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 ExoMars Rover. Credit: ESA Click for larger version Making good on its promise to work together with other space agencies, NASA has selected two science instruments that will fly on board European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, one heading to Mars on the ExoMars rover, the other to Mercury with the BepiColombo orbiter. “The selections will further advance our knowledge of these exciting terrestrial planets,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The international collaboration will create a new chapter in planetary science and provide a strong partnership with the international science community to complement future robotic and human exploration activities.” (...) Read the rest of NASA Selects New Projects to Study Mars and Mercury (347 words)
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 Previous Hubble servicing mission. Credit: NASA The crew of the upcoming Hubble servicing mission have not only been busy training for all contingencies of spaceflight on the shuttle and telescope repair (have you been following Astro_Mike on Twitter?) but they’ve also been training for the big screen. The REALLY big screen. NASA announced today that the crew will be using IMAX 3-D cameras to document this most complex of space shuttle operations — the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. And in another bit of news, in a show of solidarity and support of the shuttle astronauts, astronomers from the University of Alabama are encouraging everyone to “raise a wing” to the Hubble repair crew. (...) Read the rest of Hubble Servicing Mission Meets the Big Screen; Watch With Friends (433 words)
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The Spitzer Space Telescope is close to running out of coolant. Around May 12, the telescope will use up the last drop of the coolant that chills the instruments to just a few degrees above absolute zero. Everyone knew this was coming, but still it is sobering news. However, even though the coolant will be depleted, Spitzer will remain cold enough to still probe the universe with its infrared detectors for at least a couple of years. But we all like to think these missions will go on forever, at least I do anyway. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory shared this news in one of the more creative press releases ever put out by any NASA center: they interviewed the telescope. That’s right, the telescope. Not the principal investigator, not the chief engineer, but the telescope itself.
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Read the rest of The Spitzer Space Telescope Speaks Its Mind (1,110 words)
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Data from several different space and ground based observatories imply the presence of a nearby object that is beaming cosmic rays our way. Scientists with the Fermi Space Telescope say an unknown pulsar may be close by, sending electrons and positrons towards Earth. Or another more exotic explanation is that the particles could come from the annihilation of dark matter. But whatever it is, the source is relatively close, surely in our galaxy. “If these particles were emitted far away, they'd have lost a lot of their energy by the time they reached us,” said Luca Baldini, a Fermi collaborator.
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Read the rest of Is a Nearby Object in Space Beaming Cosmic Rays at Earth? (391 words)
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 The Solar System often throws up surprises for astronomers, but the recent discovery of a 2- to 3-km wide asteroid called 2009 HC82 has sent observers in a spin. A retrograde spin to be precise.
This particular near-Earth asteroid (NEO) should have already been spotted as it has such a strange orbit. It is highly inclined, making it orbit the Sun backwards (when compared with the rest of the Solar System’s planetary bodies) every 3.39 years. What’s more, it ventures uncomfortably close (3.5 million km) to the Earth, making this NEO a potentially deadly lump of rock…
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Read the rest of 2009 HC82: A Burnt-Out, Eccentric and Backward Near-Earth Asteroid (439 words)
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 Space shuttle. Credit: NASA NASA began the first round of job layoffs today as the space agency prepares to retire its fleet of space shuttles. 160 people were notified today their jobs were being cut, the first of 900 jobs that will evaporate in the next five months. The first wave of layoffs will affect Lockheed Martin and ATK Thiokol, contractors that support the shuttle program building fuel tanks and rocket boosters in Louisiana and Utah. The shuttle program employs about 1,600 NASA civil servants across the space agency and 13,800 contractors around the country. Once the shuttle stops flying, as many as 6,500 jobs could be cut at the Kennedy Space Center alone.
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Read the rest of NASA Begins Job Layoffs As Shuttle Retirement Looms (262 words)
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 NGC 2841, a smooth galaxy. Credit: NASA Look at the disk of any large spiral galaxy, and outwardly it appears smooth, with stars evenly distributed throughout. But when young stars are forming, they are clustered together in dense clouds of dust and gas. So what happens as the galaxy matures to allow for the smooth distribution seen in galaxies like the Milky Way? Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered streams of young stars flowing from their natal cocoons in distant galaxies. These distant rivers of stars provide an answer to one of astronomy’s most fundamental puzzles. (...) Read the rest of Why Are Galaxies Smooth? Star Streams (613 words)
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 The black arrows indicate the orientation of chevrons along the southern coast of Madagascar, but the white arrows indicate what computer models say should have been the orientation if they were caused by the impact of a space body in the Indian Ocean. Credit: Robert Weiss Coastal formations called chevrons, large U- or V-shaped features found on coastlines around the world were originally thought to be evidence of ancient “megatsunamis” caused by asteroids or comets slamming into the ocean. However, new research using Google Earth and computer models to recreate large wave action refutes that school of thought. (...) Read the rest of Coastal Formations Not Result of Asteroid Impact (446 words)
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 Greetings, fellow StarGazers! Let’s start the weekend off right by taking on a lunar club challenge and then kicking back to enjoy yet another spring meteor shower! (After all, if April showers bring May flowers, you do know what May flowers bring, don’t you? That’s right… Pilgrims!) Now that I’ve got you at least smiling, take out your binoculars, too… Because there’s two asteroids that are ripe for plucking - Hebe and Ceres. If you feel like being a little more serious about your lunar studies, why not do a little photographic map work? Just match the picture to what you see in the eyepiece and log your studies! Are you ready? Then I’ll see you in the back yard… (...)
Read the rest of Weekend SkyWatcher’s Forecast - May 1-3, 2009 (845 words)
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 Illustration Credit: Simon Swordy (U. Chicago), NASA People looking for new ways to explain climate change on Earth have sometimes turned to cosmic rays, showers of atomic nuclei that emanate from the Sun and other sources in the cosmos. But new research, in press in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says cosmic rays are puny compared to other climatic influences, including greenhouse gases — and not likely to impact Earth’s climate much. (...)
Read the rest of Cosmic Rays too Wimpy to Influence Climate (340 words)
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My friend Carolyn Collins Petersen, a.k.a. The Spacewriter, has just started a new gig with Astrocast.tv. She now has a regular monthly show called “The Astronomer’s Universe.” Her first episode aired today, and it features “The Big Picture,” an image from the Palomar-Quest digital sky survey. It shows the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, and is something akin to the Hubble Deep Field image. Carolyn’s webcast is a stunning and beautiful look at this amazing part of our night sky, and with wonderful background music and Carolyn’s great voice, (can’t find enough superlatives!) this is must-see TV! Thanks to Carolyn and Astrocast.tv for sharing the video.
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 Mission patch for STS-125. Credit: NASA After today’s Flight Readiness Review for space shuttle Atlantis' STS-125 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, mission managers unanimously agreed to set May 11 at 2:01 p.m. EDT as the launch date. This long awaited flight will repair and upgrade Hubble, likely the most significant satellite ever launched. And, for the space shuttle, it’s a final visit to a dear, old friend. (...) Read the rest of It’s Official: Hubble Mission to Launch May 11 (135 words)
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Even though Mercury looks like the Moon at first glance, scientists from the MESSENGER mission say it’s becoming apparent that Mercury is an amazingly dynamic planet, and is actually more like Mars. For example, before this mission, scientists weren’t sure if volcanism even existed on Mercury, but from the spacecraft’s two flybys, they now know it is a very important part of the planet’s history. Additional new findings from the second flyby of Mercury in October 2008 show that the planet's atmosphere, magnetosphere, and geological past are all characterized by much greater levels of activity than scientists first suspected.
And by the way, isn’t this a stunning picture of an impact basin? It’s one of the new discoveries from MESSENGER.
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Read the rest of New Mysteries Unveiled on Mercury (651 words)
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Fireworks in space? Astronomers are comparing “starbursts” from a galaxy that is in the throes of star formation to a Fourth of July fireworks display. And three particular galaxies are like my children’s favorite part of a fireworks display: the grand finale. These bursts occur at a fast and furious pace, lighting up a region for a short time before winking out. But that’s only part of the story. Archived data from the Hubble Space Telescope are showing that starbursts — intense regions of star formation — sweep across the whole galaxy and last 100 times longer than astronomers thought. The longer duration may affect how dwarf galaxies change over time, and therefore may shed light on galaxy evolution.
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Read the rest of Starbursts from Dwarf Galaxies Like Fireworks (613 words)
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Its time once again for another Where In The Universe Challenge. The goal of this challenge is to test your skills and knowledge of the cosmos. Guess where in the Universe this image is from, and give yourself extra points if you can guess which spacecraft is responsible for the image. Post your guess in the comment section (no links to hints please!) and check back tomorrow for the answer. Good luck!
UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.
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Read the rest of Where In The Universe #52 (249 words)
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 A brand new bouncing baby crater. Opportunity Rover, portion of Navcam mosaic (Sol 1825; PIA 1185). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The two Mars Exploration Rovers have both seen their fair share of craters in their five years on Mars. Opportunity is currently booking it across Meridiani Planum on her way to Endeavour Crater, an ancient, huge hole in the ground (22 kilometers (13.7 miles across). But recently she came across the youngest crater either rover has ever seen. This crater is “young,” in relative terms; scientists say this small crater called “Resolution” formed sometime in the past 100,000 years. Most features studied by Opportunity are much older, including rocks over 3 billion years old. In contrast to these seniors, Resolution is just a baby.
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Read the rest of Opportunity Finds Young Crater on Mars (224 words)
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 We certainly hope you had the opportunity to keep an eye on our remote telescope! Despite the weather changes in the southern hemisphere causing a little rain delay, we've been looking forward to a clear night and firing the telescope back up. I know it's certainly fascinating to watch and don’t be disappointed if you log on and get an error message. (That just means the scope is not operating at the moment or you need to refresh.) If you didn't get a chance to watch the IYA telescope "live" on Galactic TV today, don't worry. We took a video capture for you. Step inside to enjoy today's view of Messier Object 10. We do it all for you… (...)
Read the rest of IYA Live Telescope Today - Messier 10 (183 words)
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 The future Russian capsule could land on a bright rocket plume. Credit: Anatoly Zak, Russianspaceweb.com Engineers for Russia’s next-generation manned space vehicle are considering a rocket-powered landing system which would provide precision landing on Earth. Currently, the Soyuz uses small solid propellant motors to soften its touchdown, but the ship’s parachute plays the main role in providing the vehicle and crew with a safe landing. Russia is developing a new spacecraft to replace the Soyuz which has been used for nearly forty years. If the rocket-powered landing system is approved, this would be the first time in history that a manned vehicle relied solely on rocket engines for touchdown. (...) Read the rest of Russia Considering Rocket-Powered Precision Landing for Next Generation Spacecraft (319 words)
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 Chocolate astronomy sculpture. Credit: Museo de Chocolate. Two of my greatest loves are coming together at the Museo de Chocolate (Chocolate Museum) of Barcelona. To celebrate the International Year of Astronomy 2009, this year’s International Contest of Chocolate Figures has chosen astronomy as its theme. And the fourteen sculptures that are part of the competition –in which the designers use chocolate to embody creative astronomical interpretations, as the one seen here — will be on display at the Museo de Chocolate starting on May 7 in a new temporary exhibition, “Los Mundos Celestes-400 años del descubrimiento del sistema solar” (Celestial Worlds - 400 years since the discovery of the Solar System). I understand the exhibition as being temporary, but my question is, who gets to eat them? Source: Pasteleria.com
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 Credit: M. Revnivtsev The map above details the Galactic ridge X-ray emission, first detected 25 years ago and observed recently by NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) observatory. The inset shows the zoomed Chandra image of the region, close to the center of the galaxy. The mysterious — and formerly blurry — X-ray source puzzled astronomers for a quarter century, but a new paper release today by the journal Nature has helped to clear the air. (...)
Read the rest of Nearsighted No More: Astronomers Resolve Milky Way’s Mysterious X-Ray Glow (344 words)
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Planetary scientists say the geysers shooting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus are likely to come from a subsurface sea of liquid water. During the Cassini spacecraft’s fly-through of the geyser’s plume on October 9, 2008, the instruments on board were able to measure the molecular weight of the chemicals in the ice. Detected were traces of sodium in the form of salt and sodium bicarbonate. The chemicals would have originated in the rocky core of Enceladus, so to reach a plume they must have leached from the core via liquid water.
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Read the rest of Salt in Enceladus’ Geysers Hints at Subsurface Liquid Ocean (142 words)
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Here’s another “rogue black hole” theory, which hopefully doesn’t set the doomsday crowd off on a new tangent. But new research suggests that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the early galaxy-building days of the Universe, may wander the Milky Way. Astrophysicists Ryan O’Leary and Avi Loeb say that rogue black holes originally lurked at the centers of tiny, low-mass galaxies. Over billions of years, those dwarf galaxies smashed together to form full-sized galaxies like the Milky Way. But they also predict that Earth should be safe, as the closest rogue black hole should reside thousands of light-years away.
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Read the rest of Rogue Black Holes May Wander the Galaxy (485 words)
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