New Celestial Census: 17 Billion Earth-sized Worlds Out There!
At least one in six stars has an Earth-sized planet – that’s the word from Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Fressin and his colleagues have been sifting through data gleaned by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. A new analysis of...Asteroid Vesta: Spacecraft Imagery Unveils its Eventful Past
Data gleaned by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft during a year-long survey of asteroid Vesta have shown that impacting small asteroids delivered dark, carbonaceous material to the protoplanet. These huge impacts not only altered Vesta’s shape, but also its surface composition....NEXT in Propulsion!
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft that explored asteroid Vesta and is now en route to space rock Ceres is being propelled by ion thrust. Ion engines use electric fields instead of chemical reactions. Ion engines tend to be much less powerful, but they are so efficient, they can...Free Downloads! Looking Up at Hubble, James Webb Space Telescopes
Here are two celestial stocking stuffers for the mind and for those still shopping – just in time for the holidays and new year! NASA has issued two new e-books, one on the Hubble Space Telescope, the other on the still-to-be-launched, next-generation space...China Space Probe Encounters Asteroid Toutatis
A number of news services in China are reporting that Chang’e-2 has successfully flown by asteroid Toutatis. The flyby took place on Dec. 13 and was announced by the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND). The Chinese...Space Rock Flyby of Earth: Radar Images of Asteroid Toutatis
A crack team of planetary radar specialists at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory snagged a sequence of images of asteroid Toutatis as it whisked by the Earth December 12th. An observing campaign of the space rock was carried out at the Goldstone facility in California....Take a Look: Asteroid Flyby of Earth
Potentially hazardous asteroid Toutatis, an asteroid with an estimated diameter of over 3 miles (5.4 km), will make its close approach to Earth this week. Slooh Space Camera will cover its near-approach on Tuesday, December 11th, with several live shows on Slooh.com,...Space Foundation, National Research Council Call for Bolder Course for U. S. Space Exploration
The outside advice directed at NASA and theU. S.civil space program came in waves this week, just as the space agency was unveiling changes to its Mars exploration program, including plans for the launching of a second Curiosity class rover in 2020. An earlier...It’s Alive? Active Volcanoes on Venus: Smoking Gun Evidence Possibly Found
The hellish world we know as Venus may sport active volcanoes. Thanks to six years of observations by the European Space Agency’s Venus Express, the orbiter appears to have recorded large changes in the sulphur dioxide content of within that planet’s atmosphere. And...Follow Us
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#NASA estimates that a human mission to Mars could take months or years with current propulsion technologies. To accelerate this timeline, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are exploring nuclear thermal propulsion.
Learn more: https://bit.ly/4f8zDlE
#ICYMI, check out the latest recap of space exploration, science and policy news from CDSE's Deep Space Extra newsletter.
Read it here: https://exploredeepspace.com/news/deep-space-extra-39-2024-09-30/
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.@NASA_Langley is testing the Lightweight Surface Manipulation System AutoNomy capabilities Development for Surface Operations (LANDO), a robotic arm designed to lift payloads and place them on the #lunar surface.
Read more: https://bit.ly/3NbFYAO
📷: NASA/David C. Bowman
#ICYMI, check out the latest recap of space exploration, science and policy news from CDSE's Deep Space Extra newsletter.
Read it here: https://exploredeepspace.com/news/deep-space-extra-38-2024-09-23/
Sign up to stay in the know. #ExploreDeepSpace
