NASA Unveils Next Generation 'Monster' Space Rocket : The Two-Way. Hide captionArtist concept of SLS launching. If things go without a hitch, NASA said its newly unveiled Space Launch System could take its first manned test flight in 2017. The new rocket design looks a lot like the Apollo era rockets that took American astronauts to the moon, but NASA said the new rocket is much more powerful than any other rocket they've made before and in conjunction with the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, already in development, it could set up astronauts for deep space exploration. The SLS will be NASA's first exploration-class vehicle since the Saturn V took astronauts to the moon. "We're investing in technologies to live and work in space, and it sets the stage for visiting asteroids and Mars," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at a news conference. hide captionArtist concept of future destinations.
Artist concept of future destinations. At the unveiling of the plans, Sen. "Will it be tough times going forward? ... Update at 2:36 p.m. Newly Discovered Planet: Hot, Muggy And (Maybe) Liveable : The Two-Way. Sort of like Washington, D.C., in the summer: "It would feel like a steam bath — hot, sticky and beyond uncomfortable. " That's how The Associated Press describes the way scientists are describing "HD 85512 b ... a newly discovered planet about 35 light-years from Earth in the constellation Vela.
" It's the second planet outside our solar system that seems to be orbiting in "the habitable zone" around its star, according to the European Southern Observatory, which today announced the discovery of HD 85512 b and more than 50 other plants around other stars. In that habitable zone, "water may be present in liquid form if conditions are right," the ESC adds. One issue, though, if you don't like steamy weather: "Temperatures there may range from 85 to 120 degrees with plenty of humidity," the AP adds. The news of HD 85512 b's discovery has been filtering out for a couple weeks. European Southern Observatory/YouTube Here's a video report from the ESO. (H/T NPR's Rob Schaefer) Astronauts' tracks, trash seen in new moon photos. WASHINGTON (AP) — A spacecraft circling the moon has snapped the sharpest photos ever of the tracks and trash left behind by Apollo astronauts in their visits from 1969 to 1972.
Images taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter from 13 to 15 miles up show the astronauts' paths when they walked on the moon, as well as ruts left by a moon buggy. Experts could even identify the backpacks astronauts pitched out of their lunar landers before they returned to Earth. "What we're seeing is a trail," said Arizona State University geology professor Mark Robinson, the orbiter's chief scientist. "It's totally awesome. " However, the photos were not close enough to see individual bootprints, Robinson said. The pictures were taken two weeks ago and show the landing sites for Apollo 12, 14 and 17. Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan wrote in an email to The Associated Press that the photo gives him a chance to revisit those days, "this time with a little nostalgia and disappointment.
Online: New Horizons: Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Black Holes. NOTE: This section is about stellar-mass black holes. For information about black holes that measure in the billions of solar masses, see Active Galaxies & Quasars . There are many popular myths concerning black holes, many of them perpetuated by Hollywood. Television and movies have portrayed them as time-traveling tunnels to another dimension, cosmic vacuum cleaners sucking up everything in sight, and so on.
It can be said that black holes are really just the evolutionary end point of massive stars. But somehow, this simple explanation makes them no less mysterious, and no easier to understand. Black holes: What are they? Black holes are the evolutionary endpoints of stars at least 10 to 15 times as massive as the Sun. But contrary to popular myth, a black hole is not a cosmic vacuum cleaner. The Schwarzschild radius can be calculated using the equation for escape speed: vesc = (2GM/R)1/2 R = 2GM/c2 If we can't see them, how do we know they are there?
Last Modified: December 2010. Pale Blue Dot « a simple prop. BBC Solar System – Uranus orbits the Sun tilted on its side. Solar System Exploration. Diamond Planet Discovered By Astronomers. The nursery song "twinkle twinkle, little star" might have a whole new meaning now that astronomers have found a planet they believe to be made almost entirely of diamonds. Scientists say the planet exists about 4,000 light years away from Earth, and is probably the remnants of a once-large dead star, Reuters reports. (Scroll down for video.) "The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon," Matthew Bailes of the University of Technology in Melbourne told Reuters. He calls it "a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun.
" The Daily Mail reported that, even though the planet is small in size, it has slightly more mass than the planet Jupiter. Scientists were able to find the planet by tracking its companion star, or a pulsar, using the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia. Astronomers detected a similar planet in December 2010, only 1,200 light years away. Scientists Now Know: We're From Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy! Scientists Now Know: We're Not From Here! Summary & comments by Dan Eden for Viewzone "This first full-sky map of Sagittarius shows its extensive interaction with the Milky Way," Majewski said. "Both stars and star clusters now in the outer parts of the Milky Way have been 'stolen' from Sagittarius as the gravitational forces of the Milky Way nibbled away at its dwarf companion.
This one vivid example shows that the Milky Way grows by eating its smaller neighbors. " The study's map of M giants depicts 2 billion years of Sagittarius stripping by the Milky Way, and suggests that Sagittarius has reached a critical phase in what had been a slow dance of death. "After slow, continuous gnawing by the Milky Way, Sagittarius has been whittled down to the point that it cannot hold itself together much longer," said 2MASS Science Team member and study co-author Martin Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts. Does this mean we are at a unique moment in the life of our galaxy? From Dan Eden: Hi Dan, The Unsolved Mystery of Saturn's Hexagon -4 Times the Size of Earth. "Cassini is indebted to Voyager for its many fascinating discoveries and for pavingthe way for Cassini," says Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL, who started her career working on Voyager from 1977 to 1989.
"On Cassini, we still compare our data to Voyager's and proudly build on Voyager's heritage. " But the Voyager Mission left a few mysteries that Cassini has not yet solved. One of the most perplexing mysteries is Saturn's hexagpn. NASA scientists first spotted a hexagonal weather pattern when they stitched together Voyager images of Saturn's north pole. 'Now that we can see undulations and circular features instead of blobs in the hexagon, we can start trying to solve some of the unanswered questions about one of the most bizarre things we've ever seen in the solar system, said Kevin Baines, Atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after viewing Cassini images in 2009.
After the sunlight faded, darkness shrouded the north pole for 15 years. Enceladus. Enceladus [en-SELL-ah-dus] is one of the brightest objects in our solar system. Covered in water ice that reflects sunlight like freshly fallen snow, Enceladus reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. Because Enceladus reflects so much sunlight, the surface temperature is extremely cold, about -201° C (-330° F). About as wide as Arizona, Enceladus is quite similar in size to Mimas but has a smoother, brighter surface. Unlike Mimas, Enceladus displays at least five different types of terrain. Parts of the moon show craters no larger than 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) in diameter. Other areas show regions with no craters indicating major resurfacing events in the geologically recent past. Enceladus. Saturn II Enceladus ("en SEL a dus") is the eighth of Saturn's known satellites: orbit: 238,020 km from Saturn diameter: 498 km mass: 7.30e19 kg In Greek mythology Enceladus was a Titan who was defeated in battle and buried under Mount Etna by Athena.
Discovered in 1789 by Herschel. Craters and smooth plains Enceladus has the highest albedo (>0.9) of any body in the solar system. Its surface is dominated by fresh, clean ice. At least five different types of terrain have been identified on Enceladus. This means that Enceladus must have been active until very recently (and perhaps is still active today). Enceladus is much too small to be heated solely by the decay of radioactive material in its interior at present. Cassini closeup view (looks like Europa?) Enceladus is locked in a 1:2 resonance with Dione (similar to the situation between Io and Europa). Enceladus is very likely the source of the material in Saturn's tenuous E ring. More about Enceladus Open Issues Home ... Strongest evidence yet indicates Enceladus hiding saltwater ocean.
This image shows icy spray spewing from Saturn's moon, Enceladus. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute The new discovery was made during the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn , a collaboration of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Launched in 1997, the mission spacecraft arrived at the Saturn system in 2004 and has been touring the giant ringed planet and its vast moon system ever since. The plumes shooting water vapor and tiny grains of ice into space were originally discovered emanating from Enceladus -- one of 19 known moons of Saturn -- by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005. During three of Cassini's passes through the plume in 2008 and 2009, the Cosmic Dust Analyser, or CDA, on board measured the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. The study shows the ice grains found further out from Enceladus are relatively small and mostly ice-poor, closely matching the composition of the E Ring. Enlarge University of Colorado at Boulder.
Saturn Moon Has Oxygen Atmosphere. An oxygen atmosphere has been found on Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea, astronomers announced Thursday—but don't hold your breath for colonization opportunities. For one thing, the 932-mile-wide (1,500-kilometer-wide), ice-covered moon is more than 932 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. For another, the average surface temperature is -292 degrees Fahrenheit (-180 degrees Celsius). And at less than 62 miles (100 kilometers) thick, the newfound oxygen layer is so thin that, at Earthlike temperatures and pressure, Rhea's entire atmosphere would fit in a single midsize building. Still, the discovery implies that worlds with oxygen-filled air may not be so unusual in the cosmos. At about 327,000 miles (527,000 kilometers) from Saturn, Rhea orbits inside the planet's magnetic field. The Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Galileo probe found in 1995 that a similar process creates tenuous oxygen atmospheres on Jupiter's ice moons Europa and Ganymede.
MESSENGER - Unlocking the Secrets of Mercury. Dark alien planet discovered by NASA | MNN - Mother Nature Network - StumbleUpon. An alien world blacker than coal, the darkest planet known, has been discovered in the galaxy. The world in question is a giant the size of Jupiter known as TrES-2b. NASA's Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 lightyears away in the direction of the constellation Draco. The researchers found this gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen up to now.
[The Strangest Alien Planets] "It's just ridiculous how dark this planet is, how alien it is compared to anything we have in our solar system," study lead-author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com. "It's darker than the blackest lump of coal, than dark acrylic paint you might paint with. "However, it's not completely pitch black," co-author David Spiegel of Princeton University said in a statement.
Related on SPACE.com: Juno Mission - Unlocking Jupiter's Secrets. Mars Exploration Program. Venus Express. Seriously jaw-dropping picture of the Sun. Need your slice of awesome today? Then check out this truly astonishing picture of a detached prominence off the limb of the Sun: Holy wow! Click to ensolarnate. And I mean it: you want to see the bigger version of this. This picture was taken by Alan Friedman, who is no stranger to this blog: his picture of the boiling Sun last year was hugely popular, and so amazing I featured it as one of my top pictures of 2010.
And with this he’s done it again… and maybe even topped it. Alan used a filter that lets through only a very narrow wavelength of light emitted by hydrogen (called Hα for those of you keeping track at home), so this tracks the activity of gas on the solar surface. The scene-stealer is that detached prominence off to the left.
The beauty of this picture belies its violence and sheer magnitude: the mass of material in a prominence can easily top 10 billion tons! Yegads. You really need to go and see the rest of Alan’s photography at his site, Averted Imagination. Related posts: