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New moon discovered
Only the second known satellite of an asteroid has been discovered by astronomers.l.
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Mir calls Welsh school
Russian cosmonaut Viktor Afanasyez called down from the Mir space station on Wednesday to send a message of congratulations to pupils at UK school.
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The Full Moon Blues See also: Here comes the Blue Moon
Despite all the talk of "blue moons" — especially with this year's plethora of full moons — the magazine that brought the term back in the early 1980s admits they may have defined it incorrectly.
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SETI's waiting game: Deal with it
The latest dispatch from Astronomer Seth Shostak at Arecibo.
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Tracking Down Source Of High-Energy Cosmic Rays -- Argentina Site Preparations Begin
Scientists will need two detectors the size of Rhode Island to track down the mysterious source of rare but extremely powerful high-energy cosmic rays that periodically bombard Earth.
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To Mercury with Love
In July, the next NASA Discovery mission will be announced. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but one candidate deserves our admiration and support - the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging mission.
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Europe signs Mars deal See also: Mission to Mars set to revolutionise ESA's working methods
Anglo-French company Matra Marconi Space (MMS) has signed a 60m euros (£40m) contract with the European Space Agency (Esa) to send a probe to Mars.
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Earth's water probably didn't come from comets
A new Caltech study of comet Hale-Bopp suggests that comets did not give Earth its water, contrary to the longstanding belief of many planetary scientists.
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A signal from ET?
Listen to just one of the many mysterious signals astronomers have detected from outer space.
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Surveyor scouts prime sites for Mars landings
Mars Global Surveyor is paving the way for an armada of spacecraft NASA wants to either put in orbit or land on Mars over the next decade.
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Money still needed to keep Mir alive
Fresh supplies are scheduled to be launched this week to Russia's space station Mir, which soon will face a crucial milestone in efforts to keep it open.
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Solar Eclipse on August 11, 1999
On this page you will find provisional information with related links about the total solar eclipse that will be visible from Europe on August 11, 1999.
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Second Blue Moon of Year to Occur on Wednesday
We're about to see something we haven't seen since 1915. The second 'blue moon' of the year takes place this week.
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Huge storms hit the planet Uranus See also: Huge Spring Storms Rouse Uranus from Winter Hibernation
If springtime on Earth were anything like it will be on Uranus, we would be experiencing waves of massive storms, each one covering the U.S. from Kansas to New York, with temperatures of 300 degrees below zero.
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Mars Probe Deploys Antenna See also: Deployed antenna sending streams of Mars images and Mars orbiter boosts its power to send pictures
The Mars Global Surveyor has successfully unfolded its high-gain antenna that had been retracted against the spacecraft's body since it was launched in November 1996.
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Rocket lifts off from the sea See also: Sea Space Launch a Success and Sea Launch makes history
An international consortium has launched a rocket with a dummy satellite from a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean.
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MIT Students Propose Plan To Go To Mars
A group of MIT students have launched a business plan to establish a joint venture company between NASA and their proposed company ThinkMars, to manage an expedition to Mars.
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Tethered Transportation In Space: Experiment Will Lasso Energy From Earth's Atmosphere
NASA plans to lasso energy from Earth's atmosphere with a tether as part of the first demonstration of a propellant-free space propulsion system, potentially leading to a revolutionary space transportation system.
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Expansive musings on a dwarf star
"The telescope was pointed at the star CN Leo. This is not a star among stars. CN Leo is just another of the galaxy's many dim bulbs, a dwarf somewhat smaller than the Sun. Sure, it's nearby — a paltry 8 light-years distant — although it would require a good pair of binoculars and perseverance to see this run-of-the-mill runt with your eyes. But of course, we weren't using our eyes."
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Autopsy of an Explosion
Determining what happens during a gamma-ray burst reads like a detective story. Scientists are hot on the trail of unraveling the mystery, using telescopes that are far more complex than Sherlock Holmes' simple magnifying glass.
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First Colour Photo from ESO's Wide-Field-Imager at La Silla
Spectacular colour photo of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 4945, obtained with the new, 67-million pixel Wide-Field-Imager Camera at La Silla.
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NASA's Galileo finds 'bottle blonde' chemical on Europa See also: 'Blonde in a Bottle' Chemical Found on Jupiter Moon
Writing in the journal Science on Friday, a team of scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said the spacecraft Galileo had detected hydrogen peroxide, the chemical that turns brunettes into instant blondes, on Europa.
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Real space age is just beginning, symposium concludes
With a sober look toward the past and giddy anticipation of the future, scientists, engineers and visionaries gathered in Washington this week to grapple with the big questions of space exploration: Where do we go, why should we go, and how will we get there?
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Summer snow on the Red Planet
New photos from the Mars Global Surveyor reveal snow on Mars' northern hemisphere.
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Laser probes planetary surfaces
With a spark from a small laser, researchers from the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory can analyze soils and rocks from more than 50 feet away.
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Paranal power
The second optical telescope to come online at the Paranal Observatory is already proving its worth with stunning new images of the cosmos.
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Simulation Reveals Very First Stars That Formed In The Universe
At a meeting of the American Physical Society (March 24), astronomers announced they have turned back the hands of time and taken a look at the earliest structures that formed in the universe.
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Terraforming Mars, and other visions See also: NASA Experiment Lays Groundwork for 'Living Off the Land' on Mars
Scientists have turned carbon dioxide into oxygen in a simulated Martian atmosphere, NASA's chief reported at Wednesday's "Space 2000" symposium. The technique could represent one small step toward eventual human missions to the Red Planet.
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Gamma-Ray Burst Amazes See also: 'Live' gamma burst was huge, astronomers say and 'Live' gamma burst was huge
The first gamma-ray burst that astronomers got to watch 'live' was the biggest explosion ever seen, second only to the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe.
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Aldrin: Accessibility the key to future space flight
Buzz Aldrin, one of the privileged few who have traveled into space during the current millennium, said Mar.24 that opening the heavens to the masses is the key to fostering space exploration in the next century.
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Report: space rockets damaging Earth's environment
Pollution from space rockets is a major source of damage to the Earth's ozone layer and toxic rocket fuel is a growing threat to peoples' health in many areas. |
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Sea Launch primed to make history See also: Space race goes to sea
The world's first floating space pad will enter use on Saturday (Mar.27) when a rocket blasts a dummy satellite into orbit. Success would herald a new era in the space business.
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Mapping Mars
Now firmly settled in its final mapping orbit, the Mars Global Surveyor (MSG) spacecraft has started sending back to Earth a series of stunning, detailed images of the Martian surface.
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Leftover instruments will pave way
for new propulsion test
Instruments that flew on a total of four Space Shuttle missions are being prepared for one last trip into space, piggyback on a university satellite, to help validate a new method of studying electrified gases in space.
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Why Antimatter Isn't Around
Offering a clue to why the universe exists at all, an experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has confirmed a new example of why nature favors matter over antimatter.
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Eclipse cooks eyeballs
The hordes who will descend on Cornwall and Devon to see the total solar eclipse in August risk "cooking" their eyeballs, specialists have warned.
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Big Bang Theory Challenged -- Many Stars May Be Living Unseen See also: Big Bang theory challenged
An Australian-led team of astronomers has challenged conventional Big Bang theory by finding that large numbers of stars may be living unseen in the space between the galaxies. |
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Jodrell Bank resumes search for life in the universe
Following the abandonment of the observations last September due to damage caused by Hurricane George to the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the University of Manchester's Lovell radio telescope at Jodrell Bank has resumed its role in the most sensitive and comprehensive search ever undertaken for radio communication signals from Extra-Terrestrial Civilisations beyond our Solar System.
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SETI sleuths track down the glitches
Dispatch from Arecibo: Astronomer Seth Shostak discusses the glitches that bedevil SETI researchers. |
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Hubble's galactic gallery See also: Hubble surveys 6 spiral galaxies
Fresh views of the process of starbirth have come from the Hubble Space Telescope after its gaze penetrated the dust clouds swirling around the centres of distant galaxies
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Hunting the Higgs
Scientists are building a giant machine to find a particle that is fundamental to our current understanding of the nature of matter.
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Mysterious moon's methane sea
Triton, one of Neptune's moons, may have a strange under-ice ocean of liquid methane.
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Ancient tomb captured the winter sun
A mysterious prehistoric tomb on the island of Orkney has a special 'light box' cut into its roof, archaeologists have discovered. It allowed a shaft of light to herald the start and end of winter.
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Signs of Life in Mars Rocks See also: NASA finds more evidence of possible past life on Mars, More meteorites in Mars debate and Scientists say Nakhla meteorite hints at life on Mars
A pair of Martian meteorites include features that resemble Earth bacteria, according to the same NASA researchers who three years ago claimed they had evidence of primitive life on early Mars.
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John Glenn roasted, toasted by colleagues
For a change, John Glenn wasn't in a parade, wasn't getting a medal, wasn't even being praised as the great geriatric hero. Instead, he was among old friends and fellow astronauts, and the mood was anything but reverential as they toasted him -- not just for his space-shuttle flight last October, but for the 37th anniversary of his first rocket ride.
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Hale-Bopp suggests comets are cosmic leftovers See also: Cosmic leftovers within a comet
Comet Hale-Bopp, which blazed across the sky in 1997, may be brimming with some of the primordial material from which the sun and the planets formed more than 4 billion years ago.
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The alien hunters are back at it See also: Alien hunters back on track
Seth Shostak: "Squinting through the aircraft window, I see a bright expanse of ocean below, clotted with white cumulus. Above is a blue-bowl sky, and I suspect that it, too, is clotted. Not with clouds, but with distant worlds peopled by strange beings."
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Hubble's Infrared Galaxy Gallery
Astronomers have used the NASA Hubble Space Telescope to produce an infrared "photo essay" of spiral galaxies. By penetrating the dust clouds swirling around the centers of these galaxies, the telescope's infrared vision is offering fresh views of star birth.
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Lunar Data Support Idea That Collision Split Earth, Moon See also: Earth smash spawned Moon and Earth the Moon's Mother?
Analysis of data from NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft has confirmed that the Moon has a small core, supporting the theory that the bulk of the Moon was ripped away from the early Earth when an object the size of Mars collided with the Earth.
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Russia cancels 2 Mir spacewalks
The crew aboard Russia's orbiting Mir space station will have to cancel at least two spacewalks because of the country's financial problems.
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Best site for Moonbase revealed
The most detailed analysis ever of the Moon's mysterious polar regions has pinpointed the place best suited for a future human base.
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UK astronaut essential, says Foale
Astronaut Michael Foale has told the BBC that it is about time the UK Government paid for an astronaut to go to the International Space Station (ISS).
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Fastrac Full-Engine, Hot-Fire Test Successful -- New Rocket Engine Could Dramatically Reduce Launch Costs
NASA has begun full-engine, hot-fire testing of the Fastrac rocket engine. A 20-second, full-power test this month at NASA's Stennis Space Center, Miss., demonstrated operation of the complete engine system.
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Sea Launch gets the final 'green light'
Ever wondered what would happen if you launched a rocket from a floating platform?
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University Of Minnesota, Fermilab To Probe Nature Of Neutrinos
Physicists are preparing to go underground to solve one of nature's most baffling mysteries: whether the elusive subatomic particles known as neutrinos have mass.
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Asteroid-seekers stumble upon supernova See also: NASA's asteroid hunters net a surprise catch
Astronomers canvassing the sky for asteroids that could threaten Earth stumbled upon a supernova in a galaxy 650 million light-years away, Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers say.
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Search for E.T. springs forward
NASA Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph views of the rapidly fading visible-light fireball from the most powerful cosmic explosion recorded to date. For a brief moment the light from the blast was equal to the radiance of 100 million billion stars.
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Hubble Views Home Galaxy of Record-Breaking Explosion
NASA Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph views of the rapidly fading visible-light fireball from the most powerful cosmic explosion recorded to date. For a brief moment the light from the blast was equal to the radiance of 100 million billion stars.
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Saturn's Mysterious Moon
Skywatchers can view Saturn's enigmatic moon Titan through a small telescope this week
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Scientists weigh interstellar flight
NASA Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph views of the rapidly fading visible-light fireball from the most powerful cosmic explosion recorded to date. For a brief moment the light from the blast was equal to the radiance of 100 million billion stars.
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Mars Smiles for the Camera See also: Mars' happy face: Have a nice planet! and Surveyor begins mapping of Mars
The Mars Global Surveyor's camera is busy doing portraits. It has sent back photos of a 134-mile-wide crater that looks a lot like a 'Happy Face' from the sky.
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Rosetta Lander unveiled
A full size model of the Rosetta lander was presented to the public for the first time Mar.11. The unveiling ceremony took place at the Institute for Space Simulation in Cologne-Porz, a facility operated by the German Aerospace Research Centre
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Go-ahead for ESA's new millennium space observatories Planck and FIRST
European scientific institutes have been given the go-ahead for the development of instruments for two major ESA missions for the new millennium: Planck, a satellite to study the radiation considered to be the 'echo' of the Big Bang and FIRST, an infrared space telescope.
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New Martian meteorite found
A rock discovered in the Sahara Desert is only the 14th meteorite known to have come from Mars.
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Magnet theory to life on Mars
Scientists are about to reveal what may be the best evidence yet for past life in a rock from Mars. They hope it will cause their critics to pause for thought instead of dismissing their controversial claims.
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China Developing Super Space Telescope
Chinese scientists are working on a spectrum telescope that can observe about 4,000 celestial bodies at the same time.
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Eye on Science
The sharpest images of Mars ever recorded from an orbiting spacecraft suggest that two ingredients deemed necessary for life -- water and a source of heat -- were once plentiful on or just beneath the surface of the Red Planet. Check the link on the Mars page for the latest images of Mars.
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NASA to launch emergency repair trip to telescope See also: Hubble to get early service and NASA to launch emergency repair trip to telescope
NASA will launch an emergency repair mission this autumn to the Hubble Space Telescope, which is in danger of shutting down.
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Scientists to forecast sun eruptions See also: Finding the 'smoking gun' before it fires, 'S' marks the spot and Solar storms may disrupt everything under the sun
Colossal solar storms which can destroy communication satellites and knock out power grids on Earth may be predictable.
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Hilton to back space hotel
The hotel group Hilton International is to become the first sponsor of a privately funded plan to build a space station. It will be constructed from used Space Shuttle fuel tanks.
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'Last Man on the Moon'
TIt has been 26 years since Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt left the surface of earth's moon, the final astronauts to stand on the lunar surface. But in his memories of the mission, Cernan still captures the awe and wonder of a trip that is still almost unbelievable. Read an excerpt from his new book, 'Last Man on the Moon.'
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Busy time ahead for NASA's X-38
With another wildly successful test flight under their belts, NASA engineers are already looking forward to their next opportunity to test the lifeboat escape vehicle for the International Space Station.
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A Tale of Two Space Stations
In the rushed hope of manning the International Space Station before the end of the millennium, American space officials have reportedly agreed to a Russian proposal to move the launch of the first crew to October, four months earlier than previously planned.
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WIRE Satellite Lost See also: WIRE mission to study galaxy formation declared a loss and NASA pulls plug on WIRE science mission
NASA's $73-million Wide-Field Infrared Explorer is now just a piece of spinning space junk. The probe, intended to study infant galaxies, was launched last Thursday, but started going awry in its second orbit, and efforts to salvage the mission have failed.
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Found and lost in deep space See also: A Mote in Hubble's Eye
While looking at something else, the Hubble Space Telescope has seen, and then lost, an asteroid.
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Best ever view of Ganymede
The best global view has been obtained of the Jovian moon that is larger than some planets.
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VLT Unit Telescopes Named at Paranal Inauguration
It had long been ESO's intention to provide 'real' names to the four VLT Unit Telescopes, to replace the current, somewhat dry and technical designations as UT1 to UT4. Four names of objects in the sky in the Mapuche language were chosen. This indigeneous people lives mostly in the area south of Santiago de Chile
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Focusing on faces of Mars
Scientists are gearing up for their most comprehensive look at Mars, with the beginning of an orbiter's two-year mapping mission. Meanwhile, NASA is taking a closer look at its future plans for the Red Planet.
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'Sensational' anti-matter discovery
The reason we are all made of matter, and not anti-matter, may have been discovered after the latest results from a particle accelerator in Chicago.
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NASA working to correct spin rate of WIRE spacecraft
Ground controllers are attempting to recover a NASA spacecraft that was unable to maintain a stable position in orbit after launch on Mar.04.
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X-38 makes controlled test flight
An advanced space "lifeboat" prototype designed to ferry International Space Station crews home in emergencies dove from beneath the wing of a B-52 on Mar.05 and coasted to the desert floor in a flight test.
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WIRE spacecraft encounters trouble See also: Problem reported on Wide-Field Infrared Explorer
NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Explorer is in trouble just hours after arriving in space. Space agency officials say the telescope's protective cover somehow ejected shortly after launch, and the spacecraft is in an uncontrolled 3-axis spin about 340 miles above Earth.
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Happy birthday, Magnetars
20 years ago today, the first blast of gamma-rays from these enigmatic objects was first observed. Ever since, scientists have been unraveling what happened - and discovering radical new members of the cosmos.
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Rocket man's dreams take off
One of the UK's leading amateur rocketeers has successfully launched his latest craft. Steve Bennett watched his four-metre (14ft) Tempest climb high into the sky over Merseyside just after 10:15GMT on Mar.05.
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WIRE launches on galactic mission See also: NASA launches satellite to study history of star formation and NASA's star-gazing Wire satellite successfully launched
The NASA satellite which will observe the formation of galaxies has been successfully launched into space.
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ISO confirms that the normal matter in the universe is not enough to cause a 'Big Crunch'
New clues on the total amount of existing matter have been obtained by an international team of astronomers using the European infrared space telescope, ISO, by measuring for the first time the abundance of deuterium in a very active star-forming region in the Orion nebula.
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Infrared mission to the stars and beyond
While the Wide field Infrared Explorer may be garnering all the attention lately as NASA's satellite du jour, there are other missions in the wings looking to delve even deeper into the galaxies at the edge of the universe.
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UK MP Urges Action to Monitor Killer Asteroids See also: A call to monitor killer asteroids
British member of parliament on Mar.03 launched a campaign for the global monitoring of massive asteroids which could kill billions of people if they crashed into the Earth.
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Mercury Rising
On Friday, Mar. 5, Jupiter will have another close encounter in the sky, this time with the planet Mercury.
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Mars Life Even More Likely
If the Mars Pathfinder had set down on the Red Planet billions of years ago, it may have landed on a vastly different landscape, one that could have been able to support life.
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Cosmic Traffic Jam See also: Hubble reveals stellar traffic jam and Researchers Obtain Clearest View Of Nearby Galaxy's Core
A kind of cosmic traffic jam marks the core of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, with stars piling up on one end.
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ET, are you home?
For those looking to use their computer's idle cycles for something more understandable than higher math and code cracking, SETI@home is the perfect answer.
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Medieval astronomer's horoscope discovered See also: Ancient Math, Predictions and Astronomer Discovers 400-year-old Kepler Manuscript
A horoscope drawn by one of the greatest astronomers who ever lived has been rediscovered in California.
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Bringing Mars into the Iron Age
A metal-making process known to the ancient Romans could be pressed into service to bring Mars into the Iron Age - and start opening the solar system to human habitation.
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Life on Mars - new claims See also: Another Martian meteorite hints at life on Mars?
Sensational new claims about fossilised Martian bacteria in two more meteorites are about to be made by US scientists.
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Future telescope could shatter solar high-resolution barrier
Scientists look ahead at a new telescope which could lead to observations of violent magnetic fields on the sun with resolution 10 times better than the best solar instrument today.
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First private space shuttle unveiled See also: Satellite launcher unveiled and Roton rocket prototype unveiled
A prototype of the world's first privately-financed space shuttle was unveiled at the Mojave Spaceport, California. It was described as both a "revolution" and a "traffic cone with helicopter blades".
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NASA postpones launch of satellite to study history of star formation See also: Wide-Field Infrared Explorer launch postponed
A rocket malfunction forced NASA officials on Mar.01 to postpone the launch of a satellite to study the history of star formation.
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Discovery Of Supernovae "Fossils" Challenges Conventional Chemistry
Astrophysicists at Clemson University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Harvard University discovered a new chemical sequence during research into how large carbon molecules might form in exploding stars known as supernovae. The finding is casting doubt on the long-held chemical equilibrium theory and clearing the way for a new field -- kinetic chemistry.
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Space probe name winner will receive computer gift certificate
A $4,000 gift certificate for merchandise from CompUSA will go to the grand prize winner of a contest to name the two microprobes that comprise NASA's Deep Space 2 mission, which successfully launched in early January and are now headed toward Mars.
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NASA announces field center name change to honor John Glenn
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin today officially changed the name of the Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, OH, to the John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field.
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NASA to explore history of universe
The launch of the Wide Field Infra Red Explorer, known as WIRE, was scheduled for Monday night from Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Los Angeles. Its mission: to study the history of star formation in the universe.
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Space entrepreneur may inspire 'rocket boys' for a new millennium
By now, you have probably heard the story of Homer Hickam Jr. Born and raised in a tiny West Virginia coal town, a teen-aged Hickam looked to the night sky after the launch of Sputnik in October of 1957, hoping to catch a glimpse of the 184 pound satellite as it streaked by.
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