May 22nd, 2008 · lgmac brings us a story about how NASA will bring information from the Phoenix Mars lander to the internet in the coming days. CIO Magazine speaks with JPL's chief knowledge architect and others about how they'll provide massive amounts of data from the …
May 14th, 2008 · Several readers relayed the press release from JPL about the upcoming landing of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander on May 25. It's going to set down in the north polar regions and look for indications of whether conditions have even been favorable for microbial …
Feb 23rd, 2008 · JPL announced that Ulysses' mission will be ending after 17 years. The power generated by the decay of a radioactive isotope has been slowly decreasing. To conserve power its main transmitter was shut off. Unfortunately due to a fault in its power supply …
Dec 21st, 2007 · Multiple users have written to tell us of an LA Times report that an asteroid may hit Mars on January 30th. The asteroid is roughly 160 feet across, and JPL-based researchers say that it will have a 1-in-75 chance of striking Mars. Those odds are very …
Dec 14th, 2007 · An article on the O'Reilly Radar site discusses a new street mapping technology by a company in Berkeley called earthmine. They are using technology developed by the Jet Propulsion Lab for the Mars Exploration Rover missions for reconstructing three-dimensional …
Nov 29th, 2007 · Wired is reporting that all NASA JPL scientists must 'voluntarily' (or be fired) sign a document giving the government the right to investigate their personal lives and history 'without limit'. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists this includes …
Sep 13th, 2007 · The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is reporting on the Cassini spacecraft's recent close flyby of the Saturnian moon Iapetus, highlighting images taken from distances 100 times closer than the Voyager 2 flyby in 1981. Near real-time images were shown to Cassini …
Aug 30th, 2007 · Longtime JPL scientists, many of whom do not work on classified materials, including rover drivers and Apollo veterans, sued NASA, Caltech, and the Department of Commerce today to fight highly invasive background checks, which include financial information, …
Jun 20th, 2007 · It's a field day for robotics hackers everywhere, as NASA releases the first installment of their CLARAty reusable robotic software framework to the public. According to the JPL press release, these modules contain everything from math infrastructure …
Jun 7th, 2007 · JPL is now close to embarking on another of its trademark, one-of-a-kind missions, this time to the heart of the asteroid belt: The Dawn mission is being prepared for launch this summer from Kennedy Space Center. Dawn will explore Ceres and Vesta, the …
Dec 3rd, 2006 · Dik Zak points us to this NASA page about a new generation of intelligent Earth observation satellites. From the article: "The Indonesian volcano Talang on the island of Sumatra had been dormant for centuries when, in April 2005, it suddenly rumbled to …
Nov 10th, 2006 · The Cassini spacecraft recently observed a hurricane-like storm on the south pole of Saturn. What makes this storm particularly interesting is that this is the first time that a clearly defined eyewall has been seen outside of the Earth in the Solar System. …
Feb 20th, 2006 · I had the opportunity to interview a supervisor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The JPL is putting together several missions utilizing solar sail technology. The interview and article detail where NASA and the JPL are in using solar sails for applications …
Jan 11th, 2006 · It's not a secret that Linux has been used at NASA for a long time, and it appears that they have been using it quite extensively on the desktop. From the article: 'At the JPL, it is common to see Red Hat Inc., SuSE or Mandriva Linux running on users' …
Oct 14th, 2005 · NASA JPL, the lab that brought us missions such as Voyager, Cassini, and the Mars Exploration Rovers will eliminate about 300 engineering related positions due to Congressional budget cuts, according to various sources. The cuts reflect a change in emphasis …
Jul 29th, 2005 · The Minor Planet mailing list is buzzing with the discovery by an amateur astronomer of a 17th magnitude object 51 astronomical units from the Sun, tentatively designated 2003 EL61. For those not versed in astronomical lingo, this is an object several …
Jul 3rd, 2005 · To celebrate the anniversary of the Cassini-Huygens probe's orbital insertion, NASA's JPL has a set of fifteen amazing photos from the past year. Meanwhile, the BBC reports that some of the latest science data from the mission reveals that Saturn's ring …
Apr 25th, 2005 · It appears that NASA is not backing down from their nuclear space initiative. Project Prometheus has recently started a new web page (under JPL) and NASA is finishing up a period of public comment (last session today). Currently Northrop Grumman is …
