Orion Nebula Fully Unveiled in New Telescope Image

Amateur and professional astronomers alike know the Orion Nebula as one of the most recognizable constellations in the night sky, and a new image from Europe's powerful VISTA telescope has captured it in a stunning new light. But rather than just seeing the visible cloud of gas enshrouding the stellar nursery, VISTA turned its infrared vision upon the young stars emerging in and around the nebula.
Four such youngsters at the center of the nebula have cleared out their immediate surroundings with ultraviolet radiation that causes nearby gas to glow. A red region directly above the center of the image reveals young stars that continue to form amidst clouds of interstellar gas. Such stars can eject gas at speeds of almost 435,000 miles per hour (700,000 km/hr).

Fainter red features below the Orion Nebula also represent lesser spots of activity where stars are being born.

Those features would typically be hidden from ordinary visible-light telescopes. But don't let that stop you from pointing your own camera toward the night sky -- as PopSci's Eric Adams noted in his DIY astrophotography guide, it's all worth the trouble.

Source: www.popsci.com

'Ingredients for Life' Present on Saturn's Moon Enceladus, Say Scientists

Some of 'the major ingredients for life' are present on one of Saturn's moons, according to University College London scientists.

A team from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory working on the Cassini-Huygens mission have found negatively charged water ions in the ice plume of Enceladus.

Their analysis of data gathered during the spacecraft's plume fly-throughs in 2008 provide evidence for the presence of liquid water.

The spacecraft's plasma spectrometer, used to gather this data, also found other species of negatively charged ions including hydrocarbons.

MSSL's Professor Andrew Coates, lead author of a paper on the latest discovery, said: "While it's no surprise that there is water there, these short-lived ions are extra evidence for sub-surface water and where there's water, carbon and energy, some of the major ingredients for life are present.

The surprise for us was to look at the mass of these ions. There were several peaks in the spectrum, and when we analysed them we saw the effect of water molecules clustering together one after the other."

Enceladus thus joins Earth, Titan and comets where negatively charged ions are known to exist in the solar system. Negative oxygen ions were discovered in Earth's ionosphere at the dawn of the space age. At Earth's surface, negative water ions are present where liquid water is in motion, such as waterfalls or crashing ocean waves.

The plasma spectrometer measures the density, flow velocity and temperature of ions and electrons that enter the instrument. But since the discovery of Enceladus' water ice plume, the instrument has also successfully captured and analysed samples of material in the jets.

Early in its mission, Cassini-Huygens discovered the plume that fountains water vapour and ice particles above Enceladus. Since then, scientists have found that these water products dominate Saturn's magnetic environment and create Saturn's huge E-ring.

At Titan, the same instrument detected extremely large negative hydrocarbon ions with masses up to 13,800 times that of hydrogen. Dr Coates and his colleagues believe large ions are the source of the smog-like haze that blocks most of Titan's surface from view.

The new findings add to astronomers' growing knowledge of the detailed chemistry of Enceladus' plume and Titan's atmosphere, giving new understanding of environments beyond Earth where prebiotic or life-sustaining environments might exist.

Professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which funds the UK involvement in Cassini-Huygens, said: "This measurement of water ions in the ice plume of Enceladus is incredibly exciting and provides us with further hope of finding water and maybe even life on this distant icy moon."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Endeavour Lifts Off in Space Shuttle's Final Night Launch

It's a sight captured by many a late-night stargazer: a shuttle streaking through the dark sky on its way to orbit. Last night, a gorgeous predawn launch of the space shuttle Endeavour marked the last scheduled night launch ever for the retiring NASA vehicle, even as NASA looks forward to a new age of commercial spaceflight.All four of the remaining shuttle flights are slated for the daytime, Space.com reports.

The 13-day mission's highlight involves bringing a huge new window to the International Space Station, so that residents of the orbital outpost can better direct the robotic arm and maybe even snap some prettier Twitpics . The window's addition in the new node would bring the space station to about 90 percent completion.
It's just one bittersweet part of the long goodbye for the shuttle. The vehicle's retirement will not only have riple effects on NASA employees and Florida's economy, but also marks the beginning of a transition toward relying more upon private vehicles to launch cargo and crew into low Earth orbit. The Ob

Publish Post

ama administration's recent budget for NASA killed plans for the Ares rockets to replace the space shuttle, and instead refocused the U.S. space agency on more deep space exploration.

Readers curious about how the new space age might look can consult PopSci's January issue that covers the impending commercial space rush.

Source: www.popsci.gr

Spectacular Launch Begins a Complex Mission

"What a beautiful launch we had this morning... the orbiter performed extremely well," said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations, during the STS-130 postlaunch news conference. "This is a great start to a very complicated mission."

Jean-Jacques Dordain, European Space Agency director general, thanked NASA, the crew and the ground teams for "a very beautiful launch." Dordain said, "It was an important event. Even more important for us because the shuttle was full of European hardware."

Mike Moses, shuttle launch integration manager, said the count went unbelievably smooth. He commented how the weather constraints influenced the launch of space shuttle Endeavour and how happy he was that it all came together today. Docking is set for flight day three with three spacewalks planned to install the Tranquility node and then cupola permanently to the International Space Station. "This will be a good example of international partnerships and cooperation between the station crew and shuttle crew," said Moses.

"This was one of the smoothest countdowns ever," said Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director. "The team was very, very energized going into the count."
Liftoff of Space Shuttle Endeavour
After a one day delay due to clouds, space shuttle Endeavour launched at 4:14 a.m. EST Monday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a new module and an attached cupola for the International Space Station that should increase human understanding of our home planet. It was the last scheduled night launch in shuttle program history.

Commander George Zamka, Pilot Terry Virts and Mission Specialists Kay Hire, Stephen Robinson, Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken began their 13-day mission with an eight and a half minute dash to orbit to begin the pursuit of the orbital outpost, lighting up the central Florida coast as Endeavour arced to the northeast en route to space.

When Endeavour lifted off, the station was traveling at almost five miles a second about 212 miles over western Romania. Endeavour is scheduled to dock with the station at 12:09 a.m. Wednesday over the northern coast of Spain.

Source: www.nasa.gov

Say Hello to Robonaut2, NASA's Android Space Explorer of the Future

With the news that the White House has caneled the Constellation Program, NASA seems to be moving out of the human space flight business. However, the unveiling of a next-generation robot astronaut shows the android space program to be alive and well.

Designed through a partnership with General Motors, the Robonaut2 is the cutting edge of android technology. Equipped with a wide array of sensors and dexterous five fingered hands, NASA plans for the Robotnaut2 to work along side humans in space operations, or by itself in missions too dangerous for people.

The Robonaut2 began life as, surprise surprise, a DARPA project almost ten years ago. The original Robonaut debuted in 2004, and sported a very Bobba Fett-like head. For the new model, NASA appears to have turned to the Power Rangers for design inspiration, with future models presumably looking more and more like Ian Holm or Lance Hendrickson.

No word yet on when NASA plans on deploying the Robonaut on an actual mission, or if its first job will be programing binary load lifters and moisture vaporators.

Source: www.popsci.com

Iran Launches Turtles Into Space, Plans Satellite Mission Soon

Boldly taking turtles where few turtles have gone before, Iran launched its satellite carrier Kavoshgar-3 rocket skyward earlier today as part of the Islamic Republic's National Day of Space and Technology. The rocket was sans satellite for the test firing, but crewing the 10-foot launch vehicle were two turtles, a mouse, and a dozen or so worms.

All right, the Soviets sent live tortoises into space a few times in the late '60s and '70s, including on a 1968 circumlunar flight that was the first to carry live animals into deep space. So this isn't the first time a member of the order Testudines has proven it has the Right Stuff. But by launching some of the smaller variety into space it appears Iran has achieved a "first," one of many the nation aims to notch in coming years.As part of Space and Technology Day, Iran also unveiled a new homegrown light booster rocket known as Simorgh that purportedly can carry a 220-pound satellite into orbit up 310 miles above the Earth. Three satellites were also revealed: Mesbah-2, Tolou and Navid-e-Elm-o-Sanat, the latter of which could benefit from a NASA-style acronym. But satellite launches aren't Iran's only aeronautical ambition; Iran wants to put a man into space before the decade is out, not because it is easy, but because frankly other nations are not leaping at the opportunity to aid Iran in its space ambitions.

Both Italy and Russia have declined to launch Iranian satellites in the past, and Western governments bristled at today's launch as advanced rocketry isn't something the United States and her allies like to see in the hands of a diplomatically hostile state -- one that may or may not be enriching weapons grade uranium. Iranian authorities did not disclose the nature of the research or the purpose of launching live animals aboard the craft, nor did they disclose the time and place of the launch. The military-green surface-to-air missile truck that paraded the Kavoshgar-3 around to dramatic music prior to lift-off likely didn't help Iran's image either.

But necessity is the mother of invention, they say, so we suppose it's good to see innovation coming out of any corner of Earth, as long as said innovation remains on a peaceful track. Though not usually compared to visionary leaders like JFK, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated publicly that he aims to send Iranian astronauts beyond earth orbit. Keep reaching for the stars.

Source: www.popsci.com

Carbon Crystals Harder Than Diamond Found In Finnish Meteorite

Diamond may remain the preferred material for wedding rings, Lil' Wayne's birthday gifts, and Damien Hirst sculptures, but it looks like girls' best friend will have to relinquish its title as the hardest natural substance known. The new title holder: mysterious carbon compounds found in a Finnish meteorite.

Writing in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Tristan Ferroir, a professor at the University of Lyon, France, reports that his team has discovered two new materials harder than the precious stone. Ferroir discovered the compounds when a diamond-coated sander failed to file down pockets of the compound nestled inside of the meteorite, which fell in 1971.

Ferrior has seen carbon nodules, fused by the heat of atmospheric entry, resist the diamond sander before, but only in one direction. These new minerals are the first ever to remain uniformly invulnerable from every direction.

Of the two minerals, one is a kind of diamond that had been predicted by scientists decades ago, but never observed in nature. The other is truly novel, having formed from fused sheets of graphite in a manner similar to the method used in the production of artificial diamonds.

Due to the small quantities of each mineral, Ferroir has been unable to test precisely how hard they really are. For now, all we can do is speculate about the limits of their hardness, and hope that they don't weaken Superman.

Source: www.popsci.com

NASA Budget: Constellation Officially Canned, But The Deep-Space Future Is Bright

Rumors circulated last week, but now it’s official: NASA won’t be sending manned missions back to the moon any time soon. But in what may seem like a gutting of NASA moon- and Mars-based ambitions there is a silver lining: a $6 billion investment in helping private industry bring their space launch vehicles up to human-rated capacity and a smattering of modest robotic precursor missions to the moon, Mars, Martian moons or the Lagrange points that should set the stage for later manned missions far beyond low-earth orbit.

However, the Constellation program – and the $9 billion already spent developing its Orion crew vehicle and Ares rockets – is decidedly dead.

In a press conference Sunday, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters the White House is recommending Constellation be scrapped, turning the run-of-the-mill duties of shuttling astronauts into low-earth orbit over to private companies and shifting NASA’s focus to “"advance robotics and other steps that will help to inspire Americans and not just return a man or a woman to the Moon but undertake the longer range research that could succeed in human spaceflight to Mars."

In a teleconference today, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden outlined the budget’s goals, emphasizing that while Constellation is getting the axe, NASA’s deep space exploration ambitions have not been curtailed, nor are they being fiscally undercut. Rather, NASA is reprioritizing, seeking more or less a five-year period of intense study on possible means toward future manned missions to deep space before embarking on a mission to the moon or beyond. Between now and fiscal 2015, the agency plans to fully utilize the R&D capabilities of the ISS, demonstrate better deep space flight technologies and fly some unmanned missions around the near solar system to scout out the most scientifically interesting targets for future manned exploration.

Those precursory missions to the moon, Mars and nearby asteroids might entail more tele-operated robots like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars, as well as a robotic lunar lander or asteroid mission that demonstrates an ability to utilize resources from remote outposts in space. These will be substantially cheaper than manned missions, generally less than $800 million each. But the thrilling prospect of a manned mission back to the lunar surface within the decade as envisioned in Constellation is more or less out of the question.

Highlights from the proposed NASA budget:

• $6 billion over five years to catalyze development of American commercial human spaceflight vehicles.
• $7.8 billion over five years for technology demonstration programs for future exploration activities. These might include technologies aimed at rendezvous and docking in orbit, refueling vessels in space, advanced life support systems for astronauts and other developments that will facilitate future missions beyond low-earth orbit.
• $3.1 billion over five years for aggressive research into heavy-lift rocket engines (but not the Ares-V), new propellants, and innovative ways of reaching deep space.
• $4.9 billion over five years for investment in early-stage and game-changing technologies incubating in the private sector. These could include innovations in sensor tech, robotics, launch vehicles, communications, etc., and will likely be funded through X-Prize-like performance-based grants that reward private sector space companies that can hit certain benchmarks quickly.
• $3 billion over five years to fund a string of cost-effective exploratory unmanned missions to the moon, near-earth asteroids and even Mars, scouting future manned exploratory targets.

Source: www.popsci.com

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

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

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