Free Republic

The shuttle Discovery's scheduled takeoff Wednesday will return NASA's grounded space program to flight. But the primary goal - to launch, orbit, and bring a crew back safely - more aptly fits the mission profile of a test flight. Truth be told, that prospect is not exactly where the space agency thought its orbiters would be at this stage. Liftoff, the first since the 2003 Columbia disaster, marks the beginning of the end of an era, given that the remaining shuttles - Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour - are destined for permanent grounding in 2010, some 10 years short of their...

In mid–February, I participated in a NASA Science Update press briefing that presented gamma–ray and radio observations of a flaring neutron star. A neutron star is a solar–mass worth of mundane and exotic nuclei and fundamental particles trapped by gravity at supranuclear densities, exhibiting superfluidity and superconductivity. The star is encased within a solid crust, a liquid ocean, a gaseous atmosphere, and a relativistic plasma magnetosphere capable of inducing zettavolt electromotive forces and radiating intense, coherent emission. Neutron stars are used to test general relativity and to search for gravitational radiation. The neutron star in question is also a “magnetar,”...