News articles tagged with 'spacecraft'
When is an asteroid not an asteroid?
— 30 Mar 2011 17:37 | AstronomyOn March 29, 1807, German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers spotted Vesta as a pinprick of light in the sky. Two hundred and four years later, as NASA's Dawn spacecraft prepares to…
MESSENGER spacecraft to swing into orbit around Mercury
— 15 Mar 2011 21:20 | AstronomyAt 8:45 p.m. EDT on March 17, the MESSENGER spacecraft will execute a 15-minute manoeuvre that will place it into orbit around Mercury, making it the first craft ever to do so, and…
Southampton scientists develop control system to allow spacecraft to think for themselves
— 14 Feb 2011 15:21 | TechnologyThe world's first control system that will allow engineers to programme satellites and spacecraft to think for themselves has been developed by scientists from the University of Southampton…
New instrument will help confirm Kepler's planet finds
— 14 Feb 2011 15:09 | AstronomyThe search for planets outside our solar system continues to heat up. NASA's Kepler spacecraft has located more than 1,200 planetary candidates, however confirming them remains a challenge.…
2-timing spacecraft has date with another comet
— 12 Feb 2011 20:10 | AstronomyNASA's Stardust spacecraft, equipped with the University of Chicago's Dust Flux Monitor Instrument (DFMI), is hurtling at more than 24,000 miles an hour toward a Valentine's Day encounter…
Stardust NExT set to meet its second comet
— 10 Feb 2011 19:07 | AstronomyStardust NExT must love comets. On Valentine's Day the spacecraft will get up close and personal with its second…
Surprise hidden in Titan's smog: Cirrus-like clouds
— 4 Feb 2011 16:49 | AstronomyEvery day is a bad-air day on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Blanketed by haze far worse than any smog belched out in Los Angeles, Beijing or even Sherlock Holmes' London, the moon looks…
NASA prepares to launch next Earth-observing satellite mission
— 21 Jan 2011 20:14 | EnvironmentNASA's newest Earth-observing research mission is nearing launch. The Glory mission will improve our understanding of how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols affect…
NASA's Fermi catches thunderstorms hurling antimatter into space
— 11 Jan 2011 17:26 | AstronomyScientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before…
SOHO spots 2,000th comet
— 4 Jan 2011 21:23 | AstronomyAs people on Earth celebrate the holidays and prepare to ring in the New Year, an ESA/NASA spacecraft has quietly reached its own milestone: on December 26, the Solar and Heliospheric…