Comet PanSTARRS

Aerospace Engineering Magazine  April 1962

Saturn and Jupiter You can see Jupiter’s moon, Io, casting a shadow onto the gas giant.   Credit and Source:  nomorelickfoot 

How the sun abducted dwarf planets from an alien solar system : porkchop_d_clown || ourspaceisbeautiful.tumblr.com

A once in a lifetime event visible every 75-76 years, Halleys comet returned in 1986. Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye from Earth. It has been documented since 240 BC.

Comets may hold the secret to the origin of life on Earth

We’ve studied life on Earth extensively, but we still have no idea where it came from. Some scientists think it may have spontaneously arisen on Earth by some unknown process. Others think the ingredients for life were delivered here by comets crashing into Earth in the early days of the solar system. The latter theory just got a huge boost.

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What Happened to Mars?

Billions of years ago, Mars was a very different world. Liquid water flowed in long rivers that emptied into lakes and shallow seas. A thick atmosphere blanketed the planet and kept it warm.

Today, Mars is bitter cold. The Red Planet’s thin and wispy atmosphere provides scant cover for the surface below.

Our MAVEN Mission

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission is part of our Mars Scout program. This spacecraft launched in November 2013, and is exploring the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the sun and solar wind.

The purpose of the MAVEN mission is to determine the state of the upper atmosphere of Mars, the processes that control it and the overall atmospheric loss that is currently occurring. Specifically, MAVEN is exploring the processes through which the top of the Martian atmosphere can be lost to space. Scientists think that this loss could be important in explaining the changes in the climate of Mars that have occurred over the last four billion years.

New Findings

Today, Nov. 5, we will share new details of key science findings from our ongoing exploration of Mars during a news briefing at 2 p.m. EDT. This event will be broadcast live on NASA Television. Have questions? Use #askNASA during the briefing.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com 

Getting ready for 8/21/17

I am making a journal as I get ready for the total eclipse of the sun on 8/21/17 and you can find it on http://www.astrotidbits.com.  Irregular posts as I do something new or learn new ways of doing things.

Rosetta: Alarm to sound for comet mission

One of the most daring space missions ever undertaken reaches a key milestone on Monday.

Europe’s Rosetta probe was launched a decade ago on a long quest to chase down and land on a comet, and has spent the past two-and-half-years in hibernation to try to conserve power.

But at 10:00 GMT, an onboard “alarm clock” is expected to rouse the spacecraft from its slumber.

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