NASA selects Intuitive Machines for south pole lunar lander mission
30 Aug
Science & Technology

NASA selects Intuitive Machines for south pole lunar lander mission

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NASA Space Technology Intuitive Machines will use its Nova-C lander for the CLPS task order awarded by NASA Aug. 29. Credit: Intuitive MachinesWASHINGTON — NASA has selected Intuitive Machines to deliver a set of payloads to the south polar region of the moon in 2027, the first award under a commercial lunar lander program in nearly a year and a half.NASA announced Aug. 29 that it awarded a task order valued at $116.9 million through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to Intuitive Machines. That company’s Nova-C lander will deliver six payloads, with a combined mass of 79 kilograms, to the south polar region of the moon in 2027.The six payloads — four from NASA centers, one from the European Space Agency and one from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric...
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NASA G-IV Plane Will Carry Next-Generation Science Instrument
30 Aug
Science & Technology

NASA G-IV Plane Will Carry Next-Generation Science Instrument

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NASA Space Technology In June 2024, a new tail number swept the sky above NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. Pilots conducted flights of a Gulfstream IV (G-IV) to evaluate its handling characteristics and to familiarize pilots with it before it begins structural modifications. The research plane is joining the center’s fleet serving NASA’s Airborne Science program.The G-IV will carry the Next Generation Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR-NG), which sends and receives microwave signals to collect information about Earth’s topographic features and how they change over time. The goal for the team at NASA Armstrong is to modify the G-IV to accommodate three radars simultaneously.“The AIRSAR-NG will be composed of three different Synthetic Aperture Radar antennas in one instrument to provide new insight into Earth’s surface more efficiently,” said Yunling Lou, principal investigator...
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NASA JPL Developing Underwater Robots to Venture Deep Below Polar Ice
30 Aug
Science & Technology

NASA JPL Developing Underwater Robots to Venture Deep Below Polar Ice

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NASA Space Technology Called IceNode, the project envisions a fleet of autonomous robots that would help determine the melt rate of ice shelves.On a remote patch of the windy, frozen Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California huddled together, peering down a narrow hole in a thick layer of sea ice. Below them, a cylindrical robot gathered test science data in the frigid ocean, connected by a tether to the tripod that had lowered it through the borehole.This test gave engineers a chance to operate their prototype robot in the Arctic. It was also a step toward the ultimate vision for their project, called IceNode: a fleet of autonomous robots that would venture beneath Antarctic ice shelves to help scientists calculate how rapidly the frozen continent is losing...
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NASA’s Roman Space Telescope to Investigate Galactic Fossils
30 Aug
Science & Technology

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope to Investigate Galactic Fossils

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NASA Space Technology The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging together, and shifting appearance. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes can only provide snapshots, squeezed into a human lifetime.However, galaxies leave behind clues to their history and how they came to be. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have the capacity to look for these fossils of galaxy formation with high-resolution imaging of galaxies in the nearby universe.Astronomers, through a grant from NASA, are designing a set of possible observations called RINGS (the Roman Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey) that would collect these remarkable images, and the team is producing publicly available tools that the astronomy community can use once Roman launches and starts taking data. The RINGS survey is a preliminary concept that...
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