This Week in NASA History: Apollo 16 Launches – April 16, 1972
This week in 1972, Apollo 16 launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Apollo 16 was the second of three science-oriented missions planned for the Apollo Program. The mission included a…
Piercing the Dark Birthplaces of Massive Stars with Webb
High-mass stars, which are eight or more times the mass of our Sun, live hard and die young. They often end their short lives in violent explosions called supernovas, but…
Interstellar Comet Borisov Reveals Its Chemistry and Possible Origins
On Aug. 30, 2019, when amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov gazed upward with his homemade telescope, he spotted an object moving in an unusual direction. Now called 2I/Borisov, this runaway point…
NASA Releases Concept Images of All-Electric X-57 in Final Configuration
This artist’s concept image shows NASA’s first all-electric X-plane, the X-57 Maxwell, flying shortly after takeoff in its final configuration over NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. In…
NASA Data Aids Ozone Hole’s Journey to Recovery
On Sept. 16, 1987, policymakers and scientists from around the world gathered at the International Civil Aviation Organization’s headquarters in Montreal, preparing to take action on the day’s most urgent…