July 18, 2008

For nearly half a century the world’s largest telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, has been observing our solar system and the universe around it. Completed by Cornell University along with the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1963, Arecibo’s enormous size gives it the ability to collect more light than any other telescope, [...]

July 16, 2008

Sunday July 20, 2008 will likely be a fairly typical summer day in America. People will get up, go to Church, and maybe hold a barbeque in the back yard. Perhaps the more industrious amongst us will wash the family car. Calmness, serenity, and above all, normality will rule the day. And in a way, [...]

June 28, 2008

An asteroid the size of Pluto that slammed into the Northern hemisphere of Mars created the Borealis basin, based on the latest survey of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor.
The report released by the magazine Nature explains the 1984 observation of the unusual shape of Mars terrain in the northern hemisphere against the [...]

June 26, 2008

The scientists behind the Mars Phoenix Lander project announced that the soil on Mars was more alkaline than expected and could sustain life.
Scientists at NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration claimed that they were “flabbergasted” by their discovery on the possibility that life could grow on Martian soil.
“It is the type of soil [...]

June 23, 2008

For the first time ever, NASA has confirmed the presence of water ice on Mars. The Phoenix lander, which landed on Mars on May 25, has confirmed to NASA scientists that the white substance it found while digging a trench on June 15 is water ice.
“It is with great pride and a lot of joy [...]

June 20, 2008

Previous studies had identified amino acids and sugars in the meteorite that were believed to have formed in space.

June 17, 2008

Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama thundered to long, loud and vigorous applause from a Father’s Day Chicago church crowd that black fathers don’t engage with their children.
A month before Obama made this stereotypical and plainly false assertion, Boston University professor Rebekah Levine Coley, in a comprehensive study on the black family, found that black [...]

June 8, 2008

NASA has stated that the Mars Phoenix lander is having trouble analyzing soil samples that its robotic arm is collecting. According to NASA, the soil appears to be too clodded to pass through screens on the way to Phoenix’s Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA).
Images taken by the lander’s camera shows that the robotic arm has [...]

June 2, 2008

The robotic arm scoop on the Phoenix lander on Mars has made its first impression on the red planet, leaving behind a mark that resembles a human footprint. It began its first dig on Saturday, May 31, and the camera on board the arm caught an image.
“This first touch allows us to utilize the Robotic [...]

June 1, 2008

Space Shuttle Discovery has successfully launched from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, beginning mission STS-124. Discovery will deliver the main pressurized module of the Japanese Experiment Module to the International Space Station. Lift-off occurred at 21:02:12 GMT this evening, with the ascent to an initial sub-orbital trajectory lasting approximately eight [...]

May 28, 2008

According to a NASA status report, the lone toilet on the International Space Station (ISS) has broken, leaving the astronauts on board having to use a rigged-up system of bags to collect any liquid waste.
According to NASA, the collection fan motor broke sometime last week after one of the crew used the Russian-made toilet in [...]

May 25, 2008

NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft has landed safely on Mars, following a ten-month flight. Landing occurred yesterday evening at around 23:38 GMT (20:38 EDT), with confirmation being received by flight controllers around fifteen minutes later at 23:53, the communications delay due to the time taken for light and radio signals to travel from Mars back to Earth.
Phoenix [...]

May 22, 2008

The Spirit Rover, one of two planetary rovers operated by NASA on the planet Mars, has made an important, though unintentional discovery on the red planet. A wheel which has been inoperable on the rover, has been making large gouges in the soil of Mars where ever it goes.
Scientists say they can confirm that images [...]

Astronomers have for the first time watched a supernova explosion break out of the surface of the parent star. Previously only the remnants after an explosion have been found. The new object, SN 2008D, is in another galaxy.
Alicia Soderberg, a Hubble and Carnegie-Princeton Fellow at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, explained the significance: “For [...]

March 26, 2008

The Space Shuttle Endeavour landed on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida at 00:39 GMT this morning. Endeavour’s landing marks the completion of the STS-123 mission, which saw two new components installed aboard the International Space Station during a 15 day, 18 hour, 10 minute and 54 second mission. [...]

March 19, 2008

A Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket has successfully launched the DirecTV-11 Communications satellite for DirecTV. The Ukrainian-built rocket lifted off from the Norwegian Ocean Odyssey launch platform in the Pacific Ocean at 22:47:59 (UTC) yesterday evening, with spacecraft separation from the carrier rocket occurring at 23:49:03.
The mission, which marked the 13th orbital launch of 2008, is [...]

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected methane in the atmosphere of a planet 63 light-years away, marking the first discovery of an organic compound on a planet outside our Solar System.
The methane was found on a Jupiter-sized planet named HD 189733b. The planet closely orbits HD 189733, a yellow dwarf star in the constellation Vulpecula.
Although [...]

March 15, 2008

Space probe Cassini performed a close flyby of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus on Wednesday. The fate of the $3.5 billion mission was in the balance as the bus-sized spacecraft swooped to just 50 km (30 mi) above the surface of Enceladus to sample the frozen spray issuing from geysers on the the moon’s surface. The [...]

March 14, 2008

At 23:18:55 GMT this evening, a Russian Proton-M/Briz-M rocket launched from Area 200/39 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with the AMC-14 satellite for American communications organisation SES Americom. The rocket, operated by International Launch Services, lifted off on time, and headed towards a Geosynchronous orbit. AMC-14, which will be operated in conjunction with Echostar [...]

March 13, 2008

An Atlas V rocket has successfully launched a classified spy satellite for the United States National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The satellite, currently known to the public as NRO L-28, or Launch 28, is believed by amateur enthusiasts to be a signals intelligence (SIGINT) spacecraft, known by the codename Trumpet. The Atlas V carrier rocket flew [...]