SPACE
& SCIENCE NEWS: January 2004
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Hubble is first casuality of Bush plan
(Jan 17, 2004)
The Hubble Space Telescope will be allowed to degrade and eventually
become useless, as NASA changes focus to President Bush's plans to
send humans to the moon, Mars and beyond, officials said Friday. NASA
canceled all space shuttle servicing missions to the Hubble, which
has revolutionized the study of astronomy with its striking images
of the universe. John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist, said NASA
administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision to cancel the fifth space
shuttle service mission to the Hubble when it became clear there was
not enough time to conduct it before the shuttle is retired. The servicing
mission was considered essential to enable the orbiting telescope
to continue to operate.
Read
more. Source: CNN |
Mars rover stretches arm, snaps micro-pictures
(Jan 17, 2004)
The Mars rover Spirit stretched its robotic arm over Martian soil
Friday, and its microscopic imager is capturing even-higher-resolution
images than the ones sent back after landing. A black-and-white image
beamed back to Earth shows in exhaustive detail an inch-and-a-half
square of the red planet's silty surface. "The science team is extremely
fortunate to be up to their eyeballs in new data," NASA's Rob Sullivan
said Friday during a news conference at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, California.
Read
more. Source: CNN |
Hubble obtains deepest space view
(Jan 16, 2004)
The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the deepest view ever of the
cosmos, detecting the youngest and most distant galaxies ever seen
by astronomers. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the result of an unprecedented,
long look of 80 days at just one patch of sky. According to scientists,
the picture reaches back to the Universe's "Dark Ages", before the
first stars formed. The image, which will be released in February,
will be a major advance in our understanding of the cosmos.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
'Hole in sky' amazes scientists
(Jan 16, 2004)
A giant hole that appeared in a uniform layer of cloud over Mobile,
Alabama, in the US, has left scientists puzzled. Local resident Joel
Knain said as he took pictures: "I immediately realised that I was
seeing something unique." Strictly speaking there is no scientific
term for the apparition, and what exactly it is has been the subject
of much meteorological speculation. One hypothesis is that the hole
is made by falling ice-crystals that could have come from the exhaust
of a passing aircraft.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Spirit rover rolls onto the surface of
Mars
(Jan 15, 2004)
The US robotic probe that landed on Mars 10 days ago has rolled off
its lander and on to the Martian surface. The Spirit rover rolled
down the three- meter-ramp on to the red soil of Mars, widely considered
one of the riskiest steps in the US Space Agency's mission. If all
goes well, it will take part in joint experiments with US and European
orbital spacecraft. It can now embark on its mission of exploration
to find evidence of water, past and present, in the Martian soil.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Bush outlines ambitious plan of space exploration
(Jan 14, 2004)
Saying "the desire to explore and understand is part of our character,"
President Bush Wednesday unveiled an ambitious plan to return Americans
to the moon by 2020 and use the mission as a steppingstone for future
manned trips to Mars and beyond. The president unveiled what he billed
as a "new course" for the nation's space program in a speech at NASA
headquarters, shifting the long-term focus from the space shuttle
and the international space station to the creation of a new manned
space vehicle that will be flying with a crew in 10 years and will
return humans to the moon within 16 years.
Read
more. Source: CNN |
Spirit rover targets unveiled
(Jan 14, 2004)
The US space agency NASA has unveiled a list of targets on the Martian
surface which it plans to explore using its robot rover Spirit. Areas
earmarked for investigation include a nearby crater, where a meteorite
may have exposed some of Mars's mysterious underground geology. The
rover will then proceed toward distant hills to learn more about the
processes that shaped Mars. Spirit should leave its landing pad to
roll on to the surface on Thursday GMT.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Mars probe ponders water puzzle
(Jan 13, 2004)
Scientists are speculating that the Spirit rover on Mars may have
already found evidence that water once flowed at its landing site,
Gusev Crater. One of its cameras may have detected small amounts of
a mineral in the soil that suggests water was once present. Spirit's
mini-thermal emission spectrometer is sensitive to infrared light
and is designed to analyse rocks. Mars scientist Phil Christensen
says the presence of the mineral – carbonate – suggests
some rock formed in water.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Reworked images give new view of Venus
(Jan 13, 2004)
As the world looks at Mars, an American scientist has produced the
best images ever obtained from the surface of a rather different planet
- Venus. The second planet from the Sun is blanketed with a thick
layer of cloud. Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital
data from two Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975. His reprocessed
and recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian
surface which is hotter even than the inside of a household oven.
Image: surface of Venus from Venera 9.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Mars rover gets first hints of water
(Jan 13, 2004)
The Mars rover Spirit has not even left its landing platform yet,
but mission managers say some of its major scientific goals are already
well on the way to being realised. Most importantly, Spirit has detected
tantalising signs of minerals that could provide the long-sought evidence
of Mars's watery past. The first images taken by the craft's mini-Thermal
Emission Spectrometer – an infrared instrument capable of indicating
the composition of nearby soils and rocks – show evidence of
carbonates and hydrated minerals. Both of these are usually, though
not exclusively, produced in long-standing bodies of water. Image:
Spirit's thermal emission spectrometer shows warmer regions in red,
cooler ones in blue.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
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