NASA Archives - Memeburn

NASA’s groundbreaking Parker Solar Probe to visit the Sun in 2025
By Andy Walker: Editor on 2 June, 2017
As ambitious as Icarus might've been, even he flew a little too close to the Sun. But in the non-fictional world, NASA is planning to do exactly the same. But, you know, replacing those wax wings with a massive heat shield. The Parker Solar Probe, a multi-billion-dollar unmanned mission to the Sun has been made concrete this week, with a timeline and mission outline. The probe, renamed in honour of astrophysicist Eugene Parker, will travel to the Sun, and try extremely hard to not burst into flames. It will be aided by a fat carbon-composite heat shield that'll allow the craft to...
Watch live: astronauts repair the ISS during historic 200th spacewalk
By Andy Walker: Editor on 12 May, 2017
Two NASA astronauts are about to embark on the 200th spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS). Peggy Whitson and Jack Fisher are the two lucky Americans who will venture out into the vacuous void to repair a few problems on the ISS's exterior and swap out a few parts. LIVE NOW: @AstroPeggy and @Astro2Fish prepare to venture outside @Space_Station for 6.5 hour #spacewalk. Watch: https://t.co/mzKW5uDsTi pic.twitter.com/4jldGpDMNK — NASA (@NASA) May 12, 2017 For Fisher, it will be his first ever time walking through space, but for 57-year-old Whitson, it's just another day at the office. She broke the record for most days...
Cassini’s latest fly-by captures Saturn’s creepy but fascinating surface
By Andy Walker: Editor on 5 May, 2017
NASA has this week published new images of Saturn's surface taken by its Cassini spacecraft in April. The decade-old craft, embarking on the first stage of it final mission, dipped between the planet's cloudbase and its ring network. Tracking with its wide-angle camera across Saturn's surface, Cassini captured the odd lines and blotches on the gas giant from its north pole to equator. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the craft captured over an hour of footage. Cassini flew within 7000km of Saturn's cloudbase, capturing the angular lines of its 'hexagon', and its creepy north pole And judging by that footage, Saturn...
Where’s the dust? Cassini non-discovery puzzles NASA
By Hadlee Simons on 2 May, 2017
NASA's Cassini space probe has started its Grand Finale, diving between Saturn's rings before crashing into the gas giant later this year. However, the first plunge has perplexed scientists, who were expecting to encounter a ton of cosmic dust. Instead, the probe found a low level of dust, the space agency explained. "The region between the rings and Saturn is 'the big empty,' apparently," said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Cassini will stay the course, while the scientists work on the mystery of why the dust level is much lower than expected." Prior to the...
Cassini’s grand finale: Saturn’s best friend embarking on its final mission
By Andy Walker: Editor on 5 April, 2017
NASA's fabled Cassini mission is about to come to an abrupt but long-coming end. The craft, which has been a part of Saturn's sky since 2004, will finally end its celestial bucket list by self-destructing in the most bad-ass way possible -- nosediving into Saturn itself. "On Wednesday, April 26, the spacecraft will make the first in a series of dives through the 1500-mile-wide (2400-kilometre) gap between Saturn and its rings as part of the mission’s grand finale," NASA reveals. Incidentally, no other spacecraft has ever done this before. If that isn't enough, Cassini will attempt to cross through the rings 22...

1
Boeing’s Deep Space Gateway will be our high-tech taxi to Mars
By Staff Reporter on 4 April, 2017
There's a slim chance that us human beings will be populating both the Moon and Mars in the next few decades. Boeing, alongside NASA, is leading that charge. The company has today revealed concepts of its "deep space gateway and transport systems" that it hopes will help NASA and its astronauts explore our two closest celestial neighbours more intricately. And by more intricately, we mean actually walking their surfaces. "Known as the Deep Space Gateway," Boeing writes in a press release, "the habitat could support critical research and help open opportunities for global government or commercial partnerships in deep space, including...
NASA’s online library will up your inspirational quote game
By Julia Breakey on 30 March, 2017
If only the hipsters of 2012 could see us now. More than 140 000 NASA images, videos and audio files have been released to the public -- copyright free -- all available for download on one platform. According to a press release, the content comes from the "agency's many missions in aeronautics, astrophysics, Earth science, human spaceflight, and more." Anyone with online access is now able to embed the content, or download it in multiple resolutions. The site is best used on a computer, but it does scale down for phones and tablets. We're not sure that this is the future NASA envisioned for its free image...
Mars Curiosity Rover is injured with no one around to fix it
By Andy Walker: Editor on 23 March, 2017
It's a sad lonely world for a space craft. You're sent deep into space beyond foreign worlds and forced to survive with little to no human assistance at all. For the Mars Curiosity Rover, it has lived on the Red Planet like this for nearly five years. And the little thing's still plodding along. But it's finally beginning to show its age. A routine check of the Rover's exterior performed earlier this month revealed that the left-middle wheel is taking quite a beating. Images were beamed back from the explorer this week, and tweeted via the Rover's personal Twitter account. These are...
NASA used AI to capture lava lakes from orbit
By Hadlee Simons on 23 March, 2017
AI might be all the rage now, but NASA has been using an AI system for over a decade to quickly direct satellites to capture disasters. In a post on NASA's website, the space agency detailed how its Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE) AI system was able to quickly capture a volcano's changing lava lake. "On 21 January, a fissure opened at the top of Ethiopia's Erta Ale volcano -- one of the few in the world with an active lava lake in its caldera. Volcanologists sent out requests for NASA's Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) spacecraft to image the eruption, which was large...
Snapping Dublin’s city lights from space is how NASA celebrated St Patrick’s Day
By Staff Reporter on 20 March, 2017
Everyone feels just a little bit Irish when St. Patrick's Day comes around. This year, the feast fell on Friday with millions of human beings across the world enjoying festivities with families and friends. But it seems that even NASA's off-world astronauts were getting in on the fun. Astronaut Shane Kimbrough, who is currently residing on the ISS, shared the below snap of Dublin from the space station at night, detailing the city's ring roads, harbour and buzzing city centre. Happy #StPatricksDay Spectacular #Dublin, Ireland captured by @thom_astro from @Space_Station. Enjoy the #StPatricksFest Parade down there! pic.twitter.com/5yKuFyoOUc — Shane Kimbrough (@astro_kimbrough) March 17,...
New Google Doodle honours NASA’s latest discovery
By Andy Walker: Editor on 23 February, 2017
It's not often mother Earth discovers long lost relatives in outer space, but that's largely what NASA has announced this week. The space exploration association shed some light on a new planetary system circulating a distant star called Trappist-1. It's a big discovery, especially since some of these planets are Earth-sized and could harbour life. But that's a bit of a hope more than a certainty for now. Nevertheless, internet giant Google just couldn't resist celebrating the achievement with a Doodle. Earth to #TRAPPIST1...we read you loud and clear. Thanks @NASA for this cosmic discovery! #GoogleDoodle pic.twitter.com/EDh6sDjKIQ — Google Doodles (@GoogleDoodles) February 23, 2017 On...
NASA finds seven Earth-like exoplanets in one system
By Hadlee Simons on 23 February, 2017
In what is a landmark moment in the search for exoplanets and a possible future second home, NASA has announced the discovery of seven Earth-like exoplanets in one solar system. "Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water," NASA said on its website. The agency used the Spitzer space telescope to make the discovery, adding that it was the largest batch of habitable zone exoplanets it's ever found. "This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments,...

1
Help NASA find the ninth planet in our solar system
By Julia Breakey on 17 February, 2017
Scientists have long believed there to be a ninth planet in our solar system, due to some theories that involve science and numbers and gravitational pulls. I'm not too sure. I like movies. What I do know though, is that they are now enlisting the help of the trusty web to expedite the search for the mysterious planet hiding out there in the dark -- and you can join in whenever you'd like. Backyard Worlds is asking people to look through flipbooks of data to identify moving objects. Mostly what you'll be finding are failed stars, but the creators assert that you may...
Dineo’s dangerous siblings: 4 other cyclones that hit South Africa this century
By Andy Walker: Editor on 16 February, 2017
Tropical cyclones are fairly common in the Indian Ocean, but they rarely venture anywhere near South Africa's shores. Most of the time, the country lies too south on the continent to be affected by them. But once in a while, they do make landfall. That's largely what Dineo is doing right now. The tropical cyclone is by no means the most intense cyclone to affect South Africa and hit Mozambique's coastline, but it is the first in the age of peak social media. But before the likes of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook really fueled citizen reporting, there were other storms. We take...

1
Cassini beams back unprecedented views of Saturn’s rings
By Hadlee Simons on 1 February, 2017
NASA's venerable Cassini spacecraft is currently grazing Saturn's rings, beaming some astounding images back to Earth in the process. The images, published on NASA's website, effectively show twice the level of detail as previous imagery of the area. "The new images resolve details as small as 0.3 miles (550 metres), which is on the scale of Earth's tallest buildings," the agency added, giving you a sense of how close Cassini is to the gas giant. Saturn's outer B ring. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute "As the person who planned those initial orbit-insertion ring images -- which remained our most detailed...