Magazine

Mars Science Laboratory

Kennedy Space Center

NASA's Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a...
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The Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is undergoing renovations to accommodate future launch vehicles. A project of Ground Systems Development and Operations, or GSDO, space shuttle-era work platforms have...
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Magazine

Mars Rover

MagISStra

True Gullies on Mars

The camera at the end of the robotic arm on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has its own calibration target, a smartphone-size plaque that looks like an eye chart supplemented with color chips and an attached penny.
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ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli is now half way into his six-month mission on the International Space Station. Monday’s handover of command heralds the departure of three crewmembers and the arrival of a new trio in the coming weeks.
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NASA's versatile Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which began orbiting Mars five years ago tomorrow, March 10, has radically expanded our knowledge of the Red Planet and is now working overtime.
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Magazine

Voyagers in the Heliosheath

Rosetta

NASA's Jupiter

In which direction is the sun's stream of charged particles banking when it nears the edge of the solar system? The answer, scientists know, is blowing in the wind. It's just a matter of getting NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft in the right orientation...
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Ultra-light carbon-fibre rods used to stiffen a comet probe’s legs are now being harnessed by a German manufacturer to boost the precision and efficiency of their laser cutters.
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NASA's Juno spacecraft is currently undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems near Denver. The solar-powered Juno spacecraft will orbit Jupiter's poles 33 times to find out more about the gas giant's origins, structure,...
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Magazine

This final flight of Discovery

ATV-2 closing in

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano

After a flawless launch last Thursday and a textbook docking on Saturday, the Space Shuttle today delivered the European-built Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module to the International Space Station.
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Eight days after launch, ESA’s latest Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, completed a flawless rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station at 17:08 CET (16:08 GMT) to deliver essential supplies.
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ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano has been assigned to fly on the International Space Station from May to November 2013, serving as a flight engineer for Expeditions 36 and 37.
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Magazine

Alpha Particle X-ray

Launch of the ATV

NASA's Jupiter Europa Orbiter

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, will carry a next generation, onboard "chemical element reader" to measure the chemical ingredients in Martian rocks and soil. The instrument is one of 10 that will help the rover in its upcoming...
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ATV Johannes Kepler was launched on a specially modified launcher, the Ariane 5ES, at 22:50 CET on 16 February 2011 from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana. The second space cargo carrier in the ATV programme, it is now en route to the...
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With input from scientists around the world, American and European scientists working on the potential next new mission to the Jupiter system have articulated their joint vision for the Europa Jupiter System Mission. The mission is a proposed...
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Magazine

Arabia Terra on Mars

ATV Johannes Kepler

The first full-duration simulation

ESA’s Mars Express has returned new views of pedestal craters in the Red Planet’s eastern Arabia Terra.
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ESA’s latest Automated Transfer Vehicle is ready for launch to the International Space Station on Tuesday, 15 February at 22:08 GMT from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The unmanned spaceship will deliver essential supplies and reboost...
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The first full-duration simulation of a manned voyage to Mars has reached a major milestone: the ‘spacecraft’ yesterday ‘arrived’ at Mars after 244 days of virtual interplanetary flight. Three crewmembers will ‘land’ on Mars on 12 February and make...
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Magazine

Galileo’s first satellite

Stardust-NExT

Lifting SAM Instrument for Installation into Mars Rover

Galileo’s first satellite is undergoing testing at ESA’s technical centre in the Netherlands, checking its readiness to be launched into orbit. This marks a significant step for Europe’s Galileo satnav constellation.
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The Stardust-NExT, or New Exploration of Tempel, spacecraft will take high-resolution images during the encounter, and attempt to measure the composition, distribution, and flux of dust emitted into the coma, or material surrounding the comet's...
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The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, largest of the 10 science instruments for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, will examine samples of Martian rocks, soil and atmosphere for information about chemicals that are important to life...
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Magazine

NASA's Kepler Mission

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Soyuz

NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.
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The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a Dec. 31, 2010, view of the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on the southwestern rim of a football-field-size crater called "Santa...
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ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli is on his way to the International Space Station with crewmates Dmitri Kondratyev and Catherine Coleman aboard their Soyuz spacecraft following liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 20:09:25 CET yesterday.
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Magazine

The Voyager

Paolo Nespoli

“Software of the Year 2010”

The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.
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ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli will be launched to the International Space Station on 15 December at 20:09 CET (16 December 01:09 Baikonur time). Media are invited to the main event in Nespoli's home town of Verano Brianza, with subsidiary events in...
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Redshift 7 Advanced Download Edition from United Soft media GmbH, won the second place in the PC category "Hobby".



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Magazine

A flawless launch

The operating space science missions

EPOXI Mission

A flawless launch has delivered Hylas-1, ESA’s first public–private partnership in a full satellite system, into space. The satellite was released today into its transfer orbit after a textbook launch by an Ariane 5 vehicle from Europe’s Spaceport...
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ESA has decided to extend the productive lives of 11 of its operating space science missions. This will enable ESA’s world-class science missions to continue returning pioneering results until at least 2014.
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The EPOXI mission's recent encounter with comet Hartley 2 provided the first images clear enough for scientists to link jets of dust and gas with specific surface features. NASA and other scientists have begun to analyze the images.
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Magazine

Hubble captures aftermath of asteroid collision

MagISStra

Glowing southern lights on Saturn

Last January astronomers thought they had witnessed a fresh collision between two asteroids when images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope revealed a bizarre X-shaped object at the head of a comet-like trail of material.
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In Latin magistra means 'female teacher', and now Europe’s third long-duration astronaut mission to the International Space Station will carry almost the same name: MagISStra.
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A new movie and images showing Saturn's shimmering aurora over a two-day period are helping scientists understand what drives some of the solar system's most impressive light shows. The movie and images are part of a new study that, for the first...
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Magazine

Europe explores the Moon

Mars500

Cassini

Mission description: land autonomously with pinpoint precision near the Moon’s south pole, a region full of dangerous boulders and high ridges. The aim of ESA’s proposed precursor is to probe the moonscape’s unknowns and test new technology to...
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Sailing now in interplanetary space on their simulated mission towards the ‘Red Planet’, the Mars500 crew has entered in a new phase of their isolation. The previous mission endured 105 days in 2009 and from now on, everything in this experiment is...
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be hunting for heat signatures at the "tiger stripes" in the dim south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Friday, Aug. 13. The closest approach will bring the spacecraft to within about 2,500 kilometers (1,600...
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Magazine

Space Weather

NASA Telescope Finds

Exoplanets

The solar eruption of August 7th might affect Earth after all. Newly-arriving data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) show a CME heading our way with a significant Earth-directed component.
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Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as "buckyballs," in space for the first time. Buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules that were first observed in a laboratory 25 years ago.
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Many scientists speculate that our galaxy could be full of places like Pandora from the movie "Avatar" -- Earth-like worlds in solar systems besides our own.
That doesn't mean such worlds have been easy to find, however. Of the 400-plus...
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Magazine

Students find Mars-Crater

Water Content of Moon's Interior Underestimated

June 13 circled on the calendar

They went looking for lava tubes on Mars — and found what may be a hole in the roof of a Martian cave. The 16 students in Dennis Mitchell's 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., chose to study lava tubes, a...
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NASA-funded scientists estimate from recent research that the volume of water molecules locked inside minerals in the moon’s interior could exceed the amount of water in the Great Lakes here on Earth.
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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) expects the sample return capsule of the agency's technology demonstrator spacecraft, Hayabusa, to boomerang back to Earth. The capsule, along with its mother ship, visited a near-Earth asteroid,...
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Magazine

TRAPPIST

PASADENA, Calif.

PASADENA, Calif.

A new robotic telescope has had first light at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, in Chile. TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) is devoted to the study of planetary systems through two approaches: the detection and...
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Deep in the heart of the asteroid belt, on its way to the first of the belt's two most massive inhabitants, NASA's ion-propelled Dawn spacecraft has eclipsed the record for velocity change produced by a spacecraft's engines.
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Rocks examined by NASA's Spirit Mars Rover hold evidence of a wet, non-acidic ancient environment that may have been favorable for life. Confirming this mineral clue took four years of analysis by several scientists.
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Solar Eclipse by Redshift

Solar Eclipse by Redshift for iOS

Observe, understand, and marvel at the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017! » more

Solar Eclipse by Redshift

Solar Eclipse by Redshift for Android

Observe, understand, and marvel at the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017! » more