The most interesting events of astronautics and astronomy for the week (03.23-28.03)



    Cosmonautics, astronomy continue to please us with an abundance of interesting discoveries and events. More and more people are paying attention to space, being distracted from their gadgets, and this cannot but rejoice. Today is another weekly news feed.


    A rare photograph of the passage of the Moon and the ISS along the disk of the Sun is obtained.





    All this is more like a frozen frame from a sci-fi film, and the ISS here in general is similar to a combat vehicle from Star Wars. The photo was taken by experts from the Spanish Observatory, by increasing exposure. The ISS passed the solar disk in just 0.6 seconds.

    Mexico has an observatory that will monitor supernovae



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    An observatory has been built on the slope of the Sierra Negra volcano in Mexico , which will monitor 60% of the total sky. The observatory has three hundred detectors (tanks with clean water).

    Opportunity rover became a marathoner and reformatted memory





    NASA was able to reformat the Opportunity rover ROM, and now you can use the storage device. Over the past three months, the rover has only worked with storing data only in volatile RAM.

    In addition, Opportunity covered a distance exceeding the marathon, and thus became the first vehicle to travel over 42 km while being on another planet.

    UAE plans to buy a floating spaceport from Russia





    The United Arab Emirates shows significant interest in the Sea Launch project, which is developing a floating launch platform for launching Zenit missiles. On this issue, several meetings have been held by representatives of the UAE.

    The creation of its own space agency in the UAE was announced in July 2014. Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Rashid Al-Maktoum (Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE) on his Facebook page also spoke about plans to send the mission to Mars by 2021. Sheikh called his region “the cradle of great civilizations” and promised that the Arab world would soon again make a scientific contribution to the development of mankind. Ancient Arab scholars are known for their contributions to the development of mathematics, medicine and astronomy.

    Curiosity discovered traces of nitrates on Mars





    Scientists presented the results of the analysis of soil samples that were collected by the Curiosity rover. It turned out that in the water in the early history of Mars there was a large amount of nitrogen in a form accessible to life.

    Previously, researchers searched for organic carbon on Mars, but instead they found traces of nitrates and other nitrogen compounds. These substances were found in soil samples found as a result of the deviation of the rover from its original route to Mount Sharp.

    One of the twins will spend one year on the ISS





    On March 27, a new team will leave for the International Space Station . It will consist of astronauts Gennady Padalki, Mikhail Kornienko and astronaut Scott Kelly. Besides the fact that Kornienko and Kelly will spend the whole year in orbit, NASA is launching the NASA Twin Study, a scientific biological research program. It became possible because on Earth there remains the identical twin of the astronaut Scott Kelly - his brother Mark.

    During the study of both twins, it is planned to consider a number of issues. One of them is associated with premature aging of astronauts during long missions due to the influence of cosmic radiation. Scientists on Earth want to compare the length of the telomeres of the Kelly brothers and, if it turns out that they are shorter than Scott, then this may be confirmation that the astronaut’s body is really aging prematurely.

    Roscosmos will again begin to work with space tourists



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    From 2001 to 2009, Roscosmos sent 8 space tourists to the ISS, after which it was decided to stop working with tourists and carry more astronauts to the ISS. Now the decision has been made to re-launch “tours into space”, as a result of which the organization will receive additional profit, but the number of cosmonauts from Roscosmos will decrease to 1 person.

    NASA has confirmed plans to intercept an asteroid



    As previously planned, NASA in 2025 will land a team of astronauts on an asteroid in the orbit of the moon. This asteroid is scheduled to be delivered into orbit in 2020 using an automatic “trawler”. Work with the asteroid will be carried out to prepare the expedition to Mars. In particular, suits of a new type and various kinds of equipment will be checked.

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