Announcements

NASA Completes Spacecraft to Transport, Support Roman Space Telescope

Project News • September 17th, 2024

The spacecraft bus that will deliver NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to its orbit and enable it to function once there is now complete after years of construction, installation, and testing.

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer Spacecraft Completes Environmental Testing

Project News • September 16th, 2024

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft recently completed the shaking, chilling, baking, and other testing needed to ensure it can survive launch and the harsh conditions of space. Now that environmental testing is done, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, is putting...

Explore Exoplanets - The Discoverers (Episode 16)

Project News • September 12th, 2024

Did the movie Avatar predict the discovery of the holy grail of exoplanets: a nearby Earth-like rocky planet orbiting a Sun-like star? Drs. Jessie Christiansen and Ashley Chontos continue their conversation about Ashley's favorite fictional planet—and Jessie reveals whether she's found Pandora's...

Work Is Under Way on NASA’s Next-Generation Asteroid Hunter

Project News • August 30th, 2024

The mirrors for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope are being installed and aligned, and work on other spacecraft components is accelerating.

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope to Investigate Galactic Fossils

Project News • August 29th, 2024

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...

Explore Exoplanets - The Discoverers (Episode 15)

Project News • August 29th, 2024

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Telescope found its first planet candidate in 2009. Ten years later, KOI-4.01 was finally confirmed as an exoplanet by a team led by Dr. Ashley Chontos. The confirmation provided some bittersweet closure for the Kepler mission and also brought Ashley fame and fortune...

Live From the Clean Room — Building NEO Surveyor

Project News • August 21st, 2024

Watch as NASA’s next planetary defense mission comes together at the JPL.

NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour

Project News • August 15th, 2024

Most familiar stars peacefully orbit the center of the Milky Way. But citizen scientists working on NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space. This hypervelocity object is...

'Last Light' Image from NASA's NEOWISE

Project News • August 8th, 2024

Around midnight on July 31 in Pasadena, California, NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft made its final record of the infrared sky. This was the final observation that the prolific telescope would make of our cosmic neighborhood, after nearly 30 million total observations during its lifetime, first as the...

Brown Dwarf and Red Dwarf Pairs Highlight a Gray Area Between Planets and Stars

Project News • July 24th, 2024

A team of researchers and citizen scientists discovered 13 new red dwarf and brown dwarf binary systems in NASA's WISE and NEOWISE data that will help scientists better define the differences between stars and planets.