jet propulsion laboratory

More than just a scientific mission, Mars rover Curiosity's final, frightening descent stirred up plenty of emotions, from both the engineers who piloted it and from spectators around the world. We all held our breath as the rover went through the "seven minutes of terror" that was the landing--and then celebrated when news came of a successful finale. It was beautiful, and we've collected some of the best reactions to its descent, as well as some of the early pictures Curiosity sent back to Earth.

Scientists are on the hunt for exo-Earths, distant cousins of our planet that are just the right distance from their stars to harbor liquid water and other ingredients for life. But even with plenty of data and some educated guesses, no one will ever see what these faraway worlds look like, so we’re left with the creative concepts of NASA artists.

The Deep Impact probe, part of NASA's EPOXI mission, has successfully returned never-before-seen images of the comet Hartley 2 as it flew near Earth this morning, only the fifth comet nucleus ever visited by a spacecraft.

Less than half an hour after the probe reached its closest distance from the comet, about 435 miles away, a series of images completed the 23-million-mile trip from EPOXI’s spacecraft to computer screens in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It may not look like much, but NASA’s next candidate to touch down on Mars has taken its first steps toward its larger ambition of exploring the Martian landscape in 2012.

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had a big week last week, mounting the Remote Sensing Mast and an array of navigation and sensing cameras on their latest Mars rover. Then on Friday Curiosity took its first drive, traveling about three feet back and forth on its brand new 20-inch aluminum wheels.

One can only imagine how history might have played out if the United States had not deported a Chinese-born Caltech rocket scientist on suspicion of being a Communist in 1955. Qian Xuesen first fought his deportation, but later accepted his fate and went on to become the founder of China's missile and space programs. His death this past Sunday comes as China broadens its space exploration efforts to become a potential challenger to a troubled U.S. space program, or perhaps a partner.

Ready for an intergalactic adventure? Take this virtual flight over Mariner Valley, Mars's version of the Grand Canyon, a geological feature as deep as Mt. Everest and as wide as the distance from New York to Los Angeles. Kind of makes Earth's biggest dry river bed seem a bit less "Grand," doesn't it?

Exploring the intricacies of Martian geology requires a steady climber, nimble enough to scale cliffs and dexterous enough to sample the strata. A climbing primate would be a good candidate, if only there were air to breathe and the temperature were warmer than -140

This short animation is made up from a sequence of images taken by the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) instrument on board ESA's Huygens probe, during its successful descent to Titan on Jan. 14, 2005.

The year opened with a presidential commitment to space unrivaled since John F. Kennedy's vow to put a man on the moon: In January, George W. Bush promised not only to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 but also to use it as a testing ground for possible "human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond." His directive came less than a year after the Columbia disaster grounded NASA's human-spaceflight program.

Seven years ago, the largest and most expensive interplanetary probe ever built blasted off from Cape Canaveral. It was loaded with 12 advanced scientific instruments, 72 pounds of plutonium to power them, and a capsule destined to be jettisoned toward the only other object in our solar system protected by a nitrogen-based atmosphere. After launch, the spacecraft began its voyage through the void of space and was promptly forgotten by all but a few scientists and space enthusiasts.

Galileo, the interplanetary spacecraft that has changed the way we understand Jupiter and its 61 known moons, will perish on the 21st of this month as it plunges into the Jovian atmosphere. NASA engineers have put Galileo on a collision course with the planet so that the spacecraft, which is running low on propellant, can study the Jovian magnetosphere as a final task. The suicide mission will also ensure the craft won't end up crashing intoand possibly contaminatingthe ocean of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.

In 1999, Yoseph Bar-Cohen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory challenged the engineering world to an arm-wrestling contest. Sort of, anyway. He doesn't plan on participating himself, and the arm, which will face off against a human opponent of middling strength, has to be robotic. The catch is, he's not asking for your standard metallic appendagethis robotic arm must be built with electroactive polymers (EAPs).

It's the fourth day of a scientific conference in Denverfour busy February days in a huge rabbit-warren convention center with long hallways and fluorescent lighting and serious scientists giving serious PowerPoint presentations in darkened auditoriums; four days of breakthroughs and advancesnanotech to biotech, anthropology to zoology, the whole mind-spinning stew. Four days, for the assembled journalists, of making sense of it all and banging out stories on the fly-and now comes word of what could be a light interlude: Keep an eye out for the guy carrying the head. Say what? The robotic human head.

In 1966, Mrs. Weddle's first grade class at Las Lomitas Elementary School got its first homework assignment: We were to find out what our fathers did for a living, then come back and tell the class. The next day, as my well-scrubbed classmates boasted about their fathers, I was nervous. For one thing, I was afraid of Mrs. Weddle: I realize now that she was probably harmless, but to a shy, elf-size, nervous little guy she looked like a monstrous, talking baked potato. On top of that, I had a surprise in store, and I wasn't sure how it would be received.