Most amazing video showing our future of space exploration

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Stunning video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbHgu9xu0_U&feature=youtu.be

Riding a space elevator up from Mars. Trekking across the ice fields of Europa. Soaring in wing suits above the clouds of Titan. Base jumping on Miranda. Wanderers is a science-inspired short film imagining human exploration of our solar system that leaves me giddy and excited for a future we could one day experience.



Humans awaiting a scenic dirigible ride at Victoria Crater on Mars, a vista first seen by the Opportunity rover. Image credit: Erik Wernquist (Click Image to Download)



Base jumping off Verona Rupes, the highest cliff in the solar system. Credit: Erik Wernquist

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Colonizing the equatorial ridge on Iapetus, one of Saturn's moons, with artistically oversized domed settlements. Image credit: Erik Wernquist (Click Image to Download)

Each of the places depicted in Wanderers is an actual place in our solar system. When real photos or map data was available, Wernquist used them to guide his digital recreations. You can read about each of the places and their scientific basis in an accompanying gallery of stills (also on imgur): leaving our home planet, surfing the rings of Saturn, basking above Jupiter's epic storms, mining asteroids, and so much more.

While we're still a long way off from human deep space exploration, we are getting a tiny step closer with the first space test flight of the Orion spacecraft next week. Currently just a crew and service module, the spacecraft is intended as the planetary crew transport module for an eventual deep space exploration vehicle for asteroid interception or even to carry humans to Mars. All the alien worlds in this short film are within our solar system, places conceivably within reach of Orion or its descendants.



Human-powered flight in the skies of Titan. Image credit: Erik Wernquist (Click Image to Download)

In the film, Wernquist takes a bit of artistic license, but he works with the beautiful parts of what is plausible, not sacrificing science on a whim. It'd be more scientifically plausible to mount a space elevator on Pavonis Mons, an equatorial volcano stretching 14 kilometers above average surface elevation, but the cratered Terra Cimmeria highlands are more aesthetically pleasing. This is such a beautiful merger of science and fiction that I don't even care about such tiny variations; it's a minor thing to suggest humans may pick their space elevator location based not just on science but on having a great ascent view!

Source : space.io9.com , Erik Wernquist

Cool NASA Animation Beautifully Details Every Step of Orion’s First Launch!

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Source : universetoday.com

http://vimeo.com/31799422

Video Caption: Animation details NASA’s Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission launching on Dec. 4. 2014. Credit: NASA

It’s not Science Fiction! It’s Not Star Trek!

No. It’s a really, really big NASA Mission! It’s Orion!

In fact, it’s the biggest and most important development in US Human Spaceflight since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.

Orion is launching soon on its first flight, the pathfinding Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission and sets NASA on the path to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.

Watch this cool NASA animation beautifully detailing every key step of Orion’s First Launch!

Orion is designed to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. Even farther into deep space than NASA’s Apollo moon landing which ended more than four decades ago!



Orion atop Delta 4 Heavy Booster. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett (Click Image to Download)

We are T-MINUS 4 Days and Counting to the inaugural blastoff of Orion as of today, Sunday, November 30, 2014.

Every aspect of the final processing steps now in progress by engineers and technicians from NASA, rocket provider United Launch Alliance, and Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin is proceeding smoothly and marching towards launch.

Orion will lift off on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket on its inaugural test flight to space on the uncrewed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission at 7:05 a.m. EST on December 4, 2014, from Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The two-orbit, four and a half hour Orion EFT-1 flight around Earth will lift the Orion spacecraft and its attached second stage to an orbital altitude of 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) – and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years.

Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle that will carry America’s astronauts beyond Earth on voyages venturing farther into deep space than ever before – beyond the Moon to Asteroids, Mars, and other destinations in our Solar System.

Europe targets Ariane deal to stay in commercial space race

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• Meeting on Tuesday expected to agree funding for new rocket


• Franco-German compromise aims to keep Europe competitive


• Airbus CEO urges radical shift to counter U.S. rival SpaceX

Weeks after its dramatic coup in landing a probe on a speeding comet, Europe is hoping a last-minute deal to provide funding for the workhorse Ariane rocket will prevent its space ambitions falling back to earth this week.

Anxious to preserve its own access to space, the 20-nation European Space Agency will seek to put aside differences over how to respond to U.S. low-cost rival SpaceX and safeguard thousands of high-tech jobs at ministerial talks on Tuesday.

After two years of wrangling, the outlines of an accord to fund development of a new Ariane 6 satellite launch vehicle appeared to be in place after Germany dropped its insistence on a prior upgrade to the current Ariane 5, officials said.

France is likely in return to back continued European funding for the International Space Station.

"It would be very serious if there is no decision on Dec 2 because Europe would have a competitive delay that it would never manage to reverse," said Karim Michel Sabbagh, chief executive of Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES.

With the arrival in 2013 of SpaceX, founded by electric car entrepreneur Elon Musk and offering cut-price satellite launches, Ariane needs to lower costs dramatically.

The chief executive of Europe's largest space contractor Airbus Group, Tom Enders, told Reuters a deal would mark a "new chapter" in the way Europe approaches space.

But he called for a clean break with bureaucratic public-private space industry structures to avoid Europe being "marginalized" by international competition.

"A departure from current ways of working is a precondition for future competitiveness of the European space business".

Airbus Group, which builds the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, is expected to inaugurate a previously announced joint venture with engine maker Safran on the eve of the talks to help secure Ariane's future. It will incorporate Arianespace, the launch services firm which operates Europe's satellite launcher.

CALL FOR REFORM

The new venture is the most serious effort to reorganise Europe's space industry and is being set up in the hope the one-day ministerial meeting in Luxembourg will back Ariane 6 - ending a compromise two years ago which split potential funding between the upgrade known as Ariane 5ME and an eventual new Ariane 6.

But Europe's space industry remains heavily influenced by state agencies and industry sources say removing multiple layers of management is key to keeping Europe's commercial activities competitive.

SpaceX offers launches for around $60 million (50 million euros) compared to 70-90 million euros a shot expected for the Ariane 6 and an average Ariane 5 launch price of 130 million euros ($160 million).

Efficiency comes into play in a cut-throat global commercial market where most companies can only rely on national links when it comes to sensitive defence satellites.

RUSSIA'S ROLE

The European Space Agency, an intergovernmental organisation with 20 member states from across Europe, was founded in 1975 to pool the continent's finances and brains at a time when the United States and Russia had virtually monopolised space.

But despite Europe's Ariane capturing 50 percent of the market, a costly system of job distribution and rival design offices has cast a shadow over Europe's commercial activity even as it basks in scientific success like the Philae comet lander.

Science ministers will also decide on whether the ESA's participation in the International Space Station will continue beyond 2020, its original shutdown date, and in what way.

The United States earlier this year said it would keep the ISS running until at least 2024, but Russia is looking at going alone and creating its own orbital station. Europe and Russia are also working on a two-mission ExoMars probe shot to Mars.

"(The ISS) shows we can achieve a lot if we all work together and it's important to highlight that given the tensions building up between Russia and the West," Daniel Brown, an astronomy expert at Nottingham Trent University, said.

ESA's budget for 2014 was about 4.1 billion euros ($5.12 billion), and roughly equates to the price of one cinema ticket each year per each European tax payer.

NASA's budget is $17.6 billion in 2014. The budget gap has made the achievements of Rosetta appear all the more impressive to many observers, but Europe's space industry is lobbying for a healthy commercial launch activity to support such projects.

ESA plans also include a mission to orbit one of the icy moons of Jupiter and one going to Mercury.

The Horizon 2000 programme, developed in 1984, transformed Europe into a world leader in many areas, including solar physics, cosmology and X-ray Astronomy, said Ken Pounds, former CEO of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council.

Pounds said he hoped the success of Philae would lead to a virtuous circle "where Europe is proving it can do world-class things, people feel warm about it, and the political class respond to that."

Source : Reuters

Esa's mission to Jupiter is GO! 'Juice' spacecraft will launch in 2022

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• Jupiter and its moons could be best hope of finding signs of alien life


• Jupiter icy moons explorer (Juice) will reach the Jovian system in 2030


• It will explore volcanic Io, Europa and rock-ice Ganymede and Callisto


• Juice will also take a look at Jupiter's atmosphere and magnetosphere

Astronomers claim Jupiter and its moons could provide the best hope of finding signs of alien life in our solar system.

Now, in an effort to explorer its distant oceans, the Jupiter icy moons explorer (Juice) mission has been given the green light to launch in 2022.

The five-tonne satellite will reach Jupiter in 2030 where it will use its suite of instruments to explore the planet's atmosphere, magnetosphere and tenuous set of rings.

Juice will also look at Jupiter's diverse Galilean moons - volcanic Io, icy Europa and rock-ice Ganymede and Callisto - which make the Jovian system a miniature solar system in its own right.

The focus will largely be on Ganymede, though, and will the first time any icy moon has been orbited by a spacecraft.

Earlier this year, scientists said Ganymede might have ice and oceans stacked up in several layers similar to a club sandwich.

Previously, the moon was thought to harbour a thick ocean sandwiched between just two layers of ice, one on top and one on bottom, but now it seems it has multiple layers.

Scientists claims that places where water and rock interact are important for the development of life. For example, it is possible life began on Earth in bubbling vents on our sea floor.

Prior to the new study, Ganymede's rocky sea bottom was thought to be coated with ice, not liquid - a problem for the emergence of life.

It will visit Callisto, the most heavily cratered object in the solar system, and will twice fly by Europa.

Juice is hoping to make the first measurements of the thickness of Europa's icy crust and will identify candidate sites for future in situ exploration.

The Galileo mission found strong evidence that a subsurface ocean of salty water is in contact with a rocky seafloor.

Source : Daily mail

India's Manned Space mission: ISRO to test-drop crew module in December

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Aiming to start a manned space mission, the ISRO will launch the GSLV Mk-III in the second week of December to study its performance and carry out a crew module recovery experiment through it.

The 630-tonne launch vehicle, designated as LVM3-X, will carry CARE (Crew Module Atmospheric Reentry Experiment) weighing about 3.65 tonnes. The Isro intends to study the impact of heat on the crew module when it enters the earth atmosphere.

Briefing the media on the salient features of the experimental mission, Satish Dhawan Space Centre director, Dr M.Y.S. Prasad said that the objectives of the mission are flight validation of the complex atmospheric flight regime of LVM3 vehicle, validation of new design features and overall integrity of the mission design.

The experimental flight will provide all the inputs required for the first developmental flight of the GSLV Mark-III, which is being planned within next two years. It will carry a communication satellite of four tonne nominal payload capability.



Isro’s (Indian Space Research Organisation) crew module or CARE, which would be launched in an experimental mission from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota between December 15 and 20. (Photo: PTI)

Dr Prasad said that Care is expected to enhance their understanding on re-entry and parachute phase of crew module. The crew module, after getting separated from the launch vehicle at an altitude of 125 km, will re-enters Earth’s atmospheric at about 80 km and descend in ballistic mode.

Source :deccan chronicle

Ripples in Space-Time Could Reveal 'Strange Stars'

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By looking for ripples in the fabric of space-time, scientists could soon detect "strange stars" -- objects made of stuff radically different from the particles that make up ordinary matter, researchers say.

The protons and neutrons that make up the nuclei of atoms are made of more basic particles known as quarks. There are six types, or "flavors," of quarks: up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange. Each proton or neutron is made of three quarks: Each proton is composed of two up quarks and one down quark, and each neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark.

In theory, matter can be made with other flavors of quarks as well. Since the 1970s, scientists have suggested that particles of "strange matter" known as strangelets -- made of equal numbers of up, down and strange quarks -- could exist. In principle, strange matter should be heavier and more stable than normal matter, and might even be capable of converting ordinary matter it comes in contact with into strange matter. However, lab experiments have not yet created any strange matter, so its existence remains uncertain.

Why Are Quark Stars So Strange?

One place strange matter could naturally be created is inside neutron stars, the remnants of stars that died in catastrophic explosions known as supernovas. Neutron stars are typically small, with diameters of about 12 miles (19 kilometers) or so, but are so dense that they weigh as much as the sun. A chunk of a neutron star the size of a sugar cube can weigh as much as 100 million tons.

Under the extraordinary force of this extreme weight, some of the up and down quarks that make up neutron stars could get converted into strange quarks, leading to strange stars made of strange matter, researchers say.

A strange star that occasionally spurts out strange matter could quickly convert a neutron star orbiting it in a binary system into a strange star as well. Prior research suggests that a neutron star that receives a seed of strange matter from a companion strange star could transition to a strange star in just 1 millisecond to 1 second.

Philae reveals presence of large amount of water ice on the comet

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A comet seen from close up - the surface looks like rock, but is a mixture of water ice, carbonaceous particles and interesting compounds. Image credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/ROLIS/DLR  (Click Image to Download ) 

The European Space Agency has revealed that the comet - 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko "is not nearly as soft and fluffy as it was believed to be".

The first results to emerge from the team of the SESAME experiment (Surface Electrical, Seismic and Acoustic Monitoring Experiment) confirm that "the strength of the ice found under a layer of dust on the first landing site is surprisingly high".

"The mechanical properties of 67P will be derived. SESAME's two other instruments suggest that cometary activity at this landing site is low, as well as revealing the presence of a large amount of water ice under the lander," Klaus Seidensticker from the DLR Institute of Planetary Research said.

Source : Times of india , SEN Blog

Complex life may be possible in only 10% of all galaxies

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The universe may be a lonelier place than previously thought. Of the estimated 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, only one in 10 can support complex life like that on Earth, a pair of astrophysicists argues. Everywhere else, stellar explosions known as gamma ray bursts would regularly wipe out any life forms more elaborate than microbes. The detonations also kept the universe lifeless for billions of years after the big bang, the researchers say.

"It's kind of surprising that we can have life only in 10% of galaxies and only after 5 billion years," says Brian Thomas, a physicist at Washburn University in Topeka who was not involved in the work. But "my overall impression is that they are probably right" within the uncertainties in a key parameter in the analysis.

WHAT IS GAMMA RAY BURST 

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are flashes of gamma rays associated with extremely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the brightest electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe.Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several minutes. A typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime. But all observed GRBs have originated from outside the Milky Way galaxy.

Scientists have long mused over whether a gamma ray burst could harm Earth. The bursts were discovered in 1967 by satellites designed to spot nuclear weapons tests and now turn up at a rate of about one a day. They come in two types. Short gamma ray bursts last less than a second or two; they most likely occur when two neutron stars or black holes spiral into each other. Long gamma ray bursts last for tens of seconds and occur when massive stars burn out, collapse, and explode. They are rarer than the short ones but release roughly 100 times as much energy. A long burst can outshine the rest of the universe in gamma rays, which are highly energetic photons.

Venus Express Spacecraft, Low On Fuel, Does Delicate Dance Above Doom Below

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It’s been an interesting year for Venus Express. A few months ago, controllers deliberately dipped the spacecraft into the atmosphere of the planet — for science purposes, of course. The daring maneuver was approved because the spacecraft is near the end of its mission. It’s nearly out of fuel and will fall into Venus — sometime. Likely in 2015. No one knows exactly when, however.

Until Dec. 30, European Space Agency operators are going to boost the spacecraft’s orbit to try to get a little more productivity out of it. After that, all depends on what gas is left in the tank.
The push against the dense atmosphere revealed a few surprises. In a recent blog post, ESA said the atmosphere was changing more than expected. Between different altitudes, controllers sometimes saw a steady rise in pressure and sometimes multiple peaks. The spacecraft’s journeys took it as low as 129.2 kilometers (80 miles) above the surface, but mostly involving a month of “surfing” between 131 km and 135 km (81.4 miles and 83.9 miles).



Artist’s impression of Venus Express performing aerobreaking maneuvers in the planet’s atmosphere in June and July 2014. Credit: ESA–C. Carreau (Click Image to Download) 

“One possible explanation is that we detected atmospheric waves,” stated Håkan Svedhem, Venus Express project scientist.

“These features can be caused when high speed winds travel over mountain ranges. The waves then propagate upwards. However, such waves have never before been detected at such heights – twice the altitude of the cloud deck that blankets Venus.”

ESA observed that the atmospheric density increased 1,000 times between 165 km and 130 km (102.5 miles and 80.8 miles) and that it also changed when the spacecraft moved from day to night (specifically, it was four times greater on the sunlit side.) Measurements were also taken of high-energy particles and Venus’ magnetic fields, which are still being examined.

But now, the end is indeed near for the spacecraft after eight years at Venus — four times longer than its primary mission. Although it is healthy and performing routine science operations, fuel is only standing at around 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) and oxidizer at 5 kg (11 lbs). It’s possible not all of it is accessible due to propellant movement in the tanks, ESA said. The new maneuvers are expected to subtract 1.4 kg of fuel and 2 kg of oxidizer from these totals.

“Unfortunately, we do not know how much fuel remains in its tanks, but we are intending to continue the up-down process as long as possible, until the propellant runs out,” Svedhem added.

“We have yet to decide whether we shall simply continue until we lose control, allowing it to enter the atmosphere and burn up naturally, or whether we attempt a controlled descent until it breaks up.”

Source : Universe Today

Japan readies asteroid probe for lift off

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Japan will send space probe Hayabusa2 on Sunday (Nov 30) on a six-year mission to mine a distant asteroid, in the hopes of answering some fundamental questions about life and the universe.

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Japan will send a space probe this weekend on a six-year mission to mine a distant asteroid, just weeks after a European spacecraft's historic landing on a comet captivated the world's attention.

Hayabusa2 is set to blast off aboard Japan's main H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan on Sunday (Nov 30). The ¥31 billion (US$260 million) project is sending the kit towards the unpoetically-named 1999 JU3 asteroid in deep space. It will blast a crater in the asteroid to collect virgin materials unexposed to millennia of solar wind and radiation, in the hope of answering some fundamental questions about life and the universe.



"The asteroid is carbonaceous and we may find organic matter and water, the stuff of life," Hitoshi Kuninaka, project leader at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), said in an interview posted on the agency's website. Analysing the extra-terrestrial materials could help shed light on the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and offer clues about what gave rise to life on Earth, he said.

Hayabusa2, about the size of a domestic refrigerator, is expected to reach the asteroid in mid-2018 and will spend around 18 months studying the surface. It will also drop tiny MINERVA-II rover robots as well as a French-German landing package named Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) for surface observation.

GALACTIC FIRST

In a galactic first, Hayabusa2 will drop an "impactor" that will explode above the asteroid's surface and fire a metal bullet into the crust at a speed of 7,200 kilometres an hour - six times the speed of sound on Earth. The bullet is expected to create a small crater that will enable the probe to collect material from the asteroid. "The impactor is made fully with Japanese technologies that are so advanced you would think they are out of this world," said Kuninaka.

The Hayabusa2 mission will blast off just weeks after the European Space Agency succeeded in making mankind's first-ever landing on a comet this month. Scientists said initial data sent from the robot lab Philae showed traces of organic molecules and a surface much harder than imagined.

Philae, released from its mothership Rosetta, has gone into hibernation on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, having used its onboard battery power after 60 hours of prodding and probing. Engineers hope the lander's solar panels will charge its batteries in the coming months as the comet, with Philae hopefully still clinging to its surface, moves closer to the Sun.

If the Hayabusa2 mission goes well, pristine asteroid samples will be returned to Earth in late 2020. JAXA aims to bring 100 milligrams (1/286th of an ounce) of samples to Earth after a round trip of more than five billion kilometres.

The probe is the successor to JAXA's first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa - the Japanese term for falcon - which returned to Earth in 2010 with dust samples after a trouble-plagued seven-year mission.

The spherical 1999 JU3 asteroid, which is around a kilometre across, is believed to contain significantly more organic matter and water than the potato-shaped rock studied by the original Hayabusa. Despite various setbacks during its epic seven-year odyssey, including intermittent loss of communication and damage to its motors, the first Hayabasa was hailed as a triumph of science when it returned to Earth.

Source : Channel news asia

NASA clears Orion spacecraft for first test flight next week

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NASA's newest deep space capsule Orion, is getting ready for its first uncrewed test flight, launching next week.

The space agency and Lockheed Martin - the company that manufactured Orion for NASA - have given the "go" to proceed with the capsule's robotic test on Dec. 4. The company and agency finished their "Flight Readiness Review" on Nov. 20, clearing the way for Orion's first test flight.

"The FRR is a rigorous assessment of the spacecraft, its systems, mission operations and support functions needed to successfully complete Orion’s first voyage to space," NASA officials said in a statement.



Orion Spacecraft illustration  (Click Image to Download)

NASA officials hope that Orion will eventually be able to take humans to deep space destinations like Mars, but first, the capsule's systems need to get through a series of flight tests starting with the first one next week.

Orion is scheduled to launch to space atop a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket from Florida. The spacecraft is outfitted with more than 1,000 sensors to gather data about how the capsule performs under the harsh conditions in space and during re-entry.

In total, the test flight should last about 4.5 hours. Orion will make two orbits of Earth with one of them taking it as high as 3,600 miles from the planet. The spacecraft will gain speed as it comes back down from its position in orbit, before re-entering the atmosphere. Orion's heat shield is the largest of its kind ever manufactured, and the test will help scientists see if it can efficiently protect the capsule during re-entry.

The test — called Exploration Flight Test-1 — will also help officials check out Orion's parachute system, designed to slow down the spacecraft before its expected splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Officials will be on hand to fish Orion out of the ocean after it returns to Earth.

NASA, U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin officials have started to prepare for activities after splashdown.

"At Naval Base San Diego, two Navy ships, the USS Anchorage and the USNS Salvor, have been outfitted with the necessary tools and equipment needed to return Orion to land after the flight test," NASA officials said in the same statement.

Source : Foxnews

NASA contracts two firms to work on asteroid mining

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NASA has contracted with two private space firms to prepare for and ultimately execute missions to land on and mine asteroids for valuable resources. The contracts, forged between NASA and both Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, are further evidence of a the kinds of new and interesting partnerships as space exploration increasingly becomes the domain of private industry.
Both companies have been forging plans to launch asteroid-landing probes for months-long stints on near Earth objects -- with the aim of extracting valuable resources. Although such expeditions could theoretically return to Earth with valuable minerals, the financial viability of the concept relies on the prospects of supplying other space missions with an extracted assets. That's where NASA comes in.

With a spate of deep space missions planned in the coming century, NASA would be able to save time and money by supplying some of those missions (including International Space Station expeditions) with vital resources mined from asteroids -- water, silicate, carbonaceous minerals and more.

"Deep Space brings commercial insight to NASA's asteroid planning, because our business is based on supplying what commercial customers in Earth orbit need to operate, as well as serving NASA's needs for its moon and Mars exploration," Deep Space CEO Daniel Faber said in a press release earlier this year. "The fuel, water, and metals that we will harvest and process will be sold into both markets, making available industrial quantities of material for expanding space applications and services."

The fuel it takes to rocket out of the grasp of Earth's gravity makes launching anything -- much less a massive cargo ship -- exceptionally expensive. By contrast, asteroids have minuscule centers of gravity, making coming and going from them much less fuel (and cost) intensive.

"Right now it costs $17 million per ton to get anything up to geosynchronous orbit," David Gump, vice chairman of Deep Space, told The Boston Globe. "If we can beat whatever that price is in 2022, we'll have a big market."

"Asteroids hold the resources necessary to enable a sustainable, even indefinite presence in space -- for science, commerce and continued prosperity here on Earth," Chris Lewicki, president and chief engineer of Planetary Resources, echoed in a statement released by NASA last week.

As part of Planetary Resources' ongoing cooperation with NASA's asteroid exploration efforts, the company will help sort through the near Earth object-finding algorithms being submitted by citizen scientists as part of the agency's Asteroid Data Hunter challenge.

"By harnessing the public's interest in space and asteroid detection, we can more quickly identify the potential threats, as well as the opportunities," Lewicki added.

Following in the wake of European Space Agency's history-making comet landing, NASA will attempt to land its own spacecraft, the OSIRIS-Rex, on an asteroid named Bennu in September 2016.

Source : upi.com

Life on Mars was ‘destroyed by nuclear attack’, says physicist – and we could be next

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Source : Huffington Post UK

Physicist Dr John Brandenburg has a new, stunning theory for why we can't see life on Mars.

It was wiped out by a nuclear war.

Brandenburg believes that the evidence lies in the composition of Martial soil, which he suggests has the colouration and composition consistent with fallout from a series of "mixed fusion-fission explosions."

Scientists have argued that while he's, technically, not wrong about the soil thing, the discovery of high concentrations of Xenon-129 in the atmosphere should not be surprising as it's a commonly found substance.

Brandenburg will not be convinced, though. He says his theory is based on hard evidence -- using the photographs of the Curiosity rover as proof that we've already seen ancient archaeological sites, and the remnants of an ancient civilisation.

He'll be publishing his full set of findings in next month's Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

Is Dark Energy Evaporating Dark Matter?

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cientists at the University of Rome and Portsmouth recently published a paper which describes dark matter slowly being engulfed by dark energy.

Dark matter is almost completely undetectable matter that astronomers and cosmologists have calculated to exist within our universe, hence the name “dark”. Whereas dark energy is an accepted model of energy that permeates all matter and space, and is responsible for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe (to find out more about the two, click on the links above)

Why are they of interest now?

In the paper, the cosmologists discuss how recent astronomical data favours the idea that dark energy grows as it interacts with dark matter, which can help explain the mechanics of the expansion of the universe.

“If the dark energy is growing and dark matter is evaporating we will end up with a big, empty, boring universe with almost nothing in it,” said the Director of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, Professor David Wands.

Professor Wands continues by stating that “Dark matter provides a framework for structures to grow in the Universe. The galaxies we see are built on that scaffolding and what we are seeing here, in these findings, suggests that dark matter is evaporating, slowing that growth of structure,”.

How does this play a role in the understanding of our universe?

As our understanding of the universe changes, so does our approach in pursuing more knowledge about its every aspect. In 1998, researchers observing distant supernovae found that they were fainter than expected. The most accepted explanation for the variance is that the light emitted from the supernovae traveled a greater distance than theorists had predicted. This observation lead to the conclusion that space must have expanded at an accelerating rate as it traveled. The phenomenon was later attributed to the existence of dark energy, which completely revolutionized the scientific community’s way of looking at the structure of the universe, and in essence, the very foundation of our existence.



If dark energy continues its dominance in the Universe, every galaxy beyond our neighborhood will one day no longer be visible

Now, researchers believe that it is the evaporation of dark matter that can explain why the growth of cosmic structures, such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies, seems to be slower than expected.

The availability of more data allows researchers such as Professor Wands, to examine the mechanics and interactions of various cosmic phenomena more precisely.

“Much more data is available now than was available in 1998 and it appears that the standard model is no longer sufficient to describe all of the data. We think we’ve found a better model of dark energy,” Wands continues, “However there is growing evidence that this simple model cannot explain the full range of astronomical data researchers now have access to; in particular the growth of cosmic structure, galaxies and clusters of galaxies, seems to be slower than expected”.

The paper itself was published by the American Physical Society, and although it looks very interesting, one must keep in mind that dark energy and dark matter is a subject in which very little is understood. As more data becomes available, a finer structure of our universe can be developed, which cannot be possible without the researchers such as Prof. Wands, Dr. Marco Bruni and their research students.

Source : from quarks to quasars

NASA prepares to wake New Horizons ahead of historic Pluto flyby

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NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft comes out of hibernation on December 6 at 3:00 pm EST. Now about 2.9 billion miles (4.6 billion km) from Earth, and 162 million miles (260 million km) from Pluto, the spacecraft will be put through a month-long preparation for its six month flyby of Pluto, with the primary phase of the mission slated to begin on January 15.

New Horizons' current state of hibernation means that most of the spacecraft’s systems are shut down except for monitors and a weekly beacon-status transmission. So far, the probe has gone through 18 hibernation phases since it launched in 2006. This works out to 1,873 days in hibernation or two-thirds of the Pluto flyby mission.

The hibernation technique, which NASA pioneered, is a way of conserving onboard resources, cutting down on mission control personnel time, reducing time on NASA’s Deep Space Network, and saving wear and tear on the spacecraft's electronics. New Horizons was reawoken periodically over the years to check the systems, rehearse the flyby, perform course corrections, and upload software updates. Last August, the probe was programmed to wake up on the scheduled December date. NASA says that 90 minutes after coming back online, New Horizons will transmit a confirmation back to Earth. However, this signal will not reach Earth for 4 hours and 25 minutes due to the enormous distances involved.

Once out of hibernation, mission control will put New Horizons through its final system checks and course corrections, download science data, and write and upload software updates. During the flyby, the probe will use its suite of seven scientific instruments to map Pluto, study its topology, temperatures, geology, and composition, as well as study the planet's moons and search for additional satellites.

One particular reason for the missions timing is that Pluto is currently in its late "summer" and scientists want to take the opportunity to study the planet’s atmosphere before it freezes again during its century-long winter. New Horizon’s instruments includes an advanced imaging infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers, compact multicolor camera, high-resolution telescopic camera, two particle spectrometers, space-dust detector, and two radio experiments.



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Real picture of Pluto and its Moon Charon taken by New Horizons

The US$650 million New Horizons mission was launched January 19, 2006 atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The unmanned 478 kg (1,054 lb) nuclear-powered spacecraft was sent on a 9.5-year mission to fly by Pluto and then on to study selected objects in the Kuiper Belt. Sent on a slingshot trajectory using the gravitational pull of Jupiter, New Horizons passed the orbit of Neptune on August 24 and will rendezvous with Pluto on July 14 of next year, which it will pass at a distance of 13,000 km (8,000 mi).

According to NASA, the mission was fast tracked due to the increasing knowledge about the Kuiper Belt. Since Pluto is the most accessible object originating from there, it seemed a logical way to gain direct information. In addition, it is the first mission sent to the only unvisited planet (if you're old school) in the Solar System.

NASA says that the flight team will be kept busy even after the flyby, because so much data will have been recorded that it won’t all be transmitted to Earth until October 2016.

"We've worked years to prepare for this moment," says Mark Holdridge, New Horizons encounter mission manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "New Horizons might have spent most of its cruise time across nearly three billion miles of space sleeping, but our team has done anything but, conducting a flawless flight past Jupiter just a year after launch, putting the spacecraft through annual workouts, plotting out each step of the Pluto flyby and even practising the entire Pluto encounter on the spacecraft. We are ready to go."

Source : gizmag

Lunar Mission One aims to take Moon exploration to new depths

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Another private space exploration venture is under way with the British-led Lunar Mission One announcing plans to send an unmanned robotic landing module to the South Pole of the Moon. Initially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, the non-profit organization hopes to drill ten times deeper into the lunar surface than has ever previously been attempted and use the borehole to store a giant digital time capsule of human knowledge.

Under development for about eight years, the UK-based Lunar Mission One had its public launching this week at the the Royal Society's 12th Reinventing Space Conference in London. The effort was founded as Lunar Mission Ltd by former Royal Navy Engineering Officer David Iron, and is partnered with the University College of London and the Open University among others. Its goal is to develop and land a probe at the Lunar South Pole by 2024 as part of an effort to not only gather more knowledge about the Moon, but also to promote public interest in space exploration and develop new means of funding future missions without government support.

http://vimeo.com/112315022

ISRO's Mangalyaan Mars Mission Among Time Magazine's '25 Best Inventions of 2014'

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Mangalyaan has been named among the best inventions of 2014 by Time magazine which described it as a technological feat that will allow India to flex its "interplanetary muscles."
"Nobody gets Mars right on the first try. The US didn't, Russia didn't, the Europeans didn't. But on September 24, India did. That's when the Mangalyaan... went into orbit around the Red Planet, a technological feat no other Asian nation has yet achieved," Time said about Mangalyaan, calling it "The Supersmart Spacecraft."

Mangalyaan is among the 25 'Best Inventions of 2014' listed by Time magazine that are "making the world better, smarter and-in some cases-a little more fun."

Developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Mars spacecraft cost India just US $74 million (roughly Rs. 457 crores), less than the budget for the multi-Academy Award winning science fiction thriller film Gravity. Time said at that price, the Mangalyaan is equipped with just five onboard instruments that allow it to do simple tasks like measure Martian methane and surface composition.

"More important, however, it allows India to flex its interplanetary muscles, which portends great things for the country's space programme and for science in general," Time said.



(Click Image to Download) Image of mars image  taken from a height of 7300 km by India 's Mangalyaan

NASA’s “Remastered” View of Europa is the Best Yet

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(Click image to download) This newly-reprocessed color view of Europa was made from images taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

Europa, Jupiter’s sixth-closest moon, has long been a source of fascination and wonder for astronomers. Not only is it unique amongst its Jovian peers for having a smooth, ice-covered surface, but it is believed that warm, ocean waters exist beneath that crust – which also makes it a strong candidate for extra-terrestrial life.

And now, combining a mosaic of color images with modern image processing techniques, NASA has produced a new version of what is perhaps the best view of Europa yet. And it is quite simply the closest approximation to what the human eye would see, and the next best thing to seeing it up close.

The high-resolution color image, which shows the largest portion of the moon’s surface, was made from images taken by NASA’s Galileo probe. Using the Solid-State Imaging (SSI) experiment, the craft captured these images during it’s first and fourteenth orbit through the Jupiter system, in 1995 and 1998 respectively.

The view was previously released as a mosaic with lower resolution and strongly enhanced color (as seen on the JPL’s website). To create this new version, the images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye.



The cracked, icy surface of Europa. The smoothness of the surface has led many scientists to conclude that oceans exist beneath it. Credit: NASA/JPLredit: NASA

'Space plane' readies for launch

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(Click image to Download) The Intermediate experimental Vehicle. Photo: ESA 

Europe's first-ever "space plane" will be launched on February 11 next year, rocket firm Arianespace says after a three-month delay to fine-tune the flight plan.

The unmanned, car-sized vessel will be sent into low orbit by Europe's Vega light rocket, on a 100-minute fact-finding flight to inform plans to build a shuttle-like, reusable space vehicle.

Dubbed IXV, for Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle, the plane will be boosted from Europe's space pad in Kourou, French Guiana, and separate from its launcher at an altitude of 320 kilometres.

The European Space Agency website says it will attain an altitude of around 450k kilometres before re-entering the atmosphere at an altitude of 120 kilometres - representative of a return mission from low orbit.

The vessel is expected to collect data on its hypersonic and supersonic flight phases, before plunging into the Pacific Ocean with a parachute.

The initial launch had been scheduled for November 18, but Arianespace in October announced a postponement "to carry out additional flight trajectory analyses".

"Based on joint work by ESA [the European Space Agency] and CNES [the French space agency], the date for the IXV mission to be launched by Vega has been set for February 11, 2015," the company said in a statement on Friday.

Developed over five years at a cost of 150 million euros ($225 million), the IXV is the testbed for a reusable vehicle that may one day be able to land on a conventional runway on Earth after a mission to space.

This could be useful for bringing astronauts back from the International Space Station (ISS).

The only craft currently able to ferry astronauts to the ISS and back is Russia's Soyuz.

Last month saw two major setbacks for the space industry.

On October 28, an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket exploded shortly after launch on what was to be a supply mission to the ISS, followed three days later by the crash of Virgin Galactic tourist space plane SpaceShipTwo on a test flight, killing one of two pilots.

Source : smh

Mystery of the 'spooky' pattern in the universe: Scientists find that supermassive black holes are ALIGNED

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A European research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over distances of billions of light-years. An artist's impression of the alignment is pictured



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Black holes are one of the strangest objects in the universe, preventing anything from escaping their grip – even light.

Now astronomers have discovered something even more peculiar about these enigmatic objects; they are aligned with each other over distances stretching billions of light-years

The remarkable observations were made by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, which found an eerie alignment between enormous interstellar objects called quasars.

Quasars are galaxies with very active supermassive black holes at their centres. They shine more brightly than all the stars in the rest of their host galaxies put together.

A European research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over vast distances.

Source : Dailymail

Astronomers Discover 7 New Galaxies Using Subaru Telescope

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Man's quest to discover life and new galaxies in the outer space had been going on for ages now. We For long, scientists have been using advanced technologies to search for life and planets in our very own Akashganga, also known as Milky way. But now, the talk of the town is seven galaxies that Japanese scientists have discovered in the outer space.

The fact was revealed in the recent Astrophysical Journal, which cites that space scientists have found seven new galaxies (seemed to be appearing from nowhere), 700 million years after the Big Bang. The researchers believe that this would help them unleash deeper mysteries of the universe and its galaxies.

Wondering, who discovered it? Well, the galaxies have been discovered by a team of astronomers in Japan, led by graduate student Akira Konno and Dr Masami Ouchi, using the Subaru Telescope. The team was searching for low mass galaxies, also known as Lyman-alpha Emitters (LAEs), in the space.

Akira Konno cites, "At first we were very disappointed at this small number, but we realized that this indicates LAEs appeared suddenly about 13 billion years ago. This is an exciting discovery. We can see that the luminosities suddenly brightened during the 700 to 800 million years after the Big Bang. What would cause this?"

In order to investigate the phenomenon of cosmic reionisation, he and his team searched for early LAE galaxies at a distance of 13.1 billion light years.

Notably, galaxy clusters are the most massive objects in the universe that consist of hundreds to thousands of galaxies, pulled together by gravity.

Nearly 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was born in an event called the Big Bang. During the same period, first stars and galaxies were formed. Later, the ultraviolet light of these objects were ionised, which is also known as process called 'cosmic reionisation'.

Source : Gizmodo

Gravity May Have Saved Very Early Universe – Study

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A team of physicists from Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom, led by Dr Matti Herranen University of Copenhagen, says that the spacetime curvature – in effect, gravity – is what may have saved the Universe from collapse immediately after the Big Bang.



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Some previous studies have suggested that the production of Higgs particles during the accelerating expansion of the very early Universe (inflation period) should have led to instability and collapse. Physicists have been trying to find out why this didn’t happen, leading to hypotheses that there must be some new physics that will help explain the origins of the Universe that has not yet been discovered.

Dr Herranen and his colleagues, however, believe there is a simpler explanation.

In a new study, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, they describe how the spacetime curvature provided the stability needed for the Universe to survive expansion in that early period.

They investigated the interaction between the Higgs bosons and gravity, taking into account how it would vary with energy.

The results show that even a small interaction would have been enough to stabilize the Universe against decay.

“The Standard Model of particle physics, which scientists use to explain elementary particles and their interactions, has so far not provided an answer to why the Universe did not collapse following the Big Bang,” said co-author Prof Arttu Rajantie of Imperial College London.

“Our research investigates the last unknown parameter in the Standard Model – the interaction between the Higgs particle and gravity.”

This parameter cannot be measured in particle accelerator experiments, but it has a big effect on the Higgs instability during inflation. Even a relatively small value is enough to explain the survival of the Universe without any new physics!”

The physicists plan to continue their research using cosmological observations to look at this interaction in more detail and explain what effect it would have had on the development of the early Universe.

In particular, they will use data from current and future ESA’s missions measuring cosmic microwave background radiation and gravitational waves.

“Our aim is to measure the interaction between gravity and the Higgs field using cosmological data,” Prof Rajantie said.

“If we are able to do that, we will have supplied the last unknown number in the Standard Model of particle physics and be closer to answering fundamental questions about how we are all here.”

Source : Sci-news

Philae’s Incredible Comet-Landing Sequence Shows Up In Fresh Rosetta Images

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Images from the Rosetta spacecraft show Philae drifting across the surface of its target comet during landing Nov. 12, 2014. Credit: ESA/Rosetta

New images released from the Rosetta spacecraft orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko show the spacecraft coming in for its (first) landing on Wednesday (Nov. 12). “The mosaic comprises a series of images captured by Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera over a 30 minute period spanning the first touchdown,” wrote the European Space Agency in a blog post today (Monday).

This is just the latest in a series of images coming from the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft showing the Philae lander coming in for its rendezvous with 67P. A major next step for the mission will be figuring out where the lander actually came for a rest, but there’s plenty of data from both Rosetta and Philae to comb through for this information, ESA said.

What’s known for sure is Philae made three touchdowns on the comet — making history as humanity’s first soft-lander on such an object — stopping in a shady area that will make recharging its solar panels difficult. The spacecraft is in hibernation as of Friday (Nov. 17) and scientists are really, really hoping it’s able to charge up for another science session soon. Rosetta, meanwhile, is hard at work above and will continue to follow the comet in 2015.

Source : universe today

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NASA Takes Stunning Image of Florida Nighttime Coast

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The lights of Cocoa Beach trace the curved lines of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, an area well known to astronauts. (NASA image)

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of Florida in October 2014. The peninsula is highly recognizable even at night, especially when looking roughly north, as our map-trained brains expect.

Illuminated areas give a strong sense of the size of cities. The brightest continuous patch of lights is the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, the largest urban area in the southeastern U.S. and home to 5.6 million people.

The next largest area is the Tampa Bay region (2.8 million people) on the Gulf Coast of the peninsula. Orlando, located in the middle, has a somewhat smaller footprint (2.3 million). A nearly straight line of cities runs nearly 560 kilometers (350 miles) along the Atlantic coast from Jacksonville, Florida, to Wilmington, North Carolina.

South of Orlando, the center and southern portions of the peninsula are as dark as the Atlantic Ocean, vividly illustrating the almost population-free Everglades wetland.

The lights of Cocoa Beach trace the curved lines of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, an area well known to astronauts. Dim lights of the Florida Keys extend the arc of the Atlantic coast to the corner of the image. The small cluster of lights far offshore is Freeport on Grand Bahama Island (image right). The faint blue areas throughout the image are clouds lit by moonlight.

Source : spacecoastdaily

Webb Space Telescope promises astronomers new scientific adventures

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Astronomers are hoping that the Webb will be able to collect light that is very far away from us and is moving still farther away. The universe has been expanding ever since the big bang got it started, but scientists reckon that if the telescope is powerful enough, they just might be able to see the birth of the first galaxies, some 13.5 billion years ago.

“This is similar to archaeology,” says Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who helped plan Webb’s science mission. “We are digging deep into the universe. But as the sources of light become fainter and farther away, you need a big telescope like the James Webb.”

Named for a former NASA director, the 21-foot-diameter Webb telescope will be 100 times as powerful as the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990. Although Hubble wasn’t the first space telescope, its images of far-off objects have dazzled the public and led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as determining how fast the universe is expanding.

The Webb will be both bigger and located in a darker part of space than Hubble, enabling it to capture images from the faintest galaxies. Four infrared cameras will capture light that is moving away from us very quickly and that has shifted from the visible to the infrared spectrum, described as red-shifted. The advantage of using infrared light is that it is not blocked by clouds of gas and dust that may lie between the telescope and the light. Webb’s mirrors are covered in a thin layer of gold that absorbs blue light but reflects yellow and red visible light, and its cameras will detect infrared light and a small part of the visible spectrum. As objects move away from us, the wavelength of their light shifts from visible light to infrared light. That’s why the Webb’s infrared cameras will be able to see things that are both far away and moving away from us.

In the meantime, scientists such as Sara Seager of MIT, who studies exoplanets that revolve around distant stars, are imagining the discoveries that will occur once Webb directs its mirrors toward deep space. As a planet moves in front of a star, researchers hope to see the fingerprints of its atmosphere, which absorbs starlight. By analyzing the chemical spectrum of the light, they may be able to determine the atmosphere’s composition. Oxygen has a spectral fingerprint, as does methane, carbon dioxide and other gases found in atmospheres.

NASA Plans Manned Mars Mission By 2035

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NASA's Dr Ellen Stofan has claimed that the space agency is planning missions to Mars in the not too distant future.

“In a sense it’s our destiny to move beyond this planet and Mars is the logical choice,” said the 53-year-old scientist. She predicts that Mars is likely the site of signs of other evolved life forms, and having a laboratory on the Red Planet would be “critically important” for science.

NASA’s Manned Mars Mission: Significant challenges

Any future Mars mission would be fraught with difficulty, including the threat from high-levels of radiation once astronauts have landed, and Stofan claims NASA are still trying “to figure out how to adequately protect them.”

Another challenge is presented by Mars’ thin atmosphere, which makes landing a colossal spaceship an incredibly difficult proposition. Scientists are still researching a “way of slowing yourself down really rapidly” under such conditions.

NASA’s Manned Mars Mission: Why Mars?

The expense of space exploration has come under fire from those more concerned with earthly problems, but Stofan claims that exploration of our solar system and the other planets contained in it is of great benefit in studying the Earth too.

Concerning a mission to Mars, Stofan claims that scientists would ideally be able to compare processes on Earth with those from other planets, in order to build a greater understanding of our own planet. She compares the work of earth scientists with that of doctors, whose understanding of a disease benefits from a greater number of patients.

Stofan has another riposte for those who claim that we should be concentrating on issues closer to home. “We get amazing technology spinoffs from the work NASA has done,” she claimed, giving examples such as fuel efficient winglets for airplanes to climate change monitoring equipment.

Stofan also weighed in on equality in the workplace, claiming that at NASA she has “had to work four times as hard to be taken half as seriously,” with men making up the vast majority of the workforce. She adds that if humanity wants to undertake new groundbreaking missions such as a Mars landing, we need to maximize our potential by involving the brightest minds from different genders and races, “not just white men.”

If we can effectively harness our potential, Stofan thinks we could see a manned Mars mission within the next 25 years.

Source :valve walk

Black hole at Milky Way center may be emitting mysterious neutrinos, NASA says

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The massive black hole at the heart of our milky galaxy may be churning out peculiar particles called neutrinos, NASA satellites have revealed. If verified, it would be the first time neutrinos have been traced to the darkest regions of spacetime.

The subatomic activity was first detected by three NASA satellites, which observe in x-ray light: the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Swift gamma-ray mission, and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), the space agency said in a press release.

Neutrinos, from the Italian “little ones”, live up to their namesake, as they are tiny by even subatomic standards. Carrying no charge, they are unaffected by the electromagnetic forces that affect charged particles such as electrons and protons.

As a result, they can travel across vast expanses of the universe without being absorbed by matter that crosses their path (in fact, billions of them pass through your body every second!) And without an electric charge, they are not deflected by magnetic fields when traveling across the universe.

While the earth is constantly buffeted by neutrinos from the sun, those originating from beyond our solar system can be millions or even billions of times more energetic. Scientists have long puzzled the origin of ultra-high energy and very high-energy neutrinos.

“Figuring out where high-energy neutrinos come from is one of the biggest problems in astrophysics today,” said Yang Bai of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who co-authored a study about the results published in Physical Review D. “We now have the first evidence that an astronomical source – the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole – may be producing these very energetic neutrinos."

By tracing neutrinos back to black holes, scientists will be one step closer to understanding how cosmic rays are made. These rays wreak havoc on microelectronics and life outside the protection of an atmosphere and magnetic field. Understanding their origin also provides deeper insight into how the universe works.

Did NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Find Fish Fossil On Mars ?

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Curiosity Mars rover has provided numerous intriguing insights into the mysteries of the Red Planet since it landed on the Martian surface two years ago. It has also supplied armchair astronomers with plenty of fringe theories about the planet that unfortunately seem to catch more attention on the internet than the actual research being done on Mars.

 Last month, amateur observers were quick to conclude photo-error unusualities on images taken by the rover as evidence for alien existence. A report gave details on how “experts” on social media, like YouTuber “Martian Archelogist” [sic], interpreted tricky lighting on rocks as actual elongated skulls left behind by otherworldly civilizations. These and other similar claims have either been disregarded or debunked by real researchers.

A more recent Mars “alien evidence” story has been circulating on social media for the past few days, detailing how Curiosity Mars rover allegedly discovered fish bones on the surface of the planet — particularly near the Windjana drilling target, where the rover has just recently completed drilling a hole. Allegedly dubbed as NASA’s “greatest discovery”, the fossils were reportedly found intact and resembling what humans might identify as the endoskeleton of a fish.

A site called MSNBC.website, which allegedly broke the story online, quoted statements reportedly released by NASA’s chief scientist Dr. Elle Stafon.

“This is extraordinary news for the scientific community. We’ve found minute evidence of prior life before but nothing as concrete as this.”

Although there is an actual Dr. Stafon working at NASA, the statements she allegedly issued regarding the rover fish bone discovery were fabricated. The image of the fossil discovery provided by the article has also been proven to be a doctored version of an actual NASA image of the Windjana area on Mars, the site of the Curiosity rover’s recently concluded drilling activities.

Since arriving on Mars in 2012, the Curiosity rover has actually made real discoveries about our nearest neighbor. Last year, the rover discovered the existence of an ancient, knee-deep streambed which used to flow on the Martian surface for thousands of years at a time. This inspired strong suspicions among scientists of ancient microbial life that may have existed on Mars hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Last June, the Curiosity Mars rover has officially spent a whole Martian year on its mission, having completed 687 Earth days of travel and discovery on the red planet.

Source :inquisitr

Scientists Discover Why Jupiter's Great Red Spot Is Red

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We know that Jupiter's Great Red Spot is red. Its color is right there in the name. However, why is it red? A team of NASA scientists recently found out.

Previous theories about the reddish color of Jupiter's Great Red Spot suggested that the color comes from chemicals beneath Jupiter's clouds, with certain chemicals forming lower in Jupiter's atmosphere and then rising to the top of the spot.

However, after studying new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, along with laboratory experiments, scientists think that the red in the Red Spot comes from sunlight hitting chemicals higher up in Jupiter's upper atmosphere.

After studying Cassini's data, researchers used ultraviolet light to mimic sunlight, and blasted it at two gases known to exist on Jupiter: ammonia and acetylene. The result was a red material that matched Cassini's observations of Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

"Our models suggest most of the Great Red Spot is actually pretty bland in color, beneath the upper cloud layer of reddish material," says Kevin Baines, a Cassini team scientist. "Under the reddish 'sunburn' the clouds are probably whitish or grayish."

The Great Red Spot is actually a massive storm on the surface of Jupiter. It's so big that three Earths could easily fit inside it. Discovered in the 1600s, the storm reaches high into Jupiter's upper atmosphere.

"The Great Red Spot is extremely tall," Baines says. "It reaches much higher altitudes than clouds elsewhere on Jupiter."

This high altitude is why the Great Red Spot's color is so intense: the storm's winds bring ammonia ice particles into the upper atmosphere, exposing it to more sunlight. Because the storm is spinning, similar to a hurricane, the ammonia particles can't escape. This creates a constant red color at the top of the storm.

So why is the Great Red Spot's color so important? Jupiter only has a few elements, with its body mostly formed of hydrogen and helium. By examining the colors on the planet's surface, scientists can identify those elements and get a better idea of the planet's chemical composition.

Jupiter displays a variety of similar shades across its surface: oranges, browns and other shades of red. These colors suggest areas with thinner and higher clouds, which lets us see deeper into Jupiter's atmosphere.

The Great Red Spot, though, stands out as one of Jupiter's more mysterious features. Jupiter has no land mass, so a storm of that magnitude should have disappeared quickly in such a turbulent atmosphere. However, the Great Red Spot is still there, although recent measurements show that it's possibly shrinking.

Source : techtime

Asteroids colliding with Earth more than 550 times in 20 years

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New data released by NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) program shows that the Earth has been struck more than 550 times in a twenty-year period.

The map divides the collisions among those that hit during the night and those that entered the atmosphere during daylight. The size of each dot is proportional to the optical radiated energy.

The data was gathered by American sensors between 1994 and 2013 during which 556 bolides—or bright meteors—were reported all across the world.

Each impact released energy up to 1,000,000 giga joules (which is the equivalent of one million tons of TNT explosives).

NASA has allocated more than 10 times the money that they had budgeted five years ago to asteroid detection. The agency says that characterizing hazardous asteroids to protect our home planet is a high priority for the space agency.

To help with this mission, NASA is also developing an Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) which will send astronauts to explore asteroids. See the video below :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4IBW4XuUFo

Source : .the weather network

NASA gets green light for ‘space taxi’ project with Boeing

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Artistic impression of Boeing's Space Taxi

Boeing is moving full speed ahead with ambitious plans to build and fly America’s and indeed the world’s first private spaceships destined to transport humans to orbit, after being awarded the lion’s share of NASA’s commercial crew contract barely two month ago.

Boeing's slice of the contract is worth $4.2 billion, while SpaceX captured $2.6 billion of the project.

Source : bizjournals,SEN

Uranus Is 'Incredibly Active' Say Astronomers

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Astronomers are extremely excited that Uranus is “incredibly active” and is experiencing significant turbulence.



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It’s been a crazy few days in the galaxy far beyond as not only did we have the first ever successful landing on a moving asteroid but according to astronomers, Uranus is “incredibly active”.

Now you’re probably thinking that’s a wonderful punchline for a joke about your anus, but shame on you as that’s no such thing.

This is a very serious topic as a healthy and productive Uranus is vital to the well being of your system, uh, solar system I should say.

In the past Uranus has been void of much action, though it seems as if things are starting to spice up on Uranus and it’s not from a poor choice in diet as the planet has been experiencing a significant amount of unusual activity. Storms have blanketed the planet in recent weeks which has shocked astronomers who suggest this type of activity takes about a four decade break, much like your significant other.

“This type of activity would have been expected in 2007, when Uranus’s once every 42-year equinox occurred and the sun shined directly on the equator,” opined Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. “But we predicted that such activity would have died down by now. Why we see these incredible storms now is beyond anybody’s guess.”

Given the amount of activity being experienced by Uranus, one might be best served to simply enjoy the unusual phenomenon and let nature takes its course.

Source :fansided

New Mission May Discover Hundreds of Black Holes Throughout the Universe

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A new mission may just discover hundreds of new black holes throughout the universe. Scientists have revamped two detectors that are scheduled to switch on in the U.S. next year that could help scientists pick up the faint ripples of black hole collisions millions of years ago, known as gravitational waves.

Black holes can't be seen, but the new detectors should be able to act like giant microphones and pick up the remnants of black hole collisions.

The rapid spinning of black holes will cause the orbits to wobble, just like the last wobbles of a spinning top before it falls over," said Mark Hannam, one of the researchers, in a news release. "These wobbles can make the black holes trace out wild paths around each other, leading to extremely complicated gravitational-wave signals. Our model aims to predict this behavior and help scientists find the signals in the detector data."
The researchers created a theoretical model which aims to predict all potential gravitational-wave signals that might be found by detectors. In theory, this should help scientists by acting as a "spotter's guide" and allow them to recognize the right waveforms.
"Sometimes the orbits of these spinning black holes look completely tangled up, like a ball of string," said Hannam. "But if you imagine whirling around with the black holes, then it all looks much clearer, and we can write down equations to describe what is happening. It's like watching a kid on a high-speed spinning amusement park ride, apparently waving their hands around. From the side lines, it's impossible to tell what they're doing. But if you site next to them, they might be sitting perfectly still, just giving you the thumbs up."
The new model should help search for black hole mergers once the detectors switch on. That said, more work still needs to be done. The scientists hope to create enough simulations to capture enough combinations of black-hole masses and spin directions to understand the overall behavior of these complicated systems.

Source : science world report