Researchers at Big Bear Solar Observatory have tuned their adaptive optics array and achieved first light, capturing this image of a sunspot that is now the most detailed ever captured in visible light. The image was captured with Big Bear’s New Solar Telescope (NST), a brand new instrument (as the name implies) with a [...]
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China has finished the first module of a planned space station and is testing its electronics and other systems before launching it into orbit next year. The official Xinhua News Agency reported on the module’s schedule Tuesday. It also said changes were being made on a two-stage Long March 2F rocket that will carry the 8.5-ton [...] United Space Alliance announced today that the company will layoff about 15 percent of its current Space Shuttle workforce, effective October 1, 2010, in order to align the workforce level with the company’s Space Shuttle Program Operations Contract work scope and current budget. Two missions remain in the Space Shuttle Program – STS-133 currently scheduled for [...] An experimental solar-powered plane took off from western Switzerland on Wednesday for a 24-hour test flight – a key step in a historic effort to one day circle the globe using only energy collected from the sun. The plane with its 262.5-foot (80-meter) wingspan left Payerne airfield shortly before 7 a.m. after overcoming an equipment problem [...] The University of Hawaii Board of Regents unanimously approved a plan Monday to build the world’s largest telescope at Mauna Kea’s summit. The decision clears the way for managers of the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope to seek a permit from the state to build the facility on conservation land. TMT managers aim to begin construction late [...] The first of the asteroid-hunting Pan-STARRS telescopes is now on the lookout for threatening near-Earth objects, but its vision is impaired due to the US military. From its perch atop the Haleakala volcano in Maui, Hawaii, PS1’s mammoth, 1400-megapixel camera should uncover 100,000 new asteroids and identify any that are on a collision course with Earth. [...] Minerals that can only be formed in the presence of liquid water have again been detected on Mars, this time in huge craters in the low-lying terrain of the red planet’s northern hemisphere. The new survey found the so-called hydrated minerals in nine giant craters dotting the northern plains of Mars. The minerals appear to have [...] Even in the company of other astronauts, Buzz Aldrin is still the hippest guy in the room. At the 2010 Astronaut Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which took place earlier this month at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Buzz was the Jack Nicholson to NASA’s Oscars. He exuded an effortless cool just by smiling [...] A new telescope in Hawaii being billed as the world’s largest digital camera has begun searching the sky for potentially killer asteroids that could endanger our planet Earth. With a main mirror about 60 inches (1.8 meters) wide, the new telescope on Maui’s Haleakala volcano peak is somewhat small when compared to the large 10-meter Keck [...] A group of seventh-graders in California has discovered a mysterious cave on Mars as part of a research project to study images taken by a NASA spacecraft orbiting the red planet. The 16 students from teacher Dennis Mitchell’s 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found what looks to be a Martian skylight [...] |
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