Universe Today - October 9, 2001

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua announced today that China is planning to send a spacecraft to the moon. Few details have been released so far, only that it will be launched on Chinese-made Long-March rocket, but not when, or whether it will land on the moon. This lunar probe will go hand-in-hand with a recent agreement between the Chinese Space Agency and the European Space Agency to jointly study the Earth's magnetosphere.

NASA is planning to reveal the early stages of planet formation using a powerful new instrument - the Keck Interferometer. Early next year the twin Keck telescopes, the most powerful telescopes in the world, will be linked together to form one giant telescope. The team will focus their instrument at the disk of dust and gas around a class of stars which are thought to resemble the Sun at a formative stage.

According to data gathered by the European Space Agency's Ulysses spacecraft, our Sun is starting to calm down after reaching the peak of its 11-year activity cycle. The sun has settled down at the poles, but there is still the potential for large solar storms around the equator. The sun will reach the minimum of its cycle in 2007.