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| August 19, 2012 |
 New form of carbon observed Washington DC (SPX) Aug 17, 2012 - A team of scientists led by Carnegie's Lin Wang has observed a new form of very hard carbon clusters, which are unusual in their mix of crystalline and disordered structure. The material is capable of indenting diamond. This finding has potential applications for a range of mechanical, electronic, and electrochemical uses. The work is published in Science on Aug. 17. Carbon is the fourth-m ...more |  |
 Mars rover takes 'cool' detour: NASA Los Angeles (AFP) Aug 17, 2012 - The US space agency NASA's Mars rover Curiosity will make a wide detour to explore a "cool" geographical hot spot on Mars, scientists said Friday. The scientists also reported they found temperatures in the Red Planet's Gale Crater to be just above freezing, the first monitoring of Mars temperatures in three decades. Before driving to its destination at Mount Sharp, which may contain tra ...more |  |
 XCOR Becomes Corporate Sponsor of Uwingu, a Space Apps Company Boulder CO (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - XCOR Aerospace, a leader in commercial suborbital spaceflight, has become a corporate sponsor of Uwingu LLC's crowd-sourcing campaign to generate funds to launch its first web-based products. Uwingu is a space-themed, for profit start up seeking crowd-sourced funding to launch an ongoing series of public engagement projects. Uwingu's mission is to use proceeds from those projects to genera ...more |  |
 The Sun's Almost Perfectly Round Shape Baffles Scientists Manoa HI (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - The sun is nearly the roundest object ever measured. If scaled to the size of a beach ball, it would be so round that the difference between the widest and narrow diameters would be much less than the width of a human hair. The sun rotates every 28 days, and because it doesn't have a solid surface, it should be slightly flattened. This tiny flattening has been studied with many instrume ...more |  |
 Hubble Watches Star Clusters on a Collision Course Baltimore MD (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have caught two clusters full of massive stars that may be in the early stages of merging. The clusters are 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. What at first was thought to be only one cluster in the core of the massive star-forming region 30 Doradus (also known as the T ...more |  |
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 Exoplanet hosting stars give further insights on planet formation Lisbon, Portugal (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - An international team, led by EXOEarths researchers (Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto - CAUP), proposes that metals like Magnesium might have an important role in the formation of low mass planets. The team, lead by CAUP researcher Vardan Zh. Adibekyan, analyzed high resolution spectra of 1111 sun-like stars, obtained by the HARPS spectrograph (ESO). Of these stars, 109 are k ...more |  |
 Space bugs for blood testing and more Paris, France (ESA) Aug 20, 2012 - Thanks to ideas of putting swarms of tiny robot bugs to work on a future space station, patients being medicated for blood clots may soon get a simple, home-use testing kit, here on Earth. Fifteen years ago as a graduate student, Vladislav Djakov started building these micro-electromechanical creatures that mimic the swarms of bugs found in nature. Equipped with a power supply, limited int ...more |  |
 India's GSAT-10 satellite continues its checkout for the upcoming Arianespace Ariane 5 mission Kourou, French Guiana (ESA) Aug 20, 2012 - Test deployments of the antenna reflectors on India's GSAT-10 telecommunications satellite have been performed as part of pre-flight preparations for this payload, which is one of two spacecraft on Arianespace's next Ariane 5 mission from the Spaceport in French Guiana. GSAT-10's two reflectors, located on the "east" and "west" side of its rectangular-shaped body, were opened in the S5C hi ...more |  |
 NASA Selects Combined Data Services Contract For Polar Satellites Washington DC (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - NASA has selected the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC) of Oslo, Norway, for combined data support services for NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Program. This is a firm-fixed price contract with a value of about $22 million, which includes one base year and four one-year options to extend performance. This contract permits usage of the Svalbard Satellite Station ground station and oth ...more |  |
 Curious dark nebula seen as never before Munich, Germany (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - Just as Rene Magritte wrote "This is not a pipe" on his famous painting, this is also not a pipe. It is however a picture of part of a vast dark cloud of interstellar dust called the Pipe Nebula. This new and very detailed image of what is also known as Barnard 59 was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory. By coincidence this image is ...more |  |
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Flight Readiness Review Complete; No Constraints to Aug. 23 Launch Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Flight Readiness Review for the agency's Radiation Belt Storm Probes spacecraft and the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is complete. There were no significant issues identified that would be a constraint to launch on Aug. 23. A launch countdown dress rehearsal will be conducted on Friday. The Launch Readiness Review is to be held Aug. 20 ...more |  |
NASA is Tracking Electron Beams from the Sun Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - In the quest to understand how the world's weather moves around the globe, scientists have had to tease apart different kinds of atmospheric movement, such as the great jet streams that can move across a whole hemisphere versus more intricate, localized flows. Much the same must currently be done to understand the various motions at work in the great space weather system that links the sun and E ...more |  |
 Lockheed Martin Receives Contract To Produce THAAD Weapon System Equipment For The US Army Dallas TX (SPX) Aug 17, 2012 - Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $150 million contract from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to produce Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Weapon System launchers and fire control and communications equipment for the U.S. Army. The contract includes 12 launchers, two fire control and communications units, and associated support equipment. This contract will provide six launchers ...more |  |
Israel wraps up national SMS missile alert test Jerusalem (AFP) Aug 16, 2012 - Israel on Thursday wound up nationwide testing of an SMS warning system against missile attack, sending texts to mobile phones in Jerusalem and other parts of the country, a military spokeswoman said. The five-day exercise, which began on Sunday, took place to the backdrop of mounting speculation over a possible Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities and a resulting Iranian counter-atta ...more |  |
 N.Korea could produce dozens more nukes: study Washington (AFP) Aug 16, 2012 - North Korea could build an arsenal of up to 48 nuclear weapons, several times more than it has now, if the communist state were able to step up its program unchecked, a US think tank said Thursday. North Korea's nuclear program is shrouded in secrecy, but the Institute for Science and International Security used limited available information to chart out different scenarios for Pyongyang's p ...more |  |
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US confident of Pakistan nuclear security Washington (AFP) Aug 16, 2012 - The United States said Thursday it was confident of the safety of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal after heavily armed militants stormed an air force base in clashes that left 10 people dead. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland offered condolences over the attack claimed by the Taliban. She said the United States had no reason to doubt Pakistan's account that the Minhas base was free of n ...more |  |
Phoenix Cluster Sets Record Pace at Forming Stars Washington DC (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - Astronomers have found an extraordinary galaxy cluster, one of the largest objects in the universe, that is breaking several important cosmic records. Observations of the Phoenix cluster with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the National Science Foundation's South Pole Telescope, and eight other world-class observatories may force astronomers to rethink how these colossal structures and the gal ...more |  |
New Report Presents Research Program for Solar and Space Physics Over the Next Decade Washington DC (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - A new report from the National Research Council presents a prioritized program of basic and applied research for 2013-2022 that will advance scientific understanding of the sun, sun-Earth connections and the origins of "space weather," and the sun's interactions with other bodies in the solar system. This second decadal survey in solar and space physics - the product of a 18-month effort b ...more |  |
Astronomers Reassured by Record-breaking Star Formation in Huge Galaxy Cluster Hilo HI (SPX) Aug 20, 2012 - Until now, evidence for what astronomers suspect happens at the cores of the largest galaxy clusters has been uncomfortably scarce. Theory predicts that cooling flows of gas should sink toward the cluster's center, sparking extreme star formation there, but so far - nada, zilch, not-so-much. The situation changed dramatically when a large international team of over 80 astronomers, led by M ...more |  |
 Micro-thruster could move small satellites Cambridge, Mass. (UPI) Aug 17, 2012 - Micro-thrust engines no larger than a penny could move future small satellites in space, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say. The engine has none of the valves, pipes and heavy propellant tanks of typical bulky satellite engines, they said. Instead the design, developed my MIT aeronautics and astronautics Professor Paulo Lozano, is a flat, compact square, ...more |  |
