Alex R. Howe
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Tag Archives: nasa
The Perseverance Rover Lands on Mars Tomorrow!
Tomorrow is a big day in the world of planetary science. NASA’s Perseverance rover (formerly Mars 2020) will be landing on Mars at 3:55 PM EST. This is something that brings back memories for me. Eight and a half years … Continue reading
Posted in Current events, Space exploration
Tagged mars, Mars 2020, Mars Perseverance, nasa
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Help Name the Mars 2020 Rover!
If you remember the summer of 2012, you might recall the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. (As a hint, it was right at the end of the London Olympics.) It was a pretty big deal because this was … Continue reading
The Moon Landing at 50
Unless you’ve been living under a Moon rock, you’re probably aware of how significant today and this week are. July 20, 2019: the fiftieth anniversary of the first Moon landing. What can I say about this event that won’t have … Continue reading
Posted in Current events, Space exploration, Uncategorized
Tagged Apollo50, ApolloXI, Moon, Moon Landing, nasa
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New Horizons and Ultima Thule: Where to Watch
Update: it turns out that the coverage of the Ultima Thule flyby is “forward funded”, so it will proceed on NASA TV as normal. New Horizons, the spacecraft that famously imaged Pluto three years ago, will be making history again … Continue reading
Posted in Current events, Space exploration
Tagged nasa, new horizons, Ultima Thule
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TESS Lifts Off
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) lifted off on a SpaceX rocket last night. TESS is a follow-up to the wildly successful Kepler mission that will hunt for transiting planets—that is, planets that pass in front of their stars, blocking … Continue reading
Posted in Current events, Planets, Space exploration
Tagged exoplanets, nasa, SpaceX, TESS
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LIGO Discovers Colliding Neutron Stars and Cosmic Gold
(Virgo doesn’t, but that’s still a good thing.) The two LIGO observatories and Virgo are the world’s three operational gravitational wave observatories. These observatories use incredibly precise lasers to detect the ripples in spacetime caused by colliding massive objects like … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy, Current events
Tagged gamma-ray burst, gravitational waves, kilonova, LIGO, nasa, Virgo
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The End of the Cassini Mission
Yesterday morning, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft at Saturn was deorbited into the planet’s atmosphere in the Grand Finale of an epic 20-year mission. Cassini observed Venus, Earth, and Jupiter while it was in transit and has spent the past 13 years … Continue reading
Posted in Current events, Space exploration
Tagged Cassini, nasa, saturn
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NASA Discovers the First “Earth-Like” Planet for the Third Time
There’s been buzz in the news about the latest planet discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, Kepler-452b. It’s being hailed as a major discovery. It’s the first ever Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone of a…boy, this sounds familiar, … Continue reading
Posted in Current events, Planets, Space
Tagged earth-like planets, exoplanets, kepler, kepler-452b, nasa
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NASA finds an ice-cold planet right next door
You may have heard about the recent discovery of an ice cold “brown dwarf” or “star” right next door in our Solar Neighborhood. The object, which goes by the telephone number* WISE J085510.83-071442.5, is only 7.2 light-years from our Solar … Continue reading
Posted in Current events, Planets
Tagged brown dwarf, definition of a planet, exoplanets, nasa, wise, wise 0855-0714
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Planets abound!
It’s always fun when a government agency uses the word “bonanza” in a press release. NASA’s Kepler space telescope spent mission spent three and a half years observing distant stars in our galaxy looking for planets crossing in front of … Continue reading
Posted in Current events, Planets
Tagged earth-like planets, kepler, nasa, planet discoveries, super-earth
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