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Exploration & Science Missions

NASA’s Push to Exoplanets Via Sagan Fellowships

September 5, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

NASA announced their new Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowships in Exoplanet Exploration, created to inspire the next generation of explorers seeking to learn more about planets, and possibly life, around other stars. NASA's new Sagan fellowships will allow talented young scientists to follow the path by Sagan with award stipends of approximately $60,000 per year, for a period of up to three years, to selected postdoctoral scientists. Topics can range from techniques for detecting the glow of a dim planet in the blinding glare of its host star, to searching for the crucial ingredients of life in other planetary systems. A call for Sagan Fellowship proposals went out to the scientific community earlier this week, with selections to be announced in February 2009.

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Immense Energy Radiation Traced To Crab Nebula Venue

September 2, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

Scientists have been able to locate where particles in the vicinity of the rotating neutron-star in the Crab Nebula are accelerated to immense energies, thanks to data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Integral gamma-ray observatory. Resulting from more than 600 individual observations of the nebula, this discovery puts into place another piece of the puzzle in understanding how neutron stars work.

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NASA’s Carl Sagan Legacy and Apple Pie

September 1, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

While Carl Sagan is no longer alive, his famous expression of 'billions and billions of stars, planets, and galaxies' is oft quoted, and his legacy lives on in many areas. Wednesday, September 3, NASA will hold a news conference on at 10:30 a.m. EDT, at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, Cullman Hall of the Universe, American Museum of Natural History in New York, to announce its new Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowships in Exoplanet Exploration.

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NASA Mars Lander Digs Into Stone Soup

August 28, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

You won't find this on a restaurant's menu, but NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has scooped up a sample of soil from the bottom of a trench called Stone Soup. This is after the lander reached a depth about three times greater than in any trench Phoenix has excavated during its stay of 90 Martian days. Phoenix landed on May 25.

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Opportunity Knocks — Backs Out Of Martian Crater

August 27, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

NASA's Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is heading back out to the Red Planet's surrounding plains nearly one year after descending into a large Martian crater to examine exposed ancient rock layers. Having completed its job in the crater, Opportunity is now preparing to inspect loose cobbles on the plains. Some of these rocks, approximately fist-size and larger, were thrown long distances when objects hitting Mars blasted craters deeper than Victoria into the Red Planet.

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Cassini Scopes Janus

August 27, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

On a high-inclination orbit of Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft gazes down at the north polar region of Janus. This view looks toward Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) from a perspective 72? N of the moon's equator. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.

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ESA’s XMM-Newton Locates A Monster

August 26, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

ESA’s orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton has discovered the most massive cluster of galaxies seen in the distant Universe until now. The galaxy cluster is so enormous there can only be a handful of them at that distance, making this a rare catch indeed. The discovery confirms the existence of dark energy. The newly-discovered monster, known only by the catalog number 2XMM J083026 524133, is estimated to contain as much mass as a thousand large galaxies.

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NASA/ESA’s Hubble’s Filament Find

August 25, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

The Hubble Space Telescope has seemingly uncovered a mystery in space. The telescope has found the answer to a long-standing puzzle by observing the details of giant, but delicate, filaments shaped by a strong magnetic field around the active galaxy NGC 1275. These filaments are the only visible-light manifestation of the intricate relationship between the black hole hosted at the center of the galaxy and the surrounding cluster gas.

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ESA’s Getting Set To Launch Core Work

August 25, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

The European Space Agency (ESA) is about to launch the most sophisticated mission ever to investigate the Earth’s gravitational field and to map the reference shape of our planet, known as the geoid, with unprecedented resolution and accuracy. The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) will be placed into a low altitude near sun-synchronous orbit by a Russian Rockot vehicle launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia, some 800 km north of Moscow.

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Stein Well In Hand By ESA’s Rosetta

August 20, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

On August 14th, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta conducted a successful trajectory correction maneuver using data obtained from the Agency's first-ever optical tracking of an asteroid target, (2867) Steins. Images from the spacecraft's cameras were used to calculate the asteroid's location and optimize its trajectory for fly-by next month.

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