Looking Up by Bob Eklund
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
SPACECRAFT RETURNS FIRST VIDEO FROM MOON’S FAR SIDE – A camera aboard one of NASA’s twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the Moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study. GRAIL consists of two identical [...]
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
A New Take on a Familiar Picture -- In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope’s “Pillars of Creation” image of the Eagle Nebula became one of the most-viewed stellar pictures of the 20th century. Now, two of the European Space Agency’s orbiting observatories have shed new light on this enigmatic star-forming region of our galaxy. The Eagle Nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the [...]
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
“LISTENING UP” TO A SKY FULL OF RADIO WAVES – The world’s most famous radio telescope will become the “Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array” to honor the founder of radio astronomy, the study of the Universe via radio waves naturally emitted by objects in space. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) announced the new name for the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array [...]
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
The second of NASA’s two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has successfully completed its planned main engine burn and is now in lunar orbit. Working together, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will study the Moon as never before, in a mission that carries—for the first time ever—instruments dedicated to education and public outreach. “NASA greets the new year with a new [...]
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
A Christmas Comet in the Southern Sky -- The recently discovered Comet Lovejoy has been captured in stunning photos and time-lapse video taken from Paranal Observatory in Chile. The comet graced the southern sky after it had unexpectedly survived a close encounter with the Sun. This bright comet was also seen from the International Space Station in another stunning time-lapse sequence on [...]
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
NASA Discovers First Earth-Size Planets Beyond Our Solar System -- NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a Sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever [...]
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
Dawn Spacecraft in Low Orbit Circling Asteroid Vesta -- NASA’s Dawn spacecraft successfully maneuvered into its closest orbit around the giant asteroid Vesta on December 13, beginning a new phase of science observations. The spacecraft is now circling Vesta at an altitude of 130 miles. “Dawn has performed some complicated and beautiful choreography in order to reach this lowest [...]
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
‘Perfect Black’ Coating Can Render a 3-D Object Flat, Raises Intriguing Dark Veil Possibility in Astronomy -- A carbon nanotube coating developed at the University of Michigan acts as a “magic black cloth” that conceals an object’s three-dimensional geometry and makes it look like a flat black sheet. The 70-micron coating, or carbon nanotube carpet, is about half the thickness of [...]
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
Evidence of Liquid Water on Icy Europa Analysis of data from NASA’s Galileo planetary mission has turned up evidence of what appears to be a body of liquid water equal in volume to North America’s Great Lakes beneath the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. The Galileo data suggest there is significant exchange between Europa’s icy shell and the ocean beneath. This information [...]
Looking Up – Bob Eklund
CURIOSITY GOES TO MARS NOV. 25 — NASA’s most advanced mobile robotic laboratory, built into a car-sized rover named “Curiosity,” is in final preparations for a launch from Florida’s Space Coast at 10:25 a.m. EST on Nov. 25. It will examine one of the most intriguing areas on Mars, near the base of a mountain inside a deep crater. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission will have [...]
