Category Archives: News and Updates

News about Astronomy and Space Science. Find every news item and update here, in blog format. You can get these updates sent straight to your mailbox by subscribing here, or you can subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking the link.

Oxygen on Saturn’s Moon

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The Cassini mission has collected an impressive body of data from Saturn and its many moons and rings.  Evidence collected in 2008  seemed to suggest that its second moon, Rhea (about half the size of our own moon) may have a tiny ring structure of its own.  Follow-up observations showed that this discovery was mistaken and that these rings do not exist, but did reveal something just as interesting:  An atmosphere rich in oxygen. The chemistry is complex and scientists are still sifting … Continue reading →

Visitors from another star

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As any astronomer knows, there are two zones in the Solar System packed with small loose bodies, two to three kilometers across, of rock and ice:  The Kuiper belt out past Neptune and the Oort cloud, a mind-numbingly vast region marking the very distant outer reaches of our Sun’s territory at a distance of about a light-year.  Every now and then some sort of gravitional perturbation (a close encounter with a larger object, or passing star) will disturb the orbit of … Continue reading →

Commercial Space Flight Licenses

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Amongst all the american rhetoric about the future of space travel and the roles that should be played by government and private enterprise, one fact stands out clearly:  If it is ever to become financially viable it has to be commercialised.  Space technology development needs commercial pressures to increase efficiency and bring prices down.  One of the many companies currently working to provide space travel products is SpaceX. The FAA has just awarded SpaceX the first ever commercial license to … Continue reading →

South Africa confirms commitment to SKA

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STATEMENT ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN SQUARE KILOMETRE ARRAY BID INTER MINISTERIAL COMMITTEE MEETING. The South African Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC) on the Square Kilometre Array met in Cape Town today, 11 November 2010.   The South African Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC) on the Square Kilometre Array met in Cape Town today, 11 November 2010. The IMC was established following a Cabinet decision on 21 October 2009. South Africa is leading the African bid to host the world’s most powerful radio … Continue reading →

Asteroid Montage

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It may surprise you to learn just how many places our robotic spacecraft have visited over the years.  Click Image to enlarge This image is a montage of all small (non-planetary) bodies that have been visited so far – five comets and eleven asteroids (although two of those asteroids form a double asteroid system).  With thanks to Emily Lakdawalla from the Planetary Society for collecting the images, resizing them all to the same scale and composing this impressive image.  I … Continue reading →