Topic: Jupiter (Planet)
Top galleries, list articles, quizzes
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What makes a planet livable? Five things scientists look for.
Scientists have so far detected at least 550 planets outside the solar system – and another 2,000-plus await confirmation. But how to pick out the ones that may be Earth-like havens for life? Here's what one team looks for in assessing any planet's potential habitability and its similarity to Earth's properties.
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Quadrantid meteors and 11 other big skywatching events of 2012
What lies ahead sky-wise for 2012? Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist, selected what he considers to be the top 12 "skylights" for this coming year,
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In Pictures: Timeline of American rockets
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Dwarfs
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Uranus
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Pitch black: The mystery of a darkest planet ever seen
Darkest planet ever discovered is a gas giant but reflects only 1 percent of the light falling on it. Scientists speculate an unknown chemical or gas is absorbing light.
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'Next stop, Jupiter': NASA's mission to the giant planet blasts off
NASA launches Juno, its newest planetary explorer, on a 1.7 billion-mile, five-year voyage to Jupiter. Scientists hope to pierce Jupiter's cloudy veil and fill in the blanks on the origins of the oldest planet.
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What NASA hopes to learn from Juno spacecraft on Jupiter mission
Jupiter, perhaps more than any object in the solar system, is thought to hold the key to understanding planet formation. On Friday, NASA sends the Juno spacecraft hurtling toward Jupiter to probe the planet's constituent parts.
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Asteroid Vesta and Dawn spacecraft get cozy
Asteroid Vesta: The Dawn spacecraft last month slipped into orbit around the 330-mile-wide rocky body with little fanfare and began beaming back incredible details of the pockmarked surface that resembles Earth's moon.
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Trojan asteroid discovered leading Earth's orbit
Trojan asteroid: NASA has discovered that Earth has an asteroid companion traveling just ahead of our planet as it orbits the sun. This so-called Trojan asteroid could serve as a stepping stone to celestial objects farther afield.
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School-bus sized asteroid to hurtle past Earth Monday morning
At 9:26 AM Eastern time on Monday, a small asteroid will make an extremely close pass to our planet, but there is no chance that it will strike it, say NASA officials.
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NASA's Dawn satellite has reached the asteroid belt. First stop: Vesta.
Vesta and Ceres, the two largest objects in the asteroid belt, have mystified scientists for centuries. With NASA satellite Dawn on final approach to Vesta, the wait is almost over.
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Hidden sea on a Saturn moon? New evidence says yes.
Satellite Cassini flew through geyser plumes spouting from Enceladus and gathered ice crystals. These crystals are salt-rich, suggesting that a hidden salty sea lurks beneath Enceladus's icy cap.
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Asteroid Vesta: surface of huge asteroid has mysterious dark spot
Asteroid Vesta has been coming into focus as NASA's Dawn probe comes in for close-up photos, but a mysterious dark spot has scientists scratching their heads.
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Surprise find in Kepler planet hunt: lots of multi-planet systems
NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which is searching for Earth-mass planets orbiting sun-like stars, is finding hundreds of candidate planets, and many more multi-planet systems than expected.
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End of the world May 21st? About a billion years too soon, astronomers say.
Beginning of the end of the world: May 21st is what a California minister (with a considerable following) predicts. Scientists, for their part, consider the sun's 'habitable zone' in calculating when Earth will become toast.
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Cracker-size satellites to launch with Space Shuttle Endeavour
Cracker-size satellites are to launch with the Space Shuttle Endeavour, advancing efforts to populate the Earth's orbit with tiny 'space-chips.'
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Dwarfs
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Antarctic meteorite reveals new mineral
Antarctic meteorite: a new mineral has been discovered in a known Antarctic meteorite first discovered in 1969.
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Uranus
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NASA milestone: MESSENGER spacecraft enters orbit around Mercury
Mercury had been excluded from the travels of instrument-loaded orbiters because of the difficulty of the mission – until now. On Thursday, the NASA MESSENGER started orbiting the planet.
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Europa or bust? Maybe not. Top 9 priorities for planetary research missions
The National Research Council has just unveiled planetary scientists' space-mission wish-list for the next 10 years. Tight federal budgets will provide the reality check. Here's a sampler of missions the panel recommends NASA undertake this decade.
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Auroras
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Exoplanets
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Stardust-NExT to make Valentine rendezvous with comet Tempel 1
NASA sent its Deep Impact probe to comet Tempel 1 in 2005, but failed to get the data it wanted. Now, with Stardust-NExT returning this Monday, NASA gets a second shot.
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Kepler telescope's astonishing haul: 54 planet-candidates in 'habitable zone'
The Kepler space telescope is designed to look for planets like Earth that could have life. But no one expected it to find 54 planet-candidates at Goldilocks distances from their stars – not too warm or cold for life as we know it – in its first four months of operation.
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Cosmic pairs
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Massive Storms
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Scientists plan Uranus probe
Proposed by British scientists as a joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency, the mission would offer the first close-up view of Uranus in 25 years.
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Hey, space hounds! Here's our top space stories of 2010. What are yours?
A burping black hole, water in weird places, and whopper-size new planets are some top space stories of 2010. If you have different discoveries on your list, post them in the comments section.
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