Archive for the 'Space' Category
Mars Lander Headed for “7 Minutes of Terror” Sunday
Mars Lander Headed for “7 Minutes of Terror” Sunday
After years of planning followed by a ten-month journey, the Mars Phoenix Lander is slated to touch down Sunday near the red planet’s north pole. If successful, the probe will be the first lander to reach a Martian pole and the first to actually touch the planet’s water ice.
What’s more, it could settle the debate over whether Mars was once suitable for life.
As Phoenix closed in on the last miles of its journey, NASA scientists were gearing up for the “seven minutes of terror” that could make or break the U.S. $420-million mission.
Full story at:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080523-mars-lander.html
No commentsHydrothermal 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 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
How Do Artists Portray Exoplanets They’ve Never Seen?
How realistic are images of planets around other stars—and should they be?
By JR Minkel
Stargazers have yet to lay eyes on any of the nearly 240 planets detected outside our solar system. These so-called exoplanets are too faint for current telescopes to distinguish from the stars they orbit*; instead astronomers rely on indirect methods to infer their existence. Yet popular news accounts, supplied by space agency press services, overflow with bold, almost photo-realistic images of distant worlds. Naturally, people can get confused. When San Francisco artist Lynette Cook painted a particularly striking image of a newly discovered planet passing in front of the star HD 209458 for a 1999 NASA press release, she received e-mail asking what kind of amazing image processing software she had used. “A lot of people didn’t understand that it was a rendering,” she says.
No commentsHigh-Definition Imagery of Earth Shot from Space
By Jeanna Bryner, Staff Writer
posted: 01 October 2007, 11:41 am ET
The first high-definition video of Earth from beyond the planet’s orbit has just been made by a Japanese satellite on its way to the moon.
The imagery was taken by the lunar explorer Kaguya, launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Sept. 14 (Japan Standard Time). The onboard high-definition television, developed by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, captured the eight-minute video about 68,350 miles (110,000 kilometers) away from Earth.
The video has not been released, but in a still shot taken from the footage, the west coast of South America is seen, awash in daylight.
No commentsAstronomers Pinpoint Origin Of Nature’s Most Powerful Magnetic Bursts
Science Daily — University of Arizona astronomers have pinpointed the origin of powerful bursts from nature’s most magnetic objects.
The bursts are from “magnetars,” some of the most enigmatic objects in the universe.
Magnetars are a type of neutron star, which are superdense stars that pack the mass of a sun into a body the size of Manhattan Island. Tiny magnetars possess magnetic fields that are at least 100 trillion times as powerful as Earth’s magnetic field. They occasionally produce powerful bursts, hurling high-energy radiation cascading across space. The origin of these energetic eruptions and the strong magnetic fields is a mystery.
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 commentsA warm South Pole? Yes, on Neptune!
An international team of astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope has discovered that the south pole of Neptune is much hotter than the rest of the planet. This is consistent with the fact that it is late southern summer and this region has been in sunlight for about 40 years.
The scientists are publishing the first temperature maps of the lowest portion of Neptune’s atmosphere, showing that this warm south pole is providing an avenue for methane to escape out of the deep atmosphere.
“The temperatures are so high that methane gas, which should be frozen out in the upper part of Neptune’s atmosphere (the stratosphere), can leak out through this region,” said Glenn Orton, lead author of the paper reporting the results. “This solves a long-standing problem of identifying the source of Neptune’s high stratospheric methane abundances.”Â
No commentsMilky Way Companions Just Passing Through
By Jeanna Bryner,Staff Writer
posted: 18 September 2007,06:52 am ET
Two dwarf galaxies thought to be our Milky Way’s longtime companions are actually relative newcomers to our neighborhood that are just passing through, according to a new study.
The surprising finding is a celestial curveball of sorts, sending astronomers back to the clubhouse in order to rework theories that were based on long-lasting interactions between the Milky Way and the dwarf galaxies, called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
Read More…Â
No commentsPlanet Survived Brush with Red Giant
Will the sun destroy Earth? Astronomers come closer to an answer.
By JR Minkel
Astronomers have detected the first planet orbiting a star that has passed through the red giant phase, the massive bloating that befalls sun-like stars when their nuclear fuel begins to run out.
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