NASA activated a new section of its website to host the application Vesta Trek, which aims to provide a detailed view of the giant asteroid Vesta. This application works in browsers allowing anyone to explore Vesta in detail thanks to its interactive maps. Among its tools, there’s also one that allows you to export topographic elements to recreate them with a 3D printer.
During the past weekend, ESA’s space probe Rosetta has taken a new flyby about 14 kilometers (about 8.6 miles) away from the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This means that it hasnt come as close as in February, however, the comet’s increasing activity caused some problems in Rosetta. Among the consequences, it had serious difficulties in communicating with ESA’s mission control.
An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describes the results of a research carried out by combining the observations made with ESA’s Herschel and Planck space telescopes. The purpose was to find protoclusters, the precursors of today’s galaxy clusters seen in the distant past when the universe was only three billion years. This will help to understand how these huge groups of tens, hundreds and even thousands of galaxies formed and evolved.
At the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference being held in The Woodlands, Texas, some surprising discoveries made on Mars thanks to NASA’s space probe MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) were presented. They’re a cloud of dust at high altitudes and an aurora that goes deep into the Martian atmosphere.
An article just published in the journal “Nature” shows a research based on the detections carried out by NASA’s Cassini space probe. Among other information provided by the mission there’s also evidence that on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, there are signs of the presence of hydrothermal vents. This means that there are waters heated by geothermal energy similar to those existing on Earth, where the presence of various microorganisms abounds, particularly those known as extremophiles.