By Catherine, on August 5th, 2012%
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On Monday August 6th, at 1:31 am EDT (0531 GMT), following a 254 day, 352 million mile (567 million kilometer) journey through the Solar system, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will land its newest rover, “Curiosity”, on the surface of the red planet.
We hope.
In what is NASA’s most ambitious and risky Mars mission ever, the entry, descent and landing phase (EDL) is particularly hazardous. So much so, that the time from MSL’s entry into the Martian atmosphere to its landing of Curiosity on the Martian surface has even been dubbed by NASA, the ‘Seven Minutes of . . .
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By Catherine, on June 10th, 2011%
Late last month, space and astronomy blogs and news sources were abuzz over the discovery of what may be the most distant event ever detected in the Universe.
The event was something referred to as a Gamma Ray Burst officially designated as GRB 090429B, and it was detected by the ‘Burst Alert Telescope’ which is part of NASA’s ‘Swift’ space satellite. The satellite, launched in 2004, orbits at an altitude of 600 km above the Earth. Here, I take a closer look at what a “gamma ray burst” really is and why this observation is interesting.
A whole . . .
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By Catherine, on April 22nd, 2011%
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (or AMS-02 for short) instrument is a cutting edge particle physics experiment which will make its way to the ISS for installation aboard shuttleflight STS-134, scheduled for launch on April 29th. This space based experiment is being led by Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
According to a NASA press release in August, the AMS-02 will “use the unique environment of space to advance knowledge of the Universe, leading to a better understanding of the universe’s origin by searching for antimatter, dark matter, strange matter and measuring cosmic rays.”
So. . . .
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By Catherine, on March 15th, 2011%
In April, the Space Shuttle Endeavour and her crew of six will make a final flight to the International Space Station. Fans of NASA’s human spaceflight program have begun to mourn the end of an era in the retirement of the space shuttle.
In other circles, excitement is building over the cargo Endeavour will be delivering to the ISS – the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS-02 for short. The AMS-02, a state of the art particle physics experiment, represents a scientific collaboration of 56 institutions from 16 countries under the banner of the United States Department of Energy (DoE).
. . .
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By Catherine, on November 16th, 2010%
This week NASA’s Fermi space telescope made a discovery that is perplexing scientists around the world. Fermi is a space telescope which detects gamma ray radiation - the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation. In fact it is billions of times more energetic than the type of light visible to our eyes.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum.
This means that Fermi sees the immense energy of the most exotic and energetic phenomenon in our Universe: super massive black holes, pulsars and streams of hot gas travelling at close to the speed of light. This week Fermi and the astronomers at the Harvard . . .
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By Catherine, on November 5th, 2010%
There is plenty of excitement for NASA this week with both manned and unmanned missions sharing the limelight. Avid shuttle watchers are eagerly awaiting this week’s scheduled launch of Space Shuttle Discovery’s final mission to the International Space Station now scheduled for Nov.5th at the earliest.
Nov. 4th held a real treat: NASA’s EPOXI mission made a very successful close encounter with a comet known as Hartley 2. In fact this encounter is the closest a man-made object has ever come to any comet – coming within 435 miles/700 km. This is only the fifth time a spacecraft has . . .
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By Catherine, on September 13th, 2010%
Last year the infamous NASA LCROSS mission gained attention as the unmanned space probe was set on a collision course with the lunar surface. On October 9 2009, viewers watched as footage of the crash event was streamed back to Earth. The mission crashed a rocket into the moon’s southern pole while the LCROSS craft with all the sensors and recording equipment followed behind, analyzing the cloud of material kicked up by the impact, looking for water. And water was found: on November 13 2009, scientists confirmed the presence of water in data collected from the mission.
It . . .
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By Catherine, on August 23rd, 2010%
A Case Study: The Pluto Effect
On the afternoon of 24th August 2006, members of the IAU present at the General Assembly in Prague were able to vote on a resolution to essentially classify what it meant to be a planet in the Solar system.
With new so-called Kuiper Belt objects being discovered, it became apparent that the planet Pluto – heralded as the 9th planet since 1930, had company. Astronomers were either quickly discovering several new planets or alternatively our categorization of Pluto as a planet was perhaps inappropriate. Maybe Pluto wasn’t so special after all? This was a . . .
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By Catherine, on May 7th, 2010%
This video gave me goosebumps. Not only am I a supporter of NASA and all they do, I am a long time admirer of Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson and his enormous ability to communicate science in a charismatic, succinct, approcahable way. That is a skill that is lacking in a great deal of the scientific community but it’s an important one. We need people to care about what we do. We need people to feel comfortable walking up to scientists, astronauts, teachers, professors and talking with them and even more importantly perhaps we need the “specialists” in the . . .
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By Catherine, on March 24th, 2010%
Today is Ada Lovelace day – an international day of blogging to draw attention to, and to celebrate the achievements of women in the fields of technology and science.
I’m not sure I can aptly express how important I believe it is as scientists that we use every opportunity we are given (and to make those opportunities ourselves) to showcase the ability of women and to encourage a continuing and ever strengthening contribution of women in scientific fields. I believe this because I think we are at a critical point where we have young girls and women experiencing . . .
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