A University of Colorado at Boulder space dust counter designed, tested and operated by students that is flying aboard NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto now holds the record for the most distant working dust detector ever to travel through space. (more…)
Washington, D.C.—There are places in space where the gravitational tug between a planet and the Sun balance out, allowing other smaller bodies to remain stable. These places are called Lagrangian points. So-called Trojan asteroids have been found in some of these stable spots near Jupiter and Neptune. Trojans share their planet’s orbit and help astronomers understand how the planets formed and how the solar system evolved.
