Hubble's Infrared Camera Working Again.

Image credit: NASA

With the weather finally on side for NASA, the Space Shuttle Endeavour blasted off Wednesday afternoon from Florida's Cape Canaveral. The shuttle launched at 2122 GMT (5:22 EDT) carrying the crew of Expedition 5 into orbit, bound for the International Space Station. Endeavour will dock with the station on Friday and relieve the 3-man crew of Expedition 4. Shuttle astronauts will also perform 3 spacewalks to install some additional components onto the station.

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Jun 5, 2002, 9:33pm

Hubble's Infrared Camera Working Again

Image credit: Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) is functioning again, thanks to the refurbishing it got from a recent Space Shuttle mission. The telescope's Infrared capabilities ended when the NICMOS ran out of coolant three years ago. To showcase its capabilities, Hubble controllers release a series of images today, including the Cone Nebula - brilliant in infrared.

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Jun 5, 2002, 9:09pm

Astronomers Find More Red Quasars

Image credit: NASA

A team of Astronomers from the Space believe that red quasars may be more common in the universe than previously thought. Quasars are bright, distant objects and the current theory is that they are caused by the black holes that reside at the centre of Galaxies - because they're so hot, they usually appear blue. Red quasars are largely obscured by dust and were typically hard to find in visible light, but they can be found in Infrared light. The team compared sky surveys in visible and Infrared light and turned up 17 of the elusive red quasars.

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Jun 5, 2002, 9:03pm

Odyssey Gets More Sensitive

Image credit: NASA

Flight controllers for the Mars Odyssey completed a milestone on Tuesday when they ordered the spacecraft to extend the boom 6.2 metre boom that holds its gamma ray spectrometer sensor head instrument. Even though it hadn't been deployed yet, the instrument was still able to collect data from Mars' surface, but this extension will make it much more sensitive. The operation went off without a hitch.

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Jun 5, 2002, 8:52pm

Ariane Rocket Launches Intelsat Bird

Image credit: Arianespace

An Ariane 44L rocket successfully launched an Intelsat 905 telecommunications satellite into orbit on Wednesday - liftoff was at 0644 GMT (2:44am EDT) from Kourou, French Guiana. Once in its final position, the Intelsat 905 will provide Ku-band coverage for much of North America and Western Europe. This was the seventh launch of the year for Arianespace.

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Jun 5, 2002, 8:43pm