Today, November 14, the NASA Dawn spacecraft entered the inner asteroid belt of our solar system for the last time. The probe is scheduled to visit the dwarf planet Ceres, and also the large asteroid Vesta, and to collect scientific readings on as many of the objects' properties as possible. The asteroid belt li... |
14 November 2009
06:50 GMT |
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Experts have always thought that lower atmospheric temperatures help keep glaciers frozen in ice sheets, or on mountaintops, but new measurements from a NASA satellite show that ice spreads play a crucial role in keeping temperatures low. Greenland is especially important in this scheme, as its ices reflect back a la... |
29 October 2009
05:50 GMT |
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The recently discovered 2 Pallas is an asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter, and previous investigations have determined that it is a bit too impressive in size to be a simple rock. Indeed, the first high-resolution images to come to astronomers seem to demonstrate that the celestial body is a protoplanet, as sp... |
13 October 2009
18:11 GMT |
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The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) observation system is one of NASA's ongoing projects that is related to understanding the role of clouds in the atmosphere and the energy cycle in a global climate change. The satellite is part of the agency's Earth Observing System (EOS), alongs... |
4 May 2009
14:01 GMT |
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Located on an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, the Ceres dwarf planet is about 950 kilometers in diameter, and totals about 32 percent of the mass present in the inner asteroid belt. Astronomers believe that its surface is covered in water ice and various hydrated minerals, and this knowledge has recently sparked an i... |
17 April 2009
03:41 GMT |
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At the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life conference, which took place in Florence, Italy, an astronomer proposed a somewhat unusual location of where life might have originated from. University of Giessen scientist Joop Houtkooper told colleagues and attendants that life on Earth might have re... |
5 March 2009
09:25 GMT |
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On Tuesday, February 17th, NASA's spacecraft Dawn, which is currently heading for the asteroid belt with the aim of studying the Vesta asteroid and the Ceres dwarf planet, passed only 549 kilometers (341 miles) away from the Red Planet, thus successfully completing its Mars-assist stage. This maneuver, which req... |
28 February 2009
03:28 GMT |
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The Dawn spacecraft, a NASA mission to the main asteroid belt, recently shut down its ion engines, according to the schedule, NASA officials announced. The three top notch propulsion systems may be switched on again in January in order to adjust the craft's orbit as it will near Mars, its first target during the... |
22 November 2008
18:31 GMT |
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