Sleeping Comet Chaser to Get Wake-Up Call
The European Space Agency’s comet chasing Rosetta spacecraft is about to wake up from a 31-month nap, which was induced to conserve power after the vehicle ventured too far from the sun. While ESA officials are confident Rosetta will respond when they try to rouse it this Monday, Jan. 20, they also realize anything could […]
First Evidence of Comet Strike Found
A team of South African scientists writing in the journal ‘Earth and Planetary Science Letters’ said that they have found the first evidence of a comet striking Earth 28 million years ago. “Comets always visit our skies – they’re these dirty snowballs of ice mixed with dust – but never before in history has material […]
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Hubble Spots Farthest Supernova Yet
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found the farthest known supernova discovered to date. Nicknamed “SN Wilson,” after the American President Woodrow Wilson, scientists say supernova UDS10Wil, exploded more than 10 billion years ago, about 3.77 billion years after the Big Bang. SN Wilson is in a special class of exploding stars known as “Type Ia […]
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European Scientists Hope to Send Humans Back to the Moon
A team of European scientists wants to send people back to the moon, ending the 40-year break from human lunar exploration. The group not only wants to see a resumption of lunar exploration, but it recommends those efforts be dramatically stepped-up. In a report to be published in “Planetary and Space Science,” the authors argue […]
SpaceX Marks New Commercial Era in Space Exploration
Yesterday’s successful launch of SpaceX‘s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon reusable spacecraft from Cape Canaveral in Florida, marked what NASA administrator Charles Bolden called “the beginning of a new era in exploration.” Now that the Dragon is in space, technicians are testing its capability of rendezvousing and docking with the International Space Station, where it […]