Space

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Space

    NASA’s OSIRIS-REx must avoid ‘Mount Doom’ to return a sample of the asteroid Bennu

    The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft finally has a target spot for sample collection, called Nightingale, on the asteroid Bennu.

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  2. Space

    NASA’s MAVEN probe shows how wind circulates in Mars’ upper atmosphere

    By using the MAVEN spacecraft to track winds in the Martian thermosphere, researchers hope to better understand how the atmosphere leaks into space.

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  3. Space

    NASA’s Parker probe has spotted the Geminid meteor showers’ source

    For the first time, we’ve spotted the trail of space debris responsible for the Geminid meteor shower.

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  4. Space

    Electric charges on dust grains may help explain how planets are born

    In an experiment, glass beads clung together like protoplanetary dust particles when shaken and flung more than 100 meters skyward.

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  5. Space

    NASA’s Parker probe reveals the sun’s rogue plasma waves and magnetic islands

    Scientists have analyzed the Parker probe’s first data, giving a peek at what’s to come as the craft moves closer to the sun over the next few years.

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  6. Space

    How brightly the moon glows is a mystery, but maybe not for long

    The best estimates for the moon’s brightness are still somewhat unsure. A new experiment is trying to fix that.

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  7. Space

    A newfound black hole in the Milky Way is weirdly heavy

    A dark mass about 68 times as massive as the sun is locked in orbit with a star in our galaxy. Theory says that such black holes shouldn’t get so big.

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  8. Astronomy

    19 more galaxies mysteriously missing dark matter have been found

    The finding reveals a population of dwarf galaxies that defy common wisdom about how these star systems form and evolve.

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  9. Planetary Science

    Ribose, a sugar needed for life, has been detected in meteorites

    Samples of rocks that fell to Earth contain a key molecular ingredient of RNA, part of life’s genetic machinery.

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  10. Space

    How two gamma-ray bursts created record-breaking high-energy photons

    Light packing up to 1 trillion electron volts of energy bolsters a theory for how these cosmic explosions produce such high-energy radiation.

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  11. Space

    Realigning magnetic fields may drive the sun’s spiky plasma tendrils

    Solar spicules emerge near counterpointing magnetic fields, hinting that self-adjusting magnetism creates these filaments, which may heat the corona.

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  12. Space

    NASA gave Ultima Thule a new official name

    The distant world briefly visited by New Horizons is now called Arrokoth, a Powhatan word that means “sky.”

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