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Saturn's moon may have liquid water

An ocean could be lying beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus, according to researchers.

Scientists studying water ice jets on Enceladus have discovered ammonia, methanol and some salts which, on Earth, act as anti-freeze and keep water in liquid state at temperatures of up to minus 100C.

They say it is the strongest sign yet that the icy surface of the volcanic moon may be hiding an ocean or large caverns of liquid water beneath.

New space centre officially opened

A new research centre has been officially opened by the European Space Agency (Esa) in Oxfordshire.

Until now, the UK was the only European Space Agency nation not to have its own centre, but the new facility will remedy this and become a boost to both the local community and the UK science sector.

It is situated on the Harwell innovation campus and will specialise in subjects including exploration, climate change and robotics.

Giant flying squid attack divers

Flying squid that weigh up to 100lbs have attacked divers in California.

The Humboldt squid, which have sharp beaks, are nicknamed "red devils" for their colouring and aggression.

Local diver Mike Bear said: "I wouldn't go into the water with them for the same reason I wouldn't walk into a pride of lions on the Serengeti. For all I know, I'm missing the experience of a lifetime."

Mars

The Location Of Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. It is the seventh largest and 227,940,000 kilometers from the sun. The diameter of Mars is 6,794 kilometers. Mars travels around the sun in an oval-shaped pattern. It takes about 687 earth days to make a full orbit. It rotates on an axis of about 24 degrees from a perpendicular position. Mars rotates every 24 hours and 37 minutes.

The Features Of The Red Planet

Mars is considered the red planet because of its bright red color. The temperature ranges from -220 degrees Fahrenheit to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The Red Planet is thought to have no magnetic field. It has the greenhouse effect which raises the temperature about 5 degrees. It has a very thin atmosphere consisting of 95.3% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, 0.15% oxygen, and 0.03% water.

The Colors Of Mars

The surface of Mars can be seen in detail from Earth. The rust colored portions are thought to be desert-like regions. The greenish-gray regions are thought to be the seas of our neighboring planet. Small amounts of water have been found, but not enough to support our needs.

The first visit to Mars was in 1965 and Olympus Mons was discovered. It is the largest mountain in the solar system, with a height of 78,000 feet. The Viking landed in 1976 to take photos.

The Moons Of Mars

The Red Planet has two small moons that rotate very close to the surface. Phobos has a 22 kilometer diameter and is 9,378 kilometers from Mars. Deimos is 23,459 kilometers from the planet and has a 12 kilometer diameter. Both moons were discovered by a man named Hall in 1877.

Moon Dust in the Wind
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. The first lunar explorers didn't experience severe health effects from lunar dust because their visits to the moon were brief

'Wet' Moon Glass
Green glass spherules collected from the Apollo 15 landing site at Hadley Rille on the moon. These samples represent volcanic deposits formed early in the moon's geologic history. A research team found up to 46 parts per million of water in tiny volcanic glass balls.

Moon Brick
Researchers at Virginia Tech devised a way to make building material from a lunar rock-like material mixed with powdered aluminum. The strong moon bricks could be molded into any shape.

Lunar Lookout
This artist's conception shows NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on its way to the moon. The craft, slated for launch in June 2009, will map the lunar surface so NASA can find safe landing spots for future astronauts

Ed Viesturs

The Will to Climb

kiran

Photograph by

• Over the past 15 years Ed Viesturs has made a career of scaling the snowy tops of 12 of the world's 14 highest peaks. All located in the Himalaya's rugged playground, he's climbed some of them more than once and all without supplemental oxygen. One of two westerners to summit Everest five times or more, he has been called "superhuman" by other climbers.

news of moon

The shock wave plowing through the supernova remnant RCW 86, seen above in x-ray and visible light, acts as a superefficient particle accelerator, new images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory reveal.


Workers secure the hatch to the multipurpose logistics module Leonardo, one of three giant pressurized "moving vans" used to ferry cargo to and from the International Space Station via NASA's space shuttles.

Built by the Italian Space Agency in the late 1990s, the 21- by 15-foot (6.4- by 4.6-meter) Leonardo--named after da Vinci--is designed to temporarily dock with the station. During the next shuttle mission, slated to begin August 18, Leonardo will carry racks for storage and science experiments.



It may look like an aerial photo, but this Death Valley view is so much more.

The image, released by NASA and a Japanese government agency Monday, is a detail from "the most complete topographic map of Earth." The interactive elevation map was created using more than a million images taken by Japan's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite.



-Saturn's icy moon Tethys (not pictured) casts a long shadow on the planet's rings in this rare image from NASA's Cassini orbiter.

Saturn takes 29 years to orbit the sun, which means the planet has an equinox--when the sun crosses the plane of the planet's equator--roughly every 15 years. The planet is now approaching its August 2009 equinox, and its rings are seeming to tilt in relation to the sun. Such an event is the only time Saturn's moons will cast shadows on the rings rather than the planet's surface.



-A false-color image taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows layers of clays and sulfates in Gale Crater, a roughly 62-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) crater on the border between Mars's southern highlands and northern plains.

Gale Crater is one possible landing site for NASA's Curiosity rover, an SUV-size science lab due to launch in 2011. The crater has a three-mile-high (five-kilometer-high) central mound of layered deposits, which might reveal clues about the action of liquid water--and the possibilities for life--on early Mars

-->Beautiful







Mantled in winter white, 9,176-foot-tall Mount Ruapehu (foreground) reigns over Tongariro National Park. Conical Ngauruhoe and broad Tongariro beyond shed their snow cover when summer comes, but the cold lock on Ruapehu never breaks, making Crater Lake one of the most active volcanic crater lakes perpetually surrounded by snow and ice in the world