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News briefs: August 3-4
Posted: Mon, Aug 5, 2002, 7:55 AM ET (1155 GMT)
- EchoStar announced late Friday that it has rescheduled the launch of its EchoStar 8 satellite for August 20. The satellite, a Space Systems/Loral 1300, will be launched by International Launch Services on a Proton from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The launch was scheduled for late June, but delayed shortly before launch to correct a problem with the spacecraft's command receiver.
- A West Virginia scientist has applied a theory from chemistry to predict the orbits as asteroids. Charles Jaffe, a West Virginia University chemistry professor, and a group of other researchers believe that chemical transition state theory can predict which asteroids are most likely to pass close to their Earth. Initial work they performed, predicting the number of asteroids that would escape the gravitational pull of Mars, was recently published in Physical Review Focus.
- Recent observations by a European telescope have confirmed one popular model of brown dwarfs. Observations of eight brown dwarfs performed by the European Southern Observatory turned up mid-infrared emissions from two of them: one from a young dwarf's dust disk and one from an older dwarf without a disk. Astronomers say this confirms the hypothesis that brown dwarfs form like larger stars and initially have dust disks that eventually disperse.
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