Monthly Archives: April 2022

Curiosity Rover

Posted on April 12, 2022 by Emily Bertram

The Curiosity Rover is located on Mars. This car-sized explorer, which is owned by NASA, is designed to investigate Mars climate and geology. It was launched on November 26, 2011 and landed on August 6, 2012. It has traveled over 16 miles exploring Mars and taking pictures for astronomers to study.  Its main goal is […] Continue reading →

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Ceres

Posted on April 12, 2022 by Emily Bertram

The most famous dwarf planet is Pluto but not many people know about Ceres. Ceres is located between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt. There are many interesting facts surrounding this dwarf planet such as: it was the first asteroid to be discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi. Piazzi was an Italian astronomer and […] Continue reading →

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The Oort Cloud

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Lindsey

The Oort cloud is located in the most distant part of our solar system. It is so far away that it is thought to be multiples times farther from the Sun than the outermost parts of the Kuiper Belt. One thing that makes the Oort Cloud unique is that the objects within it do not […] Continue reading →

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Pluto: from planet to dwarf planet

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Lindsey

Pluto is one of the six dwarf planets that we have currently identified in our solar system, and it was the first object discovered in the Kuiper belt. It was discovered in 1930 and was initially declared to be the ninth planet. However, when other objects were discovered in the Kuiper belt (like the dwarf […] Continue reading →

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Space Junk

Posted on April 10, 2022 by josephmaquino9

Now that humanity has reached a stage where we can send equipment and spacecraft to space quite frequently, there is a concern about the build-up of debris around the Earth. The Department of Defense keeps surveillance of more than 27,000 pieces of rogue debris that are orbiting within the near-Earth environment. These pieces of “space […] Continue reading →

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Mini Saturn Orbiting Saturn?

Posted on April 9, 2022 by josephmaquino9

Perhaps the moon in Figure 1 looks like a miniature version of Saturn. Maybe even an empanada. Saturn’s innermost moon Pan was first identified in 1990 in a photograph captured by the Voyager 2 spacecraft (which flew in 1981). Pan has an average diameter of 17.6 miles and orbits about 83,000 miles apart from Saturn. […] Continue reading →

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Asteroid Mining

Posted on April 8, 2022 by jesszhang782

Rocky asteroids contain metals that are commonly used on Earth. What if there was a way to mine those metals from asteroids and bring them back to Earth? The potential gains seem promising, as even a small asteroid can contain enough industrial metals … Continue reading →

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Blog 6: Asteroids

Posted on April 7, 2022 by camsto42

On this Tuesday, April 5th, an asteroid the size of a house flew by the Earth. This asteroid flew by 79,000 miles away from us, which is actually pretty close. That distance is around 1/3 the distance between us and the Moon. Although there is always some panic that an asteroid could hit Earth, this […] Continue reading →

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Life Among the Rings

Posted on April 7, 2022 by isaiandrade01

Perhaps one of the best chances of finding life on another world in our solar system, one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, is a world of great interest. Although considerably smaller than our own Moon, Enceladus is a small world composed of a top layer of ice, which is on average 20 km thick across the […] Continue reading →

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Blog 5: Pluto

Posted on April 7, 2022 by camsto42

Pluto is a very weird, and unknown “mass”. Since being alive, our generation has known Pluto as the 9th planet of the solar system, and now as a giant rock, or dwarf planet. Despite this, Pluto has some very cool features that aren’t seen other places in the solar system, such as Ice Volcanos. Although […] Continue reading →

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