Tag: nasa jet propulsion laboratory

Technology

Bad news! NASA loses contact with its mini-helicopter Ingenuity on Mars

NASA has lost contact with its tiny helicopter Ingenuity during the hard-working craft's 72nd flight, the space agency said. The agency's engineers are attempting to re-establish communications, which ended abruptly on Thursday as the craft was making its descent from a test flight, NASA said late Friday.Ingenuity, which resembles a large drone, had arrived on Mars in 2021 with the rover Perseverance and became the first motorized craft to fly autonomously on another planet. Data from the helicopter's flights are transmitted via Perseverance back to Earth. On its flight Thursday -- "a quick pop-up vertical flight to check out the helicopter's systems, following an unplanned early landing during its previous flight," NASA said -- Ingenuity successfully attained an altitude of 40 feet (1...
Technology

ISRO-NASA built satellite ready to be shipped to India for launch

An earth-observation satellite jointly developed by NASA and ISRO that will help study Earth's land and ice surfaces in greater detail is all set to be shipped to India later this month for a possible launch in September.ISRO Chairman S Somanath visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the US state of California on Friday to oversee the final electrical testing of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite before being shipped to India. “This mission will be a powerful demonstration of the capability of radar as a science tool and help us study Earth's dynamic land and ice surfaces in greater detail than ever before,” Somanath said at the formal send-off ceremony organised at the JPL which was attended by senior scientists from the two space agencies. Later this...
Technology

Researchers develop new approach for conducting automated science in space

NASA's Mars rovers strive for groundbreaking scientific discoveries as they traverse the Martian landscape. Researchers have developed a new approach to balancing the risks and scientific value of sending planetary rovers into dangerous situations.Researchers in the School of Computer Science's Robotics Institute (RI) have developed a new approach to balancing the risks and scientific value of sending planetary rovers into dangerous situations. David Wettergreen, a research professor in the RI, and Alberto Candela, who earned his Ph.D. in robotics and is now a data scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will present their work, "An Approach to Science and Risk-Aware Planetary Rover Exploration," at the IEEE and RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems la...