Nature Hub

 From - Sky & Telescope, By - Jeff Hecht, Edited by  Amal Udawatta, This mosaic of asteroid 101955 Bennu was created using data from NASA’s OSIRIS-REX spacecraft, which visited the asteroid from late 2018 to mid-2021. NASA GSFC / University of Arizona Small asteroids are called rubble piles because they come in pieces, but close-up observations show the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu is far from a random accumulation of interplanetary debris. Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Osiris-REX spacecraft say they’ve found evidence it has an inner shell: a compacted layer a few meters thick made of small particles. The results will appear  in  Icarus .   Most asteroids larger than tens of kilometers appear as single bodies, held together by gravity despite cracks and impacts. However, asteroids in the kilometer range or smaller are more often loose aggregations of smaller objects. The latter, so-called “rubble piles,” often have a low overall density and appear to be porous. Examples

   From - Sky & Telescope   By - David Dikinson,   Edited  by - Amal Udawatta,          The first surface image received from Chandrayaan 3.             ISRO In a first for the nation, India’s Chandrayaan 3 soft-landed in the lunar south pole region of the Moon. Russia’s Luna 25 lander crashed, however. Today was a “historic day for India’s space sector,” says India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, on   X , formerly known as Twitter. "Congratulations to ISRO for the remarkable success of Chandrayaan 3 lunar mission.” The landing occurred near Manzinus U Crater on the lunar nearside at 12:34 Universal Time (UT) (8:34 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, or EDT) on Wednesday, August 23rd. This makes India the fourth nation to soft-land on the Moon, after the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China. ESA’s European Space Tracking system (ESTRACK) and NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) partnered with ISRO to provide global tracking coverage for Chandrayaan 3. A cheering mission contr

     By Jonathan Amos     BBC Science Correspondent,    Edited  by - Amal Udawatta, A European space telescope has launched from Florida on a quest to resolve one of the biggest questions in science: What is the Universe made of? The Euclid mission will make an immense 3D map of the cosmos in an effort to tie down some of the properties of so-called dark matter and dark energy. Together, these phenomena appear to control the shape and expansion of everything we see out there. Researchers concede, however, they know virtually nothing about them. Neither dark matter nor dark energy are directly detectable. This big gap in knowledge meant we couldn't really explain our origins, said Prof Isobel Hook. Euclid's insights will be our best bet to get on to a path of understanding, the astronomer at the UK's Lancaster University believes. "It will be like setting off on a ship before people knew where land was in different directions. We'll be mapping out the Universe to tr