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18th May 2011

PSSRI scientists selected to study Instrument Package for European Lunar Lander

The European Space Agency, Directorate of Human Spaceflight and Operations, is planning a lunar lander mission in 2018 as part of its programme for future human exploration of the Earth’s moon.  The lunar lander mission to the south pole proposes to carry a Lunar Volatiles Resource Analysis Package (L-VRAP) ...

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13th May 2011

NASA shortlists Titan proposal involving PSSRI Team

NASA has shortlisted an investigation from The Open University to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, for a future key planetary mission.NASA has selected three science investigations from which it will pick one potential 2016 mission. One of the planetary missions selected to pursue preliminary design studies is the ...

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28th February 2011

Stardust spacecraft successfully completes second comet flyby

PSSRI member Simon Green attended the Stardust NExT encounter campaign at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on February 14th for the first ever re-visit of a comet.Stardust, launched in 1999, has already proved a spectacular success, completing its prime mission to collect dust particles ejected from comet Wild 2 ...

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27th October 2010

PSSRI celebrates 25 years of history

The 7, 8 and 9 October saw the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences celebrate 25 and 40 years respectively of science at The Open University. The celebrations comprised a two-day conference with talks by former PhD students and research staff and an ...

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24th August 2010

Microbes taken from Devon village survive in space for 553 days

PSSRI's Professor Charles Cockell talks to us about his widely reported research on the microbes from an English seaside village sent into space, he says "The fishing village of Beer may not seem like an extreme environment, but the surfaces of the cliffs there are exposed to desiccation, solar radiation, ...

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11039206 BBC News

 

5th August 2010

PSSRI to play a role in next stage of Mars exploration

PSSRI to play a role in next stage of Mars exploration

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have embarked on a joint programme to study the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Mars from 2016. They have just announced the providers of five scientific instruments for the first mission, including a consortium in which The Open University has a major role.The ...

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30th April 2010

Four Decades Of Earth And Planetary Sciences At The OU

The Department of Earth Sciences at The Open University has been in existence for forty years this year, and it is over 25 years since the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute (PSSRI, originally the PSU then PSRI) joined us in the 1980s. The Open University celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, but we ...

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1st April 2010

PSSRI Professor Joins Space Leadership Council

PSSRI Professor Joins Space Leadership Council

Lord Drayson, Minister for Science and Innovation, has invited John Zarnecki, Professor of Space Science, to be a member of the Space Leadership Council. The leadership council is associated with the new UK Space Agency, announced last week, which will take over responsibility for government and the key budgets for ...

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16th March 2010

One small step

One small step

PSSRI Professors John Zarnecki and Colin Pillinger had the honour of meeting Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to step onto the Moon, together with Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, the mission known as the "successful failure" and Eugene Cernan, the last man on the Moon with Apollo 17, he ...

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23rd February 2010

PSSRI Team to Observe Asteroids in a Spin

PSSRI Team to Observe Asteroids in a Spin

PSSRI Senior Lecturer Simon Green, PDRA Stephen Wolters and postgraduate student Ben Rozitis are part of a UK team that has been awarded over 80 nights on two telescopes at the European Southern Observatory to investigate the changing spin of asteroids.The Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect is a ...

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s.f.green@open.ac.uk Dr Simon Green

 

29th January 2010

The Colour of Dinosaur Feathers Revealed

The Colour of Dinosaur Feathers Revealed

Dr Diane Johnson has co-authored a paper published online this week in Nature which for the first time describes the identification of the colours on the feathers of dinosaurs and bird species from the early cretaceous.The research found that the theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx had simple bristles – precursors ...

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http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100127/full/news.2010.39.html Nature

http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/melanosomes/news.html Research in Bristol

 

8th January 2010

Gaia Research within PSSRI.

On the night of Monday 4th January 2010, the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) reached the milestone of having observed more than 400,000 stellar spectra (400,039 to be exact) since 2003, making it one of the largest astronomical spectroscopic surveys ever. RAVE is measuring radial (line-of-sight) velocities and ...

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press-office@open.ac.uk General media inquiries

+44 (0) 1908 654316 +44 (0) 1908 654316

 

4th November 2009

Students defy gravity to investigate asteroids!

Students defy gravity to investigate asteroids!

PhD students Ben Rozitis and Naomi Murdoch with Thomas de Lophem, studying physics, became weightless for the very first time.Their parabolic flight experiment contained over one million small glass beads and is designed to investigate how granular material moves on the surface of an asteroid.A typical km-sized ...

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http://www.open.ac.uk/pssri/astex/ AstEx website

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press-office@open.ac.uk General media inquiries

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Contact

n.a.murdoch@open.ac.uk Naomi Murdoch

 

12th June 2009

The 40th anniversary of the first Apollo landing

To mark the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo landing. New Scientist is inviting its readers to suggest what Neil Armstrong should have said when he made that one small step for man. The best entry will win a rare piece of lunar meteorite. It takes a battery of tests to tell if a meteorite really comes from the ...

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17213-competition-win-a-piece-of-moon-rock.html New Scientist Website

External Contact

r.c.greenwood@open.ac.uk Dr Richard Greenwood

 

18th December 2008

PSSRI research reaffirmed as world leading.

PSSRI research reaffirmed as world leading.

PSSRI's position as one of the world's leading centres for planetary science and space research has been reaffirmed by the 2008 UK RAE results.PSSRI were part of the cross-disciplinary submission made by CEPSAR that saw 70% of its research activity fall into the highest categories (4* and 3*) of world ...

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press-office@open.ac.uk General media inquiries

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15th October 2008

Boltysh impact crater drill core samples arrive in UK

Boltysh impact crater drill core samples arrive in UK

One hundred and two core boxes containing over 400 m of core from the Bolytsh impact crater in the Ukraine have arrived in Aberdeen as part of the NERC funded project into the environmental effects that resulted from this 65 million year old impact crater. CEPSAR scientists Jon Watson, Simon Kelley and Iain Gilmour ...

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i.gilmour@open.ac.uk Iain Gilmour

 

22nd September 2008

Near Earth Asteroids

Near Earth Asteroids

Ben Rozitis has recently returned from a ten week trip to NASA Ames Research Centre, California, where he participated in the 2008 Small Spacecraft Summer Study on Near Earth Objects. This compliments his Ph.D. studies at PSSRI, in which he has already produced a thermo-physical asteroid model. Ben is involved with ...

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b.rozitis Ben Rozitis

 

25th July 2008

PSSRI people to attend Annual Picnic

Some PSSRI staff who are also members of the Royal Astronomical Society shall attend, on Sunday 3rd August, the annual RAS picnic in Greenwich.For a reminder, on Friday 1st August, a partial eclipse of the Sun will occur over the UK.

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press-office@open.ac.uk General media inquiries

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22nd May 2008

NASA Stardust mission samples analysed.

NASA Stardust mission samples analysed.

PSSRI's Dr Ian Franchi will be using the new Diamond synchrotron source to analyse samples of a comet returned by the NASA Stardust mission.Along with colleagues from the University of Leicester (including ex-PSSRI member Dr John Bridges) the team will be performing synchrotron X-ray fluorescence analyses of ...

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http://www.diamond.ac.uk/AboutDiamond/default.htm synchrotron light source.

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press-office@open.ac.uk General media inquiries

+44 (0) 1908 654316 +44 (0) 1908 654316

Contact

i.a.franchi@open.ac.uk Dr Ian Franchi

 

22nd May 2008

NASA Visits PSSRI

The Director of NASA’s Ames Research Centre in California, Dr Pete Worden, visited PSSRI on Thursday 22 May to discuss research areas of common interest. These included hypervelocity impacts, analysis of extraterrestrial material, lunar research and astrobiology. (CEPSAR and NASA Ames have hypervelocity impact ...

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http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/about/ Astrobiology institute

http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/ Lunar science institute

http://www.arc.nasa.gov NASA Ames

Media Contact

press-office@open.ac.uk General media inquiries

+44 (0) 1908 654316 +44 (0) 1908 654316

External Contact

t.a.ward@open.ac.uk Tracey Ward

55988 55988

 

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