New Frontiers – Page 2 – Astronomy Now

One of NASA’s cleanest spacecraft ever is ready to fly

24 August 2016 Stephen Clark

Five years after winning $1 billion from NASA to mount the first U.S. asteroid sample return mission, scientists and engineers will get their last look at the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft this week as it is closed up inside the nose cone of an Atlas 5 rocket for launch in September.

Scientists on edge awaiting Juno’s perilous encounter with Jupiter

4 July 2016 Stephen Clark

Speeding toward Jupiter at nearly 40 miles per second, NASA’s Juno spacecraft must brave a field of computer-zapping radiation and Jupiter’s tenuous ring of ice and dust particles when it brakes into orbit around the planet Monday and zooms just 2,900 miles from the world’s turbulent cloud tops.

Asteroid that flew close by Earth 26th January has a moon

27 January 2015 Astronomy Now

Radar observations made with NASA’s 70-metre-wide Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California yesterday show that close-approach asteroid 2004 BL86 has a small moon.