The Ring Nebula's distinctive shape makes it a popular illustration for astronomy books. But new observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, sun-like star reveal a new twist. "The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it's like a jelly doughnut, because it's filled with material in the middle," said C. Robert O'Dell of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He leads a research team that used Hubble and se...

Soyuz Flight VS05 The Soyuz launcher for Arianespace’s next medium-lift mission is rapidly taking shape at French Guiana as this vehicle undergoes its build-up for a June flight with the first four satellites in O3b Networks’ connectivity constellation. During activity this week in the Spaceport’s MIK launcher integration building for Soyuz, the vehicle’s core second stage was completed with the mating of its upper and lower sections.  Today, team members ...

QUITO -  A tiny Ecuadoran satellite that collided in space with the remains of a Soviet rocket survived the crash, but was damaged and is not transmitting, Quito's space agency said Thursday. Ecuador's space agency EXA had warned on Wednesday that a space fender-bender was likely between its "Pegaso" (Pegasus) nanosatellite and the remains of an S14 rocket launched by the Soviet Union into space in 1985, in the midst of the Cold War. The agency's director Ronnie Nader sai...

A rare encounter between two gas-rich galaxies spotted by ESA’s Herschel space observatory indicates a solution to an outstanding problem: how did massive, passive galaxies form in the early Universe? Most large galaxies fall into one of two major categories: spirals like our own Milky Way that are full of gas and actively forming stars, or gas-poor ellipticals, populated by old cool red stars and showing few signs of ongoing star formation. It was long assumed that the large el...

HERNDON, Va. -  The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has selected ITT Exelis (NYSE: XLS) to provide maintenance, operations, and engineering services for NASA’s international Deep Space Network (DSN). The subcontract has a base period of performance of five years, with incentive provisions that can extend the contract up to 10 years for a total value of $435 million. Under the DSN subcontract, Exelis will support an international network of communications complexes that supports interplanetary robot...