New data gathered by NASA’s QuikScat satellite has found that ice at the Arctic polar ice cap is disappearing rapidly. Just between 2004 and 2005, the spacecraft measured a loss of 14% of the perennial sea ice; ice that normally lasts all year round. This is an amount of ice measuring 720,000 square kilometers (280,000 square miles), an area the size of Texas. Scientists expect that the coverage of perennial sea ice will continue to decrease this year as well.
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Second Spacewalk Ends
The astronauts of STS-115 spent a second day outside the International Space Station working to connect up the new P3/P4 truss element. During the 7-hour spacewalk Dan Burbank and Steve MacLean had to remove insulation covers and hundreds of bolts from the truss. The final test will come on Thursday, when the new electricity-generating solar panels are unfurled to their full 13.7-metre (45-foot) length. Once operating, the new panels will double the amount electricity available to the station. The third and final spacewalk will occur on Friday.
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Hubble Sees the First Bright Galaxies
A new view from the Hubble Space Telescope shows some of the first bright galaxies to emerge in the Universe, appearing around 13 billion years ago, or 900 million years after the Big Bang. Galaxies like these weren’t visible 700 million years after the Big Bang, so smaller galaxies must have merged together quite rapidly for them to get large and bright. The discoveries were made in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and the Great Observatory Origins Deep Survey Fields.
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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Reaches Final Orbit
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its main thrusters for 12.5 minutes on Monday, adjusting the spacecraft into its final orbit around the Red Planet. Its altitude now ranges between 250 kilometers (155 miles) to 316 kilometers (196 miles) above the Martian surface – its final science orbit. The spacecraft will still need to deploy the large antenna for the Shallow Subsurface Radar instrument, and remove the lens cap from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer, which will map the surface of Mars for minerals.
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New Podcast – Astronomy Cast
In case there’s any room left on your podcast schedule, I wanted to let you know about a new project I’ve been working on with Dr. Pamela Gay from Slacker Astronomy. We’ve started a new podcast called Astronomy Cast. Every week, Pamela and I will chat about a specific topic in astronomy to try and give the listeners a deeper understanding of the topic. Over the coming weeks, we’ll talk about dark matter, dark energy, extrasolar planet detection, etc. Less news, and more background and explainer.
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Connection Found Between the Earth and Space Weather
Researchers have found a connection between weather here on Earth, and the weather in space. The connection comes from the ionosphere, a high-altitude region of the Earth’s atmosphere formed by solar X-rays and ultraviolet light. NASA satellites found that regions of the ionosphere become more dense above areas of thunderstorm activity in the lower atmosphere. This is a surprising discovery because the ionosphere and the lower atmosphere are separated by hundreds of kilometres.
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Rings Behind Saturn
In this Cassini photograph, Saturn’s B and C rings pass behind the Ringed Planet. Right at the point where they meet Saturn’s upper atmosphere, they appear to bend slightly. This is caused by refraction, as the light from the rings is bent as it passes through the atmosphere. Cassini took this photo on August 16, 2006 when it was 256,000 kilometers (159,000 miles) from Saturn.
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Human Influences Will Generate More Hurricanes
Climate scientists have uncovered more evidence that human activities are raising ocean temperatures, spawning more powerful hurricanes. The researchers used 22 different climate models to reproduce ocean temperatures over the last 100 years. They found that human-caused greenhouse gases, ozone and aerosol particles are raising ocean temperatures, which provide energy to the strongest hurricanes.
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The Milky Way’s Bulge Formed Early
Although our Milky Way formed from a single, giant cloud of gas and dust, new research has found that the stars in the disc are different from those in the bulge. A new survey has measured the amount of oxygen in 50 stars in the Milky Way using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope to determine when and how the stars formed. The survey found that stars in the bulge probably formed in less than a billion years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was still young; the stars in the disc came later.
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First Female Space Tourist Will Participate in Several Experiments
The International Space Station is going to be a busy place. Right after Atlantis undocks, the next Soyuz mission, carrying the crew of Expedition 14, as well as a space tourist will launch on September 18. Iranian-American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari will live on board the station for a week, partly as a tourist, and partly as a test subject for several research experiments. Four experiments are planned for Ansari, including two that test her blood, one to seek the cause of astronaut low-back pain, and a search for bacteria around the station.
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