news 2013

Galileo FOC FM2 main antenna Galileo Full Operational Capability Flight Model 2, FM2, satellite's main L-band antenna used for broadcasting navigation messages, seen during preparation for a mass property test at the ESTEC Test Centre at the end of August 2013. Two Galileo FOC satellites together The first two Galileo Full Operational Capability (FOC) satellites seen together at the ESTEC Test Centre on 30 August 2013.

01 Nov 2013 A radio telescope once used to track ballistic missiles has helped astronomers determine how the magnetic field structure and rotation of the young and rapidly rotating Crab pulsar evolves with time. The Crab pulsar is a neutron star which formed in a massive cosmic explosion seen in both Europe and China in AD 1054 as a bright star in the daytime sky.

By detecting an even distribution of iron throughout a massive galaxy cluster, astrophysicists can tell the 10-billion-year-old story of how exploding stars and black holes sowed the early cosmos with heavy elements New evidence that iron is spread evenly between the galaxies in one of the largest galaxy clusters in the universe supports the theory that the universe underwent a turbulent and violent youth more than 10 billion years ago.

Scientists testing the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment have reported promising scientific and technological results today. They have set up the experiment to identify the nature of dark matter, an invisible substance that physicists believe is all around us, making up most of the matter in the universe, but that barely has any effect on our every-day lives.

Posted under: Education , Engineering , Learning , News Releases , Research , Science , Technology During spring break the last five years, a University of Washington class has headed to the Nevada desert to launch rockets and learn more about the science and engineering involved. Sometimes, the launch would fail and a rocket smacked hard into the ground.

A new collaborative science program is pioneering the development of ultra-sensitive methane-sensing technology. "Given the importance of methane to global climate change, this study is essential," said Manvendra Dubey of Los Alamos National Laboratory. LOS ALAMOS, N.M. Oct. 28, 2013—A new collaborative science program is pioneering the development of ultra-sensitive methane-sensing technology.

New MIT-led experiment could finally shed light on the mysteries of dark matter. Dark matter, believed by physicists to outweigh all the normal matter in the universe by more than five to one, is by definition invisible. But certain features associated with dark matter might be detectable, according to some of the many competing theories describing this elusive matter.

22 October 2013 ESA's volunteers recently finished their third and last session lying in bed in the interest of spaceflight and science. They can return to their normal lives after spending their last 21 days in bed with their feet up - once their bodies have recuperated from the experience. When astronauts return from a long flight they can need days for their bodies to recuperate from the effects of living in weightlessness.

Projected density images resembling the inner structure of molecular clouds controlled by the turbulence that breaks the cloud into fragments, providing initial conditions for star formation. Simulation done using Kraken abnd Nautilus supercomputers at NICS.

Scientists at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, the University of Glasgow and the Natural History Museum in London may have discovered how Mars lost its early carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere to become the cold and arid planet we know today. This research provides the first direct evidence from Mars of a process, called 'carbonation' which currently removes carbon dioxide from our own atmosphere, potentially combating climate change on Earth.

A quick glance at a world precipitation map shows that most tropical rain falls in the Northern Hemisphere. The Palmyra Atoll, at 6 degrees north, gets 175 inches of rain a year, while an equal distance on the opposite side of the equator gets only 45 inches. Scientists long believed that this was a quirk of the Earth's geometry - that the ocean basins tilting diagonally while the planet spins pushed tropical rain bands north of the equator.

Black holes that collide generate gravitational waves. New data about the effect of these waves on surrounding spinning stars called pulsars has challenged existing ideas about the growth of supermassive black holes. A paper published in Science today led by University of Melbourne and CSIRO scientists shows a new limit to the strength of gravitational waves.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham have discovered a stellar system in our Galaxy where the spin of its 'red giant' star and the orbits of its planets are misaligned, according to research published in the journal Science today (17 October 2013). In our own solar system the rotation of the Sun and the orbits of the planets are perfectly aligned, with the spin axis of the Sun at right angles to the orbits of the planets.

Developed to help scientists learn more about the complex nature of celestial objects in the universe, astronomical surveys have been cataloguing the night sky since the beginning of the 20th century. The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF)-led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)-started searching the skies for certain types of stars and related phenomena in February.

14 October 2013 Nestled within the shell around this large bubble is an embryonic star that is already a hefty eight times more massive than our Sun. This image, by ESA's Herschel space observatory, was originally presented in the first announcement of scientific results from the mission in May 2010.

Latest research on rocky relics suggests a distant planetary system, now past its "death throes", had very similar water 'delivery system' to our own - and consequently the potential to contain habitable exoplanets complete with water A system cannot create things as big as asteroids and avoid building planets, and GD 61 had the ingredients to deliver lots of water to their surfaces Jay Farihi Astronomers have found the shattered remains of an asteroid that contained huge amounts of water orbiting an exhausted star, or white dwarf.

Cloud-chamber experiments show that clouds on Mars form in much more humid conditions than clouds on Earth. At first glance, Mars' clouds might easily be mistaken for those on Earth: Images of the Martian sky, taken by NASA's Opportunity rover, depict gauzy, high-altitude wisps, similar to our cirrus clouds.

Stanford scientists recreated the intense pressures and temperatures found deep within the Earth, resulting in a discovery that complicates theories of how the planet and its core were formed. Crystal Shi In a rock and metal sample created by Stanford scientists to mimic the make up of the early Earth mantle, drops of molten iron merge to form a network.

Map reveals a lopsided cloud distribution on an extremely hot planet. On the exoplanet Kepler 7b, the weather is highly predictable, an international team of scientists has found: On any given day, the exoplanet, which orbits a star nearly 1,000 light-years from Earth, is heavily overcast on one side, while the other side likely enjoys clear, cloudless weather.

1 October 2013 Using a telescope in Antarctica and ESA's Herschel space observatory, astronomers have made the first detection of a subtle twist in the relic radiation from the Big Bang, paving the way towards revealing the first moments of the Universe's existence. The elusive signal was found in the way the first light in the Universe has been deflected during its journey to Earth by intervening galaxy clusters and dark matter, an invisible substance that is detected only indirectly through its gravitational influence.