Wed Tech News - Space & Science Edition

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The incident that poses the highest risk is the discovery of damage to a 22-centimetre-wide (8.5 inch) heat-resistant tile near or on the door enclosing the shuttles nose landing-gear. Radar analysis, and then video footage from a camera mounted on the external fuel tank, revealed that a patch of the surface about 4 cm (1.5 inches) across is missing. The seal around the hatch enclosing the landing gear is known to be an area where any damage would be especially worrying. However, minor damage due to falling debris has been a common occurrence on shuttle flights. The flight operations manager for the shuttle, John Shannon, said it was not yet possible to say if this damage was a safety issue.

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So he and Seymour built a model based on a series of dating decisions. In the model males had to decide what kind of gift to offer females – valuable, extravagant or cheap – based on how attractive he finds her. The females had to either accept or decline the gift and then decide whether to mate with the gift-giver – a decision also weighted on the ‘attractiveness’ of their prospective partner. When they measured the different outcomes of all the steps, they found the best solution for the males was to give extravagant, but intrinsically value-free gifts the vast majority of the time, while giving gifts of material value very occasionally.

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MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) will photograph Mars’ surface with such detail, researchers expect to resolve objects as small as four feet (1.3 meters) wide. To get a wider view, the orbiter’s Context Camera will gather images about 25 miles (40 kilometers) across, with a resolution of about eight kilometers per pixels.

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In assessing China’s overall military prowess, the U.S. Defense report stresses that China is "facing a strategic crossroads." Noting that China’s emergence has significant implications for the region and the world, the Defense Department assessment stresses that "questions remain" about choices that China’s leaders will make regarding its military might as that country’s power and influence grow.

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Shuttle engineers rolled the Atlantis orbiter into the VAB, where it will be mated to its external tank-solid rocket booster launch stack for NASA’s STS-121 mission, at about 10:20 a.m. EDT (1420 GMT) Friday. Landing gear glitches plagued Atlantis’ rollover from its Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) to the VAB.

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There is some tension between Congress and the White House over the balance between Bush's vision for space exploration and other NASA initiatives. Originally, the measure would have shifted $1.3 billion in funds from exploration to other NASA programs. But after administration objections lawmakers added the money back to the budget for exploration during floor debate. That was done by adding to the bill's bottom line -- now at $34.7 billion -- not at the expense of science and aeronautics.