spacetoday.net: News briefs: July 17

Posted: Thu, Jul 18, 2002, 8:19 AM ET (1219 GMT)

The search for a spacecraft launched on a suborbital test flight last week continues in Russia. The Demonstrator-2 spacecraft was launched July 12 from a submarine in the Barents Sea and was to land on the Kamchatka Peninsula, but searchers have failed to find the spacecraft as of late Wednesday. The spacecraft was testing an inflatable reentry and landing system.
The Japanese space agency NASDA has set September 10 as the launch date for the next flight of the H-2A booster. The booster will carry NASDA's Data Relay Test Satellite, an experimental communications satellite; and the Unmanned Space Experiment Recovery System, a spacecraft that will perform crystal growth experiments in orbit and then return samples to Earth in a reentry capsule. The launch window extends through the end of September.
Black holes keep gas in intergalactic space from cooling, according to research by European astronomers published in the latest issue of the journal Nature. The gas, left over from the formation of a cluster of galaxies, should cool over time, but has remained hot. Astronomers found that x-ray emissions from matter falling into black holes kept the gas warm.