nasa

Three veteran space station fliers strapped into their Soyuz ferry craft, undocked and plunged back to Earth today, making a fiery descent to a frigid pre-dawn landing in Kazakhstan to close out a 127-day stay in space.

With Soyuz commander Yuri Malenchenko strapped into the descent module's center seat, flanked on the left by outgoing Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams and on the right by Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, the crew undocked from the station's Russian Rassvet module at 5:26 p.m. EST as the two spacecraft sailed 250 miles above northwestern China.

Two-and-a-half hours later, positioned … Read more

"Now, this is the plan. Get your ass to Mars."

We all remember Schwarzenegger motivating himself to go to the Red Planet in "Total Recall" (anyone bother watching the remake?) and sure we'd like to go too. Now NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has determined that radiation levels on the planet's surface are safe for human explorers.

"The astronauts can live in this environment," Don Hassler, principal investigator on Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector instrument (RAD), told a news conference.

"Basically, we're finding that the Mars atmosphere is acting as a shield for the radiation on the surface and as the atmosphere gets thicker, that provides more of a shield and therefore we see a dip in our radiation dose," Hassler said.

The findings mark the first time that cosmic rays have been measured on the surface of another planet, and come 100 years after Victor Hess discovered cosmic rays on Earth by using a hot-air balloon.… Read more

Buffeted by ethereal whirlwinds and twisters, the Curiosity Mars rover is wrapping up initial soil analysis operations at a sandy drift where it's been parked for more than a month, project scientists said today. The rover is now being prepared to move on in search of suitable targets for a compact rock drill, the final major sample acquisition system to be tested.

Ashwin Vasavada, the deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory rover at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told reporters that Curiosity's robot arm had completed five scoops of martian soil, using the sandy … Read more

3D printing has captured the imaginations of just about anyone who knows what it is -- even NASA, apparently.

The space agency is using a similar technology to create precise metal parts for its next heavy-lift rocket, which it hopes will eventually help take humans to Mars.

The method is called selective laser melting, or SLM, but it's not quite the same as printing up a sweet "Star Wars" chess set out of extruded plastic. It's more of a cross between 3D printing and some high-end, defense-grade awesome tech.… Read more

NASA and the European Space Agency say they have successfully tested an interplanetary communications protocol, with astronauts on the International Space Station using it to control a Lego robot in Germany.

The protocol is called Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), and one of its creators is Vint Cerf, who helped come up with the original Internet Protocol suite. NASA and the ESA said on Thursday that DTN may one day allow "internet-like communications" with spaceships and help support infrastructure on other planets.

"The demonstration showed the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a … Read more

It has been almost 40 years since the Apollo 17 mission last landed a man on the moon. It may not take anywhere near that long before we send astronauts back to the moon's neighborhood.

Space.com reports that NASA is seriously looking at sending out a new manned moon mission with the purpose of creating a manned outpost beyond the far side of moon and eventually visiting an asteroid in 2025. This may not physically land a human on the moon, but it would establish a deep space outpost as a base for research and missions.… Read more

Even if you're outside the U.S., rocking the vote is relatively easy -- as long as you're on Earth. But how do you make your mark if you're an astronaut up above?

The International Space Station has been hosting international crews for 12 years, and there are now two Americans aboard: Sunita Williams and Kevin Ford.

While both voted in Russia before they left Earth, there are provisions for astronauts who want to vote from space. … Read more

You may or may not know that the International Space Station is visible from Earth with the naked eye. If you didn't know, NASA wants to make sure you do. The space agency has created a service that will send e-mail and text alerts when the ISS is above your location.

It's called "Spot the Station." The system allows you to give your e-mail address and receive notices when the ISS, the third brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon, is orbiting above your area. Given that the ISS passes over roughly 90 percent of the Earth's population, most people will have a chance to spot the space station sooner or later.… Read more

It's as if you've just strolled up to Curiosity on the surface of Mars and surprised the rover as -- convinced that everyone at Mission Control is on a coffee break -- it's decided to ditch the scientific research for a bit and build a martian sand castle instead.

One of the latest Curiosity images posted by NASA is a stunning self-portrait made up of 55 high-rez images taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager. The base of Mount Sharp serves as a dramatic backdrop, swooping up toward the right, and in front of the rover, you can see four hand-size holes in the ground where Curiosity had just started building its sand castle gathered scoops of martian dirt for analysis. The scoop site is poetically named "Rocknest."… Read more