Efence – Spaceflight

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 18, 2018

New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 and 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn’s magnetic field.

“We estimate that this ‘ring rain’ drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming p
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Goleta CA (SPX) Dec 17, 2018

A special visitor is crossing the sky this December: Comet 46P/Wirtanen, sighted with telescopes and binoculars in recent weeks, is on the way to its closest approach to Earth this weekend, when it might become visible to the naked eye.

“Comet 46P/Wirtanen has been a popular proposed target comet for several spacecraft missions. This has resulted in intensive observation campaigns from the
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NASA – Hubble Space Telescope patch.

Dec. 17, 2018

This image from the Hubble Deep UV (HDUV) Legacy Survey encompasses 12,000 star-forming galaxies in a part of the constellation Fornax known as the GOODS-South field. With the addition of ultraviolet light imagery, astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured the largest panoramic view of the fire and fury of star birth in the distant universe.

Hubble’s ultraviolet vision opens up a new window on the evolving universe, tracking the birth of stars over the last 11 billion years up to the busiest star-forming period in the cosmos, which happened about three billion years after the big bang.

So far, ultraviolet light has been the missing piece of the cosmic puzzle. Now, combined with data in infrared and visible light from Hubble and other space- and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have assembled the most comprehensive portrait yet of the universe’s evolutionary history. The image straddles the gap between the very distant galaxies, which can only be viewed in infrared light, and closer galaxies, which can be seen across different wavelengths. The light from distant star-forming regions in remote galaxies started out as ultraviolet, but the expansion of the universe has shifted the light into infrared wavelengths. By comparing images of star formation in the distant and nearby universe, astronomers can get a better understanding of how nearby galaxies grew from small clumps of hot, young stars long ago.

The observation program harnessed the ultraviolet vision of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. This study extends and builds on the previous Hubble multi-wavelength data in the CANDELS-Deep (Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey) fields within the central part of the GOODS (Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey) fields. This mosaic is 14 times the area of the Hubble Ultraviolet Ultra Deep Field released in 2014.

For more information about Hubble, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/
http://www.nasa.gov/hubble
http://www.spacetelescope.org/

Image, Animation, Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA/Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/NASA/Karl Hille.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch
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Columbus OH (SPX) Dec 18, 2018

Humankind’s exploration of space has for years pondered one central question: Is there another world somewhere in the universe where human beings could survive?

And as astrophysicists and astronomers have searched for the answer, they’ve traditionally looked for a world that has water.

But Wendy Panero, professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University, has developed a new way
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2 guys explore the inside of the abandoned Russian space shuttle and watch the recent Soyuz launch

Leeds UK (SPX) Dec 17, 2018

Astronomers have captured one of the most detailed views of a young star taken to date, and revealed an unexpected companion in orbit around it.

While observing the young star, astronomers led by Dr. John Ilee from the University of Leeds discovered it was not in fact one star, but two.

The main object, referred to as MM 1a, is a young massive star surrounded by a rotating disk of ga
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Chicago IL (SPX) Dec 18, 2018

Between 1995 and 2003, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft made several flybys of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Several findings from observations of the moon pointed to evidence of a liquid ocean beneath Europa’s icy surface. The ocean, researchers believe, could harbor microbial life, or evidence of now-extinct microbial life.
While researchers generally agree on where to look – underneath the thick, planet-
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Washington DC (SPX) Dec 18, 2018

As the world urbanizes and technologies such as LED grow lights bring down costs, indoor farming is becoming an increasingly important part of the food supply. Eventually, indoor farming techniques could help humans maintain a healthy diet in space. However, because of the completely closed systems in which indoor crops are grown, imbalances in soil nutrients, salinity, temperature, and other fa
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