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Space and astronomy news

Future Missions to Mars Will be Joint NASA/ESA EffortsYesterday

Future missions to Mars, including a sample return mission will be joint endeavors between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). NASA's associate administrator for space science Ed Weiler revealed in Thursday's Mars Science Laboratory press conference that the two space agencies agreed this week, based on initial discussions last July, to work together on future Mars missions. "This delay (of MSL) also means an opportunity of in the future having one Mars program for all the Earth," said Weiler.
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Hubble Repair Mission Will Launch in May '09Yesterday

NASA announced Thursday that space shuttle Atlantis' STS-125 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is targeted to launch May 12, 2009. The mission, which was previously scheduled for October of this year was delayed when a data handling unit on the telescope failed. Since then, engineers have been working to prepare a 1970's era spare unit for flight. They expect to be able to ship the spare, known as the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling System, to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in spring 2009.
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Teddy Bears Go To SpaceYesterday

Two of the teddy bears imaged in Near Space. Credit: CU Spaceflight

I don't think this is what Iran has in mind about launching animals into space, but … you never know. Four teddy bears voyaged to the edge of space on Monday, December 1st via high altitude helium balloon. This was done as an experiment by a student organization at Cambridge University in England, along with a science club and community college. The bears were lifted to 30,085 meters above sea level, and the goal of the experiment was to determine which materials provided the best insulation against the -53 ° C temperatures experienced during the journey. Each of the bears wore a different space suit designed by 11-13 year-olds who were took part in the experiment. But the main goal of the endeavor was to give young students the opportunity to try their hand at a real mission in sending objects into space.
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Students Find ExoplanetYesterday

Three undergraduate students doing a research project discovered an extrasolar planet. The planet is about five times as massive as Jupiter, not all that big as far as previously detected exoplanets go. This is also the first planet discovered orbiting a fast-rotating hot star. The students, Meta de Hoon, Remco van der Burg, and Francis Vuijsje from Leiden University in the Netherlands, were testing a method of investigating the light fluctuations of thousands of stars in the OGLE database in an automated way. The brightness of one of the stars was found to decrease for two hours every 2.5 days by about one percent. Follow-up observations, taken with ESO's Very Large

Iran to Launch Animals to SpaceYesterday

Iran is planning to launch animals into space. According to Mohammed Ebrahimi from Iran's Aerospace Research Institute, in the near future, the Kavoshgar-3 and -4 rockets will use animals as test passengers before they attempt a human mission. On November 26, Iran successfully launched its second space rocket, the Kavoshgar-2, which contained a space lab and a data-monitoring and processing unit. This Iranian rocket is fully capable of packing a small payload and then re-entering Earth's atmosphere with a high degree of accuracy, according to reports. They will attempt two more test flights before trying to launch a working satellite into orbit with a larger rocket, the Safir-e Omid (or Ambassador of Peace) rocket. In August, Iran claimed they successfully launched a dummy satellite into space, which was refuted by the US. Officials from Iran insist the country's space program is non-military in nature.
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