How to watch Jared Isaacman’s NASA chief confirmation hearing in the Senate on April 9

American billionaire Jared Isaacman heads to Capitol Hill this week for a Senate confirmation hearing on whether he’ll take NASA’s top job, and you can watch it live online. Jared Isaacman, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the next NASA Administrator, will appear before the Senate on Wednesday (April 9) during a hearing with the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) and you’ll be able to watch it live directly from a Senate webcast or on the NASA+ streaming…

Read More

Black holes as batteries: Could humanity ever harness the energy of these cosmic titans?

Humans are quite rightly fascinated by black holes, but could we ever harness them as an energy source? New research poses this question in order to explore some of the most wonderous cosmic events. Black holes are bounded by outer barriers called event horizons that prevent us from ever viewing their interiors or their hearts, singularities at which all known laws of physics collapse. This means black holes couldn’t be more mysterious. Black holes are also unlike anything found on Earth or in the solar system in another respect: their…

Read More

Welcome to the Mission Support Directorate (MSD)

2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Portrait of David Mitchell, Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022, NASA Headquarters Mary W. Jackson building in Washington. NASA/Bill Ingalls David Mitchell, the Associate Administrator for MSD.    Have you ever wondered how NASA manages to achieve all the incredible missions it does, like probing the Sun and studying the history of our Universe? We do it through teamwork, one of our core values. And an essential part of NASA’s team is what we call Mission Support. Mission Support makes sure NASA’s…

Read More

Sixty Years in Canberra: NASA’s Deep Space Network

NASA Deep Space Station 43 (DSS-43), a 230-foot-wide (70-meter-wide) radio antenna at NASA’s Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, is seen in this March 4, 2020, image. DSS-43 was more than six times as sensitive as the original antenna at the Canberra complex, so it could communicate with spacecraft at greater distances from Earth. In fact, Canberra is the only complex that can send commands to, and receive data from, Voyager 2 as it heads south almost 13 billion miles (21 billion kilometers) through interstellar space. More than 15 billion miles…

Read More

Findings from the Field: A Research Symposium for Student Scientists

Explore This Section Science Science Activation Findings from the Field: A… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science   3 min read Findings from the Field: A Research Symposium for Student Scientists Within the scientific community, peer review has become the process norm for which an author’s research or ideas undergo careful examination by other experts in their field. It encourages each scientist to meet the high standards that they themselves, as writers and reviewers, have aided in setting. It has become…

Read More

NASA Astronaut to Answer Questions from Students in Florida

NASA astronaut and SpaceX Crew-10 Pilot Nichole Ayers. Credit: SpaceX Students from Dade City, Florida, will have the chance to connect with NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers as she answers prerecorded science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-related questions from aboard the International Space Station. Watch the 20-minute space-to-Earth call at 1 p.m. EDT on Friday, April 11, on NASA+ and learn how to watch NASA content on various platforms, including social media. The event, hosted by Academy at the Farm and open to students and their families, will occur in Dade City.…

Read More

NASA to Kick Off 31st Annual Rover Competition

3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Students from Universidad Católica Boliviana “San Pablo” compete during NASA’s 2024 Human Exploration Rover Challenge. The 2025 competition takes place Friday and Saturday, April 11-12, 2025, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center’s Aviation Challenge course in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA NASA’s annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge returns Friday, April 11, and Saturday, April 12, with student teams competing at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center’s Aviation Challenge course near the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Media…

Read More

Navy SEAL-doctor-astronaut lifts off with cosmonauts on Russian flight to ISS

A Navy SEAL, medical doctor and NASA astronaut lifted off for an eight-month mission on the International Space Station — and that was just one of the three crewmembers on the trip into Earth orbit. Jonny Kim of the United States, together with Russia’s Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, launched on Tuesday (April 8) as the Soyuz MS-27 crew. Riding atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket, they ascended from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:47 a.m. EDT (0547 GMT or 10:47 a.m. local time). “I am so proud and excited,”…

Read More

SpaceX launches 27 Starlink satellites on brand-new Falcon 9 rocket, aces Pacific Ocean landing (video)

A never-before-flown Falcon 9 rocket launched the newest round of Starlink internet satellites Monday (April 7), in an afternoon liftoff from the U.S. West Coast. The booster, likely the one designated B1091, was the second new rocket that SpaceX has launched so far this year, both of which supported Starlink missions. Monday’s flight, known as Starlink 11-11, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 7:06 p.m. EDT (2306 GMT), lofting 27 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO). About eight minutes after liftoff, B1091 completed its descent…

Read More

A day on Uranus is actually longer than we thought, Hubble Telescope reveals

Uranus just got a little more time on its hands. A fresh analysis of a decade’s worth of Hubble Space Telescope observations shows Uranus takes 17 hours, 14 minutes and 52 seconds to complete a full rotation — that’s 28 seconds longer than the estimate provided by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft nearly four decades ago. In January 1986, Voyager 2 became the first — and so far the only — spacecraft to explore Uranus, and with its data, astronomers pegged the ice giant’s rotation period at 17 hours, 14 minutes…

Read More