science / Space
Astronauts transfer cargo carrier to ISSWashington - The crews of the space shuttle Discovery and the International
space station on Monday transferred a container holding 816 kilograms of cargo to the station. In the first day of joint operations at the station, the crews used a robotic a...
Earth Times Tuesday, September 01, 2009Cargo carrier moved to ISSThe crews of the space shuttle Discovery and the International
space station have transferred a cargo container to the orbital outpost.
iol.co.za Tuesday, September 01, 2009Salvaging NASA's Planetary Grand Tour: Sending Voyager 2 Where No Probe Had Gone Before--Or SinceOn March 5, 1979, Voyager 1 arrived at Jupiter, followed by Voyager 2 on July 9. Suddenly, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., was flooded with crystal-clear pictures of Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere and never-before-seen volcanic eruptions on its moon Io.When the twin spacecraft arrived at Saturn, they matched their previous performances at Jupiter with images of the ringed world's magnificently intricate system and moons, granting Voyager Project Scientist Ed Stone and his colleagues all they had hoped for in a torrent of discoveries. [More]
Scientific American Tuesday, September 01, 2009Target Europa: Ambitious Plans Aim for Jupiter's Ocean MoonAn elaborate choreography of multiple spacecraft will play out among Jupiter and its Galilean moons in the decade of the 2020s, if plans now taking shape at NASA and other space agencies get the go-ahead in the next several years. The lion's share of these coordinated and collaborative ventures will focus on orbiting--and possibly landing on--Europa, a scientifically intriguing world where evidence of a watery ocean beneath the moon's icy crust points to a possible abode for extraterrestrial life.In February, NASA selected a Europa voyage as a priority for the agency's "flagship" mission to the outer solar system, edging out a proposed visit to Saturn's moon Titan that was deemed to require further study and technology development. [More]
Scientific American Tuesday, September 01, 20095 Future Robotic Expeditions and What They Could Reveal [Slide Show]Fifty years ago this month, the Soviet Union scored a coup in the space race with a probe called Luna 2. The spacecraft, which resembled a squat, souped-up version of its cousin Sputnik, was launched on September 12, 1959, and two days later reached the lunar surface. By impacting the moon, Luna 2 became the first man-made object to land on a celestial body other than Earth. [More]
Scientific American Tuesday, September 01, 2009Solar Systems Warped by Interstellar WindShape of solar system debris disks changed by encounters with interstellar gas.
SPACE.com Tuesday, September 01, 2009Astronauts Prepare for Mission's First SpacewalkAstronauts are gearing up for their mission's first spacewalk at the International
space station on Tuesday.
SPACE.com Tuesday, September 01, 2009Phobos-Grunt Probe to Put Microbial Life in Mars OrbitIn Mars exploration, of course, it's the Red Planet itself that gets top billing. But there are some good reasons to keep tabs on Phobos, the innermost and larger of Mars' two diminutive moons, which the Russian space agency plans to study with a probe set for launch next month on board a Zenit rocket. Called Phobos Grunt, the three-year mission is to land a spacecraft on the distant moon, scoop up soil samples for analysis and launch one of them back to Earth for further inspection. The probe's name means "Phobos's soil" in Russian. If successful, Phobos Grunt would represent something of a coup for the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). Russia has long struggled to reach Mars and has not carried out a successful interplanetary mission in decades. The nation launched Mars 96 in 1996 to explore the Red Planet, but a rocket failure occurred in Earth orbit. Phobos Grunt would also mark the first sample returned from a planetary surface since the U.S.S
Scientific American Tuesday, September 01, 2009Southern California fire threatens historic Mount Wilson ObservatoryThe so-called Station Fire, which now covers more than 120,000 Southern California acres and is burning largely uncontained, continues to threaten the century-old Mount Wilson Observatory, home to astronomer Edwin Hubble at the time he made his landmark observations of the universe's expansion. The observatory is currently unmanned due to the fire threat and the attending smoke, but a webcam atop Mount Wilson's 150-foot solar tower has provided observatory managers and concerned observers with a view from the scene. At 12:55 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) the camera showed a great deal of smoke but no flames. [More]
Scientific American Tuesday, September 01, 2009Satellites and submarines give the skinny on sea ice thickness(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) This summer, a group of
scientists and students -- as well as a Canadian senator, a writer, and a filmmaker -- set out from Resolute Bay, Canada, on the icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent. They were headed through the Northwest Passage, but instead of opening shipping lanes in the ice, they had gathered to open up new lines of thinking on Arctic science.
Eurekalert.org Tuesday, September 01, 2009 1 2
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