Carnival of Space #208

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We’re hosting another edition of the Carnival of Space this week, in which we’ve shared some of the most important news and events related to space and astronomy. For more, check out the Carnival’s homepage over at Universe Today.

• The Chandra blog posted  their latest installment in the Women in the High Energy Universe profile series, a recent release on supermassive black holes, and exhibiting astronomy for visually impaired participants.
• A look at the physical fitness tests facing Mercury astronaut candidates with three do-it-yourself tests pulled from the candidate evaluation report. See if your heart health measures up.
• How will an international collaboration choose the site for the largest radio telescope ever imagined?
• Galaxies are thought to grow through mergers. This post is about how studying active galaxies can help us to understand this process.
• The International Space Station is set to get sunk in the Pacific ocean for its 2020 retirement.
• Next month, Perseids meteor shower will be visible [In Spanish]
• RadioAstron, a Russian radio telescope intended to be the biggest radio telescope in space, has started touring the Earth for the first time. The main scientific goal of the mission is the study of astronomical objects with an angular resolution up to a few millionths of an arcsecond. This is accomplished by use to the satellite in conjunction with ground-based observatories and interferometry techniques. It will form a radio telescopt baseline of nearly 300,000 miles at certain parts of its orbit.
• Dear Astronomer has his own Carnival of Space posted for this week as well. Some more links to interesting articles can be found there.
• Astroblogger revisited a revised version of the unpublished paper of Mensur Omerbashich which claims comet Elenin causes earthquakes – It doesn’t.
• Astronomers close in on star’s last breath.
• The farthest and largest amount of water has been found in a quasar in the form of vapour. The quasar is one of the most powerful objects in the universe with energy output of 1000 trillion suns.
• Structureless Space Telescope® (SST) for Science Applications (27 pages, 2008) – 30-meter diameter optical telescope using extensions of current technology, – 88 free-floating mirrors controlled in orbit and attitude in all 3 axes by light pressure from a set of Control Lasers. The near term version could have 60 times the resolution of the Hubble telescope.
• A new list of 17 technologies that should provide breakthroughs in technical capabilities and lead to mundane singularity of higher growth.
• Comet Garradd is starting to light up and give us a nice display.
• Forty year ago. Apollo 15 was sent to the Moon, its primary mission goals to explore the spectacular and mountainous Hadley-Appenine region using new and improved Apollo equipment,including the Lunar Rover. Here is the story of  possibly the most ambitious Apollo moon landing.