“The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer” or GOCE, has been orbiting Earth since March 2009, with objective to map our planet’s gravity. In order to improve the quality of the gravity model, maximise its sensitivity to variations in Earth’s
Rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide in upper level of Earth’s atmosphere is expected to gradually result in a cooler, more contracted high-altitude atmospheric layer or thermosphere, and a consequent reduction in the atmospheric drag experienced by satellites,
Mars rover Curiosity has completed the first-ever detailed X-ray analysis of Martian sand showing the mineralogy of Martian soil is similar to weathered basaltic soils of volcanic origin in Hawaii.Curiosity used its Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) to
ESA’s new deep-space mission tracking station is nearing inauguration in Malargüe, Argentina, 1000 km west of Buenos Aires. Deep Space Antenna 3 (DSA 3) will ensure reliable communications with missions voyaging hundreds of millions of kilometres into our Solar
Since Sentinels of the Heliosphere in 2008, there have been a few new missions, and a few missions have been shut down. As of Fall of 2012, here’s a tour of the NASA Near-Earth Heliophysics fleet, covering the space from near-Earth orbit out to the orbit of the
Yesterday NASA revealed some really intriguing radar images of Titan’s terrain captured by Cassini spacecraft’s radar instrument during its May 22 flyby, which recently completed its 15 years in space. One of them depicts a giant, nearly circular mound which looks like
Europe will launch a second pair of Galileo satellites to accompany 2 satellites already sent last year in attempt to build its own global navigation satellite system. The launch is scheduled for October 12, 2012 at 18:15:00 UTC from Europe’s Space Port in French
As noted before, Voyager 1 is at the edge of our solar system. Science enthusiasts around the world are eyeing Voyager 1’s progress as such an incident will mark another giant leap for humanity. New data suggests it has already happened. There were three things
This gallery shows four planetary nebulas from the first systematic survey of such objects in the solar neighborhood made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The planetary nebulas shown here are NGC 6543, also known as the Cat’s Eye, NGC 7662, NGC 7009 and NGC 6826.
NASA’s Swift satellite has discovered a stellar-mass black hole toward center of our Milky way galaxy. With its advantageous X-rays detection ability, Swift found a rare Nova as a result of high energy X-ray outburst in mid-September; leading to discovery of black
