ScienceDaily: Astronomy News |
- Two Kuiper Belt objects found: Hubble to proceed with full search for New Horizons targets
- Computing paths to asteroids helps find future exploration opportunities
- Cassini names final mission phase its 'grand finale'
- Rosetta's comet target 'releases' plentiful water
| Two Kuiper Belt objects found: Hubble to proceed with full search for New Horizons targets Posted: 01 Jul 2014 11:55 AM PDT Planetary scientists have successfully used the Hubble Space Telescope to find two Kuiper Belt objects for NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. After the marathon probe zooms past Pluto in July 2015, it will travel across the Kuiper Belt -- a vast rim of primitive ice bodies left over from the birth of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago. If NASA approves, the probe could be redirected to fly to a Kuiper Belt object and photograph it up close. |
| Computing paths to asteroids helps find future exploration opportunities Posted: 01 Jul 2014 06:35 AM PDT As left over building blocks of the solar system's formation, asteroids are of significant interest to scientists. Resources, especially water, embedded within asteroids could be of use to astronauts traveling through deep space. Likewise, asteroids could continue to be destinations for robotic and human missions as NASA pioneers deeper into the solar system, to Mars and beyond. |
| Cassini names final mission phase its 'grand finale' Posted: 01 Jul 2014 06:32 AM PDT With input from more than 2,000 members of the public, team members on NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn have chosen a name for the final phase of the mission: the Cassini Grand Fi-nale. Starting in late 2016, the Cassini spacecraft will begin a daring set of orbits that is, in some ways, like a whole new mission. The spacecraft will repeatedly climb high above Saturn's north pole, flying just outside its narrow F ring. Cassini will probe the water-rich plume of the active geysers on the planet's intriguing moon Enceladus, and then will hop the rings and dive between the plan-et and innermost ring 22 times. |
| Rosetta's comet target 'releases' plentiful water Posted: 01 Jul 2014 06:30 AM PDT Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is releasing the Earthly equivalent of two glasses of water into space every second. The observations were made by the Microwave Instrument for Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO), aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft on June 6, 2014. The detection of water vapor has implications not only for cometary science, but also for mission planning, as the Rosetta team prepares the spacecraft to become the first ever to orbit a comet (planned for August), and the first to deploy a lander to its surface (planned for November 11). |
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