- -09-29-04 Spaceship One - First Private Flight into Space (CBS News)
"The first private manned rocket to reach space soared toward the edge of the atmosphere again in an unexpectedly bumpy ride Wednesday in the first half of a bid to earn a $10 million prize." 7-04
- -News on Spirit and Opportunity Rovers - Press Releases (NASA)
Provides news on the two American rovers sent to Mars. 1-04
- 01-04-04 Spirit Sends Photos from Mars (USAToday.com)
"Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory let out whoops of joy and embraced one another as signals from the Spirit rover indicated it had survived the landing."
"Within hours it began sending back photos of the Red Planet. Among the first was a tiny black and white image showing a sundial on the rover. Another showed the Martian horizon and portions of the lander." 1-04
- 01-06-04 Mars Rovers Questions and Answers (BBC News)
"Their mission is to examine their landing sites for past environmental conditions that may have been conducive to life." 1-04
- 01-08-04 Astronauts to be Sent to Mars (Bloomberg.com)
"President George W. Bush next week will announce plans to send U.S. astronauts to Mars and establish a permanent human outpost on the moon, an administration official said." 1-04
- 01-15-04 Bush Announces Plans for Manned Missions to Moon and Beyond (CNN News)
" 'We will give NASA a new focus and vision for future exploration. We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own,' Bush said." 1-04
- 01-23-04 European Orbiter Finds Water (CBS News)
"Europe's Mars orbiter has found the most direct evidence yet of water in the form of ice on the Red Planet's surface, the European Space Agency said Friday." 1-04
- 01-24-04 Second Rover Lands on Mars (CNN News)
"Opportunity, the second of NASA's twin rovers, has made the descent to the surface of Mars, touching down successfully at 0505 GMT Sunday (12:05 a.m. ET)." 1-04
- 03-02-04 Water Once Flowed on Mars (NASA.gov)
"Scientists examining what NASA's Opportunity is showing them about Mars rocks are seeing into the past, and what they're seeing indicates water once flowed there."
"The outcrop right next to where Opportunity landed holds evidence that the rocks have spent time drenched in liquid water." 3-04
- 03-04-04 Former Astronaut Glenn Criticizes Bush Space Plan (Dayton Daily News)
Former astronaut John Glenn criticized President Bush for planning to discard the U.S. space shuttle program and the scientific research associated with space station research, a $2.9 billion program. 3-04
- 03-18-04 Space Dust to Unlock Mexican Pyramid Mysteries (MSNBC News)
"Deep under the huge Pyramid of the Sun, north of Mexico City, physicists are installing a device to detect muons, subatomic particles that are left over when cosmic rays hit Earth."
"The particles pass through solid objects, leaving tiny traces which the detector will measure, like an X-ray machine, in a search for burial chambers inside the monolith." 3-04
- 03-29-04 Spirals in Mars Snow Caps Unraveled (CNN News)
"Odd spiraling gorges etched deep into the polar ice caps of Mars have stumped scientists for decades. The huge arcing troughs radiate outward like arms of a pinwheel, creating an overall shape that visually and mathematically resembles hurricanes, spiral galaxies and even some seashells."
"Now there is an apparent solution to the mystery, put forth by Jon Pelletier of the University of Arizona in Tucson."
"The tilted planet causes ice on one side of a crack to heat and vaporize, deepening and widening the crack. Then the water vapor hits the shady, colder side of the growing canyon and refreezes." 3-04
- 07-01-04 Spaceship One - First Private Suborbital Flight (CNN News)
"The man who became the first person to pilot a privately built craft into space called his flight 'almost a religious experience' after his safe landing Monday morning." 7-04
- 08-17-04 Age of Galaxy Finally Estimated (BBC News)
"A team working with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile report that our galaxy is 13,600 million years old, give or take 800 million years. The observations were made by measuring the content of the element beryllium in two stars contained in a so-called globular cluster in our galaxy. The beryllium content of stars rises with time, so it can be used as a 'cosmic clock' to calculate their ages." 8-04
- 08-25-04 "Earth-Like" Planet Found (CNN News)
"In a discovery that has left one expert stunned, European astronomers have found one of the smallest planets known outside our solar system, a world about 14 times the mass of our own around a star much like the sun." "The star, mu Arae, is visible under dark skies from the Southern Hemisphere." 8-04