First of NASA's GRAIL spacecraft enters Moon orbit
(PhysOrg.com) -- The first of two NASA spacecraft to study the moon in unprecedented detail has entered lunar orbit.
Space Exploration
Jan 1, 2012
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Page 20 - News tagged with rocky planet
Mercury's magnetic field -- nipped in the bud
(PhysOrg.com) -- Mercury, the smallest of the eight planets with a diameter of 4900 kilometres and the closest to the Sun, looks more like the Moon than the Earth from the outside. It is the only rocky planet that has a global ...
Space Exploration
Dec 23, 2011
27
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The water reservoir in a young planetary system
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers once thought that the process of star formation was more-or-less controlled by the simple coalescence of material by gravity, leading eventually to a new star. But they have come to realize that ...
Astronomy
Nov 15, 2011
1
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Lutetia: A rare survivor from the birth of the Earth
(PhysOrg.com) -- New observations indicate that the asteroid Lutetia is a leftover fragment of the same original material that formed the Earth, Venus and Mercury. Astronomers have combined data from ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, ...
Space Exploration
Nov 11, 2011
8
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Heavy metal stars produce Earth-Like planets
New research reveals that, like their giant cousins, rocky planets are more likely to be found orbiting high metallicity stars. Furthermore, these planets are more plentiful around low mass stars. This could have important ...
Astronomy
Sep 30, 2011
64
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How common are earth-moon planetary systems?
Sebastian Elser, Prof. Ben Moore and Dr. Joachim Stadel of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in cooperation with Ryuji Morishima of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tried to estimate how common Earth-Moon planetary ...
Astronomy
Sep 18, 2011
20
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Rocky planets could have been born as gas giants
When NASA announced the discovery of over 1,200 new potential planets spotted by the Kepler Space Telescope, almost a quarter of them were thought to be Super-Earths. Now, new research suggests that these massive rocky planets ...
Astronomy
Sep 16, 2011
38
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NASA twin spacecraft to map the inner Moon
The US space agency plans to launch two unmanned spacecraft Thursday that will chase each other around the Moon as they use gravity measurements to draw an unprecedented map of its inner workings.
Space Exploration
Sep 7, 2011
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NASA invites 150 Twitter followers to lunar launch
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA has invited 150 followers of the agency's Twitter accounts to a two-day launch Tweetup Sept. 7-8. The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launch of the twin moon-bound GRAIL spacecraft aboard a Delta ...
Space Exploration
Sep 2, 2011
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Greenhouse effect could extend habitable zone
The distant region beyond Saturn is too cold for liquid water, a necessity for life as we know it. But new research indicates that rocky planets far from their parent star could generate enough heat to keep water flowing ...
Astronomy
Aug 26, 2011
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