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...

2 min readPreparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This Hall-effect thruster, shown being tested at Glenn Research Center, turns electricity and inert gas into force that could propel a spacecraft. Orbion Space Technology was founded to bring the high efficiency of these thrusters to small commercial satellites, and the...

3 min read Sols 4175-4177: Don’t Blink We’re Taking a Picture This image shows our previous workspace block and rover wheel tracks from Sol 4171 taken by the Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, May 3, 2024 Curiosity loves to drive so it’s pretty rare...