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May 05, 2015

PSI Researchers Look Back at Mercury MESSENGER Accomplishments
Tucson AZ (SPX) May 05, 2015
As NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft ends its scientific operations by crashing into Mercury today, Planetary Science Institute researchers looked back at a mission that provided new discoveries on the planet closest to the Sun. PSI Senior Scientist Catherine Johnson and her group have played key roles in the characterization of Mercury's magnetic field, including the major discovery, with colleague and team member Brian Anderson, that the magnetic field is offset from Mercury's body center. Her group's ... read more

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NASA completes MESSENGER mission with surface impact Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., confirmed today that NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSEN ... more		Rock Spire in 'Spirit of St. Louis Crater' on Mars An elongated crater called "Spirit of St. Louis," with a rock spire in it, dominates a recent scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Opportunity compl ... more		Making robots more human Most people are naturally adept at reading facial expressions - from smiling and frowning to brow-furrowing and eye-rolling - to tell what others are feeling. Now scientists have developed ultra-sen ... more
				Tracking Japan's asteroid impact mission ESA is set to support Japan's 'touch-and-go' Hayabusa-2 spacecraft, now en route to a little-known asteroid, helping to boost the scientific return from this audacious mission. A flawless launch las ... more		KinetX Aerospace Navigates MESSENGER through Final Mission Phase KinetX Aerospace, the first commercial company to navigate any spacecraft to distant planetary bodies, announced that it has successfully guided the MESSENGER spacecraft through its final and perhap ... more

Space Tech Expo - Design - Build - Test - Long Beach CA - May 19-21, 2015

The World's Largest Commercial Drone Conference and Expo - Sept 9 - Las Vegas

Human 2 Mars Conference Mat 5-7 2015 - Washington DC

Possible Polar Cap on Pluto Detected For the first time, images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft are revealing bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto - the primary target of the New Horizons close flyby in mid-July. ... more		MESSENGER executes last orbit-correction maneuver ahead of impact MESSENGER mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., conducted the last of six planned maneuvers on April 24 to raise the spacecraft's minim ... more		Sidekick autonomy software guides YFQ-42A test mission for CCA program Infleqtion lists shares on NYSE as neutral atom quantum firm Top Chinese gaming companies continue to challenge		An improvement to the global software standard for analyzing fusion plasmas The gold standard for analyzing the behavior of fusion plasmas may have just gotten better. Mario Podesta, a staff physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (P ... more
				Computer faces poker pros in no-limit Texas Hold'em Four of the world's best poker players face a common opponent, a computer program named Claudico, in a two-week "Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence" competition at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. ... more		Robotically discovering Earth's nearest neighbors A team of astronomers using ground-based telescopes in Hawaii, California, and Arizona recently discovered a planetary system orbiting a nearby star that is only 54 light-years away. All three plane ... more

Army Network Modernization 2015 - Washington DC June 23-25

Russia Invites China to Join in Creating Lunar Station Russia and China are currently in talks on inviting the latter to become one of the main partners in creating a lunar station, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Tuesday. "The q ... more		Deep Space Atomic Clock On Time For 2016 Mission As the saying goes, timing is everything. More so in 21st-century space exploration where navigating spacecraft precisely to far-flung destinations - say, to Mars or even more distant Europa, a moon ... more		Solar-driven ionosphere charges may nudge stressed faults toward rupture Stable black carbon in mangrove soils boosts coastal climate role Low crystallinity iron minerals show promise for chromium cleanup and carbon storage		Rover on the Lookout for Dust Devils Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater next to the "Spirit of St. Louis" crater near the entrance of "Marathon Valley." The rover had been conducting an in-situ (contact) science campaig ... more
Astronomers join forces to speed discovery of habitable worlds UC Berkeley astronomers will lead one of 16 new projects funded by NASA to coordinate different exoplanet searches to more efficiently find habitable planets around other stars, and perhaps extrater ... more		Collaboration to Aid the Search for Life on Distant Worlds A new NASA initiative is embracing a team approach to the problem of finding life on planets around other stars. Termed NExSS (NASA Exoplanet System Science), this virtual institute will benefit fro ... more		Tau Ceti Probably not the next Earth As the search continues for Earth-size planets orbiting at just the right distance from their star, a region termed the habitable zone, the number of potentially life-supporting planets grows. In tw ... more		Saturn's Faint D Ring Not all of Saturn's rings are created equal: here the C and D rings appear side-by-side, but the C ring, which occupies the bottom half of this image, clearly outshines its neighbor. The D rin ... more

	Titan's Atmosphere Useful In Study Of Hazy Exoplanets With more than a thousand confirmed planets outside of our solar system, astronomers are attempting to identify the atmospheres of these distant bodies to determine if they could possibly host life. ... more		ASU team searching for signs of life in the stars For centuries, humans have sought to learn whether life exists beyond Earth. That answer is closer than ever to fulfillment, and an ASU team is working on a key part of that quest with NASA's backin ... more

AALTO plans Zephyr stratospheric hub in northern Australia and seeks local payload partners

Ancient guano drove Chincha coastal power

UAH lands first DARPA award for biological sciences department

UW key player in new NASA coalition to search for life on distant worlds		Chemistry of seabed's hot vents could explain emergence of life		Search for Extraterrestial Life Included in Russian Space Program		Xinhua Insight: How China joins space club?		JILA strontium atomic clock sets new records
First exoplanet visible light spectrum		Russian Mission Control Adjusts ISS Orbit to Avoid Space Junk		Millimetre-sized stones formed our planet		Ceres' Bright Spots Come Back Into View		Design begins for ESA's Asteroid Impact Mission

UAE opens space center to oversee mission to Mars

Japan to land first unmanned spacecraft on moon in 2018

New 'space trash' laser may tidy up Earth's orbit

A blueprint for clearing the skies of space debris

Life's building blocks recreated under space-like conditions

Honeywell gives European Space Agency new satellite technology

Dating the moon-forming impact event with meteorites

SwRI team studies meteorites from asteroids to date moon impacts

White Dwarf May Have Shredded Passing Planet

NASA Spacecraft Achieves Unprecedented Success Studying Mercury

Dawn Glimpses Ceres' North Pole

Japan to land probe on the moon in 2018

Spitzer Spots Planet Deep Within Our Galaxy

NASA spacecraft set for death plunge into Mercury

Why astronomers hate the lawn-mowing Roomba

Violent methane storms on Titan may solve dune direction mystery

Search for advanced civilizations finds nothing obvious in 100,000 galaxies

Japan planning moon mission: space agency

Spitzer, OGLE spot planet deep within our galaxy

Capstone: 2015

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