Tag: Planetary Science
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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.
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Scientists on edge awaiting Juno’s perilous encounter with Jupiter
This artist’s concept shows Juno’s approach path toward Jupiter for the July 4 insertion maneuver. Jupiter’s intense radiation belts are also illustrated here. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Speeding toward Jupiter at nearly 40 miles per second, NASA’s Juno spacecraft must brave a field of computer-zapping radiation and Jupiter’s tenuous ring of ice and dust particles when it…
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NASA’s Juno mission is about to peel back the layers on Jupiter
A version of this story was originally published in Astronomy Now magazine. NASA’s Juno spacecraft, seen here in an artist’s illustration, will become the second mission to orbit the solar system’s king planet. Credit: Lockheed Martin Whether you’re a casual stargazer or armed with a toolkit of observing gadgets, chances are you have caught a…
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Video: When Juno launched to begin 5-year trek to Jupiter
Juno left the Earth atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on Aug. 5, 2011, beginning its journey to Jupiter atop the most powerful Atlas variant with five side-mounted boosters. Liftoff occurred at 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT) from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. After traveling more than 1.7 billion miles, Juno arrives…
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Scientists to land, and switch off, Rosetta comet probe in September
Artist’s concept of the Rosetta spacecraft at comet 67P. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM/ATG medialab The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission will end Sept. 30 with a dicey descent to the core of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a risky, but potentially rewarding finale punctuated by commands to automatically safe the probe’s rocket thrusters and turn off its radio transmitter. The…
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Juno switched to autopilot mode for Jupiter final approach
Artist’s concept of the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Four days out from arriving at the solar system’s biggest planet, NASA’s Juno spacecraft received a final uplink of commands Thursday governing the robotic probe’s high-velocity braking maneuver Monday to steer into orbit around Jupiter. Juno will run on autopilot for the rest of its…
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NASA must decide soon on Dawn mission’s next act
Artist’s concept of the Dawn spacecraft, with its ion propulsion system active, in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA NASA managers face a July 12 deadline to decide whether to send the Dawn spacecraft on an unplanned visit to a third object in the asteroid belt or keep the probe at dwarf planet…