Tag: Solar System
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NASA just launched the Psyche mission—no one knows what it will find
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—A roughly 3-ton spacecraft launched Friday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a six-year trip to an enigma in the asteroid belt, an unusual metallic world the size of Massachusetts that could hold clues about the formation of Earth and other rocky planets. This mission, named Psyche, will survey its…
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A year from launch, the Europa Clipper spacecraft nears finish line
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—The launch window for one of the most expensive robotic space missions in NASA’s history opens one year from Tuesday. Coming in at $5 billion, Europa Clipper will try to help scientists answer a bold question commensurate with its eye-popping cost: Are there places below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa,…
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Scientists just opened the lid to NASA’s asteroid sample canister
Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, has waited nearly 20 years to get his hands on pristine specimens from an asteroid, which he says is a key to unlocking answers to mysteries about the origin of life on Earth. On Tuesday, he got his first look at dust grains returned by…
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NASA spacecraft returns to Earth with pieces of an asteroid
Monday update: This story has been updated with comments from OSIRIS-REx officials about the drogue parachute. A small capsule carrying pristine specimens from an asteroid parachuted to a landing in the Utah desert Sunday, capping a seven-year voyage through the Solar System to bring home samples for eager scientists seeking clues about the origins of life.…
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NASA’s asteroid sampling mission is on course for landing this weekend
A NASA spacecraft will complete a round-trip journey to an asteroid this weekend, returning to Earth after a seven-year voyage to bring back unspoiled rock specimens from an alien world that could yield insights into the formation of life. The landing Sunday at 8:55 am local time in Utah (10:55 am EDT or 14:55 UTC)…
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NASA decides not to launch two already-built asteroid probes
Two small spacecraft should have now been cruising through the Solar System, on their way to study unexplored asteroids, but after several years of development and nearly $50 million in expenditures, NASA announced Tuesday the probes will remain locked inside a Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado. That’s because the mission, called Janus, was supposed to…
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We can leave the Solar System, but arriving anywhere is not happening soon
On August 25th, 2012, humanity became an interstellar species. There was no fanfare or galactic welcome party as a humble robotic probe, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, crossed an invisible threshold. It slipped between the region dominated by the physics of the Sun and into the thin milieu of plasma between the stars. Whatever fate befalls…
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Saturn’s rings steal the show in new image from Webb telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope has observed Saturn for the first time, completing a family portrait of the Solar System’s ringed planets nearly a year after the mission’s first jaw-dropping image release. Webb’s near-infrared camera took the picture of Saturn on June 25. Scientists added orange color to the monochrome picture to produce the image…
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Webb spots vast plume of water vapor spewing from Saturn’s moon Enceladus
A plume of water vapor jetting from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus stretches 20 times the size of the moon itself, feeding a vast torus around the ringed planet. Inset: Enceladus as imaged by the Cassini orbiter. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and G. Villanueva (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center). Image Processing: A.…
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Jammed radar boom on Jupiter-bound JUICE probe finally freed
Artist’s concept of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer with all its antenna deployed. Credit: European Space Agency After three weeks of intense analysis and troubleshooting, European Space Agency flight controllers have finally succeeded in freeing a jammed 52-foot (16-meter) boom critical to the Jupiter-bound JUICE probe’s ice-penetrating radar instrument. The Jupiter Icy Moons mission –…