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‘NASA’ Stories

NASA ramps up search for habitable planets near Earth

We've written several times about recent habitable planet findings, such as the discovery of three such planets on April 18 via the Kepler space telescope. Such planets exist within the habitable zone, but aren't necessarily capable of supporting life, and we won't know for sure without studying each one individually. The distance at which many of these exo-planets are located from our planet makes this a problem, with current technology being able to do little more than recognize their existence and potential habitability. That is where NASA's upcoming TESS telescope will come in. Read The Full Story

NASA 2013 International Space Apps contest winners unveiled

NASA has the announced the winners of its 2013 International Space Apps Challenge, which opened to submissions back in late April. A total of 770 entries were sent in, and out of them five winners have been selected, one in each of the five categories presented. The winners were selected by judges from the European Space Agency and NASA, as well as partnered organizations. The goal of the contest was to create apps that help with space exploration, among other things. Read The Full Story

Giant asteroid 1998 QE2 to pass Earth on May 31

A giant asteroid called 1998 QE2, named after the year it was discovered, is slated to whiz past Earth on May 31, something it won't do again for another 200 years. The asteroid is said to measure in at about 1.7-miles long, and although it will be about 3.6 million miles away from Earth as it passes, the distance is still short enough for space agencies to get detailed images of it, making the event very notable. Read The Full Story

NASA grant to fund 3D-printed food system prototype

We've heard about 3D-printed guns and a 3D-printed implant, but a new project is taking the use of these printing machines to a whole new level: 3D-printed food. Such is the goal of Anjan Contractor, who received a $125,000 6-month NASA grant to build a prototype. If successful, the resulting system would not only provide food for space travel, but could also provide sustenance in the future when the population is higher and presumably natural food sources become scarce. Read The Full Story

Curiosity rover bores into Mars for second time

, May 20th 2013 Discuss [0]

It's been a few months since NASA's Curiosity rover drilled into Mars' rocky surface for the first time, but the little rover that could has bored into the red planet for the second time, collecting a healthy amount of Mars dirt along the way to be analyzed by the rover in the next few days. Read The Full Story

NASA records largest explosion ever on the Moon

, May 17th 2013 Discuss [0]

NASA scientists have recorded what they say is the largest explosion ever seen on the Moon. A meteoroid roughly the size of a small boulder crashed into the moon, creating a large explosion that NASA says could have been seen with the naked eye. The meteoroid was said to have weighed around 90 pounds and was traveling at approximately 56,000 mph when it crashed into the moon. Read The Full Story

Mars rover Opportunity breaks space driving distance record

, May 17th 2013 Discuss [0]

Mars rover Curiosity might be the talk of the town currently, but NASA's older Opportunity rover is still kicking it in high gear on the red planet. In fact, Opportunity has now traveled 22.22 miles, breaking a 40-year-old driving distance record of 22.21 miles when Apollo 17 astronauts traversed the Moon on a Lunar Roving Vehicle in 1972. Read The Full Story

Google and NASA buy D-Wave quantum computer

, May 16th 2013 Discuss [0]

Google will co-invest in a quantum supercomputer lab near its Mountain View campus, exploring the potential for incredibly-fast processing tipped to run 11,000x faster at some tasks compared to a standard Intel chip. The computer itself will be manufactured by D-Wave and based at NASA‘s Ames Research Center, where the Universities Space Research Association nonprofit will be responsible for its operation; Google and other companies will share access to the “D-Wave Two” hardware, which is rumored to cost around $10m.

d-wave_quantum_computer

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NASA estimates over 200 asteroid impacts on Mars each year

NASA has been studying all aspects of Mars using various spacecraft and rovers on the planet surface for a number of years. One of the most important scientific instruments orbiting Mars is NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Recently, NASA has been using the MRO to observe how many asteroid impacts and how many little bits of comets hit the surface of Mars each year that form craters of a certain size. Read The Full Story

Sun emits 2013′s first two X-class solar flares

The Sun has emitted its first two X-class solar flares of 2013, the first having happened on Sunday May 12, and the second yesterday. Both were relatively small in size, neither coming close to the record breaking X-flares of 2011 and 2012, yet were still powerful and resulted in spectacular images. Unlike the coronal mass ejection that happened back on April 12, these two were not directed towards Earth. Read The Full Story

Chris Hadfield holding first public talk on Thursday after returning from ISS

, May 14th 2013 Discuss [0]

Astronaut Chris Hadfield, as well as the rest of the Expedition 35 team, returned safely to Earth last night after spending 5 months on the International Space Station. While aboard the ISS, Hadfield tweeted many photos of Earth from his perspective and even uploaded many YouTube videos that described life on the ISS. He'll be giving his first public talk since returning to Earth on Thursday, May 16 at 10 am ET. Read The Full Story

Some remains of NASA’s Skylab space station reside in Australia

We talk a lot about the International Space Station around here. In fact, only a few days ago we talked about the ammonia leak from the cooling system aboard the ISS that NASA and space station crew members were working to fix. While it's easy to think of the ISS as NASA's first space station, that would be incorrect. Read The Full Story

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