Jet Propulsion Laboratory – Page 22

Internal debris may be causing problem with Mars rover’s drill

December 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

Engineers suspect a piece of foreign object debris may be intermittently stalling a motor needed to place the Curiosity Mars rover’s drill bit onto rocks, and the robot’s ground team is assessing the source of the potential contamination.

Hunt for water at Ceres goes underground

December 23, 2016 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has continued its survey of the dwarf planet Ceres this year, discovering rock-bound ice hidden just beneath the airless world’s rugged surface and a handful of icy outcrops inside craters in the northern hemisphere, raising hopes that Ceres could have once held a buried habitable ocean of liquid water.

Mars rover’s drill out of action

December 18, 2016 Stephen Clark

The rock-coring drill fixed to the end of the Curiosity rover’s robot arm has suspended operations to allow engineers on the ground to diagnose, and officials hope correct, a problem traced to the mechanism that pushes the drill bit onto rocks to collect powder samples.

NASA declares end for space station’s hurricane monitoring instrument

November 28, 2016 Stephen Clark

NASA’s RapidScat instrument mounted on a platform outside the International Space Station to track winds over the world’s oceans has ended its mission after a technical glitch disabled the sensor earlier this year, officials said Monday.

Juno recovers from reboot, but propulsion problem lingers

October 28, 2016 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Juno spacecraft will stay in its current long-period orbit around Jupiter until at least February, and perhaps longer, as engineers study balky valves inside the science probe’s propulsion system and an unexpected computer reboot that interrupted key functions of the orbiter earlier this month.

Mission managers keeping Juno in elongated orbit until December

October 15, 2016 Stephen Clark

Ground teams are buying more time to study two sluggish valves inside the Juno spacecraft’s fuel pressurization system and postponing a major engine burn that was scheduled for next week to reshape the probe’s orbit around Jupiter, officials said Friday.

NASA official says new mission selections on track despite InSight woes

September 7, 2016 Stephen Clark

A $150 million cost overrun and two-year launch delay for NASA’s InSight Mars mission could mean fewer opportunities for new planetary science missions in the next few years, but the head of the agency’s science division said this week NASA will still approve development of at least one new solar system probe in December.

Juno beams back dramatic new pictures of Jupiter

September 2, 2016 William Harwood

NASA’s Juno spacecraft, making its first scientific run over Jupiter’s poles Aug. 27, captured remarkable images of Jupiter’s atmosphere, showing that the equatorial bands and zones familiar to even amateur astronomers completely disappear at high latitudes.

Juno gets its closest look at Jupiter

August 27, 2016 Stephen Clark

Nearly two months after NASA’s Juno spacecraft slipped into orbit around Jupiter, the solar-powered probe made a passage 2,600 miles over the giant planet’s colorful banded clouds Saturday, the closest planned encounter during its 20-month exploration of the solar system’s largest world.

NASA spells out support for SpaceX’s Red Dragon Mars mission

July 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

If SpaceX is able to dispatch a robotic Dragon capsule to land on the red planet in 2018 on time and successfully, engineers stand to get a lesson on what it will take to eventually send humans there, capturing key data on an untested Mars landing scheme a decade sooner than NASA could do it, space agency officials said this week.