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NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft recently caught sight of a dust devil dancing across the Martian surface.

While change may be on the way, the Pacific is still dominated by the strong, larger-than- El Nino/La Nina pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), according to the latest data from the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon satellite m…

On June 15, 1991, Mt. Pinatubo blew its top in one of the most violent volcanic events of the century.

The intriguing past and out-of-this-world future of the telescope will be explored in a pair of free lectures sponsored by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The Hawaiian Islands trigger an extraordinary interaction between wind and ocean that extends thousands of kilometers.

The 10 most promising mission concepts of the 43
proposed to NASA for possible launch to Mars in 2007 were
selected today to receive funding for six months of continued
studies.

The elusive swirl of breezes called the Catalina Eddy, responsible for helping cool the Los Angeles basin, is captured in a new animation of sea-surface winds measured by the SeaWinds instrument on NASA’s QuikScat satellite.

A new radar mapping technology designed to generate high-resolution, three-dimensional maps of Earth beneath foliage and other vegetation has been licensed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to EarthData Internation…

NASA’S next robotic space explorer is ready to do a little sunbathing on a mission to catch a wisp of raw material from the luminous celestial body around which the Earth and other planets revolve.

When the Shiveluch volcano erupted on Monday night, the diligent “zoom lens” on NASA’s Terra spacecraft, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), was watching.

In the first step of a potential two-step process, JPL is included in two proposals selected by NASA for detailed mission feasibility studies as candidates for a Pluto-Kuiper Belt (PKB) mission

Students who are visually impaired now have a unique opportunity to touch the stars and experience some of NASA’s spectacular discoveries.

Mars scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will give the latest report about the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission, now en route to the mysterious red planet, in a webcast available for viewing starting June 7, 2001…

Jupiter’s magnetosphere, an ionized-gas bubble encasing the planet, is lopsided and leaky, with an unexpected abundance of high-energy particles bleeding out of one side.

NASA’s Genesis spacecraft, to be launched aboard a Boeing Delta II vehicle on July 30, arrived today at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center from Denver, Colo. aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft.

Engineers are narrowing down possible causes for an intermittent problem with the camera on NASA’s Galileo spacecraft that may be related to effects of Jupiter’s radiation belts.

The clearest radar pictures of a near-Earth double asteroid system were taken by astronomers last week using NASA’s Goldstone radar telescope.

NASA software that thinks for itself and makes decisions without help from ground controllers will fly as the brains of triplet satellites in 2002.

Daily global maps, created with images from NASA’s Mars
Global Surveyor spacecraft, provide a moving picture of
Martian weather during 1999-2000 similar to the familiar
satellite weather maps we see of Earth.

The Deep Impact mission, the first mission to ever attempt to impact a comet nucleus in order to answer basic questions about the nature of comets, has successfully completed.

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft today passed the closest point to Jupiter of the spacecraft’s current orbit of the giant planet, and remains healthy as it heads for a flyby of Callisto, the outermost of Jupiter’s four largest moons.

NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft performed its first trajectory correction maneuver this morning as it fired its thrusters to fine-tune its flight path for arrival at Mars in October.

On a third and final tour of duty in the Jovian system, NASA’s dauntless Galileo spacecraft makes its closest pass yet to Jupiter’s outermost large moon.

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft has successfully completed a flyby of Jupiter’s moon Callisto, closer than any of the spacecraft’s 30 previous flybys of Jovian moons.

See the Santa Barbara, Calif., coast and nearby mountains as an airplane pilot might in a short computer animation created with data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

Imagine turning on your faucet and watching water flow out and then flow right back up into the faucet.

Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., helped to piece together what happened when Comet LINEAR (C/1999 S4) disintegrated in July 2000.

For two days this weekend, thousands of people from around the country will get to go behind the scenes at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., NASA’s lead center for robotic space exploration.

An Air Force general who leads one of the United States’ largest organizations responsible for developing and fielding military space missions has been selected to become deputy director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The desert takes to the skies in these images of eastern China from NASA’s Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR).

Preparing for the communication needs of an expected population boom in interplanetary spacecraft, NASA has selected a builder to add an advanced dish antenna, 34 meters in diameter (112 feet), near Madrid, Spain, one of the three sites …

Once a year, thousands of people from around the country get a chance to go behind the scenes at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA’s lead center for robotic space exploration.

During its relatively brief history, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has created an impressive legacy of achievement as the world’s leading center for the robotic exploration of space.

A few of the 2,300 students from 13 states who have used a huge remote-control radio telescope to measure energy from Jupiter’s radiation belts during the past six months will present their results May 4 to scientists at NASA’s JPL, Pasa…

Flight controllers for NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory report that the spacecraft is doing fine after the reset of one of its on-board computers Tuesday, possibly caused by a solar flare.

Sunspots touch both K.B. Hallmark’s job as a police communications supervisor in Victoria, Texas, and his volunteer sideline of helping people learn about space.

As NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope celebrates its 11th birthday, its JPL-built camera has added picture number 100,000 to its bulging photo album.

NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft turned its multipurpose camera homeward last week and took its first picture — a shot of a faint crescent Earth — as the spacecraft heads off toward its destination, the planet Mars.

This morning flight controllers turned the Mars Odyssey spacecraft and pointed the thermal emission imaging system at Earth and the Moon to calibrate the instrument.

How did we get here? Are we alone? These tantalizing questions are addressed in two free, public lectures called “The Hunt for Earthlike Planets,” at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Thurs., November 29, and at Pasadena City College o…

A bloom of decaying algae with major ecological ramifications was recently observed by NASA’s Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer instrument on the Terra satellite. The event occurred near Elands Bay, in South Africa’s Western Cape pro…

NASA’s Mars Exploration Program has awarded four industry team contracts to conduct initial studies of specific implementation scenarios for a first Mars sample return mission that might be launched as early as 2011.

The benefits of using infrared telescopes to unveil celestial objects not visible to the human eye will be demonstrated in a pair of free, public lectures to be held at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Thursday, April 19, and at Pasad…

An advanced sensor developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will be inducted into the U.S. Space Foundation Hall of Fame on April 12 in recognition of its potential uses in medicine, firefighting and industry, as …

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft has successfully completed a flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io, skimming about 200 kilometers (124 miles) above the surface of the highly volcanic moon at 0459 Universal Time today (9:59 p.m. Sunday, Pacific Daylight T…

The earthquake that struck western India this January brought water to places that had previously been dry.

Scientists are seeing unprecedented detail of the spiral arms and dust clouds in the nearby Whirlpool galaxy.

The innovative engine now propelling NASA’s Deep Space 1 spacecraft toward its ambitious September encounter with Comet Borrelly just won’t give up, having now run for more than 10,000 hours — 50 times beyond its originally required lif…

By spinning ultra-cold sodium gas in a laboratory, NASA-funded scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge have created a gas cloud that resembles rounded Swiss cheese and is riddled with tiny whirlpools, l…

Two NASA spacecraft jointly observing Jupiter’s moon Io this winter captured images of a towering volcanic plume never seen before and a bright red ring of fresh surface deposits surrounding its source.

NASA’s Deep Space 1 spacecraft, sailing through the solar system today, has taken delivery of a new cargo: the latest software for its ambitious encounter with Comet Borrelly this September.

In December, Stardust, the mission to Comet Wild 2 to capture dust particles and return them to Earth, cleared a coating that was clouding its camera optics by applying heat.

Dr. Charles Elachi has been named the new director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr. David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology, announced at a press conference today. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Two asteroids have been given Irish names in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

The resilient Galileo spacecraft doesn’t know when to call it quits. So, NASA has outlined the details of one last mission extension, which includes five more flybys of the Jovian moons before a final plunge into the crushing pressure of…

Students in at least six states will join California astronomers in a live Internet teleconference Thursday, March 15, to analyze new data about Jupiter’s radiation belts, much of it collected by the students using huge radio-telescope d…

A mathematical model of the surface of Venus could show how the hot, dry surface has reacted to changes in temperature throughout the planet’s history.

NASA is taking advantage of having two spacecraft near Jupiter to examine that planet and its surroundings in ways neither spacecraft could do alone, and one of the scientists who organized the campaign will describe it during free publi…

Oceanographer Dr. William Patzert, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will discuss one of the planet’s most powerful climate phenomenon, El Nino.

Bright auroras on parts of Jupiter where those shimmering glows have not previously been seen appear in new images taken from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope by University of Michigan scientists.

A colorful image showing violent star formation triggered when two galaxies bumped into each other has been captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

An amazing “edge-on” view of a spiral galaxy 55 million light years from Earth has been captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Bright, flat terrain in long swaths on the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Ganymede may testify that water or slush emerged there about a billion years ago, say planetary scientists who have combined stereo images from NASA’s Galileo and V…

The last data from the overachieving Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR Shoemaker) mission to asteroid Eros will be received today via NASA’s Deep Space Network telecommunications system.

Nine budding scientists can all pat themselves on the back, having become the first-ever elementary and high school students to direct a camera on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and image Martian sites.

With fingers flying across calculator keypads as new guidance data flowed in, JPL space navigators yesterday used fast math, and lots of it, to help carefully nudge NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft to its historic touchdown on the surfac…

Richard Volpe, former manager of robotic autonomy architecture at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has been named manager of JPL’s Mars Regional Mobility and Subsurface Access Technology office

Of the 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, only a handful have colorful names, while the rest are designated by letters and numbers that are the stellar equivalent of a Social Security card.

People visiting the popular Old Pasadena district will become sidewalk space explorers when scientists from NASA’s JPL in Pasadena bring telescopes, photos and hands-on activities to the One Colorado courtyard on five consecutive Saturda…

The first movie ever made of Jupiter’s moon Io while it is in eclipse shows bright spots of hot lava and changes in auroral glows.

NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which has collected more information about the red planet than all previous missions combined, completes its primary science mission today and begins a new era of continued exploration.

The El Nino and La Nina events of the past few years may have faded into climate history, but the Pacific Ocean has not calmed down.

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft mission at Jupiter has a new project manager, Dr. Eilene Theilig of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

If you have ever dreamed of starting your own business or expanding your existing small business, here’s your chance.

James Graf of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has been named manager of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is helping scientists see the structure and hour-to-hour changes of a giant doughnut-shaped gaseous ring around Jupiter in unprecedented detail.

A new batch of Jupiter images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft demonstrates some of the ways scientists are using Cassini’s camera to learn more than what first meets the eye.

Spacecraft instruments monitor our planet, but ground-based legwork to verify the measurements is an essential part of studying Earth from space.

A search for lighting on Venus in 1998 and 1999 using NASA’s Cassini spacecraft failed to detect high-frequency radio waves commonly associated with lighting.

NASA’s Stardust spacecraft took a picture of the Moon as the spacecraft flew by Earth on Monday, January 15, 2001.

With a dash of paint here and a blast of color there, a blank canvas was brought to life by two space-inspired high school students responding to an art assignment.

Two new images of the Santa Barbara area from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission highlight the region’s spectacular scenery.

After a few months of foggy camera vision, NASA’s Stardust mission team has improved the spacecraft’s navigation-camera resolution to nearly normal, just as Stardust is preparing to make a close flyby of the Earth on Monday.

As it completes the first of three laps of about a billion miles each around the heart of the solar system, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft is getting ready for a pit stop of sorts, flying by Earth in mid-January for a gravitational speed boo…

Spanish-speaking space fans can hitch a ride via the Internet on an orbiting space observatory, thanks to the first-ever Spanish-language web site tied to a NASA mission.

The first major step toward NASA’s return of a spacecraft to an orbit around Mars was achieved late Thursday night, Jan. 4, when the Mars Odyssey spacecraft arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has continued collecting new scientific information from Jupiter’s environs every day since making its closest approach to the giant planet on Dec. 30, 2000, and is scheduled to keep studying the Jupiter system …

One audio clip produced from radio waves that NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detected near Jupiter.

It’s a difficult decision: With about $300 million to spend, should NASA buy a spacecraft that could find Earth- sized planets around nearby stars?

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which made its closest approach to Jupiter early today, is providing ways to make invisible features visible, to track daily changes in some of the planet’s most visible storms, and to hear the patterns in natu…

From teachers to graduate students and homemakers to veterinarians, hundreds of space aficionados have been selected to share their love of space exploration with the public.

Earth comes in for its close-up with NASA’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) — the “zoom lens” of NASA’s Terra satellite — and now image data from the instrument are available to the public.

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Inspired by the elegant efficiency of spider webs, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have designed a tiny, web-shaped sensor that maps faint structures in the early universe, reinforcing theories that t…

Like an excited kid hoping to snag a fly ball at a professional baseball game, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft has extended its high-tech “catcher’s mitt” to collect a valuable space souvenir — a batch of interstellar dust particles.

“Interferometry: Seeing New Worlds” is a public lecture that will explain how researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are developing innovative technologies to look for planets around distant stars.

A new robotic device that safely strips paint from the hulls of ships without polluting the environment is based on NASA robotics technology.

It’s an invention that may eventually end up in the hands of every craftsman and orthopedic surgeon.