http://www.physorg.com/space-news/space-exploration/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on space, space exploration, space science and earth sciences. (PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers and scientists say the maneuver went off without a hitch, and everything is working properly. The mission's "first-light" images of the sky will be released to the public in about a month, after the telescope has been fully calibrated. http://www.physorg.com/news181381778.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:34:06 EST news181381778 (PhysOrg.com) -- The new year approaches with New Horizons zooming past another milestone: the NASA spacecraft is now closer to target planet Pluto than its home planet, Earth. http://www.physorg.com/news181381526.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:47:04 EST news181381526 (AP) -- Once in a blue moon there is one on New Year's Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month. But don't expect it to be blue - the name has nothing to do with the color of our closest celestial neighbor. http://www.physorg.com/news181316313.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:38:52 EST news181316313 (PhysOrg.com) -- The University of Colorado at Boulder has been awarded $840,000 from the National Science Foundation for students to build a tiny spacecraft to observe energetic particles in space that should give scientists a better understanding of solar flares and their interaction with Earth's atmosphere. http://www.physorg.com/news181305800.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:45:15 EST news181305800 The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery. http://www.physorg.com/news181052057.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:15:41 EST news181052057 NASA heads into 2010 with the bittersweet assignment of retiring the space shuttle after nearly three decades. But that's not all the agency has planned: There are also launches of three new satellites aimed at better understanding the Earth's climate and oceans, and the sun. http://www.physorg.com/news181026854.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Sat, 26 Dec 2009 05:15:34 EST news181026854 Iran will unveil a new home-built satellite in February, a newspaper reported Thursday, amid Western concerns that Tehran is using its nuclear and space industries to develop atomic and ballistic weapons. http://www.physorg.com/news180853256.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:01:34 EST news180853256 (PhysOrg.com) -- If a suggestion to be made to NASA comes to fruition, vast lakes thought to be filled with liquid hydrocarbons near the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan, may one day be explored by boat. http://www.physorg.com/news180680793.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:10:01 EST news180680793 The monkeys at this run-down research centre which was once the pride of Soviet science have seen it all -- a brutal civil war, freezing winters and starvation. http://www.physorg.com/news180532052.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:48:17 EST news180532052 (PhysOrg.com) -- Spirit's right-front wheel, which had stopped operating in March 2006, revolved with apparently normal motion during the first three of four driving segments on Sol 2117 (Wednesday, Dec. 16) but stopped early in the fourth segment of the drive. http://www.physorg.com/news180369209.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:33:51 EST news180369209 Saturn's largest moon, Titan, looks to be the only place in the solar system -aside from our home planet, Earth -with copious quantities of liquid (largely, liquid methane and ethane) sitting on its surface. According to planetary astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Earth and Titan share yet another feature, which is inextricably linked with that surface liquid: common fog. http://www.physorg.com/news180350535.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:23:11 EST news180350535 (AP) -- A California company developing a rocket plane for space tourism announced Thursday that it has an agreement with a nonprofit group in South Korea to conduct launches in that nation. http://www.physorg.com/news180346190.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:20:01 EST news180346190 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Cassini Spacecraft has captured the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan, confirming the presence of liquid on the part of the moon dotted with many large, lake-shaped basins. http://www.physorg.com/news180296862.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:28:54 EST news180296862 (PhysOrg.com) -- A network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA's THEMIS mission has made a startling discovery about the Northern Lights. Sometimes, vast curtains of aurora borealis collide, producing spectacular outbursts of light. Movies of the phenomenon were unveiled at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union today in San Francisco. http://www.physorg.com/news180282059.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:21:57 EST news180282059 (PhysOrg.com) -- In 1996, when scientists examined a meteorite from Mars previously uncovered in Antarctica, they were intrigued by what looked like microscopic fossils of ancient Martian life forms. Now, using new technology that wasn't available 13 years ago, NASA scientists have found further evidence that the materials and structures in the meteorite are likely signs of ancient life, rather than the results of inorganic processes. http://www.physorg.com/news180264793.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:33:52 EST news180264793 Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was personally skeptical of manned space missions and warned that NASA's future funding could depend on whether it was likely to create jobs. http://www.physorg.com/news180255598.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:15:12 EST news180255598 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the smallest object ever seen in visible light in the Kuiper Belt, a vast ring of icy debris that is encircling the outer rim of the solar system just beyond Neptune. http://www.physorg.com/news180197919.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:50:02 EST news180197919 (PhysOrg.com) -- Diagnostic tests were run on Spirit's right-rear wheel and right-front wheel on Sol 2013 (Dec. 12, 2009). http://www.physorg.com/news180119338.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:20:04 EST news180119338 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's MESSENGER mission team and cartographic experts from the U. S. Geological Survey have created a critical tool for planning the first orbital observations of the planet Mercury - a global mosaic of the planet that will help scientists pinpoint craters, faults and other features for observation. The map was created from images taken during the MESSENGER spacecraft's three flybys of the planet and those of Mariner 10 in the 1970s. A presentation on the new global mosaic is being given today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. http://www.physorg.com/news180114935.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:56:12 EST news180114935 (PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Manchester scientist, working as part of an international team, has uncovered an unexpectedly rich trove of relicts from the ancient cosmos. http://www.physorg.com/news180032250.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:00:16 EST news180032250 NASA launched Monday a new breed of satellite called WISE on a mission to orbit Earth and map the skies to find elusive cosmic objects, including potentially dangerous asteroids. http://www.physorg.com/news180010326.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:52:57 EST news180010326 It's the stuff of a Hollywood disaster epic: A comet plunges from outer space into the Earth's atmosphere, splitting the sky with a devastating shock wave that flattens forests and shakes the countryside. http://www.physorg.com/news179994144.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:23:19 EST news179994144 (PhysOrg.com) -- For the very first time, the martian moons Phobos and Deimos have been caught on camera together. ESA's Mars Express orbiter took these pioneering images last month. Apart from their ‘wow` factor, these unique images will help the HRSC team validate and refine existing orbit models of the two moons. http://www.physorg.com/news179763963.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:26:50 EST news179763963 (PhysOrg.com) -- Results of diagnostic tests on Spirit's right-rear wheel on Sol 2109 (Dec. 8, 2009) continue to indicate a troubled wheel, which may leave the rover with only four operable wheels. http://www.physorg.com/news179689932.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:52:47 EST news179689932 Extensive analyses and modeling of Cassini imaging and heat-mapping data have confirmed and extended previous ideas that migrating ice, triggered by infalling reddish dust that darkens and warms the surface, may explain the mysterious two-toned "yin-yang" appearance of Saturn's moon Iapetus. The results, published online Dec. 10 in a pair of papers in the journal Science, provide what may be the most plausible explanation to date for the moon's bizarre appearance, which has puzzled astronomers for more than 300 years. http://www.physorg.com/news179677088.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:18:55 EST news179677088 Russia's new nuclear-capable missile suffered another failed test launch, the defence ministry said Thursday, solving the mystery of a spectacular plume of white light that appeared over Norway. http://www.physorg.com/news179671318.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:43:24 EST news179671318 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) scientists is looking for clues about life on Mars in an earthy clay mineral found only in Aberdeenshire in Scotland. http://www.physorg.com/news179652861.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:10:01 EST news179652861 (PhysOrg.com) -- After waiting years for the sun to illuminate Saturn's north pole again, cameras aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft have captured the most detailed images yet of the intriguing hexagon shape crowning the planet. http://www.physorg.com/news179601566.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:50:03 EST news179601566 Scientists have ruled out the possibility that methane is delivered to Mars by meteorites, raising fresh hopes that the gas might be generated by life on the red planet, in research published tomorrow in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. http://www.physorg.com/news179499648.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:02:06 EST news179499648 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) and its mothership, VMS Eve (WhiteKnightTwo) herald a new era in commercial space flight with daily space tourism flights set to commence from Spaceport America in New Mexico after test program and all required US government licens http://www.physorg.com/news179407567.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:27:15 EST news179407567