Some babies still in diapers

The appearance of the nebula changes slowly filaments of glowing gas to disperse
slowly, blown by stellar winds, while other parts are soft and hot compress,
allowing the nuclear fusion that will give new birth stellar. Like all open
clusters, stars of NGC 346 will gradually disperse due to various gravitational
perturbations, such as encounters with other giant molecular clouds. In a few
hundred million years, there will be nothing left of that heavenly embroidery.

With young open star clusters like NGC 346, astronomers have real laboratories
for studying stellar development and impact on the cosmic environment.

With Selene, Japan has made an ambitious lunar exploration program: a probe main
renamed Kaguya, was put into orbit with two small satellites in September 2007.
Kaguya was precipitated on the Moon in June 2009 in order to cause impact
observable from Earth, having provided thousands of images of very high quality
(see our gallery) as well as many radar measurements of sub-lunar soil.

Traces of the volcanic history of the Moon
A team of international researchers led by the Laboratory of Planetology of
Grenoble analyzed the results of surveys conducted between 400 and 800 meters
deep by the LRS instrument (Lunar Radar Sounder) placed aboard Kaguya. These
surveys suggest that the lunar basins were filled by successive outpourings of
lava basalt different compositions over a very long time ago started three
billion years ago and completed just 500 million years.

Between episodes, volcanic lava solidified suffered the effects of solar wind
and impact of micro-meteorites, a change known as the regolithisation.Les
researchers noted that the measures implemented by the LRS instrument over some
parts of the lunar seas does not give the same results, the radar seems to be
lost. By combining these observations with the geological studies of the
surface, they noted the presence of some oxide minerals such as ilmenite, which
may explain the absorption of the radar signal.

For the authors of this study, there is no doubt that the alternation of
volcanic episodes and phases of régolithisation is a phenomenon that concerns
all the lunar seas. It remains to clarify the magmatic processes implemented on
the Moon at the origin of this volcanism discontinuous.

The budget of the Indian Space Agency (Isro) has increased significantly. He spends 31 to 50 billion rupees (over 800 million euros) and, if he gives pride to the lunar exploration, it gives priority to manned spaceflight and establish a system Regional Positioning Satellite (IRNSS).

The Galileo India will consist of seven satellites. Three will be placed in geostationary orbit and the other four in geosynchronous orbit. The constellation will consist of a ground segment consisting of a main control center and several stations for tracking satellites and ensure the integrity of the system. IRNSS, whose first satellite could be launched in 2011, will be able to provide an absolute position with an accuracy of 20 meters across India and up to 2,000 miles of its borders.

The space ambitions and intense international cooperation

The ambitious lunar program will continue. It provides in terms of reporting on Earth of lunar samples. It began in 2008 with the launch of Chandrayaan-1, the first space probe exploration of India attended the NASA and the ESA in providing instruments. It continues with the development of Chandrayaan-2, a mission scheduled in October 2013 intended to orbit around the moon a satellite and surface to land a lander and a rover. This mission will be once again in cooperation with NASA and the ESA, which will provide instruments and Russia, which is currently involved in the development of the lander and rover.

The budget of ISRO also provides funding Adyta a satellite observing the Sun one hundred kilograms equipped with a coronagraph designed to study the solar corona in order to better understand the physical processes of heat, accelerate the solar wind and produce coronal mass ejections. Adyta be launched around 2012, the year should correspond to a peak of solar activity. It will evolve into Earth orbit approximately 600 kilometers altitude.

Regarding the future launch, ISRO will continue the development of a semi-cryogenic stage necessitated by the Indian ambitions that can not be satisfied with two launchers in use today GSLV (Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) with limited performance.

For NASA and its contractor, Northrop Grumman, the successful completion of the first of 18 segments that comprise the primary mirror by James Webb shows that technological choices are good. The 18 segments of the primary mirror will be polished in time while meeting the high specifications of NASA. The model thus produced will be used as alternatives to segment the flight model.

In order to avoid any misconception, as was the case with Hubble (HST) who suffered an aberration caused by an error in the shape of the mirror, four independent verification tests are planned (Ball Aerospace, NASA Goddard NASA Johnson Tinsley Labs), each using different methods. In case of disagreement on the results, further checks will be conducted.

The lesson of the HST was selected. This is especially necessary if the problem had been corrected Hubble in orbit during the first servicing mission, it is not possible to send a crew to James Webb, although it had been a time studied. Unlike Hubble, which turns 565 kilometers of altitude orbit inclined at 28.5 °, James Webb will be located on the Lagrange point number 2 (L2) to approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth .

These tests were conducted in a fifth center (X-ray and Cryogenic Facility of the Marshall Center of NASA), which shows once again that the United States has the means to space policy.

A telescope that will bring more questions than answers

Together with NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian (CSA) participating in the development of the space telescope. JWST will be launched in 2014 by an Ariane 5 in respect of the involvement of Europe. Successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the instrument will study every phase in the history of our universe, the first light emerging from the Big Bang to the evolution of planetary systems. James Webb will take great pictures in the infrared and operate in different spectroscopic methods, many capabilities that will learn more about the chemistry and evolution of the objects populating our universe.

This capability is made possible through its primary mirror of 6.5 m, the largest ever sent into space, and its suite of four instruments, two of which will be provided by Europe (NIRSpec the spectrograph and the infrared camera Miri ).

By observing the universe in the infrared James Webb will be able to see the first detectable objects in the universe, who formed after the Dark Ages or obscure, a period in the history of the universe that begins after the dissemination of radiation cosmic appeared when warm and cloudy and before the formation of the first luminous structures consisting of stars and galaxies from 200 million years after the Big Bang.

Known as E-ELT for European Extremely Large Telescope, the 42-m telescope will consist of a primary mirror of 906 hexagonal segments, a secondary mirror of 6 m in diameter and three other mirrors that constitute the ‘adaptive optics to stabilize the image. The E-ELT will be more than a hundred times more sensitive than the largest optical telescopes in use today, such as telescopes twin Keck 10-m or 4 m telescopes of the VLT 8.2. With a collecting area 25 times larger than that of an 8 m telescope, it will override the Hubble Telescope if it is still in use (which is unlikely) and even its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. Despite the effects of turbulent air is expected to produce images at the limit of diffraction 18 times finer than the Hubble.

European astronomers and astrophysicists want to build it quickly, to stay in the competition with the United States who have also planned two telescopes of this size set to 2020. The Magellan telescope of 24 m (7-segmented mirror elements of 8.4 m polished separately) which will be located in Chile and the Thirty Meter Telescope, a 30-m telescope (mosaic of 36 hexagonal mirrors) which will be built on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Construction could begin in 2011 for first light in 2018. The European Union probably will participate in the financing of the telescope because the Commission has placed in its list of priorities under the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). The final choice of site is not yet done. But the committee responsible for selecting just submitted its report, which called Mount armazón a summit of the Atacama Desert in Chile, just 20 kilometers from Cerro Paranal, where the instruments are installed on the VLT, the Very Large Telescope.

Significant advances have already provided

We expect significant progress in many areas: the study of exoplanets, the black holes or galaxies apart and research on issues as fundamental nature of matter and the dark energy or the physics of the early moments. Specifically, the astronomers will be able to detect and characterize exoplanets the size of the Earth, to study the horizon of black holes, see the first galaxies and isolate the stars of distant galaxies.

Significant synergies are expected with the VLT, Alma and James Webb, so that the limits of the observable universe will be pushed so far away that astronomers can study the environment of star formation and opening new windows on the output of Ages dark, a period in the history of the universe that begins after the release of radiation and cosmic before the formation of the first luminous structures, from 200 million years after the Big Bang.

Finally, as each mission brings its own surprises scientists are betting that the European Extremely Large Telescope will upset conventional wisdom and offer some unexpected findings.

But now Spain, one of 14 members of the ESO (European Space Organization), has just heard his voice, with a major argument if the EELT is finally installed in the Canaries, the Spanish commitment to finance one-quarter of its construction!

The attachment of Spain in the development of astronomy is an open secret: the Canary island of La Palma in 2007 already hosts the Gran Tecan, or GTC (Gran Telescopio Canarias), currently the largest telescope world. It consists of an assembly of 36 mirrors hexagon (which represents the equivalent of a spherical mirror of 10.40 meters in diameter), a technique that engineers fluent Spanish and gives them some legitimacy to consider the implementation EELT which the optical design will be identical.

If this giant (see our picture gallery) has been installed on this earth Spanish for two reasons. First page of GTC is one of the best in the world. At 2396 meters altitude, the summit del Roque de los Muchachos on the edge of a caldera, the sky is exceptionally clear and the weather excellent, with less than 20 days of rain per year.

The place has also attracted other nations (England, Italy, Sweden …) that have set up different instruments: telescopes for the study of supernovae and galaxies, solar telescopes, telescope Cherenkow to study radiation or gamma telescope devoted to spectroscopy and stellar seismology.

When King gets involved

On the other hand Spain has shown its commitment to achieving this by funding the project up to 90%, giving it a virtual monopoly on the instrument. At his inauguration last year, the GTC has even been visited by the King of Spain is known passion for astronomy as to change the protocol by asking to stay the night out!

There are still some weeks to ESO which shall decide by June to choose the location of the EELT. On one side of the VLT site in Chile with the control room could be used to drive the new European giant, one of the top Spanish La Palma, with financial support weight. The suspense continues …

Launched December 14, 2009 and in use since mid-January, WISE (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer), the new telescope Nasa, produced a complete map of the sky in infrared, since the small objects of the solar system until galaxies far away. Its catalog will be used by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that will replace Hubble around 2014.

Wise has already discovered 16 new asteroids that move around the Earth. All are called dark. Known asteroids and very discreet because they reflect a small percentage of light and solar because they operate on an orbit inclined. When they are not reflective is that they absorb much of the sunlight, which tends to warm them. Hardly detectable in the visible, then they identify more easily in infrared.

Sixteen newcomers and probably almost a thousand


Furthermore, current methods to identify the responsible asteroids, including NEOs, are optimized for tracking moving objects in the plane of the ecliptic. But he is frolicking elsewhere …. Working in infrared and monitoring the whole sky, Wise is well suited to detect them.

Of the sixteen dark asteroid revealed by Wise, more than half think less than a tenth of the light of the sun. The darkest of them reflects less than 5% of the light it receives.

Astronomers estimate there are tens of thousands of objects potentially dangerous or destructive to man with Wise and expect to discover about one thousand operating near the Earth. As highlighted by experts in the main belt, asteroids dark are the most numerous, up to four times more than the brightest asteroids.

DB: John Turner is a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. He advocates switching to hydrogen as our main fuel source. Hydrogen could be used in cars with special fuel cells, or in power plants to make electricity.

JB: Turner says one way to make the hydrogen might be to use sunlight to split water into its component parts — hydrogen and oxygen.

John Turner: Our most abundant natural resources are sunshine and water. And we can use those to power our society. . . . that energy has been there since the Earth was formed and that energy will be there until the sun dies. And for most of us, that’s probably plenty long enough.

DB: Burning fossil fuels produces pollution and greenhouse gases. Hydrogen fuel is cleaner. It only produces energy and water. And because hydrogen can be produced wherever there’s water and sunlight, hydrogen fuel could be created almost anywhere. That means a hydrogen economy could include small production sites spread throughout nations or even communities.

JB: This system would make the world’s energy supply less susceptible than what we have now to political unrest or natural disasters. With thanks to the National Science Foundation — where discoveries begin. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.

It is reported that the operation of refueling ship will take three hours, and the launch of Endeavour must be made at 4: 14 am local time (11: 14, Kyiv time.

Nevertheless, according to experts, the probability of launching the shuttle today is about 60% and is directly dependent on weather conditions.

Today’s launch of space shuttle should be the first of five of his last flight. In late 2010 - early 2011 shuttles will be retired. Instead, up to 2012

Yesterday, a launching shuttle Endeavour was moved to February 8 this year due to weather conditions. According to representatives of NASA, the cause of such a decision were clouds that cloaked the sky. The launch was postponed just 9 minutes before the scheduled start.

Shuttle to deliver to the ISS, in particular, a new observation deck.

However, the head of Federal Space Agency said that the cost of services should be such that some of the money could pay for the development of rocket and space industry.

Recall that recently Roskosmos already raised fares on the Union for American astronauts. Thus, it was reported that the cost of one place on the ship will be about $ 51 million

In replacing them was supposed to be the ship Orion, but work on this project was discontinued in the new development strategy space agency endorsed Barack Obama.

As expected, delivery people on the ISS will take the company private. For example, a project of its own ship designs Space. The first flights of these ships, however, held no earlier than 2014.