Word: orbitals
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...team of NASA scientists was trying to fix the distorted lenses in the Hubble telescope, which was already in orbit. An expert in optics suggested that tiny inversely distorted mirrors could correct the images, but nobody could figure out how to fit them into the hard-to-reach space inside. Then engineer Jim Crocker, taking a shower in a German hotel, noticed the European-style showerhead mounted on adjustable rods. He realized the Hubble's little mirrors could be extended into the telescope by mounting them on similar folding arms. And this flash was the key to fixing the problem...
When NASA first considered a mission to Pluto more than 15 years ago, the idea was to visit the last and most distant of the nine planets, an oddball whose icy composition, tilted orbit and tiny size made it unlike anything else in the solar system. But when the New Horizons probe finally takes off from Cape Canaveral?as early as next week, if all goes well?it will be heading for something else entirely. "This little misfit is now central to our understanding of the origin of our solar system," says Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute...
...ORBIT OF PLUTO ? From Pluto, the sun appears about 1,000 times as dim as it does from Earth ? Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, are locked in synchronous orbit, always keeping the same face toward each other...
...also studied planet formation and the physics of planets and their atmospheres. In 1976, Cameron challenged contemporary beliefs with his new theory for the origin of the moon. He argued that an object at least the size of Mars struck our planet, causing fragments to be strewn into orbit around the Earth. The debris then coalesced into what is now known as the moon. This “giant impact” theory is now widely accepted in the scientific community. Professor Avi Loeb, who worked alongside Cameron from 1993-1999 in the Department of Astronomy said his work...
...Meet The New Planets" discussed some of the recently discovered planetlike objects that are orbiting our sun [Oct. 24] and the difficulty astronomers are having in deciding what is a planet. How about defining a planet as an object that is massive enough to be squeezed into a spherical shape by gravity, does not orbit another such object and orbits the sun in the same plane as the eight objects that we considered planets before 1930? Then Pluto and others with tilted orbits could be called planetoids. There, that was easy...