New Image of Mercury

Taken October 7th by MESSENGER spaceship, 17,000 miles above the surface of Mercury.

The lines (known officially as "rays") running down the surface of the planet emanate from a crater in the far north.

Source, NASA.

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China in Space

China Launches First Willing Manned Mission Into Space





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Forget the Fireworks This 4th July - Check Out the Planets!

NASA reports today (July 4th and tomorrow) an impressive planetary alignment visible with a telescope from the northern hemisphere.

The place to look, apparently, is halfway up the western skyline, just above the twilight glow of sunset, where Mars, Saturn and the bright star Regulus will converge to make a bright 1st magnitude line. I am reliably informed that this is a good thing to see. Map here.

The celestial wonders continue on Saturday when the Moon joins the line to make it even brighter. Map.

A small telescope should be able to pick out Saturn's rings, the distinct red hue of Mars and also craters and other formations on the surface of the Moon.

Although they cannot be seen by amateur telescopes, NASA also reports that the man-made craft circling these bodies at this time include the Cassini (around Saturn), Chinese and Japanese probes investigating the moon ahead of planned human landings and several craft around Mars , two from NASA and one from the European Space Agency.

Fascinating though all this is, I'm afraid as a city dweller my chances of finding some night sky free of light pollution this 4th July are remote.

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And Now for Something Completely Different

It's not quite The Apprentice and the pace is, well, quite slow, but for sheer originality and kudos value, you could do a lot worse with tonight's TV viewing than pull up a mouse and click on the NASA website for live and recorded images from the surface of Mars.

When not showing live pictures of soil and rocks, which have their own charm, NASA is also broadcasting Martian weather updates (-80 at the moment).

Strangely compelling.

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Space Junk Update

Hot on the vapor trails of my previous post - describing a large piece of rocket casing narrowly avoiding collision with a sheep farmer's outside toilet in central Russia - it has emerged that more space junk has been falling to earth, this time in northern Australia.

Cattle farmer James Stirton (pictured) announced on Friday the discovery of what he believes to be an item from a rocket used to launch a communications satellite.

Discovered in the Australian outback, about 500 miles west of Brisbane, the twisted metal object is described as "hollow" and "covered in carbon-fiber material".

"I know a lot about sheep and cattle but I don't know much about satellites," admitted the self-deprecating farmer, who came across the item on his 40,000 hectre farm, "But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket."

In 1979, large parts of the Skylab space station fell to earth near a tiny outback town in western Australia. A local council sent NASA a ticket for littering and the then US President Jimmy Carter responded with an apology.

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Space Junk Threatens Privvy

A Russian farmer is suing the country's space agency for compensation after he claimed a 10-foot-long chunk of metal from a space rocket fell into his yard, just missing his outdoor toilet.

Boris Urmatov, who is visually handicapped, lives in the village of Kyrlyk with his sister Marina. The village lies under the flight path of rockets launched from the nearby Baikonur space centre and is, according to locals, frequently the location of near-misses from assorted space junk falling from the sky.

Mr Urmatov, a sheep herder, is suing the agency for 1 million rubles (£21,000) after what he describes as "an enormous metal casing" woke him in the night as it landed adjacent to his home: "It nearly crushed the outhouse," claims his sister.

Mr Urmatov is seeking damages for stress suffered as a result of the incident.

Russian paper Izvestia (News) says that the Mr Urmatov has legal precedence for his claim. In 2001, the Russian space agency Roskosmos paid compensation of 10,000 rubles (£212) to a private individual when a piece of space junk fell on his yard as he was outside chopping wood.

For archive (though not very interesting) film of a Russian satellite taking off, please click here.

Source: Reuters









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Asteroid is Hurtling Towards Earth

For reasons that will have conspiracy theorists twitching nervously, the world's mainstream media has been strangely silent about the impending near-arrival of a giant asteroid which is due to pass within 334,000 miles of earth on January 29th.

The asteroid - labelled 2007WD5 by Nasa's Near-Earth Object Programme - looks set to pass close enough to be visible by amateur astronomers and has been described as "potato-shaped" measuring 150-500 metres in length.

An impact of an object this size, travelling at 30,000 miles per hour, would be devastating were it to hit the earth, a prospect which NASA are not predicting, but perhaps not loudly enough to calm the nerves of the web's more nervous observers.

Students of near earth events will be familiar with the Tunguska Event when, on June 30th 1908, a meteoroid (it is now assumed) exploded about three miles above the Siberian forest north west of Lake Baikal causing widespread devastation over an area of approximately 800 square miles. A similar event above a major city of the time would have had a major effect on the course of 20th century history.

The colourful interactive space map on NASA's site shows what close means in cosmic terms as you follow the path of the asteroid around the inner solar system. Not one for those of a nervous disposition.

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