Tag: SWRI

  • NASA’s New Horizons probe wakes up for New Year’s Day flyby

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    Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Speeding through the outer reaches of the solar system nearly 3.8 billion miles from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has awakened from a five-and-a-half month slumber, ready for a second act after its 2015 flyby of Pluto with a New Year’s Day encounter with a primordial…

  • New Horizons spacecraft’s next distant destination gets a nickname

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    This image of Ultima Thule, or 2014 MU69, was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI The frozen faraway miniature world targeted for a high-speed flyby by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on Jan. 1, 2019, now has a nickname: Ultima Thule. Formally known as 2014 MU69, the robotic space probe’s next target…

  • Juno’s latest imagery from Jupiter

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    This image of Jupiter’s swirling south polar region was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it neared completion of its tenth close flyby of the gas giant planet on Dec. 16, 2017. Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/Gerald Eichstädt NASA’s Juno spacecraft, now on its 11th…

  • Plot thickens as New Horizons moves within year of next flyby

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    Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of 2014 MU69. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben The final days before NASA’s New Horizons probe barrels in on its next destination on Jan. 1, 2019, should prove eventful, with scientists trying to sort out whether a distant mini-world detected by the…

  • Scientists firm up flyby plan for New Horizons’s next destination

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    Artist’s illustration of the New Horizons spacecraft communicating with Earth. Credit: NASA Now more than two years outbound from its historic encounter with Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is on target for a fleeting flyby less than 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) from 2014 MU69, an icy, city-sized world set to become the most distant object…

  • New Horizons’ next target might be a binary pair

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    One artist’s concept of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, the next flyby target for NASA’s New Horizons mission. This binary concept is based on telescope observations made at Patagonia, Argentina, on July 17, 2017, when MU69 passed in front of a star. New Horizons theorize that it could be a single body with a large…

  • First images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot reach Earth

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    STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION An enhanced color view of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot from the Juno spacecraft flyby Monday. Credit: NASA / SWRI / MSSS / Greg Smye-Rumsby / Astronomy Now Two days after NASA’s Juno spacecraft streaked over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, pictures of the solar system’s largest, most powerful storm,…

  • Ride with NASA’s Juno orbiter over turbulent Jupiter

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    Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran Take a trip around Jupiter with NASA’s Juno spacecraft in a time-lapse animation created from a sequence of images taken during the probe’s last close-up flyby of the gas giant May 19. The orbiter’s JunoCam imager repeatedly scanned across the planet as the craft soared over Jupiter’s north pole, passed within around…

  • Juno spacecraft makes another pass by Jupiter

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    This image of cyclones near Jupiter’s north pole was captured by the JunoCam imager during Friday’s flyby. Credit: NASA/SWRI/MSSS Making its fifth science pass close to Jupiter’s turbulent cloud tops, NASA’s Juno spacecraft sailed by the solar system’s king planet Friday to collect another treasure trove of data on the giant world’s atmosphere, internal structure,…

  • Juno orbiter races by Jupiter on fourth science pass

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    This enhanced-color image of a mysterious dark spot on Jupiter seems to reveal a Jovian “galaxy” of swirling storms. The JunoCam imager acquired this image during Juno’s flyby Feb. 2 from an altitude of about 9,000 miles (14,500 kilometers). Citizen scientist Roman Tkachenko enhanced the color to bring out the rich detail in the storm and…