University of Manchester scientists are among the few in the world selected to analyze minute asteroid fragments which could shed light on the origin and evolution of the solar system.
Space Exploration
Oct 4, 2012
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Comets and asteroids preserve the building blocks of our Solar System and should help explain its origin. But there are unsolved puzzles. For example, how did icy comets obtain particles that formed at high temperatures, ...
Space Exploration
Jul 25, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The traditional picture of comets as cold, icy, unchanging bodies throughout their history is being reappraised in the light of analyses of dust grains from Comet Wild2. A team led by the University of Leicester ...
Space Exploration
Mar 27, 2012
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Particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 brought to Earth in 2006 by NASA's Stardust spacecraft indicate that Jupiter formed more than three million years after the formation of the first solids in our Solar System. The new finding ...
Astronomy
Mar 1, 2012
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With the click of a mouse, Sandy Freund Kasper sent a command to NASA's comet-hunting Stardust space probe to burn all its fuel, starting a sequence that would shut the spacecraft down after a 12-year run.
Space Exploration
Mar 25, 2011
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In most cases, a Valentine's Day rendezvous that resembles a flight through artillery fire is less than ideal.
Space Exploration
Feb 21, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA'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 with comet Tempel ...
Space Exploration
Feb 13, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The EPOXI mission spacecraft has refined its path toward a Nov. 4 flyby of comet Hartley 2, successfully performing its final maneuver today at 8 a.m. PDT (11 a.m. EDT). The spacecraft burned its engines ...
Space Exploration
Nov 2, 2010
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The first specks of interstellar dust may have been found by NASA's Stardust spacecraft during its seven-year-long voyage. Interstellar dust is believed to form from gas ejected from stars, which condenses ...
(PhysOrg.com) -- Though comets are thought to be some of the oldest, most primitive bodies in the solar system, new research on comet Wild 2 indicates that inner solar system material was transported to the comet-forming ...
Space Exploration
Feb 25, 2010
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