Astronomical collaboration expected on building Antarctica, space telescopes, leading scientist By Yu Zheng, Xu Xuedan BEIJING, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- A world leading astronomer said Wednesday that international collaboration on building new, powerful telescopes in Antarctica and space would trigger major breakthroughs in scientific research. Prof. York, founding director of the multinational-collaborated Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), was invited by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to co-chair a scientific committee offering advice to the China-made Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST).

NASA scientists have developed software they hope will lead to an Internet-like network in deep space. The goal of the technology NASA has been testing is to get spacecraft to communicate in a networked way like computers now do on Earth. But just as computers handle the heavy lifting of sending e-mail on Earth, NASA wants to have an equally automated system in space.

NASA is offering U.S. students the opportunity to name the space agency's new Mars Science Laboratory. The essay contest, conducted in conjunction with Walt Disney Studios, is open to students 5 to 18 years old who attend a U.S. school and are enrolled in the current academic year. Disney will provide prizes to students submitting winning essays, including a trip to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., where the rover is being built.

Italian explorers and geologists in the Antarctic report finding the world's largest and oldest cache of meteorite particles. The researchers say the dust could offer possibilities on how life began on Earth. The explorers found balls of Earth glass and other material that came "from a gigantic cosmic impact," Folco said, that probably occurred in Indonesia.

TEMECULA, California--A moderate earthquake struck early Monday in a remote area of the Cleveland National Forest in northern San Diego County. There were no reports of damage or injury. The magnitude-4.1 temblor struck at 4:35 a.m. about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of the Palomar Observatory and about 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of the Riverside County community of Temecula, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

PASADENA - The gigantic telescope that ushered in the modern age of cosmic exploration, marked its 100th anniversary last week in celebrations at Mount Wilson Observatory. When it was built in 1908, the brainchild of George Ellery Hale, the revolutionary, 60-inch telescope was the largest in the world and the first to explore rather than map the universe. "In the width, breadth and depth of his vision, he was ahead of his time," said Sam Hale, one of Hale's eight grandchildren.

WASHINGTON - The old moon has never looked this good. Mankind's first up-close photos of the lunar landscape have been rescued from four decades of dusty storage, and they've been restored to such a high quality that they rival anything taken by modern cameras. NASA and some private space business leaders spent a quarter million dollars rescuing the historic photos from early NASA lunar robotic probes and restoring them in an abandoned McDonald's.

The U.S. space agency's Cassini spacecraft has detected an aurora that lights Saturn's polar cap unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system. National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists said the aurora was detected by one of the infrared instruments aboard Cassini. "We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," said Tom Stallard, a scientist working with Cassini data at Britain's University of Leicester.

PASADENA, California--NASA's Spirit rover, which is nearing its fifth year on Mars, is struggling to survive after a dust storm sapped its power, mission scientists said Tuesday. The culprit was a dust storm that moved over Spirit's site near the Martian equatorial plains, blocking sunshine from reaching its solar panels. To prevent Spirit from depleting its batteries, ground controllers commanded the rover to turn off heaters that warm various instruments.

Data from the U.S. space agency's Spitzer Space Telescope suggests shock waves around dusty, young stars might be creating raw materials for planets. National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists said the evidence comes in the form of tiny crystals called cristobalite and tridymite that are known to reside in comets, in volcanic lava flows on Earth and in some meteorites that land on Earth. But what they found surprising about the discovery is that those particular crystals require flash heating events, such as shock waves, to form.

Nov. 10--The patio of the Dupont Lodge at the Cumberland Falls Resort was packed Saturday evening with folks trying to get a view of the stars and planets as the Moonbow Astronomy Center kicked off with its inaugural star party. "This is our first star party," said Lisa Davis, Cumberland Falls Resort Park Manager. Davis said organizers at Cumberland Falls got the idea for the monthly astronomy meetings when they learned of a park in Texas giving park-goers the opportunity to meet and look at the night sky.

Nov. 10--The man who killed Pluto is coming to town to tell us how he did it. Mike Brown is the CalTech astronomer who discovered objects in the vicinity of Pluto that led to its demotion from "ninth planet" to "dwarf" in August 2006. "Of course," Brown writes on his Web site, "there are no people from Pluto that are big and drink a lot of beer and would beat you up if you said that."

Harsh weather forced the UA-led Phoenix Mars lander to shut down on Tuesday night in what officials said could mark the beginning of the end of the spacecraft's mission. After mission officials announced a plan to begin conserving Phoenix's dwindling power supply on Tuesday, they received word from the lander that it had shut down because of a power failure, a Wednesday news release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. Known as safe mode, the backup procedure stops all non-critical operations while Phoenix awaits instructions from mission planners on Earth.

The U.S. space agency says schools around the world will help it celebrate its 50th birthday next week by holding a virtual party. Space agency officials said schools in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico City, India, Slovenia and New Zealand are expected to participate. During each webcast, each international school will connect with a U.S. school and one of NASA's 10 field centers.

The U.S. space agency has selected 46 students to take part in its International Year of Astronomy Student Ambassadors Program. Gonzalez is a junior at the University of Puerto Rico-Arecibo who is majoring in biology. The IYA Student Ambassadors Program is designed to encourage undergraduate and graduate students to participate in IYA activities and generate excitement in their communities about NASA's discoveries in astrophysics, planetary science and solar physics.

Nov. 1--The UA-led Phoenix Mars lander was able to re-establish communication with mission officials late Thursday after shutting down and cutting off radio contact earlier this week. The spacecraft, which has been on the surface of Mars since late May, has faced a week of potentially crippling problems as the northern arctic region of the planet succumbs to winter. After a power failure caused by weather on Mars shut down the lander on Wednesday, Phoenix started a program designed to conserve power and limit radio activity.

Spanish physicists say they have discovered unequivocal evidence of electrical activity in the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Physicists at the University of Granada and the University of Valencia say their analysis of data from the Huygens space probe proves "in an unequivocal way" the existence of natural electric activity in Titan's atmosphere. Huygens, a joint mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency, was launched in 1997 and landed on Titan in January 2005, sending data for 90 minutes after it reached the surface.

New observations using the U.S. space agency's Spitzer Space Telescope indicate the nearest planetary system to ours has two asteroid belts. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the star at the center of the nearby system, called Epsilon Eridani, is a younger, slightly cooler and fainter version of the sun. Previously, astronomers had uncovered evidence for two possible planets in the system, and for a broad, outer ring of icy comets similar to our own Kuiper Belt.

The U.S. space agency says Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas, has won $350,000 in prize money in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. The challenge is a two-level, $2 million competition sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, designed to accelerate commercial space technology. "Armadillo's winning vehicle successfully demonstrated some of the technologies needed for a lunar lander capable of ferrying payloads or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface," NASA said in a statement.

Oct. 26--CAPE CANAVERAL Bit by bit, the new rocket ship that is supposed to blast America into the second Space Age and return astronauts to the moon appears to be coming undone. Now, in the latest setback to the Ares I, computer models show the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff.

Oct. 26--Rich Kowalski is a jovial fellow who loves his job but approaches it with a certain sense of dread. Kowalski doesn't want to be the guy who finds the asteroid headed for Earth that will wipe out our species. This month, Kowalski earned at least a footnote in the astronomy books by becoming the first to spot an asteroid before it crashed into Earth's atmosphere as a meteor -- heady stuff for a high school graduate who, three years ago, was driving tanker trucks.