Now that I’m in south Texas, the night skies are amazingly dark. The trick to great stargazing is clear skies though. Thankfully we get a fair amount of clear skies. Last night was a good example. It was so clear I could see the dust cloud of the great Milky Way galaxy. It’s tilted edge on stretching north to south.

I’ve only seen the Milky Way galaxy with my own eyes a couple of times, but it is an awe inspiring sight. Looking into the heart of our great home galaxy really stirs my imagination. How many billions of stars are there? What’s it like at the center, knowing there’s a gigantic black hole at the center that’s gobbling up stars? Is there anyone out there looking back at us?

Milky Way Galaxy on YouTube

Read more…
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/rel_milkyway.html

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NASA News Release: 08-136 May 31, 2008

Space shuttle Discovery and a seven-member crew has launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to deliver and install a Japanese laboratory on the International Space Station.

The mission, designated STS-124, is the second of three flights to launch components to complete the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory.  Discovery is carrying Kibo’s tour bus-sized Japanese Pressurized Module, or JPM, which will be the station’s largest module.  The shuttle astronauts will work with the three-member station crew and ground teams around the world to install the JPM and Kibo’s robotic arm system.

Joining Kelly on Discovery’s 14-day flight are Pilot Ken Ham and Mission Specialists Karen Nyberg, Ron Garan, Mike Fossum, Greg Chamitoff and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide.

Garan and Fossum will conduct three spacewalks during the mission.  Chamitoff will replace current station crew member Garrett Reisman, who has lived on the outpost since mid-March.  Chamitoff will return to Earth on Endeavour’s STS-126 mission, targeted for Nov. 10.

NASA is providing continuous television and Internet coverage of Discovery’s mission, which is the 123rd shuttle flight, the 35th for Discovery and the 26th shuttle mission to the station.

NASA Television features live mission events, daily mission status news conferences and 24-hour commentary.

NASA TV is webcast at:  www.nasa.gov/ntv

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JPL/NASA/University of Arizona News Release: 2008-090 May 30, 2008

Scientists have discovered what may be ice that was exposed when soil was blown away as NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars on Sunday May 25th.  The possible ice appears in an image the robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near a footpad.

“We could very well be seeing rock, or we could be seeing exposed ice in the retrorocket blast zone,” said Ray Arvidson of Washington University , St. Louis , Mo., co-investigator for the robotic arm.  “We’ll test the two ideas by getting more data, including color data, from the robotic arm camera.  We think that if the hard features are ice, they will become brighter because atmospheric water vapor will collect as new frost on the ice.

Testing last night of a Phoenix instrument that bakes and sniffs samples to identify ingredients identified a possible short circuit.  The instrument is the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer.  It includes a calorimeter that tracks how much heat is needed to melt or vaporize substances in a sample, plus a mass spectrometer to examine vapors driven off by the heat.  The Thursday, May 29, tests recorded electrical behavior consistent with an intermittent short circuit in the spectrometer portion.

“We have developed a strategy to gain a better understanding of this behavior, and we have identified workarounds for some of the possibilities,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona , Tucson , lead scientist for the instrument.

The latest data from the Canadian Space Agency’s weather station shows another sunny day at the Phoenix landing site with temperatures holding at minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit) as the sol’s high, and a low of minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit).  The lidar instrument was activated for a 15-minute period just before noon local Mars time, and showed increasing dust in the atmosphere.

“This is the first time lidar technology has been used on the surface of another planet,” said the meteorological station’s chief engineer, Mike Daly, from MDA in Brampton , Canada .  “The team is elated that we are getting such interesting data about the dust dynamics in the atmosphere.”

“We have evaluated the performance of the spacecraft on the surface and found we’re ready to move forward.  While we are still investigating instrument performance such as the anomaly on TEGA [Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer], the spacecraft’s infrastructure has passed its tests and gets a clean bill of health,” said David Spencer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy project manager for Phoenix.

“We’re still in the process of checking out our instruments,” Phoenix project scientist Leslie Tamppari of JPL said. “The process is designed to be very flexible, to respond to discoveries and issues that come up every day. We’re in the process of taking images and getting color information that will help us understand soil properties. This will help us understand where best to first touch the soil and then where and how best to dig.”

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver . International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel , Switzerland ; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus , Denmark ; Max Planck Institute, Germany ; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

For more about Phoenix visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu

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A telescopic camera in orbit around Mars caught a view of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander suspended from its parachute during the lander’s successful arrival at Mars Sunday evening, May 25th.

The image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marks the first time ever one spacecraft has photographed another one in the act of landing on Mars.

Meanwhile, scientists pored over initial images from Phoenix , the first ever taken from the surface of Mars’ polar regions.

“We can see cracks in the troughs that make us think the ice is still modifying the surface,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona , Tucson .

“I’m floored. I’m absolutely floored,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif. A team analyzing what can be learned from the Phoenix descent through the Martian atmosphere will use the image to reconstruct events.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver.  International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for NASA. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver , Colo. , is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The University of Arizona operates the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corp., Boulder , Colo.

Read more about Phoenix at www.nasa.gov/phoenix

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Phoenix Mars Mission http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu

NASA Phoenix Mars Lander www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main

“Mars is literally pulling on our spacecraft, and at the same time it is pulling on our emotions,” Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona , Tucson , said early Sunday afternoon.

“We are excited at how close we are right now to beginning our study of a site where Martian water ice will be within our reach, after all these years of preparations. Our science mission begins as the spacecraft settles into its new home on Mars.”
Source: JPL/NASA/University of Arizona News Release: 2008-080 5/25/08

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Shortly after the annual 500-mile race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Phoenix will be approaching Mars at about 12,750 miles per hour. After it enters the top of the Martian atmosphere at that velocity, it must use superheated friction with the atmosphere, a strong parachute and a set of pulsing retrorockets to achieve a safe, three-legged standstill touchdown on the surface in just seven minutes. That’s the scariest seven minutes of the entire mission.

The earliest possible time when mission controllers could get confirmation from Phoenix indicating it has survived landing will be at 7:53 p.m. Eastern Time.

The landing site is expected to have ice-rich permafrost beneath the surface, but within reach of the lander’s eight-foot robotic arm. Phoenix is equipped to study the history of the water now frozen into the site’s permafrost, to check for carbon-containing chemicals that are essential ingredients for life, and to monitor polar-region weather on Mars from a surface perspective for the first time.

The Phoenix mission is led by the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Read more about Phoenix at:
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu

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What is WorldWide Telescope? It’s software you can download from Microsoft Research that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope.

Explore the universe; view deep space images from such observatories as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory; zoom into all-sky surveys, and browse through visible, infrared, and x-ray views of the cosmos.
Follow multimedia guided tours created by scientists, plus you can create your own to share with others.

The WorldWide Telescope is available at www.worldwidetelescope.org

A pretty cool tool.  It reminds me of Google’s Earth & Sky, which offers much of the same features.   http://earth.google.com/sky

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Mars Odyssey Themis Images from May 5-9, 2008:

o Herschel Dunes (Released 05 May 2008)
http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20080505a

o Dunes (Released 06 May 2008)
http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20080506a

o Dunes (Released 07 May 2008)
http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20080507a

o Landslides (Released 08 May 2008)
http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20080508a

o Landslide (Released 09 May 2008)
http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20080509a

All of the THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System) images are archived at:  http://themis.asu.edu/latest.html

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NEWS RELEASE #2008-063 dated April 16, 2008:
NASA Statement on Student Asteroid Calculations

PASADENA, Calif. — The Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has not changed its current estimates for the very low probability (1 in 45,000) of an Earth impact by the asteroid Apophis in 2036.

Contrary to recent press reports, NASA offices involved in near-Earth object research were not contacted and have had no correspondence with a young German student, who claims the Apophis impact probability is far higher than the current estimate.

This student’s conclusion reportedly is based on the possibility of a collision with an artificial satellite during the asteroid’s close approach in April 2029. However, the asteroid will not pass near the main belt of geosynchronous satellites in 2029, and the chance of a collision with a satellite is exceedingly remote.

Therefore, consideration of this satellite collision scenario does not affect the current impact probability estimate for Apophis, which remains at 1 in 45,000.

NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth. The Near Earth Object Observation Program, commonly called “Spaceguard,” discovers, characterizes and computes trajectories for these objects to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

For more information:
Near Earth Object Observation Program http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov
NASA www.nasa.gov

Other Sources:
www.livescience.com

www.earthsky.org

www.astronomy.com

www.planetary.org

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With the increased pace of the shuttle program, it’s harder to keep up with their daily activities as it’s crews gear up to complete missions before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010. However, Space Shuttle News can be found at nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/

NASA News:

The crew of the International Space Station will take part in a news conference on Tuesday April 15th at 10:00 am, CDT. The 30-minute conference will be broadcast live on NASA TV.

Members of the 17th crew of the station, Expedition 17 Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko, docked their Soyuz spacecraft to the station early Thursday. With them is South Korean spaceflight participant So-yeon Yi, who will stay on the complex for nine days under a commercial agreement with the Russian Federal Space Agency.

NASA-TV www.nasa.gov/ntv

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