Saturday 1 January 2011

# Download 2011 International Space Station Calendar


Download 2011 International Space Station Calendar in PDF-format

Source: NASA

    Asteroid Itokawa Sample Return

    Hayabusa photographs its own shadow on asteroid Itokawa in 2005 prior to collecting samples from the big space rock. [more]

    Source: Nasa Science News

    Asteroid Itokawa Sample Return

    Dec. 29, 2010:  The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa spacecraft has brought home to Earth tiny pieces of an alien world–asteroid Itokawa.
    "It's an incredible feeling to have another world right in the palm of your hand," says Mike Zolensky, Associate Curator for Interplanetary Dust at the Johnson Space Center, and one of the three non-Japanese members of the science team. "We're seeing for the first time, up close, what an asteroid is actually made of!"

    He has good reason to be excited. Asteroids formed at the dawn of our solar system, so studying these samples can teach us how it formed and evolved.
    Hayabusa launched in 2003 and set out on a billion kilometer voyage to Itokawa, arriving a little over two years later. In 2005, the spacecraft performed a spectacular feat -- landed on the asteroid's surface(1). The hope was to capture samples from the alien world.
    But there was a problem. The projectiles set to blast up dust from the surface failed to fire, leaving only the particles kicked up from landing for collection. Did any asteroid dust made it into the collection chamber?

    More ...

    Venus is closest to the Earth today


    If you're feeling romantic tonight, it might be because Venus is closest to the Earth today for 2011. Just 92,750,680km away. 
    - Auke Slotegraaf on Twitter

    Best Space Discoveries of 2010: Nat Geo News's Most Popular

    Space Photos This Week

    Monday 20 December 2010

    Cryosat ice mission returns first science


    The Cryosat-2 spacecraft has produced its first major science result.
    Radar data from the European satellite has been used to make a map of ocean circulation across the Arctic basin.
    Cryosat's primary mission is to measure sea-ice thickness, which has been in sharp decline in recent decades.
    But its ability also to map the shape of the sea surface will tell scientists if Arctic currents are changing as a result of winds being allowed to blow more easily on ice-free waters.
    "Nobody really knows how the Arctic is going to behave as the ice retreats, but we do anticipate that significant changes will occur," said Dr Seymour Laxon, a Cryosat science team member from University College London, UK.
    "This is just the first data, and it shows we now have the tool to monitor what is happening," he told BBC News.

    Space Pictures This Week: Cosmic Gem, Sun Burp, Vegas

    NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached the outside edge of the solar system.

    A NASA space probe dispatched 33 years ago for the first close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn has entered the tail of the solar system, a place where the constant stream of charged particles flowing from the sun ebbs.

    This final phase of solar system exploration should last another four years, computer models show, though scientists overseeing the two Voyager spacecraft really don't know what to expect.

    Voyager 1 is now about 10.8 billion miles from the sun, traveling in a region of space known as the heliosheath, a turbulent area between the sphere of space influenced by the sun and magnetic forces from interstellar space that lies beyond.

    Read more ...

    Thursday 16 December 2010

    Magnetic Eruption on 14 December 2010

     

    MAGNETIC ERUPTION : On Dec. 14th around 1530 UT, a filament of magnetism lifted up from the surface of the sun and--snap!--erupted. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action.
     
    The blast produced an hours-long C2-class solar flare and hurled a magnificent CME into space: SOHO movie. The expanding cloud is not heading directly toward Earth, but it might deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetic field two or three days hence. High latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

    Source: Visit  spaceweather.com

    Coleman, Crew Members Fly to ISS