Space

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Planetary Science

    Found and lost

    Astronomers who previously announced that they had identified the likely remains of the Mars Polar Lander in images taken by an orbiting spacecraft now say that they were fooled by electronic noise in those images.

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  2. Astronomy

    Images of a fiery youth

    A faint, infrared glow captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope might be light from the universe's first stars.

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  3. Planetary Science

    Mars or Bust!

    Scientists are working to overcome the biomedical challenges that would hinder a human voyage to Mars.

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  4. Astronomy

    Infrared telescope spies mountains of star creation

    Viewing a star-making region in the infrared, the Spitzer Space Telescope has captured mountains of gas and dust being eroded by winds and radiation from a massive star, triggering waves of star birth.

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  5. Planetary Science

    Cassini snaps icy moon Dione

    Saturn's small moon Dione has a heavily-cratered, fractured surface.

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  6. Planetary Science

    Groovy Science

    The Cassini spacecraft is shedding new light on Saturn's icy rings.

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  7. Astronomy

    Moon Zoom

    Imagine riding a magic carpet around the moon and being able to zoom down to any point or appear magically at any location. NASA has developed software that allows you to interactively browse three-dimensional images of the moon, based on data obtained by the Clementine spacecraft. These Web pages provide information about downloading the software, […]

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  8. Planetary Science

    Protecting Earth: Gravitational tractor could lure asteroids off course

    Relying solely on the tug of gravity, a proposed spacecraft could divert an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

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  9. Planetary Science

    New Partners: Hubble finds more moons around Pluto

    Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have spied two tiny moons orbiting Pluto, giving this planet a total of three satellites.

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  10. Astronomy

    Spooky Sounds of Saturn

    For Hallowe’en, tune in to eerie, bizarre sounds from the Saturnian system. These NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Web pages provide sound files based on magnetometer data from Cassini spacecraft observations of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, radar echoes from Titan’s surface, Saturn’s radio emissions, and more. Go to: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/sounds/

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  11. Planetary Science

    Shoreline for Titan?

    New radar images of Saturn's smog-shrouded moon Titan show evidence of a shoreline cutting across the moon's southern hemisphere.

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  12. Planetary Science

    ’10th planet’ has a partner

    The so-called 10th planet, an object larger than Pluto that ranks as the most distant body known in the solar system, has a moon.

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