With help from NASA, an international team has discovered a new pulsar. Using similar techniques, another team has discovered nine new pulsars. All of this made possible by NASA’s new Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. more…
Atlantis takes off for it’s final mission, July 8th, 2011. This will end 30 years of Shuttle flight, that began with space shuttle Columbia. The 4 man crew wraps the program with a 12 day mission. Bringing supplies and spare parts, they’ll also work on a robotic refueling experiment. Future US missions on the International Space Station will require a lift from our Russian friends via Soyuz. Local Florida residents and businesses will feel the pain of no shuttle. Certainly not the end for NASA. A multitude of current missions are at hand. And maybe, just maybe, a future shuttle.
What was that?! That was the asteroid dubbed “2011 MD”. It flew by earth at about 12000 miles per hour. Discovered June 22, the asteroid came so close that amateur astronomers were able to get a glimpse. Some say this stray would have broken up in the atmosphere. Other scientist theorize a violent collision, leaving a large crater. The mind races with possible doomsday scenarios. New Ice Age? Famine and drought? Massive tsunamis? Could we have shot this thing down? Check out the NASA near earth object program.
A new study reports that a mammals sense of smell was the primary motivator for brain development. Using high resolution scanning, scientist determined that sensory areas of the skull developed more quickly. This study, for the first time, outlines the evolutionary history of mammal brain regions.
The countdown is on for Space Shuttle Endeavour. Launch has been re-scheduled for May 10th, after failure in a power distribution box. The launch marks the next to last shuttle mission. Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for launch on June 28 at 3:40pm. An estimated 1 million launch watchers are expected to witness the historic ending to one of man’s greatest innovations.
Earth Day celebrations go world wide for April 22nd. NASA has a nice Earth Day page titled “Exploring The Whole Earth”.
NASA’s Stardust-NExT Mission comes to a successful end. On February 24, 2011, NASA engineers commanded the Stardust spacecraft to burn its remaining fuel. The fuel burn being used as a future measure of fuel consumption and efficiency. Originally launched to collect particles from comet Wild 2, Stardust was then commanded with a bonus mission to fly past comet Temple 1. Stardust racked up 5.69 billion kilometers, that’s 3.5 billion miles, from launch to final burn.
Japan gets hits by an historic 9.0 quake. The following tsunami devastated much of east coastal Japan. The count of lost lives continues to rise, as the country struggles with controlling ecological and human tragedy. Check out this NOAA image of tsunami wave height projections.
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