Month: June 2023

Ice clouds high in Earth’s atmosphere could help predict climate change. NASA wants a closer look

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An upcoming NASA mission will provide an unprecedented look at ice clouds at high altitudes in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s Polarized Submillimeter Ice-cloud Radiometer (PolSIR) is an instrument designed to study ice clouds that form high above tropical and subtropical regions of the Earth. A pair these relatively low-cost sensors will be mounted on two small satellites and launched into low Earth orbit, where they will collect data on how ice clouds change over the course of a day. The data will help scientists better understand both how these ice clouds…

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This tiny probe the size of your cell phone could measure asteroid gravity in a space 1st

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The European Space Agency (ESA) wants to land a tiny mobile phone-sized satellite on an asteroid to measure its gravity. ESA has completed vacuum and vibration tests for its Gravimeter for Small Solar System Objects (GRASS) asteroid probe. GRASS is designed to measure surface gravity on the Dimorphos asteroid, which NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with as a part of its mission last year. Dimorphos has a diameter of about 525 feet (160 meters), which is roughly the size of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.…

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Marvel’s new ‘Micronauts’ comic collection dives into inner space

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If “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” had you thirsting for more micro-miniature adventures, Marvel Comics has just the ticket to an ultra tiny universe with a comprehensive volume collecting years worth of its “Micronauts” comic books.  Mego’s original line of “Micronauts” toys produced in the late 1970s was a revelation in a post-“Star Wars: A New Hope” marketplace, with futuristic plastic and die-cast metal action figures, vehicles and playsets featuring characters like Acroyear, Biotron, Space Glider, Time Traveler, Force Commander, and the evil Baron Karza and his intimidating black stallion,…

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NASA’s Kepler telescope discovered 2 mini-Neptune exoplanets just before dying

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NASA’s prolific Kepler space telescope, which shut its powerful eye nearly five years ago, continued finding exoplanets even while taking its final breaths. A team of astrophysicists and citizen astronomers combing through the last chunk of data that Kepler sent home say they found two new worlds and a “candidate” planet closely orbiting three faint stars about 400 light-years from Earth.  So far, these are the only exoplanets that have been discovered in the telescope’s final dataset, making them the very last worlds that Kepler glimpsed just before it ran…

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NASA TV Executive Producer Rebecca Sirmons

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“‘NASA for all.’ That’s something that I think is really important because we are the universe, right? We are made of star stuff, and I think now more than ever, we all need to remember that we’re part of a greater purpose.” – Rebecca Sirmons, NASA TV Executive Producer, NASA Headquarters

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