NASA JPL
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NASA
Ribbon-Cutting Event for NASA Deep Space Network’s Deep Space Station 23
Description Leadership from NASA Headquarters, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Deep Space Network (DSN) stand in front of the recently completed Deep Space Station 23 antenna at the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone complex near Barstow, California, on Aug. 25, 2026. From left: Germaine Aziz (project manager, DSN Aperture Enhancement Project, JPL); Bradford Arnold (manager, Telecom Programs & Oversight, JPL);…
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Press Releases
AV Awarded Contract for Three Autonomous Helicopters in Support of NASA’s SkyFall Mission to Mars
AeroVironment, Inc. (“AV”), a global defense technology leader, today announced that its MacCready Works advanced solutions team has been awarded a contract for the co-design and co-manufacture of three Mars helicopters for NASA’s SkyFall mission with the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), taking the project from future concept to a formally funded Mars science mission and a path toward launch in late…
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NASA
Antenna Testing for NASA’s SkyFall Mission
Description SkyFall ground-penetrating radar engineer Maya Román connects a coaxial cable to a test antenna in the Environmental Test Lab’s electromagnetic interference testing chamber at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The antenna was pointed up during test to minimize reflections and interferences with the antenna pattern during the measurement. Equipped with four instruments each, the three SkyFall aircraft will follow…
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NASA
PRAXIS: Planetary Rings Autonomous EXploration with In-situ Sampling
Marco QuadrelliNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Humanity has never touched the particles of a planetary ring, but if we were able to get close enough and sample them, it will transform understanding of ring structure and origins for Saturn (dense), Uranus and Neptune (tenuous), rings of other objects such as Centaurs Chariklo and Chiron, and even early protoplanetary and circumstellar disks. Despite…
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NASA
Our First View of the Surface of Mars
“Touchdown, we have touchdown!” At 5:12 a.m. PDT, July 20, 1976, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers as they learned that the Viking 1 lander had survived its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere. Forty minutes later, the lander’s first image began to appear on their monitors, slowly forming line by line from left to right.…
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NASA
NASA Study Finds Near-Earth Asteroid Is Actually Comet
New research led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has revealed the identity of a puzzling near-Earth object by precisely tracking its motion through space and using powerful observatories that image faint celestial objects. This object has a dual personality: Past images hadn’t revealed obvious cometlike activity, suggesting it might be an asteroid, but its motion…
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NASA
Voyager awarded $298M NASA contract under completed Astrobotic acquisition
Voyager Technologies (NYSE: VOYG) has completed its acquisition of Astrobotic Technology, Inc. The close comes as NASA recently awarded two new lunar lander missions to the company and Griffin Mission One shipped to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for environmental testing ahead of launch later this year.”As America marks 250 years, the next chapter of this nation’s leadership begins on the…
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NASA
Curiosity Sees Martian Sulfur Up Close
This close-up view shows fragments of sulfur crystals — the first ever seen on the Red Planet. The crystals were found after NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover happened to drive over a rock and crush it on May 30, 2024. Several days later, Curiosity used a camera on the end of its robotic arm to take this image. A recent paper in Science…
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NASA
NASA Scientists Take to Air and Space to Study Arctic Sea Ice
This month, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are testing a spacecraft sensor that will help measure how quickly Arctic sea ice is disappearing. And while that instrument won’t launch for another year, scientists started preparing for its use during a recent field campaign in the Canadian wilderness. Researchers spent two weeks in April flying above the…
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NASA
NASA Testing Advanced Capabilities for Moon, Mars Rovers
On a bleak stretch of the Colorado Desert in Southern California, a compact four-wheeled rover recently trundled about 16 miles (26 kilometers) with minimal intervention from the team of engineers trailing it. Called ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain), this prototype is being used by NASA to advance both robotic autonomy and the ability to traverse challenging landscapes.…
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