Aerospace

Plastic Power: Jeremy Rowsell Flying From Sydney To London Using Household Trash As Fuel

Move over Flight of the Bumblebee. Hello Flight of the Butter Tubs. That’s what you could call the daring 12,000 mile journey that Australian pilot Jeremy Rowsell is planning for early next year, when he will fly a single engine plane from Sydney to Londo ...

Article - Mark Halper - Oct 24 2012 - 11:51am

How To Simulate The Weightlessness Of Space On A Budget

How do you test the effects of weightlessness in space without risking lives and a lot of money? Use a bed. P eople in bed with their heads 6° below the horizontal for long periods causes their bodies to react in similar ways to being weightless and so bed ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 13 2012 - 11:05am

Fermi Telescope Boosts Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes Monitoring

The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times better at catching the brief outbursts of high-energy light, known as  terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs),mysteriously produced above thunderstorms. Terrest ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 6 2012 - 3:00pm

Swift Satellite May Detect Birth Of Violent Supernovae

A team of astronomers have measured an excess of X-ray radiation in the first few minutes of collapsing massive stars, which may be the signature of the supernova shock wave first escaping from the star- new evidence that X-ray detectors in space could be ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 8 2012 - 10:49pm

"Black Marble" Images Showed Lights In Uninhabited Western Australia- What Gives?

If you looked at the "Black Marble" images of Earth at night released by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week, you may have noticed bright areas in the largely uninhabited western part of Australia. What's ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 7 2012 - 7:18pm

A Midwestern Snowstorm In Infrared Light

Low pressure areas that dropped more than a foot of snow in some Midwestern states have prompted many warnings and weather advisories. Satellite data recently got a look at a major snowstorm. On Dec. 21st, 2012, at 0729 UTC (2:29 a.m. EST), the Atmospheri ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 22 2012 - 12:26pm

NGC 1999: APEX Sets The Dark On Fire

A new image from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile shows a beautiful view of clouds of cosmic dust nebula NGC 1999 in the region of Orion. While these dense interstellar clouds seem dark and obscured to visible-light observations ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 23 2013 - 1:39pm

Seeing The Northern Lights In VISIONS

Some time this month, in Poker Flat, Alaska, a team of scientists from  The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, Calif.and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center of Greenbelt, Md., will launch a sounding rocket up through the Northern Lights.  ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 2 2013 - 11:21am

Landsat 8 Satellite Launch: Saving And Making Money With Earth Observations

NASA has got the hang of it now. Creating an almost unbearable suspense before the launching of a new satellite, that is. Actually, the last time NASA tortured us with excitement was in connection with a landing, and not a launching. I am of course referri ...

Article - Bente Lilja Bye - Feb 11 2013 - 6:21pm

Chelyabinsk Meteor Waves Largest Ever Detected By Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

Infrasonic waves from the meteor that broke up over over Chelyabinsk in Russia's Ural mountains last week were the largest ever recorded by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization's (CTBTO) International Monitoring System. The bla ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 19 2013 - 5:19pm