NASA’s Dawn space probe resumed its activities moving down to an altitude of about 3.900 kilometers (about 2,400 miles) over the dwarf planet Ceres in order to proceed with the mapping operations that will provide images at unprecedented resolution. This task was supposed to start at the end of June but due to an anomaly the spacecraft entered the “safe mode” in which it stops its activities awaiting instructions.
NASA unveiled the first of the long-awaited photographs taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during its Pluto flyby that took place on July 14. They reveal among other things the presence of mountains even 3,500 meters (11,000 feet) high. A photo of Charon taken on July 13 was also released and it shows several fractures on its crust. These close-up images show geological activity on both Pluto and Charon, an unexpected fact.
Today, NASA’s New Horizons space probe will carry out the much anticipated Pluto flyby. When at NASA’s mission control center it’s early morning, it will pass at a distance that will reach a minimum of 12,500 kilometers (about 7,800 miles) from the dwarf planet. All New Horizons’ instruments will be used to analyze Pluto as ever before but some time will be devoted also to its moons, particularly Charon.
In the journal “Nature Communications” an article was published on the study of images of the planet Venus taken during its transit, its passage between the Sun and the Earth, which occurred in June 2012, taken by two satellites: NASA’s SDO and NASA and JAXA’s Hinode. This research allowed to look at Venusian atmosphere in a different way measuring the way it absorbs the different types of light. This type of study allows to get important clues about the presence of various chemical elements in the atmosphere’s layers. It will also be useful to improve the techniques to examine exoplanets’ atmosphere.
An article in the journal “Nature” describes a research about the planet GJ 436b, whose mass is similar to that of Neptune. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers led by David Ehrenreich of the Observatory of the University of Geneva in Switzerland discovered that it leaves behind a huge tail of the estimated size of about 50 times that of the star it orbits. Those are hydrogen emissions ripped from the planet which make it looke like a huge comet.
