hubble

NASA's Most Jet-Setting Shuttle Retires

Maureen O'Connor · 03/09/11 01:06PM

NASA's most-flown shuttle, Discovery, landed for the final time today at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Over the course of 39 missions spanning the course of 26 years, Discovery traveled 148,221,665 miles. Career highlights: Launched the Hubble telescope, delivered new modules to the International Space Station. NASA's other two remaining space shuttles—Endeavour and Atlantis—are scheduled for the glue factory later this year. [ABCNews, Image of Discovery above the northwest coast of Morocco via AP]

Hubble Discovers Planet-Eating Star

Max Read · 05/25/10 03:03AM

According to the Hubble Space Telescope, there is a planet, with the unbelievably cool name of Wasp-12b, currently being "eaten" by a star. It only has 10 million years left, so enjoy it while it lasts. [BBC; pic via NASA]

Look, It's the Universe

Hamilton Nolan · 01/06/10 10:46AM

Here, it's an unprecedented mosaic of Hubble space telescope photos showing more than 12 billion years of cosmic history. Are you impressed? You're not, are you? God, you people. [Pic: Hubblesite.org/ NASA. Click to enlarge, or are you too busy?]

NASA's shame: Hubble Space Telescope runs on a 486 chip

Tim the IT Guy · 10/16/08 04:20PM

Two weeks ago, NASA spokespeople acknowledged that the $6 billion Hubble Space Telescope had stopped transmitting data back to Earth. Today, the optimistic news is that ground control technicians have remote-booted the telescope's backup computer. The Hubble's No. 2 system is built around a pre-Pentium Intel 80486 microchip. Five of the six "redundant components" activated this week haven't been powered up since 1990. Before you type this is not news, read Nasa's carefully crafted PR prose from 1999. Look how much we've gotten used to commodity PC hardware since then: