Orcus Patera - Mars's Mysterious Elongated Crater

Orcus Patera is an enigmatic elliptical depression located between the volcanoes of Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons. This well-defined depression extends approximately 380 by 140 kilometres in a north-northeast to south-southwest direction. It has a rim that rises up to 1800 metres above the surrounding plains, while the floor of the depression lies 400 to 600 metres below the surroundings. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum).

by Staff Writers
Bonn, Germany (SPX) Aug 30, 2010
Orcus Patera is an enigmatic elliptical depression near Mars's equator, in the eastern hemisphere of the planet. Located between the volcanoes of Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons, its formation remains a mystery. Often overlooked, this well-defined depression extends approximately 380 by 140 kilometres in a north-northeast to south-southwest direction.

It has a rim that rises up to 1800 metres above the surrounding plains, while the floor of the depression lays 400 to 600 metres below the surroundings.

The High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter acquired the images during Mars Express orbits 2216 and 2238.

The images show an area centred at approximately 14 degrees N / 177 degrees E, and have a ground resolution of about 30 metres per pixel. The camera is operated by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR).

The term 'patera' is used for deep, complex or irregularly shaped volcanic craters such as the Hadriaca Patera and Tyrrhena Patera at the north-eastern margin of the Hellas impact basin. However, despite its name and the fact that it is positioned near volcanoes, the actual origin of Orcus Patera remains unclear.

Aside from volcanism, there are a number of other possible origins. Orcus Patera may be a large and originally round impact crater, subsequently deformed by compressive forces.

Alternatively, it could have formed after the erosion of aligned impact craters. However, the most likely explanation is that it was made in an oblique impact, when a small body struck the surface at a very shallow angle, perhaps less than five degrees above the horizontal.

The existence of tectonic forces at Orcus Patera is evident from the presence of the numerous 'graben', rift-valley-like structures that cut across its rim. Up to 2.5 kilometres wide, these graben are oriented roughly east-west and are only visible on the rim and the nearby surroundings.

Within the Orcus Patera depression itself, the large graben are not visible, probably having been covered by later deposits. But smaller graben are present, indicating that several tectonic events have occurred in this region and also suggesting that multiple episodes of deposition have taken place.

The occurrence of 'wrinkle ridges' within the depression proves that not only extensional forces, as would be needed to create graben, but also compressive forces shaped this region. Wind-driven processes probably formed the dark shapes near the centre of the depression, where dark material excavated by small impact events in the depression has been redistributed.

However, the presence of graben and wrinkle-ridges has no bearing on the origin of Orcus Patera, as both can be found all over Mars. The true origin of Orcus Patera remains an enigma.

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) experiment on the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission is led by the Principal Investigator (PI) Prof. Dr Gerhard Neukum, who was also responsible for the technical design of the camera. The science team of the experiment consists of 45 Co-Investigators from 32 institutions and 10 nations.

The camera was developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) under the leadership of the PI, G. Neukum, and built in cooperation with industrial partners (EADS Astrium, Lewicki Microelectronic GmbH and Jena-Optronik GmbH).

The experiment on Mars Express is operated by the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, through ESA/ESOC. The systematic processing of the HRSC image data is carried out at DLR. The scenes shown here were processed by the PI-group at the Institute for Geosciences of the Freie Universitat Berlin in cooperation with the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin.

www.marsdaily.com

Moon Capital: A Commercial Gateway To The Moon

File image.

by Marc M. Cohen
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 30, 2010
On 21 September 2010, the Moon Capital Competition will accept entries for the architectural design of an international and commercial lunar habitation. The prime sponsors of the competition who are putting up the prize money are: The Boston Society of Architects (American Institute of Architects) and The New England Council of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Other sponsors include: Draper Laboratory, Google Lunar X Prize, AIAA Space Architecture Technical Committee, and The Boston Center for the Arts

The competition is open to all comers, although its slant is largely toward space architects and architects who may become inspired to design in space.

Moon Capital consists of the planning and design of a Second Generation Habitation on the Moon to support a resident staff of 60 people. The groundbreaking on the Moon will occur July 20, 2069, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Second Generation means that a prior lunar base exists that can serve as the construction camp and the assembly point for building Moon Capital.

This assumption means that the project designers do not need to address the means of delivering materials and construction equipment to the site; the technology and transportation capability exists to assure these deliveries proximate to the construction site.

The primary purpose of Moon Capital is to provide a permanent commercial, science, and technology development facility on the Moon. Up to now, scientists and engineers have conducted lunar research almost exclusively from Earth. Certainly, the Apollo Astronauts returned over 300kg of lunar materials to Earth, which have provided a subject for study for over 40 years.

However, lunar science goes far beyond picking up rocks for return to Earth; and lunar technology development has barely begun. The scientific and technological disciplines have matured to where they can be far more productive and serendipitous if these professionals can do their work directly on the Moon.

Moon Capital arises from a concept of the evolution of lunar Habitation and Space Architecture. The First Generation Habitation will take the form of a largely government-driven lunar base that currently appears on the NASA exploration timeline for a construction start in the 2030s or later.

This base will provide habitation elements that include rigid, pre-integrated modules, deployable or inflatable structures, and the reuse of lunar lander parts.

The first generation base can provide some manufacturing and assembly of modules and components for the Second Generation Habitation: Moon Capital. However, mass delivered out of the gravity well of Earth is always at a premium in space, so any design decisions that reduce landed payload-mass and mass that the construction process must move will contribute to the success of the project.

As the Second Generation Habitation, Moon Capital represents an international and commercial effort to build a permanent human community on the moon. This community intends to achieve a much broader scope of endeavor than the First Generation base. It will support an entrepreneurial and commercial activity that can become the forerunner of a true in-space economy.

Moon Capital will be much more advanced in achieving self-sufficiency such as food production and regenerative life support. By placing the Habitat Core underground with all the living accommodations, Moon Capital will provide superior protection from the extreme and unforgiving lunar environment.

The habitat core will provide common labs for science and engineering that all crewmembers can use and share. On the lunar surface, the commercial modules cluster around the Surface Access Units to which they can make a pressurized connection.

Second Generation also means that Moon Capital will serve a multigenerational population; the staff can come with their families. Co-locating children with their parents at a lunar base becomes an essential step toward truly breaking the bonds of Earth and becoming a space-faring species.

The commercial activities that Moon Capital will support include:

+ Excavation and construction for the Moon Capital habitation,

+ Deployment and operation of scientific facilities such as a far-side radio telescope or a north-pole far-infrared telescope.

+ Supporting scientific surveys of the surface by providing transportation, field habitats, and operations,

+ Prospecting for minerals,

+ Extraction of resources such as water from polar ice or oxygen from regolith

+ Provision of fuel for surface rovers, lunar ascent vehicles, and interplanetary spacecraft.

+ Growing food,

+ Operating recycling processes and systems,

+ Manufacturing equipment for other commercial entities to use in their proprietary labs modules.

+ This compilation is just a start. Once people settle and live permanently on the moon, the pioneers will think of many more beneficial and profitable activities that they can undertake on Earth's only natural satellite.

www.space-travel.com

NASA/NOAA Study Finds El Ninos Are Growing Stronger

Deviations from normal sea surface temperatures (left) and sea surface heights (right) at the peak of the 2009-2010 central Pacific El Ninos, as measured by NOAA polar orbiting satellites and NASA's Jason-1 spacecraft, respectively. The warmest temperatures and highest sea levels were located in the central equatorial Pacific. Image credit: NASA/JPL-NOAA

by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 27, 2010
A relatively new type of El Nino, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA. The research may improve our understanding of the relationship between El Ninos and climate change, and has potentially significant implications for long-term weather forecasting.

Lead author Tong Lee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Michael McPhaden of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, measured changes in El Nino intensity since 1982.

They analyzed NOAA satellite observations of sea surface temperature, checked against and blended with directly-measured ocean temperature data. The strength of each El Nino was gauged by how much its sea surface temperatures deviated from the average. They found the intensity of El Ninos in the central Pacific has nearly doubled, with the most intense event occurring in 2009-10.

The scientists say the stronger El Ninos help explain a steady rise in central Pacific sea surface temperatures observed over the past few decades in previous studies--a trend attributed by some to the effects of global warming.

While Lee and McPhaden observed a rise in sea surface temperatures during El Nino years, no significant temperature increases were seen in years when ocean conditions were neutral, or when El Nino's cool water counterpart, La Nina, was present.

"Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Ninos, rather than a general rise of background temperatures," said Lee.

"These results suggest climate change may already be affecting El Nino by shifting the center of action from the eastern to the central Pacific," said McPhaden.

"El Nino's impact on global weather patterns is different if ocean warming occurs primarily in the central Pacific, instead of the eastern Pacific.

"If the trend we observe continues," McPhaden added, "it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting, which is largely based on our understanding of El Ninos from the latter half of the 20th century."

El Nino, Spanish for "the little boy," is the oceanic component of a climate pattern called the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, which appears in the tropical Pacific Ocean on average every three to five years. The most dominant year-to-year fluctuating pattern in Earth's climate system, El Ninos have a powerful impact on the ocean and atmosphere, as well as important socioeconomic consequences.

They can influence global weather patterns and the occurrence and frequency of hurricanes, droughts and floods; and can even raise or lower global temperatures by as much as 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

During a "classic" El Nino episode, the normally strong easterly trade winds in the tropical eastern Pacific weaken. That weakening suppresses the normal upward movement of cold subsurface waters and allows warm surface water from the central Pacific to shift toward the Americas. In these situations, unusually warm surface water occupies much of the tropical Pacific, with the maximum ocean warming remaining in the eastern-equatorial Pacific.

Since the early 1990s, however, scientists have noted a new type of El Nino that has been occurring with greater frequency. Known variously as "central-Pacific El Nino," "warm-pool El Nino," "dateline El Nino" or "El Nino Modoki" (Japanese for "similar but different"), the maximum ocean warming from such El Ninos is found in the central-equatorial, rather than eastern, Pacific.

Such central Pacific El Nino events were observed in 1991-92, 1994-95, 2002-03, 2004-05 and 2009-10. A recent study found many climate models predict such events will become much more frequent under projected global warming scenarios.

Lee said further research is needed to evaluate the impacts of these increasingly intense El Ninos and determine why these changes are occurring.

"It is important to know if the increasing intensity and frequency of these central Pacific El Ninos are due to natural variations in climate or to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

/www.spacedaily.com

China Launches New Mapping Satellite

A mapping satellite, "Mapping Satellite - I," is launched from the northwestern Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, at 3:10 p.m. (Beijing time) on Aug. 24, 2010. The satellite, which was launched on a Long March 2-D carrier rocket, had entered into the preset orbit, according to the center. (Xinhua/Liang Jie)

by Staff Writers
Jiuquan, Gansu (XNA) Aug 26, 2010
China successfully launched a mapping satellite, "Mapping Satellite - I," from the northwestern Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 3:10 p.m. (Beijing time) Tuesday.

The satellite, which was launched on a Long March 2-D carrier rocket, had entered into the preset orbit, according to the center.

The satellite, developed by a company under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), would be mainly used to conduct scientific experiments, carry out surveys on land resources, and mapping, said a statement on the Ministry of National Defense website

.

The remote sensing information and test results from the satellite would promote the country's scientific research and economic development, said the statement.

The launch was the 128th for China's Long March series of rockets since April 24, 1970, when a Long March-1 rocket successfully sent the country's first satellite Dongfanghong-1 into the space.

www.spacedaily.com

British bacteria are hardy space travelers

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

by Staff Writers
London (UPI) Aug 23, 2010
Bacteria from cliffs on the south coast of England have proved themselves hardy astronauts, surviving a year and a half as space travelers, researchers say.

Taken from the cliffs near the small fishing village of Beer in Devon, the bacteria were placed on the outside of the International Space Station to see how they would deal with harsh conditions in Earth orbit, the BBC reported.

The bacteria were sent up still sitting on, and in, small chunks of cliff rock. They were placed in experiment boxes on the outside of the station, exposed to the vacuum of space.

Scientists inspecting the bugs after a year and a half exposure to extreme ultraviolet light, cosmic rays and dramatic shifts in temperature say many were still alive.

The survivors, brought back to Earth, are thriving in a laboratory at the Open University in Milton Keynes, the BBC reported.

The experiment was intended to find microbes that could be useful to future astronauts who leave Earth orbit to explore the rest of the solar system

.

"It has been proposed that bacteria could be used in life-support systems to recycle everything," OU researcher Karen Olsson-Francis said.

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Weighing The Planets, From Mercury To Saturn

The new measurement technique is sensitive to a mass difference of two hundred thousand million million tons - just 0.003% of the mass of the Earth, and one ten-millionth of Jupiter's mass. In the short term, spacecraft will continue to make the most accurate measurements for individual planets, but the pulsar technique will be the best for planets not being visited by spacecraft, and for measuring the combined masses of planets and their moons. Repeating the measurements would improve the values even more.

by Staff Writers
Bonn, Germany (SPX) Aug 24, 2010
An international research team led by David Champion, now at Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, with researchers from Australia, Germany, the U.S., U.K. and Canada, has come up with a new way to weigh the planets in our Solar System, using radio signals from pulsars. Data from a set of four pulsars have been used to weigh Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn with their moons and rings.

The new measurement technique is sensitive to just 0.003% of the mass of the Earth, and one ten-millionth of Jupiter's mass (corresponding to a mass difference of two hundred thousand million million tons). The results are described in an article for the "Astrophysical Journal", which is publicly accessible via preprint-server.

Until now, astronomers have weighed planets by measuring the orbits of their moons or of spacecraft flying past them. That's because mass creates gravity, and a planet's gravitational pull determines the orbit of anything that goes around it - both the size of the orbit and how long it takes to complete.

The new method is based on corrections astronomers make to signals from pulsars, small spinning stars that deliver regular "blips" of radio waves. Measurements of planet masses made this new way could feed into data needed for future space missions.

"This is first time anyone has weighed entire planetary systems-planets with their moons and rings," says team leader Dr. David Champion of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. "In addition, we can provide an independent check on previous results, which is great for planetary science."

The Earth is travelling around the Sun, and this movement affects exactly when pulsar signals arrive here. To remove this effect, astronomers calculate when the pulses would have arrived at the Solar System's center of mass, or barycenter, the rotation center for all the planets. Because the arrangement of the planets around the Sun changes with time, the barycenter moves around too (relative to the sun).

To work out its position, astronomers use both a table with the positions of the planets in the sky (called an ephemeris), and the values for their masses that have already been measured. If these figures are slightly wrong, and the position of the barycenter is slightly wrong, then a regular, repeating pattern of timing errors appears in the pulsar data.

"For instance, if the mass of Jupiter and its moons is wrong, we see a pattern of timing errors that repeats over 12 years, the time Jupiter takes to orbit the Sun," says Dr. Dick Manchester of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science. But if the mass of Jupiter and its moons is corrected, the timing errors disappear. This is the feedback process that the astronomers have used to determine the planets' masses.

Data from a set of four pulsars have been used to weigh Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn with their moons and rings. Most of these data were recorded by CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia, with data contributed by the Effelsberg telescope in Germany and the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.

The masses were consistent with those measured by spacecraft. The mass of the Jovian system (Jupiter and its moons), 0.0009547921(2) times the mass of the Sun, is significantly more accurate than the mass determined from the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, and consistent with, but less accurate than, the value from the Galileo spacecraft.

The new measurement technique is sensitive to a mass difference of two hundred thousand million million tons - just 0.003% of the mass of the Earth, and one ten-millionth of Jupiter's mass. In the short term, spacecraft will continue to make the most accurate measurements for individual planets, but the pulsar technique will be the best for planets not being visited by spacecraft, and for measuring the combined masses of planets and their moons. Repeating the measurements would improve the values even more.

If astronomers observed a set of 20 pulsars over seven years they'd weigh Jupiter more accurately than spacecraft have. Doing the same for Saturn would take 13 years.

"Astronomers need this accurate timing because they're using pulsars to hunt for gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity", says Prof. Michael Kramer, head of the "Fundamental Physics in Radio Astronomy" research group at Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.

"Finding these waves depends on spotting minute changes in the timing of pulsar signals, and so all other sources of timing error must be accounted for, including the traces of solar system planets."

www.spacedaily.com

NASA's Marks 35th Anniversary Of Mars Viking Mission

This is the first photograph ever taken on the surface of the planet Mars and was obtained by Viking 1 just minutes after the spacecraft landed successfully. Image Credit: NASA

by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 23, 2010
Mars. Roman god of war. The Red Planet. From the perennial Mars hoax to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, no other body in our solar system has so captured the human imagination. Throughout history mankind has gazed into the night sky wondering what civilizations awaited those who landed on the Red Planet's surface. The novels of Burroughs and others tout the planet's allure and films have warned humanity of its dangers.

In 1965, the Mariner 4 spacecraft sent the first images of another planet to waiting scientists on Earth. Since that image, the Red Planet has revealed a world strangely familiar, yet challenging. Each time scientists feel close to understanding Mars, new discoveries send them back to the drawing board to revise existing theories.

In the 35 years since NASA launched Viking 1 on Aug. 20, 1975, the ambitious mission only whetted the scientific world and public's enthusiasm for future space exploration.

In the ensuing years, NASA has launched the Phoenix Mars Lander, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Exploration Rovers, among others. Perhaps the most successful of these missions is Mars Exploration Rovers. Launched in June and July 2003, respectively, Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars each for a 90-day mission that continues after more than 6 years.

For centuries, scientists wondered if Mars might be covered with vegetation - or even inhabited by intelligent beings. Today, we know Mars to be quite different. It is a frozen desert world with now silent volcanoes and deep canyons. Polar ice caps expand and contract with the Martian seasons.

While the story began years earlier, it culminated in August and September 1975 with the launch of two large, nearly identical spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Fl. Vikings 1 and 2, named for the fearless Nordic explorers of Earth, finally give humans a close-up look at this alien world.

Viking 1 and 2, each consisting of an orbiter and a lander, became the first space probes to obtain high resolution images of the Martian surface; characterize the structure and composition of the atmosphere and surface; and conduct on-the-spot biological tests for life on another planet.

Among the discoveries about Mars over the years, one stands out above all others: the possible presence of liquid water, either in its ancient past or preserved in the subsurface today.

Water is key because almost everywhere water is found on Earth, so is life. If Mars once had liquid water, or still does today, it's compelling to ask whether any microscopic life forms could have developed on its surface.

Viking 1 arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. On July 20, 1976, the Viking 1 lander separated from the orbiter and touched down at Chryse Planitia. Viking 2 was launched Sept. 9, 1975, and entered Mars orbit Aug. 7, 1976. The Viking 2 lander touched down at Utopia Planitia on Sept. 3, 1976.

www.marsdaily.com

Mud Volcanoes On Mars

The mounds shown here, located in the Southern Acidalia Planitia, range in size between 20 and 500 meters in diameter. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

by Anuradha K. Herath
for Astrobiology Magazine
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Aug 20, 2010
If life does - or did - exist on Mars, signs of such life might well be found in a region in the northern plains called Acidalia Planitia, according to a new study.

The region appears to be dotted with what scientists believe are geological structures known as mud volcanoes, spewing out muddy sediments from underground. These sediments might contain organic materials that could be biosignatures of possible past and present life.

"If there was life on Mars, it probably developed in a fluid-rich environment," said lead author Dorothy Oehler, a research scientist at the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"Mud volcanoes themselves are an indicator of a fluid-rich subsurface, and they bring up material from relatively deep parts of the subsurface that we might not have a chance to see otherwise."

In a study published in the August issue of Icarus, Oehler and her co-author Carlton Allen mapped, for the first time, more than 18,000 of these circular mounds. Their estimate is that more than 40,000 mud volcanoes could be found in that region if the mapping continued.

"The Oehler paper adds to [previous studies] by documenting in much greater detail [the] number and distribution [of the mud volcanoes] and analyzes more deeply their origin and possible implications as paleo-habitats," said Kenneth Tanaka, a scientist at the Astrogeology Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Oehler and Allen analyzed images obtained from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which allowed them to take a closer look at the structure of some of the mounds and their flow-like features. More data from the imaging spectrometer known as CRISM provided new information on the mineralogy of the mud volcano-like mounds.

Through these assessments, the two scientists were able to rule out the possibility that the mounds were caused by other processes. The paper provides a detailed explanation of why the mounds cannot be impact structures, ice-cored mounds, evaporation deposits or structures caused by lava flow.

Scientists first observed the mounds in Acidalia using imagery obtained from the Viking mission in the late 1970s. However, it was more recently that these mounds were thought to represent mud volcanoes. Tanaka was one of the first to make that suggestion.

"I also thought that these features, which also occur elsewhere in the northern plains of Mars, were good places to search for signs of life," Tanaka said.

Mud volcanoes are geological structures in which a mixture of gas, liquid and fine-grained rock (or mud) is forced to the surface from several meters or kilometers underground. On Earth, mud volcanoes have specific significance to the oil industry. Those found on land have been found to play a significant role in predicting petroleum reservoirs.

Offshore, they can also be a "huge drilling hazard," according to Oehler, because the earth around a mud volcano is unstable and the activity inside is somewhat unpredictable. It is difficult to predetermine how much mud will surface and whether the process will be a quiet one or an explosive one.

The size of mud volcanoes can range up to about ten of kilometers in diameter and several hundred meters in height. The mud flows in an upward direction because the muddy mixture is more buoyant than the surrounding rocks.

One of the major goals of the Mars exploration program is to try to understand if life ever evolved on the planet. In that hunt, astrobiologists are searching for biosignatures that would indicate the presence of extraterrestrial life.

While the surface of Mars is thought to be inhospitable to life, microbial life possibly could exist underground. Mud volcanoes bring materials from great depths to the surface, providing samples from deep inside the planetary body that, on a place like Mars, would otherwise be completely inaccessible to scientists.

"If life were present in the subsurface, the water and slurries involved in forming the mud volcanoes would have brought it to the surface," Tanaka explained. "While life may not have survived at the surface, it at least could have been brought there by this process."

Studies such as this could help identify regions on the Red Planet that may have been the most suitable places for life to take hold. Missions could use this information to target sites that would be the most likely to have organic biosignatures.

"None of the previous landers or rovers on Mars has tested any structure interpreted as a possible mud volcano," Oehler said. "So the mounds in Acidalia represent an entirely new, and untested, class of exploration target for Mars."

However, Tanaka said the age of the mud volcanoes, which could be two to three billion years old, might make them less suitable locations for finding signs of life.

"There has been a great amount of time [for UV radiation and other surface processes] to destroy possible microfossils in surface rocks and soils," Tanaka said. "For this reason, it is unclear if these features are the best places to search for preserved life. Better places might include recent crater impacts and deposits from younger flood discharges."

Tanaka points to a Martian valley called Athabasca Valles as a good alternative location for astrobiologists to search for biosignatures. Scientists estimate its age to be in the range of two to 30 million years, making it the youngest channel on the planet. The younger the geological structure, the greater likelihood of finding better-preserved biosignatures.

Meanwhile, Oehler and her colleagues are hoping to continue analyzing the MRO imagery to provide further evidence that the circular structures in Acidalia are in fact mud volcanoes. They plan on analyzing their distribution on the surface, and how the shapes of the different structures vary. This analysis could provide more information about the subsurface conditions in the Acidalia region.

"We do believe that Acidalia is a place where life could have been abundant because of long-lived water sources," Oehler said. "It is one of the better places to look for evidence of life - if life ever developed on Mars."

www.marsdaily.com

Galaxies' Glory Days Revealed

This sensitive exposure captures galaxies that are relatively local along side some that date back almost 10 billion years, soon after the Big Bang. The most distant galaxies stand out clearly in the infrared, rendered here in green and red. Image credit:NASA/JPL/Caltech/Texas A and M. For a larger version of this image please go here.

by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 19, 2010
Astronomers have experienced the galactic equivalent of discovering pictures of a mild-mannered grandmother partying as a wild youth. New observations from NASA's Spitzer SpaceTelescope reveal the early "wild" days of galaxy clusters - a time when the galaxies were bursting with new stars.

What is particularly striking is the fact that the stellar birth rate is higher in the cluster's center than at its edges - the exact opposite of what happens in our local portion of the universe, where the cores of galaxy clusters are known to be galactic graveyards.

The discovery, made by an international team of researchers led by Kim-Vy Tran of Texas A and M University, College Station, could ultimately reveal more about how such massive galaxies form.

Tran and her team spent the past four months analyzing images taken by Spitzer, essentially looking back in time nearly 10 billion years at a distant galaxy cluster known as CLG J02182-05102.

Mere months after first discovering the cluster and the fact that it is shockingly "modern" in its appearance and size for its age, the team was able to determine that the galaxy cluster produces hundreds to thousands of new stars every year.

That is a far higher birth rate than that of galaxies relatively near to us.

"We have revealed between the active galaxies and the quiescent behemoths that live in the local universe," said Tran.

www.spacedaily.com

Astronaut Muscles Waste In Space

The study - the first cellular analysis of the effects of long duration space flight on human muscle - took calf biopsies of nine astronauts and cosmonauts before and immediately following 180 days on the International Space Station (ISS). The findings show substantial loss of fibre mass, force and power in this muscle group.

by Staff Writers
Milwaukee WI (SPX) Aug 19, 2010
Astronaut muscles waste away on long space flights reducing their capacity for physical work by more than 40%, according to research published online in the Journal of Physiology.

This is the equivalent of a 30- to 50-year-old crew member's muscles deteriorating to that of an 80-year-old. The destructive effects of extended weightlessness to skeletal muscle - despite in-flight exercise - pose a significant safety risk for future manned missions to Mars and elsewhere in the Universe.

An American study, led by Robert Fitts of Marquette University (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), was recently published online by The Journal of Physiology and will be in the September printed issue.

It comes at a time of renewed interest in Mars and increased evidence of early life on the planet. NASA currently estimates it would take a crew 10 months to reach Mars, with a 1 year stay, or a total mission of approximately 3 years.

Fitts, Chair and Professor of Biological Sciences at Marquette, believes if astronauts were to travel to Mars today their ability to perform work would be compromised and, with the most affected muscles such as the calf, the decline could approach 50%. Crew members would fatigue more rapidly and have difficulty performing even routine work in a space suit.

Even more dangerous would be their return to Earth, where they'd be physically incapable of evacuating quickly in case of an emergency landing.

The study - the first cellular analysis of the effects of long duration space flight on human muscle - took calf biopsies of nine astronauts and cosmonauts before and immediately following 180 days on the International Space Station (ISS). The findings show substantial loss of fibre mass, force and power in this muscle group.

Unfortunately starting the journey in better physical condition did not help. Ironically, one of the study's findings was that crew members who began with the biggest muscles also showed the greatest decline.

The results highlight the need to design and test more effective exercise countermeasures on the ISS before embarking on distant space journeys. New exercise programmes will need to employ high resistance and a wide variety of motion to mimic the range occurring in Earth's atmosphere.

Fitts doesn't feel scientists should give up on extended space travel. 'Manned missions to Mars represent the next frontier, as the Western Hemisphere of our planet was 800 years ago,' says Fitts. 'Without exploration we will stagnate and fail to advance our understanding of the Universe.'

In the shorter term, Fitts believes efforts should be on fully utilizing the International Space Station so that better methods to protect muscle and bone can be developed.

'NASA and ESA need to develop a vehicle to replace the shuttle so that at least six crew members can stay on the ISS for 6-9 months,' recommends Fitts. 'Ideally, the vehicle should be able to dock at the ISS for the duration of the mission so that, in an emergency, all crew could evacuate the station.'

www.space-travel.com

Astronauts make third space foray to fix ISS cooling pump

Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson (left) and Doug Wheelock work to set up the ammonia spare pump module after it was installed on the S1 Truss. Credit: NASA TV

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Aug 16, 2010
Astronauts from the International Space Station on Monday wrapped up a third and final spacewalk to replace a busted cooling unit on the orbiting outpost, NASA said.

Spacewalkers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson began installing a replacement ammonia pump module on the ISS at 6:20 am (1020 GMT) Monday and finished at 1:40 pm (1740 GMT) -- a seven hour, 20 minute space foray, according to the US space agency.

Flight Engineer Shannon Walker assisted the effort from inside the ISS by operating the station's robotic arm and space officials reported no detectable ammonia leaks.

The cooling unit's nearly 800-pound (360 kilo) ammonia pump failed unexpectedly on July 31 and was removed from the 100-billion dollar orbiting station during a spacewalk last Wednesday.

The pump is critical to keep the station from overheating. The six-member crew has relied on a single backup since the malfunctioning pump failed during a power surge.

The incident set off alarms on the station, although officials have said that the crew of three Russians and three Americans were never seriously in danger.

A first spacewalk to begin repairs on the malfunctioning cooling system took place on August 7 and lasted eight hours, three minutes, with a follow-up second spacewalk on August 11.

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IBEX Spacecraft Finds Discoveries Close To Home

IBEX found that Energetic Neutral Atoms, or ENAs, are coming from a region just outside Earth's magnetopause where nearly stationary protons from the solar wind interact with the tenuous cloud of hydrogen atoms in Earth's exosphere. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

by Kelly Beatty
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 17, 2010
Imagine floating 35,000 miles above the sunny side of Earth. Our home planet gleams below, a majestic whorl of color and texture. All seems calm around you. With no satellites or space debris to dodge, you can just relax and enjoy the black emptiness of space.

But looks can be deceiving.

In reality, you've unknowingly jumped into an invisible mosh pit of electromagnetic mayhem - the place in space where a supersonic "wind" of charged particles from the Sun crashes head-on into the protective magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet. Traveling at a million miles per hour, the solar wind's protons and electrons sense Earth's magnetosphere too late to flow smoothly around it.

Instead, they're shocked, heated, and slowed almost to a stop as they pile up along its outer boundary, the magnetopause, before getting diverted sideways.

Space physicists have had a general sense of these dynamic goings-on for decades. But it wasn't until the advent of the Interstellar Boundary Explorer or IBEX, a NASA spacecraft launched in October 2008, that they've been able to see what the human eye cannot: the first-ever images of this electromagnetic crash scene.

They can now witness how some of the solar wind's charged particles are being neutralized by gas escaping from Earth's atmosphere.

A New Way to See Atoms
IBEX wasn't designed to keep tabs on Earth's magnetosphere. Instead, its job is to map interactions occurring far beyond the planets, 8 to 10 billion miles away, where the Sun's own magnetic bubble, the heliosphere, meets interstellar space.

Only two spacecraft, Voyagers 1 and 2, have ventured far enough to probe this region directly. IBEX, which travels in a looping, 8-day-long orbit around Earth, stays much closer to home, but it carries a pair of detectors that can observe the interaction region from afar.

Here's how: When fast-moving protons in the solar wind reach the edge of the heliosphere, they sometimes grab electrons from the slower-moving interstellar atoms around them, like batons getting passed between relay runners.

This charge exchange creates electrically neutral hydrogen atoms that are no longer controlled by magnetic fields. Suddenly, they're free to go wherever they want - and because they're still moving fast, they quickly zip away from the interstellar boundary in all directions.

Some of these "energetic neutral atoms," or ENAs, zip past Earth, where they're recorded by IBEX. Its two detectors don't take pictures with conventional optics.

Instead, they record the number and energy of atoms arriving from small spots of sky about 7 degrees across (the apparent size of a tennis ball held at arm's length). Because its spin axis always points at the Sun, the spacecraft slowly turns throughout Earth's orbit and its detectors scan overlapping strips that create a complete 360 degrees map every six months.

A Collision Zone Near Earth
Because IBEX is orbiting Earth, it also has a front-row seat for observing the chaotic pileup of solar-wind particles occurring along the "nose" of Earth's magnetopause, about 35,000 miles out. ENAs are created there too, as solar-wind protons wrest electrons from hydrogen atoms in the outermost vestiges of our atmosphere, the exosphere.

Other spacecraft have attempted to measure the density of the dayside exosphere, without much success. NASA's Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft probably detected ENAs from this region a decade ago, but its detectors didn't have the sensitivity to pinpoint or measure the source.

Now, thanks to IBEX, we know just how tenuous the outer exosphere really is. "Where the interaction is strongest, there are only about eight hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter," explains Stephen A. Fuselier, the Lockheed Martin Space Systems researcher who led the mapping effort. His team's results appear in the July 8 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The key observations were made in March and April 2009, when IBEX was located far from Earth - about halfway to the Moon's orbit - and its detectors could scan the region directly in front of the magnetopause.

During some of the March observations, the European Space Agency's Cluster 3 spacecraft was positioned just in front of the magnetopause, where it measured the number of deflected solar-wind protons directly. "Cluster played a very important role in this study," Fuselier explains. "It was in the right place at the right time."

The new IBEX maps show that the ENAs thin out at locations away from the point of peak intensity. This falloff makes sense, Fuselier says, because Earth's magnetopause isn't spherical.

Instead, it has a teardrop shape that's closest to Earth at its nose but farther away everywhere else. So at locations well away from the magnetopause's centerline, even fewer of the exosphere's hydrogen atoms are hanging around to interact with the solar wind. "No exosphere, no ENAs," he explains.

A Versatile Spacecraft
Since its launch, IBEX has also scanned another nearby world, with surprising results. The moon has no atmosphere or magnetosphere, so the solar wind slams unimpeded into its desolate surface. Most of those particles get absorbed by lunar dust.

In fact, space visionaries wonder if the moon's rubbly surface has captured enough helium-3, an isotope present in tiny amounts in the Sun's outflow, to serve as a fuel for future explorers.

Yet cosmic chemists have long thought that some solar-wind protons must be bouncing off the lunar surface, becoming ENAs through charge exchange as they do. So does the moon glow in IBEX's scans? Indeed it does, says David J. McComas of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, who serves as the mission's Principal Investigator.

In a report published last year in Geophysical Research Letters, McComas and other researchers conclude that about 10 percent of the solar-wind particles striking the Moon escape to space as ENAs detectable by IBEX. That amounts to roughly 150 tons of recycled hydrogen atoms per year.

Meanwhile, the squat, eight-sided spacecraft continues its primary task of mapping the interactions between the outermost heliosphere and the interstellar medium that lies beyond. McComas and his team are especially eager to learn more about the mysterious and unexpected "ribbon" of ENAs that turned up in the spacecraft's initial all-sky map.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., IBEX Mission Scientist Robert MacDowall says the spacecraft should be able to continue its observations through at least 2012. "We weren't sure those heliospheric interactions would vary with time, but they do," he explains, "and it's great that IBEX will be able to record them for years to come."

www.spacedaily.com

ISS Could Last Another Decade - Roscosmos

File image

by Staff Writers
Moscow, Russia (RIA Novosti) Aug 17, 2010
The International Space Station (ISS), which has been in orbit for 10 years, could continue work for another decade, the head of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) said on Monday.

The service life of the ISS ends in 2015 but participants of the project are currently discussing ways to extend its operation until 2020.

"It has great potential," Anatoly Perminov said in an interview with Golos Rossii radio station, adding that the ISS had not yet fulfilled all of its missions.

He said the ISS was and remained a successful project.

"All five countries [Canada, the European Union, Japan, Russia and the United States] participating in the creation and operation of this station have always honored their obligations," he said.

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Cassini Bags Enceladus 'Tigers'

The camera was pointing toward Enceladus at approximately 348,913 kilometers (216,805 miles) away, and the image was taken using the CL1 and GRN filters. This image has not been validated or calibrated. A validated/calibrated image will be archived with the NASA Planetary Data System in 2011. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 16, 2010
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has successfully completed its flyby over the "tiger stripes" in the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus and has sent back images of its passage.

The spacecraft also targeted the moon Tethys.

The tiger stripes are actually giant fissures that spew jets of water vapor and organic particles hundreds of kilometers, or miles, out into space.

While the winter is darkening the moon's southern hemisphere, Cassini has its own version of "night vision goggles" - the composite infrared spectrometer instrument - to track heat even when visible light is low.

It will take time for scientists to assemble the data into temperature maps of the fissures.

www.spacedaily.com

India Launches Satellite-Based Navigation System

File image: gagan.

by Staff Writers
New Delhi, India (PTI) Aug 13, 2010
India Tuesday launched a satellite-based navigation system to aid air traffic in the region and joined a select club of nations which have similar capabilities.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel launched the Global Position System Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (gagan) based on a constellation of 24 satellites positioned in six earth-centred orbital planes.

gagan will provide seamless coverage of air traffic from south Asia to Africa and connect to the systems of Europe and Japan. It is also expected to enhance marine and transport navigation, search and rescue operations, survey and mapping.

"This system is expected to provide enhanced navigation performance for critical applications like civil aviation, marine navigation

, train and road transport," said a ministry official.

At present, only the United States, European Union and Japan have such a system.

Airport officials said the system will enable airlines to chart out direct routes as they will be less dependent on the ground-based radar systems, save fuel and increase efficiency.

gagan is a joint initiative of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The system provides enhanced safety features for the airlines as they would be able to have precision approach guidance towards runways in any weather conditions, the officials said. It will also increase air-to-air surveillance.

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Image of the Day: Russia's Fires Creating "Brown Clouds" from Asia to the Amazon

This image was taken by the European Space Agency’s Envisat Earth-observing satellite. Moscow is in the lower left corner of the frame, and the field of view is several hundred kilometers across. Dozens of plumes from forest and peat bog fires can be seen scattered everywhere. Smoke blowing over Moscow is making pollution ten times normal amounts. The smoke from forest fires smothering Moscow adds to health problems of "brown clouds" from Asia to the Amazon and Russian soot may stoke global warming by hastening a thaw of Arctic ice, environmental experts say. p {clear:none !important;}

"Health effects of such clouds are huge," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, chair of a U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) study of "brown clouds" blamed for dimming sunlight in cities such as Beijing or New Delhi and hitting crop growth in Asia.

The clouds -- a haze of pollution from cars or coal-fired power plants, forest fires and wood and other materials burned for cooking and heating -- are near-permanent and blamed for causing chronic respiratory and heart diseases.

"In Asia just the indoor smoke - because people cook with firewood - causes over a million deaths a year," Ramanathan, of the University of California, San Diego, told Reuters.

Moscow's top health official said on Monday that about 700 people were dying every day, twice as many as in normal weather, as Russia grapples with its worst heat wave in 130 years.

"The Russian fires are in principle similar to what you see from other brown clouds," said Henning Rodhe of Stockholm University, a vice-chair of the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud study. "The difference is that this only lasts a few weeks."

Asian pollution has been blamed for dusting Himalayan glaciers with black soot that absorbs more heat than reflective snow and ice and so speeds a thaw. Worldwide, however, the polluting haze blocks out sunlight and so slows climate change.

For the climate, "the main concern ... is what impact the Russian smoke would have on the Arctic, in terms of black carbon and other (particles) in the smoke settling on the sea ice," Ramanathan said.

Via Reuters

Giant Ultraviolet Rings Found In Resurrected Galaxies

Astronomers have found unexpected rings and arcs of ultraviolet light around a selection of galaxies, four of which are shown here as viewed by NASA's and the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope. Observations from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) picked out 30 elliptical and lens-shaped "early-type" galaxies with puzzlingly strong ultraviolet emissions but no signs of visible star formation. Early-type galaxies, so the scientists' thinking goes, have already made their stars and now lack the cold gas necessary to build new ones. Hubble images captured the great, shining rings of ultraviolet light, with some ripples stretching 250,000 light-years. In these Hubble images, ultraviolet light has been rendered in blue, while green and red light from the galaxies is shown in their natural colors. Image Credit: NASA/ESA /JPL-Caltech/STScI /UCLA

by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 12, 2010
Astronomers have found mysterious, giant loops of ultraviolet light in aged, massive galaxies, which seem to have a second lease on life. Somehow these "over-the-hill galaxies" have been infused with fresh gas to form new stars that power these truly gargantuan rings, some of which could encircle several Milky Way galaxies.

The discovery of these rings implies that bloated galaxies presumed "dead" and devoid of star-making can be reignited with star birth, and that galaxy evolution does not proceed straight from the cradle to the grave.

"In a galaxy's lifetime, it must make the transition from an active, star-forming galaxy to a quiescent galaxy that does not form stars," said Samir Salim, lead author of a recent study and a research scientist in the department of astronomy at Indiana University, Bloomington. "But it is possible this process goes the other way, too, and that old galaxies can be rejuvenated."

A One-Two Observational Punch
The findings come courtesy of the combined power of two orbiting observatories, NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and Hubble Space Telescope. First, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer surveyed a vast region of the sky in ultraviolet light.

The satellite picked out 30 elliptical and lens-shaped "early" galaxies with puzzlingly strong ultraviolet emissions but no signs of visible star formation. Early-type galaxies, so the scientists' thinking goes, have already made their stars and now lack the cold gas necessary to build new ones.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer could not discern the fine details of these large, rounded galaxies gleaming in the ultraviolet, so to get a closer look, researchers turned to the Hubble Space Telescope. What they saw shocked them: three-quarters of the galaxies were spanned by great, shining rings of ultraviolet light, with some ripples stretching 250,000 light-years. A few galaxies even had spiral-shaped ultraviolet features.

"We haven't seen anything quite like these rings before," said Michael Rich, co-author of the paper and a research astronomer at UCLA. "These beautiful and very unusual objects might be telling us something very important about the evolution of galaxies."

Colors of the Ages
Astronomers can tell a galaxy's approximate age just by the color of its collective starlight. Lively, young galaxies look bluish to our eyes due to the energetic starlight of their new, massive stars. Elderly galaxies instead glow in the reddish hues of their ancient stars, appearing "old, red and dead," as astronomers bluntly say.

Gauging by the redness of their constituent stars, the galaxies seen by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and Hubble are geezers, with most stars around 10 billion years old.

But relying on the spectrum of light visible to the human eye can be deceiving, as some of us have found out after spending a day under the sun's invisible ultraviolet rays and getting a sunburn. Sure enough, when viewed in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, these galaxies clearly have more going on than meets the eye.

Some ultraviolet starlight in a few of the observed galaxies might just be left over from an initial burst of star formation. But in most cases, new episodes of star birth must be behind the resplendent rings, meaning that fresh gas has somehow been introduced to these apparently ancient galaxies. Other telltale signs of ongoing star formation, such as blazing hydrogen gas clouds, might be on the scene as well, but have so far escaped detection.

The Lord of the Ultraviolet Rings
Just where the gas for this galactic resurrection came from and how it has created rings remains somewhat perplexing. A merging with a smaller galaxy would bring in fresh gas to spawn hordes of new stars, and could in rare instances give rise to the ring structures as well.

But the researchers have their doubts about this origin scenario. "To create a density shock wave that forms rings like those we've seen, a small galaxy has to hit a larger galaxy pretty much straight in the center," said Salim. "You have to have a dead-on collision, and that's very uncommon."

Rather, the rejuvenating spark more likely came from a gradual sopping-up of the gas in the so-called intergalactic medium, the thin soup of material between galaxies. This external gas could generate these rings, especially in the presence of bar-like structures that span some galaxies' centers.

Ultimately, more observations will be needed to show how these galaxies began growing younger and lit up with humongous halos. Salim and Rich plan to search for more evidence of bars, as well as faint structures that might be the remnants of stellar blooms that occurred in the galaxies' pasts.

Rather like recurring seasons, it may be that galaxies stirred from winter can breed stars again and then bask in another vibrant, ultraviolet-soaked summer.

The study detailing the findings appeared in the April 21 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers sponsored by Yonsei University in South Korea and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France collaborated on this mission.

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