Tuesday Tech News
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on April 11, 2006 at 1:24:40 PM
NASA to smash probe into Moon looking for water.
Venus Express reaches Venus.
Comet-Asteroid breaks up.
Spirit goes into sunbathing mode.
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"What this mission buys us is an early attempt to get to know what the resources are," said Scott Horowitz, head of NASA's lunar exploration program. "We know for sure that for human exploration to succeed we're going to have to eventually live off the land." Water ice could be used to make oxygen for astronauts to breathe, as well as an oxidizer for rocket fuel.
Venus Express reaches Venus.
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The critical 49-minute-long manoeuvre was designed to reduce the spacecraft's velocity relative to Venus by 15%, allowing it to be pulled into orbit around the planet. At 0845 BST, with its engine still firing, Venus Express disappeared behind the planet, severing contact between the craft and Earth.
Comet-Asteroid breaks up.
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However, at 1.9 billion kilometres, this object is very far from the Sun. Another mysterious feature is that much more gas and dust is escaping from the breakaway fragment than from the parent body. The disintegration has created a dust cloud more than 100,000 km across and which is several times brighter than the original object was before the event.
Spirit goes into sunbathing mode.
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Spirit reached Low Ridge Haven over the weekend and as a result, the rover's power supply has been bumped up by as much as 20%, Squyres says. Science observations are just getting underway at the new site, but he says there are some "wonderful, finely-layered bedrock outcrops" there and it is likely the rover will remain there for the entire winter science campaign.