Image: Rosetta's target up close

(Phys.org) —Close up detail focusing on a smooth region on the 'base' of the 'body' section of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image was taken by Rosetta's Onboard Scientific Imaging System (OSIRIS) on August 6, 2014. ...

NASA-funded mission to study the sun's energy

On July 14, 2014, a sounding rocket will be ready to launch from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico a little before noon local time. Soaring up to 180 miles into Earth's atmosphere, past the layers that can block much ...

Dry run for the 2020 Mars mission

(Phys.org) —A film director looking for a location where a movie about Mars could be shot might consider the Atacama Desert, one of the harshest landscapes the planet has to offer. Due to the accidents of its geography, ...

Degradation free spectrometers sounding rocket

(Phys.org) -- The July 24, 2012 Degradation Free Spectrometers (DFS) sounding rocket mission's ultimate objective is to significantly advance the state of the art in short wavelength observing solar spectrometers to permit ...

Voyager instrument cooling after heater turned off

(PhysOrg.com) -- In order to reduce power consumption, mission managers have turned off a heater on part of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, dropping the temperature of its ultraviolet spectrometer instrument more than 23 degrees ...