Space
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Focus
A reflection from near the Moon
Scientists testing some Apollo-era equipment.
It’s not quite “ET phone home”, but NASA has finally got a signal from space that it’s been waiting for. Dozens of...
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Dawn’s close-up look at an active Ceres
Occator crater a source of quite some excitement.
When NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arrived at Ceres in 2015, scientists were expecting to find a relic from the early days o...
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Snapshot
Magnetic maps of the solar corona
Global team works with near-infrared observations.
The twisting and ever-shifting magnetic field of the Sun’s outer atmosphere can be mapped using near-infrared observa...
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Mushballs, ammonia and storms on Jupiter
Juno data reveals more about planet’s weather.
Violent thunderstorms in Jupiter’s atmosphere may form “mushballs” – ammonia-rich hail –that play a key role in the p...
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SpaceWatch: spiral arms and space junk
News of space exploration, astrophysics and astronomy.
Mars is space flavour of the month, with three spacecraft on their way and suggestions of a possible icy past, but th...
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When Mars was like Canada
Analysis suggests early landscape was icy, not warm.
Ancient river channels on Mars may have formed beneath thick ice sheets, scientists say. It’s an important find, b...
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Mars is the place (in space) to be
Three missions, three countries, one destination.
Mars is about to become crowded. When the spacecraft carrying NASA’s Perseverance rover safely launched from Cape Can...
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Learning more about how spacecraft land
Scientists make good use of ‘messy turbulent flows’.
The focus this week has been on the launch of the spacecraft carrying the Perseverance rover to Mars (see mission sta...
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A strange and ancient globular cluster
Scientists find remnants of the ‘last of its kind’.
Astronomers have discovered a “shredded globular cluster” – the remnants of a collection of stars torn apart by the M...
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Travel with maps and Perseverance
Astrogeologists check the lay of the (Martian) land.
A long trip needs a good map. Just to be safe, the US Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Centre has created two...
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Snapshot
Summer on Saturn and an icy pole
Hubble and Juno send us more arresting images.
Sometimes all you need for a great photo is an interesting subject. Here we present two such examples. Above is a ...
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Tracing the origin of oddball meteorites
It’s complex, multi-layered and quite magnetic.
The earliest objects in the Solar System may have been more complex than scientists have assumed. New research sug...