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Supermassive black holes common in early  Universe

...observations of a spectacular collision of galaxies in the distant Universe have revealed that colossal black holes were present when galaxies were just beginning to form...

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Fermi discovers first pure gammar ray pulsar

...the Fermi spacecraft’s Large Area Telescope has discovered the first pure gamma ray-only stellar corpse, blinking at the Earth around three times a second...

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Martian moon Phobos a rubble pile?

...new Mars Express observations of Martian moon Phobos suggest it could be a rubble pile rather than a single solid object..

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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

The STS-118 crew, including Barbara Morgan, narrates its mission highlights film and answers questions in this post-flight presentation.

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 Mission film

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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Dawn: Launch preview

These briefings preview the launch and science objectives of NASA's Dawn asteroid orbiter.

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Phoenix completes

soil delivery
BY DR EMILY BALDWIN
ASTRONOMY NOW

Posted: October 22, 2008

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has finished scooping soil samples to deliver to its onboard laboratories, and is now preparing to analyse samples already obtained before the Sun completely sets on the mission.

Last week, the lander’s robotic arm successfully delivered soil into oven six of the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyser (TEGA), a bonus for the mission since the mission goal of filling and examining soil in at least three of the ovens has already been completed.

This image shows four of the eight cells in the TEGA instrument. TEGA's ovens, located underneath the cells, heat soil samples so the released gases can be analysed. Left to the right the cells are numbered 7, 6, 5 and 4, with the most recent delivery to cell 6 Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute.

The project scientists are keen to analyse the samples as the power Phoenix generates continues to drop as autumn on Mars gradually sets in. "My entire team is working very hard to make use of the power we have before it disappears," says William Boynton, the lead scientist for TEGA. "Every time we fill an oven, we potentially learn more about Mars' geochemistry." TEGA's tiny ovens heat the soil to as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius in order to sniff out the gases derived from heating the soil.

Meanwhile, the spacecraft's robotic arm is digging into the lower portion of the Upper Cupboard and Stone Soup regions of the Phoenix workspace and the Surface Stereoscopic Imager is documenting trenching so scientists can better map out the geology of the ice table already found a few centimetres below the surface. "We're basically trying to understand the depth and extent of the ice table to tie together how geology and climate control its formation," says Phoenix mission scientist Diana Blaney of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Later this week, mission engineers will instruct Phoenix to use its robotic arm to attempt to push a soil sample piled in a funnel on top of the lander's Wet Chemistry Laboratory into a cell for analysis. Images of the soil already captured will be taken using the Optical Microscope. In addition, digital-elevation models of a rock called Sandman are scheduled with Phoenix's Robotic Arm Camera.

Mission scientists will continue to research and analyse the soil samples in the coming months, long after Phoenix stops operating on the surface.

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