Dec 17 1997
From The Space Library
NASA released images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) revealing more clearly than ever the "final blaze of glory" of aging Sun-like stars. Scientists had long hypothesized that stars gradually dimmed and died out as they cast off a shell of glowing gas. However, the HST revealed instead that dying stars create in space an intricate series of glowing patterns-"pinwheels, lawn sprinkler style jets, elegant goblet shapes, and even some that look like a rocket engine's exhaust." Astronomers speculated that the new images would lead them to reanalyze "stellar evolution." According to Howard E. Bond of the Space Telescope Science Institute of Baltimore, Maryland, the images made old ideas about the death of stars seem simplistic. Hubble scientist David S. Leckrone of NASA Headquarters, referring to the eventual burning out of the Sun, went so far as to say, "In a very real way, these images show us our own destiny." Scientists believed that the images portrayed a complicated but very organized sequence of events, which experts might understand after further study.
Mir's crew had to abandon a German-built robotic camera called the Inspector, which Russian space officials had hoped would capture precise images of the holes in the Spektr module, made when the a cargo craft crashed into Mir in June 1997. The camera had failed immediately after its launch, diverting from its planned course. After attempting for several hours to redirect the Inspector, the crew made plans to change Mir's orbit, to avoid a collision with the unruly robot. The malfunctioning Inspector was the latest in the long string of accidents and malfunctions that had forced the three Russian-American crew members aboard Mir to spend nearly as much time on maintenance as on scientific research.
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