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The French Space Agency (CNES) commissioned Damien Labrousse to recreate the Jupiter Mission Control Room in Lego for display at the Kourou spaceport. The impressive build features 6,000 bricks, 80 minifigs, a working video screen that shows the rocket launch sequence and a sound system, displaying launch countdown.

A fifth giant planet was kicked out of the early solar system, according to computer simulations by a US-based planetary scientist. The sacrifice of this gas giant paved the way for the stable configuration of planets seen today, says David Nesvorný, who believes that the expulsion prevented Jupiter from migrating inwards and scattering the Earth and its fellow inner planets.

A fifth giant planet was kicked out of the early solar system, according to computer simulations by a US-based planetary scientist. The sacrifice of this gas giant paved the way for the stable configuration of planets seen today, says David Nesvorný, who believes that the expulsion prevented Jupiter from migrating inwards and scattering the Earth and its fellow inner planets.

...video of which 2/3rds length is the title slide...

Thanks for taking the hit for us, big J!

It may not show up on MapQuest, but NASA scientists are betting that the best route to Jupiter and its ice-crusted moon Europa runs through an underwater cavern in Mexico.

The atom may not be a planetary system, but under specific circumstances it can behave like one. That is the curious finding of physicists in Austria and the US, who have confirmed a 1994 prediction that, in the presence of an applied electromagnetic field, electrons in very highly energized atomic states should behave like the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter.

Bohr's model finally not so wrong?

Informative Q&A.

I could come up with a name for the onboard computer of the spacecraft...

here's something we didn't consider yesterday in the meeting on extra-solar planets!

this is because you did not read the nature paper I have posted (see post a few lines below ...)

Let's all start up some crazy space companies together: harvest hydrogen on Jupiter, trap black holes as unlimited energy supplies, use high temperatures close to the sun to bake bread! Apparently it is really easy to do just about anything and Deep Space Industries is really good at it. Plus: in their video they show Mars One concepts while referring to ESA and NASA.

hmm aside from the technological feasibility, their approach still should be taken as an example, and deserve a little support. By tackling such difficult problems, they will devise innovative stuffs. Plus, even if this doom-to-fail endeavour may still seem you useless, it creates jobs and make people think... it is already a positive! Final word: how is that different from what Planetary Resources plan to do? It is founded by a bunch of so-called "nuts" ... (http://www.planetaryresources.com/team/) ! a little thought: "We must never be afraid to go too far, for success lies just beyond" - Proust

I don't think that this proposal is very different from the one by Planetary Resources. My scepticism is rooted in the fact that - at least to my knowledge - fully autonomous mining technology has not even been demonstrated on Earth. I am sure that their proposition is in principle (technically) feasible but at the same time I do not believe that a privately funded company will find enough people to finance a multi-billion dollar R&D project that may or may not lead to an economically sensible outcome, i.e. generate profit (not income - you have to pay back the R&D cost first) within the next 25 years. And on that timescale anything can happen - for all we know we will all be slaves to the singularity by the time they start mining. I do think that people who tackle difficult problems deserve support - and lots of it. It seems however that up till now they have only tackled making a promotional video... About job creation (sorry for the sarcasm): if usefulness is not so important my proposal would be to give shovels to two people - person A digs a hole and person B fills up the same hole at the same time. The good thing about this is that you can increase the number of jobs created simply by handing out more shovels.

Combination of the radio occultation method plus change in the orbital plan in order to observe new target (the volcanic outgassing from Io satellite) by passing though the magnetosphere of Jupiter. It poses a challenge in the sensitivity of the electronics. Maybe it is accepted if the risk is low. Idea for the next GTOC challenge maybe? Optimising the cost on the electronics vs the frequency of passages?

We made it to Slashdot's frontpage !!! :)

Congratulations, gentlemen!

NASA (WPMI) Glowing a dark magenta, the newly discovered GJ 504b, a Jupiter-sized planet with four times the mass, is posing a challenge to scientist on how giant planets are formed.

Great explanations of space stuff for people who are not experts (for example children) :-)

Nice... Now I have a lame question: after you have discovered ~500k asteroids, all moving (I assume more or less) chaotically in that asteroid belt, how do you tell one from another?

That's what I thought but when presented as a green "goo" in the video, it appears rather unordered... so I guess this is just an impression evoked by a not-to-scale presentation?

It depends... orbits can be chaotic if the orbital period is in a resonance with Jupiter, although such orbits are not stable. Such configurations tend to get disrupted pretty quickly (in cosmic terms :P) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkwood_gap

already on slashdot with a lot of comments. Amazing work, I have no words ! I will just start playing

best comment, act style : If we assume teleporters, it wouldn't even take a second. Therefore my completely unrealistic solution is much better than your completely unrealistic