News, Star Charts, Space Pictures - Astronomy.com

HSF - International Space Station Space station updates have moved. Please go to the Space Station page on the NASA Web for continuing international space station coverage. Can humans live on Mars? Is it safe? The Vision for Space Exploration opens the door for NASA to find out. Researchers on Earth are using several experiments aboard the international space station to study health and safety issues. Space travelers living on Mars for extended periods will need to grow plants, which provide food and generate oxygen. Greenhouses in the Station's Destiny Laboratory and in the Zvezda Service Module grow plants in a controlled environment. NASA is also concerned about health hazards posed by space radiation. On the station, sensors inside the crew areas monitor radiation levels. Will it ever be safe for humans to live on Mars?

Hubble Goes to the eXtreme to Assemble Farthest-Ever View of the Universe Hubble Goes to the eXtreme to Assemble Farthest-Ever View of the Universe Like photographers assembling a portfolio of best shots, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind's deepest-ever view of the universe. (Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the constellation Fornax, created using Hubble Space Telescope data from 2003 and 2004. The new full-color XDF image is even more sensitive, and contains about 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. Magnificent spiral galaxies similar in shape to our Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy appear in this image, as do the large, fuzzy red galaxies where the formation of new stars has ceased. Related Link

NASA World Wind