Earthquakes are among the most destructive natural disasters, in terms of death tolls and the cost of recovery. They’re also nearly impossible to predict, but...
In the mid-1990s, NASA, the Air Force, and McDonnell Douglas Corporation realized they were duplicating each other’s efforts to make better software...
When the Curiosity rover made its spectacular landing on Mars, most of the attention was focused on the revolutionary “sky-crane maneuver” that helped slow the...
When imagining what it takes to design a spacecraft, few people think about the engineering work that goes into getting an accurate cost estimate before the building...
Scientific experimentation is the central purpose of the International Space Station (ISS), where astronauts work toward answers that will be crucial...
When you launch rockets, even the smallest deviation from design can create big problems—and they’re hard to fix for next time unless you know exactly what...
The Orion crew capsule may resemble its Apollo ancestor on the surface, but all of its internal systems reflect nearly half a century of development since NASA’s...
Edward Freniere and a partner founded Lambda Research Corporation in 1992 with the idea of developing software to simulate the behavior of light, basing their...
Some 10,500 years ago, what is now western Oklahoma teemed in late summer and early fall with bison, traipsing through the grassy landscape. For the humans who...
It was sometime in late 2004, and Tom Stanley, technical monitor and small business technical advisor out of Stennis Space Center, took to studying newly completed...
Rocket science and simplicity don’t normally go hand in hand, but that’s what NASA had in mind when the Agency developed the Fastrac turbopump in the...
A young engineering and technical services company is betting that NASA teams at the Mission Control Center in Houston, aboard the International Space...
Every few seconds, NASA’s satellites transmit more than a gigabyte of data back to Earth. By 2030, it’s estimated the Agency will have amassed 350 petabytes...
By the mid-1990s, NASA was collecting an enormous amount of information about Earth and the universe. For example, the Earth Observing System, comprising a fleet of satellites,...
Exposure to a noise level of 105 decibels causes hearing damage after an hour or less. Concertgoers in the front row at a rock show can expect sustained noise of...
In order to prepare Curiosity for its trip to Mars, NASA had to pull out all the stops. Because the rover’s payload is 10 times as massive as those of...
Schedules for major projects get long and complicated, involving a slew of interdependent tasks and timelines, and few organizations handle projects more...
Throughout the years, NASA has done more than any agency to explore what lies beyond our world. It has sent rovers to traverse the Martian landscape and...