4 Min Read Tropical Solstice Shadows June 20, 2024, marks the summer solstice — the beginning of astronomical summer — in the Northern Hemisphere. Credits: NASA/DSCOVR EPIC Solstices mark the changing of seasons, occur twice a year, and feature the year’s shortest and longest daylight hours – depending on your hemisphere. These extremes in [...]

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft docked to the Harmony module of the International Space Station on the company’s Orbital Flight Test-2 mission (Credits: NASA) NASA and Boeing will discuss Starliner’s mission and departure from the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test in a pre-departure media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT Tuesday, [...]

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) High school and collegiate student teams gathered just north of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to participate in the agency’s annual Student Launch competition April 13. Credits: NASA/Charles Beason Over 1,000 students from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico launched high-powered, [...]

2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA astronaut and Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Victor Glover reviews procedures on a computer for the Monoclonal Antibodies Protein Crystal Growth (PCG) experiment inside the Harmony module. Each year, Black Space Week celebrates the achievements of Black Americans in space-related fields. To kick-off Black [...]

Representatives from NASA, FEMA, and the planetary defense community participate in the fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise on April 2 and 3, 2024, to discuss the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the threat of a potentially hazardous asteroid or comet.Credits: NASA/JHU-APL/Ed Whitman NASA will host a virtual media briefing at 3:30 p.m. EDT, [...]

2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This summer between June 17 and July 2, NASA will fly aircraft over Baltimore, Philadelphia, parts of Virginia, and California to collect data on air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions.   The campaign supports the NASA Student Airborne Research Program for undergraduate interns. Two [...]

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) A Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket carrying students experiments for the RockOn! mission successfully launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Aug. 17, 2023 at 6 a.m. EDT.NASA/ Kyle Hoppes More than 50 student and faculty teams are sending experiments into space as part of NASA’s [...]

Earth Observer Earth and Climate Earth Observer Home Editor’s Corner Feature Articles News Science in the News Calendars In Memoriam More Meeting Summaries Archives 22 min read Summary of the Ninth DSCOVR EPIC and NISTAR Science Team Meeting Introduction The ninth Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Camera (EPIC) and National Institute of [...]

3 min read NASA’s Hubble Restarts Science in New Pointing Mode This image of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was taken on May 19, 2009 after deployment during Servicing Mission 4. NASA NASA successfully transitioned operations for the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope to an alternate operating mode that uses one gyro, returning the spacecraft to [...]

This image from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows China’s Chang’e 6 lander in the Apollo basin on the far side of the Moon on June 7, 2024. The lander is the bright dot in the center of the image. The image is about 0.4 miles wide (650 meters); lunar north is up.Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University [...]