The Philae probe, dropped onto a comet by the Rosetta spacecraft, has made contact with a surface thought too hard to be on a comet and has detected a few organic molecules new to comet exploration.
Instruments and techniques
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Philae Scientists Make Plans for Revived Mission
With their robotic explorer awake again, Philae's handlers get ready to give Comet 67P-Churyumov-Gerasimenko renewed scrutiny and to get a better bead on where the lander clings to the spinning orb of rock and ice.
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NASA Selects Science Instruments for Europa Mission
The instruments chosen for a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa include cameras, spectrometers, magnetometers, and an ice-penetrating radar.
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Mercury's Secrets Revealed by Soon-to-Crash Spacecraft
From finding water ice on Mercury to discovering magnetic field lines cutting through the planet, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has spent its lifetime unveiling Mercury's secrets.
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Group Calls for More Focus on Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
A declaration from astronauts, scientists, and others calls for dramatically increasing the detection and tracking of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.
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Pluto-Bound Spacecraft Crosses Orbit of Neptune
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which is en route to explore Pluto and its planetary system in 2015, crossed the orbit of Neptune on 25 August.