2016

Artistic concept of the Venus Express space probe during an aerobraking maneuver (Image ESA–C. Carreau)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Physics” describes an analysis of the data collected by ESA’s Venus Express space probe during the final phase of its mission. After about eight years orbiting the planet Venus, in 2014 it was sent down lower and lower into the atmosphere, where it collected many new data before ending up getting destroyed. This allowed for example to discover the extraordinarily low temperatures of some atmospheric waves that have an average of about -157° Celsius (about -250° Fahrenheit).

Schematic of the Hitomi space telescope's on board systems (Image NASA)

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The Japanese space agency JAXA analyzed the data collected on its Hitomi Space Telescope, formerly known as Astro-H, to try to understand the reasons why only sporadic signals got received from the satellite since March 26. The most plausible hypothesis is that it lost its attitude because of some invalid data and its maneuvering thrusters didn’t correct the problem due to unsuitable settings. The perspective is grim but there are still hopes to save Hitomi.

Haulani Crater on Ceres (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

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NASA released new photos of various craters on the dwarf planet Ceres taken from its Dawn space probe, currently in its lowest orbit at an altitude of 385 kilometers (240 miles). From there, Dawn is making the most detailed mapping of Ceres and is providing really interesting details of craters that had already attracted the attention of scientists such as Haulani and Oxo.

The huge Y-shaped discontinuity on Enceladus' surface (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

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A photograph taken by the Cassini space probe shows a huge system of fractures that have a shape similar to a letter Y on the surface of Enceladus, Saturn’s moon become in recent years one of the most interesting objects of astronomical studies. Called “Y-shaped discontinuities”, these elements of Enceladus’ icy surface are probably relatively young revealing the existing geological activity on this moon.

A comparison between the Sun, a low mass star, a brown dwarf, Jupiter and the Earth (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCB)

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describes a study of the brown dwarfs that should be present in the cosmic neighborhood. A team of astronomers from the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Germany, re-analyzed data from observations and cataloging of the brown dwarfs less than six and a half parsecs from Earth and concluded that there should be more of them and maybe we haven’t found them yet.