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Articles on NASA

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Without satellites, modern technologies such mobiles phones and GPS would not exist. Flickr/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Curious Kids: How do satellites get back to Earth?

We’ve all seen videos of satellites being blasted off into space - but once they’re locked in orbit around the earth, how do we bring them back down?
Cassini makes the first radio occultation of Saturn’s rings producing this simulated image with green for particles smaller than 5cm and purple where particles are larger. NASA/JPL

The beauty and mystery of Saturn’s rings revealed by the Cassini mission

The Cassini space probe took us up close and through the beautiful rings of Saturn. It captured some amazing images, and even the sound of the rings during its mission.
A Cassini portrait of five of Saturn’s moons. Janus (179km across) is on the far left, Pandora (81km across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F ring, Enceladus (504km across) is centre, Rhea (1,528km), is bisected by the right edge of the image and the smaller moon Mimas (396km) is seen beyond Rhea also on the right side of the image. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

What Cassini’s mission revealed about Saturn’s known and newly discovered moons

The Cassini space probe discovered several new moons on its mission to Saturn, and revealed fresh views of the moons we already knew about.
Lasers being shone from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. These lasers help remove the twinkles in the night sky and help astronomers see stars clearer on Earth than ever before. F. Kamphues/ESO

Curious Kids: Why do stars twinkle?

How exactly do the stars twinkle in the night sky? As it turns out, the answer is full of hot air… and cold air.
A watercolour of a dingo, pre-1793, from John Hunter’s drawing books. By permission of The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, London.

Living blanket, water diviner, wild pet: a cultural history of the dingo

In Indigenous culture, dingoes were prized as companions, garments and hunting aids. Europeans later tried to tame dingoes as ‘pets’ but their wild nature has prevailed.
A view from the ‘Kimberley’ formation on Mars taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover. The strata in the foreground dip towards the base of Mount Sharp, indicating flow of water toward a basin that existed before the larger bulk of the mountain formed. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The new space race: why we need a human mission to Mars

We could learn a lot from any mission to send people to Mars, such as whether there’s life elsewhere in the universe or even the technology for new household appliances.
It’s happened before: why we need to plan for the next doomsday event that could wipe out much of life on Earth. Shutterstock/solarseven

How to backup life on Earth ahead of any doomsday event

NASA says there are ten “potentially hazardous” asteroids close to Earth. Good reason to make sure we have a backup plan should any catastrophic event wipe of much of life on Earth.

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