I'm on my Way to Mars

I'm on my way to Mars.

At least my name is. This morning I received an email from the Planetary Society, telling me that the DVD containing my name (as well as of the quarter-million others), has been installed in the Phoenix spacecraft. The names, through the Messages from Earth program, will piggyback on the spacecraft to Mars.

The Phoenix lander will be launched this August from Cape Canaveral and will reach the red planet in June 2008.

Atacama Telescope Gains Another Supporter

The Anglo-American project to build a new infrared telescope - the Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope - in the Atacama desert in Chile gained another supporter, with the University of Boulder in Colorado the latest to sign up, in addition to Cornell, CalTech and UK's Astronomy Technology Center.

The telescope will work in conjunction with ALMA, or Atacama Large Millimeter Array, which is expected to be the world's largest and most accurate ground-based infrared observatory when.

The infrared telescope is expected to cost $100 million and will be finished in 2013.

James Webb Space Telescope in Action

This is how the origami-like James Webb Space Telescope, will deploy in orbit. The JWST is slated to replace the Hubble Telescope in 2012.

More here

Previous post about the JWST.