New Obama Budget Reported to Axe Constellation, Future Moon Missions

Bad news on the Constellation front this morning: the Orlando Sentinel reports this morning that sources inside the Obama administration say the budget proposal to be released Monday contains no money for the Constellation program or the Ares I rocket that was supposed to replace the space shuttle as America’s means to shuttle humans to space. Also axed: the Ares V cargo rocket intended to ferry fuel and supplies necessary for America’s return to the moon.

Lunar landers, moon bases and a shot at a future manned mission to Mars are all conspicuously absent from the budget’s long-term goals.

So what is in the budget? According to administration insiders, agency officials, industry wonks and sources on The Hill, the Obama White House wants NASA to pursue a “heavy-lift” rocket capable of taking humans and robots beyond low-earth orbit at some faraway, yet-to-be-determined date. The White House also wants NASA to focus more attention on climate change research and monitoring and developing programs enabling future exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system. A 2020 life extension for the ISS is also expected.

It’s important to note that all of these “insiders” spoke to reporters on a condition of anonymity; leaking budget details several days before their official release is now way to ensure job security. But the details that are leaking, if true, seem to spell an end to NASA’s aspirations to recreate its glory days of Apollo with modern, vastly superior technology. And those of us who were stoked about the idea can forget about a permanent moon base.

Space shuttle duties – rotating crew at the ISS, putting satellites into orbit, etc. – will likely fall to other nations or to private enterprise. But while it’s fair to say that perhaps we don’t need to go back to the moon, the greater fear is that America will lose its place at the head of the table. Just yesterday Reuters noted that Russia, the first nation to launch a satellite into orbit and a man into space, has lost its standing as a scientific powerhouse for lack of research and development. Nations like China and South Korea are racing to close the aeronautical gap, and India has green-lit its first manned mission to space in 2016, a year when it appears the U.S. Space Agency will be measuring glacial ice and ocean currents.

Source: www.popsci.com

The Moon May Have Been Created By a Massive Nuclear Blast Inside the Earth

The standard explanation for the formation of our moon holds that during the formation of our solar system, a giant object smashed into the infant Earth, knocking loose a huge chunk of our planet that became our orbiting satellite. But the problem with easy explanations is that the science doesn’t always reconcile with the theory. A new explanation of lunar formation holds that the big event that cleaved the moon wasn’t a space object at all, but a home-grown nuclear georeactor going supercritical, blasting the moon into orbit.

The rub with the standard explanation is thus: if a giant asteroid or some such object smashed into earth and sent the moon hurtling into its present orbit, the Moon ought to be composed of about 80 percent of that object's constituent material and about 20 percent of the Earth's. But the makeup of moon rock closely mirrors that of the Earth. The ratios of heavier elements in moon rock and Earth rock are simply too similar for the standard theory to hold up without some further explanation.

Another theory, known as the fission theory, suggests that the moon spun out of the rapidly spinning blob of molten rock that would later become Earth. But though this theory has lingered for 150 years, it has never been taken too seriously because no one could explain a catalyst that might launch a small chunk of earth out into space with enough force to defy Earth’s gravitational pull.

spaceHowever, a couple of European researchers think they may have found the missing piece to the fission theory puzzle. According to their explanation, the centrifugal forces on Earth concentrated heavier elements like uranium and thorium near the surface around the equatorial plane. Enough of these elements in high enough concentrations could set off a runaway nuclear chain reaction, similar to the kind that cause nuke plant meltdowns. In this way, a natural-born nuclear georeactor was pushed to supercritical levels and: BOOM! The moon was cleaved from the Earth and rocketed into orbit by a massive nuclear explosion.

It’s a tough theory to test, but we do know that nuclear georeactors existed, their legacy left behind in the uranium we mine from the Earth today. If the theory can be confirmed, it could reverse decades of loose consensus on how our moon came into being.

Source: www.popsci.com

Spirit Rover Shall Rove No More

After nearly ten months and countless efforts at twisting, turning and rocking for traction, NASA has conceded defeat in its effort to free the Mars rover Spirit from a sand trap near the Martian equator. But though the rover will likely never coast over the Martian landscape again, researchers do expect it to survive the upcoming winter and serve as a static science station going forward.
During its six-year stint on Mars, Spirit and its sister craft Opportunity have snapped thousands of images of the inhospitable surface and beamed back invaluable data to researchers on the ground that have spawned over 100 scholastic papers. It was Spirit that found and analyzed rocks and soil that showed extensive exposure to water in the past, changing the way researchers form theories about the Red Planet's past.

But Spirit lost operation in one of its six wheels years ago and another has ceased function since handlers began trying to free it from its sand trap. As such, even if the researchers could get it free it would likely have trouble negotiating the Martian frontier.

Therefore, NASA has reprioritized its objectives, focusing on adjusting its northerly tilt so its solar panels will be in the best position to survived the Martian winter, during which temps will hit -49 degrees. But its electronics are expected to survive, meaning Spirit should revive come spring and serve as a stationary observation station.

In the meantime, in the spirit of Spirit, Opportunity rolls on.

Source: www.popsci.com

Daredevil Space Diver To Leap Toward World's First Supersonic Free-Fall From 120,000 Ft

Here’s Felix Baumgartner’s plan: Float a balloon to 120,000 feet. Jump out. Break the sound barrier. Don’t die. Simple, right?

If Baumgartner, a world famous base jumper and skydiver, pulls off the feat, he’ll set the record for the world’s highest jump and become the first person to break the sound barrier with his body alone. During the jump, he’ll also collect data on how the human body reacts to a fall from such heights, which could be useful for planning orbital escape plans for future space tourists and astronauts.

Dubbed the Red Bull Stratos and sponsored by the energy drink company, the jump will send Baumgartner to the stratosphere in a small space capsule, lifted by a helium-filled balloon. Once he reaches 120,000 feet after three hours of ascension, ground control will give him the “all clear” sign and he’ll pop open the door and jump, as video cameras on the capsule and his suit record his descent. Within 35 seconds or so, Baumgartner will hit supersonic speeds and break the sound barrier. No one really knows what will happen at that point, but the scientists seem confident that he’ll maintain consciousness. He will free fall for roughly six more minutes, pulling his chute at about 5,000 feet and coasting for 15 minutes back to solid ground.

Just what happens to his body as it goes from subsonic to supersonic and back to subsonic speed is of great interest to scientists, and so he’ll be hooked up to an electrocardiogram monitor during the jump. He’ll also be outfitted with accelerometers and GPS units to confirm his acceleration and speed, and from that the stress on his body. But that’s pretty much it for gear—because he’s wearing a pressurized suit filled with 100 percent oxygen, his crew is rightly wary of putting too many electronics and power sources in his suit that could accidentally set him on fire. Any data they collect will then be made public and turned over to the military and NASA.

The plan is to make the jump sometime in 2010. After they complete test jumps at 25,000, 60,000, and 90,000 feet, they’ll watch the Doppler radar and wait for calm weather and then pick the launch location, which for now they can only say will be somewhere in North America. The goal is to drop Baumgartner near the launch site, but even with low wind conditions he could drift some 150 miles away.

But first they have to test all the gear to make sure that it will work as it transitions from the freezing, no-pressure environment at 120,000 feet to the extreme heat of the dive. It’s the same as with any other flight test program, says Jonathan Clark, the team’s medical director. “Only in this case, Felix Baumgartner is the aircraft.”

Source: www.popsci.com

Hidden asteroids are stalking the Earth

A TINY asteroid that buzzed Earth last week highlighted our planet's vulnerability to objects whose peculiar orbits put them in a game of hide-and-seek with us.

An Earth-based telescope spotted the 10-metre space rock hurtling our way just three days before a near miss on 13 January, when it flew by at just one-third of the distance to the moon. The asteroid is never expected to hit Earth and would burn up before hitting the ground in any case. But its unusual orbit seems ingeniously designed to evade our surveys. It is likely that a handful of objects large enough to cause harm are hiding under similar circumstances.

Large asteroids are relatively easy to spot because they reflect the most sunlight. But smaller asteroids - which can still damage Earth if they span at least 30 to 50 metres - are usually too dim for telescopes to detect except during brief close approaches to Earth. For a typical near-Earth asteroid, these occurrences are a few years or decades apart.

However, last week's unexpected visitor, called 2010 AL30, kept far enough from Earth to be invisible for more than a century. The prolonged avoidance occurred because the period of its solar orbit was 366 days - very close to Earth's year (though the close pass shifted the space rock into a 390-day orbit). Like a slightly slower race car that is periodically lapped by its competitor on a circular track, it stays far from Earth for long stretches.

"2010 AL30 may become a sort of 'poster child' for hiding asteroids," says Alan Harris of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Similar "synchronised" asteroids may be hiding with periods of very close to two, three, four years and so on, Harris says. Those with periods of about four years pose the greatest risk to Earth, because they would be in sync with both Earth and Jupiter, says Timothy Spahr of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Such asteroids would be particularly influenced by Jupiter's gravity, which could nudge them onto a collision course with Earth.

Asteroids with non-synchronous orbits can also hide. Those with orbits mostly interior to Earth's - called Aten asteroids - spend most of their time in the glare of the sun as seen from Earth, so telescopes have trouble spotting them.

But Atens would be easier to spot if a telescope were positioned closer to the sun - in an orbit near Venu's, say. Such a telescope would also make it harder for asteroids to hide in synchronised orbits, says Harris. He admits that the cost of such a mission would be high, given the small fraction of asteroids likely to be in synchronised orbits. "On the other hand, I suppose I'd rather spend money on that than on strip-search scanners at airports to detect crotch-bombers, which constitute a similar level of cost and risk to society," he says. A US National Research Cuncil report evaluating asteroid-hunting strategies, including the use of space telescopes, is due soon. But even if no observatories are placed near Venus, the newly launched Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) could spot any big Earth-synchronised asteroids - those larger than 1 kilometre across. Large asteroids in orbits like 2010 AL30's, at about Earth's distance from the sun or closer, would be warm and bright in the infrared, making them "a piece of cake" for WISE to spot, Spahr says. However, even WISE will only be able to spot a small fraction of any mid-sized asteroids in these orbits, he says.

Source: www.newscientist.com

Public invited to pick pixels on Mars

Scientists are taking suggestions on where to image the Red Planet using NASA satellite.

The most powerful camera aboard a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars will soon be taking photo suggestions from the public.

Since arriving at Mars in 2006, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has recorded nearly 13,000 observations of the Red Planet's terrain. Each image covers dozens of square miles and reveals details as small as a desk. Now, anyone can nominate sites for pictures.

"The HiRISE team is pleased to give the public this opportunity to propose imaging targets and share the excitement of seeing your favorite spot on Mars at people-scale resolution," said Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the camera and a researcher at the University of Arizona.

The idea to take suggestions from the public follows through on the original concept of the HiRISE instrument when its planners nicknamed it "the people's camera." The team anticipates that more people will become interested in exploring the Red Planet while their suggestions for imaging targets will increase the camera's already bountiful science return. Despite the thousands of pictures already taken, less than 1 percent of the martian surface has been imaged.

Students, researchers, and others can view Mars maps using a new online tool to see where images have been taken, check which targets already have been suggested, and make new suggestions.

"The process is fairly simple," said Guy McArthur, systems programmer on the HiRISE team at the University of Arizona. "With the tool, you can place your rectangle on Mars where you'd like."

McArthur developed the online tool, called "HiWish," with Ross Beyer, principal investigator and research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

In addition to identifying the location on a map, anyone nominating a target will be asked to give the observation a title, explain the potential scientific benefit of photographing the site, and put the suggestion into one of the camera team's 18 science themes. The themes include categories such as impact processes, seasonal processes, and volcanic processes.

The HiRISE science team will evaluate suggestions and put high-priority ones into a queue. Thousands of pending targets from scientists and the public will be imaged when the orbiter's track and other conditions are right.

HiRISE is one of six instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Launched in August 2005, the orbiter reached Mars the following year to begin a two-year primary science mission. The spacecraft has found that Mars has had diverse wet environments at many locations for differing durations in the planet's history, and martian climate-change cycles persist into the present era. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is in an extended science phase and will continue to take several thousand images a year. The mission has returned more data about Mars than all other spacecraft combined.

Source: www.astronomy.com

The 5 Extrasolar Planets

The closest planet to 55 Cancri has about the same mass as Uranus and is located 5.6 million km (3.5 million miles) away from the star. It orbits the star in slightly less than 3 days.

The second planet is 17.9 million km (11.2 million miles) away from the star. It has about the same mass as Jupiter . It completes one orbit every 14.7 days.

The third planet from 55 Cancri is 35.9 million km (22.3 million miles) away. Its mass is about the same as Saturn's. It makes one complete orbit around the star every 44 days.

The fourth planet is 116.7 million km (72.5 million miles) from the star. This distance is similar to the distance that Earth is from our Sun (149.6 million km or 93 million miles). This planet's distance from 55 Cancri places it in the habitable zone - a zone in which it is likely that the temperature would permit the presence of liquid water. Scientists believe that liquid water is a necessary component to support the development of life. Astronomers believe that the planet may be similar to Saturn in composition and appearance, but only about half the size. It orbits the star every 260 days.

The fifth and most distant planet from 55 Cancri is 867.6 million km (539.1 million miles) from the star. It is a large planet with four times the mass of Jupiter (the largest planet in our solar system). The fifth planet completes one orbit every 14 Earth years.

Astronomers have only found five planets orbiting 55 Cancri so far, but there may be more planets that they haven't yet detected. So far, all of the planets found orbiting the star are large. Smaller planets would be harder for astronomers to detect, which means astronomers may not have found them yet.

Source: www.outerspaceplanet.com

Cocaine Found In Space Shuttle Hangar

Apparently, outer space isn't high enough for some folks over at NASA. Earlier today, NASA confirmed that a small baggie of cocaine was found in the hangar housing the space shuttle Discovery. A shuttle maintenance worker found the dime bag outside the men's room, and reported it to security. So far, no one knows who brought the bag into the Kennedy Space Flight Center.

Chemical tests of the baggie contents confirmed that it was, in fact, a dab of nose candy. NASA claims that security officials are investigating both who's blow it was, and how it got into the hangar.

NASA has a zero tolerance drug policy, so at least one person is going to get fired behind this. However, getting to the bottom of the affair might prove difficult. As Allard Beutel, a NASA spokesman, told SPACE.com, "there are no obvious indications of anyone acting oddly or under the influence."

Mothership Connection, indeed.

Source: www.popsci.com

Satellite Photos Show Destruction from Haiti Earthquake

now

One photo of central Port-au-Prince, near the epicenter of the Haiti earthquake,

shows the Haitian National Palace, which collapsed. The photograph was taken Wednesday by the GeoEye 1 Earth-observing satellite.

The imagery also reveals extensive damage throughout the city, including roads covered with debris from collapsed structures, people crowded in the streets and in open public places, such as sports fields and stadiums. Many buildings appear to be flattened. The white-colored National Palace shows damage along the roof line.

Satellite photos can help rescue workers.

Following the Haiti earthquake, a group of organizations requested satellite data of the area from the International Charter on 'Space and Major Disasters,' in order to provide this data free to anyone affected by disasters anywhere in the world. The groups involved included: French Civil Protection authorities, Public Safety of Canada, American Earthquake Hazards Program of USGS and the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti.

The photos taken immediately after the event can be used to generate emergency maps to provide rescue services with an overview of the current state of the area. These can be compared with situation maps generated from archived satellite data to identify major changes on the ground caused by the disaster.

By comparing before and after maps, officials can pinpoint areas hit the hardest and proceed to identify passable routes for relief and rescue workers, according to the European Space Agency, which also released a space-based photo of Haiti. Additionally, they can help to identify areas that are suitable for setting up aid camps where medical support and shelter can be provided to people.

Radar satellites in particular can be valuable, as they can peer through clouds, which is an asset when weather conditions prevent the use of optical satellite instruments. Radar imagery can be used to identify hazards such as landslides that may be triggered by earthquakes like that in Haiti.

before

Source: www.space.com

14 January 2010: Barcelona celebrates 5th anniversary of Titan landing

On 14 January 2005, ESA’s Huygens interplanetary probe descended on Titan’s atmosphere and landed on its surface, gathering important scientific data and marking mankind’s first successful attempt to land a probe on another world in the outer Solar System. The probe had detached itself a few days earlier form NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

To commemorate the fifth anniversary of this historical achievement, a public session will discuss the main scientific and engineering achievements of Huygens, expectations for the Cassini mission, and objectives for future missions to Titan.

Entrance is free on 14 January 2010 at 18:00 at CosmoCaixa in Barcelona, as part of a 3-day international meeting on the Cassini-Huygens mission. Access will be limited, on a first come first serve basis.

One of the main reasons for sending Huygens to Titan was that its nitrogen atmosphere, rich in methane, and its surface are believed to contain many chemicals of the kind that existed on the young Earth. Combined with the Cassini observations, Huygens offers an unprecedented view of Saturn’s mysterious moon.

The 3-day international meeting is organized by the City of Barcelona in collaboration with the Fabra Observatory, ESA, NASA, the Spanish Research Council CSIC, the Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the La Caixa Foundation.

CosmoCaixa is close to the Fabra Observatory, from where Titan's atmosphere was observed for the first time in 1907 by Josep Comas i Solà, with a telescope still in activity today.

Source: www.ctae.org

A Cannon for Shooting Supplies into Space

John Hunter wants to shoot stuff into space with a 3,600-foot gun. And he’s dead serious—he’s done the math. Making deliveries to an orbital outpost on a rocket costs $5,000 per pound, but using a space gun would cost just $250 per pound.

Building colossal guns has been Hunter’s pet project since 1992, when, while a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he first fired a 425-foot gun he built to test-launch hypersonic engines. Its methane-driven piston compressed hydrogen gas, which then expanded up the barrel to shoot a projectile. Mechanical firing can fail, however, so when Hunter’s company, Quicklaunch, released its plans last fall, it swapped the piston for a combustor that burns natural gas. Heat the hydrogen in a confined space and it should build up enough pressure to send a half-ton payload into the sky at 13,000 mph.

Hunter wants to operate the gun, the “Quicklauncher,” in the ocean near the equator, where the Earth’s fast rotation will help slingshot objects into space. A floating cannon—dipping 1,600 feet below sea level and steadied by a ballast system—would let operators swivel it for different orbits. Next month, Hunter will test a functional, 10-foot prototype in a water tank. He says a full-size launcher could be ready in seven years, provided the company can round up the $500 million. Despite the upfront cost, Hunter says he has drawn interest from investors because his reusable gun saves so much cash in the long haul. Just don’t ever expect a ride in the thing: The gun produces 5,000 Gs, so it’s only for fuel tanks and ruggedized satellites. “A person shot out of it would probably get compressed to half their size,” Hunter says. “It’d be over real quick.”

How to Shoot Stuff into Space

STEP 1: HEAT IT
The gun combusts natural gas in a heat exchanger within a
chamber of hydrogen gas, heating the hydrogen to 2,600˚F and causing a 500 percent increase in pressure.

STEP 2: LET THE HYDROGEN LOOSE
Operators open the valve, and the hot, pressurized hydrogen quickly expands down the tube, pushing the payload forward.

STEP 3: TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

After speeding down the 3,300-foot-long barrel, the projectile shoots out of the gun at 13,000 mph. An iris at the end of the gun closes, capturing the hydrogen gas to use again.

Source: www.popsci.com

printer friendly page First satellite map of Haiti earthquake

A major 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on 12 January, causing major casualties and damage. The quake was followed by several aftershocks with magnitudes over 5.0.

Such a powerful earthquake can make current maps suddenly out of date, causing additional challenges to rescue workers on the ground. Earth observation satellite images can help rescue efforts by providing updated views of how the landscape and the infrastructure have been affected.

Following the event, the French Civil Protection authorities, the Public Safety of Canada, the American Earthquake Hazards Programme of USGS and the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti requested satellite data of the area from the International Charter on ‘Space and Major Disasters’. The initiative, referred to as ‘The Charter’, is aimed at providing satellite data free of charge to those affected by disasters anywhere in the world.

To meet the requirements of the rescue teams in Haiti, Very High Resolution imagery is needed from both optical and radar sensors. Through the Charter, the international space community is acquiring satellite imagery as quickly as possible. Currently, data are being collected by various satellites including Japan’s ALOS, CNES’s Spot-5, the U.S.’s WorldView and QuickBird, Canada’s RADARSAT-2 and ESA’s ERS-2 and Envisat.

Satellite imagery acquired immediately after the event is used to generate emergency maps to provide rescue services with an overview of the current state of the area. These can be compared with situation maps generated from archived satellite data to identify major changes on the ground caused by the disaster.

Comparison of the maps from before and after the event allows areas that have been hit hardest to be distinguished and identify passable routes for relief and rescue workers. Additionally, they can help to identify areas which are suitable for setting up aid camps where medical support and shelter can be provided to people.
Radar satellites are able to peer through clouds, which is an asset when weather conditions prevent the use of optical satellite instruments. Radar imagery can be used to identify hazards such as landslides that may be triggered by earthquakes. In the long term, radar data can also be processed to map surface deformations caused by earthquakes to help scientists understand better seismic events.

The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security’s SAFER project is collaborating with the Charter to provide a specialised capacity to produce damage maps over the area. SAFER’s value-adding providers SERTIT from Strasbourg and the German Aerospace Centre’s (DLR) centre for satellite-based crisis information (ZKI) from Munich are currently working on this.

In the framework of SAFER, other user organisations, including the German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance and the UN World Food Programme, have requested damage-mapping services. Based on the collaboration between the Charter and SAFER, the first space-maps derived from crisis data acquired on 13 January were produced by SERTIT within 24 hours as rapid situation maps to help locate damaged areas with up-to-date cartographic material.

Together with ESA and CNES, the Charter, founded in 2000, currently has 10 members: the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Argentine Space Agency (CONAE), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the British National Space Centre/Disaster Monitoring Constellation (BNSC/DMC), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

Via the Charter mechanism, all of these agencies have committed to provide free and unrestricted access to their space assets to support relief efforts in the immediate aftermath of a major disaster.

The Charter also collaborates with other satellite damage-mapping initiatives within the UN such as the UNITAR/UNOSAT team who is receiving support from the U.S. government to analyse satellite imagery to be provided to the Haitian government, UN sister agencies and NGOs.

To learn more about the Charter and to find updated maps on the Haiti earthquake, please visit the links on the right.
Source: www.esa.int

Space Station Toilet Clogged with Calcium Deposits; Could Astronauts' Bone Loss Be the Culprit?

It's a bit cliché to kick off a story about NASA with "Houston, we have a problem," but seriously, they've got a problem: the plumbing on the International Space Station is clogged, and NASA isn't exactly sure why, or how to fix it. To clarify, it's not the actual toilet component that's broken, but the $250 million system designed to recycle astronauts' urine, sweat, and exhaled vapor into clean, potable water.

Engineers working on the problem believe high concentrations of calcium in the astronauts' urine is causing deposits to build up, clogging the system that provides up to two-thirds of the water used on the station.

Before going into service in November 2008, the system was fully tested at NASA, but changes in the physiology of astronauts as well as the chemistry of astro-waste as it works through the processing system could be contributing to the problem. One theory holds that the higher calcium concentrations in the crew's urine may come from the bone loss that inevitably accompanies a zero-G lifestyle, but that idea has yet to be proved.

In the meantime, engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville are scrambling to pull together a solution before Space Shuttle Endeavour takes off for the ISS on Feb. 7. If they can't solve the cosmic clog by then, we suppose the station could always go back to dumping waste the way the space shuttles do. Or the astronauts could resort to simply holding it; the next nearest toilet is only 220 miles away.

Source: www.popsci.com

How Galaxies Came to Be: Astronomers Explain Hubble Sequence

For the first time, two astronomers have explained the diversity of galaxy shapes seen in the universe. The scientists, Dr Andrew Benson of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Dr Nick Devereux of Embry-Riddle University in Arizona, tracked the evolution of galaxies over thirteen billion years from the early Universe to the present day.

Their results appear in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Galaxies are the collections of stars, planets, gas and dust that make up most of the visible component of the cosmos. The smallest have a few million and the largest as many as a million million (a trillion) stars.

American astronomer Edwin Hubble first developed a taxonomy for galaxies in the 1930s that has since become known as the 'Hubble Sequence'. There are three basic shapes: spiral, where arms of material wind out in a disk from a small central bulge, barred spirals, where the arms wind out in a disk from a larger bar of material and elliptical, where the galaxy's stars are distributed more evenly in a bulge without arms or disk. For comparison, the galaxy we live in, the Milky Way, has between two and four hundred thousand million stars and is classified as a barred spiral.

Explaining the Hubble Sequence is complex. The different types clearly result from different evolutionary paths but until now a detailed explanation has eluded scientists.

Benson and Devereux combined data from the infrared Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) with their sophisticated GALFORM computer model to reproduce the evolutionary history of the Universe over thirteen billion years. To their surprise, their computations reproduced not only the different galaxy shapes but also their relative numbers.

"We were completely astonished that our model predicted both the abundance and diversity of galaxy types so precisely," said Devereux. "It really boosts my confidence in the model," added Benson.

The astronomers' model is underpinned by and endorses the 'Lambda Cold Dark Matter' model of the Universe. Here 'Lambda' is the mysterious 'dark energy' component believed to make up about 72% of the cosmos, with cold dark matter making up another 23%. Just 4% of the Universe consists of the familiar visible or 'baryonic' matter that makes up the stars and planets of which galaxies are comprised.

Galaxies are thought to be embedded in very large haloes of dark matter and Benson and Devereux believe these to be crucial to their evolution. Their model suggests that the number of mergers between these haloes and their galaxies drives the final outcome -- elliptical galaxies result from multiple mergers whereas disk galaxies have seen none at all. Our Milky Way galaxy's barred spiral shape suggests it has seen a complex evolutionary history, with only a few minor collisions and at least one episode where the inner disk collapsed to form the large central bar.

Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Mirror Testing at NASA Breaks Superstitious Myths

In ancient mythological times reflective surfaces like shiny metals and mirrors were thought to be magical and credited with the ability to look into the future. NASA is using mirrors to do just the opposite -- look into the past.

Fast forward a couple of centuries from ancient time and myths to find NASA is developing a primary mirror, 21.3 feet in diameter, for use on the James Webb Space Telescope in a very different way -- to tell us about our beginning in the universe and how the first galaxies formed. The primary mirror will serve as the telescope's eye and peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System.

Handling delicate space hardware holds no superstitious myths for NASA, but it's still a delicate task that requires careful preparation. Six of the 18 Webb telescope mirror segments are being moved into the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility, or XRCF, at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., to eventually experience temperatures dipping to a chilling -414 degrees Fahrenheit to ensure they can withstand the extreme space environments.

When the primary mirror is assembled in space, it will include three different shapes of mirror segments: 6 are "A" segments, 6 are "B" segments and 6 are "C" segments. This upcoming test in the XRCF will collect data from all three sizes -- "A, B and C"-- a first for these in the cryogenic facility. This test will also include the engineering development unit, the first primary mirror segment of the Webb telescope that has met flight specifications at ambient temperatures.

"By the time testing in the XRCF concludes in 2011, all 18 flight segments will have been through multiple measurements while experiencing the extreme temperatures of space," said Helen J. Cole, James Webb Space Telescope Activities Project Manager at NASA Marshall. "This process has been six years in the making and we're excited that we can support the Webb telescope development with our world class cryogenic test facility."

Marshall's X-ray & Cryogenic Facility is the world's largest X-ray telescope test facility and a unique, cryogenic, clean room optical test location. The test chamber takes approximately five days to cool a mirror segment to cryogenic temperatures. As this cooling takes place, engineers will measure in extreme detail how the shapes of the mirrors change, simulating how they'll react to space temperatures.

"This is a tremendously important milestone to the Webb Telescope project that bodes well for both our future mirror manufacturing schedule and for the potential performance capabilities of the telescope," said Lee Feinberg, James Webb Space Telescope Optical Telescope Element Manager at NASA Goddard.

Northrop Grumman Corporation is leading the design and development effort for the space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Mirror manufacturing began six years ago, led by Northrop Grumman's principal optical contractor Ball Aerospace. Brush Wellman in Elmore, Ohio made twenty-one 500-lb. hexagonal mirror blanks from beryllium, an extremely strong, lightweight metal. Axsys Technologies in Cullman, Ala. machined the backside of the beryllium blanks and chemically etched them into an isogrid pattern that reduced mirror mass by 92 percent, from 250 kg to 21 kg (equivalent to 553 pounds and 46 pounds). The front side of the mirror blank was machined to prep the optical surface for high precision grinding, polishing and testing, which is being done by Tinsley. The mirror segments have undergone a series of polishing and cryogenic testing cycles. Ball incorporates the mirrors into optical assemblies, which are mounted on the telescope structure.

Source: www.sciencedaily.com

How Earth Survived Its Birth

WASHINGTON — Just how Earth survived the process of its birth without suffering an early demise by falling into the sun has been something of a mystery to astronomers, but a new model has figured out what protected our planet when it was still a vulnerable, baby world.

In short, temperature differences in the space around the sun, 4.6 billion years ago, caused Earth to migrate outward as much as gravity was trying to pull it inward, and so the fledgling world found equilibrium in what we now know to be a very habitable orbit.

Planets like the Earth are thought to form from condensing clouds of gas and dust surrounding stars. The material in these disks gradually clumps together, eventually forming planetesimals – the asteroid-sized building blocks that eventually collide to form full-fledged planets.

As the planets are forming, they are also thought to migrate within the surrounding dust disk. The classic picture of this planet migration suggests that planets like (and including) the Earth should have plummeted into the sun while they were still planetesimals.

"Well, this contradicts basic observational evidence, like We. Are. Here," said astronomer Moredecai-Mark Mac Low of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Mac Low and his colleagues investigated this apparent paradox and came up with a new model that explains how planets can migrate as they're forming and still avoid a fiery premature death. He presented these findings here today at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

One problem with the classic view of planet formation and migration is that it assumed that the temperature of the protoplanetary disk around a star is constant in temperature across its whole span, Mac Low explained.

It turns out that portions of the disk are actually opaque and so cannot cool quickly by radiating heat out to space. This creates temperature differences across the disk, and these differences have not been accounted for before in models. So Mac Low and his colleagues created new model simulations of planet migration that include a disk with variations in temperature.

What happens when you change the temperatures in the disk is this: The temperature changes can completely alter the nature of the planet migrations, causing planets to migrate outward instead of inward.

"Well, that is a major development," Mac Low said, because you can put it in the model and see if outward migration cancels inward migration "and allows us to survive, or at least our progenitors."

Sure enough, that seems to be the case. Within the disk, zones of inward and outward migration develop that meet at equilibrium zones; once planets reach these, "they more or less sit there," Mac Low said.

And eventually the disk dissipates to a point where its gravity can no longer influence the planets to pull or push them into new orbits.

So the model suggests that outward migration "allows planetoids to survive," which explain how planets in our solar system and others that we see in galaxy survive, Mac Low said.

Source: www.space.com

NASA Scientists Classify the Time Before Earth Existed: the Chaotian Era

The geological time scale, with its familiar Cretaceous, Cambrian, and Eocene periods, works great as a calendar for the history of the Earth. Indeed, the different periods only cover the 3.8 billion years of life on Earth, with everything before that time lumped into one nondescript eon called the Hadean. But for some geologists, that lack of specificity simply won't work any more.

Frustrated by referring to Hadean-era events with vague phrases like "around the time of Moon formation" or "shortly after Earth cooled", four scientists, including two from NASA, have chopped up the Hadean into distinct geologic periods, and even extended the time scale back to the formation of the solar system, with a new eon called the "Chaotian."

Under the new scheme, the Hadean Eon begins when Tellus, the proto-Earth, gets smacked into by Theia, a proto-planet absorbed into the Earth. This impact caused the formation of the Moon, and marks the beginning of Earth at its current size. Everything coming before that event takes place in the Chaotian.

During the Chaotian, the planets coalesce out of a giant disk of hot dust, cool, and form the solar system we know today. The Chaotian is also broken down into bombastic-sounding periods like the Hyperitian and the Titanomachean.

If the names seem a little out there, it's because they're drawn from classic Greek and Latin literature. Since no scientist can avoid naming something after Greek myths, the geologists drew the names from Hesiod's Theogony, Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, and Thamyris's Titanomachia. Which is to say, NERDS!

The scientists hope that the new time scale will enable geologists studying the early history of the planet to write more accurate papers. For the rest of us, just be happy that there's a period of our history literally named "Clash Of The Titans."

Source: www.popsci.com

Kepler Telescope Spots Hotter, Weirder Bodies Than Ever Before Seen (In The Sky, That Is)

It's been less than a year since NASA launched the Kepler Space Telescope, and the device is already paying off with new discoveries. In particular, NASA scientists have identified a planet with the consistency of styrofoam, a gaggle of exoplanets, and two never-before-observed objects too small to be stars, but too hot to be planets.

NASA researchers revealed these discoveries yesterday, during a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. These revelations cover the first data sets produced by the Kepler Telescope, which launched in March 2009.

The styrofoam planet, called Kepler 7b, is 1.6 times the size of Jupiter, and less dense than water. If that wasn't weird enough, Kepler 7b also maintains a toasty 2300-degree Fahrenheit surface temperature, roughly hot enough to melt gold. But those planets weren't even the hottest objects Kepler found. Two of the objects Kepler detected were hotter than the stars they orbited, thus failing to resemble any previously observed astronomical bodies.

The objects are far smaller than stars, but much too hot to be planets. Some astronomers think that they might be newly formed planets, still hot from their chaotic birth. However, others think they might be white dwarf stars, slowly shrinking and dying as they orbit a more stable twin star at the center of their solar system.

And while these exotic bodies are certainly interesting, the most exciting discoveries announced yesterday were of something incredibly common to us Earthlings: sun-like stars. Based on measurements taken through Kepler, the NASA astronomers determined that only one third of 43,000 observed sun-like stars emit periodic life-killing bursts of radiation. This number is far lower than the previous estimate, and greatly expands the number of known solar systems potentially capable of harboring alien life.

Despite all the fascinating discoveries, the rate of discoveries coming out of Kepler may have been the most impressive revelation of the talk. Within the first six weeks of operation, scientists had already used Kepler to confirm five new exoplanets, a rate of discovery that makes Kepler a worthy successor to the Hubble.

Source: www.popsci.com

Is There Life on Other Planets?

Most scientists believe that, yes, there may be life on other planets.

What scientists look for when searching for alien life are stars that are similar to our sun, and planets that show evidence of water, an atmosphere that contains oxygen or methane, and a planet that is neither too far nor too close to its sun. Scientists believe that water is a necessary component of life, so a planet with none cannot support life (at least not life as we know it). In our solar system, the planet most similar to ours is Mars, however, scientists have not found evidence that life exists there, or that it ever did. There is evidence that there was once water on Mars, however, there doesn't seem to be any water on Mars now. Mars does have a lot of water ice at the polar caps, but the temperature on Mars at the poles is too cold for this ice to melt.

At Mars equator it does get to a comfortable daytime temperature that is slightly above 60 °F (16°C) but there isn't ice or water at the equator and Mars equator gets very cold during the nighttime, below -200 °F (-129 °C). This means that any life that might be inclined to form during the daytime would probably not survive the night. Scientists are still investigating whether or not life ever existed on Mars.

Scientists are also investigating whether or not some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are capable of supporting life, such as Jupiter's moon Europa, for example. The planets Jupiter and Saturn themselves certainly don't seem capable of supporting life.

Source: www.outerspacesite.com

NASA's Mars Rover Spirit Has Uncertain Future as Sixth Anniversary Nears

NASA's Mars rover Spirit will mark six years of unprecedented science exploration and inspiration for the American public on Sunday. However, the upcoming Martian winter could end the roving career of the beloved, scrappy robot.

Spirit successfully landed on the Red Planet at 8:35 p.m. PST on Jan. 3, 2004, and its twin Opportunity arrived at 9:05 p.m. Jan. 24, 2004. The rovers began missions intended to last for three months but which have lasted six Earth years, or 3.2 Mars years. During this time, Spirit has found evidence of a steamy and violent environment on ancient Mars that was quite different from the wet and acidic past documented by Opportunity, which has been operating successfully as it explores halfway around the planet.

A sand trap and balky wheels are challenges to Spirit's mobility that could prevent NASA's rover team from using a key survival strategy for the rover. The team may not be able to position the robot's solar panels to tilt toward the sun to collect power for heat to survive the severe Martian winter.

Nine months ago, Spirit's wheels broke through a crusty surface layer into loose sand hidden underneath. Efforts to escape this sand trap barely have budged the rover. The rover's inability to use all six wheels for driving has worsened the predicament. Spirit's right-front wheel quit working in 2006, and its right-rear wheel stalled a month ago. Surprisingly, the right-front wheel resumed working, though intermittently. Drives with four or five operating wheels have produced little progress toward escaping the sand trap. The latest attempts resulted in the rover sinking deeper in the soil.

"The highest priority for this mission right now is to stay mobile, if that's possible," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. He is principal investigator for the rovers.

If mobility is not possible, the next priority is to improve the rover's tilt, while Spirit is able to generate enough electricity to turn its wheels. Spirit is in the southern hemisphere of Mars, where it is autumn, and the amount of daily sunshine available for the solar-powered rover is declining. This could result in ceasing extraction activities as early as January, depending on the amount of remaining power. Spirit's tilt, nearly five degrees toward the south, is unfavorable because the winter sun crosses low in the northern sky.

Unless the tilt can be improved or luck with winds affects the gradual buildup of dust on the solar panels, the amount of sunshine available will continue to decline until May 2010. During May, or perhaps earlier, Spirit may not have enough power to remain in operation.

"At the current rate of dust accumulation, solar arrays at zero tilt would provide barely enough energy to run the survival heaters through the Mars winter solstice," said Jennifer Herman, a rover power engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The team is evaluating strategies for improving the tilt even if Spirit cannot escape the sand trap, such as trying to dig in deeper with the wheels on the north side. In February, NASA will assess Mars missions, including Spirit, for their potential science versus costs to determine how to distribute limited resources. Meanwhile, the team is planning additional research about what a stationary Spirit could accomplish as power wanes.

"Spirit could continue significant research right where it is," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for the rovers. "We can study the interior of Mars, monitor the weather and continue examining the interesting deposits uncovered by Spirit's wheels."

A study of the planet's interior would use radio transmissions to measure wobble of the planet's axis of rotation, which is not feasible with a mobile rover. That experiment and others might provide more and different findings from a mission that has already far exceeded expectations.

"Long-term change in the spin direction could tell us about the diameter and density of the planet's core," said William Folkner of JPL. He has been developing plans for conducting this experiment with a future, stationary Mars lander. "Short-period changes could tell us whether the core is liquid or solid," he said.

In 2004, Opportunity discovered the first mineralogical evidence that Mars had liquid water. The rover recently finished a two-year investigation of a half-mile wide crater called Victoria and now is headed toward Endeavor crater, which is approximately seven miles from Victoria and nearly 14 miles across. Since landing, Opportunity has driven more than 11 miles and returned more than 132,000 images.

Source: www.sciencedaily.com