Hubble and Spitzer show Milky Way in amazing detail
This must-see composite color infrared image from the Hubble and Spitzer spacecraft shows the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around. The sweeping panorama is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core.
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Space shuttle Discovery prepped for hangar rollout
After a quiet break for the holidays, Kennedy Space Center technicians are back at work preparing Discovery for the first space shuttle launch of 2009.
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Dead stars are telling the story of planetary birth -- Astronomers have turned to an unexpected place to study the evolution of planets -- dead stars. Observations made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal six dead "white dwarf" stars littered with the remains of shredded asteroids. This might sound pretty bleak, but it turns out the chewed-up asteroids are teaching astronomers about the building materials of planets around other stars.
New study reveals hazards of severe space weather -- A NASA-funded study describes how extreme solar eruptions could have severe consequences for communications, power grids and other technology on Earth.
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Stars forming just beyond black hole's grasp
The center of the Milky Way presents astronomers with a paradox: it holds young stars, but no one is sure how those stars got there. The galactic center is wracked with powerful gravitational tides stirred by a 4 million solar-mass black hole. Those tides should rip apart molecular clouds that act as stellar nurseries, preventing stars from forming in place.
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New info says Milky Way a swifter spinner, more massive -- Fasten your seat belts -- we're faster, heavier, and more likely to collide than we thought. Astronomers making high-precision measurements of the Milky Way say our home Galaxy is rotating about 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously understood.
Baby Jupiters must gain weight fast -- The planet Jupiter gained weight in a hurry during its infancy. It had to, since the material from which it formed probably disappeared in just a few million years, according to a new study of planet formation around young stars.
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Space has never been closer
Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth's upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes.
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Mars rovers celebrate fifth year of exploration
NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers celebrate their fifth year exploring the Red Planet this month, in a mission that was only expected to last 90 days.
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Did prehistoric asteroid smash stimulate life?
Microscopic meteorite fragments discovered in Scotland that fell 480 million years ago coincided with a time of dramatic upheaval on Earth.
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Researchers ponder what came before the Big Bang
The Big Bang is widely considered to have obliterated any trace of what came before. Now, astrophysicists at Caltech think that their new theoretical interpretation of an imprint from the earliest stages of the Universe may also shed light on what came before.
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The great escape of water from Venus -- Venus Express has provided new clues that suggest how the planet lost its water, which could have once been as abundant as it is on Earth today.
Dark energy's galactic stranglehold seen -- It dominates the Universe, accounting for 74 percent of its energy density. The mysterious, space-stretching force known as dark energy, which is accelerating the expansion of the Universe, could also be inhibiting the development of galaxies.
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A solar flare surprise
Solar flares are the most powerful explosions in the solar system. Packing a punch equal to a hundred million hydrogen bombs, they obliterate everything in their immediate vicinity. Not a single atom should remain intact. At least that's how it's supposed to work.
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NASA releases new report on the Columbia tragedy
NASA released a detailed engineering study Tuesday outlining lessons learned about astronaut survival based on an analysis of the 2003 Columbia disaster. The study does not provide any significant new details about the fate of Columbia's crew, but a new timeline shows the pilots attempted to troubleshoot a cascade of problems in the final moments before the spacecraft's computers lost control.
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Scientists find 'missing' clues to Mars mysteries
Researchers using a powerful instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found a long-sought-after mineral on the Martian surface and, with it, unexpected clues to the Red Planet's watery past.
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NASA's Kepler spacecraft ready to ship to Florida -- Engineers are getting ready to pack NASA's Kepler spacecraft into a container and ship it off to its launch site at Cape Canaveral. The mission, scheduled to launch on March 5, will seek to answer an age-old question -- are there other Earths in space?
NASA study links severe storm increases, global warming -- The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth's tropics -- the type associated with severe storms and rainfall -- is increasing as a result of global warming, according to a study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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Russia finishes year by launching three satellites
Three new satellites blasted off from a frigid launch pad in Kazakhstan Thursday, bolstering Russia's space navigation system to help provide continuous coverage over its territory. It marked the final announced space launch of 2008, punctuating the global industry's most successful year since 2000.
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NASA calls on commercial firms to serve space station
NASA has awarded contracts to Orbital Sciences and SpaceX to provide commercial delivery of cargo to the international space station after the space shuttle's retirement in 2010. The companies are developing spacecraft and rockets for commercial resupply missions in the post-shuttle era. Orbital received an order for 8 flights valued at $1.9 billion and SpaceX's order includes 12 flights valued at $1.6 billion.
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China launches for record 11th time in 2008
China launched a new geostationary weather satellite early Tuesday, marking the country's 11th successful space launch of the year and setting a new record for Chinese space activity.
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Amid uncertainty, NASA plans for Ares 1-X test flight
As the incoming Obama administration considers whether to accelerate development of the Ares 1 rocket that will replace the space shuttle - or possibly change course and switch to a different system or even extend shuttle operations - NASA is pressing ahead with plans to launch a critical sub-orbital test flight to show off the new rocket and collect valuable engineering data.
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Station crew ventures outside for spacewalk
Space station commander Mike Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov made a five-hour, 38-minute spacewalk Monday night, lasting from 7:51 p.m. to 1:29 a.m. EST to install an instrument that will measure the electrical environment around the station and to install and remove space exposure experiments. One package could not be hooked up and was brought back inside.
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Eutelsat's unprecedented launch twice as sweet
One of the world's top commercial satellite operators used a heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket to successfully get two of its new communications spacecraft into orbit Saturday evening. It was a risky proposition for Eutelsat to entrust a pair of its satellites to just one rocket. Never before had the company put two pricey birds on a single launch.
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What came before the Big Bang? -- A question that has been pondered by scientists and philosophers alike could soon be answered, thanks to a mathematical model that explains an anomaly in the early Universe.
Wobbly planets could reveal Earthlike moons -- Instead of looking for potentially habitable planets around stars outside our Solar System, University College London astronomer David Kipping is searching for moons.
Red giants to probe history of Milky Way -- A new project based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III will study more than 100,000 Milky Way red giant stars to help understand the formation history of our Galaxy.
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Solar spacecraft inherits a new launch opportunity
The delay of NASA's next Mars mission will allow an $800 million solar observatory to move out of launch limbo and into an opening in the Atlas 5 rocket's manifest next October.
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Jupiter's largest moon caught going to 'dark side'
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has caught Jupiter's moon Ganymede playing a game of "peek-a-boo." In this crisp Hubble image, Ganymede is shown just before it ducks behind the giant planet.
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Seeing the shape of material around black holes
Black holes can now be thought of as donut holes. The shape of material around black holes has been seen for the first time: an analysis of over 200 active galactic nuclei - cores of galaxies powered by disks of hot material feeding a super-massive black hole - shows that all have a consistent, ordered physical structure that seems to be independent of the black hole's size.
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NASA administrator hails agreement with Ad Astra -- NASA and Ad Astra Rocket Company of Webster, Texas, have signed a Space Act Agreement that could lead to the testing of a new plasma-based space propulsion technology on the International Space Station. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engine initially was studied by NASA and is being commercially developed by Ad Astra.
Astronomers find most distant water in the Universe -- Astronomers have found the most distant water yet seen in the Universe, in a galaxy more than 11 billion light-years from Earth. Previously, the most distant water had been seen in a galaxy less than 7 billion light-years from Earth.
Looking for extraterrestrial life in all the right places -- Scientists are expanding the search for extraterrestrial life -- and they've set their sights on some very unearthly planets. Cold "Super-Earths" that are giant, "snowball" planets astronomers have spied on the outskirts of faraway solar systems could potentially support some kind of life, they have found.
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Planets living on the edge
Some stars have it tough when it comes to raising planets. A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows one unlucky lot of stars, born into a dangerous neighborhood. The stars themselves are safe, but the material surrounding them -- the dusty bits of what might have been future planets -- can be seen blowing off into space.
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Dark energy found stifling growth in universe -- For the first time, astronomers have clearly seen the effects of "dark energy" on the most massive collapsed objects in the universe using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By tracking how dark energy has stifled the growth of galaxy clusters and combining this with previous studies, scientists have obtained the best clues yet about what dark energy is and what the destiny of the universe could be.
Rock varnish: A promising habitat for Martian bacteria -- As scientists search for life on Mars, they should take a close look at rock varnish. A new study suggests that rock varnish could provide a niche habitat for microbial life on Mars and in other extraterrestrial environments devoid of liquid water.
New oceanography mission data now available -- Oceanography data that will help scientists around the world better understand climate change are now available. The data come from the Ocean Surface Topography Mission, also known as OSTM/Jason-2, a spacecraft developed jointly by NASA and the French space agency.
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Dynamic moon Enceladus shows more signs of activity
The closer scientists look at Saturn's small moon Enceladus, the more they find evidence of an active world. The most recent flybys of Enceladus made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft have provided new signs of ongoing changes on and around the moon. The latest high-resolution images of Enceladus show signs that the south polar surface changes over time.
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Titan's volcanoes give NASA spacecraft chilly reception -- Data collected during several recent flybys of Titan by NASA's Cassini spacecraft have put another arrow in the quiver of scientists who think the Saturnian moon contains active cryovolcanoes spewing a super-chilled liquid into its atmosphere.
Phoenix site on Mars may be in dry climate cycle phase -- The Martian arctic soil that NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander dug into this year is very cold and very dry. However, when long-term climate cycles make the site warmer, the soil may get moist enough to modify the chemistry, producing effects that persist through the colder times.
Stennis Space Center to test rocket engine for Taurus 2 -- NASA's Stennis Space Center will provide propulsion system acceptance testing for the Taurus 2 space launch vehicle, which Orbital Sciences is developing.
SBIRS HEO surveillance system achieves certification -- The first Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO-1) payload and ground system, built by a Lockheed Martin team, has been certified for operations by U.S. Strategic Command.
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Hubble finds carbon dioxide on an extrasolar planet
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This is an important step along the trail of finding the chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life as we know it.
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China launches another Earth-observing satellite -- China launched a secretive Earth observation satellite early Monday for land surveys and disaster monitoring, according to state media reports.
Ball completes environmental testing for Kepler mission -- Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has successfully completed a series of rigorous environmental and operational tests for NASA's Kepler mission to verify seamless operation of the system level hardware and software.
Oscillation rules as the Pacific Ocean cools -- The latest image of sea-surface height measurements from the U.S./French Jason-1 oceanography satellite shows the Pacific Ocean remains locked in a strong, cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a large, long-lived pattern of climate variability in the Pacific associated with a general cooling of Pacific waters.
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Study tracks stars orbiting Milky Way black hole
In a 16-year long study, a team of German astronomers has produced the most detailed view ever of the surroundings of the monster lurking at our Galaxy's heart - a supermassive black hole. The research has unravelled the hidden secrets of this tumultuous region by mapping the orbits of almost 30 stars, a five-fold increase over previous studies. One of the stars has now completed a full orbit around the black hole.
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Astronomers dissect a supermassive black hole -- Combining a double natural "magnifying glass" with the power of ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have scrutinised the inner parts of the disc around a supermassive black hole 10 billion light-years away. They were able to study the disc with a level of detail a thousand times better than that of the best telescopes in the world, providing the first observational confirmation of the prevalent theoretical models of such discs.
Students discover planet -- Three undergraduate students from Leiden University have discovered the first extrasolar planet orbiting a fast-rotating hot star.
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Endeavour's ferryflight delivers shuttle back home
Space shuttle Endeavour safely concluded its cross-country trek atop a Boeing 747 carrier jet Friday, flying from an overnight stopping point at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and returning home to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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NASA's Swift looks to comets for a cool view
NASA's Swift Gamma-ray Explorer satellite rocketed into space in 2004 on a mission to study some of the highest-energy events in the universe. The spacecraft has detected more than 380 gamma-ray bursts, fleeting flares that likely signal the birth of a black hole in the distant universe. In that time, Swift also has observed 80 exploding stars and studied six comets.
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Predicted planet seen -- In 2006, astronomer Alice Quillen of the University of Rochester predicted that a planet of a particular size and orbit must lie within the dust of a nearby star. That planet has now been photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, making it only the second planet ever imaged after an accurate prediction. The only other planet seen after an accurate prediction was Neptune, discovered more than 160 years ago.
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Mars orbiter completes prime mission
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has completed its primary, two-year science phase. The spacecraft has found signs of a complex Martian history of climate change that produced a diversity of past watery environments.
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Camera measures size of a planet orbiting a distant star -- A team of astronomers led by John Johnson of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy has used a new technique to measure the precise size of a planet around a distant star. They used a camera so sensitive that it could detect the passage of a moth in front of a lit window from a distance of 1,000 miles.
James Webb Telescope mirrors chill out -- The first of 18 mirror segments that will fly on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope arrived this week at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. to prepare it to meet the extreme temperatures it will encounter in space.
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Astronomers find the two dimmest stellar bulbs
It's a tie! The new record-holder for dimmest known star-like object in the universe goes to twin "failed" stars, or brown dwarfs, each of which shines feebly with only one millionth the light of our sun.
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Proton rocket puts payload into space for Canada
The first new commercial spacecraft for an up-and-coming Canadian satellite operator successfully ascended into orbit around the planet Wednesday atop a Russian rocket. The Proton booster blasted off at 8:43 a.m. EST from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying the Ciel 2 spacecraft. It took about nine hours and five firings by the Breeze M upper stage to haul the 12,260-pound satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit. The craft's anchor customer will be the DISH Network television broadcast service.
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Launch of Delta 4-Heavy rescheduled for January
Efforts to troubleshoot and resolve an issue with the top-secret national security satellite to be carried aloft by a Delta 4-Heavy rocket has slipped the launch into the New Year.
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Rivers of gas flow around stars in new space image
A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a turbulent star-forming region, where rivers of gas and stellar winds are eroding thickets of dusty material. The picture provides some of the best examples yet of the ripples of gas that can form around stars in choppy cosmic waters.
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Moon mission gets green light -- The UK-led MoonLITE mission that will see penetrator darts embedded into the lunar surface has been given the go ahead by the government to enter into an in-depth
"Phase-A" study.
Brown dwarfs do form like stars -- Astronomers have uncovered strong evidence that brown dwarfs - the dividing line between stars and planets - form like stars.
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U.S. and Europe join forces for future Mars missions
NASA and the European Space Agency have agreed on a strategic partnership for future robotic missions to explore Mars. The partnership will help the agencies share mounting costs and responsibilities for future missions.
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Orbiter finds Martian rock holding a rhythmic record
Climate cycles persisting for millions of years on ancient Mars left a record of rhythmic patterns in thick stacks of sedimentary rock layers, revealed in three-dimensional detail by a telescopic camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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Rocket motor test helps NASA's shuttle and Ares 1 -- NASA's Space Shuttle Program on Thursday successfully conducted a test firing of a space shuttle reusable solid rocket motor in Utah. The more than seven-year-old, four-segment motor tested is the oldest ever fired.
NASA assigns crews for future space shuttle missions -- NASA has assigned the crews for space shuttle flights STS-130 and STS-131. The STS-130 mission will deliver a third connecting module to the International Space Station and a seven-windowed cupola to be used as a control room for robotics. The STS-131 mission will deliver research and science experiment equipment, a new sleeping area and supplies to the station in a logistics module carried in the shuttle's payload bay.
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NASA delays Mars Science Laboratory launch to 2011
Launch of NASA's showcase Mars Science Laboratory, a nuclear-powered rover the size of a small car, will be delayed from 2009 to 2011 because of ongoing development problems, agency officials said Thursday. The cost of the delay through end of mission will add some $400 million to the project's price tag, pushing the projected cost from $1.88 billion to around $2.2 billion.
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Supernova time travel to a 16th century explosion
When a person looks up into the nighttime sky, they see stars, planets, and galaxies across a sea of darkness. The movements of planets and seasonal variations to the constellations have been relatively the same for thousands of years. What if the sky changed overnight and a new star brighter than anything else appeared? Would it be noticed if it happened in the 16th century?
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A new class of comets -- Comet 96P/Machholz 1 shows extremely anomalous compositional characteristics helping pinpoint its origin to one of three intriguing scenarios.
Cosmic ray influx -- Research conducted at the Milagro observatory has uncovered two nearby regions in space that exhibit unusually high readings of cosmic rays.
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Jets on Enceladus: Are they wet or just wild?
Scientists continue to search for the cause of the geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The geysers are visible as a large plume of water vapor and ice particles escaping the moon. Inside the plume are jets of dust and gas. What causes and controls the jets is a mystery. The Cassini spacecraft continues to collect new data to look for clues.
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SpaceX adds two DragonLab missions to manifest -- SpaceX announces the addition of two DragonLab missions to its manifest, as a result of demand from a successful workshop held to introduce the new product. The first two flights are scheduled for 2010 and 2011 respectively from the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch site at Complex 40, Cape Canaveral, Florida.
NASA selects contractor for next GOES series spacecraft -- NASA, in coordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has selected the contractor for the next series of weather satellites. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company of Denver was selected to build the satellites for NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, or GOES-R, Program.
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NASA finishes listening for Phoenix lander on Mars
After nearly a month of daily checks to determine whether Martian NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander would be able to communicate again, the agency has stopped using its Mars orbiters to hail the lander and listen for its beep.
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Russians deploy new military spacecraft into orbit -- Russia launched a military reconnaissance satellite Tuesday morning into an elliptical high-altitude orbit from the country's northern space base, according to news reports.
Chinese launch another Earth-observing satellite -- China launched a new remote sensing satellite early Monday for a variety of civilian applications, according to state media reports. The Yaogan 4 satellite was launched aboard a Long March 2D rocket.
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Weather detour leads shuttle to California landing
The space shuttle Endeavour dropped out of a cloudless blue sky and settled to a tire-smoking touchdown at California's Edwards Air Force Base on Sunday afternoon to wrap up another 16-day space station assembly and maintenance mission. Poor weather at Florida's Kennedy Space Center caused NASA to divert the shuttle to the backup landing site.
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New simulation gives Jupiter double-sized core
New computer simulations, conducted at the scale of individual atoms, say Jupiter has a rocky core surrounded by ice that is more than twice as large as previously thought.
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Milky Way's mammoth stars resolved by Hubble
Two of our Galaxy's most massive stars have been scrutinised by the Hubble Space Telescope to reveal a third component of the system.
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When and where will shuttle Endeavour land?
Entry Flight Director Bryan Lunney hopes the Florida weather will cooperate and permit the Endeavour astronauts to land Sunday at the Kennedy Space Center. But if predicted high crosswinds and thunderstorms develop, and if Monday's forecast promises little improvement, he'll divert the crew to Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert.
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Shuttle departs station to prepare for landing
Space shuttle Endeavour undocked from the international space station Friday morning, capping a 12-day visit that delivered the equipment needed to enlarge the outpost's crew size. The astronauts spent the afternoon performing a final round of heat shield inspections. The shuttle is scheduled for landing on Sunday, weather permitting.
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Thanksgiving in space
Celebrating Thanksgiving in space, the crews of the international space station and the shuttle Endeavour enjoyed a half-day off and shared a turkey dinner in orbit before saying farewell and closing hatches between the two spacecraft to set the stage for undocking Friday.
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Leonardo returns to shuttle; Progress glitch fixed
An unmanned Russian Progress supply ship was launched Wednesday, bound for a docking with the international space station Sunday. An antenna that is part of the vehicle's automated docking system initially failed to deploy, but later efforts got the antenna out. Aboard the station, the astronauts closed the Leonardo cargo module and, using the station's robot arm, moved it back to the shuttle for return to Earth.
LEONARDO RETURNED TO SHUTTLE
MORNING WAKEUP STORY
PROGRESS LAUNCH STORY
NASA TV SCHEDULE REV. L (.pdf download)
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LEONARDO MODULE RETURNED TO ENDEAVOUR PLAY
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Booster cameras give dramatic views of launch
Footage recorded by video cameras on space shuttle Endeavour's twin solid rocket boosters has been released showing the ship's nighttime launch on November 14 from Kennedy Space Center. The movies are presented here with launch audio.
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LEFT-HAND BOOSTER CAMERA LOOKING UPWARD PLAY
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RIGHT-HAND BOOSTER CAMERA LOOKING UPWARD PLAY
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RIGHT-HAND BOOSTER CAMERA LOOKING INBOARD PLAY
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RIGHT-HAND BOOSTER CAMERA LOOKING DOWNWARD PLAY
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Station boss happy with SARJ, water recycler repairs
Work to replace bearings and re-lubricate the space station's damaged right-side solar array rotary joint went better than expected, a senior manager said Tuesday, resulting in remarkably smooth operation that may permit the agency to forego building, launching and installing costly replacement hardware. And the station's newly installed water recycling system, including an initially cantankerous urine distillation assembly, appears to be operating normally and will allow Endeavour to bring back more samples for analysis than expected.
FULL STORY
MORNING WAKEUP STORY
NASA TV SCHEDULE REV. K (.pdf download)
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MINNEAPOLIS, PORTLAND, PHILLY INTERVIEWS WITH CREW PLAY
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TUESDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
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TUESDAY MORNING FLIGHT DIRECTOR INTERVIEW PLAY
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Spacewalkers complete final excursion of mission
Astronauts Stephen Bowen and Shane Kimbrough accomplished a six-hour spacewalk Monday that finished work on the space station's damaged right-side solar array rotary joint and carried out preventive maintenance on its port-side counterpart. Meanwhile, the shuttle flight has been extended a day and the water recycling system was fired back up and appeared to run relatively smoothly after additional modification work.
RECYCLING GEAR WORKS DURING LONG TEST
SPACEWALK ENDS
PORT SARJ SHOWS WEAR
EVA NO. 4 BEGINS; MISSION EXTENDED
MORNING WAKEUP STORY
NASA TV SCHEDULE REV. J (.pdf download)
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MONDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING P |
