Following the first successful contact on Tuesday, ESA’s tracking station in Australia again established two-way communication with Russia’s Phobos–Grunt spacecraft on 23 November. The data received from the spacecraft have been sent to the Russian mission control centre for analysis.
Tracking station control room at ESA’s Space Operations Centre, Credits: ESA
ESA’s 15 m-diameter antenna at Perth, Australia, was again … Read the rest of this article
A new video from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows huge blasts of plasma, called solar prominences, curling around the sun’s tumultuous magnetic field. The remarkable activity was captured Nov. 14 to 15 using a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. Never look at the Sun directly yourself – it can lead to blindness!
The Camtasia Studio video content presented here requires … Read the rest of this article
Three International Space Station crew members safely returned to Earth on Monday, wrapping up nearly six months in space during which NASA and its international partners celebrated the 11th anniversary of continuous residence and work aboard the station.
Expedition 29 Commander Mike Fossum, Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Sergei Volkov of the Russian Federal … Read the rest of this article
Images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) show sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars at dozens of locations and shifting up to several yards. These observations reveal the planet’s sandy surface is more dynamic than previously thought.
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A dune in the northern polar region of Mars shows significant changes between two images taken on June 25, …
Here is a stunning, mind-blowing time lapse video of the Earth at night, taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station:
The video, taken by astronauts and edited by Michael König, was from a high-resolution camera with low-light abilities, so it can see faint sources of light. The footage was all taken from August to October 2011.
Cities stream by … Read the rest of this article
Sensors destined for ESA’s LISA Pathfinder mission in 2014 have far exceeded expectations, paving the way for a mission to detect one of the most elusive forces permeating through space – gravity waves.
LISA Pathfinder about to enter the space environment vacuum test. Credits: Astrium UK
The Optical Metrology Subsystem underwent its first full tests under space-like temperature and vacuum … Read the rest of this article
A coronal mass ejection that swept past Mercury on Nov. 13th will likely hit Venus later today. Because Venus has no global magnetic field to protect it, the impact could erode material directly from the top of the planet’s atmosphere. It’s okay; Venus has atmosphere to spare. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab calculated the path of the CME, … Read the rest of this article
The sun rotates at a respectable 2 kilometers per second, which may sound pretty fast. But according to a study to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (arXiv:1111.0157v1), a star has been detected in 30 Doradus (a.k.a. the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 160,000 light-years away) spinning at the breakneck speed of 600 kilometers per … Read the rest of this article
A new model for generating a global magnetic field in the ancient moon could help solve a 40-year-old mystery.
The Earth’s magnetic field exists because it has a spinning solid core surrounded by hot metallic liquid, which churns around lava-lamp style and generates magnetism. But the moon is too small and cool to possess such a molten interior and therefore … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. has captured new radar images of Asteroid 2005 YU55 passing close to Earth.
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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 miles, or 1.38 million kilometers, …
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
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