ScienceDaily_Space_and_Time

NASA technologists will get a chance next summer to relive the good old days when Agency engineers would affix space-age gizmos to rockets just to see if the contraptions worked. In what will be the first of four high-altitude balloon flights to begin in the summer of 2013, technologists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., are preparing to test new deceleration devices that could replace current descent technologies for landing ever-larger payloads at higher elevations on Mars.

The Dragon spacecraft built by SpaceX will head to the International Space Station with about 1,200 pounds of cargo during its demonstration mission, including commemorative patches and pins, 162 meals and a collection of student experiments.

A NASA flight test designed to demonstrate the feasibility of inflatable spacecraft technology is coming down to the wire. The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) is the third in a series of suborbital flight tests of this new technology. It is scheduled to launch from the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore this summer.

On May 20-21, 2012 an annular eclipse of the Sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor along Earth's northern Hemisphere -- beginning in eastern Asia, crossing the North Pacific Ocean, and ending in the western United States. A partial eclipse will be visible from a much larger region covering East Asia, North Pacific, North America and Greenland.

A technology that mimics the structure of a lobster's eyes is now being applied to a new instrument that could help revolutionize X-ray astronomy and keep astronauts safe on the International Space Station.

Astronomers have discovered a giant, galaxy-packed filament ablaze with billions of new stars. The filament is the first structure of its kind spied in a critical era of cosmic buildup when colossal collections of galaxies called superclusters began to take shape. The glowing galactic bridge offers astronomers a unique opportunity to explore how galaxies evolve and merge to form superclusters.

Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to the best assessment yet of our solar system's population of potentially hazardous asteroids. The results reveal new information about their total numbers, origins and the possible dangers they may pose.

NASA is lending the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where the spacecraft will continue its exploration of the cosmos. In a first-of-a-kind move for NASA, a Space Act Agreement was signed May 14 so the university soon can resume spacecraft operations and data management for the mission using private funds.

By combining the light of three powerful infrared telescopes, scientists have observed the active accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light years away, a method that has yielded an unprecedented amount of data for such observations. The resolution at which they were able to observe this highly luminescent active galactic nucleus has given them direct confirmation of how mass accretes onto black holes in centers of galaxies.

Baby galaxies from the young universe more than 12 billion years ago evolved faster than previously thought, shows new research. This means that already in the early history of the universe, there was potential for planet formation and life.

The strange galaxy Centaurus A is pictured in a new image from the European Southern Observatory. With a total exposure time of more than 50 hours this is probably the deepest view of this peculiar and spectacular object every created.

Astronomers have the first X-ray evidence of a supernova shock wave breaking through a cocoon of gas surrounding the star that exploded. This discovery may help astronomers understand why some supernovas are much more powerful than others.

Astrophysicists have just discovered a new heating source in cosmological structure formation. Until now, astrophysicists thought that super-massive black holes could only influence their immediate surroundings. Scientists have now discovered that diffuse gas in the universe can absorb luminous gamma-ray emission from black holes, heating it up strongly. This surprising result has important implications for the formation of structures in the universe.

The Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida has been a landmark to the technological advancements of sending men to the moon and astronauts into space for more than 45 years. But the VAB, as it is best known, is due for major renovations to continue processing launch vehicles and support the subsequent launching of a new generation of astronauts into orbit and deeper into space than ever before.

ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme is keeping watch over space hazards, including disruptive space weather, debris objects in Earth orbit and asteroids that pass close enough to cause concern.

Meteorite fragments were recently scattered around Sutter's Mill in California, the same region where the first nugget of gold was found that sparked the Gold Rush in 1848. Scientists believe the meteorites may hold answers to unsolved mysteries about our solar system and the origins of molecules necessary for life. When the Gold Rush began, people headed to California seeking their fortune. Now, with this meteorite hunt, people once again have flocked to this area to search for scientific treasures.

NASA's Space Launch System is on track to give America the launch vehicle it will need to send humans deeper into space than ever before, according to officials.

Team members of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission took a test rover to Dumont Dunes in California's Mojave Desert this week to improve knowledge of the best way to operate a similar rover, Curiosity, currently flying to Mars for an August landing.

In England it is known as the "Plough," in Germany the "Great Cart," and in Malaysia the "Seven Ploughs." Since humanity first turned its eyes skyward, the seven northern hemisphere stars that compose the "Big Dipper" have been a welcome and familiar introduction to the heavens.

Using state of the art computer simulations, a team of astronomers have found the first evidence that the way in which stars form depends on their birth environment.

For the last few decades, space scientists have generally accepted that the bubble of gas and magnetic fields generated by the sun moves through space, creating three distinct boundary layers that culminate in an outermost bow shock. This shock is similar to the sonic boom created ahead of a supersonic jet. A collection of new data however, now indicate that the sun does not have a bow shock.

Vesta looks like a little planet. "We didn't find gold on Vesta, but it is still a gold mine," said the principal investigator of NASA's Dawn mission. Scientists have discovered two large craters, a mountain more than twice as large as Mount Everest, and landslides, detailed in six new articles.

New findings from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft lay the groundwork for the first geological overview of asteroid (4)Vesta and confirm the existence of not one but two giant impact basins in its southern hemisphere.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has provided researchers with the first orbital analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta, yielding new insights into its creation and kinship with terrestrial planets and Earth's moon.

Scientists have discovered evidence that the giant impact crater Rheasilvia on Asteroid Vesta was created in a collision that occurred only about one billion years ago, much more recently than previously thought. This result is based on the analysis of high-resolution images obtained with the Dawn spacecraft, which entered orbit around Vesta in July 2011.

New results reveal that the bow shock, widely accepted by researchers to precede the heliosphere as it plows through tenuous gas and dust from the galaxy does not exist. For about a quarter century, researchers believed that the heliosphere moved through the interstellar medium at a speed fast enough to form a bow shock. IBEX data have shown that the heliosphere actually moves through the local interstellar cloud at about 52,000 miles per hour, roughly 7,000 miles per hour slower than previously thought -- slow enough to create more of a bow "wave" than a shock.

More than a 150 years ago, before Neptune was ever sighted in the night sky, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier predicted the planet's existence based on small deviations in the motion of Uranus. Scientists have now inferred another unseen planet, this time orbiting a distant star, marking the first success of this technique outside the solar system.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has made detailed observations of the dwarf galaxy NGC 2366. While it lacks the elegant spiral arms of many larger galaxies, NGC 2366 is home to a bright, star-forming nebula and is close enough for astronomers to discern its individual stars.

New research shows the first detections of new interstellar molecules and important spectral lines in space, and address different stages of the star formation process. 

Researchers say life-bearing planets may exist in vast numbers in the space between stars in the Milky Way.

Astronomers have found a brown dwarf that is more than 99% hydrogen and helium. Described as ultra-cool, it has a temperature of just 400 degrees Celsius and its discovery could be a key step forward in helping astronomers distinguish between brown dwarfs and giant planets.

Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are testing parts of the Orion service module to ensure the spacecraft can withstand the harsh realities of deep space missions.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth. This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, is only about one percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are less frequent and weaker than Earth's.

With its daily supply of solar energy increasing, NASA's durable Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has driven off the sunward-tilted outcrop, called Greeley Haven, where it worked during its fifth Martian winter.

The Herschel Space Observatory has shown galaxies with the most powerful, active black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes. The results are the first to demonstrate black holes suppressed galactic star formation when the universe was less than half its current age.

Last year, images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars -- observations that challenged previously held beliefs that there was not a lot of movement on the Red Planet's surface. Now, new technology has allowed scientists to measure these activities for the very first time.

Just weeks after celebrating its tenth year in orbit, communication with the Envisat satellite was suddenly lost on 8 April. Following rigorous attempts to re-establish contact and the investigation of failure scenarios, the end of the mission is being declared. A team of engineers has spent the last month attempting to regain control of Envisat, investigating possible reasons for the problem.

A new image of Messier 55 from ESO's VISTA infrared survey telescope shows tens of thousands of stars crowded together like a swarm of bees. Besides being packed into a relatively small space, these stars are also among the oldest in the Universe. Astronomers study Messier 55 and other ancient objects like it, called globular clusters, to learn how galaxies evolve and stars age.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth" planet beyond our solar system for the first time. While the planet is not habitable, the detection is a historic step toward the eventual search for signs of life on other planets.

The idea of discovering a new form of life has not only excited astronomers and astrobiologists for decades, but also the wider public. The notion that we are the only example of a successful life form in the galaxy has, for many, seemed like an unlikely statistic. A new essay examines what really constitutes "life" and the probability of discovering new life forms.

New insight into the behaviour of atomic nuclei may explain how gigantic star explosions, or supernovas, have formed the elements that are crucial to humankind.

"Hot Jupiter"-type planets are most likely to be alone in their systems, according to new research. "Hot Jupiters" are giant planets beyond our solar system, roughly the size of Jupiter but orbiting close to their parent stars and thus much hotter than Earth or Jupiter. They have very short orbital periods, completing a turn around their stars in fewer than 10 days. This study provides new insights into how these planets are formed.

Type Ia supernovae are important stellar phenomena, used to measure the expansion of the universe. But astronomers know embarrassingly little about the stars they come from and how the explosions happen. New research from a team led by Harvard University and including Carnegie's Josh Simon, Chris Burns, Nidia Morrell, and Mark Phillips examined 23 Type Ia supernovae and helped identify the formation process for at least some of them.

In the search for Earth-like planets, it is helpful to look for clues and patterns that can help scientist narrow down the types of systems where potentially habitable planets are likely to be discovered. New research narrows down the search for Earth-like planets near Jupiter-like planets. Their work indicates that the early post-formation movements of hot-Jupiter planets probably disrupt the formation of Earth-like planets.

The exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae serve an important role in measuring the universe, and were used to discover the existence of dark energy. They're bright enough to see across large distances, and similar enough to act as a "standard candle" - an object of known luminosity. However, an embarrassing fact is that astronomers still don't know what star systems make Type Ia supernovae.

A new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope could seem like a quiet patch of sky at first glance. But zooming into the central part of a galaxy cluster -- one of the largest structures of the Universe -- is rather like looking at the eye of the storm.

Maar lake sediments reveal a grand solar minimum and the climate response recorded for the first time in the same climate archive highlights the need for a more differentiated approach to solar radiation.

NASA's high-flying ER-2 Airborne Science aircraft has concluded its four-week deployment to validate data acquired by the Multiple Altimeter Beam Experiment Lidar (MABEL) laser altimeter over the Greenland ice cap and surrounding sea ice fields.

The Boeing Company successfully completed the second parachute drop test for its Crew Space Transportation (CST) spacecraft May 2, 2012, part of its effort to develop commercial crew transportation capabilities that could ferry U.S. astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit (LEO) and the International Space Station.

Humanity is on the constant search for improvements in cancer treatments, and the International Space Station has provided a microgravity platform that has enabled advancements in the cancer treatment process.

Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Josef Dufek's new findings provide more evidence that early Mars was saturated with water and that its atmosphere was considerably thicker, at least 20 times more dense, than it is today.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will study Venus's atmosphere during an upcoming opportunity where Venus is passing in front of the Sun. Hubble cannot look at the Sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Moon, using it as a mirror. The next time Venus will pass in front of the Sun will be in the year 2117.

Yes, it will be marginally brighter and larger, but Saturday's so-called "supermoon" is not going to be noticeably different from the full moon of the month before or after. An astronomer explains that a "supermoon" typically happens once a year, when the moon's elliptical orbit comes closest to Earth during a full moon. But the nickname makes it sound like a much bigger deal than it actually is.

Late last year, the NASA Mars Rover Opportunity found what appeared to be veins of gypsum when examining the edge of the crater dubbed “Endeavour.” Gypsum is formed in water at a temperature lower than 60°C. Its presence on Mars indicates that conditions conducive to life have existed there at least temporarily. The rock of the crater edge is similar to suevite, a rock consisting partly of melted material which is typically found at meteor impact sites.

A report details discoveries Opportunity made in its first four months at the rim of Endeavour Crater, including key findings reported at a geophysics conference in late 2011. Opportunity completed its original three-month mission on Mars eight years ago. It reached Endeavour last summer, three years after the rover's science team chose Endeavour as a long-term destination. This crater is about 4 billion years old and 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter.

Every second, lightning flashes some 50 times on Earth. Together these discharges coalesce and get stronger, creating electromagnetic waves circling around Earth, to create a beating pulse between the ground and the lower ionosphere, about 60 miles up in the atmosphere. This electromagnetic signature, known as Schumann Resonance, had only been observed from Earth's surface until, in 2011, scientists discovered they could also detect it using NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite. In a new paper, researchers describe how this new technique could be used to study other planets in the solar system as well, and even shed light on how the solar system formed.

When it comes to scary things in the universe, it's hard to get much scarier than supermassive black holes. These gigantic, invisible menaces lurk in the centers of galaxies, hungrily vacuuming up everything within reach -- or so we think. But the truth is more benign. Supermassive black holes snack infrequently, making the recent discovery of a black hole in the act of feeding all the more exciting to astronomers.

Evidence of ancient water at a Martian crater is the latest in a long series of discoveries by a surprisingly long-lived Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. The latest discovery was made at the rim of the Endeavour Crater, a large ancient impact crater on Mars measuring 14 miles in diameter.

Astrophysicists have pinpointed four white dwarfs surrounded by dust from shattered planetary bodies which once bore striking similarities to the composition of Earth.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully flew by Saturn's moons Enceladus and Dione during close flybys on May 2, 2012, capturing these raw images. The flybys were the last close encounters of these icy moons that Cassini will make for three years.