space

NASA announced Tuesday a Grand Challenge focused on finding all asteroid threats to human populations and knowing what to do about them.

NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier and other agency officials will debut a new machine for manufacturing NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) and check on development progress with the heavy-lift rocket at the agency's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans Friday, June 21.

Deputy Administrator Lori Garver and other senior NASA officials will discuss the progress being made on NASA's mission to capture, redirect, and explore an asteroid June 18.

Assembly of the backbone of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the primary mirror backplane support structure, is a step closer to completion with the recent addition of the backplane support frame, a fixture that will be used to connect all the pieces of the telescope together.

Ocean waters melting the undersides of Antarctic ice shelves are responsible for most of the continent's ice shelf mass loss, a new study by NASA and university researchers has found.

NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission is scheduled to launch at 7:27 p.m. PDT (10:27 p.m. EDT) Wednesday, June 26, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

NASA has selected Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of McLean, Va., to provide safety and mission assurance engineering support services for the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA has selected 21 space technology payloads for flights on commercial reusable launch vehicles, balloons, and a commercial parabolic aircraft.

NASA will hold a media teleconference at 9 a.m. PDT (noon EDT) on Friday, June 7, to provide an update about the long-lived Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. The 10th anniversary of this rover's launch is next month.

NASA aircraft will take to the skies over the southern United States this summer to investigate how air pollution and natural emissions, which are pushed high into the atmosphere by large storms, affect atmospheric composition and climate.

By comparing infrared and X-ray background signals across the same stretch of sky, an international team of astronomers has discovered evidence of a significant number of black holes that accompanied the first stars in the universe.

NASA has selected L-3 Vertex Aerospace of Madison, Miss., to support the operations of all aircraft assigned to the agency's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base and the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in nearby Palmdale, Calif.

NASA's next scientific satellite, which is scheduled for launch June 26, will provide the most detailed look ever at the sun's lower atmosphere or interface region.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will have two opportunities in the next few years to hunt for Earth-sized planets around the red dwarf Proxima Centauri.

NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., has exercised the second option of its Technology, Engineering, and Aerospace Mission Support (TEAMS) 2 contract with Analytical Mechanics Associates Inc. (AMA), also of Hampton, to continue providing engineering support to the center.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will deliver the keynote address at the annual Space Weather Enterprise Forum Tuesday, June 4, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Auditorium and Science Center, located at 1301 East-West Highway in Silver Spring, Md.

NASA Television will provide live coverage in June of the launch and docking of the European Space Agency's (ESA) fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo craft (ATV-4) to the International Space Station and the departure of a Russian Progress resupply ship from the orbiting laboratory.

NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has uncovered the origin of massive invisible regions that make the moon's gravity uneven, a phenomenon that affects the operations of lunar-orbiting spacecraft.

Jaden Smith, star of Columbia Pictures' movie "After Earth," is featured in a new NASA public service announcement that describes the contributions of the agency's Earth science program to environmental awareness and exploration of our home planet.

NASA is inviting members of the media and public to participate in online and television events May 30-31 with NASA officials and experts discussing the agency's asteroid initiative and the Earth flyby of the 1.7-mile-long asteroid 1998 QE2.

Eleven teams from across the country and around the globe are preparing to compete for $1.5 million during NASA's 2013 Sample Return Robot Challenge, June 5-7 at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Mass.

Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to a new and improved family tree for asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Three new Expedition 36 crew members lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:31 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, May 28, (2:31 a.m. Kazakh time, Wednesday, May 29) on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station.

The following is a statement from NASA's associate administrator for space technology, Michael Gazarik, about his meetings this week in Europe to discuss potential cooperation on development of space technologies that will enable NASA's future missions. These include the asteroid initiative announced in the president's fiscal year 2014 budget proposal.

NASA's Summer of Innovation project is accepting proposals through Monday, June 10, from organizations that want to offer students science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) educational experiences this summer.