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Next station crew
Full coverage of the Expedition 13 crew's launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to begin a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.

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Solar eclipse from ISS
External cameras on the International Space Station captured this incredible footage of the March 29 solar eclipse. The station flew through the eclipse over the Middle East as the moon passed in front of the sun and cast its shadow on the Earth.

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Total solar eclipse
A total solar eclipse occurred March 29. This video from Side, Turkey shows the period of totality when the moon slid between the Earth and Sun. The eclipse revealed the Sun's glowing outer halo of million-degree gas, called the solar corona.

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Dawn mission reborn
In early March, NASA cancelled its Dawn mission built to orbit two of the solar system's largest asteroids using ion engine propulsion. Technical problems and cost overruns were blamed. But in this news conference from March 27, agency officials announce NASA's decision to reverse the cancellation and restart the mission.

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CEV planning
Lockheed Martin holds this news conference in Houston on March 24 to announced that it is partnering with the State of Texas to locate the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) program office in Houston, as well as systems engineering, software development and qualification testing, if the corporation wins the NASA contract to build the next generation spacecraft for NASA.

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Expedition 12 recap
As the Expedition 12 mission aboard the International Space Station winds down, officials managing the flight from Mission Control in Houston hold this retrospective briefing to talk about the highs and lows, the science, the spacewalks and everything in between.

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Expedition 13 preview
International Space Station officials preview the next Expedition mission to the orbiting outpost, which is scheduled for launch March 29. The preview was given during a briefing March 22 from Johnson Space Center.

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STS-41B: Human satellite
One of the iconic moments of the early space shuttle program was astronaut Bruce McCandless floating above the brilliantly blue Earth completely disconnected from his spacecraft. He was testing the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a jet-powered backpack that would enable spacewalkers to travel away from the space shuttle to service satellites. In this post-flight presentation, the crew of Challenger's STS-41B mission of February 1984 narrate the film highlights from their mission that also included the first shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center.

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New map of Milky Way charts where stars are born
BOSTON UNIVERSITY NEWS RELEASE
Posted: March 30, 2006

A team of astronomers from Boston University's Institute for Astrophysical Research has produced the clearest map to-date of the giant gas clouds in the Milky Way that serve as the birthplaces of stars. Using a powerful telescope, the astronomers tracked emissions of a rare form of carbon monoxide called 13CO to chart a portion of our home galaxy and its star-forming molecular clouds.

The researchers hope the new illustration will aid in the identification of additional clouds and study of their internal structure to better understand the origin of stars like the sun, which began its life in such a cloud about 5 billion years ago. The data and images are published in the March issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement.

The eight-year project, called the Boston University-Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory (FCRAO) Galactic Ring Survey (GRS), was led by a team of astronomers based at BU, the University of Cologne in Germany, and the University of Massachusetts.

To produce the detailed image, the astronomers mapped the location of 13CO in the Milky Way using a large radio telescope operated by the FCRAO of the University of Massachusetts that captures and images radio emissions at a frequency near 100,000 MHz - about 1,000 times higher than FM stations. When viewed in the emission from 13CO, the clouds are far more transparent than the more traditionally studied 12CO which allowed the team to peer more deeply into their interior.

"The value of such high range imaging is that it enables us to identify the underlying patterns of gas distribution and speeds that point toward the key physical processes occurring within the molecular gas phase of the interstellar medium," said Dr. Mark Heyer, a researcher from UMass involved in the project.

Using a new receiver developed at UMass, the astronomers could depict the structure of the clouds faster and with much finer detail than any previous attempts. As an added benefit, the distribution of the clouds also delineates the spiral structure of the Milky Way.

"Ironically, because we live inside the Milky Way, we know more about the shapes of far more distant galaxies better than our own," said James Jackson, astronomy professor at BU and lead investigator of the study. "The GRS map helps us better understand the configuration of our home galaxy and its components."

"Upon seeing the GRS image, I knew right away it was something terrific. It was like the first time I put on glasses as a kid, and wondered how I ever got along without knowing about every shape, contour and detail of the world around me," said Dr. Ronak Shah, a researcher from BU who worked on the project. "The GRS has that affect on a lot of us. We thought we understood the Milky Way and then the GRS revealed so much more detail to explore."

According to Dr. Robert Simon, now at the University of Cologne, but who started the project with Jackson in 1998 at BU, the information from the GRS will constitute an important new database for the study of molecular clouds and Milky Way structure for generations of astronomers.

The scientists are now closely analyzing the image and one of the initial findings is the probable identification of dark, cold molecular clouds in the earliest stages of star development.

"Data from the Galactic Ring Survey have shown that these clouds are the counterparts to active, bright star-forming clouds, but because they have not yet been heated by the embedded stars, they are much colder and quieter," said Jackson. "Follow-up studies of these clouds will provide additional important clues about the origin of stars since we'll be able to examine them at an earlier point in their life."

Another interesting result is that all of the molecular clouds studied so far have similar lumpy structures, regardless of their size, mass, and star-forming activity. These lumps will eventually become stars and, according to the researchers, this similarity suggests that all clouds form stars of various masses in roughly the same proportion.

The Milky Way is a vast disk of 100 billion stars, gas, and dust and because it is flat, the map is long and narrow. Since most of the Galaxy lies in the southern skies, unreachable from Northern Hemisphere telescopes, and because many of the molecular gas clouds are concentrated toward its inner regions, only a portion was imaged.

The Institute for Astrophysical Research (IAR) was founded in 1998 in order to promote and facilitate research and education in astrophysics at Boston University. The IAR supports research by BU Astronomy faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students, and postdoctoral and senior research associates. In addition, the IAR manages and coordinates the use of astrophysical research facilities and promotes the design, development, and operation of instruments and telescopes for astronomical research.

Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 30,000 students, it is the fourth largest independent university in the United States. BU contains 17 colleges and schools along with a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes which are central to the school's research and teaching mission.