Word: nasa
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...NASA will always have fans, and they'll always be rabid - folks who love the machines, swoon over the history and long to see Americans back on the moon and flying on toward Mars. For this space-happy group, here's some good news: even in hard economic times, President Obama would actually increase NASA's budget - to more than $100 billion - over the next five years. But space junkies had better be satisfied with that positive development, because it's just about the only...
...Monday, NASA administrator Charlie Bolden unveiled both Obama's proposed space budget through 2015 and the Administration's plans for how that money should be spent. And though Bolden filled his prepared remarks with all the usual promises to "blaze a new trail," answer a "bold challenge," "spur innovation" and, of course, inspire young people, the fact of the matter is that the new plans will keep America on the ground for most of the next decade or longer. And whenever U.S. astronauts finally do return to space, they won't be going very far. (See the 40th anniversary...
...models didn't take into account the fact that compressed gas heats up, which limits how dense it can become, and in turn limits how hard its gravity can pull on the proto-planets. Beyond that, the planets' own gravity would fling gas around - the same sort of phenomenon NASA counts on, say, when a spacecraft en route to Saturn gets a slingshot velocity boost from Jupiter on the way. By adding in both effects, Mac Low's collaborator Sijme-Jan Paardekooper, now at Cambridge, found that there are places where the net force pushes a planet inward, but other...
...them to be. What's important, Borucki declared, was that "these five new exoplanets come from the first six weeks of data." An additional eight months of Kepler observations are already in the can and awaiting analysis, meaning many more planets are undoubtedly lurking on hard drives at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, where Kepler is headquartered. "We're going home to lots of presents still unopened," says Natalie Batalha, a San Jose State University astronomer on the Kepler team. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
...balmy enough to support life, the planet has to be about as far from its star as Earth is from the sun, making its orbit about a year long; and that, by definition, requires at least two years after the initial detection. "Have patience," said Jon Morse, director of NASA's astronomy and physics division, to the assembled crowd. (See pictures of Earth from space...