Space News Archive - September 15, 2009
A powerful lightning storm in Saturn’s atmosphere that began in mid-January 2009 has become the Solar System’s longest continuously observed thunderstorm.
NASA will showcase new images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's seven instruments and provide updates about the topography of the moon's south pole during a news conference at 1 pm EDT Thursday, Sept 17.
Officials are likely to recommend that the launch of Russia’s leading planetary spacecraft, scheduled to take place in less than two months, be put off until 2011.
A team of University of Hawai'i at MÄnoa researchers led by Ralf Kaiser, physical chemist at UH MÄnoa, unraveled the chemical evolution of the orange-brownish colored atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, the only solar system body besides Venus and Earth with a solid surface and thick atmosphere.
NASA says freeing its Mars rover Spirit that's been stuck in loose martian sand since April will be very difficult and might even prove impossible.
Networks of giant polygonal troughs etched across crater basins on Mars have been identified as desiccation cracks caused by evaporating lakes, providing further evidence of a warmer, wetter martian past.
Less than two months after they inaugurated the world’s largest telescope, University of Florida astronomers have used one of the world’s most advanced telescopic instruments to gather images of the heavens.

