Video of China's Historic Moon Landing Released.

It’s been a busy weekend for China’s moon mission Chang’e 3. After a successful landing on Saturday, the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center commanded the lander’s rover to roll onto the lunar surface early Sunday morning (Beijing Time). Now, a beautiful video has been released of the full landing sequence, shown here.

At approximately 3 minutes into the video, the Chang’e 3 lander rotates to begin its vertical descent onto Sinus Iridum (the Bay of Rainbows), an ancient lava plain in the moon’s northern hemisphere. The descent onto lunar regolith had a very Apollo-landing feel as the lander’s thrusters blew moon dust away from the landing site at around the 6 minute mark. Then, as the lander reached 4 meters from the surface, its engines switched off, causing the robot to drop, unaided, the rest of the way.

Source: DN

Google plans aerospace and robotics projects for Hangar One.

MOUNTAIN VIEW -- If you were Google, what would you do with a 350,000-square-foot hangar that was originally built to house helium airships for the U.S. Navy?

How about using its cavernous interior for building and testing new robots, planetary rovers and other space or aviation technology?

A NASA spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday that those plans are part of the proposal submitted by a subsidiary of the giant Internet company, along with restoring the outside of the landmark structure known as Hangar One at Moffett Federal Airfield. Based on that proposal, U.S. officials said this week they will negotiate a long-term lease with Google for a significant portion of the former naval base, including three historic hangars, two runways and some adjacent land and buildings.

While the company is best known for its Internet search engine, software and other online services, Google's founders and several top executives also have a well-documented interest in robots, high-altitude balloons, aviation and space exploration.
In recent months, Google has confirmed buying eight small robotics companies for a mysterious new division headed by its former Android software chief, Andy Rubin. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin already own a fleet of jets now parked at Moffett Field. And Page, the company's CEO, has reportedly invested in a separate company that hopes to mine asteroids for precious metals.
While a Google spokeswoman didn't respond to requests for more details about the company's plans, it's clear the massive Hangar One would provide plenty of room for tinkering with exotic hardware. The Depression-era structure is 200 feet tall and covers 8 acres. All told, the proposed lease would provide more than 1 million square feet of space in Hangar One and its two neighbors, known as Two and Three.
That's probably enough for projects such as Google's plans to develop new robot technology for manufacturing and retail shopping. Rubin is reportedly working in a Palo Alto office now, but the effort appears to be expanding. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Rubin has discussed a robotics partnership with the Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn.

It's unclear if Google plans to sublet any of the Moffett space to other commercial tenants, although local real estate experts say it would be an attractive property. Neighboring residents said they might be concerned if Google brings more air traffic or daytime workers into the area. Mountain View City Manager Dan Rich, however, said in a statement that he's pleased the landmark hangar will be restored.

Officials at NASA and the U.S. General Services Administration, which helps administer federal property, said only that the proposal from Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures described using all three historic hangars for "research, testing, assembly and development" of new technology related to space, aviation and "rover/robotics."
The proposal also calls for building a new 90,000-square-foot structure on the property that Planetary Ventures would make available "at no cost" for a "public benefit educational/museum/incubator," said GSA spokeswoman Jackeline Stewart.
Federal officials rejected competing proposals from two other groups, including a coalition of scientists and entrepreneurs that wanted to make the airfield a center for new aerospace companies. One rival was disqualified because it didn't follow procedures, officials said, while another fell short on several criteria.
As part of its proposal, which NASA official Richard Keegan rated "exceptional," Google promised to upgrade a golf course on the property and provide a net increase in revenue for the federal government, while operating the two runways on a "low-use" basis for a mix of private and government flights. Officials said specific financial terms haven't been negotiated.
Since it was decommissioned as a Navy air base in 1994, the sprawling, 2,000-acre Moffett property has been home to a mix of private tenants and government agencies, including NASA's Ames Research Center and a wing of the California Air National Guard. NASA currently occupies about 500 acres, but the government has negotiated long-term leases for other portions over the years.
Google has a separate long-term lease to build a planned office campus on 42 acres of the site, which are not physically connected to the airfield portion. A coalition of local colleges has a lease for 77 acres, where it hopes to build classrooms, labs and possibly housing.
Several aerospace contractors also use the site. Former NASA scientist Sean Casey, who led one of the rival bidding groups, said he hopes Google will keep the airfield open to aerospace startups.
"Moffett Field is a great place for new space companies to connect with the investment community and with NASA Ames," he said.

In a statement Monday, Google said simply: "We are delighted to move ahead in the selection process and we are looking forward to working with both GSA and NASA to preserve the heritage of Moffett Federal Airfield."

Source: MercuryNews

Massive 'Potentially Hazardous' Asteroid To Fly Over Earth (And You Can Watch Live On The Internet)

An asteroid three times the size of a football pitch travelling at 27,000 miles power is about to pass close to Earth.
And you can watch live on the internet.
Astronomers announced that the 'potentially hazardous' object - known as (NEA), 2000 EM26 - will come within about 0.018 AU of the Earth on 17 February.

Now - while 0.018 AU (a standard Astronomical Unit, or the distance to the sun) might sound small, it's actually pretty far, being more than 2.6 million kilometers.
So, no - there's no reason to panic. Instead you can sit back and watch the massive rock pass overhead, thanks to the cameras on Slooh.com (or its iPad app) which are trained to the right part of the sky above the Canary Islands.
Slooh routinely tracks dangerous asteroids which have the potential to cause significant damage if they hit the Earth.

Their work has the side aim of increasing awareness about the dangers of asteroids, and recruiting members of the public to help by scanning the skies with Slooh robotic telescopes.
The pass of 2000 EM26 comes almost exactly a year after an asteroid 30 metres in diameter exploded above Chelyabinsk in Russia, injuring more than 1,000 people.
Slooh's technical and research director, Paul Cox told Phys.org:

"We continue to discover these potentially hazardous asteroids—sometimes only days before they make their close approaches to Earth. Slooh's asteroid research campaign is gathering momentum with Slooh members using the Slooh robotic telescopes to monitor this huge population of potentially hazardous space rocks. We need to find them before they find us!"

Source: HP

Termite-like robots could build on Mars.

 Scientists have developed automated robots capable of working together to build complex structures.

In much the same way as termites are able to build massive columns hundreds of times larger than themselves, the new robots developed at Harvard University operate without the need for direct instructions or a central leader telling them what to do.

At around the size of a brick, the robots function by assessing what work has already been done and then adding to it with only the knowledge of the completed structure to go by. The process continues until all the pieces are in place and the structure has been completed.

Scientists believe that in the future, small armies of independent robots such as these could prove invaluable in the construction of buildings in places inhospitable to humans such as on the surface of Mars or at the bottom of the sea. 

 Source: Washington Post

Ganymede, Solar System's Largest Moon, Gets 'On The Map'.

When it comes to the multitude of moons that exist in our solar system, we often hear a lot about the few big stars of today’s scientific stage: Titan, Europa, Enceladus, Pluto’s most recently-discovered companions Kerberos and Styx, Mars’ moon Phobos… and of course our very own lovely moon, The Moon. But in the vast pantheon of heavenly satellites there’s one that looms above all the rest: Ganymede, the seventh moon of Jupiter and the largest moon in the entire solar system.

But just because Ganymede doesn’t make the headlines as often as its smaller cousins doesn’t mean it lacks fans in the scientific community, as evidenced by a brand-new geologic map released today by the USGS.

The comprehensive (and very colorful) map is the result of a project led by Geoffrey Collins of Wheaton College, and uses the most detailed images obtained of Ganymede by NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 and Galileo spacecraft, executing imaging flybys of Jupiter and its moons in 1979, and the late 90s and early 2000s, respectively.
Using colors to differentiate the incredibly varied terrain on Ganymede, the illustrative map provides planetary scientists with the first solid evidence for distinct periods in the massive moon’s history: ancient, heavy cratering; tectonic upheaval; and then more recent settling and geologic decline.

Watch a 360-degree rotation of Ganymede and its new map above:

“This map illustrates the incredible variety of geological features on Ganymede and helps to make order from the apparent chaos of its complex surface,” said Robert Pappalardo of JPL. “This map is helping planetary scientists to decipher the evolution of this icy world and will aid in upcoming spacecraft observations.”
ESA’s upcoming Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission is slated to launch in 2022 and orbit Ganymede around 2032, and this map will undoubtedly aid in mission planning and the targeting of specific objectives.

“The surface of Ganymede is more than half as large as all the land area on Earth, so there is a wide diversity of locations to choose from. Ganymede also shows features that are ancient alongside much more recently formed features, adding historical diversity in addition to geographic diversity.” – Geoffrey Collins, Geology Professor at Wheaton College, Norton, Mass.

The largest of Jupiter’s 63 named satellites, Ganymede has twice the mass of our moon and is even larger than the planet Mercury. In fact, at 3,280 miles wide Ganymede is bigger than Mercury and almost as large as Mars! Its complex icy surface is crisscrossed by dark regions covered with craters and lighter areas lined with grooves and ridges.

Ganymede even has a very thin oxygen atmosphere as well as its very own magnetosphere, generated by a molten core made up of heavy conductive metals. It’s been said that if Ganymede were to be orbiting the sun instead of Jupiter, it would easily be classified as a planet in its own right.

Discovered by Galileo in 1610, Ganymede is visible from Earth as one of the four Galilean moons seen alongside Jupiter (with Callisto, Io and Europa). With Jupiter so bright in the sky right now it’s fairly easy to spot Ganymede for yourself. All that’s needed is a small telescope or decent pair of binoculars (preferably mounted on a tripod) and a clear night sky… and a way to know what you’re seeing.
Source: DN

New tracking technology to spot smaller asteroid threats.

The dream of detecting every potentially dangerous near Earth asteroid could be a step closer to reality, thanks to a new technique called synthetic tracking.

A report in the Astrophysical Journal, claims the system, which combines high-speed computers and low-noise cameras, has the potential to find every near Earth object down to 10 metres in size.
Currently, only a tiny fraction, possibly as little as two per cent of the estimated quarter of a million small asteroids near Earth have been found, according to the study's lead author Dr Michael Shao of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
"Only a very small fraction of those asteroids are detectable with current techniques," says Shao.
Small dark asteroids in the 10-metre range are only discovered when they're very close to the Earth.
"When they're that close, they appear to be moving very fast, making them hard to track," says Shao.
"We think we have a new mouse trap that can detect all of them. If they fall into our field of view we will find them."

Better data

The synthetic tracking system developed by Shao and colleagues uses a 5 mega-pixel camera that can snap a hundred images a second with a very low noise-to-picture ratio.
The camera is matched with graphic processing units capable of computational rates of four teraflops (trillion operations per second), allowing a huge amount of data to be processed in real time.
The software acts as an artificial tracking system, combining data from different pixels as an object moves across the camera's line of sight.
"It lets us detect and track asteroids which would normally be too faint to see," says Shao.
It also allows better measurements to be made of their orbits.
"Up to 95 per cent of asteroids are lost because they're observable over only a short period of time," says Shao.
"The higher sensitivity [of the synthetic tracking system] means we can keep track of an object for a longer period of time as it swings by Earth, so it won't be subsequently lost."
In April 2013, Shao and colleagues successfully tested the technique on two known asteroids, 2013FQ10 and 2009BL2.

Major danger

Near Earth asteroids pose a significant threat to life on Earth, prompting a recent United Nations vote to develop an asteroid defence plan.
Several times a year, an object of the size of a small car hits Earth's atmosphere. Larger asteroids occasionally also crash into Earth, producing impact sites, such as Arizona's kilometre-wide Meteor Crater.
Another impact, off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, caused a mass extinction event 65 million years ago, which wiped out 75 per cent of all life on Earth.
So far more than 10,000 near Earth asteroids have been discovered, with nearly 1000 of these objects being greater than a kilometre wide. However the smaller they are, the harder they are to detect.
The danger was highlighted a year ago, when a 17-metre wide asteroid exploded in the skies over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk injuring more than 2000 people.
Over the past five years, only about 150 near Earth asteroids in the ten metre range have been discovered.

"If we get the funding to build our ideal camera, we could increase the number of small asteroids over say seven meters, detected per night by several hundred," says Shao.

Source: ABC

Experts Question Claim Tunguska Meteorite May Have Come from Mars.

In 1908 a blazing white line cut across the sky before exploding a few miles above the ground with a force one thousand times stronger than the nuclear blast that leveled Hiroshima, Japan.
The resulting shock wave felled trees across more than 800 square miles in the remote forests of Tunguska, Siberia.
For over 100 years, the exact origins of the Tunguska event have remained a mystery. Without any fragments or impact craters to study, astronomers have been left in the dark. That’s not to say that all kinds of extraordinary causes haven’t been invoked to explain the event. Various people have thought of everything from Earth colliding with a small black hole to the crash of a UFO.
Russian researchers claim they may finally have evidence that will dislodge all conspiracy theories, but that “may” is huge. A team of four believes they have recovered fragments of the object — the so-called Tunguska meteorite — and even think they are Martian in origin. The research, however, is being called into question.
In a detective-like manner, the team surveyed 100 years’ worth of research. The researchers read eyewitness reports and analyzed aerial photos of the location. They performed a systematic survey of the central region in the felled forest and analyzed exotic rocks and penetration funnels.

Previously, numerous expeditions failed to recover any fragments that could be attributed conclusively to the long-sought Tunguska meteorite. But then Andrei Zlobin, of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Vernadsky State Geological Museum, discovered three stones with possible traces of melting. He published the results in April 2013.
Zlobin’s discovery paper was received with skepticism and Universe Today covered the news immediately. A curious question arose quickly: why did it take so long for Zlobin to analyze his samples? The expedition took place in 1988, but it took 20 years before the three Tunguska candidates were nominated and another five years before Zlobin finished the paper.
By Zlobin’s admission, his discovery paper was only a preliminary study. He claimed he didn’t carry out a detailed chemical analysis of the rocks, which is necessary in order to reveal their true nature. Most field experts quickly dismissed the paper, feeling there was more work to be done before Zlobin could truly know if these rocks were fragments from the Tunguska meteor.
Today, new research is moving forward with an analysis of the rocks originally discovered by Zlobin. But an interesting new addition to the collection is a rock called “John’s Stone” — a large boulder discovered in July, 1972. While it’s mostly a dark gray now it was much lighter at the time of its discovery. “John’s Stone has an almond-like shape with one broken side,” lead author Dr. Yana Anfinogenov told Universe Today.
Now the skeptical reader might be asking the same question as before: why is there such a large time-lapse between the discovery of John’s Stone and the analysis presented here? (It’s interesting to note that while this elusive rock has been reviewed in the literature for over 40 years, this is the first time it has appeared in an English paper). Anfinogenov claimed that new data (especially concerning Martian geology) allowed for a much better analysis today than it did in recent years.

“The ground near John’s Stone presents undeniable impact signs suggesting that the boulder hit the ground with a catastrophic speed,” Anfinogenov told Universe Today. It left a deep trace in the permafrost which allowed researchers to note its trajectory and landing velocity coincides with that of the incoming Tunguska meteorite.
John’s Stone also contains shear-fractured splinter fragments with glossy coatings, indicating the strong effect of heat generated when it entered our atmosphere. The research team attempted to reproduce those glossy coatings found on the splinters by heating another fragment of John’s Stone to 500 degrees Celsius. The experiment was not successful as the fragment disintegrated in high heat.
“The authors do not present a strong case that the boulder known as John’s Stone was involved in the Tunguska event, or that it originated from Mars,” said Dr. Phil Bland, a meteorite expert at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.
They claim the mineral structure and chemical composition of the rocks — a quartz-sandstone with grain sizes of 0.5 to 1.5 cm and rich in silica — match rocks found on Mars. But their paper lacks any microanalysis of the samples, or isotopic study.
While there is a strong case that an impact on Mars could easily eject rock fragments that would then hit the Earth, something doesn’t match up. “The physics of ejecting material from Mars into interplanetary space argues for fragments with diameters of one to two meters, not the 20 to 30 meter range that would be required for Tunguska,” Bland told Universe Today.
It seems as though planetary geologists will require a much stronger case than this to be truly convinced John’s Stone is the Tunguska meteorite, let alone from Mars.
The paper is currently under peer-review but is available for download here.

Source: UT

Dyson Spheres: How Advanced Alien Civilizations Would Conquer the Galaxy (Infographic)

 Ancient extraterrestrial civilizations, millions of years older than humanity, would need enormous amounts of energy. By creating a swarm of satellites in a spherical shell, they could harness much of the power of their star.
Science fiction author Olaf Stapledon described spherical, energy-trapping alien structures in his 1937 novel "Star Maker": 
"Not only was every solar system now surrounded by a gauze of light traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for intelligent use, so that the whole galaxy was dimmed, but many stars that were not suited to be suns were disintegrated, and rifled of their prodigious stores of sub-atomic energy."

Incredible Technology: How to Search for Advanced Alien Civilizations

Recalling Stapledon's description, physicist Freeman Dyson proposed similar structures in a scientific paper in 1960. Dyson realized that alien civilizations could be recognized by their waste heat, which would be detectable as infrared radiation. Dyson proposed that really advanced civilizations would re-engineer their solar systems, perhaps dismantling planets to form a shell of satellites around their star to capture its energy. 

Astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed in 1962 that very old and advanced civilizations would be of three types:
A Type I civilization harnesses all the resources of a planet. Carl Sagan estimated that Earth rates about 0.7 on the scale.
A Type II civilization harnesses all the radiation of a star. Humans might reach Type II in a few thousand years.
A Type III civilization harnesses all the resources of a galaxy. Humans might reach Type III in a few hundred thousand to a million years.
A solid shell around a star would be gravitationally unstable, and would probably require more material than all of the planets of a solar system could provide. Instead, practical Dyson spheres would be made from millions of individual solar-collecting satellites.
Solar sails could remain in place by balancing against the pressure of light from the sun. The satellite would not be in orbit, it would actually hover in space. Such a satellite is called a "statite." Rings of statites would form a cloud around the star, collecting its energy and beaming it back to the home planet.

Dyson spheres and other mega-structures appear frequently in science fiction. In his 1970 novel "Ringworld," Larry Niven features a ring-shaped artificial structure girdling an alien star. In the 1992 “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode "Relics," the starship Enterprise encounters a Dyson sphere in the form of a rigid shell surrounding a star.

Source: LS

A History of Curious Artifacts Sent Into Space.

Since the dawn of the Space Age in 1957, thousands of artifacts and memorabilia have been flown into space. Some have been hoisted on brief suborbital flights, while others have been flung out of the solar system, never to return. And of course, it’s become a fashionable — and highly commercialized — trend as of late to briefly loft products, stuffed animals, etc via balloon towards the tenuous boundary of space. Fly a souvenir or artifact into orbit, and it goes from mundane to priceless. But a few may also serve as a final testament to the our ephemeral existence as a species long after our passing.
Here’s a look at some of the most memorable objects sent into space:

The Florida State Quarter dispatched with New Horizons. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Rodgers, JHU/APL.

New Horizons Memorabilia
Launched on January 19th, 2006, New Horizons is headed towards a historic encounter with Pluto and its moons next year. From there, New Horizons will survey any Kuiper Belt objects of opportunity along its path and then head out of the solar system, becoming the fifth spacecraft to do so. In addition to a suite of scientific instruments, New Horizons also carries the ashes of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh, a Florida & Maryland state quarter, a piece of Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne, and an American flag. These will doubtless confuse any extraterrestrial salvagers!

The Humanoids Where Here: the plaque affixed the the Pioneer 10 & 11 spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL.

The Pioneer Plaques
The first spacecraft sent on escape trajectories out of our solar system, the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft each carry a plaque which serves as a sort of postcard “greeting” to any future interceptors. The plaque depicts a diagram of the solar system, a map of our location in the galaxy using the positions of known pulsars, and a nude man & woman, which actually generated lots of controversy.  Scientist James Van Allen tells of deliberately placing a fingerprint on the Pioneer 10 plaque in his biography The First Eight Billion Miles.

Earth’s Greatest Hits: the Golden Record attached to the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL.

The Voyager 1 and 2 Golden Records
Conceived and designed in part by Carl Sagan, these records contain images and sounds of the Earth that’ll most likely outlive humanity. The records carry greetings in 55 languages, music ranging from Mozart to Chuck Berry, 116 images and more, along with instructions and a stylus for playback.  The record is also enclosed in an aluminum cover electroplated with Uranium-238, which an alien civilization could use to date its manufacture via half-life decay.

A closeup of the “Mars Penny.” Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The Mars Curiosity Penny
Strange but true: The Mars rover Curiosity carries a 1909 U.S. Penny for a backup camera calibration target.  The penny itself is embedded just below the primary color calibration targets used by Curiosity’s MArs Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Rare enough on Earth, the 1909 Lincoln “Mars penny” will be priceless to future collectors!

Jupiter-bound figurines from left: Jupiter, Juno, & Galileo. Credit: NASA.

Juno’s LEGO Figurines
Mini-figurines of Galileo and the Roman deities Jupiter and Juno were launched in 2011 aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft en route to Jupiter . LEGO has flown products aboard the U.S. Space Shuttles and to the International Space Station previously, but Juno’s cargo represents the “most distant LEGO launch” ever. The figurines will burn up in Jupiter’s atmosphere along with the spacecraft at the end of the mission in October 2017.

An Apollo 15 postal cover flown to the Moon. Credit: NASA.

Apollo 15 Postal Covers Fiasco
Apollo 15 astronauts got in some hot water over a publicity scheme. The idea that stamp collector and dealer Hermann Sieger approached the astronauts with was simple: 400 commemorative postage stamp covers would be postmarked at point of departure from the Kennedy Space Center and again at the return point of arrival aboard the USS Okinawa after their circuitous journey via the Moon. NASA was less than happy with the whole affair, and Command Module Pilot Al Worden recounts the aftermath in his book, Falling to Earth.

A Marsbound DVD… Courtesy of Lockheed Martin/LSP.

Last year’s MAVEN mission to Mars also carried haiku submitted by space fans.  Over 12,530 valid entries were submitted and over 1,100 haiku received the necessary minimum of two votes to be included on a DVD disk affixed to the spacecraft. MAVEN reaches orbit around Mars in October 2014.

The copy of the Soviet pennant aboard Luna 2 on display at the Kansas Cosmoshpere. Credit: Patrick Pelletier under a Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Luna 2: A Russian Pennant on Moon
On September 12^th, 1959, the Soviet Union’s Luna 2 spacecraft became the first man-made object to impact the Moon. Luna 2 carried two spherical “pennants” composed of pentagon-shaped elements engraved with the USSR Coat of Arms and Cyrillic letters translating into “CCCP/USSR September 1959.” An identical pennant is now on display in the Kansas Cosmosphere.

EchoStar XVI in its clean room. Credit: Space Systems Loral.

A GeoSat Time Capsule Aboard EchoStar XVI
A disk entitled Last Pictures similar to the Voyager records was placed on a satellite headed to geosynchronous orbit in 2012. Launched aboard EchoStar XVI, Last Pictures is an ultra-archival disk containing 100 snapshots of modern life along with interviews with several 21^st century artists and scientists.  Geosynchronous satellites aren’t subject to atmospheric drag,  and may be the last testament to the existence of humanity on Earth millions of years hence.

An artist’s conception of NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission leaving Earth orbit. Credit: NASA.

Lunar Prospector Carries An Astro-Geologist’s Ashes to the Moon
Though he never made the selection to become an astronaut, scientist Eugene Shoemaker did make a posthumous trip to the Moon.  The Lunar Prospector spacecraft departed Earth with Shoemaker’s ashes on January 7th, 1998 in a capsule wrapped in brass foil. Lunar Prospector impacted the south pole of the Moon on July 31^st, 1999.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule on approach to the ISS during the COTS 2 mission. Credit: NASA.

SpaceX Takes Star Trek Actor to Space
The ashes actor James Doohan (AKA Scotty) were launched aboard a 2012 SpaceX flight to the International Space Station. The COTS Demo Flight, or COTS 2, was the first commercial spacecraft to berth at the ISS. SpaceX had flown a small amount of Doohan’s ashes on the 2008 unsuccessful test launch of the Falcon 1 rocket.

The “Top Secret Payload” of the Dragon capsule revealed. Credit: Chris Thompson/SpaceX.

Cheese Wheel Makes a Suborbital Journey
All eyes were also on SpaceX during their December 8^th 2010 maiden flight of the Dragon space capsule. And the hinted mystery cargo? None other than a wheel of cheese, a nod by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to a classic Monty Python sketch.
The Apollo 12 “Moon Museum”
Did it really go into space? One of the legends surrounding the Apollo program is the existence of what’s been dubbed the “Moon Museum.”  This was a postage stamp-sized “gallery” of art which included a sketch by Andy Warhol and other 1960s artists that was supposedly attached to descent stage of Apollo 12 and left on the Moon.  It will be up to future lunar visitors to confirm or deny its existence!
…And lastly, I give you the “Space Hubcap”
Was the first man-made object propelled into space actually a 1 ton armor plate? On August 27^th, 1957 — just two months prior to Sputnik 1 — the Pascal-B underground nuclear test was conducted in southern Nevada.  During the explosion, a steel plate cap was blasted off of a test shaft. The plate could be seen in the initial high-speed video frames, and it was estimated to have reached a speed six times the sufficient escape velocity to depart Earth. To this day, no one knows if this strange artifact of early Space Age folklore still roams the void of space, or simply vaporized due to atmospheric compression at “launch”.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/109026/a-history-of-curious-artifacts-sent-into-space/#ixzz2t2erE83T

The Search for Extraterrestrial Archeology --Probing Kepler Mission Data

Fifty years ago the physicists Freeman Dyson speculated that vast structures could ring or completely enclose their parent star. These Dyson Spheres, the work of a Kardashev Type II civilization — would be capable of drawing on the entire energy output of its star. Geoff Marcy, Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, who is famous for discovering more extrasolar planets than anyone else, 70 out of the first 100 to be discovered, received a grant last year from the UK’s Templeton Foundation to search for Dyson spheres.

Marcy studies thousands of Kepler systems for telltale evidence of such structures by examining changes in light levels around the parent star as well as possible laser traffic among extraterrestrial civilizations. "Fermi Bubbles," which might appear as a void in visible light in spiral galaxies, is the term used by Richard Carrigan,  a scientist emeritus at Fermilab,  in his work on the search for cosmic-scale artifacts like Dyson spheres or Kardashev civilizations using Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS)  data .  A Fermi bubble would grow as the civilization creating it colonized space, according to Carrigan.  As Carl Sagan observed, the time to colonize an individual system is small compared to the travel time between stars. A civilization, believes Carrigan, could engulf its galaxy on a time scale comparable to the rotation period of the galaxy, or every 225–250 million years, and perhaps shorter.
Searching for signatures of cosmic-scale archaeological artifacts such as Dyson spheres or Kardashev civilizations is an interesting alternative to conventional SETI. Uncovering such an artifact does not require the intentional transmission of a signal on the part of the original civilization.
This type of search is called interstellar archaeology or sometimes cosmic archaeology. The detection of intelligence elsewhere in the Universe with interstellar archaeology or SETI would have broad implications for science. The constraints of the anthropic principle, for example, would have to be loosened if a different type of intelligence was discovered elsewhere.
A variety of interstellar archaeology signatures could include non-natural planetary atmospheric constituents, stellar doping with isotopes of nuclear wastes, Dyson spheres, as well as signatures of stellar and galactic-scale engineering.
The concept of a Fermi bubble due to interstellar migration grew out of the the discussion of galactic signatures. These potential interstellar archaeological signatures are classified using the Kardashev scale, developed by Nikolai Kardashev, who divided civilizations into those harvesting all the energy of a planet, of a star, and of a galaxy. With few exceptions interstellar archaeological signatures are clouded and beyond current technological capabilities. However SETI for so-called cultural transmissions and planetary atmosphere signatures are currently under way.
According to the Kardashev scale, radio SETI might be a type 0 civilization. A type I civilization would utilize the energy available from a planet. Signals from exosolar planetary atmospheres fall roughly in this category. A Dyson Sphere, a star cloaked in broken up planetary material, would be an example of type II. Another example would be some sort of engineering of the stellar burning process suggested by Martin Beech. A civilization using all of the energy of a galaxy would be type III.
James Annis,a member of Experimental Astrophysics Group at Fermilab, has suggested that elliptical galaxies, which exhibit little structure, might be a more likely place to look for Fermi bubbles than spiral galaxies. Annis examined existing distributions for spiral and elliptic galaxies and looked for sources below the normal trend lines where more than 75% of the visible light would have been absorbed. But no candidates were found in his sample of 137 galaxies. From this Annis inferred a very low probability of a Type III civilization appearing that would be found using this search methodology.
In 1960 Dyson suggested that an advanced civilization inhabiting a solar system might break up the planets into very small planetoids or pebbles to form a loose shell that would collect all the light coming from the star. The shell of planetoids would vastly increase the available "habitable" area and absorb all of the visible light. The stellar energy would be reradiated at a much lower temperature.

If the visible light was totally absorbed by the planetoids a pure Dyson Sphere signature would be an infrared object with luminosity equivalent to the hidden star and a blackbody distribution with a temperature corresponding to the radius of the planetoid swarm. For the case of the Sun with the planetoids at the radius of the Earth the temperature would be approximately 300 ºK.
Many of the earlier searches for Dyson Spheres have looked for so-called partial Dyson Spheres where the loose shell only partially obscures the star. The Dyson Sphere investigation at Fermilab looks for so-called pure Dyson Spheres as well as partial Dyson Spheres.
Studying the M51 Whirlpool galaxy (image above), Carrigan says a rough qualitative estimate shows there are no unexplained ‘Fermi bubbles’ at the level of 5 percent of the M51 galactic area. The quest is tricky because spiral galaxy structure includes natural voids — even if a void in visible light with infrared enhancement were traced, it would be hard to regard it as anything other than natural.
The distribution of galaxies on a plot of galactic optical brightness or luminosity versus the maximum rotation velocity or radius of the galaxy follows a fairly consistent pattern. Cases lying below the typical galactic trend line reflect visible light that has been absorbed and emitted somewhere else in the electromagnetic spectrum.
Looking elsewhere, ynthetic or unnatural constituents in an exoplanet atmosphere could show a sign of ETI. The fingerprints of life, or biosignatures, are hard to find with conventional methods, but advances for eample by the ESO's VLT team in Chile team have pioneered a new approach that is more sensitive. Rather than just looking at how bright the reflected light is in different colours, they also look at the polarisation of the light, an approach called spectropolarimetry.
"The light from a distant exoplanet is overwhelmed by the glare of the host star, so it's very difficult to analyse — a bit like trying to study a grain of dust beside a powerful light bulb," says Stefano Bagnulo of Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland. "But the light reflected by a planet is polarised, while the light from the host star is not. So polarimetric techniques help us to pick out the faint reflected light of an exoplanet from the dazzling starlight."
In the attempt to identify Dyson spheres, their use would greatly expand the useful area for activities for any culture that could build them, absorbing most or all visible light and re-radiating the energy of the star at lower temperatures. Various searches for infrared excesses around visible stars –hoping to target a partial Dyson sphere, perhaps a ring — have been attempted, but with no luck from the searches of several thousand stars. Even a pure Dyson sphere, completely surrounding its star, is not definitive because there are natural objects that mimic it, especially since dust clouds surround stars as they are born and as they die.
Carrigan used data from the IRAS spacecraft’s database of low resolution spectra, discarding objects that had been previously well categorized and narrowing the sample to sixteen sources that he calls ‘mildly interesting.’ Only three had relatively low spectral statistical fluctuations. All of the sixteen sources have some feature which clouds their identification as a Dyson sphere.
The search suggests that there are few if any even mildly interesting candidates within several hundred light years of Earth.

Carrigan observes that "a Dyson sphere does not require intent to communicate on the part of a civilization. The current detection reach is comparable to a SETI search. However there is a problem of confounding signatures from mimics such as carbon stars. Searches for potential Dyson spheres would be sharpened by developing more realistic pictures of construction scenarios including such factors as time to build and approaches to stability… "Finally it would be interesting to consider how stellar evolution might stimulate the necessity of such large scale structures with a view to looking at candidate objects in the later stage of evolution along the main sequence."
When we search for the type of structures or effects, the "signatures," interstellar archaeology, we acknowledge that they demand technologies so far beyond our own that their construction seems all but miraculous.
"We can look for Dyson spheres," Carrigan says, for example, "but scarcely imagine how a culture could build at this scale. But these are limitations of our own state of development, and they don’t keep us from extrapolating to what civilizations far older than our own might be capable of developing."
In the current search for advanced extraterrestrial life SETI experts say the odds favor detecting alien AI rather than biological life because the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence would be brief.
“If we build a machine with the intellectual capability of one human, then within 5 years, its successor is more intelligent than all humanity combined,” says Seth Shostak, SETI chief astronomer. “Once any society invents the technology that could put them in touch with the cosmos, they are at most only a few hundred years away from changing their own paradigm of sentience to artificial intelligence,” he says.
ET machines would be infinitely more intelligent and durable than the biological intelligence that created them. Intelligent machines would be immortal, and would not need to exist in the carbon-friendly “Goldilocks Zones” current SETI searches focus on. An AI could self-direct its own evolution, each "upgrade" would be created with the sum total of its predecessor’s knowledge preloaded.

"I think we could spend at least a few percent of our time... looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out." Shostak thinks SETI ought to consider expanding its search to the energy- and matter-rich neighborhoods of hot stars, black holes and neutron stars.

Source: The Daily Galaxy

NASA Photos Show Possible Water Flows on Mars (Images)

New clues are emerging about the mysterious streaks that appear on Mars' surface during warm weather, though scientists still can't say for sure that they're caused by flowing water.
The marks, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), snake down some crater walls and other inclines when the mercury rises on the Red Planet. New research finds seasonal changes in iron minerals at RSL sites, suggesting that brines containing an iron antifreeze may flow there from time to time — but direct evidence of water remains elusive.

"We still don't have a smoking gun for existence of water in RSL, although we're not sure how this process would take place without water," Lujendra Ojha, a graduate student at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, lead author of two recent RSL studies, said in a statement. (Ojha discovered the RSL in 2011, while an undergraduate at the University of Arizona.) [Photos: The Search for Water on Mars]

 Ojha and his colleagues studied images of 13 RSL sites taken by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), an instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). They saw relatively high concentrations of iron minerals at most of the sites.
"Just like the RSL themselves, the strength of the spectral signatures varies according to the seasons," Ojha said. "They're stronger when it's warmer and less significant when it's colder."
Many scientists think the recurring slope lineae are created by water flowing just beneath the Martian surface. This water — which would leave the iron antifreezes and other minerals in its wake — likely contains salts that lower its freezing point significantly, allowing it to stay liquid despite frigid Red Planet temperatures.
While the researchers didn't see any spectral signatures of water in the CRISM images, that doesn't rule out the substance's presence at RSL sites, scientists said.
For example, the observations were made exclusively in the afternoon and thus could have missed surface water appearing in the morning. Further, each CRISM image observed a large area, possibly making it tough to spot signs of water in the narrow RSL streaks.
The researchers reported these results late last year in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. In another study, due out next month in the journal Icarus, a team led by Ojha analyzed pictures snapped by MRO and NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, looking for patterns in RSL formation on the Red Planet.
The team found 200 locations where conditions seemed ideal for seasonal streaks — areas in the southern mid-latitudes with rocky cliffs — but found only 13 with actual RSL marks.
"The fact that RSL occur in a few sites and not others indicates additional unknown factors such as availability of water or salts may play a crucial role in RSL formation," Ojha said.

Unraveling the mystery of Mars' seasonal dark lines could reveal exciting things about the Red Planet, such as its potential to host life as we know it, NASA officials said.
"The flow of water, even briny water, anywhere on Mars today would be a major discovery, impacting our understanding of present climate change on Mars and possibly indicating potential habitats for life near the surface on modern Mars," MRO project scientist Richard Zurek, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.

Source: Space.com

Google’s Space Race – Shooting for the Moon

Most of the teams competing in Google’s Lunar XPrize Challenge will spend more than the $30 million prize money to get off the ground, but it’s not about the money.There’s a little more at stake.
For some, winning Google’s Lunar XPrize Challenge is a matter of national pride. Only the three major superpowers, the U.S., Russia and China have so far reached the moon. There’s a team from Spain, and another from Italy. The Japanese team calls itself Hakuta, and there are numerous teams from the U.S. They’re working hard with a serious sense of competition. But they’re not getting ready for the winter Olympics in Sochi.
It’s T-minus 23 months for the international assortment of scientists and their sponsors who are literally shooting for the moon in Google’s Lunar XPrize Challenge. The goal is to successfully launch an unmanned spacecraft, land it on the lunar surface and send back high-definition images, in exchange for a $30 million prize from the technology giant and its cosponsors, which include aerodynamic firm Northrup Grumman, phone giant Nokia, and chipmaker Qualcomm. The mission must be accomplished by the end of 2015 to win the grand prize.
Not About The Money
Many, if not all the groups will spend more than the $30 million to get off the ground, but it’s not about the money. For some, it’s a matter of national pride: only the three major superpowers, the U.S., Russia and China have so far reached the moon.

The United States beat Russia to the moon in a race that was estimated to have cost NASA $20 billion dollars. A global race is once again taking place except this time it’s a more private affair.

Others are hoping to develop new technology and ignite new enthusiasm about space exploration, just as the U.S. Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s did. The last U.S. lunar landing was Apollo 17 in 1972, and the Russians landed an unmanned craft the following year.
China is currently most active, with a six-wheeled robotic moon rover named Jade Rabbit roaming the lunar landscape. The Yutu rover began its mission in December, marking the first moon landing by a space probe in 37 years.
Inspiring Radical Breakthroughs
The XPrize Foundation’s goal, according to its Web site is to promote “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity, thereby inspiring the formation of new industries and the revitalization of markets that are currently stuck due to existing failures or a commonly held belief that a solution is not possible.”
In addition to the grand prize for the first lunar landing, the XPrize will award $5 million for second place as well as bonuses for reaching the Apollo 11 module landing site, surviving a lunar night, and for exploring lunar artifacts.
Rules say 90 percent of the funding must come from private rather than government sources, and Google expects some teams will spend as much as $100 million to win the contest. But others are looking to reduce their costs by deploying commercial payloads on the way to the moon.

NASA and X PRIZE Announce Winners of Lunar Lander Challenge (Photo credit: NASA HQ PHOTO)

Israel’s team, SpaceIL, is cutting its costs through innovation. Rather than develop an expensive rover to accomplish the goal of traveling 500 meters (1,620 feet), its 300-pound spacecraft is being designed to land once, then fire up its rockets again to take some aerial pictures and land the required distance away.
“For every pound of rover I need four pounds of propulsion to get it there,” Daniel Saar, director of business development for the Israeli team told us. Trying to find the spot where Neil Armstrong left his footprints will be almost as big a challenge as the landing, he said.
“There is no GPS on the moon,” said Saat. “We have to use a NASA database of images.” The project will also draw from Israel’s defense establishment, borrowing from satellite technology deployed by Israel Aerospace Industries, a government-owned agency.
Saat said that his team, which will launch from a site in the U.S. or Russia, hopes to inspire more of Israel’s young people to pursue careers in science by rising to the challenge of doing big things with limited resources. “Landing on the moon is a complex engineering task,” said Saat. “For a tiny budget of $36 million, we want to show the world we can explore outer space and accomplish various missions.”

Extracted from CIO Today