Space Science News from NASA Headquarters 10 October 2000
Greetings, fellow denizens of this cosmic dust speck!
What’s new at http://spacescience.nasa.gov/ :
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The High Energy Transient Explorer-2 gamma ray burst mission launch over
the weekend appears to have been fully successful! Activation and complete
testing of the spacecraft systems will continue over the coming days.
Hopefully, HETE-2 will soon be nailing down the locations of GRBs, so that
other telescopes can study them at other wavelengths.
press release: ftp://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/PAO/Releases/2000/00-123.htm
HETE-2: http://space.mit.edu/HETE/
the updated and exhaustive list of Space Science missions:
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/
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A team of interdisciplinary astrobiologists from NASA and other agencies is
homing in on recognizing the microbial biosignatures for life, making it
easier someday to identify life on other planets. Building better nets for
ET bug-catching at http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2000/00_67AR.html
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Hubble has peered deep into a neighboring galaxy (the Small Magellanic
Cloud) to reveal details of the formation of new stars. Pretty pic and
story at http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2000/30/pr-photos.html
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On its way to Saturn, Cassini has taken its first color image of Jupiter.
In December, Cassini will whiz by Jupiter and perform joint observations
with Galileo, which has been wowing us from Jovian orbit since December
1995.
pic and story:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/press/imageadv/imagead001009.html
Cassini: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/
Galileo: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/
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New Spacewatch Telescope Detects Its First Asteroids: another rock-hunter
starts collecting.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/10/001010072508.htm
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A team of Spanish and German astronomers have found evidence for numerous
“superjupiters” in Orion’s Sigma cluster. Were they ejected from stellar
disks, or did they form independently?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/10/001006075617.htm
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Cheers… and thanks for your interest in Space Science!
