SPACE.com: NASA’s Solar Probe Plus, scheduled to launch no later than 2018, is designed to study the Sun’s outer atmosphere. Five science experiments were chosen from thirteen proposals to fly on the spacecraft, which is being built at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory; the instruments include a solar wind particle detector and a 3D camera. “The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics: Why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun’s visible surface, and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system?” said Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s heliophysics division.
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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