Preparing for Asteroid Threats
With a mandate from the UN, ESA and other space agencies from around the world are about to establish a high-level group to help coordinate global…
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Where Is the Coldest Spot in the Known Universe?
Everyone knows that space is cold. In the vast gulf between stars and galaxies, the temperature of gaseous matter routinely drops to 3 degrees K, or…
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Citizen Science – Search for New Planetary Nurseries Using “Disk Detective”
NASA is inviting the public to help astronomers discover embryonic planetary systems hidden among data from the agency’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission through a…
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The Three NASA Instruments Aboard Rosetta
Three NASA science instruments are being prepared for check-out operations aboard the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, which is set to become the first to orbit…
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Water Vapor Discovered Around Ceres by Herschel
ESA’s Herschel space observatory has discovered water vapour around Ceres, the first unambiguous detection of water vapour around an object in the asteroid belt. With a…
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Saving Our Planet From a Killer Comet
A comet heading towards Earth threatens humanity’s existence – that was the virtual scenario of this year’s Zero Robotics tournament. Secondary-school students from across Europe controlled…
Read the articleRosetta Wakes From Long Sleep – Is Alive and Well
It was a fairy-tale ending to a tense chapter in the story of the Rosetta space mission this evening as ESA heard from its distant spacecraft…
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Comets are among the most beautiful and least understood nomads of the night sky. To date, half a dozen of these most heavenly of heavenly bodies…
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Counting Down to a Flyby of Pluto
When NASA’s New Horizons mission was launched, Pluto was still considered one of the nine planets in our solar system. It has since been reclassified as…
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GAIA Arrives at the L2 Point
With a final, modest, thruster burn yesterday afternoon, ESA’s billion-star surveyor finalised its entry into orbit around ‘L2’, a virtual point far out in space. But…
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