NASA plans to launch a new orbiter called Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on Aug. 10 as the next step in its ambitious Mars exploration program. MRO will return more data about the red planet than all previous Mars missions combined, according to the U.S. space agency. More than 40 University of Arizona researchers, family members and friends leave for NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida next week to cheer the launch. The soon-to-fly orbiter payload includes UA’s High
VLT Enables Most Accurate Distance Measurement to Spiral Galaxy NGC 300
An international team of astronomers from Chile, Europe and North America [1] is announcing the most accurate distance yet measured to a galaxy beyond our Milky Way’s close neighbours. The distance was determined using the brightness variation of a type of stars known as “Cepheid variables”.
The team used the ISAAC near-infrared camera and spectrometer on ESO’s 8.2-m VLT Antu telescope to ob
Quantum dots programmed to glow in presence of enzyme activity
Researchers from Rice University’s Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) have developed a “smart” beacon hundreds of times smaller than a human cell that is programmed to light up only when activated by specific proteases. Altered expression of particular proteases is a common hallmark of cancer, atherosclerosis, and many other diseases.
In the September issue of the journal B
The latest close flyby of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft confirms that the moon has a significant, extended and dynamic atmosphere. The flyby, which took place on 14th July 2005, was Cassini’s lowest altitude flyby of any object to date, a mere 173 kilometres (108 miles) above the surface of Enceladus.
The 500 km diameter moon Enceladus is a very bright icy moon at a distance of 4 Saturn radii away from Saturn. It has long been associated with the formation of
The situation regarding titanium is paradoxical. On the one hand, titanium is found in abundance in the natural environment: in terms of natural occurrence in the earth’s crust, the element is the third among all metals, directly following iron and aluminium. In industry, particularly in metallurgy it is used very rarely, about one hundred times less than aluminium. This happens in spite of the outstanding properties of titanium: it is lightweight, fast, heatproof and chemically stable. But it
Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania have overcome a major hurdle in the race to create nanotube-based electronics. In an article in the August issue of the journal Nature Materials, available online now, the researchers describe their method of using nanotubes tiny tubes entirely composed of carbon atoms — to create a functional electronic circuit. Their method creates circuits by dipping semiconductor chips into liquid suspensions of carbon nanotubes, rather than growing the nanotu
Using high-speed collisions between gold atoms, scientists think they have re-created one of the most mysterious forms of matter in the universe — quark-gluon plasma. This form of matter was present during the first microsecond of the Big Bang and may still exist at the cores of dense, distant stars.
UC Davis physics professor Daniel Cebra is one of 543 collaborators on the research. His main role was building the electronic listening devices that collect information about the
A team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, Yale University in New Haven, CT, and Gemini Observatory in Hilo, HI, report the discovery of a new planet in the outer solar system. Officially designated 2003 UB313, the new planet is intrinsically brighter than Pluto and three times farther away. Assuming the reflectivity of the surface is the same as Pluto’s, it is the largest object detected in the solar system since the discovery of Neptune and its moon
This image, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a patch of water ice sitting on the floor of an unnamed crater near the Martian north pole.
The HRSC obtained these images during orbit 1343 with a ground resolution of approximately 15 metres per pixel. The unnamed impact crater is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars’s far northern latitudes, at approximately 70.5° North and 103° East.
The European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP) has begun the Initial Operations Phase of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), following the successful conclusion of negotiations with the European Space Agency.
During the Initial Operations Phase, the responsibility for providing the EGNOS signal and data will be transferred from the development agency (ESA) to the operator (ESSP). During this phase, the ESSP will technically qualify and optimise EGNOS op
NIST detects ’ticks’ in aluminum, with help from intermediary atom
Physicists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used the natural oscillations of two different types of charged atoms, or ions, confined together in a single trap, to produce the “ticks” that may power a future atomic clock.
As reported in the July 29 issue of Science,* the unusual tandem technique involves use of a single beryllium ion to accurately se
British design experts from Sheffield Hallam University are the brains behind a revolutionary robotic arm helping NASA refine its safety in the wake of the Columbia shuttle disaster. The artificial joints of the robot arm exactly replicate the workings of a human limb.
The Discovery space mission, re-scheduled to launch yesterday at 15:39 BST, will carry out vital safety tests using a 50-foot robot arm, designed with help from researchers at Sheffield Hallam University.
In this SOHO image, taken 21 July 2005, the Sun is represented by the white circle in the centre. Saturn is the bright object to the left of the Sun.
Saturn was approaching a position called ’superior conjunction’, that is, it would be almost directly behind the Sun as seen from Earth. Therefore the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn, was not able to send or receive transmissions normally.
As Cassini passed close by the limb (edge) of the Sun on 24
Astrobiologists, who search for evidence of life on other planets, may find a proposed Neutron/Gamma ray Geologic Tomography (NUGGET) instrument to be one of the most useful tools in their toolbelt.
As conceived by scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Md., NUGGET would be able to generate three-dimensional images of fossils embedded in an outcrop of rock or beneath the soil of Mars or another planet. Tomography uses radiation or sound waves to look i
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory survey of nearby sun-like stars suggests there is nearly three times more neon in the sun and local universe than previously believed. If true, this would solve a critical problem with understanding how the sun works.
“We use the sun to test how well we understand stars and, to some extent, the rest of the universe,” said Jeremy Drake of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “But in order to understand the sun,
This image, taken by the Advanced Moon Micro-Imager Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft, shows the Hadley Rille on the south-east edge of Mare Imbrium on the Moon.
AMIE obtained this image from an altitude of about 2000 kilometres. It covers an area of about 100 kilometres and shows the region around Hadley Rille centred at approximately 25° North and 3° East.
The sinuous rille follows a course generally to the north-east toward the peak of Mount Hadl
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