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Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Relativity mission achieves two major milestones Relativity mission achieves two major milestones NASA-MSFC NEWS RELEASEPosted: March 6, 2002 The NASA Gravity Probe B (GP-B) Relativity Mission has successfully mated its science payload to its spacecraft and after successful systems testing, the GP-B space vehicle was shipped to Sunnyvale, Calif., on Feb. 9, 2002, to prepare for upcoming rigorous environmental tests. The Gravity Probe B spacecraft on a modal stand in preparation for environmental testing. Photo: Lockheed Martin  "These milestones are a huge accomplishment for this dedicated team," said Gravity Probe B program manager Rex ...

There has been no announcement, no peer review or publication of the findings - all typically important steps in the process of releasing reliable and verifiable scientific research. Instead, a message on Twitter from an Arizona State University cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss, has sparked a firestorm of speculation and excitement. Krauss does not work with the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO, which is searching for ripples in the fabric of space and time. But he tweeted on Monday about the apparent shoring up of rumor he'd heard some months ago, that LIGO scientists were writing up a paper...

Europe's innovative Goce satellite has switched on the super-sensitive instrument that will make ultra-fine measurements of Earth's gravity. The sophisticated gradiometer will feel the subtle variations in Earth's tug as it sweeps around the globe. The spacecraft has also fired up the British-built engine that will help maintain its orbit. Goce needs tiny but continuous levels of thrust to keep it stable and prevent it from falling out of the sky. European Space Agency (Esa) mission manager Rune Floberghagen said all systems on the spacecraft had now been activated following the launch from Russia last month.

Nearly three years ago, NASA's oft-canceled $750 million Gravity Probe B Relativity Mission finally shot into space with one goal -- to quantify Einstein's predictions from Earth's orbit. Earlier this year, at the meeting of the American Physics Society, principal investigator Francis Everitt delivered the first results: Gravity Probe B has verified Einstein's theory to within 1 percent... Einstein's theory predicts that the axes should shift by a tiny amount -- 0.0018 degree -- under the influence of Earth's pull on space-time. After 18 months of data analysis, Everitt and his team measured the axial shift to within 1 percent...

NEWS RELEASE October 3, 2005 Contact: Bob Kahn, Gravity Probe B Public Affairs: (650) 723-2540, kahn@relgyro.stanford.edu Comment: Francis Everitt, Gravity Probe B Principal Investigator: (650) 725-4104, francis@relgyro.stanford.edu Editor Note: Photos and graphics are available on the web at http://einstein.stanford.edu/pao/newspix/hires. Relevant Web URLs: http://einstein.stanford.edu http://www.gravityprobeb.com Putting relativity to the test, NASA's Gravity Probe B experiment is one step away from revealing if Einstein was right Almost 90 years after Einstein postulated his general theory of relativity—our current theory of gravity—scientists have finally finished collecting the data that will put this theory to an experimental test. For the past 17 months, NASA's...

Even its critics admit that it was a great idea in 1959. It was then that three Stanford scientists, dangling their legs in a university swimming pool, agreed to team up on an ambitious effort to peer deep into the heart of the strangeness that is Albert Einstein's legacy. Now 45 years and $700 million later, their dream has materialized as a van-size assemblage of plumbing, electronics and quartz, known unpoetically as Gravity Probe B, sitting atop a rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It is to be launched into orbit next Monday on an 18-month mission. When...