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![]() Huntsville AL (SPX) Aug 17, 2011 In a few years a NASA spacecraft will seek the building blocks of life in a shovelful of asteroid dirt. The OSIRIS-REx1 spacecraft, targeted for launch in September 2016, will intercept asteroid 1999 RQ36, orbit it for a year, and then reach out a robotic arm to touch its surface. "We call it 'touch and go,'" explains principal investigator Michael Drake of the University of Arizona. "OSIRIS-REx will approach the surface at 0.1 m/sec (only 0.2 mph, less than a tenth of walking pace) and, without l ... read more |
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![]() Comet Elenin Poses No Threat to Earth Often, comets are portrayed as harbingers of gloom and doom in movies and on television, but most pose no threat to Earth. Comet Elenin, the latest comet to visit our inner solar system, is no excep ... more | .. |
![]() Jodie Foster helps keep search for aliens alive "Contact" star Jodie Foster was among donors helping to revive the 42 radio telescope dishes at a key California institute searching for extraterrestrial life, the group said Tuesday. ... more | .. |
![]() Solar Flares: What Does It Take to Be X-Class? Solar flares are giant explosions on the sun that send energy, light and high speed particles into space. These flares are often associated with solar magnetic storms known as coronal mass ejections ... more | .. | ||
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![]() A Cosmic Exclamation Point VV 340, also known as Arp 302, provides a textbook example of colliding galaxies seen in the early stages of their interaction. The edge-on galaxy near the top of the image is VV 340 North and the f ... more | .. |
![]() GRAIL Launch Less Than One Month Away NASA's twin lunar probes - GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B - completed their final inspections and were weighed one final time at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Fla., on Tuesday. T ... more | .. |
![]() Asteroid Photographer Beams Back Science Data The Dawn spacecraft has completed a graceful spiral into the first of four planned science orbits during the spacecraft's yearlong visit to Vesta. The spacecraft started taking detailed observ ... more | .. |
![]() Hubble Offers a Dazzling Necklace A giant cosmic necklace glows brightly in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. The object, aptly named the Necklace Nebula, is a recently discovered planetary nebula, the glowing remains of ... more |
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![]() Supernovae parents found Type Ia supernovae are violent stellar explosions whose brightness is used to determine distances in the universe. Observing these objects to billions of light years away has led to the discovery th ... more | .. |
![]() Alien World is Blacker than Coal Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet - a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight fal ... more | .. |
![]() Strange planet is blacker than coal A planet orbiting a distant star is darker than coal, reflecting less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, according to a paper published on Thursday. ... more | .. |
![]() Spaceships, Meteors, and Moonlight Bright moonlight streams through your window. A nugget of space debris disintegrates in a sparkling fireball. A huge spaceship glides silently overhead. By itself, any one of these events migh ... more |
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![]() A Spiral in Leo The most distinctive features of the bright galaxy NGC 3521 are its long spiral arms that are dotted with star-forming regions and interspersed with veins of dust. The arms are rather irregular and ... more | .. |
![]() Escaping Gravity's Clutches The Great Black Hole Breakout New research by scientists at the University of York gives a fresh perspective on the physics of black holes. Black holes are objects in space that are so massive and compact they were describ ... more | .. |
![]() A Cosmic Inkblot Test If this were an inkblot test, you might see a bow tie or a butterfly depending on your personality. An astronomer would likely see the remains of a dying star scattered about space - precisely what ... more | .. |
![]() Structural and Thermal Model of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter arrives at ESTEC The BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) STM arrived at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, during the night of 29/30 July. It had trave ... more |
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![]() The Lunar Farside And The Ancient Big Splat The mountainous region on the far side of the moon, known as the lunar farside highlands, may be the solid remains of a collision with a smaller companion moon, according to a new study by planetary ... more | .. |
![]() Sun Unleashes X6.9 Class Flare On August 9, 2011 at 3:48 a.m. EDT, the sun emitted an Earth-directed X6.9 flare, as measured by the NOAA GOES satellite. These gigantic bursts of radiation cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to ... more | .. |
![]() A Comet Collision to Come? A telegram was issued on July 10th by the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams of the International Astronomical Union announcing that the Earth got impacted for a few hours by a stream of dust ... more | .. |
![]() A Freaky Fluid inside Jupiter Last Friday, August 5th, NASA's Juno spacecraft blasted off on a 5-year voyage to a freakish world: planet Jupiter. Jupiter has a long list of oddities. For one thing, it's enormous, containing 70% ... more |
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![]() 'Housekeeping' could solve space junk mess The growing problem of space junk orbiting Earth could be tackled by specialized "housekeeping" spacecraft, an Italian researcher has proposed. ... more | .. |
![]() International Astronomical Union congress to be held next year in Beijing About 3,000 astronomers will get together in Beijing in August 2012 to attend the 28th congress of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chi ... more | .. |
![]() Meteorites as tool kits for creating life on Earth Meteorites hold a record of the chemicals that existed in the early Solar System and that may have been a crucial source of the organic compounds that gave rise to life on Earth. Since the 1960s, sc ... more | .. |
![]() DNA Building Blocks Can Be Made in Space NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The resea ... more |
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![]() Space Scientists Seek Returns from JEDI A Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) instrument that will delve into the dynamics of the solar system's largest planetary magnetic field was launched Friday aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft ... more | .. |
![]() Europe Takes Step Toward Detecting Gravitational Waves Scientists operating Europe's gravitational wave observatories have combined efforts this summer to search for gravitational waves. This groundbreaking research is being taken forward in Europe whil ... more | .. |
![]() The Physics of Crop Circles In this month's edition of Physics World, Richard Taylor, director of the Materials Science Institute at the University of Oregon, takes a serious, objective look at a topic that critics might claim ... more | .. |
![]() Death of star too near black hole recorded A team including a University of Sydney researcher observed a star being torn apart after getting to close to a massive black hole, the university said Monday. ... more |
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![]() Antimatter found in bands around Earth A thin belt of antimatter particles surrounding Earth has been detected for the first time, an article in a British astrophysical journal reports. ... more | .. |
![]() NASA launches Juno mission to Jupiter The US space agency on Friday launched an unmanned spacecraft, Juno, on a five-year journey toward Jupiter for clues on how the gas giant and other planets in our solar system were formed. ... more | .. |
![]() Putting it all Together on Titan Three of Titan's major surface features-dunes, craters and the enigmatic Xanadu-appear in this radar image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hazy bright area at the left that extends to the ... more | .. |
![]() 45th Space Wing Supports Successful Atlas V Juno Launch The U.S. Air Force's 45th Space Wing provided flawless Eastern Range support for the successful launch of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA's Juno spacecraft Friday. The launch occ ... more |
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