While scanning the sky to chart a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, ESA's Gaia satellite is also sensitive to celestial bodies closer to home, and regularly observes asteroids in our solar system.
Space Exploration
Apr 29, 2019
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66
It is known that gas giants around other stars are often located very near their sun. According to accepted theory, these gas planets were formed far away and subsequently migrated to an orbit closer to the star. Now, researchers ...
Astronomy
Mar 25, 2019
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849
In science fiction, explorers can hop in futuristic spaceships and traverse half the galaxy in the blink of a plot hole. However, this sidelines the navigational acrobatics required in order to guarantee real-life mission ...
Space Exploration
Dec 21, 2018
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53
Ralph, one of NASA's most well-traveled space explorers, has voyaged far and accomplished much: on the New Horizons mission, Ralph obtained stunning flyby images of Jupiter and its moons; this was followed by a visit to Pluto ...
Space Exploration
Nov 12, 2018
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138
Scientists at Southwest Research Institute studied an unusual pair of asteroids and discovered that their existence points to an early planetary rearrangement in our solar system.
Astronomy
Sep 10, 2018
2
193
The planet Mars shares its orbit with a handful of small asteroids, the so-called Trojans. Among them, one finds a unique group, all moving in very similar orbits, suggesting that they originated from the same object. But ...
Space Exploration
Oct 18, 2017
2
385
The planet Mars shares its orbit with a handful of small asteroids, the so-called Trojans. Now an international team of astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile have found that most of these objects share a common ...
Space Exploration
Apr 3, 2017
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391
A NASA spacecraft begins its search Thursday for an enigmatic class of near-Earth objects known as Earth-Trojan asteroids. OSIRIS-REx, currently on a two-year outbound journey to the asteroid Bennu, will spend almost two ...
Space Exploration
Feb 10, 2017
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26
The University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission will take advantage of its two-year outbound cruise to the asteroid Bennu in order to conduct a search for elusive solar system objects. Between Feb. 9 and 20, the NASA spacecraft ...
Space Exploration
Dec 13, 2016
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159
Previously, the Kepler space telescope looked straight out from the solar system in a direction almost perpendicular to the ecliptic and the plane of the planets. This way, it could observe the same spot all year long, as ...
Astronomy
Oct 24, 2016
0
539
