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Last Space Shuttle Night Launch
Photograph courtesy NASA
February 8, 2010—A cloud of exhaust engulfs a launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida as the space shuttle Endeavour lifts off during the space shuttle program's last scheduled night launch. The launch is the first of the final five launches before NASA retires the space shuttle at the end of 2010.
Endeavour and its crew are on their way to the International Space Station to deliver supplies and help install the new Tranquility node, a pressurized module that will provide additional room for crew members as well as house many of the station's life-support and environmental-control systems.Published February 10, 2010
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Mars and a Moonbow
Photograph by Wally Pacholka, TWAN
February 2, 2010—Mars shines like a bright red star over a "moonbow" in fog surrounding Hawaii's Halaekala volcano. The recently released picture was taken as Mars was about to make its closest pass by Earth for 2010 in late January.
The lunar rainbow was created as moonlight passed through tiny droplets of water in the fog.Published February 10, 2010
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U.S. "Snowpocalypse" 2010
NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.
February 9, 2010—Heavy snowfall blankets the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast in a February 7 satellite picture from NASA's Terra orbiter. The record snowstorm, dubbed Snowpocalypse or Snowmaggedon by local media, has so far dumped several feet of snow, bringing to a halt a number of major East Coast cities, including the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C.
The view from space shows snow cover reaching hundreds of miles inland along a broad swath of the northeastern coast, with snow starting to thin to the north at about the latitude of New York City.Published February 10, 2010
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CryoSat-2 Illustration
Image courtesy P. Carril, ESA
February 3, 2010—A view of the underside of the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 satellite shows the Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radar Altimeter, an instrument designed to measure Earth's ice sheet elevation.
Due to launch February 25 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, CryoSat-2 will monitor precise changes in the thickness of polar ice sheets and floating sea ice.Published February 10, 2010
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Stellar Nursery NGC 3603
Image courtesy Digital Sky Survey 2 and ESO
February 3, 2010—Gases and dust shine with unusual brightness due to the intense star formation inside the nebula known as NCG 3603, as seen in a newly released picture from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.
At a mere 22,000 light-years from Earth, this star factory is close enough for astronomers to study how stars are born in unprecedented detail.Published February 10, 2010
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