Launch of NASA's New Solar Mission Rescheduled to June 27

The launch of NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission is being delayed one day to 7:27 p.m. PDT (10:27 p.m. EDT) Thursday, June 27, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Live NASA Television launch coverage begins at 6 p.m. PDT.

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NASA Thruster Achieves World-Record 5+ Years of Operation

A NASA advanced ion propulsion engine has successfully operated for more than 48,000 hours, or 5 and a half years, making it the longest test duration of any type of space propulsion system demonstration project ever.

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NASA Selects Student Teams For Microgravity Research Flights

NASA has selected 14 undergraduate student teams from minority serving institutions across the United States to test science experiments under microgravity conditions.

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Le Bourget

ESA's pavilion at the Paris Air and Space Show - the story in pictures
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IRIS Launch Set For Thursday

Technicians and engineers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California mate the Pegasus XL rocket with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, solar observatory to the Orbital Sciences L-1011 carrier aircraft. The launch of NASA's IRIS mission has been delayed one day to 10:27 p.m. EDT on Thursday, June 27.

Live NASA Television launch coverage begins at 9 p.m. IRIS will open a new window of discovery by tracing the flow of energy and plasma through the chromospheres and transition region into the sun's corona using spectrometry and imaging. The IRIS mission will observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a largely unexplored region of the solar atmosphere.

The interface region, located between the sun's visible surface and upper atmosphere, is where most of the sun's ultraviolet emission is generated. These emissions impact the near-Earth space environment and Earth's climate.
Image Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin

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Earth’s northern biomass mapped and measured

The biomass of the northern hemisphere's forests has been mapped with greater precision than ever before thanks to satellites, improving our understanding of the carbon cycle and our prediction of Earth's future climate.

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ESA and student teams kick-off Fly Your Satellite!

Six student teams and their supervisors have gathered at ESTEC for the kick-off of the new Fly Your Satellite! Programme under the ESA Education Office. For the next three days, ESA experts will introduce the objectives and present the activities to be performed during the first phase of the programme.

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