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Science News

Month in Space: February 2010

See highlights from the shuttle Endeavour's mission and other awe-inspiring space images from February 2010.

/ 22 PHOTOS
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Hangin' out in outer space

Astronaut Nicholas Patrick works on the International Space Station's new observation deck, known as the Cupola, during a Feb. 17 spacewalk. The seven-window Cupola provides the best view of Earth from the orbital outpost.

Image: Comet Siding Spring

Look! Up in the sky!

Comet Siding Spring appears to streak across the sky like a superhero in this infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The picture, released Feb. 17, is among the first images from the orbiting probe. The comet made a close approach to Earth in October 2009 and is now heading back toward the outer reaches of the solar system. In this view, longer wavelengths of infrared light are red, and shorter wavelengths are blue.

Spitzer Space Telescope

Space Snowmageddon

Nicknamed “Snowpocalypse” and “Snowmageddon,” an exceptionally severe winter storm dropped several feet of snow on the East Coast in early February. This view, captured Feb. 7 by NASA's Terra satellite, shows an area stretching northward from Virginia and Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia and New York City.

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Storms on the sun

Fiery arcs rise above an active region on the surface of the sun in this image taken by NASA's STEREO (Behind) spacecraft on Jan. 27. The arcs are plasma, superheated matter made up of moving charged particles. Just as iron filings arc from one end of a magnet to another, the plasma is sliding in an arc along magnetic field lines.

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X marks the spot

A Hubble Space Telescope picture of a cometlike object called P/2010 A2, released Feb. 2, shows a bizarre X-shaped pattern of filamentary structures near the pointlike nucleus of the object. Streams of dust trail behind the object. The "X" can be seen clearly in the inset photo at right. Scientists think the object is the remnant of an asteroid collision.

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Our home in space

Backdropped by Earth's horizon and the blackness of space, the International Space Station is featured in this photograph, taken Feb. 9 from the space shuttle Endeavour as it approached the station for docking.

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Martian chocolate

Guess who has a sweet tooth? NASA's Opportunity rover on Mars, that's who. A rock named "Chocolate Hills" is a prominent target in this enhanced-color image, which was taken by the robotic geologist on Feb. 3. The rock has a thick, dark-colored coating that is interesting to scientists, because many of the rocks in the surrounding area have the same mysterious dark stuff. Opportunity sampled the "chocolate" with the microscopic imager and spectrometer mounted on its robotic arm.

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Nature's fireworks

The northern lights shimmer above the flight deck of the British Royal Navy helicopter carrier HMS Ocean in this image from the fjords of northern Norway, made available Feb. 18. The HMS Ocean, Britain's largest warship, was participating in a multinational military exercise.

Bernie Henesy / ROYAL NAVY
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Craters young and old

An image from the European Space Agency's Mars Express, released Feb. 3, shows part of the Sirenum Fossae region in Mars' southern highlands. Sirenum Fossae is a system of grabens formed by stresses placed on the crust during an ancient geological uprising. A graben is a depressed block of land that is bordered by two parallel faults. Craters of various ages also pockmark the landscape.

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Shuttle on the horizon

Though astronauts and cosmonauts often encounter striking scenes of Earth's limb, this rare image has the added feature of a silhouette of the space shuttle Endeavour. The photograph was captured by an International Space Station crew member during the shuttle's approach on Feb. 9. The orange layer is Earth's troposphere, where the planet's weather and clouds are contained. This orange layer gives way to the whitish stratosphere and then the mesosphere.

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Mojave on Mars

A digital terrain model, based on stereo imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, provides a synthesized view of a portion of the wall terraces of Mojave Crater in the Xanthe Terra region of Mars. This view, released Feb. 17, shows the ponding of material backed up behind massive wall-terrace blocks of bedrock. The vertical dimension is exaggerated threefold compared with horizontal dimensions.

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Starry night

This wide-field image, based on data from Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the whole region around the star-forming nebula NGC 3603, located 22,000 light-years away. Embedded in this scenic nebula is one of the most luminous and most compact clusters of young, massive stars in our Milky Way. The picture, released Feb. 3, was taken using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.

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Cosmic potato

Dark shadows cover much of Saturn's potato-shaped moon Prometheus in this close-up from the Cassini orbiter, captured on Jan. 27. The view was obtained from a distance of about 23,000 miles, or 36,000 kilometers.

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Oh, Orion!

The Orion Nebula reveals many of its hidden secrets in a dramatic image from the European Southern Observatory’s new VISTA survey telescope, released Feb. 10. VISTA — the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy — is the latest addition to ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile. It is the largest survey telescope in the world and is dedicated to mapping the sky at infrared wavelengths.

Image: Space Shuttle Endeavour Lifts off From Kennedy Space Center Florida

Heading into space

The space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as seen from a distant vantage point on Feb. 8. Endeavour carried the last major pieces of the International Space Station into orbit.

Jon Bahr / EPA
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Light shows on Saturn

In January and March 2009, astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to record Saturn while its rings were edge-on. The result was a rare view of the giant planet's nearly symmetrical auroral shows, seen at both poles simultaneously. It takes Saturn almost 30 years to orbit the sun, and the opportunity to image both poles occurs only twice during that time. After processing the ultraviolet data, NASA released the image on Feb. 15.

Read more.

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Farewell to the shuttle

A photograph taken from the International Space Station shows the shuttle Endeavour's departure on Feb. 19. During their visit, Endeavour's astronauts installed the station's Tranquility module and Cupola observation deck, which can also be seen in this photo.

Image: People view parts of military missiles as they visit Aerospace Technology Museum on its opening day, which is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Siberian Aerospace University, in Krasnoyarsk

Space history in Siberia

Visitors view military missiles at the Aerospace Technology Museum in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, on Feb. 17, its opening day. The opening marked the 50th anniversary of the Siberian Aerospace University. The museum, the only one in Siberia, exhibits satellites, missiles, torpedoes, engines and other aerospace products that were constructed in the region.

Ilya Naymushin / X01151
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Falcon rising

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket stands tall on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in preparation for testing, as seen in a photo released Feb. 21. The Falcon 9 is designed to help resupply the International Space Station after the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet.

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The galaxy next door

NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, highights the Andromeda Galaxy in one of the first images sent down from orbit. This image, released Feb. 17, combines data from all four of WISE's infrared detectors. Shades of blue highlight mature stars. The yellow and red areas indicate where dust has been heated by newborn, massive stars.

Spitzer Space Telescope
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Twin eruptions

Neighboring volcanoes on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula acted up at the same time in mid-February 2010. Klyuchevskaya Volcano in the north and Bezymianny Volcano in the south both sent plumes skyward over a snowy landscape. NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color image of the twin eruptions on Feb. 13.

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Outside looking in

Endeavour commander George Zamka peeks out one of the seven windows of the International Space Station's Cupola observation deck on Feb. 19. Installing the Cupola and the attached Tranquility module was the top priority for the shuttle Endeavour's mission. The successful installation left the station 98 percent complete.

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