Science Friday

The Hubble space telescope captured an image of a distant star
that bears resemblance to the famous Vincent van Gogh painting "Starry
Night", NASA and the European Space Agency announced.
The spectacular image taken February 8 showed the star, V838
Monocerotis (V838 Mon), surrounded by an expanding halo of light
"complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across
trillions of kilometers of interstellar space", a statement from the
agencies said. "The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the
red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a
flashbulb-like pulse of light two years ago," the statement added,
describing the image as "nature's own piece of performance art".

And in a related story:

Save Hubble Resolution Introduced in House
A Colorado congressman and seven colleagues introduced a resolution in
the U.S. House of Representatives March 3 urging NASA to establish an
independent panel of experts to review its recent decision to forgo any
further servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said in a statement that he introduced the
resolution to draw attention to Hubble's scientific contributions to
ensure that the telescope is not abandoned in the next several years
without someone other than NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe having a
say. NASA announced Jan. 16 that it was canceling a planned space
shuttle mission to service Hubble, citing the danger of launching the
shuttle to a destination other than the international space station.
Udall wants an independent review of that decision, as well as the
underlying safety assumptions that prompted O'Keefe to cancel the
mission.
"Precisely because of Hubble's extraordinary contributions in the past
and promised contributions in the future, I also believe it is
important that the decision to cancel the planned servicing mission to
Hubble be reviewed by an independent panel of experts and all options
for safely carrying it out be examined," Udall said in the statement.

For the record, Administrator Sean O'Keefe is getting a bum rap. It's
not his fault they're shutting the Hubble down. Because of Bush's
ridiculous Mission to Mars plan, NASA was forced to reallocate funds
from all of their existing programs.

By the way, whatever happened to that whole Mars thing? Are we there yet?

Posted by flow Frazao on March 5, 2004 at 08:59 AM | Permalink