After showing you a solar tsunami as it occurs, we bring you this horse-shaped image from your left. See it? That's the Horsehead Nebula from the Orion constellation. Using only a small telescope, the Star Shadows Remote Observatory from New Mexico, USA was able to photograph its entire surroundings. Head over the full article to see the Horsehead Nebula in its fullest majesty.

NASA is aiming high with several new missions planned out after forwarding its request for the fiscal budget of 2009. These include three new robotic missions to the Moon, two new Earth science missions, and an ambitious mission to the outer solar system. You can take a look at more details on these ambitious new plans in the full article after the jump!

New contracts for the next-gen space systems have landed at NASA's Michoud Facility in New Orleans which will provide a boost to the state's current economy that's still being rebuilt after hurricane Katrina ravaged the land and its people. The new contracts will bring more jobs and higher wages to New Orleans. Check out the rest of the details at the full article.

 

If you like star gazing and mythology (like this writer), then you're going to enjoy this one. The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, have been captured in infrared by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Take out your telescopes and binoculars.

If you're not so into the heavenly bodies geekiness, a bit of a primer. In mythology, the Pleiades are the seven daughters of Pleione and Atlas, the titan: Alcyone, Electra, Maia, Merope, Taygeta, Celaeno and Asterope. Now, when Atlas was asked to carry the sky on his shoulders, the hunter Orion started pursuing the Pleiades. King of the gods Zeus stepped in and turned them into doves - when that didn't work, he turned them into a cluster of stars.

That cluster of stars is on the constellation Taurus and they're going to be very visible in the night sky, both for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. A couple of days back, they shone just above Venus (it's like they're having a photoshoot). On April 19, the crescent moon will join them and cut in between the Pleiades and Venus. The heavenly show will also be visible to the naked eye on clear nights.

The picture on the left is the one taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The yellow, green and red in the background of the stars is made up of dust. The star cluster travels through cloud that may explain the dust. The parent star Atlas is also visible in the picture along with other stars in blue.

The Spitzer also gathered some data on "brown dwarfs" or failed stars plus some planetary debris. The telescope gives astronomers a better view of cooler, smaller stars and lets them study the faint stars better. (Of course if the star has lower mass and cooler, it is less visible.) According to John Stauffer of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope mission, the Pleiades are perfect for the study of the evolution of stars.

Based on a report from Space.com, NASA wants to make a "slight" detour on the way to the Moon. NASA is now analyzing plans to use the Constellation system, including the Moon-bound Orion spacecraft, to be the first to land a man on the Moon an asteroid and get him back safely.

Of course, this is all in the name of science, and the said mission might involve taking back samples of space rock back to Earth for analysis. And the physics of an asteroid precludes man actually setting foot on one; the astronauts are more likely to pilot a remotely-operated spacecraft to study the said lump of space rock.

But the name of science often gets morphed into practical applications, and here the story writers for Deep Impact and Armageddon should pat themselves on the back. In view of the threat that large near-Earth objects (NEOs) pose to Earth, NASA is also looking at such a mission as a sort of "tech demo" in the endeavor to flying a crew to an asteroid, which may probably turn out to be the first step in stopping one. Next step: call up Bruce Willis and whistle up a couple of nukes.

The Orion will be the bigger, but younger, brother of Apollo. It will have the same multistage rocket, crew vehicle, and lunar lander--but bigger and more high tech of course. When asked why there are similarities between the two shuttles; Patrick McKenzie, the Business Development Manager for the Orion Project at Lockheed Space Systems, said that the Apollo shuttle got the aerodynamic shape of the capsule dead on; the shape has been proven safe by NASA.

However, there will be some major upgrade in technology under the hood. They are planning to build an automated rendezvous and docking capability. It will also have a new design and material for the heat shield. They'll be using materials such as PICA [phenolic impregnated carbon ablator] and SLA [a cork-based ablative material].

They're also looking forward to developing better landing-impact systems. The capsule will be bigger than Apollo's: it can seat six crew members. The cockpit has been replaced by a modern "glass cockpit" design. The avionics systems will be up to current technology.

No more "Houston, we have a problem." The Orion will have a "dual fault tolerance" element. Two failures in the system? The Orion will still run safely. The system constantly monitors the other; if one fails, another takes its place. It may add more weight to the vehicle, but it'll make it safer.

When asked about the gap between the last moon mission and 2020, Patrick answers that the budget for lunar missions these days aren't that big as the last mission. He added that they are still in the process of developing the lunar lander, the Earth-departure stage, and lift vehicles.

So in 2020, we'll be grooving and jiving to the 60's Apollo look-alike Orion as it pushes itself from Earth's atmosphere to the moon.

NASA have launched their official Orion Moonship website, containing videos and 3D models of the upcoming moonship being built by Lockheed Martin. The new Orion moonship is the replacement for the Space Shuttle program and has it's first flight scheduled for 2020. A hot NASA fact from the website states that The Orion spacecraft will have more volume than the Apollo capsules, reducing development time, boosting stability, and permitting safe travel for up to six crew members.

The Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle will be capable of travelling to the International Space Station, lunar landing on the moon and could even be chosen for a trip to Mars and back again. Orion will be capable of transporting cargo and up to six crew members to and from the International Space Station, with the capacity for 4 crew members on lunar landings.

After having just given the go signal to build the Orion Spacecraft which shall carry astronauts back to the moon and later on, to Mars, NASA officials are now considering a new fleet of satellites to monitor space storms and help in gathering more data about solar storms and solar flares that could potentially harm astronauts and turn a mission into a disaster. The fleet will consist of six probes:

• Inner Heliospheric Sentinels: Four identical probes stationed inside the orbits of Venus and Mercury to sample energetic solar particles close to the sun.
• Near-Earth Sentinel: a probe orbiting Earth to observe the sun's atmosphere, from where big storms emanate.
• Farside Sentinel: a probe to watch the far side of the sun.

Though currently still in the discussion phase, the mission has been temporarily dubbed as the Solar Sentinels mission. The objective is to build three crafts that would gather and provide important data regarding the heavy doses of solar radiation that can threaten astronauts and their spacecraft. Since a solar flare can possibly kill an astronaut during a spacewalk, scientists believe that advance warning of such occurrences are important so that the crew can take cover in time.

Also, based on the fact that the sun waxes and wanes every 11 years, the Solar Cycle that is just beginning is expected to peak between 2010 and 2012. This could be dangerous since astronauts are scheduled for another moon landing by 2020.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered well over 2,000 planet-forming discs surrounding young stars in the Orion Nebula. These were observed indirectly using infrared photography, which detects the temperature variations indicating the existence of the discs.

The Orion Nebula is 1,450 light years from Earth, and is about 240 light years across. The image of Orion was released yesterday, and shows objects smaller than our own Sun in that region for the first time. Thomas Megeath of the University of Toledo said, "This is the most complete census of young stars with discs in the Orion cloud complex...basically, we have a census of potential solar systems, and we want to know how many are born in the cities, how many in small towns, and how many out in the countryside."

Three-fifths of the stars that had discs were found in large clusters. One fourth of them were solitary, with the remainder belonging to small clusters. This has caused astronomers to rethink their earlier belief that 90% of all stars are born in clusters. The researchers estimate that the number of stars with proto-planetary discs in Orion may run as high as 70%. "It is an interesting question why this number isn't 100%," Megeath stated. "Eventually, we may be able to understand why some stars don't have discs."

Click on the above left image to see the Spitzer image in all its glory.

The Crew Exploration Vehicle project that is intended to take man to the moon again has a name and logo: Orion.

A proposed logo of the CEV project with the name "Orion" and marked "approved" has been seen in an internal NASA document. Other reports have NASA applying for trademark protection for "Orion." The Orion constellation features on the logo, along with a blue globe and red orbital vector.

This is the latest nomenclature to be associated with NASA's space exploration programs. The entire moonshot project (as well as the Mars exploration mission) is codenamed "Constellation", with Orion associated with the CEV component. "Ares" refers to the launch vehicle family (Ares I being the crew launcher and Ares V the heavy-lift launcher). Prior reports had NASA designating the separate command/service module and moon lander as "Altair" and "Artemis", respectively, until superceded by this report.