It's just one year to go before the launch of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) - the next spacecraft from Earth to head for the Red Planet. Due for launch on August 10, 2005, the spacecraft will reach Mars 7 months later, and mapping the planet with the most powerful instruments ever sent to Mars; its camera will be so sensitive, it will be able to see objects as small as a metre (3 feet) across. The team building the spacecraft - 175 at Lockheed Martin and 110 and NASA's JPL - has completed integration and testing of most of the MRO's components, and nearly completed its software.
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An unmanned cargo ship blasted off from Kazakhstan today, en route to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Progress 15 lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 0503 UTC (1:03 am EDT), and safely reached orbit 10 minutes later. It's carrying propellant, air, water, spare parts, life support components and equipment hardware. One special delivery is a set of new pumps for the US spacesuits on board the station that experienced cooling problems earlier this year. The crew used Russian-built spacesuits to make their latest spacewalks.
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Here's a perspective view of the caldera at the top of Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the Solar System. The image was taken with Mars Express' High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which allows scientists to assemble a 3D view of any surface feature on Mars. Olympus Mons is 22 km (14 miles) high, and the caldera drops down 3 km (1.9 miles). The circular regions inside the caldera are where the lava was emerging at different points in the volcano's history.
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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope took this image of a dying star in the middle of a doughnut of leftover gas and dust. The dying star is is part of a planetary nebula, called NGC 246, which used to be similar to our own Sun, but it expended all its fuel and then boiled off its outer layers. Spitzer "sees" in the infrared spectrum, which allows it to peer through most of the obscuring material and get a much better look at the star and its surroundings. NGC 246 is located 1,800 light-years away in the Cetus constellation of our galaxy.
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Another X Prize contender's rocket crashed over the weekend. Armadillo Aerospace's lead engineer and funder John Carmack reported that their prototype rocket ran out of fuel on a test flight and crashed shortly after takeoff. The $35,000 hydrogen peroxide-powered "Black Armadillo" lifted off from the launch pad and then ran out of fuel 180 metres (590 feet) into the air; it crashed into the ground and was completely destroyed. The team hopes to be flying again in September with a completely new vehicle.
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The European Space Agency's Mars Express has relayed images from the NASA Mars rovers for the first time, demonstrating how the robots at Mars can work with each other to keep the data flowing back to Earth. Mars Express flew over the Opportunity rover on August 4, and received 15 images which were stored in the rover's memory. The data was transferred to the ESA's operations centre in Germany, and then passed along to NASA's JPL in Pasadena. This communication was possible because the rovers and Mars Express use the same communication protocols.
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This image of Saturn's moon Rhea was taken as Cassini was looping away after it went into its initial orbit around the Ringed Planet. The image was taken on July 15, in visible light when Cassini was 5.1 million km (3.2 million miles) away from Rhea, and shows its heavily cratered surface and a bright feature near the terminator.
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The Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science has succeeded in launching and deploying the first ever solar sail into space. A solar sail is a thin metallic film pushed by light from the Sun - like a sail on Earth is pushed by the wind - it requires no engine. The 7.5 micrometers thick sail was carried on board an S-310 rocket launched from the Uchinoura Space Center, and deployed at 122 km (75 miles) altitude.
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NASA announced on Friday that one of Hubble's four science instruments has failed, and they're not sure if they can get it working again. The instrument is called the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), and it's designed to detect black holes and measure the temperature of stars. Engineers think that its backup power converter has failed; unfortunately, it already lost its primary power converter almost three years ago. The STIS was installed during a servicing mission in 1997, and it's already exceeded its planned lifespan of 5 years.
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NASA is working on a human-like robot called "Robonaut" to assist astronauts with the maintenance of the International Space Station. It's still a long way off before the robot joins the astronauts in space, but things are developing well. This week the robot got a "space leg" so that it can move itself around a simulated version of the station. Another test put it onto a modified Segway scooter so that it could wheel around the lab. The robot is controlled through "telepresence", where commands from a human controller are transmitted to the robot wirelessly.
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The European Space Agency's Envisat Earth observation satellite is so sensitive it can track changes on the surface of our planet that move at the pace your fingernails grow. One of Envisat's tasks as it orbits the Earth every 100 minutes is to make a precise map of the seismic areas that make up 15% of the planet's surface. At the end of its five year mission, the spacecraft will have provided details about how these seismic areas have changed over time. By comparing these changes to the locations of earthquakes around the world, scientists should get an insight into regions that could be due for a shakeup.
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This detailed picture of Saturn's stormy atmosphere was taken on July 13 by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, when it was 5.1 million km (3.2 million miles) away from the planet. It was taken using Cassini's narrow angle camera using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light.
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Astronomers used to believe that dwarf irregular galaxies were leftover building blocks from the beginning of the Universe which somehow avoided getting gobbled up by larger galaxies. New observations using the Subaru Telescope of dwarf galaxy Leo A has challenged this theory, however, as it's clearly been through a lot in its history. Astronomers found that size and structure of Leo A is significantly more complex than previously observed, and it shares many aspects of larger, more complex galaxies like our own Milky Way - it probably went through similar mergings and galactic collisions.
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The annual Perseid meteor shower has already started, but it's going to peak on the night of August 11, with observers in dark locations seeing upwards of 60 meteors an hour. This year could be special, though, since the Earth is expected to pass through a brand new filament of material left over from Comet Swift-Tuttle when it flew past in 1862. This year's Perseids could turn into a full fledged meteor storm, but the only way to know for sure is to get out and watch. The best time will be after 11 pm, in the darkest skies you can find.
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NASA and JAXA have decided to extend the operations of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) until the end of 2004 so it can provide data during the Autumn storm season for the U.S. and Asia. Officials had originally planned to have the spacecraft cease observations in July, and then perform a safe de-orbit maneuver about a year later. TRMM measures rainfall levels over the global tropics, allowing scientists to study the transfer of water and energy from the oceans into the atmosphere and back again. Its radar can see through clouds providing detailed images of the insides of hurricanes and storms.
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Cassini took this image of Saturn - its new home - as it traveled away from the Ringed Planet after its arrival in orbit. Separate images were taken with its red, blue and green filters on July 17, and then merged to create a natural colour view. Cassini was 5.8 million km (3.6 million miles) away at the time.
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In orbit around Saturn for more than a month now, the Cassini spacecraft has been sending back mountains of scientific data. It's now detected flashes of lightning, a new radiation belt, and a glow around Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The spacecraft's radio and plasma wave science instrument is detecting the lighting, which varies from day to day; a dramatically different situation from what the Voyagers found 20 years ago. The new radiation belt is just above Saturn's cloud tops and extends around the planet, yet the radiation particles are able to "jump over" the planet's rings.
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A Russian Proton rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday, carrying a Brazilian Amazonas satellite into orbit. The rocket launched at 2232 UTC (6:32 pm EDT), and its Breeze M upper stage placed the satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit 9 hours, 11 minutes later. When it reaches its final position of 61-degrees West, it will provide broadcast television services to countries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
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The Canadian da Vinci Project has informed the Ansari X Prize of its plans to launch its Wild Fire rocket on October 2, 2004. This is the second team to announce a launch attempt, after Scaled Composite revealed they'll be launching SpaceShipOne on September 29. Wild Fire will be carried to altitude in Saskatchewan on board a giant balloon; it will detach and then fly up to 100 km (62.5 miles). The team announced a new sponsor, Internet casino GoldenPalace.com, which has provided cash in exchange for advertising.
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Okay, time to update your desktop wallpaper. This time, it's a beautiful image of galaxy NGC 3949 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. We're embedded inside the Milky Way, so it's impossible to study many of our galaxy's large scale features. NGC 3949 is located 50 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Ursa Major (aka the Big Dipper), and astronomers believe its very similar to the Milky Way in terms of shape and structure - it's like we're looking in a galactic mirror.
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This perspective image is of the flanks of Olympus Mons; located on Mars, this volcano is the tallest mountain in the Solar System. It was taken by the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. The escarpment in the image rises 7,000 metres from the surface of Mars, and you can see the deposits around the base of the escarpment, which scientists have dubbed "aureole"; latin for "circle of light". These aureole deposits are a mystery, but one popular theory is that they're landslides of material shed from the sides of the volcano; perhaps connected with glacial activity.
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The European Space Agency's Integral probe detected a gamma ray burst in December 2003, which has now been studied by a host of telescopes and instruments for several months. Researchers now believe that the event, called GRB 031203, was the closest burst on record; it went off in a galaxy only 1.3 billion light-years away. Even though it was much closer, it wasn't much brighter than other bursts, and astronomers believe this could be the first discovery of a whole new class of gamma ray bursts which aren't as energetic, but could be much more common.
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The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft took this picture of the Earth and Moon from a distance of 70 million km (43 million miles); the furthest distance for a spacecraft this year. But this distance is just a fraction of the 800 million km (500 million mile) journey that Rosetta will make by the time it reaches Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 10 years time. The image was taken using the spacecraft's Navigation Camera System (NAVCAM).
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NASA's Terra satellite took this true-colour photograph of Hurricane Alex, the first Atlantic storm of the season, as it grazed the side of North America. At Noon on Tuesday, August 3, the Category 2 Hurricane had wind speeds of 100 km/h (62 mph), and was disrupting North Carolina's Outer Banks; thousands are without power, and Hatteras Island's only link to the mainland has been flooded. It's currently moving east-northeast out to sea, and so far there haven't been any injuries reported.
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Researchers from the UK believe that our Solar System could have formed differently from many other star systems, making places like our home much more rare in the Universe. After examining the 100 or so known extrasolar planetary systems, they found that they probably formed in a manner different from our own Solar System - in a way that's hostile to the formation of life. Planets could form in several different ways, and how the Earth formed is actually quite rare. It will still be 5 more years or so before astronomers have equipment with the resolution to confirm this.
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This photo of Saturn's southern pole was taken by Cassini on July 13, when the spacecraft was 5 million km (3.1 million miles) away. It was taken with the spacecraft's narrow angle camera using a filter sensitive to infrared light, and shows the concentric rings of clouds which circle a dark spot at the planet's south pole. As you move north, the clouds have wavy edges of turbulence as the edges of the bands interact with each other.
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Astronaut Mike Fincke and Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka spent 4.5 hours outside the International Space Station on Tuesday, preparing for the arrival of the European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which will start delivering cargo to the station next year. They installed two antennas and replaced six laser reflectors with four new advanced versions which the ATV will use to guide itself in to dock. They ended up back in the station with 40 minutes to spare from their original mission plan - there were no problems with the Russian-built spacesuits which shortened a previous spacewalk.
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Particle physicists believe they have uncovered the reason why our Universe favours matter, instead of being made up of equal parts matter and antimatter. Their experiment was done with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the USA, which collides electrons and antimatter positrons together to produce a spray of exotic particles. Although complete opposites, the various particles and anti-particles should have similar decay times, but the experimenters found that the anti-particles seem to decay much quicker.
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NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Tuesday, to begin its mission to become the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. The spacecraft was designed and built by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and will make a roundabout trip before reaching its final destination. It'll make 15 orbits of the Sun, and fly once past the Earth, twice past Venus and three times past Mercury before easing into its final orbit in 2011. The first and only spacecraft sent to Mercury was Mariner 10, which made three flybys in 1974-75, and only mapped less than half its surface.
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This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the strange twisted cloud structures at the heart of the Lagoon Nebula (M8). The nebula is being driven by the central hot star, O Herschel 36, and several others, which are ionizing the outer visible parts of the nebula - making it visible. Similar to tornadoes on Earth, temperature differences between different clouds of gas create a horizontal "windshear", which twists the clouds into funnel shapes.
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This is what it would look like if you were flying over a region of Mars' Valles Marineris at an altitude of 5,000 metres (3.1 miles). The photo was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft on May 2, using its High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) at a resolution of approximately 30 metres/pixel. Scientists have constructed this perspective view of the region, which makes it easier to understand how the different surface features relate to each other.
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Here's an image of Saturn's moon Tethys, taken by Cassini on July 13, when the spacecraft was 4.8 million km (3 million miles) away. Tethys is only 1060 km (659 miles) across, and in this visible light image, you can only see a few details of its surface, including a large crater in its southern hemisphere. Cassini will make a close flyby of the moon in September 2005.
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NASA has picked 9 ideas out of 26 proposals for further study as part of its Astronomical Search for Origins Program. Among the ideas are: a mission that would survey a billion stars in the galaxy; an infrared observatory to examine some of the most distant galaxies in the Universe; an optical-UV replacement to the Hubble Space Telescope; and a mission that would measure the shape of cosmic inflation. Each program will have another 8 months to further develop and refine their concepts, and demonstrate how they can answer the questions: "how did we get here", and "are we alone?"
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NASA scientists are inviting the public to help them inspect images of Mars and find important geologic features hidden in the thousands of photographs in the agency's archives. NASA will be adding a set of surveying tools to their Marsoweb website which allows anyone to navigate around the surface of Mars, and then zoom into any region they like. NASA is hoping people can help them find interesting targets for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) which will fly on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in 2005.
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This image of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, was taken on July 3, one day after NASA's Cassini spacecraft made its closest approach. The image shows two thin layers of atmospheric haze that enshroud the moon (they've been brightened and made purple to enhance their visibility). Cassini used its ultraviolet light filter to take this photograph, as it's sensitive to the small haze particles that make up the atmosphere.
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Scientists from Lockheed Martin and the University of Sheffield believe they've solved the mystery of supersonic jets that dart across the low atmosphere of the Sun. The team used computer modeling and high-resolution images taken with the Swedish 1-metre Solar Telescope to understand how these jets - called "spicules" - are formed. They noticed that the spicules formed in certain spots quite regularly, usually every five minutes or so. This matched sound waves on the Sun's surface that had the same five minute period. The sound waves are usually dampened before they reach the Sun's atmosphere, but wherever they aren't dampened, spicules are formed, propelling matter upward.
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NASA's Swift satellite is due to arrive at Florida's Cape Canaveral today, to prepare for its launch in October. Named after the fast-moving bird, Swift will track down the fastest and most powerful known explosions in the Universe: gamma ray bursts. Swift has one instrument to detect bursts in the sky, and then it can swing around two high-resolution telescopes in less than a minute for a closer look. It'll also inform the astronomical community of a blast so that anyone watching the sky can tune in as well and watch the explosion unfold. Swift should help turn up more than 100 bursts a year.
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The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has taken this image of a mysterious group of stars called the Quintuplet Cluster. This dense cluster of stars is located near the centre of our Milky Way, and actually contains hundreds of young stars, but they're obscured by thick dust. In fact it wasn't even discovered until 1990 when it was located with an infrared telescope that can peer through the dust. The bright concentrations in the image aren't stars, but points where powerful winds from the young, hot stars are colliding and being superheated to 50 million degrees Celsius.
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Astronomers have tracked a fast moving binary pair of objects back to the original stellar nursery that they were ejected from 1.7 million years ago. The binary is classified as a microquasar, where a regular star 17 times the mass of our Sun is orbiting a neutron star or black hole. The regular star in this pairing exactly matches several other stars in a nearby cluster of stars, so the astronomers are fairly certain that's where they originated. It's believed that that black hole or neutron star was much more massive than the companion star, but it exploded as a supernova millions of years ago.
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Scaled Composites has announced that they will make an attempt win the $10 million X Prize with SpaceShipOne on September 30, 2004. In order to win the prize, the spacecraft will need to be carrying the equivalent of 3 people, reach an altitude of 100 km (62.5 miles), and then do it again by October 13th. SpaceShipOne will launch from the Mojave airport again, and Scaled Composites will attempt to complete a second flight within just 5 days. Designer Burt Rutan said that he's fixed the problems that hampered the previous flight, so they shouldn't be a factor.
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NASA engineers have approved the design for a new way to attach the space shuttle to the external fuel tank; one of the key milestones required to get the shuttles flying again. The accident that caused the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia happened because the previous attachment was covered in foam to prevent ice building up - foam fell off and struck the shuttle's wing during launch. The new design uses heaters to keep it free of ice, so no foam is required. This new design will be retrofitted to all 11 external fuel tanks, and be used when the first space shuttle flies again in early 2005.
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This image of Saturn's moon Titan, taken by Cassini, was taken July 3; one day after the spacecraft made its relatively close flyby. This natural colour image was taken when Cassini was 790,000 km (491,000 miles) away from the foggy moon.
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Researchers from the University of Washington have developed a theory which links together Dark Energy - the mysterious force that's accelerating the Universe - with the recent discovery that neutrinos have mass. They believe the link comes from the interaction between neutrinos and undiscovered subatomic particles called "accelerons". Dark energy results when the Universe tries to pull the neutrinos and accelerons apart. One interesting prediction from this theory is that the acceleration of the Universe will slow down as the neutrinos get further apart.
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Halfway through their 6-month mission, the crew of Expedition 9 are preparing for their third spacewalk outside the International Space Station. On August 3, Gennady Padalka and Mike Fincke will exit the station and install retroreflectors and communications equipment. This will be used by the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle which will make its first flight next year to deliver supplies to the station.
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It's mostly empty, but space can still be a dangerous place for spacecraft. They're usually filled with delicate and sensitive scientific equipment, and the first major risk comes with launch. A typical rocket launch is so loud and violent that spacecraft can be shaken apart. Once in space, they need to deal with the temperature extremes, which can range hundreds of degrees above and below freezing. They're blasted by radiation from the Sun and cosmic rays which come from deep space. And the tiny dust in meteor showers can punch holes in the spacecraft because of their tremendous speed. Engineers need to account for all of these when designing them to survive.
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This perspective image of a fractured crater near the Valles Marineris was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft during its 61st orbit in January, 2004. The image was obtained using its High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which enables scientists to build a realistic 3D model of the surface of Mars which can then be tilted and rotated to examine from different angles. Scientists aren't sure why the floor of this crater is broken up like this, but it could be from cooled lava, dried clay, or frozen ground.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this image of Saturn's moon Titan on July 2, 2004, when it was only 347,000 km (216,000 miles) away. This closer image and better resolution is an improvement over Cassini's previous images of the enshrouded moon by a factor of four. It's a natural colour image, built by merging photographs taken through the spacecraft's red, blue and green filters.
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The European Space Agency's SMART-1 spacecraft took this snapshot of the Middle East and Africa from its vantage point of 100,000 km (63,000 miles) from Earth. SMART-1 is continuing its long journey to the Moon by using its efficient ion engine to slowly raise its altitude. Operation of the engine has been so efficient, in fact, that the spacecraft will probably be able to save 25% of its fuel by the time it reaches the Moon. This will allow it to get much closer to the Moon than originally planned, and take much higher resolution images of its surface.
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