Space News

ESA News
Hubble: The Antennae Galaxies found to be closer to us [heic0812]
New research on the Antennae Galaxies using the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows that this proto-typical pair of interacting galaxies is in fact much closer to us than previously thought - at 45 million light-years instead of 65 million light-years.

Gaia: NASA's WMAP poses for ESA's Gaia
Sebastien Bouquillon (SYRTE/Obs. de Paris), Ricky Smart (INAF/OATo, Torino) and Alexandre Andrei (Observatorio Nacional, Rio de Janeiro) have used the 2.2m telescope of the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile, to take several photographs of NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite in its orbit, which is about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. Perhaps surprisingly, they did so as part of the preparations for ESA's Gaia mission, which scientifically is totally unrelated to WMAP.

Hubble: Compact galaxies in early Universe pack a big punch [heic0811]
Using the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer onboard of the Hubble NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have made observations of young, surprisingly compact galaxies, each only 5000 light-years across, but weighing 200 thousand million times the mass of the Sun.

NASA Breaking News
NASA Successfully Completes First Series of Ares Engine Tests
The J-2X engine will power the upper stages of the Ares I and Ares V rockets.

NASA to Announce Education Initiative at San Jose Future Forum
NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale will announce a significant new education initiative at a NASA Future Forum on May 14 at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif.

NASA Awards Contract for Ares I Mobile Launcher
NASA's Kennedy Space Center has awarded a contract to Hensel Phelps of Orlando, Fla., for the construction of the Ares I mobile launcher for the Constellation Program.