Space and Science News
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on January 14, 2003 at 12:49:07 AM
Your daily dose of real science news!
Mapping Earth's Ice Sheets.
More Old Quasar coverage.
New moons of Neptune.
First Israeli Astronaut.
Mapping Earth's Ice Sheets.
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Inside the 13-story rocket's nose cone were ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite) and CHIPSat (Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer), a spacecraft duo in which ICESat was the primary cargo and CHIPSat -- a smaller University Explorer Class probe -- was basically along for the ride.
More Old Quasar coverage.
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The faint light of 26 young galaxies and three quasars, objects thought to be powered by supermassive black holes, were observed at a distance of some 13 billion light-years, at the time the universe was less than a billion years old and apparently just emerging from an epoch of utter darkness. Scientists said the observations could provide important clues to when and how the lights came on all over the cosmos.
New moons of Neptune.
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Astronomers announced today the discovery of three previously unseen moons orbiting Neptune, bringing the total of satellites around that planet to 11. The moons are the first found at Neptune since the Voyager II mission in 1989 and the first detected from the ground since 1949. Each is roughly 18-24 miles (30-40 kilometers) in diameter. The research was led by Matthew Holman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and JJ Kavelaars of the National Research Council of Canada.
First Israeli Astronaut.
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On Thursday, Columbia is to lift off on a 16-day research flight crammed with more than 90 experiments and investigations that will mean round-the-clock duties for its seven-member crew, which includes the first Israeli astronaut. The countdown began today.