Today, Ken Carpenter is a scientist for NASA’s Hubble and Roman space telescopes, but in 1967 he was just a teenager at his local library out to fact-check a “Star Trek” episode. Name: Kenneth G. Carpenter Title: Operations Project Scientist for Hubble Space Telescope; Ground System Scientist for Roman Space Telescope; and a NASA Innovative [...]
6 Min Read Breaking the Scaling Limits: New Ultralow-noise Superconducting Camera for Exoplanet Searches When imaging faint objects such as distant stars or exoplanets, capturing every last bit of light is crucial to get the most out of a scientific mission. These cameras must be extremely low-noise, and be able to detect the smallest [...]
Astronomers have discovered black holes ranging from a few times the Sun’s mass to tens of billions. Now a group of scientists has predicted that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find a class of “featherweight” black holes that has so far eluded detection. Today, black holes form either when a massive star collapses [...]
NASA/Frank Micheaux NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronaut Suni Williams gives a thumbs up during a mission dress rehearsal on Friday, April 26, 2024, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Williams was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1998 and has been aboard the International Space Station twice. She is set to [...]
5 min read New NASA Black Hole Visualization Takes Viewers Beyond the Brink Ever wonder what happens when you fall into a black hole? Now, thanks to a new, immersive visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer, viewers can plunge into the event horizon, a black hole’s point of no return. In this visualization of [...]
Artist James Dean prepares sketches of the space shuttle Columbia as it sits on Pad 39 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on April 9, 1981, waiting for its first historic flight (STS-1).NASA In March 1962, NASA Administrator James Webb addressed a two-paragraph memorandum to NASA Public Affairs Director Hiden T. Cox about the possibility of [...]
2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This Hall-effect thruster, shown being tested at Glenn Research Center, turns electricity and inert gas into force that could propel a spacecraft. Orbion Space Technology was founded to bring the high efficiency of these thrusters to small commercial satellites, and the company sought the [...]
3 min read Sols 4175-4177: Don’t Blink We’re Taking a Picture This image shows our previous workspace block and rover wheel tracks from Sol 4171 taken by the Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, May 3, 2024 Curiosity loves to drive so it’s pretty rare we stay at [...]
2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, is one of the world’s largest manufacturing plants, with 43 acres under one roof and a port with deep-water access, permitting transportation of large space systems and hardware NASA NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, [...]
2 min read Hubble Views a Galaxy with a Voracious Black Hole This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 4951, located roughly 50 million light-years away from Earth. Bright, starry spiral arms surround an active galactic center in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the galaxy NGC 4951. [...]
