Florida Space Research and Information

July 23, 2008

Test your science and space smarts

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:54 pm
What do you know about the week in science and space news? Take MSNBC.com's weekly quiz and see how much you remember.

Stellar nursery found around Milky Way’s black hole

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Signs of young stars have been found in a ring of gas surrounding the violent centre of the Milky Way

Satellite designed to spot asteroid Armageddon

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An illustration of NEOSSat, the 143-pound satellite expected to launch in 2010 and track asteroids and satellites orbiting near the Earth. A tiny Canadian satellite is gearing up for a mission to hunt wayward space rocks that may pose a threat to Earth.


Rocket planes to ship for first demo race

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A company hopes to showcase two "rocket racers" flying head-to-head, but problems with flight permits could yet make it a one-plane demo

July 22, 2008

Mars lander pulls all-nighter

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The double doors to the oven that will heat up the ice sample (on the right) are wide open in this image of four pairs of oven doors on Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). The lander's Surface Stereo Imager took this photo on July 19, 2008, during the 53rd Martian day, or sol, since Phoenix landed. Credit: Mission controllers extended the Phoenix Mars Lander's schedule to keep it awake during the Martian night so the lander could coordinate with observations made by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it flew over Phoenix.


A star explodes in the sky, but nobody sees it …

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 11:42 am

The nova V598 Puppis, accidentally discovered in the XMM-Newton slew survey. The X-ray contours, which indicate the position of the nova, are overlaid on image composite (infrared, red and blue channels) from the SuperCOSMOS Sky Surveys (SSS), Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC (A. Read et al.)/SSSAn orbiting X-ray observatory has discovered an exploding star in the Milky Way which somehow escaped notice by the usual crowd of star gazers.


Cosmic Log: Rockets boosted by fashion

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Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: Do rocket planes and men's fashions mix? The Rocket Racing League and DKNY, which have just struck a sponsorship deal, certainly hope so.Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: Do rocket planes and men's fashions mix? The Rocket Racing League and DKNY, which have just struck a sponsorship deal, certainly hope so.


July 21, 2008

Moonlighting engineers design alternative NASA rocket

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:40 pm
In their spare time, a group of engineers is developing an alternative to NASA's Ares rockets - they want an independent review of their concept

Solar systems like ours may be rare

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A Hubble Space Telescope image of visible light emitted by a protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula called proplyd 170-337 shows hot, ionized gas (red) surrounding and streaming off of a disk (yellow). The contours reveal the dust disk hiding within the hot gas. This protoplanetary disk has a mass more than one hundredth that of the sun, the minimum needed to form a Jupiter-sized planet. Credit: Bally et al 2000/Hubble Space Telescope & Eisner et al 2008/CARMA, SMA

As humans look farther into the universe and discover more and more planets beyond the sun, many wonder how typical our own solar system is. Often astronomers in the planet-hunting business say discoveries of Earth-like worlds are just around the corner. But a new study indicates our setup may be rare indeed.


Worm pincers may inspire better spacecraft materials

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 6:18 am
An ugly marine worm with a super-strong jaw could provide a simple way to tailor-make the strength of polymers
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