There will be no New Year’s Eve revelry for those working on NASA’s New Horizon’s space probe. They will need to be stone cold sober with their wits about them when, on New Year’s Day 2019, it whizzes past one of the fossil building blocks of the planets and one of the most primitive bodies in the Solar System.
NASA’s newly arrived Mars lander has been spotted by one its orbiting cousins.
The space agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its supersharp High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE) to photograph the InSight lander, as well as the hardware that helped the stationary robot ace its Nov. 26 touchdown on the equatorial plain known as Elysium Planitia.
“It looks like the heat shield (upper right) has its dark outside facing down, since it is so bright (saturated, probably a specular reflection),” HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen, of the University of Arizona, wrote in an image description today (Dec. 13). [Mars InSight in Photos: NASA’s Mission to Probe Core of the Red Planet].
Continue reading “NASA’s Insight Lander on Mars Spotted from Space!” »
Thinking of trying something new today? How does “discovering new planets while sitting comfortably at home” sound? Learn how ordinary citizens can make a WORLD of difference in the ongoing hunt for exoplanets.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to discover new planets? Learn how Planet Hunters TESS shows us how to find new worlds far away from our Sun.
The latest test flight by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic successfully rocketed to the edge of space and back.
The firm’s SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket ship reached a height of 82.7km, beyond the altitude at which US agencies have awarded astronaut wings.
It marked the plane’s fourth test flight and followed earlier setbacks in the firm’s space programme.
“When we send astronauts to the surface of the Moon in the next decade, it will be in a sustainable fashion,” says NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstinee. Learn how we’ll expand partnerships with industry and other nations to explore the Moon and advance our exploration missions to even farther destinations, such as Mars: https://go.nasa.gov/2GeqhZL
WASHINGTON — When a blazing fireball from space exploded over Earth on July 25, scientists captured the first-ever seismic recordings of a meteor impact on ice in Greenland.
At approximately 8 p.m. local time on that day, residents of the town of Qaanaaq on Greenland’s northwestern coast reported seeing a bright light in the sky and feeling the ground shake as a meteor combusted over the nearby Thule Air Base.
But the fleeting event was detected by more than just human observers, according to unpublished research presented Dec. 12 here at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
Continue reading “Fireball That Exploded Over Greenland Shook Earth, Triggering Seismic Sensors” »
