46749687
submission
astroengine writes
"In a recent batch of images beamed back to Earth from Mars rover Curiosity's MAHLI camera, obvious signs of wear and tear could be seen in the "skin" of the robot's wheels. Considering Curiosity is only 281 sols (Mars days) into its mission and roved less than a kilometer after landing, surely this doesn't bode well? Fortunately, there's good news. “The wear in the wheels is expected,” Matt Heverly, lead rover driver for the MSL mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News. “We will continue to characterize the wheels both on Mars and in the Marsyard, but we don’t expect the wear to impact our ability to get to Mt. Sharp.”"Link to Original Source
46745541
submission
astroengine writes
"The mother of all cosmic collisions has been spotted between two galaxies containing a total of 400 billion stars, igniting the birth of 2,000 new stars per year! This incredible event was first spotted by the recently-retired Hershel infrared space observatory, a mission managed by the European Space Agency. This violent discovery isn't just awesome to look at, it could also help explain how massive, red elliptical galaxies evolved in the early universe."Link to Original Source
46575435
submission
astroengine writes
"After nine years of hard Mars roving, Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity has broken a 40-year-old extraterrestrial distance record. On Thursday, the tenacious six-wheeled robot drove 80 meters (263 feet), nudging the total distance traveled since landing on the red planet in 2004 to 35.760 kilometers (22.220 miles). NASA’s previous distance record was held by Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt when, in December 1972, they drove their Lunar Roving Vehicle 35.744 kilometers (22.210 miles) over the lunar surface. Although it's broken the NASA distance record, it hasn't surpassed the international record, yet. The Soviet Lunokhod 2 remote-controlled moon rover roved 37 kilometers (23 miles) across the lunar surface and, so far, remains the undisputed champion of distance driving on an extraterrestrial surface."Link to Original Source
46567275
submission
astroengine writes
"Dust devils are a well-known atmospheric phenomena on Mars, and as these new HiRISE observations show, the devilish vorticies can carve beautiful patterns in the Martian dust. What's more — in side-by-side comparisons of observations of the same Mars region years apart — it appears that the active Mars atmosphere acts like an Etch A Sketch, rubbing out the dust devils' tracks, only for the dust devils to make brand new tracks years later."Link to Original Source
46540691
submission
astroengine writes
"NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has shut down due to an apparent problem with its positioning system, suspending indefinitely its science mission, officials said Wednesday. So far, attempts to coax the telescope back into operation have been fruitless. Two of the observatory’s four spinning reaction wheels, needed to properly point Kepler at its targets, are now no longer working. “People are definitely saddened by the loss of another reaction wheel. It certainly is not good news for the mission, which has been performing so well and had so much promise for doing even better,” deputy project manager Charles Sobeck, with the Ames Research Center, told Discovery News."Link to Original Source
46419071
submission
astroengine writes
"During an unscheduled spacewalk on the space station’s exterior on Saturday morning, NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy carried out the mother of all plumbing jobs: They detached a suspect ammonia pump, replaced it with a spare and watched for any further ammonia leakage. The emergency spacewalk was carried out in response to a troubling ammonia coolant leak that was discovered on Thursday. The coolant is used to maintain the temperature of the vast solar arrays the space station uses to generate electricity for its systems. “It will take some diagnostics, still, over the course of the next several days by the thermal systems specialists to fully determine that we have solved the problem of the ammonia leak,” said NASA commentator Rob Navias during the live NASA TV spacewalk broadcast. “But so far, so good.”"Link to Original Source
46384109
submission
astroengine writes
"After the discovery of an ammonia coolant leak supplying one of the solar arrays on Thursday, International Space Station managers have decided to plan for an unscheduled spacewalk on Saturday to repair the problem. The final decision about whether to go ahead with the extravehicular activity will be made late on Friday. “Good Morning, Earth! Big change in plans, spacewalk tomorrow, Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn are getting suits and airlock ready. Cool!” Tweeted the Space Station's Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield on hearing the news an emergency EVA may be required of his crew. “The whole team is ticking like clockwork, readying for tomorrow. I am so proud to be Commander of this crew. Such great, capable, fun people.”"Link to Original Source
46348279
submission
astroengine writes
"The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered rocky remains of planetary material ‘polluting’ the atmospheres of two white dwarfs — a sign that these stars likely have (or had) planetary systems and that asteroids are currently being shredded by extreme tidal forces. Although white dwarfs with polluted atmospheres have been observed before, this is the first time evidence of planetary systems have been discovered in stars belonging to a relatively young cluster of stars. “We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets,” said Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge in a Hubble news release. “When these stars were born, they built planets, and there’s a good chance that they currently retain some of them. The signs of rocky debris we are seeing are evidence of this — it is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our Solar System.”"Link to Original Source
46278139
submission
astroengine writes
"The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera carried by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has spotted a strange geological feature that, for now, defies an obvious explanation. Found at the southern edge of Acidalia Planitia, small pits with raised edges appear to hug a long ridge. So far, mission scientists have ruled out impact craters and wind as formation processes, but have pegged the most likely cause to be glacial in nature."Link to Original Source
46245299
submission
astroengine writes
"Over 6 days, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observed the hot-Jupiter HAT-P-2b as it passed in front of its star, behind and back in front again — the first time an infrared observatory has done so. Interestingly, HAT-P-2b’s orbit is highly eccentric, meaning its orbital path takes it only 2.8 million miles from the star’s surface at closest approach and out to 9.3 million miles at its most distant. HAT-P-2b is therefore a roasted planet, where rapid changes in its atmosphere can be expected from extreme heating. Fortunately, because HAT-P-2b’s orbit is not only compact but also eccentric, astronomers have a wonderful opportunity to see these changes occur over a very short timescale. “It’s as if nature has given us a perfect lab experiment with this system,” said Heather Knutson, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif. “Because the planet’s distance to the sun changes, we can watch how fast it takes to heat up and cool down. It’s as though we’re turning the heat knob up on our planet and watching what happens.” Extra kudos goes to the fun-sized exoplanet-on-a-Bunsen-burner image accompanying the NASA release."Link to Original Source
46104411
submission
astroengine writes
"Pulling from 20 years of research since the first discoveries of planets beyond our solar system, scientists have concluded that Earth and its sibling worlds comprise what appears to be a relatively rare breed in a diverse cosmic zoo that includes a huge variety of planet sizes, orbits and parent stars. The most common systems contain one or more planets one to three times bigger than Earth, all orbiting much closer to their parent stars than Earth circles the sun, says astronomer Andrew Howard, with the University of Hawaii."Link to Original Source
45974915
submission
astroengine writes
"SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger, two-pilot suborbital spaceship owned by Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, fired up its rocket engine for the first time on Monday to successful complete a 16-second, supersonic test flight Branson called 'critical.' “It looked stunning,” Richard Branson told Discovery News. “The pilots themselves were tempted to say, ‘Let’s get farther. Let’s just go straight into space today,’ but it’s good sense they decided not to do that and save it up for later on in the year.” The space tourism company has also released an awesome video of the test flight."Link to Original Source
45772469
submission
astroengine writes
"In a galaxy, far, far away (6 billion light-years away to be precise), the most efficient star "factory" has been discovered. Called SDSSJ1506+54, this galaxy generates a huge quantity of infrared radiation, the majority being generated by a compact region at its core. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) first spotted the galactic oddity and Hubble confirmed the maelstrom of stellar birthing near its core. But the most amazing thing? This galaxy is the "greenest" factory yet discovered — it uses 100 percent of all the available hydrogen to supply the protostars, leaving no waste. “This galaxy is remarkably efficient,” said lead scientist Jim Geach of McGill University in a NASA news release. “It’s converting its gas supply into new stars at the maximum rate thought possible.”"Link to Original Source
45572021
submission
astroengine writes
"About 1,200 light-years from Earth, five planets are circling around sun-like star Kepler-62, two of which are fortuitously positioned for water, if any exists, to remain liquid on their surfaces — a condition believed to be necessary for life. The discovery, made by scientists using NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, is the strongest evidence yet for more than one Earth-sized planet existing in a star’s so-called “habitable” zone. “We’re particularly delighted to find that there are two planets in the habitable zone,” lead Kepler scientist William Borucki, with NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, told Discovery News. “It sort of doubles our chances of finding that Earth we’d all like to find. When you think about Earth and Mars, if Mars had been a bit larger, if Jupiter hadn’t been so close, we’d again have two planets in the habitable zone and maybe we’d have a place to go,” he said."Link to Original Source
45546903
submission
astroengine writes
"World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has announced that he was likely wrong about his view that the Higgs boson doesn’t exist — an outcome he doesn’t find very exciting — conceding that he lost a $100 wager. Speaking at the Beckman Auditorium in Caltech, Pasadena, Calif., on Tuesday (April 16), the British physicist gave a public lecture on “The Origins of the Universe,” summarizing new revelations in modern astrophysics and cosmology. After the lecture, Caltech physicist and colleague John Preskill commented on Hawking’s fondness of placing bets when faced with conflicts of physics ideas. Hawking lost a famous wager to Preskill in 2004 in a debate over whether or not black holes destroy information (theory suggests they do not, opposing Hawking's argument). “To love Stephen Hawking is to not always agree with Stephen Hawking,” Preskill quipped. “He’s usually right, but he’s not always right. Sometimes we haven’t been able to resolve our differences and we’ve resorted to making bets it’s sad to say that although Stephen Hawking is without doubt a great scientist, he’s a bad gambler.”"Link to Original Source