Space News for July 16, 1999

Merging Galaxies Found by Hubble

Recent images caught by the Hubble Space Telescope show more than a dozen distant galaxies merging together. The galaxies are 8 billion light-years away, and the merging process will take less than a billion years.

CNN Space
Fox News
MSNBC

New Evidence Refutes Antigravity

Recent observations that exploding stars in distant galaxies seemed fainter than expected suggested that the expansion of the Universe was speeding up – caused by a mysterious force called antigravity. But astronomers from the University of California at Berkley have recently refuted these conclusions.

exoScience

Mir Prepared to Be Abandoned

It appears that the current Mir crew will be its last. When the cosmonauts leave the station on August 23rd, the 130-ton station will be readied for its final, fiery descent. Although the Mir’s final days are nearing, the station has survived almost three times as long as its original mission.

Fox News

Boeing Plans New Experimental Plane

NASA and Boeing have announced plans to build a new experimental space plane, called the X-37, which will serve as a test bed for a range of technologies, including flight at Mach 25 while demonstrating aircraft-like operations.

SpaceDaily