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Hibernating magnetar springs to life

...a mysterious celestial object that emitted 40 visible light flashes before disappearing again could be a missing link in the family of neutron stars...

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Evidence of life could survive in Martian meteorites

...an artificial meteorite plunged through the Earth’s atmosphere has shown that traces of life could survive the high temperatures and pressures endured in such an ordeal...

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Solar wind at 50 year low

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STS-120 day 2 highlights

Flight Day 2 of Discovery's mission focused on heat shield inspections. This movie shows the day's highlights.

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STS-120 day 1 highlights

The highlights from shuttle Discovery's launch day are packaged into this movie.

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STS-118: Highlights

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STS-120: Rollout to pad

Space shuttle Discovery rolls out of the Vehicle Assembly Building and travels to launch pad 39A for its STS-120 mission.

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Dawn leaves Earth

NASA's Dawn space probe launches aboard a Delta 2-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral to explore two worlds in the asteroid belt.

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Phoenix peeks under a rock
BY DR EMILY BALDWIN
ASTRONOMY NOW

Posted: September 26, 2008

Earlier this week Phoenix used its robotic arm to slide a rock away from an area of soil that could shed light on the processes that effect the presence of ice on Mars.

Phoenix had enlarged the trench near the videotape-sized rock –- nicknamed “Headless” – two days earlier in preparation for the ground moving maneuver to slip the rock into the trench. The ground surface between the rock's prior position and the lip of the trench had a slope of about three degrees downward toward the trench.

"The rock ended up exactly where we intended it to," says Matt Robinson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Phoenix slipped the "Headless" rock (originally located just above the trench in the top image) into a trench earlier this week (bottom image), in order to study the soil underneath the original location of the videotape-sized rock. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University.

Although the robotic arm was not designed to heave rocks around the Phoenix workspace, the motivation was in the layer of hard, icy material discovered around the landing site. Excavating down to that hard layer underneath a rock might provide clues about processes affecting the ice.

"The appeal of studying what's underneath is so strong we have to give this a try," says Michael Mellon, a Phoenix science team member at the University of Colorado. "The rocks are darker than the material around them, and they hold heat. In theory, the ice table should deflect downward under each rock. If we checked and saw this deflection, that would be evidence the ice is probably in equilibrium with the water vapour in the atmosphere."

The scientists also speculate that if the icy layer were found closer to the surface under a rock, it could be that the rock is collecting moisture from the atmosphere, with the moisture becoming part of the icy layer.

Whatever new findings are derived from the study of the soil underneath the rock, scientists will be given a fresh insight into the ways in which the Martian atmosphere and surface are intimately linked.

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