Moon and Mars

Gingrich touts moon base, Mars travel in Florida

2012-01-26T02:15:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich told numerous thousand people today there will be a "permanent base on the moon" and other ground-breaking space-focused programs by the end of his second term as president.

The GOP presidential candidate said he had "a romantic belief it is really part of our destiny," adding that the current state of the space program is a "tragedy."

Gingrich, a former House speaker, said there will also be a "continuous propulsion system" that would allow travel to Mars in a shorter span of time.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has mocked Gingrich for his proposal for a colony on the moon -- comments that Gingrich said showed the difference between a "romantic" and "so-called practical people."

Gingrich said the idea that people could one day live on the moon or easily explore space would inspire children and future innovators to make dreams like that happen.

The speech was a departure from Gingrich's message in South Carolina, where he focused mainly on the economy and health care.

Jane Sheahan, 70, a retired federal accountant from Pinellas County, recently voted for Gingrich by absentee ballot and made more than 500 calls for his campaign over the past few days.

The reactions, she said, were mixed.

"There's just a lot of indecision," she said, adding that many people were tired of "terrible" ads that ran everyday on television by super PACs supporting other candidates.

Thanks: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/

Nasa launches vital new mission to recover its stolen moon rocks

2012-01-23T01:32:00.000-08:00

The American space agency, Nasa, is not as busy as it once was sending astronauts into orbit aboard its freshly retired shuttle convoy, which means it has time to attend to other pressing business, like trying to track down countless samples of moon rock it has handed out over the years that have gone missing.

A new internal report depicts an agency that has generously distributed extra-terrestrial flotsam, including moon rock, to government leaders and scientific institutions promising to use them for research. But it has also been peculiarly lax about monitoring the whereabouts of the moon rock and ensuring the bits on loan were returned.

According to the report, signed by Paul Martin, the Inspector General of Nasa, 517 moon rocks and other so-called "astromaterial" samples loaned out by the agency between 1970 – when Apollo missions began to collect them – and 2010 have gone missing or have been stolen.

The job of retrieval is partly being undertaken by Joseph R. Gutheinz Jr., a Texas lawyer who once was an undercover Nasa agent intercepting attempts by private citizens trying to sell moon rock they had nefariously acquired on the open market for millions. Now he tries to find lost rocks wherever he can find them, which is as likely to be in a shoebox as in a vault.

Thanks : http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas

NASA moon probes renamed as Ebb and Flow

2012-01-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

A pair of unmanned NASA spacecraft that are orbiting the Moon were renamed Ebb and Flow on Wednesday by a middle school class in Montana, the US space agency announced.

The original names for the twin probes Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) -- A and B -- were not very inspired, admitted principal investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

NASA moon probes renamed as Ebb and Flow
"We were so busy in the design and getting these two spacecraft launched on time that when we gave them names, we gave them names of A and B, and that isn't too creative. So we asked the youth of America to assist us," she said.

More than 11,000 students took part in the contest to rename the twin craft which aim to map the Moon's surface, determine its gravity field and reveal the contents of its inner core.

NASA moon probes renamed as Ebb and Flow
The winners were a fourth grade classroom of nine- and 10-year-olds at Emily Dickinson School in Bozeman, Montana.

Thanks: http://zeenews.india.com/news/space

Underfunding doomed Russian Mars probe

2012-01-08T20:43:00.000-08:00

Mars has claimed many a spacecraft as victim, and the latest one, a Russian space probe, looks likely to tumble to Earth very soon.

Russia's Phobos-Grunt ("grunt" is Russian for ground or soil) mission aimed for a first landing of a probe on the Martian moon Phobos. Launched Nov. 8, the spacecraft reached Earth orbit but failed to fire the rocket that would send it on an eight-month interplanetary trip to Mars. It's likely to fall to Earth around Jan. 15, the Russian Defense Ministry concluded, the victim of a steadily dropping orbit.

"Way too ambitious and way too underfunded to reach its goal," space law attorney Michael Listner says.

The $163 million spacecraft carried a piggybacked Chinese Mars orbiter added late to the mission.

After weeks of attempts to re-establish radio communication by European Space Agency and NASA transmitters and fleeting hints of contact, Russian space agency officials declared the craft a loss last month.

Mars has claimed overly thrifty probes before. NASA's Mars Polar Lander, a $120 million spacecraft, was judged about 30% underfunded by an accident panel after its calamitous crash in 1999. Testing shortfalls probably played a role in the craft's landing rockets malfunctioning.

"The Phobos science team would like to repeat the mission using experience that we got working on this mission," said an e-mail from mission scientist Alexander Zakharov of the Space Research Institute in Moscow

Read More: http://www.usatoday.com

Blue moons? Kepler-22b offers NASA habitable world hopes

2011-12-18T22:09:00.000-08:00

And NASA? NASA's Kepler space telescope team this month unveiled "Kepler-22b." A planet some 600 light-years away, Kepler-22b circles its star squarely in a "habitable zone" — the orbital distance where a world's surface temperature would neither boil nor freeze water, perhaps allowing oceans to survive as on Earth. Water is widely seen as one of life's vital ingredients by planetary scientists.

Catchy names, clearly, aren't a priority in astronomy. Other proposed habitable zone worlds reported by astronomers (among the more than 700 planets detected in the last two decades orbiting nearby stars) sport monikers such as "55 Cancri f" and "HD 85512 b.

But at least some solace comes from the Kepler space telescope team's estimate that just in our Milky Way galaxy alone, some 500 million planets likely orbit inside their star's habitable zone.

"We have many candidates in that region," said Kepler principal scientist William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., at a briefing unveiling Kepler-22b to his colleagues earlier this month. At his briefing, Borucki showed a chart depicting more than 50 possible habitable zone planets, as well as Kepler-22b, among the 2,326 planetary candidates detected by Kepler since its 2009 launch.

source:www.usatoday.com

Russian scientist apologizes for failed Mars moon mission

2011-12-11T22:21:00.000-08:00

In an open letter Thursday, a prominent Russian scientist lamented the failure of the country's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was meant to collect samples from Mars' moon Phobos, but instead is languishing in Earth orbit.

"We are deeply sorry about the failure" of Phobos-Grunt, wrote Lev Zelenyi, director of the Space Research Institute and Chair of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Solar System Exploration Board, in a letter to fellow scientists and mission team members. "We hope in (the) future to continue our collaboration on space science projects."

The troubled spacecraft has been stranded since its Nov. 8 launch, when it failed to propel itself off into a deep space trajectory toward Mars.

Not giving up
In yesterday's message, Zelenyi said the reason for the failure has yet to be determined. He saluted the dedicated efforts of the European Space Agency, NASA, as well as the U.S. military space trackers and amateur skywatchers that helped in efforts to establish communication with the wayward probe and to assist in determining the exact orbit, orientation and attitude of Phobos-Grunt.

"However, despite people being at work 24/7 since the launch, all these attempts have not yield(ed) any satisfactory results," Zelenyi said. "Lavochkin Association specialists will continue their attempts to establish connection with the spacecraft and send commands until the very end of its existence."

Russia's NPO Lavochkin was the main contractor of the Phobos-Grunt project.

The spacecraft is expected to enter Earth's atmosphere in early January as a piece of space debris. Zelenyi explained that Russian space experts are now working on the issue of re-entry and the "probability of where and which fragments may hit the ground (if any)," he said.

Source : http://www.msnbc.msn.com

Mars Mission Hoping To Satisfy Curiosity

2011-12-05T01:54:00.000-08:00

The University of Leicester is to play a key role in NASA's $2.5 billion mission to Mars. Dr. John Bridges of the University's Space Research Centre leads a team from the University of Leicester, the Open University, and CNES France which have been accepted as participating scientists on the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, which lands in August 2012.

John Bridges will be among the first people to study images returned after landing. The Leicester-led team will focus on determining the conditions associated with the presence of water in past epochs at the landing site.

Launched on 26th November, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a NASA mission with the aim to land and operate a rover named Curiosity on the surface of Mars. The 900-kg rover, which is the size of a small car, will travel on the Red Planet's surface for 23 months, looking at sediments that could help explain the planet's past and help to assess Mars's habitability.

source:www.marsdaily.com

Russia Mars probe failure underlined by successful U.S. launch

2011-11-29T21:15:00.000-08:00

As the NASA rover Curiosity, launched from Cape Canaveral, streaks toward Mars, Russia's Phobos-Ground probe is marooned in near-Earth orbit and largely unresponsive to ground controllers' commands As the NASA rover Curiosity, launched Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., streaks toward Mars, Russia's Phobos-Ground probe is marooned in near-Earth orbit and largely unresponsive to commands from ground controllers.

Russian officials acknowledge that the narrow ballistic window for the spacecraft to reach Mars has closed, making it another in a series of failures for the country's space research. Since the retirement of the last space shuttle in July, U.S. astronauts heading to the International Space Station need to hitch a ride with the Russians, but officials say Russia's space program is suffering from worn-out equipment, a graying workforce and inability to attract a new generation of young specialists The $167-million probe, launched Nov. 9, was intended as a major step back into exploration of the deeper cosmos by Russia's proud space program. It was to land on the Martian moon Phobos next year, pick up samples of dust and deliver them back to Earth.

After the probe separated from its main booster rocket, however, its engines failed to fire properly to set it on a path toward Mars, and it didn't respond to signals from ground control.

Source: http://www.latimes.com

NASA Launches Super-Size Mars Rover to Red Planet

2011-11-27T20:36:00.001-08:00

The world's biggest extraterrestrial explorer, NASA's Curiosity rover, rocketed toward Mars on Saturday on a search for evidence that the red planet might once have been home to itsy-bitsy life It will take 8 1/2 months for Curiosity to reach Mars following a journey of 354 million miles.

An unmanned Atlas V rocket hoisted the rover, officially known as Mars Science Laboratory, into a cloudy late morning sky. A Mars frenzy gripped the launch site, with more than 13,000 guests jamming the space center for NASA's first launch to Earth's next-door neighbor in four years, and the first send-off of a Martian rover in eight years NASA astrobiologist Pan Conrad, whose carbon compound-seeking instrument is on the rover, had a shirt custom made for the occasion. Her bright blue, short-sleeve blouse was emblazoned with rockets, planets and the words, "Next stop Mars!"

The 1-ton Curiosity -- as large as a car -- is a mobile, nuclear-powered laboratory holding 10 science instruments that will sample Martian soil and rocks, and analyze them right on the spot There's a drill as well as a stone-zapping laser machine It's "really a rover on steroids," said NASA's Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator for science. "It's an order of magnitude more capable than anything we have ever launched to any planet in the solar system." The primary goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to see whether cold, dry, barren Mars might have been hospitable for microbial life once upon a time -- or might even still be conducive to life now.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/

Scientists simulate Moon and Mars exploration

2011-11-24T01:25:00.000-08:00

NASA and a team of international researchers from Mars Institute and SETI Institute returned to the Mojave Desert this month to complete a series of field tests and simulations aimed at investigating how humans will conduct geotechnical surveys on the moon or Mars the Mojave's inhospitable, sun-scorched environment presents scientists with perfect opportunities to study locations that are similar to what explorers would find on the moon or Mars. Other research partners include Carnegie Mellon University and aerospace companies Hamilton Sundstrand, Windsor Locks, Conn., and Honeybee Robotics, Pasadena, Calif.

The Mojave simulations were designed to study how an astronaut crew would characterize the geotechnical properties of a site, such as the composition and density of surface materials, their water content and roughness of the terrain. As part of the characterization of the sites by human explorers, soil samples were collected for microbiological analysis. The soil samples will be examined in the laboratory for their microbial content to better understand the astrobiological potential offered by similar environments on Mars.

“Our overall goal was to learn how to scientifically explore and validate, as civil engineers would, open areas on the moon and Mars that might be candidate sites for an outpost or other elements of surface infrastructure,” explained Pascal Lee, chairman of the Mars Institute and leader of the field campaign.

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NASA prepares for launch to Mars

2011-11-21T00:19:00.000-08:00

NASA officials spent much of the weekend putting the last-minute touches on a rover headed to Mars this week NASA will launch the rover — nicknamed Curiosity — using an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on November twenty six (26), space agency officials said. The launch was originally scheduled to blast off on November 25, however, officials said Sunday that the launch will be delayed in order to replace a suspect battery on the rover’s rocket

“The launch is rescheduled for Saturday, November 26 from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.,” NASA officials said in a statement. “The one hour and 43 minute launch window opens at 10:02 a.m. EST.”NASA has until December 18 to launch the new rover toward Mars and still make the current flight window to the Red Planet. Officials expressed confidence that they will launch the rover within the window of opportunity

The mission to Mars will take over eight months, NASA officials say. The rover is expected to arrive on the planet on August 6, 2012. The rover is reportedly nearly seven foot tall and is twice as big as previous Mars’ rovers. Officials say the rover weighs over a ton, and it is expected to carry more than ten times the amount of scientific equipment sent with the Spirit and Opportunity rovers launched in 2004. The mission cost: $2.5 billion.

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Botched Mars mission shows Russian industry troubles

2011-11-16T21:01:00.000-08:00

Russia's unsuccessful launch of a Mars moon probe points up the problems of a once-pioneering space industry struggling to recover after a generation of brain drain and crimped budgets an unmanned craft, launched last Wednesday in what was meant to be post-Soviet Russia's interplanetary debut, got stuck in Earth's orbit and may drop down into the atmosphere within days.

The failure rattled Russian space officials but came as no surprise to many industry veterans who saw the ambitious mission to bring back dirt from the Martian moon Phobos as a pipe dream "Unfortunately, no miracle occurred," veteran cosmonaut Yuri Baturin quipped to the state-run newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Despite improved budgets and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's pledge to restore pride in the sector, the Russian space industry is saddled the legacy of a lost generation of expertise, in many cases obsolete ground equipment and outdated Soviet-era designs.

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Russians desperately try to save Mars moon probe

2011-11-13T21:54:00.000-08:00

A Russian space probe became stuck in orbit this week after an equipment failure, raising fears it could come crashing down and spill tons of highly toxic fuel on Earth unless engineers can steer it back to its flight path the spacecraft was headed for one of Mars' two moons when it developed technical problems.

U.S. space and Defense Department officials are tracking it. Officials at NASA in Washington figure it will be at least a week, maybe more, before the errant space probe falls to Earth, if it does. The Russians are trying to get it back on course one independent U.S. expert on the Russian space program said the spacecraft could become the most dangerous manmade object ever to hit the planet. But those at the U.S. space agency and other space debris experts are far less worried. They believe the fuel will probably explode harmlessly in Earth's upper atmosphere.

NASA chief debris scientist Nicholas Johnson said the spacecraft's orbit is already starting to degrade slightly "From the orbits we're seeing from the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, it's going to be a couple weeks before it comes in," Johnson said Wednesday afternoon. "It's not going to be that immediate."

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Russia Struggles to Save Mars Moon Probe

2011-11-10T22:18:00.000-08:00

As Russia's space organization struggled Thursday to fix a probe jump for a moon of Mars that instead got stuck in Earth's orbit,some experts said the chances of saving the $170 million craft looked slim roscosmos spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said efforts to communicate with the unmanned Phobos-Grunt spacecraft hadn't brought any results yet the probe will come crashing down in a couple of weeks if engineers fail to fix the problem.

The Phobos-Grunt was launched Wednesday and reached preliminary orbit, but its engines never fired to send it off to the Red Planet. Kuznetsov said controllers on Thursday will continue attempts to fix the probe's engines to steer it to its path to one of Mars' two moons, Phobos roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin, said the system that keeps the spacecraft pointed in the right direction may have failed. Other space experts suggested that the craft's computer failure was a likely cause.

If a software flaw was the problem, scientists can likely fix it by sending new commands. Some experts think, however, that the failure was rooted in hardware and will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fix "I think we have lost the Phobos-Grunt," Vladimir Uvarov, a former top space expert at the Russian Defense Ministry, said in an interview published Thursday in the government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta. "It looks like a serious flaw. The past experience shows that efforts to make the engines work will likely fail."

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Russia back in 'Space Race' with Mars moon lander

2011-11-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

Russia hopes to end a humiliating two-decade absence from deep space with the launch on Wednesday of an ambitious three-year mission to bring back a soil sample from Mars' moon Phobos russian scientists have dreamed of probing the Red Planet's potato-shaped satellite since the 1960s heyday of pioneering Soviet forays into space.

Dust from Phobos, they say, will hold clues to the genesis of the solar system's planets and help clarify Mars' enduring mysteries, including whether it is or ever was suited for life but the USD $163 million Phobos-Grunt mission is haunted by memories of past failures in Moscow's efforts to explore Mars and its moons.

"Mars has always been an inhospitable planet for Russia. The United States has had much more success there," said Maxim Martynov, the project's chief designer at NPO Lavochkin, the major Russian aerospace company that made the Phobos-Grunt Russia kept rocketing cosmonauts into orbit though the purse-pinched 1990s and is now the only country whose craft now carry crews to the international space station.

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NASA prepares for moon tourism

2011-11-06T21:08:00.000-08:00

"Looting, that would be pretty bad," says archaeologist Beth O'Leary of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Looting is the bane of archaeological sites and O'Leary has spearheaded efforts to declare moon landing sites as historic preserves or national parks, seeking to head off similar depredations before before tourists leave Earth for the moon. "I put landing people on the moon up there with creating fire as a technological achievement."

From 1969 to 1972, NASA sent 6 manned space missions to the moon. Each one landed in a different spot, but in each case American astronauts left behind various artifacts. The first, Apollo 11, for instance, left things ranging from a "Camera, Lunar TV" to a "Urine Collection Assembly (Small)".

NASA isn't expecting the sites to generate the kind of traffic we see at national parks on Earth, but the prospect of future tourists could affect plans to inspect the sites and artifacts in the future. So, the space agency released guidelines this summer on protecting lunar landing sites and artifacts. They call for a 1,200 acre "no-fly" zone around the first Apollo 11 landing site, and final Apollo 17 one. Tourists could only walk within 82 yards of the Apollo 11 landing site where Neil Armstrong first took "One small step for man," on July 20, 1969, under the guidelines.

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Asteroid to zoom by Earth

2011-11-03T22:20:00.000-07:00

An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will zoom past Earth on Tuesday just inside the orbit of the moon.

The space rock poses no danger as its nearest approach will be a comfortable 202,000 miles distance. But the event marks the closest flyby of an asteroid this large since 1976, according to NASA.

Asteroid 2005 YU55 has a name only a scientist could love. They’re also loving the chance to stare at the nearly round, slowly spinning chunk of space debris as it flies by at some 30,000 mph.

“It will be scanned and probed and scanned some more,” said Marina Brozovic, an asteroid researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Starting tomorrow, Brozovic will ping the approaching asteroid with radar from giant dishes in Goldstone, Calif. She wants to map every crater and boulder while refining estimates of the asteroid’s path, which swings inside the orbit of Venus and then out near Mars, crossing Earth’s orbit.

Meanwhile, telescopes in Arizona and Hawaii will analyze light reflected from the asteroid to determine more precisely what it’s made of. Already scientists know it’s darker than charcoal because it’s a “C-type” asteroid, heavy with carbon and silicate minerals. Astronomers will also look for signs of water.

Similar asteroids that have plunged to Earth — called carbonaceous chondrites — hold within them amino acids and other building blocks of life.

“These are the objects that probably seeded the early Earth with carbon-based materials and water that allowed life to form,” said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program.

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Apollo astronaut surrenders moon camera

2011-11-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell has decided to give up the camera he kept as a memento of his 1971 moon mission rather than face a federal lawsuit over its ownership.

In a settlement he reached with the U.S. government filed with the District Court in southern Florida on Thursday (Oct. 27), the sixth man to walk on the moon agreed to "relinquish all claims of ownership, legal title, or dominion" over the data acquisition camera that flew with him aboard NASA's Apollo 14 mission.

Mitchell agreed to allow Bonhams, the New York auction house where he had consigned the camera for sale last June, to release the artifact to the government. Bonhams had estimated the camera's value at $60,000 to $80,000.

The 16-mm camera, which was one of two motion picture cameras on board the Apollo 14 lunar module "Antares" when it landed on the moon on Feb. 5, 1971, will be given within 60 days to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC for display.

According to the the terms of the settlement, which still needs to be signed off by a judge, Mitchell and the federal prosecutors will be responsible for their own legal fees. Earlier this month, MItchell lost his bid for the case to be dismissed after a judge ruled that Florida's statute of limitations did not apply and any determination if the government had abandoned or gifted the camera would need to be made in court.

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Asteroid will pass inside the moon’s orbit this week

2011-11-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

According to Scientists, we don’t need to start rolling out the retired space shuttle fleet or suiting Bruce Willis up to save the planet, but an asteroid will pass very close to Earth this week. Close is a relative term when we are talking space, but this giant 1,300 foot wide asteroid will pass between the Earth and the moon. The exact distance the asteroid will streak by the Earth is pegged at 201,700 miles according to NASA.

The details on the asteroid come from NASA’s Don Yeomans, manager of the Near Earth Object Program Office at the JPL in California. The asteroid is called YU55 and Yeomans says it poses no threat to the Earth. Yeomans says that the asteroid will be no threat for at least the next 100 years. NASA has spent the time since the asteroid was discovered refining trajectories to get the best telescope for the job to observe the asteroid.

NASA has used that item wisely and expects to be able to get telescopes on the job and observe the passing asteroid at a resolution of 13 feet. That will provide the sort of surface detail that you would get from a spacecraft fly by. YU55 is classified as a c-type asteroid made of the sort of material left over from the formation of the solar system. Sadly, normal stargazers will not be able to see the asteroid as it streaks by the Earth.

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Russian mission to Mars’s moon to last 3 years

2011-10-31T02:58:00.000-07:00

The space station which Russia intends to send to one of Mars’s moons, Phobos, will work there for a about year. Its main task is to take samples of Phobos’s soil, which will be later examined by Russian scientists.

It is also planned that the station will deliver the Chinese satellite “Inho-1” to Mars’s orbit.

In total, the mission will last 3 years.

These plans have been revealed by the head of the Lavochkin construction office Maxim Martynov.

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NASA considers 'fuel stops' in space

2011-10-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

NASA is looking to accelerate plans to send astronauts to distant destinations by considering a proposal to put filling stations in the sky.

The filling stations - NASA calls them propellant depots - would refuel a spacecraft in orbit before it headed out to the moon, an asteroid or eventually Mars. Currently, all of the fuel needed for a mission is carried up with the rocket. The weight of the fuel limits the size of the spacecraft.

Next month, engineers will meet at NASA headquarters in Washington to discuss how propellant depots could be used to reach farther into space and make possible more ambitious missions using the heavy-lift rocket that NASA is planning to build. The discussions grow out of a six-month NASA study of propellant depots, completed in July.

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NASA sets buffers for Apollo moon landing sites

2011-10-21T21:42:00.001-07:00

NASA has begun drafting guidelines to protect the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 landing sites, listing them as off-limits, and including ground-travel buffers and no-fly zones to avoid spraying rocket exhaust or dust onto aging, but historic, equipment Robert Kelso, NASA’s director of lunar commercial services at Johnson Space Center in Houston, has taken a hard look at future revisits to the Apollo sites and how to protect U.S. government artifacts on the moon.

Kelso has carved out a set of guidelines intended to safeguard the historic and scientific value of more than three dozen "heritage sites" on the lunar surface.

The report, which was released on July 20, is titled "NASA’s Recommendations to Space-Faring Entities: How to Protect and Preserve the Historic and Scientific Value of U.S. Government Lunar Artifacts."
A greater urgency for guidelines has been sparked by the Google Lunar X Prize’s offer of $20 million to any private team that lands a robotic rover on the moon’s surface. An additional $4 million has been offered for any team that snaps pictures of artifacts near or at the Apollo landing sites.

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Gaddafi's Gone -- All Hail the TNC!

2011-10-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

The Libyan people have paid a heavy price to bring about this day of euphoria since their uprising began in mid-February. Tens of thousands of Libyans are dead and wounded, or homeless. Most of Libya's cities abutting the Mediterranean between Tripoli and Benghazi have been destroyed. The country is awash in militias, self-anointed revolutionaries, and a population thirsting for justice and a better life in a free society. All tall orders for Libya's triumphant governing Transitional National Council (TNC).

Libya's celebration will be fleeting unless the TNC can transform this popular anti-Gaddafi force into a "pro-Libya" force which marshals the goodwill of all Libyans to prevent an Egyptian-like post Mubarak slide into dissension and instability. And it will be a major test of endurance for Libyans to find the patience to give the TNC's leaders the time they need to turn from war to find a durable path to peace.

I have carefully followed the deliberations of the TNC, and its leadership has done a commendable job allocating responsibilities and tasks to subcommittees composed of very capable individuals in anticipation of this day. What is set forth below is really less my own list of priorities than a summary of what the TNC's goals and objectives will be in the weeks and months to come.

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Will China take over the moon?

2011-10-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

Is China on course to surpass the United States as the world's space superpower and stake a claim on the moon in the next 15 years? Billionaire space executive Robert Bigelow is deeply worried about that scenario — and he says Americans need a "kick in the ass" to respond to the challenge.

Bigelow delivered that kick today at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, N.M. — but the general consensus among experts on China policy is that it's a bit too early to start rattling the sabers.

The founder of the Budget Suites hotel chain and Bigelow Aerospace promised to "cause a stimulation" with his remarks at the ISPCS conference, and delivered on that promise by laying out an argument for China's growing space dominance. He said the trend could conceivably lead to a lunar takeover in the 2022-2026 time frame.

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Moon Packed with Precious Titanium, NASA Probe Finds

2011-10-18T03:44:00.000-07:00

A new map of the moon has uncovered a trove of areas rich in precious titanium ore, with some lunar rocks harboring 10 times as much of the stuff as rocks here on Earth do.

The map, which combined observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths, revealed the valuable titanium deposits. These findings could shed light on some of the mysteries of the lunar interior, and could also lay the groundwork for future mining on the moon, researchers said.

"Looking up at the moon, its surface appears painted with shades of grey — at least to the human eye," Mark Robinson, of Arizona State University, said in a statement. "The maria appear reddish in some places and blue in others. Although subtle, these color variations tell us important things about the chemistry and evolution of the lunar surface. They indicate the titanium and iron abundance, as well as the maturity of a lunar soil."

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Phobos-Grunt: The Mission Poster

2011-10-16T21:20:00.001-07:00

Russia is marking the upcoming blastoff of their dauntingly complex Phobos-Grunt sample return mission to the Martian moon Phobos with the release of a quite cool looking mission poster – see above. Phobos-Grunt translates as Phobos-Soil and is due to liftoff on or about November 7, 2011 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a Zenit rocket.

The holy grail of Mars exploration has long been a sample return mission. But with severe cutbacks to NASA’s budget that goal is realistically more than a decade away. That’s why Phobos- Grunt is so exciting from a scientific standpoint.

If successful, this audacious probe will retrieve about 200 grams of soil from the diminutive moon Phobos and accomplish the round trip in three years time by August 2014. Scientists speculate that martian dust may coat portions of Phobos and could possibly be mixed in with any returned samples.

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New mystery could rewrite Mars’ history

2011-10-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

A geologist at the University at Buffalo has suggested that one of the supposedly best understood and least interesting landscapes on Mars is hiding something that could rewrite the planet’s history.

Tracy Gregg found that decades of assumptions regarding the wide, flat Hesperia Planum are not holding up very well under renewed scrutiny with higher-resolution, more recent spacecraft data.

New mystery could rewrite Mars’ history
After early Mars scientists decided Hesperia Planum looked like a lava-filled plain, no one really revisited the matter and the place was used to exemplify something rather important: The base of a major transitional period in the geologic time scale of Mars, she stated.

But when Gregg and her student Carolyn Roberts started looking at this classic Martian lava plain with modern data sets, they ran into trouble.

“There’s a volcano in Hesperia Planum that not many people pay attention to because it’s very small,” Gregg said.

“As I started looking closer at the broader region — I can’t find any other volcanic vents, any flows. I just kept looking for evidence of lava flows. It’s kind of frustrating. There is nothing like that in the Hesperia Planum.

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Early Mars likely warm and wet

2011-10-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

Researchers have directly determined the surface temperature of early Mars for the first time, providing evidence that’s consistent with a warmer and wetter Martian past.

By analyzing carbonate minerals in a four-billion-year-old meteorite that originated near the surface of Mars, the scientists determined that the minerals formed at about 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The thing that’s really cool is that 18 degrees is not particularly cold nor particularly hot,” says Woody Fischer, assistant professor of geobiology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and coauthor of the paper, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It’s kind of a remarkable result.”

Knowing the temperature of Mars is crucial to understanding the planet’s history—its past climate and whether it once had liquid water.

The Mars rovers and orbiting spacecraft have found ancient deltas, rivers, lakebeds, and mineral deposits, suggesting that water did indeed flow. Because Mars now has an average temperature of −63 degrees Celsius, the existence of liquid water in the past means that the climate was much warmer then.

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Future of Space Travel Launches at AMNH

2011-10-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

The American Museum of Natural History announces Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration, a new exhibition that offers a vision of the future of space travel as it boldly examines humanity's next steps in our solar system and beyond. The exhibition features a re-creation of a lunar habitat, a model of a space elevator rising up from the surface of the Moon, one of the world's largest color holograms depicting 1,000 exoplanets, and engaging, immersive simulations. The exhibition celebrates the pioneering accomplishments of both manned and unmanned space missions and considers the critical partnership of robotic spacecraft and astronauts as humanity journeys farther beyond Earth.

Although NASA's final Space Shuttle mission ended this summer, numerous exciting missions are underway or being planned. Beyond Planet Earth envisions a future when humans travel out of low-Earth orbit to explore the next frontier-our Solar System and eventually the Milky Way galaxy. Missions described in the exhibition were once limited to the realm of science fiction, but today are discussed by leading scientists and engineers: mining for rare gasses on the Moon, landing on or deflecting a potentially deadly asteroid, traveling to Mars-and perhaps even establishing colonies there. Using a new augmented reality (AR) app created as a companion to the exhibition Beyond Planet Earth, visitors will also be able to find a Mars-bound spaceship, glimpse a near-Earth asteroid, watch a Mars rover, and more. They can download the app before visiting the exhibition, then look for eleven AR icons sprinkled throughout the show. By using the camera on their iPod touch or iPhone they can activate the icon and unlock animations. Then, visitors can share images by email or post to Facebook and Twitter. A link to a special site will let visitors collect other icons, find out the science behind space technologies, and share photos with friends."

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Russian Space objectives

2011-10-11T21:29:00.000-07:00

Russia plans to carry out an unmanned lunar flight before 2050, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Vladimir Popovkin said. Speaking at a State Duma session, he emphasized that further research will be primarily aimed at exploring planets of the Solar System, particularly Mars and the Moon.

Present-day cosmonautics is on the threshold of a new stage in its development - the exploration of the most remote edges of the universe. A landmark move along this track will be made as early as in autumn this year, says Vladimir Popovkin:

"November will see the launch of the Phobos-Grunt interplanetary automatic research station aimed at delivering samples of the Martian natural satellite's soil to Earth. Yes, we will send a 700-ton spaceship for just 50 grams of soil. Do you realize how difficult it will be to send a human to Mars?"

Over the 11 months of its operation, the spacecraft will reach the Martian orbit alongside a Chinese scientific micro-satellite, undock from the interplanetary station and engage in studying the Red Planet's magnetic field. The next few months will witness a distanced examination of Mars and procedures to choose a landing site for Phobos.

The latter will actually have a number of passengers on board - a collection of microorganisms and insect larva that will come back to Earth to help scientists find out more about the Solar System's ongoing processes. For the time being, Roscosmos is engaged in building the most capacious and comfortable manned spacecraft to replace Soyuz ships, Vladimir Popovkin goes on to say:

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Mars Express Finds Supersaturated Water Vapor in Mars' Atmosphere

2011-10-10T22:07:00.000-07:00

Mars Express was able to accomplish what so many other spacecraft have tried and failed by using a SPICAM(2) spectrometer

The search for water on Mars has been ongoing for quite some time now, with Mars rovers like NASA's Spirit and Opportunity being two examples of those who have found clues that point to a once-tropical past on the dusty red planet billions of years ago.

Now, the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has discovered that Mars' atmosphere holds water vapor in a supersaturated state.

Mars Express was able to accomplish what so many other spacecraft have tried and failed by using a SPICAM(2) spectrometer. While other spacecraft have used tools that concentrate only on surface data, which only analyzes the horizontal component of the Martian atmosphere, SPICAM(2) utilizes solar occultation to observe the vertical component of the atmosphere, which is critical for understanding Mars' hydrological cycle. Solar occultation studies light from the Sun in Martian atmosphere during sunrise and sunset.

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NASA ‘Can’ be the Midpoint of Geoengineering

2011-10-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

Geoengineering has been in the news in recent weeks after the announcement of Stratospheric Particle Injection Climate Engineering (SPICE) experiment by UK Scientists; Geoengineering also came to further light after recommendations on Climate Remediation Research by the US Bipartisan Policy Center some days ago.

Geoengineering or climate engineering is an artificial procedure directed to correct excesses responsible for Global Warming within the Earth atmosphere. Geoengineering is common for Climate Change fix but may be applied to other procedures like Ozone Layer Repair and more.

Experiments of Geoengineering are ‘very’ workable but issues with Geoengineering are huge like aftereffects and agreements between Nations. These issues however are small compared to challenges Global Warming hold for planet earth in some years from now.

There are a number of geoengineering procedures proposed, some are in forefront of discussions while others are mere hypothesis. Some of the most talked about include mimicking a super volcano by pumping aerosols into the atmosphere for global cooling; installing giant reflectors in orbit to return incident solar energy; using plants in oceans to capture carbon dioxide and spraying sea water in the atmosphere to form clouds

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Turning point for jobs at NASA

2011-10-06T22:08:00.000-07:00

The Space Shuttle Atlantis successfully completed its last mission on July 21st of this year, officially ending the thirty-year program. With this came a transitional phase at NASA, one that had been predicted for a long time prior. NASA has spent the last generation with its 1970's shuttle technology, to which its veteran scientists and engineers grew accustomed. With the end of the program, it was feared than many technical employees would either retire or leave to work in private industry for higher salaries.

In a recent hearing by the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Chairman Ralph Hall (R-TX) expressed serious concern about NASA's future. "If NASA doesn't move out quickly, more and more of our industrial base, skilled engineers and technicians and hard-won capabilities are at risk of withering away," he announced. In addition, Hall was concerned about the future of aerospace if support for new NASA programs is not strong. "Bright young engineers about to enter our workforce will likely look to disciplines other than aerospace."

According to Roger Launius, Senior Curator at the Smithsonian Air and Space Division of Space History and former Chief Historian at NASA, there are two sides to the issue of losing so many experienced engineers. "We have all of this expertise which is walking out the door," said Dr. Launius in an interview with the News-Letter, adding that "we're going to have to rebuild that." At the same time though, these are the engineers "who kept us in low earth orbit for the last 40 years [we need] new perspectives and new ways of doing things," said Launius.

Since the Apollo 17 mission to the moon in 1972, human space flight has been limited to Low Earth Orbit, a region of space defined as between 80 and 200 km above Earth's surface, in which the International Space Station resides.

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NASA Invites Students To Name Moon-Bound Spacecraft

2011-10-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

NASA has a class assignment for U.S. students: help the agency give the twin spacecraft headed to orbit around the moon new names.

The naming contest is open to students in kindergarten through 12th grade at schools in the United States. Entries must be submitted by teachers using an online entry form. Length of submissions can range from a short paragraph to a 500-word essay. The entry deadline is Nov. 11.

NASA’s solar-powered Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)-A and GRAIL-B spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. on Sept. 10 to begin a three-and-a-half-month journey to the moon. GRAIL will create a gravity map of the moon using two spacecraft that orbit at very precise distances. The mission will enable scientists to learn about the moon’s internal structure and composition, and give scientists a better understanding of its origin. Accurate knowledge of the moon’s gravity also could be used to help choose future landing sites.

“A NASA mission to the moon is one of the reasons why I am a scientist today,” said GRAIL Principal Investigator Maria Zuber from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. “My hope is that GRAIL motivates young people today towards careers in science, math and technology. Getting involved with naming our two GRAIL spacecraft could inspire their interest not only in space exploration but in the sciences, and that’s a good thing.”

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NASA Tests a Versatile Habitat for Long-Term Missions

2011-10-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

Despite recent cuts to its manned space program, NASA continues to research ways that astronauts might live safely in space during prolonged missions. The agency recently completed tests of a prototype astronaut habitation unit in the rugged, barren, almost-Martian landscape of the Arizona desert. The habitat could be tested in space within a decade, and might one day serve as a home away from home for astronauts on the moon or Mars.

The tests, completed last month, included sending in crews for overnight stays, and running simulations of work that would be done in a single day.

The current prototype housing unit has a hard cylindrical shell, contains four rooms, two outside additions for dust mitigation and hygiene, and an inflatable component that adds a second level for sleeping and relaxing.

The inflatable loft design was part of a university competition called XHab. The researchers explain that a final design could be fully inflated, or could have a small hard shell inside an inflated exterior. Hard shells, while heavier to transport, are better at blocking dangerous radiation from space.

Inflatable space habitats have been a popular idea since the 1970s, but the new project is the most advanced to date. Inflatable units are a typical option because they offer a lot of volume for the weight of materials, so the cost of getting the housing to space is lower.

The team also tested a prototype robot that could explore the surface of Mars and be controlled by an astronaut from inside the habitation.

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Help NASA explore Mars with Mapper. Poke around secret lakes and earn achievements

2011-10-03T04:22:00.000-07:00

Hidden Object games suck… right? You’re usually finding things like umbrellas and beach balls. Mapper does not suck. Mapper has you staring at the lakes of British Columbia, looking for things like “dark sediment” and super rare “microbialite.” It’s like Facebook with with less fancy dress and more sci-fi. You could potentially find a sea beast. Or at least end up on a leaderboard.

What’s all this for? NASA are testing strategies to help us explore the moon, mars and asteroids. Do well enough and we’ll be playing Mapper on Mars soon. Potentially.

Mapper is completely free and comes with a set of achievements for you to earn. To play, you just need to sign up at the official site and log in. Then, you can start tagging photos. You don’t get to control where and when the photos are taken, but this is a secret lake we’re talking about, don’t expect too much.

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NASA launches moon research mission

2011-09-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

NASA launched twin satellites on Saturday morning on a mission to unveil the inner secrets of the moon, the US space agency said. After a couple of weather delays, NASA finally launched its moon research mission.

The two probes will study the moon’s internal structure in unprecedented detail, shedding light on whether a second moon crashed into it long ago.

The probes, together called GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), lifted off on Saturday at 0908 EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, New Scientist reported.

GRAIL will study how the moon was formed. It will explore “the structure of the lunar interior, from crust to core… to advance understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon,” NASA said.

The crafts — GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B — will eventually separate from the Delta rocket. GRAIL stands for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory.

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It's time to reconsider the nuclear option for spaceflight

2011-09-28T21:37:00.000-07:00

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — For weeks to come, NASA will be working with the aerospace industry on its plans to develop its new super-sized rocket for missions back to the moon, the nearest Lagrangian point, asteroids, Mars and other ports of call in deep space.

The agency will be working with the latest technology, as well as innovations yet to be invented. Some even dare to whisper rocketry's N-word: nuclear.

But first, it seems logical to assume that NASA will use what it has.

For the initial flight tests, NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket will use two five-segment versions of the space shuttle’s solid-rockets. The solids will be strapped to a tank structure equipped with shuttle-style main engines, forming the basic “core stage.”

The second stage will use the J-2X engine, an updated version of the upper-stage rocket that powered the Saturn 1B and Saturn V rockets in the 1960s and '70s. The system was used for 16 manned space missions, including nine Apollo flights that carried crews to the moon and back.

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Russia restarts Mars projects

2011-09-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

After a many years break, Russia resumes Mars exploration projects.

It is planned that in November, Russia will launch a space station to one of Mars’s two moons, Phobos, to take samples of its soil.

The station will be launched from Baykonur, a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan which is rented by Russia. It is expected to reach Mars’s orbit in 11 months.

For several months, the station will study Mars from its orbit, and “look” for a better way to land on Phobos.

Scientists hope that studying the Mars’s moon’s soil will help them better understand the origins of the Solar System.

The station will be equipped with many brand-new apparatuses – both Russian, foreign and jointly-made. One of them is a facility for exploring the distribution of methane in Mars’s atmosphere, made jointly by Russia and France.

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NASA Wants Internet Access In Space

2011-09-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

NASA hopes to extend the use of the Internet across the solar system as one of a host of key enabling technologies to help achieve future goals for human space exploration.

The space agency recently published the Global Exploration Roadmap, the result of collaboration between multiple space agencies around the globe, to find "feasible and sustainable exploration pathways to the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, and Mars," according to the document.

Now that NASA has ended its space shuttle program, the agency is turning its attention to developing a new space-launch system and crew vehicle that can carry astronauts beyond near-Earth orbit and deeper into space, among other technologies. The rpadmap identifies two mission key goals, Asteroid Next and Moon Next, and outlines some of the technologies that will be needed to facilitate them and other future space missions.

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See Mars near the moon on equinox Friday

2011-09-25T23:22:00.000-07:00

On Friday, Sept. 23, the sun will cross the celestial equator, heading south, in the annual equinox marking the start of the fall season in the Northern Hemisphere and the spring in the south. But this year's equinox brings a special treat: the moon and planet Mars shining together at dawn.

The north's autumnal equinox will occur Friday at 5:05 a.m. EDT (0905 GMT). If you look high toward the east-southeast at sunrise, you’ll see a lovely crescent moon, and hovering above and to its left will be a modestly bright "star" with a yellow-orange tinge. That's no star, but rather the famous Red Planet, Mars.

The sky map of Mars and the moon here shows how they will appear on the Friday's equinox.

These days, Mars is coming up about five hours before sunrise — around 1:50 a.m. local daylight time. It currently resides in the dim constellation of Cancer, the Crab. It's currently 173 million miles from Earth and shines as brightly as a first-magnitude star. (Remember, astronomers measure the brightness of objects as "magnitude." The lower an object's magnitude, the brighter it appears

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'Asteroid Next', 'Moon Next' to dominate future space programs, Mars much later: NASA

2011-09-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

“Asteroid Next” and “Moon Next” will dominate NASA and ISEC group’s future space exploration efforts over the next 25 years while “Mars Next” will also follow soon.

NASA has released the Global Exploration Roadmap (GER) developed by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group with 12 space agencies, including NASA, during the past year to advance coordinated space exploration.

The GER begins with the International Space Station and expands human presence throughout the solar system, leading ultimately to crewed missions to explore the surface of Mars.

The roadmap identifies two potential pathways: “Asteroid Next” and “Moon Next.” Each pathway represents a mission scenario that covers a 25-year period with a logical sequence of robotic and human missions. Both pathways were deemed practical approaches to address common high-level exploration goals developed by the participating agencies, recognizing that individual preferences among them may vary.

The following space agencies participated in developing the GER (in alphabetical order): ASI (Italy), CNES (France), CSA (Canada), DLR (Germany), ESA (European Space Agency), ISRO (India), JAXA (Japan), (KARI (Republic of Korea), NASA (United States of America), NSAU (Ukraine), Roscosmos (Russia), UKSA (United Kingdom).

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Bigger than Saturn, at last

2011-09-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

THE history of manned space flight since the end of America's moon missions in 1973 can be summed up by a single fact: nearly half a century after its maiden flight in 1967, the Saturn V, the immense, building-sized rocket that powered the Apollo programme, remains the most powerful space vehicle ever flown. After 1973 the space-faring nations were content to confine themselves to low earth orbit. With no appetite to return to the moon, let alone venture any farther afield (at least among the politicians who control the purse strings), comparably powerful rockets have simply not been needed.

Over the past few years, though, manned space exploration has come back onto the agenda. China has announced a lunar programme of its own. In 2005 George Bush announced a plan to send Americas back to the moon as well, with a view to building a permanent base there as a precusor to trips further afield. Last year, Barack Obama cancelled that plan, instead instructing America's space agency to send a manned mission to an asteroid as a prelude to a flight to Mars, pencilled in for some time in the 2030s.

Sending astronauts into the solar system would require a beefier rocket than any currently operating. On September 14th NASA unveiled its design for just such a rocket. Dubbed the "Space Launch System" (one might think that NASA's legion of PR people might have come up with a less quotidian name), the $18 billion rocket is a mish-mash of previous designs that will eventually be able to loft 130 tons into low-earth orbit, compared with 119 for the Saturn V.

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Spending Longer Time in Space Could Damage Astronauts' Eye-Sight

2011-09-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

Astronauts in space are exposed to a newly identified medical condition, something that NASA should consider seriously. It is the blurring vision of some of the astronauts who have spent months in space that has made NASA to think about possible impacts it may have on long-term space trips.

According to NASA researchers, if astronauts stay in space for long period of time, the risk of blurred vision increases. Doctors are worried that long space travels, such as a multi-year trip to Mars, may end up blinding the space explorers.

In response to the serious threat, NASA has asked a number of researchers to study the issue and has also sent special eye-glasses to the International Space Station to help those affected, Los Angeles Times reported.

NASA has done a survey on 300 astronauts and found that almost 30 percent of those who have flown two-week shuttle missions, and 60 percent of those who have continued to stay for six months longer in the space station noticed things became blurry either during or after the missions.

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Stargazing: Waning crescent moon passes Mars

2011-09-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

The official end of summer, and the beginning of autumn, will occur on Friday at 5:06 p.m. when the sun passes halfway between its summer high point and winter low point in the sky.

This morning's last quarter moon signals that the current lunar month is also coming to an end. The moon will shrink this week to a left-hand crescent in the eastern morning sky before disappearing into the glare of the sun next Tuesday. As the crescent sinks to the horizon this week, stargazers should look toward the eastern sky one hour before sunrise to see the crescent pass Mars Thursday and Friday mornings.

Mars is currently located in Cancer and rises around 2 a.m. It's headed for an encounter with M44, the Beehive Star Cluster, on Oct.1. The Red Planet will continue to brighten and rise earlier this autumn and winter. It will return to prominence in the evening sky in February and March, shining at it brightest in more than two years.

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Mars micro-rover Kapvik may tether to larger vehicles

2011-09-19T02:00:00.000-07:00

Engineers at Carleton University in Canada have demonstrated a small-scale rover that could be used as a risk-assessment tool in explorations of the surface of Mars and the moon.

The Kapvik micro-rover is inspired by design concepts seen in NASA's Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity rovers. It has six wheels, weighs less than 66 pounds, and could be deployed by larger unmanned rovers to scout out specific areas.

One problem that has dogged Martian rovers is getting stuck in sand or other topographic features. The Kapvik, named for an Inuktitut term for "wolverine," has a tethering system for winching it up hills.

The Canadian Space Agency is coordinating development of the rover, and partners include aerospace company MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates as well as Toronto's Ryerson University, which created a utility arm that will collect surface samples and perform trenching operations.

Sensors planned for Kapvik include ultraviolet-visible spectrum, infrared imaging, and mapping tools to detect water and ice content.

Kapviks could serve as low-cost, adaptive rovers that would be remotely piloted and lower the chances of losing more elaborate, expensive rovers to inhospitable terrain.

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NASA Aims For Moon, Mars and Asteroids

2011-09-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

I hope later on we can all remember this moment as being as full of hope and promise as it seems right now. NASA is introducing, via a press conference, a new space launch vehicle aimed at taking astronauts to the moon, asteroids, and Mars. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison called the rocket “a new beginning.” There’s an aim to get people to Mars by 2030.

You can view a press release, complete with artists’ concepts and videos, for the new vehicle here, and watch the press conference here. And here is a more detailed story on the technology behind it.

This new rocket is in many ways a repudiation of much that the space shuttle stood for. Astronauts will ride in a capsule at the top of the rocket, as they did in the famous Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. This should make them safer than shuttle astronauts who were strapped to the side of the launch vehicle, the Senators said. It will have a massive ability to launch as much as 110 tons into space, four times what the shuttle could manage.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had with one of biotech’s ranking futurists, Martine Rothblatt, more than a year ago. Rothblatt is currently chief executive of biotech United Therapeutics, which she founded, but before that she was one of the central figures in creating Sirius Satellite Radio. At the beginning of an interview for a profile I was writing about her biotech company, we spent some time talking about her first passion, which was space.

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Students Building Rocket for Moon Vehicle

2011-09-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

Purdue University students are designing and building a rocket engine that might be used in a vehicle to land on the moon.

Graduate students Thomas Feldman and Andrew Rettenmaier are part of a team developing a rocket motor through the NASA-funded Project Morpheus, which includes research to develop new technologies for future trips to the moon, Mars or asteroids.

Two other groups from Armadillo Aerospace in Texas and NASA's Johnson Space Center also are in the process of designing an engine under the same requirements. The most promising design will be chosen for the vehicle.

The rocket must meet stringent design and performance specifications related to factors including efficiency, size and weight limits, thrusting power, and the ability to dynamically throttle the rocket from 1,300-4,200 pounds of thrust, Feldman said.

"This thrusting range is needed because initially, when the lander is fully fueled, it will weigh significantly more than at the end of the mission when most of the propellant will be gone," he said.

The rocket, which will use liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants, will be designed, built and tested using specialized facilities at Purdue's Maurice J. Zucrow Laboratories, including a new facility to liquefy the methane propellant.

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NASA Launches Mission To Study Moon From Crust To Core

2011-09-12T21:45:00.000-07:00

NASA’s twin lunar Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:08 a.m. EDT Saturday to study the moon in unprecedented detail.

GRAIL-A is scheduled to reach the moon on New Year’s Eve 2011, while GRAIL-B will arrive New Year’s Day 2012. The two solar-powered spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits around the moon to measure its gravity field. GRAIL will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

“If there was ever any doubt that Florida’s Space Coast would continue to be open for business, that thought was drowned out by the roar of today’s GRAIL launch,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “GRAIL and many other exciting upcoming missions make clear that NASA is taking its next big leap into deep space exploration, and the space industry continues to provide the jobs and workers needed to support this critical effort.”

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Nuclear power plants for settlements on the Moon and Mars

2011-09-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

The first nuclear power plant being considered for production of electricity for manned or unmanned bases on the Moon, Mars and other planets “may really look like it came from outer space.”

On earth, nuclear reactors are under attack because of concerns over damage caused by natural disasters. In space, however, nuclear technology may get a new lease on life.

Plans for the first nuclear power plant for the production of electricity for manned or unmanned bases on the Moon, Mars and other planets were unveiled today at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

James E. Werner, the project leader at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), said that innovative fission technology for surface power applications is far different from the familiar terrestrial nuclear power stations, which sprawl over huge tracts of land and have cooling towers and other large structures.

A fission reactor itself is about 1.5 feet wide by 2.5 feet high, roughly the size of a carry-on suitcase, according to Werner. And there are no cooling towers.

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Don't doubt the man on the moon

2011-09-08T21:47:00.000-07:00

NASA has released stunning new photos of the old Apollo landing sites — so naturally the conspiracy freaks are firing rockets.

“Fakes,” they cry across the Internet. “Photoshop fakes!”

Those space cadets still believe Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and all the other Apollo boys landed not on the moon, but on a Hollywood soundstage.

You’d think the new pics would bring the kooks down to earth.

The images were taken by a NASA orbiter from about 20 klicks up and show astronauts’ footprints and equipment they left behind four decades ago, including the cute little lunar rover.

The scorch marks of the Apollo 12 descent are tack sharp. Or they’re a cigarette burn on the image.

(Settle down, hoax fans. I’m joshin’.)

At the Apollo 14 site, you can see where Alan Shepard hit a golf ball. Six-iron, judging by the divot.

(Just kidding. But I think you can see George W. Bush in the deep rough.)

At Apollo 17 are man’s (mankind’s?) last bootprints on the moon. The rover is nearby.

A pile of parking tickets is clearly visible on the window.

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NASA Readies Twin Lunar Spacecraft

2011-09-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

ANASA-backed team of scientists and engineers is set to map the Moon’s gravity—and internal structure—with a pair of spacecraft working on the same principle as the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission orbiting Earth.

Like Grace, the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (Grail) mission will track minute changes in the distance between two satellites in the same orbit caused by changes in the density of the terrain below. To hold down costs, it is drawing on heritage from Grace and other missions developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Lockheed Martin.

Beyond the rich scientific results expected from Grail, use of that heritage hardware holds an important lesson as NASA slashes its contractor workforce with the retirement of the space shuttle fleet. Heritage hardware is a good way to stretch space-exploration dollars, Grail managers have found, but it is not a substitute for experienced technical experts in making the hardware work.

While the Grail satellites are physically very similar to the Experimental Satellite System-11 (XSS-11) microsat that Lockheed Martin built for the Air Force Research Laboratory to launch in 2005, the differences were enough that in some cases it was a challenge to fit the new mission into the heritage hardware. That is where the experienced workforce came in handy to make the new mission fit into the old hardware designs.

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NASA's return to the moon

2011-09-06T22:43:00.000-07:00

When NASA and 14 space agencies formed the "Global Exploration Strategy and Lunar Architecture," returning to the Moon became a reality. Using important data from the Mars expeditions, future colonization is now more than a possibility.

A planned milestone in NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration was to colonize mysterious Mars, the unfathomable red planet. However, common sense is now saying to return to the Moon first...at least, according to NASA and 1,000 scientists, space advocates, engineers, commercial entrepreneurs and the public.

Over the past year, NASA sent out two questionnaires regarding a return to the Moon. One was entitled “Why should we return to the moon?” and the second was “What do we hope to accomplish through lunar exploration?” NASA reports that the questionnaire responses have led to the development of Global Exploration Strategy and Lunar Architecture---with NASA and 14 global space agencies participating in its venture.

According to NASA’s Science News, plans were made six years ago for a return to the Moon even as Mars was being actively studied. However, both planets have much in common:

• The Moon has no atmosphere – the atmosphere of Mars is relatively thin.
• Mars has only one-third of the Earth’s gravity while the Moon has one-sixth of the Earth’s gravity.
• Both the Moon and Mars are cold: the Moon can be -240 degrees in the shadows while Mars varies from -20 degrees to -100 degrees.
• Both the Moon and Mars are covered with loose “regolith” dust that covers solid rock, with both worlds having layers of regolith 10+ meters deep.

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NASA To Launch Twin GRAIL Spacecraft to Measure Moon’s Gravity

2011-09-05T21:40:00.000-07:00

The moon has fascinated mankind for centuries and has been studied by humans for hundreds of years, but Earth's natural satellite is still shrouded in many mysteries.

To shed some more light on the moon and its history, NASA is set to launch twin spacecraft to map the moon's gravity in exceptional detail.

By creating the most precise lunar gravity map ever, scientists hope to understand better how the moon formed, its evolutionary history and what's beneath the lunar surface all the way from crust to core. The orbiting probes also will help pinpoint the best landing sites for future explorers, whether human or mechanical, reports Associated Press.

The twin GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) probes are set to depart from Space Launch Complex 17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Thursday aboard an unmanned Delta II Heavy rocket built by United Launch Alliance.

Armstrong Urges Return to the Moon, then Mars

2011-09-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

He has previously criticized US President Barack Obama for being "poorly advised" on space matters and said it was "well known to all that the American space program is in some chaos at the present time, some disarray".

"There are multiple opinions on which goals should be the most important and the most pressing," he told a function in Sydney late Wednesday.

The US shuttle program came to an end last month with Atlantis cruising home for a final time, 42 years after Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission.

Critics have assailed NASA for lacking focus, with no next-generation human space flight mission to replace the shuttle program.

Now 81, Armstrong said the agency had become a "shuttlecock" for the "war of words" between the executive, legislative and congressional arms of US government.

"It's my belief given time and careful thought and reasoning we will eventually reach the right goal, I just hope we do it fairly quickly," he said.

The normally private and reserved space veteran said Mars should be the next frontier for exploration but urged more missions to the moon as the vital next step.

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When the moon goes splat

2011-08-10T21:17:00.000-07:00

IF YOU ARE A space fan, the last week or so has offered plenty to keep your brain cells tingling, including meteor showers and possible liquid on Mars. But did you hear the one about the moon going splat? Earth may have once had two moons which collided and merged, resulting in the farside highlands of the single moon that orbits our planet now.

That’s a scenario outlined in a letter to the journal Nature, which describes how simulations of that slow collision result in the smaller moon forming an “accretionary pile” rather than a crater.

And if moon-splatting theories weren’t enough to be getting on with, how about liquid water on Mars? Analysis of images from the surface of the red planet taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter describes intriguing features: dark streaks or tendrils that appear on some steep slopes in warmer periods and fade in winter.

There is already evidence of water on Mars in the form of ice, but this finding hints at a more fluid variety: “Liquid brines near the surface might explain this activity, but the exact mechanism and source of water are not understood,” write the study authors in Science.

Meanwhile, also on Mars, the rover Opportunity has been inching towards the Endeavour crater and has beamed back images from close to the rim.

At around 14 miles (22 km) in diameter, Endeavour is no meagre pothole, and is more than 25 times wider than Victoria crater, an earlier stop that Opportunity examined for two years. Closer to home, keep your eyes peeled at night for the annual Perseid meteor shower, which should peak this week.

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Eight years and 34 million miles on, Mars rover nears end of road

2011-08-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

It travelled at an average speed of 60cm an hour and it has arrived a year late. But the Mars rover Opportunity is finally approaching its destination, the rim of the vast Endeavour crater.

Nasa hailed the six-wheel Opportunity's approach to the 22.5km-wide crater last night as a "tremendous scientific success".

The ageing robotic field geologist has logged more than 32km since it was first parachuted on to the planet's surface in 2003, along with its twin rover Spirit, for a planned three-month mission after their 34 million-mile journey from Earth. Spirit emitted its last signal a year ago after becoming trapped in sand. Opportunity crawled out from a crater in 2008 and headed south to the Endeavour, a two-year journey in theory, which has taken longer because Opportunity had to drive backwards to prevent its front wheel from wearing out.

At the crater, Opportunity will travel south across the rim to perform a geological assessment of the location, examining the clay minerals formed under wet conditions at the oldest of the four craters it has visited.

The finishing point was nicknamed Spirit Point in honour of Opportunity's fallen twin. Scott Maxwell, leader of the Mars Rover driving team, tweeted: "The drive we uplink today will actually take us physically on to Cape York. So. *Freaking*. Excited."

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Forget Two Moons, Earth Would not Have Needed a Moon at all

2011-08-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

A recent study suggested that Earth might have lost one of its two moons following a collision between the two. But a new study concludes that Earth's orbit would have been stable even without a moon.

Moon stabilizes the tilt of Earth that in turn ensures stable climatic conditions for the evolution of complex life. However, according to the latest study, "the influence of other planets in the solar system could have kept a moonless Earth stable."

"The stabilizing effect that our large moon has on Earth's rotation may not be as crucial for life as previously believed," lead researcher Jason Barnes of the University of Idaho said in his report published in Astrobiology magazine.

Barnes and his collaborators concluded that the pull of other planets in the solar system orbiting the Sun would keep Earth’s rotation on its axis steady. They insist that Jupiter, being the most massive planet of the solar system, would restore stability of a moonless Earth.

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ISRO mulls delaying moon mission, may opt for foreign tie-up

2011-08-05T05:13:00.000-07:00

The Indian space programme appears to have shifted to the 'go slow' mode as far as its plan to send a manned mission to space is concerned. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had earlier fixed an unofficial target of 2016 for the first human space flight from the Indian soil.

Now, ISRO chairman Dr K. Radhakrishnan says the agency is open to different options, including foreign tie-ups, for India's manned mission.

One of the key requirements for such a mission is a launch vehicle with high reliability - one with a risk factor as less as one in 100. The crew escape factor should be even better and the tolerable risk factor must be one in 1000. An upgraded version of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle - GSLV Mark II - could take a two-member crew to space.

But the two failures of GSLV last year have come as a blow to the Indian space agency. "GSLV will now have to first go on unmanned missions," Radhakrishnan said. Other technologies, too, need to be perfected.

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Plans to build budget trip to Mars

2011-08-03T05:39:00.000-07:00

NASA is working with private industry to go well beyond simply supplying ferry flights to the International Space Station, but to Mars on the cheap.

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is preparing to launch its second test Dragon capsule on 30 November with the intention of docking it at the space station.

In addition to carrying cargo to and from the station, SpaceX plans to upgrade the Dragon to fly people into space and to one day land it on Mars.

"We figured out that for a pretty low cost, a Dragon capsule on a Falcon Heavy (rocket) could go to Mars for hundreds of millions of dollars, not billions," says Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center, speaking at the NewSpace 2011 commercial space conference last weekend.

The mission, informally known as Red Dragon, would follow NASA's upcoming US$2.5 billion (AU$2.3 billion) Mars Science Laboratory, which is due to launch in November and arrive on Mars next August. Its goal is to determine if the red planet is, or ever was, suitable for microbial life.

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Driving on the moon: the 40-year legacy of NASA's first lunar car

2011-08-02T01:53:00.000-07:00

When NASA's Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin touched down on the moon 40 years ago, they had an extra special tool packed away on their lunar lander: a dune buggy-size rover that enabled them to become the first humans to drive on the surface of a world beyond Earth.
Rover technology has made great strides since Scott and Irwin landed on the moon on July 30, 1971, but the lessons learned from NASA's first Lunar Roving Vehicles (LRVs) are still applicable today. While technology has evolved since the Apollo era, NASA's first rovers are influencing manned and robotic vehicles for exploration on Mars and beyond.

The "LRV on Apollo fulfilled a very important need, which was to be able to cover large traverses, carry more samples, and get more scientific exploration done," Mike Neufeld, a curator in the space history division at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. told SPACE.com. "It was a really important part of why Apollo 15, 16 and 17 were so much more scientifically advanced and productive."

Apollo 15 was the fourth mission to land men on the moon, and it was the first of three missions to use the LRVs. The rover had a mass of about 460 pounds (208 kilograms) and was designed to fold up so it could fit inside a compartment of the Lunar Module.

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Meteor showers to streak under a dark moon

2011-07-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

Each summer skywatchers all over the world look forward to observing the annual mid-August performance of the Perseid meteors, but often overlook some of the lesser showers that peak in the days leading up to the main event.

This year, sadly, the full moon will seriously hamper the 2011 Perseid meteor shower. But this week, the moon is a thin waning crescent and will arrive at new phase on Saturday, leaving the sky dark and moonless from dusk to dawn.

This makes it a great opportunity to enjoy two displays of "shooting stars" that will be active and near their peak this weekend, which can provide some entertaining viewing: the Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids.

How to watch
The actual number of meteors an observer can see in an hour depends strongly on sky conditions. The rates that we quote here are based on your having a really good, dark sky, having some experience in meteor observing and the assumption that you have the radiant of that particular shower directly overhead.

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NASA's future: Let's go to Mars, an asteroid

2011-07-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

With the end of the space shuttle program, NASA shifts its sights onto new projects.

Since the 1958 Space Act, NASA has held a strong foothold in space discovery and science. With the conclusion of the space-shuttle program, NASA is reevaluating its goals and looking for ways to continue to expand space travel.

"Human space flight has a bright future, Lori Garver, NASA Deputy Administator, said. "The space shuttle was a great program, and we are so pleased that that program is now leading to the next great adventures in space."

NASA's immediate goals are to make successful trips to an asteroid and then to the planet Mars. NASA hopes that using the technology developed under the Shuttle program for these next missions will be big money savers.

"We are looking at being able to go to space for a lot less money using advanced technology and using the aerospace industry," Garver said.

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NASA - How A Girdle Made The Moon Landing Possible

2011-07-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

With the end of the space shuttle, we may also be seeing an end to manned space travel as a science endeavor. I am not saying we shouldn't send people into space, we certainly should, but it should be just that - a bold voyage into the unknown and not rationalized with science, where it is not a very good one. Robots are cheaper and better and the Congressional hearings are less messy if a robot dies.

President Obama likely agrees about robots, since he canceled the manned successor to the space shuttle, the Constellation project and there is no valid replacement in sight.

With the space shuttle over, people have given it a lot more honest reassessment that they did in the past - before a week ago, virtually no one in science media would do anything except be a cheerleader for the thing. But the space shuttle also did something positive - it showed us newer is not always better. Some old NASA stuff is still pretty cool.

When talking about the Mercury program, for example, and comparing the NASA of that time to that of today, I noted that we can still fire up an Apollo RS-18 engine from 39 years ago and it works just fine, so it shouldn't take 16 years to go back to the Moon when it only took 9 years the first time. We've lost our way because space started being about science and not about boldly going where no man has gone before.

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Rare Volcanoes Discovered On Far Side of the Moon

2011-07-25T21:00:00.000-07:00

Shielded from Earth-bound eyes, the far side of the moon is home to a rare set of dormant volcanoes that changed the face of the lunar surface, a new study finds.

Data and photos from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) reveal the presence of now-dead silicate volcanoes, not the more common basaltic volcanoes that litter the moon's surface, researchers said.

"Most of the volcanic activity on the moon was basaltic," primary author Brad Jolliff of Washington University told SPACE.com in an email. "Finding other volcanic types is interesting as it shows the geologic complexity and range of processes that operate on the moon, and how the moon's volcanism changed with time."

Because the moon's rotation has been affected by tidal forces between the Earth and the moon, only one side of the moon is visible from the Earth. The far side of the moon — sometimes referred to inaccurately as the "dark side" — was hidden from view until 1959, when Soviet Union's Luna 3 spacecraft took the first photos of the region.

When NASA's Lunar Prospector probe circled the moon in 1998, it revealed a highly reflective plain lying between two ancient impact craters. Known as the Compton-Belkovich region, this part of the moon contains thorium and other silicate rocks, suggesting a more involved type of volcanic activity than that which created the moon's well-known dark plains of basaltic plains known as "maria," or "seas."

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Next Mars Rover Targets Gale Crater

2011-07-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

When NASA's Vikings reached Mars 35 years ago, scientists and engineers had only vague ideas about where the mission's twin life-seeking landers should set down on the surface. Remarkable in hindsight, members of the site-selection team gave themselves only two weeks to find the best landing spot for Viking 1 — and ultimately had to scrap their provisional Plans A and B (too many big rocks!) and delay the first landing by two more weeks as they scrambled to find a suitable Plan C.

There'll be no such hurry-up offense for the space agency's next Red Planet adventure. When the Mars Science Laboratory (a.k.a. "Curiosity") departs Earth on or about November 25th, the mission's 263 scientists will know with certainty that it's headed for 4.4868ºS and 137.4239ºE — a target on the broad floor of Gale crater.

NASA managers announced the choice of Gale over three other final candidates during an hour-long press briefing on Friday.

Whereas the Viking team had only relatively crude orbital imagery, some water-vapor measurements, and a few ground-based radar scans to work with, MSL's site selection involved deliberations over five years by 150 scientists, who hashed over 60 possible sites using 16 sets of detailed measurements and met in five dedicated workshops. The final four candidates, which underwent intense scrutiny after being picked in 2008, were:

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No hoax: Moon landing stands as NASA's finest hour

2011-07-22T21:35:00.000-07:00

As Atlantis rolled to a stop on its Florida landing strip, ending the space shuttle fleet’s 30-year run, the atmosphere around NASA is filled with uncertainty.
Image: "Moon Shot"
Open Road Integrated Media
"Moon Shot" recounts the story of the early space effort. NBC News correspondent Jay Barbree has updated the book, written with astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton as co-authors, for the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. and Soviet spaceflights.

It's not like it was 42 years and a day ago, at the time of America’s highest space triumph. That’s when Neil Armstrong took humankind’s first steps on the moon. The only thing for sure following Atlantis’ farewell flight is that most members of its launch team will be out of a job.

Critics say NASA is in shambles. They say foot-dragging and indecision by the Obama administration has left America with no defined mission in space. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, a veteran astronaut himself, strongly disagrees. "I’m not about to let human spaceflight go away on my watch," he says.

Despite the dithering, private companies could have Americans flying in their commercial spacecraft by 2015, and Bolden says test flights aimed at sending astronauts to deep space on NASA spaceships could begin in 2016 or 2017.

Back in 1969, the scene at America’s spaceport was clearly different: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s walk on the moon represented the height of prestige for America’s space program. The country was first. Americans were beating the Russians. A decade-long race to put a human on another world had ended.

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Where Will the Next Mars Rover Land? NASA to Announce Crater Choice Friday

2011-07-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

NASA is set to announce the landing site for its next Mars rover Friday (July 22), and one thing's for certain: It will be a crater.

Earlier this month, the space agency revealed that its $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission will drop the car-size Curiosity rover down at either Gale Crater or Eberswalde Crater. Both Martian sites appear to preserve a record of ancient water activity. That's crucial, because Curiosity's main task is to assess whether Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life.

So which crater has NASA picked? The space agency hasn't tipped its hand, saying publicly that both craters have a lot to offer and that choosing between them is tough.

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NASA's Opportunity Tops 20 Miles of Mars Driving

2011-07-21T02:34:00.000-07:00

More than seven years into what was planned as a three-month mission on Mars, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has driven more than 20 miles, which is more than 50 times the mission's original distance goal.

A drive of 407 feet (124 meters) completed on July 17 took Opportunity past the 20-mile mark (32.2 kilometers). It brought the rover to within a few drives of reaching the rim of Endeavour crater, the rover's team's long-term destination since mid-2008. Endeavour is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter, and its western rim exposes outcrops that record information older than any Opportunity has examined so far. The rover is now about eight-tenths of a mile (about 1.3 kilometers) from the site chosen for arriving at the rim.

"The numbers aren't really as important as the fact that driving so much farther than expected during this mission has put a series of exciting destinations within Opportunity's reach," said Alfonso Herrera, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. who has worked on the rover missions since before launch in 2003.

The latest drive included an autonomous hazard detection portion during which the rover paused at intervals to check for obstacles before proceeding.

Herrera said, "Autonomous hazard detection has added a significant portion of the driving distance over the past few months. It lets us squeeze 10 to 15 percent more distance into each drive."

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42 years ago, man landed on the moon

2011-07-19T21:15:00.000-07:00

"Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." – Inscription on plaque left on the moon by Apollo 11 astronauts

(RNN) - It is perhaps the crowning achievement in human history.

And it was a dream came true 42 years ago this week when Earth was joined by its only natural satellite in playing host to humans.

Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon July 20, 1969, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy's goal to surpass the Soviet Union in the space race. The United States sent five additional manned missions to the moon, and remains the only country to do so.

Describing the surface as "fine and powdery," Armstrong uttered one of the most famous lines ever spoken to mark the monumental event, and put the achievement into perspective.

"That's one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind."

For 2 1/2 hours, Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin explored the lunar surface, collected rock samples, photographed the surface of the moon, the Earth and each other, and placed an American flag to stake claim to being the first country to visit another celestial body.

"We wanted to do well," Armstrong said in a rare interview with CBS' 60 Minutes in 2005. "But more than that, you as a person hope you don't make any mistakes."

Armstrong said in the interview that the famous statement after stepping on the moon was meant to honor the countless number of individuals whose work helped make the lunar landing, and the entire space program, possible.

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Mars rover's destination decided

2011-07-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

After years of deliberation, NASA says it will announce the destination for its next Mars rover on Friday at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

Earlier this month, the choice was whittled down to two: NASA said the Curiosity rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, would be launched either to Eberswalde Crater or Gale Crater. Today's announcement signals that a decision has been made.

Curiosity is already at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, undergoing final preparations for launch as early as Nov. 25, the day after Thanksgiving. The car-sized rover is scheduled to arrive at Mars in August 2012 to begin a primary scientific mission scheduled to last at least one Martian year, or roughly two Earth years.

Among the questions the $2.5 billion mission could answer: Were there areas on the Red Planet that could have been favorable for supporting microbial life? Could "molecular fossils" preserve the evidence of such life? Past missions have turned up evidence that ancient Mars was warmer and wetter than it is today, but how long did those life-friendly conditions last?

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Vesta Astroid : US Spacecraft Orbits Vesta Astroid

2011-07-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

NASA’s Spacecraft Dawn has officially entered the orbit of one of Vesta.

“Today, we celebrate an incredible exploration milestone as a spacecraft enters orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt for the first time,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said on NASA.gov.

Dawn became the first probe ever to enter the orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to NASA.

Vesta is one of the largest asteroids in the solar system and Dawn will orbit it and rely information back to scientists. Observations will provide data to help scientists understand the solar system better.

“Dawn’s study of the asteroid Vesta marks a major scientific accomplishment and also points the way to the future destinations where people will travel in the coming years,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said on NASA.gov.

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Stealing moon rocks from NASA

2011-07-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

RETURNING from vacation in the summer of 2002, NASA geochemist Dr Everett Gibson learned that a 275-kilogram safe had vanished from his lab. Situated in one of the most secure buildings on the planet, the lab was an implausible target for even the world's greatest crime syndicates - despite the fact that the Apollo lunar samples were stored there and the street price of moon rocks was estimated at about $5 million per gram.

The theft of the safe, which contained 101.5 grams of material, including samples from every lunar landing, was in fact stranger and more pedestrian than anyone could have imagined. Late one night, three NASA interns wheeled the safe into a borrowed Jeep, planning to hawk the material to a Belgian buyer they had found online. Within days they were caught, turned in by the Belgian and arrested in an FBI sting.

After serving a six-year prison sentence, Thad Roberts - the "mastermind" of this unmasterly crime - called Ben Mezrich, bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires, seeking to reveal his side of the story. Trumped up by Mezrich as "one of the biggest heists in US history", Sex on the Moon is the entertaining yet unsatisfying result of that collaboration.

Mezrich relates Roberts's life as a thriller. Cast out by his Mormon family for premarital sex, Roberts finds direction by resolving to become an astronaut. He studies hard and lands a coveted internship at NASA's Johnson Space Center, where he impresses fellow interns with pranks such as sneaking into the space shuttle simulator. In his third semester, he falls in love with a new intern. "I want to give you the moon," he tells her.

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SpaceX chief sets his sights on Mars

2011-07-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

Don't expect to hear any nostalgia about the soon-to-end space shuttle era from Elon Musk, the millionaire founder of Space Exploration Technologies. Musk isn't prone to look to the past, but rather to the future — to a "new era of spaceflight" that eventually leads to Mars.

SpaceX may be on the Red Planet sooner than you think: When I talked with him in advance of the shuttle Atlantis' last liftoff, the 40-year-old engineer-entrepreneur told me the company's Dragon capsule could take on a robotic mission to Mars as early as 2016. And he's already said it'd be theoretically possible to send humans to Mars in the next 10 to 20 years — bettering NASA's target timeframe of the mid-2030s.

You can't always take Musk's timelines at face value. This is rocket science, after all, and Musk himself acknowledges that his company's projects don't always finish on time. But if he commits himself to a task, he tends to see it through. "It may take more time than I expected, but I'll always come through," he told me a year ago.

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Iapetus gets dusted

2011-07-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

Imagine a powdered sugar doughnut hole plowing through a cloud of dark-chocolate dust. The resulting two-colored treat would resemble one of Saturn’s weirder moons, Iapetus — an icy world with a coal-black face and a bright white backside.

For centuries astronomers have puzzled over the source of this yin-yang color pattern. Now a team led by graduate student Daniel Tamayo of Cornell offers an explanation: Dust flung from another one of Saturn’s moons is coating one side of Iapetus. Because Iapetus doesn’t rotate, the same face continually catches the dark moon flakes.

“Iapetus is probably one of the most striking bodies in the solar system, and one of the longest-standing problems in planetary science,” Tamayo says. In a study posted online July 7 in Icarus, Tamayo mathematically describes the movement of dust particles in the outer Saturnian system. He focuses on dust coming from Phoebe, a dark and distant, irregularly shaped moon that circles Saturn in the opposite direction as Iapetus. Phoebe’s retrograde motion puts it at odds with a number of other far-flung moons.

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China want to explore the Moon, Venus and Mars

2011-07-12T03:33:00.000-07:00

In light of last week's final NASA space shuttle launch, Beijing is stepping up to the plate with aspirations of exploring the Moon, Venus and Mars.

China plans to send a rover to the moon by 2013 and an astronaut by 2020. As the U.S. slows its space initiatives, many are worried that the Chinese may become the leader in space exploration, knocking the U.S. from its long-held top spot.

"Space leadership is highly symbolic of national capabilities and international influence, and a decline in space leadership will be seen as symbolic of a relative decline in U.S. power and influence," said Scott Pace, an associate NASA administrator in the George W. Bush administration and proponent for sending American astronauts back to the moon.

Some American officials are worried Beijing may try to militarize space because the space initiatives are run by the army. Just four years ago, the Chinese fired a missile at a dead satellite in space, something which sent up a red flag for many officials.

Refuting the idea that the Chinese hope to militarize space, Li Longchen, former editor of Space Probe Magazine said, "Space technology can be applied for both civilian and military use, but China doesn't stress the military purpose. It has been always hard for humankind to march into space and China must learn the lessons from the U.S."

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Mars, Asteroids, The Moon on NASA's To-Do List

2011-07-10T23:19:00.000-07:00

Space shuttles will soon be a thing of the past, museum relics put on display around the country. But, NASA will remain, and they're determined to take the next steps in space exploration - without the shuttle taking them there.

Surrounded by the blackness of deep space, 117 million miles from Earth, is the asteroid "Vesta". In the not too distant future, U.S. astronauts could be looking out their window and preparing to set foot on an asteroid.

Astronaut Mike Gernhardt and his team are working on the kinds of equipment and techniques they'll need for human exploration of an asteroid as early as the year 2025 - before missions to either the Moon or Mars.

"What we're doing is building a simulated asteroid underwater." said Gernhardt. Not at some high tech lab, but right on the water in Key Largo, Florida. At the undersea habitat called "Aquarius", the group has created an asteroid proving ground in the near weightless environment of water. "We work there, we live there.....We can put anchors......We built a rock wall like a climbing wall. But we can climb up that wall in zero gravity."

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Saturn: Bring an Umbrella

2011-07-08T21:30:00.000-07:00

The disturbances on Saturn shown here depict the largest, most intense storm observed on Saturn by NASA’s Voyager or Cassini spacecraft. The storm, currently active, encircles the giant planet, encompassing an area eight times the surface area of earth. Inside the planet’s atmosphere, lightning is generated in the water clouds where rain and hail make electricity, creating significant radio noise. Scientists are mystified as to why Saturn stores energy for decades and releases it all at once. This behavior is unlike that at Jupiter and Earth, which have numerous storms going on at all times. Carolyn Porco, the Cassini Imaging Team Leader, writes in her Captain’s Log on July 6th, 2011:

“One might think that after years in orbit around Saturn, we are now accustomed to great big happenings and fantastic spectacles. But far from it. It is the shock of the unexpected, the intense mind-grabbing, eye-popping, soul-stirring thrill of seeing the unseen that gets us every time. That is what this glorious, history-making exploration of Saturn and its magnificent realm is all about.”

This picture, captured on Feb. 25, 2011, was taken about three months after the storm began. By this time the clouds had already formed a tail that wrapped around the planet. This tail, which show as blue-tinged clouds south and west (left) of the storm head, can be seen encountering the storm head in this view. To see ravishing close-up images of the storm, click here.

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Mars, Asteroids, The Moon on NASA's To-Do List

2011-07-06T22:29:00.000-07:00

NASA Introduces Mars Rover "Curiosity," Debates Its Martian Landing Site

2011-07-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

Curiosity is expected to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on November 25, 2011, and will land on Mars in August 2012. The decision regarding its landing site is expected to be made this month

After recently retiring Mars rover Spirit, NASA is introducing a new Mars probe called Curiosity. While the rover is expected to launch later this year, one critical question remains unanswered: where will it land?

NASA rover Curiosity is a $2.5 billion, nuclear-powered machine that is the size of a Mini Cooper, and is four times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity. Curiosity contains a laser that can vaporize rocks at seven meters, a percussive drill, a large robot arm and a weather station. In addition, it has 4.8kg of plutonium-238.

Curiosity's main mission on Mars is to find organic compounds as a "telltale sign" that life have existed on Mars. The problem is that scientist's must decide on a landing area that will most likely contain such evidence.

So far, scientist's have narrowed the choices down to four options: Eberswalde Crater, Mawrth Vallis, Gale Crater and Holden Crater

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Alabama Space Camp shifts its focus to the moon, Mars and asteroids

2011-07-05T01:05:00.000-07:00

NASA may be shutting down its space shuttle program, but that won’t stop a group of young astronauts from heading to the moon this summer, and Mars the next.

In simulation, at least.
For 29 years, Space Camp and its attendees have followed in NASA’s footsteps. This summer, the camp is taking the next giant leap for mankind largely on its own. The U.S. government may not want to fund space travel right now, but many children and adults have the money to pretend.

Space Camp was started in 1982, just a year after the first space shuttle launch, and is run by the nonprofit U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., which is funded by the state of Alabama and serves as the official visitor center for NASA’s nearby Marshall Space Flight Center.

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NASA Targets Manned Mission To Mars

2011-07-04T02:43:00.000-07:00

The end of the space shuttle program does not mean the end of NASA, or even of NASA sending humans into space. NASA has a robust program of exploration, technology development and scientific research that will last for years to come. Here is what’s next for NASA:

Exploration

NASA is designing and building the capabilities to send humans to explore the solar system, working toward a goal of landing humans on Mars. We will build the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, based on the design for the Orion capsule, with a capacity to take four astronauts on 21-day missions.

NASA says it will soon announce the design for the heavy-lift Space Launch System that will carry them out of low Earth orbit. It is developing the technologies it will need for human exploration of the solar system, including solar electric propulsion, refueling depots in orbit, radiation protection and high-reliability life support systems.

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Is Settling Mars Inevitable, Or An Impossibility?

2011-07-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're not going to the planet Mars anytime soon. President Obama suggested something like the mid-2030s as a target date, but for various reasons - the dangers of space travel, the price tag, more pressing problems on this planet - that trip to the Red Planet has been put on indefinite hold.

My next guest says that's a mistake. We can and should be able to make the trip by 2020, and he says that technology - technologically speaking, we're already closer to being able to send astronauts to Mars than we were to sending men to the moon back in 1961, when President Kennedy made his pronouncement.

But what about all the obstacles: radiation, length of the trip, the lack of gravity during the voyage and all the potential hazards to the astronauts? Robert Zubrin has solutions to every one of these problems, and he's not just thinking about exploratory scientific field trips, he envisions human colonies growing crops in Martian soil, making energy from the atmosphere, even evolving new cultures and dialects.

So what do you think? Would you volunteer as a colonist from Mars? Or are you happy to let NASA's Rovers, the robots, explore the Red Planet? Give us a call. Our number is 1-800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. You can tweet us @scifri, @-S-C-I-F-R-I. Or you can go to our Facebook page or our website. Our home page is sciencefriday.com.

Robert Zubrin is the author of "The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must." He's also president of the Mars Society based in Golden, Colorado. He joins us from the studios of Colorado Public Radio. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Zubrin.

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For Visits to Asteroid & Mars, NASA Needs New Ways to Do Everything

2011-07-01T04:33:00.000-07:00

With NASA at a crossroads as the space shuttles retire, the space agency is facing the steep challenge of developing a slew of new technologies for a new phase in exploration: trips to an asteroid and Mars.

For 30 years, NASA astronauts have worked in low-Earth orbit, flying on the space shuttlesand building the International Space Station. Now that the station is complete and the shuttle program is winding down, the United States is focusing on sending astronauts farther out in the solar system than ever before.

NASA's next big goals for human spaceflight, as articulated by President Barack Obama, are visiting an asteroid by the year 2025 and landing on Marsin the 2030s.

"We're not going to get to an asteroid in 2025 without some of the key building blocks that NASA wants to start on today," NASA's chief technologist Bobby Braun told reporters during a June 27 teleconference.

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The Case For Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must

2011-06-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

Fifteen years ago, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin published The Case for Mars, and issued a clarion call to his fellow scientists, and the people of Earth. We need to plan our Mars colony, and we need to do it now.

Today Zubrin has released an updated and revised version of his classic book, outlining the most realistic way to get ourselves to Mars and start setting up a human society there. Smart, idealistic, and pragmatic, this book is more important than ever. And we've got an excerpt from it.

A lot has happened in the 15 years since The Case for Mars was first published. A string of robotic mission were launched to the Red Planet, including Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor in late 1996, Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999, Mars Odyssey in 2001, Spirit, Opportunity, and Mars Express in 2003, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005, and Phoenix in 2007. With the exception of the 1999 flights, all of these missions have been brilliantly successful. As a result, our knowledge of the planet has greatly increased.

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Small asteroid swings harmlessly past Earth

2011-06-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

An asteroid the size of a tour bus streaked harmlessly past Earth on Monday, passing within 7,600 miles (12,230 kilometers).

Discovered only last week, the relatively small space rock made a hairpin turn around the planet at about 10 a.m. PDT (1800 GMT), sailing high over the southern Atlantic Ocean.

In truth, there was never any doubt it would miss. But given the vastness of the universe, 7,600 miles (12,230 kilometers) is practically a stone’s throw away, at about three times the distance between New York and Los Angeles.

The asteroid, dubbed 2011 MD, was initially mistaken by astronomers for a piece of space junk because it was so small, at up to 60 feet (18 meters) wide. Later observations confirmed it was an asteroid that had no chance of hitting Earth.

Asteroids of this size typically brush by Earth every six years. In fact, earlier this year, a smaller one came even closer to our planet, passing within 3,500 miles (5,630 kilometers).

Even if the latest one had aimed straight for us, it would have burned up in the atmosphere and not caused any damage on the ground.

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Missing Apollo 11 moon dust is returned to NASA

2011-06-26T22:30:00.000-07:00

The few specks of dust stuck to a small swatch weren't much to look at, but federal prosecutors said Thursday they came from the moon via Apollo 11 and have been sent back to NASA, where they belong.

U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan in St. Louis said the dust is believed to be at least part of what was smuggled out of Johnson Space Center by a NASA worker years ago. It was discovered in St. Louis last month, just before it was to be auctioned.

It is illegal for individuals to own moon material, but Callahan's office said the auction consignor was a woman who didn't know how the dust had come to her late husband. She was not charged.

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Scientists: Saturn moon could support life

2011-06-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

Where there's salt, there's water and rock, it seems. And where there's water and rock, there could be life.

NASA's Saturn-exploring Cassini spacecraft has gathered new evidence that conditions on Enceladus, one of Saturn's 53 named moons, could support life, said Dr. Carolyn Porco, director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

"On Enceladus we have conditions under the surface that we know could be enjoyed by organisms similar to types of organisms we find right here on Earth," she said Friday.

Several years ago, Cassini, launched in 1997, spotted jet sprays shooting out of fissures called tiger stripes in Enceladus' southern polar region. Lighter particles from those jets provide most of the material for Saturn's outermost ring, called the E ring. But heavier particles fall back to the moon's surface, Porco explained. Cassini took measurements of the spray during three passes and found a greater concentration of sodium and potassium grains (that is, salt) nearer Enceladus' surface than farther out, according to a paper published in this week's edition of the journal Nature.

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NASA Moves Closer to Manned Missions to Mars

2011-06-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

NASA has moved one step closer to sending astronauts into deep space with the announced development of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV).

The MPCV replaces the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, commissioned under President Bush and nixed under President Obama due to budgetary constraints. Funds used in the development of the Orion ship had exceeded five billion dollars at the time of the project’s cancellation.

President Obama has instead set goals of a manned mission to a near-earth asteroid in the next twenty years, and a possible manned mission to Mars in the next thirty. NASA hopes the MPCV will help meet these goals. Unlike the Orion, which had been developed with the moon as its only destination, the MPCV will be used as the primary vehicle in the manned exploration of entirely new frontiers, such as asteroids or the Martian moons.

The development of the MPCV was brought about by the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, which shifted NASA’s focus away from the moon and towards a “permanent human presence beyond low Earth orbit.” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke on the Authorization Act and development of the MPCV in a statement released Tuesday.

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Saturn's 'ice queen' captured

2011-06-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

NASA's Cassini orbiter has captured another close-up view of the Saturnian moon Helene, clearing the way for a global map of the 20-mile-wide "ice queen."

The spacecraft got its latest look at the icy moon on Saturday from a distance of 4,330 miles (6,968 kilometers), more than a year after its closest-ever Helene flyby in March 2010. This time, the pictures provided sunlit views of the moon's Saturn-facing side, improving on last year's imagery. Taken together, these pictures will enable astronomers to finish a global map that could shed additional light on the grooved, pockmarked moon's impact history, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in today's image advisory.

Helene sticks out among Saturn's more than 60 moons for a couple of reasons: First of all, it is gravitationally bound in the same orbit as another, much larger icy moon called Dione. This makes it one of four "Trojan moons" in the Saturnian system, along with Polydeuces (which is also bound to Dione) and Telesto and Calypso (both bound to Tethys).

Helene's surface also reveals a network of gully-like features that may have been created by landslides (or, in this case, dustslides or iceslides). Working up a detailed map of the moon should help astronomers get a better grip on the gullies' genesis.

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An Austrian Scientists Use LASER & iPhone To Detect Microbes On Mars Space Suit

2011-06-20T01:30:00.000-07:00

Finding out life on other planets has always been a human endeavor. Many missions have been planned and sent to outer space in search of some alien life. However the possibility that microorganisms clinging to the space suit of astronauts who are out on the mission to find aliens cannot be neglected. It may lead to confusion whether the organisms are from earth or other planets. Well it may be a tricky aspect but it has been solved by scientists for astronauts going to mars.
he program of developing foolproof techniques for detection of microbes on space suit is a part of Austrian Space Forum’s PolAres mission. Austrian scientists are taking use of the laser-induced-fluorescence emission (L.I.F.E) technique which was also earlier used in detection of microbes in Antarctica. The technique may sound difficult one but it is actually simple. It requires only a LASER pointer and an iPhone. The LASER pointer is directed towards the space suit and if it contains any microbe, it emits a fluorescent glow. The glow is then processed with digital photography and laptops. If the microbe is any known one, it takes only a few seconds. The scientists want to be sure for the samples being brought from Mars to be genuine. The technique is designed for both forward and reverse contamination. While returning to earth, there may be contamination from microbes, if present on mars.

The development of new techniques is not only limited to detection alone. Austrian scientists are also developing techniques to shake away the organisms. The team of scientists led by Gernot Groemer, president of the Austrian Space Forum has designed an electromagnetic method for the same. For that all the astronauts have to do is that to attach the space suit to high voltage electric charge which would make the dust particle and micro organisms to levitate away from the space suit. The dust particles can then be blown away with the help of a stream of air. Earlier, vibration techniques were used for the purpose; however they are not as effective as this one. As per the simulations conducted by scientists, it is found that around 60 to 405 bacteria can cling within minutes of cleaning the suit.

The techniques developed are expected to be the part of The ExoMars rover to be launched in 2018. The current research and studies are conducted in the desert of San Rafael, Utah. The technology developed would increase the credibility of samples from mars. It will be a step ahead in human search for Alien life.

Mars moon spotted eclipsing Jupiter

2011-06-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

A European satellite circling Mars has captured an interesting astronomical intersection -- the tiny moon, Phobos, passing in front of Jupiter.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite positioned itself in orbit to capture the alignment of the 11.4-mile-wide moon passing in front of Jupiter, as seen from Mars.

By knowing the exact moment when Jupiter passed behind Phobos, the observation will help to verify and even improve our knowledge of the orbital position of the martian moon, says the ESA statement released Friday.

The spacecraft was 7,077 miles from the moon when it snapped the passage and 328 million miles from Jupiter.

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Mars exhibit opens with NASA scientist’s talk

2011-06-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what it would be like to walk on Mars?

Beginning today, Helena residents have the opportunity to experience the sensation of just one-third of the Earth’s gravity at a new ExplorationWorks exhibit, and it kicks off with a presentation by NASA scientist Dr. Darlene Lim.

Her presentation, “A Deep Dive Toward the Moon and Mars: How underwater science is informing exploration concepts of the future,” is said to appeal to anybody who is curious, because curiosity drives science.

Lim is a research scientist with interests that span both the Earth and outer space sciences. She is the principal investigator of the Pavilion Lake Research Project at a remote lake in British Columbia. The project brings together scientists, engineers, astronauts and artists to conduct science and exploration in an underwater setting. The team’s exploration research is focused on developing operational strategies and technologies to prepare humans for exploration of the solar system.

Lim says the presentation is a human story of exploration.

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Lunar Eclipse Images from Around the World; June 15, 2011

2011-06-15T20:56:00.000-07:00

It was an event that hasn’t happened in 11 years and won’t happen again until 2018. The total lunar eclipse of June 15, 2011 didn’t disappoint. Take a look at some of the amazing images taken by astrophotographers from around the world — well, the “eastern” side of the world anyway, as the eclipse wasn’t visible in North America. Our lead image is a fantastic mosaic taken by Marko Posavec in Koprivnica, Croatia. We have another image by Posavic below, but you can see more of his images via his Twitter account.

A the redness of the Moon during the eclipse was perhaps enhanced by the major volcanic eruption in Chile which has polluted the stratosphere with a haze, making the eclipse appear dark red. This image was taken by Leonard Mercer in Malta. You can see more of his images at his website.

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The giant bubbles at the solar system's edge

2011-06-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

A pair of NASA spacecraft on a decades-long journey in deep space have found a "big surprise": Giant magnetic bubbles churning near the outer edges of our solar system. (See an image below.) Here, a guide to the findings:

What exactly has NASA found?
Unexpected magnetic bubbles, "shaped like sausages, more than 100 million miles across," says William Harwood at CNET. Scientists had believed the structure of the magnetic field at the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space "was relatively smooth." But the data NASA has gotten from its two Voyager spacecraft suggest otherwise. "It's very bubbly as far as we can tell," says Jim Drake, a University of Maryland physicist, as quoted by National Geographic. "This entire thing is like the most bubbly part of your Jacuzzi."

Why are these bubbles there?

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The irreplaceable Space Shuttle

2011-06-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

On June 1 the shuttle Endeavour glided to its final landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If all goes according to NASA’s current plans, the final shuttle mission, the flight of Atlantis on STS-135, will launch on July 8.

When Atlantis lands, it will mark the end of the operational life of a remarkable spacecraft. It will also mark the end of all American manned spaceflight, at least for the next few years. Leaving aside the bitter arguments over future NASA policy, it is worthwhile to look back to see why the shuttle was developed and what lessons we can draw from the program.

Many in the space industry consider the Space Shuttle to have been a major failure. Many experts see the whole program as a waste of time, money, and worst of all, of fourteen precious lives in two major accidents in 1986 and 2003. The shuttle certainly never lived up to the 1970s-era hype that promised that it would become the DC-3 of space. In the 1930s, the DC-3 made commercial airline travel safe and economically viable. The shuttle was supposed to do the same for spaceflight. It would fly as often as once a week and radically reduce the cost of getting into orbit. By this standard it failed miserably.

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NASA Robot Moon Lander Test Sparks Grass Fire

2011-06-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

NASA engineers are forging ahead with a project to test a futuristic moon lander, despite a grass fire that broke out during a Wednesday (June 1) test.

The fire started around 2:30 p.m. local time (1530 GMT), during a tethered test of the Morpheus robot lander at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Morpheus project is designed to test an amalgam of cutting-edge technologies NASA is developing to take humans to the moon, Mars or beyond.

When the lander lifted off its concrete launch pad, it kicked up some of the concrete, which set off the fire in the dry field around it.

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Is there life on Mars?

2011-06-11T03:31:00.000-07:00

Forty years ago, space engineers launched a probe that would play a pivotal role in changing our understanding of our place in the cosmos. On May 30, 1971, Mariner 9 was dispatched to Mars on an Atlas Centaur rocket and in November that year slipped into orbit around the Red Planet.

In doing so, the American robot spaceship became the first man made object to be placed in orbit around another planet. Humans had added an artificial satellite to another world.

A few days later, two other spacecraft, Mars 2 and Mars 3, both built by the Soviet Union, followed suit and achieved Martian orbit. In three weeks, the Red Planet had become a scientific hotspot.

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Is NASA's $2.5 billion Mars rover doomed?

2011-06-09T21:12:00.000-07:00

NASA's next Mars rover, a nuclear-powered marvel nicknamed Curiosity, is supposed to blast off for the Red Planet later this year. But an audit issued this week by the space agency's inspector general finds a host of unresolved issues that could put the mission in jeopardy. Here, a brief guide to the mess:

What makes this rover so special?
It's "the most ambitious Mars project NASA has ever mounted," says Michelle Norris at NPR. Officially, the rover is called Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), but it's more commonly known as Curiosity

A nuclear-powered, car-sized vehicle, Curiosity is "the product of almost 10 years of work by 1,000 people," says Eryn Brown in the Los Angeles Times. Weighing four times as much as previous models (Spirit and Opportunity), it can drive long distances over rough terrain, and uses an unprecedented array of instruments to hunt for Martian life, says Lisa Grossman at Wired.

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Mars Science Lab Needs $44 Million More For It to Launch This Year, NASA Says

2011-06-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

NASA’s newest Mars rover faces further hurdles and could require another $44 million in funds before it is ready for launch this fall, according to an agency audit announced today.

The Mars Science Laboratory is supposed to launch in a window between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the alignment between Earth and Mars is the most favorable for an interplanetary trip. But as it stands now, the MSL team won’t finish all their work before launch unless they get more money, according to an internal audit prepared by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin.

“The project may have insufficient funds to complete all currently identified tasks prior to launch and may therefore be forced to reduce capabilities, delay the launch for 2 years, or cancel the mission,” he wrote.

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