The incident resulted in a $74 million settlement with the state of New Mexico for numerous permit violations at both the lab and the repository. Investigators said the misstep could have been avoided if existing policies and procedures had been followed. The settlement, signed in early 2016, was at the time the largest ever negotiated between a state and the Energy Department.Since then, some areas of the repository have remained off-limits, making it impossible for crews to do maintenance to prevent its ever-shifting salt ceilings and walls from collapsing. In one area, monitors last month picked up on increased movement, indicating some instability. A rockfall last November forced a brief evacuation of workers but there were no injuries or contamination.As the mining work resumes, officials said crews will install rock bolts to provide stability inside the new disposal vault. A machine called a continuous miner removes the salt. It’s loaded into a large truck and then a hoist that carries the material nearly a half-mile (0.8KM) to the surface. ”. "You can learn so much from looking out the window," Fox said.9 million miles of the sun's surface, where temperatures exceed 2,500 Fahrenheit (1,377 Celsius) (Photo:AFP) A new NASA mission aims to brush by the sun, coming closer than any spacecraft in history to its scorching heat and radiation in order to reveal how stars are made, the US space agency said Wednesday.A 20-day launch window for the spacecraft&Travel Vacuum Space Bag39;s liftoff atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket opens July 31, 2018.Time for a visitThe spacecraft will measure plasma waves and high-energy particles, and carry a white light imager to capture images of the structures through which it is flying, according to Nicola Fox, mission project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.9 million miles (6. "You can see the sun is shining, you can see the birds are singing."It's a testament to the importance of his body of work, founding a new field of science that also inspired my own research and many important science questions NASA continues to study and further understand every day."I'm sure that there will be some surprises," he added.

After liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in July 2018, the Parker Solar Probe will become the first to fly directly into the sun's atmosphere, known as the corona."This is the first time NASA has named a spacecraft for a living individual," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.Scientists hope its data will improve forecasts of solar storms and space weather events that affect life on Earth, satellites and astronauts in space.""One would like to have some more detailed measurements of what's going on in the solar wind," he said."."We will brush closely by it," she said at an event in Chicago to unveil the mission, which NASA has touted as promising to provide humanity's closest-ever observations of a star. But until you actually go out, you have no idea quite how hot it is out there or how windy it is, or what the conditions are like.3 million kilometers) of the sun's surface.The plan for the unmanned spacecraft is to orbit within 3.43 cm) carbon-composite shieldRoughly the size of a small car, the probe will make seven flybys of the sun over a seven-year period, in what NASA described as a "mission of extremes."Parker, who is days away from his 90th birthday, described the mission as "very exciting.The solar Probe will liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in July 2018 The Parker Solar Probe is set to orbit within 3.Re-named after astrophysicist Initially called Solar Probe Plus, the mission was renamed after the astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 89, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.5-inch-thick (11. "There always are.""I think we have really come as far as we can with looking at things and now it is time to go up and pay it a visit," she added.Temperatures in that region exceed 2,500 Fahrenheit (1,377 Celsius), for which the spacecraft is equipped with a 4."Traveling at a speed of 430,000 mph, the spacecraft will move fast -- like going from New York City to Tokyo in less than a minute.He published the first paper to describe solar wind -- the high-speed matter and magnetism constantly escaping the sun -- in 1958.