New stuff at http://spacescience.nasa.gov/ :
Perhaps the most important news: an international team of cosmologists has
released the first detailed images of the universe in its infancy.
BOOMERANG is a balloon-borne telescope that circumnavigates Antarctica.
Analysis of images from BOOMERANG is already shedding light on some of
cosmology’s outstanding mysteries. The results confirm other recent
findings suggesting that the expansion of the Universe is actually
accelerating, rather than slowing down under the influence of gravity.
They also confirm that the geometry of the Universe is, indeed, “flat”.
Cutting edge cosmology, to challenge the mind and excite that sense of wonder.
HQ press release at ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-067.txt
images and more at http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/~boomerang/
our Balloon program is at
http://www.wff.nasa.gov/pages/scientificballoons.html
Our Stardust mission, which has been collecting interstellar dust since
February 22, will put away its dust catcher for a while on May 1.
Meanwhile, the first ever in-situ chemical analysis of interstellar dust
(collected by Stardust!) has produced a puzzling result: they resemble
tar-like substances, rather than minerals. Stardust page at
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/ , early results at
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/stardust-00c.html
Chandra Shows New Way to Measure Cosmic Distances – here’s a good use for
some of that interstellar dust!
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast26apr_1m.htm
The Hubble Heritage Project, a team who releases a new image from Hubble
each month, is soliciting the public’s votes for their choice of objects to
observe with Hubble. Weigh in at
http://heritage.stsci.edu./public/observations2000/toplevel_mar00.html
New images of the Martian south polar cap and a crater in the Northern
Hemisphere show seasonal changes taking place in each region as seen from
Mars Global Surveyor. Find ’em at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/
NEAR has started moving toward its final 50-kilometer high science orbit,
after an engine burn on April 22 nudged the spacecraft into an elliptical
orbit around asteroid Eros. The final orbit should be achieved on April 30.
http://near.jhuapl.edu/
Finally, I am going to be out of the office for a while. I’ll get the next
message out, and update spacescience.nasa.gov , as soon as I can after
returning.
Cheers!
Craig Tupper dtupper@hq.nasa.gov
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