The DAWN spacecraft, the one with the awesome Ion Thrusters, that has already performed an historical orbiting maneuver around the asteroid Vesta located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is closing in fast on the largest dwarf planet in the asteroid belt:  Ceres.  Back story here:  https://gregole.com/2015/01/27/mission-to-the-asteroid-belt-codename-dawn/

http://dawnblog.jpl.nasa.gov/2014/08/31/dawn-journal-august-31/

March 6th is the day DAWN will insert itself into orbit around the weird little world that is Ceres – the closer we get, the weirder it looks.  Continue Reading

Bullet Cluster: Searching for Primordial Antimatter

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/bullet/

Yesterday’s reblog of The Science Geek (thesciencegeek.org – bookmark this one!)  blog on dark matter, the weird stuff posited to exist otherwise galaxies don’t make sense, and if galaxies don’t make sense, we don’t exist, but we exist so galaxies make sense but they wouldn’t make sense if it weren’t for dark matter…or if it weren’t for something we haven’t considered yet; because there just isn’t enough stuff (matter) in the universe to explain how galaxies actually hold themselves together.  Continue Reading

I’ve been thinking a lot about where Earth’s oceans came from ever since we landed a probe on a comet, comet CG 67P.

https://gregole.com/2014/11/13/philae-lander-has-landed-on-a-comet/

http://www.livecometdata.com/comets/67p-churyumov-gerasimenko/

It has been conjectured that comets colliding with early Earth provided the water for the oceans.  Continue Reading

Laika the space dog – the first creature to orbit the planet.

“Laika”. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laika.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Laika.jpg Continue Reading

Comets, giant asteroids, dwarf planets.  Welcome to 21st century space exploration.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA17650 Continue Reading

“Dawn Flight Configuration 2”. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dawn_Flight_Configuration_2.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Dawn_Flight_Configuration_2.jpg

The Dawn Mission is another of these totally crazy ideas that somehow got traction, got funded, got built, got launched, is working as planned, and is still just totally crazy.  Continue Reading

Not just any moon but the moon; Luna in Latin, Selene in Greek.

The “Near Side” of the moon.   NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University, Public Domain Continue Reading

Yes, Earth.

Although we call it home, it is after all, another of the planets in our solar system so let’s check out Terra. Continue Reading