Cassini Shows Why Jet Streams Cross-Cut Saturn

Turbulent jet streams, regions where winds blow faster than in other places, churn east and west across Saturn. Scientists have been trying to understand for years the mechanism that drives these wavy structures in Saturn's atmosphere and the source from which the jets derive their energy.In a new study appearing in the June edition of the journal Icarus, scientists used images collected over several years by NASA's Cassini spacecraft to discover that the heat from within the planet powers the...

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NASA readies to Hunt Black Holes with New Space Telescope

The U.S. space group is set to launch a telescope into space June 13 to seek out and learn black holes -- those still-mysterious space bodies that scientists consider lie at the spirit of every massive galaxy, including our own Milky Way. Black holes have a gravitational pull so intense that not even light can flee from them. As gas, dust and stars are sucked in; the fabric accelerates and heats up, generating powerful X-ray beam emissions. NASA is setting out to conduct a survey of the black...

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SpaceX journey should get NASA moving

A space capsule known as the Dragon touched down in the Pacific Ocean on Thursday. After launching into orbit May 22, the capsule had performed a sequence of complicated exercises, docked with the International Space Station, dropped off more than 1,000 pounds of provisions and returned home bearing a load of science experiments. It was the first profitable spacecraft to complete such an achievement. And the company that developed it, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, was...

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ISS Transit of Venus

In 1768, when James Cook sailed out of Plymouth harbor to observe the Transit of Venus in Tahiti, the trip was tantamount to a voyage through space. The remote island had just been "discovered" a year earlier, and by all accounts it was as strange and alien to Europeans as the stars themselves. Cook's pinpoint navigation to Tahiti and his subsequent observations of Venus crossing the South Pacific sun in 1769 have inspired explorers for centuries.  One of those explorers is about...

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