Comets

NASA's comet trekking spacecraft Stardust has officially ended operations. Stardust sent its last transmission to Earth on March 24 having traveled an incredible 3.54 billion miles over a 12 year period to become "NASA's most traveled comet hunter." Read More

On Valentine's day, while we were all cooing over your loved ones or lamenting the obvious negligence of the postman, scientists at Denver's NASA station were cooing over something rather larger. On February 14th this year, NASA's Stardust probe made its second visit to the comet Tempel 1 at 8.40pm PST, shaving the comet at a distance of 111 miles (178 km) and traveling at a relative speed of 24,300 mph (10.9 km per second). This is the first time scientists have been able to get a second look at a comet, which allows them to compare data from the first visit in order to learn more about these icy inhabitants of our solar system. Read More

Mission controllers from the University of Maryland-led EPOXI mission celebrated last week as NASA's Deep Impact space probe flew close by the Hartley 2 comet, sending back rare and valuable data about the comet. This is only the fifth time that a comet core has been viewed from such a near distance by a space probe, and it is hoped that by understanding comets better we can learn more about the origin and history of our solar system. Read More

If there’s a killer asteroid or comet hurtling towards Earth it’s probably best to know about it sooner rather than later. However, space is a big place and keeping our eyes out for these little blighters is no mean feat even with a mighty automated telescope to hand. Fortunately, astronomers in Hawaii have just announced they’ve successfully managed to boot up the Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System) telescope, also known as PS1. Working from dusk-to-dawn every night Pan-STARRS is able to map one-sixth of the sky each month, allowing astronomers to track every moving object, calculate their orbits and identify any potential threats to Earth. Read More

Fresh evidence has been revealed to support the theory that life on Earth began in space. NASA’s Stardust probe, a specially-designed comet ‘chaser’, successfully collected particles shed from Comet Wild 2 in 2004, and NASA scientists have since confirmed for the first time that amino acids can indeed be found on these extraterrestrial bodies. Read More

Aerogel is 99.8% air and 1,000 times less dense than glass yet it can withstand high temperature, is robust enough to survive a space launch and delivers 39 times more insulation than the best fibreglass. This exotic substance was invented in the 1930s but recently refined by NASA for the purpose of catching space-dust, Aerogel was used on the Mars Pathfinder rover and its latest assignment is to capture both cometary samples and interstellar particles aboard the Stardust mission. Read More