Topic: Space - on July 16, 2007 at 10:44:00 AM CEST
Tests begin on Canaries telescope
Tests have begun on one of the world's largest optical telescopes, installed on a mountain in the Canary Islands.
Situated on a 2,400m-high (7,900ft) peak on the island of La Palma, the huge telescope consists of a mirror measuring 10.4m (34.1ft) in diameter.
The Spanish-led Great Canary Telescope (GTC) is extremely powerful and will be able to spot some of the faintest, most distant objects in the Universe.
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Topic: Space - on July 7, 2007 at 2:15:00 PM CEST
NASA Installs $19 Million Toilet on the ISS, Won’t Let Russians Use it.
Tension is bound to flare over the $19 million toilet NASA purchased from Russian aerospace firm RCS Energia, as only half of the International Space Station will enjoy the upgrade—the American side. The toilet justifies its steep price by being able to recycle urine as drinkable water, Waterworld-style.
The Russian half of the station is stuck with the old latrine. They’ll have to continue to load up one of their unmanned cargo vessels with boxes of their leftovers and send it to burn up in the atmosphere, which is pretty much the equivalent of flushing right now in space.
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Topic: Space - on June 15, 2007 at 6:05:00 PM CEST
Russian sources tell ABC News U.S. equipment may have contributed to glitch.
Russian space agency officials tell ABC News, that the damaged computers aboard the International Space Station could have a "fatal flaw." The President and Vice President of the state-owned Energia Space Rocket Corp., which operates the flight, told ABC News while they are still trying to fix the failure from the ground, they now believe they will have to send up a completely new power supply for the computer system.
This would have to wait till August when they'd send a Russian rocket up.
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Topic: Space - on April 20, 2007 at 11:32:00 AM CEST
Who should watch the Lyrid meteor shower?
The Lyrid meteor shower will peak this weekend, on the mornings of April 22 and 23. Who should watch it?
You should! If you’re a gambler.
That’s because all meteor showers are just that . . . a gamble. No one can tell you precisely how many meteors you’ll see from any given shower.
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Topic: Space - on April 15, 2007 at 5:35:00 PM CEST
Uploaded Software Patch Killed Mars Probe
A software 'fix' sent up to NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in June 2006 ultimately led to its failure five months later, a preliminary new report reveals. The report also finds that the existing procedures used by the mission team were not thorough enough to catch the resulting problems, and that reductions in budgets and staff may have played some role in the loss of the mission.
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Topic: Space - on April 12, 2007 at 12:39:00 PM CEST
US businessman makes $9m selling lunar real estate
Dennis Hope has been claiming ownership of the Earth's Moon - and seven planets and their moons - for over 20 years. So far, he says he has sold more than 1.6m sq km (400 million acres) netting him $9m (£4.5m). A further eight billion acres are still up for grabs.
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Topic: Space - on March 30, 2007 at 11:59:00 AM CEST
All (known) Bodies in the Solar System Larger than 200 Miles in Diameter
It's just one of those things I've been itching to make for a long while, frankly because I wanted to see it - a visual listing of objects in the Solar System, ordered by size. A couple weeks ago, I started tinkering with it, today, I have something to show finally: A (large) image showing the 88 known objects in our Solar System that are larger than 200 miles in diameter.
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Topic: Space - on March 25, 2007 at 12:29:00 PM CEST
Google Maps for space!
Our on-line system is a detailed sky map. We generate the map automatically using our database with the positions and basic characteristics of space objects.
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Topic: Space - on March 13, 2007 at 4:53:00 PM CET
Stereo Eclipse
When scientists announce they're about to calibrate their instruments, science writers normally put away their pens. It's hard to write a good story about calibration.
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Topic: Space - on February 23, 2007 at 1:05:00 PM CET
First Russian Space Dogs
We had first Russian space pig a few day ago. Ok now it’s turn for Russian space dogs.
There were a lot of them. Before the first human has traveled to space and back there were twenty nine launches with dogs. Ten dogs died, saving the life to the first human offering Russian space scientists invaluable data on how all the systems of the ship behave during the space flight, launch and its landing. Some dogs even had a few flights.
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Topic: Space - on February 6, 2007 at 3:01:00 PM CET
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Sometimes the sky itself is the best show in town. On January 26, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On the far right, lightning from a thunderstorm flashed in the distance.
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Topic: Space - on February 4, 2007 at 11:41:00 AM CET
Spitzer space telescope images
Enjoy high-resolution images from the Spitzer Space Telescope which you can interactively zoom. Click on the image to reveal more details.
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