Space Sciences Laboratory

NASA's @escapade_mars mission is now studying Earth's magnetotail. PI @RobLillis describes this first ever visit to this distant region of the magnetosphere. Read more 👇 ssl.berkeley.edu/escapade-magne…

Hello Mars, goodbye Mars 👋 NASA’s #MissionToPsyche spacecraft was speeding by the Red Planet on May 15 when it snapped this rare, crescent view of Mars. The successful flyby flung the Psyche spacecraft toward its final destination: the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. 1/2

FOXSI-5 を打ち上げました🚀 今日フレアを起こした3つの領域を観測しました！！☀️

Don't miss @MissionToPsyche's closest approach to Mars today at 12:28 PM Pacific Time.

SSL Director @ltelkins spoke to @sciam on her new book, Mission Ready: How to Build Teams That Perform under Pressure. "The ability that one in a leadership position has to try to help everyone else succeed is an incredible gift," says Elkins-Tanton. tinyurl.com/54tvnepz

Thanks to @evgenya of @SESEASU, who delivered our final talk of the semester on the SPARKS mission, which is seeking out habitable exoplanets in our galaxy.

NASA's @MissionToPsyche is approaching Mars for a gravity assist. It's also a chance to get images of the Red Planet. "...if...we can do important testing and calibration of the science instruments, that would be the icing on the cake," said Psyche PI and SSL Director @ltelkins.

#FOXSI-5, a NASA-led sounding rocket mission that will study the X-rays produced by large solar flares, is ready for launch. Principal investigator @astronomilo is at Poker Flat Research Range preparing for launch. 🚀 gi.alaska.edu/news/poker-fla…

It's our home. This Earth Day, see our planet as our Artemis II astronauts saw it with these new images from the mission.

DESI has completed its planned 3D map of the universe. Much of the cutting-edge technology that made the survey possible was developed at SSL. ssl.berkeley.edu/cutting-edge-d…

Victoria Coleman, Associate Provost of the @ucbspacecenter, stopped by SSL to tell us about forthcoming opportunities with Berkeley's 36-acre innovation center at NASA's Ames campus. She stayed on for lunch and heard ideas for the center from SSL researchers.

Thanks to Dr. @umaabythelake for the amazing talk on AI and machine learning applications the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Thanks also to @mathmoves for hosting us again.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument mapped 47M+ galaxies & quasars (beating its goal) + 20M stars. newscenter.lbl.gov/2026/04/15/des…

SSL's contributions to the Artemis 2 mission were featured in the @dailycal. “Even though we’re playing a small role, it still feels good to be part of it in some way,” said ground station engineer Warren Rexroad. dailycal.org/news/campus/re…

Our Mission Operations Center tracking Artemis 2's Orion spacecraft as it went around the moon.

@Vincent_Ledvina Wow!

Tonight's aurora was pretty extraordinary. Here is a real-time video showing the rapid motion and vivid colors. All I could do while watching this was smile and laugh.. it's a pretty unique feeling seeing the sky move like this. Good night!

Great talk by @MattGialich founder and CEO of @AstroForge at SSL this afternoon. The conference room was standing room only as we all packed inside to learn more about DeepSpace-2 and its upcoming mission to land on an asteroid. 🙏 for flying up to the Bay to tell us about it.

The Berkeley Ground Station dish is tracking ARTEMIS 2! We're collecting doppler data to send back to the NASA SCaN project.

Per Rexroad, we'll now make our first tracking attempt at around 6AM tomorrow.

We're supporting Artemis 2 by providing tracking support for the Orion capsule. Per ground station engineer Warren Rexroad, our first opportunity will be tomorrow at 1AM. "We're all excited to be able to contribute to this historic return to the moon," says Rexroad. Go Artemis 2!

Jupiter’s lightning isn’t just bigger—it’s hundreds of times more powerful. Using new @NASA Juno data, @ucbssl scientists revealed storms far more extreme than anything on Earth. news.berkeley.edu/2026/03/23/lig…