NASA News
Courtesy of Science Daily

Phobos flyby images: proposed landing sites for the forthcoming Phobos-Grunt mission Images from the recent flyby of Phobos, on March 7, 2010, have been released. The images show Mars' rocky moon in exquisite detail, with a resolution of just 4.4 m per pixel. They show the proposed landing sites for the forthcoming Phobos-Grunt mission. Publ.Date : Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EDT Turning up the heat: Finding out how well the Webb telescope's sunshield will perform Keeping an infrared telescope at very cold operating temperatures isn't an option, it's an absolute necessity. Serving as a radiation blocker, the Webb telescope sunshield is subjected to nearly 100,000 thermal watts of solar heat, and reduces that to one tenth of a watt on the cold side, a million to one reduction. Publ.Date : Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EDT Mars constantly loses part of its atmosphere to space due to solar wind Space physicists have identified the impact of the Sun on Mars' atmosphere. The scientists report that Mars is constantly losing part of its atmosphere to space. The new study shows that pressure from solar wind pulses is a significant contributor to Mars's atmospheric escape. Publ.Date : Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EDT Mars dunes: On the move? New studies of ripples and dunes shaped by the winds on Mars testify to variability on that planet, identifying at least one place where ripples are actively migrating and another where the ripples have been stationary for 100,000 years or more. Publ.Date : Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST Proposed mission would return sample from asteroid 'time capsule' Meet asteroid 1999 RQ36, a chunk of rock and dust about 1,900 feet in diameter that could tell us how the solar system was born, and perhaps, shed light on how life began. It also might hit us someday. Publ.Date : Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST Cassini data show ice and rock mixture inside Saturn's moon Titan By precisely tracking NASA's Cassini spacecraft on its low swoops over Saturn's moon Titan, scientists have determined the distribution of materials in the moon's interior. The subtle gravitational tugs they measured suggest the interior has been too cold and sluggish to split completely into separate layers of ice and rock. Publ.Date : Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST Mysterious cosmic 'dark flow' tracked deeper into universe Distant galaxy clusters mysteriously stream at a million miles per hour along a path roughly centered on the southern constellations Centaurus and Hydra. A new study tracks this collective motion -- dubbed the "dark flow" -- to twice the distance originally reported. Publ.Date : Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST Biggest, deepest crater exposes hidden, ancient moon Shortly after the Moon formed, an asteroid smacked into its southern hemisphere and gouged out a truly enormous crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin, almost 1,500 miles across and more than five miles deep. Publ.Date : Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST Is That Saturn's Moon Titan or Utah? Planetary scientists have been puzzling for years over the honeycomb patterns and flat valleys with squiggly edges evident in radar images of Saturn's moon Titan. Now, working with a "volunteer researcher" who has put his own spin on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, they have found some recognizable analogies to a type of spectacular terrain on Earth known as karst topography. Publ.Date : Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:00:00 EST Historic deep space network antenna starts major surgery Like a hard-driving athlete whose joints need help, the giant "Mars antenna" at NASA's Deep Space Network site in Goldstone, Calif. has begun major, delicate surgery. The operation on the historic 70-meter-wide (230-foot) antenna, which has received data and sent commands to deep space missions for over 40 years, will replace a portion of the hydrostatic bearing assembly. This assembly enables the antenna to rotate horizontally. Publ.Date : Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST Alternative Energy Crops in Space 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. Publ.Date : Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST NASA's Fermi probes 'dragons' of the gamma-ray sky One of the pleasures of perusing ancient maps is locating regions so poorly explored that mapmakers warned of dragons and sea monsters. Now, astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope find themselves in the same situation as cartographers of old. A new study of the ever-present fog of gamma rays from sources outside our galaxy shows that less than a third of the emission arises from what astronomers once considered the most likely suspects -- black-hole-powered jets from active galaxies. Publ.Date : Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST Webb Telescope's first primary mirror meets cold temperature specifications, sets program landmark The James Webb Space Telescope reached a mission-readiness landmark March 2, 2010 when its first primary mirror segment was cryo-polished to its required prescription as measured at operational cryogenic temperatures. This achievement sets the stage for a successful polishing process for the remaining 18 flight mirror segments. Publ.Date : Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 EST Lava likely made river-like channel on Mars Flowing lava can carve or build paths very much like the riverbeds and canyons etched by water, and this probably explains at least one of the meandering channels on the surface of Mars. Publ.Date : Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST Radar map of buried Martian ice adds to climate record Extensive radar mapping of the middle-latitude region of northern Mars shows that thick masses of buried ice are quite common beneath protective coverings of rubble. Publ.Date : Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST NASA's Kepler Mission Celebrates One Year in Space One year ago this week, NASA's Kepler mission soared into the dark night sky, leaving a bright glow in its wake as it began to search for other worlds like Earth. Publ.Date : Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:00 EST NASA Mars Orbiter Speeds Past Data Milestone NASA's newest Mars orbiter, completing its fourth year at the Red Planet next week, has just passed a data-volume milestone unimaginable a generation ago and still difficult to fathom: 100 terabits. Publ.Date : Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:00:00 EST Mars Express Phobos flyby a success: Unlocking mystery of 'second generation' moons Mars Express encountered Phobos March 3, smoothly skimming past at just 67 km, the closest any artificial object has ever approached Mars' enigmatic moon. The data collected could help unlock the origin of not just Phobos but other "second generation" moons. Publ.Date : Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST NASA radar finds ice deposits at Moon's north pole; additional evidence of water activity on Moon Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits near the moon's north pole. NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to15 km) in diameter. Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice. Publ.Date : Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST Exotic magnetar has extremely strong magnetic fields Astronomers have observed an uncommon neutron star. Classified as magnetar, its nature is as peculiar as its official name: SGR 0418+5729. The observations reached an unprecedented depth at optical wavelengths for this kind of sources, helping in constraining the physical properties of this celestial body characterized by extremely strong magnetic fields. Publ.Date : Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:00:00 EST Salt-seeking satellite shaken by quake, but not stirred NASA's Aquarius instrument, and the Argentinian spacecraft that will carry it into space, the Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas (SAC-D), successfully rode out one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history Feb. 27 with no problems. Publ.Date : Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST Astronomically large lenses measure the age and size of the universe Using entire galaxies as lenses to look at other galaxies, researchers have a newly precise way to measure the size and age of the universe and how rapidly it is expanding. The measurement determines a value for the Hubble constant, which indicates the size of the universe, and confirms the age of the universe as 13.75 billion years old, within 170 million years. The results also confirm the strength of dark energy, responsible for accelerating the expansion of the universe. Publ.Date : Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST New 'alien invader' star clusters found in Milky Way As many as one quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way -- many more than previously thought -- are "invaders" from other galaxies, according to a new study. Publ.Date : Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST Stellar, metal-free way to make carbon nanotubes Space apparently has its own recipe for making carbon nanotubes, one of the most intriguing contributions of nanotechnology here on Earth, and metals are conspicuously missing from the list of ingredients. Publ.Date : Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST