NASA’s Webb Reveals Smallest Asteroids Yet Found in Main Asteroid Belt

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Illustration of the main asteroid belt, orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter NASA NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope includes asteroids on its list of objects studied and secrets revealed.  A team led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge repurposed Webb’s observations of a distant star to reveal a population of small asteroids — smaller than astronomers had ever detected orbiting the Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The 138 new asteroids range from the size of a bus to the size of a…

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Lab Work Digs Into Gullies Seen on Giant Asteroid Vesta by NASA’s Dawn

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NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured this image of Vesta as it left the giant asteroid’s orbit in 2012. The framing camera was looking down at the north pole, which is in the middle of the image. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA Known as flow formations, these channels could be etched on bodies that would seem inhospitable to liquid because they are exposed to the extreme vacuum conditions of space. Pocked with craters, the surfaces of many celestial bodies in our solar system provide clear evidence of a 4.6-billion-year battering by meteoroids and other space debris.…

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NASA Mars probe spies dusty, retired Insight lander from orbit (photo)

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NASA’s InSight lander continues to contribute valuable knowledge about Mars, even after its retirement. Photos captured in late October by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) show InSight resting on the Martian surface. While no longer active, the rover is providing researchers new data on how dust accumulates and evolves over time in the region. “Even though we’re no longer hearing from InSight, it’s still teaching us about Mars,” science team member Ingrid Daubar of Brown University said in a Dec. 16 NASA statement. “By monitoring how much dust collects on…

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Rocket Lab scrubs Strix radar satellite launch for Synspective over ‘sensor data’

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The spaceflight company Rocket Lab called off a planned launch of half a dozen commercial satellites due to concerns over sensor readings on Friday (Dec. 20). Rocket Lab scrubbed what was to be its 16th Electron rocket flight of 2024 less than 20 minutes before planned liftoff at 10:03 a.m. EST (1503 GMT) from the company’s primary launch site on Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. Fueling of the rocket had already begun at the time of the scrub. “We are standing down from today’s launch attempt for Synspective to take…

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Gateway: Wired for Deep Space

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A maze of cables and sensors snakes through a major piece of Gateway, humanity’s first space station around the Moon, during a key testing phase earlier this year to ensure the lunar-orbiting science lab can withstand the harsh conditions of deep space.

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It’s a bird! it’s a plane! It’s the 1st fantastic trailer for James Gunn’s ‘Superman!’

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The new DC Universe might have technically already launched earlier this month with Max’s animated series “Creature Commandos,” but that was just an appetizer for the Big Blue Boy Scout as he swoops in for the first official trailer today for director James Gunn’s “Superman.” Starring David Corenswet as the iconic Man of Steel, “Superman” (previously titled “Superman: Legacy”) strikes multiplexes on July 11, 2025 as the premiere DCU feature film delivered under James Gunn and Peter Safran’s newly-minted DC Studios leadership and expansive vision. This provocative preview represents 18…

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Contact Dynamics Predictions Utilizing theNESC Parameterless Contact Model

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Download PDF: Contact Dynamics Predictions Utilizing theNESC Parameterless Contact Model Modeling the capture of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Orbiting Sample (OS) involves understanding complex dynamic behavior, which includes the OS making contact against the interior of the capture enclosure. The MSR Program required numerical verification of the contact dynamics’ predictions produced using their commercial software tools. This commercial software used “free” parameters to set up the contact modeling. Free parameters (also known as free variables) are not based on contact physics. The commercial contact model used by MSRrequired seven…

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BepiColombo spacecraft flies by Mercury, sees volcanic plain and impact craters

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BepiColombo just imaged Mercury in a whole new light — mid-infrared light, to be precise. On the spacecraft’s fifth flyby of Mercury earlier this month (out of a planned six flybys) BepiColombo pointed its Mercury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (MERTIS) at a swath of Mercury’s northern hemisphere. Mid-infrared light is invisible to human eyes, but it carries a wealth of information about the mineral makeup and temperature of very hot rocks like those on Mercury’s sun-baked surface. The Dec. 1 flyby marked the first time scientists have ever seen…

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NASA Names Carlos Garcia-Galan as Gateway Program Deputy Manager

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Official portrait of Carlos Garcia-Galan, deputy manager for the Gateway Program. NASA/Bridget Caswell NASA has selected Carlos Garcia-Galan as deputy manager for the Gateway Program. Garcia-Galan previously served as manager of the Orion Program’s European Service Module Integration Office at Glenn Research Center. “I am tremendously excited to take on this new role and help lead development of humanity’s first outpost in deep space,” Garcia-Galan said. “I’m honored to join a top-class Gateway team around the world, as the first elements of the complex move toward completion.” Garcia-Galan brings more…

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