西安高考学校联系方式(莲湖复读学校专业排名) (今日更新中)

WASHINGTON, May 11 (Xinhua) -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft has obtained its first image of the giant asteroid Vesta, which will help fine-tune navigation during its approach, the U.S. space agency announced Wednesday.Dawn expects to achieve orbit around Vesta on July 16, when the asteroid is about 117 million miles from Earth.The image from Dawn's framing cameras was taken on May 3 when the spacecraft began its approach and was approximately 752,000 miles (1.21 million km) from Vesta. The asteroid appears as a small, bright pearl against a background of stars. Vesta also is known as a protoplanet, because it is a large body that almost formed into a planet."After plying the seas of space for more than a billion miles, the Dawn team finally spotted its target," said Carol Raymond, Dawn's deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "This first image hints of detailed portraits to come from Dawn's upcoming visit."Vesta is 330 miles (530 km) in diameter and the second most massive object in the asteroid belt. Ground- and space-based telescopes obtained images of the bright orb for about two centuries, but with little surface detail.Mission managers expect Vesta's gravity to capture Dawn in orbit on July 16. To enter orbit, Dawn must match the asteroid's path around the sun, which requires very precise knowledge of the body's location and speed. By analyzing where Vesta appears relative to stars in framing camera images, navigators will pin down its location and enable engineers to refine the spacecraft's trajectory.Dawn will start collecting science data in early August at an altitude of approximately 1,700 miles (2,700 km) above the asteroid's surface. As the spacecraft gets closer, it will snap multi-angle images allowing scientists to produce topographic maps. Dawn will later orbit at approximately 120 miles (200 km) to perform other measurements and obtain closer shots of parts of the surface. Dawn will remain in orbit around Vesta for one year. After another long cruise phase, Dawn will arrive in 2015 at its second destination, Ceres, an even more massive body in the asteroid belt.Gathering information about these two icons of the asteroid belt will help scientists unlock the secrets of our solar system's early history. The mission will compare and contrast the two giant asteroids shaped by different forces. Dawn's science instruments will measure surface composition, topography and texture. Dawn also will measure the tug of gravity from Vesta and Ceres to learn more about their internal structures. The spacecraft's full odyssey will take it on a 3-billion-mile (5-billion-km) journey, which began with its launch in September 2007.

MOSCOW, March 11 (Xinhua) -- A new crew which are to depart for the International Space Station (ISS) at the end of March have successfully passed the pre-flight tests, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced on Friday.At a press conference held at Russia's Cosmonauts Training Center, a Roscosmos spokesman said two Russian cosmonauts Andrei Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev and a U.S. astronaut Ronald Garn will leave for the ISS by a Russian Soyuz-TM-21 spacecraft on March 30.On March 17, the three crew members and their backup crew members, Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin and Daniel Burbank, will make their final preparation for the space trip in the Baikonur space site in Kazakhstan.According to the Roscosmos, the three main crew members are expected to spend 170 days in the ISS. During the period, they will receive two U.S. space shuttles and three Russian Progress cargo ships and conduct a spacewalk.The agency also revealed the Soyuz-TM-21 spacecraft scheduled for the ISS was named as Gagarin.The year of 2011 was announced as Russia's Space Year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first Russian manned space flight carrying cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961 for a 90-minute flight.

MOSCOW, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- Russian and Chinese companies started construction of an iron ore dressing plant Friday in the Evreyskaya Autonomous Oblast to provide high-grade iron ore to the Asia Pacific region, including China.Yury Makarov, chief executive officer of IRC Ltd., told Xinhua the plant would reach its designed capacity in 2013 at 10 million tons of iron ore and 3.2 million tons of iron ore concentrates, which contain up to 65 percent iron.Makarov said that 20 percent of the iron ore concentrates, which are natural iron ore processed through crushing, grinding and dressing, would be used to meet demands of Russia's far east and the rest would go to the Asia-Pacific market. Currently, China imports large amounts of concentrates from Brazil, Australia and India."We are very open to interaction with various countries of the Asia-Pacific region, especially China. The volume of processed iron ore has been increasing every year. We will be happy to deliver iron ore to your companies as well as any other consumers who are willing to purchase our products," he said.The plant will draw its resources from the Kimkanskoye and Sutarskoye deposits and send its products through the Khabarovsk Krai and the Suifenhe port to China.The plant is only 7 km from the Trans-Siberian Railway. A railway bridge is being planned between Evreyskaya Oblast and Heilongjiang to further shorten the supply route.Total investment in the plant is 400 million U.S. dollars, with 340 million in loans from the ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) in China. Interest under the facility will be charged at 2.8 percent above LIBOR per annum. The China National Electric Engineering Co, Ltd is tasked with the construction of the plant.Makarov said he was very optimistic about the future of the plant and the development of relations between the Russia's far east and China's northeastern region.IRC Ltd. is a metal unit of Russian gold miner Petropavlovsk PLC. It became the second Russian company to be listed on the HK stock exchange, when it started trading on Oct. 21.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Yahoo Inc. on Monday announced that it has acquired IntoNow, a startup company whose technology can let users almost instantly recognize TV content and share favorite programs with their friends.IntoNow has built a technology platform that can automatically identify live television content and any previously aired U.S.- based television programming in the past five years.It also offers an application for iPhone and other devices running Apple's iOS operating system, which can help users connect and engage with their friends around the shows they love.With the application, users can find out what their friends are watching and engage in discussion through their favorite social networks, or discover what shows they have in common with others and which of them are on air right now."Relying on social channels as a means for discovering content - - whether it's on a PC, mobile device, or TV -- is rapidly on the rise," Bill Shaughnessy, Yahoo's senior vice president of product management and product marketing, said in a statement."IntoNow's technology combines the ability to check-in to what a consumer is watching, engage in conversations, and find related content," he added.In a post on its company blog, Yahoo noted that the addition of IntoNow will enhance its video programming, and bolster its social engagement across the Yahoo network and on all screens.IntoNow, headquartered in Palo Alto in the U.S. state of California, was only launched in January 2011 and now has seven employees.Yahoo didn't disclose terms of the purchase. Technology blog TechCrunch reported that Yahoo paid between 20 million to 30 million U.S. dollars, citing sources with knowledge of the deal.

来源：资阳报