Mapex

Archive for January, 2010

This view from the navigation camera near the top of the mast on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the tracks left by the rover as it drove southward and backward, dragging its inoperable right-front wheel, to the location where the rover broke through a crust in April 2009 and became embedded in soft sand. The rover team’s strategy to extricate Spirit from the sand trap was to follow these tracks out, heading north. Spirit took this image during the 2,092nd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission on Nov. 21, 2009. For scale, the distance between the right and left wheel tracks is about 3 feet. The rover team began commanding extrication drives in November after months of Earthbound testing and analysis to develop a strategy for attempting to drive Spirit out of this soft-soil site, called “Troy.” Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

After six years of unprecedented exploration of the Red Planet, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot.

NASA will launch small research satellites for several universities as part of the agency’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellite, or ELaNA, mission.

Astronauts orbiting 220 miles above Earth will discuss science with students of the Troy School District in Troy, Mich., on Feb. 1.

On 9 and 10 February, ESA will hold its First International Security Symposium, to share information on security approaches, challenges and evolution that international organisations face in the current geopolitical situation.

Expedition 22 flight engineer Oleg Kotov used a digital still camera to take this self-portrait during a January 2010 spacewalk. Also visible in the reflections of his visor are various components of the station and the Earth below. During the spacewalk, Kotov and cosmonaut Maxim Suraev (out of frame) prepared the Mini-Research Module 2 (MRM2), known as Poisk, for future Russian vehicle dockings. Suraev and Expedition 22 commander Jeffrey Williams were the first to use the new docking port when they relocated their Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft from the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module on Jan. 21. Image Credit: NASA

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Jan. 26 to discuss the status of the agency’s Mars rover Spirit.

In 1895 German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered rays which he didn’t know much about, so he called them X-Rays.

Two spectacular tails of X-ray emission have been seen trailing behind a galaxy using the Chandra X-ray Observatory. A composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 3627 shows X-rays from Chandra in blue, optical emission in yellow and emission from hydrogen light — known to astronomers as ‘H-alpha’ — in red. The optical and H-alpha data were obtained with the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile. At the front of the tail is the galaxy ESO 137-001. The brighter of the two tails has been seen before and extends for about 260,000 light years. The detection of the second, fainter tail, however, was a surprise to the scientists. The X-ray tails were created when cool gas from ESO 137-001 (with a temperature of about ten degrees above absolute zero) was stripped by hot gas (about 100 million degrees) as it travels towards the center of the galaxy cluster Abell 3627. What astronomers observe with Chandra is essentially the evaporation of the cold gas, which glows at a temperature of about 10 million degrees. Evidence of gas with temperatures between 100 and 1,000 degrees Kelvin in the tail was also found with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Galaxy clusters are collections of hundreds or even thousands of galaxies held together by gravity that are enveloped in hot gas. The two-pronged tail in this system may have formed because gas has been stripped from the two major spiral arms in ESO 137-001. The stripping of gas is thought to have a significant effect on galaxy evolution, removing cold gas from the galaxy, shutting down the formation of new stars in the galaxy, and changing the appearance of inner spiral arms and bulges because of the effects of star formation. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UVa/M. Sun et al; H-alpha/Optical: SOAR/MSU/NOAO/UNC/CNPq-Brazil/M.Sun et al.

NASA is inviting student teams nationwide to design and build an experiment or technology demonstration to be sent to the near space environment of the stratosphere, an altitude of 100,000 feet.