The SpaceX Dragon capsule, which on Tuesday became the first commercially developed and built spacecraft to launch to the International Space Station, is carrying among its cargo a suite of 15 science experiments designed by students.
NASA Student Space Flight Experiments Program
Known collectively as Aquarius, the experiments will assess the effects of microgravity on physical, chemical and biological systems. … Read the rest of this article
Scientists and amateur astronomers around the world are preparing to observe the rare occurrence of Venus crossing the face of the Sun on 5-6 June, an event that will not be seen again for over a hundred years.
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On June 8, 2004, the planet Venus passed across the disk of the Sun in a rare transit. The last such transit …
The second demonstration mission for NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program is under way as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft lifted off Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 3:44 a.m. EDT.
“I want to congratulate SpaceX for its successful launch and salute the NASA team that worked alongside them to make it happen,” … Read the rest of this article
A partnership with the UK’s Faulkes Telescope Project promises to boost the Agency’s space hazards research while helping students to discover potentially dangerous space rocks.
2m Faulkes North Telescope at Haleakalā, Hawaii, USA. Credits: Faulkes Telescope Project
ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme is keeping watch over space hazards, including disruptive space weather, debris objects in Earth orbit and asteroids … Read the rest of this article
Chaotic networks of dust and gas signpost the next generations of massive stars in this stunning new image of the Cygnus-X star-nursery captured by ESA’s Herschel space observatory.
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This new view of the Cygnus-X star-formation region by Herschel highlights chaotic networks of dust and gas that point to sites of massive star formation (click for larger image). The …
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has provided researchers with the first orbital analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta, yielding new insights into its creation and kinship with terrestrial planets and Earth’s moon.
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This image, made from data obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, shows the mineral distribution in the southern hemisphere of the giant asteroid Vesta. The mineral data came from Dawn’s visible …
AAVSO Alert Notice 458Dr. Christopher Mauche, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and colleagues in Spain and Oman have requested AAVSO observations in support of their upcoming multiwavelength observations of the novalike intermediate polar cataclysmic variable AE Aqr with the Swift satellite, the MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov) telescope on La … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth.
Back-and-forth blinking of this two-image animation shows movement of a sand dune on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/JHU-APL. Click here for more information.
This is unexpected … Read the rest of this article
The Herschel Space Observatory has shown galaxies with the most powerful, active black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes. The results are the first to demonstrate black holes suppressed galactic star formation when the universe was less than half its current age.
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This artistically modified image of the local galaxy Arp 220, …
Just weeks after celebrating its tenth year in orbit, communication with the Envisat satellite was suddenly lost on 8 April. Following rigorous attempts to re-establish contact and the investigation of failure scenarios, the end of the mission is being declared.
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Just weeks after celebrating its tenth year in orbit, communication with the Envisat satellite was suddenly lost on 8 April …
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
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