back News direct retour direct News News Archives (2004)

for each month news sorted by inverted order of date. links may or may not work. note: first available new dated 2/12/2004 only

note: les nouvelles, en 2004, n'étaient pas encore accompagnées d'une traduction française; la 1ère nouvelle avec traduction est datée du 14/07/2005 seulement; pour chaque mois, les nouvelles par ordre inverse de date; les liens peuvent ou non fonctionner

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12/30/2004 NEO 2004 MN4 Added to the Tsunamis Scare. As the Indian Ocean was flooded by giant tsunamis, heavens added another motive of worry at Earth. NEO 2004 MN4 was given the highest odds ever to hit Earth. The thing was to strike on April 13, 2029, with a 0.3 percent chance to hit, as the odds climbed at a 1.6 last Dec. 24. Luckily, as the case with most such discoveries, further refinement of the asteroid's orbit eventually led, Dec. 27, 2004 to rule out any impact on that date. This, in a way, does not offend 'Amateur Astronomy' webmaster as his birthday is each year on April, 13th ;-) 2004 M is an Aten class NEA. It was discovered in June 2004 and is 1,300 ft (400 m) wide. This is another example that public announcements of dangerous asteroids most often are rapidly weakened as the professional astronomers are able to reduce the uncertainties of the orbit. The more observations -past or present- the better the orbit's definition, leading to a better assessment of where the object is passing in Earth's vicinity. As far as the tsunamis are concerned, the earthquake was of such a strength that it slightly affected the Earth parameteres. This, however, is usual. Earthquakes, generally, are all, cumulatively, impacting Earth. That is that the poles location, the oblateness of the Earth and the length of day are affected. The North Pole is shifting East, the oblateness (the Earth being more flat at the poles than at the equator) lessens and the length of day decreases (this in linked to the decrease in oblateness; the Earth being rounder, it rotates quickier, like a skater who, drawing arms closer to his body, is spinning faster). The Indian Ocean earthquake, which is the fourth largest in one century just is a more visible part of such trends. By itself, it moved the pole by 1" (2.5 cm), decreased the oblateness by one part in 10 billion, and decreased the length of day by 2.68 millionth of a second (2.68 microseconds). Another powerful, 1960, Chilean earthquake had yielded a 8 microseconds decrease. Both values are well under today's best measurements which have a 20 microseconds precision

12/23/2004 Large Galaxies Still Forming Near Us? Recentest results of the observation of galaxies in the ultraviolet by the NASA's mission Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) might have uncovered 100 million to 1 billion years old, massive precursors to large galaxies just 2 to 4 billion light-years from us. Such a discovery might hint to the fact that the formation of galaxies is still somehow active in the Universe. It was thought until now that the bulk of the galaxy formation had occurred 10 billion years ago and that the pace of formation had definitively broken about 7 billion years after the Big Bang. Our own Milky Way is 10 billions years old. These objects are of interest because they are, at reach and more easily observable, those building blocks galaxies -large of them- which eventually gave birth to large spiral galaxies. Until now they had to be observed at the far reaches of the Universe. Up to now such objects have been found by Galex at the number of a three-dozen only. On the other hand such objects belong to an already known category of galaxies, the "ultraviolet luminous galaxies". These galaxies are characterized by an intense, ultraviolet-rich star formation and numerous supernova events

12/16/2004 Supernova Remnant 3C58 Found Similar to the Crab Nebula. Another jet-torus event has been discovered by the Chandra X-ray telescope at the supernova remnant 3C58, the remnant of a supernova observed by the Chinese in A.D. 1181. After that a star goes supernova a pulsar may eventually form at the center of the explosion. A pulsar is an extremely dense, small star which is rotating at extremely high speeds. Such an object is seen at the center of the well-known Crab Nebula. 3C58 has been found similar to the Crab Nebula on another point that is it features a torus and jets. Such events are produced by strong electromagnetic fields around the pulsar. On the other hand this pulsar has been seen cooler than thought which means that pulsar stars may cool in brief period of times due to collisions between neutrons and other particles. Neutrinos are dissipating the energy away

12/16/2004 NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe Resigns. Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator is resigning. The administrator had been appointed late 2001 by President Bush. As a financial specialist his role was essentially to make NASA finances sounder. The catastrophe of the Shuttle Columbia, in February 2003, on the other hand, led him to be the man who made NASA think about its safety culture. Sean O'Keefe began to implement the new Vision for Space Exploration as crafted in President Bush's speech last January 14th, 2004. NASA structure was lately streamlined to better match these views. The administrator put into work a new Educator Astronaut Program by which educators selected to become astronauts will foster science and maths interest among students. No new administrator has been appointed yet

12/6/2004 Another Piece About Oceans Circulation Patterns Variability. Data 1992-2000 about the Indian Ocean are showing how a long term oscillation of circulation patterns is working there, impacting the weather and climate in the region, and the surrounding ones. This study was made by NASA based on several sets of satellite data. Usually, the upper Indian Ocean surface waters are warmed by the atmosphere. A balance is achieved by the circulation of the ocean: warm water is exported South as colder subsurface water is imported. A modification of the southeasterly trade winds in the southern part of the Indian Ocean is impacting this circulation, bringing to an increase of the sea-surface temperature by about 0.45°F (0.25°C) in a decade. A former modification of large-scale weather trends in the region already impacted further West, in the Sahel, south of the Sahara. A drought there in the 1970s and '80s was caused by a multi-decadal warming of the Indian Ocean. This study is another piece about the debate natural/human-induced variability of large scale weather/climate patterns in a region

11/17/2004 NASA's X-43A Successfully Reached Mach 10!. The experimental scramjet-powered NASA X-43A successfully reached Mach 10 last Monday, Nov 16. Leaving the Edwards AFB, Calif. rigged to NASA's B-52 launch aircraft, the X-43A, was released at 40,000 ft and then accelerated by a Pegasus rocket. The experimental mock-up aircraft then reach Mach 10 (7,000 mph!), and 110,000 ft, relying on its sole engine. With this third flight, the X-43A program is coming to an end. The program's purpose was to explore an alternative to usual present launchers. Such scramjet engines ("supersonic-combustion ramjet engine") are atmospherical engines which can work in the upper atmosphere, compressing the air there so it can ignite fuel. The fuel is hydrogen. Hence such powered vehicles, used for space activities, do not need any oxydiser anymore. Once accelerated to Mach 4 by a conventional jet engine or a booster rocket, they can reach Mach 15. They might allow a new generation of reusable launchers to reach orbit, or be used like ultra high-speed commercial flights. This last mission was risky as less wind tunnel data were available, and the heating on the vehicle being double

11/10/2004 The Spitzer Space Telescope On the Road to Solar Systems Alike to Ours! The NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope -the latest NASA space telescope, which is working in the infrared- definitively has seen that ice is found in protoplanetary discs. Ice, until now, had been seen in the large dust and gas clouds preluding to star formation, as it's the first time such elements have been seen in one of those dust discs which surround recently formed stars. Such discs are the birthplace of planets. The ice, further, has been seen in the innermost portion of the disc! The Spitzer Space Telescope surely saw the first years of a solar system similar to ours. The astronomers found ammonium ions, components of water, and carbon dioxide ice. This solar system in gestation, which might be a few hundred thousand years old only, might turn into a water-rich planetary system. Such a system, due to the small and stable central star might last for billions of years! This seems to be the first evidence that exo-solar systems may turn alike ours

11/2/2004 The X-43A Project to Attempt Mach 10. The last of three X-43A research missions is preparing for its attempt to reach Mach 10. The mission will fly no earlier than November 8th. The X-43A program is a scramjet powered project. Supersonic-combustion ramjets (scramjets) are air-breathing engines which are using hydrogen without needing any oxidiser to have it burnt, using upper atmosphere oxygen instead. Scramjets will be able one day to power new NASA reusable launchers and new commercial civilian hypersonic aircraft. The X-43A, which is a mock-up of a real such craft, already reached Mach 7 last March 2004. The craft will be carried up to 40,000 ft by NASA's B52B whence a Pegasus rocket will accelerate it to Mach 10 at about 110,000 ft! This mission is riskier than the previous as less wind tunnel data are available with the heating on the vehicle being double. The risk is mitigated by the experience of the previous mission however. The X-43A project is directed by NASA's Langley Research Center along with NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center (Edwards AFB, Calif.). The flight is leaving from DFRC (updated 11/5: The X-43A flight has been postponed no earlier than Monday, November 15th 2004)

10/28/2004 A New Supercomputer for NASA Scientists. A new supercomputer is now working at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Named "Columbia" in honor to the fallen crew of the Shuttle Columbia, Feb 1, 2003, the new processing system is an integrated cluster of 10,240 Intel®Itanium®2 processors. This new tool is a tremendous improvement of NASA's computing capabilities. NASA scientists will use it for simulations in various areas like hurricanes track prediction, global ocean circulation, large scale structures in the Universe or physics of supernova events. The new supercomputer is based on a collaboration between NASA, Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) and Intel Corporation. NASA scientists have already improved by three days the prediction of when a hurricane is expected to hit land

10/25/2004 Earth is Really Frame-Dragging Space Time Around It!. Ahead of Gravity Probe B an international team of NASA and university researchers found the first direct evidence that Earth is dragging space and time around itself as it rotates. This effect known as frame dragging of the Lense-Thirring Effect is part of the predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity. The study found that the orbits of two satellites (LAGEOS I and II) shift by 6 ft (2 meters) a year in the direction of the Earth's rotation. The measurements used an extremely accurate model of Earth's gravitational field yielded by the twin satellites GRACE mission. This study is accurate to 10 percent or better. Future measurements by the Gravity Probe B mission, which launched in 2004, will reduce the error margin to less than 1 percent! The Lense-Thirring Effect has far-reaching implications for the nature of matter and cosmology

10/19/2004 Protoplanetary Disks Much More Turbulent than Thought. New findings by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are modifying the way solar systems' formation has to be described. The life in the protoplanetary disks was thought until now smooth and steady with grains clumping into larger grains, larger grains into clumps, clumps into planetesimals, leading to planets, over a few million to a few tens of millions of years. The planet-forming environment seems much more varied and violent, according to a study by Spitzer scientists. They studied about 266 nearby stars, finding 71 with a protoplanetary disk. This sample lacked the forecasted homogeneity. Instead of young stars having large disks and old ones small disks, or none, Spitzer found that some young stars were lacking disks as some old stars were having massive disks. The latter case implies that much dust is provided to the disk and this cannot be the case another way that by huge collisions. Even about our Sun, it seems that such impressive impacts took place with Moon originating from a large impactor smashing at Earth and further enduring large impactors at its surface. Protoplanetary disks might be much more turbulent and their lifespan might stretch from young stars of just 1 million years of age to stars up to 10 to more than a hundred millions years old, involving collisions between planetesimal-sized objects! With its infrared ability to pierce into the dusty places of the Universe, the Spitzer Space Telescope should continue to further improve our understanding of how planetary systems are forming. picture courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

10/14/2004 Fuel Cells Powered Car a Step Nearer! Ford Motor Company is using NASA-pioneered hydrogen fuel cells to power demonstration cars. Such cars might become a common sight in less than 10 years. Although hydrogen fuel cells were invented long ago, about 1839, they did not get any practical use until NASA refined them for the Gemini and Apollo programs. It's such batteries which were generating the electricity needed by the capsules. The technology used are of the "Proton Exchange Membrane" (PEM) type. Generally a fuel cell works on the natural attraction between hydrogen and oxygen. A one-way membrane is separating individual chambers of both elements. As the hydrogen naturally rushes toward the oxygen, the membrane strips the hydrogen atoms of their electrons and forces the electrons into an electricity-generating circuit. And from there to the engine or batteries. The remaining hydrogen eventually reaches the oxygen, producing pure, clean, water as the sole exhaust of the process! Such cars will have an autonomy of about 160-200 miles

10/14/2004 Two K-6 and 7-12 Classrooms to Have their Science Project in Space. A national challenge program is organized by NASA for two classrooms to have astronauts conduct their science project aboard the ISS or the Shuttle. "The Science in Space Challenge" calls for teachers to submit proposals, on behalf of their students, for a science and technology investigation. Deadline for entries is June 3, 2005. A panel of key NASA science education experts will evaluate and select one entry each from grades K-6 and 7-12. NASA and Pearson Scott Foresman, publisher of pre-K through grade six educational books, are sponsoring the challenge. On the other hand, NASA and Foresman are in a partnership to spark students' imaginations, encourage interest in space exploration, enhance elementary and secondary science curriculum. entry forms and information, see at http://www.scottforesman.com. For NASA and education see NASA's Education Gateway

10/14/2004 The Spitzer Space Telescope Finds a New Globular Cluster. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in colloboration with the University of Wyoming Infrared Observatory, recently discovered a one more globular cluster to our Milky Way galaxy. It was lying until now unseen, hidden by the dusty plane of the Galaxy. As a dust cloud is linked to the cluster this might be the first globular cluster seen interacting with the Milky Way or this might be a pure line of sight effect. It's a graduate student at the University of Wyoming, who first spotted the cluster. The discovery is part of the Spitzer Space Telescope's Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire - a survey to find objects hidden within the dusty mid-plane of our galaxy. All of the Milky Way clusters -about 200 of them- were thought to be known. The newly discovered cluster is about 9,000 light-years away (closer than most of its cousins) and contains about 300,000 suns. It's located in the constellation of the Eagle. Globular clusters are spherical-shaped bundles of stars surrounding most galaxies in a halo. They mostly are remains of the epoch of galaxies' formation, hence containing very old stars. Globular clusters are a fine sight for amateur astronomers looking like densely packed, bright objects, gradually fading at their edges. One the most famous globular cluster is M13, in the constellation of Hercules

9/23/2004 Jupiter JIMO Mission on Tracks. Northrop Grumman Space Technology, Redondo Beach, Calif., has been selected by NASA's JPL for being the contractor for the Prometheus Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission. JIMO is an innovative planetary mission, scheduled to launch about 2012. It will be the first such mission to implement nuclear fission technologies for power and ion propulsion. The power generated by a reactor will be used for an ion engine as well as for more powerful instrumentation and communications. Northrop Grumman will work with a government team about the non-nuclear part of the ship only as it's the Department of Engergy (DOE)'s Office of Naval Reactors which will handle the nuclear part. JIMO mission will head to the three icy moons, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, of Jupiter as a mission bound to study these possibly life-harbouring worlds. It will especially characterize the subsurface oceans there as possible places for extra-terrestrial life as the mission will scout too the landing places where further missions might come and investigate for life. The moons will be studied too under the angle of their formation for a better understanding of how Earth worked, and under the angle of their interactions with the strong Jupiter environment. Prometheus is a NASA program to develop power systems and technologies for space exploration

9/13/2004 A Milestone For the Understanding of Life at Earth! A NASA, National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), and National Institutes of Health-funded, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) research, published in the September, 9th issue of the journal Nature, is proving a milestone study about how life evolved at Earth! The advanced cells of which advanced forms of life -of them humans- are made, have been found born 2 billion years ago from the combination of the two genomes of more primitive forms of cells in a symbiotic effort to survive. The two first steps of the tree-of-life view of the evolution are our two ancestors in fact! Such a finding was made possible through a genomics study of some microorganisms and a computer search for the best genome match for the ancestor of modern forms of life. We are the heirs of a bacteria on one hand and of an Archaea on the other hand. see more on a dedicated page

9/3/2004 SETI Best Match: ET at Doorstep? One signal detected due to the SETI@Home program has been found intriguing by the Arecibo radio-telescope. The signal is emitted at the 1,420 Mhz frequency which is the frequency of the hydrogen in the Universe. It is thought that any intelligent civilization would beam on this most usual frequency. The signal is coming from a point between the constellation of the Fishes and the Ram where nothing obvious is found within 1,000 light-years. The beam is weak, it does not match any known astronomical phenomenon, and it is shifting in frequency as if it was coming from a rapidly spinning object. Would this object be a planet it would have to rotate 40 times swiftier than Earth. The most intriguing is that the signal is always found starting at the same frequency as the shift occurs afterwards only. Just like the shift was triggered by interception at Earth! ET at doorstep? This is SETI best match. The new is found at The New Scientist
(last updated 9/14) A part of the SETI@home team seems to be tempering the preceding facts saying that such a signal was a candidate signal only which means at SETI that the signal has to be further investigated only. Some even go further stating that the statistics of noise were making likely that at least one of the 200 signals deemed worth to be verified was to reappear (the Arecibo radio-telescope has been used to look again at 200 signals found interesting from the SETI@home screensaver program through which volunteers are using their computers' spare time to sample the 15 million signals a day catched by the telescope)

9/30/2004 A New NASA Scholarship Program to Begin Next December. With details to be released about application procedures and deadlines next December, a new NASA scholarship program for two and four-year university and college students is on tracks. The Science and Technology Scholarship Program (STSP) is a competitive scholarship program intended to guide students toward those careers. U.S. citizens and permanent residents are eligible. Following graduation, students successfully completing the program will be appointed to full-time positions with NASA. The program will be open to diverse geographic and demographic individuals enrolled in accredited university, college or community college degree programs specializing in STEM fields. The STSP was specifically created to attract the best and brightest students in STEM areas of study. In exchange for scholarships and research stipend support, STSP students must agree to fulfill a service obligation following graduation

9/30/2004 -43A Scramjet Gets a Final In-Flight Check Before a Mach 10 Flight. After the experimental X-43A scramjet reached Mach 7 last March 27th, 2004 it's now preparing for a flight at Mach 10 later this fall. The project successfully performed a final check-flight on last September, 27th. The X-43A remained, along with its Pegasus rocket, attached to the NASA's B-52B. The X-43A project is directed by NASA's Langley Research Center with NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center (Edwards AFB, Calif.). Scramjet are air-breathing engines which are using hydrogen without needing any oxidiser to have it burnt, using upper atmosphere oxygen instead. Scramjets will be one day be able to power new NASA reusable launchers, and new commercial civilian hypersonic aircraft

9/30/2004 Some News From our Interstellar Medium. An interstellar breeze of neutral helium atoms is currently streaming through the heliosphere, this magnetospheric bubble protecting the solar domain. As the heliosphere is efficient against any charged particles, it lets in particles with no charge. The flow is coming from the constellation of the Archer and this confirms that our solar system is presently colliding with a vast interstellar cloud. It's mostly made of hydrogen, like most interstellar clouds. It's only the helium part of it which is leaking into our bubble as the hydrogen atoms are ionized, hence electrically charged. As long as the solar system is journeying there, our defenses against cosmic radiations are weakened as the cloud is compressing the heliosphere. The cloud, generally, has a temperature of 6,000° C and it's moving at 58,000 mph (26 km/s). Things should go better thousands of year ahead, as we will get out into a lower pressure cavity. The heliosphere will expand, providing a better protection. Our local galactic medium is a mix of gas clouds, stars, and bubbles of low density which were carved by ancient supernovae

9/27/2004 A Large Galaxy Cluster Merger Seen in Detail for the First Time. A team of ESA XMM-Newton scientists led by a NASA-funded researcher announced a detailed observation of a head-on collision of two galaxy clusters. Cluster Abel 754 in the constellation of the Hydra, 800 million light years away from us, is a pending merger between two smaller clusters of galaxies. Such gigantic mergers are second only to the Big Bang in terms of energy and are not unknown. This one is the first ever studied in detail. Such mergers are taking place at the nodes of the filamentary web, which is the way the Universe is now envisaged, that is that an intricated although organized filamentary ensemble of dark matter, gas, isolated galaxies, and small and large clusters. Largest clusters are building up at the nodes, like Abel 754. The dynamics there ressemble those of a galaxy merger. At Abel 754 one merging cluster is seen having already passed through the other and is now pulled back by gravity. Things will settle in some billion years. On the other hand, such mergers might come to a standstill due to dark energy. As dark energy is accelerating the expansion rate of the Universe, the clusters might become pulled apart rather than continue to merge on time scales of somes billion years. see a view of a node of the filamentary Universe

9/10/2004 NASA Commemorating 9/11 Attacks and Participating in "National Preparedness Month". NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has released a message remembering the 9/11 attacks. The full text of the message is available on a separate page. Saturday, September, 11th 8:46 a.m. EDT people throughout the USA will observe a moment of silence in memory of people who died three years ago in the terrorist attacks. On the other hand NASA is participating in the "National Preparedness Month" which is to encourage all Americans to prepare for emergencies (natural disasters, terrorist attacks) in their homes, businesses and schools. This initiative is due to a coalition of more than 60 organizations and federal agencies including NASA, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, America Prepared Campaign, American Red Cross and all 50 state governments

9/3/2004 Smallest Ever Exoplanets Found. Far smaller than any previously detected exoplanets, two Neptune sized planets have been detected by two independent teams. A Carnegie Institute of Washington/University of California, Berkeley, team found its exoplanet around the star Gliese 436, a M dwarf, as a team of the University of Texas, Austin, found its at 55 Cancri. Three other planets are orbiting at 55 Cancri in the first 4-planet system ever seen. It it still hard to know whether such planets are more akin to Neptune or to Earth. In the first case they would be gas giants, in the second they would be rocky planets. 140 extrasolar planets have been found so far and Earth-sized planets are likely to be the next step. These new exoplanets are orbiting closely to their stars in swift orbits like most other exoplanets, as their main interest is to be the first planets under the gas giants-class. "These Neptune-sized planets prove that Jupiter-sized, gas giants aren't the only planets out there," one of the scientists said

8/26/2004 Mars Odyssey Mission Extended. NASA just extended Mars Odyssey mission until September 2006. The craft has been working at Mars since February 2002 that is a full Martian year. The extension covers a further year. Mars Odyssey is "the other orbiter" at Mars. As Mars Global Surveyor is studying Mars in the visible and yielding those fabulous views of the Red Planet, Mars Odyssey is more of a spectroscopic tool mapping and monitoring at different wavelengths and in the thermal range. It's Mars Odyssey which found the widespread olivine showing Mars was essentially dry or water ice at both poles. The craft is in good health except for the radiation environment instrument which was knocked out by the November 2003 historical solar events

8/26/2004 Chandra Celebrating Its Fifth Year of Observation. The NASA Chandra X-Ray Observatory is celebrating its fifth year of observation with a fine dedicated sub-site and a fine review of how conceptions about Cassiopeia A supernova remnant evolved as the craft just released the most detailed picture ever of a supernova remnant. Chandra is in the extended part of its mission since last August 2003. see at Chandra site

8/16/2004 Rock Clumps at Ganymede. Data are still used from the mission Galileo to Jupiter. A late paper in the journal Science, by researchers at the JPL and the University of California is reporting irregular lumps beneath the icy crust of Ganymede, one of the Galilean satellites. It is ill-known what these rocks might be, ranging from variations in height at the bottom of a possible underlying ocean to increase in the proportion of the rocks/ice mix found in Ganymede's outer layer. No surface features are associated with these bulges as they were discovered as gravity anomalies by Doppler measurements of the moon's gravity effects on Galileo during its flybys there. Such anomalies had already been seen at Moon during the Apollo program and they might become something to look at during other missions as a mean to probe moons' interior. Ganymede is the largest moon of Jupiter and solar system's largest, being larger than Mercury and about 3/4 Mars size. see more at Galileo mission pages on this site

8/16/2004 A Galaxy Cluster in the Making. At about 3 billion light-years from us, the galaxy cluster Abel 2125 is in the making. A galaxy cluster slowly forms on durations of billions of years. Most clusters are pervaded by hot gas clouds. Such clouds are interacting with the galaxies in the cluster. A recent NASA Chandra X-Ray Observatory is showing how Abel 2125 contains a vast zone of gas clouds and galaxies and that galaxies attracted into the cluster are being stripped of their own gas by the surrounding high-pressure hot gas and spreading heavy elements as iron, as in another part of the cluster gas clouds have less pressure and galaxies have not yet enriched the medium there. Abel 2125 is a good example of the interactions during the building of a galaxy cluster click on the thumbnail to a larger picture. picture courtesy NASA/CXC/UMass/Q.D.Wang et al.

8/8/2004 ASA Selects Teams to Work About Advanced Electric Propulsion Systems Technologies. As part of the project Prometheus, Northrop Gruman Space Technology (Redendo Beach, Calif.) has been selected by NASA to develop a nuclear-electric pulsed inductive thruster system as Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.) has been chosen to advance the technology of a lithium-fed magnetoplasmadynamic thruster system. Such new propulsive technologies will be used to develop high power electric-propulsion thrusters for planetary probes. They will move afterwards to larger power level systems to be used for human exploration missions. JPL is part of both projects. Such powered systems should be used first by the JIMO mission which will head to Jupiter icy moons searching for life

7/26/2004 Open Doors at Goddard Space Flight Center Next Saturday, July, 31st. The Goddard Space Flight Center is opening its gates to the public on Saturday, July 31st, 2004, in Greenbelt, MD from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Various NASA exhibits and demonstrations will be available. Admission is free. More details at NASA site and Community Day website

7/19/2004 Apollo XI 35th Anniversary on July, 20th. Apollo XI was at Moon 35 years ago! NASA is celebrating the event by a ceremony with the veteran astronauts on Tuesday, 20th. see a dedicated page starting at the Apollo program missions list of the tutorial "Apollo Program: Man on Moon"

7/24/2004 A New State-of-the-Art Laboratory to Open At Marshall Space Flight Center. Next July, 29th NASA is officially opening the new Propulsion Research Laboratory at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville (Ala.).This new state-of-the-art laboratory will be used for cutting-edge research into advanced propulsion systems. "The Propulsion Research Laboratory is at the forefront of new ideas and capabilities in advanced propulsion research," says Steve Rodgers, manager of the Propulsion Research Center. "The work we're doing here could revolutionize space travel and pave the way for a new era of exploration throughout the Solar System." Technologies already under review at Marshall Space Flight Center include solar energy, advanced chemical propulsion, and high power plasma propulsion technologies that don't rely on conventional propellant. Other teams will use the new laboratory to study high-energy propulsion systems based on fission, fusion and antimatter

7/12/2004 Halloween 2003 Major Solar Events Still Alive in the Solar System. Last November 2003, most powerful events ever recorded occurred at Sun. Strong coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ejected billions of tons of plasma at speeds over 5 million mph (8 million km/h). A fleet of NASA spacecraft, at work throughout the solar system, tracked the expanding solar wind all along its way, from Mars to Saturn. The most recent reports came from Voyager 2 (at 7 billion miles (11 billion km)) as Voyager 1 (9 billion miles (14.5 billion km)) will see the blast this month. Next step will be the heliosphere boundary, there where Sun's domain is ending and interstellar space is beginning. The solar radiation will pile up there pushing the heliosphere boundary by as much as 400 million miles (650 million km). Such a knowledge of the solar environment is useful for space infrastructure and human and robotic explorers. How solar events are journeying through solar system is still not well understood. November 2003 events increased radiation levels in the inner solar system

7/8/2004 July Blue Moon. This July has two full Moon (on July, 2nd, and on July, 31st). Such a second full moon in a same month is called a "Blue Moon" by pop culture although, historically, the terms "Blue Moon" was first designating an extra fourth moon during one of any season (seasons at Earth each have three full moons only). A misinterpretation of the fact at Sky & Telescope in March 1946 (an additional moon in one season gives 13 moons total in one year, with one month of the year having two) led to the new interpretation, which was generalized on the "StarDate" radio program in 1980. On the other hand, Moon may appear blue to atmospheric conditions, when tiny particles like clouds of water droplets, snowy ice crystals, fine-grained sand, dust or ash are present in the air and acting like a blue filter.

6/4/2004 More Details by NASA About North Atlantic Currents Change.Two recent pages at NASA site are adding to the debate about North Atlantic currents modifications. It will take another decade of data collection to determine whether the recently observed changes are permanent or a mere short-lived phenomenon. Above all, any comparison to what occurred 13,000 years ago when large amounts of fresh waters were added to the ocean, bringing Earth temporarily back to ice-age conditions are bogus as what could be added to North Atlantic Ocean over the next 50 to 100 years is trivial compared to what occurred then. A more realistic scenario might includes regional disruptions in climate, occurring over mere decades, such as a transition to colder European winters. Changes might be of the order of magnitude of already seen unusual precipitation patterns, and phenomena like El Nino might be fueled and intensified by such changes. The shut down of Atlantic Ocean major current unleashing abrupt changes to Northern Hemisphere's climate system is deemed extreme. more details at archived 4/19/04

6/3/2004. Annual AAS Meeting Discoveries. Annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (this year in Denver, Colo.) is yielding as usual its crop of new discoveries. See a selection of what was recently released

6/3/2004 Chandra Sees a Gamma-Ray Burst Remnant in Milky Way. NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory detected a gamma-ray burst remnant, 35,000 light-years away, that is inside our own galaxy. From what is seen of the supernova remnant (SRN) this gamma-ray burst was due to a massive, short-lived, star, collapsing as a supernova, with two jets emanating from the resulting black hole, and running into a gas envelope which had been previously expelled. It occurred just a few thousand years ago. An observer aligned with one of these jets would have seen a gamma-ray burst, one of the most energetic events in the Universe. Supernova remnant W49B is located in the constellation of the Eagle. Jets remnant is seen in the X-ray (Chandra) as gas envelope in the infrared (Palomar)

6/1/2004 Apollo 11 35th Anniversary Next July On July, 20th, it will be Apollo 11 landing 35th anniversary. On that night, 35 years ago, the world watched as US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set lunar module "Eagle" down in the Sea of Tranquillity, while their crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module "Columbia". Apollo program had been initiated by President Kennedy by 1960s' beginning: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," the President said in a May, 25th 1961 speech. No special event has been announced until now, though NASA site evoked the event. more on the Apollo program on this site

6/1/2004 Earthshine Reflects Earth Climate Tendencies. Earthshime reflects Earth climate tendencies. Earthshine is full Earth at Moon. From Earth, it is seen before Moon first quarter as a ghostly light shining over Moon's dark part. A study by researchers of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Newark, N.J., and California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif. based on the fact that earthshine is providing valuable data on Earth's overall reflectance. Earth's surface may have been sunnier, or less cloudy, in the 1980s and 1990s as the trend reversed during the past three years as the Earth appears to reflect more light toward space. Though not fully understood, such shifts may indicate a natural variability of clouds. Authors compared earthshine measurements from 1999 to mid-2001 with global clouds cover satellite observations and obtained a measure of Earth's albedo, this fraction of light reflected by a body or a surface. The researchers attributed the brightening to changes in cloud properties. "At the moment, the cause of these variations is not known, but they imply large shifts in Earth's radiative budget," said a Caltech physicist. One more piece to understanding Earth climate's puzzle!

6/1/2004 Spitzer Space Telescope Confirms Icy Organic Materials are Found in Protoplanetary Disks. Spitzer Space Telescope discovered a significant amount of icy organic materials sprinkled throughout several protoplanetary disks circling new born stars. This discovery is the first unambiguous one of such an evidence. Materials, which were seen in constellation of the Bull, about very young stars, 420 light-years away from Earth, are icy dust particles coated with water, methanol and carbon dioxide. Spitzer Space Telescope is confirming that comets surely were life-carriers for Earth, bringing to our planet water and some of various biogenic, life-enabling materials. With its infrared ability to peer into dusty objects, Spitzer Space Telescope will provide data about thousands of disks, as only a small sample of them had been at reach of astronomers until now. Spitzer Space Telescope is the fourth of NASA large space observatories and is aimed to study Universe in the infrared. It was launched on August, 25th 2003

5/25/2004 NASA Mars Odyssey Reaches 10,000 Orbits. At 5:29 p.m. PDT on May 22, 2004, NASA orbiter, Mars Odyssey, reached its 10,000th science mapping orbit about Mars. Craft was launched from Cape Canaveral on April, 7th 2001 and had as a mission to map and make science about chemical composition and radiation environment of the red planet. It was a "you cannot fail" mission as two previous missions had failed (Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander) and as orbit insertion took place one month after 9/11 events. Apart from its mission, Mars Odyssey is providing a strong support to present Twin Rovers mission at Mars. The other NASA orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor, is mostly dedicated to photograph Mars in the visible

5/20/2004 A Chandra Team Confirms Dark Energy. A Chandra team is confirming dark energy. Dark energy is an anti-gravity force which accelerated Universe expansion 6 billion years ago. It was discovered in 1998 by two independent teams. Until then Universe expansion was thought to have unfolded at an even pace since the Big Bang. Chandra team based its work on a study of hot gas-dark matter ratio in 26 galaxy clusters. On another hand, the new Chandra results suggest that dark energy density may be constant. This means that Universe should continue expanding forever, with galaxy groups and clusters spreading further and further apart. Data allow for the possibility that dark energy may be increasing slowly with time however. This might lead Universe expansion to continue to increase with an eventual "Big Rip" when everything in the Universe, down to atoms, would be torn apart

5/20/2004 JPL Releases Pictures About May, 15th-16th Open House 2004. JPL site is releasing pictures about its May, 15th-16th Open House. JPL opened then its doors to the public. JPL, Pasadena, California, is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). JPL is managing various important NASA missions like e.g the present Twin Rovers at Mars, recent Stardust mission at comet Wild, or oncoming Cassini mission at Saturn. JPL is managing too NASA Deep Space Network

5/10/2004 JPL Annual Open House 2004. JPL, Pasadena, California, is opening its doors to the public next Saturday-Sunday, May, 15-16th 2004. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). JPL is managing various important NASA missions like e.g the present Twin Rovers at Mars, recent Stardust mission at comet Wild, or oncoming Cassini mission at Saturn. JPL is managing too NASA Deep Space Network. Exhibits and demonstrations about the Laboratory's ongoing research and space exploration, rover and spacecraft, and many of the Lab's scientists and engineers on hand to answer questions will provide an insight about Lab's activities. The Open House is a fun and educational experience for children too, with special hands-on activities designed for kids. Food and beverages will be available, along with space souvenirs and NASA and JPL merchandise. Admission is free. Event hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday. more practical details at JPL site

4/19/2004 More Science About Possibly Weakening North Atlantic Current. Pentagon recently released a study which had been commissionned by a famous old-timer Kennedy-Nixon era adviser. This report was forecasting doomsday next day due to accelerated climate changes linked to North Atlantic currents modification and thawing in the Arctic. NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center recently released more science. There really was dramatic changes in mid-to-high-latitude North Atlantic Ocean during last decade. A subpolar current has been declining and was found weaker in the late 1990s than in the late 1970s and 1980s. Deep underwater changes have been observed in Labrador waters where North Atlantic current is plunging back to tropical waters. Scientists are needing a further 5 to 10 years however to really assess whether such changes are part of a natural cycle or are resulting of factors related to global warming, mostly Arctic permanent ice thawing. see more on a dedicated page

?/?/2004 Hubble Provides Further Details About Sedna. Hubble Space Telescope provided further details about Sedna, this new object found at solar system outer reaches and thought to be first Oort Cloud Object ever found. This object, dubbed Sedna, was found in November 2003 by a team working about Kuiper Belt Objects (see more at 3/16/2004 with a link to a dedicated page). Sedna had been found having a slow rotation as most solar system bodies -Mercury and Venus excepted- orbit in a matter of hours. This might have been due to a satellite to Sedna. Hubble did not found any. Thus Sedna would be the slowest rotating solar system body with a rotation period of 40 days. And no plausible explanation accounts for that. Sedna was found anyway to be about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) across. Sedna is so far away that it is reduced to just one pixel on Hubble image

?/?/2004 Super-High-Temperature Supraconductors. Working in the direction of Bose-Einstein condensates and other exotic soups of matter, a NASA-funded team made an important step towards very-high-temperature-superfluids when it managed to see how a fermionic superfluid was wobbling for increasingly longer times as its temperature decreased. At the opposite of a normal gas, wobbles of which quickly come to a stop when temperature is decreasing, a superconductor is bound to oscillate forever when cooled. Such a fermion condensate is per se another exploit as fermions, at the difference of bosons, are not social. This exploit was due to a previous team which had been able to trap 6 lithium atoms into a focused laser beam and to have them chilled at less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Superconductors are material allowing electrical currents to flow without resistance and may have various applications in daily technology. Such an experiment like the one of NASA-funded team is a door opened to new models of super-high-temperature supraconductors, up to thousands of degrees Celsius! In astronomy, such studies are useful to understand how neutron stars are working

4/23/2004 NASA Deep Space Network is Celebrating 40th Anniversary. Deep Space Network (DSN) is celebrating 40th anniversay. It was initiated on December, 24, 1963 by a William Pickering memo. William Pickering was NASA's JPL director. Such an action, by combining several separate elements that had appeared in the preceding five years, like first Goldstone site (CA) antennas or overseas sites at Woomera (Australia) or Johannesburg (South Africa), created NASA first integrated deep space global communications system. DSN was upgraded since passing from 85 ft (26 m) to 111 ft (34 m) and 210-230 ft (64-70 m) antennas and evolving from a 8 bits/s telemetry-one spacecraft at a time capacity to a multi-megabit telemetry, three dozen spacecraft in any given year and a three-location system (Goldstone, Canberra -Australia, Madrid -Spain) allowing a round-the-clock tracking. Mars Rovers, Mars orbiters as deep space missions are using, or used NASA Deep Space Network

4/23/2004 Hubble Was Launched 14 Years Ago. Completing a flurry of anniversaries these times, Hubble is celebrating its 14th. First main and most known space telescope was launched on April, 24th, 1990 via Shuttle Discovery. Along its 14-year science performance, Hubble brought astronomers a wealth of data. 5,000 scientific papers have been published based on Hubble results. Hubble site is commemorating the event putting online a summary of what science Hubble permitted during these last 14 years. Hubble Deep Fields (HDF) and recentest Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) reached infant Universe outer reaches. Definitive evidence that supermassive black holes are lurking at each galaxy was brought, or that quasars, these brightest and powerful sources, are residing in galaxies. Hubble allowed "dark energy" discovery, giving the evidence that Universe expansion is increasing. Data were brought too about planetary nebulae and supernova events, about exo-worlds and their protoplanetary disks surrounding stars in the making, or about Kuiper Belt icy objects

4/19/2004 First Exoplanet Discovered Ever Using Microlensing. A new method has been added to exoplanets hunters toolbox: microlensing. In the same way gravitational lenses are allowing to see further in space, microlensing is a phenomenon affecting light via mass. A background star light is deviated from its path by an intervening foreground star. Such lensings are best seen looking in direction of Milky Way center. Background star light is brightened. Extra brightness spikes are indicators of one or more additional objects near intervening body. Exoplanets microlensing detection was first proposed in 1991. This discovery is first definite planet detection with this method. Exoplanets may be spotted through various methods: wobbling (parent-star proper motion is wobbling due to exoplanet attraction), spectrography, or transit (parent-star light curve is slightly modified)

4/13/2004 Astronomy Day is on April, 24th. This year, Astronomy Day is on April, 24th. Astronomy Day is a day of public outreach for amateurs clubs, societies, institutions throughout USA. You may look for events near your home at official Astronomy Day page

4/13/2004 April, 12th: Gagarin Flight and Shuttle First Flight Anniversaries. April, 12th was the 43rd anniversary of first manned spaceflight by former USSR cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, as 23rd anniversary of Shuttle first flight. Yuri Gagarin was first man in space as part of an agressive Russian program in the 1960s. All USSR premieres in these years were immediately followed by American ones: Major John Glenn was first American in space in May 1961. STS-1 Shuttle Columbia 1981 flight was first Shuttle genuine space flight. Atmospheric flight tests had been performed by Shuttle Enterprise along five preceding years

4/8/2004 NASA X-43A Successfully Performed a Scramjet Powered Flight. On March, 31st NASA successfully tested a scramjet-powered X-43A research aircraft. Scramjet is an air-breathing engine which one day will be able to power new NASA reusable launchers as new commercial civilian hypersonic aircraft. Such an engine is using hydrogen as fuel but does not need any oxidiser to have it burnt. It uses upper atmosphere oxygen instead. Launchers are now working based on a blend of fuel and oxidiser, obliging launchers to carry the latter. X-43A launched from a B-52B, atop a Pegasus rocket. Pegasus rocket boosted craft at an altitude of 95,000 ft. X-43A then separated and flew using its scramjet engine. It reached more than Mach 7 about 5,000 mph. This was first controlled scramjet powered flight. Scramjet launchers will allow an increased payload-craft size ratio

4/3/2004 ESO Puts an Astronomical Constraint on Fine Structure Constant Variation. A recent study of faraway quasars at European Southern Observatory (ESO) is putting an astronomical constraint on fine structure constant variation. Fine structure constant is one of about 25 physics constants (like speed of light or gravitation's strength) and some schools of thought like string theories or searches about theories reconciling quantum physics and gravitation (Grand Unified Theories (GUT), Theories of Everything (TOE)) are surmising that constants may vary along time. ESO study about quasars 10 billion light-years distant is showing that their spectrum, and their spectrum seen through intervening gas clouds, do not display any change in their wavelengths which could confirm such variations. If any fine structure constant variation exists ever, it must be less than 0.6 part per million. Past studies about uranium decay in a Gabon (Africa) mine already showed that such a variation had to be less that 2 parts per a hundred millions. This ESO study is of importance as it is the most accurate study ever about fine structure constant working on astronomical data. Fine structure constant determines strength of interactions between charged particles and electromagnetic fields

3/16/2004 Hubble Telescope Yields an Ultra Deep Field Reaching Redshift 12. Hubble Space Telescope, a joint project NASA-ESA, released a new Deep Field. This one has been dubbed "Hubble Ultra Deep Field" as, compared to previously released ones, it is reaching farthest galaxies ever just at Dark Ages boundary. 10,000 galaxies are present on pictures, ranging from 800 to 400 million years after the Big Bang (redshift 7 to 12). These galaxies are farthest seen ever and picture an early Universe already filled with stars and galaxies. more details on a dedicated page

3/16/2004 Beyond Quaoar, Sedna. First Inner Oort Cloud Object. A Caltech team found last November 2003 a new faraway body which its discoverers think not to be one more Kuiper Belt Object (like Quaoar), but to belong to what is termed the "inner Oort Cloud". Oort Cloud is a cloud of solar system formation leftovers extending about 2 light-years from Sun. see more on this page

3/3/2004 Intermediate Black Holes Question Back Again. A late study by Chandra X-Ray Observatory has pinpointed what are called x-ray "quasisoft" sources in four galaxies. These sources are emitting as much power as a neutron star or a stellar black hole, having a temperature of one to four million degrees C only however. Neutron stars, like stellar black holes, have temperatures about 10 million degrees. New found objects hence would be dozens of times larger. This study might bring back question of intermediate-size black holes. Up to now astronomers knew two classes of black holes: stellar and galactic. First have a mass in the range of 10 solar mass as the latter of millions to billions solar mass. Stellar black holes are formed following a star going supernova as galactic black holes are found at center of each galaxy. Recent evidence suggests that a class of "intermediate-mass" black holes may also exist. They might be the result of supernovae occurring at extremely massive stars or of merger of several stellar black holes. Whether these new "quasisoft" sources would be these intermediate-mass black holes requires further galaxy sampling. And wouldn't they be this new class of black holes, these new sources might just be usual neutron stars or black holes, having an associated x-ray gas region larger than usual

2/20/2004 An Hubble Team Thinks Dark Energy Might be Einstein's Constant. Working on an Hubble-yielded supernovae database an Hubble team led by Adam Riess (Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) Baltimore) studied one feature of two which are thought to be those of dark energy : permanence. This discovery makes astronomers community move closer to the idea that dark energy might be Einstein's "cosmological constant". If not, dark energy would change at a pace bringing Universe to its end in only 30 billion years from now. more details on a dedicated page

2/20/2004 Chandra and XMM-Newton See for the First Time a Star Swallowed by a Galactic Black Hole. A study by Chandra X-Ray Observatory and ESA XMM-Newton is showing for the first time what theory had demonstrated but what no observation had ever seen: a star swallowed by a galactic black hole. Ten years ago galaxy RX J1242-11 was seen by German ROSAT craft having an exceptional brightness (large blue object on the picture [note: picture is missing]). A 2001 view of the same object by Chandra showed the object had faded by 200 times (white square). This was the most variable galactic event ever. This variation was eventually definitely ascribed to the swallowing of a star by the supermassive black hole located at galaxy's center. A close encounter between two stars sent one of them on a trajectory towards the black hole and tidal forces disrupted it. About 1 percent of the star material only was accreted into a disk about the black hole, as most of star remnants were pushed back into the galaxy. The x-ray flare was produced when the material was further swallowed by the black hole. Now, 10 years later a thin relinquished disk only is remaining. Odds for such an event are once every 10,000 years for any typical galaxy. A star which would be disrupted at the center of our own Milky Way would produce a powerful x-ray burst but would not pose any threat to Earth

2/12/2004 Scientists Found a New State of Matter. NASA-funded scientists found a new state of matter: the fermionic condensate. The new condensate has been created cooling 500,000 potassium-40 atoms to about one millionth of degree above absolute zero. New form of matter is of the same kind than the Bose-Einsein condensate found in 1995. Like BEC, fermionic condensate is made of particles refrigerated at very low temperatures and forming a single object (BEC is e.g. forming a super-particle, which acts more like a wave than a speck of matter). BEC start objects are bosons. In a fermionic condensate they are fermions. Discovery was made possible due to scientists bypassing the fact that fermions, according to Pauli Exclusion Principle cannot gather in a same quantum state: a magnetic field was applied leading atoms to pair; these pairs retained some of their fermionic behaviour but gained too a bosonic one: it is these pairs which merged forming the fermionic condensate. Each particle of the pair has an opposite spin relative to the other. Such a process had already been seen in superfluid like liquefied helium-3. A practical use of such a new state of matter might be superconductivity as it could allow superconductors at room temperature. Both Bose-Einstein Condensate and the new fermionic condensate are adding two more forms of matter to the four usually known: solids, liquids, gas and plasmas

January

- no news for that month / pas de nouvelles pour ce mois -