SPACE
& SCIENCE NEWS: April 2004
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| Opportunity main mission complete |
Apr 30, 2004 |
| Molecular rings could shelter
Venus bugs |
Apr 29, 2004 |
| Super-hot star caught in death
throes |
Apr 29, 2004 |
| Fewer females wiped out dinosaurs |
Apr 28, 2004 |
| New Moon mineral found |
Apr 27, 2004 |
| Spying the surface of Titan |
Apr 26, 2004 |
| NASA optimistic about Hubble
fate |
Apr 25, 2004 |
| Early life thrived in lava flows |
Apr 23, 2004 |
| 'Weird' meteorite may be from
Mars moon |
Apr 22, 2004 |
| Soyuz docks with space station |
Apr 21, 2004 |
| Dust storms
may bedevil Mars explorers |
Apr 21, 2004 |
| Gravity B
probe successfully launched |
Apr 20, 2004 |
| Comet destroyed
in stellar crash |
Apr 20, 2004 |
| Opportunity
dashes 140 meters |
Apr 19, 2004 |
| British scientists
seek alien worlds |
Apr 18, 2004 |
| Star Trek
communicator ready to go |
Apr 17, 2004 |
| Mars rover
finds rock like meteorites that fell to Earth |
Apr 17, 2004 |
| Cosmic magnifying
glass finds distant planet |
Apr 16, 2004 |
| Cave yields
'earliest jewellery' |
Apr 15, 2004 |
| Big Bang glow
hints at funnel-shaped Universe |
Apr 15, 2004 |
| Runaway stars
may solve black hole riddle |
Apr 15, 2004 |
| Memory bottleneck
limits intelligence |
Apr 15, 2004 |
| Invisible
giants exposed in new Spitzer image |
Apr 14, 2004 |
| Sedna has
no moon say puzzled astronomers |
Apr 14, 2004 |
| Trilobite
was ancient snack food |
Apr 14, 2004 |
| With tiny
brain implants, just thinking may make it so |
Apr 13, 2004 |
| Turin Shroud
'shows second face' |
Apr 13, 2004 |
| Barren Siberia
may be original home of animal life |
Apr 13, 2004 |
| Mars life-detection
experiment being developed |
Apr 13, 2004 |
| Stunning new
views from Mars Express |
Apr 12, 2004 |
| NASA ponders
yearlong space missions |
Apr 11, 2004 |
| Dark matter
'found within decade' |
Apr 10, 2004 |
| Probe sees
storms merge on Saturn |
Apr 10, 2004 |
| Twin Mars
Exploration Rovers set for extended encore |
Apr 9, 2004 |
| Private spaceflight
draws closer |
Apr 8, 2004 |
| Asteroid protection
plan proposed |
Apr 8, 2004 |
| Milky Way
past was more turbulent than previously thought |
Apr 8, 2004 |
| Telescopes
take close-up of Titan |
Apr 7, 2004 |
| Solar wind
sampler seals its scoops |
Apr 7, 2004 |
| Spirit rover
finishes main mission |
Apr 6, 2004 |
| Astronomy
study reveals ancient places of healing |
Apr 6, 2004 |
| Lunar base
options divide experts |
Apr 5, 2004 |
| Satellite
to test Einstein predictions |
Apr 5, 2004 |
| Strange sound
is heard again by space station crew |
Apr 4, 2004 |
| Ancient builders
followed stars |
Apr 3, 2004 |
| Fossil arm
holds evolutionary secrets |
Apr 3, 2004 |
| Spirit finds
multi-layer hints of past water at Gusev site |
Apr 2, 2004 |
| Double whammy
link to extinctions |
Apr 1, 2004 |
| 'Fifty planets'
could have life |
Apr 1, 2004 |
Opportunity main mission complete
(Apr 30, 2004)
The US space agency's robotic Mars explorer Opportunity has completed
90 days on the Red Planet, bringing its primary mission to an end.
But Opportunity is not finished yet: the rover will carry on investigating
the Red Planet for at least another 240 sols, or Martian days. The
rover has uncovered evidence that its landing site was once the shoreline
of a salty lake or sea. Its "twin", Spirit, passed the 90 sol landmark
earlier this month. Opportunity is exploring Meridiani Planum, a flat
plain rich in the mineral grey haematite – which usually forms
in water. "We have full mission success on the project," said mission
manager Matt Wallace. "It's a remarkable milestone."
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Molecular rings could shelter Venus bugs
(Apr 29, 2004)
The idea that microbes may be alive and well in Venus's
clouds is controversial. But some scientists are becoming more convinced
that microorganisms could survive, thanks to the shelter from ultraviolet
radiation provided by molecular rings of sulphur. Venus might once
have been warm and wet, and a potential breeding ground for life,
but at some point a runaway greenhouse effect dried the planet out
and heated its surface to more than 480°C. A few scientists have argued
that if Venus's climate change was slow enough for life to adapt,
microbes could survive there today, living in acidic clouds at altitudes
of about 50 kilometres. The temperature there is only about 50 to
70°C – conditions some terrestrial microbes can endure.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Super-hot star caught in death throes
(Apr 29, 2004)
The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the death throes of a searingly
hot, Sun-like star that has cast off its outer layers in a form resembling
the opalescent wings of a giant butterfly. Gas in the Bug Nebula,
officially called NGC 6302, is being ionised by an unseen star –
one of the hottest known – at the intersection of the wings.
Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 made this composite image
from exposures of ionised hydrogen and nitrogen in the nebula. The
gas is expanding outward, rippling into finger shapes where it collides
with slower-moving gas. But what excites astronomers most is not the
shimmer of the wings but a dark band that bisects them. A dense ring
of gas and dust girdles and obscures the dying star and contains most
of the star's ejected gas.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Fewer females wiped out dinosaurs
(Apr 28, 2004)
Too many males may have been the reason the dinosaurs died out 65
million years ago, say Leeds University scientists. They believe the
dinosaurs could have been like modern-day reptiles such as crocodiles
whose sex depends upon the temperature before they are born. The idea
is that the asteroid which struck changed the world's climate, causing
it to be cooler and leading to the birth of a preponderance of males.
The male-female imbalance would have led to the dinosaurs' extinction.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
New Moon mineral found
(Apr 27, 2004)
Scientists say a new lunar mineral has been found in a meteorite from
the Moon that crashed to Earth in 2000. The mineral is called hapkeite
after the scientist Bruce Hapke who predicted the existence of the
iron and silicon compound on the Moon 30 years ago. Hapkeite is probably
made when tiny particles impact the Moon at very high speeds, say
Mahesh Anand and colleagues Their investigation of meteorite Dhofar
280 is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Spying the surface of Titan
(Apr 26, 2004)
New images of unsurpassed clarity have been obtained with the ESO
Very Large Telescope (VLT) of formations on the surface of Titan,
the largest moon in the Saturnian system. They were made by an international
research team during recent commissioning observations with the "Simultaneous
Differential Imager (SDI)", a novel optical device, just installed
at the NACO Adaptive Optics instrument. The images show a number of
surface regions with very different reflectivity. Of particular interest
are several large "dark" areas of uniformly low reflectivity. One
possible interpretation is that they represent huge surface reservoirs
of liquid hydrocarbons.
Read
more. Source: Spaceflight Now/ESO |
NASA optimistic about Hubble fate
(Apr 25, 2004)
A robotic rescue mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope
may be feasible, according to NASA's Associate Administrator, Dr Ed
Weiler. In January, the US space agency said there would be no more
risky astronaut visits to the telescope, which would probably limit
its life to a few years. But Dr Weiler says there are now some promising
ideas about how Hubble could be visited without the space shuttle.
A small spacecraft could be built to attach itself to Hubble, he believes.
"There is a lot of optimism about the robotic possibilities," Dr Weiler
told BBC News Online. He added that NASA should be able to be more
definitive about the options in June.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Early life thrived in lava flows
(Apr 23, 2004)
Geologists have discovered microscopic burrows where some of Earth's
earliest lifeforms bored their way into volcanic glass 3.5 billion
years ago. The tubes, from rocks in South Africa's Barberton Greenstone
Belt, retain traces of organic carbon left behind by the microorganisms,
the authors say. The microbes etched their way into rocks that formed
as lava oozed out across a sea floor in Archaean times. An international
team published details of the work in the journal Science.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
'Weird' meteorite may be from Mars moon
(Apr 22, 2004)
A unique meteorite that fell on a Soviet military base in Yemen in
1980 may have come from one of the moons of Mars. Several meteorites
from the Red Planet have been found on Earth, but this could be the
only piece of Martian moon rock. Andrei Ivanov, who is based at the
Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry in Moscow,
Russia, spent two decades puzzling over the fist-sized Kaidun meteorite
before he decided that it must be a chip off Phobos, the larger of
the two Martian moons. "I can't find a better candidate," Ivanov told
New Scientist. The Kaidun meteorite is like no other in the world
– and 23,000 of them have been catalogued. It is made of many
small chunks of material, including minerals never seen before.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Soyuz docks with space station
(Apr 21, 2004)
A Russian spacecraft carrying a Russian-American-Dutch crew has docked
smoothly with the international space station. The Soyuz TM-4, working
on autopilot, docked three minutes ahead of schedule at 9:01 a.m.
local time, approximately two days after blasting off on a rocket
from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Carrying three astronauts,
it was the third Russian spacecraft to fill in for the U.S. space
shuttle, which has been suspended since the Columbia disaster.
Source: CNN/AP |
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