The radio flare began at about the time of the gamma-ray flares, but continued to increase in brightness for at least two months. "This tells us that energetic material burst out very close to the black hole, causing the gamma rays to be emitted and the radio flare to begin. As that material traveled down the jet, expanding and losing energy, the gamma-ray emission ceased, but the radio continued to increase in brightness," Walker explained.
"The VLBA showed us with great precision where the radio emission came from, so we know the gamma rays came from closer in toward the black hole," he added.
CAYENNE, French Guiana, July 1 (Reuters) - An Ariane rocket
has launched from French Guiana on Wednesday the TerreStar-1
satellite, billed by the Arianespace rocket launch company as
"the largest commercial communications satellite ever launched".
TerreStar blasted off from the European Space Agency's (ESA)
launch centre in Kourou, French Guiana on the northeast coast of
South America at 2.52 pm (1752 GMT).
It was released into orbit twenty-six minutes later.
Virginia-based TerreStar Corp TTSR.O plans to provide
hybrid telecommunications to satellite and cellular handsets
about the same size as a conventional smartphone.
The satellite is designed to provide service throughout the
United States and Canada. Analysts estimated the cost of the
satellite, launch and insurance to exceed $500 million.
TerreStar weighed 6.9 metric tonnes (15,200 lb) at lift-off
and was built by U.S. satellite manufacturer Loral Space &a
The Japanese
Kaguya spacecraft, which was launched in 2007, detected uranium with a gamma-ray
spectrometer. Scientists are using the instrument to create maps of the moon's surface
composition, showing the presence of thorium, potassium, oxygen, magnesium,
silicon, calcium, titanium and iron.
Over the 4th of July
weekend, Americans will have "spectacular views" of the International
Space Station as it makes several passes over the country.
The space station
orbits Earth every 90 minutes in a constantly changing pattern. It is
brighter than any stars in the sky right now, typically visible near
dawn and just after dusk, weather permitting.
As astronomers have long expected, exploding stars called supernovas
can accelerate particles up to almost the speed of light, a new study shows. The discovery helps explain where the extremely energetic
cosmic rays we find near Earth come from.
If all goes to plan, the inaugural flight should carry Sir Richard Branson, his family and spaceship designer Burt Rutan on a sub-orbital ride within two years.
Astronauts travelling on the International Space Station and during missions on board space shuttles have shown that nature's light show is clearly visible miles outside the Earth's atmosphere.
"This is the first
unambiguous evidence of shorelines on the surface of Mars," Di Achille
said. "The identification of the shorelines and accompanying geological
evidence allows us to calculate the size and volume of the lake, which
appears to have formed about 3.4 billion years ago."
A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com has learned.
The satellites' main objectives include detecting nuclear bomb tests,
and their characterizations of asteroids and lesser meteoroids as they
crash through the atmosphere has been a byproduct data bonanza for
scientists.
A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar.
"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast
enough to bury itself into the road," Gerrit Blank said in a newspaper
account. Astronomers have analyzed the object and conclude it was
indeed a natural object from space, The Telegraph reports.
The mood at the Space Business Forum, an
annual gathering of investors and space geeks
was impatience to get the feds out of the way so the private sector can
attract investments and grow quicker. "I'd say the role of government
[in the space industry] is too high," says Heidi Wood, the senior
equity analyst for aerospace for Morgan Stanley. "There are far too
many hands on it."
HAWTHORNE, California – Building a successful startup in Silicon
Valley is hard, but it’s not rocket science. Unless you’re SpaceX.
Eschewing the traditional startup trappings of two college grads eating ramen, watching Adult Swim
and coding until the wee hours of the night, SpaceX instead employs
hundreds of brainiacs and builds its rockets in a massive hangar that
once housed a 747 fuselage factory.
Started in 2002 by PayPal founder Elon Musk, SpaceX (short for Space
Exploration Technologies Corporation) brings a startup mentality to
launching rockets into orbit, which until recently was almost
exclusively government turf. The hope is that minimal bureaucracy,
innovation and in-house manufacturing and testing can be used to put
payloads into space at roughly one-tenth the cost of traditional
methods.
If the company’s newest rocket, the Falcon 9,
successfully completes its two scheduled launches this year, it will
The spindle acts as the zero gravity work zone for docking and transshipment to the habitat. The bubble or ‘tire’ can be inflated with air and the system can be spun up to achieve a rotational velocity capable of providing artificial gravity at the outer perimeter and stabilizing the overall shape.
All further work takes place inside the bubble habitat and is accessed through the spindle. Thus any debris will be plausibly, after much improvement, be arrested at the outer shell wall.
It has been a long haul to the launch pad, but the U.S. Air Force and Boeing are gearing up to loft the X-37B – an unpiloted military space plane, SPACE.com has learned.
Tucked inside the shroud of an Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), the winged craft will be boosted out of Cape Canaveral, Florida, orbit the Earth and then make an auto-pilot landing in California.
The X-37B OTV-1 (Orbital Test Vehicle 1) is currently on the launch manifest for January 2010, explained U.S. Air Force Captain Elizabeth Aptekar, who works in media operations for the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C.
"The vehicle is ready for the shipping process, which includes minor close-out activities," Aptekar told SPACE.com. "The vehicle will ship at the conclusion of the pre-ship activities ... which should be approximately 60 days before its launch date."
Years ago, the X-37B was originally slated to be deployed from the payload ba
Scientists have devised a way to spot water on distant planets that can only barely be seen now, which in turn could reveal whether they might be able to support life. Astronomers have detected more than 300 planets orbiting alien stars.
Virgin Galactic tests the hybrid rocket motor that will help the company's second generation craft launch space tourists and cargo into suborbital space. (Photo from inside SpaceShipOne hanger immediately after first launch to Space)
Electric ion engines; plasma drives, slingshot-style gravitational-assist maneuvers; ultra-light super-strong solar sails and other innovations are driving exploration forward beyond reliance on chemical rockets.
The space tourism firm Virgin Galactic has successfully test-fired the rocket motor designed to boost a passenger spaceliner on suborbital joy rides into space. The hybrid rocket motor would launch Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo spacecraft into suborbital space at speeds of over 2,500 mph (4,000 kph) to send ticket-carrying passengers soaring to heights of 65 miles (110 km) above the Earth.
The Russian Soyuz space capsule carrying 3 new crew members docked with the International Space Station this morning marking the first time that 6 crew members will be living on board as full time residents.
HAVE Mars landers been destroying signs of life? Instead of identifying chemicals that could point to life, NASA's robot explorers may have been toasting them by mistake.
Space Shuttle Atlantis ended their Hubble Space Telescope repair mission in California after stormy weather prevented a return to NASA's Florida home base. NASA TV
On Mars, a rover named Spirit has gotten stuck in soft, alien soil. 2 weeks ago, its wheels dug into the Martian soil, and the plucky rover became trapped. Spirit has been roaming the red planet for 5years, but its roving days could be over unless
Mismanagement and underinvestment by the U.S. Air Force could possibly lead to the failure and blackout of the Global Positioning System (GPS), a federal watchdog agency says. [And this would be a bad thing...?]
Atlantis astronauts spent more than 36 hours over five marathon spacewalks to make upgrades and outfit Hubble with new instruments. These included a panchromatic wide-field camera that should be able to see objects formed just 500 million years after
"Two of the most sophisticated astronomical spacecraft ever built," the two observatories will begin a 60-day journey to the Lagrange point, an orbital slot 1.5 million kilometers (about 1 million miles) from Earth. The largest mirror of an
Atlantis captured in solar transit with a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II. [NASA photos linked from article show Hubble and Atlantis together during their .8 second transit]
[successfully launched 2PM EDT] NASA is set to dispatch 7 astronauts on its most dangerous ever shuttle mission as it attempts to rescue the $7 billion Hubble Space Telescope from meltdown.
The 1859 storm shorted out telegraph wires, causing fires in North America and Europe, sent readings of Earth's magnetic field soaring, and produced northern lights so bright that people read newspapers by their light.
Long-haul trips could be made in spaceships instead of planes in 20 years' time if Virgin's efforts to commercialize space travel succeed, the president of Virgin Galactic told Reuters in an interview.
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