Philae’s primary landing site – mosaic EU–(ENEWSPF)–16 October 2014. ESA has given the green light for its Rosetta mission to deliver its lander, Philae, to the primary site on 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November, in the first-ever attempt at a soft touchdown on a comet. Philae’s landing site, currently known as Site[Read More…]
Space
NASA’s Hubble Telescope Finds Potential Kuiper Belt Targets for New Horizons Pluto Mission
This is an artist’s impression of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO), located on the outer rim of our solar system at a staggering distance of 4 billion miles from the Sun. A HST survey uncovered three KBOs that are potentially reachable by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft after it passes by[Read More…]
NASA Mission Finds Widespread Evidence of Young Lunar Volcanism
The feature called Maskelyne is one of many newly discovered young volcanic deposits on the Moon. Called irregular mare patches, these areas are thought to be remnants of small basaltic eruptions that occurred much later than the commonly accepted end of lunar volcanism, 1 to 1.5 billion years ago. Image[Read More…]
NASA’s Hubble Maps the Temperature and Water Vapor on an Extreme Exoplanet
This is a temperature map of the “hot Jupiter” class exoplanet WASP 43b. The white-colored region on the daytime side is 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The nighttime side temperatures drop to under 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Image Credit: NASA/ESA Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–October 10, 2014. A team of scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope[Read More…]
Lutetia’s Dark Side Hosts Hidden Crater
Tracing Lutetia’s grooves EU–(ENEWSPF)–8 October 2014. Grooves found on Lutetia, an asteroid encountered by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, point to the existence of a large impact crater on the unseen side of the rocky world. Rosetta flew past Lutetia at a distance of 3168 km in July 2010, en route to[Read More…]
NASA’s NuSTAR Telescope Discovers Shockingly Bright Dead Star
A rare and mighty pulsar (pink) can be seen at the center of the galaxy Messier 82 in this new multi-wavelength portrait. NASA’s NuSTAR mission discovered the “pulse” of the pulsar — a type of dead star — using is high-energy X-ray vision. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–October 8, 2014. [Read More…]
CryoSat Unveils Secrets of the Deep
Gravity reveals seafloor EU–(ENEWSPF)–3 October 2014. ESA’s ice mission has been used to create a new gravity map, exposing thousands of previously unchartered ‘seamounts’, ridges and deep ocean structures. This vivid new picture of the least-explored part of the ocean offers fresh clues about how continents form and breakup. Carrying[Read More…]
NASA Selects Nine Space Radiobiology Research Proposals
NASA’s space radiobiology research aims to mitigate the harmful effects of the space radiation environment on astronaut health outside of the relative protection of the Van Allen belts (pictured in blue). Image Credit: NASA/SOHO Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–October 3, 2014. NASA’s Human Research Program will fund nine proposals for ground-based research that[Read More…]
Winter In Argyre
Perspective view of Hooke crater in Argyre basin EU–(ENEWSPF)–19 September 2014. Over billions of years, the southern uplands of Mars have been pockmarked by numerous impact features, which are often so closely packed that they overlap. One such feature is Hooke crater, shown in this frost-tinged scene, imaged by ESA’s[Read More…]
Hubble Helps Find Smallest Known Galaxy Containing a Supermassive Black Hole
Artist’s View of M60-UCD1 Black Hole. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI-PRC14-41a Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–September 18, 2014. Astronomers using data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground observation have found an unlikely object in an improbable place — a monster black hole lurking inside one of the tiniest galaxies ever known. The[Read More…]
