Space

<p>Two NASA and one European spacecraft, including NASA’s MAVEN mission led by the University of Colorado Boulder, have gathered new information about the basic properties of a wayward comet that buzzed by Mars Oct. 19, directly detecting its effects on the Martian atmosphere.</p>

<p>NASA’s newest orbiter at Mars, MAVEN, took precautions to avoid harm from a dust-spewing comet that flew near Mars yesterday and is studying the flyby’s effects on the Red Planet’s atmosphere, according to University of Colorado Boulder Professor Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator on the mission.</p>

<p>NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft has provided scientists their first look at a storm of energetic solar particles at Mars and produced unprecedented ultraviolet images of the tenuous oxygen, hydrogen and carbon coronas surrounding the Red Planet, said University of Colorado Boulder Professor Bruce Jakosky, the mission’s principal investigator.</p>

<p>A team of scientists including a University of Colorado Boulder professor used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to make the most detailed global map yet of the glow from a giant, oddball planet orbiting another star, an object twice as massive as Jupiter and hot enough to melt steel.</p>

<p class="p1">The spacecraft for a NASA mission to probe the climate history of Mars led by the University of Colorado Boulder slid seamlessly into orbit at about 8:24 p.m. MDT on Sunday, Sept. 21, the last major hurdle of the 10-month, 442-million-mile journey.</p>

<p>The public is invited to attend a watch party at the University of Colorado Boulder on Sunday, Sept. 21, when NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, designed to understand past climate change on Mars, inserts itself into orbit after a 10-month journey to the planet.</p>

<p>After spending nearly six months on the International Space Station, University of Colorado Boulder astronaut-alumnus Steve Swanson is slated to drift back to Earth in a Russian space capsule Sept. 10 before banging down on the steppe of Kazakhstan.</p>

<p>Two University of Colorado Boulder student aerospace engineering science teams have won prestigious international and national awards for the design of real-world space missions to Mars and the moon.</p>

<p>The importance of Mars exploration and how the aerospace industry partners with university researchers to advance one of Colorado’s leading economic sectors will be featured at a free program Monday, Sept. 8, in south Denver.</p>

<p>Just as diamonds with perfect symmetry may be unusually brilliant jewels, the quantum world has a symmetrical splendor of high scientific value. Confirming this exotic quantum physics theory, JILA physicists led by theorist Ana Maria Rey and experimentalist Jun Ye have observed the first direct evidence of symmetry in the magnetic properties—or nuclear “spins”—of atoms. </p>