Latest Comet Stories
DENVER, March 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's Stardust spacecraft, built and flown by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), sent its last transmission to Earth at 4:33 p.m. PDT (7:33 p.m. EDT) Thursday, March 24, shortly after depleting fuel and ceasing operations. During a 12-year period, the venerable spacecraft collected and returned comet material to Earth and was reused after the end of its prime mission in 2006 to observe and study another comet during February 2011. The Stardust team...
PASADENA, Calif., March 25, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Stardust spacecraft sent its last transmission to Earth at 7:33 p.m. EDT Thursday, March 24, shortly after depleting fuel and ceasing operations. During an 11-year period, the venerable spacecraft collected and returned comet material to Earth and was reused after the end of its prime mission in 2006 to observe and study another comet during February 2011. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The...
After 12 years of providing NASA with lessons about our solar system, the Stardust spacecraft has sent its last commands to burn off all its fuel. In its final moments, the spacecraft continues to teach us. The "burn to depletion maneuver was designed to fire Stardust's rockets until insufficient fuel remains to continue, all the while downlinking data on the burn to Earth some 312 million kilometers (194 million miles) away," released NASA in a press release.Based on the Stardust-NExt team's...
Scientists are excited about solving some of the mysteries surrounding our smallest and hottest planet; the findings are expected to broaden our understanding of rocky planets, more and more of which are being discovered in other solar systemsAt 8:45 p.m. EDT on March 17, the MESSENGER spacecraft will execute a 15-minute maneuver that will place it into orbit around Mercury, making it the first craft ever to do so, and initiating a one-year science campaign to understand the innermost...
Ultra-light carbon-fiber rods used to stiffen a comet probe's legs are now being harnessed by a German manufacturer to boost the precision and efficiency of their laser cutters.Right now, the rods in question are on a collision course with a comet "“ literally.In 2014 ESA's Rosetta spacecraft will end a decade-long chase through space by catching up with Comet Churyumov"“Gerasimenko.It will orbit the comet and release its Philae lander to anchor itself to the icy surface. Carbon-fiber...
By Dauna Coulter, Science @ NASAEvery day about 100 tons of meteoroids -- fragments of dust and gravel and sometimes even big rocks "“ enter the Earth's atmosphere. Stand out under the stars for more than a half an hour on a clear night and you'll likely see a few of the meteors produced by the onslaught. But where does all this stuff come from? Surprisingly, the answer is not well known.Now NASA is deploying a network of smart cameras across the United States to answer the question, What's...
BackgroundIn November 2010, the scientific journal Icarus published a paper by astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, who proposed the existence of a binary companion to our sun, larger than Jupiter, in the long-hypothesized "Oort cloud" -- a faraway repository of small icy bodies at the edge of our solar system. The researchers use the name "Tyche" for the hypothetical planet. Their paper argues that evidence for the planet would have been recorded by the...
NASA's Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus.The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST at a distance of approximately 111 miles. Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet. It also accumulated 468 kilobytes of data about the dust in its coma, the cloud that is a comet's atmosphere. The craft is...
PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST at a distance of approximately 111 miles. Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet. It also...
DENVER, Feb. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft made a Valentine's Day deep-space rendezvous with an object it had been seeking for the past four-and-a-half years. The Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT)-built spacecraft flawlessly executed its mission and performed a flyby of comet Tempel 1 at 9:39 p.m. MT yesterday. Stardust made its closest approach of the nucleus of the comet at a distance of 111 miles (178 km) and was traveling a relative speed of 24,300 mph (10.9 km per...
Latest Comet Reference Libraries
A Shubunkin is a type of single-tailed goldfish with calico coloration, a combination of orange, white, black, red, and blue markings, blue being the most desired. They are similar to the common goldfish and the comet goldfish. Also called speckled goldfish, harlequin goldfish, calico goldfish, and coronation fish, they were developed in Japan about a hundred years ago by crossing calico fantails with single-tailed goldfish to produce a hardy, able swimmer with bright colors. There are...
A Fantail goldfish is a standard "fancy" type of goldfish. It has a dual-lobed tail, unlike its cousin the common or comet. Its fins can be different sizes, ranging from 1-3 in or more in length. A typical fantail has paired fins, including anal fins, a single dorsal fin, and a round, pointed body shape. It can range in color, from bronze (known as chocolate), orange, red, calico, and mixes of the colors. It is the third hardiest of the fancy goldfish with Comet first and Shubunkin second,...
The Comet is a commonly kept form of goldfish, the only type to have originated in the United States. They first appeared in the ponds of the Fish Commission in Washington in the early 1880s. Hugo Mullertt was the first person to bring the Comet goldfish to the market in a large quantity. Characterized by a long, tall, flowing tailfin they can be differentiated from the common goldfish, although otherwise they are very similar. Both of these varieties are quite hardy and will do well in...
Comet -- A comet is a small body from the outer reaches of the solar system similar to an asteroid but composed of ice. Often described as "dirty snowballs," they are composed largely of carbon dioxide ice, methane ice, and water ice with a mixture of dust and small stony aggregates mixed in. Comets are thought to be small pieces of debris left over from the formation of the solar system, representing a sample of the original composition of the nebula that condensed to form the Sun and all...
The Solar System refers to the area in space that is dominated by our own Sun. It is comprised of the Sun and its associated astronomical objects that are held in its gravitational orbit. The Solar System was formed as a result of the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The mass of this system is located almost entirely in the Sun. Apart from the Sun, a high percentage of the remainder of the system’s mass is located in the eight solitary planets that...
![An Astronomer\](/media/gallery/spitzer-space-telescope-sirtf/thumbs/thumbs_746643main_pia17008_full.jpg "An Astronomer\")
