Today, Ken Carpenter is a scientist for NASA’s Hubble and Roman space telescopes, but in 1967 he was just a teenager at his local library out to fact-check a “Star Trek” episode. Name: Kenneth G. Carpenter Title: Operations Project Scientist for Hubble Space Telescope; Ground System Scientist for Roman Space Telescope; and a NASA Innovative Advanced...

6 Min Read Breaking the Scaling Limits: New Ultralow-noise Superconducting Camera for Exoplanet Searches When imaging faint objects such as distant stars or exoplanets, capturing every last bit of light is crucial to get the most out of a scientific mission. These cameras must be extremely...

Astronomers have discovered black holes ranging from a few times the Sun’s mass to tens of billions. Now a group of scientists has predicted that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find a class of “featherweight” black holes that has so far eluded detection. Today, black holes form either when a massive star collapses or when heavy...

NASA/Frank Micheaux NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronaut Suni Williams gives a thumbs up during a mission dress rehearsal on Friday, April 26, 2024, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Williams was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1998 and has been aboard the International Space Station twice. She is set to return to the space...

5 min read New NASA Black Hole Visualization Takes Viewers Beyond the Brink Ever wonder what happens when you fall into a black hole? Now, thanks to a new, immersive visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer, viewers can plunge into the event horizon, a black hole’s point of no return. In this visualization of a flight toward...

Artist James Dean prepares sketches of the space shuttle Columbia as it sits on Pad 39 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on April 9, 1981, waiting for its first historic flight (STS-1).NASA In March 1962, NASA Administrator James Webb addressed a two-paragraph memorandum to NASA Public Affairs Director Hiden T. Cox about the possibility of bringing...