NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Begins Approach to Dwarf Planet Ceres
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is getting set for the final segment of its planned ten-year mission after entering the approach phase of its visit to the dwarf planet Ceres. This dwarf planet, with an average diameter of 950 kilometers, is the largest object in the asteroid belt, a region of space located between the orbits of […]
Rosetta Mission Fuels Argument About Origin of Earth’s Water
The debate about the origin of Earth’s water just got deeper. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) comet-chasing spacecraft Rosetta has sent back some interesting information regarding water vapor it detected and analyzed on its target, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. According to the ESA and an international group of scientists, the analysis shows that the chemical composition of […]
Science Scanner: Orion Set for Test, Mars Meteorite May Have Organic Matter, Heavy Newborns Excel in School, Oceans Help Warming Hiatus
NASA Readies Orion Spacecraft for Test Flight Excitement continues to build in Florida as NASA makes final preparations for the tomorrow’s (12/4/14) first unmanned flight test of Orion spacecraft, which the space agency plans to use to send astronauts to an asteroid and then to Mars. Liftoff has been set for 1105 UTC from Space […]
Science Images of the Month – November, 2014
Science Images of the Month – October, 2014
NASA’s NuStar Mission Finds Rare Pulsar that Pumps Out the Energy of 10 Million Suns
This animation shows a neutron star—the core of a star that exploded in a massive supernova. This particular neutron star is known as a pulsar because it sends out rotating beams of X-rays that sweep past Earth like lighthouse beacons. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission recently made a remarkable discovery that could […]
Science Images for September, 2014
ESA’s Rosetta Probe Gets Close to Duck-Shaped Comet 67P/C-K
Back on Aug. 6 the European Space Agency‘s unmanned space probe Rosetta completed its decade long journey across space to meet up with its target, Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, making it the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet. As the spacecraft neared its target, it took some close-up photos of the comet with its two camera […]