Nick's Space / Astronomy Blog November 2004 Archive

Schedules vary from school to school and country to country, but many students in the US will be preparing for the science fair around this time, if they haven't already ... Read More

U.S. - Russian Crew Re-Docks Spaceship ABC reports that the 2 man crew of the international space station successfully re-docked a Soyuz spaceship at a new port on the station Monday ... Read More

Today's non-space headlines are full of stories about Iraq: Car bomb kills 6 near Ramadi Iraq terror group makes grisly claim Michael Jordan's brother deployed to Iraq What is it about this region of ... Read More

Artificial Gravity: A New Spin on an Old Idea One problem inherent in long space flights, such as a trip to Mars, is keeping an astronaut crew in tip-top shape. Yahoo! ... Read More

Veteran NASA astronaut John Phillips and seasoned Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev are the next crew of the International Space Station. Their six-month mission is set for launch in April 2005. ... Read More

Inflatable Space Module Cleared for Liftoff Bigelow Aerospace has received government approval to launch its inflatable space module technology, according to MSNBC. Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas has blueprinted a step-by-step ... Read More

On November 24, 1995 Pioneer 11 left the solar system. Pioneer 11 flew by Jupiter on Dec 1, 1974 passing 42,900 km from Jupiter's cloud tops. It took better pictures ... Read More

Black-Hole Birth Hunter Launched CBS News reports that NASA's fast-swiveling space science observatory, named Swift for its speedy pivoting and pointing, Launched into orbit Saturday to hunt for the birth of ... Read More

Telescopes come in three basic designs; Refractor, Reflector, and Catadioptric. Refractor: A refractor uses two lenses. At one end (the end farther away from the viewer), is the larger lens, called ... Read More

Pluto, the Maybe Planet, Gets Another Look The New York Times says, "So maybe Pluto is a planet after all." As we've reported in the past, in recent years, there has been ... Read More

The Leonid Meteor Shower returns this week. Great anticipation is stirring around the world. Since the Moon, which will be only a thin crescent, will have set long before the ... Read More

Private Spaceflight Legislation Fizzles Out Don't plan on adding the title "Astronaut" after your name any time soon. According to MSNBC, "an 11th-hour bid to pass legislation allowing paying passengers to ... Read More

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) Ptolemy - Journey To The Center Of The Universe - Earth Ptolemy (aka Claudius Ptolemaeus, Ptolomaeus, Klaudios Ptolemaios, Ptolemeus) lived in Alexandria, Egypt. We know very little of Ptolemy's ... Read More

NASA 'Scramjet' Travels Almost 7,000 Mph The unmanned NASA X-43A supersonic combustion ramjet roared into speeds of almost 7,000 mph, shattering the record books. ABC says the flight of the 12 ... Read More

The Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) NASA Advances Water Recycling for Space Travel and Earth Use Water is one of the most crucial provisions astronauts need to live and work ... Read More

Europe Probe Arrives at the Moon The BBC says that the ESA Smart 1 lunar probe has entered into orbit around the Moon. It is the first European mission to do ... Read More

Mars Methane Boosts Chances for Life Sky and Telescope reports, "Tantalizing new evidence possibly suggestive of current life on Mars has just been reported by two independent teams. The groups, led ... Read More

Robot Helps NASA Refocus on Hubble Recently, scientists have been concerned about the impending "doom" of NASA'a Hubble Space Telescope. It has reached the end of its original planned lifetime and ... Read More

On November 12, 1980 Voyager 1 flew by Saturn. It had flown by Jupiter on March 5, 1979. Voyager 1 is now headed to Interstellar Space, speeding along at about ... Read More

Mars Rovers Get Ready to Move On Opportunity, one of two NASA robotic Mars rover has spent the last four months exploraing a crater, but has now reached terrain that appears ... Read More

On November 10, 1967: Mariner 5 completed its journey. Mariner 5 arrived at Venus on October 19, 1967, one day after Venera 4. It passed within 3,900 kilometers of the ... Read More

Did NASA Space Robot Dodge Disaster? NASA’s DART project, to test the technology for an automated space rendezvous, may have been doomed before it even reached outer space, according to MSNBC. "The ... Read More

NASA named the world's first space-based optical telescope after American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble (1889–1953). This week's Featured Astronomy Picture of the Week (Formerly Space - Astronomy Picture of ... Read More

Exploded Star Possibly Affected Human Evolution Space.com reports that an ancient supernova might have affected the course of human evolution by leaving traces of debris throughout the galaxy and on Earth, ... Read More

On November 8, 1968: Pioneer 9 (November 8, 1968 - March 3, 1987); a US Solar Probe created to make the first detailed, comprehensive measurements of the solar wind, solar ... Read More

Devising a Way to 'Sail' to Mars ABC News talks with Louis Friedman, of the Planetary Society, about using Solar Sails as a future form of propulsion. "Friedman's group plans to perform ... Read More

Discover astronomy and space related events which occurred on this date in history. Also find astronomy and space related quotations, fascinating facts, and word definitions. What happened on this date? ----- Don't forget ... Read More

"Beam me up, Airman. Space.com is reporting that the United States Air Force is studying the possibility of transporter style travel. They recently took delivery of a new study, The Teleportation Physics ... Read More

MSNBC reports that "astronomers have produced the first truly useful image ever of something in space using gamma rays. "Cosmic rays are extremely energetic particles that continually bombard the Earth. Thousands ... Read More

Most people do not sit around contemplating magnetic stars, but many astronomers do. According to Space.com "they believe they have figure out why the two disparate bodies are sometimes strikingly ... Read More

Early this year, scientists were devastated when the Beagle 2 Mars probe failed to respond to repeated attempts at contact. The European Space Agency later said the mission was poorly ... Read More

But without a clear victor It looks like it will take several more days to discover who will be the president of the United States for the next four years. In ... Read More

My name is Nick Greene and I approved this Blog. The exploration of space is very important. Without our inate curiosity about the universe around us, we remain in our caves, ... Read More

A report in USATODAY says that it has been a year since the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center reported to law enforcement on an internal audit showing more than 100 ... Read More

NASA has again adjusted its schedule for bringing the space shuttle back into use. CBS reports that the space agency announced it is aiming for a mid-May launch. This will ... Read More