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News -01-05-06 Lasers Promise Greatly Improved Interplanetary Communications (NewScientistsSpace.com) "Interplanetary space probes currently communicate via microwaves, but those transmitters are not as tightly focused as laser beams. This spreading reduces microwave power received, and thus the maximum data rate. For example, NASA's Mars Odyssey probe can send only 128,000 bits per second to Earth." "Because laser beams spread much more slowly, they can deliver more power to ground-based optical receivers, allowing higher data rates." 01-06 -01-14-05 Cassini Spacecraft Probe to Land on Titan (CNN News) "The Huygens probe is plunging through the orange clouds of Saturn's moon Titan, and scientists hope to soon have their first glimpse of the mysterious moon." 1-05 -01-14-05 Cassini Spacecraft Probe to Land on Titan (NASA) "Mission managers for the European Space Agency's Huygens probe said the spacecraft is on course for its descent to Saturn's mysterious moon Titan on Friday, Jan. 14. The probe, which detached from NASA's Cassini orbiter last month, will be the first object to explore on-site the unique environment of Titan, whose chemistry is thought to be very similar to that of early Earth, before life formed." 1-05 -07-25-05 Space Shuttle Astronauts (CNN News) "The astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery are also groundbreakers -- the first to fly since the Columbia disaster in 2003." 7-05   -07-25-05 Space Shuttle to Launch (CNN News) "NASA said Monday it is ready to launch the first space shuttle since the 2003 Columbia disaster despite not fully understanding what caused a problem with a sensor in the external fuel tank." "Discovery is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center at 10:39 a.m. ET Tuesday [July 26]." 7-05   -07-26-05 Discovery Blasts Off for Space (ABC News) "Discovery and seven astronauts blasted off Tuesday on America's first manned space shot since the 2003 Columbia disaster, ending a painful, 2 1/2-year shutdown devoted to making the shuttle less risky and NASA more safety-conscious." 7-05 -07-27-05 NASA Grounds Shuttles (CNN News) "There will be no more shuttle launches until NASA engineers determine the effect of debris that fell from the shuttle Discovery during blastoff Tuesday, said Bill Parsons, space shuttle program manager." 7-05 -08-07-05 Discovery to Land (CNN News) "NASA engineers on the ground and astronauts in space are preparing for the first re-entry of a space shuttle since the 2003 Columbia disaster." " 'Staff preparing NASA's main landing facility for Monday's 4:46 a.m. ET scheduled touchdown were feeling a bit of "nervous excitement," an agency spokesman said.' " 8-05 -08-09-05 Discovery Lands Safely (ABC News) "Discovery and its crew of seven glided safely back to Earth on Tuesday, ending a riveting, at times agonizing, 14-day test of space shuttle safety that was shadowed by the ghosts of Columbia." 8-05 -08-12-05 Orbiter Off to Mars (ABC News) "A spacecraft loaded with high-tech cameras, antenna and radar began a seven-month voyage to Mars on Friday that aims to gather more data on the Red Planet than all previous explorations combined." "During its first two years, the orbiter will build on NASA's knowledge of the history of the planet's ice. The planet is cold and dry with large caps of frozen water at its poles, but scientists think it was a wetter and possibly warmer place eons ago conditions that might have been conducive to life. Scientists are also trying to determine if it could support future human outposts." 8-05 -08-20-05 Discovery's Trip Home Delayed (ABC News) "Discovery had been expected to arrive at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday after riding piggyback atop a jumbo jet across the country, but NASA delayed the trip for a day because of weather concerns, said Bruce Buckingham, a spokesman with the space agency." "After landing, Discovery underwent maintenance inside a steel structure on the base two hours north of Los Angeles. Crews purged the shuttle of hazardous substances, removed fuel from the on-board tanks and attached a 10,000-pound aluminum tail cone to eliminate drag during flight." 8-05 -09-04-05 Fastest Space Traveler Located (Scientific American) "Superman may be faster than a speeding bullet, but there is a neutron star in our galaxy that can compete for the title of fastest space traveler. Astronomers have tracked the movement of a pulsar, making the first direct measurement of its impressive speed." 9-05 -09-10-05 New Planet Discovered (ScienceDaily.com) "A team of researchers from the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, the California Institute of Technology, and Yale University have discovered a new planet." "Officially designated 2003 UB313, scientists said the planet is located in the outer area of the solar system is intrinsically brighter than Pluto and three times further away." "Astronomers said assuming the reflectivity of the surface is the same as Pluto's, it is the largest object detected in the solar system since the discovery of Neptune and its moon Triton in 1846." 9-05 -10-07-04 Residue Seen from Supernova of 1604 (MSNBC News) "Four hundred years ago this week, a previously unseen star suddenly appeared in the night sky. Discovered on Oct. 9, 1604, it was brighter than all other stars." "No supernova in our galaxy has been discovered since the 1604 event." 10-04 -11-16-04 Leonid Meteor Shower (The Leonids) "The annual Leonid meteor shower is set to rain space dust over Earth for the next few days, putting on a show for night skygazers. Astronomers disagree as to when the shower will peak -- some say Wednesday, others Friday." Every year at this time, Earth passes through the dusty debris trail of the comet Tempel-Tuttle. As the tiny meteors -- most no bigger than a grain of sand -- hit earth's atmosphere, they burn up in a fiery streak. They are also known as shooting stars." 11-04 -11-23-05 Supernovae Back Einstein's Constant (Scientific American) "Now new observations from an international team of astronomers seem to show that dark energy is like the cosmological constant, unvarying throughout space and time. By measuring the distances to 71 far-off supernovae, the scientists were able to ascertain with a high degree of confidence that the effect dark energy exerts on supernovae light does not vary with distance. The researchers also plugged this data into a so-called equation of state, which measures the relationship between pressure and density, and found that dark energy must be less than -0.85--awfully close to Einstein's cosmological constant at -1. 'Our observation is at odds with a number of theoretical ideas about the nature of dark energy that predict that it should change as the universe expands and, as far as we can see, it doesn't,' says team member Ray Carlberg of the University of Toronto." 11-05 -12-11-05 Life Began in Space? (Scientific American) "Louis Allamandola and his colleagues at the NASA Ames Research Center have created primitive cells of a sort—empty, two-layer membranes (see image)—from elementary chemicals, exposed to conditions like those in interstellar clouds. 'Scientists believe the molecules needed to make a cell's membrane, and thus for the origin of life, are all over space,' Allamandola says. 'This discovery implies that life could be everywhere in the universe.' " 12-05 08-06-03 Mars Rover Expedition (CNN) "A NASA robot packed with eight cameras, geology instruments and super-rugged wheels roared into space on Tuesday, one of three missions headed to Mars this summer during the most favorable cosmic conditions in centuries." "Their geologic studies, scheduled to last three months, are designed to find physical evidence of water activity on Mars from billions of years ago, when the planet was thought to have been wetter and warmer -- and possibly inhabited by microbes." "Like surfers who have been waiting for the big wave, the spacecraft are riding to the red planet as Mars and Earth make their nearest pass to each other since prehistoric times." "A closer approach won't take place until 2287, according to Sky & Telescope Magazine." 8-03 08-06-05 Discovery Shuttle Starts Home (MSNBC News) "With the most anxiety-ridden part of their flight still to come, shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven set off for home Saturday after leaving the international space station." "Monday’s planned predawn re-entry will be the first by a space shuttle since Columbia’s catastrophic descent 2½ years ago." 08-05 09-19-05 NASA to Replace Shuttle Design (Bloomberg.com) "NASA plans to replace the space shuttle with a reusable spacecraft shaped like the Apollo capsule that first took U.S. astronauts to the moon in 1969, the U.S. space agency said today." "The Crew Exploration Vehicle will be three times as big as the Apollo capsule and can be used as many as 10 times, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement." "The spacecraft will be able to take as many as four astronauts to the moon and as many as six people on missions to Mars, NASA said. It will also be able to deliver supplies and crews to the International Space Station." 9-05 11-14-04 Ion propulsion rocket gets to the Moon (CBS News) "A European Space Agency rocket entered moon orbit Monday in a unique mission using a pioneering power plant." "The s-called SMART-1 spacecraft blasted off from Kourou, French Guiana, Sept. 27, 2003, on top of an Ariane 5 rocket, the Washington Post reported." "Since then its ion propulsion engine has been slowly moving the spacecraft by expelling positively charged atoms, or ions, of the gas xenon, accelerated by an electrical field inside the spacecraft's engine." "The engine does not combust fuel; rather it splits atoms with electricity to get ions, accelerates them at high speed, and then ejects them, driving the spacecraft forward. SMART-1 generates its electricity by converting sunlight with outsize solar arrays that give the spacecraft a 45-foot wingspan." 11-04

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