Space Telescope

Have questions about space and the James Webb Space Telescope? John Mather, a Nobel laureate and scientist working on the telescope, will answer them on Twitter tomorrow. The telescope is slated for a 2018 launch and is seeking to find the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang, determine how they have evolved, observe star formation and investigate potential for life in other planetary systems. Tweet with the hashtag #JWSTscience and follow @NASAWebbTelescp for answers from 2-3 p.m.

Jason Kalirai doesn't just reach for the stars. He pulls them close and studies them - and encourages others to do so, as well. For two years, Kalirai, an award-winning astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, worked with the Hubble Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope in history. Now he is the deputy project scientist developing Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be 100 times more powerful. "Astronomy is my passion, and the James Webb Space Telescope is the most exciting astronomy project ever," said Kalirai, 35, of Ellicott City.

When the powerful new Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, astronomers predicted that it would upset a lot of theoretical apple carts on its way to new discoveries.Three new reports from Hubble astronomers, including one described as "revolutionary," have proven those forecasts correct.The discoveries are challenging previous theories relating to gravitational "lenses," intergalactic hydrogen clouds and the chemistry of the early universe. Hubble's contributions to the debate were discussed yesterday at the 179th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta.

Jason Kalirai doesn't just reach for the stars. He pulls them close and studies them — and encourages others to do so as well. Kalirai, 35, is an award-winning astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. For two years, he worked with the Hubble Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope in history, and for the past 2 1/2 years has been the deputy project scientist developing Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be 100 times more powerful than Hubble.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- After a flawless pre-dawn launch that rumbled like thunderous timpani, the Shuttle Endeavour hurtled early today toward its much anticipated rendezvous with the Hubble Space Telescope and the start of an arduous and complex repair mission.The seven-member crew spent much of yesterday firing up Endeavour's engines to reach the 48-foot-long observatory at the appointed hour and orbit. The shuttle is expected to intercept Hubble tomorrow morning when it is more than 360 miles above the earth.

WASHINGTON -- The keen eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope are shattering scientists' pet theories about two TC fundamental questions about the universe:What is it made of? And how old is it?Astronomers said yesterday that new photographs from Hubble rule out the widely held belief that dim red stars five to 10 times smaller than the sun make up most of the invisible matter in the universe.Only about 10 percent of the mass of the universe is visible. The rest is so-called "dark matter" -- a mysterious substance that has baffled scientists since it was discovered 60 years ago."

James Fraher, an engineer and retired Hubble Space Telescope manager, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, Sunday at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Towson resident was 75. Born in New York City, he moved at age 6 to Abbeyside, Ireland, the place of his parents' birth. He attended a Christian Brothers school and learned to speak Gaelic fluently. He was active in Boy Scouting, attaining the rank of Eagle and organizing a village gang called the Black Flash.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- In a first, a NASA space telescope has identified molecules in the atmospheres of alien worlds outside our solar system. Recent observations indicate that two giant gas planets trillions of miles away are cloudier and drier than theorists had predicted. However, just as important as the unprecedented scientific data is the potential the discovery holds for eventually finding life on distant Earth-like bodies. "These results are a very important steppingstone for our ultimate goal of characterizing planets around other stars where life could exist," said Mark Swain, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope say they have made a significant advance toward confirming the existence of black holes -- massively heavy, super-condensed galactic centers that are so strong that even light cannot travel fast enough to escape their pull.The Hubble findings, announced in Washington yesterday, also show that black holes may be more common than was formerly believed.A black hole, by its very nature, cannot be seen. But the Hubble images show that stars in a nearby galaxy, M32, become extremely concentrated toward the center.

When it was launched in 1990, astronomers predicted that the powerful new Hubble Space Telescope would upset a lot of theoretical apple carts on its way to new discoveries.Three new reports from Hubble astronomers, including one described as "revolutionary," have proven those forecasts correct.The discoveries are challenging previous theories relating to gravitational "lenses," intergalactic hydrogen clouds and the chemistry of the early universe. Hubble's contributions to the debate were being discussed today before the 179th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta.

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured distant reaches of the universe over the past 22 years, but with the end of the space shuttle program, has not been repaired since 2009. A filmmaker is challenging that decision with the documentary "Saving Hubble" and will speak in Baltimore on Tuesday. David Gaynes will speak at the Space Telescope Science Institute with his message about saving Hubble, which is expected to continue operating only through next year. NASA is focused on replacing Hubble with the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.

Half a century ago, a nearby cluster of stars appeared to astronomers as a single glowing ball of gas. As recently as 15 years ago, scientists realized it was in fact a cluster of stars but were convinced they all must have formed at the same time and with the same composition. Now astronomers at Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute have found evidence that one cluster may actually be two, one a million years older than the other, in the process of merging. The clusters are 170,000 light years from Earth in an area known as the Tarantula Nebula.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is holding a family event Wednesday night to teach middle-school-age children about the James Webb Space Telescope. Visitors will learn about the telescope from experts who work on it, and then will be able to build a simple telescope they can take home. The event is from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Goddard visitors center in Greenbelt. The Webb telescope is slated to launch around 2018.

Have questions about space and the James Webb Space Telescope? John Mather, a Nobel laureate and scientist working on the telescope, will answer them on Twitter tomorrow. The telescope is slated for a 2018 launch and is seeking to find the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang, determine how they have evolved, observe star formation and investigate potential for life in other planetary systems. Tweet with the hashtag #JWSTscience and follow @NASAWebbTelescp for answers from 2-3 p.m.

Tuesday's announcement that Hopkins astronomer Adam G. Riess will share this year's Nobel Prize in physics acknowledges his huge contribution to scientific knowledge. From the study of giant exploding stars millions of light-years from Earth, Mr. Riess and his colleagues, Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and Brian P. Schmidt of the Australian National University in Australia, deduced the astonishing hypothesis that our universe is being violently blown apart by an immensely powerful, previously unsuspected force.

A "badly flawed" original budget and a failure at NASA headquarters to spot the problems have allowed a $1.5 billion cost overrun and a year's delay in the agency's project to build its most powerful telescope yet, according to an independent panel. In a report released Wednesday, the panel said the James Webb Space Telescope project — planned for launch in 2014 as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope — will likely cost $6.5 billion when all the bills are in, and is unlikely to launch until September 2015 at the earliest.

A TIME MACHINE. That's another way to describe the Hubble space telescope. This week's successful space shuttle mission included installation of a new instrument, the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, which will extend the Hubble's vision in distance and thus through time. Johns Hopkins astronomers will have much new data to analyze.The resulting images provided to astronomers will be of objects as they appeared in space millions of years ago. Scientists using these pictures from the past will gain important information about the creation of the universe, distant galaxies, stars forming, comets falling.

The Astro space telescope, which seemed doomed by budget cuts, will be revived and scheduled for a second space shuttle flight, officials said today.Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said NASA's budget was "scrubbed down" to find the money to keep the program alive in the form of an Astro-2 mission expected to cost $30 million.Astro was designed to explore some of the hottest and most violent regions of space, which generate radiation in the X-ray and ultraviolet wavelengths that cannot be observed from the ground.

Ralph Vanderlipp, an electrical engineer whose work spanned the eras from World War II to the space age and into the computer age, died Nov. 3 of leukemia at Gilchrest Hospice Care in Towson. The long-time Columbia resident was 83. From serving as an electronics and radar technician on a cargo ship during the waning days of World War II to helping interpret data from the Hubble Space telescope, Mr. Vanderlipp spent decades on the cutting edge of electronics technology. "If you were to look up 'electrical engineer' in the dictionary, you would see his picture," said Bill Anderson, who was a young aerospace engineer working under contract for Lockheed-Martin when he first met Mr. Vanderlipp and considered him a mentor.