Space Science News from NASA HQ 19 Dec 2000
What’s new at http://spacescience.nasa.gov :
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Add Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, which is bigger than two of the solar system’s
nine planets, to the growing list of worlds with evidence of liquid water
under the surface. Galileo provided the data. Take a chilly plunge into
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2000/aguganymederoundup.html and visit
Galileo at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/
In more Jupiter news, December 14 began an intensive two weeks of joint
observation of Jupiter’s aurora by Hubble and Cassini. To illustrate HST’s
contribution, a prior image of Jupiter’s aurora, showing the
never-before-seen magnetic “footprint” of the moons Ganymede and Europa, is
featured at http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2000/38/index.html
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According to a new study: even during the violent era of Earth’s early
history, when our young planet was being frequently whacked by asteroids
and comets, conditions most of the time at the Earth’s surface were quite
hospitable for the microbes that lived here. This supports other results
in recent years, suggesting that life developed very early on our
planet. Maybe elsewhere
too?
http://www.rochester.edu/pr/News/NewsReleases/latest/AnbarBombardment.html
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Black Holes Younger, Meaner, and More Plentiful Than Previously Thought: A
team of astronomers using Chandra has found that supermassive black holes
contribute about as much energy to the Universe as all the stars combined.
Many have formed recently rather than in the early, violent stages of
galaxy birth. And, at any give time in the history of the Universe, about
10 percent of all supermassive black holes are actively pulling in huge
quantities of gas and whole stars.
Story at http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~cowie/chandra/chandra.html
Chandra at http://chandra.harvard.edu/index.html
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The science team that originally offered evidence for fossil life in the
Mars meteorite ALH84001 a few years ago has published new evidence in
support of that claim. Magnetic bugs at
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/media/rel/2000/J00-84.html
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We have released the new Space Science Enterprise 2000 Strategic Plan, now
also available in sections. The new NASA Strategic Plan is also
out. Policy lovers will want to visit
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/strategy/2000/index.html , and also download
the NASA plan from http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codez/plans/pl2000.pdf
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Cool web site of the week: many North Americans will be treated to a
partial solar eclipse on Christmas day, December 25. Find out how much of
the sun you’ll be missing, learn how to observe it safely, see an
animation, and lots more at the NASA eclipse page,
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html
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