Archive for the 'NASA' Category
Hydrothermal Vents on Mars Could Have Supported Life
Scientists have found signs that water may once have gurgled up through the Martian soil in hydrothermal vents similar to those in Yellowstone National Park.
The site of these proposed vents could possibly contain preserved traces of ancient Martian life, scientists say. That assumes, of course, that life might once have existed on Mars. No firm evidence for that idea has ever been found, however.
The vents evidence comes from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. The robotic explorer found deposits of pure silica, a form of the element silicon that occurs when hot water reacts with rocks (quartz is a pure silica), in Mars’ Gusev Crater in 2007. The discovery was announced briefly at the time, but scientists have now had time to fully analyze the deposits. The results are detailed in the May 23 issue of the journal Science.
Full story at:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080522-mars-silica.html
No commentsLunar GRAIL
May 22, 2008: Meet MIT professor of physics Maria Zuber. She’s dynamic, intelligent, intense, and she’s on a quest for the Grail.
No, not that Grail.
Zuber is the principal investigator of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory — “GRAIL” for short. It’s a new NASA mission slated for launch in 2011 that will probe the moon’s quirky gravity field. Data from GRAIL will help scientists understand forces at play beneath the lunar surface and learn how the moon, Earth and other terrestrial planets evolved.
“We’re going to study the moon’s interior from crust to core,” says Zuber. “It’s very exciting.”
Full story at:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/22may_grail.htm?list932191
No commentsPhoenix set to land on Mars
NASA Science News for May 13, 2008 NASA’s Phoenix lander is getting ready to touch down on Mars and begin an unprecedented investigation of the Red Planet’s arctic realm.
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov
A Fantastic Monday Morning Sky Show
Nov. 2 , 2007: This is worth waking up for.
On Monday morning, Nov. 5th, anyone willing to step outside before dawn will see a fantastic display of stars and planets—and maybe a couple of spaceships, too.
The planets: Venus, Saturn and Mars.
Venus is the extravagantly luminous “star” hanging low in the east. You can’t miss it—especially because the crescent Moon is hanging nearby. The closely-spaced pair is as lovely as anything you will ever see in the heavens.
Right: Venus and the crescent Moon. Photo credit: Zhen Jie of Singapore. July 17, 2007.
No commentsA New Lunar Impact Observatory
Author: Dauna Coulter | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
Sept. 28, 2007: NASA scientists are proving that you can go home again – if you bring a telescope with you. “Home” is north Georgia’s Walker County, where astronomers Bill Cooke and Rob Suggs have just set up a research-grade observatory for their old school system.
Years ago, they won’t say how many, Cooke and Suggs attended the same high school in Walker County and after school they volunteered at the Walker County Science and Technology Center. The center’s telescopes fueled their fire for astronomy. They learned to operate the instruments, find their way around the night sky, and they took their first pictures of the Moon.
Now, photographing the Moon is something they do professionally for NASA.
No commentsMagnetic Trilobite
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
Sept. 18, 2007: “We’ve never seen anything quite like it,” says solar physicist Lika Guhathakurta from NASA headquarters.
Last week she sat in an audience of nearly two hundred colleagues at the “Living with a Star” workshop in Boulder, Colorado, and watched in amazement as Saku Tsuneta of Japan played a movie of sunspot 10926 breaking through the turbulent surface of the sun. Before their very eyes an object as big as a planet materialized, and no one was prepared for the form it took.
No commentsFasten Your Seat Belts
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
Sept. 14, 2007: “Fasten your seat belts,” says Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “One of NASA’s most amazing programs is about to get even better.”
He’s talking about Discovery–the adventurous NASA program that gave us the first rover on another planet (Mars Pathfinder), the first landing on an asteroid (NEAR’s touchdown on 433 Eros), the first sample return from a comet (Stardust), the first sample return from the Sun (Genesis) and the possible discovery of water at the Moon’s poles (Lunar Prospector).
NASA Sought to Stop Astronaut Meltdowns
By MARCIA DUNN –
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA e-mails released Wednesday indicate the space agency was looking for ways to prevent astronaut meltdowns just three months before one-time shuttle flier Lisa Nowak was arrested in a scandalous love triangle.
The e-mails from late last year show that space program employees interviewed the former colleagues and the “common-law wife” of ex-astronaut Charles Brady Jr. after he committed suicide in July 2006. It seemed to be an effort to find behavioral clues that could be a tip-off in future cases. Read more
No commentsThe Universe Through the Looking Glass
Author: Dauna Coulter | Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
A whole new world came to life for Alice when she passed through the looking glass – beetles with bad attitudes, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, smiling cats, talking tiger lilies and much more.
Mirrors have special powers in the real world too, especially in the hands of an astronomer. In fact, modern astronomy depends on mirrors. Almost every telescope uses a mirror, sometimes several mirrors, to gather and guide starlight toward some super-sensitive digital detector where a breathtaking image can be formed. Without mirrors, it would be almost impossible to study the universe.
No comments“Cosmic Cockroaches”
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
“Cosmic Cockroaches”, remain is Polcyclic aromatic hydrocrabons of the supernova
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs for short) are ring-shaped molecules made of carbon and hydrogen. They’re about as well loved as roaches: PAHs are a widespread organic pollutant, appearing in auto exhaust, oil spills and cigarette smoke. The EPA has classified seven PAH compounds as human carcinogens.
No comments