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Scientist and author Stephen Hawking is "very ill" and has been hospitalized, according to Cambridge University, where he is a professor. Hawking, 67, is one of the world's most famous physicists and also a cosmologist, astronomer, and mathematician. Wheelchair-bound Hawking is perhaps most famous for 'A Brief History of Time.' Hawking has Lou Gehrig's Disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS), which is usually fatal after three years. Hawking has survived for more than 40 years since his diagnosis. A Cambridge University spokesman told CNN: "Professor Hawking is very ill and has been taken by ambulance to Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge."...

BERLIN (AFP) - A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated. Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported. NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right. The schoolboy took into consideration...

The two NASA satellites, to be launched on Friday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., aboard the same Boeing Delta II rocket, is to join three spacecraft already surveying the planet for a detailed study of the interlocking factors that affect Earth's climate. This constellation of satellites in a string 4,400 miles long will loop around the poles at an altitude of 438 miles measuring the interactions of the air, water and surface with the Sun's energy as they drive near-term weather and longer-term climate changes. The newest additions are the CloudSat, which will profile cloud formations with radar...

Some of the most highly promoted missions on NASA's scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or perhaps even canceled under the agency's new budget, despite its administrator's vow to Congress six months ago that not "one thin dime" would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars. The cuts come to $3 billion over the next five years, even as NASA's overall spending grows by 3.2 percent this year, to $16.8 billion. Among the casualties in the budget, released last month, are efforts to look for habitable planets and...

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/ http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/mission_design.html Mission Design The image above shows MESSENGER's entire trajectory, looking down on Earth's orbit plane. Click on it for a detailed explanation of MESSENGER's path. MESSENGER uses gravity assists from Earth, Venus and Mercury to lower its speed relative to Mercury at orbit insertion. In a gravity assist, a spacecraft flies close by a planet and picks up (or loses) a tiny amount of the planet's angular momentum around the Sun. The planet is so massive (compared with the spacecraft) that its orbit does not change. But each gravity assist changes the shape, size and tilt of MESSENGER's...