NASA is about to embark on its first mission to sample an asteroid—and I’ll have a front-row seat to the launch! On Thursday, Sept. 8, at 7:05 p.m. (23:05 UTC) the launch window opens for the launch of OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s mission to visit the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, orbit and map it, collect a sample and…
Tag: science
Rosetta Finally Found Its Lost Philae Lander
Nearly two years after its historic landing on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, ESA’s lander has finally been spotted in an image from the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft—PHILAE HAS BEEN FOUND!
Juno Sends Back Its First Pictures of Jupiter’s North Pole; “Like Nothing We Have Seen Before”
Thanks to NASA’s Juno spacecraft we now have our best views yet of the north pole of our Solar System’s largest planet and they’re “hardly recognizable as Jupiter” according to the mission’s lead scientist!
NASA Releases Mars Rover Game for Curiosity’s 4th Anniversary
Friday, August 5 marks the 4th anniversary of Curiosity’s landing on Mars and to celebrate NASA has released a video game that lets you rack up high scores while trying to drive a rover on Mars (warning: it’s trickier than it looks!)
Watch a Moonwalker Prove Galileo Right: Dave Scott’s Famous Hammer-Feather Drop
On August 2, 1971, at the end of the last EVA of the Apollo 15 mission, Commander David Scott took a few minutes to conduct a classic science experiment in front of the TV camera that had been set up just outside the LM Falcon at the Hadley Rille landing site. Scott, a former Air…
Seeds in the Cosmic Wind: Carl Sagan on Space Exploration
Got the Monday back-to-work blues? Upset by bad news headlines? Concerned about a potential future President Trump? Take a couple of minutes and watch this. This video, published by The Royal Institution on YouTube in Dec. 2015 and shared again on Twitter today, features an adorable animation about spaceflight with narration taken from a lecture given by Carl…
The Moon’s Dark Seas Are Scars From Ancient Strikes—Even Bigger Than We Thought
When you look up at a full or full-ish Moon you can’t help but notice the large dark spots that mark its Earth-facing side. These form the face of what many call the “Man in the Moon” (or the body of a Moon rabbit, to others) and are individually called mare (“MAR-ay”) which is the Latin word…
Juno Just Hours from Jupiter Arrival
After nearly 5 years of traveling through space NASA’s Juno spacecraft is just a few dozen hours away from entering orbit around Jupiter, the Solar System’s largest, most massive, and most extreme planet. “We are ready,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). “The science team is incredibly excited…
We Still Don’t Know What Exploded Over Tunguska in 1908
This is an article, now updated, that I originally posted in 2009 during my first year of blogging. Since then more research has been done on the famous 1908 Tunguska Event and we even had a remarkably similar type of thing occur in February 2013 over the Chelyabinsk area, not too far from Tunguska, but…
Does Earth Have a New Moon? Kinda But Not Really
This week NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced news of an object traveling around the Sun in an orbit that keeps it relatively close to our own planet. The object, a near-Earth asteroid (NEO) less than 300 feet (100 m) across, is designated 2016 HO3 and has in some reports been called a “new” or “mini”…
Venus’ Water Has Been Electrified Away
Using data gathered by ESA’s Venus Express researchers have determined what likely happened to Venus’ water: it was “zapped” away by a surprisingly strong electric field generated by the planet’s atmosphere and the incoming solar wind. Without a protective magnetosphere like Earth has, Venus’ upper atmosphere directly interacts with energetic particles streaming out from the Sun. The…
Icy Nix Indicates Pluto’s Moons Are Leftovers From a KBO Collision
Recent findings from the New Horizons team reveal that Pluto’s third-largest satellite Nix is covered in the purest water ice yet observed in the dwarf planet system, even purer in spectra than what was seen on its slightly larger sibling Hydra. This analysis further supports the hypothesis that Pluto’s moons were created in an impact event…
Lights in the Dark 