Perseverance and Ingenuity ready to explore Mars
Preparations have continued to go smoothly for next month’s targeted launch of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission to the Red Planet. The mission includes a car-sized rover as well as the first helicopter to ever be sent to another planet. The rover’s primary mission is to search for signs of ancient microbial life, as well as …
This Week in History: June 7-13
JUNE 7, 2013: A team led by Dutch astronomer Nienke van der Marel announces their discovery of a planet-forming – and comet-forming – disk of material surrounding the young star Oph-IRS 48 in the constellation Ophiuchus, using data obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile. An ALMA image of this disk …
Comet of the Week: PANSTARRS C/2017 K2
Perihelion: 2022 December 19.67, q = 1.797 AU I’ve hinted in some of the earlier presentations of “Ice and Stone 2020” that, for the past few years, we have been in a slow period when it comes to bright comets. Indeed, for “Great Comets” – discussed in a previous “Special Topics” presentation – the most …
Special Topic: “Small Bodies” in Culture and Literature
Although they may not be as big a presence in our overall human culture and literature as the moon and the other planets of our solar system are, the “small bodies” of our solar system are nevertheless present. There a number of misperceptions about them, perhaps more so than there are for the planets. Consider, …
NASA’s Mars 2020 Mission Crossword
NASA is upping its game with the next mission to the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 mission will include a car-size rover based largely on the design of the Curiosity rover. Also attaching a ride to Mars with the new rover is a small helicopter that will test powered flight on another world for the …
Dragon Endeavour delivers astronauts to ISS after historic flight
A pair of veteran NASA astronauts flying aboard a commercial SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft safely docked at the International Space Station ISS) this Sunday morning just 19 hours after the first human launch from US soil for the first time in nine years on a history-making and flawless blastoff from the Florida Space Coast. NASA …