Proposed Mars mission has new name

A proposed Discovery mission concept led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to investigate the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets by studying the deep interior of Mars now has a new name, InSight.

Giant planet ejected from the solar system

(PhysOrg.com) -- Just as an expert chess player sacrifices a piece to protect the queen, the solar system may have given up a giant planet and spared the Earth, according to an article recently published in The Astrophysical ...

NASA selects investigations for future key missions

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA has selected three science investigations from which it will pick one potential 2016 mission to look at Mars' interior for the first time; study an extraterrestrial sea on one of Saturn's moons; or study ...

Our unlikely solar system

Recent modeling of solar mass stars with planetary systems, found that a system with four rocky planets and four gas giants in stable orbits – and only a sparsely populated outer belt of planetesimals – has only ...

Probing Question: What is a Near Earth?

In the 1997 movie "Contact" (based on the novel by Carl Sagan), actress Jodie Foster plays an astrophysicist devoted to SETI -- the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Despite doubting colleagues, she vigilantly monitors ...

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