NASA Archives - The Westside Story

NASA awards contracts for moon landings, slated for as soon as next year

May 31, 2019

NASA has awarded three companies contracts to transport cargo to the moon, as part of the space agency’s renewed focus on lunar missions, according to Science. The landings would come a half century after the U...

Pence calls for NASA to land astronauts on the moon within five years

West Side Story

Mar 29, 2019

Innovation, Science

Vice President Pence has called for NASA to conduct a crewed mission to the surface of the moon within five years, according to the Washington Post. It would be the first time that astronauts have walked on th...

Rather than a threat, SpaceX is exactly what NASA needs

West Side Story

Mar 2, 2019

Business, Innovation, Opinion, Science

At almost 3 a.m. local time Saturday, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft launched on board one of the company’s reusable Falcon 9 Rockets, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Flight Center in Florida. The Crew Dragon is ...

Hackers compromised the personal data of NASA staff

West Side Story

Dec 19, 2018

Innovation, Science

NASA has warned its employees that hackers may have obtained data that included their personal information, in an internal email. The US space agency says two servers had been compromised that contained the per...

NASA probe finds building blocks of water on a nearby asteroid

West Side Story

Dec 10, 2018

Innovation, Science

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe has found the building blocks of water on Bennu, an asteroid which orbits the sun at roughly the same distance, according to Reuters. Bennu is about 1.4 million miles (2.25 million km...

NASA solar probe will fly closer to the Sun’s surface than any prior spacecraft

West Side Story

Jul 25, 2018

Innovation, Science

A NASA probe, set to launch in August, will fly closer to the surface of the Sun than any prior spacecraft, according to Reuters. Aiming to reach as close as 3.83 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the...

NASA awards contract for aerial drone that can survive on Venus

West Side Story

Jul 8, 2018

Innovation, Science

In light of renewed scientific interest in the planet, NASA is working toward an aerial drone that could survive in the harsh upper atmosphere of Venus, according to Science Alert. Now, the agency has taken a f...

NASA efforts to monitor carbon emissions stymied by Trump administration

West Side Story

May 14, 2018

Environment, Policy, Science

The Trump administration has quietly ended a NASA research program to monitor the level of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, according to Science. The program, called the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS...

NASA to test helicopter on 2020 Mars mission, in a first for interplanetary aviation

West Side Story

May 13, 2018

Innovation, Science

A helicopter will launch with NASA’s Mars rover in 2020, to become the first heavier-than-air aircraft to operate on another planet, according to BBC News. A team spent four years designing the helicopter to...

The cost of returning astronauts to the Moon is likely to exceed the benefits

West Side Story

Feb 7, 2018

Innovation, Opinion, Policy, Science

Preliminary budget plans have indicated that the Trump administration is planning to fund Space Policy Directive One, which follows a unanimous recommendation last year from the National Space Council, accordin...

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