Aug 16 2000
From The Space Library
Emergency rescue personnel from Canada, Russia, and the United States participated in training exercises near St. Petersburg in Russia, where they practiced maneuvers for rescuing astronauts returning to Earth from the ISS. The rescuers practiced searching in water and on land for a module carrying three astronauts, as well as practicing first-aid techniques.
NASA announced that its Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) had detected water vapor throughout interstellar space. However, in the very coldest areas, where temperatures are only 30° above absolute zero, the satellite had detected far less water vapor than most theories had predicted. In those areas, SWAS measurements had indicated water vapor concentrations of only a few parts per billion. Ronald L. Snell of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst remarked that the finding presented a "real puzzle to our understanding of the chemistry of interstellar clouds." In warmer regions, such as those within star-producing gas clouds, SWAS had measured water concentrations as much as 10,000 times greater than in the coldest regions. The new results were the product of 18 months of observations using the compact radio observatory, launched in 1998 on a mission to "study the composition of interstellar gas clouds and their collapse to form new stars.”
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