Feb 10 1998
From The Space Library
At a news conference at NASA in Washington, DC, Robert P. Kirshner, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and other astronomers discussed new Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images, showing a "shock wave lighting a knot of gas some 100 billion miles [161 billion kilometers] wide." In 1987, when a telescope in Chile detected the first light of an exploding star, the supernova designated SN1987A, astronomers had observed a glowing ring of gas around the remnant of the star. Although the gas ring had cooled and faded, the new HST images showed the shock wave of energy colliding with and lighting up the edges of the ring. The astronomers had been studying the images closely to learn more about how stars evolve and become supernovas. Anne L. Kinney of the Space Telescope Science Institute explained that studying stellar evolution and the inner workings of supernovas is important, because the explosions that create supernovas "fertilize the galaxies" with the enriched material of heavy elements.
The National Research Council released a report entitled "Space Technology for the New Century," finalizing two years of independent study by an expert panel, conducted at the request of NASA. The report's key finding stated that, because of its "faster, better, cheaper" short-term goals, NASA "may be neglecting key technologies needed for longer-term advances in space." The panel identified six technologies that NASA ought to "spur with annual investments of $3 million to $5 million each." The technologies, all with broad-based applications, include: 1) high-volume, planet-to-planet video and data communications based on laser technologies instead of radio frequencies; 2) precisely controlled space structures (space telescopes with more sophisticated and sensitive steering and pointing); 3) micro-machines; 4) safer and more efficient nuclear power systems; 5) radiation-resistant computers and electronics; and 6) advanced space mining and manufacturing technologies.
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