A little while ago the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was captured by the robotic arm Canadarm2 from the International Space Station. The Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, assisted by commander Terry Virts, managed the operation and started moving the Dragon to the docking point of the Harmony module. The spacecraft was launched last Tuesday.
In late 2010, NASA’s space probe Cassini started observing a huge storm on Saturn lasting for several months. In recent days, an article was published on the journal “Nature Geoscience” that provides an explanation for this phenomenon that had been observed a number of times in the last 140 years but had remained mysterious. According to a team led by Cheng Li of CalTech, Pasadena, the presence of water is the key to its origin.
A few hours ago the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft blasted off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in its CRS-6 (Cargo Resupply Service 6) mission, also referred to as SPX-6. This is the 6th of 12 missions that for the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station with a cargo and its return to Earth, again with a cargo.
A research conducted by a team led by astronomer Peter A. Milne of the University of Arizona published in two articles in the “Astrophysical Journal” shows that Type Ia supernovae can be divided into two groups with different characteristics. For years, astronomers had thought that their brightness depended almost exclusively on their distance. This can have consequences on our knowledge of the universe expansion, also calculated based on this type of supernovae.
Yesterday in Washington, D.C. there was a NASA panel about water and its connection with the possibility of finding extraterrestrial life. Some scientists summarized the findings of recent decades obout the presence of water in space and exoplanets. According to Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA, in the course of our life we may finally have an answer whether we are alone in the solar system and beyond.
