Tragedy won't crush space tourism, supporters say

The second crash this week of a space craft is a setback for the fledgling field of space tourism, aerospace experts say. But it's unlikely to stop an industry that has attracted a trio of ambitious, daring billionaires like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk from trying to open a pathway for ordinary citizens to travel into space.

VirginGalactic's SpaceShipTwo, which was designed to ultimately carry paying passengers into suborbital space, crashed Friday in the Mojave Desert during a test flight. The accident occurred three days after an Orbital Sciences rocket headed to the International Space Station exploded within seconds of liftoff in Virginia.

Pedro Llanos, who teaches about the commercialization of space at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Daytona Beach campus, said that space travel has suffered similar, sometimes deadly setbacks, in other stages of its evolution.

"It happened ... in the space era with the Apollo. It happened with the shuttle,'' he said. "The reason it happened in the past is because we were testing new technologies. It's happening now because we are pushing technology's boundaries, to move space exploration forward.''

Such exploration is critical, Llanos said, whether it's to create the possibility of mining asteroids for resources that are scarce on earth, or perfecting technology that will one day allow a person in California to travel to Australia within a couple of hours. "It will help us,'' he says. "It will help society.''

Now XCOR Aerospace, which has been developing its own suborbital vehicle, may get its paying passengers into space first, says John Spencer, founder and president of the West Los Angeles-based Space Tourism Society.

"It may be now that XCOR is first to go into a commercial setting because it will take a while for Virgin Galactic to catch up,'' he says.

"Virgin Galactic will eventually recover ... because of the extensive experience Branson and the Virgin brand has with one of the world's most successful airlines. Being first is cool but that doesn't really matter when you're creating a long-term vision for an expanding industry,'' Spencer said.

Among the hundreds who have paid tens of thousands of dollars for a ticket on one of Virgin Galactic's flights are actors Ashton Kutcher, Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie. Spencer said those who want to go to space aren't easily dissuaded.

"One of the inherently unique aspects of space is it is dangerous but people are willing to risk their lives for that experience,'' Spencer said. "Just like climbing Mount Everest or sky diving.''

Source : USA TODAY

Virgin Galactic space rocket crash: Richard Branson’s dream of space tourism suffers setback after Mojave crash kills test pilot

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo went down Friday afternoon, killing at least one while highlighting safety concerns that Richard Branson said could kill the space tourism industry.

Investors see private space travel as the market of the future. According to the Space Angels Network, an organization created to connect investors with entrepreneurs in the private space travel business, in 2012 the global space economy was valued at over $300 billion. The network says it is expected to grow to $600 billion by 2030.

On Tuesday, an unmanned rocket manufactured by Orbital Sciences, a Virginia company NASA has contracted to resupply the space station, exploded during its launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. This engine used in the flight, the Antares 130, is powered by old Soviet engines.

For years, Richard Branson, who owns a part of Virgin Galactic, has touted the bright future of space tourism. In February, he said that he and his children would be on the first space tourism flight.

Everybody who signs up knows this is the birth of a new space program and understands the risks that go with that," Branson said in an interview for Weekend magazine. "But every person wants to go on the first flight."

He even alluded to the fact that accidents could kill the industry. Right now, tickets to space cost a minimum $250,000 each.

“Space is hard, and today was a tough day,” said George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, at a press conference. “We believe we owe to the folks who were flying these vehicles to understand this and to move forward, which is what we’ll do.”

Source : The Independent

Jupiter's ‘one-eyed giant Cyclops’ captured by Hubble

A stunning event captured by NASA’s Hubble Telescope shows a big black eye staring back from Jupiter's Great Red Spot storm. In reality, it is shadow play on a planetary scale.

The image was captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope as it tracked changes in Jupiter’s immense Great Red Spot storm – a storm that has been raging for over 300 years. The black eye is caused by the shadow of the Jovian moon, Ganymede, sweeping across the center of the storm.

“For a moment, Jupiter stared back at Hubble like a one-eyed giant Cyclops,” a NASA spokesman told the Daily Express.

The Great Red Spot, the largest known vortex in the Solar System at 10,000 miles wide, is a persistent anti-cyclonic storm just south of Jupiter's equator. It has been raging for between 300 and 400 years, blowing winds at 345 miles an hour – speeds that are beyond comparison with even an Earthly Category 5 hurricane, which can only maximize up to 200 miles.

Astronomers are only beginning to fully understand the complexity of Jupiter, a gas giant which has a mass 317 times bigger than Earth. The planet has 62 moons – including four large ones called the Galilean moons, first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede is the largest of these moons.

Isro to Test Crew Module in December for India's First Human Space Flight

India will launch an unmanned crew module in December onboard a heavy rocket to test its re-entry into the atmosphere for the country's maiden human space flight, the space agency chief said Thursday.
"We will send an unmanned crew module on the experimental GSLV-Mark III rocket in December and test its re-entry into the earth's atmosphere for a human space flight plan in future," Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters in Bangalore on the margins of an engineers conclave.

Weighing 3.6 tonnes, the crew module will be put into orbit 100-120km up in a satellite and brought back to Earth for checking its re-entry characteristics when carrying two Indian astronauts in the proposed human space flight.

"Though the actual human space flight will be in an orbit around earth at a height of 270km for a week, the experimental flight with the crew module in a spacecraft will go up to 100-120km above earth to test its heat shield survive very high temperatures (about 1,500 degrees Celsius) during the re-entry into the atmosphere," Radhakrishnan noted.

The crew module will have a parachute that will open up after re-entry into the atmosphere and fall into sea for retrieval.

"The parachute will open up for soft landing of the spacecraft carrying the crew module in the Bay of Bengal, about 450 km away from Andamans (islands), and will be retrieved by a boat," Radhakrishnan said.

The previous UPA government had sanctioned Rs. 145 crores to Isro for developing a crew module that will fly two Indian astronauts into space, space suits, life support systems and related technologies for the human space flight programme.

The heavy rocket (GSLV) will, however, have a passive cryogenic stage - liquid nitrogen at super cooled temperature and gaseous nitrogen instead of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

The space agency is integrating the rocket with the crew module at its Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh, about 90 km northeast of Chennai.

Source : NDTV

NASA catches the sun celebrating Halloween

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured quite a photo of the sun on October 8.

In the photo, hotspots of magnetic fields on the sun form what can appear to look like eyes, a nose and a grin reminiscent of a Jack-O-Lantern.

The image is a composite of two photos taken in ultraviolet light. The magnetic activity in the corona, or sun's atmosphere, is what creates the pattern.

The SDO, launch in 2010, monitors the sun's activity to provide accurate space weather forecasts, including to provide warning when solar flares may threaten the Earth.

China's Main Competitor in Space Exploration is India, Not Russia

China's principal competitor in space exploration is India, not Russia, researcher at the Russian Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies Vasily Kashin told RIA Novosti on Friday.

"China and India are two new space powers. They have vast resources and consider their space programs from the national prestige perspective ," the expert said.

He added that China and India are following Russian and US footsteps in space exploration.

"China's more developed space-rocket industry and immense resources have let it take the lead in the two countries' space race," Kashin argued.

Despite being behind China in space exploration, India has a significant advantage, according to the researcher.

"China is still under rigid restrictions on any form of cooperation with the United States, including on the purchase of components...The Chinese are forced to do many things on their own and they sometimes cannot produce components of a required level. The Indians have less resources, but they are in good relations with everyone. India can cooperate with both Russia and the West, adopting their best technologies," Kashin concluded.

Earlier on Friday, China launched an experimental spacecraft to the moon orbit, which is to return to Earth in eight days. The spacecraft is to test out re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere for the planned 2017 Chang'e-5 lunar mission.

Czech Republic prepares own space program

The Czech Republic will have its own space program, according to the National Space Plan for 2014-2019 that the government approved at the beginning of the week, the daily Hospodárske noviny (HN) writes today.
The plan recommends that the National Space Agency, "a considerably smaller variant of NASA," be established to integrate the currently fragmented competences in this field, HN says.
So far the Czech Republic has participated in the European Space Agency (ESA) programs, the second most significant player in space exploration after NASA, which they joined in 2008. Czechs annually give some 14 million euros to the ESA.
The national space exploration program should have an annual budget of three to five million euros and last for five years at least.
It should complement the research carried out within the ESA. Consequently, the National Space Agency could fund the projects that cannot be paid by the ESA, HN says.
Jan Kolář, head of the Czech Space Office NGO, welcomes the idea of the national space program.
"However, it should focus on the preparation of research and development activities in technical sciences," such as the development of materials and various types of detectors and the aerodynamics area, Kolář said.
HN writes that one of the rare successes that Czech science and industry has recently scored in this filed is a micro-accelerometer used in the SWARM satellites that were sent into space last November. The device, developed by 15 Czech firms, measures slight and slow accelerations that influence the satellite's movement, which removes possible distortions in the magnetic field measurements, HN notes.
However, the successful Czech micro-accelerometer was rather an exceptional case, Kolář told HN.
He said Czech participation in the ESA is limited by finances on the one hand, and by skills on the other hand. "In addition, our participation in each program is confronted with other European countries," he added.
Under the approved national space plan, the Czech Republic's contribution to the ESA's optional programs must be doubled at least, HN writes.
The transitory six-year period, in which the Czech Republic as a new ESA member could use a special incentive program, ends this year. Almost a half of the Czech obligatory payments to the agency went to it.
After the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania entered the ESA, while Estonia and Hungary plan to do so, and now they can use the advantages of newcomers, HN adds.
Source : prague post

Finnish researchers discover new type of black hole

Researchers at the University of Turku, in cooperation with international colleagues, have identified a new type of low-mass black hole. The type now discovered is a bright celestial object that emits x-rays.


NOTE : It is not possible to directly observe a black hole, but it is possible to detect events in its vicinity. An artist's concept of x-ray emissions from a black hole, published by NASA, August 2014

This new type of black hole has less mass than other known types and is associated with x-ray emitting quasars.

Up until now, it has been assumed that the collapse of a massive star generally forms a massive black hole or a small neutron star. The mass gap between neutron stars and stellar mass black holes is a question that has been a matter of inquiry for numerous research teams.

The object now discovered and designed SWIFT J1753.5-0127 has a mass somewhere between that of a conventionally-recognized black hole and a neutron star. Previously, observed neutron stars have been found to have less than two solar masses, while black holes have over five.

Observations related to this new type of low-mass black hole were published in a paper by a group of reseachers at the University of Turku, the Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, and the INAF-IASF Milan branch, and published by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Source : yle

Evidence Builds for Dark Matter Explosions at the Milky Way’s Core

This Fermi map of the Milky Way center shows an overabundance of gamma-rays (red indicates the greatest number) that cannot be explained by conventional sources.

So far, dark matter has evaded scientists’ best attempts to find it. Astronomers know the invisible stuff dominates our universe and tugs gravitationally on regular matter, but they do not know what it is made of. Since 2009, however, suspicious gamma--ray light radiating from the Milky Way’s core—where dark matter is thought to be especially dense—has intrigued researchers. Some wonder if the rays might have been emitted in explosions caused by colliding particles of dark matter. Now a new gamma-ray signal, in combination with those already detected, offers further evidence that this might be the case.

One possible explanation for dark matter is that it is made of theorized “weakly interacting massive particles,” or WIMPs. Every WIMP is thought to be both matter and antimatter, so when two of them meet they should annihilate on contact, as matter and antimatter do. These blasts would create gamma-ray light, which is what astronomers see in abundance at the center of our galaxy in data from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. The explosions could also create cosmic-ray particles—high-energy electrons and positrons (the antimatter counterparts of electrons)—which would then speed out from the heart of the Milky Way and sometimes collide with particles of starlight, giving them a boost of energy that would bump them up into the gamma-ray range. For the first time scientists have now detected light that matches predictions for this second process, called inverse Compton scattering, which should produce gamma rays that are more spread out over space and come in a different range of energies than those released directly by dark matter annihilation.

“It looks pretty clear from their work that an additional inverse Compton component of gamma rays is present,” says Dan Hooper, an astrophysicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who was not involved in the study, but who originally pointed out that a dark matter signal might be present in the Fermi telescope data. “Such a component could come from the same dark matter that makes the primary gamma-ray signal we've been talking about all of these years.” University of California, Irvine scientists Anna Kwa and Kevork Abazajian presented the new study October 23 at the Fifth International Fermi Symposium in Nagoya, Japan and submitted their paper to Physical Review Letters.

None of the intriguing gamma-ray light is a smoking gun for dark matter. Other astrophysical processes, such as spinning stars called pulsars, can create both types of signal. “You can make models that replicate all this with astrophysics,” Abazajian says. “But the case for dark matter is the easiest, and there’s more and more evidence that keeps piling up.”

The official Fermi telescope team has long been cautious about drawing conclusions on dark matter from their data. But at last week’s symposium, the group presented its own analysis of the unexplained gamma-ray light and concluded that although multiple hypotheses fit the data, dark matter fits best. “That’s huge news because it’s the first time they’ve acknowledged that,” Abazajian says. Simona Murgia, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Irvine and a member of the Fermi collaboration’s galactic-center analysis team, presented the team’s findings. She says the complexity of the galactic center makes it difficult to know for sure how the excess of gamma rays arose and whether or not the light could come from mundane “background” sources. “It is a very interesting claim,” she says of Abazajian’s analysis. “However, detection of extended excesses in this region of the sky is complicated by our incomplete understanding of the background.”

The dark matter interpretation would look more likely if astronomers could find similar evidence of WIMP annihilation in other galaxies, such as the two dozen or so dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I think a convincing claim of discovery would probably require a corresponding signal in another location—or by a non-astrophysical experiment—as well as the galactic center,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology astrophysicist Tracy Slatyer, who has also studied the Fermi data from the Milky Way’s center.

Non-astrophysical experiments include the handful of so-called direct-detection experiments on Earth, which aim to catch WIMPs on the extremely rare occasions when they bump into atoms of normal matter. So far, however, none of these has found any evidence for dark matter. Instead they have steadily whittled away at the tally of possible types of WIMPs that could exist.

Other orbiting experiments, such as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the International Space Station, which detects cosmic rays, have also failed to find convincing proof of dark matter. In fact, the AMS results seem to conflict with the most basic explanations linking dark matter to the Fermi observations. “Most people would agree that there is something rather unexpected happening at the galactic center, and it would be tremendously exciting if it turns out to be a dark matter annihilation signal,” says Christoph Weniger of the University of Amsterdam, another astrophysicist who has studied the Milky Way’s core. “But we have to confirm this interpretation by finding corroborating evidence in other independent observations first. Much more work needs to be done.”

Source : scientificamerican

JAXA shows off second-generation asteroid explorer 'Hayabusa 2'

Japan's space agency showed off a space probe to be launched next month that it hopes will answer questions about how life seeded Earth.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) intends to land Hayabusa 2 on an asteroid orbiting between Earth and Mars. It is set to be launched by an H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center here on Nov. 30.

Its predecessor, launched in 2003, returned to Earth after a seven-year mission, during which it landed on an asteroid and collected sample material, an unprecedented achievement.

JAXA showed off the near complete body of its second-generation asteroid explorer to reporters on Oct. 27.

Hayabusa 2 will embark on a six-year journey to collect samples from an asteroid called 1999 JU3. Scientists expect the mission to shed light on the origins of the solar system and life on Earth.

The spherical asteroid is about 900 meters diameter and is thought to contain organic compounds and water, the key to life. It was first observed in 1999.

Hayabusa 2 arrived at Tanegashima island, south of Kagoshima, on Sept. 22. The capsule, impactor and other parts were then assembled.

A JAXA official said Hayabusa 2 will be attached to the rocket after fueling operations are complete and the exterior of the explorer has been inspected for flaws.

Hayabusa 2 is slated to reach the asteroid between June and July in 2018, and spend 18 months on the celestial body before returning to Earth between November and December in 2020.

The explorer will release the impactor to smash a crater and collect mineral samples that have not been exposed to and affected by the heat of the sun.

Russian Cargo Ship Lifts Off For Space Station

An unmanned Russian cargo ship successfully lifted off for the International Space Station (ISS) on October 29.

The Progress 57 craft was launched atop a Soyuz rocket at 8:09 a.m. Prague time from the Russian-leased Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan.

"Everything looks good on the Soyuz booster and the Progress resupply ship," an announcer on the U.S. space agency's NASA TV said.

The launch came nine hours after a privately operated rocket exploded seconds after liftoff in the United States, causing the loss of cargo ship that was also bound for the ISS.

The explosion of the Antares was the first such accident since NASA turned to private operators to deliver cargo to the station, breaking a Russian monopoly that followed the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011.

The Progress is delivering nearly three metric tons of propellant, oxygen, water, and other supplies to the station.

EXPLOSION OF NASA'S UNMANNED ROCKET ANTARES

An unmanned Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff from a commercial launch pad in Virginia on Tuesday, marking the first accident since NASA turned to private operators to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, but officials said no one was hurt.

The 14-story rocket, built and launched by Orbital Sciences Corp, blasted off its seaside launch pad at the Wallops Flight Facility at 6:22 p.m. EDT carrying a Cygnus cargo ship for the space station. It exploded in a huge fireball moments later.

Orbital Sciences stock was down 12.74 percent after hours, or down $3.87 at $26.50.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known, said NASA mission commentator Dan Huot.

Huot said there were no reports of any personnel in the vicinity of the explosion. An Accomack County Sheriff's spokeswoman added, "As far as we know, all personnel are accounted for and everyone's OK."

Orbital Sciences said in a statement: "We've confirmed that all personnel have been accounted for. We have no injuries in the operation today."

NASA launch control said damage appeared to be limited to the launch facility and rocket. The Antares rocket has been launched successfully on four previous missions.

"This has been a lot of hard work to get to this point," Orbital Sciences Executive Vice President Frank Culbertson told the launch team just before liftoff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSJ2kcDirEo

Launch had been delayed one day after a boat sailed into a restricted safety zone beneath the rocket's intended flight path.

Virginia-based Orbital Sciences is one of two companies hired by NASA to fly cargo to the station after the space shuttles were retired. Tuesday's planned flight was to be the third of eight under the company's $1.9 billion contract with NASA.

The second U.S. supply line to the station is run by privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which is preparing for its fourth flight under a separate $1.6 billion NASA contract.

Outfitted with a new, more powerful upper-stage engine, the Antares rocket launched on Tuesday carried a Cygnus spacecraft packed with 5,055 pounds (2,293 kg) of supplies, science experiments and equipment, a 15 percent increase over previous missions.

Cygnus was to loiter in orbit until Nov. 2, then fly itself to the station so astronauts can use a robotic crane to snare the capsule and attach it to a berthing port. The station, a $100 billion research laboratory owned and operated by 15 nations, flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth.

In addition to food, supplies and equipment, the Cygnus spacecraft was loaded with more than 1,600 pounds (725 kg) of science experiments, including an investigation to chemically analyze meteors as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The Cygnus also carried a prototype satellite owned by Redmond, Washington-based startup Planetary Resources Inc., which is developing technology to mine asteroids. The satellite, designated A3, was to be released into space by a commercially owned small spacecraft launcher aboard the station.

Source : Reuters

High-Altitude Methane Ice Cloud Discovered Floating Above Titan's Pole

NASA scientists have uncovered a starting new find on Saturn's moon, Titan. They've found an unexpected high-altitude methane ice cloud, similar to exotic clouds formed high above Earth's own poles. This cloud in the stratosphere over Titan’s north pole (left) is similar to Earth’s polar stratospheric clouds (right). NASA scientists found that Titan’s cloud contains methane ice, which was not previously thought to form in that part of the atmosphere. Cassini first spotted the cloud in 2006. (Photo : L. NASA/JPL/U. of Ariz./LPGNantes; R. NASA/GSFC/M. Schoeberl)

NASA scientists have uncovered a starting new find on Saturn's moon, Titan. They've found an unexpected high-altitude methane ice cloud, similar to exotic clouds formed high above Earth's own poles.

The researchers first spotted the cloud with the help of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. It was part of the winter cap of condensation over Titan's north pole. Now, scientists have teased apart the data and found that the cloud contained methane ice, which produces a much denser cloud than the previously identified ethane ice.

"The idea that methane clouds could form this high on Titan is completely new," said Carrie Anderson, lead author of the new study, in a news release. "Nobody considered that possible before."

The temperatures in Titan's lower stratosphere are not the same at all latitudes. In fact, the high-altitude temperature near the north pole is far colder than just south of the equator. This temperature difference-as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit-is enough to yield methane ice.

So how do these clouds form? The mechanisms for forming these high-altitude clouds are different from what happens in the troposphere. Titan has a global circulation pattern; warm air in the summer hemisphere wells up from the surface and enters the stratosphere, slowly making its way to the winter pole. There, the air sinks back down and cools as it descends. This forms the methane clouds.

Currently, the scientists are gathering more information about Saturn's moon in order to better understand the natural processes that occur on the alien world. This could shed light on the processes that occur on exoplanets and allow scientists to apply their findings to processes that also occur on Earth.

"Titan continues to amaze with natural processes similar to those on Earth, yet involving materials different from our familiar water," said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist. "As we approach southern winter solstice on Titan, we will further explore how these cloud formation processes might vary with season."

Amazing picture of Supernova 1987A

Real image SN 1987A located at 1,68,000 light years from earth in Large Magellanic Cloud (Another Galaxy)

you can imagine the power of this supernova by understanding that even it was located at another galaxy it was visible to the naked eye. It was the first supernova that modern astronomers had to observe a SN and to use modern technology in that observation allowing them to gather much more data.

Supernovae are extremwely rare events. About 1 every 200 years is visible and they only last for a month or two.



image of SN 1987A

Popular Physicist Says , "We are alone in the universe"

The process which led to the creation of humankind on earth was a fluke - and it is highly unlikely it has been repeated anywhere else in the universe.

That is the view of English physicist Professor Brian Cox, who made the assertion in an episode of BBC's Human Universe.

Professor Cox thwarted suggestions alien life was a possibility and said he believed humans were the only form of life in the universe, despite the astronomical number of other planets in the galaxy.

The presenter and scientist, who also appeared on the ABC's Q&A program last week, blamed a series of "evolutionary bottlenecks" as the main reason no extraterrestrial life has been discovered.

"There is only one advanced technological civilisation in this galaxy and there has only ever been one - and that's us," Professor Cox said. "We are unique.

"It's a dizzying thought. There are billions of planets out there, surely there must have been a second genesis?
"But we must be careful because the story of life on this planet shows that the transition from single-celled life to complex life may not have been inevitable."

Professor Cox went on to say that the extinction of dinosaurs, believed by scientists to have been caused by a meteor impact, allowed mammals and ultimately humans to dominate the planet.

"We still struggle to understand how this happened," he said. "It's incredibly unusual.

"We're confident this only happened once in the oceans of the primordial earth. Life here did squeeze through."

Professor Cox's views are in stark contrast to those of astrophysicists Dr Timothy Brandt and Dr David Spiege of Princeton University, who last month made the claim that our best chance of finding aliens, if they exist at all, lies in the examination of plant life on planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.

They said if alien life existed on exoplanets, it might be possible to detect traces of water, oxygen and chlorophyll.

Meanwhile, NASA has offered a more widely accepted prediction; that one hundred million worlds in our galaxy are capable and fit to host alien life.

Spacecraft Spots Ice at Mercury's North Pole

NASA 's MESSENGER spacecraft has sent back its first visible-light images of water ice on Mercury, the tiny charbroiled planet that orbits closest to the sun.

The findings, described in the journal Geology, reveal that the ice deposits look surprisingly "fresh" -- and hint that water could have been very recently delivered to rocky little Mercury.

Even though Mercury sits less than 36 million miles from the sun -- which is less than two-fifths of the Earth's comfortable 93 million miles from sun -- some ice still manages to cling to the planet's surface. That's because the ice lies at the poles, in permanently shadowed regions inside craters that are eternally shielded from sunlight and remain very, very cold.

More than two decades ago, ground-based radar observations picked up signs of this polar ice, and the MESSENGER spacecraft later lent support to the idea with its own suite of instruments. But it's tough to actually see these permanently shadowed regions with the spacecraft's visible-light camera because, well, it's dark there. But recently, the team was able to refine the images of the ice-deposit surfaces with the help of what little light was reflecting off the crater walls.

The scientists examined Prokofiev, which at roughly 69.6 miles in diameter is the largest crater at Mercury's north pole thought to have water-ice deposits. There, the surface ice had a "cratered" texture -- showing that it was placed there more recently than the smaller underlying craters.

And in other spots, such as Berlioz crater, the researchers found that the water ice was "covered by a thin layer of dark, organic-rich volatile material." The boundaries of those icy regions were surprisingly sharp -- they hadn't been in place long enough to get smoothed out.

"The sharp boundaries indicate that the volatile deposits at Mercury's poles are geologically young, relative to the time scale for lateral mixing by impacts," the study authors wrote, "and either are restored at the surface through an ongoing process or were delivered to the planet recently."

To put that idea in perspective, estimates indicate that there could be roughly enough water-ice on Mercury to fill Lake Ontario. And if at least some of that water is indeed being delivered to the planet, it sheds new light on dynamics in the inner solar system, the scientists said.

"If Mercury's currently substantial polar volatile inventory is the product of the most recent portion of a longer process," the study authors wrote, "then a considerable mass of volatiles may have been delivered to the inner Solar System throughout its history."

European Scientists Conclude That Distant Comet Smells Terrible

Kathrin Altwegg, a lead scientist on the Rosetta space probe project, explains:

"The perfume of 67P/C-G is quite strong, with the odour of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulphide), horse stable (ammonia), and the pungent, suffocating odour of formaldehyde. This is mixed with the faint, bitter, almond-like aroma of hydrogen cyanide. Add some whiff of alcohol (methanol) to this mixture, paired with the vinegar-like aroma of sulphur dioxide and a hint of the sweet aromatic scent of carbon disulphide, and you arrive at the 'perfume' of our comet."

Since August, Rosetta's two mass spectrometers have been sniffing out what 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko smells of. Scientifically speaking, that means detecting the most volatile molecules released via sublimation. But really, that means working out what it smells like. So far, Rosetta has sniffed out the following

• Water (H2O)


• Carbon monoxide (CO)


• Carbon dioxide (CO2)


• Ammonia (NH3)


• Methane (CH4)


• Methanol (CH3OH)


• Formaldehyde (CH2O)


• Hydrogen sulphide (H2S)


• Hydrogen cyanide (HCN)


• Sulphur dioxide (SO2)


• Carbon disulphide (CS2)

Mars One Mission Could be end up with Big Failure

Mars One is the ambitious, privately-funded plan to develop a colony on the Red Planet by 2025. But a new study led by a researcher at MIT found the current roadmap could be a deadly one.

Sydney Do, a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), released a feasibility study that found the first humans on Mars would suffocate within 68 days of landing.

At the International Astronomical Union conference in Toronto, Do and his team presented their results: excess oxygen from crops produced in the artificial habitat would require ventilation and eventually cause asphyxiation.



According to CBC News, Do’s team ran a 26-month simulation to monitor conditions on the planned Mars One habitat; Twenty-six months is the time it would take backup spaceships to arrive from Earth according to the current Mars One plan.

Do told CBC News that a machine capable of solving the oxygen dilemma would be “so large that we couldn’t land it in one of the landers.” He said he actually contacted Mars One with his research, but has not heard back.

The Mars One team, which formed in 2011, is now two steps into its projected roadmap. According to the project’s website, the team produced a complete feasibility study during its first year with the help of experts from “space agencies and private corporations around the world.”

Mars One has already been collecting candidates for its 2024 launch. Candidates chosen by Mars One will begin training in 2015, and even when faced with the news that the mission could be deadly, several candidates remain undeterred.

Claude Gauthier, a 61-year-old Canadian mathematics professor, told CBC news that the problems laid out by Do and his team would be solved by food transports from Earth.

Fellow candidates and Canadians Paige Hunter and Tyler Reyno also told CBC News they weren’t worried by the study’s findings.

"Obviously, keeping humans alive on Mars is extremely difficult," Reyno said. "You just have to understand there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of unknowns and those who are passionate and inspired will understand that and do it anyway."

Scientists Create 3D Map of Cosmic Web for the First Time Showing 'Adolescent' Universe

Using extremely faint light from galaxies 10.8 billion light-years away, scientists created one of the most complete, 3D maps of the early universe. 3D map of the cosmic web at a distance of 10.8 billion years from Earth, generated from imprints of hydrogen gas observed in the spectrum of 24 background galaxies behind the volume. (Photo : Casey Stark (UC Berkeley) and Khee-Gan Lee (MPIA))

y have managed to create a map of what our universe looked like during its adolescence. Using extremely faint light from galaxies 10.8 billion light-years away, the researchers created one of the most complete, 3D maps at a time when the universe was made of a fraction of the dark matter we see today.

In this case, the researchers used a new technique for high-resolution universe maps. This technique, which uses distant galaxies to backlight hydrogen gas, could actually also inform future mapping projects, such as the proposed Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI).

Before this study, no one knew if galaxies further than 10 billion light-years away could provide enough light to be useful. Yet the Keck-1 telescope collected four hours of data during a brief break in cloudy skies and showed that it was possible to do so. Because of the extreme faintness of the light, though, the scientists had to develop algorithms to subtract light from the sky that would otherwise drown out the galactic signals.

"It's a pretty weird map because it's not really 3D," said David Schlegel, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It's all these skewers; we don't have a picture of what's between the quasars, just what's along the skewers."

The resulting map, though, shows that this technique is possible for future maps.

"This technique is pretty efficient and it wouldn't take a long time to obtain enough data to cover volumes hundreds of millions of light-years on a side," said Khee-Gan Lee, the lead researcher.

The findings reveal a bit more about the early universe and show that this technique could be huge when it comes to peering even further back into the past. That said, scientists will need to collect more data before this becomes a possibility.

Source : Science World Report

Stephen Hawking joins Facebook , First post for ice bucket challenge

Famed physicist and writer Stephen Hawking has joined Facebook.

Hawking has promised to share his work investigating "what makes the universe exist" with followers of his new account.

He writes, "Time and space may forever be a mystery, but that has not stopped my pursuit. Our connections to one another have grown infinitely and now that I have the chance, I'm eager to share this journey with you. Be curious, I know I will forever be."

The message even got a "like" from Hawking's employer, the University of Cambridge, which added, "Nice to see you here Stephen Hawking."

Hawking also shared a video of him accepting the Ice Bucket Challenge, though he didn't opt to take the plunge himself. Instead, his three children stepped up to do the challenge on his behalf. In the video Hawking says, "It would not be wise for me to have a bucket of cold water poured over me."
Hawking then nominated Ian Blatchford, director of The Science Museum, Lord Sainsbury, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge to take the challenge.

Some speculate that Hawking's decision to join Facebook may be a marketing stunt for his upcoming biopic, The Theory Of Everything. So far, no promotional material for the film has been posted to his page. The movie will detail Hawking's first marriage and his early battles with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Hawking has already amassed over 1,300,000 followers on the site.

Compact Fusion Reactor Within A Decade, Says Lockheed Martin

American advance technology company Lockheed Martin says it’s within a decade of producing a fusion reactor that’s 90 percent smaller than previous designs.

what is fusion power ?



Fusion reactor may be the ultimate solution for today's energy crisis . Fusion is the process that powers stars. Fusion power is the energy generated by nuclear fusion processes. In fusion reactions, two light atomic nuclei fuse to form a heavier nucleus (in contrast with fission power). In doing so they release a comparatively large amount of energy arising from the binding energy due to the strong nuclear force that is manifested as an increase in temperature of the reactants. Fusion power is a primary area of research in plasma physics.

The stakes are high, and so is the enthusiasm and skepticism about Lockheed’s announcement. After all, fusion could generate much more energy much more cleanly than today’s power plants that rely on nuclear fission.

But fusion reactors are elusive. So far, no researcher has been able to wring more energy from a fusion reactor than is needed to power it up.

Most efforts to create a fusion reactor have focused on containing hot plasma, a highly ionized gas, within strong magnetic fields in what’s called a “tokamak,” a doughnut-shaped device. Some of these tokamaks already being built or tested are enormous, including the world’s largest – 30 meters tall – at an international laboratory in France known as ITER. Its projected cost is $50 billion.

In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Tom McGuire, who leads Lockheed’s fusion research, said the aerospace, defense and security company has developed a compact reactor based on what he called “magnetic mirror confinement,” which is designed to contain plasma by reflecting particles from high-density magnetic fields to low-density fields.

By “compact” Lockheed means that its research reactor measures two meters long and one meter wide, much smaller than its rivals. And according to McGuire, it’s not small for small’s sake. He argues that the reduced size makes operations and hardware revisions quicker and more efficient. “That is a much more powerful development paradigm and much less capital intensive,” he said.

Small also means that a working fusion reactor of this size might easily fit in a tractor-trailer and be taken to a remote site to generate 100 megawatts of power. He concedes, “There are no guarantees that we can get there, but that possibility is there.”

Already, Lockheed’s fusion reactor team has conducted 200 firings with plasma at its research facility in Palmdale, Calif., known as Skunk Works, but it hasn’t yet produced any data on their results. Still, McGuire said, the plasma “looks like it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.”

X-Class Solar Flare, 4th Major Eruption On The Sun This Week Detected

It’s been a busy week for earth’s star, with a partial solar eclipse delighting space watchers Thursday, and three earlier solar flares captured on NASA’s cameras.

The NOAA’s space weather tracking detected the X3.1 class flare Friday, beginning just after two in the afternoon, Pacific time, and lasting till after 3 p.m.

Flares of this strength can disrupt radios and navigational equipment, but harmful radiation is absorbed by the earth’s atmosphere.



One legendary solar flare in 1989 actually shut down power grids in the U.S. and Canada. That was an “X15″ class flare, exponentially more powerful than this week’s flares.

An X1.6 class flare erupted on Tuesday. X is the strongest class, and an X2 is twice as strong as an X1.

An M-class or mid-level solar flare peaked at 6:59 p.m. Tuesday night, as measured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

A third flare, an X1.1 on October 19th also sent radiation toward earth.

These solar eruptions can trigger larger than usual northern lights also known as the Aurora Borealis, sometimes making the glow visible as far south as Northern California.

NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales

Source : CBS Local

Google executive sets new stratosphere (Near space) skydive world record

A skydiving Google executive is safely back on Earth after jumping out of a giant balloon floating in the stratosphere more than 25 miles (40 km) above New Mexico, a feat that broke the sound barrier and shattered a world altitude record.

Alan Eustace, a senior vice president at the Mountain View, California-based company, was lifted up 135,890 feet (41,419 meters) by an enormous balloon shortly before dawn on Friday, the Paragon Space Development Corp said.

After spending about 30 minutes "experiencing the wonders of the stratosphere," he plunged toward the earth, the company, which designed his custom-made pressurized spacesuit and life support system, said on its website.

The jump topped a record set by Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner over New Mexico on Oct. 14, 2012 after he jumped from a height of 128,100 feet (39,045 meters).

Eustace remained in a free fall for about 4.5 minutes before landing safely nearly 70 miles from his launch point, setting a world record for the highest skydive and breaking the sound barrier in the process.

"In rapid free-fall, Alan experienced a short period of near weightlessness and within 90 seconds exceeded the speed of sound," Paragon said on its website.

He landed on the ground just 15 minutes after he was lifted into the air.

Eustace, who has worked with Google since 2002, is a pilot and skydiver, Paragon said.

"I always wondered: what if you could design a system that would allow humans to explore the stratosphere as easily and safely as they do the ocean?" Eustace is quoted as saying on the space development company's website.

Source : Reuters

Hubble captures stunning image of a comet's brush past Mars

NASA has just released this image of comet Siding Spring's close brush past Mars, and it is thrilling.

The image you see above -- a fuzzy white comet hovering above a glowing rust-colored planet -- is actually a composite of several images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on Saturday and Sunday.

NASA's Hi Res camera aboard a Mars orbiter captured the first images of the nucleus of a comet
There are a few reasons that Hubble could not take a picture like this in a single shot. For one, Mars is 10,000 times brighter than its cometary visitor, making it impossible to see details of Siding Spring and Mars in one exposure.

Also, the two objects were racing past each other during their near-rendezvous on Sunday. At least one of the objects would have been blurry if Hubble tried to take an image of them simultaneously.

The starfield that the two bodies are set against was provided by the Palomar Digital Sky Survey.

Despite being a bit of a cut and paste job, NASA officials say the image accurately illustrates the distance between Siding Spring and Mars at the time of the comet's closest approach.

It also accurately represents the relative sizes of the two bodies.

IF YOU THINK THAT EARTH IS VERY LARGE THEN JUST TAKE A LOOK AT THIS VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q

 

New Horizons to Explore Pluto

In January 2006, New Horizons was launched for its long journey to explore Pluto and its five known moons. This will be NASA’s first opportunity to explore the distant planet of which little is known since its 1930 discovery.

Pluto is the most famous resident of the Kuiper Belt, an area of space beyond Neptune that is filled with innumerable objects that are believed to be remnants of the formation of the solar system. A Dutch astronomer, Jan Oort, theorized that comets might originate from this distant region. Gerard Kuiper first envisioned the existence of icy objects beyond Neptune in 1951.

The Kuiper Belt is about 3 billion miles from Earth and is similar to the asteroids that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter.   The asteroid belt is filled with rocky objects whereas the Kuiper Belt’s objects are icy. Several dwarf planets, of which Pluto is one, exist in these far reaches of space. Dwarf planets are not only smaller than regular planets, but their lack of size does not give them the ability to clear space around them.

Currently in a hibernation state, New Horizons will awake and begin preparing for its encounter with Pluto on Dec. 6. The actual flyby will begin in January with the spacecraft’s closest encounter occurring on July 15, 2015. A scheduled trajectory adjustment burn was not deemed necessary and has left the craft with additional fuel.

The additional fuel has NASA officials searching for additional Kuiper Belt objects for New Horizons to explore. To identify potential targets, officials used the Hubble telescope to locate objects of interest. These targets had to be in line with Pluto so that additional use of fuel would not be required. The Hubble data identified three additional objects that will be tracked to ascertain their orbital path.

New Horizons crossed Neptune’s orbital path on Aug. 25. On Sept. 12 NASA, using the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, began its initial preparatory testing of the approaching Pluto system. Hydra, a small moon of Pluto, was detected. It was not anticipated to view the moon until early in 2015. Locating Hydra this early in the process bodes well for the team’s ability to locate potential unknown moons or planetary rings.

New Horizons took 48 images, each lasting 10 seconds, of Pluto on two separate occurrences in July. While these images revealed Hydra, officials were unable to see Nix, another of Pluto’s moons. New Horizons was still 267 million miles from Pluto when these images were taken. Those images also revealed its largest moon, Charon. Some astronomers consider Pluto-Charon as a binary planet.

NASA has completed its detailed engineering review of the mission and has begun the process of planning for the approach science. By next month sequences for planetary approach will be developed. Each sequence serves as a two-week flight plan for the spacecraft and takes about eight weeks to develop, test and certify.

New Horizon’s exploration of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is NASA’s first extensive look at this distant part of the solar system. Pluto was still classified as a planet when the mission initially launched. It has since been downgraded to a dwarf planet.

GSLV-Mark III launch in 45 days, says ISRO chief

A step closer to sending astronauts into space

In just 45 days from now, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) would launch its most ambitious suborbital — less than the usual orbit- test flight — Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark III.

It will be an unmanned crew module. This will unleash India’s dream of sending its astronauts into space come true.

“We will comeback soon with an unmatched module in the next 45 days. GSLV Mark III will be one of the heaviest indigenous launch vehicles,” said K. Radhakrishnan, Chairman, ISRO, after the launch of PSLV C26, IRNSS-1C, the third satellite of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System from the first launch pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

The GSLV Mark III will help ISRO put heavier communication satellites of INSAT-4 class into orbit. These satellites weigh anywhere between 4,500-5,000 kg. The vehicle is 42.4 metre tall compared to the other GSLV which is 49 metre. It will be a three-stage vehicle.

“We are already working on this next launch. The work is completed and in testing stages,” Y.S. Prasad, Director, SHAR, said.

Terming the Mark III mission as most important and challenging, M. Chandradathan, Director of Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre of ISRO, said: “It is one of the heaviest indigenous launch vehicles that is been developed till date.”

The launch of GSLV Mark III will enhance India’s capability to be a competitive player in the multimillion dollar commercial launch market.

The vehicle envisages multi-mission launch capability for GTO (geo transfer orbit), LEO (low earth orbit), Polar and intermediate circular orbits.

Astronomers may have detected the first direct evidence of dark matter

Scientists have detected a mysterious X-ray signal that could be caused by dark matter streaming out of our Sun’s core.



A sketch (not to scale) shows axions (blue) streaming out of the Sun and then converting into X-rays (orange) in the Earth's magnetic field (red). The X-rays are then detected by the XMM-Newton observatory.

Scientists in the UK may have finally found direct evidence for dark matter pouring out of our Sun.

Dark matter is an invisible mass of unknown origin, that is believed to make up 85 percent of the Universe. But despite that, scientists have never been able to directly detect it - they only know it’s there because of its gravitational effect on regular light and matter.

Now scientists at the University of Leicester have identified a signal on the X-ray spectrum which appears to be a signature of ‘axions’ - a hypothetical dark matter particle that’s never been detected before.

While we can't get too excited just yet - it will take years to confirm whether this signal really is dark matter - the discovery would completely change our understanding of how the Universe works. After all, dark matter is the force that holds our galaxies together, so learning more about it is pretty important.

The researchers first detected the signal while searching through 15 years of measurements taking by the European Space Agency’s orbiting XMM-Newton space observatory.

Unexpectedly, they noticed that the intensity of X-rays recorded by the spacecraft rose by about 10% whenever XMM-Newton was at the boundary of Earth’s magnetic field facing the Sun - even once they removed all the bright X-ray sources from the sky. Usually, that X-ray background is stable.

"The X-ray background - the sky, after the bright X-ray sources are removed - appears to be unchanged whenever you look at it," said Andy Read, from the University of Leicester, one of the lead authors on the paper, in a press release. "However, we have discovered a seasonal signal in this X-ray background, which has no conventional explanation, but is consistent with the discovery of axions."

Researchers predict that axions, if they exist, would be produced invisibly by the Sun, but would convert to X-rays as they hit Earth’s magnetic field. This X-ray signal should in theory be strongest when looking through the sunward side of the magnetic field, as this is where the Earth’s magnetic field is strongest.

And that's exactly what the scientists found.

The research has now been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Sadly, the first author of the paper Professor George Fraser died earlier this year.

He writes in the paper: “The direct detection of dark matter has preoccupied physics for over 30 years … It appears plausible that axions – dark matter particle candidates - are indeed produced in the core of the Sun and do indeed convert to X-rays in the magnetic field of the Earth."

The next step is for the researchers to get a larger dataset from XMM-Newton and confirm the pattern they’ve seen in X-rays. Once they’ve done that, they can begin the long process of proving that they have, in fact, detecting dark matter streaming out of our Sun’s core.

And that will take a lot of work, as physicist Christian Beck, who didn’t work on the project, told Ian Sample from The Guardian. “A true discovery of dark matter that is convincing for most scientists would require consistent results from several different experiments using different detection methods, in addition to what has been observed by the Leicester group,” said Beck.

If confirmed, it’s hard to know just how profound the impact of this discovery could be.

“These exciting discoveries, in George's final paper, could be truly ground-breaking, potentially opening a window to new physics, and could have huge implications, not only for our understanding of the true X-ray sky, but also for identifying the dark matter that dominates the mass content of the cosmos,” said Read in the press release.

To the moon and back: Lunar mission tests China's space program

China launched an experimental spacecraft early Friday that is scheduled to orbit the moon before returning to Earth, a first for the country's ambitious space program and considered a precursor to a planned mission to the moon.

The unmanned spacecraft was launched by a Long March 3C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan, western China, state media said.

It is China's first lunar module capable of returning to Earth and the mission's main technical challenge will be making sure the spacecraft slows down enough to re-enter Earth's atmosphere safely.

Too fast and it could overheat or become difficult to track and control, Hu Hao, chief designer of the lunar exploration program, told The China Daily.

It is expected to take around a week to fly around the moon. The spacecraft will end its mission by landing on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.

The mission tests technology that will be used in a more ambitious launch, scheduled to take place in 2017, when an unmanned lunar probe will go to the moon, collect soil samples and return home.

Chinese astronauts have made five manned space flights on a series of Shenzhou "Divine Vessel" modules, with the latest mission in 2013 completing a successful manual docking with the Tiangong-1 space station.

Last December, China put a lunar rover -- known as the Jade Rabbit -- on the moon but it has been plagued by mechanical troubles, the China Daily said.

On course for the moon?

Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, said the lunar orbiter marks a step forward in the capabilities needed for a potential manned lunar program, which while under discussion hasn't been officially approved yet.

"It's significance is not only in demonstration of technical abilities, but in a continued political will to achieve its space goals over long periods of time — which is what China has that the U.S. currently lacks."

While the United States has pulled back its space program, other countries are trying to match or surpass China's accomplishments in what some observers have called an Asian space race.

In September, India became the first Asian country to send an orbiter around Mars.

Political symbolism

China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003 and has made rapid advances in the intervening decade.

Despite this, its space program is still yet to achieve capabilities reached by the U.S. and then Soviet Union decades ago, says James A. Lewis, director and senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

With little economic or military advantage, its value, he says, lies in how the space program shapes China's perception of itself -- a conspicuous display of national power and wealth that asserts China's return to confidence and authority.

"We could ask if China is following an outdated recipe for superpower status," he writes in a blog for the University of Nottingham in the UK.

"In terms of the global effect of the manned program, there might be some truth to this. But for the domestic audience that is the chief concern of China's leaders, the space program produces invaluable results."

India reaches Mars, Prime Minister Narendra Modi showers praises on ISRO

India scripted history on Wednesday,24 September with the success of its Mars mission. As the Mangalyaan entered the Mars orbit, making India the first country in the world to make it to the Red Planet in the first attempt. Mangalyaan moved a step closer to home after the dormant main engine on the spacecraft was test-fired flawlessly, ISRO looked confident of giving one final nudge to put it in orbit around Mars that saw it make space history. - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/live-indias-mars-mission-mangalyan-red-planet-mars-orbiter/#sthash.240P3tKY.dpuf