Tag: Planetary Science
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Juno beams back dramatic new pictures of Jupiter
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION The JunoCam instrument obtained this view on Aug. 27, about two hours before closest approach, when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (195,000 kilometers) away from the giant planet (i.e., for Jupiter’s center). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS NASA’s Juno spacecraft, making its first scientific run over Jupiter’s poles Aug. 27, captured…
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Juno gets its closest look at Jupiter
Updated with details from NASA press release. Jupiter’s north polar region is coming into view as NASA’s Juno spacecraft approaches the giant planet. This view of Jupiter was taken on August 27, when Juno was 437,000 miles (703,000 kilometers) away.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Nearly two months after NASA’s Juno spacecraft slipped into orbit around Jupiter, the solar-powered…
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China’s Yutu rover dies on the moon
A camera aboard the Chang’e 3 lander captured this view of the Yutu rover in December 2013. Credit: Chinese Academy of Sciences/NAOC/Science and Application Center for Moon and Deepspace Exploration A Chinese rover sent to the moon in 2013 has stopped operating, officials announced Wednesday, ending a groundbreaking 31-month mission that made discoveries in lunar…
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NASA spells out support for SpaceX’s Red Dragon Mars mission
Artist’s concept of SpaceX’s Red Dragon spacecraft entering the Martian atmosphere. Credit: SpaceX If SpaceX is able to dispatch a robotic Dragon capsule to land on the red planet in 2018 on time and successfully, engineers stand to get a lesson on what it will take to eventually send humans there, capturing key data on…
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ExoMars orbiter fine-tunes path toward red planet
Artist’s concept of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Credit: Thales Alenia Space. A European spacecraft cruising toward Mars fired its main engine Thursday, tweaking its trajectory and helping set up for carefully-choreographed simultaneous maneuvers Oct. 19 to place part of the tandem mission into orbit around the red planet and deposit a stationary battery-powered lander…
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NASA developing plans for commercially-built Mars orbiter
An artist’s illustration of one potential design for NASA’s new Mars orbiter, which could launch as soon as 2022. Credit: NASA NASA is advancing a plan to send a robotic orbiter to Mars in the early 2020s, developing designs with five U.S. satellite makers for a mission to extend high-resolution mapping capabilities, telecommunications relay functions,…
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40 years since Viking, scientists still on the hunt for life on Mars
NASA’s Viking 1 lander captured this image of its landing site at Chryse Planitia at sunset in August 1976. Credit: NASA/JPL Four decades after NASA’s Viking landers acquired humanity’s first view of the surface of Mars, a planet whose reality lived in the imaginations of skywatchers for millennia, a definitive smoking gun for microbial life…
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Researchers eager for Juno’s first chance for Jupiter science
Animation of Juno 14-day Orbits Starting in late 2016. Juno is currently in an even larger 53-day orbit. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Juno spacecraft fine-tuned its orbit around Jupiter this week, helping steer the spinning space probe on a course to dip beneath the giant planet’s radiation belts in late August for the first time with…
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Juno spacecraft braves the unknown at Jupiter to enter orbit
NASA’s Juno spacecraft, spinning once every 12 seconds for stability, fired its main engine for more than 35 minutes Monday to brake into orbit around Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Setting up post at the king of planets, NASA’s Juno spacecraft fired its main engine for 35 minutes Monday, steering into orbit around Jupiter to peer inside…
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Live coverage: NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter
Live coverage of NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.