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Mar 19 | News
The biggest storm in the Solar System has attracted a lot of attention over the years, but the extreme complexity of the storm system has only just recently come to light through intense study by the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. They show that despite continuous upheaval the Spot is remarkably stable.
Mar 18 | News
The 35-kilometer lunar trek by the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2 still holds the record for distance by a robotic rover on a celestial body. Using his own lunar atlas and NASA images, Phil Stooke, a researcher in Canada, has found the rover and its tracks. Recent images and data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter confirmed the location.
Mar 16 | News
Images from the recent flyby of Phobos—a proposed landing for an upcoming mission—were captured on the rarely seen “dark side” of the Martian moon thanks to the highly elliptical orbit of the Mars Express that takes outside the moon’s path. The images were also taken as part of the High Resolution Stereo Camera experiment.
Mar 12 | News
At 1.3 million cubic feet, the Goddard Space Flight Center’s High Bay Clean Room, where the components of the James Webb Space Telescope are now being assembled, circulates a staggering one million cubic feet of air per minutes, ensuring no more than 10,000 particles larger than 0.5 microns. Progress on the telescope can now be viewed by webcam.
Mar 9 | News
What if space held the key to producing alternative energy crops on Earth? That's what researchers are hoping to find in a new experiment on the International Space Station. The experiment, National Lab Pathfinder-Cells 3, is aimed at learning whether microgravity can help jatropha curcas plant cells grow faster to produce biofuel, or renewable fuel derived from biological matter.
Mar 8 | News
Though comets are thought to be some of the oldest, most primitive bodies in the solar system, new research on comet Wild 2 (including this TEM image of its material) indicates that inner solar system material was transported to the comet-forming region at least 1.7 million years after the formation of the oldest solar system solids.
Mar 5 | RDBlog
I typically attend the annual Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy each year in pursuit of specific coverage. This year, I sought out candidates for coverage in a vacuum technology article, and pulled together some instruments for a spectroscopy guide. But as busy as that kept me, it wasn’t all mass spectrometers and vacuum pumps on the show floor.
Mar 2 | News
Astronomers from the United States and Europe have used a gravitational lens—a distant, light-bending clump of dark matter—to make a new estimate of the Hubble constant, which determines the size and age of the universe.
Feb 24 | News
Suddenly, and for the first time in a long time, America’s space agency finds itself without a mission plan. Filling the void are a mix of old and new ideas, including the revived goal of an electric propulsion engine (they still lack thrust), and the possibility of making the next manned landing on a near-Earth asteroid (no gravity).
Feb 22 | News
Over the next three years, Southwest Research Institute scientists will develop and fly microgravity and space astronomy experiments on multiple suborbital space flights. The project marks a new approach to low-orbit astronomy experiments, conducted “in the field”.