by Jonathan Nally | Oct 31, 2021 | News, Planets, Space missions
ABOVE: The Dawn spacecraft’s ion engine allowed for slow but steady acceleration in order to reach the asteroid belt. Image credit: NASA/JPL. By David Ellyard WE’VE KNOWN OF THE EXISTENCE of ‘minor planets’ or asteroids in the Solar System since the start of the 19th...
by Jonathan Nally | Oct 21, 2021 | Astronomy, Planets
Above: Now classed as a dwarf planet, Pluto was discovered in February 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh. Image credit: NASA/JHU APL/SwRI/A. Parker. By David Ellyard AT A TIME WHEN WE ARE FINDING PLANETS by the hundred orbiting stars other than our own, it is worth recalling the...
by Jonathan Nally | Oct 3, 2021 | News, Planets, Space missions
THE BEPICOLOMBO SPACECRAFT HAS SUCCESSFULLY conducted its first trajectory-changing flyby of Mercury, three years after launch and almost four years prior to reaching its final orbit around the innermost planet. During the flyby on October 1 UTC (October 2, Australian...
by Jonathan Nally | Sep 29, 2021 | Astronomy, News, Planets
Above: Jupiter and its Great Red Spot, with the moon Europa on the left. The image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on 25 August 2020, when the planet was 653 million kilometres from Earth. Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M....
by Jonathan Nally | Jul 31, 2020 | Astronomy, Planets, Space missions
NASA’S LATEST AND MOST AMBITIOUS MISSION to Mars was successfully launched in the early hours of Friday, July 31 (Sydney time), ascending on an Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Carrying a rover called...
by Jonathan Nally | Jul 3, 2020 | Amateur astronomy, Astronomy, Planets
ABOVE: An artist’s impression showing a Neptune-sized planet in the ‘Neptunian Desert’. It is extremely rare to find an object of this size and density so close to its star. Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick. THE SURVIVING CORE OF A GAS GIANT...
