ISRO to Launch India's Third Navigation Satellite on October 16
Bangalore, India (SPX) Oct 14, 2014 -
India's third navigation satellite will be launched October 16 from Sriharikota spaceport in coastal Andhra Pradesh, space agency ISRO announced Thursday.
"The 1,425kg navigation satellite (IRNSS-1C) will be launched October 16 at 1.32am IST onboard a polar rocket (PSLV-C26) from Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota," said an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) statement. Srihar ...
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Alternative Earths Team To Join NASA Astrobiology Institute
Riverside CA (SPX) Oct 14, 2014 -
If we're looking at Mars, or planets in solar systems far, far away, how can we tell whether they support life? Researchers at the University of California, Riverside will share a $50 million grant from the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) to help answer that question by studying ancient rocks on Earth to determine how oxygen developed in our atmosphere billions of years ago.
Specifically ...
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NASA Exercises Authority to Proceed with Commercial Crew Contracts
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 14, 2014 -
On Sept. 16, NASA announced U.S. astronauts once again will travel to and from the International Space Station (ISS) from the United States on American spacecraft under groundbreaking contracts. The agency unveiled its selection of Boeing and SpaceX to transport U.S. crews to and from the space station using their CST-100 and Crew Dragon spacecraft, respectively, with a goal of ending the nation ...
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The heat is on
Paris (ESA) Oct 14, 2014 -
Thanks to ESA and a high-tech fabric used in spacesuits, Swedish steelworkers will soon be wearing safer and cooler underwear to work. Cathrin Persson has worked in Sweden's steel industry since 1998. Every morning as she dresses for work, the welder faces the same problem: there are few heat- and fire-resistant underwear options on the market, and none are designed for women.
So, like mos ...
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First Light for MAVEN
Huntsville AL (SPX) Oct 14, 2014 -
After 10-month voyage across more than 400 million miles of empty space, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft reached Mars on Sept. 21st 2014. Less than 8 hours later, the data started to flow.
"Our Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) obtained these false-color images of Mars on Sept. 22nd," says Nick Schneider who leads the instrument team at the University of Colorado. "They trace the distributio ...
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New ASU, Nature journal to highlight spaceflight research
Phoenix AZ (SPX) Oct 14, 2014 -
It's a field of scientific discovery with practical applications that could be astounding: new drugs and vaccines to halt the spread of disease and infection, improved telecommunications linking people around the world, enhanced manufacturing capabilities and the very future of interplanetary exploration.
That interdisciplinary compendium of scientific research and innovation now has a new ...
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Moons Can Help Planets Remain Stable Long Enough for Life to Form
Moffet Field CA (NASA) Oct 14, 2014 -
The Moon is more than just Earth's partner in space - it may have helped stabilize Earth's orbit enough for it to become hospitable for the evolution of complex forms of life. A new study suggests that large moons can form and remain stable for long times around distant planets as well, potentially helping alien life evolve.
Researchers also suggest that if the recently discovered rocky al ...
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China's ailing moon rover weakening
Beijing (XNA) Oct 14, 2014 -
China's ailing moon rover Yutu has entered its 11th dormancy as the lunar night falls, with its functions degrading gracefully, its designer said Friday. The rover is currently in good condition and works normally, but its control problem persists, said Yu Dengyun, deputy chief designer of China's lunar probe mission.
"Yutu has gone through freezing lunar nights under abnormal status, and ...
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NMSU helps NASA's Scientific Balloon Program achieve rare feat
Fort Sumner NM (SPX) Oct 15, 2014 -
For the first time in the 27-year launch history in Fort Sumner, N.M., New Mexico State University's Physical Science Laboratory's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility team launched three balloon experiments on three consecutive days for NASA's Scientific Balloon Program. The launches took flight Sept. 24-26.
The team from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility traveled to Fort Sumner an ...
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Measurements on Cl-36 samples refute decay rate on distance between Earth and Sun
Brunswick, Germany (SPX) Oct 15, 2014 -
A group of US American scientists had recently published measurement data concerning the radioactive isotope chlorine-36. The measurement values showed fluctuations according to the seasons, which the researchers explained by corresponding changes in the decay rate of the nuclide.
They attributed these fluctuations in the decay rates of chlorine-36, as well as of other isotopes, to the cha ...
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Arianespace's December mission for DIRECTV-14 and GSAT-16 satellites in process
Kourou, French Guiana (ESA) Oct 15, 2014 -
Basic build-up of the Ariane 5 for Arianespace's sixth heavy-lift flight of 2014 is complete for a mission scheduled from French Guiana in early December with two geostationary orbit relay satellites.
During activity inside the Spaceport's Launcher Integration Building for Ariane 5, the "upper composite" - consisting of its cryogenic upper stage and equipment bay - was installed atop the v ...
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Hubble Catches a Dusty Spiral in Virgo
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 15, 2014 -
This magnificent new image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 4206, located about 70 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Virgo.
Captured here are vast streaks of dust, some of which are obscuring the central bulge, which can just be made out in the center of the galaxy.
Towards the edges of the galaxy, the scatte ...
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Sticky business: bonding ultrastable space missions
Paris (ESA) Oct 15, 2014 -
A new ultrastable adhesive identified through ESA research could be a key to assembling rock-solid structures for space, including large telescopes, instruments and antennas to peer deeper into the cosmos or sharpen views of our terrestrial environment.
The resulting ceramic bonding promises composite structures of several metres rigid down to a few thousandths of a millimetre.
Such ...
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MIRI and NIRSpec, ADS Instruments For Webb Telescope Pass Cryogenic Vacuum Test
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 15, 2014 -
The Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), developed and built by Airbus Defence and Space, the world's second largest space company, and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), built by a European consortium led by the company, have successfully passed a 120 day cryogenic vacuum test campaign within the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
This ...
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ISS Crew Relations Not Affected by Ukrainian Conflict
Zvyozdny Gorodok (RIA Novosti) Oct 15, 2014 -
The situation in Ukraine has not affected relations between crew members at the International Space Station (ISS), cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev said Friday.
"In spite of politics, we have not argued and we feel like a single entity, a single nation that inhabits the Earth," Artemyev, who returned from the ISS about a month ago, told reporters at the Cosmonaut Training Center in Zvyozdny Gorodok ...
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Leaky, Star-Forming Galaxies Help Understanding The Universe
Baltimore MD (SPX) Oct 15, 2014 -
By focusing on large, star-forming galaxies in the universe, researchers at Johns Hopkins University were able to measure its radiation leaks in an effort to better understand how the universe evolved as the first stars were formed.
Sanchayeeta Borthakur, an assistant research scientist in the university's Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, repo ...
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Russia to Conduct Observation Flights Over Canada and US
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Oct 15, 2014 -
A team of Russian aviation inspectors will conduct observation flights over Canada and the United States under the Treaty on Open Skies, the head of the Russian National Center for Reducing Nuclear Threat Sergei Ryzhkov has said.
"Under the international Treaty on Open Skies, a team of Russian inspectors plans to carry out two consecutive observation flights on a Tu-154M-LK1 aircraft over ...
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Space Trips To Change World For Better: Virgin Galactic CEO
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Oct 15, 2014 -
As Virgin Galactic is developing commercial space vehicles to launch in spring 2015, for 155,000 pounds per ticket (about $249,015), chief executive George Whiteside expects space tourists to experience a journey that will alter human perspective on our planet irreversibly and help to change the world for better, The Telegraph reported Sunday.
"There is something called the overview effect ...
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Humans may only survive 68 days on Mars: study
Washington (AFP) Oct 14, 2014 -
Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.
Oxygen levels would start to deplete after about two months and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusett ...
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US military's robot space plane due to land this week
Washington (AFP) Oct 14, 2014 -
The US military's mysterious robot space plane is expected to land this week after a 22-month orbit, officials said Tuesday, but the craft's mission remains shrouded in secrecy.
The unmanned X-37B, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, is due to glide back to Earth after having launched on December 11, 2012, on a mission that military officers say is strictly top secret.
"Preparati ...
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US-led coalition meets as strikes pound jihadists
Mursitpinar, Turkey (AFP) Oct 14, 2014 -
The White House said Tuesday a multinational air war against Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria is succeeding, as top brass from 22 countries met to discuss a strategy for combatting them.
That optimism was underscored by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said US-led air strikes had stopped in its tracks IS's bid to seize Kobane, a strategic Syrian town on the border with ...
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Sri Lankan military to return Tamil civilians' gold
Colombo (AFP) Oct 14, 2014 -
Sri Lanka's military announced Tuesday it would return unspecified quantities of gold jewellery recovered from a battle site dating to the crushing of separatist Tamil Tiger rebels more than five years ago.
Security forces have identified 2,377 "legitimate claimants" and 25 of them were handed back their gold ornaments by President Mahinda Rajapakse, who visited the island's northern provinc ...
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N. Korea's Kim Jong-Un reappears with walking stick
Seoul (AFP) Oct 14, 2014 -
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has finally resurfaced with the help of a walking stick after a prolonged, unexplained absence that fuelled rampant speculation about his health and even rumours of a coup in the nuclear-armed state.
State media on Tuesday reported that Kim, who had not been seen in public for nearly six weeks, made an inspection tour of a newly-built housing complex in Pyongy ...
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US 'deeply concerned' about Kobane: Obama
Washington (AFP) Oct 14, 2014 -
President Barack Obama on Tuesday expressed grave concern over the plight of the Syrian town of Kobane under attack by Islamic State jihadists, and said a US-led coalition would keep up bombing raids there and in western Iraq.
"We're deeply concerned about the situation in and around the Syrian town of Kobane," Obama said after meeting commanders from a coalition of more than 20 countries fi ...
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US, Iran keep pushing for elusive nuclear deal
Vienna (AFP) Oct 14, 2014 -
Iran's foreign minister warned Tuesday of "numerous" gaps in troubled nuclear talks with world powers but both he and US counterpart John Kerry, due in Vienna Wednesday, insisted a deal remains possible by a November 24 deadline.
Speaking early Tuesday as he arrived in Vienna for talks with US and EU officials, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said there was "general agreement" but that ...
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