Rosetta’s lander Philae has woken up after seven months in hibernation

on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The signals were received at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in

Darmstadt at 22:28 CEST on 13 June.

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Data collected by NASA’s Alice instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft reveal that electrons close to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — not photons from the sun, as had been believed — cause the rapid breakup of water and carbon dioxide molecules spewing from the comet’s surface.

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Brown University researchers have produced new evidence that lunar swirls – wispy bright regions scattered on the moon’s surface – were created by several comet collisions over the last 100 million years.

In a paper published in the journal Icarus,

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An asteroid, designated 1999 FN53, will safely pass more than 26 times the distance of Earth to the moon on May 14. To put it another way, at its closest point, the asteroid will get no closer than 6.3 million miles away (10 million kilometers).

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Royal Astronomical Society press release (On behalf of the University of Warwick)

Water delivery via asteroids or comets is likely taking place in many other planetary systems, just as it happened on Earth, according to new research.

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The asteroid that slammed into the ocean off Mexico 66 million years ago and killed off the dinosaurs probably rang the Earth like a bell, triggering volcanic eruptions around the globe that may have contributed to the devastation, according to a team of UC Berkeley geophysicists.

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European industry has begun work on dual concept studies to design an innovative Asteroid Impact Mission for ESA. The mission is tasked to encounter and chart a distant asteroid, and then witness it being struck by another spacecraft, returning data to help guide planetary defence strategies.

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On Oct. 12, 2017, the asteroid 2012 TC4 is slated to whizz by Earth dangerously close. The exact distance of its closest approach is uncertain, as well as its size. Based on observations in October 2012 when the space rock missed our planet,

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She’s the teenage activist who campaigned for girls’ education in Pakistan, and was shot by the Taliban.

She’s also a Nobel Prize winner, and now Malala Yousafzai has had an asteroid named after her.

In terms of honours –

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If an asteroid were spotted headed towards Earth, what could humanity do about it? ESA’s latest mission is part of a larger international effort to find out.

This month marked the start of preliminary design work on ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission,

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