The Sky Tonight

September 08, 2016

NASA launches first asteroid dust-retrieval mission
Miami (AFP) Sept 8, 2016
The US space agency Thursday launched its first mission to collect dust from an asteroid, the kind of cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to Earth billions of years ago. The unmanned spacecraft, known as OSIRIS-REx, blasted off at 7:05 pm (23:05 GMT) atop an Atlas V rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The $800 million mission will travel for two years on a journey to Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid about the size of a small mountain. ... read more

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Asteroid Mission Will Carry Student X-Ray Experiment At 7:05pm (EDT), Thursday, Sept. 8, NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. Among that spacecraft's five instruments is a student experiment that will use X-rays to h ... more		Terzan 5 Is Like No Other Globular Cluster A fossilised remnant of the early Milky Way harboring stars of hugely different ages has been revealed by an international team of astronomers. This stellar system resembles a globular cluster, but ... more		First Gravitational Waves form After 10 Million Years In his general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein predicted gravitational waves over a century ago; this year, they were detected directly for the first time: The American Gravitational Wave Obse ... more
				Recreating Our Galaxy in a Supercomputer Astronomers have created the most detailed computer simulation to date of our Milky Way galaxy's formation, from its inception billions of years ago as a loose assemblage of matter to its present-da ... more		Massive Holes 'Punched' Through a Trail of Stars Likely Caused by Dark Matter Researchers have detected two massive holes which have been 'punched' through a stream of stars just outside the Milky Way, and found that they were likely caused by clumps of dark matter, the invis ... more

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Space Plasma Hurricanes Suggest New Sources of Energy A new study by researchers at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, funded by the National Science Foundation, has identified for the first time a process by which the solar wind is heated along ext ... more		Titan's Dunes and Other Features Emerge in New Images New scenes from a frigid alien landscape are coming to light in recent radar images of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Cassini obtained the views during a close f ... more		Russia launches dozens of drones as Ukraine claims 'important success' Russian jets violate Estonian air space in 'brazen intrusion' U.S. defense in free fall		Wits University scientists predict the existence of a new boson Scientists at the High Energy Physics Group (HEP) of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg predict the existence of a new boson that might aid in the understanding of Dark Matter in th ... more
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2nd Integrated Air and Missile Defense - Securing the Complex Air Domain: Requirements for Sustainable, Global, and Reliable Solutions to Next Generation Air & Missile Threats - 28-30 September, 2016 | Washington D.C.

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OSIRIS-REx Prepared for Mapping, Sampling Mission to Asteroid Bennu The first U.S. mission to travel to an asteroid, retrieve samples and return them to Earth is targeted for a Sept. 8 launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force ... more		T2K CP Violation Results Help Explain Workings of Universe Why the universe is dominated by matter today, instead of being comprised of equal parts matter and antimatter, is one of the most intriguing questions in all of science. One of the conditions requi ... more		Fossil fuels harm health from 'cradle to grave': report Trash, mulch and security: All jobs for troops in Washington Rising oceans to threaten 1.5 million Australians by 2050: report		One Trace of Dark Matter Vanishes A mysterious X-ray signal from clusters of galaxies recently caused some excitement among astronomers: Does it perhaps originate from dark matter, which makes up around 80 percent of the matter in t ... more
Detailed Age Map Shows How Milky Way Came Together Using colors to identify the approximate ages of more than 130,000 stars in the Milky Way's halo, University of Notre Dame astronomers have produced the clearest picture yet of how the galaxy formed ... more		Brown Dwarfs Hiding in Plain Sight in Solar Neighborhood Cool brown dwarfs are a hot topic in astronomy right now. Smaller than stars and bigger than giant planets, they hold promise for helping us understand both stellar evolution and planet formation. N ... more		Asteroid named for Freddie Mercury on 70th birthday Rock legend Freddie Mercury's legacy is living on as an asteroid, named after him on what would have been the Queen singer's 70th birthday. ... more		Missing comet lander Philae spotted at last: ESA Europe's Rosetta spacecraft has finally spotted its tiny lander Philae, thought to be lost forever, stuck in a ditch on the surface of a comet hurtling through space, ground controllers said Monday. ... more

	Jupiter's North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System NASA's Juno spacecraft has sent back the first-ever images of Jupiter's north pole, taken during the spacecraft's first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on. The images show storm sy ... more		New light on the complex nature of 'hot Jupiter' atmospheres Fascinating new light could be shed on the complex atmospheres of planets which orbit stars outside our own solar system, thanks to pioneering new research. A team of international researchers, led ... more

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