More on New Horizons

A diagram of the New Horizons' probe.

Image: Nasa

Nasa provides an online resource for the New Horizons project. The site contains artistic images of the probe, team and instrument specifications, and multimedia features as well as up to the minute updates on the mission. The probe is currently approaching Jupiter and is on course for a 2015 rendevous with Pluto.

--Visit Nasa's online resource

Voyage to Pluto

An artist's rendition of the New Horizons probe as it passes Jupiter.
Image: JHU/APL/SwRI

NASA's New Horizons probe is approaching Jupiter, and the gas giant's gravity will slingshot the voyager toward remote Pluto by 2015. The probe will make its closest pass of Jupiter on Feb. 28, from which the planet will accelerate the probe to 52,000 miles per hour. Researchers are considering the flyby a test of the probe's data collection capabilities. Scientists plan future data will provide a map of Pluto and Charon in 2015. From Pluto, New Horizons will live up to its name, passing into the distant Kuiper Belt region, the farthest and oldest region of the Solar System.

--BBC has more information

In the Footsteps of the Hubble Telescope

An artist's conception of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Image: NASA

John Mather is the senior project scientist behind the Hubble Telescope's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). "This telescope extends the science that Hubble has pioneered, but it covers different wavelength regions," he said. The JWST will see in infrared, as opposed to Hubble's scan of optical and ultra-violet wavelengths. Infrared technology will allow astronomers to see farther into the cosmos, giving insight into the farthest, and oldest, regions of outer space.

--BBC has more information

Manufacturing Data

The Union of Concerned Scientists is a leading science non-profit organization dealing with environmental issues.
Image: Union of Concerned Scientists

The Union of Concerned Scientists has issued a report documenting ExxonMobil's attempts to create public confusion on global warming. According to the report, ExxonMobil is adapting the tobacco industry's disinformation strategies to hinder the science behind climate change. The company had allegedly supplied some $16 million to skeptic groups between 1998 and 2005. Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' Director of Strategy and Policy, has said:

"ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer. A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years."

The report is entitled Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to "Manufacture Uncertainty" on Climate Change.

--The report can be accessed from the Union of Concerned Scientists

Saturn's Moon of a Thousand Lakes

Recent images of the moon Titan reveal a world of methane lakes.
Image: NASA

In July of 2006, NASA's Cassini spacecraft penetrated the dense haze hiding Titan's surface. The images reveal the world of Saturn's moon, a place so removed from the sun that it reaches minus 290 degrees. Methane rains fall from this moon's clouds, forming methane rivers that flow into lakes. The atmosphere's dynamics are similar to that of the Earth, making Titan even more interesting to scientists. Titan is 3,200 miles wide, making it larger than Earth's moon. Findings from the Cassini spacecraft were published in Nature.

--The USA Today has more information

More Images Concerning Recent Martian Water Flow

NASA images show evidence of recent water flow on Martian surface.

Image: NASA

NASA's webpage provides an interactive photo gallery detailing the evidence of recent water flow on the Martian surface. Each image contains an informative caption.

--The gallery can be reached by proceeding to this link, and then clicking on "Signs of floating water on Mars."