I don’t want to sound like a broken record here, but I wanted to give you all another reminder that there’s going to be a total lunar eclipse on March 3, 2007.
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Construction for the New Soyuz Launch Facility Begins
Workers broke ground this week on a new construction site at the European Space Agency’s new Soyuz launch base in French Guiana. Currently, Soyuz rockets only blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But at the end of 2008, the rockets will roar from this facility as well.
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A Solution for the Black Hole Information Paradox?
One of the mysteries that has puzzled physicists has to do with black holes. When information goes into a black hole, is it completely destroyed, or is it maintained in some form? Physicist Stephen Hawking believes that black holes will evaporate over long periods of time, slowly releasing featureless particles. Whatever information went into the black hole would then be destroyed.
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New Horizons Gets a Gravity Boost From Jupiter
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft got a big speed boost today, when it used Jupiter’s gravity to give it a slingshot towards its final destination of Pluto. It didn’t exactly skim the planet’s surface, but New Horizons got as close as 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) to Jupiter.
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Hail Damages Space Shuttle Atlantis, Delays Launch
A hail storm pounded the Space Shuttle Atlantis on Tuesday, chewing up foam at the top of the shuttle’s external fuel tank. The damage was so significant that managers decided to delay the shuttle’s launch until the damage can be repaired.
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South Pole Telescope Sees First Light
Telescopes located on the Earth suffer from having to peer through our thick atmosphere. That’s why they’re located at high altitudes, where the air is cold and clear. In fact, the best place on Earth to locate a telescope is in Antarctica – the air doesn’t get any colder or clearer.
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Europe Approves its Mercury Mission
Although NASA has its Messenger spacecraft headed towards the planet Mercury, the European Space Agency is planning a mission of its own called BepiColumbo. The agency recently announced that it has “adopted” the BepiColumbo mission, officially greenlighting its development.
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NASA Reveals a Sample Lunar Base
For the upcoming lunar return missions, the astronauts will be staying on the surface of the Moon far longer than they did during the Apollo. They’ll need someplace safe to live.
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High Resolution Views of Comet McNaught’s Nucleus
Comet McNaught, one of the brightest comets in last few decades recently swept past the Sun, providing a beautiful show. Unfortunately, the comet was so low to the horizon that only viewers in the Southern hemisphere were able to see its brightest point.
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Podcast: The Story of Galaxy Evolution
Our Milky Way is a complex and majestic barred spiral galaxy. But 13.7 billion years ago it began, like all galaxies, from the elementary particles formed in the Big Bang. How did our galaxy grow from nothing to the hundreds of billions of stars we see today?
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