British astronomers have used a radio telescope called the Very Small Array to probe the cosmic background radiation; an afterglow from the Big Bang that gives insights into the rapid expansion of the early Universe. By combining their results with data from the WMAP satellite, they were able to see how the expansion went when the Universe was only 10(-35) seconds old. They found that temperature and density varied much wider than traditional estimates.
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The US House of Representatives approved bill H.R. 912, which awards amateur astronomers who discover potential Earth-crossing asteroids up to $3,000. One award will be given to the astronomer who discovers the brightest object, and another to the astronomer who makes the biggest scientific contribution to Minor Planet Center's mission of cataloguing near-Earth asteroids. It's estimated that there are between 900 and 1,100 objects larger than 1 km - of which, 700 have already been tracked.
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NASA's workhorse satellite Landsat 5 recently passed the 20 year mark of operations, beating original estimates that it would only last 2-3 years. Over the course of 100,000 orbits, the satellite has taken over 29 million images of the Earth, tracking human activity and changes in the planet's environment; and it's still working fine. Nothing lasts forever, though; the satellite is expected to run out of fuel by 2009 - a replacement should be launched before then.
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Here's a 1024x768 wallpaper of the latest image released from the Hubble Space Telescope. It's of V838 Monocerotis, a nebula located about 20,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Monoceros. Hubble first began watching this object when the central red star flared up in 2002, illuminating a cloud of material that was probably ejected in an explosion tens of thousands of years ago. The object is likely to continue changing rapidly over the next few years as light continues to expand inside the shell of material.
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Sojourner is the little robot that enthralled Earth in 1997. For the first time, a mobile construct of humans was being guided by humans on the surface of another planet. Andrew Mishkin is a systems engineer who worked on the Sojourner project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) during the inception, birth, and life of this little rover. He uses his notes, official documentation, unofficial recollections and friendships to present Sojourner, An Insider's View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission - a book that is an historical reference, a guide to systems engineering, and an insight into the bureaucracy of government science departments.
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Want an easy way to find Jupiter on Thursday and Friday? Just look for the Moon. On March 4th and 5th, the Moon and Jupiter will be side-by-side in the sky inside the constellation Leo. And right now, Jupiter is only 400 million kilometres away - that's close. If you have a small telescope, point it at Jupiter, and you should be able to see the planet's four larger moons, dusty bands across its surface, and maybe even the Great Red Spot.
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During yesterday's press conference, scientists produced four pieces of evidence to support their claim that liquid water once acted on Mars in the region that Opportunity landed. One of these is the discovery of the presence of sulfates, which are likely formed by the action of water. There are microbes on Earth, which use sulfates as their primary source of energy, so they can be largely independent from the Sun. Perhaps something like this could be alive just under the surface of the Mars.
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For a few hours on January 13, 2004, some astronomers believed that a 30-metre asteroid could strike the Earth in less than two days. The asteroid, named 2004 AS1, ended up passing 12 million kilometres away, but it demonstrates the difficulty asteroid hunters have searching for objects that could hit our planet. Had it struck, 2004 AS1 could have caused destruction on a city-wide scale. NASA currently has a program to search for asteroids larger than 1 km, and should locate them all by 2008. Other proposals have been suggested to search for smaller - and still dangerous - asteroids that threaten the Earth, but nothing has been approved yet.
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Astronomers at UC Berkeley took advantage of the newly installed adaptive optics system at the Lick Observatory to get clear images of a massive star forming region. The system works by using a laser to create a false star in the sky. A computer tracks the atmospheric turbulence, and warps the telescope's mirror to compensate. The young massive stars that the team observed are usually too blurry when seen from the ground, so they made the perfect target for the adaptive optics system.
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NASA announced today that liquid water once soaked the environment around Opportunity's landing site, raising the chances that life once existed on the Red Planet. This announcement came from Opportunity's detailed examination of a region of exposed rock on the side of the crater it landed in. By analyzing the rock with every instrument at its disposal, scientists now have conclusive evidence that liquid water once acted on this rock, changing its texture and chemistry. Opportunity's next job will be to determine if the rocky outcrop was actually formed by water, or if it's volcanic in origin. This means that there was probably a long period of time on Mars where the environment would have supported life.
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In 1997, cosmologists Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, and John Preskill made a bet about what happens to a black hole when material is sucked into it. Do the characteristics of the particles somehow change the black hole so that a record of information is maintained? Or is all the information destroyed? A new solution based on string theory predicts that material sucked into the black hole is preserved as a tangle of strings, which fills its core to its surface. In theory, a black hole could be traced back to its original condition by following the trail of material consumed. Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne need to pay up.
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NASA's Spirit rover used its rock abrasion tool to dust off a rock called "Humphrey", and then backed away to see the whole rock with its thermal emission spectrometer - this should tell it what minerals are present in the rock. Once it completes this task, the rover will actually grind a hole to see under the rock's surface. Opportunity is also examining rocks on the other side of Mars, and it's getting ready to exit the crater that it landed in to search for evidence of past water on the plains.
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Saturn's moon Titan has long intrigued astrobiologists as a possible environment that was similar to our own Earth's early history. Its atmosphere has the same pressure as Earth, and it could contain chemicals called tholins - a building block for life. The Huygens probe, currently piggybacking a ride on NASA's Cassini spacecraft, will measure the atmosphere when it arrives later this year, but researchers are working to simulate Titan's complex chemistry in a laboratory environment right here on Earth.
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Astronomers have found hydrogen peroxide in Mars' atmosphere. The team gathered the data when Mars made its closest approach to Earth in the summer of 2003, using the 15-metre James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii. Hydrogen peroxide is used as an antiseptic to kill bacteria on Earth, so it could help sterilize the surface of Mars. Many astrobiologists now think that the best chance of finding bacteria on Mars will be underneath the surface, which would be protected from this hydrogen peroxide and ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.
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The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft took this image of the caldera of volcano Hecates Tholus; it's 5300 metres tall, and the northernmost of the Elysium volcano group. The photo was taken during orbit 32, when the spacecraft was 275 km above the volcano.
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Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have shattered the record for finding the most distant galaxy ever seen. By using a gravitational lens to magnify more distant objects, the team has found a galaxy which is 13.2 billion light-years away; the galaxy is being seen when the Universe was only 470 million years old. The young object is 10 times less massive than our own Milky Way, and looks like it was a building block for present day galaxies.
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Astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley have discovered the nearest and youngest star with a visible disk of dust that could be a home for planets. The dim red star, AU Microscopium, is only 33 light-years away. It's half the mass of the Sun, and only 12 million years old (our Sun is 4.6 billion years old). The star was imaged using the University of Hawaii's 2.2-metre telescope atop Mauna Kea, which can block out the central star to reveal dimmer material.
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A new animation built from a series of photos taken by NASA's Opportunity rover shows the Sun dimly setting in a hazy Martian sky. Although it's a pretty picture, the main purpose for this data is to let scientists calculate the amount of dust in the sky - currently it seems to be roughly double what Pathfinder measured in 1997. Opportunity is partway through its analysis of a piece of the exposed rock outcropping; after this it will exit the crater it landed in, and begin exploring the surrounding flatlands.
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Now only four months away from its encounter with Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be delivering weekly postcards as it approaches the ringed planet. Here's a 1024x768 desktop wallpaper image of Saturn, taken by Cassini on February 9, 2004, when the spacecraft was 69.4 million kilometres away - the smallest details visible are 540 kilometres across. Cassini will go into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004, and spend the next four years studying the planet and its moons.
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The Mars rovers are starting to generate less power these days because Mars is starting to slip into Winter. In order to compensate for the reduced amount of light falling on the rovers' solar panels, engineers have begun a new lower-power communications plan. The rovers will only receive information in the morning, and transmit through Mars Odyssey twice a day. The rovers will also take more naps during the day to conserve battery power.
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Astronomers have spent the last five years trying to explain a strange star called KH 15D, which winks on an off, sometimes with eclipses that last 24 hours. One theory is that there was a blob of protoplanetary material orbiting the star, occasionally blocking our view. By looking into historical images of the object, astronomers think they might have a new scenario that better explains their observations. They think it could be a double star system with a disk of material surrounding it and rotating with a wobble. This would explain the unusual eclipses.
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Having made the drive up to the "El Capitan" region of exposed rock, NASA's Opportunity rover ground away the surface of part of it with its rock abrasion tool (RAT). It then examined the spot with its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer for five hours, and then swapped in its Moessbauer spectrometer, which will analyze for 24 more hours. After Opportunity transfers this data back to Earth, it will move slightly forward, and grind another spot to gather more data about the formation of this rocky outcrop. Scientists back on Earth are getting closer to understand what could have formed this layered bedrock.
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One key to the long-term exploration of Mars will be figuring out how to get plants to grow there in greenhouses - they're natural factories for air and food. Since they evolved on Earth, they have no mechanism for surviving in low pressures, which would be a requirement for off-planet greenhouses; they think they're drying out even when there's plenty of water. One solution might be to biochemically adjust levels of hormones that initiate the drought instinct.
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NASA's Spirit rover has discovered an unusual patch of sand in a hollow on its journey to the crater "Bonneville". An unusual pattern of irregular lines and polygons in the soil could indicate the presence of a salty brine. This could mean there's liquid water right below the surface of Mars, which could harbour life - microbes thrive in similar environments on Earth. The rover dug a trench and examined the spot with its array of instruments, which scientists will study intensely back on Earth.
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Canadian and NASA scientists have captured details of swirling gas as it hovers above the surface of a neutron star. A massive explosion on the surface of the neutron star illuminated the material long enough for scientists to see normally hidden details, such as its accretion disk - a ring of gas swirling around and into the neutron star. The binary pair is located 25,000 light-years from Earth, and it was tracked by NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer.
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NASA announced today that it has chosen 22 researchers to receive up to four year grants to conduct research into advanced human support technologies. The goal of this research will be to help humans achieve the goal of long-duration space flight, both in low Earth orbit as well as exploration of the solar system. NASA received 122 proposals when it originally announced the grants back in March 2003, and these were peer reviewed by scientific and technical experts before the final 22 projects were selected.
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The European Space Agency has selected two teams to carry out the detailed design of the ExoMars rover and its suite of scientific experiments to search evidence of life on Mars. The two teams - Astrium UK and MD Robotics - will develop their plans in parallel to create detailed design concepts for the rover. The final rover should be able to roam around the surface of Mars, dig or drill below the surface, and detect current or past evidence of life. If all goes well, the spacecraft will launch in 2009.
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When NASA's Opportunity rover dug a trench into the Martian soil two days ago, it revealed a series of mysteries that scientists back on Earth are still puzzling out. The tiny spherical granules that Opportunity found on the surface with its microscope are also underneath the topsoil, but strangely, these look shiny and polished. Opportunity's next task will be to examine a region of exposed rock which has many of these granules embedded inside to help give scientists a better idea of what they're looking at.
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The Hubble Space Telescope has further confirmed the existence of "Dark Energy" - a mysterious force that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. The giant space observatory examined some of the most distant supernovae ever seen and found that this force seems to have been acting at a constant rate for as far back as astronomers can see. This is good news. If dark energy continued to accelerate, some physicists believe the fabric of the Universe could tear apart in an event called "The Big Rip".
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Jupiter's moon Io is depositing a trail of dust particles as it makes its journey around the Sun, and the European Space Agency's Ulysses spacecraft has detected them 500 million km away from the gas giant. The dust streams contain particles no larger than smoke, and they originate from Io's many volcanoes, which are constantly erupting across its surface. One unusual feature about the streams is that they have a period of 28 days, which suggests they somehow interact with the solar wind streaming from the Sun.
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Instead of looking directly for Earth-sized planets, it might be easier to just try to find the ring of dust that is the fingerprint of terrestrial planet formation. This is according to a new computer model created by astronomers from the Smithsonian Center and Astrophysics and the University of Utah. Their model predicts that stars with disks will be a little brighter in the infrared spectrum than stars without disks; astronomers should be able to predict the size of its planets just from the brightness of its disk in infrared. The recently-launched Spitzer space telescope should be the perfect tool to measure these disks.
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Astronomers from Caltech and Yale University have discovered a distant object that could be nearly as large as Pluto. The planetoid is called 2004 DW, and located in the Kuiper Belt, billions of kilometres from Earth. The team estimates that 2004 DW is 1,400 km across, but it's difficult to tell, because the size estimate comes from its brightness. The reflected light from the Sun, which astronomers call "albedo", depends on the darkness of the object. Other astronomers will try and help pin down the characteristics of 2004 DW.
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The European Space Agency's Proba spacecraft imaged the Nasca region of Peru; famous for its giant lines and animal figures. The photos were taken from an altitude of 600 km, and clearly show the straight lines (the animals are too faint to see with this spacecraft). Although the markings were created more than 2,000 years ago, the region is so dry they've barely been weathered. Increased human activity, including roads and farming is starting to have an impact, though, and these satellite photos will help scientists track the changes.
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Astronomers spotted the brightest supernova seen in modern times almost 17 years ago, and the Hubble Space Telescope has been keeping tabs on it since its launch. Just last year Supernova 1987A put on a new show when a shockwave from its explosion smashed into a ring of gas that had probably been shed 20,000 years ago. Under the pressure from the shockwave, the gas has started to glow, like a ring of pearls around the centre of the explosion. More hotspots will keep appearing until the entire ring of gas is ablaze as it absorbs the full force of the shockwave.
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A Russian Soyuz rocket with a classified government cargo lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in far northern Russia. The Molniya-class booster took flight at approximately 0705 UTC (2:05 am EST), marking the first launch this year from the space centre. Details about the military communications satellite weren't revealed, only its name: Kosmos 2405. Russian President, Vladimir Putin was on hand to watch the launch.
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Human travelers to Mars face many challenges. One of the biggest unknowns is exactly what effect radiation from the Sun and cosmic rays will have on the human body for the 1,000 days a journey to Mars might take. If the risk turns out to be high, there are methods that could cut down the amount of radiation humans might receive on the journey. One method could be to build parts of the spacecraft out of plastic, which absorbs radiation 20% better than aluminum; liquid hydrogen, which would be needed for fuel absorbs cosmic rays 2.5 times better.
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Dr. Hayley Bignall, an astronomer from the Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe (JIVE), believes that interstellar clouds of gas and dust can serve as a natural lens to magnify distant objects better than any human-built telescope. Every galaxy, including our own Milky Way has a cloud of particles around it, which naturally clump together by gravity. Radiation from a distant object passing through these clouds (light, radio waves, etc) can be focused to reveal details.
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The latest image released from the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft is of Kasei Vallis; one of the largest outflow channels on Mars. The image was taken using the spacecraft's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) while it was cruising above the planet at an altitude of 272 km. It's believed that the outflow channel was carved by glaciers, or the bursting of subterranean lakes which were dammed by glaciers. Operators had a difficult time building a true-colour image from this photograph because of all the dust and haze in the atmosphere at the time.
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Construction of the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory is well underway, and engineers recently completed a significant part of what will become the largest mirror on a space telescope. The 3.5 metre primary mirror was built from silicon carbide, which reduces its mass by a factor of 5 from using traditional materials. The mirror will next be machined to reduce its mass even more and then coated with a reflective surface. Herschel is due to launch in February 2007, and will cover the far infrared and sub-millimetre waveband.
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NASA has postponed the test of its X-43 prototype because of a problem with the aircraft's rudder. The 4-metre X-43 is affixed to the front of a Pegasus rocket which will be launched from a B-52 aircraft. Once the X-43 is accelerated to Mach 7 on the rocket, it will use its scramjet engine to fly under its own power. Unlike traditional rocket engines, scramjets don't need to carry oxygen to burn rocket fuel. The aircraft uses its speed to compress air from the atmosphere and use this to burn fuel. This allows a scramjet to save weight and carry more cargo. It's unknown when the repairs to the prototype will be completed.
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If you have clear skies on the early evening of Monday, February 23, get outside and look to the West for a beautiful sight. You can't miss Venus and a crescent Moon blazing in the Western sky, right beside each other. The Moon will only have 15% of its surface illuminated, and Venus is so bright right now, that the two objects may look equally bright. You might even be able to see the reflected light of the Earth shining on the Moon, revealing its complete circular shape. Don't miss it.
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NASA's Opportunity rover dug into the Martian soil today, to get a better idea of the composition of the minerals beneath the top layer. The maneuver was done by locking five of the rover's six wheels and then turning the sixth in place to scoop soil like a waterwheel. After Opportunity completed the dig, scientists were able to confirm that the rover had dug down approximately 8-10 centimetres into the Martian soil. Its next operation will be to examine the unearthed dirt with its array of instruments.
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According to researcher Ralph Lorenz, Saturn's moon Titan could help teach scientists about how oceans and weather work on the Earth. Titan is thought to have oceans of liquid methane, but they are created under a completely different environment from our own familiar oceans. When Cassini and the Huygens probe arrive at the Saturn system in 2004, they will begin gathering data about Titan and its oceans and weather, and help answer questions like: how deep are its oceans? do they form steep cliffs or shallow beaches? and what effect does Saturn's huge gravity have?
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Here's a new desktop wallpaper (1024x768 resolution) of the latest rock visited by NASA's rover Spirit, which scientists have dubbed "White Boat". The rock stood out to scientists because of its unusual shape and colour compared to the other darker rocks around it. Spirit's next task will be to make a "mega drive" 25 metres towards a nearby crater called "Bonneville". On the other side of Mars, Opportunity completed a 9 metre drive, and is getting set to trench out a spot of soil rich in hematite. Both rovers should send back a mountain of scientific data for the folks on Earth to analyze.
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Since Earth and Mars were probably formed much the same way; through the accretion of rocky material from the inner solar system, they should have roughly the same amount of water, but Mars is pretty much bone dry compared to the Earth. So what happened to make it so dry? Some scientists believe that Mars used to have the same amount of water as Earth, but it evaporated into space. Others believe that the Red Planet never had much water in the first place; that it started out as a collection of dry materials from the asteroid belt.
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