February 21

China to Launch Two Astronauts in Second Space Mission

BEIJING (AP) -- China will launch its second manned space mission next year, state television said Saturday.

The Shenzhou 6 will be launched with two astronauts aboard some time in 2005 and will remain in orbit for five to seven days, according to China Central Television. No other details were provided.

The official Xinhua News Agency has reported that 14 astronauts are being trained for the next mission, including Yang Liwei, the astronaut who flew into space in October aboard Shenzhou 5 in China's first manned space mission.

The United States and Russia are the only other countries that have sent manned spacecraft into orbit.

China appears to be stepping up the pace and profile of its space missions. The government said last month that it hoped to send 10 satellites into orbit this year while developing its first lunar probe. A space station is also planned.

-- Associated Press

February 19

Boeing Upper Stage Retires with Little Fanfare

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Almost forgotten in the successful Valentine's Day launch of an Air Force Titan 4B rocket this past weekend was the fact it marked the final use of Boeing's workhorse Inertial Upper Stage (IUS).

The IUS is a two-stage, solid-fueled rocket that for more than two decades has been used to loft all manner of payloads to their final orbit, flying as an upper stage on both the Titan 4 and NASA's space shuttle. Altogether there have been 24 IUS missions flown -- 15 from the shuttle and nine from the Titan 4.

Everything from this latest Defense Support Program missile warning satellite, to NASA's Tracking and Data Relay System satellites and planetary probes such as Galileo and Magellan have relied on the IUS for a final thrust to their destination.

"This last IUS mission added a critical asset to our nation's military space program with the successful launch of DSP-22," said Bill Benshoof, Boeing IUS program manager. "The flight of IUS-10 concludes a 22-year journey for one of the most successful upper stages ever built and flown."
 

-- Jim Banke

February 18

Coming Soon to a Store Near You: IMAX's 'Space Station'

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With only 310 shopping days left until Christmas '04 it's not too late to start assembling your gift list, which this year could include a DVD copy of the IMAX film "Space Station."

Warner Home Video has announced plans to release by the end of this year 2D and 3D versions of the popular movie that depicts the early assembly and operation of the International Space Station.

"Space Station has captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of people worldwide and we now have the opportunity to add this great film to our impressive library of IMAX titles available on DVD," said Mike Saksa, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Warner Home Video.

Originally released in IMAX theatres in April of 2002 -- and still showing at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex -- "Space Station" is the fifth film produced by the partnership of IMAX Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, NASA and The Smithsonian Institution. Others included "The Dream is Alive," "Blue Planet," "Destiny in Space," and "Mission to Mir." Although not filmed entirely in the IMAX format, the shuttle-related movie "Hail Columbia" also was popular.

-- Jim Banke

February 17

Kennedy Space Center to Practice Emergency Landing Drill

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Kennedy Space Center officials are planning to conduct an annual disaster simulation Feb. 18 that will exercise emergency personnel and the ability of several local, state and federal agencies to coordinate their response.

Last conducted at KSC in 2002, the so-called Mode VII activity will assume a space shuttle returning from orbit could not make it all the way to the three-mile-long runway just north of the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Instead, the make-believe shuttle will crash in a wooded area about two-and-a-half miles south of Runway 33. Emergency crews will respond to the site, which will feature a full-sized shuttle crew compartment mock up.

Rescue personnel will remove the injured astronaut crew, provide triage and then transport the crash victims to area hospitals by ambulance or helicopter.

Officials say that to assure the drill is as authentic as possible for responding emergency rescue crews, they will not be told in advance about the exact circumstances they will encounter.

February 16

Diamond in the Sky Outweighs Any on Earth

Astronomers announced Friday that a white dwarf star they've been studying is a chunk of crystallized carbon that weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds. That's the same as a diamond that is approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.

"It's the mother of all diamonds," said astronomer Travis Metcalfe, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Bill Gates and Donald Trump together couldn't begin to afford it."

The object, a burned out corpse of a star named BPM 37093, is about 50 light-years from in the constellation Centaurus. It is a mere 2,500 miles wide. It's coated with a thin layer of hydrogen and helium. Astronomers had long suspected the interiors of white dwarfs crystallized, but only recently did they determine it to be so. The star pulsates like a giant gong, and the researchers studied those pulsations -- like seismic waves inside Earth -- to figure out the carbon interior was solidified.

The biggest diamond on Earth is the 530-carat Star of Africa, part of the Crown Jewels of England. It was cut from a 3,100-carat gem, the biggest ever found.

-- SPACE.com Staff

February 13

Opportunity Spied by Mars Global Surveyor

A "you are here" image taken by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) has spotted the whereabouts of the Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover. The robot has been identified from above, sitting in its landing home, a crater 72 feet (22 meters) in diameter within Meridiani Planum.

As the longest "hole in one" shot ever recorded in the history of Mars exploration, Opportunity's airbag landing system bounced 26 times and rolled about 220 yards (200 meters) before coming to rest in the bottom of the small crater.

Mars Rover Opportunity's landing site, Credit: NASA/JPL/MSS Click to enlarge.

Also used to pinpoint the location at which Opportunity sits on Mars were pictures taken by the robot itself. By poking its cameras above the crater rim, the rover spotted leftover litter from the craft's entry, descent and landing - a parachute and protective backshell.

But the real validation was a new MGS image showing the Opportunity lander as a bright feature in the crater. A dark object near the lander is thought to be the rover itself. Given Opportunity's wheeling around the rim of the crater, subsequent MGS shots of the crater should help identify that, indeed, that dark object is the rover.

-- Leonard David

February 11

Catch a Comet by the Tail

The tails of comets, we're told, always point away from the Sun, a result of charged solar particles racing outward on a "solar wind" and applying a bit of pressure. In a pair of surprise discoveries, additional pressure created during large solar storms can shove cometary tails into unexpected places.

The European Space Agency's Ulysses spacecraft, designed primarily to study the solar wind and Jupiter's magnetic environment, detected the tail of comet Hyakutake while passing through it in 1996. Now the probe has apparently found the tails of two other comets, known as McNaught-Hartley (C/1991 T1) and SOHO (C/2000 S5).

The same research team that oversaw the Hyakutake tail crossing noticed the two newfound streams of debris. Each comet's tail was in a location the scientists did not expect. Upon analysis of other observations made during each tail detection, they found that a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun -- a stormy, expanding cloud of charged particles -- enveloped both the comet and the spacecraft, carrying the cometary material to Ulysses.

Comets are mixtures of water ice and other minerals that originate in the deep freeze of the solar system. Some are booted inward and loop around the Sun. Upon close approach, a comet's outer material is kicked up by the warmth of the Sun, forming a head and tail of charged, or ionized particles that glow with reflected sunlight.

In addition to dedicated missions designed to study comets, such as ESA's Rosetta and NASA's Stardust, the new serendipitous technique could help scientists better understand these frozen wanderers and learn more precisely what they are made of.

-- Robert Roy Britt

February 10

The Heavy Snows of Venus

New research appears to solve an old question about what sort of metallic snow creates bright spots on Venus.

In 1995, researchers pawing through mountains of data from NASA's Magellan Mission revealed a mysterious brightening effect on some mountain in radar imaging maps. The scientists concluded it was due to a metal-containing "snow" only a few millimeters in thickness frosting the mountains' rugged surfaces.

But the chemical composition of the strange snow was not known.

New calculations provide "plausible evidence that snow is composed of both lead and bismuth sulfides," according to Laura Schaefer and M. Bruce Fegley, Jr. of Washington University in St. Louis.

Venus is much hotter than Earth. But the snow is generated by similar physics.

"Because you have a decrease in temperature with altitude, places like the Maxwell Montes on Venus -- similar to Mauna Loa in Hawaii -- get cold enough that some of these things would start to condense out," Fegley said. He adds that if a proposed sample return mission to Venus were approved by NASA, the lead sulfides, as the material is called, could be used to date the origin of Venus.

The findings are published in the current issue of the journal Icarus.

-- SPACE.com Staff

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