JHUAPL – Spaceflight Now

Discoveries at solar system’s distant frontier shed light on how planets form

February 13, 2020

Data from the encounter of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft with a frozen reddish snowman-shaped object a billion miles beyond Pluto last year suggest the building blocks of planets may have formed less violently than many scientists expected, officials said Thursday.

NASA’s resilient Van Allen Probes shut down

October 20, 2019

Ground controllers transmitted commands to shut down the second of NASA’s Van Allen Probes on Friday, three months after turning off an identical satellite to conclude a seven-year mission that explored the donut-shaped radiation belts surrounding Earth.

NASA approves development of flying drone to explore Saturn’s moon Titan

June 27, 2019

NASA officials announced Thursday that the agency will move forward with the development of a plutonium-powered robotic quadcopter drone to explore Saturn’s moon Titan, a hazy world covered with dunes and methane lakes that scientists say is reminiscent of the ancient Earth.

New Horizons finds Ultima Thule has an unexpected, flattened shape

February 20, 2019

Images taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft when it flew by an object the size of a large metropolitan area at the frontier of the solar system Jan. 1 have revealed the miniature world has a more flattened shape than the flyby’s initial pictures suggested.

CubeSat deployed from space station to test sample return technology

February 13, 2019

One of five CubeSats deployed from the International Space Station last month is testing a steerable drag brake that could find use in future smallsats to return experiment samples to the ground from low Earth orbit, or on low-cost micro-probes to explore other planets.

Ultima Thule revealed in new detail with fresh flyby image

January 25, 2019

A new image captured minutes before NASA’s New Horizons probe zipped by a rocky object in the Kuiper Belt on New Year’s Day shows the dual-lobed world — nicknamed Ultima Thule — is covered with intriguing fractures and a large crater-like depression that could provide clues about the early history of the solar system.

Most distant object ever visited resembles a snowman

January 2, 2019

The first well-resolved image of the faraway chunk of rock fleetingly visited by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on New Year’s Day reveals the object — officially named 2014 MU69 but nicknamed Ultima Thule — is made of two lobes scientists say came together in an ancient slow-speed collision just as the solar system’s planets were forming.

Video: The New Horizons team hold news conference after flyby declared a success

January 1, 2019

Watch as the New Horizons team hold a press conference an hour after they received confirmation that the spacecraft had successfully flown by Ultima Thule and had recorded the expected amount of science data.

New Horizons scientists elated as Ultima Thule’s shape comes into view

January 1, 2019

A fresh image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft released Tuesday showed the mission’s distant flyby target a billion miles beyond Pluto — nicknamed Ultima Thule — has an elongated shape like that of a peanut shell or a bowling pin, and the prospect of higher-resolution pictures arriving on Earth later in the day had scientists salivating for more.

New Horizons phones home, confirms successful flyby

January 1, 2019

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft raced past a frozen remnant of the solar system’s birth early New Year’s Day, phoned home to confirm a successful flyby and readied a treasure trove of pictures and other data for transmission back to eager scientists some 4.1 billion miles away.