NASA | Exploring the Universe, Inspiring the World

Meet Christina Hernandez, a flight systems engineer on NASA's Psyche mission, which will be the first to explore a metal-rich asteroid, also named Psyche. In this video Hernandez, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, talks about getting Psyche ready for Launch through the spacecraft's verification-and-validation phase and her passion for heavy metal music. Whether the asteroid Psyche is the partial core of a planetesimal (a building block of the rocky planets in our solar system) or primordial material that never melted, scientists expect the mission to help answer fundamental questions about Earth's own metal core and the formation of our solar system. This is the first episode in a weekly, five-part video series called "Behind the Spacecraft." Each Psyche team member will tell the story of how they came to the mission. Join us on this channel on Sept. 13 and 20 for Livestreamed Q&As with team members as well, Psyche's launch period opens Oct. 5, 2023. The spacecraft will begin orbiting the asteroid Psyche in 2029. Learn all about our first-of-its-kind #MissionToPsyche at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/psyche Credit: NASA Produced by: NASA 360 Productions

Meet one of the Martian samples that has been collected and is awaiting return to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign. As of early August 2023, NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has collected and sealed 20 scientifically selected samples inside pristine tubes. The next stage is to get them back for study. Considered one of the highest priorities by the scientists in the Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032, Mars Sample Return would be the first mission to return samples from another planet and provides the best opportunity to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for ancient Life. NASA is teaming with ESA (European Space Agency) on this important endeavor. Learn more about Sample No. 19 - "Melyn," the first sample the rover collected after climbing up onto the ancient delta formation in Mars' Jezero Crater. The rocks in this area were deposited in an ancient river environment, as opposed to the rover's earlier samples from the ancient lakebed. Due to a type of mineral called carbonate found in this rock, scientists believe this sample could be well-suited to record the signatures of past water history on Mars,

A team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is creating and testing a snake-like robot called EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor). Inspired by a desire to descend vents on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus and enter the subsurface ocean, this versatile robot is being developed to autonomously map, traverse, and explore previously inaccessible destinations on Earth, the Moon, and other worlds in our solar system. The robot has been put to the test in sandy, snowy, and icy environments, including the Mars-like terrain at JPL's Mars Yard, a "robot playground" created at a ski resort in the snowy mountains of Southern California, and even an indoor ice rink, Because of the Long communications lag time between Earth and deep space, EELS is designed to autonomously sense its environment, calculate risk, travel, and gather data with yet-to-be-determined science instruments. When something goes wrong, the goal is for the robot to recover on its own, without human assistance. The project team began building the first prototype in 2019, and has been making continual revisions. They've been trying out white, 3D-printed plastic screws for testing on Looser terrain Like sand and soft snow, as well as sharper, black metal screws for ice. In its current form, the EELS 1.0 robot weighs about 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and is 13 feet (4 meters) Long, EELS is funded by the Office of Technology Infusion and Strategy at JPL in Southern California through a technology accelerator program called JPL Next. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California. The EELS team has worked with a number of university partners on the project, including Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of California, San Diego, The robot is not currently part of any NASA mission.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made history when it achieved the first powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021. Since then, it has exceeded expectations and most recently executed its 50th flight on Mars. This video highlights Ingenuity's flights, captured by the Perseverance Rover's WATSON and Mastcam-Z cameras, as well as Ingenuity's color Return to Earth (RTE) camera and its black-and-white navigation camera,

We're testing a new way of landing on Mars... by crashing into its surface. The Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) is a Lander concept being tested at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It could one day provide a new way for low-cost missions to Land on Mars, Rather than rely on parachutes or retrorockets, SHIELD would include a collapsible, accordion-like base to absorb the energy of a landing. A full-size prototype of the base was tested on Aug. 12, 2022. The prototype was hurled at the ground from the top of a nearly 90-foot-tall (27-meter-tall) drop tower at JPL, A steel plate ensured the impact was even harder than what would be experienced on Mars. The design worked: After crushing against the steel plate at 110 mph (177 kph), several electronic components inside the SHIELD prototype, including a smartphone, survived the impact.