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, supporting the notion that it … Read the rest of this article
Dawn Spacecraft Images Show Vesta’s ‘Color Palette’
December 9, 2011
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NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space. Data obtained from Voyager over the last year reveal this new region to be a kind of cosmic purgatory. In it, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun has calmed, our solar system’s magnetic field is piled up, and higher-energy particles … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s New Horizons Becomes the Closest Spacecraft to Approach Pluto
December 4, 2011
NASA’s New Horizons mission reached a special milestone yesterday, Dec. 2, 2011, on its way to reconnoiter the Pluto system, coming closer to Pluto than any other spacecraft.
It’s taken New Horizons 2,143 days of high-speed flight – covering more than a million kilometers per day for nearly six years—to break the closest-approach mark of 1.58 billion kilometers set by … Read the rest of this article
Waking up before sunrise can be tough to do, especially on a weekend. On Saturday, Dec. 10th, you might be glad you did. A total eclipse of the Moon will be visible in the early morning skies of western Northern America.
Lunar eclipse diagram provided by LunarPhase Pro. All times in UT.
The action begins around 4:45 am Pacific … Read the rest of this article
A peculiar cosmic explosion first detected by NASA’s Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was caused either by a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual collision much closer to home, within our own galaxy. Papers describing both interpretations appear in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Nature.
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This animation illustrates two wildly different …
ESA astronauts joined Google and YouTube managers on 30 November at the European Astronaut Centre, Cologne, to present highlights of the ‘Space Lab’ competition.
Watch a replay of the webcast recording below. The programme runs about 80 minutes.
eurospaceagency on livestream.com. Broadcast Live FreeThe “Curiosity” Rover Is on Its Way to Mars
November 28, 2011
NASA began a historic voyage to Mars with the Nov. 26 launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, which carries a car-sized rover named Curiosity. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard an Atlas V rocket occurred at 10:02 a.m. EST (7:02 a.m. PST).
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An artist’s concept of NASA’s biggest-ever Mars rover Curiosity examining a rock on the Red Planet. …
NASA Successfully Launches Mars Science Lab Mission
November 26, 2011
NASA has launched the most capable machine, nicknamed Curiosity, ever built to land on Mars.
The 1-tonne rover, tucked inside a capsule, launched from Florida on an Atlas 5 rocket at 10:02 EST (15:02 GMT). The rover will take 8.5 months to fly to Mars.
Mars Science Lab
The landing configuration is a first. Rather than being sheathed in inflated … Read the rest of this article
How to Watch the NASA Curiosity Mars Mission Launch Today
November 26, 2011
After eight years of planning, more than $600 million in cost overruns, and a two-year delay, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory is finally ready to launch.
Now you can watch the nuclear-powered, 1-ton rover — currently the largest machine that can feasibly land on the Red Planet — take off from Cape Canaveral and begin its journey to Mars.… Read the rest of this article
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