* Astronomy

A Jaxa H2A F12 rocket body that was launched on the 24th February, 2007 from the Tanegashima Space Centre, for the IGS 4A mission, is predicted to re-enter the Earths atmosphere on the 12th April, 2011 @ --:-- GMT ± -- hours. Period: 90.45 minutes Inclination: 97.38° Apogee: 310 km...

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2010 Annual Meeting. Read more

Sunspot 11054 has appeared on the Suns North-eastern limb Expand (72kb, 560 x 560) Credit SOHO/MDI

JPL Director Charles Elachi Receives Multiple Honours The director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Charles Elachi, is receiving multiple awards and honours this year in the United States and overseas. Read more...

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has approved the name Dogana for a 41.2-km-wide Martian crater located at 10.0°S, 306.35°E. The feature was named in honour of a town in the Republic of San Marino.Google Earth file Dogana Crater.kmz (1kb, kmz)

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 3:30 p.m. - 5 p.m. Gerard P. Kuiper Space Sciences Room: 308 Dante Lauretta, from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, will give a talk titled "The OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission." Read more

Orbital elements: 2011 GD68 Earth MOID = 0.4014 AU Epoch 2011 Feb. 8.0 TT = JDT 2455600.5 MPC M 12.76959 (2000.0) P Q n 0.35865822 Peri. 331.92565 +0.36709402 -0.75138440 a 1.9619241 Node 91.70270 +0.92259118 +0.21894675 e 0.7351724 Incl. 33.26897 +0.11860645 +0.62248197 P 2.75 H 17.7 G 0...

HR 8323 is a G-type pre-main-sequence star in the constellation of Grus. It has an apparent visual magnitude of approximately 5.58. A debris disk has been imaged around this star in visible light using the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope; it has also been imaged in the infrared (70 m) usi...

Motor boat turbulence kills zooplankton in estuaries Turbulence generated by speeding motor boats kills significant numbers of zooplankton, a study has revealed for the first time. Experiments on copepods, tiny crustaceans that live and float in water, show that a third die in waters frequente...

Fireball of 10 April 2011 over N Italy A fireball of zenithal magnitude -13.4 was captured over N Italy on April 10, 2011 at 02h31m UT (00h31m LT). The bright object, ended with a big explosion, was taken by E.Stomeo from the automatic meteor s...

Asteroid 2006 HF6 will make a near-Earth flyby (0.013 AU) on the 19th April, 2011.Orbital elements: 2006 HF6 Earth MOID = 0.0027 AU Epoch 2006 Mar. 6.0 TT = JDT 2453800.5 MPC M 5.94793 (2000.0) P Q n 0.58341866 Peri. 86.65334 -0.43973079 -0.89637331 a 1.4184559 Node 29.63715 +0.77234901 -0.4...

Salyut 1 (DOS-1) was the first space station of any kind, launched by the USSR on April 19, 1971. Read more

Aryabhatta was India's first satellite, named after the great Indian astronomer of the same name. It was launched by the Soviet Union on 19 April 1975 from Kapustin Yar using a Cosmos-3M launch vehicle. Read more

The Exodus (the exit from Egypt) is the story of the departure of the Israelites from ancient Egypt described in the Hebrew Bible. Narrowly defined, the term refers only to the departure from Egypt described in the Book of Exodus; more widely, it takes in the subsequent law-givings and wanderings in...

National Academy of Sciences Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Project Mohole Fifty years ago an ambitious scientific endeavour dubbed "Project Mohole" succeeded in obtaining sample cores from 234 feet beneath the ocean bottom, operating in 12,000 feet of water, the first time such a v...