The U.S. space agency has selected 19 science teams to conduct year-long studies of new concepts for its next generation of major space observatories.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said every 10 years U.S. astronomers and physicists take part in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey in cooperation with the National Academy of Sciences. They produce directions that guide federal agencies such as NASA and the National Science Foundation in planning astronomy and astrophysics programs for the coming decade. "The exciting new astrophysics mission concept studies we are funding will seed preparations for astronomical space missions and paradigm-shifting discoveries across the early 21st century," said Alan Stern, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
The concept studies total approximately $12 million in fiscal years 2008 and 2009.
Some of the proposals explore a powerful new combination of telescopes and instruments optimized for observing the tenuous filaments of intergalactic hydrogen gas known as the cosmic web gas.
Another mission would place two laser beacons on Mars. Precise measurements of the distance to these beacons would provide the most stringent test yet of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
The studies' results are expected in March 2009.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International
Related stories:
COROT discovery stirs exoplanet classification rethink
(PhysOrg.com) -- COROT has discovered a massive planet-sized object orbiting its parent star closely, unlike anything ever spotted before. It is so exotic, that scientists are unsure as to whether this oddity is actually a planet or a failed star.
NASA at 50: still taking science to the limit
In 50 years, NASA has earned itself an unparalleled reputation as an engineering, technological and scientific pioneer by pushing science to the limit.
NASA's Carl Sagan Fellows to Study Extraterrestrial Worlds
NASA announced Wednesday the new Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowships in Exoplanet Exploration, created to inspire the next generation of explorers seeking to learn more about planets, and possibly life, around other stars.
GLAST Burst Monitor Team Hard at Work Fine Tuning Instrument and Operations
(PhysOrg.com) -- While only on orbit for 40 days and still in the process of a two-month checkout, NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST) has already detected 12 powerful gamma-ray bursts, an encouraging harbinger of good things to come for this mission. The gamma-ray bursts were detected by the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM), one of two instruments on the spacecraft.
Hubble Instruments Slated for On-Orbit 'Surgery'
When astronauts visit the Hubble Space Telescope in October 2008 for its final servicing mission, they will be facing a task that has no precedence – performing on-orbit ‘surgery’ on two ailing science instruments that reside inside the telescope – the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
NASA Satellites Discover What Powers Northern Lights
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers using a fleet of five NASA satellites have discovered that explosions of magnetic energy a third of the way to the moon power substorms that cause sudden brightenings and rapid movements of the aurora borealis, called the Northern Lights.
Seeing the universe through gamma-ray eyes
The scientists have stopped holding their breath. Three weeks after the launch of the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), researchers from Stanford University, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and elsewhere have shaken awake the scientific instruments aboard their $690 million satellite, 350 miles above Earth, for the first time. And everything's working.
NASA Goddard mission approved to probe matter in extreme environments
An instrument to study the extreme environments of the universe has been given the "green light" from NASA Headquarters. The High-Resolution Soft X-Ray Spectrometer (SXS) was one of the two science proposals recently selected by NASA for the Explorer Program Mission of Opportunity investigations, and is managed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.