NASA Logo, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Sunshield

A “Seamless” Unfolding

Recently, there was a Google Plus hangout with NASA and Northrop Grumman to talk about the James Webb Space Telescope’s giant sunshield. This sunshield is, as someone on Twitter pointed out, big enough to host a very awkward game of tennis. (Yep, it’s for real the size of a tennis … Continue Reading →

Optimus Prime Spinoff Challenge

“Transforming” STEM Education

We’ve posted in the past about the Real World/In World Engineering Design Challenge. The James Webb Space Telescope has been a foundational partner since the challenge’s start in 2010. This year, RWIW merges with the NASA OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Challenge to add an InWorld component to this video challenge. If … Continue Reading →

Search for Life panel

Search for Life

Recently NASA had a panel discussion of leading science and engineering experts to describe the scientific and technological roadmap that will lead to the discovery of potentially habitable worlds among the stars. This is such an exciting topic, especially with so many new worlds being discovered. The ultimate goal of … Continue Reading →

Neil deGrasse Tyson visit

Neil deGrasse Tyson Pays a Visit

While in DC for a Cosmos screening, a simple email from the James Webb Space Telescope team was all it took to get Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (astronomer, Hayden Planetarium director, and general advocate for science) to come by NASA Goddard for a visit. It was truly exciting to meet … Continue Reading →

Boarding the plane for the safety walkthrough

A Ride on SOFIA

This is a guest blog by astronomer Brian Williams, who last blogged for us about the building blocks of life. A joint project between NASA and the German space agency (DLR), the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, is a bit of a departure from NASA’s traditional telescope fleet. … Continue Reading →

Coma Niddy

Coma Niddy Brings Us New Sci Tunes

Our friend, science rapper Coma Niddy, recently released a rap about dark energy, and we thought we would share it with you. Dark energy is one of the big mysteries in current astrophysics. We know it affects the universe’s expansion and we know that 68% of the universe is made … Continue Reading →

Jazz sequence (GRB 130427A)

The Nexus of Art and Science, Part 2

We recently blogged about students from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) making animations inspired by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Another student, Turner Gillespie, also from MICA, spent the summer working on an animation of the “sound” of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). A scientist was working on turning … Continue Reading →

The Nexus of Art and Science, Part 1

It’s always cool when you stumble across projects that cross different fields of study. We learned that students at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) worked with scientists during Spring of 2014 to produce five very short animations illustrating, or inspired by, results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Observatory. Fermi … Continue Reading →

Test Backplane Arrival

We’ve had a lot of exciting things going on with the James Webb Space Telescope here at NASA Goddard. A recent one was the arrival of this: Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn What’s inside the big white thing? It’s our the test version (called the pathfinder) of JWST’s backplane. What’s the backplane … Continue Reading →

NASA Social

In June we finally had the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NASA Social, that we were supposed to have in January. It was such a lot of work planning it (in fact I often felt like I was a wedding planner!) but it was totally worth it. The event was … Continue Reading →

NASA Logo, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Goddard