Scientific American - Space

Space Show Takes Viewers on a Stellar Journey

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:00:00 EST

As moviegoers make plans to watch summer blockbusters this weekend, there is an additional choice for New Yorkers: Journey to the Stars, the new space show opening July 4 at the Hayden Planetarium in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Rose Center for Earth and Space. [More]

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter snaps its first images of the moon

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:20:00 EST

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached its destination just last week, is already showing its stuff.

The space agency switched on the LRO's cameras two days ago and today released the first images from the orbiter's mission, which is intended to pave the way for the return of astronauts to the moon. [More]

Space shuttle Endeavour's hydrogen leak appears fixed

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:58:00 EST

Will the third time be a charm for space shuttle Endeavour? NASA successfully tested a troublesome gas-venting system this morning, green-lighting the twice-delayed launch of the shuttle to the International Space Station. [More]

Astronomers Size Up a Candidate for Midsize Black Hole

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:01:00 EST

Black holes vary greatly in size, from relatively small ones several times the mass of the sun, which are born of collapsed stars, to supermassive lurkers like the one at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, with the mass of about four million suns. [More]

NASA set to test repairs of space shuttle leak

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:57:00 EST

NASA will refill space shuttle Endeavour's external fuel tank tomorrow morning to test whether the leak that twice scrubbed the orbiter's launch earlier this month has been properly repaired. [More]

Stuck Mars rover passing its time as an observatory

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:30:00 EST

The hobbled Spirit rover, stuck in a tricky patch of Martian soil, is whiling away the hours with a little stargazing. From its stationary post in an area known as Troy, the rover has been turning its cameras to the skies to act as an ad hoc observatory on Mars, as noted by Universe Today. [More]

Heads up! Tap Twitter for alerts when space station is overhead

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:28:00 EST

The International Space Station (ISS) is a big bird, boasting nearly an acre of solar panels along its backbone. Those panels make the ISS reflective enough so that the station can sometimes be seen from the ground as it passes roughly 220 miles (350 kilometers) above. But where and when to look? [More]

NASA gains Senate support over budget cuts proposed by House

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:00:00 EST

The budgetary committee of the U.S. Senate yesterday approved a bill that would give NASA all the money President Obama requested for the agency for fiscal year 2010, undoing a proposed House cut of roughly half a billion dollars. [More]

Hello Moon, Good-Bye Rennie

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:19:08 EST

[More]

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Search for dark matter goes deep, with Earth as a blocker

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EST

Dark matter, written into theory to explain the behavior of massive celestial objects far above us, could be detected by heading down below--nearly a mile into the Earth. That’s the hope, anyway, of an experiment scheduled to begin next year in a South Dakota gold mine that closed in 2002. [More]

Saturn's moon Enceladus spews clues on habitability

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:25:00 EST

A pair of papers in this week's Nature look at evidence that Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, may have an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface. Such an ocean would bode well for Enceladus harboring some kind of extraterrestrial life, in a location close enough for robotic probes to visit. [More]

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter enters orbit around moon

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:49:00 EST

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched last week to survey the moon with an eye toward future human exploration, has reached lunar orbit. The spacecraft entered orbit today at 6:27 A.M. (Eastern Daylight Time), placing a NASA probe around the moon for the first time in nearly 10 years. [More]

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Up and away: NASA's lunar spacecraft are on their way

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:21:00 EST

After failing to get the shuttle Endeavour off the launch pad this week, NASA had better luck with its mission to map the moon. [More]

Second hydrogen leak shuts down NASA's Endeavour launch until July

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:49:00 EST

Another hydrogen leak will keep the space shuttle Endeavour's crew on the ground for another month while NASA investigates the problem. The space agency scrubbed today's scheduled launch early this morning when a gaseous hydrogen leak was detected at the same location where a similar leak halted the shuttle's original June 13 launch. [More]

Earth's Fried Far-Future Postponed

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:12:08 EST

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

About a billion years from now, some scientists say, the sun will be too bright for comfort, and our formerly hospitable planet will no longer be able to support life. If visions of this impending heat death disturb you, researchers from the California Institute of Technology have some good news. Their calculations add at least another billion years to Earth’s expiration date, results published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [More]

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Updates: Whatever Happened to Hubble's Last Fix?

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:00:00 EST

How Mercury Gets into SeafoodScientists have known how mercury from industrial pollution affects local freshwater ecosystems and poses a human health threat [see “Mapping Mercury”; SciAm, September 2005]. New data reveal just how the mercury cycle functions in the ocean. Based on samples from 16 sites from Hawaii to Alaska and on computer simulations, researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey and other institutions conclude that bacterial decomposition of algae that have sunk from the surface to mid-depth plays a crucial role. In the presence of mercury, which in this study came from Asia via ocean currents, the decomposition process creates methylmercury, which works its way up the food chain and into predators such as tuna. The study, in the May 1 Global Biogeochemical Cycles, also finds that the North Pacific has seen a 30 percent rise in mercury contamination since the mid-1990s.

[More]

Under pressure: NASA aims to fix Endeavor's leaky fuel system and launch June 17

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:30:00 EST

As NASA engineers ponder how the shuttle Endeavor's gaseous hydrogen venting system started leaking and delayed the spacecraft's launch, the agency said it will try to put the shuttle in orbit on Wednesday at 5:40 a.m. ET. The shuttle's problems likewise push the launch of the moon-probing Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) back at least one day, to Thursday, June 18. [More]

NASA Return to Lunar Orbit Will Scout for Future Human Exploration

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EST

Atop an Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida sits the first step in what will surely be a long and arduous task for NASA--returning humans to the moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, set to lift off this week, will orbit the moon in search of potential landing sites and useful resources, such as water ice, that would facilitate a long-term human presence. [More]

John Rennie Recollects the Moon Landing

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EST

Forty years ago this month I walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The odds are good that you did, too, if you were within the reach of a television or radio on that July 20. My family and 10-year-old self were vacationing on Cape Cod at the time, but my attention was mostly 230,000 miles overhead. With whelk shells in the silky white dunes, I rehearsed the lunar module’s landing dozens of times along audacious flight plans that NASA would no doubt have discouraged.

For days I watched news anchor Walter Cronkite take America on tours of mission control and interview scientists and engineers about what the astronauts might find in the Sea of Tranquillity. Film clips recalled past fantasies of lunar exploration, from the French 1902 short Le Voyage dans la Lune to the 1950 classic Destination Moon. To this day, I remember learning about the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, which claimed that telescopes had seen bat-winged humanoids flitting through lunar caverns.

[More]

Space Geology: From the Moon to Mars

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EST

Forty years ago this month the lunar surface reverberated with life for the first time. Forty years from now will Mars, too, come alive? President Barack Obama has affirmed the broad goals for human spaceflight that his predecessor put forward in 2004: retire the shuttle in 2010, develop a replacement line of rockets (named Ares), return to the moon by 2020, and go to Mars, perhaps in the mid-2030s [see “To the Moon and Beyond,” by Charles Dingell, William A. Johns and Julie Kramer White; Scientific American, October 2007]. The program is known as Constellation.

For now, policy makers are worried less about Mars than about the downtime between the last shuttle launch and first Ares flight, during which the U.S. will depend on Russia or private companies to launch its astronauts into orbit. What was originally supposed to be a two-year gap has widened to six, and in May the Obama administration announced that former aerospace executive Norman Augustine will lead a review of the program to see how it might get back on track.

[More]