News ...Space 3/4/08

A team of astronomers from the University of Sydney in Australia have been keeping an eye on a binary star system called Wolf-Rayet 104, located in the constellation Sagittarius. Wolf-Rayet stars are hot, gargantuan, older stars that are losing their masses, and astronomers consider these stars as ticking bombs: they could go supernova at any time within the next few hundred thousand years. That’s a relatively short fuse for astronomers. Images of this system from the Keck Telescope show an almost perfect spiral nebula formed by the two stars orbiting each other as they each blow off streams of gas. The way this system is spinning caught the eyes of these astronomers, who say Earth could be in the line of fire when the system blows.
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Magnificent images of avalanches of ice and rock in the northern polar regions of Mars have been captured by NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's (MRO) High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). These images are not of landslides that have happened in the past, they are actual Mars avalanches happening at the moment of observation. This rare event will be of tremendous value to Mars scientists currently analysing the effects of seasons on the landscape and will provide information on the geological activity of the planet…

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The shoot down of US spy satellite USA 193 was condemned by some quarters of the international community. However, the fact remains, this was a resounding success for the US military. Observers of the operation to destroy the potentially dangerous satellite likened it to "trying to fire a missile through the eye of a needle". After all, the dead satellite was orbiting at a height of about 250 km, and the satellite-killing missile was fired from a boat; assuring impact with an object the size of a small bus was never going to be easy. But the mission was a success and the satellite disintegrated into bits (no bigger than a football). Now the task of tracking the debris is under way, and the fallout from last months fireworks are impacting the scheduled launch of other space missions…

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With three orbiters and two rovers currently at Mars, there are always interesting images coming back from the Red Planet. Here's a round-up of the latest images from the five different spacecraft. First up is a fascinating image from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft of dust devil tracks. It's amazing just how many tracks there are in just this one image. Martian dust devils can be up to fifty times as wide and ten times as high as dust devils seen on Earth. This image was taken by Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), and shows an area in the south polar region, just east of Daly Crater. Resolution is about 17 meters per pixel. Original Image link.

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The UK is the only G8 country (the eight richest countries in the world) without a manned space program. 20 years ago, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher put pay to any hope for a British astronaut by opting out of plans citing it as "too expensive" for the island nation. However, the UK government signalled last month they were considering a review of this space exploration policy, receiving a mixed reaction. A prominent satellite manufacturer has come forward with a suggestion that the UK may after all be better suited to constructing a space exploration "infrastructure" and leaving manned exploration to the ESA and NASA…

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