Experiments in Space

Credit: ESA After contributing to Rosetta Mission, in 2024 Politecnico di Milano will be back to deep space. That year ESA, the European Space Agency, will launch the Hera spacecraft towards binary asteroid Didymos, the smallest…

Stellar chemical compositions used as proxy for potentially habitable systemsCredit: NASA/JPL-Caltech SAN ANTONIO -- Sept. 16, 2020 -- A Southwest Research Institute scientist has identified stellar phosphorus as a probable marker…

ITHACA, N.Y. - In a little more than a decade, samples of rover-scooped Martian soil will rocket to Earth. While scientists are eager to study the red planet's soils for signs of life, researchers must ponder a considerable new…

Credit: M. Brozovic/JPL-Caltech/NASA/University of Arizona It's 5 o'clock somewhere - and while here on Earth, "happy hour" is commonly associated with winding down and the optional cold beverage, that's when things get going on Bennu, the…

Research uses data from NASA's OSIRIS-REx missionCredit: NASA/GSFC/University of Arizona SAN ANTONIO -- Sept. 9, 2020 -- A new study published this month in JGR Planets posits that the major particle ejections off the near-Earth…

The dark energy surveyCredit: World Scientific How does our universe function? Why is it expanding and why is the expansion accelerating? The advances of recent decades have been astonishing, and following every discovery, big and…

Credit: NASA / JPL An observer standing on Mars would see the planet's moon Phobos cross the sky from west to east every five hours. Its orbit passes between the sun and any given point on Mars about once each Earth year. Each time it does…

SwRI also contributing to two additional mission concept design studiesCredit: Southwest Research Institute SAN ANTONIO -- Sept. 2, 2020 -- A Southwest Research Institute proposal to study the Sun's poles -- considered among the last…

A binary black hole merger likely produced gravitational waves equal to the energy of eight suns For all its vast emptiness, the universe is humming with activity in the form of gravitational waves. Produced by extreme astrophysical…

Credit: IMPACT lab A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder is pioneering a new solution to the problem of spring cleaning on the moon: Why not zap away the grime using a beam of electrons? The research, published…

NASA-funded research recently reported in an American Chemical Society journalCredit: CU College or Science CLEMSON, South Carolina - Electrifying research by Clemson University scientists could lead to the creation of lighter,…

Lucy mission gains approval for final development stageCredit: Lockheed Martin SAN ANTONIO -- Aug. 28, 2020 -- NASA has approved the final development stage of the Southwest Research Institute-led Lucy mission to explore the Trojan…

It's hard to get a good night's sleep in space. An evaluation of astronauts serving on the Mir space station found that they experienced shorter sleep durations, more wakefulness, and changes in the structure of their sleep cycles while…

Exhaustive emissions modeling by global physicists narrows down particle candidates Irvine, Calif., Aug. 26, 2020 - The detection more than a decade ago by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope of an excess of high-energy radiation in the…

Credit: Purdue University/Jackson Spencer WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- A rocket is going up into space with a drag sail. The goal? For the drag sail to bring the rocket back to Earth, preventing it from becoming like the thousands of pieces of…

Credit: DLR MORABA For the first time, researchers in Germany sent perovskite and organic solar cells on a rocket into space. The solar cells withstood the extreme conditions in space, producing power from direct sunlight…

SwRI's award-winning CYGNSS platform added to NASA's RSDO catalogCredit: NASA SAN ANTONIO -- Aug. 11, 2020 -- NASA has selected Southwest Research Institute to take part in the $6 billion indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity…

Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona NASA's first asteroid sampling spacecraft is making final preparations to grab a sample from asteroid Bennu's surface. Next week, the OSIRIS-REx mission will conduct a second rehearsal of its…

As a global center for petrochemical manufacturing, Houston, Texas, experiences some of the worst air quality in the country, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Evidence suggests that air pollution disproportionately…