| May 14, 2009 |  |
a timely reality check |
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Atlantis astronauts set for first Hubble fix-it spacewalk Houston, Texas (AFP) May 14, 2009 
Astronauts from the US space shuttle Atlantis prepared Thursday for an ambitious spacewalk to overhaul the Hubble space telescope and extend its working life. The spacewalks follow an operation Wednesday during which Atlantis astronauts plucked Hubble from orbit, maneuvering it into the cargo bay of the shuttle. John Grunsfeld, 50, will lead the first of five spacewalks Thursday at 1216 ... read more
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Chinese space debris passes shuttle uneventfully: NASA
Houston, Texas (AFP) May 13, 2009A small piece of debris from China's 2007 anti-satellite test passed by the space shuttle Atlantis, but not close enough to require an evasive maneuver, NASA said Wednesday. "No action was required," said Pat Ryan, a US space agency spokesman in Mission Control. The 10-centimeter-long (four-inch) object, which was being tracked by the Pentagon, was projected to pass within three kilomete ... more An Urgent Call To Action On Space Debris 
Superior CO (SPX) May 14, 2009Now is the time to reduce the threat to both human spaceflight and satellites from destructive space debris. That viewpoint emerged from a major gathering of space experts at the International Interdisciplinary Congress on Space Debris, held May 7-9 at the Faculty of Law, McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The Congress brought together legal, policy, and technical experts from around ... more Let The Planet Hunt Begin 
Moffett Field CA (SPX) May 14, 2009NASA's Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for other Earth-like worlds. The mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 6, will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars for telltale signs of planets. Kepler has the unique ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possi ... more Planck Satellite Ready To Measure The Big Bang 
Garching, Germany (SPX) May 14, 2009The last tests of the Ariane 5 rocket system have been finished, and ESA's Planck satellite is sitting ready for launch at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou. Together with ESA's Space Telescope Herschel, Planck will start into space on 14 May to begin its studies of the cosmic microwave radiation and of the clues it gives about the Big Bang, the earliest phases of the cosmic history, and ... more Atlantis astronauts capture Hubble on fix-it mission 
Houston, Texas (AFP) May 13, 2009Astronauts plucked the high-flying Hubble Space Telescope from orbit Wednesday, maneuvering it into the bay of the shuttle Atlantis for an ambitious spacewalking overhaul. Astronaut Megan McArthur grappled the 13.2-meter long telescope with the shuttle's robot arm at 1714 GMT, after Atlantis commander Scott Altman maneuvered his spacecraft within 10 meters (35 feet) of the scientific icon. ... more |
solarscience:
 extrasolar:  hubble:  |
Pasadena CA (SPX) May 11, 2009The Hubble community bids farewell to the soon-to-be decommissioned Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 onboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In tribute to Hubble's longest-running optical camera, which was developed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a planetary nebula has been imaged as the camera's final "pretty picture." This planetary nebula is known as Ko ... more Telescopes to probe the dawn of time 
Paris (AFP) May 12, 2009Visiting the future may remain a sci-fi fantasy, but on Thursday a rocket is set to hoist aloft two European spacecraft designed to probe the distant past... all the way back to the origins of the Universe some 14 billion years ago. With a combined cost of 1.6 billion euros (2.17 billion dollars), the Herschel and Planck telescopes represent Europe's greatest-ever investment in orbital astro ... more The Camera That Saved Hubble...Twice 
Pasadena CA (SPX) May 11, 2009First motion is almost always a big event in the world of space exploration. Whether the first motion is of a wheel beginning to rotate or a rocket lifting off the pad, first motion means things are definitely changing. On day four of the upcoming shuttle servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope, there will be another such significant first motion. It will begin when a bolt that has ... more Creating The Astro-Comb To Locate Earth-Like Planets 
Washington DC (SPX) May 11, 2009Thanks to the ability of astronomers to detect the presence of extrasolar planets orbiting distant stars, scientists are now able to examine hundreds of solar systems. Now researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. have created an "astro-comb" to help astronomers detect lighter planets, more like Earth, around distant stars. The Harvard group will pr ... more |
hubble:
 hubble: hubble:  |
Moffett Field CA (SPX) May 08, 2009Outer space is known to be unfriendly to biology, but it has been hard to determine just how long it takes for life and life-related compounds to be negatively affected. A new research project plans to monitor samples of organic compounds and living organisms as they orbit the Earth in a small satellite. The hope is that this will give astrobiology researchers vital data about chemical evo ... more Precursors Of Life Maybe Lost In Space 
Ann Arbor MI (SPX) May 08, 2009Many of the organic molecules that make up life on Earth have also been found in space. A University of Michigan astronomer will use the Herschel Space Observatory to study these chemical compounds in new detail in the warm clouds of gas and dust around young stars. He hopes to gain insights into how organic molecules form in space, and possibly, how life formed on Earth. "The chemis ... more The Asteroids Are Coming 
Bethesda MD (SPX) May 04, 2009This isn't just "buzz" to get you excited about a new movie coming; we really are being buzzed by asteroids and other NEOs (Near Earth Objects), and one day these conjunctions could become collisions! There are lots of NEOs out there orbiting the sun. Some, like comets, are less worrisome since they are composed primarily of ice and small, rocky particles that dissipate upon entering Earth ... more Study Plunges Standard Theory Of Cosmology Into Crisis 
Bonn, Germany (SPX) May 07, 2009As modern cosmologists rely more and more on the ominous "dark matter" to explain otherwise inexplicable observations, much effort has gone into the detection of this mysterious substance in the last two decades, yet no direct proof could be found that it actually exists. Even if it does exist, dark matter would be unable to reconcile all the current discrepancies between actual measuremen ... more
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stellar-chemistry:
 stellar-chemistry:  hubble:  |
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