Supporting the future of Mars exploration with supercomputers

You may have flown a flight simulator in a computer game or at a science museum. Landing without crashing is always the hardest part. But that's nothing compared to the challenge that engineers are facing to develop a flight ...

Space exploration: A luxury or a necessity?

"Oh, come on Daniel, space travel is so expensive, and pointless!" These were the words of my friend Max, during a Christmas party where I was discussing my thesis project: studying places on Earth where the living conditions ...

A new type of seismic sensor to detect moonquakes

During the Apollo missions of the 1970s, several seismometers were flown to the moon, where they collected data on lunar seismic trembling for eight years. The data showed some lunar quakes were as powerful as a magnitude ...

NASA technology helps guard against lunar dust

Defeating dust may be a small concern for most people on Earth, but for astronauts and spacecraft destined for the moon or Mars, it is a significant hazard that must be mitigated. That's why researchers at NASA's Kennedy ...

Examining the blowtorch effect of satellite reentry through video

A reaction wheel—one of the heaviest parts of a space mission, its changing rotation used to shift a satellite's orientation—seen in a plasma wind tunnel belonging to the High Enthalpy Flow Diagnostics Group (HEFDiG) ...

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