Today, scientists will launch a sounding rocket 200 miles up into the atmosphere, where in just five minutes, it will take 1,500 images of the sun. The NASA-funded RAISE mission is designed to scrutinize split-second changes occurring near the sun’s active regions — areas of intense, complex magnetic activity that can give rise to solar […]
A new observation from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captures the landing platform that the rover Opportunity left behind in Eagle Crater more than 13 years and 27 miles (or 44 kilometers) ago. A series of bounces and tumbles after initial touchdown plunked the airbag-cushioned lander into the crater, a mere 72 feet (22 meters) […]
A relatively large near-Earth asteroid discovered nearly three years ago will fly safely past Earth on April 19 at a distance of about 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), or about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon. Although there is no possibility for the asteroid to collide with our planet, this will […]
41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák, officially named after its three discoverers, or known this year as the April Fool’s Day Comet, passed by our planet at a distance of approximately 13 million miles. 41P was first discovered by Horace Tuttle in 1858, it was determined then that 41P was a periodic comet, (a comet that orbits the sun) but, […]