An article published in the journal “Geology” illustrates the discovery of water ice on the planet Mercury made thanks to NASA’s Messenger (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) space probe. Several pictures show frozen water and other materials in permanently shadowed craters near Mercury’s north pole.
NASA announced that it identified three potential targets for the mission of the New Horizons spacecraft after its Pluto flyby. They are Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) found using the Hubble Space Telescope exactly for this purpose.
The research program of KBOs was successful from the start, leading to the discovery of two interesting objects and then three more. In particular, the first object discovered, identified as 1110113Y, was subsequently defined certainty targetable. For this reason, it’s called PT1 by the team of the New Horizons mission.
Using a camera included in the Comet Infrared and Visible Analyser (CIVA) of its lander Philae, a few days ago the Rosetta space probe took a really special selfie. On October 7, it was at a distance of about 16 km (about 10 miles) from the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which appears in the background of the photo, above one of the spacecraft’s solar panels.
NASA has announced the successful activation of RapidScat (Rapid Scatterometer), a scatterometer transported to the International Space Station by the Dragon spacecraft and therefore also called ISS-RapidScat. It’s an instrument designed to monitor ocean winds to contribute to climate research, weather forecasting, and the monitoring of phenomena such as hurricanes. It’s an experimental instrument to use the Station as a platform for observations generally made by satellites.
