Astronomy

NASA has some new information that is leading them to believe that Mars could support life. They used the special Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and scientists were able to discover carbonate minerals on the surface of the planet.

For the longest time scientists believed that the environment on Mars was acidic - but because carbonates dissolve in acid they have decided to rethink things. NASA said that these new breakthrough findings lead them to believe that different watery environments once existed. This could mean that it once supported life.

NASA has high hopes that they will be able to send people to the moon a year earlier then they planned. They had scheduled to send people in 2015.

At this time Congress is worried by the fact that we have to rely on Russia in order to make any trips to the International Space Station during that time. NASA is preparing for any demands that the new President might have and is working on a new study that pushes up the test launch of the brand new Ares rocketship.

Hundreds of photos of Mercury were beamed to Earth by a U.S. spacecraft. The photos showed images of landscapes on the surface of the planet that have never been seen before. They released four of these high resolution pictures to the media - which were posted on NASA’s Messenger web site.

Scientists are stumped by the fact that the sun has gone 200 days this year and no sunspots have been spotted. The sun has not been this blank since 1954 when it was spotless for a total of 241 days. Usually the sun will go through an 11 year cycle and scientists say that it is now coming from the quietest part of that cycle known as the solar minimum. Yet, for this particular phase it has been unusually quiet and had little of the roiling magnetic fields that cause sunspots.

For quite some time now NASA has been trying to discover whether or not there is water on Mars due to certain pictures that they received from their land rover. That research came to an abrupt end when they discovered that it was snowing on the planet.

The Large Hadron Collider (also knows as the LHC) is the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. Despite many attempts at trying to delay the activation of the machine it looks like it will be turned on for the very first time September 10th.

The machine was built on the borders of France and Switzerland and has been worked on since the early 1980’s. More then 8,000 physicists from 85 different countries have worked long and hard on this machine and are excited to finally see it in action.

NASA stated this week that a worm - known as Gammima or Tarerf - was discovered on a computer in the International Space Station. It is a generic Trojan that steals passwords and they say that it is not the first time they have encountered this problem. A spokesperson for NASA stated that there was no missing information and it did not disrupt the mission.

The NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope have collected much more clues on certain dark matter and the properties that they hold. They recently captured what is believed to be a powerful collision of galaxy clusters a good two years after the Bullet Cluster was first discovered. This new collision (which has been labeled the MACS J0025.4-1222) offer evidence on the inner workings behind the dark matter of the universe. This evidence will in turn help scientists to discover the separation between ordinary and dark matter.

NASA has decided to take corrective action in the Government Accountability Office and the protest that has been lodged against the Exploration Systems & Technology. Officials of NASA stated that they believe the issue requires the termination of the contract for the Constellation Space Suit System that was agreed upon with Oceaneering International.

The Orion is NASA’s first manned test flight and will be replacing the current U.S. space shuttles - but it will not launch until 2014. NASA was originally shooting for 2013 - but because of technical and funding problems they have had to change the date.