A jet with a large telescope built into its side has snapped its first in-flight images of the night sky. The flight begins a new phase for the infrared observatory, called SOFIA, which was once in danger of cancellation due to cost overruns.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a Boeing 747 jet that has been modified to carry a 2.5-metre telescope provided by the German Space Agency. The observatory is designed to fly at an altitude of about 12 kilometres.

That altitude is above more than 99 per cent of the atmosphere's water vapour, which obscures the sky at infrared wavelengths. That means SOFIA will receive roughly 80 per cent of the infrared light that hits orbiting space telescopes. It can be used to study phenomena such as star and planet formation in the Milky Way.

The telescope took off on Wednesday from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, for its first in-flight night observations. Images taken during the six-hour flight are sharp enough for the telescope to perform "front-line astronomical research", SOFIA project scientist Pam Marcum said in a statement.

A massive asteroid hit the Timor Sea around 35 million years ago - and the impact apparently contributed to the formation of the Antarctic ice sheets.

So says Andrew Glikson, a specialist in the study of extraterrestrial impacts, from the Planetary Science Institute at the Australian National University in Canberra, who analysed a dome found 2.5 kilometres below the Timor Sea, about 300 kilometres off Australia's north west coast.

Based on the structure of the dome, called Mount Ashmore, there were two obvious explanations for its formation: from a mud volcano or from the movement of tectonic plates.

But using a barrage of tests including scanning electron microscopy and seismic surveys, as well as chemical analysis of the rocks, Glikson concluded that the dome was the result of an asteroid crashing into the Earth at such speeds that it caused the Earth's crust to rebound (Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, DOI: 10.1080/08120099.2010.481327).

Images from scanning electron microscopy showed that the cracks and pulverised rocks throughout the dome were unlike those seen in tectonic plate movements.

NASA authorities report that an unknown object approaching the Earth from deep space is almost certainly artificial in origin rather than being an asteroid. Object 2010 KQ was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona earlier this month, and subsequently tracked by NASA's asteroid-watching service, the Near-Earth Object Program headquartered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Observations by astronomer S J Bus, using the NASA-sponsored Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate that 2010 KQ's spectral characteristics do not match any of the known asteroid types, and the object's absolute magnitude (28.9) suggests it is only a few meters in size.

The mysterious artificial object has apparently made a close pass by the Earth, coming in almost to the distance of the Moon's orbit, and is now headed away again into the interplanetary void. The object has used no propulsion during the time NASA has had it under observation. However the spacewatch experts believe that it must have moved under its own power at some point, given its position and velocity.

In an attempt to make its rockets lighter and carry heavier satellites, the Indian space agency is planning to flight test by the end of this year its own air-breathing engine that will use atmospheric oxygen as fuel.

Air-breathing engines use atmospheric oxygen and burn it with the stored on-board fuel to generate the onward thrust.

Conventional rockets carry both oxygen and chemical fuel on board.

"We will be doing a series of ground tests of the air breathing engine soon. We are planning an actual launch of a sounding rocket - ATV D02 - powered by such an engine by the end of this year," an official of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told IANS on condition of anonymity.

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The 21st Century is being kind to Egyptology.

At the end of May, it was announced that yet another tomb had been found, that of Ptahmes, mayor of Memphis, army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C.

Important new finds like this are being generated at a frenetic pace, as exemplified by the research being done in the Valley of the Kings, whose necropolis has resulted in much recent data regarding the intriguing Amarna period pharaohs, including Akhenaten, Smenkhare, Tutankhamen and Ay.

Indeed, discoveries are happening at the most frenetic pace since 1997 when more than 60 people, mostly Japanese and Swiss tourists, along with Egyptian police and guides, were killed by an attack on the archaelogical hotbed of Luxor. The attack, perpretrated by extremists from the outlawed Islamist Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, a group with links to Ayman al Zawahiri and Al Qaeda, not only made ensuring the safety of tourists in the country more problematic, but it made archaeology much more challenging and risky as well.

In the film, Star Wars, fighter spacecraft do battle in space. This may soon come to pass. An American Air Force space fighter listed as top secret is currently being tested. The pilotless X-37B fighter took its maiden test flight into space from Florida. The challenge is that the X-37B is not simply a reusable space fighter; it is America's secret weapon. And it can attack any target on the globe within two hours. This is more dangerous than a nuclear warhead!

Not long ago, the U.S. developed the X-37B, the world's first space fighter to be successfully launched into space. The Atlas 5 rocket carried out this launch mission. In a war, the X-37B would have the ability to carry out military operations against satellites of enemy countries and their aircraft. This would include controlling, seizing or destroying enemy aircraft, as well as carrying out military reconnaissance against enemies and so forth. With its mission accomplished, the intention is for it to glide back to land automatically. The X-37B is not suited for an astronaut. It carries out many types of missions automatically in air and space.

The U.S. air force refused to reveal what missions were carried out during the maiden flight of the X-37B. At present, after the X-37B launches, it enters into earth's orbit, but it is undetermined for how long. After returning from space, the X-37B will enter auto-pilot mode to return to earth by finally landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California or, as a backup, the nearby Edwards Air Force Base.

Though only a small aircraft, the X-37B space plane is a U.S. military secret at the highest level, although the U.S. military has repeatedly stressed that the main purpose for manufacturing the X-37B is scientific research. Yet once exposed, the X-37B project could raise violent responses. Some military experts call it "the first prototype space fighter." This project has a clear military purpose and may further exacerbate the militarization of space.

Harare, Zimbabwe - Tudor Parfitt has spent years chasing a theory that a lost tribe of Jews wound up in Southern Africa. But his latest leap has landed him in a minefield.

The subject at hand is this British scholar's contention that the remains of a 700-year-old bowl-shaped relic which he tracked down in a Zimbabwe museum storeroom in 2007 could be a replica of the Ark of the Covenant that carried the Ten Commandments.

According to African legend, white lions of God and a two-headed snake guarded the "drum that thunders" in a cave in southwestern Zimbabwe's sacred Dumbwe mountains. Parfitt's theory has sparked fierce reactions from some Zimbabwean scholars, who suspect a plot to superimpose foreign origins on what is purely a product of African culture.

Having long disappeared from public view since its discovery in the 1940s, the artifact is now on display at the Harare Museum of Human Sciences. It is about 45 inches by 24 inches in diameter and 27 inches tall with a pattern of shallow engraving on the outside that could have held gold threads. Scorch marks on the base inside were possibly left by primitive gun powder.

Parfitt, a professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of London's prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies, says he first heard of the vessel during his two-decade search for Jewish tribes lost in Africa.

At the center of that research is a southern African ethnic group variously called Lemba, Remba or waLemba. Parfitt says 52 percent of them carry a Y chromosome known as the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH) - unique to ancient priestly Jewish communities and raising the possibility they are descended from Aaron, Moses' brother. Other groups in Zimbabwe have no CMH.

The amazing pictures of the space station taken by ground-based amateur astronomers keeps on coming. On May 29th, Anthony Ayiomamitis used a 16 cm (6″) telescope to capture a phenomenal image of the International Space Station passing Jupiter... in broad daylight!

Wow! Note the color of the sky; it was about 9:00 a.m. local time when he took this shot, with the Sun well above the horizon. This is actually two images added together; the first shows the ISS to the lower right, and in the second shot it had moved to the upper left. Jupiter shows its disk near the center of the frame, it being easily bright enough to be seen using a telescope in daylight.

What an incredible picture! But it gets cooler...

Archaeologists have discovered the 3,300-year-old tomb of the ancient Egyptian capital's mayor, whose resting place had been lost under the desert sand since 19th century treasure hunters first carted off some of its decorative wall panels, officials announced Sunday.

Ptahmes, the mayor of Memphis, also served as army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and his son and successor, Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C.

The discovery of his tomb earlier this year in a New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara, south of Cairo, solves a riddle dating back to 1885, when foreign expeditions made off with pieces of the tomb, whose location was soon after forgotten.

"Since then it was covered by sand and no one knew about it," said Ola el-Aguizy, the Cairo University archaeology professor who led the excavation. "It is important because this tomb was the lost tomb."

Some of the artifacts ended up in museums in the Netherlands, the United States and Italy as well as the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, providing the only clues about the missing tomb.

Up close, the solar surface is a striking patch work of granules in this very high resolution picture of the quiet Sun. Caused by convection, the granules are hot, rising columns of plasma edged by dark lanes of cooler, descending plasma. But the high-resolution view reveals that the dark lanes are dotted with many small, contrasting bright points. Constantly present on the solar surface, the bright points do not seem to be related to sunspots that come and go with the magnetic solar cycle. Nonetheless, the bright points are regions of concentrated magnetic fields and are bright because the magnetic pressure opens a window to hotter deeper layers below the photosphere.