The Sky Tonight

August 08, 2014

MESSENGER Team Celebrates 10th Anniversary of Launch
Baltimore MD (SPX) Aug 07, 2014
Ten years ago, on August 3, 2004, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a risky mission that would take the small satellite dangerously close to Mercury's surface, paving the way for an ambitious study of the planet closest to the Sun. The spacecraft traveled 4.9 billion miles (7.9 billion kilometers) - a journey that included 15 trips around the Sun and flybys of Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury three times - before it was inserted into orbit around its t ... read more

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Orbiter Completes Maneuver to Prepare for Comet Flyby NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has successfully adjusted the timing of its orbit around Mars as a defensive precaution for a comet's close flyby of Mars on Oct. 19, 2014. The orbiter fired thr ... more		Planet-like object may have spent its youth as hot as a star Astronomers have discovered an extremely cool object that could have a particularly diverse history-although it is now as cool as a planet, it may have spent much of its youth as hot as a star. ... more		Baby universe picture brought closer to theory Last year, the Planck Telescope revealed the most detailed picture of the cosmic microwave background, the relic radiation from the Big Bang. But this map contains features that challenge the standa ... more
				Probe makes space history with rendezvous with comet The space probe Rosetta made a historic rendezvous with a comet on Wednesday, climaxing a 10-year, six-billion-kilometre (3.7-billion-mile) chase through the Solar System, the European Space Agency (ESA) said. ... more		Rosetta and Philae: Profile of comet-chasing team Following is a profile of the Rosetta spacecraft, its payload Philae and the instruments they carry: ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Startup in the Land of the Rising Sun; A Japanese Solar Venture - by Bradley L. Bartz

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Rosetta Arrives At Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko After a decade-long journey chasing its target, ESA's Rosetta has today become the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet, opening a new chapter in Solar System exploration. Comet 67P/Chu ... more		Dawn navigates mini-asteroid belt Patient and persistent, silent and alone, Dawn is continuing its extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition. Flying through the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the spacecraft is using it ... more		Sierra Space clears design milestone for missile tracking satellites in SDA Tranche 2 Top diplomats of North Korea, China agree to oppose 'hegemonism' The Surprising Overlap In Skills Required To Fly An Aircraft And To Excel At iGaming		Rosetta's Comet: Imaging the Coma Less than a week before Rosetta's rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, images obtained by OSIRIS, the spacecraft's onboard scientific imaging system, show clear signs of a coma surroundi ... more
				A Hellacious Two Weeks on Jupiter's Moon Io Three massive volcanic eruptions occurred on Jupiter's moon Io within a two-week period in August of last year. This led astronomers to speculate that such "outbursts," which can send material hundr ... more		Extreme Volcanism On Io During the middle of 2013, Jupiter's moon Io came alive with volcanism. Now, an image from the Gemini Observatory captures what is one of the brightest volcanoes ever seen in our solar system. The i ... more

Rosetta Takes Comet's Temperature The observations of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were made by Rosetta's visible, infrared and thermal imaging spectrometer, VIRTIS, between 13 and 21 July, when Rosetta closed in from 14 000 km t ... more		Center for Orbital Debris Education and Research Recruits Industrial Affiliates The newly formed Center for Orbital Debris Education and Research (CODER) at the University of Maryland is off to a rapid start. Collaborations with-in the industry are quickly being formed in order ... more		The first animals on Earth may have been sea sponges, study suggests Small Satellite Contracted to Probe Climate Effects of Space Radiation Fengyun satellite strengthens China global weather forecasting capacity		NASA's IBEX and Voyager spacecraft drive advances in outer heliosphere research Scientists yesterday highlighted an impressive list of achievements in researching the outer heliosphere at the 40th International Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Scientific Assembly in Moscow. ... more
Jupiter's moon Io may feature more volcanoes than previously thought Jupiter's moon Io featured three massive volcanic eruptions within a two-week span last summer, leading astronomers to believe the "pizza moon" - named so for its cratered, pepperoni-like surface - may spew molten rock more often that scientists previously believed. ... more		Coronal Heating Theory Tested In NASA Sounding Rocket Mission Scientists have recently gathered some of the strongest evidence to date to explain what makes the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than its surface. The new observations of the small-scale ext ... more		BIOMEX: Exploring Mars in Low Earth Orbit In their quest to understand life's potential beyond Earth, astrobiologists study how organisms might survive in numerous environments, from the surface of Mars to the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter' ... more		Scientist underlines threat of inevitable "solar super-storms" In this month's issue of Physics World, Ashley Dale from the University of Bristol warns of the "catastrophic" and "long-lasting" impacts of "solar super-storms" and the dangers we face if the threa ... more

	NASA's Fermi Space Telescope Reveals New Source of Gamma Rays Observations by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope of several stellar eruptions, called novae, firmly establish these relatively common outbursts almost always produce gamma rays, the most energ ... more		Comet-chaser nears prey after crossing billions of miles After a decade-long quest spanning six billion kilometres (3.75 billion miles), a European probe will come face to face Wednesday with a comet, one of the Solar System's enigmatic wanderers. ... more

Worlds most powerful centrifuge begins operations in China

Breakthrough in UAV swarm intelligence as SRI redefines topology mapping

China factory activity shrinks in September for sixth straight month

Manned Moon Mission to Cost Russia $2.8 Bln		Companion planets can increase old worlds' chance at life		Hubble Shows Farthest Lensing Galaxy Yields Clues to Early Universe		How Rosetta arrives at a comet		Perseid Meteors vs. the Supermoon
Young binary star system may form planets with weird and wild orbits		Tidal forces gave moon its shape		Mercury's magnetic field tells scientists how its interior is different from Earth's		MESSENGER Gets Closer to Mercury than Ever Before		New NASA Research Shows Giant Asteroids Battered Early Earth

Solar Probe Plus, Highest Energy Mission Ever

ALMA Finds Double Star with Weird and Wild Planet-forming Discs

Our galaxy is way smaller than previous estimates

Astronomers measure weight of galaxies, expansion of universe

Mapping the optimal route between 2 quantum states

Scientists separate a particle from its properties

Riddle of bulging Moon solved at last

The Quantum Cheshire Cat: Scientists separate a particle from its properties

Mysterious molecules in space

Lifetime of gravity measurements heralds new beginning

Gaia: 'Go' for science

Collecting just the right data

Titan Offers Clues to Atmospheres of Hazy Planets

Glow in Space is Evidence of A Hot Bubble in Our Galaxy

NASA-funded X-ray Instrument Settles Interstellar Debate

The source of the sky's X-ray glow

Measuring the Smallest Magnets

Refrigerator magnets

A New Approach to SETI: Targeting Alien Polluters

Biomarkers of the Deep

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