February 2019

Mars Rover Curiosity and the Apollo 17's Moon Rover (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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An article published in the journal “Science” reports a clever use of the Mars Rover Curiosity’s accelerometers and gyroscopes to estimate the density of rocks under Gale Crater. A team of scientists examined the data collected over the years by those instruments to evaluate the gravity force where Curiosity passed, obtaining lower than expected measurements. This suggests that in that area the rocks are very porous and less compact than scientists thought.

The dwarf galaxy Bedin 1 behind the globular star cluster NGC 6752 (Image ESA/Hubble, NASA, Bedin et al.)

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters” describes the discovery of the most isolated dwarf galaxy detected so far. A team of researchers led by Luigi Bedin of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics examined observations of the star cluster NGC 6752 carried out with the Hubble Space Telescope for a study of white dwarfs finding a group of very ancient stars that turned out to be a dwarf galaxy that was nicknamed Bedin 1.