October 2013

Robert Picardo at the San Diego Comic-Con International in 2011

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Robert Picardo was born on October 27, 1953 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into a family of Italian origin on both father and mother’s side. He had roles particularly in many TV shows: his most famous ones are in “China Beach”, “Star Trek: Voyager” and the Stargate shows.

Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus skeleton

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A website has been activated to cover the discovery of a baby dinosaur, specifically a Parasaurolophus lived about 75.5 million years ago. This specimen that probably was less than a year old was found in 2009 in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah and now has its own virtual museum on the Internet.

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Yesterday it was afternoon at ESA’s ESOC (European Space Operations Centre of ESA) in Darmstadt, Germany, when the last command was sent to the Planck Surveyor, the space telescope that provided us with the most detailed map of the early universe. This marked the end of its mission after being “parked” into a heliocentric orbit.

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Despite the temporary shutdown of federal activities in the USA that also affected the American NASA, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) space probe entered lunar orbit on October 7, about a month after its launch. With federal activities remuming, in recent days it was possible to test the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD) installed on LADEE and it was a success.