January 20 – January 26, 2020 | Colorado Space News

OSIRIS-REx Completes Closest Flyover Of Nightingale Sample Site

During the OSIRIS-REx Reconnaissance B flyover of primary sample collection site Nightingale, the spacecraft left its safe-home orbit to pass over the sample site at an altitude of 0.4 miles (620 m). The pass, which took 11 hours, gave the spacecraft’s onboard instruments the opportunity to take the closest-ever science observations of the sample site. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

January 25, 2020 – NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully executed a 0.4-mile (620-m) flyover of site Nightingale earlier this week as part of the mission’s Reconnaissance B phase activities. Nightingale, OSIRIS-REx’s primary sample collection site, is located within a crater high in asteroid Bennu’s northern hemisphere. Read More

NASA Sounding Rocket Observing Nitric Oxide In Polar Night

Bill McClintock, PolarNOx co-investigator, monitors a payload test at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. Image Credit: NASA/Berit Bland

January 25, 2020 – Aurora, also known as the northern lights, are a sight to behold as they dance across the sky when solar winds collide with the Earth’s atmosphere. However, they also contribute to a process that has an adverse impact on the Earth’s ozone as nitric oxide is created during the auroral light show. Read More

United Launch Alliance Issues Call For Student Rocket Launch Payloads

January 25, 2020 – United Launch Alliance (ULA) is inviting the next generation of rocket scientists to submit payload proposals for the annual Student Rocket Launch, which will take place this summer. Read More

How NASA’s Webb Telescope Will Continue Spitzer’s Legacy

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, then known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday, August 25, 2003. Image Credit: NASA

January 22, 2020 – As one window to the universe closes, another will open with an even better view. Some of the same planets, stars and galaxies we first saw through the first window will appear in even sharper detail in the one that will soon open. Read More

NASA Celebrates The Legacy Of The Spitzer Space Telescope

In this artist’s rendering of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in space, the background is shown in infrared light. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

January 22, 2020 – NASA is celebrating the legacy of one of its Great Observatories, the Spitzer Space Telescope, which has studied the universe in infrared light for more than 16 years. The Spitzer mission will come to a close on January 30. Read More

New SwRI Models Reveal Inner Complexity Of Saturn Moon

Using new geochemical models, SwRI scientists found that CO2 in Enceladus’ ocean may be controlled by chemical reactions at the seafloor. Integrating this finding with previous discoveries of H2 and silica suggests geochemically diverse environments in the rocky core. This diversity has the potential to create energy sources that could support life. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

January 22, 2020 – A Southwest Research Institute team developed a new geochemical model that reveals that carbon dioxide (CO₂) from within Enceladus, an ocean-harboring moon of Saturn, may be controlled by chemical reactions at its seafloor. Studying the plume of gases and frozen sea spray released through cracks in the moon’s icy surface suggests an interior more complex than previously thought. Read More