It’s no small thing deciding who will occupying our political offices and wield power for the next few years. But you’ll have to excuse some NASA scientists if they have bigger questions on the brain.
A team at NASA last week successfully made contact with a primordial asteroid more than 200 million miles away, as the spacecraft Osiris-Rex reached out and grabbed its surface, with any luck picking up some ancient material to bring back to Earth.
This may worth something:
Second alignment plane of solar system discovered -- ScienceDaily
A study of comet motions indicates that the Solar System has a second alignment plane. Analytical investigation of the orbits of long-period comets shows that the aphelia of the comets, the point where they are farthest from the Sun, tend to fall close to either the well-known ecliptic plane where the planets reside or a newly discovered "empty ecliptic." This has important implications for models of how comets originally formed in the Solar System.
In the Solar System, the planets and most other bodies move in roughly the same orbital plane, known as the ecliptic, but there are exceptions such as comets. Comets, especially long-period comets taking tens-of-thousands of years to complete each orbit, are not confined to the area near the ecliptic; they are seen coming and going in various directions.
Six solar system oddities and why they're important - Big Think
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
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Unlike many other items on this list, this strange occurrence is likely caused by a fairly mundane mechanism. As the planet, which is made primarily of metal, has a high iron content, scientists speculate that the planet is shrinking as it continues to cool down from the high internal temperatures it had when it formed.
However, this isn't the end of things. Why Mercury has such a higher iron content remains a mystery.
Oxygen isotopic heterogeneity in the early Solar System inherited from the protosolar molecular
The Sun is 16 O-enriched (Δ 17 O = −28.4 ± 3.6‰) relative to the terrestrial planets, asteroids, and chondrules (−7‰ < Δ 17 O < 3‰). Ca,Al-rich inclusions (CAIs), the oldest Solar System solids, approach the Sun's Δ 17 O. Ultraviolet CO self-shielding resulting in formation of 16 O-rich CO and 17,18 O-enriched water is the currently favored mechanism invoked to explain the observed range of Δ 17 O.
( A to D and F ) Backscattered electron images and ( E ) combined x-ray elemental map in Mg (red), Ca (green), and Al (blue) of the grossite-bearing CAIs (A) 1579-2-1 , (B) MB2-15 , (C) 1573-4-11 , (D) MB111-33 , and (E and F) 4C from Acfer 214 (CH) and QUE 94627 (CB). The region outlined in (E) is shown in (F).
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Firestone Walker Creates a 'Solar System' • Atascadero News
PASO ROBLES — Tucked behind Firestone Walker Brewing Company is what co-founder David Walker playfully calls the "solar system" — a 2.1-megawatt array that will offset a majority of the brewery's energy usage.
"That is a pretty grand word for it, isn't it, solar system," he says with a hearty laugh before lowering his voice and saying, "Welcome to our solar system."
He is obviously having a bit of fun, but make no mistake, Walker and co-founder Adam Firestone take sustainable brewing very seriously.
NASA 'fist bumps' an asteroid to reveal Solar System's secrets
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is set to sample the diamond-shaped asteroid Bennu. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
NASA has grabbed its first-ever taste of an asteroid. On 20 October, some 334 million kilometres from Earth, the agency's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly touched the surface of an asteroid named Bennu, with the aim of hoovering up a collection of dust and pebbles. NASA should know within a week if it was successful in picking up material. If so, the spacecraft will fly the carbon-rich rubble back to Earth, where scientists can probe it for clues to the history of the Solar System.
Voyager Spacecraft Detect an Increase in The Density of Space Outside The Solar System
In November 2018, after an epic, 41-year voyage, Voyager 2 finally crossed the boundary that marked the limit of the Sun's influence and entered interstellar space. But the little probe's mission isn't done yet - it's now sending home information about the space beyond the Solar System.
And it's revealing something surprising. As Voyager 2 moves farther and farther from the Sun, the density of space is increasing.
It's not the first time this density increase has been detected. Voyager 1, which entered interstellar space in 2012, detected a similar density gradient at a separate location.
The Solar System has a second plane where objects orbit the Sun - Universe Today
When solar systems like ours first start forming, they compress from a loose-and-irregular cloud of gas and dust into a rapidly spinning, thin, flat disk. All the planets, the asteroids, and the comets form in this disk . Once that disk disappears (either through its material accreting onto planets or it getting blasted by outbursts from the young sun), all the objects still maintain that original orbital preference, something called the ecliptic plane.
You can see this effect today, as you watch the sun, the moon, and all the planets travel along roughly the same track on the sky.
Happening on Twitter
It's #SunDay — with a special guest, the Moon! Our satellite's view of the Sun was briefly interrupted by a lunar t… https://t.co/ifjiCopKog NASASun (from NASA Goddard, Greenbelt, MD) Sun Oct 25 14:16:07 +0000 2020
On Oct. 16, our Solar Dynamics Observatory saw a lunar transit in space when the Moon passed through the satellite'… https://t.co/XJHDvWWKuv NASASun (from NASA Goddard, Greenbelt, MD) Mon Oct 19 15:58:02 +0000 2020
🚨 New Episode Alert: An Astronaut's View of Earth Earth has been called "a brilliant jewel in the black velvet sky… https://t.co/vfLJxL8bEs NASA Fri Oct 23 15:04:51 +0000 2020
Our Sun-watching satellite saw a lunar transit from space. The Moon passed through our Solar Dynamics Observatory's… https://t.co/kaCdvCG7Ps NASAGoddard (from Greenbelt, MD USA) Wed Oct 21 12:00:08 +0000 2020
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