RECENT NEWS: 1
The Worlds of David Darling > Recent News: 1
RECENT NEWS: 2 | LATEST NEWS | NEWS ARCHIVES
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(Jun 15, 2008) How could evidence of a major asteroid impact have been missed when it was in plain sight all along? The telltale signs of a huge impact site were sitting alongside a busy road 8 kilometres north-east of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Jun 14, 2008) Space shuttle Discovery and its crew landed at 11:15 a.m. EDT Saturday, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., completing a 14-day journey of more than 5.7 million miles in space. The STS-124 mission was the second of three flights to launch components to the International Space Station to complete the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory. Read more. Source: NASA |
(Jun 14, 2008) Some fundamental building blocks of our genetic code might have come from outer space, according to a controversial new meteorite study. The study suggests that some organic compounds associated with genetic material might have formed in a meteorite called Murchison before it landed in Australia in 1969. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Jun 13, 2008) It could be the longest commercial break in history. Over a six-hour period this morning, high-powered radars in the Arctic Circle broadcast an advertisement into space for the first time. The advertisement, for Doritos tortilla chips, was being directed towards a solar system [47 UMa] in the Ursa Major constellation, just 42 light years from Earth. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Jun 13, 2008) The short answer is, of course, not long. But your build, age and general level of cardiovascular health could make a small difference in how long you'd get to relish the unique experience. [See encyclopedia entry on space survival.] Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Jun 13, 2008) It is nearly two years since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) stripped Pluto of its former status as a "proper" planet. Now an IAU committee, meeting in Oslo, has suggested that small, nearly spherical objects orbiting beyond Neptune should carry the "plutoid" tag. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Jun 13, 2008) NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander sprinkled a spoonful of Martian soil Wednesday onto the sample wheel of the spacecraft's robotic microscope station, images received early Thursday confirmed. The delivery of scooped-up soil for inspection by the lander's Optical Microscope, a component of MECA, marks the second success in consecutive days for getting samples delivered to laboratory instruments on Phoenix's deck. Read more. Source: NASA/JPL |
(Jun 12, 2008) New experiments are being proposed to test a big unknown in physics: how antimatter reacts to gravity. Physicists have studied antimatter, the mirror version of ordinary matter, for decades. They know, for example, that antiparticles have the same mass as ordinary particles, but opposite charge. But no one knows what effect gravity will have on such particles. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Jun 12, 2008) The first private manned mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is set to go ahead in 2011, a US space tourism company has announced. The mission has been agreed between the company Space Adventures and the Russian federal space agency. A Soyuz spacecraft will be specially manufactured for this mission. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Jun 12, 2008) Phoenix Mars Lander has filled its first oven with Martian soil. "We have an oven full," Phoenix co-investigator Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said today. "It took 10 seconds to fill the oven. The ground moved." Boynton leads the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument, or TEGA, for Phoenix. The instrument has eight separate tiny ovens to bake and sniff the soil to assess its volatile ingredients, such as water. Read more. Source: NASA/JPL |
(Jun 11, 2008) A NASA space telescope has launched successfully on a mission to explore the universe in gamma-rays. The GLAST mission will shed light on some of the most violent events in the universe, that release massive amounts of energy in the form of gamma-rays. It will scan the sky for massive cosmic explosions, giant black holes that hurl matter across space, and dense neutron stars with powerful magnetic fields. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Jun 11, 2008) Pluto's dazzling red stands in sharp contrast to the greys of its three moons Hydra, Nix and Charon. The moons' similarity was thought to be because the trio were created at the same time from the same material in a massive smash in the early solar system. Now Alan Stern at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, has another idea: two of the moons, Nix and Hydra [circled in the photo], are spray-painting Pluto and Charon with their dust. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Jun 10, 2008) Engineers operating the Robotic Arm on the Phoenix Mars Lander are testing a revised method for delivering soil samples to laboratory instruments on Phoenix's deck now that researchers appreciate how clumpy the soil is at the landing site. The soil's physical properties are proving to be a challenge for getting a sample intended for one instrument to pass through a screen over a delivery opening. Read more. Source: NASA/JPL |
(Jun 10, 2008) A Japanese-built robotic arm has been unfolded on the International Space Station (ISS). The 10m-long (33ft) crane is part of the Kibo laboratory, which was built in Japan and installed aboard the ISS during the latest shuttle mission. Next year, NASA plans to launch an outdoor platform with telescopes and experiments that will extend Kibo. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Jun 9, 2008) Radio transmitters on Earth cause charged particles to leak out of the inner Van Allen radiation belt in space, new observations confirm. Future satellite transmitters may take advantage of the effect, which had been predicted theoretically, to help clear the belt of charged particles from intense solar outbursts or nuclear explosions in space that could threaten satellites. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Jun 8, 2008) Scientists working on NASA's Phoenix lander are trying to work out why a soil sample dropped on to an instrument bay was not registered. Images sent back from Mars clearly show the sample lying across a screen protecting the opening to a tiny oven. But it seems the soil may have been too lumpy to pass through into the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer. Read more. Source: BBC |