SSL to provide satellite for Azercosmos at 45 degrees east
Palo Alto CA (SPX) Oct 23, 2015 -
Space Systems/Loral has been selected to provide a communications satellite to Azercosmos, the national satellite operator of Azerbaijan. Under the strategic agreement with Intelsat the satellite will be located at the 45 degrees east orbital location where it will provide service in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
"SSL has a long history of partnering with satellite operators," ...
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Senior Russian space industry official held over corruption
Moscow (AFP) Oct 23, 2015 -
A Russian court said Friday it has detained a regional director of renowned space company Energia over corruption in the latest scandal to hit the country's fraud-plagued space industry.
Vladimir Ryabov, the head of the company's branch in the city of Samara, on the Volga river, was placed in custody for two months on suspicion of large-scale corruption, a city court told state news agency R ...
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Suzaku satellite reveals the average chemical composition of our Universe
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Oct 23, 2015 -
All of the chemical elements that are heavier than carbon, the oxygen we breathe, the silicon that makes up the sand on the beach, were produced inside stars through nuclear fusion and released by stellar explosions called supernovae. By measuring the chemical composition of the Universe, scientists are trying to reconstruct the history of how, when, and where each of the chemical elements so ne ...
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Cobalt atoms on graphene a powerful combo
Houston TX (SPX) Oct 23, 2015 -
Graphene doped with nitrogen and augmented with cobalt atoms has proven to be an effective, durable catalyst for the production of hydrogen from water, according to scientists at Rice University.
The Rice lab of chemist James Tour and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Houston have reported the development of a robust ...
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Chinese scientists probe mystery of solar storms
Beijing (XNA) Oct 26, 2015 -
An aurora dancing in the sky reminds scientist Liu Ying of the skirt of a ballerina. But this poetic image belies a potential source of disaster.
How does a super solar storm, which can cause the most magnificent auroras, begin? Scientists are still mystified by it.
Liu Ying, a researcher at the State Key Laboratory of Space Weather of the National Space Science Center under the Chin ...
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NASA SLS Prime Contractor Industry Team Reaches Significant Exploration
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 26, 2015 -
NASA's Space Launch System program has completed its Critical Design Review, and major subsystems such as Orion's launch abort system and the SLS RS-25 engines have recently completed successful testing. These accomplishments bring America one step closer to deep space - preserving the nation's leadership in human space exploration.
"The successes and milestones we are seeing are incredibl ...
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China plans to launch CO2 monitoring satellite in 2016
Beijing (XNA) Oct 26, 2015 -
China is reported to be planning to launch the global carbon dioxide observatory satellite into space in 2016. Recently, all satellite payloads have finished the samples development.
CO2-observatory satellite aims to establish ground-based data processing and verification system, make monitoring precision be better than 4ppm, and become feasible to monitoring carbon dioxide of world, China ...
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CIS Countries Plan to Create Joint Institute for Space Research
Moscow (Sputnik) Oct 26, 2015 -
The representatives of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Azerbaijan agreed on multilateral cooperation, an interstate system for space monitoring of emergency situations, as well as an interregional satellite communication system, according to Roscosmos.
A protocol on CIS countries cooperation that includes an agreement to establish a Joint Institute for Space R ...
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Researchers catch Comet Lovejoy giving away alcohol
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Oct 26, 2015 -
Comet Lovejoy lived up to its name by releasing large amounts of alcohol as well as a type of sugar into space, according to new observations by an international team. The discovery marks the first time ethyl alcohol, the same type in alcoholic beverages, has been observed in a comet. The finding adds to the evidence that comets could have been a source of the complex organic molecules necessary ...
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NASA Calls for American Industry Ideas on ARM Spacecraft Development
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 26, 2015 -
NASA, through its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has issued a callo American industry for innovative ideas on how the agency could obtain a core advanced solar electric propulsion-based spacecraft to support the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM).
Part of NASA's overall Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), this mission will use a number of important technologies to pr ...
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Solar energy's land-use impact
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 20, 2015 -
With mounting vigor for combating global climate change, increasing the use of renewable energy resources such as solar, without compromising natural habitats, is a challenge to the traditional model of utility-scale solar energy installations. Such facilities use vast swaths of land for solar gathering and generating equipment. Until now, studies quantifying the effects on land-cover change and ...
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NASA Study Improves Understanding of LA Quake Risks
Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 22, 2015 -
A new NASA-led analysis of a moderate magnitude 5.1 earthquake that shook Greater Los Angeles in 2014 finds that the earthquake deformed Earth's crust across a broad region encompassing the northern Los Angeles Basin and northern Orange County. The shallow ground movements observed from this earthquake likely reflect strain accumulated on deeper faults, which remain locked and may be capable of ...
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The shape of a pipe dramatically affects how pollutants will spread
Chapel Hill NC (SPX) Oct 16, 2015 -
Researchers have long known and well-documented how dye disperses when injected into a fluid flowing through a pipe. But a team of mathematicians at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has discovered that the size and shape of the pipe dramatically affects how the dye will disperse in the early moments after injection.
Their results have major implications for drug delivery, ch ...
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VW's 'dieselgate' puts spotlight on electric cars in Germany
Frankfurt (AFP) Oct 21, 2015 -
The pollution-cheating scandal that has engulfed auto giant Volkswagen is turning up the heat on the German government to make more determined headway in its self-declared "electromobility" goals, analysts say.
The "bitter irony" of the scam that has rocked the automobile sector around the world and plunged the once-respected carmaker into its deepest-ever crisis is that the billions of eur ...
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Plastic litter taints the sea surface, even in the Arctic
Bremerhaven, Germany (SPX) Oct 26, 2015 -
In a new study, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) show for the first time that marine litter can even be found at the sea surface of Arctic waters. Though it remains unclear how the litter made it so far north, it is likely to pose new problems for local marine life, the authors report on the online portal of the scientific journa ...
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Plague in humans 'twice as old' but didn't begin as flea-borne, ancient DNA reveals
Cambridge, UK (SPX) Oct 26, 2015 -
New research using ancient DNA has revealed that plague has been endemic in human populations for more than twice as long as previously thought, and that the ancestral plague would have been predominantly spread by human-to-human contact - until genetic mutations allowed Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis), the bacteria that causes plague, to survive in the gut of fleas.
These mutations, which may ...
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Rain produces rivers of trash in Lebanese capital
Beirut (AFP) Oct 25, 2015 -
Streets in parts of Lebanon turned into rivers of garbage on Sunday as heavy rains washed through mountains of trash that have piled up during a months-long waste collection crisis.
Residents and activists posted photographs and video online showing water from torrential showers carrying accumulated waste down streets in the early morning outside Beirut and beyond.
On the edge of the cap ...
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5 dead as heavy rains pound Egypt's Alexandria
Cairo (AFP) Oct 25, 2015 -
Torrential rains lashed Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria Sunday, killing five people, including two children and the captain of a ship who was trapped in his car by floodwaters, officials said.
A man and two children were electrocuted to death when a cable from a tramway fell into a street flooded with water, the health ministry said in a statement.
And the captain of a ship drow ...
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Hong Kong probes ferry crash as injury toll rises to 124
Hong Kong (AFP) Oct 26, 2015 -
Hong Kong officials were Monday investigating a weekend ferry crash that injured 124, including five critically, amid fresh concern over the safety of its busy waterways.
Investigators still did not know what caused Sunday's accident, when a high-speed ferry from Macau to Hong Kong hit an "unidentified object" in the water.
"We feel saddened by the large number of people who were affec ...
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China to donate fuel to Nepal: official
Kathmandu (AFP) Oct 25, 2015 -
China will supply Nepal with 1.3 million litres of fuel to ease crippling shortages after protests over a new constitution blocked imports from India, a Nepali official said Sunday.
Scores of trucks have been stranded at a key India-Nepal border checkpoint for around a month, cutting off vital supplies and forcing fuel rationing across the landlocked Himalayan nation.
The shortages led t ...
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Early snowfall strands hundreds in Pakistan
Peshawar, Pakistan (AFP) Oct 26, 2015 -
Hundreds of tourists were stranded Monday after the earliest snowfall in 40 years blocked a main highway in Pakistan's northern areas, dumping three feet of snow on one town in less than 24 hours.
Authorities sent heavy machinery along with troops and rescue workers to clear the roads in the Naran Valley in Mansehra district.
Pakistanis enjoying a long weekend for Ashura in the holy mont ...
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Evaporation for review - and with it global warming
Warsaw, Poland (SPX) Oct 23, 2015 -
The process of evaporation, one of the most widespread on our planet, takes place differently than we once thought - this has been shown by new computer simulations carried out at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The discovery has far-reaching consequences for, among others, current global climate models, where a key role is played by evaporation o ...
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NASA Study Shows That Common Coolants Contribute to Ozone Depletion
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Oct 23, 2015 -
The ozone layer comprises a belt of ozone molecules located primarily in the lower stratosphere. It is responsible for absorbing most of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation before it reaches Earth's surface. Research in the 1990s showed that HFCs, which have replaced more powerful ozone-depleting chemical coolants in recent years, destroy a negligible amount of ozone. But that conclusion was ...
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Farmers lose debt gamble in typhoon-plagued Philippines
Santa Rosa, Philippines (AFP) Oct 25, 2015 -
Philippine rice farmer Francisco Santo Domingo's life is in ruins after losing yet another gamble with nature, but the typhoon that destroyed his crops means gleeful loan sharks have again hit the jackpot.
Like thousands of other farmers, Santo Domingo will be forced to go back to the "shadow" bankers who dominate the nation's agricultural economy and take on even more debt at exorbitant int ...
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Hurricane flattens Mexico homes, but no major disaster
Chamela, Mexico (AFP) Oct 25, 2015 -
Patricia flattened a fishing hamlet on Mexico's Pacific coast, but authorities were relieved to see Saturday that the record-breaking hurricane largely spared the country and dissipated as it moved north.
The wood and brick homes with tin and palm leaf roofs of 40 families in the village of Chamela were blown away when Patricia made landfall as a Category Five monster in Jalisco state late F ...
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