SPACE.com – WASHINGTON — NASA hailed the flawless liftoff of spaceshuttle Atlantis Monday, a space shot that marked the agency’s fifth shuttle launchof the year — a flight rate not seen since 2002, before the tragic Columbiaaccident.
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2009 November 15 
It looks like a ring on the sky.Hundreds of years agoastronomersnoticed a nebula with a most unusual shape.Now known asM57or NGC 6720, the gas cloud became popularly known as theRing Nebula.It is now known to be aplanetary nebula,a gas cloud emitted at the end of a Sun-like star’s existence.As one of the brightestplanetary nebula on the sky,the Ring Nebula can be seen with a small telescope in the constellation ofLyra.The Ring Nebula lies about 4,000light years away, and is roughly 500 times the diameter ofour Solar System.In this picture by theHubble Space Telescope in 1998,dust filaments and globules are visible far from the central star.This helps indicate that the Ring Nebula is not spherical, butcylindrical
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SPACE.com – NASA’s Mars-exploring Spirit rover received its commands Tuesdayto attempt an escape from a sand trap, but it made little progress because of a precarious tilt, mission managers reported today.
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SPACE.com – WASHINGTON — The space shuttle Atlantis roared into spaceMonday afternoon to begin a vital 11-day delivery run to the InternationalSpace Station.
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Mars Express flew over the boundary between Kasei Valles and Sacra Fossae and imaged the region, acquiring spectacular views of the chaotic terrain in the area.
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AFP – Wildlife experts in Indian-controlled Kashmir have fitted black bears with satellite-tracking collars to study their behaviour and help conserve the endangered animals, officials said Wednesday.
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SPACE.com – NASA’s Mars-exploring Spirit rover has received its commandsto attempt an escape from the sand trap it is stuck in and mission managers arewaiting to hear back on the plucky robot’s progress.
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AFP – NASA and Microsoft launched an interactive website that allows Web surfers to become Mars explorers.
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SPACE.com – The effort to free NASA’s Spirit rover, currently mired insand on Mars, will begin in earnest today, when engineers team send the first escapecommands to the stuck robot to try to move out of its trap late tonight.
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AFP – NASA’s Atlantis shuttle has blasted off with a haul of spare parts for the International Space Station and some microscopic worms that could explain muscle loss in space.
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