Notícies d'astronomia

The core technology developed for NASA's Nebula cloud computing platform has been selected as a contributor for OpenStack, a newly-launched open source cloud computing initiative.

One day homeowners everywhere may be protected from deadly carbon monoxide fumes, thanks to a device invented at NASA's Langley Research Center. The device uses a new class of low-temperature oxidation catalysts to convert carbon monoxide to non-toxic carbon dioxide at room temperature and also removes formaldehyde from the air. The catalysts initially were developed for research involving carbon dioxide lasers. Image Credit: NASA

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, will complete its first survey of the entire sky on July 17.

On July 17, 1975, Cold War rivals America and the Soviet Union met in Earth orbit as American Apollo astronauts Tom Stafford, Vance Brand and Deke Slayton docked with Soviet Soyuz cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Valeriy Kubasov. During their joint mission, the astronauts and cosmonauts assembled this commemorative plaque in orbit as a symbol of the international cooperation. The American side is blue with English text, while the Soviet side is red with Russian text. Image Credit: NASA

Select teachers will spend part of their summer learning about virtual technology in an effort to get their students excited about science, technology, engineering and math.

An Aerojet AJ26 rocket engine was delivered to NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center on July 15, 2010. This is the first of a series of Taurus II engines to be tested at Stennis to include acceptance testing of flight engines. Stennis will provide propulsion system acceptance testing for the Taurus II space launch vehicle, which is being developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va. The first Taurus II mission will be flown in support of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services cargo demonstration to the International Space Station. Orbital's Taurus II design uses a pair of Aerojet AJ26 rocket engines to provide first stage propulsion for the new launch vehicle. Image Credit: NASA

The first spacecraft designed by NASA to orbit Mercury is giving scientists a new perspective on the planet's atmosphere and evolution.

On Monday, July 19, NASA Television will launch a full-time High Definition (HD) channel that media, cable and satellite service providers can access.

On July 11, 2010, the new moon passed directly in front of the sun, causing a total solar eclipse in the South Pacific. In this image, the solar eclipse is shown in gray and white from a photo provided by the Williams College Expedition to Easter Island and was embedded with an image of the sun’s outer corona taken by the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on the SOHO spacecraft and shown in red false color. LASCO uses a disk to blot out the bright sun and the inner corona so that the faint outer corona can be monitored and studied. Further, the dark silhouette of the moon was covered with an image of the sun taken in extreme ultraviolet light at about the same time by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The composite brings out the correlation of structures in the inner and outer corona. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Williams College Eclipse Expedition

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the existence of a baked object that could be called a "cometary planet." The gas giant planet, named HD 209458b, is orbiting so close to its star that its heated atmosphere is escaping into space.

Serving as a contracting agent for the Department of Defense’s Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office, NASA has selected Millennium Engineering and Integration Co., of Arlington, Va., to receive a contract for Rapid Response Space Works (RRSW).

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is helping with the unprecedented effort to save wildlife from the effects of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tycho's Supernova, the red circle visible in the upper left part of the image, is SN 1572 is a remnant of a star explosion is named after the astronomer Tycho Brahe, although he was not the only person to observe and record the supernova. When the supernova first appeared in November 1572, it was as bright as Venus and could be seen in the daytime. Over the next two years, the supernova dimmed until it could no longer be seen with the naked eye. In the 1950s, the remnants of the supernova could be seen again with the help of telescopes. When the star exploded, it sent out a blast wave into the surrounding material, scooping up interstellar dust and gas as it went, like a snow plow. An expanding shock wave traveled into the surroundings and a reverse shock was driven back in toward the remnants of the star. Previous observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicate that the nature of the light that WISE sees from the supernova remnant is emission from dust heated by the shock wave. To the right is a star-forming nebula of dust and gas, called S175. This cloud of material is about 3,500 light-years away and 35 light-years across. It is heated by radiation from the young, hot stars within it, and the dust within the cloud radiates infrared light. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

NASA officials will discuss an upcoming International Space Station spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts during a news briefing at 2 p.m. CDT on Wednesday, July 21.

NASA has selected nine experiments, designed by students at seven schools, for astronauts to perform on the International Space Station this summer. NASA selected the proposals from among 132 received for the new Kids in Micro-g! Program.

NASA announced three new Centennial Challenges Tuesday, with an overall prize purse of $5 million. NASA's Centennial Challenges are prize competitions for technological achievements by independent teams who work without government funding.

On its way to a 2014 rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, with NASA instruments aboard, flew past asteroid Lutetia on Saturday, July 10. The instruments aboard Rosetta recorded the first close-up image of the biggest asteroid so far visited by a spacecraft. Rosetta made measurements to derive the mass of the object, understand the properties of the asteroid's surface crust, record the solar wind in the vicinity and look for evidence of an atmosphere. The spacecraft passed the asteroid at a minimum distance of 3,160 kilometers (1,950 miles) and at a velocity of 15 kilometers (9 miles) per second, completing the flyby in just a minute. But the cameras and other instruments had been working for hours and in some cases days beforehand, and will continue afterwards. Shortly after closest approach, Rosetta began transmitting data to Earth for processing. Lutetia has been a mystery for many years. Ground telescopes have shown that it presents confusing characteristics. In some respects it resembles a ‘C-type’ asteroid, a primitive body left over from the formation of the solar system. In others, it looks like an ‘M-type’. These have been associated with iron meteorites, are usually reddish and thought to be fragments of the cores of much larger objects. Image Credits: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

NASA and Microsoft Research are bringing Mars to life with new features in the WorldWide Telescope software that provide viewers with a high-resolution 3-D map of the Red Planet.

A piece of NASA history landed at the Glenn Research Center's Visitor Center, now located at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The Apollo Command Module, used for the Skylab 3 mission in 1973, was moved successfully from Glenn to the Science Center on Tuesday, June 22. The module will be the focal point of the Visitor Center, which includes space and aeronautics artifacts, models and interactive experiences. The move was carefully planned to protect and preserve the module, which weighs 12,800 pounds and is more than 11 feet tall and 13 feet wide. The module is on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Image Credit: NASA

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, lifted off Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 41 on a first-of-a-kind mission to reveal the sun's inner workings in unprecedented detail. The launch aboard an Atlas V rocket occurred at 10:23 a.m. EST.