— NASA's Hubble confirms that galaxies are the ultimate recyclers — New observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are expanding astronomers' understanding of the ways in which galaxies continuously recycle immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy…
— Frozen comet had a watery past, University of Arizona scientists find — For the first time, scientists have found convincing evidence for the presence of liquid water in a comet, shattering the current paradigm that comets never get warm enough to melt…
— Sugar-grain sized meteorites rocked the climates of early Earth and Mars — Bombardments of 'micro-meteorites' on Earth and Mars four billion years ago may have caused the planets' climates to cool dramatically, hampering their ability to support life, according…
— Astrophysicist: White dwarfs could be fertile ground for other Earths — Planet hunters have found hundreds of planets outside the solar system in the last decade, though it is unclear whether even one might be habitable. But it could be that the best place…
— Integral spots matter a millisecond from doom — ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory has spotted extremely hot matter just a millisecond before it plunges into the oblivion of a black hole. But is it really doomed? These unique observations…
— MESSENGER spacecraft to swing into orbit around Mercury — At 8:45 p.m. EDT on March 17, the MESSENGER spacecraft will execute a 15-minute manoeuvre that will place it into orbit around Mercury, making it the first craft ever to do so, and…
— Baby stars born to 'napping' parents — Cardiff University astronomers believe that a young star's long 'napping' could trigger the formation of a second generation of smaller stars and planets orbiting around it…
— Oldest objects in solar system indicate a turbulent beginning — Scientists have found that calcium, aluminium-rich inclusions (CAIs), some of the oldest objects in the solar system, formed far away from our sun and then later fell back into the…
— Oxygen isotope analysis tells of the wandering life of a dust grain 4.5 billion years ago — Scientists have performed a micro-probe analysis of the core and outer layers of a pea-sized piece of a meteorite some 4.57 billion years old to reconstruct the history of its formation,…
Mars is literally pulling on Phoenix spacecraft
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander sped on Sunday morning toward its arrival at Mars, as the tug of the Red Planet's gravity accelerated the craft during the final day of its trip from Earth to Mars.
'Mars is literally pulling on our spacecraft, and at the same time it is pulling on our emotions,' Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said early Sunday afternoon. 'We are excited at how close we are right now to beginning our study of a site where Martian water ice will be within our reach, after all these years of preparations. Our science mission begins as the spacecraft settles into its new home on Mars.'
The spacecraft's speed relative to Mars increased from 6,300 miles per hour at 8:30 AM Pacific Time to 8,500 mph at 12:30 PM, headed for a speed higher than 12,000 mph before reaching the top of the Martian atmosphere.
Phoenix was on track for anticipated entry into the atmosphere at 4:30 PM Pacific Time and reaching the surface at 4:38 PM, although confirmation of those events comes no sooner than 15 minutes, 20 seconds later, due to the time needed for radio signals to travel from Mars to Earth.
Mission controllers decided Saturday night and Sunday morning to forgo the last two opportunities for adjusting the spacecraft's trajectory.
'We are so well on course that those adjustments were not necessary,' said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
The most challenging part of the entire mission, getting from the top of the atmosphere to a safe landing on three legs, still lies ahead. Internationally, only five of the 11 attempts to land a spacecraft on Mars have succeeded.
The Phoenix mission is led by Smith, with project management at JPL. The development partnership is with Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions are from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; the Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
Less than 4 hours left before the landing.
Or subscribe for our Newsletter, a free e-mail publication. It is published practically every day.
NASA scientists predict black hole light echo show
Vast cloud of antimatter traced to binary stars
Hubble finds double Einstein ring
Circumstellar dust takes flight in The Moth