Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Solar System . ... Moon . ... Comets and Asteroids . ... What changed our view of Chariklo is the discovery of a ring system around it, the first such feature found around a Solar System body smaller than a gas giant planet. ... Almost certainly the rings were born when a collision with a smaller asteroid blasted millions of tonnes of debris off CharikloтАЩs surface. ... A ring system detected around the Centaur (10199) Chariklo (Braga-Rigas et al.) ...

... Martian Surface in Perspective . ... Credit Copyright: Mars Exploration Rover Mission , JPL , NASA Explanation: Spirit moved across Mars yesterday as the rover successfully maneuvered down off its lander, driving its six wheels onto the floor of Gusev crater. ... A perspective projection of Spirit's local martian rocks and soil is shown above, based on 3D color image data recorded when rover was still perched on its landing platform. ... Publications with keywords: Mars - Spirit rover . ...

History of Space Exploration . ... Space History Introduction . ... Chronology of Solar System Discovery This is a partial list of past, present, and future planetary and solar missions; for a complete account, please see the Space Exploration Chronology. Space exploration is becoming increasingly internationalized; as a result, the national designations listed here are not completely representative of the true nature of all projects. ... Apollo Lunar Surface Journal . ... Mariner Missions . ...

... Spacecraft . ... To space by cannon? Finally, the deep space explorers --spacecraft which break away from the Earth's gravity . ... The "Luna" series of the USSR conducted 7 soft landing of unmanned probes, two of them with wheeled robotic "Lunokhods," and two of those missions returned samples to Earth. Others spacecraft have visited the major planets of the Solar system. ... The Mariner series have explored Venus and Mars--and Mariner 10 even reached Mercury, for three separate encounters! ...

... Asteroids are awkward to photograph. Can you imagine how hard it is to spot one of these tiny, dark lumps of rock against the blackness of our night sky? ... Like Earth, asteroids move around the Sun. ... But astronomers don t give up easily, and asteroids are something they really want to study. ... The asteroid in this photograph is called Itokawa. It became famous in 2005 when a Japanese spacecraft called Hayabusa visited it and took some photographs including this one! ...

History of Space Exploration . ... Space History Introduction . ... Chronology of Solar System Discovery This is a partial list of past, present, and future planetary and solar missions; for a complete account, please see the Space Exploration Chronology. Space exploration is becoming increasingly internationalized; as a result, the national designations listed here are not completely representative of the true nature of all projects. ... Apollo Lunar Surface Journal . ... Mariner Missions . ...

NASA Press Release Text - June 24, 1996 GALILEO READY FOR CLOSE FLYBY OF JUPITER'S BIGGEST MOON Now residing in orbit around Jupiter, NASA's Galileo spacecraft is primed for its first close flyby of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, at 2:29 a.m. EDT on June 27, 1996. ... In the days just before and after the Ganymede flyby, Galileo's other studies will include a search for auroral activity on Jupiter's nightside and observations of other Jovian moons: Io, Europa and Callisto. ...

... When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by the planet Uranus in January 1986, astronomers were treated to their first close-up glimpse of the satellites that orbit the seventh planet. ... But by far the most intriguing of those 15 satellites was a jigsaw-puzzle world called Miranda . ... How dark was it at Miranda? One of the Voyager scientists put it this way: Taking pictures in the Uranus system is like trying to do photography in a ballpark at night when the only light comes from a single candle. ...

... This year's eclipse is unique in duration. ... Although, at the present time, there are 6 solar observatories belonging to leading space agencies in orbit around the Earth, the eclipse of 22 July, 2009, will only be seen by two of them: the Russian CORONAS-PHOTON satellite equipped with TESIS telescopes and Japan's HINODE satellite fitted with an XRT space telescope. ... TESIS will be the first of the two devices (and the very first on Earth) to witness the solar eclipse. ...

... OOF . ... OOF Index . ... OOF software . ... Fits up to fifth order . ... These are experimental data currently being analysed, not final documentation of research. ... Only fitting for Zernike orders up to and including 3rd to concentrate on finding possible off-axis aberrations. ... The results below show that when fitting for all Zernikes up to and including fifth order, the output maps vary greatly between pixels. As above, but fitting up to fifth order Zernike polynomial. ...

... Mars . ... News . ... NASA's newest Mars mission spacecraft enters orbit around the Red Planet . ... On September 21, 2014, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft entered orbit around Mars, completing an interplanetary journey of 10 months and 442 million miles (711 million kilometers). ... NASA s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft successfully entered Mars orbit at 10:24 p.m. EDT Sunday, Septempter 21, where it now will prepare to study the Red Planet s upper atmosphere as never done before...

... Breaking News | Hubble asteroid images help prepare ... http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0706/20hubbledawn/ Spaceflight Now + Subscribe to Spaceflight Now Plus for access to our extensive video collections! ... Video archive Complex 36 demolition Hubble asteroid images help prepare for spacecraft visit NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: June 20, 2007 These Hubble Space Telescope images of Vesta and Ceres show two of the most massive asteroids in the asteroid belt, a region between Mars and Jupiter. ...

From: TerryMosel aol.com Subject: LECTURE AT QUB Thu 31st, SMART Impact, Shuttle Launch, Pluto Date: 30 August 2006 20:30:17 BDT Hi all, 1. ... Possibility of impact flash and/or the resulting ejecta plume being observed/imaged from the UK ( Ireland) On 2/3 September, ESA's SMART-1 spaceprobe will slam into the lunar surface in a dramatic end to its 18 month period of orbiting the Moon. ... See the SPA website at www.popastro.com for a graphic of the impact. ... Clear Skies, Terry Moseley . ...

... NASA SPACECRAFT FINDS NEW EVIDENCE FOR WATER ICE ON MERCURY . ... The new data indicate the water ice in Mercury's polar regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be more than 2 miles thick," said David Lawrence, a MESSENGER participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., and lead author of one of three papers describing the findings. ... Water ice concentrations are derived from the hydrogen measurements. ...

... S.P. KOROLEV ROCKET AND SPACE CORPORATION ENERGIA . ... OAO RSC "Energia" . ... Company's History . ... History . Brief History of Rocket and Space Technology . ... Flights Chronology . ... ISS Russian Segment . ... Rocket Space Complexes . Sea Launch . ... Brief History of Rocket Space Technology Development . ... Launch of an unmanned Vostok-type spacecraft. ... Contribution of RSC Energia to the Russian Rocket-Space Technology . ... RSC Energia: Progress MS-02 docked with the ISS.' ...

ESOC TDRS / MUST and what it might do for you .. XMM-Newton Deputy Spacecraft Operations Manager with Inputs from JosИ-Antonio MartМnez-Heras, Black Hat S.L., Spain European Space Agency (ESA) European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) Dr. Marcus G. F. Kirsch March 2009 M.Kirsch, XMM-Newton European Space Operations Center Page 1 menu ESOC · TDRS · MUST · How can I use it? ... M.Kirsch, XMM-Newton European Space Operations Center Page 7 How does MUST work? ...

GRANAT is the Russian x-ray sattelite launched to the high apogee orbit (200,000 km) and operated almost for 10 years (1989 -1999) , carrying out four major instruments: French SIGMA coded-mask hard x-ray telescope (30-1000 keV), Soviet ART-P coded-mask telescope (2??-60?? keV), all-sky monitor WATCH (6-150 keV), and a gamma-burst detector PHEBUS . ... Since September 1994, GRANAT is in the survey mode. ... Explore pages devoted to individual GRANAT instruments (including main scientific results): . ...

... The European HST Archive has been moved to ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre ( ESAC ), Spain, where most of ESA's Space Science Archives are located and operated from. ... The Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF), jointly operated by ESA and the European Southern Observatory ( ESO ) was, until the end of 2010, the European HST science facility, supporting the European astronomy community in exploiting the research opportunities provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... On Thursday, February 15th 2001 (and replayed on March 19), the Fox TV network aired a program called ``Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?'', hosted by X-Files actor Mitch Pileggi. ... Dust around the lander . ... However, it appeals to our common sense: when the sky is black here on Earth, we see stars. ... Bad: The program claims that when the top half of the lander took off from the Moon to bring the astronauts back into orbit, there was no flame from the rocket. ...

... High-velocity clouds (HVCs) were discovered by Muller, Oort & Raimond (1963) in the 21-cm line emission of neutral, atomic hydrogen. They are gas clouds which are characterised by high radial velocities incompatible with a participation in the rotation of our Galaxy. ... This suggestion was seized by Braun & Burton (1999) who identified 66 compact high-velocity clouds (CHVCs) with positional and kinematic characteristics being compatible with a distribution across the entire Local Group. ...