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  * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - March 18, 2005 * * *

This week, featuring special on-site reports from the Lunar and Planetary
Science Conference in Houston, Texas.

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Welcome to S&T's Weekly News Bulletin. Images, the full text of stories
abridged here, and other enhancements are available on our Web site,
SkyandTelescope.com, at the URLs provided below. (If the links don't work,
just manually type the URLs into your Web browser.) Clear skies!

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AN ATMOSPHERE FOR ENCELADUS

As NASA's Cassini orbiter continues to weave its way around Saturn's
satellites, each moon rendezvous provides a wealth of new information.
Though images from its main camera have largely stolen the spotlight,
Cassini sports 11 other instruments that are busy collecting data during
each encounter. One of these, the magnetometer, has discovered a very thin
atmosphere around Enceladus....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1483_1.asp

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MARS ROVERS ROLL ON AND ON

Move over, Energizer Bunny! After more than a year on the red planet, the
Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to keep going and
going. This week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston,
Texas, the rover team updated participants on the mission's latest science
findings. Having traversed several kilometers across Gusev Crater, Spirit
is currently scaling Husband Hill....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1482_1.asp

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SALVAGING THE GENESIS MISSION

For the hundreds of people who helped design and build Genesis, September
8, 2004, was a very bad day. After a nearly flawless two-year mission of
collecting solar-wind particles, the Genesis team watched helplessly as
its prized spacecraft slammed into the Utah soil at around 305 kilometers
per hour (190 mph), smashing to pieces. Nevertheless, the Genesis team
announced yesterday that it can still fulfill most or perhaps all of the
mission's prime objectives....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1480_1.asp

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THE NATURE OF GUSEV CRATER

The Mars Exploration Rovers were sent to the red planet to "follow the
water," and their respective landing sites reflected their mission. Spirit
touched down in Gusev Crater, which many scientists thought was once a
water-filled lake. But when the rover starting rolling around the flat
basin, it found nothing but volcanic basalt. In a presentation at the
Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Ronald Greeley (Arizona State
University) confirmed that Gusev's classification as a paleolake might be
misleading....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1481_1.asp

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NEW NASA CHIEF

President George W. Bush has nominated physicist and aerospace engineer
Michael D. Griffin to serve as the next administrator of NASA. Pending
confirmation by the US Senate, Griffin will succeed Sean O'Keefe, who
resigned from the space agency in mid-February. Unlike O'Keefe, who came
to NASA from the Office of Management and Budget, Griffin has extensive
experience in the space program....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1479_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Spring begins on March 20th.
* Full Moon on March 25th.
* Saturn shines brightly high overhead in the evening.
* Jupiter rises during twilight.

For more, see This Week's Sky at a Glance and Planet Roundup:

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/ataglance
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