Universe Today - December 6, 2001

After another one-day delay Tuesday afternoon due to poor weather, the space shuttle Endeavour finally lifted off from Cape Canaveral Wednesday at 2219 GMT (5:19pm EST). This launch was the first since the September 11th attacks, so it was protected with unprecedented security. Endeavour is currently catching up with the International Space Station, on track to deliver the crew of Expedition 4 to their new home by Friday.

Astronomers believe they may have finally solved one of the greatest mysteries in astronomy; or maybe they just found another star. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, the team captured an image of a red dwarf star using a technique called microlensing; another star in front acted like a gravitational lens to focus the red dwarf's light to make it visible on Earth. Red dwarf stars like this could make up a portion of what astronomers call "Dark Matter".

A new photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a star forming nebula in nearby galaxy NGC 6822, located 1.6 million light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. The glowing gas cloud is called Hubble-V, with a diameter of about 200 light-years, and contains dozens of young, ultra-hot stars.

A new game show called "Ancient Astronaut" might send a lucky winner into space on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to visit the International Space Station. In an announcement by MirCorp (which previously attempted to broker trips to Mir), European company Image World Media may put the winner of their contest into space as early as 2003. Image World Media has reserved another Soyuz seat for a different, and so far unannounced, television program.