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NASA is seeking technology demonstration proposals for green propellant alternatives to the highly toxic fuel hydrazine

As part of NASA's ongoing efforts to foster development of a U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability to and from low Earth orbit and the International Space Station, NASA has issued a call for industry to submit proposals for the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability Initiative.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will brief reporters about the agency's fiscal year 2013 budget at 2 p.m. EST on Monday, Feb. 13.

The giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be vaporizing and devouring asteroids.

In the first comprehensive satellite study of its kind, a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team used NASA data to calculate how much Earth's melting land ice is adding to global sea level rise.

Cincinnati OH (SPX) Feb 08, 2012
A painstakingly detailed investigation shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden events. The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth's marine life, and it killed in stages, according to a newly published report. Thomas J. Algeo, professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati, worked with 13 co-authors to produce a high-resolution look at the

Canberra, Australia (SPX) Feb 08, 2012
The delivery of high-speed internet to some of the most remote communities in Australia has taken a leap forward following NBN Co's selection of Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), a leading manufacturer of commercial broadband satellites, to build two next-generation Ka-band satellites. The satellites, which are planned to launch in 2015, are designed to provide high-speed broadband coverage to a

Innsbruck, Austria (SPX) Feb 07, 2012
The composition of land surface - such as vegetation type and land use - regulates the interaction of radiation, sensible heat and humidity between the land surface and the atmosphere and, thus, influences ground level climate directly. For the first time, the Innsbruck climate scientists quantitatively examined whether land-cover changes (LCC) may potentially affect glacier loss. "We used

Paris, France (ESA) Feb 08, 2012
ESA's Mars Express has returned strong evidence for an ocean once covering part of Mars. Using radar, it has detected sediments reminiscent of an ocean floor within the boundaries of previously identified, ancient shorelines on Mars. The MARSIS radar was deployed in 2005 and has been collecting data ever since. Jeremie Mouginot, Institut de Planetologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG

Paris, France (ESA) Feb 08, 2012
The MARSIS radar instrument on board ESA's Mars Express orbiter has discovered a subsurface blanket of low density material around the north polar cap, supporting theories that the northern lowlands of Mars were once covered by a large body of water. Although Mars is currently a frozen desert where liquid water cannot exist on the surface for more than a few seconds, there is plenty of evi

Credits: NASA/JPL–Caltech/Space Science Institute

Credits: ESA, C. Carreau

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has been engaged in initial analysis* of Itokawa’s s

On January 6, 2012, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) found that a computer terminal use

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency reported that operation of the infrared astronomical satellite AK

with Dr Markus Kissler Patig, ESO

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is setting out to build the largest optical telescope ever conceived: the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This giant, with a primary mirror of 40 metres in diameter, is one of the most ambitious research infrastructures of the next decade, worldwide! Dr Markus Kissler-Patig (ESO), the Project Scientist for the E-ELT, will present the project and its technical challenges. Much of the necessary technology is forefront research, and the complexity of the machine is immense, promising headaches for many engineers over the next decade.

He will discuss with the guests of Café & Kosmos why such a challenge is worthwhile: this observatory will allow ground-breaking discoveries in many fields. For the first time, we will be technically capable of not only detecting, but also characterising habitable planets beyond the Solar System. We will also be able to measure the expansion of the Universe directly and learn more about the mysterious dark matter and dark energy.

Please note that the Café & Kosmos events take place in German.

What: The European Extremely Large Telescope
When: Wednesday, 8 February 2012, 19:00 until approximately 20:30
Where: Vereinsheim, Occamstr. 8, 80802 München, near Münchener Freiheit

Admission is free.

World-renowned Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory have been awarded the 2011 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences for their work on exoplanets.

The foundation recognised their groundbreaking efforts in developing “new astronomical instruments and experimental techniques that led to the observation of planets outside the solar system”. These were instrumental in the first discovery of an exoplanet around a normal star, made by their team in 1995. The discovery revolutionised astronomy and initiated an entire new field that is focused on finding and characterising exoplanets. Since then, this field has been recognised by agencies and institutes around the world as one of the major challenges for astronomy in the coming decades.

Michel Mayor and his then PhD student Didier Queloz developed the radial velocity technique for planet detection, which looks for the wobble of a star caused by the gravitational pull of a planet as it orbits the star. Today, the radial velocity technique is still the most successful in finding exoplanets, and the only way to determine planetary masses. The pair also took part in developing the transit method, in which the passage of a planet in front of its star is detected by the dimming of the light received from the star.

Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz were also at the heart of a consortium, led by the Geneva Observatory with the help of ESO and other organisations, which developed the HARPS spectrograph, installed on ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile in 2003. HARPS has greatly contributed to the search for exoplanets with an impressive crop of super-Earths and Neptune-mass planets, demonstrating that a large fraction of the stars in the solar neighbourhood host low-mass planets. HARPS was described by the award jury as the “world’s leading planet discovery machine”.

The award presentation ceremony will take place on 21 June 2012.

More Information

The jury was chaired by Theodor Hänsch, 2005 Nobel Physics laureate, Professor of Physics at LMU Munich and Director of the Department of Laser Spectroscopy at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Garching, Germany), with Avelino Corma, Research Professor in the Instituto de Tecnología Química (CSIC – Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, UPV) acting as secretary. Remaining members were Douglas Abraham, Professor of Statistical Mechanics in the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at Oxford University (United Kingdom); Ignacio Cirac, Director of the Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Garching, Germany) and BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge laureate in Basic Sciences in the first edition of the awards; Hongkun Park, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and of Physics at Harvard University (United States); Martin Quack, Professor of Physical Chemistry at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), and Sandip Tiwari, Charles N. Mellowes Professor in Engineering at Cornell University (United States).

The BBVA Foundation promotes scientific research of excellence by funding research projects, disseminating the results to society through diverse channels including symposia, workshops, lectures, publications and exhibitions, and providing advanced training and research awards.

The Frontiers Awards honour fundamental disciplinary or supradisciplinary advances in a series of basic, natural, social and technological sciences. They seek to recognise and encourage world-class research and artistic creation, prizing contributions of broad impact for their originality and theoretical significance.

HARPS was designed and built by an international consortium of research institutes, led by the Observatoire de Genève (Switzerland) and including Observatoire de Haute-Provence (France), Physikalisches Institut der Universität Bern (Switzerland), the Service d'Aeronomie (CNRS, France), as well as ESO La Silla and ESO Garching.

The project team was directed by Michel Mayor (Principal Investigator), Didier Queloz (Mission Scientist), Francesco Pepe (Project Managers Consortium) and Gero Rupprecht (ESO representative).

The Italian astronomer Franco Pacini, who was a key figure in the astronomy community, passed away yesterday, on 25 January 2012.

Pacini began his long-term involvement with ESO in 1975, when he joined the newly created Scientific Division, based in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1978 he moved back to Italy as Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Florence and Director of the Arcetri Observatory, which he led until the creation of INAF in 2001. He played an important role in the accession of Italy to ESO in 1982, represented Italy on the ESO Council — ESO’s governing body — and was also Council President between 1991 and 1994.

He served as President of the International Astronomical Union between 2001 and 2003, and was the founding father of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, a huge success for scientific outreach and increasing the awareness of astronomy around the world.

He will be greatly missed by ESO and by the wider astronomical community.

The Lander platform for NASA’s Spirit rover has been photographed in stunning high resolution color for the first time from Mars orbit – just over 8 years after the now legendary robot survived the scorching atmospheric heat of the 6 minute plunge through the Martian atmosphere and bounced to a stop inside Gusev Crater on [...]

Contrary to popular belief, Tang, Velcro and Teflon (along with the zero-gravity “space” pen) aren’t derived from NASA technology. NASA has, however, developed numerous technologies over the years, which are featured in annual “Spinoff” reports. Yes, “memory” foam mattresses are in fact one such product developed from NASA technologies. NASA’s latest Spinoff edition features over [...]

Sealed off for millions of years beneath an almost impenetrable layer of ice, Lake Vostok has kept a vast archive of ancient history waiting for just the right moment to reveal itself. Here is a unique closed ecosystem captured in time below four kilometers of ice. Saved from environmental contamination, its water has been isolated [...]

In the famous words of Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This phrase is often quoted to express the idea that an alien civilization which may be thousands or millions of years older than us would have technology so far ahead of ours that to us it would appear to [...]

For the past several years, the Chandra telescope has detected X-ray flares occurring about once a day from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. These flares last a few hours with brightness ranging from a few times to nearly one hundred times that of the black hole’s regular output. [...]