space

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Begins Asteroid Operations Campaign 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- August 31, 2018
After an almost two-year journey, NASA’s asteroid sampling spacecraft, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), caught its first glimpse of asteroid Bennu last week and began the final approach toward its target. Kicking off the mission’s asteroid operations campaign on Aug. 17, the spacecraft’s PolyCam camera obtained the image from a distance of 1.4 million miles (2.2 million km).

By David Aragorn
Asteroid miners could use Earth’s atmosphere to catch space rocks 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- August 31, 2018
Engineers have come up with a plan to purposefully steer asteroids into Earth’s atmosphere and mine them for resources in orbit. What could possibly go wrong?

By David Aragorn
How a NASA Scientist Looks in the Depths of the Great Red Spot to Find Water on Jupiter 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- August 30, 2018
For centuries, scientists have worked to understand the makeup of Jupiter.

By David Aragorn
Jupiter had growth disorders 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- August 30, 2018
With an equator diameter of around 143,000 kilometers, Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has 300 times the mass of the Earth. The formation mechanism of giant planets like Jupiter has been a hotly debated topic for several decades. Now, astrophysicists of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS of the Universities of Bern and Zürich and ETH Zürich have joined forces to explain previous puzzles about how Jupiter was formed and new measurements. The research results were published in the magazine Nature Astronomy.

By David Aragorn
Asteroid Billiards: This Wild Idea to Protect Earth Just Might Work 0
- From Around the Web, Science & Technology, Space
- August 29, 2018
Protecting Earth from dangerous space rocks might require a little asteroid-on-asteroid violence.

By David Aragorn
The Consolations of Physics: Why the Wonders of the Universe Can Make You Happy by Tim Radford – review 0
- From Around the Web, Science & Technology, Space
- August 28, 2018
From the Voyager mission to detecting the merging of black holes over a billion years ago, an argument for the pleasures of theoretical thinking

By David Aragorn
A GREEN COMET APPROACHES EARTH 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- August 27, 2018
Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner is approaching Earth. On Sept. 10th, it will be 0.39 AU (58 million km) from our planet and almost bright enough to see with the naked eye. Already it is an easy target for backyard telescopes. Last night, Michael Jäger of Weißenkirchen, Austria, caught the 7.7th magnitude comet passing through star cluster Tombaugh

By David Aragorn
NASA Will Launch a Laser Into Space Next Month to Track Earth’s Melting Ice 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- August 23, 2018
NASA is preparing to launch a cutting-edge, laser-armed satellite that will spend three years studying Earth’s changing ice sheets from above.

By David Aragorn
A galaxy 11.3 billion light-years away appears filled with dark matter 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- August 23, 2018
The finding bucks earlier research suggesting faraway galaxies lack the invisible stuff

By David Aragorn
Ice Confirmed at the Moon’s Poles 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- August 23, 2018
In the darkest and coldest parts of its polar regions, a team of scientists has directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface.

By David Aragorn