The Italian Leonardo module was carried to the International Space Station filled with more than 3,175 kg (7,000 pounds) of clothing, food and supplies. The shuttle and station astronauts emptied it out, and today they’re going to fill it back up again with 1,800 kg (4,000 pounds) of unneeded hardware and trash. Mission Specialists Mike Fossum and Piers Sellers will also prepare themselves for tomorrow’s spacewalk – the third and final of the mission. Discovery is now halfway through its mission.
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Detailed Look at Europe’s ExoMars Rover
Spirit and Opportunity have the Red Planet all to themselves for now, but ESA is planning to send a rover of its own to crawl the surface of Mars. The ExoMars rover is a wheeled robotic rover with a similar look to the NASA rovers, but it will have different science objectives and enhanced capabilities. Instead of looking for evidence of past water, ExoMars will be searching for traces of life, both past and present. If all goes well, ExoMars will launch to Mars in 2011.
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Second Spacewalk Wraps Up
Mission specialists Piers Sellers and Mike Fossum spent the day outside the International Space Station today, completing the second spacewalk of space shuttle mission STS-121. During their 6-hour, 47-minute excursion, the astronauts completed the installation of a spare thermal pump outside the Quest Airlock, and performed maintenance on the mobile transporter. The third and final spacewalk for the mission is scheduled for Wednesday, when astronauts will test out different methods to repair the shuttle’s heat shield.
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Spray of Ice from Enceladus
This Cassini photograph shows Saturn’s moon Enceladus spraying water ice from its southern pole. And if you look carefully, you can also see Rhea’s southern pole just peeking out from below Saturn’s rings. Cassini took this photograph on June 9, 2006 when it was approximately 3.9 million kilometers (2.4 million miles) from Enceladus.
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MetOp Prepares for Launch
In about a week, ESA’s MetOp-A satellite will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. If all goes well, the meteorological satellite will be placed on July 17 by a Russian Soyuz rocket into a low Earth polar orbit. MetOp-A carries 11 scientific instruments designed to scan the Earth’s atmosphere, land and oceans. There will eventually be three similar MetOp satellites flying in roughly the same orbit at an altitude of 817km (507 miles) collecting high resolution data from the Earth.
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What’s Up this Week: July 10 – July 16, 2006
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! The Moon starts off the week, but be sure to watch for aurora activity despite its bright influence. There will be plenty of objects to study, and take the time to check Heaven’s Above for visible passes of Discovery and the ISS. Now, grab your binoculars or scopes, because…
Here’s what’s up!
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Young Neutron Star Won’t Act its Age
This image, taken by ESA’s XMM-Newton observatory, shows the heart of supernova remnant RCW103. This is all that remains of a star that exploded about 2,000 years ago. Although it looks like other supernova remnants, the central neutron star spins much too slowly – 6.7 hours per revolution. A new neutron star normally spins quite rapidly, but then its powerful magnetic field slows it down. But a magnetic field couldn’t do that within 2,000 years, as astronomers have observed.
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Solar Shade to Reverse Global Warming
The overwhelming scientific consensus predicts that human emissions of carbon dioxide will warm the planet over the coming decades and centuries. By how much and how quickly is still up for dispute, but most agree it’s time to take action. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is the key, but what if it’s already too late, and the temperature tipping point has already been reached? Dr. Roger Angel from the University of Arizona takes a page from the book of C. Mongomery Burns and suggests a gigantic sunshade placed in space above the Earth might help keep us cool.
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Gassendi Crater on the Moon
ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft captured this image of crater Gassendi on the Moon. The spacecraft’s advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) captured the photograph on January 13 at a distance of 1220 km (760 miles) from the surface. Gassendi is an impact crater on the near side of the Moon, but it’s unusual because it seems to have large quantities of volcanic material on the crater floor.
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