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| New Areas in the Forum |
Sep 22, 2003 - I've added a couple of new areas to the Universe Today Forums which I think will be pretty helpful. The first is a Totally Off-Topic area where people can yack about stuff that has nothing to do with space and astronomy. Hopefully that will keep the rest of the forums purely about space.
A more useful area, however, is "Questions and Answers". If you've got a nagging question about space or a current mission, go ahead and ask it here. People in the forum will try and help you out, and I'll also be submitting the really tough questions to experts in space and astronomy so we can help get to the bottom of this for you.
Come and join us!
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today
P.S. Thanks to the overwhelming number of you who replied to my last email. There's definitely an email delay to some of you. I'm working with my hosting provider to get to the bottom of this. |
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| Image credit: ISRO |
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| Madhavan Nair Selected as New Chairman of ISRO |
| Sep 22, 2003 - Mr. G Madhavan Nair has been appointed as the new Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Previous to this new position, Nair was the Director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, and has been involved in the agency since 1967 when he was first hired at the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station. His predecessor, Dr K Kasturirangan, left the position after he was nominated for India's Upper House of Parliament. |
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| Image credit: Gemini |
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| Brown Dwarf is Actually a Binary System |
| Sep 22, 2003 - Astronomers were searching for planets around nearby star Epsilon Indi when they discovered something unusual. A previously-known brown dwarf star orbiting Epsilon Indi has a companion of its own. This new companion, known as Epsilon Indi Bb, orbits the larger brown dwarf (Epsilon Indi Ba) at a distance of only 2.2 astronomical units. Both objects are part of a new class of stars called T-dwarfs; they have diameters similar to Jupiter but have significantly more mass. |
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| Image credit: NASA/JPL |
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| Galileo Plunges Into Jupiter |
| Sep 21, 2003 - NASA's Galileo spacecraft was intentionally crashed into Jupiter on Sunday, ending 14 years of service to science and exploration. The spacecraft entered Jupiter's thick atmosphere and disintegrated at 1857 GMT (2:57pm EDT), but the last signals arrived at Earth nearly an hour later because of the great distance to Jupiter. At the end of its mission, Galileo lacked the fuel to escape the Jovian system so scientists decided to crash it into Jupiter to avoid contaminating any potential life on Europa, which is believed to have liquid water oceans under a thick sheet of ice. |
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