1998 in Science - Astronomy and Space Exploration

Astronomy and Space Exploration

• January–September – Cosmologists from the Supernova Cosmology Project led by Saul Perlmutter and the High-z Supernova Search Team led by Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt publish evidence that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.
• January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon and later finds evidence for frozen water on the moon's surface.
• February 26 – Total solar eclipse
• March 2 – Data sent from the Galileo spaceprobe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
• March 5 – NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket-fuelling station.
• March 13 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
• July 5 – Japan launches a probe to Mars, and thus joins the United States and Russia as a space-exploring nation.
• August 8 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
• August 22 – Annular solar eclipse
• September 6 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
• October 29 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts-off with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space. He became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.
• November 20 – Zarya, the first module of the International Space Station, is launched.
• The first of four 8.4 m reflecting telescopes opens in the Very Large Telescope program of the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal in Chile.