nasa

Saturday saw a first for NASA and the International Space Station, as two astronauts conducted an impromptu spacewalk to try to locate the source of a problem on the craft's exterior.

The space agency hadn't yet ordered such a spur-of-the-moment maneuver in regard to the ISS, according to the Associated Press, but when crewmembers on the craft spotted ammonia flakes floating through space beyond a window Thursday, the spacewalk was hastily planned.

After Mission Control and the ISS crewmembers prepped intensely -- for less than 48 hours -- astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Christopher Cassidy exited a hatch and … Read more

The International Space Station is leaking ammonia coolant used to prevent the station's power systems from overheating, but it doesn't pose a danger to the crew, NASA announced Thursday.

Crew aboard the space station alerted Mission Control to the appearance of small white flakes floating away from the station's P6 truss solar array this morning, NASA said in a statement. The ammonia loop affected is the same loop at which spacewalking astronauts attempted to troubleshoot a leak last November, NASA reported.

"There's a very steady stream of flakes or bits coming out as the truss … Read more

A newly released series of dramatic time-lapse satellite images, available at Google's Timelapse Web site, shows just how quickly the world's landscapes have changed in the last 28 years.

The pictures, captured by the series of Landsat satellites and released in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey, NASA, and Time magazine, show several startling examples of how humans and natural processes have changed Earth from 1984 to 2012. You'll see the depressing decline of the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, the blossoming of Dubai's epic cityscape, and Las Vegas' urban explosion. There's also an alarming look at the deforestation occurring in the Brazilian Amazon forest. … Read more

It's that time again where certain people on Earth are lucky enough to see an annular eclipse, or "ring of fire."

People on the ground in much of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands will be able to gaze toward the sky Thursday evening and witness the eclipse. However, the rest of us, who aren't in that part of the world, can watch the action live on the Slooh SpaceCamera Web site via an Australia-based telescope.

Shortly after a large meteor hit Russia in February, injuring about 1,000 people, President Obama's administration announced that the U.S. would work on asteroid tracking technology to avoid potentially more severe Earth collisions. On Monday, top NASA administrator Charles Bolden reiterated this pledge.

Bolden spoke at the Human to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C. on Monday and said that a robotic spacecraft mission currently being planned will "prepare efforts to prevent an asteroid from colliding with devastating force into our planet,"according to U.S. News & World Report.

The government's plan is … Read more

It was once described as a "glorified crane," but was so much more than that.

Tireless cargo handler, astronaut platform, and critical inspection tool, the Canadarm was an essential component of NASA's space shuttle fleet from 1981 to 2011.

This past week, it became a permanent exhibit at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa.

"This exhibit commemorates an important part of our history in space," Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore said at a ceremony to unveil the exhibit. "The Canadarm is a symbol of our country's ingenuity and expertise in space robotics. It has positioned Canada as a leader in space." … Read more

For its trip to Mars, NASA wants haikus like this, Why? Because it's cool.

That's pretty much the gist of this whole story, actually. Maybe I should start composing all stories in the form of a haiku to save us all time.

It's no joke, though, that NASA really is collecting submissions of three-line poems from the public to send into space aboard the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which will launch later this year for a mission to study the Red Planet's atmosphere.… Read more

The near miss that happened with a high-tech telescope orbiting the Earth last month was so dramatic that I have to assume Hollywood thrill makers will soon be calling up NASA project scientist Julie McEnery to get all the details and begin determining how feasible it is to jam Ben Affleck or Morgan Freeman into the story line.

McEnery works with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which has the mission of mapping the highest-energy light in the universe. On March 29, McEnery learned that Fermi and a dead Russian spy satellite, Cosmos 1805, were speeding toward the same point in space on nearly perpendicular orbits. They would miss being in that same place at the same time by only 30 milliseconds, likely passing within about 700 feet of each other.… Read more

NASA released the most detailed images ever seen of a gigantic hurricane that scientists believe has existed at Saturn's north pole for years.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft snapped the spectacular pictures this past November from a vantage point approximately 261,000 miles from Saturn -- a distance so extreme that the above picture has an image scale of about 1 mile per pixel.… Read more