SPACE
& SCIENCE NEWS: February 2004
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Close-ups narrow theories on Mars bedrock
(Feb 11, 2004)
The latest close-ups taken by the Mars rover Opportunity leave just
two serious possibilities for the method of formation of the layered
rocks it is examining, lead scientist Steve Squyres said on Monday.
The rocks are the first bedrock ever analysed on Mars – other
rocks were only loose boulders. The strata are tantalising the science
team as they might provide conclusive proof of water-lain sediments.
This would show that Mars was once a much wetter place and increase
the chance that life existed. The images, including pictures from
the craft's microscope, show the rock is made of extremely fine-grained
material – too fine for it to have been sediments formed in
standing water, or windblown sand, or any kind of lava flows. And
it forms extremely thin layers embedded with spheres about the size
of peppercorns, whose uniformity rules out the idea that they could
be formed by wave erosion of pebbles. Image: Scientists are closely
studying the broken spherule at the bottom-center of this 3-cm-wide
photo.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Extrasolar waterworlds may be brimming
with life
(Feb 11, 2004)
Picture a giant, blue-white world with a planet-wide ocean hundreds
of times bigger than the Earth's and 10 times as deep. According to
planetary physicists in France and America, such "ocean planets" could
be common – and possibly the best places in our galaxy to find
life. Until recently, nobody suspected the existence of giant water-worlds,
but in the past decade astronomers have discovered more than 100 planets
orbiting nearby stars. These "extrasolar" planetary systems have changed
our ideas of the kind of planets that are possible.
Read
more. Source: Independent |
Mars rover position pinpointed
(Feb 10, 2004)
NASA has pinpointed the position of its robot explorer Opportunity,
the second of two rovers which are now on the Martian surface. Images
taken from space show the lander sitting in a tiny impact crater on
Meridiani Planum, a flat plain rich in the iron-rich mineral grey
haematite. Opportunity has also examined layered rocks in the crater
and has found spherical granules embedded in them. They may have been
formed by volcanism or by the action of liquid water.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Opportunity peeks out over rim
(Feb 10, 2004)
The Mars rover Opportunity has moved to the lip of the crater in which
it landed and peeked out over the rim, mission scientists say. An
image taken from that location shows part of the lander's shell and
its parachute lying off in the distance across a flat, empty plain.
The rover has been using onboard instruments to study a rock outcropping
near the edge of the crater. It first focused on a rock that has been
nick-named Stone Mountain, and took microscopic images of its surface.
Mission scientists plan to study other rocks in the outcropping in
a similar fashion over the next few days.
Read
more. Source: CNN |
Comet lander named Philae
(Feb 9, 2004)
The small robotic probe that Europe is despatching to land on a comet
has been named "Philae" by a 15-year-old girl. Philae is the island
in the river Nile which played a crucial role in cracking the hieroglyphs
on the Rosetta Stone to unlock the secrets of ancient Egypt. The main
spacecraft that will carry the lander on its 10-year voyage to the
comet has already been named Rosetta. The duo are due to leave Earth
from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana on 26 February atop an
Ariane 5 rocket. Their target is 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a mountainous
ball of ice, rock and dust.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Spirit makes drilling debut
(Feb 8, 2004)
NASA says one of its unmanned rover vehicles on Mars has drilled into
a rock, the first time this has been done by a robot vehicle. A NASA
said that Spirit, took nearly three hours to drill the 2.7mm (0.1
inch) hole. The agency hopes it will provide clues about the geological
past of Mars. The drilling is a boost for the NASA mission –
Spirit malfunctioned shortly after it landed last month but resumed
its investigations on Friday.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
'Healed' Mars probe brushes away dust,
revealing darker spot
(Feb 7, 2004)
Scientists declared NASA's Spirit rover completely "healed" on Friday,
after the probe suffered computer problems that engineers now say
they made worse during their diagnosis. Spirit marked its return to
science operations by brushing off the dust from a rock nicknamed
Adirondack, revealing a surprisingly dark surface underneath. Meanwhile,
half a world away, the twin Opportunity rover closed in on another
geological mystery — an outcropping of Martian bedrock called "Snout."
At the end of Friday's workday, the six-wheeled robot geologist was
about half a yard (meter) away from its target, and roughly 23 feet
(7 meters) from its landing platform.
Read
more. Source: MSNBC |
Rover takes first spin on Mars
(Feb 6, 2004)
NASA took the rover Opportunity on its first real drive on Mars, a
trip across pebbly soil that appears to be unlike anything else seen
on the surface of the red planet, scientists said Thursday. Opportunity
rolled forward about 10 feet overnight, leaving it halfway to an outcrop
of rocks that scientists want to spend days studying, said Guy Webster,
a spokesman for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It was the first time
the rover had moved since leaving its lander Saturday. Scientists
were deciding Thursday whether they wanted to conduct more soil tests
on the way to the outcrop.
Read
more. Source: CNN |
Secrets of the 'Evil Eye' galaxy
(Feb 5, 2004)
The collision of two star systems has created a merged galaxy with
an unusual appearance and bizarre motions. The galaxy M64 has a dark
band of dust in front of its bright nucleus, giving rise to its nicknames
of the "Black Eye" or "Evil Eye" galaxy. Observations made by the
Hubble Space Telescope show that gas in the galaxy flows one way in
the centre and in the opposite direction further out. This strange
behaviour is the result of a galactic collision, say scientists.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Galactic building blocks seen swarming
around Andromeda
(Feb 5, 2004)
A team of astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Robert
C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) has made the first conclusive detection
of what appear to be the leftover building blocks of galaxy formation
– neutral hydrogen clouds – swarming around the Andromeda
Galaxy, the nearest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. This discovery
may help scientists understand the structure and evolution of the
Milky Way and all spiral galaxies. It also may help explain why certain
young stars in mature galaxies are surprisingly bereft of the heavy
elements that their contemporaries contain.
Read
more. Source: NRAO |
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