Its a star! Its a UFO! Nope its probably Venus. If youve ever gone outside for a late walk and spotted a big gorgeous bright star in the sky, its likely that you were looking at Venus. The planet is named after the Roman goddess of love, and NASA is giving Venus a little extra love right now: It's in the process of evaluating two possible missions to the planet, and both of them have the potential to reshape our understanding of how terrestrial planets form, Venus in particular. Venus is covered in a thick atmosphere primarily composed of carbon dioxide gas created in part by a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Hidden below this cloud cover is the most volcanic planet in the solar system.

The two proposed Venus missions are each very different and each would accomplish something unique. The first is VERITAS or (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy). This orbiter would map the surface of Venus to better understand the complex features and help determine more about Venuss plate tectonics and whether or not Venus is still geologically active. The other option is a one and done deal called DAVINCI+ or Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus. DAVINCI+ would drop a spherical spacecraft through the atmosphere, and during its descent the probe would collect data to help scientists better understand what the atmosphere is composed of and help complete the picture of how the planet was formed.

Sure it rains sulphuric acid and it kills all spacecraft that land there but NASA really wants to go to the planet anyway. So grab your spacesuit and get ready to show a little love to this bizarre world.

Beeline over here to look at more space photos.

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A new graphene-based sensor that measures stress via cortisol in sweat could be used by NASA to gauge the anxiety levels of astronauts.

Developed by Caltech assistant professor of medical engineering, Wei Gao, the device features a plastic sheet etched with a laser to generate a 3D graphene structure with tiny pores in which sweat can collect. Those pores create a large amount of surface area in the sensor, which makes it sensitive enough to detect compounds in the sweat that are only present in very small amounts. Those tiny pores are also coupled with an antibody sensitive to cortisol, allowing the sensor to detect the compound.

In October, NASA announced that Gao is one of six researchers selected to participate in studies of the health of humans on deep-space missions. Gao will receive funding to develop the sensor technology into a system for monitoring the stress and anxiety of astronauts as part of the programme.

We aim to develop a wearable system that can collect multimodal data, including both vital sign and molecular biomarker information, to obtain the accurate classification for deep space stress and anxiety, he said.

Our analysis time could be only a few minutes. Typically, a blood test takes at least one to two hours and requires stress-inducing blood draw. For stress monitoring, time is very important.

Aside from aerospace applications, the device could be used to help monitor and treat a range of conditions. Cortisol levels rise and fall in line with a regular daily rhythm, but according to Gao, various mental health conditions have subtle changes on these cycles. Monitoring cortisol over a number of days could help with the diagnosis of these conditions, potentially leading to better treatment.

Depression patients have a different circadian pattern of cortisol than healthy individuals do, said Gao. With PTSD patients, its another different one.

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Graphene-based stress sensor could help NASA in testing anxiety levels of astronauts - Graphene-Info

Minerva Baumann, New Mexico State University Published 8:30 a.m. MT Feb. 29, 2020

Hubble Space Telescope photo of Jupiter was taken when it was comparatively close to Earth, at a distance of 415 million miles. Hubble reveals the intricate, detailed beauty of Jupiters clouds as arranged into bands of different latitudes, known as tropical regions. These bands are produced by air flowing in different directions at various latitudes. Lighter colored areas, called zones, are high-pressure where the atmosphere rises. Darker low-pressure regions where air falls are called belts. The planets trademark, the Great Red Spot, is a long-lived storm roughly the diameter of Earth. Much smaller storms appear as white or brown-colored ovals. Such storms can last as little as a few hours or stretch on for centuries.(Photo: Images courtesy NASA, ESA, and A. Simon - NASA Goddard)

LAS CRUCES - The atmosphere of Jupiter is a colorful swirl of cloud bands in brown, yellow, red and white with an enormous red spot. To unlock some of the atmospheres mysteries on the gas giant planet, New Mexico State University researchers this week received a three-year, $283,800 grant from NASAs New Frontiers Data Analysis Program.

The New Frontiers research program, within NASAs Planetary Science Division, is aimed at enhancing the scientific return from New Frontiers class missions. The mission NMSU astronomers have chosen to investigate is the Juno mission, which is currently in orbit around Jupiter.

We proposed to analyze some infrared images and spectra of Jupiters atmosphere to try to understand the circulation patterns and the waves, and the transition between orderly and chaotic circulations in Jupiters atmosphere, said Nancy Chanover, astronomy professor and principal investigator on the project.

The team of researchers working with Chanover includes co-investigators Jason Jackiewicz, associate professor of astronomy; Wladimir Lyra, assistant professor of astronomy; and Ali Hyder, astronomy Ph.D. student.

The atmosphere of Jupiter is the largest in the solar system. Its called a gas giant because its atmosphere is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium gas, like the Sun. Each of the professors is approaching the data from a different perspective. Chanovers perspective is from the upper cloud deck of Jupiter, Jackiewicz studies the interior of Jupiter and vertical motions within the atmosphere, and Lyra creates numerical simulations of fluids of all astrophysical kinds.

My part is in the modeling of the atmosphere. In this case, we are going to apply my models to the atmosphere of Jupiter to better understand and explain the observations recorded by Juno, Lyra said as he described some of his previous simulations and how they could apply to the Jupiter project.

This a previous model, so you can see as the simulation proceeds, more vortices form, they grow, they merge with other ones, they tease each other. In the end, youre going to have one large vortex. So we are applying the same kind of calculations to the atmosphere of Jupiter.

Jason Jackiewicz, associate professor of astronomy, is part of the team of researchers studying the atmosphere of Jupiter. Jackiewiczs research, the NASA-funded Jovian Interiors from Velocimetry Experiment in New Mexico project, he has been using the Dunn Solar Telescope to measure winds in Jupiters atmosphere, in particular vertical motions with a very specific technique he pioneered.(Photo: Darren Phillips / New Mexico State University)

As part of Jackiewiczs research, the NASA-funded Jovian Interiors from Velocimetry Experiment in New Mexico project, he has been using the Dunn Solar Telescope to measure winds in Jupiter's atmosphere, in particular vertical motions, with a very specific technique he pioneered. The data from Juno are being supplemented with observations from JIVE.

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It's exciting that we can obtain data from observations carried out right here in New Mexico that complement the NASA Juno space data, providing us with new constraints about how the atmosphere of Jupiter is dynamically linked to interesting features like vortices, said Jackiewicz.

Little is known about the interior composition and structure of gas giant planets like Jupiter. One of NASAs planetary science goals is to understand how the suns family of planets originated and evolve.

The Juno images provide us sort of with east, west and north south motions of the clouds and Jasons data will provide us with the vertical motions of the clouds, Chanover said. Using that three-dimensional dataset, we will really be able to probe whats driving these vortices in the atmospheric circulation.

Ph.D. student Ali Hyder will be working with the team on all aspects of the research as part of his doctoral thesis.

Jupiters atmosphere is a dynamic and ever-changing system where we can observe fluid dynamic phenomenology on a scale inaccessible on Earth, so it provides a very unique environment in which to study such phenomena, Hyder said. Being part of this project, I will be working on all aspects of numerical modeling, the actual development of the code, modification of the model, analysis of the results from the numerical simulation, and the data reduction of the observations as well.

From left: Wladimir Lyra, assistant professor of astronomy, Ali Hyder, Ph.D. student, and Nancy Chanover, astronomy professor and principal investigator of a three-year, $283,800 grant from NASAs New Frontiers Data Analysis Program to analyze infrared images and spectra of Jupiter's atmosphere. (NMSU photo by )(Photo: Amanda Adame / New Mexico State University)

Results of this research will be published in peer reviewed journals and the new data generated through the mapping of some images or the inclusion of these other datasets will be archived in the Atmospheres Node of NASAs Planetary Data System, located at NMSU.

Chanover also leads that project, which is responsible for the acquisition, preservation and distribution of all non-imaging atmospheric data from all planetary missions (excluding Earth observations).

Once the data are archived in the PDS, they are accessible by any investigator worldwide, Chanover said. It really provides value to the existing mission data that are in the archive, because now were adding what is known as derived data or a kind of new data generated as a result of those mission data. So were adding another layer on top of the primary mission data.

The blending of different research specialties to make new discoveries about Jupiter is an important part of the project for Chanover.

One of the reasons I'm really excited about this project is because its a true collaboration among three faculty members in our department who come from varied academic research areas.

The collaborative nature is also a benefit for Hyder as a graduate student.

It is a really big deal for me to get exposure to such a varied domain of expertise, which is quite unusual for a single project, Hyder said. So Im getting information regarding the atmosphere, regarding the interior, and regarding numerical astrophysics all together.

EYE ON RESEARCH is provided by New Mexico State University. This weeks feature was written by Minerva Baumann of Marketing and Communications. Minerva Baumann can be reached at 575-646-7566 ormbauma46@nmsu.edu.

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In September 2019, NASA started the second half of an epic game of Marco Polo; early this month the agency declared it over for good.

On Feb. 2, NASA formally ended the Mars Cube One mission. MarCO, as it was known, consisted of two tiny cubesats that hitchhiked along with the agency's InSight lander that reached the Red Planet in November 2018. The twin MarCO satellites were the first cubesats to leave Earth orbit, and they aced their goal of reporting on InSight's perilous landing to scientists on Earth.

"WALL-E and EVE performed just as we expected them to," MarCO chief engineer Andy Klesh, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in a statement at the time, referring to the cubesats by their nicknames taken from the 2008 film "WALL-E." "They were an excellent test of how cubesats can serve as 'tag-alongs' on future missions, giving engineers up-to-the-minute feedback during a landing."

Related: How the tiny exoplanet-hunting ASTERIA satellite showed scientists what cubesats can do

As NASA expected, the MarCO satellites fell silent in January 2019 because of how far their orbits carried them from the sun. There was a chance that the agency would be able to reestablish communications with the plucky twins in the second half of 2019. But attempts to do so, which began in September 2019, were unsuccessful, according to a new NASA statement.

NASA will be releasing data from the twin cubesats over the next year, the agency added. That data should help future interplanetary cubesat designers to tap into MarCO's success. Among the earliest of those successors will be launching on NASA's first Artemis mission, an uncrewed flight orbiting the moon.

One such cubesat, dubbed Lunar Flashlight, is designed to contribute to lunar science by identifying ice in craters at the moon's south pole that never receive sunlight. That's the same region where the culminating Artemis mission will land astronauts in 2024, according to NASA plans.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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RIP, MarCO! The world's first cubesats to Mars are gone for good - Space.com

The Falcon Heavy has launched three times in two years.

NASA has announced that SpaceX will launch the agencys Psyche spacecraft in 2022, a mission to study an asteroid of the same name in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

SpaceXs Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the mission in July 2022 at a cost of $117 million. This will be the first NASA science launch for the Falcon Heavy, with SpaceX also scheduled to launch several NASA missions on the smaller Falcon 9 rocket, following the launch of the TESS exoplanet telescope in 2018.

The launch will take place from Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral in Florida. There will also be two secondary payloads onboard EscaPADE, which will study the atmosphere of Mars, and Janus, designed to study binary asteroids.

Psyche itself is an exciting mission to the metal-rich Psyche asteroid. This unique object appears to largely be made of the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet one of the building blocks of our Solar System, noted NASA.

The spacecraft will take more than three years to reach its target, entering orbit in January 2026, where it will then study the 250-kilometer-wide object from afar to work out how it was formed and if it is similar to Earths own core.

Since the Falcon Heavys first test flight in February 2018, the rocket has been used sparingly, completing only a further two missions. Its last launch in June 2019 for the US Air Force also included some NASA experiments as secondary payloads.

There had been some suggestions SpaceX was looking at as many as ten Falcon Heavy launches per year from 2021 to 2025, although that has not been confirmed. The agency is also working on the larger Starship vehicle, which CEO Elon Musk has previously said could replace SpaceXs entire Falcon fleet.

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SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket To Launch NASA Mission To Unique Asteroid In 2022 - Forbes

"With a surface temperature in excess of 840 degrees Fahrenheit and a surface pressure 90 times that of Earth, Venus can turn lead into a puddle and crush a nuclear-powered submarine with ease," NASA said.

"While many missions have visited our sister planet, only about a dozen have made contact with the surface of Venus before quickly succumbing to the oppressive heat and pressure."

Don't have an engineering degree? Doesn't matter. Never seen a spacecraft in real life? No problem.

"JPL is interested in all approaches, regardless of technical maturity," NASA said.

Great. What's the catch?

"Current state-of-the-art electronics fail at just over 250 degrees Fahrenheit and would easily succumb to the extreme Venus environment. That is why NASA is turning to the global community of innovators and inventors for a solution."

But the sensor has to be more than just ridiculously rugged.

That sounds tough. Why bother going to Venus?

"This is an exciting opportunity for the public to design a component that could one day end up on another celestial body," said Ryon Stewart, challenge coordinator for the NASA Tournament Lab.

"NASA recognizes that good ideas can come from anywhere and that prize competitions are a great way to engage the public's interest and ingenuity and make space exploration possible for everyone."

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Here's your chance to design equipment for NASA's proposed Venus rover and win $15,000 - CNN

Stirrings detected from deep below the surface of the Red Planet indicate, for the first time ever, that Mars is geologically active. It's alive!

A trove of new data is in from the NASA InSight lander's stay on Mars revealing new discoveries above and below the planet's terrain. One of the most fascinating findings is that the planet experiences marsquakes. According to mission lead Bruce Banerdt, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, this is the first time scientists have been able to establish that Mars is a moderately seismically active planet, reports Science News.

Image Credit: IPGP/Nicolas Sarter

The InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is a spacecraft equipped with sensory technology. It arrived on Mars in November of 2018 for a two-year quest to study the deep interior of the Red Planet. It's investigating Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts seeking to answer one of science's biggest mysteries: How were the rocky planets in the Milky Way formed?

"This is the first mission focused on taking direct geophysical measurements of any planet besides Earth, and it's given us our first real understanding of Mars' interior structure and geological processes," said geologist Nicholas Schmerr of the University of Maryland. "These data are helping us understand how the planet works, its rate of seismicity, how active it is and where it's active."

This week in Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications, mission scientists presented results from the lander's first 10 months. However, it's too soon to know what the breaking revelations mean.

"We're really in the same situation as geophysicists were for Earth in the early 1900s," Banerdt said in a press briefing last week. "We're in the wild west of understanding what's going on."

One major discovery made by the InSight is the occurrence of marsquakes. The InSight's Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, a seismic prob similar to a stethoscope, detected rumblings beneath the planet's red surface. As of September, the lander recorded 174 of those (very gentle) quakes. Interestingly, 24 of those were low-frequency rumbles with spectral shapes that follow the same scaling laws as earthquakes according to a paper summarizing the results. This led the team of scientists to infer that they are of tectonic origin. Planetary geologists had previously thought that the planet's days of tectonic activity were long gone. But this changes things. Moving tectonic plates, by the way, is what produces much of the Earth's high seismic activity.

What is exciting about this discovery is that the quakes could potentially give seismologists insights into the interior composition of the planet. If the tremors are strong enough they can behave a bit similar to a massive ground-penetrating radar, but using seismic waves rather than electromagnetic waves. As the waves ripple through Mars, they could slow down as they move through or reverberate off certain materials. This would allow scientists to guess what might lie deep under the surface.

Two of the quakes seemed to have originated from Mars' Cerberus Fossae region where a group of fissures created by faults that split the crust apart can be found. The region's landscape, which includes landslides, ancient volcanic flows, and dried up water channels, suggests it was tectonically and volcanically active less than 10 million years ago. (Fairly recent in rock-years.)

In addition to evaluating its quake-factor, InSight is measuring Mars' atmosphere and the surrounding geology of its landing site. We already knew that atmospheric gravity waves (ripples in gases and liquids) sometimes occur on Mars. A new paper on the Martian atmosphere outlines the variety of such waves InSight detected.

"From these measurements, we have discovered Martian infrasound and unexpected similarities between atmospheric turbulence on Earth and Mars," wrote the researchers. "We suggest that the observations of Mars's atmosphere by InSight will be key for prediction capabilities and future exploration."

New findings about the planet's magnetic field were also discovered. It had been thought that Mars has a weak field, but the results of yet another article suggests this wasn't always the case. The researchers infer that under the surface of the landing site are magnetized rocks "consistent with a past dynamo with Earth-like strength."

Image Credit: Wikimedia

The big story here provided by this slew of new information is that once upon a time, Mars was a radically different kind of planet. These findings could assist potential crewed missions to the planet by letting them know what to expect on Mars, and where to look to uncover more of its mysteries.

The InSight mission is planned to continue for another year, so stay tuned for more potential discoveries coming in from the Red Planet.

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Today, DSS 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, and 27 are all inactive. Buildings at DSS 12 now house administrative offices. DSS 13 has been repurposed for research and development activities. DSS 14, 24, 25, and 26 all continue to support NASA's Deep Space Network mission. The complex still helps track dozens of spacecraft across the solar system, including the various Mars rover missions. You can find a full list of the programs it presently supports here.

Throughout all of the expansions and additions at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC), Goldstone Airport offered a valuable way for Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) personnel and contractors to make both routine and emergency trips to the remote complex. Since its founding in 1936, the official address of JPL's headquarters has been in Pasadena, California, though the bulk of its main campus is now technically inside the limits of the city of La Caada Flintridge.

The straight distance between JPL and GDSCC, which lies to the northeast, is around 110 miles, but the actual distance by ground transport, at least as of 1977, was approximately 175 miles. The distance between Burbank Airport, where NASA staged many of the flights, and Goldstone Airport is around 115 miles.

In its 1978 Fiscal Year budget request, NASA asked for $150,000 to extend the runway at Goldstone airport from 4,760 feet to 6,000 feet and widen it from 60 feet to 100 feet to better support these activities. Paved turnarounds and a small ramp at the north end of the runway were also part of the request, which Congress ultimately approved.

"There is a constant requirement for JPL technical personnel to travel to Goldstone on routine or emergency projects for short periods of time," an official budget document explained. "Consequently from 25 to 100 people are flown to and from Goldstone Daily."

These upgrades brought the runway at Goldstone to its present dimensions. They remained the extent of major improvements there for decades.

It's not entirely clear when NASA officially transferred control of Goldstone Airport to the Army. As of 2005, it was still using it for flights to the GDSCC.

David Acton, a Ball Aerospace engineer who worked on the Deep Impact mission, which sent a probe to study the comet Tempel 1 that year, arranged for a tour of the complex for himself and a number of others. A NASA Beechcraft King Air flew them to Goldstone from Burbank.

However, in October 2014, the Army activated Company B, 229th Aviation Regiment at Goldstone Airport, marking the beginning of the drone training mission there. Early that same year, in its budget request for the upcoming 2015 Fiscal Year, the service asked for $45 million to build the new 52,100-square-foot hangar and associated infrastructure for Company B. The unit originally operated out of temporary structures.

Despite its training focus, Company B actually deployed for combat operations in Afghanistan in support of the U.S.-led coalition there in late 2015, with the idea that it would take up residence at the new facilities at Goldstone when it returned. The Army broke ground on the hangar and associated construction in January 2016.

One can see in the recent satellite imagery of Goldstone that the runway is marked "UAS," the abbreviation for "Unmanned Aircraft Systems." This would indicate that it is only approved now for use by unmanned aircraft, which could preclude any further fixed-wing shuttle flights to the airport by the Army, NASA, or anyone else without some sort of prior approval and coordination. Helicopters could still potentially fly to and from the airport.

With its new facilities at Goldstone Airport, Company B continues to fly training missions in support of activities at the nearby National Training Center. The airstrip is an ideal location for drone operations due to its remote location, combined with the general nature of the rest of GDSCC, which significantly reduces the amount of potential outside signal interference. This is one of the reasons why JPL decided to construct its space communications systems and radio telescopes in this area in the first place.

Company B has also remained available for operational deployments, as necessary. In November 2017, the unit deployed to Iraq supporting the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS.

Goldstone's isolated location could also make a good place for testing more sensitive upgrades for the Gray Eagle or new, advanced unmanned platforms. In addition to its primary mission as a training facility, the NTC also supports various test and evaluation activities.

With its space race origins, Goldstone Airport and the rest of the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex has had a fascinating history already. That lineage has taken a new twist with the Army moving in and creating a key drone base out of the once very basic airstrip. The little remote base now looks set for years of further use supporting Army drone activities at the nearby National Training Center.

Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com and tyler@thedrive.com

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NASA Airstrip Deep In The Mojave Desert Has Been Turned Into A Military Drone Base - The Drive

How does NASA know it's time to end a mission? For the Spitzer Space Telescope, the agency can blame it on the spacecraft's juice.

Specifically, Spitzer's struggle comes from trying to balance charging its battery, communicating with Earth and keeping its instruments cool. When it launched in 2003, those tasks didn't interfere much with each other, but the longer the mission continued, the bigger a challenge it became. And so, on Jan. 30, more than 16 years after its launch, NASA will send the spacecraft its final commands.

"There is a natural end to the mission and we are reaching it," Luisa Rebull, an astronomer at the NASA Infrared Science Archive at the California Institute of Technology, which hosts Spitzer's data, told Space.com.

Related: Gallery: The Infrared Universe Seen by Spitzer Telescope

Spitzer was designed to focus on infrared light, which lets scientists see through dust that obscures the view of other types of telescopes. During its tenure, it has used that talent to tackle astronomical puzzles like how stars and planets form.

"We see star-forming regions, we see galaxies forming and merging and just a whole cornucopia of objects in space that are not visible to our eyes in the optical, but are visible in the infrared," Suzanne Dodd, former mission manager for Spitzer, said during a news conference held today (Jan. 22).

That's because of something special about Spitzer.

"One of the unique things about Spitzer that makes this all possible is its orbit," Dodd said. Spitzer orbits the sun, tagging along behind Earth and slipping a bit farther away from us each year. "It's drifting from the Earth and the moon, so it's not getting the infrared radiation that the Earth and moon system create." Without that interference, Spitzer can gather better data.

But eventually, that orbit means the spacecraft will be on the opposite side of the sun from Earth for a long period of time a clear no-go for space communications. Right now, Spitzer is about a third of an orbit behind Earth, so the sun isn't yet blocking communications.

But even now, the logistics of the mission are becoming challenging. The farther Spitzer lags behind Earth, the more dramatically the spacecraft has to twist itself in order to communicate back to its scientists. That stresses the spacecraft's solar-charged batteries, Rebull said, and when they finally get to recharge, the batteries warm up.

"That's not good when you're trying to detect little bits of heat," she said that would be the infrared light Spitzer targets, which is essentially radiated heat.

There's a second hot problem with the maneuver: The more the spacecraft twists, the more sunlight reaches part of the spacecraft that are supposed to stay cool. The longer the mission continues, the more time Spitzer scientists lose to this process. "You have to wait for the batteries to recharge and then everything to cool down again before you can keep observing," Rebull said.

Eventually, the spacecraft won't be able to make that maneuver at all, she added it would run out of power while sending data back to Earth. That's why NASA made the decision to shut the telescope down. Spitzer will gather its last observations on Jan. 29 and turn off the next day.

Then, scientists will be left with hopes that another space telescope dedicated to the infrared will someday take its place and, of course, with the data Spitzer has gathered over 16 years. It's a melancholy time for mission scientists, but not an unexpected one.

"I know it's just a space robot," Rebull said. "But he's our space robot."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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It's time to say goodbye to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Here's why. - Space.com

A new sun-studying spacecraft is set to get off the ground soon.

Solar Orbiter, a mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA) with NASA participation, is scheduled to launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Feb. 5 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The liftoff will come just 18 months after NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) took to the skies, kicking off its historic sun-kissing mission. PSP has set the all-time spacecraft speed record and gotten nearer to our star about 15 million miles (24 million kilometers) than any other mission in history.

Related: NASA's Parker Solar Probe Mission to the Sun in Pictures

And PSP will continue to break these records; it will get closer and closer to the sun over its seven-year scientific life, ultimately zooming within a mere 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) of the solar surface.

Solar Orbiter won't try to match those superlatives; on the closest-approach phases of its highly elliptical orbit, the probe will still be about 26 million miles (42 million km) from the sun. But the ESA-NASA spacecraft will do some special things of its own.

For starters, Solar Orbiter will look directly at the sun, something that PSP doesn't do (and you shouldn't, either). In addition, the ESA-NASA probe will zoom through space substantially out of the ecliptic, the plane in which the solar system's big planets circle.

This unique perspective will allow Solar Orbiter to get good looks at our star's polar regions, said Holly Gilbert, NASA deputy project scientist for Solar Orbiter.

"We've never been able to image the poles of the sun," Gilbert said last month during a news conference at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. "That is extremely important for helioseismology, but also for looking at the global magnetic field of the sun. In order to model space weather activity and activity in general on the sun, we need that full global picture of the magnetic field."

Solar Orbiter should flesh out our understanding of the sun in multiple ways. The 3,970-lb. (1,800 kilograms) spacecraft is outfitted with 10 different science instruments, which it will use "to examine how the sun creates and controls the heliosphere, the vast bubble of charged particles blown by the solar wind into the interstellar medium," ESA officials wrote in a mission description.

"The spacecraft will combine in situ and remote sensing observations to gain new information about the solar wind, the heliospheric magnetic field, solar energetic particles, transient interplanetary disturbances and the sun's magnetic field," they added.

There are numerous parallels between the PSP and Solar Orbiter missions. Like PSP, for example, the ESA-led probe will use a series of Venus flybys (plus one of Earth) to reach its operational orbit, which will range from inside Mercury's path to beyond the orbit of Earth. Solar Orbiter will gather most of its data during its close-approach "perihelion passes," as PSP does, and the primary missions of both craft are scheduled to last seven years.

The data gathered by the two probes should mesh well, members of both mission teams have stressed. For example, PSP and Solar Orbiter will enable researchers to study the same solar plasma in detail at two very different points in space close to the sun's surface and much farther out, in Earth's neighborhood.

"And the fact that [Solar] Orbiter can also measure composition will allow us to determine where on the sun the events happened that created the solar wind that we will be seeing," Marco Velli of UCLA, the PSP observatory scientist, said during the AGU news conference.

Similarly, measurements by the two probes should result in a better understanding of the solar magnetic field, Velli added.

"So, we're really facing a decade, I think, with these two missions and, of course, the new ground-based instrumentation, the high-resolution solar telescopes that are about to be operated by the NSF [the U.S. National Science Foundation] and, a little bit further in time, in Europe that we will really unravel solar magnetism in itself," Velli said.

"Magnetism is fundamental to all of astrophysics and the universe itself," he added. "And therefore, I think we can safely say that, with the accomplishment of these two missions, our understanding of what's called the basic astrophysical plasma of the solar system and the universe will have changed entirely."

Solar Orbiter is a medium-class mission, which means that ESA's contribution will be about 500 million euros ($554 million at current exchange rates). PSP's total price tag is around $1.5 billion.

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Solar Orbiter, a new mission to the sun by Europe and NASA, to launch next month - Space.com

The odds were against the team of five students when they submitted their project proposal to NASAs Moon to Mars Ice & Prospecting Challenge last month. They were a first-time team that had found out about the challenge last October, putting them at a disadvantage to applicants from other universities who had been preparing in advance.

Yet despite these obstacles, Cal Poly became one of 10 finalists selected among 28 schools to participate in the competition.

The team consists of five mechanical engineering seniors Alex Krenitsky, Chris Boone, Westin McHaney, Aaron Erickson and Ryan Locatelli who applied to the competition as part of their senior project. Their mission? To build a robot that can drill through rocks and sand, and extract clean water from the ice beneath it while simultaneously taking measurements.

The goal is for the robot to allow NASA to put humans back on the moon, and eventually on Mars.

Being able to work with NASA is kind of an honor in itself, Krenitsky said.

In addition to finishing an aerospace internship with Boeing, Krenitsky said he has gained hands-on experience building things as a shop technician in the mechanical engineering department.

I think one of the advantages [our] team has over other colleges is we have actually made things with our hands before and we have an intuitive knowledge of how long its going to take to put this together, Krenitsky said.

Locatelli said he is interested in system controls and automation, and is excited to explore that area through the NASA challenge.

Theres a lot of programming a lot of moving parts and I think dealing with that will give me a good idea if thats something I want to continue doing, Locatelli said.

Initially strangers who were placed on the same team, the students said they have been able to work together seamlessly from the start. After many sleepless nights spent working together, they have formed close friendships.

According to project advisor and College of Engineering professor Peter Schuster, the team totally impressed him.

They have had to navigate the differences [between the structure of the class and the NASA challenge] and theyve been very good about that, Schuster said. Theyre kind of overachievers.

He said he noticed the different working styles of the team members have not been an obstacle like he has seen in previous teams.

Theyre flexible with each other, they give each other the space that they need, but they also collaborate and theyve divided the project up into parts, Schuster said.

The team submitted their project proposal for their system, Sub-lunar Tap-Yielding eXplorer (STYX), to NASA in an eight-page report in December 2019. Instead of using one tool to drill and extract water, their design featured several tools and a tool changer, which team members say caught NASAs attention for creativity and originality.

The students received an initial $5,000 from NASA, a $3,100 grant, and $1,000 from the College of Engineerings Mechanical Engineering department to fund the project.

If selected, the team must assemble their design and submit another report in March. If they are approved then, the students will receive an additional $5,000 from NASA, and the opportunity to demonstrate their prototype in the competition at NASAs Langley Research Center in June.

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Meet the students helping NASA collect water on the Moon and Mars - Mustang News

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a cloud of gas and dust full of bubbles. (NASA / JPL-Caltech)

Next week, the last of four NASA space-based observatories will retire. The Spitzer Space Telescope brought the universe into a new light (literally), revealing images of planets, solar systems, stars and more in infrared renderings that human eyes aren't able to see otherwise.

"Infrared light provides unique perspectives on the universe," said Michael Warner, a project scientist for Spitzer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "In the infrared, we have some unique things we can do to augment our understanding."

To that end, Spitzer - which launched in 2003 - allowed scientists to see stars in distant galaxies, planets that might be too cool to produce much light, and parts of the universe that are otherwise blocked by small particles.

"We call these the old, the cold, and the dirty," said Warner.

The other space observatories in Spitzer's class include the Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. In 2016, NASA announced that Spitzer and Hubble had identified GN-z11, the most distant galaxy scientists had observed to date.

Spitzer will retire on Jan. 30. Here are some of the images it has taken over the years. Live long and prosper, old friend.

Read more:

NASA's Spitzer Telescope Revealed Colors Unseeable By The Human Eye. It Retires Next Week - LAist

And then there were 155.

The competition to name NASA's next Mars rover has entered the home stretch, with the space agency culling the field from 28,000 student entries to 155 semifinalists.

The 2,300-lb. (1,040 kilograms) robot, which currently goes by Mars 2020, is scheduled to launch this July and touch down inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater in February 2021. Mars 2020 will search for signs of ancient life, characterize the geology of its surroundings, collect and cache samples for eventual return to Earth and test out tech that will aid human exploration of the Red Planet, among other tasks.

Related: NASA's Mars Rover 2020 Mission in Pictures

And it will do this work with a much catchier name.

"This rover is the first leg of a round-trip mission to Mars that will advance understanding in key science fields like astrobiology," Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in a statement Monday (Jan. 13). "This contest is a cool way to engage the next generation and encourage careers in all STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] fields. The chosen name will help define this rover's unique personality among our fleet of Martian spacecraft."

NASA selected 4,700 volunteer judges to sort through the deluge of submissions from K-12 students around the country. The newly announced semifinalists proposed a wide variety of names, from the grand (Excelsior) to the playful (Dusty).

NASA's three previous Mars rovers Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity were also named by students. Many of the Mars 2020 semifinalists went down a similar path as those winners, proposing monikers such as Ingenuity, Imagination, Inspiration and Courage.

You can find all 155 semifinalists on the Mars 2020 naming-contest website here.

The next cull will whittle the field down to nine finalists, who will get a nice intellectual reward for making it that far. The nine students "will talk with a panel of experts, including Glaze, NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, NASA JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] rover driver Nick Wiltsie and Clara Ma, who proposed the name for the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, as a sixth-grade student in 2009," NASA officials wrote in the statement.

The public will be able to vote for their favorite of the nine finalist names starting in late January, NASA officials added. This public vote will be one factor considered in the selection of the final name, which will be announced in early March.

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Read more from the original source:

What will NASA's Mars 2020 rover be called? There's 155 names on the shortlist. - Space.com

Andromeda can be seen in exquisite detail in the NASA photograph. This is because the image is actually the result of a total of 7,398 exposures taken over 411 individual pointings made by the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA wrote in a statement: This image of our nearest major galactic neighbour, M3 also known as the Andromeda galaxy is the largest Hubble mosaic to date.

This image of our nearest major galactic neighbour, M3 also known as the Andromeda galaxy is the largest Hubble mosaic to date

NASA

The 1.5 billion pixels in the mosaic reveal over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the Andromeda galaxy.

Despite the fact Andromeda is more than two million light-years away, constant upgrades to Hubble allow the telescope enough power to resolve individual stars in this 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the disk.

NASA added: Its like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand.

READ MORE:NASA unveils stunning photo of ISS transiting Sun

The image shows Hubble tracing densely-packed stars extending from the innermost hub of the galaxy, to the left of the photo.

Moving out from this central galactic bulge, the panorama sweeps across lanes of stars and dust to the sparser outer disk.

Cooler, yellowish stars dominate the galaxys core, toward the lower left.

The blue, ring-like feature wrapping from the upper left to the lower right is a spiral arm with numerous clusters of young, blue stars and star-forming regions.

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And the dark silhouettes trace out complex cosmic dust structures.

M31 is located in the constellation Andromeda and is best observed in November.

Boasting an apparent magnitude of 3.1, the galaxy can be seen with the naked eye, even in areas with moderate light pollution.

Because the star cluster is such an easily observed feature in the night sky, no-one knows who discovered the Andromeda galaxy.

However, Persian astronomer Abd al-rahman al-Sufis The Book of Fixed Stars from the year 964 contains the first known report of the object.

The emergence of the cosmic mosaic coincides with the news two ancient migration events took place in the Andromeda galaxy.

Astronomers have uncovered two historic events in which the Andromeda Galaxy underwent major changes to its structure.

The findings shed light not only on the evolution and formation of the Andromeda Galaxy, but also to our own Milky Way.

Large galaxies such as ours are believed to grow through repeated merging with smaller, dwarf galaxies.

Astronomers have uncovered evidence for two major migration events in the history of our large galactic neighbour.

The more recent migration event occurred a few billion years ago and the older event many billions of years prior.

The evidence for the two events comes from galactic archaeology the use of the motions and properties of stars and stellar clusters to reconstruct the formation and evolutionary history of galaxies.

Professor Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney, a co-author of the study, said: By tracing the faint remains of dwarf galaxies with star clusters, weve been able to recreate the way the Andromeda Galaxy drew them in at different times, from whats known as the cosmic web of matter that threads the Universe.

Originally posted here:

NASA news: Beautiful Hubble snap reveals a colossal galaxy heading to the Milky Way - Express.co.uk

On January 19, SpaceX and NASA conducted a launch of the Crew Dragon, which will one day ferry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), to demonstrate its lift-off capabilities. The mission was a resounding success, with NASA chief Jim Bridenstine stating he was thrilled with the outcome.

SpaceX boss Elon Musk added it was a picture perfect mission, saying it went as well as one can possibly expect.

Now, SpaceX, NASA and Boeing, another of the space agencys clients helping to get astronauts to the ISS and competing with Mr Musks firm, have become embroiled in a Twitter love-in as they all take turns to praise one another.

Following the success of the launch, Boeing sent out a tweet to its 58,800 followers, stating: Congratulations, @SpaceX team! @Commercial_Crew is that much closer to returning crew launch capabilities to the US in support of our @NASA customer.

Mr Bridenstine appreciated the camaraderie between NASAs two clients, responding to the Boeing tweet saying: This is the America I know and love! Great competitors congratulating each other.

Many fans were also thrilled with the love-in, with one appreciating the stark differences with the space race of the 1960s at the height of the Cold War between the US and Russia.

David Willis said on Twitter: A space race where the two sides congratulate each other instead of threatening to nuke each other. A lot better than the 60s!

Another said this sort of competition will help the US re-establish itself as the dominant force in the space race.

Brett Messinger said on Twitter: Space launches are very good money and I am sure if one or the other could win out they would try too.

Competing is good and strong competition is better so glad we have the best in the world. China may have pulled ahead but we will catch up soon.

However, it has not always been so peaceful between NASA and its clients.

READ MORE:NASA reveals Puerto Rico earthquake damage in satellite images

Link:

NASA, SpaceX and Boeing in Twitter love-in as space rivals put tensions to bed - Express.co.uk

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. As Nasa Hataoka finished up regulation play at the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions, Twitter was aflutter about the way she marked her ball on the 11th hole.

A viewer had taped part of what transpired on the green at Tranquilo Golf Course and questioned whether or not the 21-year-old had replaced the ball on the wrong side of the coin.

The LPGA confirmed there was no breach, saying that the rules official watching the telecast saw no violation. In fact, the fans video cut off part of Hataokas routine, in which she moves the ball from in front of the coin to behind the coin and then back to in front of the coin.

Tournament of Champions:Photos|Leaderboard|Celebrities

Hataoka, a three-time winner on the LPGA who is currently No. 6 in the world, was never questioned about it as the official said no rule was broken. The Japanese player went into a playoff against Inbee Park and Gaby Lopez. Park was the first to bow out after making a bogey on the par-3 18th.

The playoff was suspended at 6:04 p.m. due to darkness. Hataoka and Lopez will return at 8 a.m. on Monday to resume play.

Continue reading here:

LPGA: No breach in the way Nasa Hataoka marked her ball at TOC - Golfweek

Todays spacewalk marks the second time this year astronauts will brave the vacuum of space outside the International Space Station (ISS). You can watch the action unfold in the embedded NASA TV stream below.

Live coverage of the spacewalk will see astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch don their bulky spacesuits.

The NASA astronauts last ventured outside of the orbital laboratory on Wednesday, January 15.

The all-female team is tasked with replacing the batteries that store and distribute the space stations power.

NASA will stream the spacewalk live online from around 10.30am GMT (5.30am EST) today (January 20).

READ MORE:NASA proposes using MUSHROOMS for Mars habitats

The NASA spacewalk will be broadcast on NASA TV, through the space agencys website and YouTube channel.

You can tune in to NASA TV via the embedded video player above, courtesy of NASA.

In addition, NASAs round-the-clock broadcasts are free to watch on UStream and terrestrial television.

Live coverage will begin 10.30am GMT (5.30am EST) and the spacewalk itself will kick off at 11.50am GMT (6.50am EST) today.

Starting in October 2019, astronauts on the ISS have embarked on a series of spacewalks to upgrade the space stations batteries.

The stations solar arrays collect energy during the brief periods of daylight and the batteries then redistribute that power when in the nightside.

NASAs Mark Garcia said: This is the second of two battery replacement spacewalks in five days to complete the upgrade of batteries that store and distribute power generated by the stations solar arrays on the stations port truss.

Meir and Koch will replace nickel-hydrogen batteries with newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries for the power channel on one pair of the stations solar arrays.

The batteries were delivered to the ISS in September last year on board a Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle.

A similar set of battery replacements was last carried out in January 2017.

Before todays event, Mrs Koch shared some of the behind-the-scenes preparations.

The astronaut tweeted from space photos of her braiding Dr Meirs hair to fit in their NASA-issue spacesuits.

Mrs Koch tweeted: Spacewalk time! After all the technical studying, airlock prepping, and conferencing, @Astro_Jessica and I multitask as we do our final briefing.

Spacewalk hair pro tip: Double braid is the way to go fits snug under the com cap, out of the helmet seal, and no flyaways!

View post:

NASA spacewalk LIVE stream: How to watch NASA's all-female spacewalk live online today - Express.co.uk

Whether you take astrology seriously or not, we all know what star sign we are.

But a recent mathematical calculation by an expert in astrology, followed by a report from NASA, has put that all into question.

Revealing the constellations are no longer in the same place as they were during the Babylonian period around 3,000 years ago, it was suggested the zodiac should have new dates.

This meant people thought their horoscope might not be what they thought it originally was.

But some astrologers have since shut the theories down, and have reassured horoscope fans there is nothing to fear.

Here, we explain it all.

Fears were originally raised in 2011 when astrologist Professor Parke Kunkle calculated an astrological phenomenon.

He suggested the zodiac system was all wrong and that the zodiac should have new dates.

He said the Earth's "wobbly" orbit meant it no longer aligned to the stars in the same way it did during the Babylonian period, 3,000 years ago - when the signs of the zodiac were first drawn up.

His theory went viral - with people worrying about what it meant for them and sparking concerns they had possibility spent years checking the wrong horoscope.

Five years after Kunkle's theory was published, NASA sparked even more concern in January 2016 when it published an information piece based on the same theory.

It revealed how scientists have discovered that today, the sky has shifted since the Babylonian period.

It also explained how the Earth's axis - the North Pole - doesn't point in quite the same direction as it did 3,000 years ago - meaning the constellations are no longer in the same place they were.

As a result, NASA revealed how some would have been born under a sign that was in fact one constellation earlier.

Over the years, astrologers have discovered that stars do appear to move because of the wobble in the rotation of the Earth.

Because of this, over thousands of years, the dates where the sun appears to move in front of each constellation of stars has altered by a few days.

The process is known as 'precession'.

Astrologist's have to include the effects of precession to make sure long term predictions are accurate.

However, experts say the shift has no bearing on the 'tropical zodiac' system - based on seasons and their relationships to the cycles of the sun - which is typically used by western astrologers.

So in a nutshell, the stars don't move, but can appear as though they have over the course of centuries - which lead to Kunkle to calculate that the Zodiac should have new dates.

The suggestion of a 13th constellation has also been dismissed by astrologers.

According to the Babylonians' own ancient stories, there was in fact a 13th constellation - Ophiuchus. However, it is said they consciously chose to ignore it.

From a scientific point of view, NASA explains how the constellations are all different shapes and sizes - meaning the sun spends different lengths of time lined up with each one.

For example, the line from Earth through the sun points to Virgo for 45 days, while only pointing to Scorpius for seven.

However, to make a tidy match with their 12-month calendar, NASA claim the Babylonians ignored the fact the sun actually moves through 13 constellations.

It says they assigned each of those 12 constellations equal amounts of time - despite the sun being aligned with Ophiuchus for about 18 days each year.

Read more here:

NASA think we may have been reading the wrong star signs and horoscopes for years - Daily Post

Because of rough seas in the Atlantic, SpaceX called off a test on Saturday that would have destroyed a rocket in flight to demonstrate that its spacecraft are safe for astronauts.

The company will now try to conduct the test on Sunday between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern time.

Since 2012, the company founded by Elon Musk has been flying to the International Space Station for NASA, but it has never before carried a human crew, only cargo. In a final major milestone before it is ready to start taking NASA astronauts to the station, SpaceX will test a system that is to rescue astronauts in case of an emergency during launch.

The main objective of this test is to show that we can carry the astronauts safely away, said Benji Reed, director of crew mission management for SpaceX, during a news conference on Friday.

This flight of a Falcon 9 rocket with a Crew Dragon capsule on top is known as an in-flight abort test. It will not have any astronauts aboard, and it will not be like most launches where were really hoping for it not to be exciting, said Kathy Lueders, manager of the commercial crew program for NASA.

About 84 seconds after launch, the Falcon 9 rocket will shut off its nine engines, simulating a failure, and powerful thrusters on the Crew Dragon will ignite to propel the capsule away. The force of that sudden departure will destroy the rocket, possibly even causing it to explode.

Probably a fireball of some kind, Mr. Reed said.

After reaching an altitude of about 25 miles, the Dragon will then drop off the trunk, or bottom half of the spacecraft, and small thrusters will push the capsule into the correct vertical orientation before parachutes deploy. It is to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean just 10 minutes after launch.

While weather on Saturday looked favorable at the launchpad, waves and winds were high at the splashdown site.

If the test is successful, Ms. Lueders said, the next Crew Dragon mission, which is scheduled to take two NASA astronauts, Douglas G. Hurley and Robert L. Behnken, to the space station, could launch as soon as early March.

A success in SpaceXs in-flight abort test would bring NASA closer to the culmination of its strategy of turning to private companies SpaceX and Boeing for providing transportation for its astronauts. In the past, NASA built and operated its own vehicles, like the space shuttles.

Delays have pushed back the first commercial crew flights by a couple of years, but NASA hopes that the first crewed missions will take off this year. In California, SpaceX is completing construction of its next Crew Dragon capsule and plans to ship it to Florida within a few weeks.

Last month, Boeing launched its capsule, called Starliner, in a test flight without astronauts, but a problem with the spacecrafts clock led to calling off a planned docking at the space station. Boeing and NASA are investigating what went wrong and NASA will decide whether it will allow astronauts on the next Starliner flight, or if it will require Boeing to first repeat the uncrewed orbital test flight.

Since the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011, NASA has had to rely on Soyuz rockets built by Russia for taking astronauts into orbit. It is looking to buy one or two more seats from Russia, at a cost of more than $80 million apiece. If SpaceX and Boeing experience further delays, NASA will have to cut the number of astronauts at the space station, which would limit the amount of scientific research.

See the article here:

SpaceX Test Delayed to Sunday - The New York Times

155 students from across the U.S. have been chosen as semifinalists in NASA's essay contest to name the Mars 2020 rover. and see it launch from Cape Canaveral this July.

NASA's Mars2020 rover is one step closer to having its own name after 155 students acrossthe U.S. were chosen as semifinalists in the "Name the Rover" essay contest.Just one will be selected to win the grand prize - the exciting honor of namingthe rover and an invitation to see the spacecraft launch in July 2020 from CapeCanaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The currentlyunnamed rover is a robotic scientist weighing more than 2,300 pounds (1,000kilograms). It will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize theplanet's climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth andpave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.

"Thisrover is the first leg of a round-trip mission to Mars that will advanceunderstanding in key science fields like astrobiology," said Lori Glaze,director of NASA's Planetary Science Division. "This contest is a cool wayto engage the next generation and encourage careers in all STEM fields. Thechosen name will help define this rover's unique personality among our fleet ofMartian spacecraft."

With more than 28,000essay submissions received from K-12 students, NASA recruited volunteer contestjudges from every U.S. state and territory. Nearly 4,700 eligible judge volunteerswere selected from a diverse pool of educators, professionals, and spaceenthusiasts and were instrumental in selecting the semifinalists.

The next phasesof judging will reduce the competition to nine finalists, and the public willhave an opportunity to vote for their favorite name online in late January. Theresults of the poll will be a consideration in the final naming selection.

The ninefinalists will talk with a panel of experts, including Glaze, NASA astronautJessica Watkins, NASAJPL rover driver Nick Wiltsie and Clara Ma, who proposed the name for the MarsScience Laboratory rover, Curiosity, as a sixth-grade student in 2009. Thegrand prize winner will be announced in early March 2020.

For completecontest and prize details, including a full listing of the 155 state/territory semifinalists,visit:

https://www.futureengineers.org/nametherover

The namingcontest partnership is part of a Space Act Agreement in educational and publicoutreach efforts between NASA, Battelle of Columbus, Ohio, and Future Engineersof Burbank, California.

NASA's Jet PropulsionLaboratory in Pasadena, California, manages rover development for the agency.The Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida isresponsible for launch management.

Mars 2020 ispart of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to preparefor human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with returning astronauts tothe Moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and aroundthe Moon by 2028 through NASA's Artemislunar exploration plans.

For moreinformation about the mission, go to:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

For more aboutNASA's Moon to Mars plans, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars

News Media Contact

DC Agle Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California 818-393-9011 david.c.agle@jpl.nasa.gov

2020-007

Originally posted here:

NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Closer to Getting Its Name - Jet Propulsion Laboratory