SPACE
& SCIENCE NEWS: February 2004
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| Saturn looms large for spacecraft |
Feb 29, 2004 |
| NASA poised to solve Mars mysteries |
Feb 28, 2004 |
| Nearest young planet-forming
star found |
Feb 27, 2004 |
| Opportunity drills into Mars
rock |
Feb 26, 2004 |
| Mars rock pictures baffle scientists |
Feb 25, 2004 |
| Earth almost put on impact alert |
Feb 24, 2004 |
| Earth sows its seeds in space |
Feb 23, 2004 |
| Mars rover hints at water activity |
Feb 22, 2004 |
| New world found beyond Pluto |
Feb 20, 2004 |
| Rosetta probe ready for lift-off |
Feb 20, 2004 |
| Giant black
hole rips star apart |
Feb 19, 2004 |
| Distant galaxies
line up in space |
Feb 18, 2004 |
| Rover goes
for longest trip yet |
Feb 17, 2004 |
| Diamond star
thrills astronomers |
Feb 16, 2004 |
| Hubble sees
most distant object |
Feb 16, 2004 |
| Huygens probe
aims for white-knuckle descent |
Feb 14, 2004 |
| Mars Express
stares at volcanos |
Feb 14, 2004 |
| Mars rover
reveals new details about rocks |
Feb 13, 2004 |
| New star emerges
from dust cocoon |
Feb 12, 2004 |
| NASA to boost
Mars rovers' distance mark |
Feb 12, 2004 |
| Close-ups
narrow theories on Mars bedrock |
Feb 11, 2004 |
| Extrasolar
waterworlds may be brimming with life |
Feb 11, 2004 |
| Mars rover
position pinpointed |
Feb 10, 2004 |
| Opportunity
peeks out over rim |
Feb 10, 2004 |
| Comet lander
named Philae |
Feb 9, 2004 |
| Spirit makes
drilling debut |
Feb 8, 2004 |
| 'Healed' Mars
probe brushes away dust, revealing darker spot |
Feb 7, 2004 |
| Rover takes
first spin on Mars |
Feb 6, 2004 |
| Secrets of
the 'Evil Eye' galaxy |
Feb 5, 2004 |
| Galactic building
blocks seen swarming around Andromeda |
Feb 5, 2004 |
| Round Mars
grains excite NASA |
Feb 4, 2004 |
| Whales proving
they're smart |
Feb 4, 2004 |
| Collision
with comet may have hastened first plague epidemic |
Feb 4, 2004 |
| The growing
case for water on Mars |
Feb 4, 2004 |
| Both Mars
rovers back in action |
Feb 3, 2004 |
| Oxygen and
carbon discovered in exoplanet atmosphere |
Feb 3, 2004 |
| Mars rover
on track of watery mineral |
Feb 2, 2004 |
| Mars Express
renews speculation about algae on Mars |
Feb 2, 2004 |
| Australian
scientists, and their dog, say life once existed on Mars |
Feb 1, 2004 |
Saturn looms large for spacecraft
(Feb 29, 2004)
Saturn is getting ever bigger in the viewfinder of Cassini-Huygens'
cameras. The US-European spacecraft is not due at the giant ringed
planet until July but has just sent back another stunning image, taken
from a distance of 69m km. The smallest features visible in the new
picture – a composite of a series of exposures taken through
different filters – are about 540 km across. The main probe
Cassini will investigate Saturn for four years, with the Huygens despatched
to the large moon Titan.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
NASA poised to solve Mars mysteries
(Feb 28, 2004)
NASA scientists believe they are days away from concluding whether
or not Mars once had water using data from the Mars rover Opportunity,
they revealed on Thursday. Opportunity, which has been roaming inside
a 20-metre crater on a plateau called Meridiani Planum for nearly
five weeks, has been focusing its attention for the past three on
a 30-meter outcrop of bedrock and its immediate environs. It has taken
microscopic images and spectroscope data and ground portions of the
rock surface to peer beneath its coating of dust. The site was chosen
for its rich deposits of hematite, suggestive of a watery formation,
and for its location within a region that some scientists say shows
signs of once having been an ocean basin. The craft is now in the
midst of grinding and examining several spots on the outcrop, to gather
information about the details of the finely layered structure of the
rock. Together with the chemical and mineralogical data already collected,
this should provide the information needed to decide between the various
theories - volcanic or sedimentary - about how the rock and soil in
this region were formed. Image: Spirit's tracks, looking back toward
lander.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Nearest young planet-forming star found
(Feb 27, 2004)
Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, and University
of Hawaii have discovered the nearest and youngest star with a visible
disk of dust that may be a nursery for planets. The dim red dwarf
star is a mere 33 light years away, close enough that the Hubble Space
Telescope or ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics to sharpen
the image should be able to see whether the dust disk contains clumps
of matter that might turn into planets. "Circumstellar disks are signposts
for planet formation, and this is the nearest and youngest star where
we directly observe light reflected from the dust produced by extrasolar
comets and asteroids – i.e., the objects that could possibly
form planets by accretion," said Paul Kalas, assistant research astronomer
at UC Berkeley and lead author of a paper reporting the discovery.
Art: Scene from a moon orbiting the extra-solar planet in orbit around
the star HD70642. © David A. Hardy
Read
more. Source: Astrobiology Magazine |
Opportunity drills into Mars rock
(Feb 26, 2004)
NASA's Opportunity rover extended its arm and played robot geologist,
drilling into a Martian rock that has intrigued scientists back on
Earth. The six-wheeled rover used the rock-abrasion tool on its instrument-tipped
arm to grind a fraction of an inch into the surface of a rock in a
formation dubbed "El Capitan," project manager Richard Cook said Tuesday.
The rock's weathered surface was ground away so that the rover could
examine the material underneath and photograph it in microscopic detail.
Results were expected to take several days to reach Earth.
Read
more. Source: CNN |
Mars rock pictures baffle scientists
(Feb 25, 2004)
Microscopic photographs of a Mars rock taken by NASA's Opportunity
rover have triggered excitement among scientists, even if they aren't
unanimous on exactly what they're seeing. The images, posted on Jet
Propulsion Laboratory's Mars rovers Web site, show a highly detailed
surface on a rock dubbed "El Capitan" that has been undergoing examination
by the robot geologist. "They are just very beautiful things and it's
not at all clear that we understand what we're looking at," mission
official Rob Manning said in a teleconference with reporters on Monday.
Read
more. Source: CNN |
Earth almost put on impact alert
(Feb 24, 2004)
Astronomers have revealed how they came within minutes of alerting
the world to a potential asteroid strike last month. Some scientists
believed on 13 January that a 30m object, later designated 2004 AS1,
had a one-in-four chance of hitting the planet within 36 hours. It
could have caused local devastation and the researchers contemplated
a call to President Bush before new data finally showed there was
no danger. The procedures for raising the alarm in such circumstances
are now being revised. At the time, the president's team would have
been putting the final touches to a speech he was due to make the
following day at the headquarters of NASA.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Earth sows its seeds in space
(Feb 23, 2004)
The Earth could be scattering the seeds of life throughout our Galaxy.
Microbes could ride on specks of dust, powered by the Sun's rays,
says William Napier, an astronomer at the Armagh Observatory in Northern
Ireland. Scientists have pondered whether life might ride between
star systems ever since the nineteenth century. Some think that a
collision between a life-bearing planet and another celestial body
could scatter stones and boulders into space carrying living organisms.
These deep-frozen spores could then make their way to other worlds
- an idea called panspermia.
Read
more. Source: Nature |
Mars rover hints at water activity
(Feb 22, 2004)
The latest close-up inspections of Martian soil and rock by the NASA
rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to provide tantalising and
unexpected results. A rock that had looked sedimentary proved to be
volcanic, while a freshly-dug trench is showing what may be hints
of some recent water activity. Opportunity has now completed a full
set of microscopic imaging and two kinds of spectroscopy inside a
trench that it dug earlier this week. By spinning one wheel while
locking the other five, the rover gouged out a furrow 50 centimetre
long and 10 centimetre deep in the soft, powdery soil. On Thursday,
it placed its instrument arm on six different locations on the side
and bottom of the trench. The sides of some tiny spheres were spotted
embedded in the soil in the trench side – similar to those seen
earlier on the soil and in an outcrop of bedrock. But the ones in
the trench appear shiny and polished. This could indicate sedimentary
origins, with the stones becoming buffed gently as they rolled at
the bottom of shallow water.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
New world found beyond Pluto
(Feb 20, 2004)
Astronomers have found a large world of ice and rock circling the
Sun beyond the most distant planet, Pluto. Preliminary observations
suggest it may be up to 1,800 km across, making it the largest body
other than a true planet to be discovered orbiting the Sun. Designated
2004 DW, it was found on 17 February by an automated sky survey telescope
in California. Since 1992 some 800 bodies have been found in the outer
Solar System, five could be larger than 1,000 km across. 2004 DW was
found by California Institute of Technology astronomers Chad Trujillo
and Mike Brown, and David Rabinowitz of Yale University, the same
team that discovered Quaoar in 2002.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Rosetta probe ready for lift-off
(Feb 20, 2004)
European space scientists are counting down to the launch of Rosetta,
the mission to put a lander on a comet. The £600m, 12-year space expedition
is scheduled to launch from French Guiana's Kourou spaceport on 26
February aboard an Ariane-5 G+ rocket. But the high-risk mission will
need to overcome major technical challenges. "Rosetta will be the
first ever spacecraft to perform a soft landing on a comet's nucleus,"
UK science minister Lord Sainsbury told a news conference. "This will
allow Rosetta to carry out more in-depth study (of a comet) than has
ever been done before."
Read
more. Source: BBC |
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