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Engineers hopeful Mars rover’s drill can return to service
Engineers have started testing a new way to use the Curiosity rover's drill to bore into Martian rocks after a motor in the device stalled late last year, but ground teams are still months away from the first chance to resume drilling operations.
NASA’s Dawn mission gears up for close look at Ceres
NASA's Dawn spacecraft will remain at Ceres for the rest of its mission, heading closer to the asteroid belt's largest resident than ever before to obtain new measurements of ice, salts and a tenuous intermittent atmosphere detected around the dwarf planet, the space agency announced Thursday.
Cassini results still keeping scientists busy
Scientists examining data from the Cassini mission's final months reported this week unexpected measurements of Saturn's gravity field and outer atmosphere, suggesting they may have to revisit theories about the planet's rings and the forces that generate magnetic fields.
Asteroid-bound probe returns Earth-moon family portrait
Ten days after a swingby to receive a gravitational boost toward its asteroid target, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft turned one of its cameras back toward Earth, resolving its bluish home planet hanging in the void of space accompanied by the moon.
China resumes launch campaigns after string of failures, delays lunar mission
The launch of three experimental remote sensing satellites last week signaled the resumption of Chinese space launches following multiple rocket failures since late last year, but a senior Chinese space official has confirmed the Chang’e 5 mission to return samples from the moon remains grounded.
VideoScientists celebrate 10th anniversary of Dawn mission’s launch
In the ten years since its launch from Cape Canaveral, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has orbited the two largest worlds in the asteroid belt and overcome defective components that threatened to derail the mission on its 4 billion-mile voyage, discovering unexpectedly rich geologic tapestries suggesting both destinations have a watery past.
Q&A with Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator on NASA’s Dawn mission
Carol Raymond helps lead the Dawn science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where she oversees research investigating comets and asteroids, including the two objects visited during Dawn's decade-long mission: Vesta and Ceres.
Suomi NPP sees Hurricane Maria’s startling effect on Puerto Rico power grid
A light scanner aboard NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite sensitive to city lights, wildfires and volcanic eruptions has returned views of Puerto Rico before and after the passage of Hurricane Maria, showing the island's electrical grid ravaged in the aftermath of the storm.
OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission receives gravitational boost from planet Earth
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, en route to asteroid Bennu to retrieve samples and return them to scientists, slingshot past Earth on Friday, using gravity to change its trajectory for a rendezvous with its target late next year.
Scientists firm up flyby plan for New Horizons’s next destination
Now more than two years outbound from its historic encounter with Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is on target for a fleeting flyby less than 2,200 miles from 2014 MU69, an icy, city-sized world set to become the most distant object ever visited, just after midnight Jan. 1, 2019, on the U.S. East Coast. Scientists now say the probe may be able to pursue another destination some time in the 2020s.