Space Science News from NASA HQ 5 July 2000

Just a few things I’ve posted this past week at
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/ :

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A team of researchers have reported finding a significant amount of
deuterium (a rare isotope of hydrogen) raining into the center of our Milky
Way galaxy. The abundance of deuterium provides important insights into the
formation of the Milky Way and demonstrates that deuterium is not made by
stars or stellar activity.
http://www.williams.edu/News/NewsReleases/00062902.html

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The launch of the first pair of Cluster 2 satellites has been pushed back
three days to July 15, to make way for the launch of the next major part of
the International Space Station at Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. The
second pair of spacecraft will launch on August 9. Together, the four
spacecraft will enable 3-dimensional studies of how the Earth’s
magnetosphere responds to the solar wind. Cluster 2 is a project of the
European Space Agency, with major contributions from us.

ESA Cluster 2 page: http://sci.esa.int/home/clusterii/index.cfm

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A new 14 hour Chandra X-ray Observatory observation of the supernova
remnant Cassiopeia A has given the best map yet of heavy elements ejected
in a supernova explosion.

image and text: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/cycle1/cas_a062700/index.html
Chandra: http://chandra.harvard.edu/index.html
Space Science missions: http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/index.htm

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Even MORE Mars water news: the crust of Mars may hold two to three times
more water than scientists had previously believed. This is based on a
study comparing the amount of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, found in a
meteorite of
martian origin to the amount found in the martian atmosphere. This follows
the revelation that liquid water may have flowed on Mars relatively
recently, and another meteorite study suggesting that Mars’ ancient oceans
were salty.

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0019.html

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