From: Craig Tupper (dtupper@hq.nasa.gov)
Greetings,
There hasn’t too much space science news that I considered worthy of
posting since my last message of 10 days ago, which is a good thing since I
was swamped with work on my “real” job and didn’t have much time to update
the web. Anyway, sorry to be away, here’s what IS new at
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/ :
——————-
A successful 22-second engine burn on March 3 put NEAR into a near-circular
orbit 200 kilometers above asteroid Eros, where it will stay until April 1.
The images and data continue to stream in. The laser rangefinder (to
measure the distance to the asteroid) has been turned on, and it works
better than required. http://near.jhuapl.edu/
——————-
Scientists using Hubble images have rediscovered two tiny moons of Uranus
that have not been seen since Voyager 2 passed by the planet in 1986.
Story at http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/March00/UranusMoons.bpf.html
——————-
Detailed measurements of sulfur isotopes in five Martian meteorites have
enabled researchers to determine that the abundant sulfur on the surface of
Mars is due largely to chemical reactions in the Red Planet’s atmosphere.
(Whew, that’s a long sentence.) Their conclusions also suggest that the
variations in sulfur isotopes found on ALH84001, the Martian meteorite
thought by some scientists to contain evidence of ancient Martian life, are
not due to biological processes.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mcsulfur.htm
——————-
Chandra has imaged a colossal cosmic “weather system” produced by the
collision of two giant clusters of galaxies. Forecast: 100 million
degrees and starry. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/cycle1/a2142/
——————-
Last week we announced the selection of one flight investigation and four
interdisciplinary scientist investigations for the Gamma Ray Large Area
Space Telescope (GLAST) mission, planned for launch in 2005. GLAST is
intended to explore the most energetic and violent events in the universe.
Press release at ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-032.txt
——————-
Finally, launch of IMAGE has slipped a little, and is currently expected no
earlier than March 25. IMAGE is the first satellite mission dedicated to
imaging the Earth’s magnetosphere. Follow the news at
http://pluto.space.swri.edu/IMAGE/
Cheers!
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