ESA holds a press conference to announce the first results of the MARSIS radar experiment on board of the Mars Express satellite, orbiting Mars. Besides locating a buried impact basin it has found indication for water ice in a depth of about 1 km under the surface of Mars. (BBC)
An international group of astronomers announce the discovery of a brown dwarf with a protoplanetary disk. This is smallest star-like object known to have such a disk. (SpaceRef)
The new version of Firefox 1.5 becomes publicly available for download. (eWEEK/YahooNews)
The launch of Falcon 1 is scrubbed due to problems with the liquid oxygen tanking infrastructure. No new launch date is set. (Spaceflight Now)
Indian millionaire Vijaypat Singhania reaches a height of nearly 70,000 ft (21,330 m) in a hot air balloon. Subject to verification, this would set a new world record. (AP/YahooNews)
The Hayabusa spacecraft lands on 25143 Itokawa a second time and executes its sample collection sequence on the surface, successfully. JAXA officials say that with high probability the probe now holds asteroid material, which is slated to return to Earth by 2007. (BBC)
European scientists publish a study in Science that indicates that the current carbon dioxide content of the air is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. The data for this study was obtained by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica from analyzing air bubbles enclosed in ice. (AP/YahooNews)
Professor Hwang Woo-suk resigns from all public posts, including that of chairman of the World Stem Cell Hub and apologises for using human eggs from his own researchers and those bought from donors for his research (BBC), (Nature)
A new variant of the Sober virus spreads through worldwide email systems, by fraudulently claiming to originate from the United States FBI, the CIA or the German BKA. (BBC)
JAXA officials announce that Hayabusa did land on 25143 Itokawa in its first attempt on November 19, and stayed in contact of the surface for about 30 minutes. However, it has failed to collect a sample. (AP/YahooNews)
A PhD student from Stanford University has created a digital camera that can refocus images after they are taken by using 90,000 micro lenses which measure light direction. (Wired)
The Spirit rover reaches one Martian year on the surface of Mars. (NASA)
Hayabusa fails to take surface samples of 25143 Itokawa after dropping a target marker and guiding itself to a distance of 17 m to its target. At that point the spacecraft enters its safe mode for unknown reasons, and communications are interrupted for three hours. During this time it drifts but is assumed to be currently within 100 km of the asteroid. (AP/YahooNews) (AFP/YahooNews)
Removing the Sir2 gene has revealed a potential breakthrough in ageing research; as the cells are tricked into reacting as though there is a food shortage and slowing down. This has resulted in organisms living six times longer than normal. (Guardian)
Archaeologists in Norway discover 35 stone age settlements in southern parts of the border between Telemark and Vestfold counties; 20 of the dwellings stem from the Upper Paleolithic period, roughly 8,000 BC. Before this discovery, only six such dwellings were known in the whole of southern Norway. The excavations have been done in this exact area and time as part of the preparation for rerouting and widening European Highway E18. (This follows the standard procedure in Norway of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings withholding the startup of major road construction projects until proper archaeological excavations of the affected area have been performed.) (NRK.no) (in Norwegian only; English-language reports awaited)
Computer security experts warn that the software provided by Sony to uninstall its XCP tools creates additional vulnerabilities. (BBC)
The European Space Agency (ESA) launches two commercial satellites using the Ariane 5 ECA rocket, achieving the tenth successful launch in a row for the Ariane 5 series. With its total payload mass of about 8,000 kg (8 metric tons) this mission sets a new record. (spaceRef.com)
The United States government has won its fight to keep supervisory authority over the internet through its contractor, the ICANN, despite opposition from many nations. (BBC)
The 26th TOP500 list of the world's highest-performance supercomputer installations is presented at the Supercomputing Conference (SC|05) in Seattle, Washington. The two top positions on the list are held by IBM-built Blue Gene/L systems, with no. 1 achieving a performance of more than 280 teraFLOPS—a doubling since the previous list, in June. (TOP500.Org)
Sun Microsystems introduces its 8-core, 4-way multithreading microprocessor UltraSPARC T1 (formerly codenamed Niagara), which is the general-purpose CPU with the highest number of cores on a single chip to date. The T1 will consume about 70 watts of power, less than half that of other multicore processors. (eWEEK.com)
The release of the Minerva robot by Hayabusa fails to deliver it onto the surface of 25143 Itokawa. Most likely the release command was incorrectly timed, and the robot left the gravity field of the asteroid. (MSNBC)
Sony stops using the XCP copy protection technology after it is found that virus programs exploit it as a "backdoor", and previous negative reactions by the public. (AP/CBSNews)
The mission timeline for Hayabusa is rescheduled after a successful rehearsal brings the spacecraft within 70 m of the surface of 25143 Itokawa. (SpaceRef.com)
A Boeing 777-200LR airliner breaks the world distance record for commercial jetliners by flying nonstop from Hong Kong to London via the Pacific, North America and the Atlantic—a distance of 11,664 nautical miles (21,601 km). The flight took 22 hours and 42 minutes. (Boeing)
The Venus Express spacecraft is successfully launched at 33:33 UTC from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. (BBC)
The consortium building the Galileo positioning system, names the first demonstrator satellite GIOVE A and plans to launch it in December 2005. (BBC) (ESA)
The Kansas Board of education changes its public school science standard, including a new definition of Science and adding challenges to Evolution by advocates for Intelligent Design. (AP/CNN)
xG Technology demonstrates a wireless technology, called xMax, which is reportedly 1,000 times more efficient than WiMax. According to the company, one base station can cover the same area as 90 WiMax base stations. (TechWorld)
The Hayabusa space probe's "dress rehearsal" approach to the surface of asteroid 25143 Itokawa is cancelled shortly before the beginning of the descent due to an anomalous signal from the spacecraft. (BBC)
Mission scientists schedule the dates for collecting samples from the surface of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa by the Hayabusa space probe. The plan calls for two tries: One on November 12 and the second on November 25. (BBC)
NASA astronomers publish an analysis of Spitzer space telescope pictures showing that they could possibly contain light from the very first generation of stars after the Big Bang. (AP/YahooNews)
80 of the world's top radio astronomers meet in Pune, India to decide how and where to set up the world's biggest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array. (NDTV)
Past science and technology events by month
2005 in science: June July August September October
(For earlier science and technology events, see May 2005 and preceding months)
