It's been a busy week in space exploration. Not only is NASA's Dawn finally delivering images of dwarf planet Ceres, but we're also starting to get some better images of dwarf Planet Pluto as well from the agency's New Horizons.
Along with that, SpaceX sought to make history by landing a rocket on a barge (unfortunately, all did not go according to plan, but this landing was better than the last) and the ISS got its long-awaited espresso machine, much to the relief of the astronauts there.
So what else happened this week? Here's our rundown.
The ISS gets its espresso maker.
This might be the big news of the week, at least to astronauts living on the International Space Station (ISS). Today, SpaceX's Dragon capsule delivered an espresso machine to the station designed exclusively for use in space. This means that the astronauts can finally drink coffee from zero-gravity cups and not a pouch. Italian ISS astronaut Sam Cristoforetti tweeted her excitement about this technology.
How cool is that? During #Futura42 I'll get to operate the first space espresso machine! https://t.co/k3RgiF6cai pic.twitter.com/FN9j6V0rmf
— Sam Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) June 15, 2014
The first color map of Ceres surprises scientists.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft started orbiting dwarf planet Ceres in March and now, we're starting to get back images and information about this particular planetary body. A new color map put together using that data shows that the surface of Ceres is more diverse than we thought and that it was once an "active body."
Thanks to this new map, we now know that Ceres has a heavily-cratered surface, and that some of those craters are larger than scientists thought they would be. Scientists also identified 10 specific bright spots on Ceres' surface, although they do not yet know exactly what those indicate. Hopefully, once Dawn gets closer to Ceres, we will get a better look.
New Horizons sends back the first color photograph of Pluto.
We really don't have any good photos of Pluto yet, and what we have is in black and white. However, as NASA's New Horizons gets closer to the dwarf planet, we're starting to get better photos in than anything we've ever seen. Now, we have our first color photograph of both Pluto and its moon Charon.
Sure, the image is still relatively small, but New Horizons is still about 71 million miles away. By July, though, the spacecraft will be close enough to get those shots that show off Pluto's surface features, something scientists expect to offer lots of surprises and change what we know about the former planet.
Scientists redefine how they believe Mercury formed.
Thanks to an instrument on NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists now think that Mercury formed in a different way than we originally thought. This instrument discovered higher levels of potassium, sodium and chlorine on Mercury's surface. Previously, scientists thought that high-temperature process created Mercury's iron core. However, because of the discovery of these elements, scientists must re-think that because such processes would have eliminated those.
Of course, that now means that we need a new theory about how Mercury formed. Scientists hope that MESSENGER's data will provide new clues.
SpaceX almost nails landing a rocket on a barge.
SpaceX got closer to its goal of making reusable rockets a reality this week when it made another attempt to land a rocket on a barge. This time, Elon Musk's company almost did it: the rocket made a soft landing on the barge, but at an angle. Because of that, it tipped over and then burst into flames.
This, however, is an improvement over the previous try, when the rocket landed on the ship and exploded on impact.
The good news is that this latest attempt provided Musk with information on what went wrong and why the landing was unstable. The SpaceX team will now work on fixing that issue and it's likely the next time, we'll be celebrating history in the making with the world's first reusable rocket.
[Photo Credit: SpaceX]
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