Tag: nasa

We Know What Ceres Looks Like

Finally, we can say that we know what the Dwarf Planet Ceres looks like! No longer are we only able to view blurry images from Hubble. Now we can see a clear enough image to actually make out surface features!

Click on the image to read the article from which I stole the pic (sorry about that). This is cool. The Dawn probe will be orbiting Ceres in March, and doing actual research in April How fricken cool is that!?

Pluto!

The New Horizons spacecraft is about 200 million kilometers from Pluto and NASA released a new image today. You can see Pluto and Charon. You can’t see much, but you can see them. We’re almost there!

Click the image to see the article from which the image was taken.

Pluto! We’re coming!

Ceres

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is approaching Ceres.  Ceres is considered a Dwarf Planet as well as an asteroid.  Not only “an” asteroid, but the original asteroid.  It’s full name is 1 Ceres because it was the first object classified as an asteroid.

Back in 2006 when the whole Pluto-is-not-a-planet fiasco happened there was talk of Ceres being included in the list of planets. It was discovered in 1801 and for a number of years it actually was considered a planet before getting demoted to asteroid. Then in ’06 it was classified a dwarf planet instead of a planet. I felt bad for the little ball of ice. It was like it had been kicked in the teeth twice. I vowed at that time that I would be the first red head to walk on its surface.

How’s that working out for me?

Orion

Today NASA is launching what I believe is the first actual field test of the new Orion capsule. If you haven’t seen Orion yet, it looks a lot like the old Apollo capsules that the lunar astronauts rode to the moon and back except it’s bigger and awesomer.

The countdown was held at three minutes and change for some reason, but the folks in charge are working on clearing whatever it is that’s holding things up.

Fingers crossed that all goes well. A successful test today brings us a step closer to Mars.