On this day in 1999, the Torino Impact Hazard Scale was announced.
The Torino Impact Hazard Scale
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/torino_scale.html

http://newsroom.fit.edu/2016/07/21/alien-solar-system-boasts-tightly-spaced-planets-unusual-orbits/
Located about 1,100 light years away, Kepler-80, named for the NASA telescope that discovered it,
features five small planets orbiting in extreme proximity to their star. MacDonald and Ragozzine
determined the nature of the exoplanetary system through measurements taken with the telescope.

As early as 2012, Kepler scientists found that all five planets orbit in an area about 150 times smaller
than the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, with “years” of about one, three, four, seven and nine days. The
planets’ close proximity to each other and their star allowed the Kepler Space Telescope to detect tiny
variations (about 0.001 percent) in the length of their “years” due to their mutual gravitational interactions.

http://www.nasa.gov/...k-in-nasa-history-chandra-x-ray-observatory-delivered-to-low-earth-orbit-july
This day in 1999, space shuttle Columbia delivered the Chandra X-Ray Observatory -- shown here being installed and mated
to the inertial upper stage inside Columbia’s cargo bay at NASA's Kennedy Space Center -- to low-Earth orbit. NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center has been involved in development of many of the agency’s optical instruments.

Space in Images - 2016 - 07 - Mars navigation
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/07/Mars_navigation
In order to precisely deliver the Schiaparelli landing demonstrator module to the martian surface and then insert
ExoMars/TGO into orbit around the Red Planet, it’s necessary to pin down the spacecraft’s location to within just
a few hundred metres at a distance of more than 150 million km.



To achieve this amazing level of accuracy, ESA experts are making use of ‘quasars’ – the most luminous objects
in the Universe – as ‘calibrators’ in a technique known as Delta-Differential One-Way Ranging, or delta-DOR.

On Wednesday this week, ESA ground stations began the first of many delta-DOR observations that will be used to
precisely locate ExoMars/TGO, using quasar P1514-24, seen inset in an image of ESA's deep-space tracking station
at Malargüe, Argentina, above.

NASA may build replacement instrument for Japanese astronomy mission - SpaceNews.com
http://spacenews.com/nasa-may-build-replacement-instrument-for-japanese-astronomy-mission/
NASA is considering building a replacement for an instrument lost on a Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite
earlier this year that could fly on another Japanese spacecraft.

In a presentation to the astrophysics subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council’s science committee July 20,
Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said the Japanese space agency JAXA has approached NASA
about contributing a copy of its Soft X-Ray Spectrometer (SXS) for a new version of Japan’s Hitomi spacecraft.

The Bedrock Beneath Antarctica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_om9h7vQXh0


Our understanding of what lies beneath the world's biggest ice sheet has taken another leap forward.
This video strips away Antarctic ice to reveal a new, and much more detailed, map of the bedrock below.
This map, called Bedmap2, was compiled by the British Antarctic Survey and incorporates millions of new
measurements, including substantial data sets from NASA's ICESat satellite and an airborne mission
called Operation IceBridge.

VIRGO: paráda
VIRGO: no je výborná! :)

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-mars-rover-can-choose-laser-targets-on-its-own
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is now selecting rock targets for its laser spectrometer -- the first time
autonomous target selection is available for an instrument of this kind on any robotic planetary mission.

Getting lined up for the line-up burn | Rocket Science
http://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2016/07/15/getting-lined-up-for-the-line-up-burn/
On 28 July, ExoMars/TGO will perform one of the most important activities during its voyage to Mars:
a powerful engine burn in deep space that will change the craft’s direction and velocity by some 334 m/second.

This mid-course trajectory correction – dubbed DSM-1 (for deep-space manoeuvre 1) – will line the spacecraft up
to intersect the Red Planet on 19 October, targeting the landing site chosen for the Schiaparelli mission: Meridiani Planum.

MAVEN recently performed a maneuver to raise s/c periapsis by 7.4 km; mean density of Mars' atmosphere reduced from 0.15 to 0.06 kg/km³.
Current periapsis (lowest) altitude of MAVEN is near 148 km above the Martian surface.