Engineers at the European Space Agency will go ahead and give Mars Express the command to deploy its MARSIS radar booms during the first week of May. The agency was holding off on this decision because the manufacturer revealed a risk that the spacecraft could be damaged by a whiplash effect when the booms are deployed. Mission controllers have performed computer simulations, and they can't rule out that the spacecraft will be hit by the booms, but they're pretty sure that any damage will be minimal. The MARSIS radar will study the Martian ionosphere and search for subsurface water.
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Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a star speeding out of our galaxy at over 2.4 million kph (1.5 million mph). It's probably moving this quickly because of a close encounter with the supermassive black hole that lurks at the heart of our Milky Way. The star came too close, was captured by the black hole's gravity, and then hurled onto an exit trajectory. The star contains many heavier elements than hydrogen and helium, so astronomers believe it began life in one of the stellar nurseries near the galactic centre.
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! This will be a wonderful week as we begin by viewing the spectacular "Kemble's Cascade". Looking for some challenging studies? Then while New Moon is on our side, let's go for some serious hunting in the constellations of Pisces, Lepus, Canis Major, Cetus and Puppis. You can do them in one night if you try! Comet Machholz rounds off the week as the Moon returns. So start with binoculars and break out the "heavy artillery" for the faint stuff. Enjoy a leisurely comet hunt or lunar viewing week end...
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Engineers have outfitted the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Arecibo Observatory telescope with a new instrument that could help it discover galaxies that have no stars - so called "dark galaxies". The instrument is called ALFA (for Arecibo L-Band Feed Array), which is essentially a seven-pixel digital camera, which allows the radio telescope to receive data seven times as fast. Researchers will explore groups of galaxies, and determine how fast they're converting gas into stars. It should be able to discover if there are gas-rich regions, invisible to optical telescopes, which can be detected by their hydrogen signature.
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After the fun and excitement of any wild party comes the clean-up. Broken things need fixing, steps get taken to prevent the repeat of problems and plans are made for the next one. The same goes for space missions. After the euphoria of a successful landing ebbs away, the whole operation has to be assessed, anomalies identified and remedies initiated. Robert Godwin dived through the NASA archives and in his book, '
Apollo 12 The NASA Mission Reports Volume Two', he presents an edited collection of the assessment of this lunar landing. Perhaps a bit dryer than most parties, this text gives the skinny on what was shaking when Apollo 12 did its thing.
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New research from the University of Michigan has determined that there's definitely an upper limit to the mass that stars can reach - between 120 and 200 times the mass of our own Sun. The team examined a wide range of stellar clusters, and determined the distribution of the mass of stars in those clusters. They couldn't find any stars above this 120-200 stellar mass limit. But this brings up a new mystery. Is this as big as stars get because they run out of material, or is there a fundamental limit in physics that stops them from getting any bigger?
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The ringed planet Saturn has some of the most turbulent weather in the Solar System, including a powerful polar vortex at its southern pole. But new observations by the giant Keck 1 telescope in Hawaii have turned up a mystery. Unlike the other planets with polar vortexes, which are generally much colder than the surrounding atmosphere, Saturn's is warmer - in fact, it's the warmest place on the planet. One theory is that particles in Saturn's atmosphere, which could warm the planet through a greenhouse effect, have been concentrated by winds down to the south pole.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this natural colour image of Saturn's moon Rhea. It seems to display bright, wispy terrain, which looks like it's just been painted onto its surface - this is similar to another of Saturn's moons, Dione. Images were taken using Cassini's red, blue and green spectral filters, and then combined to create the natural colour version. They were taken on January 16, 2005, when Cassini was 496,500 kilometers (308,600 miles) from Rhea.
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Beagle 2 should never have been approved to go to Mars according to an official report from the ESA/UK Commission of Inquiry. The under funded mission was developed on a shoestring, and lacked adequate time for testing. Mission managers treated it like another scientific instrument on board Mars Express, and this fundamental error led to many subsequent problems. Beagle 2 disappeared after entering the Martian atmosphere in December 2003, and controllers still have no definitive answer for what actually caused its failure.
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International Launch Services (ILS) oversaw the launch of two rockets today, in different parts of the world. A Russian-built Proton/Breeze M rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying the AMC-12 satellite for SES AMERICOM, which will provide broadcast service to the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. At Florida's Cape Canaveral, an Atlas III lifted off with a classified payload for the US National Reconnaissance Office. The two launches occurred less than 10 hours apart.
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Here's a 1280x1024 desktop wallpaper of V838 Monocerotis taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has been watching this star off and on since it brightened unexpectedly for several weeks in 2002. This light pulse has been moving through a cloud of dust that was probably sloughed off in a previous explosion. V838 Mon is located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation of Monoceros, which puts it at the outer edge of the Milky Way galaxy.
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Now on the surface of Mars for longer than a year, the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are getting pretty dusty. Both rovers have a fine coating of dust 1-10 micrometers thick which is starting to obscure their solar panels. Spirit has gotten more dusty, with about 70% more dust, so it's getting less power. This could be because it's windier around Opportunity's landing site, which is constantly blowing away the dust. It's also cold enough at night that frost forms on the rovers. This could be clumping the dust together, and causing unexplained boosts in electricity coming from their panels.
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NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has located two huge clouds of interstellar hot gas that could partially explain where all the matter is in the Universe (we're not talking about Dark Matter here, just regular matter that hasn't been seen yet). Computer simulations predicted that this missing matter could form into a weblike structure of gas clouds, from within which clusters of galaxies formed. These clouds have defied detection until now because of their low density. Astronomers used Chandra to watch a distant galaxy which has been brightening for about 2 years. Their data showed that two separate clouds of gas containing ions of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and neon were absorbing X-rays from this galaxy.
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In this article Jeff Barbour explores the origins and development of that "Instrument of Long Seeing" known as the telescope. We trace its roots back to simple hemispheres of crystal and to the first correcting lenses - associated with both near and far-sightedness. We discuss the fundamental image quality problems shown by the earliest telescopes and the steps taken to overcome these limitations over centuries. Despite having explored all this, we still end up with what may ultimately be an unanwerable question: "But where did the telescope really come from?"
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Mission controllers used NASA's Swift satellite to capture this image of the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) using its Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT). This is Swift's third and final telescope to come online, joining the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) and the X-ray Telescope (XRT) which are already capturing scientific data. Swift is now fully operational, and ready to spot gamma-ray bursts wherever they happen in the night sky. The BAT detects bursts when they first happen, and the entire observatory swings around quickly to focus its two additional instruments and study the gamma-ray burst as it happens.
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Because of the tremendous distance to Mars, human explorers will probably process local materials to get their air, fuel, and even building supplies. But extracting resources from the Red Planet is going to be hard, especially when the environment is so hostile. Scientists are studying how the dry Martian soil will likely behave in the low gravity and air pressure, to help engineers build equipment that can dig and move dirt. NASA's upcoming Phoenix lander will help put some of this research to the test when it arrives on Mars in 2008; it will be digging trenches about a half-metre deep (20 inches).
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Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! As the month ends and a new week begins, it's time chase down the "Magnificent Machholz" again as it heads to the far north. Our European friends are in for a treat as the Moon occults Antares on February 4! Feeling "trapped" by winter weather? Then enjoy your captivity as we utilize early dark skies to delve deeper into all the secrets of the Great Orion Nebula complex -- including the holy of holies -- the "Trapezium"! There are plenty of fun astronomy facts as well as some unique things to observe for all skill levels, so turn your eyes to the skies...
Because here's what's up!
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The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has discovered that Mars' atmosphere glows during the night. The discovery was made using the spacecraft's SPICAM instrument, which is designed to study the chemicals in Mars' atmosphere and ionosphere. This nightglow occurs because atoms combining to form molecules in the Martian atmosphere release energy in the form of photons. A similar nightglow had been discovered on Venus, and give scientists an insight into the kinds of chemical reactions that are going on, and refining atmospheric circulation models.
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The Hubble Space Telescope has unquestionably shown the benefits of a space-based observatory, but having a telescope far from Earth offers the current conundrum of how to maintain such a facility. Since NASA?s Vision for Space Exploration is seemingly leading humans back to the moon, why not construct an observatory there? A group of scientists from the U.S. and Canada are exploring the option of building a Deep-Field Infrared Observatory in one of the moon?s polar craters. Although not quite a garden spot, this location would provide an excellent site for a very large and very unique spinning liquid mirror telescope.
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Many scientists feel that there's compelling evidence that the Moon formed when a Mars-sized planet smashed into the Earth, throwing out a hail of debris that eventually collected into our satellite. Now researchers from the Southwest Research Institute have developed a simulation that shows how Pluto and its moon Charon could have formed in a similar way. Two objects about 2,000 km across might have collided billions of years ago, producing Pluto, and smaller Charon orbiting it. Astronomers now believe that the early Solar System was a dynamic place, with collision after collision violently building up the planets.
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If you're going to head into space, make sure you check the weather forecast - the space weather forecast. Just a week ago, a large sunspot blasted out an X-class solar flare, and sent a highly energetic cloud of protons our way. The Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field protect us on the planet, but it could be an emergency for people on the Moon. The Moon is totally exposed to solar flares, and an astronaut outside would have gotten very ill from radiation sickness. Future Moon explorers will watch the Sun's behaviour carefully, probably staying indoors and behind shielding while big sunspots are pointed our way.
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Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found evidence that the big stars become extremely powerful magnets when they die. They used the Australia Telescope Compact Array and Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia to watch a powerful magnetar - an exotic neutron star with a magnetic field one quadrillion times more powerful than the Earth's field, which releases X-rays and gamma radiation. They found clues in the surrounding nebula that indicate that the magnetar used to be a star with 30-40 times the mass of the Sun. Larger stars spin faster when they become neutron stars (500-1000 times a second), and this generates a powerful dynamo that boosts the magnetic field.
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You're really interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. We put out the call, and received dozens of questions for SETI researcher Seth Shostak. The forum team picked out their favorites, and passed them along to Dr. Shostak. Here are his answers. Thanks to everyone who participated: both the questioners and Dr. Shostak for taking the time to put together his answers. And a special thanks to Ola D. in the forum Community Support team for organizing this. See if your question was answered.
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An experiment recovered from the wreckage of the space shuttle Columbia has given researchers valuable insights into how plants behave when they're growing in space. Experimenters were expecting common roof moss to grow in random, confused directions, but instead it grew in an ordered spiral pattern. On Earth, gravity controls the growth of moss so that it grows directly away from the centre of the planet. It's possible that this spiral direction is a backup growth response that existed before the moss evolved the ability to detect gravity. Unfortunately, only 11 out of 87 cultures were salvageable from the Columbia's wreckage.
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NASA has chosen to fund a new spacecraft, called the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), to study the edge of the Solar System, where the solar wind from the Sun interacts with interstellar particles. IBEX will launch in 2008, and take a highly elliptical orbit that keeps it away from the influence of the Earth's magnetosphere. It's equipped with two neutral atom imagers designed to spot interstellar particles as they interact with the outgoing solar wind. IBEX will also study galactic cosmic rays that pose a radiation risk to space explorers.
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The nature of dark matter is one of the mysteries currently puzzling astronomers. A new study published in the journal Nature proposes that halos of dark matter the size of our Solar System (but with only the mass of the Earth) were the first objects to form after the big bang, and they served as the gravitational glue that attracted regular matter. It's possible that there are still more than a quadrillion (a million billion) of these halos just in our own galaxy, and they could pass through our Solar System occasionally. New observatories could be able to detect the gamma ray trails of these dark matter halos as they move through the Solar System, confirming one theory that they're composed of exotic particles called neutralinos.
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The crew of the International Space Station are safely back inside after completing a 5+ hour spacewalk. During their time in space, Commander Leroy Chiao and Flight Engineer Salizhan Sharipov installed a $10 million German prototype robot arm which will demonstrate the feasibility of keeping a repair robot outside the station. Sharipov discovered residue on the outside of three vents that the station uses to expel waste products into space. This is unusual, and could be contributing to the recent problems with air on board the station. The crew of Expedition 10 will make another spacewalk in late March.
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The ESA's SMART-1 has taken its first close-up pictures of the Moon's surface, snapping a series of photos from an altitude ranging between 1,000 and 5,000 km above the lunar surface. SMART-1 only entered lunar orbit on November 15, and has been spiraling down for two months. The spacecraft will make a medium-resolution survey of the Moon for the next two weeks before lowering its orbit to begin 5 months of detailed observations, getting as close as 300 km. This first image is centred at lunar latitude 75? North, and the largest crater in the picture is called Brianchon.
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Astronomers with the European Space Agency believe that the supermassive black hole (Sgr A*) at the heart of the Milky Way was much more active only 350 years ago, when it was releasing a million times more energy than today. The study was made using the ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory, which was able to detect how a cloud of hydrogen gas near Sgr A* is being bathed in gamma radiation. Since this cloud 350 light years away from Sgr A*, astronomers know how long ago the radiation was released. It's dim right now, but Sgr A* is sure to flare up again in the future when it consumes another large quantity of matter.
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It's amazing thing but many amateur astronomers (and possibly the occasional professional as well!) don't have the big picture on where the bulk of the visible light in the universe comes from. "Sure" you say, "from the stars!" Ah but that's the easy answer. In fact the more you learn about light, the less straightforward such an answer becomes. In this article, Jeff Barbour probes a little deeper and the implications could light the way to an extraordinarily new appreciation for the "star stuff" seen all around us.
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The lunar module brought two men from an orbit about our moon onto the moon's surface and then back into the lunar orbit. Though fairly simple to describe, this craft encompassed many firsts and delved into realms never before experienced by humankind. Scott Sullivan, in his book '
Virtual LM', unravels the technology of this spaceship and its constituent parts using hundreds of different visual plates. Not as complex or detailed as engineering schematics but smoothed and coloured for clarity and understanding, these views provide a vivid, easily comprehensible, in-depth perspective of this first true spacecraft for humankind.
A team of Colorado University researchers has uncovered bacteria that primarily use hydrogen as their fuel source in the colourful hot springs of Yellowstone National Park. Bacteria, such as salmonella, have been uncovered which use hydrogen for fuel before, but nobody expected this was happening in the intense heat of the hot springs. By using very sensitive detectors, they discovered that there's a constant supply of hydrogen being delivered to the bacteria from hydrothermal vents. Hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe, and finding bacteria that consumes it in extreme conditions further expands the places life could potentially gain a foothold.
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Greetings, fellow Skywatchers! As we start the week off with a "Snow Moon", we'll enjoy its bright features as we wait for its later rise and become more Sirius. There will be plenty of opportunities to explore as we look into the M79 and the M35. As Leo "the Lion", swallows bright Selene leaving us with earlier dark skies, it will be our pleasure to sail along on the fantastic Orion Nebula and journey to the very edge of our own galaxy as we hunt down the "Intergalactic Wanderer." For many of us who are tired of the winter weather, there will be no shortage of smiles as we capture the "Eskimo Nebula"! As always, there are plenty of things to see and learn about, so open your eyes to the skies...
Because here's what's up!
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Something wiped out most of the life on Earth 250 million years ago. Evidence has been building that it was an asteroid or comet strike that made Earth unlivable nearly instantly. But other scientists think that it wasn't instantaneous; instead, they found fossil evidence that the extinction occurred over the course of 10 million years. A group of volcanoes in Siberia spewed out gas continuously that set off a runaway greenhouse effect. Lowered oxygen levels in the atmosphere combined with intense heat would have hit life a deadly double blow.
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Scientists have known for many years that Regulus spins faster than our own Sun, but astronomers from Georgia State University have observed it more precisely and discovered that it's shaped like an egg. This massive star has 5 times the diameter of our own Sun, and yet it completes a rotation in only 15.9 hours (our own Sun takes a month to rotate once). This extreme speed gives Regulus a bulging waistline; in fact, it's spinning at 86% of its breakup speed. Any faster, and the star would actually tear itself apart.
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NASA's Swift space observatory has seen its first Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB), probably the birth of a black hole. Swift detected the explosion on January 17, and turned to face it within 200 seconds - enough time to watch the explosion with its X-Ray telescope. This is the first time an X-Ray observatory has ever watched a GRB while it was bursting, and not just the afterglow. Swift is still in its checkout phase, so its Ultraviolet/Optical telescope wasn't ready to image the GRB yet, but it should be ready by February 1.
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When Huygens descended through Titans clouds, snapping hundreds of pictures, it revealed a world with many similar physical features to our own planet: clouds, rivers, lakebeds, islands, rocks and dust. But Titan is cold, plunging below -170?C; a temperature where methane can exist as both a liquid and a gas. Huygens saw a series of drainage channels running from brighter highlands to flatter, darker regions. It landed in a material that has the consistency of loose sand. Instead of rocks, Huygens is surrounded by boulders of water ice, and instead of dirt, the probe found hydrocarbon particles that settled out of the atmosphere.
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NASA's Opportunity Rover has discovered a meteorite on the surface of Mars, near the wreckage of its heat shield. The pitted object is about the size of a basketball, and contains mostly iron and nickel. Stoney meteorites are much more common than iron meteorites here on Earth, so it's possible that many of the "rocks" the rovers have seen could actually be meteorites. If it turns out that meteorites are common, it will tell scientists quite a bit about how quickly the region has eroded.
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Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to watch a small, faint companion as it orbits around a larger star. By measuring its orbit, the astronomers have been able to estimate that its mass is 93 times that of Jupiter. This is much less than a normal star, but twice as heavy as predicted by theory. If these brown dwarfs and free floating extrasolar planets are heavier than expected, then astronomers have been overestimating the number of them in the Universe.
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The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft took this image of Claritas Fossae, a series of linear fractures located in the Tharsis region of Mars. It's located on the Tharsis rise, which is south of the three large volcanoes known as the Tharsis Montes. It has linear fractures up to 150 km (93 miles) across, which were created when the whole Tharsis region bulged up several kilometres. The smooth surfaces are places where the area was covered by lava flows.
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Rockets look pretty impressive. Huge plumes of smoke and flame billow out of their base, while much further up, their tops, so slowly then oh so quickly, ascend into the heavens. Over in a few moments, the awe inspiring launches are the cumulation of years of analysis and design. Alfred J. Zaehringer and Steve Whitfield in their book '
Rocket Science' give an insight into some of the more basic design elements. Their perspective, as it were, is literally 'from the trenches' as Zaehringer defended against the V2 rockets of World War II and then went on to assist with the up-rating of the Saturn C5 and the assessment of solid rocket systems. The result is a concise, yet broad overview of rocketry.
Jean-Jacques Dordain, the Director General of the European Space Agency and Anatoly Perminov, the Head of the Russian Federal Space Agency have signed an agreement that will promote cooperation and partnership in the development of new launch systems. The two agencies are already working together to build and launch Soyuz rockets from the ESA's spaceport in French Guiana. They now plan to begin developing a new launcher with reusable liquid engines and upper stages. They hope to have their new rockets flying by 2020.
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B-15A is a giant iceberg off the coast of Antarctica, and it's now on a collision course with a floating pier of ice called the Drygalski ice tongue. Satellite photos showed B-15A rushing towards the tongue, but then it slowed down in the last couple of days. Scientists think that there's a shallow seabed underneath the Drygalski ice tongue that has protected it from these kinds of collisions for so long - it's been there for at least 4000 years. B-15A is 120 km (75 miles) long, and contains about 2000 square km (772 sq miles), so it just have the momentum to do the trick.
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