Space In The News: June 2014

Monday, June 30, 2014

LDSD Test Flight a Success | Comet Target 'Releases' Plentiful Water

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Media Telecon: NASA Supersonic Test Flight Completed


LATEST NEWS

Media Telecon: NASA Supersonic Test Flight Completed
A news teleconference has been scheduled for tomorrow, June 29, to discuss the near-space test flight of NASA's LDSD. › Read full story

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ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Astronomers closer to proving gravitational waves with precise measurements of rapidly rotating neutron star

Posted: 27 Jun 2014 08:27 AM PDT

When Albert Einstein proposed the existence of gravitational waves as part of his theory of relativity, he set in train a pursuit for knowledge that continues nearly a century later. These ripples in the space-time continuum exert a powerful appeal because it is believed they carry information that will allow us to look back into the very beginnings of the universe. But although the weight of evidence continues to build, undisputed confirmation of their existence still eludes scientists. Researchers have now provided another piece of the puzzle with their precise measurements of a rapidly rotating neutron star: one of the smallest, densest stars in the universe.

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Astronomers closer to proving gravitational waves with precise measurements of rapidly rotating neutron star

Posted: 27 Jun 2014 08:27 AM PDT

Friday, June 27, 2014

NASA Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Set to Lift Off


LATEST NEWS

NASA Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator Set to Lift Off
Mission managers are proceeding with preparations for a launch attempt tomorrow morning, Saturday, June 28, of a high-altitude balloon carrying the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) test vehicle to the edge of space. › Read full story

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ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

NOAA GOES-R satellite black wing ready for flight
From deep sea to deep space: Creating and optimizing food for people living and working in extreme conditions
Spectral 'ruler' is first standardized way to measure stars

NOAA GOES-R satellite black wing ready for flight

Posted: 24 Jun 2014 02:23 PM PDT

The solar array that will provide power to NOAA's GOES-R satellite has been tested, approved and shipped to a facility where it will be incorporated on the spacecraft. The five sections of the solar array come together as one to resemble a giant black wing.

From deep sea to deep space: Creating and optimizing food for people living and working in extreme conditions

Posted: 24 Jun 2014 07:57 AM PDT

How do you feed a six-person crew on a three-year mission to Mars? Food scientists are working on this and other challenges related to creating and optimizing food for astronauts, soldiers, pilots and other individuals working and living in extreme environments.

Spectral 'ruler' is first standardized way to measure stars

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:21 AM PDT

A team of astronomers has created the first standardized set of measurement guidelines for analyzing and cataloging stars. Previously, as with the longitude problem 300 years earlier for fixing locations on Earth, there was no unified system of reference for calibrating the heavens.

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Spectral 'ruler' is first standardized way to measure stars

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:21 AM PDT

Thursday, June 26, 2014

NASA's Curiosity Rover Team Today Features Women


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NASA's Curiosity Rover Team Today Features Women
Today (Thursday) is Women's Curiosity Day for the diverse team running NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, with female engineers and scientists doing most of mission's 90-plus roles. › Read full story

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ScienceDaily: Galaxies News

'Cosmic own goal' another clue in hunt for dark matter

Posted: 25 Jun 2014 05:19 PM PDT

The hunt for dark matter has taken another step forward thanks to new supercomputer simulations showing the evolution of our 'local Universe' from the Big Bang to the present day. Physicists say their simulations could improve understanding of dark matter, a mysterious substance believed to make up 85 per cent of the mass of the Universe.

Puzzling X-rays point to dark matter

Posted: 25 Jun 2014 08:38 AM PDT

Astronomers using ESA and NASA high-energy observatories have discovered a tantalizing clue that hints at an elusive ingredient of our Universe: dark matter. Astronomers believe that dark matter is the dominant type of matter in the Universe -- yet it remains obscure. Now a hint may have been found by studying galaxy clusters, the largest cosmic assemblies of matter bound together by gravity.

ScienceDaily: Black Holes News

Black hole trio holds promise for gravity wave hunt

Posted: 25 Jun 2014 10:24 AM PDT

The discovery of three closely orbiting supermassive black holes in a galaxy more than four billion light years away could help astronomers in the search for gravitational waves: the 'ripples in spacetime' predicted by Einstein.

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Astronomers map space's icy wastes

Posted: 24 Jun 2014 07:58 AM PDT

Using the AKARI orbiting observatory, astronomers have made the first large-scale maps of icy material where stars are forming. In a challenge to conventional ideas about the formation of water in space, they find ice in regions with little dust or gas.

ScienceDaily: Cosmic Rays News

'Cosmic own goal' another clue in hunt for dark matter
NASA's STEREO maps much larger solar atmosphere than previously observed
Puzzling X-rays point to dark matter

'Cosmic own goal' another clue in hunt for dark matter

Posted: 25 Jun 2014 05:19 PM PDT

NASA's STEREO maps much larger solar atmosphere than previously observed

Posted: 25 Jun 2014 09:23 AM PDT

Surrounding the sun is a vast atmosphere of solar particles, through which magnetic fields swarm, solar flares erupt, and gigantic columns of material rise, fall and jostle each other around. Now, using NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, scientists have found that this atmosphere, called the corona, is even larger than thought, extending out some 5 million miles above the sun's surface -- the equivalent of 12 solar radii.

Puzzling X-rays point to dark matter

Posted: 25 Jun 2014 08:38 AM PDT

ScienceDaily: Dark Matter News

'Cosmic own goal' another clue in hunt for dark matter

Posted: 25 Jun 2014 05:19 PM PDT

Puzzling X-rays point to dark matter

Posted: 25 Jun 2014 08:38 AM PDT

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Cassini Celebrates 10 Years | Dates Set for Saucer-Shaped Test Vehicle Flight | OCO-2 Tracks Impact on Airborne Carbon

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

When it rains, it pours ... on the sun

Posted: 24 Jun 2014 06:32 AM PDT

Just like on Earth, the sun has spells of bad weather, with high winds and showers of rain. But unlike storms on Earth, rain on the sun is made of electrically charged gas (plasma) and falls at around 200,000 kilometers an hour from the outer solar atmosphere, the corona, to the sun's surface. Now a team of solar physicists has pieced together an explanation for this intriguing phenomenon with imagery that shows a 'waterfall' in the atmosphere of the sun.

Titan's building blocks might pre-date Saturn

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 02:07 PM PDT

A combined NASA and European Space Agency (ESA)-funded study has found firm evidence that nitrogen in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan originated in conditions similar to the cold birthplace of the most ancient comets from the Oort cloud. The finding rules out the possibility that Titan's building blocks formed within the warm disk of material thought to have surrounded the infant planet Saturn during its formation.

ScienceDaily: Cosmic Rays News

Should the Higgs boson have caused our universe to collapse? Findings puzzle cosmologists

Posted: 24 Jun 2014 06:32 AM PDT

British cosmologists are puzzled: they predict that the universe should not have lasted for more than a second. This startling conclusion is the result of combining the latest observations of the sky with the recent discovery of the Higgs boson.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Webb telescope microshutters journey into NASA clean room
Earth-size 'diamond' in space: Remarkable white dwarf star possibly coldest, dimmest ever detected
Organic conundrum in Large Magellanic Cloud
3-D map shows dusty structure of the Milky Way
Puffing sun gives birth to reluctant eruption
All the sky, all the time: UK astronomers debate involvement in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
Big solar blowouts hold clue to space weather
Mysterious 'magic island' appears on Saturn's moon Titan

Webb telescope microshutters journey into NASA clean room

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 10:17 AM PDT

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope microshutters have taken a short jaunt in preparation of its million mile journey in four years. The microshutters were moved into a NASA Goddard cleanroom for testing to verify they work correctly before being installed in the Webb's Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument.

Earth-size 'diamond' in space: Remarkable white dwarf star possibly coldest, dimmest ever detected

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 10:13 AM PDT

Astronomers have identified possibly the coldest, faintest white dwarf star ever detected. This ancient stellar remnant is so cool that its carbon has crystallized, forming -- in effect -- an Earth-size diamond in space. The object in this new study is likely the same age as the Milky Way, approximately 11 billion years old.

Organic conundrum in Large Magellanic Cloud

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:23 AM PDT

A group of organic chemicals that are considered carcinogens and pollutants today on Earth, but are also thought to be the building blocks for the origins of life, may hold clues to how carbon-rich chemicals created in stars are processed and recycled in space.

3-D map shows dusty structure of the Milky Way

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:23 AM PDT

Astronomers have created a detailed three-dimensional map of the dusty structure of the Milky Way – the star-studded bright disc of our own galaxy – as seen from Earth's northern hemisphere.

Puffing sun gives birth to reluctant eruption

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:23 AM PDT

A suite of Sun-gazing spacecraft, SOHO, STEREO and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), have spotted an unusual series of eruptions in which a series of fast 'puffs' force the slow ejection of a massive burst of plasma from the Sun's corona. The eruptions took place over a period of three days, starting on 17 January 2013.

All the sky, all the time: UK astronomers debate involvement in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:23 AM PDT

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will be sited at Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes and will have a primary mirror 8.4 metres in diameter, making it one of the largest single telescopes in the world, as well as the world's largest digital camera, comprising 3.2 billion pixels. It will achieve first light in 2020 and its main sky survey will begin in 2022.

Big solar blowouts hold clue to space weather

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:23 AM PDT

Solar jets are ejections from the surface of the Sun, where 1-10 tons of hot material are expelled at speeds of up to 1000 kilometers per second. Using space based observatories like Hinode and STEREO, solar physicists have recently discovered a new type of jet known as 'blowout' jets, which seem to be like the Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that can disrupt the magnetic field of the Earth, but on a much smaller scale. Now a scientist has created a 3-D model of these events for the first time, with compelling computer-generated simulations that match the jets' appearance from space.

Mysterious 'magic island' appears on Saturn's moon Titan

Posted: 22 Jun 2014 11:21 AM PDT

Astronomers have discovered a bright, mysterious geologic object – where one never existed – on Cassini mission radar images of Ligeia Mare, the second-largest sea on Saturn's moon Titan. Scientifically speaking, this spot is considered a "transient feature," but the astronomers have playfully dubbed it "Magic Island."

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Earth-size 'diamond' in space: Remarkable white dwarf star possibly coldest, dimmest ever detected
Organic conundrum in Large Magellanic Cloud
3-D map shows dusty structure of the Milky Way

Earth-size 'diamond' in space: Remarkable white dwarf star possibly coldest, dimmest ever detected

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 10:13 AM PDT

Organic conundrum in Large Magellanic Cloud

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:23 AM PDT

3-D map shows dusty structure of the Milky Way

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:23 AM PDT

Astronomers have created a detailed three-dimensional map of the dusty structure of the Milky Way – the star-studded bright disc of our own galaxy – as seen from Earth's northern hemisphere.

ScienceDaily: Cosmic Rays News

Puffing sun gives birth to reluctant eruption

Posted: 23 Jun 2014 06:23 AM PDT