Rubble pile asteroids are like giant space cushions, floating around the Solar System for billions of years. Here’s what that means for planetary defence.
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It’s established Mars was once a planet with surface-level water. So with multiple MARS missions starting next year, the key to seeking out martian life may instead lie in the contents of its ‘dust’.
In five or seven billion years time, the Sun’s life will come to an end. And it will be really spectacular - if you’re watching from far enough away.
The vast majority of matter in the universe is plasma: electrically charged gas. Scientists are untangling how dust interacts with plasma both in space and experimentally closer to home.
After last summer’s Pluto flyby, the New Horizons spacecraft started sending data back to Earth – at 2 kilobits per second. Here’s some of what scientists have learned so far from that rich, slow cache.
Cosmic dust may have jump-started life on Earth as well as on distant planets.
In 1999, US space agency NASA launched the Stardust spaceship with what seemed then to be extraordinary aims. The first task of the mission was to take pictures of a comet, before diving into its tail…
When you clean your house you are probably vacuuming up space dust. Not kidding. It is the same dust that was once part of comets and asteroids. You see that dust in the faint glow it helps create before…
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Assistant Director of Educational Outreach and Research, Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics, and Engineering Research , Baylor University
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Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science and Planetary Exploration, University of Stirling
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Professor of Astrophysics, Imperial College London
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Professor of Planetary Science and Astronomy, George Mason University
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Senior Fellow and Research Physicist, University of California, Berkeley
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Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland
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Assistant Research Professor, Baylor University
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Professor of Physics and Vice Provost of Research, Baylor University
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Research Associate, The Open University
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Professor, Curtin University
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Geologist, Monash University
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Associate Professor, Curtin University
