In early June the Mars500 crew celebrated their one full year inside the modules simulating an interplanetary spaceship. They are now flying virtually back to Earth and due to a delay in communications, introduced to make the simulation more real, some material reaches the outside world slowly. As they get nearer to Earth the
communications delay is reduced.
By September … Read the rest of this article
Imagine forecasting a hurricane in Miami weeks before the storm was even a swirl of clouds off the coast of Africa or predicting a tornado in Kansas from the flutter of a butterfly’s wing in Texas. These are the kind of forecasts meteorologists can only dream about.
Could the dream come true? A new study by Stanford researchers suggests that … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), mission to study the moon is in final launch preparations for a scheduled Sept. 8 launch onboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
GRAIL’s twin spacecraft are tasked for a nine-month mission to explore Earth’s nearest neighbor in unprecedented detail. They will determine the structure of the … Read the rest of this article
Two studies appearing in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Nature provide new insights into a cosmic accident that has been streaming X-rays toward Earth since late March. NASA’s Swift satellite first alerted astronomers to intense and unusual high-energy flares from the new source in the constellation Draco.
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On March 28, 2011, NASA’s Swift detected intense X-ray flares thought …
Scientists using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered six “Y dwarfs”– star-like bodies with temperatures as cool as the human body.
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This artist’s conception illustrates what a “Y dwarf” might look like. Y dwarfs are the coldest star-like bodies known, with temperatures that can be even cooler than the human body. NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer …
Following their very successful multiwavelength observing campaign on the dwarf nova SS Cygni in 2010 April (see AAVSO Special Notices #204 and 206 at http://www.aavso.org/special-notice-archive and the related information page at http://www.aavso.org/multiwavelength-observations-ss-cygni), Dr. James Miller-Jones (International Centre for Radio Astronomy … Read the rest of this article
For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released today during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting.
“The movie sent chills down my spine,” says Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in … Read the rest of this article
In a few years a NASA spacecraft will seek the building blocks of life in a shovelful of asteroid dirt. The OSIRIS-REx1 spacecraft, targeted for launch in September 2016, will intercept asteroid 1999 RQ36, orbit it for a year, and then reach out a robotic arm to touch its surface.
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OSIRIS-Rex will visit asteroid 1999 RQ36 and return with samples …
Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson was on Bill Maher’s show a little over a week ago, and he had something to say about plans to slash NASA’s budget, including doing away with the James Webb Space Telescope. He seems to have struck a chord with the audience given their reaction. Here’s some of what he had to say:
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The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
(Northern Hemisphere) |
Aurora Oval
(Southern Hemisphere) |
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