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NASA’s Juno To Skim the Surface of Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa
This next week will mark a scientifically valuable achievement for NASA’s Juno mission, as the pioneering spacecraft is slated to fly within 358 kilometers (222 miles) of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa on September 29 at 5:36 a.m. EDT (2:36 a.m. PDT) as part of its extended mission to explore the Jupiter system. A flyby this …
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JWST’s MIRI Issues, Newborn Quasar, Detecting Exoplanets with Lagrange Points
James Webb is currently experiencing problems with its MIRI instrument. The problem is due to increased friction in one of MIRI’s mechanisms in the Medium-Resolution Spectroscopy (MRS) mode. The observatory is otherwise healthy, but the team decided to stop observations using MRS mode until they find a solution. A quick TLDR version of the most …
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The Moon’s Poles Have “Wandered” Over Billions of Years
Astronomers tracked the Moon's poles over billions of years.
The post The Moon’s Poles Have “Wandered” Over Billions of Years appeared first on Universe Today.
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Musk Suggests That Starship Will Probably Make an Orbital Flight in November
SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon Musk recently took to Twitter and hinted that the much-anticipated Starship—currently undergoing upgrades in preparation for its upcoming maiden flight—could launch as soon as November. Responding to a question from a curious Twitter account asking about updates for Starship’s orbital flight date, Musk responded, “Late next month maybe, but November …
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Space Diamonds are Even Harder Than Earth Diamonds
In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers led by Monash University in Australia have verified the existence of a rare hexagonal structure of diamond called lonsdaleite, within ureilite meteorites from the inside of a dwarf planet that formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. …
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Webb Scans a Nearby Brown Dwarf and Finds it has Clouds Made of Sand
An international collaboration has used data from Webb to characterize a brown dwarf, and found clouds of sand in its atmosphere!
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There’s a Blob of Gas Orbiting Around the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole
Sagittarius A* (Sag A) is usually a pretty quiet object, as supermassive black holes go. It’s not wildly active, like the object at the heart of M87, for example. But, every once in a while, there’s a little action in its neighborhood. Right now, there appears to be a hot blob of gas running rapidly …
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Axiom’s Next Trip to the ISS Will Carry the First Saudi Woman in Space
Axiom Space says it’s working with the Saudi Space Commission to send two spacefliers from the Arab kingdom, including the first Saudi woman to go into orbit, to the International Space Station as early as next year. The inclusion of a female astronaut is particularly notable for Saudi Arabia — where women were forbidden to …
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The World’s Ground Stations are Getting Ready to Watch a Spacecraft Crash Into an Asteroid Next Week!
On Monday, Sept. 26th, the DART mission will collide with an asteroid to test a method of planetary defense. The even will be hosted live around the world!
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Habitable Planets Will Most Likely be Cold, Dry “Pale Yellow Dots”
Remember all the habitable planets we’ve seen in science fiction movies? There’s wintry Hoth, for example, and overwhelmingly hot Dune. The folks in Interstellar visited an ocean world and a desolate rocky world. For all their differences, these places were still what they call on Star Trek M-class habitable worlds. Sure they weren’t all like …
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