European researchers discovered what looked to be three ‘super-Earths’ orbiting around a star and two other solar systems that contained small planets. They believe that these large Earth-like planets are more common then we think.
“Does every single star harbor planets and, if yes, how many?” asked Michel Mayor of Switzerland’s Geneva Observatory. “We may not yet know the answer but we are making huge progress towards it,” Mayor said in a statement.
The Mars Phoenix Lander was able to deliver a detailed view of the soil on Mars back to NASA. It took pictures of clumps of dirt that consisted of what looked like minerals and fine grains.
Scientists stated that the dirt that was picked up and placed on the microscope and was described as having a orange-reddish hue. When zooming in, scientists noticed green particles that could be olivine, a mineral usually associated with volcanic eruptions. The soil also contained round, black glassy specks that could be volcanic glass, said mission scientist Tom Pike of the Imperial College in London.
Shuttle Discovery has finally made it home after their 14 day mission – which was very successful. The crew landed at the Kennedy Space Center Saturday morning. Mission Control was happy to see the shuttle and radioed them congratulations to the Commander Mary Kelly and its crew, “Beautiful landing, Mark, and congratulations on a great mission.”
The crew aboard the Discovery space shuttle was confused and a little worried when they spotted an object floating from their ship and into space. They are scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center sin a week – but are now wondering if the object was something of importance. The object could mean that something is broken or it could simply be a piece of ice or a plastic bag that was floating out of the payload bay.
The U.S. space shuttle Discovery has undocked from the International Space Station Wednesday morning and will be leaving the brand new Japanese science lab that they came to install. It took the crew nine days to install the Kibo lab.
They are taking back with them the U.S. astronaut Garrett Reisman to be a new member of their crew. For three months he was a part of the three person crew on the space station. Gregory Chamitoff will be replacing him.
Sergey Brin – Google’s co-founder – has made plans to do something that many people can only dream about. He is going into the wide vastness of space. Brin is an investor in Space Adventures – which is a space tourist outfit in Virginia. He will most likely be taking a ride on a Russian Soyuz on the way to the International Space Station in 2011.
Astronauts decided to take a walk outside of the International Space Station over the weekend in order to fix the outpost’s cooling system and to complete the outfitting of the Japanese Kibo research laboratory. The cooling and air conditioning system was working – but NASA wanted to make sure that it stayed that way.
Astronauts on the international space station will be taking care of the plumbing this week. The toilet in the space station broke almost two weeks ago. Because of this the crew have been confined to the urine side only of the commode – which is making them flush manually with more water several times a day.
It hasn’t even been a week and already NASA’s Phoenix lander has taken some interesting pictures of Mar’s surface and discovered a lump of ice or a Martian rock on the surface. Now NASA has ordered the Phoenix to dig up the dirt around it and analyze the material.
The Phoenix Mars Lander from NASA is making its towards the surface of Mars and is scheduled to land in less than two weeks. During landing the probe will try to avoid the crash landing that its predecessor – the Mars Polar Lander – experienced.
“This is not a trip to grandma’s house,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. “Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is hard and risky.”