NASA

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, left to right, Firouz Naderi, Director for the Solar System Exploration, and John Brophy, Electric Propulsion Engineer, are shown during Bolden’s visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday, May 23, 2013. NASA engineers are developing an ion engine for an asteroid capture mission later this decade. — AP Photo PASADENA, California – Surrounded by engineers, NASA chief Charles Bolden inspected a prototype spacecraft engine that...Read Full Story

The M7-class flare was also associated with a coronal mass ejection or CME, another solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space. While this CME was not Earth-directed, it has combined with an earlier CME, and the flank of the combined cloud may pass Earth. Particles from the CME cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.This image, captured at 11:06 a.m. EDT on May 22, 2013...Read Full Story

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare on the right side of the sun on May 22, 2013. This image shows light in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength that shows material heated to intense temperatures during a flare and that is typically colorized in teal. Credit: NASA/SDO larger image Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory and ESA/NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory show that the...Read Full Story

With this new view of a spectacular stellar nursery ESO is celebrating 15 years of the Very Large Telescope -- the world's most advanced optical instrument. This picture reveals thick clumps of dust silhouetted against the pink glowing gas cloud known to astronomers as IC 2944. These opaque blobs resemble drops of ink floating in a strawberry cocktail, their whimsical shapes sculpted by powerful radiation coming from the nearby brilliant young stars. This new picture celebrates an important...Read Full Story

Moscow, May 25 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Russia’s Energia Rocket and Space Corporation will make four launches next year from the Pacific Ocean-based Odyssey platform under the Sea Launch programme, an official said. Corporation president Vitaly Lopota said that after 2014, Energia will be able to make five or more launches a year. Next year’s launches will be the first since one of Sea Launch’s Zenit vehicles carrying an Intelsat-27 telecom satellite crashed shortly after lift-off Feb 1 this...Read Full Story