Astronomers Awaiting Comet ISONs Year-End Spectacular

Excitement has been growing in recent months over the approach of Comet ISON. Like other comets, this chunk of rock and ice is following a long, elliptical orbit around the Sun, and like other comets, when it nears the Sun later this year, its trailing stream of dust and vapor will catch the sunlight and become a long, luminous, tail. Many astronomers are predicting that when this celestial ...

Sun unleashes earth-directed solar particles into space

At 5:24 am EDT on May 17, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later and affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, ...

Near-Earth asteroids and Mars 2 moons considered for future space missions

Researchers from the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, and the space robotics company Honeybee Robotics, have successfully completed a first series of field tests aimed at investigating how humans will explore and work on near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and eventually the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. From April 13 to 15, field experiments were conducted at the ...

Briton picked for five-month mission on International Space Station in 2015

European Space Agency astronaut more than two years ago and has been waiting for a space mission since then.It was feared the former army helicopter pilot might be given a short-duration mission because the UK only makes modest contributions to Esa's manned space programme. Major contributors such as France, Germany and Italy were expected to have priority.However, ...

Matt Parker Im obsessed with spreadsheets at the moment

, a maths fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, who moonlights as a stand-up comedian. "In my new show I'm going to be showing my all-time favourite. It's pretty spectacular. You may have your own favourite spreadsheet, I don't ...