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New Images Reveal Details of Saturn Rings  2004/07/08




Ultraviolet images of Saturn's rings taken by the international Cassini spacecraft may offer astronomers clues about the origin of the planet's shimmering halos of ice and debris, scientists said Wednesday. 

shimmer[動詞] ちらちら光る; かすかに光る; ゆらめく;halo[動詞] 後光を差させる; 栄光を与える;[名詞] 後光; 光輪; かさ;


The images show more ice toward the outer part of the rings, possibly providing hints about how the rings have changed over time, according to mission scientists. 


Saturn's rings are mostly ice but also contain other "dirty" material that astronomers want to investigate. 


NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., released pictures Wednesday that depict the rings in shades of turquoise and red. The images were made by a $12.5 million instrument called the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph, known as UVIS for short. 

depict[動詞] 描写する; 叙述する;

turquoise[形容詞] 青緑色の; トルコ石の;[名詞] トルコ石; 青緑色;for short : 略して

Although not what the eye would see, the false-color images increase contrast to bring out details, according to NASA. 


Researcher Joshua Colwell, a UVIS team member and ring expert, created the color-enhanced images from data recorded by Cassini when it entered orbit. 


Colwell found that the ultraviolet spectra show the rings vary in composition. The red indicates sparser ringlets believed to be made of particles that are "dirty" and possibly smaller than those in the denser, icier ringlets, which are shown in turquoise. 

sparse[形容詞] 人口希薄な; まばらな;ringlet[名詞] 巻き毛; 小さい輪;

Cassini, a project of NASA, and the European and Italian space agencies, entered orbit around Saturn last week after a seven-year, 2.2 billion-mile journey to the outer solar system.

Private U.S. Rocket Plane Soars Into Space 2004/06/24

  The privately funded rocket plane SpaceShipOne flew to outer space and into history books on Monday as the world's first commercial manned space flight. 


The white rocket plane was released from a larger plane called the White Knight and ignited its rocket engine to enter space and reach an altitude of 328,491 feet, or 62.2 miles above the earth. 


Against the backdrop of a clear blue sky, it landed safely back at a runway in the Mojave Desert in California, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Thousands gathered for the hourlong journey. 

backdrop[名詞] 背景; 背景幕; バックドロップ;hourlong[形容詞] １時間の;[副詞] １時間続いて;

"The sky was jet black above, and it got very blue above the horizon," said pilot Michael Melvill, 63, who earned his wings as an astronaut and was greeted by Buzz Aldrin, one of the first men to walk on the moon. 

jet[形容詞] ジェット機の; ジェット式の; 黒玉の; 漆黒の;[動詞] ジェット機で行く; 噴出する; 噴き出す; 噴き出る;[名詞] 噴出; 噴出口; ジェット機; 黒玉; 漆黒;jet black黒玉色、漆黒｛しっこく｝

"The earth is so beautiful," added Melvill in describing the planet's vast curvature and the Southern California coast he saw during a brief three and half minutes just beyond the atmosphere. 


"The flight today opens a new chapter in history, making space within the reach of ordinary citizens," declared Patti Grace Smith, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation. 


In Washington, Michael Lembeck of NASA 's office of exploration systems said the agency might offer up to $30 million in prizes to encourage commercial missions to orbit the Earth or land on the moon. 


Lembeck told Reuters there was even discussion of offering "a couple hundred million dollars for the first private orbital flight." 


SpaceShipOne with its striking nose -- a pointed cone covered with small portholes -- was designed by legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan and built with more than $20 million in funding by billionaire Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft Corp . 


Rutan and Allen said the success of the project proved commercial space flight and space tourism would soon become a reality. 


"We've clearly shown it can be done," said Allen, who attended the launch of the first U.S. space shuttle in 1981. 


Future flights in spacecraft based on SpaceShipOne's design will be able to take at least six passengers to 93 miles above the earth, said Rutan, who designed the Voyager airplane that was flown nonstop around the world in 1986. 


GUINNESS CITES PROJECT 


Melvill's mission was the first privately piloted flight in the space age that began when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth in 1961. It also marked the first time a non-government spacecraft reached the altitude considered to be the boundary between earth's atmosphere and outer space. 


The Federal Aviation Administration awarded Melvill with its first civilian astronaut wings, and Guinness World records cited the team for achieving the first commercial manned space flight. 

wing[動詞] 翼をつける; 飛ばす; 進ませる; 飛んでいく;[名詞] 翼; 手羽肉; 鳥の群れ; 党派; 飛行隊; ウィング;

After burning its rocket for about 80 seconds, SpaceShipOne sped up to more than three times the speed of sound and then coasted to its peak altitude, making Melvill weightless. 

coast[動詞] 惰性で進ませる; 沿岸を航行する; 惰性で進む; のんびりやる;

He said he released a bag of M&Ms chocolates, which "just spun around like little sparkling things." 

a bag of : 一袋のbag[動詞] 袋に入れる; 手に入れる; だらりとたらす; 膨らます; 膨らむ; たるむ;[名詞] 袋; 鞄; 財布; 獲物; たるみ; ズボン; 方式; 塁; バッグ;


There were a few glitches, however, that may delay Allen and Rutan's next goal, an attempt to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize, offered by a group of private donors to the first team that sends three people, or an equivalent weight, into space and repeats the trip within two weeks. 

glitch[名詞] 突然の故障; グリッチ;

SpaceShipOne's trim controls got stuck as it made its rocket boost, causing it to go about 22 miles off course and not reach its full expected altitude of 68 miles. got stuck : 行き詰まった

In addition, a piece of cowling, or protective cover near the end of the rocket nozzle, buckled, Rutan said. 

cowl[動詞] カウルをかぶせる; 修道士にする; 覆う;

NASA Scores Success in Space Travel 'Holy Grail' 2004/3/31

A revolutionary jet engine flew faster than seven times the speed of sound in a high altitude test over the Pacific on Saturday, marking what NASA  scientists hailed as a milestone in developing the "Holy Grail" of space travel. 

Holy Grail : 聖盃hail[動詞] あびせる; 迎える; 認める; 呼ぶ; あられが降る; 呼びかける; 来る;


"It's been an outstanding, record-breaking day," lead propulsion engineer Lawrence Huebner told a post-flight briefing. 


NASA's 12-foot-long X-43A research vehicle -- resembling a winged surfboard -- hit slightly over Mach 7, about 5,000 mph, during 11 seconds of powered flight before gliding at hypersonic speeds for several minutes and finally plunging into the ocean. 


The test, conducted off the southern California coast, marked the first time that a "scramjet," or supersonic-combustion ramjet, has powered a vehicle at such high speed. 

scram･jet-[名] [Ｃ] スクラムジェット(エンジン) 《吸入空気を超音速に保った状態で燃料を燃焼させ, 推力を得るラムジェットエンジン》.

"The ramjet-scramjet is the Holy Grail of aeronautics in my mind," project manager Joel Sitz told the briefing. "If you go from ground to space, you need to use a ramjet-scramjet if you're going to do it in the most efficient way you can." 


Rather than carrying both the fuel and oxygen needed to provide acceleration, like a conventional rocket engine does, scramjet engines carry only hydrogen fuel and pull the oxygen needed to burn that fuel from the atmosphere. 


Researchers at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, on the western edge of the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, hope the new engine will revolutionize aviation, speeding the development of significantly faster aircraft and lowering the cost of launching payloads. 


Huebner said the test had set a world speed record for a craft powered by an air-breathing engine. 


"To put this in perspective, a little over 100 years ago a couple of guys from Ohio flew for 120 feet in the first controlled powered flight," he said, referring to the Wright brothers. 

perspective[形容詞] 遠近法の;[名詞] 見方; 考え方; 遠近法; 遠景; 見通し;

"Today, we did something very similar in the same amount of time, but our vehicle under air-breathing power went over 15 miles." 


Project members said the successful test had important commercial and military implications. 


"Efficient access to space opens up a whole new world for industry in the future, to be able to get to space and get back, quickly, and do it several times a month," Sitz said. 


Project chief engineer Griffin Corpening said NASA had shown what was possible. "Now business and industry and the military can come forward with confidence that they can now use this kind of a propulsion system," he said. 


The first test of the X-43A in June 2001 ended in failure after a malfunction in the booster rocket attached to the test vehicle forced NASA scientists to blow up the plane. 


During Saturday's test, a modified B-52 bomber dropped the X-43A at an altitude of around 40,000 feet. 


A rocket attached to the 2,800-pound research vehicle then boosted it to an altitude of 95,000 feet, setting the stage for the scramjet engine test. 


Later this year, NASA researchers hope to test the engine at Mach 10, or about 7,000 mph, as part of their Hyper-X program. 

The vehicle used in Saturday's test will not be recovered from the ocean due to the high cost of such an effort. 

Power Drain Threatening Mars Rover Lifespan 2003/2/26

Engineers must replace software in the Mars rover Opportunity to stop a power-draining malfunction that could cut short the robot geologist's life on the Red Planet, a NASA  official said on Wednesday. 

A switch that operates an onboard heater has been stuck in the "on" position since shortly after the golf cart-sized rover landed at the Meridiani Planum near Mars' equator on Jan. 24. 


The malfunction has not affected the rover's ability to move or do science experiments but is a constant drain on the vehicle's solar-powered batteries, project manager Richard Cook told reporters on Wednesday. 


"The amount of power per day is slowly dropping," Cook said. "(The switch) consumes a sizable amount of energy every day. Opportunity is shortening down its day of operations as we move forward." 

sizable[形容詞] 相当な大きさの; かなりの量の;

Cook said engineers planned to upload new software to Opportunity in about a month that will shut off a few minor systems that now stay on during its overnight "sleep" mode. 


"We essentially are removing the power source from this ... heater. We will turn it off by removing the power source it uses," Cook said. The new system will recapture about two-thirds of the energy now lost to the malfunction, he added. 

recapture[名詞] 奪還;[動詞] 奪い返す; 取り戻す; 思い出す; 思い出させる;

The new software removes the rover's internal "alarm clock" -- one of the systems for "waking up" the rover to begin a day's operations. The vehicle also is designed to power up when the sun shines on its solar arrays. "It's sort of a belt and suspenders situation and we are removing one of those," Cook said. 


Opportunity is examining an outcrop of finely layered bedrock that scientists believe holds clues to the planet's composition. 

layered[形容詞] 層をなす; 層をなした; 層がある;bedrock[名詞] 基盤; 岩盤; 岩床; 根底; 基本的事実;

The rover spent its 31st martian day, or sol, ending early Wednesday, charging its batteries and beaming back scientific data about a rock it drilled into one sol earlier to scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. 


Its twin, Spirit, got stuck on the lip of a shallow crater nicknamed "Middle Ground" where it stopped overnight on its 52nd day on Mars, 


Spirit landed on Jan. 3 in the Gusev Crater, a depression the size of Connecticut that scientists believe is an ancient lake bed. The rover has driven 135 meters (443 ft) from its landing site searching for rocks and soil that were deposited or smoothed long ago by water. 

depression[名詞] 意気消沈; 憂鬱; 窪み; 不景気; 不振; 低下; 低気圧; 不況; うつ病;

Spirit now is headed toward a small impact crater nicknamed Bonneville Crater, where scientists hope to find rocks ejected from deep below the planet's surface, where evidence of water may have been buried by a subsequent lava floe, Cook said. 

lava[名詞] 溶岩;floe[名詞] 浮氷塊; 浮氷片;subsequent[形容詞] その後の; 続いて起こる;

Mars Rover Opportunity to Start Drive on Thursday 2003/2/6

NASA scientists plan to drive the Mars rover Opportunity to a fascinating outcrop of rocks on Thursday in the most ambitious bid so far to discover evidence of sufficient water to have sustained life on the Red Planet. 

outcrop[名詞] 露岩; 露床;[動詞] 露出する;

Mission managers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory told reporters on Wednesday that if Opportunity's six-meter drive to the rocky outcrop is successful, they will later attempt to dig below the martian surface for the first examination of the planet's sub-soil. 


Opportunity, which rolled off its lander at the weekend on the opposite side of the planet to its twin robotic rover Spirit, has already sent back microscopic images of the soil immediately in front of it. 


Scientists have been fascinated by the presence of small spherical particles of grain among granules that they have established contain hematite -- a mineral that on Earth forms in the presence of iron-rich water. 

spherical[形容詞] 球形の; 球状の; 天体の; 天球の;

But principal science investigator Steven Squyres said they had yet to piece together the evidence found so far. 


"The stuff we area looking at, at this point, doesn't really tell us much .... about water because we haven't hit the hematite sweet spot yet." 


"The next thing we are going to do with this rover -- it's going to start tomorrow -- is to head toward that outcrop. We are going to be moving into materials that are progressively more and more rich in hematite," he said. 


Mission manager Mark Adler said the next stage in the planned three-month exploration of Mars would be a complex "trenching" operation. 


Scientists on earth will command Opportunity to rotate one of its six wheels into the soil at the rocky outcrop, push the dirt out in front of it, and then move back and look into the hole using the rover's array of microscope and spectrometer instruments. 


While Opportunity sent back pictures of its immediate surroundings, the scientific team working on Spirit embarked on the final stages of what mission managers have called "brain surgery" on its corrupted computer memory. 

embarked on : に乗り出した

Exploration work by Spirit, which landed in the Gusev Crater on Jan. 3, has been idled for almost two weeks because of an onboard computer problem. 


Adler said scientists were on Wednesday carrying out a four-hour process to delete thousands of files from its flash memory, and then reboot and reformulate its computer system 


If all goes well, Spirit should be back to its scientific work on Thursday, Adler said. 

Hubble Shows New Images of 'Black Eye' Galaxy 2004/2/6

A collision of two galaxies has left a merged star system with an unusual appearance as well as bizarre internal motions. Messier 64 (M64) has a spectacular dark band of absorbing dust in front of the galaxy's bright nucleus, giving rise to its nicknames of the "Black Eye" or "Evil Eye" galaxy. 

[形容詞] 乱雑な; 取り散らかした; 体を汚す; 汚い; だらしない; 厄介な; 面倒な

merge[動詞] 合併する; 溶け込ませる; マージする; 溶け込む;

The Hubble Space Telescope  has snapped a new image of the "Black Eye" galaxy, so named because an ancient cosmic smashup produced a dark ring and a roiling, conflicted interior. 

cosmic[形容詞] 宇宙の;smashup[名詞] 大衝突; 大失敗; 破産;roil[動詞] かき乱す; いらだたせる; いらだつ;

interior[形容詞] 内部の; 内側の; 室内の; 内陸の; 国内の;[名詞] 内部; 内側; 内地; 奥地; インテリア; 国内;

What looks like a black eye in the Hubble picture is actually a dark band of dust that stands out vividly in front of the galaxy's bright nucleus, Hubble scientists said in a statement on Thursday. 

The galaxy is officially known as M64, but astronomers have nicknamed it the "Black Eye" or "Evil Eye" galaxy. 

In some earlier images, the "Black Eye" appears to be a fairly normal spiral galaxy. And as happens in most galaxies, all the stars in M64 are rotating in the same direction. 


But detailed studies in the 1990s found that while all the stars are heading the same way, interstellar gas at the outer reaches of the galaxy is rotating in the opposite direction. 

interstellar[形容詞] 恒星間の;reach[動詞] 連絡をとる; 届く; 動かす; 到着する; 達する; 伸ばす; 追求する; 到達する;[名詞] 範囲; 手のとどく距離; 能力; 区域;

At the point where the stars and gas shear against each other, the gases collide and get smashed together, creating a region of active star formation, the scientists said. 

shear[動詞] 切る; 刈る;[名詞] はさみ; 刈り込み;

The new image shows an area where hot blue stars have just formed, along with pink clouds of hydrogen gas that glow when exposed to ultraviolet light from the infant stars. 


Astronomers believe M64's internal conflict arose when the "Black Eye" absorbed a satellite galaxy that collided with it, perhaps more than a billion years ago. 

Most visible traces of this smaller galaxy have been obliterated, but signs of the collision persist in the backward motion of the outer edge of M64. 

obliterate[動詞] 消す; 拭い取る; 見えなくする; 抹殺する; 消滅する;

Long known to amateur astronomers because it can be seen with small telescopes, the "Black Eye" galaxy is about 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices (Berenice's Hair). 


A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year. 
6 trillion : ６兆

NASA Works on Spirit's Memory Problem 2004/2/5

NASA  awakened its Mars rover Spirit early Wednesday and started the delicate process of cleaning old files out of its memory to cure it of the problems that have delayed its search for signs that the planet was once a wetter place. 

awaken[動詞] 起こす; 喚起する; 気づかせる;

The process did not begin until after four days of tests. 

"It's not an operation that we do lightly," Mark Adler, a deputy mission manager, said at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 


The six-wheeled vehicle was ordered to conserve power before being awakened. Two hours later it began the four-hour process of reformatting its flash memory, which involves erasing all the contents. 


Scientists believe a buildup of too many files in the flash memory caused the rover to stop transmitting data back to Earth beginning Jan. 21. Spirit briefly resumed science operations earlier this week before NASA once again halted the work to finish correcting the memory problem. 


The rover was expected to resume normal operations late Wednesday. この前の


On the other side of Mars, the twin rover Opportunity was readied for a little road trip. Its destination was a rock formation where instruments suggest there are higher concentrations of hematite — a mineral that can form in water — than had been found at its current site. 

formation[名詞] 構成; 構造; 編隊; フォーメーション;

Geologic evidence of water would support the possibility that Mars once had life. The rovers have found intriguing geological data, but scientists remained cautious. 

[動詞] 陰謀を企む; 興味をそそる;

"With respect to extrapolating from a few grains of sand to a story about water on Mars — little hard to do at this point," said Steven Squyres, the mission's principal scientist. 

With respect to : に関して

extrapolate[動詞] 推定する; 外挿する; 推測する;

Spirit landed on Mars on Jan. 3, followed three weeks later by Opportunity. 

Second Rover Lands on Mars, Sends Pictures 

 NASA's second Mars rover, Opportunity, scored "an interplanetary hole-in-one" by safely landing inside a shallow impact crater, coming face to face with the first exposed bedrock ever seen on the Red Planet, mission scientists said on Sunday. 

coming face to face with : に直面してbedrock[名詞] 基盤; 岩盤; 岩床; 根底; 基本的事実;


The spacecraft's textbook arrival on Saturday came as mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory made progress in pinpointing the cause of a malfunction that has idled Opportunity's twin rover, Spirit, on the opposite side of Mars. 

textbook
【レベル】1、【発音】te'ks(t)bu`k、【＠】テキストブック、テクストゥブック、【変化】《複》textbooks
【名】 教科書｛きょうかしょ｝、テキスト
・ This textbook is too difficult for me. : この教科書は私にはむずかしすぎる。
【形-1】 教科書の、教科書的な、教科書どおりの、標準的な、模範的な、理想的な

As planned, Opportunity touched down in the heart of a wide, flat plain known as the Meridiani Planum, an area believed to contain large deposits of a crystalline, iron-bearing mineral called hematite, which on Earth usually forms in the presence of water. 

crystalline[形容詞] 水晶のような; 結晶状の; 結晶質の;

But the exact landing site could hardly have been more ideal, NASA scientists said. 

In a stroke of luck, Opportunity came to rest inside a small, shallow crater -- roughly 65 feet wide and 6 feet deep -- and just a few feet from the intriguing bedrock formation visible on the inside lip of the crater. 

a stroke of : の一撃stroke of luck
思いがけない幸運、もっけの幸いintriguing[形容詞] 興味をそそる;


"We have scored a 300-million-mile, interplanetary hole in one, and we are actually inside a small impact crater," Steve Squyres, the principal science investigator for the rover mission, told reporters at a Sunday afternoon briefing. 


The first pictures beamed back from Opportunity hours after landing showed a terrain unlike any previously seen on the martian surface. 

terrain[名詞] 地形; 地勢;
Besides the first bedrock ever found, much of the landing zone appeared darker in color and draped in fine-grain red and gray soils devoid of the rocks and boulders littering other areas on Mars, including Spirit's surroundings in Gusev Crater, a massive basin thought to be the site of an ancient lake bed. 

drape[動詞] もたれかける; 覆う; 飾る; もたれかかる;devoid[形容詞] ない; 欠けた;boulder[名詞] 丸石; 玉石;