Warfare has been the driving force for many technological advances. The Atlas booster, one of rocketry's stars, arose from such a conflict and now continues a stellar performance in launching military and peace oriented payloads. In the book Atlas The Ultimate Weapon Chuck Walker, together with Joel Powell, present a detailed history of the Atlas development program together with the views of the people who advanced this very successful rocket technology.

An international team of astronomers have found evidence that certain kinds of gamma-ray bursts, which are associated with Type 1C supernovae (aka hypernovae), could be caused when carbon/oxygen stars collapse into black holes. Type 1C supernovae occur when massive stars shed their outer layers of hydrogen and helium, or lose them to binary companions. As it collapses, material blasts out the top and bottom in powerful jets. The team was able to confirm this model by using Keck and the Subaru Telescope to analyze a recent hypernova that matched their predictions perfectly.

The space shuttle Discovery has returned to NASA's massive Vehicle Assembly Building to get a new, modified external fuel tank for its upcoming mission. The redesigned fuel tank has a heater on board that should help to minimize frost and ice buildup that could fall off and strike the shuttle during launch. Discovery will roll back out to the launch pad in mid-June, carrying its Italian-built Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Raffaello. NASA is targeting to launch Discovery on July 13, 2005.

Only when the Apollo astronauts finally stepped out onto the surface of the Moon was the mystery of its dark patches finally revealed - they're ancient impact basins that filled with lava 700 million years after the formation of the Earth and Moon. Scientists now think this late heavy bombardment might have come from a time when the giant planets in the Solar System were changing orbits; Jupiter moved inward, while Saturn, Uranus and Neptune headed away from the Sun. The gravitational side-effect of this shuffling sent a rain of smaller objects that struck the Moon and other planets in the Solar System.

Cassini has turned up an unusual "hotspot" on Titan that astronomers don't have an explanation for... yet. The 483-km (300-mile) wide region can been seen in both visible light and infrared. This spot could be from an asteroid impact, cryovolcanism, or some kind of atmospheric process - maybe a crater is holding clouds in place, or unusual materials on the surface. Cassini will visit Titan during its nighttime in July, 2006, and view the region again in infrared to see it it's actually hot.

Professional astronomers have got some powerful equipment at their disposal: Hubble, Keck, and Spitzer, just to name a few. But many discoveries rely on the work of amateurs, using equipment you could buy at your local telescope shop. And recently, amateurs helped discover a planet orbiting another star 15 thousand light-years away. Grant Christie is an amateur astronomer from Auckland New Zealand, and is part of the team that made the discovery.

Based on new observations from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Saturn could act as a mirror to help determine when massive X-ray flares are going off on the Sun. Chandra observed Saturn before and then during a flare and could clearly see X-rays reflected back. A similar situation also happens with Jupiter, so scientists could use the two planets as remote sensing tools to monitor events on the opposite side of the Sun.

NASA's Opportunity rover is still working its way free from the sand trap it ran into a few weeks ago. Since it began trying to escape the dune, Opportunity has only moved 30 cm (11 inches), but operators think it's just a matter of time before the rover finds more solid ground to grip onto. Once the rover gets free, it will turn around and analyze the sand dune to help figure out why this one was so sticky compared to the dozens it already drove over without any problem.

This photograph of Saturn taken by Cassini shows its rings bending down just before they pass behind the planet. This is actually an optical effect caused by Saturn's atmosphere, which acts like a lens to refract the light. The image was obtained using Cassini's near-infrared filter which samples a wavelength that makes methane gas invisible, allowing the spacecraft to "see" through Saturn's atmosphere.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has traveled so far in our Solar System that it's reached the heliosheath. This is an area just past the termination shock region, where the solar wind crashes into the thin interstellar gas of the galaxy. It was difficult to detect exactly when Voyager 1 passed through the termination shock and into the heliosheath, because we have no data about interstellar space yet, just calculations.

One of the most intense bursts of solar radiation in more than 50 years happened in mid-January this year, and scientists are still mulling over the implications for current space weather theories. Another interesting aspect of this flare is how quickly it traveled through the solar system. Normally a proton shower associated with a flare takes several hours to reach the Earth, but we were hit with the first particles in just 15 minutes. This could have important implications for future space weather warning systems, to keep astronauts safe from solar storms.

Wormholes are a mainstay in science fiction, providing our heroes with a quick and easy way to instantly travel around the Universe. Enter a wormhole near the Earth and you come out on the other side of the galaxy. Even though science fiction made them popular, wormholes had their origins in science - distorting spacetime like this was theoretically possible. But according to Dr. Stephen Hsu from the University of Oregon building a wormhole is probably impossible.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has obtained the most detailed images ever taken of Saturn's rings, including new details about its B ring, of which little was known previously. Cassini went behind Saturn's rings on May 3, 2005, and this gave scientists on Earth a chance to probe the ringst. Cassini sent a series of radio signals as it traveled behind the rings; the weaker the signal, the more dense the material in the rings. This allowed scientists to determine the thickness and size of particles at each point in the rings.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! The week might begin with a full Moon, but we'll have plenty to explore as we learn about the anti-twilight arch and the "Belt of Venus". We'll watch as the Moon occults Antares, locate globular clusters, visit the planets and pinpoint asteroids. The weekend brings early dark skies along with challenges for all observers, so get ready to grab a comet by the tail, because...

Here's what's up!

Astronomers have analyzed the dusty discs of newly forming planets around other stars, and have discovered that rocky planets (like our own Earth) form much further from their parent stars than previous theories suggested. Protoplanetary dust that gets to close to its parent star completely evaporates, and never gets the chance to clump together into larger objects. The team made these new, more precise measurements using powerful instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope and the giant Keck Observatory.

Two amateur astronomers from New Zealand, working with a team of astronomers from around the world have helped to discover an extrasolar planet 15,000 light years from Earth. They used a technique known as gravitational microlensing, which occurs when a massive object (like a star or even a black hole) passes in front of a more distant star; its gravity bends and focuses light like a lens. The team noticed that the closer star had a strange pattern of distortion to its light that indicated a planet. This method could be used to find much smaller, even Earth-sized, planets.

A Russian Proton rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sunday, carrying the DIRECTV 8 broadcast satellite into orbit. The rocket launched at 1759 UTC (1:59 p.m. EDT), and the Breeze M upper stage continued to place it into a geosynchronous transfer orbit 9 hours and 15 minutes later. DIRECTV 8 will augment the existing broadcast satellites stationed above 101 degrees west longitude.