AWESOME Space Stories of the Week

Monday, March 16, 2015

AWESOME Space Stories of the Week

Best Space Stories of the Week – March 15, 2015:

By Mike Wall, Senior Writer

Date: 15 March 2015 Time: 11:29 AM ET

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is home to giant water geysers in the moon's south polar region. Scientists say interactions between hot water and rock on the floor of a subsurface ocean powers the hydrothermal reaction pushing gas and ice through Enceladus' 50-kilometer-thick (31 miles) ice crust.

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA launched a new space-weather mission, scientists found evidence of a hydrothermal system on Saturn's ocean-bearing moon Enceladus and three astronauts returned safely to Earth after nearly six months aboard the International Space Station. Here's a look at Space.com's top stories of the week:

NASA space weather mission takes flight

NASA launched its Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, which consists of four satellites that will study energy eruptions in Earth’s magnetic field caused by space weather. MMS blasted off Thursday night (March 12) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. [Full Story: Spectacular Night Launch Sends NASA Satellites on Hunt for Magnetic Collisions]

A hydrothermal system on Enceladus

Scientists have found evidence of active hydrothermal vents on Saturn's ice-covered moon Enceladus. Conditions deep in Enceladus' subsurface ocean may therefore be similar to those that gave rise to the first life on Earth. [Full Story: Hot Springs on Saturn's Moon Enceladus Powered by Hydrothermal Vents]

Spaceflyers come home

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft touched down on the steppes of Kazakhstan Wednesday night (March 11), wrapping up a nearly six-month stint aboard the International Space Station for NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore and cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova. [Full Story: US-Russian Space Crew Returns to Earth After 167 Days in Orbit]

Happy birthday, Kepler!

NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which has discovered more than half of all known planets beyond our solar system, just celebrated six years in space. The prolific planet hunter blasted off on March 6, 2009. [Full Story: Happy Birthday, Kepler! NASA Planet Hunter Marks 6 Years in Space]

NASA test-fires booster for Space Launch System megarocket

A giant rocket booster designed to help NASA’s next megarocket, the Space Launch System, soar into space roared to life in the Utah proving grounds of aerospace firm Orbital ATK on Wednesday (March 11). [Full Story: World's Largest Solid Rocket Booster Fired in Ground Test for NASA]

The first X-flare of 2015

The sun unleashed its first superpowerful flare of the year on Wednesday (March 11), and the intense eruption was aimed directly at Earth. The monster X-class solar flare, the strongest category of sun storms, caused an hour-long blackout in high-frequency radio communications over wide areas. [Full Story: Sun Unleashes 1st Monster Solar Flare of 2015 (Photos, Video)]

Pluto probe performs most-distant engine burn ever

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which will zoom through the Pluto system on July 14, fired its engines for 93 seconds on Tuesday (March 10), when it was about 3 billion miles (4.83 billion kilometers) from Earth. No spacecraft had ever conducted an engine burn at so great a distance from its handlers, mission officials said. [Full Story: NASA Probe Makes Record-Setting Engine Burn on Path to Pluto]

A subsurface ocean on Ganymede

A salty ocean lurks beneath the icy surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found. Ganymede's ocean could actually harbor more water than all of Earth's surface water combined, according to NASA officials. [Full Story: Jupiter's Moon Ganymede Has a Salty Ocean with More Water than Earth]

Opportunity spies odd rocks near end of marathon trek

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover took a break in the home stretch of its Red Planet marathon to study some rocks the likes of which it's never seen before. As of March 5, the rover's odometer read 26.139 miles (42.067 kilometers), leaving it just 140 yards (128 meters) short of the marathon milestone. [Full Story: On Mars, Opportunity Rover Spots Weird Rocks Near Marathon Finish Line]

Lockheed Martin unveils ambitious new space transportation system

Aerospace firm Lockheed Martin has announced its plans for a new spaceflight system that could ferry cargo to the International Space Station, and also help get people to deep-space destinations such as the moon and Mars. [Full Story: Lockheed's 'Jupiter' Space Tug Could Fly to Space Station, Moon and Beyond]

What will NASA's Dawn probe look for at dwarf planet Ceres?

A Q&A with Chris Russell, principal investigator of NASA's Dawn mission, which recently arrived in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. [Full Story: Studying Dwarf Planet Ceres: Q&A with Dawn Scientist Chris Russell]

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+.

FASHION WEEK - USA Fashion and Music News
HOLLYWOOD NEWS - Hollywood News
PALCO MP3 - Download Music Legally Direct From Artist
LAST FM - Download Music Legally Direct From Artist
USA FASHION - Fashion In USA Photography Videos Beauty
DISNEY CHANNEL - Photos and Music News
BABY JUSTIN BIEBER - Google Images Google News
LADY GAGA - Google Images Google News
UNIVERSE PICTURES - Google Images Nature Pictures
VICTORIA´S SECRET Google + - Victoria´s Secret Fashion Show Photos

No comments:

Post a Comment

NASA Photos Photography

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Monday, March 16, 2015