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+ - Billion Pixel Photo of Mars Snapped by Curiosity->

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes "If you were in any doubt as to Curiosity’s photography prowess, this panorama of Gale Crater should allay your concerns. In this billion-pixel photo from Mars, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory snapped nearly 900 separate images that were then stitched together to create a wonderful high-definition view from the robot’s mast-mounted cameras. “It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras’ capabilities,” said Bob Deen of the Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who assembled the scene. “You can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details.”"
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+ - Quirky Four-Quark Quantum Monster Discovered->

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes "While looking for a strange state of matter in two particle accelerators, another, totally unexpected particle has been discovered. Say hello to the Zc(3900) particle, a particle that physicists had little clue could exist. What makes the Zc(3900) unique is that it is apparently composed of four quaks (charm, anti-charm quark, down and anti-down) — the first 4-quark hadron to be discovered experimentally. It was detected by two particle accelerators — the Belle experiment in Japan and the BESIII experiment in China — during studies of the Y(4260) particle that was discovered in 2005. Physicists noticed an excess at 3.9 GeV in the debris of the decay of the Y(4260) and 460 detections of the Zc(3900) have now been made. Some work needs to be done in characterizing the particle, but two papers have been published in Physical Review Letters."
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+ - Crowd-Funded Radio Beacon Will Message Aliens->

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes "In the hope of uniting people around the globe in a long-duration project to send a radio "message in a bottle" METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) signal, a crowd-funded project utilizing a refurbished radio telescope in California has begun its work. Lone Signal is a project initiated by scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs to set up a continuous radio beacon from Earth. To support the operations of the Jamesburg Earth Station radio dish in Carmel Valley, Calif. (a dish built to support the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969), a crowd-funding effort has been set up so that for a small fee, users can send images to the stars. If you're content with sending a text message, your first message is free. The radio dish's first target is Gliese 526, a red dwarf star 18 light-years from Earth, but the project will be considering other stellar targets believed to be harboring habitable worlds."
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+ - Mars Explorers Face Huge Radiation Problem->

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes "A radiation sensor inside NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows that even under the best-case scenario and behind shielding currently being designed for NASA’s new deep-space capsule, future travelers will face a huge amount of radiation. The results, based on Curiosity’s 253-day, 348-million-mile cruise to Mars, indicate an astronaut most likely would exceed the current U.S. lifetime radiation exposure limit during one round trip mission. “Even for the shortest of missions we are perilously close to the radiation career and health limits that we’ve established for our astronauts,” NASA’s chief medical officer Richard Williams told a National Academy of Sciences’ medical committee on Thursday."
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+ - Rough Roving: Curiosity's Wheels Show Damage->

Submitted by astroengine
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.”"
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+ - Violent Galactic Clash May Solve Cosmic Mystery->

Submitted by astroengine
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."
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+ - Opportunity Breaks NASA's 40-Year Roving Record->

Submitted by astroengine
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."
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+ - Dust Devils Rip-Up Mars' Etch A Sketch Surface->

Submitted by astroengine
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."
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+ - Kepler's Exoplanet-Hunting Mission May Be Over->

Submitted by astroengine
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."
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+ - Astronauts Fix Phantom Space Station Ammonia Leak->

Submitted by astroengine
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.”"
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+ - Space Station Crew Prepare for Emergency Spacewalk->

Submitted by astroengine
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.”"
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+ - Hubble Discovers 'Planetary Graveyard'->

Submitted by astroengine
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.”"
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+ - Weird Geological Features Spied on Mars->

Submitted by astroengine
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."
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