NASA Selects Partners for US Commercial Lander Capabilities
Washington DC (SPX) May 02, 2014 -
NASA announced Wednesday the selection of three U.S. companies to negotiate no-funds exchanged partnership agreements with the agency to advance lander capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities.
NASA made the selections following a January solicit ...
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Shockwave findings set to rewrite scientific theories
Leicester, UK (SPX) May 02, 2014 -
Research from an international team of scientists led by the University of Leicester has discovered for the first time that one of the most powerful events in our universe - Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) - behave differently than previously thought.
The study, published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, uses evidence from observation of a GRB to rule out most of the existing theoretic ...
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Undersea warfare: Viruses hijack deep-sea bacteria at hydrothermal vents
Washington DC (SPX) May 02, 2014 -
More than a mile beneath the ocean's surface, as dark clouds of mineral-rich water billow from seafloor hot springs called hydrothermal vents, unseen armies of viruses and bacteria wage war.
Like pirates boarding a treasure-laden ship, the viruses infect bacterial cells to get the loot: tiny globules of elemental sulfur stored inside the bacterial cells.
Instead of absconding with th ...
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NASA Carbon-Counting Satellite Arrives at Launch Site
Vandenberg AFB CA (SPX) May 02, 2014 -
A NASA spacecraft designed to make precise measurements of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., to begin final preparations for launch.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 arrived Wednesday at its launch site on California's central coast after traveling from Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Gilbert, Ariz. The spacecraft no ...
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Peacekeeper Safing - The Ultimate Re-Use Project
White Sands NM (SPX) May 02, 2014 -
NASA Johnson Space Center's White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) contracted with the United States Air Force (USAF) to safe Peacekeeper Post Boost Propulsion System (PBPS) stages in the next four years by de-tanking hypergolic propellants, venting helium tanks and expending the ordnance so the stage can be destroyed by the USAF and reusable hardware and propellants could be harvested.
WSTF was ...
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Boeing Showcases Future Commercial Spacecraft Interior
North Las Vegas NV (SPX) May 02, 2014 -
Boeing has unveiled a new commercial interior of its Crew Space Transportation (CST-100) next-generation manned space capsule, showing how people other than NASA astronauts may one day travel to space.
Boeing and partner Bigelow Aerospace highlighted the future commercial interior of the capsule it is developing for NASA, while Bigelow showcased a full-scale model of its BA 330 commercial ...
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Predators predict longevity of birds
Seewiesen, Germany (SPX) May 02, 2014 -
Ageing inevitably occurs both in humans and in other animals. However, life-span varies widely across species. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have now found a possible general mechanism explaining differences in longevity.
They investigated life history data of nearly 1400 bird species and found that avian life span varies considerably across the entir ...
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