Southwest Research Institute News

NASA retired its iconic space shuttle fleet in 2011, leaving the United States without a homegrown way to get its astronauts and cargo to space.

The search for distant planets in the Milky Way is now so sophisticated that astronomers are searching for unseen moons around the planets that the Kepler mission's scientists have discovered.

In England it is known as the "Plough," in Germany the "Great Cart," and in Malaysia the "Seven Ploughs." Since humanity first turned its eyes skyward, the seven northern hemisphere stars that compose the "Big Dipper" have been a welcome and familiar introduction to the heavens.

A 'hidden planet' outside our solar system has been detected by looking for 'bumps' in the orbits of its neighbours - a technique first used by astronomers 150 years ago.

This result is based on the analysis of high-resolution images obtained with the Dawn spacecraft, which entered orbit around Vesta in July 2011.

New data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer shows that the heliosphere moves through space too slowly to form a bow shock.

Using Kepler Telescope transit data of planet "b," scientists predicted that a second planet "c," about the mass of Saturn, orbits the distant star KOI-872. This research, led by Southwest Research Institute and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is providing evidence of an orderly arrangement of planets orbiting KOI-872, not unlike ... (more)

Researchers from Southwest Research Institute and Eaton have demonstrated the application of downspeeding and supercharging a diesel vehicle, in conjunction with optimizing transmission gear ratios and the shift schedule, to deliver a greater improvement in fuel economy than a downsped and turbocharged configuration.

PEEK was chosen for two components of the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment aboard NASA's Juno Space Probe.

Mark Johnston , a professor and chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.