This week in space from Fraser Cain | | One of my favorite things right now is the collaboration between citizen scientists and space agencies like NASA. And the best examples of this is the amazing photographs of Jupiter that we're seeing from NASA's Juno spacecraft.
The spacecraft is equipped with a camera called JunoCam, which sends unprocessed images back to Earth. Anyone with an internet connection is then able to download the images and process them in Photoshop to created stunning images of Jupiter.
The photo at the top of this newsletter was created by Gerald Eichstädt, but there's other great photos from Jason Major, Kevin Gill, Seán Doran and many others.
By making this data freely available to the public, it sets up a collaboration that showcases both the art and the science of exploration.
If you want to get in on the action, check out this tutorial.
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today
As always, if you have comments or questions, or suggestions on how I can improve this newsletter, please don't hesitate to reply this email or send me an email at frasercain@gmail.com. | | 
There have been 3500 extra-solar planets discovered so far, with more and more coming out every month. One unusual new planetary system is GJ9827, which contains three super-Earth worlds, with 1.6, 1.3 and 2.1 times the mass of the Earth respectively.
During our Iceland adventure, I had a chance to sit down with Dr. Paul Sutter and talk about the limits of science. Why a better version of the Planck Mission can't tell us anything else about the cosmic microwave background radiation.
When mission planners were deciding where to send the Voyager spacecraft, they took advantage of a special alignment to send Voyager 2 past Uranus and Neptune. It turns out, they could have also sent Voyager 1 to Pluto. Why didn't they?
This is an amazing and exciting accomplishment. Engineers with ESA have developed an electric thruster - similar to an ion engine - but instead of using xenon gas, it can bring in air particles from the thin upper atmosphere and use them as thrust. If this works, spacecraft could stay in low Earth orbit for years without ever having to be refueled.
A faulty motor on Curiosity's drill looked like it was going to be stop the rover from collecting samples with this instrument. But clever engineers figured out a new trick where Curiosity's arm provides the stability for the drill. Keep on drillin'.
Since the Universe is only 13.8 billion years old, you'd think you'd only be able to see stuff that's been around that long to emit light. But it turns out, stuff in the Universe is moving, and the Universe itself is expanding, so that what we can see is up to 46 billion light-years away. Ethan Seigel explains.
Rocket launches are spectacular, and group of photographers got a close view to watch the latest GOES-S satellite blast off last weekend. Check out these amazing photos from a group of photographers working with AmericaSpace.
Recent discoveries of water geysers and food for bacteria on Enceladus has made it one of the most promising places to search for life in the Solar System. Researchers found that when they created a simulated Enceladus environment, various kinds of Earth bacteria could thrive in those conditions.
SpaceX crossed a milestone on Tuesday morning with the launch of the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. This was the 50th launch of Falcon 9, carrying the satellite into a Geostationary Transfer Orbit. Because of the heavy payload and orbital trajectory, they didn't try to recover the first stage booster.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been directed at the hot exoplanet WASP-39b. One strange insight about this world is that it seems to have a large amount of water vapour in its atmosphere, triple the amount of Saturn. Of course, that doesn't make it any nicer to live on, with temperatures reaching 750 C in the cloud tops.
I mentioned Kevin Gill earlier in this newsletter as one of the people doing amazing work processing NASA data. Here's a crater on Mars mapped out by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Kevin took that data and then rendered it in 3D to create this image. It feels like you could just step out onto the surface of Mars.
The Japanese mission Hayabusa 2 captured the first image of its target asteroid, Ryugu, on February 26th at a distance of 1.3 million kilometers. It shouldn't be long now for the mission to arrive at the asteroid, where it will blast off a chunk and return it back to Earth.
I know this sounds all backwards, but recently astronaut Scott Tingle was able to control a robot in a simulated Martian landscape on Earth - while he was aboard the International Space Station. This is exciting because it means that future space missions to Mars could have astronauts in orbit controlling robots on the ground, without risking the descent down to the surface.
Remember the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua which recently passed through the Solar System. It looks like gravitational forces are conspiring to eject one of our own asteroids into deep space. Bad Astronomy Phil Plait explains...
Other Interesting Space Stuff
Amazing Astrophotography
Check out this bizarre star trail image captured by @mattpaynephoto, a photographer from Durango, Colorado. These were captured in the Bisti Badlands of New Mexico over the course of five hours and eighteen minutes of star movement.
We feature a different astrophotographer every day on our Instagram page. Want to do a takeover? Use the hashtag #universetoday and I'll check out your photos. | | | |
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