Since NASA's Parker Solar Probe launched on Aug. 12, 2018, Earth has made a single trip around the sun—while the daring solar explorer is well into its third orbit around our star. With two close passes by the sun already ...
Space Exploration
Aug 13, 2019
1
17
On July 19, 2019, at 1:27 p.m. EDT, mission operators sent a shutdown command to one of two Van Allen Probes spacecraft, known as spacecraft B, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, or APL, in Laurel, Maryland.
Space Exploration
Jul 24, 2019
0
13
Scavenging spare parts and grabbing off-the-shelf hardware, University of California, Berkeley, space scientists are in a sprint to build scientific instruments that will land on the moon in a mere two years.
Space Exploration
Jul 03, 2019
0
0
It's one of the greatest and longest-running mysteries surrounding, quite literally, our sun—why is its outer atmosphere hotter than its fiery surface?
Space Exploration
Jun 04, 2019
13
1286
Just as dust gathers in corners and along bookshelves in our homes, dust piles up in space too. But when the dust settles in the solar system, it's often in rings. Several dust rings circle the Sun. The rings trace the orbits ...
Astronomy
Mar 12, 2019
54
1779
Scientists have discovered tadpole-shaped jets coming out of regions with intense magnetic fields on the Sun. Unlike those living on Earth, these "tadpoles"—formally called pseudo-shocks—are made entirely of plasma, the ...
Space Exploration
Feb 19, 2019
2
224
Two tough, resilient, NASA spacecraft have been orbiting Earth for the past six and a half years, flying repeatedly through a hazardous zone of charged particles around our planet called the Van Allen radiation belts. The ...
Space Exploration
Feb 12, 2019
3
460
On Jan. 19, 2019, just 161 days after its launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA's Parker Solar Probe completed its first orbit of the Sun, reaching the point in its orbit farthest from our star, called ...
Space Exploration
Jan 30, 2019
0
15
Weeks after Parker Solar Probe made the closest-ever approach to a star, the science data from the first solar encounter is just making its way into the hands of the mission's scientists. It's a moment many in the field have ...
Space Exploration
Dec 13, 2018
1
140
Parker Solar Probe is alive and well after skimming by the sun at just 15 million miles from our star's surface. This is far closer than any spacecraft has ever gone—the previous record was set by Helios B in 1976 and broken ...
Space Exploration
Nov 09, 2018
5
19
