SPACE.com – PASADENA, Calif. ? Excitementand nerves are both running high among NASA scientists as they prepare for thePhoenix Mars Lander’s planned Sunday arrival at the red planet, missionscientists said today.
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AFP – A Japanese brewery Tuesday said it was planning the first “space beer,” using offspring of barley once stored at the International Space Station.
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2008 May 24
Space Station in the Sun Credit & Copyright: Dirk EwersStill bathed in sunlight, theInternational Space Station trackedthrough night skies aboveHombressen, Germany on May 12.From a range of at least 360 kilometers, astronomer DirkEwers was able to record an impressivelysharp video sequenceof the passage with a small telescope, using some ofthe individual frames to construct this composite image.Sporting solar arrays,the station’s integrated truss structureis nearly 90 meters long.The ATV Jules Verne is docked with thestation, while the space station itself is orbiting at aproximately27,800 kilometers per hour (17,200 mph).A complete video sequence is available as a 1 megabytempeg file oravi file.Phoenix at Mars
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2008 May 22
Windblown NGC 3199 Credit &Copyright: Ken Crawford(Rancho Del Sol Observatory),Macedon RangesObservatoryNGC 3199 lies about 12,000 light-years away,a glowing cosmic cloud in the southern constellationof Carina.The nebula is about 75 light-years across in this haunting,false-color view.Though the deep image reveals a more or less completering shape, it does look very lopsided with a much brighter edgeat the lower right.Near the center of the ring is aWolf-Rayet star, a massive, hot,short-lived star that generates an intense stellar wind.In fact, Wolf-Rayet stars are known to create nebulaewith interestingshapes as their powerful winds sweepup surroundinginterstellarmaterial.In this case, the bright edge was thought to indicate abow shockproduced as the star plowed through a uniform medium, like a boatthrough water.But measurementshave shown the star is not really moving directlytoward the bright edge.So a more likely explanation is that thematerial surrounding the star is not uniform, butclumped and denser near the bright edge of windblown NGC 3199.sunbathing
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2008 May 27
Phoenix at Mars Phoenix,HiRISEThe Phoenixlander’s footpads are about the size of a dinner plate.One of three is shownat the right,covered with Martian soil aftera successful soft landing on the Red Planeton May 25.Amazingly, theleftpanel image is of the spacecraft during its descent phase,captured by the HiRISE camera onboardMars Reconnaissance Orbiter –the first imageever of a spacecraft descending to the surface of another planet.Taken from 750 kilometers above Mars,the picture shows Phoenixsuspended beneath its unfurling, 10 meter-wide parachute,against the much darker Martian surface.The lander is still attached to its protective backshell.Phoenix subsequently released its parachute at an altitude of12.6 kilometers.Using rockets to further reduce its speed for landing,Phoenix nowrests in the northern polar region ofMars at about 68 degrees latitude.pixels in space| (
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AP – Japan is about to roll out the Lexus of space station labs, a whopper in size and sophistication.
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AFP – The US Mars Phoenix spacecraft landed in the frigid north pole region of Mars after a risk-laden descent, NASA said.
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2008 May 25 
Phoenix Lander Arrives at Mars Animated Illustration Credit & Copyright: MAAS Digital, SVV Project, NASAWill Phoenix survive its landing today on Mars? Phoenix‘s landing sequence will ramp up starting at about 7:30 pm EDT (23:30 UTC) today and last just over an hour. If all goes well,one of Phoenix’s first images from Mars will appear on APODtomorrow. The Phoenix Landeris programmed to set down near the North Pole of Mars, and, over the next three months, sample alien soil and ice and look for conditionsconducive for ancient microbiallifeShown above is an artistic animation of what it might look like to see Phoenix land on Mars. In the animated sequence, the Phoenixspacecraft arrives at Mars, deploys its breaking parachute, jettisons its heat shield, fires it thrusters, lands, unfurls its solar panels, deploys its instruments, scoops up some of Mars, and begins its analysis. from mars
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SPACE.com – PASADENA, Calif. ? NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is in fine health afterits unprecedented landing in the Martian arctic Sunday as mission scientiststurn their attention to the craft’s main goal: to explore the layers ofwater ice under the frozen soil.
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AP – Russian space officials on Friday honored international space station crew members who suffered through a botched landing in Kazakhstan in their Soyuz capsule last month.
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