NASA's Lucy mission will soon have its first asteroid encounter as the spacecraft travels through deep space en route to Jupiter's orbit. But before the spacecraft passes 265 miles (425 kilometers) from the surface of the ...
Astronomy
Oct 30, 2023
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In July of this year, an asteroid roughly 30 to 60 meters across passed Earth to within one-quarter of the distance to the moon. It posed no threat to our world, but if it had struck Earth it would have created a blast three ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 30, 2023
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For centuries, the quest for new elements was a driving force in many scientific disciplines. Understanding an atom's structure and the development of nuclear science allowed scientists to accomplish the old goal of alchemists—turning ...
Space Exploration
Oct 27, 2023
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Two teams of economists have conducted economic assessments of mining asteroids—one of them is a trio with one member each from the University of Tor Rome Vergata, the University of Maryland and Middlebury College. They ...
Everyone likes a cool infographic, right? Does that statement hold even if the infographic points out a gap in our knowledge that could kill millions of people? Because that's what a cool-looking infographic NASA released ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 20, 2023
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NASA's Lucy spacecraft is preparing for its first close-up look at an asteroid. On Nov. 1, it will fly by asteroid Dinkinesh and test its instruments in preparation for visits in the next decade to multiple Trojan asteroids ...
Space Exploration
Oct 19, 2023
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55
Psyche was the Greek goddess of the soul, born a mere mortal and later married to Eros, the God of love. Who knows why the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis gave her name to a celestial object he observed one night ...
Space Exploration
Oct 18, 2023
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One of the most exciting findings from NASA's Dawn mission is that Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter, hosts complex organics. The discovery of aliphatic molecules, which consist ...
Astrobiology
Oct 16, 2023
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271
It's unlikely to be a bad omen, but NASA's mission Psyche is currently due to launch on Friday 13 October. Lifting off at 10:19 EDT on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, it faces a perilous journey and isn't scheduled for arrival ...
Space Exploration
Oct 13, 2023
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At the very center of the Earth is a core of metal—so hot and so deep down as to be unreachable and impossible to study directly. But we might learn more about it and the cores of other Earth-like planets by studying the ...
Space Exploration
Oct 12, 2023
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