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/ 1 November 2007
United States astronomers have discovered the biggest black hole orbiting a star 1,8-million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia, with a record-setting mass of 24 to 33 times that of our Sun, Nasa said on Tuesday. The massive newcomer beats the previous stellar-mass black hole discovered on October 17 in the M33 galaxy that has 16 times the mass of our Sun.
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/ 31 October 2007
Nasa scrambled on Wednesday to deal with two power problems at the International Space Station that could delay future missions and make it even harder to finish building the orbiting outpost before the space shuttles must be retired. Both issues competed for the precious little spacewalking time that’s left in Discovery‘s mission.
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/ 29 October 2007
Astronauts plowed ahead on Monday with the mammoth job of moving a 17,5-ton solar-array truss on the International Space Station, a task made even more crucial following the discovery of contamination in an important part of the orbiting lab’s power system.
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/ 26 October 2007
An international team of astronomers have unexpectedly found hundreds of expanding ”super-massive” black holes buried deep inside galaxies billions of light years from Earth. The astounding discovery is the first direct evidence that most huge galaxies in the far reaches of the universe generated cavernous black holes during their infancy, when about 3,5-billion years old.
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/ 23 October 2007
The United States space shuttle Discovery blasted off on a pillar of fire on Tuesday, soaring above Florida marshlands toward a rendezvous in two days with the International Space Station. Discovery‘s 14-day mission kicks off a two-month refurbishment of the -billion outpost that prepares the way for Europe’s first permanent laboratory in orbit.
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/ 16 October 2007
A British explorer who was the first man to reach the North Pole solo announced plans on Tuesday to lead an expedition to measure the thickness of the Arctic ice caps. Pen Hadow (45), who reached the top of the world alone in 2003, will lead a three-person team.
With a series of small beeps from a spiky globe 50 years ago, the world shrank and humanity’s view of Earth and the cosmos expanded. Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, was launched by the Soviets and circled the globe on October 4 1957. The Space Age was born. And what followed were changes to everyday life that people now take for granted.
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/ 14 September 2007
Japan’s first lunar orbiter successfully blasted into space on Friday on the most extensive mission to investigate the moon since the United States’s Apollo programme began nearly four decades ago, officials said. A domestically developed rocket launched with no glitches from a small island in southern Japan.
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/ 14 September 2007
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin park their jet just a stone’s throw from their offices, paying $1,3-million a year for rights at a federally maintained airfield, the <i>New York Times</i> reported Thursday. Why put up with bothersome local traffic when you can shell out a princely sum for take-off and landing rights just a few minutes from your office?
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/ 13 September 2007
Web search leader Google will sponsor a -million competition for an unmanned lunar landing, following up on the -million Ansari X Prize that spurred a private sector race to space. The Google Lunar X Prize is open to private industry and non-government entities worldwide, organisers said on Thursday.
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/ 12 September 2007
Nasa’s Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit have resumed their three-year-old mission after surviving giant dust storms that nearly destroyed the twin robots, the United States space agency said. The rovers had been placed in hibernation mode in July to protect them from the Martian dust storms.
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/ 2 September 2007
On Wednesday, four former lunar astronauts will be guest stars at a gala Manhattan premiere for a remarkable cinematic celebration of their achievement, In the Shadow of the Moon, by British director David Sington. The film has generated rave reviews in the United States and has triggered widespread national interest.