Issue #5 (January 2014)
Cygnus delivers to the ISS
Orbital Sciences Corporation successfully launched their Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station on Jan. 9th. With freezing cold and clear blue skies as a backdrop the company sent Cygnus skyward atop their Antares rocket, which thundered away from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport launch Pad-0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The mission, Orb-1, …
WISE discovers black hole duo merging together
Two black holes are entwined in a gravitational tango in this artist’s conception. Supermassive black holes at the hearts of galaxies are thought to form through the merging of smaller, yet still massive black holes, such as the ones depicted here. NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, helped lead astronomers to what appears to …
ESA’s Swarm trio monitoring our planet’s magnetic shield
ESA’s three-satellite Swarm constellation was lofted into a near-polar orbit by a Russian Rockot launcher in late November, 2013. For four years, it will monitor Earth’s magnetic field, from the depth of our planet’s core to the heights of its upper atmosphere. The Swarm satellites will give us unprecedented insights into the complex workings of …
Students ace ‘Hole-In-One’ contest at JPL
Students from 19 high school teams across Southern California, as well as NASA professionals, took part in a “Hole-in-One” contest in the Invention Challenge last month at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. The objective of the annual challenge was to create a device that could propel or move a golf ball into a …
China lands Yutu rover on the Moon
China scored a stunning, history making success with the successful touchdown of the ambitious Chang’e-3 probe with the ‘Yutu’ rover on the surface of the Moon Dec. 14, 2013, on the country’s first ever attempt to conduct a landing on an extraterrestrial body. The dramatic Chang’e-3 soft landing on the lava filled plains of the …
Stephen Colbert presents honor from NASA to Voyager scientist
As if NASA’s Voyager mission didn’t have enough firsts in its 36-year journey, what with sending the first spacecraft to Uranus, Neptune and, most recently, interstellar space! Now, it has another first back here on Earth: on the December 3, 2013 episode of the Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert floated across the stage in a …