NASA is trying to assess the damage in a newly unfurled solar wing at the International Space Station. The panel is part of an array held inside a girder that was moved on Tuesday from its temporary site on the platform to a new, permanent location. Ground controllers and two spacewalking astronauts watched with concern as the second of two wings in the array opened to reveal a rip along its edge.
Two US astronauts are carrying out a key spacewalk on the International Space Station (ISS). Scott Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock are due to fit a massive girder that holds giant solar wings. A problem with the station's existing solar panels means the new solar arrays must work perfectly.
Missing black hole report: Hundreds found!
(Oct 29, 2007)
Astronomers have unmasked hundreds of black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away. The massive, growing black holes, discovered by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes, represent a large fraction of a long-sought missing population. Their discovery implies there were hundreds of millions of additional black holes growing in our young universe, more than doubling the total amount known at that distance.
Some of the world's most famous meteorites are going under the hammer at a New York auction house in what is said to be the first sale of its kind. The pieces are drawn from collections across the world and many examples are richly coloured and intricately patterned. Price estimates range from $1.1m (£0.53m) for a 13-kilo (29-pound) piece to pebbles worth a few hundred dollars.
Rocket racing league makes first test flight
(Oct 28, 2007)
A new league that plans to race rocket-powered planes for spectators made the first test flights of the vehicle to be used in its races. The Rocket Racing League's president, Granger Whitelaw, who won two Indy 500 races as a team owner, made the announcement at Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, New Mexico, which is hosting the Wirefly X Prize Cup this weekend. XCOR Aerospace built the vehicle as part of a partnership with the league.
Two US astronauts from the shuttle Discovery have completed a space walk in which a new room was added to the International Space Station (ISS). Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock took six hours to steer the 14-ton module from Discovery's cargo bay on a robotic arm and put it in a temporary position. Five spacewalks are planned to fit the "Harmony" unit to the space station.
New space plane design offers more legroom
(Oct 27, 2007)
Aerospace company Rocketplane Global has unveiled a new, roomier design for its suborbital space plane, which it hopes to send passengers on by the end of 2010. But at least for the first few flights, its passengers will have to remain strapped to their seats during the weightless portion of the trip.
US researchers have created exotic new versions of atomic nuclei including one previously thought to not exist. The three new isotopes of magnesium and aluminium suggest other heavy variants of everyday elements could be created. The new nuclei existed for only a fraction of a second and were created by smashing atoms at half the speed of light in a particle accelerator.
Comet brightens mysteriously by a factor of a million
(Oct 26, 2007)
A comet usually too faint to be seen with the naked eye has brightened by a factor of a million since Tuesday, suggesting its surface may have cracked open and expelled clouds of dust and gas. Astronomers are scrambling to observe the strange object [comet 17P/Holmes], which is likely to fade in the coming days and weeks.
First known belt of moonlets in Saturn's rings
(Oct 25, 2007)
A narrow belt harboring moonlets as large as football stadiums discovered in Saturn's outermost ring probably resulted when a larger moon was shattered by a wayward asteroid or comet eons ago, according to a University of Colorado study. Images taken by a camera onboard Cassini revealed a series of eight propeller-shaped "wakes" in a thin belt of the outermost "A" ring, indicating the presence of corresponding moonlets, said CU-Boulder researcher Miodrag Sremcevic, lead author of the study published in the Oct. 25 issue of Nature.
