(PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn five years ago, a dozen highly-tuned science instruments set to work surveying, sniffing, analyzing and scrutinizing the Saturnian system.
Space Exploration
Nov 20, 2009
1
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy. The ...
Space Exploration
Oct 15, 2009
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0
(PhysOrg.com) -- Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high.
Astronomy
Sep 29, 2009
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0
The heliosphere—made of solar wind, solar transients, and the interplanetary magnetic field—acts as our solar system's personal shield, protecting the planets from galactic cosmic rays. These extremely energetic particles ...
Astronomy
Mar 29, 2024
6
1007
Our corner of the universe, the solar system, is nestled inside the Milky Way galaxy, home to more than 100 billion stars. The solar system is encased in a bubble called the heliosphere, which separates us from the vast galaxy ...
Space Exploration
Oct 20, 2021
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731
When the four-decades-old Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft entered interstellar space in 2012 and 2018, respectively, scientists celebrated. These plucky spacecraft had already traveled 120 times the distance from the Earth ...
Astronomy
Apr 26, 2021
2
3147
Far beyond the orbits of the planets are the hazy outlines of the heliosphere, the magnetic bubble in space that we call home. This flexible cosmic bubble stretches and shrinks in response to the sun's gasps and sighs.
Astronomy
Jun 12, 2020
1
103
You are living in a bubble. Not a metaphorical bubble—a real, literal bubble. But don't worry, it's not just you. The whole planet, and every other planet in the solar system, for that matter, is in the bubble too. And, ...
Astronomy
Mar 17, 2020
19
581
Measurements taken by the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft are providing important new insights from some of the farthest reaches of space ever explored. In a paper recently ...
Astronomy
Dec 2, 2019
0
202
In the next decade, NASA aims to launch humankind toward the moon and on to Mars—a monumental step in crewed space travel. Such a journey is filled with challenges and perils, not unlike those faced by the first explorers ...
Space Exploration
Dec 3, 2018
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