Roving Mars: Almost Like Being There

If you live anywhere near an IMAX theater, it is well worth the trip to see the newly released Disney production, "Roving Mars". Made specially for the 6-story high IMAX screen and surround- sound experience, it is, as one would expect for an armchair interplanetary journey, a visually breathtaking adventure. Apart from the visuals, interspersed with real still photos snapped by the mars rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity", even more impressive is the up close and personal emotional triumph of the engineering undertaking itself, highlighted most effectively with portrayals of the elation felt by the staff of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as that history-making "first signal" emerged from the nerve-racking silence of the control center when "Spirit" touched down intact. After a string of disappointments (two thirds of all Mars ventures ended in failure), it had to be sweat. "Roving Mars" is playing in most IMAX theaters everywhere.

Planet Pluto: Within Our Reach

"Space travel" has a deeper meaning these days. Celebrities and businessmen are dishing out their millions for a trip to space, while mention of space travel agencies and even talk of tourist trips going around the moon starting in 2008 seem to be the wave of the future. But on the other side of the spectrum, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are looking farther into space -- not to the Earth's moon, but to Pluto and its largest moon, Charon.

While a trip to our moon takes a few days depending upon the spacecraft, the four-billion-mile journey to reach the ninth planet and its moon will take a total of 10 years.

The New Horizons spacecraft, which is the first mission of NASA's New Frontiers program to explore other planets, was launched Jan. 19 at 2 p.m. EST. The spacecraft is controlled by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

Aerospace Engineering Prof. Jim Andary is the Chief System Engineer for the Missions System Engineering Branch at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"The New Horizons spacecraft was the fastest spacecraft to leave the earth ... it set a record," Andary said."It went past the moon in nine hours."..........

The Cavalier Daily

Moon is Dragging Continents West

Someday not so soon Washington, D.C., may find itself about where San Francisco is now. According to a recent study, Earth's surface may be slipping slowly westward, dragged by the same lunar forces that produce tides..........

National Geographic News

New Planet Discovered

Astronomers on Wednesday announced the discovery of what is possibly the smallest planet known outside our solar system orbiting a normal star.
Its orbit is farther from its host star than Earth is from the sun. Most known extrasolar planets reside inside the equivalent of Mercury’s orbit.
The planet is estimated to be about 5.5 times as massive as Earth and thought to be rocky. It orbits a red dwarf star about 28,000 light-years away. Red dwarfs are about one-fifth as massive as the sun and up to 50 times fainter. But they are among the most common stars in the universe...........

MSNBC

Stardust Space Cargo a Big Hit

Scientists say they're thrilled and awed by their first glimpse at the comet particles and samples of interstellar dust returned by the Stardust spacecraft..........

National Geographic News

Capsule With Comet Dust Recovered

Special helicopter-borne teams secured and recovered the capsule, containing tens of thousands of comet grains and as many as 100 bits of interstellar dust, shortly after it landed. The capsule was moved to a clean room at the Air Force’s Utah Testing and Training Range, where a canister containing the collector grid was to be extracted and shipped to the Johnson Space Center in Houston later this week..........

Read More

Orion Nebula: A New High Resolution Image

If beauty is in the details, this is one of the most beautiful pictures ever made. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured one of the most detailed astronomical images in history. Released yesterday, the original of this Orion Nebula image is a mosaic of a billion pixels..........

National Geographic News

Another Galaxy Merging with Milky Way

A previously unrecognized galaxy appears to be merging with the Milky Way, bringing hundreds of thousands of stars into our home galaxy that no one has noticed until now, astronomers said..........

New York Times

Astronomers Measure the Most Distant Moon

An international team of astronomers says the most distant moon in the Solar System, Charon, which orbits Pluto, is an icy rock that has no sign of an atmosphere..........

Yahoo News

Dry Ice Storms on Mars?

Bombarded by violent storms of dry ice, the red planet's ice caps may have fewer silent nights than generally thought, according to new weather models.
Climate experts have long agreed that all is calm during the polar nights—the sunless winter months on Mars' north and south poles.
The poles are too cold, and the carbon dioxide rich atmosphere too thin and clear, to result in exciting weather, or so the thinking goes.
But now there's mounting evidence that temperature differences in the polar night stir up the atmosphere, creating storms..........

National Geographic News

Aquifers on Mars

Substantial quantities of liquid water must have been stably present in the early history of Mars. The findings of OMEGA, on board ESA's Mars Express, have implications on the climatic history of the planet and the question of its 'habitability' at some point in its history..........

Science Daily

The First Stars?

NASA researchers say they have detected what may be the faint infrared glow of the first stars in the universe.
Known as population III stars, the distant bodies are thought to have formed just 200 million years after the big bang, the event that in theory created the universe some 14 billion years ago..........

National Geographic News


View educational and scientific programming on Dish Network.

Sources of Oxygen on the Moon?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - The Hubble Space Telescope, which normally surveys the edges of the universe, has turned its attention to our nearby Moon and found mineral concentrations that might prove to be sources of oxygen for human visitors, researchers said Wednesday..........

New York Times

NASA Takes Giant Step Toward Finding Earth-Like Planets

Are we alone in the universe? Are there planets like Earth around other "suns" that might harbor life? Thanks to a recent technology breakthrough on a key NASA planet-finding project, the dream of answering those questions is no longer light-years away..........

Science Daily

Exploring Mars With Balloons

Global Aerospace Corporation of Altadena, CA proposes that the Mars exploration vehicle combining the global reach similar to that of orbiters and high resolution observations enabled by rovers could be a balloon that can be steered in the right direction and that would drop small science packages over the target sites. The concept being developed by the Global Aerospace Corporation is funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC)..........

Science Daily

Planet Baby Picture

............new findings not only reinforce the idea that giant planets, such as Jupiter, form much faster than scientists have traditionally expected, but one of the gas-enshrouded stars, called GM Aurigae, is analogous to our own solar system.

At only 1 million years of age, the star gives a unique window into how our own world may have come into being..........

News (WebIndia123.com)

Are Wormholes Tunnels for Time Travel?

As any self-respecting science fiction fan knows, wormholes—theoretical shortcuts through space and time—make for excellent time travel portals..........

National Geographic News

Explosion at the Edge of the Universe

Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite and several ground-based telescopes have detected the most distant explosion yet, a gamma-ray burst from the edge of the visible universe..........

ScienceDaily

The Sun Has a Binary Partner?

The ground-breaking and richly illustrated new book, Lost Star of Myth and Time, marries modern astronomical theory with ancient star lore to make a compelling case for the profound influence on our planet of a companion star to the sun. Author and theorist, Walter Cruttenden, presents the evidence that this binary orbit relationship may be the cause of a vast cycle causing the Dark and Golden Ages common in the lore of ancient cultures..........

EurekAlert

Space Elevators in Our Future?

Blasting a space shuttle away from Earth's gravity and through atmospheric friction at 15,000 miles an hour (24,140 kilometers an hour) is the most dangerous and costly part of every mission.
Why not just take an elevator instead? Thanks to a new development in the manufacture of molecule-size cylinders known as carbon nanotubes, that may one day be a viable option.
In theory, space elevators need a fixed line, or cord, that stretches from an anchor on Earth to a station out in space. The station acts like a counterweight, forever "held" above the planet by the centrifugal force from Earth's rotation.
A tram-like vehicle equipped with electric motors could climb this tether from Earth's surface into space at a safer speed than rocket alternatives..........

National Geographic News