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In what could turn out to be a landmark discovery in the history of Mars exploration, imaging scientists using data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft have recently observed features that suggest there may be current sources of liquid water at or near the surface of the red planet.
Throughout the past three-and-a-half decades, NASA has accomplished this basic assignment through printed press releases, radio programming, television shows, educational materials and, more recently, the fax machine. The futuristic capabilities of the Internet promise to expand this outreach exponentially, and we are tremendously excited by the possibilities.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a cooperative program of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to operate a long-lived space-based observatory for the benefit of the international astronomical community. HST is an observatory first dreamt of in the 1940s, designed and built in the 1970s and 80s, and operational only in the 1990s. Since its preliminary inception, HST was designed to be a different type of mission for NASA -- a long term space- based observatory. To accomplish this goal and protect the spacecraft against instrument and equipment failures, NASA had always planned on regular servicing missions. Hubble has special grapple fixtures, 76 handholds, and stabilized in all three axes. HST is a 2.4-meter reflecting telescope which was deployed in low-Earth orbit (600 kilometers) by the crew of the space shuttle Discovery (STS-31) on 25 April 1990.
Organizationally, STARLab is a research group within the Department of Electrical Engineering of Stanford University. The Laboratory is composed of four regular faculty, two research faculty, a number of emeritus faculty with active research programs, two consulting professors, several research associates, and more than sixty graduate students and staff.Research areas in the STARlab share a common basis in the study and exploitation of electromagnetic wave phenomena. Electromagnetic waves are used in remote sensing systems, communications systems, and other applications.
