After leaving the Space Test Centre in Germany on 29 August, CryoSat has safely arrived at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800 km north of Moscow, Russia. CryoSat is scheduled for launch on 8 October 2005 at 15h02 UTC.
The convoy was initially transported by truck from IABG (Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH) in Ottobrunn to Munich airport, where it was stored in a hangar over night before being loaded onto an Antonov-124 cargo aircraft for the three and a half hour fligh
Five years ago a few hundred people gathered for the SALT ground-breaking ceremony. On a windswept hilltop near the tiny Karoo town of Sutherland, home since the early 1970s to SAAO’s research telescopes, dignitaries turned the first soil. Much has happened since that historic day, and SALT is now nearing completion. The science programmes to be conducted on SALT will be many and varied – from studies of the most distant and faint galaxies to observations of solar system objects like asteroi
Imaging scientists on Cassini have spent their summer vacations having more fun than kids at a carnival. Analyzing fantastic new results from Cassini’s first season of prime ring viewing, they are announcing today some of their unexpected findings on Saturn’s rings, including new structures in Saturn’s diffuse rings, clumps and knots in the F ring – some of which may be small moons – and a completely unexpected spiral ring around the planet in the vicinity of the F ring.
Science students at The University of Nottingham will be soon be able to explore distant stars in faraway galaxies by logging on to their PCs, following the release of the first colour images from a state-of-the-art giant telescope.
Students and staff in the Schools of Chemistry and Physics and Astronomy will be using the SALT (South African Large Telescope) to study how stars and galaxies form, to detect planets around other stars, and to learn about the chemicals in space th
Astronomers and students at UK universities and observatories can use their PCs to spot stars as faint as a candle on the Moon using a record-breaking new telescope.
The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), the largest in the southern hemisphere and equal to the largest in the world, was built by partners in six countries including a UK consortium consisting of Armagh Observatory, the University of Keele, the University of Central Lancashire, the University of Nottingham, the
Nanospheres could help dentists fill the tiny holes in our teeth that make them incredibly sensitive, and that cause severe pain for millions of adults and children worldwide.
Preliminary research presented today at the Institute of Physics conference EMAG-NANO 2005 shows that creating tiny spheres of a ceramic material called hydroxyapatite could be a long term solution or cure for sensitive teeth.
Sensitive teeth or ’dental hypersensitivity’ is a condition tha
Five years after breaking ground on a South African mountaintop near the edge of the Kalahari desert, astronomers today (Sept. 1, 2005) released the first images captured by the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), now the equal of the world’s largest optical telescope and a prized window to the night skies of the southern hemisphere.
With a 10- by 11-meter hexagonal segmented mirror and state-of-the-art scientific instrumentation, the new telescope was constructed by
If you want to hear a little bit of the Big Bang, you’re going to have to turn down your stereo.
That’s what neighbors of MIT’s Haystack Observatory found out. They were asked to make a little accommodation for science, and now the results are in: Scientists at Haystack have made the first radio detection of deuterium, an atom that is key to understanding the beginning of the universe. The findings are being reported in an article in the Sept. 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Lett
The world-class reputation of the University of Leicester’s Department of Physics and Astronomy has been recognised in a €1.6M (approximately £1.1M) grant from the European Union.
Supported by this award, the SPARTAN project will help address the challenge of developing European space infrastructure in the 21st century, to provide a capability independent of NASA.
SPARTAN creates a centre of excellence in research training in the Space, Planetary and Astrophysical Scie
ESA’s X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, has for the first time allowed scientists to study in detail the formation history of galaxy clusters, not only with single arbitrarily selected objects, but with a complete representative sample of clusters.
Knowing how these massive objects formed is a key to understanding the past and future of the Universe. Scientists currently base their well-founded picture of cosmic evolution on a model of structure formation where small structures
Further results from the Cassini spacecraft’s July flyby of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, reveal more detail about the features and processes going on. Speaking at a press conference at Imperial College, London this morning (30th August) the Cassini scientists spoke about the intriguing south pole area which has a surprising hotspot and “tiger stripe” features on the surface.
Following the two distance flybys of Enceladus in February and March this year results from the Magnetome
What is the mysterious dark energy that’s causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate? Is it some form of Einstein’s famous cosmological constant, or is it an exotic repulsive force, dubbed “quintessence,” that could make up as much as three-quarters of the cosmos? Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Dartmouth College believe there is a way to find out.
In a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters, physicists Eric L
Evidence is mounting that the atmosphere of Enceladus, first detected by the Cassini Magnetometer instrument, is the result of venting from ground fractures close to the moon’s south pole. New findings from the close flyby of Enceladus by Cassini this past July add to the emerging picture of a small icy body, unusual in its past and present level of activity, and very different from all other icy Saturnian moons.
Within a minute of closest approach to Enceladus on July 14th, 2005,
A new nanotechnology tool that will dramatically cut the cost of leading-edge nano research at the sub-50nm scale has been developed by EU researchers. It could lead to Next Generation Lithography (NGL) technology.
The commercially available first generation tool is low cost compared to sub-50nm alternatives. For example, electron beam lithography costs €2m per machine, whereas the Soft Ultraviolet (UV) Imprint machine developed by SOUVENIR project costs in its basic version wel
As researchers at Pacifi c Northwest National Laboratory investigated the hydrogen storage capabilities of amine borane compounds, they knew that a rhodium catalyst readily releases hydrogen from the compound at room temperature. But they weren’t sure how it worked. Aside from the scientific quest for knowledge, understanding the mechanism at work with rhodium may help with the development of a more cost-effective catalyst to enable hydrogen storage.
PNNL scientists used
With an advanced imaging technique and a savvy strategy, researchers at Cornell University’s Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics (LAASP) have shown how adding charge-carrying atoms like oxygen to a superconductor can increase the material’s ability to conduct electricity overall and — paradoxically — to decrease it in localized spots.
The discovery, published in the Aug. 12 issue of Science, could lead to the eventual development of more effective supercondu
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