By Paul Scott Anderson, on March 11th, 2021
The zodiacal light is seen as a faint glow that extends upwards just before dawn or just after dusk. Scientists thought the dust that causes it came from asteroids or comets, but now new data from the Juno mission suggests the dust originated on Mars. Photo Credit: A. Fitzsimmons/ESO/Wikipedia
A team of scientists with […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on August 5th, 2020
Artist’s illustration of high-altitude shallow lightning in water-ammonia clouds on Jupiter. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has discovered evidence for the phenomenon using its Stellar Reference Unit. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Heidi N. Becker/Koji Kuramura
Today, Aug. 5, 2020, marks nine years since the launch of Juno, a spacecraft that has revolutionized our knowledge of the largest […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on June 18th, 2020
Neptune’s largest moon Triton as seen by Voyager 2 in 1989. The proposed Trident mission would be the first to return to this bizarre world in over three decades. Photo Credit: Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS
Much of the outer Solar System has now been visited by robotic spacecraft from Earth, including the gas and ice giants […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on March 9th, 2020
The 70-meter-wide (230-feet-wide) radio antenna at the Deep Space Network’s Canberra site in Australia. It is the only antenna that that communicate with Voyager 2 from the southern hemisphere, and will be undergoing crucial upgrades for 11 months beginning in March. Photo Credit: NASA/Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex
With so many space missions currently exploring […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on February 20th, 2020
Stunning view of Jupiter from the Juno spacecraft. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstäd/Seán Doran © CC NC SA
Jupiter is not known as a water world since it has no oceans, lakes or other kinds of liquid water or ice. It doesn’t even have a solid surface beneath its deep, turbulent atmosphere. But there is […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on August 30th, 2019
View od the fully assembled James Webb Space Telescope. The sunshield and unitized pallet structures (UPSs) that fold up around the telescope for launch, are partially deployed to enable telescope installation. Photo Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) just took another big step towards completion, as the two halves it was […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on August 24th, 2019
Artist’s concept of Europa Clipper during a flyby of Europa. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s next mission back to Jupiter’s moon Europa just took another big step towards reality. The next phase of Europa Clipper has been confirmed, giving the go-ahead for the mission to proceed to final design, construction and testing.
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on July 9th, 2019
Artist’s concept of one of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, including the location of the cosmic ray subsystem (CRS) instrument. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
With all of the current and recent planetary missions throughout the Solar System, it may be easy to forget sometimes that there are still some older spacecraft that have been traveling for decades […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on March 4th, 2019
Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, as seen by New Horizons in 2015. The lack of smaller craters -less than expected – suggests that small objects less than a mile in size are rare in the Kuiper Belt. Photo Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Alex Parker
The Kuiper Belt is a vast region of rocky debris in the outer Solar […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on November 7th, 2018
Artist’s concept of the Lucy mission at the Trojans near Jupiter. Image Credit: NASA/SwRI
NASA’s proposed mission to a group of primitive and still-unexplored asteroids has been given approval for further development – the Lucy mission will travel to the Trojans, a group of asteroids that share the same orbit as Jupiter. This […]
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