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The hot fire test was shut down early by a non-flight system used to monitor engine vibrations. Engineers use various accelerometers to monitor vibrations on engine components during a hot fire. Data review by NASA and Space Launch System lead engine contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne indicated a group of the accelerometers were improperly configured for the December 14 hot fire. Test systems subsequently interpreted accelerometer signals during the hot fire as exceeding acceptable vibration limits, resulting in an early shutdown....

The Deep Space Habitat project is an attempt to work out the optimum size of capsule, equipment, and resources to send outside of the Earth-Moon system. This could be sent to Mars, an asteroid or one of the Lagrange points in the Solar System. The mission is still at an early stage, sorting out the absolute necessities like food storage and life support. Other components like 3D printers and greenhouses for growing food are under consideration to make the mission slightly more self-sustainable....

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth. This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, is only about one percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are less frequent and weaker than Earth’s. For years, researchers debated whether sand dunes observed on Mars were mostly fossil features related to past climate, rather than currently active....

Now, a new study calculates how dark matter’s gravity affects objects in our solar system, including spacecraft and distant comets. It also proposes a way that dark matter’s influence could be directly observed with a future experiment. The article is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “We’re predicting that if you get out far enough in the solar system, you actually have the opportunity to start measuring the dark matter force,” said Jim Green, study co-author and advisor to NASA’s Office of the Chief Scientist....

BioSentinel was one of the 10 CubeSats that launched aboard Artemis I and subsequently deployed into deep space. It will study the impacts of space radiation on yeast farther in deep space than ever before. Artemis missions at the Moon will prepare humans to travel on increasingly farther and longer-duration missions to destinations like Mars, and BioSentinel will carry microorganisms, in the form of yeast, to fill critical gaps in knowledge about the health risks in deep space posed by space radiation....

Two separate research studies – the first with the Hubble Space Telescope, and the second with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope – recently arrived at the same conclusion. Using different techniques, the independent teams discovered young stars spiraling into the center of a massive star cluster called NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud. This river-like motion of gas and stars is an efficient way to fuel star birth, astrophysicists say....

Those scenarios are among the possible explanations rover-team scientists are considering for features seen just outside the crater rim’s crest above “Perseverance Valley,” which is carved into the inner slope of the rim. The team plans to drive Opportunity down Perseverance Valley after completing a “walkabout” survey of the area above it. The rover’s drives now use steering motors on only the rear wheels, following a temporary jam of the left-front wheel’s steering actuator this month....

This close-up video by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows an active region near the right-hand edge of the sun’s disk, which erupted with at least a dozen minor events over a 30-hour period from November 3-5, 2015. As competing magnetic forces grappled with each other, tongues of solar material lashed out from the sun’s surface and several small flares erupted –seen as white flashes in this extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 angstroms....

Watch the movie here to see how — from SDO’s perspective — the Moon appears to go in one direction and then switch direction to cross the Moon again. The Moon does not, of course, actually change direction, but it appears to do so from SDO’s perspective based on the fact that the spacecraft’s orbit essentially catches up and passes the Moon during the first transit. Because the Moon does not have an atmosphere, when a lunar transit occurs no light from the Sun gets distorted, allowing for a distinct view of the Moon’s surface....

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 11:24 p.m. EST on January 12, 2015. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however – when intense enough – they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel....

Three unusually long-lasting stellar explosions discovered by NASA’s Swift satellite represent a previously unrecognized class of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Two international teams of astronomers studying these events conclude that they likely arose from the catastrophic death of supergiant stars hundreds of times larger than the sun. The astronomers discussed their findings Tuesday at the 2013 Huntsville Gamma-ray Burst Symposium in Nashville, Tennessee, a meeting sponsored in part by the University of Alabama at Huntsville and NASA’s Swift and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope missions....

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft made history in 2012 by entering interstellar space, leaving the planets and the solar wind behind. But observations from the pioneering probe were puzzling with regard to the magnetic field around it, as they differed from what scientists derived from observations by other spacecraft. A new study offers fresh insights into this mystery. Writing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Nathan Schwadron of the University of New Hampshire, Durham, and colleagues reanalyzed magnetic field data from Voyager 1 and found that the direction of the magnetic field has been slowly turning ever since the spacecraft crossed into interstellar space....

During the exceptionally warm Arctic summer of 2019, Greenland lost 600 billion tons of ice — enough to raise global sea levels by nearly a tenth of an inch (2.2 millimeters) in just two months, a new study shows. Led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine, the study also concludes that Antarctica continues to lose mass, particularly in the Amundsen Sea Embayment and the Antarctic Peninsula on the western part of the continent; however, those losses have been partially offset by gains from increased snowfall in the northeast....

Scientists combined observations from two NASA missions to check out the moon’s lopsided shape and how it changes under Earth’s sway – a response not seen from orbit before. The team drew on studies by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been investigating the moon since 2009, and by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, mission. Because orbiting spacecraft gathered the data, the scientists were able to take the entire moon into account, not just the side that can be observed from Earth....

Snow and glaciers in these mountains contain the largest volume of freshwater outside of Earth’s polar ice sheets, leading hydrologists to nickname this region the Third Pole. One-seventh of the world’s population depends on rivers flowing from these mountains for water to drink and to irrigate crops. Rapid changes in the region’s climate, however, are affecting glacier melt and snowmelt. People in the region are already modifying their land-use practices in response to the changing water supply, and the region’s ecology is transforming....

The X-57, NASA’s first all-electric experimental aircraft, or X-plane – and the first crewed X-plane in two decades – was delivered by Empirical Systems Aerospace (ESAero) of San Luis Obispo, California on Wednesday, October 2, 2019, in the first of three configurations as an all-electric aircraft, known as Modification II, or Mod II. The X-57’s Mod II vehicle features the replacement of traditional combustion engines on a baseline Tecnam P2006T aircraft, with electric cruise motors....

Using a Moon-mimicking set-up in the lab, the VIPER team tested one of the rover’s wheels over a three-week period. It clocked 25 miles of movement in a high-tech sandbox filled with lunar soil simulant, running through a battery of tests. They simulated slopes, wheel slips, and even the size, shape, and distribution of rocks the rover will encounter on the Moon. While NASA has considerable experience designing Mars rovers, engineers had to invent new technology for controlling VIPER’s wheels in the unexplored environment of the Moon’s South Pole....

For teens, pandemic restrictions may have meant months of virtual school, less time with friends and canceling activities like sports, band concerts and prom. And for young people who rely heavily on social connections for emotional support, these adjustments may have taken a heavy toll on mental health, a new national poll suggests. Forty-six percent of parents say their teen has shown signs of a new or worsening mental health condition since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, according to the C....

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of the planets in our solar system into orbits that allow them to enter Earth’s neighborhood. Ten of the objects discovered by NEOWISE in the past year have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). Near-Earth objects are classified as PHAs, based on their size and how closely they can approach Earth’s orbit. “NEOWISE continues to expand our catalog and knowledge of these elusive and important objects,” said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California....

Today, we sit down with three astronomers working on Webb to talk about their latest findings. The team members are Dan Coe of Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)/Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) for the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Johns Hopkins University; Tiger Hsiao of the Johns Hopkins University; and Rebecca Larson of the University of Texas at Austin. These scientists have been observing the distant galaxy MACS0647-JD with Webb, and they’ve found something interesting....