The crew of the International Space Station had a bit of a scare today when they smelled a noxious odor in the air of the confined station. It turned out the smell was coming from a malfunctioning oxygen generator. NASA now believes a rubber gasket in the generator overheated, creating smoke and an odor. The event won’t cause any problems with the upcoming crew change.
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Expedition 14 Launches in Russian Soyuz
A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome early Monday, carrying a new team to the International Space Station. On board are Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, as well as space tourist Anousheh Ansari. The crew of Expedition 14 will remain on board the station, while Ansari will remain on board for a week, and then return with the crew of Expedition 13. They’re expected to arrive at the station early Wednesday.
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Pulsars Confirm Einstein’s Theories
Einstein was right. Well, according to new observations of a double pulsar, he was at least 99.95% right. An international team of astronomers have been measuring the pulsar pair for three years, and have detected several effects that match Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It’s believed the two pulsars are losing energy through the radiation of gravitational waves, and will eventually spiral into each other.
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Huge, Lightweight Planet Discovered
A new, lightweight planet has been discovered orbiting a star 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta. This unusual planet is larger than Jupiter, but it has only half its mass; astronomers estimate it has the same density as cork. The planet, named HAT-P-1, orbits its host star every 4.5 days. A network of automated telescopes detected how the planet dims its parent star by 1.5% when it passes in between the star and the Earth. Why this planet is so swollen is still a mystery to astronomers.
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Subaru Finds the Most Distant Galaxy
The powerful Subaru telescope in Hawai’i has found the most distant galaxy ever seen, located 12.88 billion light-years away – this is only 780 million years after the Big Bang. Observing objects this distant is extremely difficult, not only because of the great distances involved, but because much of the Universe was obscured behind neutral hydrogen. Stars only then began clearing out this neutral hydrogen, making the Universe transparent.
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Identifying Planets with Life
Telescope technology is advancing quickly, as larger and larger instruments are getting built. Eventually, an observatory will be built capable of resolving Earth-sized worlds orbiting other stars. If there’s life there, will we recognize it? Researchers from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and NASA have developed a list of epochs in Earth’s atmosphere’s history that could be visible through this instrument; from the earliest times that life emerged to our current, oxygen/nitrogen-abundant atmosphere.
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Cloud of Ethane Discovered on Titan
When preparing for Cassini’s visit to Saturn’s moon Titan, researchers expected to see the place awash in ethane – a byproduct of the breakdown of methane. They didn’t find the lakes and oceans of ethane they were expecting, but now they have found a large cloud of ethane above Titan’s southern pole. It’s possible that this cloud rains down ethane in the summer, and then condenses around the pole in the winter, accumulating as ice.
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Xena Renamed to Eris
Provisionally designated 2003ub313, and nicknamed Xena by its discoverers, this newly discovered dwarf planet has been officially named Eris by the International Astronomical Union. The name was proposed by Mike Brown, a member of the team that made its discovery, and the name was accepted by the committee. In Greek lore, Eris is the goddess of discord and strife. Its moon has been named Dysnomia, the Daimon spirit of lawlessness.
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International Space Station Spreads its Wings
The International Space Station got a lot bigger today when it spread out its newly installed solar panel arrays. NASA mission controllers sent commands up instructing the station to open the first panel, and then the second, spanning a total of 73 metres (240 feet). The STS-115 astronauts will have one final spacewalk on Friday; Joe Tanner and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper will spend 6.5 hours outside the station working on a variety of tasks. The Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to depart from the station on Sunday, and land on Wednesday.
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Podcast: Pluto’s Planetary Identity Crisis
Pluto. It’s a planet, then it’s not. This week we review Pluto’s history, from discovery to demotion by the International Astronomical Union. Learn the 3 characteristics that make up a planet, and why Pluto now fails to make the grade.
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