The Moon begins to rise behind the ARADS rover during the 2017 season of field tests in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The Milky Way is visible in the night sky.
The Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies, or ARADS, project is designing tools and techniques that could be used to search for life one day on Mars or other places in the Solar System. The team’s prototype rover combines the ability to move across the surface, drill down to collect soil samples, and feed them to several life-detection instruments on board. The extreme conditions of Chile’s Atacama Desert provide one of the most Mars-like environments on Earth, where the team can test and refine these technologies and methods.
Image Credit: NASA/CampoAlto/Victor Robles
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Tags: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center MSFC Goddard GSFC Ames Research ARC Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies ARADS Mars solar system Desert Chile
NASA is breaking ground in the world of additive manufacturing with the Low Cost Upper Stage-Class Propulsion project. Recently, the agency successfully hot-fire tested a combustion chamber at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama made using a new combination of 3-D printing techniques.
In this image, NASA successfully hot-fire tests a 3-D printed copper combustion chamber liner with an E-Beam Free Form Fabrication manufactured nickel-alloy jacket. The hardware must withstand extreme hot and cold temperatures inside the engine as extremely cold propellants are heated up and burned for propulsion.
Image credit: NASA/MSFC/David Olive
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In this image, U.S. Air Force 'Guardian Angel' Pararescue specialists secure a covered life raft, during an astronaut rescue training exercise off of Florida's eastern coast in April, 2018. The specially designed 20-person life raft is equipped with enough food, water and medical supplies to sustain both rescuers and crew for up to three days, if necessary.
Image credit: NASA
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Tags: NASA NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center MSFC Johnson JSC Commercial Crew Program Landing Recovery Team SpaceX RT Recovery Trainer Open Ocean USAF Parajumpers C-17
Rocket engine nozzles operate in extreme temperatures and pressures from the combustion process and are complex and expensive to manufacture. That is why a team of engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, developed and proved out a new additive manufacturing technique for nozzle fabrication that can greatly reduce costs and development time.
Through hot-fire testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, engineers put this nozzle through its paces, accumulating more than 1,040 seconds at high combustion chamber pressures and temperatures. Now, this technology is being licensed and considered in commercial applications across the industry.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
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NASA successfully launched the second in a series of next-generation weather satellites for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at 5:02 p.m. EST Thursday.
NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-S (GOES-S) lifted off on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
GOES-S mission managers confirmed at 8:58 p.m. the spacecraft’s solar arrays successfully deployed and the spacecraft was operating on its own power.
The satellite will provide faster, more accurate and more detailed data, in near real-time, to track storm systems, lightning, wildfires, coastal fog and other hazards that affect the western United States.
Image credit: NASA/Bill White
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Tags: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center MSFC Goddard GSFC Earth NOAA National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration weather GOES-R GOES Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite storms lightning wildfires fog GOES-S Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Goddard Space Flight Center LSP Launch Services Program KSC Kennedy Space Center ULA United Launch Alliance Atlas V-541 SLC-41 CCAFS Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Astrotech Astrotech Space Operations Lockheed Martin Harris Corporation ABI Advanced Baseline Imager SEISS Space Environment In-Situ Suite Magnetometer GLM Geostationary Lightning Mapper EXIS Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors SUVI Solar Ultraviolet Imager