NASA-led citizen science project, eight people with no formal training in astrophysics helped discover what could be a fruitful new place to search for planets outside our solar system – a large disk of gas and dust encircling a star known as a circumstellar disk. A paper, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and coauthored by eight citizen scientists involved in the discovery, describes a newly identified red dwarf star, AWI0005x3s, and its warm circumstellar disk, the kind associa...

Born out of a desire for aircraft to be able to take off and land capably at airports with shorter runways to alleviate congestion at the major hubs, the circulation control wing concept has been floated by the aeronautical community as a possible solution for decades. The technology calls for increased amounts of high-pressure air, derived from either the jet engines or separate compressors, to flow over the leading and trailing edges of the wings, creating greater lift. Given extra lift, an ai...

A Chinese government-backed company intends to fly up to 20 passengers to the edge of space, more than any other commercial space travel firm is currently planning. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology has designed a winged rocket that takes off under its own power (it doesn’t need to be carried to a high altitude by another aircraft, as is the case with many of the other proposed space tourism projects). “The vehicle will take off vertically like a rocket and land on the runway aut...

ScanEagle is an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), part of ScanEagle® Unmanned Aircraft Systems, developed and built by Insitu Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company. The UAV is based on Insitu’s SeaScan miniature robotic aircraft developed for the commercial fishing industry. ScanEagle carries an electro-optic or a dual imager in a gyro-stabilized turret. The camera has full pan, tilt and zoom capabilities and allows the operator to track both stationary and moving targ...

After an extensive review process and passing a major development milestone, NASA is ready to proceed with final design and construction of its next Mars rover, currently targeted to launch in the summer of 2020 and arrive on the Red Planet in February 2021. The Mars 2020 rover will investigate a region of Mars where the ancient environment may have been favorable for microbial life, probing the Martian rocks for evidence of past life. Throughout its investigation, it will collect samples of ...

With its blue skies, puffy white clouds, warm beaches and abundant life, planet Earth is a pretty special place.  A quick survey of the solar system reveals … nothing else like it. But how special is Earth, really? One way to find out is to look for other worlds like ours elsewhere in the galaxy.  Astronomers using NASA’s Kepler space telescope and other observatories have been doing just that.  In recent years they have been finding other planets increasingly similar to Earth—but still no...

Patrick Taylor, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, says that one of the main factors for the Arctic's rapid warming is how clouds interact with frozen seawater, known as sea ice. These interactions influence the Arctic’s albedo feedback, which is a term scientists use to describe changes in the amount of solar energy absorbed by the Earth due to changes in the Earth's albedo caused by increased greenhouse gases. The Earth's albedo is basically ...

NASA is preparing to launch its first mission to return a sample of an asteroid to Earth. The mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and bring a sample back to Earth for intensive study. Launch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. E...

NASA Goddard Tech Transfer -  the GPM mission is the first to coordinate a network of international satellites (current and planned) to produce the next generation of data on global precipitation. The star of the mission is the GPM Core Observatory, launched in February of 2014. It carries an advanced radar/radiometer system and serves as a reference standard that will unify precipitation measurements from the constellation. To do this, technology had to be developed that could link the data fro...

Like sending sensors up into a hurricane, NASA has flown four spacecraft through an invisible maelstrom in space, called magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection is one of the prime drivers of space radiation and so it is a key factor in the quest to learn more about our space environment and protect our spacecraft and astronauts as we explore farther and farther from our home planet. Space is a better vacuum than any we can create on Earth, but it does contain some particles — and it's b...

Some of the wind-sculpted sand ripples on Mars are a type not seen on Earth, and their relationship to the thin Martian atmosphere today provides new clues about the atmosphere's history. The determination that these mid-size ripples are a distinct type resulted from observations by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. Six months ago, Curiosity made the first up-close study of active sand dunes anywhere other than Earth, at the "Bagnold Dunes" on the northwestern flank of Mars' Mount Sharp. "Earth...

A regenerative fuel cell or reverse fuel cell (RFC) is a fuel cell run in reverse mode, which consumes electricity and chemical B to produce chemical A. By definition, the process of any fuel cell could be reversed. However, a given device is usually optimized for operating in one mode and may not be built in such a way that it can be operated backwards. Standard fuel cells operated backwards generally do not make very efficient systems unless they are purpose-built to do so as with high-pressur...

Reflection European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang is visible in the reflection of NASA astronaut Danny Olivas's helmet visor during this, the STS-128 mission's third and final spacewalk. Olivas and Fuglesang deployed the Payload Attachment System, replaced the Rate Gyro Assembly #2, installed two GPS antennae and worked to prepare for the installation of Node 3 next year. Work Is a Spacewalk During the STS-131 mission's first spacewalk, astronauts Ri...

Caterpillar and NASA both continuously work to develop next-generation technologies. Both are also home to some of the greatest engineering minds on the planet, so joining forces in collaborative research was a logical step.  This collaboration delivers value to Caterpillar customers here on Earth and to NASA’s future space explorers. Caterpillar’s relationship with NASA began about a decade ago. In January 2004, the federal government announced a new program to develop technologies that woul...