Space Shuttle Endeavour Blasts Off
Source: AOL News
Posted: 02/08/10 8:39AM
Filed Under: Science & Tech
Space shuttle Endeavour has blasted off, heading toward the International Space Station. Monday's lift-off was the final night time launch before the space shuttles are retired.
Views From Space
This undated handout photo provided by NASA, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows a snapshot of when the universe was just a toddler, 600 million years after the Big Bang, the earliest image yet.
An image released by NASA Jan. 5, 2010, shows Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy made from data provided by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The Chandra image of Sagittarius A and the surrounding region is based on data from a series of observations lasting a total of about one million seconds, or almost two weeks.
This recent photo provided by NASA and the European Space Agency, and captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the deepest image of the universe ever taken in near-infrared light. The faintest and reddest objects in the image are galaxies that formed 600 million years after the Big Bang. No galaxies have been seen before at such early times. The new deep view also provides insights into how galaxies grew in their formative years early in the universe's history.
This undated image provided by NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang ,from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, shows the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The mosaic of 88 Chandra pointings represents a freeze-frame of the spectacle of stellar evolution, from bright young stars to black holes, in a crowded, hostile environment dominated by a central, supermassive black hole.
This artist rendering provided by the European South Observatory shows some of the 32 new planets astronomers found outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop.
This artist's rendering released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Tuesday Oct. 6, 2009 shows the biggest but never-before-seen ring around Saturn, spotted by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The inset shows an enlarged image of Saturn, as seen by the W.M. Keck Observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in infrared light. The bulk of the ring material starts about six million kilometers (3.7 million miles) away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers (7.4 million miles). The newly found ring is so huge it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it, JPL said.
This undated handout image provided by NASA, released Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217.
A massive gamma-ray burst picked up by a NASA satellite in April has been determined to be the oldest object ever witnessed. Light from the massive explosion 13 billion years ago was detected by NASA's Swift Gamma-Ray Burst spacecraft on April 23. Scientists say the blast happened a relatively short time after the big bang, and represents the earliest evidence of our universe's beginnings.
Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions. Most occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. As their cores collapse into a black hole or neutron star, gas jets -- driven by processes not fully understood -- punch through the star and blast into space. There, they strike gas previously shed by the star and heat it, which generates short-lived afterglows in many wavelengths. (Source: NASA)
FILE - This undated file image provided by NASA shows the surface of Mars as seen from the stuck Mars rover, Spirit. Spirit has always been the unluckier of NASA's twin Mars rovers. Soon after landing in 2004, its computer went haywire, transmitting gibberish or sporadic data to Earth. Engineers eventually nursed it back to health. As Spirit and Opportunity approach their sixth year of exploration, Spirit finds itself stuck in a Martian sand trap. The robot geologist has been in jams before, but this is by far the toughest challenge it has faced.
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