NASA's Hubble Surveys Debris-Strewn Exoplanetary Construction Yards
Washington DC (SPX) Nov 07, 2014 -
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have completed the largest and most sensitive visible-light imaging survey of dusty debris disks around other stars. These dusty disks, likely created by collisions between leftover objects from planet formation, were imaged around stars as young as 10 million years old and as mature as more than 1 billion years old.
"It's like looking back i ...
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Rosetta Races Toward Comet Touchdown
Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 09, 2014 -
After sailing through space for more than 10 years, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is now less than a week shy of landing a robotic probe on a comet.
The mission's Philae (fee-LAY) lander is scheduled to touch down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Wednesday, Nov. 12 at 7:35 a.m PST/10:35 a.m. EST. A signal confirming the landing is expected about 8:02 a.m. PST/11:02 a. ...
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Virgin Galactic could resume test flights in six months
London, UK (AFP) Nov 08, 2014 -
Virgin Galactic could resume test flights with a new spaceship within six months, the company said Friday, a week after the fatal crash of SpaceShipTwo in the Californian desert.
The United States' National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident, which has called into question Virgin chief Richard Branson's dream of tourist flights to the edge of space.
"It's possi ...
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Lockheed Martin partners for space debris research
Palo Alto, Calif. (UPI) Nov 7, 2014 -
Lockheed Martin is co-operating the largest infrared telescope in the Western Hemisphere to study space debris and for other research studies.
The partnership to operate the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, or UKIRT, is with the University of Arizona and others. The telescope, once owned by the United Kingdom's Science and Technology Facilities Council and now by the University of Haw ...
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From doomsday to fact: Science lifts veil on comets
Paris (AFP) Nov 08, 2014 -
For millennia, the sight of a comet filled humans with awe or dread.
The birth of Jesus, the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Great Plague of London, the coming of war or peace, bountiful harvests or famine... all thought to be portended by cosmic herald.
Bit by bit, mysticism about comets has been replaced by fact as scientists discover more about these epic and ancient travellers of ...
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Europe set to make space history with comet landing
Paris (AFP) Nov 08, 2014 -
One of the biggest gambles in space history comes to a climax on Wednesday when Europe attempts to make the first-ever landing on a comet.
Speeding towards the Sun at 65,000 kilometres (40,600 miles) per hour, a lab called Philae will detach from its mothership Rosetta, heading for a deep-space rendezvous laden with risk.
The 100-kilogram (220-pound) probe will seek out a minuscule landi ...
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Ancient genomes show the European meta-population
Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Nov 07, 2014 -
DNA recovered from a 36,000 year old fossil skeleton found in Russia shows early divergence of Eurasians once they had left Africa, and the deep shared ancestry of Europeans.
The new study, carried out by an international team of researchers, also reveals when Neanderthals and early modern humans out of Africa interbred - around 54,000 years ago, before the modern human population began to ...
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