Mar 18 2004
From The Space Library
At a hearing held by the U.S. House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, officials from NASA and the Pentagon stated that they expect to work together on President Bush's exploration strategy for Mars and the Moon, without altering the traditional divisions between the two organizations. According to officials, NASA and the Pentagon would cooperate on technical issues of concern to both agencies, including the development of lightweight fabrication systems and systems for unpiloted docking of spacecraft. The two agencies would also explore sharing launch systems, including NASA's possible use of the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets, which the Pentagon had developed to launch its own satellites. According to major media, House subcommittee members were interested in the possibility of saving money through the collaboration between NASA and the Pentagon, but they were also concerned about the possibility of the two agencies repeating their previous collaborative failures. As an example of such a failed collaboration, they cited the Advanced Launch System project, a collaborative project between the two agencies during the 1 980s and 1990s. (Mark Carreau, “NASA, Military To Work Closely on Space Effort,” Houston Chronicle, 19 March 2004.
A team of European scientists released research that solved a long-standing puzzle concerning the sources of gamma rays in the center of the Milky Way. Scientists already knew that the Milky Way produces a substantial quantity of gamma rays, which illuminate the galaxy. However, they were uncertain about whether the galaxy's gamma rays originate predominantly from so-called point sources, such as black holes and neutron stars, or from diffuse sources, such as gas atoms, which are abundant in the Milky Way. Using data from ESA's INTEGRAL ~ International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory ~ researchers led by François Lebrun found that point sources account for nearly all of the gamma rays in the Milky Way, and diffuse sources play a distinctly minor role in gamma-ray production. (Henry Fountain, “Observatory,” New York Times, 23 March 2004; F. Lebrun et al., “Compact Sources as the Origin of the Soft Gamma-Ray Emission of the Milky Way,” Nature 428, no. 6980 (18 March 2004): 293-296.
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