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| To most current review headlines |
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| |  There are many headlines occuring about the Mars Rovers, just a selection are listed below as a general review. |
February 27, 2004
| Mars rover spies crater's edge | "Mars explorer Spirit can now see the edge of a large crater it has been travelling to for several days. Spirit is making the trek from its landing site to a 150m-wide crater named Bonneville," |
Feb 27 | Water on Mars? Flood of Data, Trickle of Answers | |
Feb 27 | NASA poised to solve Mars mysteries | "scientists say they are close to concluding if Mars ever had water" |
Feb 26 | Laser guide star teams with adaptive optics to shed light on massive star formation | "twinkle-free images of the faint dusty disks of distant massive stars...clearly show that stars two to three times larger than the sun form in the same way as solar-type stars" |
Feb 26 | article Magnetic Fields and Water on Europa | "liquid water could be present, but [there is the] possibility that the strange features ... could all have formed through the motion of soft ice, without any liquid water at all."... "Europa experiences a time-varying magnetic field" as Jupiter rotates |
Feb 25. 27 | Earth At Risk: New Calls For Planetary Defense Planetary Defense Conference Part 2: Mitigation Proposals | Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids in Garden Grove, California
"Focus is on mitigation, and three classes of deflection missions are considered"
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Feb 25 | Greenhouses for Mars | "plants aren't going to understand that off-earth environment" |
Feb 25  | space.com Pair of Comets Set for Spring Sky Show The Comets Are Coming | " '"If they brighten as predicted, then both may be visible to the naked eye in late April and part of May,' " |
Feb 25  | Second star, not planet, explains 'winking star' KH 15D | archive photos reveal "Something in the foreground...intermittently blocks the light from one or both stars, as the stars orbit each other." |
Feb 25 | Carbon found to be older than the Solar System | " 'presolar organic material coming into the Solar System yet today,' " |
Feb 24 | Asteroid, Nasa Red alert - How the Earth was almost put on alert for an asteroid impact | "Some scientists believed on 13 January that a 30m object... had a one-in-four chance of hitting the planet within 36 hours....It turned out to be bigger ...about 500m wide. It eventually passed the Earth at a distance of about12 million km" |
Feb 23 | Budget Cuts May Close Underwater Lab | "only one in the world ... NASA astronauts have trained at the lab for several years". |
Feb 23 | Scientists watch neutron star explosion in real time | "region was illuminated in such a way, the scientists could see details as fine as the accretion disk buckling from the explosion and then slowly recovering its original form after approximately 1,000 seconds." |
Feb 22 | article Explaining Martian colors | ' How to display a picture of Mars taken with an electronic eye capable of seeing wavelengths invisible to humans?' |
Feb 20 | Ulysses Sweeps up Dust From Jupiter | " repeat performance of its groundbreaking discovery in 1992... detected streams of dust particles ... [that] originate in the fiery volcanoes of Jupiter's moon Io." |
Feb 20 | Mars rover uncovers hints of water activity | " Shiny stones and cemented soil particles discovered by NASA's Opportunity provide tantalising clues" |
Feb 20 | Rover Microscope Detects Puzzling Thread-Like Features | "flotsam brought to Mars from Earth" ?
(watch out for jetsam, too) |
Feb 20
 | Universe Has At Least 30 Billion Years Left | " 'Right now we're about twice as confident than before that Einstein's cosmological constant is real, or at least dark energy does not appear to be changing fast enough, if at all, to cause an end to the universe anytime soon,' "
(Oh thank goodness:-) |
Feb 19 | Fading supernova producing a spectacular new light show Hubble Reveals Dramatic New Phase of a Supernova Explosion | " many bright spots along a ring of gas...produced as a supersonic shock wave...slams into the ring...Astronomers believe the star shed the ring about 20,000 years before the supernova blast." |
Feb 17, 19, 23  
| Amateur Astronomer Discovers Newborn Nebula Amateur Finds New Nebula with Small Telescope A Cosmic Game of Peekaboo - McNeil's Nebula | " Jay McNeil...January 23rd, armed with his 78-millimeter (3-inch)refractor and a CCD camera... went outside to observe Messier 78 in Orion from his rural Kentucky backyard. When he came back inside and compared his shots to other recent amateur images, he noticed 'something funky looking in the field,' "
"Sky & Telescope wants your images of M78 to determine how McNeil's Nebula has evolved with time ... Any documented image whether or not it shows McNeil's Nebula is valuable. The older the image, the better. Of particular interest are images taken in the 1960s and 70s"
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Feb 19 | Mars Rovers Explore Hints of Salty Water | |
Feb 19, 20 | Huge Mini-World Found in Outer Solar System Planetoid found in Kuiper Belt, maybe the biggest yet New world found far beyond Pluto Largest Solar System body spotted since Pluto | |
Feb 18 | NASAs Nuclear Focus Aimed At 2009 Mars Lander | |
Feb 18 | Giant black hole caught devouring star | "first time this has been seen, say astronomers, and means that black holes all over the Universe must be eating stars" |
Feb 17 | Moon-sized crystal revealed in star's heart | " Although made partly of carbon, the crystal is unlike any known on Earth - but it may help improve estimates of the age of our galaxy" |
Feb 16 | Astronomers find most distant object yet Most Distant Galaxy Hints at Dark Ages | "The faint galaxy, 13 billion light-years away, is seen just as the Universe was emerging from the cosmic Dark Ages" |
Feb 15 | Life could be tough on acid Europa | "Far from being a haven of ice and water and an ideal spot for the search for alien life, Jupiter's moon may be a corrosive hotbed of acid and peroxide" |
The Astrophysical Journal
for 2004 March 1 | Anisotropy in the Distribution of Satellite Galaxy Orbits M31's Undisturbed Thin Disk of Globular Clusters Discovery of Blue Hook Stars in the Massive Globular Cluster M54 Individual and Average Behavior of Particles in a Protoplanetary Nebula | 
And something to think about when pondering M31 globular clusters and metallicity! Quick, what diagram is indicated when speaking of Blue Hook Stars? Is that your final answer? And lastly, something to calculate with while designing extrasolar systems... |
Feb 14 | Ulysses mission extended | "to continue operating the highly successful Ulysses spacecraft until March 2008...will enable Ulysses to add an important chapter to its survey of the high-latitude heliosphere" |
Feb 13 | New Insight into Martian Winds NASA rover takes Mars' temperature | "The rover can measure air temperature every two seconds with its Mini-TES infrared instrument, using a complex technique scientists hadn't considered until the robot was deployed at Mars." "Spirit produces detailed profiles of the atmosphere, revealing thermal air currents" |
Feb 13  | NASA Moon Program Moves into Gear | "robotic lunar mission in 2008" |
Feb 12 | Mars Express stares down throat of giant volcano | "orbiter's images are the best ever of the giant peak" |
Feb 12 | Mystery Continues: Scientists Baffled by Spheres on Mars | |
January 30 | NDIA'S FIRST MISSION TO MOON CHANDRAYAAN - 1 Announcement of Opportunity | Last Date of submission of proposals: March 15, 2004 |
Jan 24 | Spirit Condition Upgraded From Critical to Serious | |
Jan 23 | First data from Mars Express confirms ice water | 'European probe finds water ice at south pole and captures detailed image of channel possibly carved by flowing water' |
Jan 22 | New data clouds cosmic distance measurements | "A new figure for the distance to a key star cluster is reigniting a seven-year controversy over how cosmic distances are determined" |
Jan 21
related | New Mars rock in Morocco hints at past water | "rock found in the Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco in 2001 has been confirmed as Martian in origin" NWA 1950
- SEE also Feb 12, 2003 MARTIAN METEORITE NWA 1460 FOUND IN MOROCCO on review page JanMar03 |
Jan 20 | B.C. astronomer challenges galaxy theory | "University of Victoria astrophysics Prof. Julio Navarro and his Dutch and Australian colleagues concluded Arcturus is an alien star... Traditionally, galaxies were thought to develop in isolation after the collapse of a giant cloud of gas and dust. ...Navarro, ... thinks galaxies may form when smaller ones are disrupted, trapped and swallowed." |
Jan 19 | Hollow mystery for Mars rover | "a close-up image of an undisturbed patch of soil... shows mostly sand-sized particles, but with a large number of apparently hollow spheres or tubes" said to 'closely resemble formations seen in deserts of the US- little tubes that build up by capillary action' |
Jan 19 | Europe's stunning Red Planet view | "first image of the Red Planet taken by Europe's Mars Express probe since it arrived in orbit" |
Jan 18 | U.S. Eyes Space as Possible Battleground | As if we ground observers didn't have enough to put up with from light pollution and radio pollution! |
Jan 17, 19 | Death knell for space telescope Hubble condemned to slow death | "NASA's new focus means no more servicing missions to the highly successful space telescope - it has just one spare gyroscope left"
[On this, Prof. Ploessel tells me his cousin Erfle wonders how much a Hubble mission costs in terms of a few top basketball and hockey players' salaries, but I think his cousin is just being a poor sport! After all, we can all get by with laser-guided adaptive optics - can't we?...]
BTW, in the Jan 16 article below, a Dr Beckwith is quoted as saying "Hubble is doing beautifully. It's working better than when it was new. We have not yet reached the limit of what it can do." Hmm... |
Jan 16 | Hubble obtains deepest space view - A sneak preview of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field | |
Jan 16 | Stardust Surprise | 'the surprise happened when Stardust passed by the core of the comet and photographed it using a navigation camera, primarily to keep the spacecraft on course' |
Jan 15 | Scientists find 'spitting star' imitates black hole | "a neutron star spitting out a jet of matter at very close to the speed of light...first time such a fast jet has been seen from anything other than a black hole" Circinus X-1 about 20 000 light-years from from us in Circinus near the Southern Cross. |
Jan 14, 15
| Bush reveals plan for Moon and Mars President Bush unveils new space initiative | "The plan also leaves open the question of exactly when astronauts would return to the Moon, any time between 2015 to 2020. And no date at all is specified for the plan's most ambitious goal, the human exploration of Mars...Unlike a similar plan put forward in 1989 by the first President Bush, this one will be limited to what in space terms is a very modest budget increase of $1 billion over the next five years. An additional $11 billion will come from cutbacks such as retirement of the space shuttle in 2010 and scaling back of the space station plans." |
Jan 14
| Canada could fly to Mars too: space agency | "With U.S. President George W. Bush set to announce a major space push, Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau said this country could also put someone on the moon or Mars in the next decade...Garneau pointed out that Canada is already working on a moon mission with India" |
Jan 12 | Jets spout far closer to black hole than thought | "Scientists... found that the jets may be originating five times closer to the black hole than previously thought; they see in better detail how these jets change with time and distance from the black hole; and they could use this information as a new technique to measure black hole mass" |
Jan 11 | First supernova companion star found | |
Jan 10 | Mars rover Spirit gets ready to roll | |
Jan 9 | Moon fever grips US space agency | |
Jan 8 | Panoramic view sent from Mars | |
Jan 7 | NASA's Chandra Locates Mother Lode of Planetary Ore in Colliding Galaxies Chandra locates planetary ore in colliding galaxies | "rich deposits of neon, magnesium and silicon in a pair of colliding galaxies known as The Antennae" |
Jan 7 | Spirit's landing site more complex than first thought | " 'This is not your typical lakebed, if it's a lakebed' " |
Jan 5 | Young star caught speeding | " PV Ceph, located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Cepheus, is whizzing through space at a speed of 40,000 miles per hour" |
Jan 5 | Suns of all ages possess comets, maybe planets | observation near sun of "Comet Kudo-Fujikawa (C/2002 X5)...combined with previous observations suggesting the presence of evaporating comets near young stars like Beta Pictoris and old stars like CW Leonis... observations...show that planetary systems like our own, complete with a collection of comets, likely are common" |
Jan 4 | Space molecules point to organic origins | "evidence points to a rare type of star as the origin for life's building blocks" |
Jan 4 | One tenth of stars may support life | 'concept of a "galactic habitable zone" for Milky Way first proposed in 2001' |
 Earlier 2004 and 2003 Headlines
[and links to lots more back through 2002]
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