such exceedingly exciting things happening in planetary science this year and the next!! the ESAs Rosetta spacecraft has already entered orbit around a comet (!) and the Philae lander is scheduled to harpoon (!!) itself to the surface on November 11th this year. NASAs JPL engineered/operated spacecraft Dawn is currently en route to 1 Ceres, the largest asteroid and only dwarf planet in the inner solar system. its arrival is set for April of 2015, at which point it will be the only spacecraft to have ever orbited two celestial bodies (the first being the asteroid and protoplanet 4 Vesta). most exciting of all, the NASA spacecraft New Horizons just last month crossed the orbit of Neptune on its way to orbit the Pluto system (!!!!!!) in July of 2015. I have been looking at the same blurred out smudge of a Hubble photo of Pluto since I was in elementary school, so I am really thrilled about this mission in particular. the only double planet in the system, the first trans-neptunian object ever detected, and the subject of great debate and popular interest for decades. get pumped for science everyone.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 21:35:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015