NASA’s Hubble: Amazing Stellar Dance

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this wonderful view of the crowded astral encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled region of space known as a circular cluster. Mutual gravitational attraction amongst a cluster’s hundreds of thousands or even millions of stars keeps stellar members in check, allowing globular clusters to hang together for many billions of years. More than 150 of these objects surround our Milky Way galaxy.

On a galactic scale, globular clusters are indeed not all that big. In Messier 68's case, its constituent stars span a volume of space with a diameter of little more than a hundred light-years. The disc of the Milky Way, on the other hand, extends over some 100,000 light-years or more. Astronomers can measure the ages of globular clusters by looking at the light of their constituent stars.

Hubble added Messier 68 to its own impressive list of cosmic targets in this image using the Wide Field Camera of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The image, which combines visible and infrared light, has a field of view of approximately 3.4 by 3.4 arc minutes

Nasa is in High Term to Develope Atlantic Row

After a Tropical low pressure, NASA's Aqua satellite spotted some very cold, high, thunderstorms around the center of a tropical low pressure area in the Atlantic Ocean today, indicating that the system is getting stronger,organized and developed.

In that low pressure area, designated as system 99L was located about 850 miles east of the southern Windward Islands  near 10.7 north latitude and 46.9 west longitude then it was moving west between 15 and 20 mph.

The Aqua Satellite's  Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of the storm. It showed that there was a small area of strong, high, cold cloud tops of thunderstorms around the center of circulation, indicating some strength in the low pressure area. Infrared imagery shows temperature and the higher the cloud tops, the colder they are as they reach higher in the troposphere (lowest atmospheric layer). When cloud top temperatures are very cold, it's an indication of strong uplift in the atmosphere. The cloud top temperatures around the center of this low were near -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius), and indicated powerful uplift and high cloud tops.

The New vehicle "LauncherOne" to transform small satellite for tourism is in final leg of test flights

The Great Farnborough "International Air Show 2012", Virgin Galactic, the world's first commercial spaceline, Today they announced "LauncherOne", a new air-launched rocket specifically designed to deliver small satellites into orbit. With substantial funding already raised from Virgin Galactic's partner aabar Investments PJS, and with commercial flights of this new orbital launch vehicle expected to begin by 2016, Virgin Galactic aims to offer frequent and dedicated launches at the world's lowest prices. Virgin Galactic also announced that four private companies have already put down deposits as future LauncherOne customers, expressing their intent to purchase a total of several dozen launches, which would exceed the level of early commitment of any previous new launch vehicle. 

The New LauncherOne will be a two-stage vehicle capable of carrying up to 500 pounds that is 225 kilograms to orbit for prices below $10 million. And,the rocket will be launched from Virgin Galactic's proven WhiteKnightTwo,it is uniquely capable aircraft also designed to carry along SpaceShipTwo aloft to begin her suborbital missions.Very thanks to the extreme flexibility of air launch, Virgin Galactic's customers will enjoy reduced infrastructure costs in addition to the wide range of possible launch locations tailored to individual mission requirements and weather conditions in this mission.

NASA’s SUMI: to Observe Magnetic Fields on the Sun

On July 5, NASA will launch a mission called the Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation or SUMI, to study the intricate, constantly changing attractive fields on the sun in a hard-to-observe region of the sun's low atmosphere called the chromospheres. SUMI will launch from White Sands Missile series in New Mexico on a Black Brant rocket. The flight will last about eight minutes total.

Magnetic fields, and the intense magnetic energy they help marshal, lie at the heart of how the sun can create huge explosions of light such as solar flares and eruptions of particles such as coronal mass ejections. While there are already instruments both on the ground and flying in space – that can measure these fields, each is constrained to observe the fields on a particular layer of the sun's surface or atmosphere. 

This higher layer of the chromospheres is known as the transition region because the chromospheres transitions here into the part of the sun's atmosphere called the corona -- and it is a region that is dominated by the magnetic fields and in which solar material heats up dramatically forming the corona and the base of the solar wind.

Model Return Robot Return Challenge at WPI

Self-directed robots roamed across the grassy terrain at Worcester Polytechnic Institute searching for samples to gather at the 2012 Sample Return Robot Challenge in Worcester, Mass, June 14-17. The challenge: plan, build up and show the next generation of robots capable of exploring the landscapes of other worlds.

Eleven teams initially registered for the challenge. Six teams complete it to WPI for the start of the challenge. After weigh-in and inspections, one team effectively met all necessities and competed in the challenge but did not win a cash prize.

WPI was the first university to offer a bachelor's degree program in robotics engineering. In 2009, a WPI robotics group took home $500,000 in NASA prize money after captivating the Regolith Excavation Challenge. The competition has demonstrated the difficulty in developing truly autonomous robotic systems for future space exploration. Prizes are merely awarded once all specifications are met. No prizes were awarded during this contest; NASA's $1.5 million prize purse will remain accessible for future Centennial Challenges