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| Image credit: NASA |
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| Getting Gravity Probe B Ready Was Tough |
| Sep 3, 2004 - After four months in orbit, NASA's Gravity Probe B is finally ready to begin its scientific mission - to find out if two predictions by Einstein about relativity are correct. It wasn't easy, though. Controllers expected to get the spacecraft orienting on its target star within a few days, but it took weeks because sunlight reflecting off of dust particles confused its tracking system. Engineers also had to tweak the spacecraft's software to compensate for cosmic rays that flashed into its telescope. Everything's working fine now, and in a year or so, we should have some answers. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: ESA |
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| Envisat Watches Hurricane Frances |
| Sep 3, 2004 - The European Space Agency's Envisat Earth has a whole suite of tools to analyze Hurricane Frances with, and that's just what it's done. The Earth observation satellite has both optical and radar instruments, and it can observe high-atmosphere cloud structure in both the visible and infrared spectrum, and use radar backscatter to look at the roughness of the water underneath to calculate wind speeds. Frances is expected to make landfall in Florida on Saturday and cause a significant amount of damage. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI |
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| Saturn's Cool... Well, Its Rings Are |
| Sep 2, 2004 - According to NASA's Cassini spacecraft, the temperature of Saturn's rings range from cold to really really cold. In this false-colour image, the red signifies 110 Kelvin (-261 degrees F), and the blue is 70 Kelvin (-333 degrees F). Cassini has shown that opaque regions of the rings are cooler, while transparent sections are warmer; this was predicted by scientists before the spacecraft arrived. The data was gathered using one of Cassini's 12 scientific instruments, the composite infrared spectrometer. (Full Story) |
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