. Researchers want to know if humans can survive breathing air similar to that found on Mars. Of the experiment one Russian scientist said, "Our [...]
Damage is occurring to NASA's spacesuit gloves during spacewalks at the International Space Station. In fact, in August of 2007, astronaut Rick Mastracchio was ordered back into the the space station's airlock when he noticed a hole in his spacesuit glove. Damage had also been found on previous EVAs, prompting NASA to call [...]
It's time for another beautiful image from the Hubble Space Telescope. And this time, there's an added bonus… video. The latest images released by Hubble are based on research of the Antennae Galaxies, known as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039. Astronomers used to think that they were 65 million light-years away, but the new research [...]