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Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute examines the revolution that the astronomer Galileo brought to the world by discovering moons around another planet. This changed what otherwise had persisted as a worldview since Aristotle placed Earth in the center of it the universe. As Galileo's namesake satellite itself crashed into Jupiter last week, one is reminded of one of its most intriguing findings: the close-up views of the Jovian lunar surfaces--Europa, Callisto and Io.
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Friday, October 03, 2003
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The Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission will have the technology to look for signs of life in the light reflected or emitted by planets orbiting nearby stars. But nobody knows exactly what signals life would emit. Clues from studies of Earth's early atmosphere are guiding the mission's technology development.
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Saturday, August 30, 2003
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Exploring unknown oceans and mountains has a long tradition of capturing society's collective imagination. As explorers continue to discover new features of our Earth from space, communicating the discoveries remains a challenge.
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
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NASA's Solar Exploration roadmap details both what is known about our neighborhood, and what new discoveries are hoped for in future missions. This three-part series examines the storyline behind how life came to Earth, and how we might seek to find it elsewhere.
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Sunday, July 27, 2003
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Before interplanetary probes, surprisingly little could be known about Jupiter and its satellites--surprising both because of its size even from a ground telescope and because Galileo himself first saw its satellites centuries ago.
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Monday, June 30, 2003
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To the Mars Exploration Rover mission, water, past or present, is the grail. One way to look for past water is to analyze soil and rock surfaces for evidence of iron-containing minerals (or compounds), which differ depending on whether the environment in the past was wet or dry. Such mineralogical analysis is the purpose of an instrument called the Mössbauer spectrometer.
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Friday, June 06, 2003
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An ancient dry lakebed called Gusev Crater is a landing target for the Mars Exploration Rover early next year. The long arduous process of finalizing what are called paleolake sites is described, and the trip is surprising - from Paris to Mountain View, California.
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Sunday, April 27, 2003
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On September 21, the Galileo space probe will dive into the atmosphere of Jupiter. Its trek to the giant planet has revealed stunning images of the Jovian moons, in particular one of its frozen satellites, Europa. Cynthia Phillips of The SETI Institute provides an account of what further studies might reveal.
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Friday, April 25, 2003
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