NASA

The Ingenuity helicopter mission achieved powered flight on another world, brought Zigbee and Linux to Mars, and survived close calls, lasting 33 times longer than originally planned.

In 2004, NASA’s solar-powered Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed on the Red Planet’s surface on January 3rd and January 24th, respectively, with their touchdown softened by multiple bounces on giant airbags. Both rovers easily surpassed their three-month lifespan: Spirit lost contact in 2010, while Opportunity made it to 2019 — traveling 28 miles during its almost 15 years in operation.

The agency was finally able to take a picture of the charcoal-like space gravel of the Bennu asteroid sample after getting the canister’s last two stubborn screws out.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) says it reestablished contact by having the Perseverance rover “perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.” The agency had lost contact with Ingenuity on Thursday, just as it was ending its 72nd Mars flight.

The Ingenuity helicopter, which has been fluttering around the red planet for almost three years now, fell out of contact with Perseverance, the rover that brought it to the planet (and that it communicates with using Zigbee!).

Astrobotic, the company that makes the lander, published an update Friday saying the lander had traversed 238,000 miles, putting it as far from the Earth as our Moon.

After its successful OSIRIS-REx mission to set an unmanned craft down on and retrieve a sample from the Bennu asteroid, two stubborn screws kept NASA’s scientists out of the canister. Now the screws are out, and there’s video to prove it.

Its maker, Astrobotic, said in an update today that it’s lost too much propellant to make it to the Moon because of a malfunction with its propulsion system that occurred after it separated from its launch vehicle.

Today’s successful launch of the NASA-funded Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander might have made it the US’ first lunar touchdown since 1972. But an “anomaly” kept Peregrine from properly orienting after separating from the launcher, reported The New York Times.

Icons from the original series are “boldly going” into deep space for a permanent space burial — including show creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel (Christine Chapel), Nichelle Nichols (Nyota Uhura), DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy), and James Doohan (Montgomery “Scotty” Scot).

It’s no MCU flick, but it runs down more than 15 missions, experiments, and big events to keep an eye out for next year. From Artemis, to Quesst, to a total eclipse in North America on April 8th, here’s your preview (also available as 1080p download).

Behold the glory of Taters, who stars in an ultra-high definition video that was beamed to Earth from 19 million miles away. Oh, and the video was streamed via laser. Awesome.

The James Webb Space Telescope grabbed this infrared photo of Uranus’ north polar cap, nine of its moons, and its rings, including “the extremely faint and diffuse” Zeta ring.

That’s according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, which said pilots reported radio interference across the United States between noon and 2PM ET on December 14th.

It’s down to just three of the six gyroscopes NASA upgraded it with in 2009 — and one of those is flaking out. According to Ars Technica, the agency’s engineers figured out a way to keep the Hubble going on a single gyro.

The Psyche spacecraft that’s heading to study a metal asteroid has successfully test-fired a communications laser back at the Earth from nearly 10 million miles away — a first for NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system.

NASA has stopped talking to the Mars robots for two weeks. Engadget pointed to NASA’s blog about solar conjunction, a biennial occurrence where the Sun sits between Mars and Earth.

NASA’s free, ad-free, and subscription-free streaming service has officially launched. I’m personally a fan of the “Space Out” series tagged under “NASA & Chill,” which are 30-minute shows featuring incredible shots of planets and space stuff all backed by chill music.

If you’re eager for NASA-produced documentaries and original series or even some good old-fashioned live launch coverage, NASA Plus, which was announced in July, goes live tomorrow, as Space reminds us.

NASA is streaming it live on YouTube. It started at around 8AM ET today and was scheduled to last “about six-and-a-half hours,” so it should have about an hour or so left.

NASA has a bunch of pictures, going back to 2007, to answer just that. Here’s a gallery of my favorites.

If you’re lucky enough to have clear skies in parts of the American Southwest or Pacific Northwest, you get a total eclipse at about 12:18PM ET today. Otherwise, check NASA’s interactive map to see how much eclipse you’re getting where you live. The US space agency is also streaming the eclipse live today.

Yes, NASA just revealed preliminary results from the OSIRIS-REx mission that snagged material from the asteroid Bennu, but this morning, it successfully launched Psyche, an orbiter that will attempt to visit an asteroid of that name, which was the 16th one discovered, on March 17th, 1852.

During a press conference on October 11th, NASA administrators and scientists showed off the initial results from their analysis of the sample capsule returned from the OSIRIS-REx mission that grabbed bits of the asteroid Bennu and brought them back to Earth last month.

After a period of beta testing, NASA rolled out an updated eighth revision of its website last week. The modernized image layouts and text look fine, even if I’m a little nostalgic for the seemingly-ancient previous version that was last updated in the mid 2010s. (The Internet Archive shows even earlier revisions, like 2007’s v5.0 update.)

NASA reports that the OSIRIS-REx capsule “has been bagged” and is flying suspended from a helicopter to the space agency’s clean lab to recover samples gathered from the Bennu asteroid in 2020.

A team is preparing to take the OSIRIS-REx capsule back to NASA’s portable clean lab to collect the Bennu asteroid sample it gathered three years ago, according to NASA’s live coverage.

Lockheed Martin crew checked it for dangerous heat, off-gassing, and unexploded ordinance at the site of the capsule to make sure it poses no danger to the team recovering the OSIRIS-REx samples.

The OSIRIS-REx helicopter team has confirmed the location of the capsule containing the Bennu asteroid sample. The capsule touched down at about 10:52AM ET.

The “time capsule to our ancient solar system” from the OSIRIS-REx mission has officially touched down in the Utah desert.

From the NASA TV live coverage, OSIRIS-REx has deployed its parachute about 5,000 feet above the Utah testing training range.

After the Bennu sample capsule’s release, NASA renamed the OSIRIS-REx mission. Now called OSIRIS-APEX, the spacecraft will meet up with a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid called Apophis.