astronomy

Giant Telescope Project Goes to South Africa, Australia

By KATHLEEN CHAYKOWSKI in Pretoria, South Africa and GAUTAM NAIK in London A consortium of countries chose South Africa and Australia to share a groundbreaking €1.5 billion ($1.87 billion) radio telescope that will be the biggest and most sensitive instrument of its kind. The telescope, known as the Square Kilometer Array, or SKA, will offer …

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SA, Australia to share SKA location

 May 25 2012 Dawn breaks over the Northern Cape near Carnavon, the proposed site for the SKA telescope. Australia and South Africa will share the location for the world’s most powerful radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array’s scientific consortium announced on Friday. “We have decided on a dual site approach,” said SKA board chairman John …

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Successful Launch Kicks off SpaceX’s Historic Mission

May 19, 2012 Contact: Kirstin Grantham SpaceX (202) 649-2716 media@spacex.com Hawthorne, CA – Today, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft to orbit in an exciting start to the mission that will make SpaceX the first commercial company in history to attempt to send a spacecraft to the …

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Stunning View of Lyrids and Earth at Night

On April 21, the 2012 Lyrid meteor shower peaked in the skies over Earth. While NASA allsky cameras were looking up, astronaut Don Pettit aboard the International Space Station trained his camera on Earth. This video is a composite of 316 still frames from that evening. (NASA/JSC/Don Pettit and NASA/MSFC/B. Cooke)