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From Mercury to Morocco, and onward to Yale: a meteorite’s tale

Talk about a precious stone — the largest piece of the only known meteorite from the planet Mercury has found its way to Yale, where it is now on display at the Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Known as NWA 7325, the fist-size, greenish space rock is a rarity among rarities: there just aren’t many verified planetary meteorites. Scientists know of about 70 from Mars and, until now, none from any of the other planets in Earth’s solar system. There are about 180 known meteorites from the moon. NWA 7325 is the first believed to be from Mercury. (more…)

NASA Releases Images of Man-Made Crater on Comet

By Guest PostFebruary 17, 2011Science2005 deep impact mission, b 17 bomber, coma, comet, comet atmosphere, comet tempel 1, crater, denver, don brownlee, images, joe veverka, jpl, lockheed martin space systems, mission operations, NASA, new terrain, nucleus, pete schultz, stardust, stardust next, stardust spacecraft, tim larson, valentine day

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus.

The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST (11:40 p.m. EST) at a distance of approximately 178 kilometers (111 miles). Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet. It also accumulated 468 kilobytes of data about the dust in its coma, the cloud that is a comet’s atmosphere. The craft is on its second mission of exploration called Stardust-NExT, having completed its prime mission collecting cometary particles and returning them to Earth in 2006. (more…)

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From Mercury to Morocco, and onward to Yale: a meteorite’s tale

NASA Releases Images of Man-Made Crater on Comet