NASA

Imagine the first manned mission to Mars is three months out from Earth when a one-of-a-kind vital component fails. Today, such an accident would mean a choice between desperate invention and death, but it may not be too long before astronauts will just download a file and print out any part as needed. Turning such a potential drama into a simple task is the goal of NASA and Made in Space Inc., whose plan is to send a 3D printer to the International Space Station (ISS) next year as part of demonstration to show the potential of the technology.  Read More

About once a month on average, an incident is reported in which turbofan jet engines flying at high-altitude lose power. The pilots report that there is little if any bad weather that might explain the power loss and although uncommon, this fault is potentially disastrous. The culprit is called ice crystal icing, and NASA scientists are making progress in understanding the problem using a world first test facility that creates an artificial ice cloud similar to that encountered by planes at high altitudes.  Read More

Data from NASA's Swift satellite has been used to create the highest-ever resolution images of our two nearest galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. The detailed ultraviolet light surveys measure 160 and 55 megapixels, and cumulatively show some 1.25 million ultraviolet sources.  Read More

NASA has captured the world's largest panoramic photo showing a swath of land 6,000 miles long and 120 miles wide using a satellite orbiting 438 miles (705 km) above the Earth. At 19.06 gigapixels, "The Long Swath” is far from the highest resolution panorama on record, falling well short of the 320 gigapixel panorama of London, but it is without question the longest, covering an area from northern Russia to South Africa.  Read More

Recently the media has been saturated with overly-hyped reports that NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) may have detected dark matter. These claims may have some justification if the word "may" is shouted, but they rest on a number of really major assumptions and guesses, some of which are on weak and shifting soil. So just what was seen in the experiment, and what are the possible explanations?  Read More

NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission took a step closer to reality on Wednesday, as the OSIRIS-REx project was cleared for development and testing. Scheduled to launch in 2016, the mission passed a series of detailed project assessments and now goes on to the development phase. The Origins-Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security REgolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) is intended to rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu (1999 RQ36) in 2018, carry out an extensive survey, and return a 2-ounce (60 gm) sample of its surface to Earth in 2023.  Read More

NASA’s Kepler space mission may be coming to an unexpected end. The space agency announced on Wednesday that the spacecraft, designed to seek out possible earth-like extraterrestrial bodies, has suffered a malfunction that may make it impossible to carry on with its search.  Read More

After one hundred and forty-four days, 2,336 orbits of the Earth, and hundreds upon hundreds of posts to Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, Commander Chris Hadfield has returned from the International Space Station a household name – arguably space travel's first since the Apollo Moon landings. Gizmag takes a look back at Hadfield's 5-month mission to see how and why Hadfield inspired millions.  Read More

NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy are preparing for a six hour spacewalk to fix the latest ammonia coolant leak on the International Space Station.  Read More