"The senior White House staff is aware of the [NASA] administrator's inability to advance their agenda and will have to decide whether they make an adjustment in a second term," said a senior administration official not authorized to speak on the record. ... No one can deny, though, there has been an accumulation of distractions, and in order to maximize NASA's opportunities, the U.S. civil space program would benefit from a leader fully committed to implementing the bold policy put forth by the president and his administration".
Astronomers have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory to measure the mass of what may be the most massive black hole yet -- 17 billion Suns -- in galaxy NGC 1277. The unusual black hole makes up 14 percent of its galaxy's mass, rather than the usual 0.1 percent. This galaxy and several more in the same study could change theories of how black holes and galaxies form and evolve.
In December 2012, Austria will launch its first two satellites: UniBRITE and BRITE-Austria. This is the first pair of three, forming a network called BRITE-Constellation. The other pairs being contributed by Canada and Poland. The primary goal of BRITE-Constellation is the exploration of short term intensity variations of bright stars (V>6 mag) for a few years. For each satellite pair, one will employ a blue filter and the other a red filter.
Today, Rep. Ralph M. Hall (R-TX), Chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, congratulated Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) for being selected by the House Republican Steering Committee to be the next Chairman in the 113th Congress.
Employees at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena have called for an immediate Congressional investigation into NASA's behavior in handling their personal data following the October 31 theft of a NASA laptop computer left unattended in a parked car in Washington DC. NASA waited two weeks before informing its employees that their personal information had been compromised and that they have been placed at risk of identity theft. The data on the stolen NASA laptop was not encrypted.
Forecasters could soon be better able to predict how intense tropical cyclones like Hurricane Sandy will be by analyzing relative-humidity levels within their large-scale environments, finds a new NASA-led study.
