Below The Beltway

We’re less than three years away from the end of America’s manned space flight program:
In 2 1/2 years, just as the [international space] station gets fully assembled, the United States will no longer have any spacecraft of its own capable of carrying astronauts and cargo to the station, in which roughly $100 billion is being [...]

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera would make a great backyard telescope for viewing Mars, and we can also use it at Mars to view other planets. This is an image of Earth and the moon, acquired on October 3, 2007, by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
At the time the [...]

A rare sight, a total lunar eclipse, will be visible in most of North America Wednesday night:
Feb. 13, 2008: On Wednesday evening, February 20th, the full Moon over the Americas will turn a delightful shade of red and possibly turquoise, too. It’s a total lunar eclipse—the last one until Dec. 2010.
The Sun goes down. The [...]

The United States will make it’s first attempt to shoot down an errant satellite on Thursday:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. Navy likely will make its first attempt to shoot down a faulty spy satellite Wednesday night.
The U.S. government issued a formal notice warning ships and planes to stay clear of a large area of the [...]

Scientists have discovered a smaller version of our Solar System about 5,000 light years away:
Astronomers said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.
“It [...]

It was five years ago today, on a Saturday morning in 2003, that the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it reentered the Earth’s atmosphere:
NASA has launched seven shuttle missions since the loss of seven astronauts aboard Columbia five years ago on Friday, but the disaster still resonates as the space program prepares for its [...]

Thanks to the Messenger probe, we’re seeing a side of Mercury that nobody has ever seen before:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The first pictures from the unseen side of Mercury reveal the wrinkles of a shrinking, aging planet with scars from volcanic eruptions and a birthmark shaped like a spider.
Some of the 1,213 photos taken by NASA’s [...]

The New York Times reports that the Mars Rover Spirit may have inadvertently discovered evidence of an environment on Mars that may have supported life:
SAN FRANCISCO — The lame wheel on the NASA Mars rover Spirit has proved an invaluable science tool, turning up evidence of a once habitable environment, scientists said Monday.
(…)
The right front [...]

The space race began:
MOSCOW — Russia on Thursday celebrated the 50th anniversary of the launch of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik, which marked the dawn of the Space Age and sparked the race to land a man on the moon.
Ceremonies were held at the Russia’s cosmonaut training center, Star City, outside of Moscow, to recall [...]

Apparently, our entire universe is nothing more that a giant cosmic doughnut:
 WASHINGTON — Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That’s got them scratching their heads about what’s just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is [...]