|  Private Cygnus Cargo Ship Launching Delivery Mission to Space Station Next Week  | A private spaceship is scheduled to launch on its first official cargo run to the International Space Station next week. The unmanned Cygnus spacecraft, which is built by Virginia-based firm Orbital Sciences, is slated to blast off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Tuesday afternoon (Jan. 7), in a launch that could be visible from large stretches of the U.S. East Coast, weather permitting. If all goes according to plan, Cygnus will arrive at the station on Friday morning (Jan. 10), delivering 2,780 pounds (1,261 kilograms) of supplies and science experiments to the crewmembers of the orbiting lab's Expedition 38, NASA officials said. A Cygnus spacecraft has visited the space station once before during a landmark demonstration flight last September.
| Read More » Elite of Ancient Pompeii Dined on Sea Urchin, Giraffe The commoners of the ancient city of Pompeii may have eaten a varied diet, with the wealthier even dining on giraffe, new research suggests. "The traditional vision of some mass of hapless lemmings — scrounging for whatever they can pinch from the side of a street, or huddled around a bowl of gruel — needs to be replaced by a higher fare and standard of living, at least for the urbanites in Pompeii," study co-author Steven Ellis, a classics professor at the University of Cincinnati, said in a statement. Pompeii was a bustling Roman city that was buried in ash after the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Ellis and his colleagues excavated about 20 shop fronts near one of the once-bustling gates of Pompeii known as the Portia Stabia. Read More » First Asteroid Discovery of 2014 Likely Hit Earth  | Astronomers have spotted the first new asteroid of 2014 — a car-size space rock that apparently slammed harmlessly into Earth's atmosphere just after the New Year began. Scientists with the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Ariz., discovered the asteroid, known as 2014 AA, early Wednesday (Jan. 1), NASA officials said. Orbit projections suggest that the space rock likely entered Earth's atmosphere sometime between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning (Jan. 2). "The most likely impact location of the object was just off the coast of West Africa at about 6 p.m. PST (9 p.m. EST) Jan. 1," NASA officials wrote in a press release Thursday.
| Read More » China Moon Rover Stamps and Medals Celebrate Country's 1st Lunar Landing  | China's postal service and largest bank are marking the country's first moon landing by launching new stamps and medallions featuring the Chang'e-3 probe and Yutu rover. The China Post on Wednesday (Jan. 1) released its second set of postage stamps commemorating the Chang'e 3 mission, which touched down on the lunar surface on Dec. 14 to mark the first moon landing in 37 years. In December, China Post also introduced souvenir sheets featuring the spacecraft and lander as a part of the artwork surrounding, but not appearing on the stamps (also known as the "selvage"). The postage stamps came packaged in folders printed with the rover's image.
| Read More » Pointer Dogs: Pups Poop Along North-South Magnetic Lines Dog owners have observed some odd behaviors among their pets — sniffing butts, eating garbage, giving unconditional love — but one habit has probably escaped their attention: Dogs apparently prefer to poop while aligned with the north-south axis of the Earth's magnetic field. The researchers found that the dogs preferred to poop when their bodies were aligned in a north-south direction, as determined by the geomagnetic field. This latest set of findings, published last week in the journal Frontiers in Zoology, joins a long and growing list of research showing that animals — both wild and domesticated — can sense the Earth's geomagnetic field and coordinate their behavior with it. Birds also use magnetic fields to migrate thousands of miles, some research suggests. Read More » Speak, Fido: Device Promises Dog Translations  | Developed by the design team at the Sweden-based Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery (NSID), the No More Woof is a lightweight headset, sized for dogs, with sensors that can record electroencephalogram (EEG) readings. The EEG readings are then analyzed by a Raspberry Pi microcomputer, which will, according to NSID, be programmed to translate those EEG readings into simple phrases like, "I'm hungry," or "Who is that person?" Once translated, those phrases will be reported over a small speaker. If and when the No More Woof ever comes to market, it would mark the latest in a centuries-old effort to communicate with dogs, dolphins, apes and a whole menagerie of other animals. Dolphin researchers designed the speakers to broadcast a specific series of vocalizations and then record dolphins' responses;
| Read More » Celestial Triple Play: Watch Meteor Shower, Sun and Jupiter Live Online This Weekend The online Slooh Space Camera will webcast live views of the annual Quadrantid meteor shower on Friday (Jan. 3), Earth's closest approach to the sun of the year on Saturday (Jan. 4) and Earth's passage between the sun and Jupiter on Sunday (Jan. 5). You can watch all three of these events live here on SPACE.com, as well as directly from the Slooh website here: http://www.slooh.com. The action kicks off at 6 p.m. EST (2300 GMT) on Friday with Slooh's coverage of the Quadrantids, one of the few annual showers capable of exhibiting more than 100 meteors per hour. "Using high-sensitivity wide-field cameras in the Canary islands and in Arizona, Slooh will show the Quadrantid meteors accompanied by narration from Slooh astronomer Bob Berman," Slooh officials said in a statement. Read More » 10 Years on Mars: NASA Rover Mission Celebrates 10th Martian Birthday  | Ten years ago today, NASA dropped the first of two rovers onto the surface of Mars, kicking off a wildly successful mission that continues to beam home data about the Red Planet and its wetter, warmer past.
| Read More » Jupiter Shines All Night Long Sunday: How to See It  | Jupiter will reign as king of the night sky on Sunday (Jan. 5), visible all night long as it reaches opposition. Jupiter sets in the west just as the sun is rising in the east. Because we are only two weeks past the winter solstice, the shortest day in the year, this means that Jupiter will be above the horizon for over 15 hours for skygazers in mid-northern latitudes.
| Read More » | |
