The Rosetta orbiter lies in a vast empty space, inhabited only by its orbital companion – a 4 Km wide ball of ice and dust, spitting out gases and other material as it is warmed by the Sun’s rays. It’s next mission milestone comes on August 13th, 2015, when the duo reaches perihelion, the closest point to the Sun in their orbit. It will be the first time a spacecraft has the opportunity to study the outgassing and behaviour of a comet as it orbits close to the Sun. So far the comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko has been slowly increasing in...
This incredible video was just released by the National Space Society as the New Horizons team is primed to receive the first wave of data from the distant Pluto system. It feels more like a movie trailer, except that it is 100% true. I was left speechless by this amazing video and you will be too. The mission comes to a head on July 14th with the close flyby of Pluto and its five moons, though it’s possible there will be more moons discovered during the flyby. If you want the latest mission updates and to follow along, go to http://seeplutonow.com/. I...
Today is a busy day in the world of astronomy and space news. The US Air Force has approved SpaceX for military launches, ending a ten year monopoly by Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. A black hole jet moving at nearly the speed of light is having traffic issues, resulting in knots of jet material rear-ending each other. An experiment in Quantum Mechanics has shown that reality simply doesn’t exist until we measure it. Finally, the Gemini planet imager has found a bright, disk-shaped ring of dust around the star HD 115600, which is being likened to the Kuiper Belt in the...
By now, if you keep up with Astronomy news even a little bit, you’ve heard of the strange white spot on the surface of Ceres, within a large crater in the dwarf planet’s northern hemisphere. As the science mission of the Dawn spacecraft continues, we are starting to see new images of the surface in unprecedented detail, and finally we have a closer view of the mystery spot. Is the new series of images enough to determine its origin? See for yourself. The only thing clear from these new images is that what once appeared to be a single or...
Today is the day that the Dawn Mission completes a long 7.5 year long journey that has taken it past the orbit of Mars and into the asteroid belt, studying the second largest asteroid Vesta before heading toward the dwarf planet Ceres, where it has now injected itself into orbit, as of 7:39 am EST. This marks the first time in history a spacecraft has seen a dwarf planet up close, and with New Horizons passing Pluto in July, Dawn won the race in an astronomical photo finish. The Story So Far Launching on September 27th, 2007, Dawn orbited the Sun and...
With the MESSENGER probe set to crash into Mercury this month, it’s nice to look back on some of the finest data that it gathered during its tenure orbiting the smallest planet of the solar system. The image shows the Caloris Basin, the largest impact basin on Mercury and one of the largest in the solar system. The result of a massive asteroid impact during the early days of the solar system, the 1,500 Km wide crater was filled with lava aeons ago when Mercury was geologically active (seen in orange). Large impacts have punctured the surface of the basin since...
Being 2015, there has been a lot of talk about the New Horizons spacecraft in the first month of the year, since it’s due to reach it’s rendezvous with the enigmatic dwarf planet in July. I remember watching the launch in 2006 while in university, and have been talking about it to audiences during my planetarium shows. I feel close to the mission, and being able to see it reach Pluto this year brings back the first feelings I ever had about discovering the universe as a child. So when the spacecraft woke up a few weeks ago, so did...
