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October 15, 2013

Rosetta: 100 days to wake-up
Paris (ESA) Oct 16, 2013
ESA's comet-chasing mission Rosetta will wake up in 100 days' time from deep-space hibernation to reach the destination it has been cruising towards for a decade. Comets are the primitive building blocks of the Solar System and the likely source of much of Earth's water, perhaps even delivering to Earth the ingredients that helped life evolve. By studying the nature of a comet close-up with an orbiter and lander, Rosetta will enable scientists to learn more about the role of comets in the evolutio ... read more

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Comet ISON Details Emerge as it Races Toward the Sun Scientists are unraveling more information on Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) as it continues on its journey toward the Sun. Comet C/ISON will skim 730,000 miles above the Sun's surface on Nov. 28 and has th ... more		Telescopes Large and Small Team Up to Study Triple Asteroid 87 Sylvia Combining observations from the world's largest telescopes with small telescopes used by amateur astronomers, a team of astronomers discovered that the large main-belt asteroid (87) Sylvia has a com ... more		Water discovered in remnants of extrasolar rocky world orbiting white dwarf Astrophysicists have found the first evidence of a water-rich rocky planetary body outside our solar system in its shattered remains orbiting a white dwarf. A new study by scientists at the Un ... more
				Blurring the lines between stars and planets Astronomers including Niall Deacon of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) captured an image of an unusual free-floating planet. As the object has no host star, it can be observed and exami ... more		Kepler Finds First Signs of Other Earths A new analysis of observations from the Kepler spacecraft reveals what may be the first earth-sized planets with earthlike temperatures found orbiting sunlike stars. Until now, Kepler's nearly ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

LSU Researchers Discover How Microbes Survive in Freezing Conditions Most microbial researchers grow their cells in petri-dishes to study how they respond to stress and damaging conditions. But, with the support of funding from NASA, researchers in LSU's Department o ... more		Watery asteroid discovered in dying star points to habitable exoplanets Astronomers have found the shattered remains of an asteroid that contained huge amounts of water orbiting an exhausted star, or white dwarf. This suggests that the star GD 61 and its planetary syste ... more		Denmark closes airspace to civilian drones amid rise in sightings Top diplomats of North Korea, China agree to oppose 'hegemonism' What is the high seas treaty?		Comet ISON's chances of surviving close brush with the Sun The much-anticipated close approach of comet ISON to the Sun this November may be spectacular as viewed from Earth, but it's unlikely to spell the end of the comet, according to a numerical-simulati ... more
				Soft shells and strange star clusters PGC 6240 is an elliptical galaxy that resembles a pale rose in the sky, with hazy shells of stars encircling a very bright centre. Some of these shells are packed close to the centre of the galaxy, ... more		Quantum computers: Trust is good, proof is better A quantum computer can solve tasks not tractable with conventional supercomputers. The question of how one can, nevertheless, verify the reliability of a quantum computer was recently answered in an ... more

Space Situational Awareness Conference 2013

Solar systems for home and business

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Controllers prepare to awaken comet hunter from deep-space sleep European space mission controllers say they're preparing to wake a comet-hunting spacecraft from a two-year deep-space hibernation as it nears its cosmic goal. ... more		European 'big bang' space telescope to be switched off The process of disposing of a space telescope that mapped the "oldest light" in the universe has begun, its European controllers say. ... more		The first animals on Earth may have been sea sponges, study suggests Wildfire-induced thunderstorms recreated in Earth system models for first time Fengyun satellite strengthens China global weather forecasting capacity		Approaching Earth flyby to slingshot Juno to Jupiter NASA's Juno spacecraft launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., Aug. 5, 2011, beginning a five-year journey to Jupiter. But it wasn't charted on a direct path. ... more
				A close look at the Toby Jug Nebula Located about 1200 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Carina (The Ship's Keel), the Toby Jug Nebula, more formally known as IC 2220, is an example of a reflection nebula. It is ... more		Scientists generate first map of clouds on an exoplanet On the exoplanet Kepler 7b, the weather is highly predictable, an international team of scientists has found: On any given day, the exoplanet, which orbits a star nearly 1,000 light-years from Earth ... more

Archival Hubble Images Reveal Neptune's "Lost" Inner Moon

SwRI study finds that Pluto satellites' orbital ballet may hint of long-ago collisions

New Horizons - Late in Cruise, and a Binary Ahoy

LSU Researchers Discover How Microbes Survive in Freezing Conditions

Methane seeps of the deep sea: A bacteria feast for lithodid crabs

Search for alien life more complicated than thought, scientists say

Kepler Finds First Signs of Other Earths

Water discovered in remnants of extrasolar rocky world orbiting white dwarf

Blurring the lines between stars and planets

ESA's test rover begins exploring Atacama Desert

US shutdown not to hit Indian Mars mission

Martian settlement site to be printed on a printer

	Methane seeps of the deep sea: A bacteria feast for lithodid crabs The bottom of the deep sea is largely deserted. Oases occur for example at cold seeps where water transports dissolved elements from the seabed: Specialized microbes convert methane and sulfate from ... more		Space 'graveyard' reveals bits of an Earth-like planet Astronomers have autopsied a distant, broken apart planet and revealed signs of water and a rocky surface together for the first time, delighting scientists on the hunt for alien life. ... more		Diamond 'super-earth' may not be quite as precious A planet 40 light years from our solar system, believed to be the first-ever discovered planet to consist largely of diamond, may in fact be of less exquisite nature, according to new research led b ... more		Evidence for a new nuclear 'magic number' Researchers have come one step closer to understanding unstable atomic nuclei. A team of researchers from RIKEN, the University of Tokyo and other institutions in Japan and Italy has provided eviden ... more

NASA ISRO radar satellite beams first Earth images from space

India plans mega-dam to counter China water fears

Breakthrough in UAV swarm intelligence as SRI redefines topology mapping

NASA's moon landing remembered as a promise of a 'future which never happened'		First ever evidence of a comet striking Earth		Search for alien life more complicated than thought, scientists say		Lonely planet without a star discovered wandering our galaxy		First-ever comet material discovered on Earth: scientists
Englert And Higgs Awarded Nobel Prize In Physics For 2013		Recent Study Reduces Casimir Force to Lowest Recorded Level		Louisiana Tech physicists aid in new findings of international research team		Russia could build manned lunar base		Researchers Find that Bright Nearby Double Star Fomalhaut Is Actually a Triple

Asteroid near-miss reported by Russian scientists

Do black holes have hair

NASA Space Telescopes Find Patchy Clouds On Exotic World

First HiRISE Images of Comet ISON

Cassini Finds Ingredient of Household Plastic in Space

SUNRISE Offers New Insight on Sun's Atmosphere

Lunar orbiters discover source of space weather near Earth

Nearby binary star system gets officially confirmed third member

Herschel throws new light on oldest cosmic light

Rensselaer Researchers Propose New Theory To Explain Seeds of Life in Asteroids

'Gravity' draws stellar reviews, awards buzz

Astronomers Uncover a 'Transformer' Pulsar

Study of big-bang radiation may yield clues to early universe

Cassini finds ingredient of household plastic on Saturn moon

Several NASA Spacecraft Track Energy Through Space

Dawn Reality-Checks Telescope Studies of Asteroids

Jekyll and Hyde star morphs from radio to X-ray pulsar and back again

Magnetic field may shape "blooming" star

Observations reveal critical interplay of interstellar dust, hydrogen

3-D models of electrical streamers

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