Churchill Science

Space Shuttle Atlantis had to land in California, two days late, after bad weather in Florida prevented it from landing as originally planned.

The shuttle landing has been delayed again due to bad weather at the landing site. So, no video to show you of the landing yet.

In the meantime, here are some of the best images from Hubble over the years:

This latest spacewalk was very difficult – the astronauts needed to remove and install many tiny pieces that just wouldn’t seem to cooperate. At one point, a tool battery died and they had to replace it, and add more oxygen to the astronaut’s tank, before he could continue.

Click here to learn more about NASA’s mission to the Hubble Space telescope. Includes step-by-step visuals about what the astronauts will do, information about how the telescope works, and video about the mission. Also, some of the best photos that Hubble has taken of our universe!

Brief video explaining the Hubble mission and introducing the astronauts…

Launch of the space shuttle to begin this mission…

Some of Hubble’s best work!

A baby mammoth was recently discovered mummified in ice. Here’s a video clip explaining the discovery:

To explore the mammoth discovery, click on the picture:

The Cluster B classes have been studying the planets in our own solar system and finding out why Earth is so unique and special. But could there be planets somewhere else in the universe that we could live on? Recently scientists announced that they have found some…

The red glowing object is Gliese 581, a red dwarf star. There are several rocky planets orbiting it, each named for the star – Gliese 581c, Gliese 581d, and Gliese 581e. Last week, scientists announced that “d” and “e” were the planets most like Earth that have ever been found.

Here’s a video showing the whole system:

This next video shows some planets that orbit around other stars, that could be like our own planet Earth. These stars are very far away and it is currently too hard to take a picture of them, much less go there. The video also talks about why Venus and Mars didn’t end up having life, the way Earth did.

When volcanoes erupt, there is a huge cloud of dust, gas, and sometimes ash. For a long time, scientists have known that there are lightning strikes inside these clouds, but needed to invent a way to screen out the cloud itself to get a picture of what was going on inside.

This image was taken by the Lightning Mapping Array, set up by scientists to take measurements inside the volcanic cloud at Mt. Redoubt in Alaska. The scientists set up their equipment when they heard that Mt. Redoubt was getting ready to erupt again, and waited two months until the eruptions began. Here’s yet another reason why it’s important to monitor volcanoes!

The Kepler spacecraft was launched into space last night. Its job is to take pictures of planets that orbit around other stars.

Here’s an animation:

And here’s the video of Kepler’s launch.

I was so excited about the oceans upgrade to Google Earth that I almost missed the even more amazing update – Google Mars is now 3D and available through Google Earth.

This quick video explains:

A fossilized snake skeleton was discovered in Colombia. It was big enough to eat a cow! Don’t worry, it’s extinct now.

Take a guess – what do you think this is? And why is Lisa so excited about it?

We’ll be talking more about the Mars rovers – and Mars in general – when we study space in the spring.

Do you know what you’d like to name the new rover? Post a comment here!

After the Australians took all the cats away, the rabbits were still there. You always have to have a top predator to make the other animals survive, because the rabbit population grew 100% and that is too much. They don’t have any more predators. The rabbits ate too much of the beautiful grass, so there was no grass to hold the soil in place. The water broke down the soil and it’s getting very muddy.

The people took the cats away because they were eating all the birds and the plants, but the birds are in danger still because of the erosion. Before they took the cats away, it looked like a quite beautiful rainforest, but since they took the cats away, now it just looks like people ruined the environment.

by Room 222

This is Macquarie Island. It’s part of the country of Australia. This penguin colony lives there. There are also other kinds of seabirds, cats, and rabbits on the island. About 9 years ago, Australia decided to get rid of all the cats so that they wouldn’t hunt the seabirds.

If you’ve ever played that Rabbits-Foxes-Grass game, you might be able to predict what happened next. What happened in our game when we didn’t have many foxes?

Did you see the Moon and two very bright objects in the night sky over the past few days? The two dots look like stars, but they are actually planets. Venus and Jupiter are both very close to Earth right now and so you can see them in the night sky along with the Moon.