http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. NASA launched its first moon shot in a decade Thursday, sending up a pair of unmanned science probes that will help determine where astronauts could land and set up camp in years to come. http://www.physorg.com/news164593301.html Space & Earth Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:22:00 EST news164593301 US ambitions of returning to the moon by 2020 and then heading to Mars risk being grounded because of "unrealistic" funds allocated to NASA, said Senator Bill Nelson, a former space shuttle astronaut. http://www.physorg.com/news164510544.html Space & Earth Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:00:01 EST news164510544 (AP) -- Japan's first lunar probe made a controlled crash landing on the moon Thursday, successfully completing a 19-month mission to study the Earth's nearest neighbor, Japan's space agency said. http://www.physorg.com/news163910504.html Space & Earth Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:42:00 EST news163910504 (PhysOrg.com) -- In 1972, Apollo astronauts narrowly escaped a potential catastrophe. On August 2nd of that year, a large and angry sunspot appeared and began to erupt, over and over again for more than a week, producing a record-setting fusillade of solar proton radiation. Only pure luck saved the day. The eruptions took place during the gap between Apollo 16 and 17 missions, so astronauts missed the storm. http://www.physorg.com/news163349846.html Space & Earth Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:58:35 EST news163349846 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's return to the moon will get a boost in June with the launch of two satellites that will return a wealth of data about Earth's nearest neighbor. On Thursday, the agency outlined the upcoming missions of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS. The spacecraft will launch together June 17 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. http://www.physorg.com/news162219006.html Space & Earth Fri, 22 May 2009 13:51:45 EST news162219006 NASA on Thursday said it was on target for a June mission to scour the Moon's surface for landing sites and water that would allow humans to work and even live on Earth's nearest neighbor. http://www.physorg.com/news162156022.html Space & Earth Thu, 21 May 2009 20:22:11 EST news162156022 (PhysOrg.com) -- The bombardment of Earth nearly 4 billion years ago by asteroids as large as Kansas would not have had the firepower to extinguish potential early life on the planet and may even have given it a boost, says a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. http://www.physorg.com/news162045388.html Space & Earth Wed, 20 May 2009 13:37:20 EST news162045388 The new observations reveal that Messier 87's halo of stars has been cut short, with a diameter of about a million light-years, significantly smaller than expected, despite being about three times the extent of the halo surrounding our Milky Way [1]. Beyond this zone only few intergalactic stars are seen. http://www.physorg.com/news162041045.html Space & Earth Wed, 20 May 2009 12:24:44 EST news162041045 (PhysOrg.com) -- Alien creatures are the least of NASA's worries when it comes to moon travel. There are several potential threats to future missions - with space radiation at the top of the list. Now, a group of students at North Carolina State University has developed a "blanket" of sorts that covers lunar outposts - the astronauts' living quarters - to provide astronauts protection against radiation while also generating and storing power. http://www.physorg.com/news161268400.html Space & Earth Mon, 11 May 2009 13:47:05 EST news161268400 (AP) -- The White House has ordered a complete outside review of NASA's manned space program, including plans to return astronauts to the moon. http://www.physorg.com/news160931608.html Space & Earth Thu, 07 May 2009 16:23:44 EST news160931608 (PhysOrg.com) -- Two of the most sophisticated astronomical spacecraft ever built - Herschel and Planck - will be launched by ESA this month towards deep space orbits around a special observation point beyond the Moon`s orbit. http://www.physorg.com/news160929569.html Space & Earth Thu, 07 May 2009 15:40:34 EST news160929569 (PhysOrg.com) -- A 25-year old astronomical mystery has been solved: Most of the diffuse X-ray emissions in the Milky Way do not originate from one single source but from so-called white dwarfs and from stars with active outer gas layers. Mikhail Revnivtsev from the Excellence Cluster Universe at the TU Munich and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, the Space Research Institute in Moscow and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge have now succeeded in proving this. http://www.physorg.com/news160755456.html Space & Earth Tue, 05 May 2009 15:18:02 EST news160755456 NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are quietly being revised and are in danger of slipping past 2020. http://www.physorg.com/news159646447.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:16:05 EST news159646447 In the 1960s and 1970s, the Apollo Moon Program struggled with a minuscule, yet formidable enemy: sticky lunar dust. Four decades later, a new study reveals that forces compelling lunar dust to cling to surfaces -- ruining scientific experiments and endangering astronauts' health -- change during the lunar day with the elevation of the sun. http://www.physorg.com/news159201494.html Space & Earth Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:38:51 EST news159201494 Picture this: It's 4:30 in the morning. You're up and out before the sun. Steam rises from your coffee cup, floating up to the sky where a silent meteor streaks through a crowd of stars. A few minutes later it happens again, and again. A meteor shower is underway. http://www.physorg.com/news159196635.html Space & Earth Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:17:50 EST news159196635 Researchers from the University of Melbourne and Princeton University have shown for the first time that the difference in reflection of light from the Earth's land masses and oceans can be seen on the dark side of the moon, a phenomenon known as earthshine. http://www.physorg.com/news158328940.html Space & Earth Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:16:18 EST news158328940 "It's very fine but angular - the sharp edges make it feel gritty and abrasive." http://www.physorg.com/news158252008.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:54:38 EST news158252008 Many longtime sailors have been mesmerized by the dazzling displays of green light often seen below the ocean surface in tropical seas. Now researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have uncovered key clues about the bioluminescent worms that produce the green glow and the biological mechanisms behind their light production. http://www.physorg.com/news157814163.html Biology Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:17:03 EST news157814163 On 24 February 2009, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured a photo sequence of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet. The moons, from far left to right, are the white icy moons Enceladus and Dione, the large orange moon Titan, and icy Mimas. Due to the angle of the Sun, they are each preceded by their own shadow. http://www.physorg.com/news156514110.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:09:01 EST news156514110 NASA and U.S. Air Force test pilots have just dropped a 50,000-pound "dummy" rocket booster on the Arizona desert--and stopped it before it crashed. It's all part of NASA's plan to return to the Moon. http://www.physorg.com/news156441809.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:04:01 EST news156441809 One by one, 13 sick and traumatised Asian black bears squeezed into tiny cages are pulled from a truck, a lifetime of agonising torture now over. http://www.physorg.com/news155992932.html Biology Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:22:42 EST news155992932 (PhysOrg.com) -- New images from two observations of the Martian moon Deimos and more than 600 observations of Mars, acquired by the high-resolution camera (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, became available for viewing Monday. http://www.physorg.com/news155846062.html Space & Earth Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:35:10 EST news155846062 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found within Saturn's G ring an embedded moonlet that appears as a faint, moving pinprick of light. Scientists believe it is a main source of the G ring and its single ring arc. http://www.physorg.com/news155318928.html Space & Earth Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:09:19 EST news155318928 Be careful, this sort of thing can cause an accident. On Friday evening, Feb. 27th, the 10% crescent Moon will glide by Venus, forming a gorgeous and mesmerizing pair of lights in the sunset sky. http://www.physorg.com/news154962003.html Space & Earth Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:00:59 EST news154962003 For the first time, a spacecraft from Earth has captured hi-resolution images of a solar eclipse while orbiting another world. http://www.physorg.com/news154885201.html Space & Earth Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:41:10 EST news154885201 (PhysOrg.com) -- Small robots the size of riding mowers could prepare a safe landing site for NASA's Moon outpost, according to a NASA-sponsored study prepared by Astrobotic Technology Inc. with technical assistance from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. http://www.physorg.com/news154790420.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:20:55 EST news154790420 Something is about to happen on Saturn that's so pretty, even Hubble will pause to take a look. http://www.physorg.com/news154282058.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:08:06 EST news154282058 At a meeting in Washington last week, NASA and ESA officials decided to first pursue a mission to study Jupiter and its four largest moons, and plan for another mission to visit Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and Enceladus. http://www.physorg.com/news154190705.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:45:51 EST news154190705 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, is enroute from Northrop Grumman's facility in Redondo Beach, Calif., to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for a spring launch. http://www.physorg.com/news154117276.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:22:16 EST news154117276 (PhysOrg.com) -- The most detailed map of the Moon ever created has revealed never-before-seen craters at the lunar poles. The map is also revealing secrets about the Moon's interior -- and hinting about Mars's interior as well. C.K. Shum, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, is part of the international research team that published the map in the February 13 issue of the journal Science. http://www.physorg.com/news153671640.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:34:36 EST news153671640