Pheonix Lander touches down on Mars

Unfortunately that's about as much info as the Phoenix mission page gives at the moment, but it's certainly great to know that another probe has successfully made the trip to Mars.


Hopefully we'll see some images from the surface fairly soon!

Edit: Short article on the landing up at the Nasa site.


Double edit: Pictures are up, and the probe looks in good shape. The flat plains around it might seem slightly featureless at first, but remember that this is the surface of another planet - and thus, is awesome. Enthusiasm aside however, there is most certainly a lot to be learned here!

Nasa reveals all

Turns out the discovery mentioned in a previous post was that of a supernova remnant in our galaxy a mere hundred years or so old.

Radio and X-ray composite of G1.9+03

The Supernova who's official name is G1.9+03 is located right near the galactic centre at a distance from us of about 27,000 lightyears, and is the youngest supernova remnant that has ever been observed in our galaxy.

Very cool stuff. It's a rare opportunity to get some serious observations in on a remnant at such an early stage, and in a place where they can continue for a long long time.

Just noticed Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has a fantastic rundown already up, so go there and read it!

Nasa plays it mysterious

For the moment in any case.

NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years.

So we'll know tomorrow!

Considering the discovery involves the Chandra observatory, it's going to be something that involves X-ray wavelength related stuff, which narrows the field down somewhat.

So black holes, supernovae, neutron and white dwarf stars, active galaxies and quasars even entire galaxy clusters could be involved, and thats just off the top of my head.

Edit: Evidently the Chandra observatory has recently been concentrating on our galactic centre, which would suggest that if this discovery is recent, it is possibly related to our rather massive black hole friend in the middle of our galaxy.

Find the Mars Polar Lander

So Nasa wants your help to find the failed 1999 Mars Polar Lander.

They have a huge amount of data to sift through and so have released the imaging data collected by the HiRISE satellite to the public in order to speed things up a bit. Sounds like a good way to burn some free time to me.

As I originally saw this on Bad Astronomy it seems only right to link to the original post here.

The blog still lives

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last week or so, it's been a crazy few days. My computer suddenly decided it was going to get rid of a paper I had been writing mere days from the deadline, so some pretty hectic re-writing ensued. Fun!

In order to prevent boredom however, here's a quick piece of news on the Jules Verne freighter previously featured- It's being used to give the ISS an altitude boost

Artists impression of the boosting procedure being carried out by Jules Verne (ESA)

Jules Verne docks - Success!

After passing all the trials set before it, the unmanned freighter Jules Verne docked successfully with the ISS yesterday afternoon.

Congrats to the ESA for achieving this feat, considering the ultra tight tolerances involved in docking with a manned platform in space, it's fully deserved.

Freighters in Space

Summons up images of all sorts of sci-fi craft doesn't it! The reality at the moment is somewhat more mundane than ships of the interstellar variety, yet still very cool, especially as it is meant to be capable of fully automated docking. Currently carrying cargo to the ISS the freighter Jules Verne is undergoing test maneuvers in order to ascertain that it is safe to actually go ahead and dock. Here's hoping all goes well, so far it's looking good.

BBC News has a nice rundown too, including a nifty tracking applet!