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A new Cité de l'Espace
The space adventure park in Toulouse has completely redesigned and renewed its permanent exhibitions. The result is an interactive immersion into man's enthusiasm for the stars.
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@explorezmars: Curiosity live!
On Monday 6 August the Mars rover Curiosity should land on the red planet. From today Enjoy Space and Cité de l’Espace are offering you the chance to follow this event on Twitter, and then by video, direct from the NASA JPL in California!
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Soyuz in Guiana
This is the mythical rocket par excellence, the one that launched Sputnik, the first satellite and Gagarin, the first man in space. The CSG, Guiana Space Centre, is now one of its launch bases: a historic achievement.
Asteroid to pass within 324,600 km of us
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| NASA’s animation showing the asteroid’s flyby. Larger version. |
The “wandering stone” in question, registered as 2005 YU55, is of a reasonable size: 400 m wide. However, there is no risk of an impact with the Earth since the trajectory of this asteroid is sufficiently well known. Astronomers have, for instance, calculated that the closest 2005 YU55 will pass to our planet is a distance of 324,600 km (slightly less than the Earth-Moon distance) on 8 November at 23:28 Universal Time (9 November at 00:28 in France). This close flyby is, above all, a golden opportunity for scientists, and an intensive observation programme has been set up, notably by NASA with the Goldstone radio-telescopes in California and that of Arecibo in Porto Rico. The aim is to draw up radar mapping of the asteroid.
NASA’s article on the passage of 2005 YU55
Published on 4 November 2011
