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The Most Amazing Space Stories This Week!
Jupiter's volcanic moon Io boasts an atmosphere made from sulfur dioxide gas — when the satellite is in sunlight. For the first time, researchers have observed the atmosphere during the moon's daily pass through Jupiter's shadow, watching that atmosphere temporarily freeze and collapse.Credit: Southwest Research Institute
August 8th, 2016 | 09:20 AM | 1486 views
Space.com
Comets' true ages are revealed, Jupiter moon Io shows off a neat trick and a private company wins permission to land on the moon — it's Space.com's top news stories of the week. Plus, don't forget to look up for Thursday's Perseid meteor shower peak.
Leftover comets
A new study suggests that comets date all the way back to the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago, rather than being fragments of more recent collisions — making them valuable windows into the system's early days.
Another!
NASA has ordered a second crewed mission from SpaceX, which will bring new crewmembers to the International Space Station using their Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. In addition to the two missions ordered from SpaceX, NASA has ordered two from Boeing.
Feeling the groove
By measuring rapidly-blinking neutron stars called pulsars, which act as very accurate cosmic clocks, researchers are tracking down the disruptive effects of gravitational waves to pinpoint merging black holes.
Io's collapsing atmosphere
Jupiter's moon Io, the solar system's most volcanically active body, has a collapsible atmosphere: every day when the moon passes through Jupiter's shadow, its sulfur dioxide shroud freezes and coats the surface, and then turns back to gas when it reaches sunlight again. Researchers have observed this phenomenon for the first time by measuring the atmosphere's heat signature.
Good to go
For the first time, a private company has gained permission to land on the moon: The U.S. government has approved the company Moon Express's planned 2017 robotic lunar landing. Moon Express hopes to fly commercial missions to the moon and extract resources such as water ice
Warm-hearted Ceres
New research suggests that the interior of the dwarf planet Ceres may still be heated by radioactive material, despite its icy exterior. The data from when NASA's Dawn spacecraft flew by Ceres reveals that its core is rock with a shell of icy, salty and rocky material, and that it might still be warm — surprising because based on its size the dwarf planet should have cooled down long ago.
4 years of Curiosity
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has roamed the Red Planet for four years now, searching for signs of ancient life, after a dramatic landing by rocket-powered sky crane in 2012.
ExoMars fires up
The European Space Agency's ExoMars spacecraft fired up its main engine for nearly an hour in its first critical deep-space maneuver on the way to Mars. It's projected to use three more engine firings to stay on course en route, with a Mars arrival in October.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft caught amazing photos as the moon passed between the probe and the sun, but didn't return to "science mode" afterwards. Its engineers back on Earth are steadily bringing its instruments back online.
Nobody home
In this "stellar desert," no new stars are born: A big swath near the center of the Milky Way seems to be devoid of young stars called Cephids — the disk stretches 8,000 light years from the Milky Way's core.
Watch for supercharged sky
The Perseid meteor shower, peaking the night of Aug. 11 – 12, is already one of the best shooting star shows for Northern hemisphere skywatchers — and this year, thanks to the pull of Jupiter, it should be even more spectacular. The shower may reach 200 meteors per hour.
Source:
courtesy of SPACE
by SPACE.com
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