Some people have always thought there’s something fishy about [dwarf] planet Pluto. Not only is Pluto in tandem with its moon Charon, has four other moons, but now New Horizons mission discovers a mysterious bulge near the planet’s “north” pole.
The following animated image was composed from a series of photos taken by New Horizons last April. The bulge can be seen as both bodies rotate.
This May 2015 the planets Mercury, Venus and Jupiter will be in near alignment with each other. From Earth’s perspective, the alignment will be visible to the West after sunset. Mercury and Venus are in close alignment and Jupiter is a little off to the left and above Venus.
Titan is the wonderful moon of Saturn that could be a planet by its own right. NASA – ESA Cassini probe and Huygens lander have captured amazing images of the satellite that has an atmosphere thicker than Earth’s.
NASA – esa released the next video of Saturn’s moon composed of images from Cassini on approach to Saturn’s moon and Huygens descent to the surface. Huygens made the amazing landing January 2005.
JPL – Titan Scenes
The mission directed by NASA – esa [Italian Space Agency] has gathered a massive amount of data about wonderful Titan, the following graphic highlights some of the mission achievements.
NASA’s probe dawn approach to Ceres is happening now. The JPL NASA team is directing the Dawn space probe to the asteroid belt [dwarf] planet Ceres. JPL released the following picture Dawn took at 383, 000 km as the probe gets close to Ceres.
Ceres, JPL – NASA
The JPL team said they expect to place the space probe into Ceres orbit around March 6, 2015.
Ceres is in orbit around the sun at the asteoid belt. Dawn is the first space probe launched to study Ceres.
The following animated GIF image shows the rotation of Ceres.
European Space Agency – Jet Propulsion Laboratory joined mission to land Rosetta’s landing module Philae on comet 67P will prove to be a more challenging task than previously thought. The undertaking will be more complex than landing on a planet or even on an asteroid. The tentative date for the landing of Rosetta’s Philae is this November 12, 2014.
A failed sub-orbital flight of a Virgin Galactic spacecraft left one pilot dead and one injured. The spacecraft, Space Ship Two, had detached from its carrier plane White Knight which landed safely. Space Ship Two was supposed to achieve sub-orbital flight but the spacecraft experienced anomalies that caused it to crash land. Virgin Galactic had had previous flights of Space Ship Two with no major incidents. But today’s was a tragic one and it is very sad news for the space community.
Tragedy Strikes Virgin Galactic – Space Ship Two Crash Lands | CNN
Our sun [Sol] has released three X-type-solar flares from an active sunspot. The solar flares were X1, X2, and the most recent one of magnitude X3.2, the biggest so far in the year. It is expected that the sun rotates to face this active sunspot towards Earth. Researchers have estimated that a direct hit of a major X-type solar flare on Earth could cripple unprotected electric grids, telecommunication satellites, and electronics.
It’s been over 150 years since a major X-type solar flare hit the Earth directly.
Scientists have found an unknown gas in Titan’s upper atmosphere after analyzing data from the Cassini probe.
Saturn’s moon is the only moon in our solar system with a thick atmosphere comparable to the ones of the inner terrestrial planets. Titan’s atmosphere is mainly made of nitrogen, methane, and hydrogen.
Titan’s Atmosphere
Back in 2004 Cassini had found emissions in Titan’s high atmosphere at an altitude of 500 km. These gases were found to be hydrocarbons. However, upon further observation of the spectral region, García Comas, López Puertas from Spain, and other European astronomers determined other unknown gas was present in the moon. The emissions increased at an altitude of 900 km in Titan’s atmosphere. The emissions that were remotely observed did not fit any other bands in the known atmosphere. It had to be a new undetected band that the astronomers did not see before.
Gases found in Titan
The findings were presented last year during the 2nd National Conference on Laboratory and Molecular Astrophysics in November. The astronomers announced that the emissions were hidden under a layer of methane. They concluded that the strong emission had to be part of another kind of gas. The scientists provisionally named the new band Agnostosphere and they believe its made of aromatic compounds. They also discovered that the band of gas is influenced by solar radiation since it is only found during Titan’s day. The astronomers think this new finding may help to explain the haze in Titan’s upper atmosphere observed by Cassini.
Titan Emission – Haze found in the planet’s atmosphere
Space X will dock with the International Space Station and land back on Earth. The company will use the Dragon capsule as well the Falcon 9 rockets to achieve the flight.
