Space
<p>In another advance at the far frontiers of timekeeping by National Institute of Standards and Technology and ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ researchers, the latest modification of a record-setting strontium atomic clock has achieved precision and stability levels that now mean the clock would neither gain nor lose one second in some 15 billion years—roughly the age of the universe.</p>
<p>NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury carrying an $8.7 million ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ instrument is slated to run out of fuel and crash into the planet in the coming days after a wildly successful, four-year orbiting mission chock full of discoveries.</p>- <p>NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft has observed two unexpected phenomena in the Martian atmosphere: an unexplained high-altitude dust cloud and aurora that reaches deep into the Martian atmosphere.</p>
<p>A new study by a team of Cassini mission scientists led by the ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ have found that microscopic grains of rock detected near Saturn imply hydrothermal activity is taking place within the moon Enceladus.</p>- <p>The ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ will serve as the Science Operations Center for a NASA mission launching this month to better understand the physical processes of geomagnetic storms, solar flares and other energetic phenomena throughout the universe.</p>
<p>Up for a romantic Valentine’s Day evening? Then head to the ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ’s Fiske Planetarium to <em>Relativity for Lovers – A Valentine’s Day Among the Stars</em>, for music, film and a talk on the genius of Albert Einstein.</p>
<p>ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ researchers will update NASA officials next week on a revolutionary space telescope concept selected by the agency for study last June that could provide images up to 1,000 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.</p>
<p>ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ Distinguished Professor W. Carl Lineberger was honored today by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his extraordinary scientific achievements.</p>
<p>Building on years of collaboration using unmanned aircraft to fly into the storms that create the massive tornadoes that rip across the Midwest, scientists at the ÌÒÉ«ÊÓƵ and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have formed a new research consortium.</p>
<p>Early discoveries by NASA’s newest Mars orbiter are starting to reveal key features about the loss of the planet’s atmosphere to space over time.<br /><br />
The findings are among the first returns from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, which achieved orbit Sept. 21 and entered its science phase on Nov. 16. The observations reveal a new process by which the solar wind -- an intense stream of hot, high-energy particles blowing off the sun at more than 1 million mph -- can penetrate deep into a planetary atmosphere.</p>