Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Recap: 21 July 2010

This weeks news stories came from Jesse Rogerson.

NASA's WISE spacecraft has released its first all-sky image in the mid-infrared. Data to be crunched in the coming months. Also took a great shot of the Pleiades.

The next mars rover, Curiosity, will provide us with a 2 min long high-definition video of its decent through the martian atmosphere. It will also use a 'Sky-Crane' to get to the surface. Read up on the details here.

Like Space Elevators? well, one from Earth might be far fetched at the moment, but it MAY be possible to build one from the surface of the Moon with current technology.

The brightest Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) ever has been observed by the SWIFT satellite. It beats the last record holder by a factor of 5, and is located 5 BILLION light years away. This was a monster.

Speaking of records, a star in 30 Doradus (Tarantula Nebula in LMC) has been measured to have a mass of 265 solar masses. If it's correct, that's one heck of a mass.

Finally, the battle for NASA's future plans continues. The Senate has made some tweaks to Obama's plan, focusing more on a new heavy-lift rocket, and less on private industry initiatives. Check out the major changes here.

That ends another week. Next week will be the last meeting of the summer. We'll pick back up again in September.

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