A partnership with the UK’s Faulkes Telescope Project promises to boost the Agency’s space hazards research while helping students to discover potentially dangerous space rocks. 2m Faulkes North Telescope at Haleakalā, Hawaii, USA. Credits: Faulkes Telescope Project ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme is keeping watch over space hazards, including disruptive space weather, debris objects…
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has provided researchers with the first orbital analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta, yielding new insights into its creation and kinship with terrestrial planets and Earth’s moon. This image, made from data obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, shows the mineral distribution in the southern hemisphere of the giant asteroid Vesta. The mineral…
Research by NASA and international scientists concludes giant asteroids, similar or larger than the one believed to have killed the dinosaurs, hit Earth billions of years ago with more frequency than previously thought. To cause the dinosaur extinction, the killer asteroid that impacted Earth 65 million years ago would have been almost 6 miles (10…
Findings from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft reveal new details about the giant asteroid Vesta, including its varied surface composition, sharp temperature changes and clues to its internal structure. The findings were presented today at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, Austria and will help scientists better understand the early solar system and processes that dominated…
Seattle, Wash. – April 24, 2012 — Planetary Resources, Inc. announced today its plan to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals. Through the development of cost-effective exploration technologies, the company is poised to initiate prospecting missions targeting resource-rich asteroids that are easily accessible. Resource extraction from asteroids will deliver…
Following on from my post a couple of days ago about how a number of Tech Billionaires and high-flyers have gotten together to create a private space program, I came across this article which provides a lot more detail about their plans… There’s gold in them there hills. You know, those ones floating around in…
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has revealed unexpected details on the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. New images and data highlight the diversity of Vesta’s surface and reveal unusual geologic features, some of which were never previously seen on asteroids. In this image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, bright material extends out from the crater Canuleia on…
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft spent the last four years voyaging to asteroid Vesta – and may have found a planet. Vesta was discovered over two hundred years ago but, until Dawn, has been seen only as an indistinct blur and considered little more than a large, rocky body. Now the spacecraft’s instruments are revealing the true…
Vesta appears in a splendid rainbow-colored palette in new images obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. The colors, assigned by scientists to show different rock or mineral types, reveal Vesta to be a world of many varied, well-separated layers and ingredients. Vesta is unique among asteroids visited by spacecraft to date in having such wide variation,…
NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. has captured new radar images of Asteroid 2005 YU55 passing close to Earth. This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained on Nov. 7, 2011, at 11:45 a.m. PST (2:45 p.m. EST/1945 UTC), when the space rock was at 3.6 lunar distances, which is about 860,000…
NASA scientists will be tracking asteroid 2005 YU55 with antennas of the agency’s Deep Space Network at Goldstone, Calif., as the space rock safely flies past Earth slightly closer than the Moon’s orbit on Nov. 8. Scientists are treating the flyby of the 1,300-foot-wide (400-meter) asteroid as a science target of opportunity – allowing instruments…
This article originally appeared on Sky & Telescope’s website On November 8–9, 2011, the Earth-crossing asteroid 2005 YU55 will speed past us at a distance closer than the Moon. With a diameter of about 400 meters, it will be the largest object that’s ever been seen passing so close. It should reach about magnitude 11.2…
The Sun Now (Visible light) |
The Sun Now (H-Alpha light) |
|
Aurora Oval (Northern Hemisphere) |
Aurora Oval (Southern Hemisphere) |
|
