# Space news and Exploration II



## ScienceRocks

The first one was getting long so I made a second one  I hope you all enjoy.

Link back to the first one 
http://www.usmessageboard.com/science-and-technology/251426-space-exploration-thread-37.html


*Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world*
15:58 31 January 2014 by Jeff Hecht
For similar stories, visit the Astrobiology Topic Guide

Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world - space - 31 January 2014 - New Scientist



> Earth may be our home, but another planet even cosier for life could be orbiting the star next door. A detailed analysis of what might make planets suitable for life says that Alpha Centauri B, the star closest to our sun, would be the perfect star to host a "superhabitable" planet  a world of islands, shallow seas and gentle slopes, where the conditions needed to support a diverse array of life forms would persist for up to 10 billion years. But the near-paradise would come at a cost to visitors from Earth: the pull of gravity would be about one-quarter stronger than on our home turf.


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## RetiredGySgt

You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.

We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?


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## SmedlyButler

RetiredGySgt said:


> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?



Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?

"A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."

LINK: Space.com


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## Old Rocks

OK, where are the GOP bills to add funds to NASA? Same place their bills to fund the study of the affects of global warming are.


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## SmedlyButler

Matthew said:


> The first one was getting long so I made a second one  I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Link back to the first one
> http://www.usmessageboard.com/science-and-technology/251426-space-exploration-thread-37.html
> 
> 
> *Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world*
> 15:58 31 January 2014 by Jeff Hecht
> For similar stories, visit the Astrobiology Topic Guide
> 
> Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world - space - 31 January 2014 - New Scientist
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earth may be our home, but another planet even cosier for life could be orbiting the star next door. A detailed analysis of what might make planets suitable for life says that Alpha Centauri B, the star closest to our sun, would be the perfect star to host a "superhabitable" planet  a world of islands, shallow seas and gentle slopes, where the conditions needed to support a diverse array of life forms would persist for up to 10 billion years. But the near-paradise would come at a cost to visitors from Earth: the pull of gravity would be about one-quarter stronger than on our home turf.
Click to expand...

 
You'd think that even with a modified Drake equation and 300 billion stars in our galaxy there would be thousands of civilizations more advanced than ours. Fermi's Question; Where is everybody"


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## SmedlyButler

Old Rocks said:


> OK, where are the GOP bills to add funds to NASA? Same place their bills to fund the study of the affects of global warming are.




"A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."


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## SmedlyButler

Also I was visiting this thread partly to get away from politics for a bit. Thx a lot.


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## Old Rocks

OK, let's have a discussion about Fermi's question. Also about what a habital planet really means. Seems to me, from the little I know about biology, that if we landed on an advanced world, one in which life had reached about the same level as on ours, that the first thing that would happen to the exploreres, is that they would die of massive allergy attacks with the first breath of that planets air.

I was on base, and in uniform, when we stopped those Soviet ships off of Cuba. Ever spend a day wondering if you would see the flash of the bomb that killed you? Perhaps advanced intelliangent life forms are self eliminating. 

Then when one review the PT extinciton event, perhaps planets eliminate a significant proportion of their lifeforms on a regular basis to prevent advanced lifeforms. And, last, perhaps advanced civilizations simple develop a code against interfering with the development of primitive intelligences.


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## SmedlyButler

Old Rocks said:


> OK, let's have a discussion about Fermi's question. Also about what a habital planet really means. Seems to me, from the little I know about biology, that if we landed on an advanced world, one in which life had reached about the same level as on ours, that the first thing that would happen to the exploreres, is that they would die of massive allergy attacks with the first breath of that planets air.
> 
> I was on base, and in uniform, when we stopped those Soviet ships off of Cuba. Ever spend a day wondering if you would see the flash of the bomb that killed you? Perhaps advanced intelliangent life forms are self eliminating.
> 
> Then when one review the PT extinciton event, perhaps planets eliminate a significant proportion of their lifeforms on a regular basis to prevent advanced lifeforms. And, last, perhaps advanced civilizations simple develop a code against interfering with the development of primitive intelligences.



Well you definitely wouldn't remove your helmet to take a whiff of the atmosphere.
And all advanced civilizations must at some point develop the technological capacity to self destruct.

And extinction-level cataclysmic events are probably relatively common. Until we have the ability to intercept sizable asteroids we'll be continuously at risk.

And maybe a StarTrek like "Prime Directive" exists in some quadrants.
*
Still with up to 500 billion galaxies* in our universe, and with *up to 17 billion earth sized planets* in the milky way alone (just try to wrap your head around those staggering numbers, I can't) I think the question is valid, "Where is Everyone?"


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## dilloduck

SmedlyButler said:


> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> OK, let's have a discussion about Fermi's question. Also about what a habital planet really means. Seems to me, from the little I know about biology, that if we landed on an advanced world, one in which life had reached about the same level as on ours, that the first thing that would happen to the exploreres, is that they would die of massive allergy attacks with the first breath of that planets air.
> 
> I was on base, and in uniform, when we stopped those Soviet ships off of Cuba. Ever spend a day wondering if you would see the flash of the bomb that killed you? Perhaps advanced intelliangent life forms are self eliminating.
> 
> Then when one review the PT extinciton event, perhaps planets eliminate a significant proportion of their lifeforms on a regular basis to prevent advanced lifeforms. And, last, perhaps advanced civilizations simple develop a code against interfering with the development of primitive intelligences.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Well you definitely wouldn't remove your helmet to take a whiff of the atmosphere.
> And all advanced civilizations must at some point develop the technological capacity to self destruct.
> 
> And extinction-level cataclysmic events are probably relatively common. Until we have the ability to intercept sizable asteroids we'll be continuously at risk.
> 
> And maybe a StarTrek like "Prime Directive" exists in some quadrants.
> *
> Still with up to 500 billion galaxies* in our universe, and with *up to 17 billion earth sized planets* in the milky way alone (just try to wrap your head around those staggering numbers, I can't) I think the question is valid, "Where is Everyone?"
Click to expand...


The answer could be as simple as " they are all here". Large numbers don't ensure inevitability.


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## SmedlyButler

"The answer could be as simple as " they are all here". Large numbers don't ensure inevitability."

That could be the answer. And because of the astronomically low probability of that being the case, if you could prove it you would also be providing incontrovertible proof for the existence of God. In my estimation anyway.


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## ScienceRocks

*Kepler-34b Helps Explain How Circumbinary Exoplanets Form*

Kepler-34b Helps Explain How Circumbinary Exoplanets Form | Astronomy | Sci-News.com

 Jan 31, 2014 by  Sci-News.com 



> Researchers reporting in the Astrophysical Journal Letters have found that the majority of circumbinary planets &#8211; planets that orbit two stars &#8211; were actually formed much further away from their binary stars and then migrated to their current locations.
> 
> There are few environments more extreme than a binary star system in which planet formation can occur.
> 
> Powerful gravitational perturbations from the two stars on the rocky building blocks of planets lead to destructive collisions that grind down the material.
> 
> To shed light on the formation process of circumbinary planets, lead author Dr Stefan Lines of Bristol University and his colleagues used a sophisticated model that calculates the effect of gravity and physical collisions on and between one million planetary building blocks.
> 
> They carried out three computer simulations: two of a circumbinary disk representative of the Kepler-34 system and one of a control simulation around a single star.


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## Delta4Embassy

SmedlyButler said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> The first one was getting long so I made a second one  I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Link back to the first one
> http://www.usmessageboard.com/science-and-technology/251426-space-exploration-thread-37.html
> 
> 
> *Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world*
> 15:58 31 January 2014 by Jeff Hecht
> For similar stories, visit the Astrobiology Topic Guide
> 
> Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world - space - 31 January 2014 - New Scientist
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earth may be our home, but another planet even cosier for life could be orbiting the star next door. A detailed analysis of what might make planets suitable for life says that Alpha Centauri B, the star closest to our sun, would be the perfect star to host a "superhabitable" planet  a world of islands, shallow seas and gentle slopes, where the conditions needed to support a diverse array of life forms would persist for up to 10 billion years. But the near-paradise would come at a cost to visitors from Earth: the pull of gravity would be about one-quarter stronger than on our home turf.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> You'd think that even with a modified Drake equation and 300 billion stars in our galaxy there would be thousands of civilizations more advanced than ours. Fermi's Question; Where is everybody"
Click to expand...


For the longest time, even we here were unaware of all the other people on the planet. Yet not being aware of them didn't mean they didn't exist.

Could simply be (and this is one of the things that really bums me out,) that our knowledge pf physics is correct, and there's no easy way to get around ala warp drive. So everyone's bound to sub-light velocities making interstellar travel impractical.  If that's the case, 'everyone' may simply be staying at home and improving things for themselves where ever they started instead of expanding and colonizing.


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## ScienceRocks

Stay in die if we do stay. There's a great amount of resources within our own solar system.


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## Delta4Embassy

Only die out if we don't learn to get along and invest in things that don't kill the planet. No reason planets can't sustain life permanently (or until they die as their stars change.) If we perpetuate the notion that we have to venture out to survive then there's much less incentive to take care of the planet if we instead just migrate to a less screwed up one.


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## ScienceRocks

expansion is the best way to grow the worlds economy. Of course I don't hold out much hope for people like you understanding this. The resources within our solar system alone would do far more to improve our planet then staying in waiting for our death.

There's not enough resources on earth to bring everyone up. You know how we can do that??? Education, science and expanding into space collecting the resources.

You really think standing on our heads is going to do a damn thing?


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## ScienceRocks

Humanity is the only species capable of insuring our survival in the long term. By spreading outwards we up our odds. 

We built this country based on expansion, education and science.


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## Delta4Embassy

Neg for that?

Space news and...  	02-04-2014 05:20 AM 	 Matthew  	Go suck a cock you anti-human trash

'Anti-human' for proposing we make things better for us right here before treating planets like they're a dime a dozen and just discarding old ones for pristine new ones? Mmkay.


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## SmedlyButler

These Cassini Saturn Photos are stunningly beautiful. But what the heck is that hexagonal gaseous structure at it's north pole all about It's counter-intuitive. Long term structures like that should be more or less circular, or at at least elliptical shouldn't they. How can something like the coriolis force produce this? I don't even know if that's one of the forces involved but it sure is a strange atmospheric phenomenon. Man, to me these pics alone are worth the price of admission. Can't wait for the James Webb to come online.

*LINK: *Bravo!


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## ScienceRocks

*Kepler finds a very wobbly planet*

Kepler finds a very wobbly planet



> (Phys.org) &#8212;Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat. That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world found by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.
> 
> The planet, designated Kepler-413b, precesses, or wobbles, wildly on its spin axis, much like a child's top. The tilt of the planet's spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons. In contrast, Earth's rotational precession is 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years. Researchers are amazed that this far-off planet is precessing on a human timescale.
> 
> Kepler 413-b is located 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It circles a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars every 66 days. The planet's orbit around the binary stars appears to wobble, too, because the plane of its orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the star pair's orbit. As seen from Earth, the wobbling orbit moves up and down continuously.


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## ScienceRocks

*Mars Space Colony Rockets Could Be Ready In 10 Years: SpaceX CEO*




> SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is a huge fan of Mars exploration and Mars colonies, and in a new interview he says a launch system to send people to the Red Planet could be available in 10 to 12 years. Requirements: it has to be big, and it has to be launched frequently to send millions of people and tons of cargo spaceward.



Mars Space Colony Rockets Could Be Ready In 10 Years: SpaceX CEO

yeah, lets send humans in a small Apollo like module for over a year. lol me, I'd build the rocket but to send pieces of a bigger renewable planetary ship that can be used hundreds of times. This ship would be able to take dozens of humans, supplies back and forth from mars. Anything else is laughable.


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## FA_Q2

Delta4Embassy said:


> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> The first one was getting long so I made a second one  I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Link back to the first one
> http://www.usmessageboard.com/science-and-technology/251426-space-exploration-thread-37.html
> 
> 
> *Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world*
> 15:58 31 January 2014 by Jeff Hecht
> For similar stories, visit the Astrobiology Topic Guide
> 
> Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world - space - 31 January 2014 - New Scientist
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You'd think that even with a modified Drake equation and 300 billion stars in our galaxy there would be thousands of civilizations more advanced than ours. Fermi's Question; Where is everybody"
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> For the longest time, even we here were unaware of all the other people on the planet. Yet not being aware of them didn't mean they didn't exist.
> 
> Could simply be (and this is one of the things that really bums me out,) that our knowledge pf physics is correct, and there's no easy way to get around ala warp drive. So everyone's bound to sub-light velocities making interstellar travel impractical.  If that's the case, 'everyone' may simply be staying at home and improving things for themselves where ever they started instead of expanding and colonizing.
Click to expand...


This is a very real possibility.

There is the other possibility as well  life is out there but it is rare enough that it requires a massive amount of searching to bump into one another.  Sure there are a LOT of planets out there and there sheer numbers mean that there is likely intelligent life BUT if it is one in a million or one in a billion that means we are still not likely to contact one another until we are BOTH appropriately advanced.


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## MDiver

If all the major space players and private enterprise got involved, we could probably create a craft to go to the nearest star, but, more likely, we will just continue being the parasites we are on this planet and eventually kill it off and us along with it.


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## ScienceRocks

*
Bacterial explanation for Europa's rosy glow*


> The red tinge of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, could be caused by frozen bits of bacteria. Their presence would also help explain Europa's mysterious infrared signal.
> 
> Europa is mostly frozen water, but it absorbs infrared radiation differently to how normal ice does. Researchers think this is because something is binding the water molecules together. Salts of magnesium sulphate frozen within the ice, for example, would make the molecules vibrate at different frequencies. But no one has managed to come up with the perfect mix of salts to explain all of Europa's spectrum.
> 
> Astrogeophysicist Brad Dalton of NASA's Ames Resarch Center wondered if something else was bound up with the water molecules. "Just on a lark, I asked a colleague of mine at Yellowstone if he had any IR spectra of extremophile bacteria," he says, and he was shocked by how well they matched Europa's mysterious spectrum.




Bacterial explanation for Europa's rosy glow - 11 December 2001 - New Scientist


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA's revived exoplanet-hunter sees its first world*
23:00 06 February 2014 by Lisa Grossman
NASA's revived exoplanet-hunter sees its first world - space - 06 February 2014 - New Scientist



> It's alive! After suffering a critical injury last year, NASA's Kepler space telescope has just observed an exoplanet for the first time in months. The Jupiter-sized world is not a new discovery &#8211; it was found by another telescope &#8211; but spotting it again with Kepler is solid evidence that, following a few modifications, the famed planet-hunter is ready to get back to work.
> 
> Launched in 2009, Kepler was designed to see planetary transits &#8211; the tiny dips in starlight when a planet passes in front of its star, from Earth's perspective. Over four years the mission collected almost 250 confirmed planets and thousands more candidates, boosting our confidence that the galaxy is brimming with alien worlds.
> 
> But observations ground to a halt last year, when mechanical failures killed Kepler's precision steering system and ruined its ability to hold steady enough to see transits. At least, until now. At a meeting in November last year, the Kepler team announced the K2 mission, which would use the radiation pressure from sunlight to hold the craft steady for up to 75 days at a time.


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## ScienceRocks

*Massive asteroid impacts Mars, leaves stunning crater [PHOTO]*
Massive asteroid impacts Mars, leaves stunning crater [PHOTO] | Science Recorder

A new crater is discovered on Mars. 




> What a difference four years makes. Where there was just another barren patch of Martian soil in July 2010, there is now an illustrious starburst imprint left by a meteor. NASA released images of it this week that it had obtained in November through the high-resolution camera array aboard the agency&#8217;s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite, which has been circling the red planet and conveying data of its atmosphere and terrain over the last few years.
> 
> The crater is 100 feet wide and is unusually eye-catching for a crater. Myriad &#8220;rays&#8221; emanating from a concentrated center. The researchers estimate that the meteor impact that created it occurred at some time between July 2010 and May 2012.
> 
> While the crater is remarkable, though, the meteor from which it originated really was not. Based on the blast site&#8217;s size and shape, NASA estimates that the rock was a modest 10 or so feet across. For a comparison, the meteor that caused several injuries and building damage in Chelyabinsk, Russia, last year measured 65 feet across. In fact, if a 10-feet-wide meteor were to fall through Earth&#8217;s atmosphere, it would probably burn up in the atmosphere and not make any crater at all.


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## ScienceRocks

*
Stunning: Curiosity rover takes first ever photo of Earth from surface of Mars*

Stunning: Curiosity rover takes first ever photo of Earth from surface of Mars | Science Recorder

Curiosity snaps a stunning photo of Earth from Mars. 





> The world is being treated to a sight no creature on Earth, living or dead, has ever seen before: our planet as it would appear to a Martian looking up into the night sky.
> 
> This unprecedented perspective of our home planet comes courtesy of NASA&#8217;s Mars rover Curiosity, which snapped the picture last week about an hour after sunset from the surface of the Red Planet.
> 
> &#8220;A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright &#8216;evening stars,&#8217;&#8221; a NASA spokesperson said.
> 
> NASA tweeted the incredible photo, which shows Earth as the brightest light in the night sky and, amazingly, just below it a vanishingly small dot that is our moon.
> 
> &#8220;Look back in wonder,&#8221; read the tweet from Curiosity&#8217;s official Twitter feed. &#8220;My 1st picture of Earth from the surface of Mars.&#8221;


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## Politico

SmedlyButler said:


> Well you definitely wouldn't remove your helmet to take a whiff of the atmosphere.
> And all advanced civilizations must at some point develop the technological capacity to self destruct.
> 
> And extinction-level cataclysmic events are probably relatively common. Until we have the ability to intercept sizable asteroids we'll be continuously at risk.
> 
> And maybe a StarTrek like "Prime Directive" exists in some quadrants.
> *
> 
> Still with up to 500 billion galaxies* in our universe, and with *up to 17 billion earth sized planets* in the milky way alone (just try to wrap your head around those staggering numbers, I can't) I think the question is valid, "Where is Everyone?"



Out there. Where we have no chance of getting to them. Thank God.


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## FA_Q2

Politico said:


> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well you definitely wouldn't remove your helmet to take a whiff of the atmosphere.
> And all advanced civilizations must at some point develop the technological capacity to self destruct.
> 
> And extinction-level cataclysmic events are probably relatively common. Until we have the ability to intercept sizable asteroids we'll be continuously at risk.
> 
> And maybe a StarTrek like "Prime Directive" exists in some quadrants.
> *
> 
> Still with up to 500 billion galaxies* in our universe, and with *up to 17 billion earth sized planets* in the milky way alone (just try to wrap your head around those staggering numbers, I can't) I think the question is valid, "Where is Everyone?"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Out there. Where we have no chance of getting to them. Thank God.
Click to expand...


You know, a good question to really ask yourself if you are one of those that believes we should have run into one of those races by now is how far away do you really think would be detectable from space?

I would doubt that anything outside our solar system would be completely oblivious to our presence.  Nothing sufficiently advanced to travel the start would be using radio or other communications equipment that utilizes the same things we do.  Nor would anything in our star pop out as something worth looking at.  Really, I dont see why we would think that we should be able to see anything that resembles other life even if the universe were absolutely teeming with it.


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## ScienceRocks

*Space-Grown Vegetables Are Safe To Eat, Scientists Announce*




> Their safety was likely verified by labs on Earth, not by adventurous diners in space
> 
> Potluck time! Russian scientists have verified that several plants grown aboard the International Space Station are safe to eat, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports.
> 
> The space-grown edibles include peas, dwarf wheat and Japanese leafy greens. They look great and not at all weird, one of the scientists working on the project, Margarita Levinskikh of the Institute of Biological Problems, assured The Voice of Russia. "The plants have been very developed, absolutely normal and did not differ a lot from the plants grown on Earth," she told the radio station.
> 
> And yes, cosmonauts have given them a munch. "We have also gotten experience with the astronauts and cosmonauts eating the fresh food they grow and not having problems," crop scientist Bruce Bugbee wrote to Popular Science in an email. Bugbee is a professor at Utah State University and has worked on studies of food grown in space.



Space-Grown Vegetables Are Safe To Eat, Scientists Announce | Popular Science


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## ScienceRocks

*NASAs Mars orbiter sees signs of seasonal water flow on Mars surface *



> NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars have returned clues for understanding seasonal features that are the strongest indication of possible liquid water that may exist today on the Red Planet.
> 
> The features are dark, finger-like markings that advance down some Martian slopes when temperatures rise. The new clues include corresponding seasonal changes in iron minerals on the same slopes and a survey of ground temperatures and other traits at active sites. These support a suggestion that brines with an iron-mineral antifreeze, such as ferric sulfate, may flow seasonally, though there are still other possible explanations.



NASAs Mars orbiter sees signs of seasonal water flow on Mars surface | Space Industry News


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## ScienceRocks

*New Evidence For Ancient Ocean on Mars*
New Evidence For Ancient Ocean on Mars




> The idea has been hotly debated among scientists for the past 20 years, ever since Viking Orbiter images revealed possible ancient shorelines near the pole. Later findings even suggested that the primordial ocean--dubbed Oceanus Borealis--could have covered a third of the planet.
> 
> But even if the evidence has mounted steadily, fostering our hopes of finding signs of past life on the Red Planet, the case for an ancient Martian ocean remains unsettled.
> 
> Now a new study by Lorena Moscardelli, a geologist at the University of Texas, Austin, puts forward yet another line of evidence.
> 
> Today, large fields of boulder-size rocks blanket parts of Mars' northern plains. By pointing to analogue geological features on our Earth, Moscardelli suggests that the boulders were delivered to their current locations by catastrophic underwater landslides--bolstering evidence for an ancient Martian ocean.


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## ScienceRocks

*European Space Agency picks Plato planet-hunting mission*


BBC News - European Space Agency picks Plato planet-hunting mission



> A telescope to find rocky worlds around other stars has been selected for launch by the European Space Agency's (Esa) Science Policy Committee.
> 
> Known as Plato, the mission should launch on a Soyuz rocket in 2024.
> 
> The observatory concept was chosen following several years of assessment in competition with other ideas.
> 
> It is expected to cost Esa just over 600 million euros, although hardware contributions from member states will take this closer to a billion (£800m).



The EU and China are starting to kick our ass. Thanks a lot conserilosers!


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA plans to go fishing for asteroids with harpoon-like spacecraft*

NASA plans to go fishing for asteroids with harpoon-like spacecraft | DVICE



> Landing spacecraft on asteroids is a delicate, precise process that takes a lot of planning. Harpooning a fish, on the other hand, is the work of an instant. A new plan put forth by University of Washington professor Robert Winglee aims to marry these two wildly different actions. The idea is to fire harpoon-like sampling rockets right into the surface of asteroids in order to take mineral samples.


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## ScienceRocks

*Giant Magellan Telescope Poised to Enter Construction Phase*

Giant Magellan Telescope Poised to Enter Construction Phase



> AUSTIN, TX &#8212; The upcoming world&#8217;s largest telescope has passed two critical milestones, according to founding partner The University of Texas at Austin. The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) has passed major reviews on its design and cost estimates and is ready to proceed to construction.
> 
> &#8220;We&#8217;re delighted &#8212; but unsurprised &#8212; to hear that GMT has passed these critical tests and can move ahead,&#8221; said Dr. David L. Lambert, director of the university&#8217;s McDonald Observatory and member of the GMT Board of Directors. &#8220;UT&#8217;s partnership in the GMT will give our faculty, scientists, and graduate students access to a major telescope at one of the world&#8217;s best observing sites far into the future, and enable our astronomy program to maintain its standing as one of the best in the world.&#8221;


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA scientists create first geological map of Ganymede*



> NASA scientists have produced the first global geological map of Jupiter's largest moon Ganymede by combining images from over twenty years of observation by the Voyager spacecraft and the Galileo orbiter.
> 
> Ganymede, which as the largest moon in the Solar System is bigger than the planet Mercury, hosts a thick mantle of ice roughly 800km (497 mi) thick. The moon has two major terrain types, dark cratered areas and younger regions characterized by a plethora of grooves and ridges. The map, published by the US Geological Survey exhibits three distinct geological periods demarcated by cratering, tectonic disturbances and finally by a drop in geologic activity.
> 
> &#8220;This map illustrates the incredible variety of geological features on Ganymede and helps to make order from the apparent chaos of its complex surface,&#8221; says Robert Pappalardo of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.



NASA scientists create first geological map of Ganymede


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## ScienceRocks

*Water found on alien world unlike any in our solar system*

Water found on alien world unlike any in our solar system | DVICE



> In the far away Boötes constellation, there exists a massive planet known as tau Boötis b. It&#8217;s a world unlike anything that exists in our solar system. The closest comparison we have is Jupiter, but tau Boötis b is thought to weigh in at eight and a half times the mass of our solar system&#8217;s largest planet. Termed a &#8220;hot-Jupiter&#8221;, it also exists in an aptly-named &#8220;torch orbit,&#8221; seven times closer to its star than Mercury is to our Sun.
> 
> Yet it is here that astronomers from Penn State University have detected the presence of water. Using a new technique, the team was able to detect water in the planet&#8217;s atmosphere, likely in the form of water vapor. Penn State research associate Chad Bender believes the importance of the discovery is two-fold:
> 
> 
> "Our detection of water in the atmosphere of tau Boötes b is important because it helps us understand how these exotic hot-Jupiter planets form and evolve. It also demonstrates the effectiveness of our new technique, which detects the infrared radiation in the atmospheres of these planets."


----------



## william the wie

Just tagging in.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
715 Newly Verified Planets More Than Triples the Number of Confirmed Kepler Planets*

Kepler: 715 Newly Verified Planets More Than Triples the Number of Confirmed Kepler Planets

02.26.2014


> "NASA's Kepler Mission Announces a Planet Bonanza, 715 New Worlds"
> 
> Excerpts:
> 
> ...715 new planets... orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system. Nearly 95 percent of these planets are smaller than Neptune, which is almost four times the size of Earth. ...To verify this bounty of planets, a research team co-led by Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif...used a technique called verification by multiplicity, which relies in part on the logic of probability. ...Kepler observed hundreds of stars that have multiple planet candidates. Through a careful study of this sample, these 715 new planets were verified. This method can be likened to the behavior we know of lions and lionesses. In our imaginary savannah, the lions are the Kepler stars and the lionesses are the planet candidates. The lionesses would sometimes be observed grouped together whereas lions tend to roam on their own. If you see two lions it could be a lion and a lioness or it could be two lions. But if more than two large felines are gathered, then it is very likely to be a lion and his pride. Thus, through multiplicity the lioness can be reliably identified in much the same way multiple planet candidates can be found around the same star.
> 
> "Four years ago, Kepler began a string of announcements of first hundreds, then thousands, of planet candidates --but they were only candidate worlds," said Lissauer. "We've now developed a process to verify multiple planet candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a veritable bonanza of new worlds."
> 
> ...Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.
> 
> ...This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1,700. As we continue to reach toward the stars, each discovery brings us one step closer to a more accurate understanding of our place in the galaxy.
> 
> The findings papers will be published March 10 in The Astrophysical Journal and are available for download at:
> 
> http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/digital-press-kit-kepler-planet-bonanza.



Damn cool  Worth every fucking penny. Time to send a fleet up!


----------



## william the wie

Time for Larry Niven's probes and follow up slowboats or at least harvesting He3?


----------



## ScienceRocks

william the wie said:


> Time for Larry Niven's probes and follow up slowboats or at least harvesting He3?



At this moment I'd be happy if we sent up a few improved keplers to replace this one.


----------



## william the wie

More widespread telescopes are needed for better resolution as well.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Space fishing: ESA floats plan to net space junk*

Space fishing: ESA floats plan to net space junk



> With the film Gravity hoovering up awards for its portrayal of astronauts dodging colliding satellites, now seems a good time to talk about the very real threat posed by space debris. It&#8217;s small wonder, then, that ESA&#8217;s Clean Space initiative is looking at developing a satellite that can rendezvous with space debris and render it harmless by netting it like fish. The proposal is just one of the ideas to be discussed as part of a symposium this May focusing on the space agency's e.DeOrbit mission.


----------



## Old Rocks

RetiredGySgt said:


> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?



Oh my, another socialistic commie trying to create a government monopoly on space travel. Will these pinkoes never stop in their support of government monopolies?


----------



## Old Rocks

william the wie said:


> Time for Larry Niven's probes and follow up slowboats or at least harvesting He3?



Sheesh. I thought I was the only fan of the Known Universe on this board.


----------



## william the wie

Old Rocks said:


> william the wie said:
> 
> 
> 
> Time for Larry Niven's probes and follow up slowboats or at least harvesting He3?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sheesh. I thought I was the only fan of the Known Universe on this board.
Click to expand...

You mean I may have to change boards to get civilized conversation from more than one board member? Do you know of Laumer and Piper?


----------



## mamooth

The super-earths that Kepler can detect are more likely to be mini-Neptunes than larger versions of earth.

Are Super-Earths Actually Mini-Neptunes?


----------



## mamooth

NASA and JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency) successfully launched the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite on Feb  27. All systems are currently performing as expected.

NASA and JAXA Launch New Satellite to Measure Global Rain and Snow | NASA


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Curiosity rover captures spectacular Martian mountain snapshot*

Curiosity rover captures spectacular Martian mountain snapshot



> Like any good tourist, NASA's rover Curiosity apparently couldn't resist the photobug urge from a gorgeous Martian mountain scene she happened by recently and decided to pull over and enjoy the view.
> 
> So she stopped the dune buggy mid-drive on the sandy road to her daily destination one Sol last week on Feb. 19, powered up the camera suite and excitedly snapped a spectacular landscape view of a striated rock field dramatically back dropped by towering Mount Sharp on the horizon.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *

NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars



> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago. The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA's $17.5 Billion Budget Request for 2015 Would Fund New Science Missions, Ground Flying Telescope *
NASA's $17.5 Billion Budget Request for 2015 Would Fund New Science Missions, Ground Flying Telescope | Space.com



> WASHINGTON &#8212; NASA's 2015 budget would remain essentially flat at $17.5 billion under a White House spending proposal unveiled today (March 4) that would hold the line on the agency's biggest space programs while laying the groundwork for major new astrophysics and planetary science missions.
> 
> However, a large airborne infrared telescope known as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) would be grounded unless NASA's partner on the project, the German Aerospace Center, steps up its contribution, a senior agency official said ahead of the budget rollout.



Should be at least 25 billion. Does a hell a lot more for this nation then the worthless nation building we have been doing in the middle east.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon*

Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon


> An asteroid is headed this way. But even though it will come closer than the moon, astronomers say it will pose no danger.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*'Dimer Molecules' Aid Study of Exoplanet Pressure, Hunt for Life*

'Dimer Molecules' Aid Study of Exoplanet Pressure, Hunt for Life -- ScienceDaily
Date:

March 4, 2014


> Astronomers at the University of Washington have developed a new method of gauging the atmospheric pressure of exoplanets, or worlds beyond the solar system, by looking for a certain type of molecule.
> And if there is life out in space, scientists may one day use this same technique to detect its biosignature -- the telltale chemical signs of its presence -- in the atmosphere of an alien world.


----------



## william the wie

Matthew said:


> *Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon*
> 
> Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon
> 
> 
> 
> An asteroid is headed this way. But even though it will come closer than the moon, astronomers say it will pose no danger.
Click to expand...

 where's the capacity to deflect or capture these rocks as needed?


----------



## FA_Q2

william the wie said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon*
> 
> Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon
> 
> 
> 
> An asteroid is headed this way. But even though it will come closer than the moon, astronomers say it will pose no danger.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> where's the capacity to deflect or capture these rocks as needed?
Click to expand...


nonexistent.

the thought is nice considering that the result could mean the end of all human life but the logistics are insane.  those rocks are traveling hellishly fast and are quite small compared to the vast expanse of space.  Hitting it would be nigh impossible.

earlier in this thread was a link to an idea of how to 'spear' something like this.  IMHO, that is the first step on creating an actual defensive plan should a rock threaten the planet.


----------



## william the wie

FA_Q2 said:


> william the wie said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon*
> 
> Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon
> 
> 
> 
> where's the capacity to deflect or capture these rocks as needed?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> nonexistent.
> 
> the thought is nice considering that the result could mean the end of all human life but the logistics are insane.  those rocks are traveling hellishly fast and are quite small compared to the vast expanse of space.  Hitting it would be nigh impossible.
> 
> earlier in this thread was a link to an idea of how to 'spear' something like this.  IMHO, that is the first step on creating an actual defensive plan should a rock threaten the planet.
Click to expand...

I suspect you are right.


----------



## SmedlyButler

Matthew said:


> *Curiosity rover captures spectacular Martian mountain snapshot*
> 
> Curiosity rover captures spectacular Martian mountain snapshot
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Like any good tourist, NASA's rover Curiosity apparently couldn't resist the photobug urge from a gorgeous Martian mountain scene she happened by recently and decided to pull over and enjoy the view.
> 
> So she stopped the dune buggy mid-drive on the sandy road to her daily destination one Sol last week on Feb. 19, powered up the camera suite and excitedly snapped a spectacular landscape view of a striated rock field dramatically back dropped by towering Mount Sharp on the horizon.
Click to expand...


Reading this article made me cringe. Maybe it was meant for an elementary school audience and got mis-filed. The language used really dumbed down the message. *"she happened by recently and decided to pull over and enjoy the view". *
Wow, the author must think his audience is child-like or intellectually challenged.

Anyway, Curiousity is a scientific-engineering marvel and the photos it sends us are endlessly fascinating.


----------



## SmedlyButler

Waiting for Christmas when I was a kid wasn't as frustrating as waiting for the next generation of Space and Earth based telescopes that will come on line around 2020.

This is one of the most exciting. (An artists rendition of the GMT on it's flattened mountain top in the Atacama desert of Chili)







It's the Giant Magellan Telescope. The segmented mirrors effectively form a single optical surface with an aperture of 24.5 meters, or 80 feet in diameter. Compare that to the 100 inch telescope on Mt. Wilson that Edwin Hubble used to make observations that revolutionized our understanding of the Universe,

It's adaptive optics will help it achieve resolutions *10 times greater* than the space-based Hubble. We just can't even imagine what we might learn about unknown unknowns or known unknowns or.....I just don't know

*LINK:*GMT Overview


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Europe's Space Jet rears its head after years in the dark*

Europe's Space Jet rears its head after years in the dark | DVICE



> In the years immediately following Virgin Galactic's 2004 debut, European airplane manufacturer Airbus announced that it too would be headed to the edge of space. The space jet, as they called the project, would be capable of carrying its human cargo to space without the aid of a mothership like Virgin's White Knight Two. But after 2007, the project went strangely silent.
> 
> The reigning theory at the time was that Airbus had simply failed to muster up any partners for their billion-dollar spaceplane. Now, with at least a dozen other space planes in varying stages of development, it seems that Airbus has found the will to move forward with their once cutting-edge project. Later this year, Airbus will be carrying out a drop test in the skies above Singapore, the first of many steps that need to be taken in order to see the space jet become a reality.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Lasers 'Could Prevent Space Debris Collisions'*

Lasers 'Could Prevent Space Debris Collisions'

Scientists are hoping to prevent a real life version of the disaster scenario in Gravity by removing space debris with lasers.




> Scientists in Australia plan to track tiny pieces of debris in space and blast them with Earth-based lasers to prevent potential collisions.
> 
> The new Space Environment Management Cooperative Research Centre (SEMCRC) aims to predict the trajectories of debris from Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra.
> 
> Eventually, researchers hope to be able to knock objects off course using lasers, forcing them to slow down and fall back into the atmosphere where they will burn up harmlessly.
> 
> Matthew Colless, head of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University, said the amount of space junk orbiting Earth, from tiny screws to parts of old rockets, needs to be addressed.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Monster Black Hole Spinning at over Half the Speed of Light*

Monster Black Hole Spinning at over Half the Speed of Light | News Tonight Africa



> Scientists have measured the spin rate of a massive black hole to be more than half the speed of light. The black hole, RX J1131-1231, is six billion light years away from earth and being able to calculate its spin rate will help in understanding how black holes form.
> 
> Rubens Reis from the University of Michigan and his colleagues measured the spin of the black hole. He said high spin rate of the black hole is a clear indicator that it is voraciously feeding on its neighbor galaxies. It is producing a luminous quasar by absorbing the gas surrounding it.
> 
> Black holes have such a strong gravitational pull that even light cannot escape them. However, the scientists were able to figure out the spin rate of the monster black hole after looking at the X-rays coming from the inner edge of the accretion disk.
> 
> The scientists caught a giant elliptical galaxy between the quasar of the black hole in question. Earth acted as a type of natural telescope because of the known phenomenon, gravitational lensing. Similar to lens or mirrors that bend and direct light, objects equivalent to the size of galaxies are able to warp light passing near them


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New technique for direct imaging of exoplanets*

[1403.0560] Magellan Adaptive Optics first-light observations of the exoplanet $\beta$ Pic b. I. Direct imaging in the far-red optical with MagAO+VisAO and in the near-IR with NICI



> For the first time, astronomers have used the same imaging technology found in digital cameras to take a photo of a planet outside our Solar System with a ground-based telescope.
> 
> University of Arizona researchers have taken images of a planet outside our Solar System with an Earth-based telescope using essentially the same type of imaging sensor found in digital cameras, instead of an infrared detector. Although it still has a long way to go, this new method brings astronomers a step closer to obtaining direct images of Earth-like planets from the visible part of the light spectrum.
> 
> "This is an important next step in the search for exoplanets, because imaging in visible light instead of infrared is what we likely have to do if we want to detect planets that might be suitable for harbouring life," said Jared Males, lead author on a report to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
> 
> Even though the image was taken at a wavelength just beyond human eye visibility, the use of a digital camera-type imaging sensor &#8211; known as a charge-coupled device (CCD) &#8211; opens up the possibility of imaging exoplanets in visible light, which has not been possible with Earth-based telescopes until now. So far, all Earth-based images taken of exoplanets close to their stars have been infrared images, which detect the planets' heat. This limits the technology to gas giants &#8211; massive, hot planets, still young enough to shed heat. In contrast, older and possibly habitable planets that have cooled since their formation don't show up in infrared images as readily, and to image them, astronomers will have to rely on cameras capable of detecting visible light.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Largest yellow hypergiant star spotted*

Largest yellow hypergiant star spotted



> ESO's Very Large Telescope has revealed the largest yellow star&#8212;and one of the 10 largest stars found so far. This hypergiant has been found to measure more than 1,300 times the diameter of the Sun, and to be part of a double star system, with the second component so close that it is in contact with the main star. Observations spanning over 60 years also indicate that this remarkable object is changing very rapidly.
> 
> Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), Olivier Chesneau (Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Nice, France) and an international team of collaborators have found that the yellow hypergiant star HR 5171 A is absolutely huge&#8212;1300 times the diameter of the Sun and much bigger than was expected. This makes it the largest yellow star known. It is also in the top ten of the largest stars known&#8212;50% larger than the famous red supergiant Betelgeuse&#8212;and about one million times brighter than the Sun.
> 
> "The new observations also showed that this star has a very close binary partner, which was a real surprise," says Chesneau. "The two stars are so close that they touch and the whole system resembles a gigantic peanut."


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Video: Morpheus flies higher and farther than ever*



> NASA's Project Morpheus nailed it again today with yet another successful free flight of their prototype lander, soaring higher, faster, and farther than ever before! Go Morpheus!
> 
> The FF9 test, which occurred at 3:41 p.m. EDT at Kennedy Space Center, saw the 2,300-lb (1000-kg) Morpheus craft rise to a height of 580 feet (177 meters) and travel 837 feet (255 m) downrange at 30 mph (48 km/h). After the 85-second flight the craft set down almost exactly on target&#8212;only about a foot (.3 m) off.During today's test flight the oxygen-and-methane-propelled Morpheus could have cleared the Washington Monument.



Video: Morpheus flies higher and farther than ever


----------



## ScienceRocks

*A Study of the Shortest-Period Planets Found With Kepler*


[1403.2379] A Study of the Shortest-Period Planets Found With Kepler
 Roberto Sanchis-Ojeda, Saul Rappaport, Joshua N. Winn, Michael C. Kotson, Alan M. Levine, Ileyk El Mellah

(Submitted on 10 Mar 2014)


> We present the results of a survey aimed at discovering and studying transiting planets with orbital periods shorter than one day (ultra--short-period, or USP, planets), using data from the {\em Kepler} spacecraft. We computed Fourier transforms of the photometric time series for all 200,000 target stars, and detected transit signals based on the presence of regularly spaced sharp peaks in the Fourier spectrum. We present a list of 106 USP candidates, of which 18 have not previously been described in the literature. In addition, among the objects we studied, there are 26 USP candidates that had been previously reported in the literature which do not pass our various tests. All 106 of our candidates have passed several standard tests to rule out false positives due to eclipsing stellar systems. A low false positive rate is also implied by the relatively high fraction of candidates for which more than one transiting planet signal was detected. By assuming these multi-transit candidates represent coplanar multi-planet systems, we are able to infer that the USP planets are typically accompanied by other planets with periods in the range 1-50 days, in contrast with hot Jupiters which very rarely have companions in that same period range. Another clear pattern is that almost all USP planets are smaller than 2 R&#8853;, possibly because gas giants in very tight orbits would lose their atmospheres by photoevaporation when subject to extremely strong stellar irradiation. Based on our survey statistics, USP planets exist around approximately (0.51±0.07)% of G-dwarf stars, and (0.83±0.18)% of K-dwarf stars.


----------



## ScienceRocks

> After sending cargo towards the International Space Station, the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket used for the flight will return nearly immediately after liftoff and return and fire its engines for the second time. The burn will allow the rocket to reenter the atmosphere in controlled flight, without breaking up and disintegrating on the way down as most booster rockets do.
> 
> The launch was delayed to March 30th.



In three weeks, Spacex could demonstrate the first reusable rocket booster and pave the way to radically cheaper spaceflight

Space x is great  Shows how the public and private sector can work towards better!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Major Discovery: 'Smoking Gun' for Universe's Incredible Big Bang Expansion Found*


> Astronomers have found the first direct evidence of cosmic inflation, the theorized dramatic expansion of the universe that put the "bang" in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, new research suggests.
> 
> If it holds up, the landmark discovery &#8212; which also confirms the existence of hypothesized ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves &#8212; would give researchers a much better understanding of the Big Bang and its immediate aftermath.



Major Discovery: 'Smoking Gun' for Universe's Incredible Big Bang Expansion Found | Space.com


----------



## longknife

A great piece @ Explore the Milky Way in Amazing 360-Degree Panorama - D-brief | DiscoverMagazine.com with this video @ [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zAtnBzDZvsk]Catching a GLIMPSE of the Milky Way - YouTube[/ame]


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Scientists Home In On Earth-Sized Exoplanet*

 Mar 20, 2014 04:29 AM ET  //  by  Irene Klotz 



> Scientists are close to announcing the first Earth-sized planet in a habitable zone around its parent star.
> 
> Astronomer Thomas Barclay, with NASA&#8217;s Ames Research Center in California, culled data collected by the Kepler space telescope to ferret out a five-planet system, the outermost of which circles toward the outer edge of its star&#8217;s habitable zone, according to reports posted Wednesday on Twitter by astronomers attending the Search for Life Beyond the Solar System conference in Tucson, Ariz.
> 
> The Most Horrific Alien Planets In Our Galaxy
> 
> The outermost planet has a radius that is estimated to be 1.1 times as big as Earth&#8217;s, Nick Ballering, an astronomy graduate student at the University of Arizona, and scientist Jessie Christiansen, with the Ames Research Center, wrote in separate posts on Twitter.




Scientists Home In On Earth-Sized Exoplanet : Discovery News


----------



## william the wie

That planet would have one third more gravity than Earth with the same density, any reports on mass?


----------



## FA_Q2

william the wie said:


> That planet would have one third more gravity than Earth with the same density, any reports on mass?



?

One third more gravity = one third more mass.


----------



## Delta4Embassy

It's counter-intuitive, but mass doesn't equal gravity. Mass is the measure of inertia, and has nothing to do with weight. Like 'theory' it's a scientific term that's almost always used incorrectly. To calculate your weight on an alien world the formula's:

Mm / r2 = F (weight)

The two "M's" on top are your mass and the planet's mass. The "r" below is the distance from the center of the planet. The masses are in the numerator because the force gets bigger if they get bigger. The distance is in the denominator because the force gets smaller when the distance gets bigger. Note that the force never becomes zero no matter how far you travel.

For instance, you may suspect that because Jupiter is 318 times as massive as the Earth, you should weigh 318 times what you weigh at home. This would be true if Jupiter was the same size as the Earth. But, Jupiter is 11 times the radius of the Earth, so you are 11 times further from the center. This reduces the pull by a factor of 112 resulting in about 2.53 times the pull of Earth on you.
Your Weight on Other Worlds | Exploratorium

Reading previous announcement about exoplanet's this question comes up a lot 'how much would we weight there?' so the mass-weight issue is a common thing to look up


----------



## FA_Q2

Delta4Embassy said:


> It's counter-intuitive, but mass doesn't equal gravity. Mass is the measure of inertia, and has nothing to do with weight. Like 'theory' it's a scientific term that's almost always used incorrectly. To calculate your weight on an alien world the formula's:
> 
> Mm / r2 = F (weight)
> 
> The two "M's" on top are your mass and the planet's mass. The "r" below is the distance from the center of the planet. The masses are in the numerator because the force gets bigger if they get bigger. The distance is in the denominator because the force gets smaller when the distance gets bigger. Note that the force never becomes zero no matter how far you travel.
> 
> For instance, you may suspect that because Jupiter is 318 times as massive as the Earth, you should weigh 318 times what you weigh at home. This would be true if Jupiter was the same size as the Earth. But, Jupiter is 11 times the radius of the Earth, so you are 11 times further from the center. This reduces the pull by a factor of 112 resulting in about 2.53 times the pull of Earth on you.
> Your Weight on Other Worlds | Exploratorium
> 
> Reading previous announcement about exoplanet's this question comes up a lot 'how much would we weight there?' so the mass-weight issue is a common thing to look up


No sorry but you stated GRAVITY and NOT weight of an object on the surface.  Gravity is a direct consequence of mass.  The weight you are on the surface is another story altogether and is impossible to calculate without the planets radius. 

HOWEVER, if the density is the same as earth, as stated, 1/3 more mass would not really mean that the planet itself is much larger.  
Volume is (# is pi considering that I dont have a better symbol) 
V=4#r^3 / 3  if we make the earth 100 units in radius then we get about 4.1 million units.
1/3 more and we get around 5.6 million units.
Then r = (3V / 4#)^(1/3)
Or  110.

Ten percent larger in radii.  Not really a big difference.  Sorry if the notation is impossible to read  I dont have a lot of mathematical notations with which to type with at my disposal


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New Dwarf Planet Found At The Solar System's Outer Limits*



> Scientists have spotted a new dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system. It's a kind of pink ice ball that's way out there, far beyond Pluto.
> 
> Astronomers used to think this region of space was a no man's land. But the new findings suggest that it holds many small worlds  and there are even hints of an unseen planet bigger than Earth.
> 
> "We used to think there's just not much out there. But it turns out there are some interesting things," says Chad Trujillo, an astronomer at the Gemini Observatory, a big telescope on a mountaintop in Chile.
> 
> Until now, the only object detected in that part of our solar system was a dwarf planet called Sedna, after an Inuit goddess said to live in the frigid Arctic Ocean. That discovery was made a decade ago, and since then scientists have wondered: Is Sedna alone?
> 
> "Because you never know, if you just find one thing, is it just some strange oddity, or is it actually the first of many more objects?" Trujillo says.
> 
> The trouble is, looking for them has been hard. These distant things don't emit their own light. Light from the sun has to travel billions of miles out there, reflect off the object and then come billions of miles back. Along the way, some light gets lost.



New Dwarf Planet Found At The Solar System's Outer Limits : The Two-Way : NPR


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Gravity measurements confirm subsurface ocean on Enceladus*

Gravity measurements confirm subsurface ocean on Enceladus



> In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft sent pictures back to Earth depicting an icy Saturnian moon spewing water vapor and ice from fractures, known as "tiger stripes," in its frozen surface. It was big news that tiny Enceladus&#8212;a mere 500 kilometers in diameter&#8212;was such an active place. Since then, scientists have hypothesized that a large reservoir of water lies beneath that icy surface, possibly fueling the plumes. Now, using gravity measurements collected by Cassini, scientists have confirmed that Enceladus does in fact harbor a large subsurface ocean near its south pole, beneath those tiger stripes.
> 
> "For the first time, we have used a geophysical method to determine the internal structure of Enceladus, and the data suggest that indeed there is a large, possibly regional ocean about 50 kilometers below the surface of the south pole," says David Stevenson, the Marvin L. Goldberger Professor of Planetary Science at Caltech and an expert in studies of the interior of planetary bodies. "This then provides one possible story to explain why water is gushing out of these fractures we see at the south pole."
> 
> Stevenson is one of the authors on a paper that describes the finding in the current issue of the journal Science. Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome is the paper's lead author.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star *



NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star | NASA



> Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.
> 
> While planets have previously been found in the habitable zone, they are all at least 40 percent larger in size than Earth and understanding their makeup is challenging. Kepler-186f is more reminiscent of Earth.
> 
> "The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind's quest to find truly Earth-like worlds."
> 
> Although the size of Kepler-186f is known, its mass and composition are not. Previous research, however, suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky.



*Birth of 'new Saturn moon' witnessed*

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27056698



> Scientists say they have discovered what could be the birth of a new moon in the rings of Saturn.
> 
> Informally named Peggy, the object would become the 63rd moon in Saturn's orbit - if confirmed.
> 
> The evidence comes from a black-and-white image of the outermost ring captured by the Cassini spacecraft.
> 
> "Witnessing the birth of a tiny moon is an exciting, unexpected event," said Linda Spilker of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
> 
> Scientists noticed a bump or distortion on the edge of the ring that they believe indicates the presence of some kind of object.
> 
> It is estimated that Peggy may be about a kilometre (half a mile) in diameter and it is almost certainly made of ice.


----------



## Politico

Moons don't just get born. They either found a new one or they didn't.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*F9R First Flight Test | 250m *


Published on Apr 18, 2014 

 Video of Falcon 9 Reusable (F9R) taking its first test flight at our rocket development facility. F9R lifts off from a launch mount to a height of approximately 250m, hovers and then returns for landing just next to the launch stand. Early flights of F9R will take off with legs fixed in the down position. However, we will soon be transitioning to liftoff with legs stowed against the side of the rocket and then extending them just before landing.

 The F9R testing program is the next step towards reusability following completion of the Grasshopper program last year (Grasshopper can be seen in the background of this video). Future testing, including that in New Mexico, will be conducted using the first stage of a F9R as shown here, which is essentially a Falcon 9 v1.1 first stage with legs. F9R test flights in New Mexico will allow us to test at higher altitudes than we are permitted for at our test site in Texas, to do more with unpowered guidance and to prove out landing cases that are more-flight like.


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjWqQPWmsY]F9R First Flight Test | 250m - YouTube[/ame]

The new grasshopper first launch!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX rocket blasts off for space station*

SpaceX rocket blasts off for space station



> MELBOURNE, Fla. -- A SpaceX cargo capsule is on its way to an Easter Sunday rendezvous with the International Space Station after a Friday afternoon blastoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
> 
> SpaceX's 208-foot Falcon 9 roared from its pad at 3:25 p.m. EDT with 1.3 million pounds of thrust, disappearing into overcast skies about 80 seconds after liftoff.
> 
> Ten minutes later the Dragon capsule separated from the rocket's upper stage, deployed power-generating solar arrays and began to chase down the station.


----------



## American Horse

RetiredGySgt said:


> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?



On the other side of that situation, the Commercial Orbital Transfer Service (COTS) initiated by the Bush Administration is on its way to lowering the cost of delivering cargo to the ISS.  Space-X, the current largest mover, will be ready to carry humans into space - to the ISS - much sooner than originally  planned at the current pace of development. 

They - Space-X - have bought (leased) building 39 at KSC and are developing the world's largest heavy lift vehicle. They rent facilities from NASA when they use them, including the NASA's global tracking network, so they are not being subsidized beyond the fact that they are getting bonus rates for meeting all the goals set out by NASA. They already  had their own launch facility in California and they have their own ocean going retrieval ship for landings in the Pacific ocean. They are drastically lowering the cost of delivering cargo into low earth orbit.  

Right now the standard estimated cost to deliver cargo into LEO is $10,000 per pound by NASA. 

The price we are paying Russia to deliver our astronauts to LEO is $333,000 per pound. 

Space-X will get delivery costs down to something like $1,000 per pound when they are fully deployed.  It will end up being a good thing that NASA is getting out of total dominance (along with the LEGACY space industry) of manned space exploration.  Now and in the future private/commercial ventures will play an ever larger role and costs will go much lower.

They launched another Falcon-9 to the space station today to arrive on Sunday carrying cargo and scientific equipment. 

SpaceX Commercial Dragon Resupply Ship Thunders to Space Bound for ISS and Easter Sunday Berthing


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Elon Musk and Spacex plan to recover and refly a first rocket stage in 2015*



> According to Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance, the next Falcon 9 launch scheduled for May will also try for a water recovery.
> 
> The next step, assuming sea crews are unable to recover the rocket from Friday's launch, is to return a first stage to a precision touchdown on land and determine what might be necessary to prepare it for another flight.
> 
> Musk hopes SpaceX can recover a Falcon 9 booster this year and fly a used first stage for the first time in 2015.
> 
> SpaceX plans to clad the rocket's single-engine upper stage with a heat shield with an eye toward reusing it as well. The company has not disclosed a timetable for a potential recovery of the second stage.
> 
> "We don't have to just recover it," Musk said. "We have to show that it can be reflown quickly and easily, where the only thing you [have to do] is reload propellant."
> 
> Here are the estimated costs for one use and partially reusable and more reusable Spacex rockets.
> 
> One use Falcon 9 rocket launch cost $1,862/lb
> One use Falcon Heavy launch cost $1000/lb
> The above costs are from Wikipedia and the Spacex website.
> 
> First stage reusable Falcon 9 launch cost $1200/lb
> First stage reusable Falcon Heavy launch cost $600/lb
> 
> The cost of fuel and the Spacex rockets has been repeated a few times.
> 
> Musk reiterated the origin of the SpaceX production model, saying fuel is only 0.3 percent of the total cost of a rocket, with construction materials accounting for no more than 2 percent of the total cost, which for the Falcon 9 is about $60 million.
> 
> Musk said that a rocket's first stage accounts for three-quarters of its total price tag, so a vehicle with a reusable first stage can be produced at far less cost &#8212; assuming the hardware is fully and rapidly reusable.
> 
> A reusable rocket stage would be able to launch about 80% of the cargo of a one use rocket. The weight of fuel is needed to fly the stage back and the extra weight of landing legs and other modifications for reuse have to be carried.
> 
> Two launches with second reusing the first stage.
> Capital cost - 1.25 times the cost of one full rocket.
> 0.6% for fuel
> Launch cargo 1.6 times the cargo of one rocket.
> 78% of the cost of a single use rocket
> 
> Three launches with reuse of the first stage twice.
> Capital cost - 1.5 times the cost of one rocket
> 0.9% for fuel
> Launch cargo 2.4 times the cargo of one rocket
> 62.5% of the cost of a single use rocket
> 
> 50% of the cost with five launches and four reuses of the first stage [$930 per pound for the 9 v1.1 and $500 per pound for the heavy]
> 
> Reusable first stage falcon heavy [with about twenty reuses] can get down to about $350/lb [one third the one use price].
> 
> Reusable (about fifteen times) Falcon 9 rocket launch cost all stages reusable $100/lb [all three stages of a falcon heavy, should get to about ten times cheaper]



Elon Musk and Spacex plan to recover and refly a first rocket stage in 2015


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Exoplanets soon to gleam in the eye of NESSI*



> The New Mexico Exoplanet Spectroscopic Survey Instrument (NESSI) will soon get its first "taste" of exoplanets, helping astronomers decipher their chemical composition. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars beyond our sun.
> 
> NESSI got its first peek at the sky on April 3, 2014. It looked at Pollux, a star in the Gemini constellation, and Arcturus, in the Boötes constellation, confirming that all modes of the instrument are working.
> 
> "After five years of development, it's really exciting to turn on our instrument and see its first light," said Michele Creech-Eakman, the principal investigator of the project at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, N.M. "Planet hunters have found thousands of exoplanets, but what do we know about them? NESSI will help us find out more about their atmospheres and compositions."




Exoplanets soon to gleam in the eye of NESSI -- ScienceDaily


----------



## ScienceRocks

This is bad news for all of you anti-space people. This is going to make it much cheaper!

*Elon Musk Confirms Historic Soft Landing That Could Make Space Flight Much Cheaper*




> Elon Musk, a serial entrepreneur and a co-founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, confirmed on Friday that his company SpaceX successfully executed a soft landing of its Falcon 9 rocket's first stage in the Atlantic Ocean.
> 
> The Falcon 9 rocket was used last week to launch the Dragon resupply spacecraft to the International Space Station. The launch was exciting because it was the first time the rocket's first stage, or bottom part of the rocket that is ignited at launch, was equipped with four "landing legs."



Read more: Elon Musk SpaceX Reusable Rocket Test - Business Insider


----------



## longknife

Video of Major Solar Flare

How infinitesimal we are! Despite all of our rhetoric about what Humanity is doing to our world, just looking at this video [with a lot of annoying ads] shows just how little control we have over things. @ Sun Unleashes Major Solar Flare (Video) | Space.com


----------



## American Horse

william the wie said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon*
> 
> Asteroid passing Earth will be closer than moon
> 
> 
> 
> An asteroid is headed this way. But even though it will come closer than the moon, astronomers say it will pose no danger.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> where's the capacity to deflect or capture these rocks as needed?
Click to expand...


Do a google search for "asteroid capture" and "asteroid redirect mission"
Things are developing; but to walk, first you have to crawl.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Length of exoplanet day measured for first time*

13 hours ago 



> Observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope have, for the first time, determined the rotation rate of an exoplanet. Beta Pictoris b has been found to have a day that lasts eight hours. This is quicker than any planet in the Solar System. This result extends the relation between mass and rotation seen in the Solar System to exoplanets. Similar techniques will allow mapping exoplanets in detail with the European Extremely Large Telescope.



 Read more at: Length of exoplanet day measured for first time


----------



## American Horse

About the ESO VLT: 





> The 8.2m diameter Unit Telescopes can also be used individually. With one such telescope, images of celestial objects as faint as magnitude 30 can be obtained in a one-hour exposure. This corresponds to seeing objects that are four billion (four thousand million) times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye.
> 
> The instruments currently available at VLTI can combine a maximum of three Unit Telescopes or three Auxiliary Telescopes at the same time. The Auxiliary Telescopes have 100% of their observing time with the VLTI, while the Unit Telescopes are usually busy with an enormous variety of observations, so they typically do not spend more than 20% of their time on VLTI. The Unit Telescopes are typically used in *interferometric* mode for fainter sources, when a larger collecting area is needed.



It was with the advancement of "*interferometry*" that we were able to image the surface of another star for the first time; i.e. visualize dark materials on the star's surface like "sunspots"


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Elon Musk Wants SpaceX to Replace Russia as NASA's Space Station Transport*

Elon Musk Wants SpaceX to Replace Russia as NASA's Space Station Transport - Businessweek



> SpaceX, the rocket and space exploration company founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, filed a protest against the U.S. Air Force this week, saying that the military has unfairly prevented it from competing for space satellite launches.
> 
> The following day, Russia&#8217;s deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, who is targeted by U.S. sanctions over Ukraine, suggested that America may need to find a large trampoline to continue NASA&#8217;s access to the International Space Station. Since the space shuttle&#8217;s retirement, the U.S. pays Russia about $71 million per seat to fly U.S. astronauts to the station. The current ISS mission, Expedition 39 (pdf), has two Americans among the six-person crew.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Let's Talk About: Ocean detected inside Enceladus
May 1, 2014 12:00 AM 
Let's Talk About: Ocean detected inside Enceladus - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette



> By Dan Malerbo, Buhl Planetarium and Observatory
> 
> 
> The Cassini spacecraft's tour of Saturn has been one of NASA's most successful planetary missions. The spacecraft's amazing discoveries and images have revolutionized our knowledge of the ring world and its moons. The spacecraft has recently uncovered evidence that Saturn's moon, Enceladus, harbors a large underground ocean.




Read more: Let's Talk About: Ocean detected inside Enceladus - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX's Grasshopper successor flies again*

By JOSEPH ABBOTT jabbott@wacotrib.com 



> I finally got to see one.
> 
> SpaceX's F9R Dev &#8212; the modified Falcon 9 first stage that's a bigger sibling to SpaceX's Grasshopper testbed rocket &#8212; flew a second time Thursday at the company's McGregor development facility, two weeks after its first free flight.
> 
> The test is another step in SpaceX's drive to produce a recoverable and reusable first stage, which saw another leap forward with the successful splashdown of the actual Falcon 9 first stage after it launched the Dragon cargo ship toward the International Space Station.
> 
> I can't get much more specific because SpaceX hasn't talked about the test yet (that usually happens after a day or two). As near as I could tell it flew to the same 800-foot height that it did two weeks ago, and took the same type of course: up, hover, move sideways, land.
> 
> More as I get it.



SpaceX's Grasshopper successor flies again - WacoTrib.com: Joe Science


----------



## Mr. H.

Cool vid:

Watch SpaceX's reusable rocket hover at 3,280 feet before gently landing back to Earth


----------



## ScienceRocks

Space-x fuckin rules! One day at tis rate they will make getting into space 1/10th the cost!




*3D Printing: 10 Ways It Could Transform Space Travel*
http://www.space.com/25706-3d-printing-transforming-space-travel.html?



> The future of space travel requires new technologies and additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3D printing, may hold the key.
> 
> The European Space Agency is investigates how the 3D printers and 3D printing technology could transform everything we think about space missions. Here's a look at 10 ways 3D printing could change space travel, courtesy of ESA scientists.


----------



## william the wie

I suspect that the Allen-Rutan project will be the big one.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers create first realistic virtual universe*



> (Phys.org) &#8212;Move over, Matrix - astronomers have done you one better. They have created the first realistic virtual universe using a computer simulation called "Illustris." Illustris can recreate 13 billion years of cosmic evolution in a cube 350 million light-years on a side with unprecedented resolution.
> 
> "Until now, no single simulation was able to reproduce the universe on both large and small scales simultaneously," says lead author Mark Vogelsberger (MIT/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who conducted the work in collaboration with researchers at several institutions, including the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies in Germany.
> 
> These results are being reported in the May 8th issue of the journal Nature.
> 
> Previous attempts to simulate the universe were hampered by lack of computing power and the complexities of the underlying physics. As a result those programs either were limited in resolution, or forced to focus on a small portion of the universe. Earlier simulations also had trouble modeling complex feedback from star formation, supernova explosions, and supermassive black holes.



http://phys.org/news/2014-05-astronomers-realistic-virtual-universe.html


----------



## Vikrant

Sooner or later, we will run out of living space on the Earth. Then, what will we do?

---

Russia is planning to put a manned colony on the moon as soon as 2030, and is racing to dispatch the first robotic rovers to explore the lunar surface two years from now.
According to Russian-language newspaper Izvestia, Russia would be ready to send manned missions to orbit the moon by 2028, and in the programme's final stage, humans would be sent to the lunar surface to set up the infrastructure for a colony using local resources, The Moscow Times reported.

The first stage of the programme is expected to cost around 815.8 million dollars, though Russia hopes to attract private investors to help bankroll the project.

Benefits of establishing a moon colony include access to the "treasure trove" of rare and valuable minerals, as well as the strategic importance of using the moon as a launchpad for future missions into deep space.

The paper added that China, India and Japan are also developing lunar exploration projects, and a California-based company, Moon Express, is planning to send its first robotic spacecraft to the satellite next year, according to the company's website.



Read more at: Russia planning to colonise Moon by 2030 : Europe, News - India Today


----------



## ScienceRocks

*$17.9 billion funding plan for NASA would boost planetary science*


> The House Appropriations Committee recommended $17.9 billion in funding for NASA on Thursday, significantly boosting planetary science programs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and continuing operation of a flying telescope.



Read more at: $17.9 billion funding plan for NASA would boost planetary science

Should be at least 20 billion!  Man space flight should have two goals...1. Asteroid mining 2. or terraforming of mars/venues. Otherwise, we should invest a lot more into probes and extrasolar planets.

Another kepler or two would be great!


----------



## Vikrant

India is gearing up for manned space mission. They just inaugurated a state of the art RTRS facility to test the heavy payloads. 

---

Rail Track Rocket Sled (RTRS) Penta Rail Supersonic Track a national test facility was today inaugurated by DRDO Chief Avinash Chander. India is among a handful of countries in the world now possessing this unique test facility. This four kilometer long RTRS Penta track will be extremely useful for the testing of wide range of critical systems such as payload for manned missions of ISRO, the navigation system for missiles and aircrafts, proximity fuses for advanced warheads, fuses for armament systems parachutes for payload delivery, arrester systems for aircraft such as LCA, stated Avinash Chander while inaugurated this National Test Facility, in presence of Dr SS Sundaram, DG(ECS), Dr Satish Kumar, Chief Controller (TM), Ajay Singh, Chief Executive (CW&E), M Balakrishnan and V S Sethi , both former directors of TBRL and officers & staff of TBRL.
Later, in his national technology Day address, Avinash Chander stated I am glad that today we have added another key facility in TBRL. He also witnessed the demonstration of several newer advanced warheads. Lauding the efforts of TBRL scientists in developing key technologies that are strategically important for the security of the nation, he said, that the observance of National Technology Day began with the technologies in which TBRL has played a key role. He also inaugurated the new building of Ballistics Vidyalaya, Ramgargh, a school run by DRDO Educational Society and the Sampooran Singh Officers Transit Facility, within the premises of TBRL residential area at Ramgarh.

DRDO Rail Track Rocket Sled Penta Rail Supersonic Track for Indian manned Space Mission | Frontier India


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Skylon &#8216;spaceplane economics stack up&#8217;*

BBC News - Skylon ?spaceplane economics stack up?



> It appears a feasible proposition, economically. That is the conclusion of a study that considered a European launch service based on a Skylon re-usable spaceplane.
> 
> The report, commissioned by the European Space Agency (Esa), was led by Reaction Engines Limited (REL) of Oxfordshire with help from a range of other contractors such as London Economics, QinetiQ and Thales Alenia Space (TAS).
> 
> It looked closely at how an operator of the UK-conceived vehicle might meet the demands of its market.



*
Russia puts satellite in orbit from sea platform after 2013 flop*
http://www.space-travel.com/reports...it_from_sea_platform_after_2013_flop_999.html

    27 May 2014



> Russia has sent a European communications satellite into orbit from a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean, after the last launch in 2013 ended with the satellite plunging into the sea.
> The Zenit-3SL rocket blasted off at 2209 GMT on Monday from the Odyssey launch pad and reached its orbit around an hour later, said the Sea Launch international consortium, 95 percent of which is controlled by Russia.
> "Sea Launch went according to plan. The control of the (satellite) has been handed over," Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees Russia's space programme, wrote on Twitter.
> Russia's space-rocket company Energia has said it plans to use the sea platform for four launches in 2014 and five in 2015.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX will reveal Dragon V2 - SpaceX's next generation spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to space.*

SpaceX | Webcast


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Virgin Galactic signs spaceflight deal with US authority*

BBC News - Virgin Galactic signs spaceflight deal with US authority



> Virgin Galactic has signed a deal with the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), which will allow it to charter space flights from its base in the US state of New Mexico.
> 
> The agreement lays out rules for how the flights will be integrated into US air space.
> 
> In a statement, Virgin Galactic said the deal brings it "another step closer" to commercial space flights.
> 
> The firm hopes to launch its first flight by the end of 2014.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Morpheus makes first night landing*
Morpheus makes first night landing



> Spacecraft lifting off at night are a beautiful sight, but equally impressive is when one lands in the dark under its own power. NASA&#8217;s robotic Morpheus prototype planetary lander did both of those in its first night-time free flight at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which included an autonomous landing in an artificial lunar landscape.


----------



## KissMy

Space-X has a more impressive launch vehicle. It launches the capsule, returns to the launch pad by automatically landing itself in launch position & is ready to be refueled & relaunched.

[youtube]NoxiK7K28PU[/youtube]


----------



## Indofred

Matthew said:


> *Virgin Galactic signs spaceflight deal with US authority*
> 
> BBC News - Virgin Galactic signs spaceflight deal with US authority
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Virgin Galactic has signed a deal with the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), which will allow it to charter space flights from its base in the US state of New Mexico.
> 
> The agreement lays out rules for how the flights will be integrated into US air space.
> 
> In a statement, Virgin Galactic said the deal brings it "another step closer" to commercial space flights.
> 
> The firm hopes to launch its first flight by the end of 2014.
Click to expand...


Just as interesting is where the cash came from.
A British/American/ Arabic deal, including Bin Laden.


----------



## Indofred

KissMy said:


> Space-X has a more impressive launch vehicle. It launches the capsule, returns to the launch pad by automatically landing itself in launch position & is ready to be refueled & relaunched.
> 
> [youtube]NoxiK7K28PU[/youtube]



That is pretty cool.


----------



## KissMy

Indofred said:


> KissMy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Space-X has a more impressive launch vehicle. It launches the capsule, returns to the launch pad by automatically landing itself in launch position & is ready to be refueled & relaunched.
> 
> [youtube]NoxiK7K28PU[/youtube]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That is pretty cool.
Click to expand...


Here is a better video of the SpaceX Rocket.


----------



## Indofred

A thing of beauty.


----------



## mamooth

FAA approves SpaceX launch site in South Texas | The Space Reporter

At the southern tip of Texas, the site is farther south than Cape Canaveral, making it more efficient for launches.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
 The United Kingdom could have a spaceport by 2018.*


> Pending a regulatory report to be published this July and a technical feasibility study that is underway with the country's National Space Technology Programme (NSTP), it is possible that the country could host a spaceport within the next five years. A new National Space Flight Coordination Group, chaired by the U.K. Space Agency, will oversee these reports and the future work for this U.K. spaceport. Government officials hope this will be the start of commercial spaceflight for the country.



UK Takes Aim at Commercial Spaceflight, Spaceport Possible by 2018


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers find a new type of planet: The 'mega-Earth'*
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140602115837.htm


> Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a new type of planet -- a rocky world weighing 17 times as much as Earth. Theorists believed such a world couldn't form because anything so hefty would grab hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas giant. This planet, though, is all solids and much bigger than previously discovered "super-Earths," making it a "mega-Earth."
> 
> "We were very surprised when we realized what we had found," says astronomer Xavier Dumusque of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who led the data analysis and made the discovery.
> 
> "This is the Godzilla of Earths!" adds CfA researcher Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative. "But unlike the movie monster, Kepler-10c has positive implications for life."
> 
> The team's finding was presented today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).



Seems to be some quite shocking news. You'd think a planet over 10 earth masses would become a gas giant...Maybe the star nova'ed?


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
The Kepler-10 planetary system revisited by HARPS-N: A hot rocky world and a solid Neptune-mass planet*
[1405.7881] The Kepler-10 planetary system revisited by HARPS-N: A hot rocky world and a solid Neptune-mass planet


> Kepler-10b was the first rocky planet detected by the Kepler satellite and con- firmed with radial velocity follow-up observations from Keck-HIRES. The mass of the planet was measured with a precision of around 30%, which was insufficient to constrain models of its internal structure and composition in detail. In addition to Kepler-10b, a second planet transiting the same star with a period of 45 days was sta- tistically validated, but the radial velocities were only good enough to set an upper limit of 20 Mearth for the mass of Kepler-10c. To improve the precision on the mass for planet b, the HARPS-N Collaboration decided to observe Kepler-10 intensively with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo on La Palma. In to- tal, 148 high-quality radial-velocity measurements were obtained over two observing seasons. These new data allow us to improve the precision of the mass determina- tion for Kepler-10b to 15%. With a mass of 3.33 +/- 0.49 Mearth and an updated radius of 1.47 +0.03 -0.02 Rearth, Kepler-10b has a density of 5.8 +/- 0.8 g cm-3, very close to the value -0.02 predicted by models with the same internal structure and composition as the Earth. *We were also able to determine a mass for the 45-day period planet Kepler-10c, with an even better precision of 11%. With a mass of 17.2 +/- 1.9 Mearth and radius of 2.35 +0.09 -0.04 Rearth, -0.04 Kepler-10c has a density of 7.1 +/- 1.0 g cm-3. Kepler-10c appears to be the first strong evidence of a class of more massive solid planets with longer orbital periods*.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Two planets orbit nearby ancient star*



> An international team of scientists, led by astronomers at Queen Mary University of London, report of two new planets orbiting Kapteyn's star, one of the oldest stars found near the Sun. One of the newly-discovered planets could be ripe for life as it orbits at the right distance to the star to allow liquid water on its surface.
> 
> Discovered at the end of the 19th century and named after the Dutch astronomer who discovered it (Jacobus Kapteyn), Kapteyn's star is the second fastest moving star in the sky and belongs to the galactic halo, an extended cloud of stars orbiting our galaxy. With a third of the mass of the sun, this red-dwarf can be seen in the southern constellation of Pictor with an amateur telescope.
> 
> The astronomers used new data from HARPS spectrometer at the ESO's La Silla observatory in Chile to measure tiny periodic changes in the motion of the star. Using the Doppler Effect, which shifts the star's light spectrum depending on its velocity, the scientists can work out some properties of these planets, such as their masses and periods of orbit.
> The study also combined data from two more high-precision spectrometers to secure the detection: HIRES at Keck Observatory and PFS at Magellan/Las Campanas Observatory.
> 
> "We were surprised to find planets orbiting Kapteyn's star. Previous data showed some moderate excess of variability, so we were looking for very short period planets when the new signals showed up loud and clear," explains lead author Dr Guillem Anglada-Escude, from QMUL's School of Physics and Astronomy.
> Based on the data collected, the planet Kapetyn b is at least five times as massive as the Earth and it orbits the star every 48 days. This means the planet is warm enough for liquid water to be present on its surface. The second planet, Kapteyn c is a more massive super-Earth and quite different: its year lasts for 121 days and astronomers think it's too cold to support liquid water.
> 
> At the moment, only a few properties of the planets are known: approximate masses, orbital periods, and distances to the star. By measuring the atmosphere of these planets with next-generation instruments, scientists will try to find out whether they can bear water.
> 
> Typical planetary systems detected by NASA's Kepler mission are hundreds of light-years away. In contrast, Kapteyn's star is the 25th nearest star to the sun and it is only 13 light years away from Earth.



Read more at: Two planets orbit nearby ancient star


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
Planet-hunting Kepler telescope back in action*
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: June 3, 2014





> NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, given a new lease on life after an endorsement by a science review panel last month, has resumed scanning the cosmos for the tell-tale signatures of alien worlds lurking around distant stars.
> 
> Kepler started taking science data May 30 in the first of nine observing campaigns through June 2016 under a two-year, $20 million mission extension dubbed K2 approved by NASA last month.
> 
> Kepler is running on just two of its four reaction wheels, spinning gyroscopes which keep the telescope steadily aimed at stars to detect subtle fluctuations in light that might indicate the presence of a planet.
> 
> But engineers with NASA and Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Kepler's manufacturer, devised a way for the observatory to continue its planet-hunting quest despite its diminished capabilities.



http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1406/03kepler/#.U45_ySg9WPQ

*
Into the methane depths of Kraken, Titan's strange sea*


> A sea of liquid methane laps a shore of solid ice as the biggest rainstorm ever falls from an orange sky. Welcome to Saturn's largest moon
> 
> THE sky is a baleful orange, but then it's always like that. The roar of the approaching maelstrom is new though, and disturbing. As are the gathering clouds, which threaten to loose a deluge more violent than anything ever seen on Earth. A sailor on an alien sea may hesitate: is it wise to venture into the Throat of Kraken?
> 
> One day this could be a real scene on Saturn's giant moon, Titan. Apart from Earth, Titan is the only world known to have liquid on its surface (see diagram). We first glimpsed its alien lakes and seas through the eyes of the Cassini spacecraft in 2006. Now, after eight years of slow exploration, Cassini has suddenly unleashed a flood of ...



http://www.newscientist.com/article...hane-depths-of-kraken-titans-strange-sea.html


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## ScienceRocks

*First light for SPHERE exoplanet imager*


> SPHEREthe Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrumenthas been installed on ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. This powerful facility for studying exoplanets uses multiple advanced techniques in combination. It offers dramatically better performance than existing instruments and has produced impressive views of dust discs around nearby stars and other targets during the very first days of observations. It is expected to revolutionize the study of exoplanets and circumstellar discs. Included is one of the best images so far of the ring of dust around the nearby star HR 4796A.



Read more at: First light for SPHERE exoplanet imager


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## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers discover a bizarre new type of
"hybrid" star*

Astronomers have detected the first Thorne-&#379;ytkow objects (T&#379;Os). These hybrids of red supergiant and neutron stars, first proposed in 1975, had been theoretical until now.



> In a discovery decades in the making, scientists have detected the first of a &#8220;theoretical&#8221; class of stars first proposed in 1975 by physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna &#379;ytkow. Thorne-&#379;ytkow objects (T&#379;Os) are hybrids of red supergiant and neutron stars that superficially resemble normal supergiants like Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion. They differ, however, in their distinct chemical signatures resulting from unique activity in their stellar interiors.
> 
> T&#379;Os are thought to be formed by the interaction of two massive stars &#8211; a red supergiant and a neutron star formed during a supernova explosion &#8211; within a close binary system. While the exact mechanism is uncertain, the most commonly held theory suggests that, during the evolutionary interaction of the two stars, the much more massive red supergiant essentially swallows the neutron star, which spirals into the core of the red supergiant.
> 
> While normal supergiants derive their energy from nuclear fusion in their cores, T&#379;Os are powered by the unusual activity of the absorbed neutron stars in their cores. The discovery of this T&#379;O thus provides evidence of a model of stellar interiors previously undetected by astronomers.
> 
> Project leader Emily Levesque of the University of Colorado Boulder, who earlier this year was awarded the American Astronomical Society&#8217;s Annie Jump Cannon Award, said: &#8220;Studying these objects is exciting as it represents a completely new model of how stellar interiors can work. In these interiors we also have a new way of producing heavy elements in our universe. You&#8217;ve heard that everything is made of &#8216;star stuff&#8217; &#8211; inside these stars we might now have a new way to make some of it.&#8221;
> 
> The study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, is co-authored by Philip Massey, of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona; Anna &#379;ytkow of the University of Cambridge in the UK; and Nidia Morrell of the Carnegie Observatories in Chile. The astronomers achieved their discovery using the 6.5-metre Magellan Clay telescope on Las Campanas in Chile, pointed at the Small Magellanic Cloud, which lies about 200,000 light years away:
> 
> 
> 
> They examined the spectrum of light emitted from apparent red supergiants, which tells them what elements are present. When the spectrum of one particular star &#8211; HV 2112 &#8211; was first displayed, the observers were surprised by some of its unusual features. As Morrell commented: &#8220;I don&#8217;t know what this is, but I know that I like it!&#8221;
> 
> When Levesque and her colleagues looked closely at the subtle lines in the spectrum, they found it contained excess rubidium, lithium and molybdenum. Past research has shown that normal stellar processes can create each of these separate elements. But high abundances of all three at temperatures typical of red supergiants are a unique signature of T&#379;Os.


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA announces technology experiments to fly on SpaceShipTwo*

NASA announces technology experiments to fly on SpaceShipTwo


> Science and space tourism shook hands this week with NASA announcing 12 technology experiments that will fly on the SpaceShipTwo spaceplane under a charter agreement with Virgin Galactic. The payload is a mixture of government, academic, and private microgravity experiments that will form the first commercial research flight for the spacecraft.
> 
> Virgin Galactic is known mainly for booking tourists, who will fly into space for the sobering price of US$250,00. But it&#8217;s flagship, SpaceShipTwo, is also designed to carry scientific experiments for the more research-minded customer. One of three charter flights under the $4.5 million contract with Virgin Galactic to carry up to 1,300 lbs (590 kg) of scientific experiments per flight, the NASA mission will be conducted as part of NASA's Flight Opportunities Program to provide a microgravity environment for experiments and encourage the development of commercial space industries.
> 
> The purpose of the flight is to test new experiments in the weightless environment that the spaceplane produces at the peak of its suborbital flight. Though the roughly six minutes &#8211; depending on trajectory &#8211; that SpaceShipTwo will experience weightlessness doesn&#8217;t seem like much, it is enough to collect important data and to determine if an experiment is worth taking the more expensive step of sending it to the International Space Station.


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## ScienceRocks

Musk fucking rules!!!
*
Spacex targets reusing the Dragon V2 ten times before refurbishment and targest hundreds of flights per day by 2030 and thousands per day by 2035*



> Elon Musk describing upgrades to the ship that could allow Dragons to fly up to 10 times without significant refurbishment
> 
> Musk doesn't want SpaceX to simply become an orbital taxi service, however. His dreams are far grander: to transform the way in which space exploration is conducted, opening up the final frontier to widespread and affordable use. Musk's vision doesn't end in Earth orbit but rather stretches all the way to the frozen deserts of Mars.
> 
> The key is reusability. Musk said the crewed Dragon is designed to land softly back on Earth and be rapidly turned around for another flight &#8212; possibly on the same day.
> 
> "The reason that this is really important is that, apart from the convenience of the landing location, is that it enables rapid reusability of the spacecraft," Musk told the audience.
> 
> Just reload the propellants and fly it again. This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space, because as long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft, we will never have true access to space; it will always be incredibly expensive," he added. "You can imagine a scenario where &#8230; if an aircraft was thrown away after each flight, nobody would be able to afford to fly. Or very few, only a small number of government customers. The same is true with rockets and spacecraft." If SpaceX's engineers can pull it off, the crewed Dragon will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket that's also fully reusable. This past April, the first stage of a Falcon 9 maneuvered to a soft "landing" on the ocean, refiring its engines and extending four landing legs before hitting the water intact. SpaceX's goal is to to recover a Falcon 9 first stage with a touchdown on land by the end of the year. The company would then re-launch the stage next year on a demonstration flight.
> 
> The company's engineers are also working on the more difficult problem of trying to recover the Falcon 9's second stage, which reaches a much higher altitude. Musk predicted that instead of flying into space a handful of times per year as we do now, humans would eventually be able to fly to space multiples times per day. "I think 20 years for thousands of flights," Musk said in response to a question about increasing annual launch rates. "And I think we could probably get to the hundreds-of-flights level in 12 to 15 years." Reusability Cost Analysis - Spacex could soon have a reusable first stage and Dragon stage Here are the estimated costs for one use and partially reusable and more reusable Spacex rockets. One use Falcon 9 rocket launch cost $1,862/lb One use Falcon Heavy launch cost $1000/lb The above costs are from Wikipedia and the Spacex website. First stage reusable Falcon 9 launch cost $1200/lb First stage reusable Falcon Heavy launch cost $600/lb The cost of fuel and the Spacex rockets has been repeated a few times. Musk reiterated the origin of the SpaceX production model, saying fuel is only 0.3 percent of the total cost of a rocket, with construction materials accounting for no more than 2 percent of the total cost, which for the Falcon 9 is about $60 million.
> 
> Musk said that a rocket's first stage accounts for three-quarters of its total price tag, so a vehicle with a reusable first stage can be produced at far less cost &#8212; assuming the hardware is fully and rapidly reusable. A reusable rocket stage would be able to launch about 80% of the cargo of a one use rocket. The weight of fuel is needed to fly the stage back and the extra weight of landing legs and other modifications for reuse have to be carried. Two launches with second reusing the first stage. Capital cost - 1.25 times the cost of one full rocket. 0.6% for fuel Launch cargo 1.6 times the cargo of one rocket. 78% of the cost of a single use rocket Three launches with reuse of the first stage twice. Capital cost - 1.5 times the cost of one rocket 0.9% for fuel Launch cargo 2.4 times the cargo of one rocket 62.5% of the cost of a single use rocket 50% of the cost with five launches and four reuses of the first stage [$930 per pound for the 9 v1.1 and $500 per pound for the heavy]
> 
> Reusable first stage falcon heavy [with about twenty reuses] can get down to about $350/lb [one third the one use price]. Reusable (about fifteen times) Falcon 9 rocket launch cost all stages reusable $100/lb [all three stages of a falcon heavy, should get to about ten times cheaper] Having three reusable stages that can be used ten times before refurbishment would get costs to about $150/lg for a Falcon Heavy. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks



Spacex targets reusing the Dragon V2 ten times before refurbishment and targest hundreds of flights per day by 2030 and thousands per day by 2035


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## ScienceRocks

*"Hello, World" &#8211; Video beamed from ISS using laser-based communications*

"Hello, World" ? Video beamed from ISS using laser-based communications



> While the International Space Station (ISS) may be mankind&#8217;s outpost for the conquest of space, it still leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to a decent YouTube connection. That&#8217;s because, for all its sophistication, the station&#8217;s communications system is still based on 1960s radio technology and has all the bandwidth of a soda straw. This changed on Thursday as NASA took a step into the video age with the test of its Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) demonstrator, which used a laser to beam a video to Earth in seconds instead of the usual minutes.
> 
> Developed by NASA&#8217;s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, OPALS is designed to test the effectiveness of lasers as a higher-bandwidth substitute for radio waves. It was delivered to the ISS on April 20 by an unmanned Dragon space freighter and is currently undergoing a 90-day test. The system has 10 to 1,000 times greater capacity for data transmission than radio links.
> 
> For the test, OPALS transmitted the &#8220;Hello, World&#8221; video from the ISS to a ground station on Earth. In some ways, it was more difficult than the Lunar test undertaken by the LADEE lunar probe last year. The station orbits Earth at an altitude of about 260 mi (418 km) at 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h). The result is that the target is sliding across the laser&#8217;s field of view much faster than it did for the lunar test.


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## ScienceRocks

Massive Beast asteroid is set to pass by Earth this weekend, missing our planet by 777,000 miles.



> WASHINGTON, June 7 (UPI) --The so-called Beast asteroid is expected to miss Earth by about 777,000 miles, which is a good thing because the 1,100-foot wide behemoth could do serious damage.
> 
> There's no chance the asteroid will hit Earth, scientists say, but at 777,000 miles away -- 3.25 times the distance from the Earth to the moon -- it's a relatively close call.
> 
> The asteroid is about 10 to 20 times bigger than the one that injured 1,000 people last year in Chelyabinsk, Russia, Bob Berman, of the Slooh community observatory said. That asteroid was 55 feet wide.



Read more: Massive Beast asteroid to have close call with Earth - UPI.com

The fact that we discoverd this in late April should be very concerning. This thing hits would be like Toba going off to life on earth...


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## mamooth

The Sun is letting out some X-class solar flares. Not pointed at earth, but news flares could be.

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA scientist creates expanded list of habitability possibilities for other worlds*

NASA scientist creates expanded list of habitability possibilities for other worlds



> (Phys.org) &#8212;A NASA scientist based at Ames Research Center has compiled a checklist of habitability possibilities for planets or other bodies in the solar system or beyond. In his paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Christopher McKay outlines ways that life could be possible on other planets, moons, or even other bodies.
> 
> 
> Research here on Earth, McKay notes, has led to findings that show that life can exist under what would previously have been considered impossible environmental conditions. Thus, it seems logical that what we define as the conditions possible for life existing in other places should expand as well. Not all life forms need the same requirements as most of the life we see around us, some can survive or even thrive in very extreme conditions.
> 
> He notes that some types of microorganisms, for example, have been found to live in environments that are consistently well below freezing or well above the boiling point. Thus, it would not make sense to rule out a planet simply because it's too cold or too hot.
> 
> He also notes that not all life forms require as much water as was once thought. Some algae, for instance has been found living inside of rocks, where very, very little water is available. Not unlike the water that is trapped in rocks on the moon, as just one example.



Read more at: NASA scientist creates expanded list of habitability possibilities for other worlds

You'd think there would be far more public support for more money for nasa. Shows how far this country has fallen.


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## longknife

mamooth said:


> The Sun is letting out some X-class solar flares. Not pointed at earth, but news flares could be.
> 
> SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids



Saw this on the web yesterday. Awesome. And hundreds of Earths could fit in each one.


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## ScienceRocks

*
NASA's new warp-speed spaceship concept is very familiar*

NASA's new warp-speed spaceship concept is very familiar | DVICE



> NASA scientist Harold White has long believed that warp speeds are possible. And now he's unveiled a concept renders by artist Mark Rademaker of what a warp speed spaceship would look like. Do you know, it's very similar to something 1960s TV threw up? (You know, goes by the name of Enterprise, head dude answers to the name of Kirk, hangs out with a hysterical Scotsman and another dude with large-ish ears.)
> 
> It's quite a beast, isn't it? The two Saturn-esque rings around the spacecraft proper are the things that will get the ship encased in the bubble that it needs to get to warp speed. Hang on, before we get too technical, you might want to read DVICE editor Evan Ackerman's explanation on how warp speed works. In a nutshell, you create a bubble around your spaceship and then force the space in the bubble to move faster than the speed of light (as nothing travels faster than the speed of light). Then you push your spaceship along by shrinking the space in front of your craft and extending it behind. Simples
> 
> There's a bunch of other drawings by Rademaker in the gallery below, and if you want to hear Professor White explaining how his spaceship would work, then you can watch him here, just before the 42-minute mark. He describes the I.X.S. Enterprise as being "sombrero-like" &#8212; a nice touch. The thick rings would generate enough energy to create your warp bubble, with the ship proper being contained within the rings, meaning it would be contained within the bubble to hit that speedo-busting velocity that you need.



The shit party from the back woods wouldn't allow it, but boy this would be nice.


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## ScienceRocks

First images from the CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope



> In preparation for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope project set to start construction in 2018, the CSIRO&#8217;s recently unveiled Australia SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope array has been used to demonstrate and prove the technology involved. With the images it has captured so far, it has also shown its ability to operate as a fully-fledged radio telescope in its own right.
> 
> Located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia, ASKAP has taken early images with just six of the 36 antennas in its array so far commissioned. Yet, even with so few instruments on line, these images show a degree of unexpectedly high resolution. Dr David McConnell, who leads the ASKAP Commissioning and Early Science (ACES) team, said that when the team saw the new image, they &#8220;practically fell off their chairs."
> 
> A radio wave image of a region of sky near the south celestial pole, the ASKAP image covers 10 square degrees of the sky &#8211; an area 50 times larger than that of a full Moon &#8211; made up of nine intersecting regions captured simultaneously. This was made possible through CSIRO&#8217;s use of a special axis of rotation control on each antenna, which kept the array on a fixed orientation to the sky, while its new "phased array feed" (PAF) technology provided the antenna with a wide field-of-view by creating 30 separate simultaneous beams at the antenna feed. The result is an image with a dynamic range of 50,000:1, which is good for a large instrument, but exceptional for so small an array.



First images from the CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope


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## ScienceRocks

*
NASA NIAC - two orders of magnitude mass and power saving for Life Support and Reduced Complexity*
NASA NIAC - two orders of magnitude mass and power saving for Life Support and Reduced Complexity


> The abundant high-energy light in space (with wavelengths as low as 190 nm, compared to 300 nm on Earth) makes the TiO2 co-catalyst an ideal approach for sustainable air processor to generate O2, without consuming any thermal or electrical energy. The combination of novel photoelectrochemistry and 3-dimensional design allows tremendous mass saving, hardware complexity reduction, increases in deployment flexibility and removal efficiency. The high tortousity photocatalystic air processor design will achieve at least two orders of magnitude mass and power saving respectively, and enable feasibility of compact processors for spacecraft. The proposed work will demonstrate these drastic reduction in reactor mass, volume and power consumption in comparison to current technology with delivery of high-tortuosity device components allowed by 3D printing (potentially in space) at the end of the proposed work.


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## ScienceRocks

*Scientists Discover Smallest Known Star*




> Astronomers recently stumbled upon a teeny star called 2MASS J0523-1403 located just 40 light years away. It's not only the smallest star discovered so far - it may also represent the smallest possible star. By studying stars such as this, scientists are starting to be able to answer the question: where do stars end and brown dwarfs begin?
> 
> Stars are burning balls of gas held together by gravity that are fuelled by the fusion of hydrogen atoms to helium in their cores. Stars come in a variety of sizes; the smallest stars, known as red dwarfs, can possess as little as 10% of the mass of our Sun, whereas the biggest stars (hypergiants) can be over 100 times as massive as the Sun. But just how small can an object be and still be defined as a star? This has mystified astronomers for years. All that was previously known is that objects below this limit don&#8217;t have enough mass to ignite the fusion of hydrogen in their cores. These objects are known as brown dwarfs.
> 
> Brown dwarfs are elusive objects that are thought to be the missing link between gas giants and low-mass stars such as red dwarfs. They&#8217;re generally around the size of Jupiter, but they don&#8217;t have enough mass to become a star. Unlike stars, brown dwarfs have no internal energy source.
> 
> There exists another strange difference between brown dwarfs and stars; they have opposite relationships between mass and size. The more material you add to a star, in the form of hydrogen, the bigger the radius of the star. I.e. stars increase in size as mass increases. Brown dwarfs, on the other hand, actually shrink in size with increasing mass because of something called electron degeneracy pressure.
> 
> So how do we find the limit that dictates whether an object is a star or a brown dwarf? Astronomers scanned the skies and located objects that were thought to lie around the stellar/brown dwarf border. They then calculated the luminosity, temperatures and radii of all of these objects and plotted them. Temperature is dependent on mass but it&#8217;s easier to measure. They found that as temperature decreased, so did radius; this is the expected trend for stellar objects. However, they found that after temperatures of around 2100K (1826oC [3320 oF]) there was a break until radius starts to increase with decreasing temperature; this is the trend that would be expected for brown dwarfs.
> 
> Thanks to this data, scientists can now pinpoint the specific temperature, luminosity and radius at which the main sequence ends. The main sequence is a relationship between luminosity and temperature (and luminosity and radius) that is obeyed by stars throughout the majority of their lives. 2MASS J0523-1403 is located around this boundary, but toward the stellar side. This star actually has a temperature of 2074K, which is the lowest described temperature so far for a main sequence star. It&#8217;s also the smallest and the least massive; if it had less mass then it would be a brown dwarf. This star has therefore been identified as a representative of the smallest possible star. However, it is theoretically possible that a star with a slightly smaller mass than 2MASS J0523-1403 could exist, but we haven&#8217;t found it yet.


Read more at Scientists Discover Smallest Known Star | IFLScience


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## ScienceRocks

*3D printer to fly to space in august, sooner than planned*



> A 3-D printer intended for the International Space Station has passed its NASA certifications with flying colors&#8212;earning the device a trip to space sooner than expected. The next Dragon spacecraft, scheduled to launch in August, will carry the Made In Space printer on board.
> 
> "Passing the final tests and shipping the hardware are significant milestones, but they ultimately lead to an even more meaningful one &#8211; the capability for anyone on Earth to have the option of printing objects on the ISS. This is unprecedented access to space," stated Made In Space CEO Aaron Kemmer.
> 
> This 3-D printer will be the first to be used in orbit. Officials have already printed out several items on the ground to serve as a kind of "ground truth" to see how well the device works when it is installed on the space station. It will be put into a "science glovebox" on the International Space Station and print out 21 demonstration parts, such as tools.
> 
> "The next phase will serve to demonstrate utilization of meaningful parts such as crew tools, payload ancillary hardware, and potential commercial applications such as cubesat components," Made In Space added in a statement.


Read more at: 3D printer to fly to space in august, sooner than planned


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## william the wie

I wonder how many iterations will be needed to work out the bugs.


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## ScienceRocks

william the wie said:


> I wonder how many iterations will be needed to work out the bugs.



I don't think the printer has any bugs. Not as far as I know.


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## ScienceRocks

*
 Two giant planets may cruise unseen beyond Pluto*

    17:30 11 June 2014 by Nicola Jenner
    For similar stories, visit the Solar System Topic Guide


> The monsters are multiplying. Just months after astronomers announced hints of a giant "Planet X" lurking beyond Pluto, a team in Spain says there may actually be two supersized planets hiding in the outer reaches of our solar system.
> 
> When potential dwarf planet 2012 VP113 was discovered in March, it joined a handful of unusual rocky objects known to reside beyond the orbit of Pluto. These small objects have curiously aligned orbits, which hints that an unseen planet even further out is influencing their behaviour. Scientists calculated that this world would be about 10 times the mass of Earth and would orbit at roughly 250 times Earth's distance from the sun.
> 
> Now Carlos and Raul de la Fuente Marcos at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain have taken another look at these distant bodies. As well as confirming their bizarre orbital alignment, the pair found additional puzzling patterns. Small groups of the objects have very similar orbital paths. Because they are not massive enough to be tugging on each other, the researchers think the objects are being "shepherded" by a larger object in a pattern known as orbital resonance.



Two giant planets may cruise unseen beyond Pluto - space - 11 June 2014 - New Scientist


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## ScienceRocks

*Inside Virgin Galactic's newest passenger spaceship*

Inside Virgin Galactic's space tourism rocket factory - CNN.com



> Mojave, California (CNN) -- When I first poked my head inside Virgin Galactic's newest spaceship, I felt a little like I was getting a front-row seat to space history.
> 
> The company, led by billionaire Richard Branson, allowed CNN unprecedented access to a "SpaceShipTwo, Serial Two" spacecraft which was being carefully assembled by workers at a secure facility in the high desert north of Los Angeles.
> 
> This invention spun from carbon fiber and imagination is designed to fly tourists some 60 miles high to the edge of space.
> 
> In 2008, Branson predicted the company would be launching paying passengers by 2010. Obviously that hasn't happened yet. Meanwhile, more than 700 people -- reportedly including astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher -- are awaiting to gain official status as Space Cowboys.


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## ScienceRocks

*Enter the Dragon: Mega-Earth in Draco smashes notions of planetary formation
*


> Worlds like this one aren't supposed to exist. In Draco the Dragon-the 8th largest constellation in our sky-there exists a solid planet weighing close to 17 times as much as Earth. This announcement rocked the scientific world.
> 
> "We were very surprised when we realized what we had found," said Dr. Xavier Dumusque of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who led the analysis that lead to the discovery.
> 
> This is the second time the Kepler-10 system has made space history. The first was in 2011, when Kepler-10b, the so-called lava-Earth, was discovered by the Kepler space telescope. That marked the first certain discovery of a rocky exoplanet in the history of planet-hunting. At that time, astronomers were 99.998% certain that there was another planet nearby. The only estimate at that time for the size of the second planet, Kepler-10c, was 2.2 times the radius of the Earth.
> 
> Much has changed since Kepler-10b was first discovered.
> 
> In the last three years our ability to seek, find and identify exoplants has increased exponentially. In the last week of May 2014 alone thirteen exoplanets were added to the NASA archive. In the Almost a dozen rocky bodies have also been to the dossier and many probably rocky planets have been found, including the 4.8 Earth-mass Kapteyn b, which surprised the scientific community by being ancient, enormous-relative to other rocky bodies known at the time-and in the habitable zone of a star only 13 light years away.
> 
> At 560 light-years away, Kepler-10 is much further than Kapteyn, but is like our Sun in more ways than one.



Read more at: Enter the Dragon: Mega-Earth in Draco smashes notions of planetary formation


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## ScienceRocks

*Space giants join forces to battle SpaceX: This is how cheap space travel begins*

Space giants join forces to battle SpaceX: This is how cheap space travel begins | ExtremeTech


> Two of Europe&#8217;s largest companies, Airbus and Safran, are joining forces to fight SpaceX&#8217;s attempts to steal away their majority share of the lucrative commercial space launch business. This is one of the first times that one of the larger, entrenched, government-backed aerospace consortia has deigned to raise a quizzical eyebrow in acknowledgement at the presence of SpaceX &#8212; but it certainly won&#8217;t be the last. SpaceX, after a series of cheap, successful space launches, is now starting to make waves: After decades of expensive, monopolistic control of space travel, companies like Boeing, Lockheed, and Airbus are finally going to have to slash their costs to stay competitive. This is how the era of cheap space travel begins.
> 
> Arianespace, co-owned by Airbus and the French government, has dominated the commercial space launch business for years, and is by far the world&#8217;s largest player when it comes to putting satellites into orbit. Following the Falcon 9&#8242;s high-profile missions to the International Space Station, its much lower cost ($60 million vs. $120 million for the Ariane 5, pictured above), and SpaceX&#8217;s continued advances towards reusable space launchers, it was only a matter of time until Arianespace was forced to react. Today, Airbus has announced a partnership with Safran (a French rocket engine maker) to create a new family of price-competitive space launch vehicles.
> 
> When it comes to big-time commercial space launches, there are three main players: The United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing), Arianespace (Airbus and French government), and International Launch Services (Lockheed, and two big Russian companies, Khrunichev and Energia). These consortia account for close to 100% of the annual multi-billion-dollar spend on space launches. SpaceX is one of a few new upstarts that wants a piece of that pie. [Read: SpaceX unveils Dragon V2, the world&#8217;s first commercial manned reusable spaceship.]
> 
> As we&#8217;ve seen, though, when it comes to big government contracts it can be hard to squeeze out an incumbent like Lockheed or Boeing, both of which have decades-long relationships with the government (and no doubt a significant amount of cronieism). SpaceX is currently fighting the US government after it awarded a huge defense contract to the United Space Alliance without a fair bidding process. The ULA argues that it alone has the strength and breadth to successfully manage the US military&#8217;s space efforts. SpaceX probably wouldn&#8217;t argue that the ULA has more experience, and is a more tried-and-tested entity, but everyone has to start somewhere.



About fucking time!


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## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX's Elon Musk hopes to put humans on Mars in 10 years*

SpaceX's Elon Musk hopes to put humans on Mars in 10 years - CNET



> The founder of the private space transport company gives a short timeline for the possibility of firing up a self-sustaining city on the Red Planet.
> 
> NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been solitarily rolling around the Red Planet collecting samples and beaming information back to Earth. But, according to SpaceX's Elon Musk, it might not be too long before Curiosity gets some company.
> 
> In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Musk said that he thinks humans could be shuttled to Mars in as soon as a decade.
> 
> "I'm hopeful that the first people could be taken to Mars in 10 to 12 years, I think it's certainly possible for that to occur," Musk told CNBC. "But the thing that matters long term is to have a self-sustaining city on Mars, to make life multiplanetary."
> 
> A private company founded by Musk in 2002, SpaceX designs, builds, and launches spacecrafts and rockets into low-Earth orbit. The company's goal is to one-day send humans into space so that they can live on other planets.



I'd try for the moon by 2018 and then mars by 2025. It will be much harder to take the real big step first.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Progress reported on asteroid mission*
Progress reported on asteroid mission


> WASHINGTON &#8212; NASA is reporting significant progress identifying potential asteroids where astronauts could land as part of a Mars mission, even as skeptics in Congress say the moon would make a better stepping stone.
> 
> Three candidates, none bigger than a school bus, are being monitored for a mission that would redirect a near-Earth asteroid into lunar orbit.
> 
> Sporting names like 2009 DD, 2013 EC and 2011 MD, each has the mass, shape, spin rate and orbit required for a mission that could cost as much as $1.25 billion and is still up to a decade away.
> 
> NASA also is looking at three larger asteroids (Itokawa, Bennu and 2008 EV5) as part of an "Option B." Those asteroids contain small boulders that could be broken off robotically and redirected into lunar orbit as well.
> 
> Agency officials held a news conference Thursday to discuss the status of the Asteroid Redirect Mission, or "ARM," exactly a year after NASA unveiled the unusual plan. They hope to decide on an option by early next year but don't have to choose a specific asteroid to land on until a year before the launch, expected to take place between 2021 and 2024.



If I had my damn way this would be done by 2017! Then we'd go back to the moon to build our base by 2020. But the losertrian savages want us to go backwards. I honestly, think the moon is better as we could put a base on it.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA expects to send drone to Titan*
NASA expects to send drone to Titan | DVICE



> NASA thinks Titan, one Saturn's moons, may have life. And what better way to find out than to send in the drones? The agency is proposing to send in a 22-pound quadrocopter drone to scour Titan for traces of life or prebiotic chemistry, after images from NASA's Cassini mission showed all sorts of similarities to our planets. The UAV would land, explore and pick up samples (maybe flee from rampaging Cylon-type warriors) and then buzz off back to a mothership, somewhere in the near vicinity.
> 
> So what sort of drone are we looking at? Something more sophisticated than the Parrot AR.Drone, for sure. The scientist behind the idea is Larrie Mathies, the senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he has dismissed the other options for obvious reasons. Landers are stationary once they've plopped down onto Titan's surface. Aircraft or balloons can't land on the moon to get the samples, and a large, long-range helicopter is far too expensive for the budgeting agency to commit to. So it's obvious that the solution starts with a D, ends with an E and has RON in the middle of it.
> 
> "We propose a mission study of a small rotorcraft," writes Mathies, "that can deploy from a balloon or lander to acquire close-up, high-resolution imagery and mapping data of the surface, land at multiple locations to acquire microscopic imagery and samples of solid and liquid material, return the samples to the mothership for analysis, and recharge from an RTG on the mothership to enable multiple sorties."


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Success! Cassini flies by Titan, collects intel on mysterious lakes*



> NASA's Cassini mission flew past Titan early Wednesday morning, successfully completing a complex maneuver that will help scientists better understand one of the solar system's most intriguing moons.
> 
> Beginning around midnight, a team of scientists and engineers guided the spacecraft into an orbit that allowed them to bounce a radio signal off the surface of Titan toward Earth, where it was received by a land-based telescope array 1 billion miles away.
> 
> "We are essentially using Titan as a mirror," said Essam Marouf of San Jose State University, who's a member of the Cassini radio science team. "And the nature of the echo can tell us about the nature of Titan's surface, whether it is liquid or solid, and the physical properties of the material."
> 
> Saturn's moon Titan is the second-largest moon in the solar system after Jupiter's moon Ganymede, and in some ways it's one of the most Earth-like bodies we have encountered. Like Earth, it has a thick atmosphere, and it is the only other world we know of that has a system of liquid lakes and seas on its surface.
> 
> However, unlike Earth, its surface is far too cold to sustain liquid water.
> 
> Scientists have hypothesized that Titan's famous lakes and seas are made of liquid methane or ethane, but Marouf explains that those inferences are mostly based on the fact that methane and ethane would take on a liquid state in the conditions on Titan, rather than direct observation.
> 
> "There is no really direct measurement that tells us what they are exactly," he said. "If the data from this morning is good enough, it will tell us what these liquids really are."




Read more at: Success! Cassini flies by Titan, collects intel on mysterious lakes


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
SpaceX to launch ORBCOMM OG2 mission Friday*
June 20, 2014

SpaceX to launch ORBCOMM OG2 mission Friday | KurzweilAI


> SpaceX is targeted to launch the first satellite in the ORBCOMM OG2 mission on Friday, June 20th, 2014 at 6:08pm ET, with a back-up date of Saturday, June 21.
> 
> The launch from from Cape Canaveral will be webcast live beginning at 5:35 pm ET.
> 
> In this flight, the Falcon 9 rocket will deliver six next-generation OG2 satellites to an elliptical 750 x 615 km low-Earth orbit. The OG2 satellites are commercial telecommunications satellites.
> 
> ORBCOMM offers global satellite and cellular services the M2M (machine-to-machine) industry, designed to track, monitor and control a variety of powered and unpowered assets in key vertical markets such as transportation and logistics, heavy equipment, oil and gas, maritime, and government.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Construction begun on world&#8217;s largest optical telescope*


> Construction on the world&#8217;s largest telescope, the European Extremely Large Telescope or E-ELT, has begun in Chile with observations expected to occur in the 2020s.
> 
> The World Cup is not the only exiting event this month: on June 19, explosives were detonated in Northern Chile to begin the construction of what will be the largest optical telescope in the world.
> 
> Called the European Extremely Large Telescope, or E-ELT, the project is the latest from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and one of its most ambitious.
> 
> E-ELT&#8217;s primary mirror is 128.9 feet (9.3 m) long, composed of 798 hexagonal segments, each 4.7 feet (1.45 m) long, but only 1.96 x 10-9 inches (50 nm) thick.
> 
> A mirror made of many segments is typical of very large telescopes: a nearly 130 foot long mirror is too large to transport to a remote mountaintop and there is currently no way to construct a mirror of that size that would also be accurate.
> 
> The telescope has 6,000 actuators that can distort the direction of the mirror segments 1000 times each second to obtain a &#8220;perfect shape&#8221; for the primary mirror. The perfect shape is the shape that minimizes or even removes the effects of the atmosphere, which can obscure the viewing of objects in deep space and introduce error into the data.
> Most telescopes are then located atop remote mountains with the least amount of atmosphere. Cerro Armazones in Northern Chile was chosen as the site of the telescope in part because it has 330 cloud-free days each year making the weather extremely predictable.
> 
> Given that most astronomers will travel nearly 7,000 miles to reach this remote location, Chile&#8217;s weather increases the probability that once an astronomer arrives, he or she will be able to use this machine.
> 
> Scientists plan to use the E-ELT to search for extrasolar planets or planets that orbit other stars and thus exist outside our solar system. Already, 1,800 extrasolar planets have been found, but this telescope should be capable of identifying many more, while also characterizing their atmospheres.




Read more: Construction begun on world?s largest optical telescope | Science Recorder


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Scientists Spy "Magic Island" On Titan, Saturn's Strangest Moon*

Scientists Spy "Magic Island" On Titan, Saturn's Strangest Moon - Forbes
Comment Now
Follow Comments


> As if Titan , the Saturnian moon with mountains, dunes, rivers and lakes made of flammable hydrocarbons, wasnt weird enough, now researchers have spotted an island in the middle of its second-largest lake that seems to appear and disappear.
> 
> Rather than an island of magic or any other sort, the feature identified using data from the Cassini spacecraft is more likely some indication of weather whipping up on the distant orb. In the time that astronomers have been able to spy on Titan close-up its mostly been winter or spring in the northern part of the moon where the mysterious island has been spotted. But now summer appears to finally be coming after several Earth years, and perhaps bringing winds causing waves that appear as an island in images.
> 
> Other possibilities proposed by the authors of a paper on the findings published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience include sunken solids in the lake becoming buoyant thanks to the onset of warmer temperatures, or gases from the sea floor rising to the surface as bubbles.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Space tourism balloon aces first test, on track to begin operations in 2016 *

Space tourism balloon aces first test, on track to begin operations in 2016



> Arizona-based World View Enterprises has successfully completed its first test flight of a space tourism balloon that, for the price of US$75,000 per person, will lift six passengers into the stratosphere to an altitude of 20 miles (32 km). From there, they will be able to see the curvature of the Earth. The company says it is on track to fly its first passenger in just two years time.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Nearby Alien Planet May Be Capable of Supporting Life*




> wfound alien world might be able to support life &#8212; and it's just a stone's throw from Earth in the cosmic scheme of things.
> 
> An international team of astronomers has discovered an exoplanet in the star Gliese 832's "habitable zone" &#8212; the just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist on a world's surface. The planet, known as Gliese 832c, lies just 16 light-years from Earth. (For perspective, the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years wide; the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away.)
> 
> Gliese 832c is a "super-Earth" at least five times as massive as our planet, and it zips around its host star every 36 days. But that host star is a red dwarf that's much dimmer and cooler than our sun, so Gliese 832c receives about as much stellar energy as Earth does, despite orbiting much closer to its parent, researchers said. [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]
> 
> Indeed, Gliese 832c is one of the three most Earth-like exoplanets yet discovered according to a commonly used metric, said Abel Mendez Torres, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.
> 
> "The Earth Similarity Index (ESI) of Gliese 832c (ESI = 0.81) is comparable to Gliese 667Cc (ESI = 0.84) and Kepler-62e (ESI = 0.83)," Mendez wrote in a blog post today (June 25). (A perfect "Earth twin" would have an ESI of 1.)
> 
> "This makes Gliese 832c one of the top three most Earth-like planets according to the ESI (i.e., with respect to Earth's stellar flux and mass) and the closest one to Earth of all three &#8212; a prime object for follow-up observations," he added.
> 
> A team led by Robert Wittenmyer, of the University of New South Wales in Australia, discovered Gliese 832c by noticing the tiny wobbles the planet's gravity induces in the motion of its host star.
> 
> 
> They spotted these wobbles in data gathered by three separate instruments &#8212; the University College London Echelle Spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Australia, the Carnegie Planet Finder Spectrograph on the Magellan II telescope in Chile and the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph, which is part of the European Southern Observatory's 11.8-foot (3.6 meters) telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
> 
> Gliese 832c is the second planet to be discovered around the star Gliese 832. The other one, Gliese 832b, was found in 2009; it's a gas giant that circles much farther out, taking about nine years to complete one orbit.
> 
> "So far, the two planets of Gliese 832 are a scaled-down version of our own solar system, with an inner, potentially Earth-like planet and an outer, Jupiter-like giant planet," Mendez wrote.
> 
> However, it's unclear at the moment just how much Gliese 832c resembles Earth. Indeed, its discoverers think the newfound world may be more similar to scorching-hot Venus, with a thick atmosphere that has led to a runaway greenhouse effect.
> 
> "Given the large mass of the planet, it seems likely that it would possess a massive atmosphere, which may well render the planet inhospitable," Wittenmyer and his team wrote in their paper, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. "Indeed, it is perhaps more likely that GJ [Gliese] 832c is a 'super-Venus,' featuring significant greenhouse forcing."



Nearby Alien Planet May Be Capable of Supporting Life


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Send your selfies to Mars for 99 cents a pop*

Send your selfies to Mars for 99 cents a pop



> A US$25 million crowdfunded, student-led mission plans to send three CubeSat microsatellites all the way to Mars, landing time capsules on the surface of the Red Planet, that will contain the digital messages from tens of millions of people from all countries around the world. You can upload a picture of your own, up to 10 MB in size, by contributing just 99 cents.


----------



## mamooth

OCO-2 satellite launch on a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg last night was scrubbed at T-minus-46 seconds, due to problems with the pad water system. That is, the system that dumps a gazillion gallons of water on the launch pad during launch to minimize damage. No problems with the rocket itself.

Delta II scrubs OCO-2 launch from Vandenberg | NASASpaceFlight.com

Why do I bring that up? I dunno. To remind everyone this space stuff is still hard.

If they fix it, they'll try again tonight to launch.


----------



## mamooth

Successful launch last night.

Delta II's are a very reliable launch platform, but also a rather expensive launch platform. The Air Force has moved on to using Delta IV and Atlas V rockets, which can boost much bigger payloads. NASA is now the only customer for Delta II's. NASA has two such launches scheduled for 2016. There's JPSS-1, a new generation general purpose weather satellite, and IceSat-2, for detailed ice measurements.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Ocean on Saturn's moon Titan could be as salty as Earth's Dead Sea*

Ocean on Saturn's moon Titan could be as salty as Earth's Dead Sea -- ScienceDaily



> Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Cassini mission have firm evidence the ocean inside Saturn's largest moon, Titan, might be as salty as Earth's Dead Sea.
> 
> The new results come from a study of gravity and topography data collected during Cassini's repeated flybys of Titan during the past 10 years. Using the Cassini data, researchers presented a model structure for Titan, resulting in an improved understanding of the structure of the moon's outer ice shell. The findings are published in this week's edition of the journal Icarus.
> 
> "Titan continues to prove itself as an endlessly fascinating world, and with our long-lived Cassini spacecraft, we're unlocking new mysteries as fast as we solve old ones," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who was not involved in the study.
> 
> Additional findings support previous indications the moon's icy shell is rigid and in the process of freezing solid. Researchers found that a relatively high density was required for Titan's ocean in order to explain the gravity data. This indicates the ocean is probably an extremely salty brine of water mixed with dissolved salts likely composed of sulfur, sodium and potassium. The density indicated for this brine would give the ocean a salt content roughly equal to the saltiest bodies of water on Earth.
> 
> "This is an extremely salty ocean by Earth standards," said the paper's lead author, Giuseppe Mitri of the University of Nantes in France. "Knowing this may change the way we view this ocean as a possible abode for present-day life, but conditions might have been very different there in the past."
> 
> Cassini data also indicate the thickness of Titan's ice crust varies slightly from place to place. The researchers said this can best be explained if the moon's outer shell is stiff, as would be the case if the ocean were slowly crystalizing and turning to ice. Otherwise, the moon's shape would tend to even itself out over time, like warm candle wax. This freezing process would have important implications for the habitability of Titan's ocean, as it would limit the ability of materials to exchange between the surface and the ocean.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Newly Discovered Rocky Planet Expands Our Search For Habitable Worlds*




> Using gravitational microlensing, researchers have discovered a cold, rocky planet some 3,000 light years away orbiting one member of a binary system- a duo of stars orbiting a common center of mass. While this planet is too chilly to support life as we recognize it, the discovery opens up new locations for astronomers to scour for potentially habitable planets. The study has been published in Science.
> 
> The newly detected planet, called OGLE-2013-BLG-0341LBb, is around twice as massive as Earth and, amazingly, is orbiting its host star at almost exactly the same distance that Earth orbits the Sun. Unfortunately, the host star is much less massive than our Sun and therefore around 400 times less luminous also, meaning that the planet&#8217;s temperature is around 60 Kelvin (-213oC [-350oF]).
> 
> As mentioned, the planet&#8217;s host is part of a binary system. These are actually incredibly common in the universe but no one knew whether planets such as this could exist in these systems, let alone in Earth-like orbits, because it was assumed that planetary formation would be disrupted if the host star is locked in such a tight system.
> 
> While the host star is not quite right for supporting life on this planet, a similar planet orbiting a Sun-like star in a binary system would lie within the habitable zone and therefore may have the right conditions to support life, such as liquid water, which is exciting.



Read more at Newly Discovered Rocky Planet Expands Our Search For Habitable Worlds | IFLScience


*
India's Rocket Mission Cheaper Than The Movie Gravity*



> On June 30, India&#8217;s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) took to the skies from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, loaded with four foreign satellites from France, Germany, Canada and Singapore. What&#8217;s more, they achieved this under an impressively low budget.
> 
> The satellite launch industry brings in a few pennies annually, to say the least. According to the US Satellite Industry Association, in 2012 the profits from this industry totaled a whopping $2.2 billion, and India is keen to increase its presence in this market by providing services at a comparatively modest price.
> 
> &#8220;India has the potential to be the launch service provider of the world and must work towards this goal,&#8221; said Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
> 
> India&#8217;s low-cost space technology is certainly something to admire; last year India launched its Mangalyaan satellite to Mars at a total cost of $75 million, a fraction of NASA&#8217;s $671 million Mars mission, Maven, that was launched just days later. The budget technology has been lauded by Modi who boasted that the venture was cheaper than the $100 million box office hit movie Gravity.



75 million for a mission to mars? wow. 
Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/technology/indias-rocket-mission-cheaper-movie-gravity#Zvt4P9uQEiktcMsY.99


----------



## mamooth

Proving the existence of gravity waves ...

First we have the eLISA satellites, planned for a 2034 launch. A trio of 3 satellites, arranged in a triangle with sides of a million kilometers, but with spacing that can be measured down to a trillionth of a meter. That's the kind of sensitivity necessary to measure gravity waves.

Laser Interferometer Space Antenna - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And next, we need a target. And we've found one. WD 0931+444, a pair of white dwarf stars so close together, closer than the size of our sun, they complete a full orbit of each other every 20 minutes. 

Gemini Reveals a Gravitational Wave Source in Hiding | Gemini Observatory

According to Einstein, that setup will create gravitational waves. At Earth distance, it's causing all of everything to expand and contract by a factor of 10E-22 every 20 minutes. And with the eLISA satellites, that will be measurable. So, in 2034 we find out if gravity waves are real.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX Restartable Thrusters Pass Early Tests*

Txchnologist



> SpaceX completed qualification testing for its SuperDraco thruster late last month. The engine will eventually be mounted on the manned version of the Dragon spacecraft as part of its launch escape system. It will also help the vehicle touch down on its return to Earth or on whatever other planet it visits.
> 
> SpaceX says the engine produces 16,000 pounds of thrust and can be fired multiple times. In an emergency, eight SuperDracos built into the Dragon will provide 120,000 pounds of thrust to propel the crew a safe distance from the rest of the vehicle.
> 
> The thruster&#8217;s engine chamber is made through the industrial 3-D printing process called direct laser metal sintering. It is composed of Inconel, a strong nickel-chromium superalloy able to withstand high temperatures.
> 
> &#8220;Through 3-D printing, robust and high-performing engine parts can be created at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional manufacturing methods,&#8221; SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a statement. &#8220;SpaceX is pushing the boundaries of what additive manufacturing can do in the 21st century, ultimately making our vehicles more efficient, reliable and robust than ever before.&#8221;
> 
> The system is expected to run through a full pad abort test later this year. SpaceX estimates that the first manned test flights using the Dragon spacecraft will happen in the next two or three years.



The government investing in Space-x has advanced rocket tech big time. Worth every cent!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*

Venus Express Rises Again*
Venus Express rises again / Venus Express / Space Science / Our Activities / ESA


> July 11, 2014
> 
> After a month surfing in and out of the atmosphere of Venus down to just 130 km from the planet&#8217;s surface, ESA&#8217;s Venus Express is about to embark on a 15 day climb up to the lofty heights of 460 km.
> 
> Since its arrival at Venus in 2006, the spacecraft has been conducting science observations from an elliptical 24-hour orbit that took it from a distant 66 000 km over the south pole &#8211; affording incredible global views &#8211; to altitudes around 250 km at the north pole, just above the top of the planet&#8217;s atmosphere.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Orbital Sciences Cygnus Launches To The International Space Station*


Orbital Sciences Cygnus Launches To The International Space Station - Forbes


> Earlier today, an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket successfully launched from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Atop the rocket was one of the company&#8217;s Cygnus craft, loaded with over 3,600 pounds of supplies and scientific equipment for the International Space Station.
> 
> The successful launch marks the third successful launch for Orbital Sciences to the space station. It&#8217;s also the second one being completed under the company&#8217;s $1.9 billion contract with NASA to provide eight loads of cargo to the station through 2016.
> 
> The Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the station at 6:39am Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 16. At that point, Steve Swanson of NASA and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency will use the station&#8217;s robotic arm to berth the spacecraft. The station&#8217;s crew will then begin unloading the equipment.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*

The world's first dedicated launch service for nanosatellites*



> A new rocket design that incorporates methane fuel can provide a low-cost platform for launching clusters of tiny satellites, greatly improving broadband delivery and Earth observation missions.
> 
> Firefly Space Systems, a small satellite launch company, has officially announced its first launch vehicle, &#8220;Firefly Alpha.&#8221; This efficient, brand new rocket, capable of carrying 400kg (882lb) into low earth orbit, will be the world&#8217;s first dedicated light satellite launch vehicle in this mass class.
> 
> Following its launch and seed funding in January, the company &#8211; which includes highly experienced aerospace engineers from SpaceX and Virgin Galactic &#8211; has aggressively moved forward in its goal to reduce the prohibitively high costs of small satellite launches. Clusters of these micro and nanosatellites placed in low orbit could revolutionise broadband data delivery and Earth observation missions, among other uses. CubeSats like those pictured above are only a litre (10 cm cube) in volume, with masses of little more than a kilogram (2.2lb), typically using off-the-shelf components for their electronics.
> 
> &#8220;What used to cost hundreds of millions of dollars is rapidly becoming available in the single digit millions,&#8221; said Firefly CEO Thomas Markusic. &#8220;We are offering small satellite customers the launch they need for a fraction of that, around $8 or 9 million &#8211; the lowest cost in the world. It&#8217;s far cheaper than the alternatives, without the headaches of a multi manifest launch.&#8221;
> 
> Simplified and optimised for least cost &#8211; and utilising innovations such as a more aerodynamic engine design &#8211; Firefly has positioned itself to be a technological and cost effective solution for traditional manufacturers of small satellites.
> 
> &#8220;To say that this is an exciting and significant technological milestone would be an understatement,&#8221; said Michael Blum, co-founder of Firefly. &#8220;Until now, there existed virtually no dedicated launcher capacity in the small satellite industry to deliver their respective payloads to orbit. This announcement today just changed all that.&#8221;



The world&rsquo;s first dedicated launch service for nanosatellites


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mark Your Calendars: In A Year, We'll Arrive At Pluto*



> Planetary scientist Alan Stern is counting down the days &#8212; just 365 of them now. He has spent the past 8 1/2 years waiting for the New Horizons spacecraft to make a close encounter with Pluto. Next year, on July 14, the spacecraft will reach its destination.
> 
> "Not only did we choose the date, by the way, we chose the hour and the minute. And we're on track," says Stern, the principal investigator for NASA's Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission.
> 
> In January 2006, the New Horizons spacecraft left Earth on the 3-billion-mile journey to Pluto and beyond.
> 
> "We're arriving at Pluto on the morning of the 14th of July 2015," Stern says. "It's Bastille day. To celebrate, we're storming the gates of Pluto."
> 
> To be clear, this is an unmanned flyby mission by a spacecraft about the size and shape of a baby grand piano. No humans or robots will be landing and walking around.
> 
> " 'Arriving's' a little bit of a squishy term, I know. At closest approach, we'll be about 6,000 miles from Pluto," Stern says.



Mark Your Calendars: In A Year, We'll Arrive At Pluto : NPR


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX launches cluster of commercial satellites*
2 hours ago

The SpaceX company has launched a rocket packed with communication satellites.



> The Falcon rocket blasted off Monday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. On board were six advanced satellites for the New Jersey-based Orbcomm. Eleven more of these satellites are to be launched in the coming year.
> 
> The 374-pound satellites will offer two-way data links to help customers track, monitor and control transportation and logistics assets, heavy equipment, oil and gas infrastructure, ships and buoys, and government-owned equipment.
> 
> The launch had been delayed repeatedly since May for technical and other reasons.
> 
> Space Exploration Technologies Corp.&#8212;or SpaceX&#8212;is also working to ferry space station cargo for NASA. The company is based in Hawthorne, California.




Read more at: SpaceX launches cluster of commercial satellites


----------



## ScienceRocks

*The Search for Alien Life Could Get A Boost From NASA&#8217;s Next-Generation Rocket*




> In three years, NASA is planning to light the fuse on a huge rocket designed to bring humans further out into the solar system.
> 
> We usually talk about SLS here in the context of the astronauts it will carry inside the Orion spacecraft, which will have its own test flight later in 2014. But today, NASA advertised a possible other use for the rocket: trying to find life beyond Earth.
> 
> At a symposium in Washington on the search for life, NASA associate administrator John Grunsfeld said SLS could serve two major functions: launching bigger telescopes, and sending a mission on an express route to Jupiter&#8217;s route Europa.
> 
> The James Webb Space Telescope, with a mirror of 6.5 meters (21 feet), will in part search for exoplanets after its launch in 2018. Next-generation telescopes of 10 to 20 meters (33 to 66 feet) could pick out more, if SLS could bring them up into space.
> 
> &#8220;This will be a multi-generational search,&#8221; said Sara Seager, a planetary scientist and physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She added that the big challenge is trying to distinguish a planet like Earth from the light of its parent star; the difference between the two is a magnitude of 10 billion. &#8220;Our Earth is actually extremely hard to find,&#8221; she said.



Read more: The Search for Alien Life Could Get A Boost From NASA?s Next-Generation Rocket


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA mission to reap bonanza of earth-sized planets*
NASA mission to reap bonanza of earth-sized planets



> Set to launch in 2017, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will monitor more than half a million stars over its two-year mission, with a focus on the smallest, brightest stellar objects.
> 
> During its observations, TESS is expected to find more than 3,000 new planets outside of our solar system, most of which will be possible for ground-based telescopes to observe.
> 
> "Bright host stars are the best ones for follow-up studies of their exoplanets to pin down planet masses, and to characterize planet atmospheres," said senior research scientist George Ricker at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics in an email.
> 
> Ricker is the principle investigator of the TESS mission.
> 
> "TESS should be able to find over 200 Earths and super-Earths&#8212; defined as being twice the size of Earth," said Peter Sullivan, a physics doctoral student at MIT. "Ten to 20 of those are habitable zone planets."
> 
> Sullivan, who works with Ricker on TESS, led an analysis of the number of planets TESS would likely find based on the number and types of planets found by NASA's Kepler mission. Kepler focused on a single region of the sky and studied all transiting planets within it. TESS, on the other hand, will examine almost the entire sky over its two-year mission, but capture only the brightest stars, many of which are expected to host terrestrial planets.



Say, so fucking happy! You go Nasa!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Large number of dark matter peaks found using gravitational lensing*



> A number of studies have shown that dark matter is the principle mass component of the universe making up about 80% of the mass budget. The most direct technique to reveal the dark matter distribution is by using the gravitational lensing technique. Indeed, following Einstein's theory of gravitation, we know that a mass concentration will deform locally the space-time and the observed shapes of distant galaxies seen through the such concentration will be deflected and distorted. By measuring the exact shapes of millions of these distant galaxies we can then map accurately the mass distribution in the universe, and identify the mass peaks tracing mass concentration along their line of sight. Importantly, the number of mass peaks as a function of the mass peak significance encodes important information on the cosmological world model. In particular this distribution is sensitive to the nature of gravitational force at large scales as well as the geometry of the universe. Measuring mass peaks is thus one of the most attractive ways to probe the relative importance and nature of dark matter and dark energy, measure the evolution the universe and predict its fate.
> 
> In a new publication of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international team, comprising researchers from Swiss, France, Brazil, Canada, and Germany present the first detailed analysis of the weak lensing peaks. This work is considered as a milestone, given the possible importance of the weak lensing peaks for cosmology. Because mass peaks are identified in two-dimensional dark matter maps directly, they can provide constraints that are free from potential selection effects and biases involved in identifying and measuring the masses of galaxy clusters. In fact a small fraction of the mass peaks are just mass concentration excess along the line of sight, and not genuine massive clusters.
> 
> To detect the weak lensing mass peaks, the research team used the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Stripe 82 Survey (CS82 in short), still one of the largest weak lensing survey yet. The Survey covers ~170 square degrees of the Stripe 82 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an equatorial region of the south galactic cap that has been extensively studied by the SDSS project. With the precise shape measurement for more than four million faint distant galaxies, a dark matter mass map was generated. Huan Yuan Shan, the lead author of this publication explains that: "By studying the mass peaks in the map, we found that the abundance of mass peaks detected in CS82 is consistent with predictions from a LambdaCDM cosmological model. This result confirms that the dark matter distribution from weak lensing measurement can be used as a cosmological probe."



Read more at: Large number of dark matter peaks found using gravitational lensing


----------



## ScienceRocks

*DARPA announces Phase 1 of its XS-1 spaceplane program*
DARPA announces Phase 1 of its XS-1 spaceplane program



> It takes a lot more money and preparation to launch a rocket than to have a plane take off. That's why DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) first initiated its Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program. The idea is that once built, the XS-1 could take off and land like a regular aircraft, but could also deliver satellite payloads into low-Earth orbit while airborne. Today, the agency announced its plans for Phase 1 of the program, which includes awarding contracts for designs of the autonomous spaceplane.
> 
> As outlined in a previous article, plans call for the unmanned XS-1 to be able to make 10 flights within 10 days, reaching a speed of Mach 10+ at least once, and launching payloads weighing between 3,000 and 5,000 pounds (1,361 to 2,268 kg) at under US$5 million a pop.
> 
> A second-stage rocket carrying each payload will fire once it's launched from the spaceplane at suborbital altitude, carrying the satellite to its final orbit. The XS-1 will proceed back to the ground, where it will land and immediately be prepared for its next launch.
> 
> In today's announcement, DARPA stated that it will be funding three companies to independently develop designs for an XS-1 demonstration vehicle. These include The Boeing Company (working with Blue Origin), Masten Space Systems (working with XCOR Aerospace), and Northrop Grumman Corporation (working with Virgin Galactic). The designs will be assessed based on criteria such as feasibility, performance, developmental and operational costs, and the potential for use in military, civil and commercial applications.



Praying for a space plane to go along with that grasshopper


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Lunar pits could shelter astronauts, reveal details of how 'man in the moon' formed*



> While the moon's surface is battered by millions of craters, it also has over 200 holes &#8211; steep-walled pits that in some cases might lead to caves that future astronauts could explore and use for shelter, according to new observations from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft.



Read more at: Lunar pits could shelter astronauts, reveal details of how 'man in the moon' formed

*
Geologist says Curiosity's images show Earth-like soils on Mars*


> Soil deep in a crater dating to some 3.7 billion years ago contains evidence that Mars was once much warmer and wetter, says University of Oregon geologist Gregory Retallack, based on images and data captured by the rover Curiosity.



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-07-geologist-curiosity-images-earth-like-soils.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*UAE plans mission to Mars*



> The United Arab Emirates, already known for housing the tallest tower in the world, is now setting its sights a bit higher, proposing a manned mission to Mars by the year 2021, a goal which the UAE&#8217;s leaders hope will demonstrate that despite the conflict that penetrates the Middle Eastern region, the nation is still capable of making groundbreaking scientific progress.
> 
> The energy-rich country on the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula announced plans Wednesday to establish a space program to send the first Arab spaceship to Mars in 2021.



Read more: UAE plans mission to Mars | Science Recorder


----------



## jon_berzerk

Matthew said:


> *UAE plans mission to Mars*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The United Arab Emirates, already known for housing the tallest tower in the world, is now setting its sights a bit higher, proposing a manned mission to Mars by the year 2021, a goal which the UAEs leaders hope will demonstrate that despite the conflict that penetrates the Middle Eastern region, the nation is still capable of making groundbreaking scientific progress.
> 
> The energy-rich country on the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula announced plans Wednesday to establish a space program to send the first Arab spaceship to Mars in 2021.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read more: UAE plans mission to Mars | Science Recorder
Click to expand...


cool


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life &#8212;And New Jobs*

Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life ?And New Jobs



> Earlier this week, the Planetary Society held a pep rally for Europa, where Bill Nye and climate change-denier House Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) set aside their differences to promote planetary science. And, of course, it doesn't hurt that a Europa expedition could pump millions of dollars into Congressional districts.
> 
> With its subsurface ocean and active plumes, Europa is one of the best candidates for life in our solar system. NASA has said that it wants to send a robotic probe to explore Jupiter's moon, and on Tuesday, the space agency announced that it had set aside $25 million for proposals to develop scientific equipment for the mission.
> 
> But, judging from the speeches at the standing-room only event, "The Lure of Europa," there are some influential people who wouldn't mind seeing a more aggressive timetable for the mission.



We will see how you're not anti-science, tea party.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*

New Horizons to take new photos of Pluto and Charon, beginning optical navigation campaign*

New Horizons to take new photos of Pluto and Charon, beginning optical navigation campaign | The Planetary Society


> Posted by Emily Lakdawalla
> 
> 2014/07/18 22:06 UTC
> 
> Topics: New Horizons, Pluto, Charon, mission status
> 
> New Horizons' scientific mission at Pluto doesn't technically begin until the end of this year, but starting in two days, the spacecraft will begin to take a lot of photos of Pluto and Charon. Why would they be doing this, if not for science? What's the point of taking pictures in which Pluto and Charon will be teeny weeny dots, barely distinguishable from stars? The answer: they're taking the photos in order to figure out how to steer the spacecraft.
> 
> Nearly every deep-space mission uses optical navigation methods to help navigators back on Earth fine-tune their path to the target. We know very well from two-way radio communication the position of spacecraft with respect to Earth. What's less precise is our knowledge of the position of the places we're aiming for. This is particularly true of small or distant targets like asteroids and Kuiper belt objects. You need big telescopes to see them, so we have relatively few measurements of their positions with respect to the stars, and few measurements lead to relatively big error bars on our predictions of their future positions.
> 
> The cameras on spacecraft never have the resolving power of our better Earth-based telescopes, so at first we steer spacecraft according to what we've been able to determine from Earth. But at some point on every space mission, a spacecraft approaches close enough to its target that its relatively small camera can do better than the bigger 'scopes back at home.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*ESA prepares IXV concept spaceplane for maiden flight*
ESA prepares IXV concept spaceplane for maiden flight


> The European Space Agency is preparing to test the atmospheric re-entry capabilities of its new early concept spaceplane, the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV). The test flight is slated for launch in November atop a European made Vega rocket, with the hope that results will inform the design of future ESA spacecraft.
> 
> The overriding goal in pursuing the project is to lessen the ESA's dependence on the current generation of Russian made Soyuz return vehicles. Whilst the IXV test vehicle is designated as a spaceplane, you could be forgiven for thinking that, at least on the outside, it looks anything but. Instead, in its current stage of development the IXV resembles a simple fuselage.
> 
> The apparent simplicity in the design of the IXV is due to the fact that the spacecraft represents a preliminary stage of testing, with an emphasis on proving basic but vital technology for more advanced concepts in the future. The agency intends to take the lessons taken from the November launch and begin the process of creating a viable autonomous re-entry spacecraft with a focus on modularity and flexibility in orbital operations.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Transiting exoplanet with longest known year*



> Astronomers have discovered a transiting exoplanet with the longest known year. Kepler-421b circles its star once every 704 days. In comparison, Mars orbits our Sun once every 780 days. Most of the 1,800-plus exoplanets discovered to date are much closer to their stars and have much shorter orbital periods.
> 
> "Finding Kepler-421b was a stroke of luck," says lead author David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "The farther a planet is from its star, the less likely it is to transit the star from Earth's point of view. It has to line up just right."
> 
> Kepler-421b orbits an orange, type K star that is cooler and dimmer than our Sun. It circles the star at a distance of about 110 million miles. As a result, this Uranus-sized planet is chilled to a temperature of -135° Fahrenheit.



Read more at: Transiting exoplanet with longest known year


----------



## CrusaderFrank

Matthew said:


> *Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life And New Jobs*
> 
> Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life ?And New Jobs
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earlier this week, the Planetary Society held a pep rally for Europa, where Bill Nye and climate change-denier House Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) set aside their differences to promote planetary science. And, of course, it doesn't hurt that a Europa expedition could pump millions of dollars into Congressional districts.
> 
> With its subsurface ocean and active plumes, Europa is one of the best candidates for life in our solar system. NASA has said that it wants to send a robotic probe to explore Jupiter's moon, and on Tuesday, the space agency announced that it had set aside $25 million for proposals to develop scientific equipment for the mission.
> 
> But, judging from the speeches at the standing-room only event, "The Lure of Europa," there are some influential people who wouldn't mind seeing a more aggressive timetable for the mission.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We will see how you're not anti-science, tea party.
Click to expand...

Defund all AGW projects to pay for Europa mission


----------



## ScienceRocks

CrusaderFrank said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life And New Jobs*
> 
> Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life ?And New Jobs
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earlier this week, the Planetary Society held a pep rally for Europa, where Bill Nye and climate change-denier House Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) set aside their differences to promote planetary science. And, of course, it doesn't hurt that a Europa expedition could pump millions of dollars into Congressional districts.
> 
> With its subsurface ocean and active plumes, Europa is one of the best candidates for life in our solar system. NASA has said that it wants to send a robotic probe to explore Jupiter's moon, and on Tuesday, the space agency announced that it had set aside $25 million for proposals to develop scientific equipment for the mission.
> 
> But, judging from the speeches at the standing-room only event, "The Lure of Europa," there are some influential people who wouldn't mind seeing a more aggressive timetable for the mission.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We will see how you're not anti-science, tea party.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Defund all AGW projects to pay for Europa mission
Click to expand...


Seeing that solar is now the second fastest growing energy source in this country. It would be extremely stupid to stop investing in that infrastructure.  As long as we stay out of more wars...We'll easily afford a few billion to explore europa!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Discovery of a Transiting Planet Near the Snow-Line*
[1407.4807] Discovery of a Transiting Planet Near the Snow-Line


> In most theories of planet formation, the snow-line represents a boundary between the emergence of the interior rocky planets and the exterior ice giants. The wide separation of the snow-line makes the discovery of transiting worlds challenging, yet transits would allow for detailed subsequent characterization. We present the discovery of Kepler-421b, a Uranus-sized exoplanet transiting a G9/K0 dwarf once every 704.2 days in a near-circular orbit. Using public Kepler photometry, we demonstrate that the two observed transits can be uniquely attributed to the 704.2 day period. Detailed light curve analysis with BLENDER validates the planetary nature of Kepler-421b to >4 sigmas confidence. Kepler-421b receives the same insolation as a body at ~2AU in the Solar System and for a Uranian albedo would have an effective temperature of ~180K. Using a time-dependent model for the protoplanetary disk, we estimate that Kepler-421b's present semi-major axis was beyond the snow-line after ~3Myr, indicating that Kepler-421b may have formed at its observed location.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
Fermi finds a 'transformer' pulsar*



> (Phys.org) &#8212;In late June 2013, an exceptional binary containing a rapidly spinning neutron star underwent a dramatic change in behavior never before observed. The pulsar's radio beacon vanished, while at the same time the system brightened fivefold in gamma rays, the most powerful form of light, according to measurements by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.



Read more at: Fermi finds a 'transformer' pulsar


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX releases video of powered booster landing*
SpaceX releases video of powered booster landing


> During the recent Orbcomm OG2 launch, SpaceX attempted its second powered landing during a commercial mission, but this time you don&#8217;t have to take the company&#8217;s word for it. As the first stage made a controlled touchdown on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, a video camera recorded the event. SpaceX has released the video for the public to see &#8211; give or take a few ice crystals.
> 
> The two-stage Falcon 9 booster launched on July 14 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida carrying six Orbcomm OG2 communication satellites in the second mission flight of a Falcon booster equipped with landing legs. After second stage separation, the usual fate of a first stage rocket would have been to crash into the ocean or burn up in the Earth&#8217;s atmosphere. However, this latest version of the Falcon 9 booster was equipped with a trio of landing legs.
> 
> After separation, the booster fired its engines to slow it down from its hypersonic velocity and return it to its designated landing spot. As it approached the ground, the engines fired again, the legs sprang open, and the booster touched down vertically at near zero velocity on the surface of the ocean. Since the booster wasn't designed to land on water, the test ended with the craft falling over on its side when SpaceX says it lost its hull integrity and broke up.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*The most precise measurement of an alien world's size*




> Thanks to NASA's Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes, scientists have made the most precise measurement ever of the radius of a planet outside our solar system. The size of the exoplanet, dubbed Kepler-93b, is now known to an uncertainty of just 74 miles (119 kilometers) on either side of the planetary body.
> 
> The findings confirm Kepler-93b as a "super-Earth" that is about one-and-a-half times the size of our planet. Although super-Earths are common in the galaxy, none exist in our solar system. Exoplanets like Kepler-93b are therefore our only laboratories to study this major class of planet.
> 
> With good limits on the sizes and masses of super-Earths, scientists can finally start to theorize about what makes up these weird worlds. Previous measurements, by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, had put Kepler-93b's mass at about 3.8 times that of Earth. The density of Kepler-93b, derived from its mass and newly obtained radius, indicates the planet is in fact very likely made of iron and rock, like Earth.



Read more at: The most precise measurement of an alien world's size


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Hubble locates three nearly dry exoplanets*



> According to a report from NASA, astronomers using NASA&#8217;s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to search for water vapor in the atmospheres of three planets orbiting stars similar to the sun has come up virtually dry.  The findings appear today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
> 
> The three planets, known as HD 189733b, HD 209458b, and WASP-12b, range between 60 and 900 light-years away from Earth. They were considered to be model candidates for detecting water vapor in their atmospheres due to their high temperatures turning water into a measurable vapor.
> 
> These &#8220;hot Jupiters&#8221; are in such close proximity to their parent star that they have temperatures between 1,500 and 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Conversely, the astronomers found that the planets were found to have only one-tenth to one one-thousandth the amount of water predicted by extant planet-formation theories.


Read more: Hubble locates three nearly dry exoplanets | Science Recorder


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Cloudy planets have better chance at supporting alien life, researchers say*




> Planets with significant cloud coverage that were previously thought to be too close to a star&#8217;s intense heat to support organic life may have increased chances of being habitable, said researchers in the Apr. 25 edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
> 
> Over 1,700 exoplanets have been identified beyond our solar system, but only a handful are in the zone close enough to their sun to form liquid water, such as that found on Earth. They must receive enough heat to cause liquid water to evaporate on the surface, rise into the atmosphere and then cool and collect into condensation. A planet&#8217;s proximity to its sun determines the amount of light it must absorb, and the corresponding amount of heat that prevents either evaporation or condensation. Planets close to their sun but with cloudier atmospheres reflect light and, with it, heat.



Read more: Cloudy planets have better chance at supporting alien life, researchers say | Science Recorder


> The cloudier an alien planet is, the closer it can get to its star and still remain potentially life-friendly, researchers say.
> 
> In fact, clouds might help Earth-like planets remain hospitable to life even when orbiting a sun-like star as closely as the hellish Venus circles the sun in our solar system, the scientists added.
> 
> This finding suggests that many alien worlds previously thought to be too hot for life as we know it may actually be habitable, investigators said
> 
> Habitable alien planets
> 
> The distance at which a planet orbits its star is one factor behind how much light from the star heats up that world's surface. Another factor controlling how much energy a planet gets from its star are clouds in that world's atmosphere, which can reflect light away from a world and cool it down &#8212; for instance, clouds account for most of the sunlight reflected away from Earth. [Habitable Zones for Alien Planets Explained (Infographic)]
> 
> Now scientists find that on planets that rotate much slower than Earth, clouds form that can help those worlds maintain Earth-like climates, even when they receive levels of light from their stars that would make Earth uninhabitable for life as we know it.
> 
> The amount of clouds a planet has and where these clouds are located on that world are primarily controlled by how its atmosphere circulates. This in turn is determined in part by how slowly that planet spins. For instance, the more slowly a planet rotates, the longer both its days and nights are &#8212; this increases the difference in temperature between the day and night sides, and to even out this imbalance, the atmosphere will circulate more.
> 
> In addition, when a planet spins, masses of air on its surface will rotate as well, a phenomenon known as the Coriolis effect that influences how powerfully major wind patterns such as hurricanes whirl. The faster a world spins, the stronger the Coriolis effect, and the more the atmosphere will separate into multiple bands running parallel to the equator in which the winds circulate in distinct patterns. The slower a planet whirls, the weaker the Coriolis effect, and the less divided the atmosphere will be into distinct regions.





> The scientists found that on what they considered rapidly rotating planets &#8212; ones that rotated about as fast as Earth &#8212; the atmosphere broke up into distinct bands, and clouds behaved much like they do on Earth. The habitable zones of these rapidly rotating worlds matched previous calculations for planets in general.
> 
> However, slowly rotating planets &#8212; ones that spin 100 times slower than Earth or more &#8212; had significantly wider habitable zones. They could maintain Earth-like climates even when receiving nearly twice as much light as rapidly rotating planets.
> 
> The scientists explained that on slowly rotating planets, the area on the planet that faces its star &#8212; the "substellar point" &#8212; gets heated for a long time. This causes air to rise from the substellar point.
> 
> "Clouds tend to form where air rises because moist warm air is cooled, leading to condensation," said study co-author Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago.
> 
> Without a strong Coriolis effect to break up atmospheric circulation into distinct bands, more clouds form. At the substellar point, the researchers found cloud cover would be present 90 percent or more of the time, reflecting a significant amount of light away from the planet, Abbot said.



http://www.space.com/26636-cloudy-alien-planets-life.html


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
Cassini spacecraft reveals 101 geysers and more on icy Saturn moon*
14 hours ago by Preston Dyches




> Scientists using mission data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have identified 101 distinct geysers erupting on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. Their analysis suggests it is possible for liquid water to reach from the moon's underground sea all the way to its surface.
> 
> These findings, and clues to what powers the geyser eruptions, are presented in two articles published in the current online edition of the Astronomical Journal.
> 
> Over a period of almost seven years, Cassini's cameras surveyed the south polar terrain of the small moon, a unique geological basin renowned for its four prominent "tiger stripe" fractures and the geysers of tiny icy particles and water vapor first sighted there nearly 10 years ago. The result of the survey is a map of 101 geysers, each erupting from one of the tiger stripe fractures, and the discovery that individual geysers are coincident with small hot spots. These relationships pointed the way to the geysers' origin.
> 
> After the first sighting of the geysers in 2005, scientists suspected that repeated flexing of Enceladus by Saturn's tides as the moon orbits the planet had something to do with their behavior. One suggestion included the back-and-forth rubbing of opposing walls of the fractures generating frictional heat that turned ice into geyser-forming vapor and liquid.


Read more at: Cassini spacecraft reveals 101 geysers and more on icy Saturn moon


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Next-generation Thirty Meter Telescope begins construction in Hawaii*
15 hours ago


> Following the approval of a sublease on July 25 by the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) announces the beginning of the construction phase on Hawaii Island and around the world throughout the TMT international partnership. Contingent on that decision, the TMT International Observatory (TIO) Board of Directors, the project's new governing body, recently approved the initial phase of construction, with activities near the summit of Mauna Kea scheduled to start later this year.
> 
> Kahu Ku Mauna and the Mauna Kea Management Board reviewed, and the University of Hawaii Board of Regents recently approved, the proposed TMT sublease. The final approval from the Board of Land and Natural Resources&#8212;the last step in the sublease process&#8212;allows TMT to begin on-site construction on Mauna Kea, home to many of the world's premier observatories.
> 
> "It has been an amazing journey for TMT, from idea to shovel-ready project," said Henry Yang, TIO Board Chair and Chancellor of the University of California Santa Barbara. "We are grateful to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Hawaiian government, its citizens, and our project partners in bringing this important astronomical science effort to fruition. It is also my rewarding experience to work with so many community friends, University of Hawaii colleagues, and officials on both the Big Island and Oahu in this journey."
> 
> The Rise of a New Observatory &#8211; Activities Around the World
> 
> The TMT project was initiated a decade ago by the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of California as the TMT Observatory Corporation. Now, as the TMT International Observatory (TIO)&#8212;founded as a nonprofit limited liability company on May 6, 2014 &#8212;the project has the official green light to begin constructing a powerful next-generation telescope.




Read more at: Next-generation Thirty Meter Telescope begins construction in Hawaii


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive*

31 July 14 by David Hambling


> Nasa is a major player in space science, so when a team from the agency this week presents evidence that "impossible" microwave thrusters seem to work, something strange is definitely going on. Either the results are completely wrong, or Nasa has confirmed a major breakthrough in space propulsion.
> 
> British scientist Roger Shawyer has been trying to interest people in his EmDrive for some years through his company SPR Ltd. Shawyer claims the EmDrive converts electric power into thrust, without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves around in a closed container.



Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive (Wired UK)


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Man-made 'breathing' leaf is an oxygen factory for space travel*



> An artificial leaf converts water and light to oxygen, and that's good news for road-tripping to places beyond Earth.
> 
> One of the persistent challenges of manned space exploration is that pesky lack of oxygen throughout much of the universe. Here on Earth, trees and other plant life do us a real solid by taking in our bad breath and changing it back to clean, sweet O2.
> 
> So what if we could take those biological oxygen factories into space with us, but without all the land, sun, water, soil, and gravity that forests tend to require? This is the point where NASA and Elon Musk should probably start paying attention.
> 
> Royal College of Art graduate Julian Melchiorri has created the first man-made, biologically functional leaf that takes in carbon dioxide, water, and light and releases oxygen. The leaf consists of chloroplasts -- the part of a plant cell where photosynthesis happens -- suspended in body made of silk protein.
> 
> "This material has an amazing property of stabilizing (the chloroplast) organelles," Melchiorri says in the video below. "As an outcome I have the first photosynthetic material that is living and breathing as a leaf does."
> 
> In addition to its potential value to space travel, Melchiorri also imagines the technology literally providing a breath of fresh air to indoor and outdoor spaces here on Earth. The facades of buildings and lampshades could be made to exhale fresh air with just a thin coating of the leaf material.
> 
> But perhaps best of all, a man-made breathing leaf could be the key to not just space travel but space colonization. No need to figure out how to till that dry, red Martian dirt to get some nice leafy trees to grow; we could just slap them on the inside of the colony's dome and puff away.



Man-made 'breathing' leaf is an oxygen factory for space travel - CNET


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX to build rocket launch site in Texas*



> SpaceX will build the world's first commercial site for orbital rocket launches in the southernmost tip of Texas.
> 
> The state of Texas added $15.3 million in incentives to the geographic value of a location east of Brownsville that will allow SpaceX to have greater control over the timing of its launches. The company has said it plans to launch 12 rockets a year from the Boca Chica Beach, a short walk from the Gulf of Mexico and just a couple miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border.
> 
> "Texas has been on the forefront of our nation's space exploration efforts for decades, so it is fitting that SpaceX has chosen our state as they expand the frontiers of commercial space flight," Gov. Rick Perry's office said Monday in a prepared statement.




Read more at: SpaceX to build rocket launch site in Texas


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Planet-like object may have spent its youth as hot as a star*




> Astronomers have discovered an extremely cool object that could have a particularly diverse history&#8212;although it is now as cool as a planet, it may have spent much of its youth as hot as a star.
> 
> The current temperature of the object is 200 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit (100 to 150 degrees Celsius), which is intermediate between that of the Earth and of Venus. However, the object shows evidence of a possible ancient origin, implying that a large change in temperature has taken place. In the past this object would have been as hot as a star for many millions of years.
> 
> Called WISE J0304-2705, the object is a member of the recently established "Y dwarf" class&#8212;the coolest stellar temperature class yet defined, following the other classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M, L, and T. Although the temperature is similar to that of the planets, the object is dissimilar to the rocky Earth-like planets, and instead is a giant ball of gas like Jupiter.




Read more at: Planet-like object may have spent its youth as hot as a star


----------



## westwall

Matthew said:


> CrusaderFrank said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life And New Jobs*
> 
> Congress Wants To Explore Europa To Seek Out New Life ?And New Jobs
> 
> 
> 
> We will see how you're not anti-science, tea party.
> 
> 
> 
> Defund all AGW projects to pay for Europa mission
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Seeing that solar is now the second fastest growing energy source in this country. It would be extremely stupid to stop investing in that infrastructure.  As long as we stay out of more wars...We'll easily afford a few billion to explore europa!
Click to expand...








Only because the Feds give taxpayer money to their friends to keep their friends companies afloat.  

It would be far better to expand the space program and let the unproductive solar companies fail.  The amount of technological advancement that would come from a new space program on the order of Apollo is beyond my ability to predict.


----------



## ScienceRocks

I agree that a lot of great innovation would come out of it, westwall. 




> Bigelow Aerospace has hired former NASA astronauts Kenneth Ham and George Zamka to form the cornerstone of the private astronaut corps the North Las Vegas, Nevada, company will need to maintain and operate the inflatable space habitats it plans to launch some time after 2017.
> 
> Bigelow said the smallest space station his company plans to fly will require two BA330 modules, each of which has 330 cubic meters of internal space. The company expects to finish building the first two BA330s by 2017, Bigelow said.
> 
> Ham and Zamka are former military aviators who have piloted and commanded space shuttle missions. Their NASA and military credentials are part of the appeal for Bigelow, who plans to put both former space fliers to work as recruiters.
> 
> &#8220;I would like to see us have half a dozen astronauts onboard by the end of the year,&#8221; Bigelow said.
> 
> Each Bigelow Aerospace space station would require about a dozen astronauts, including orbital, ground and backup personnel. The 660-cubic-foot stations would host four paying clients, who would be assisted by three company astronauts responsible for day-to-day maintenance, Bigelow said.
> 
> Initially, clients and crews would cycle in and out of the stations in 90-day shifts, Bigelow said. Eventually, the company hopes to shorten that cycle to 60 days.
> 
> &#8220;Our clients don&#8217;t need six months on orbit,&#8221; Bigelow said, referring to the time astronauts typically remain aboard the international space station. &#8220;It&#8217;s an imposition on them. They can get just as much out of three months.&#8221;
> 
> Zamka and Ham are part of a broader hiring push by Bigelow Aerospace. There are about 135 people in the North Las Vegas factory now, and &#8220;we&#8217;re hoping to be by Christmas time somewhere in the vicinity of 175,&#8221; Bigelow said




Bigelow Aerospace is hiring and targeting Inflatable Space Station Alpha to start launching in about 2017 or 2018

I think it would be a really good idea to help bigelow as the design allows for a lot more room and is far lighter.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Falcon 9 ORBCOMM first stage propulsive landing! *


----------



## ScienceRocks

*

SpaceX Sets Dates for Launch Escape Tests on Dragon Spaceship*

SpaceX Sets Dates for Launch Escape Tests on Dragon Spaceship


> Quote
> 
> SpaceX plans to conduct two critical tests of its manned Dragon capsule's emergency abort system, designed to carry astronauts to safety during a launch failure, in the next five months, according to media reports.
> 
> The first test will take place in November on the launch pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, while the second will be an in-flight trial originating from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Space News reportedtoday (Aug. 7), citing a presentation yesterday by SpaceX's Garrett Reisman at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Space 2014 conference in San Diego.


----------



## ScienceRocks

> June 17th 2014 Closing Bell Session is a talk about SpaceX being the number one on CNBC's Disruptor 50 List. They also talk about SolarCity's major plan in NY and Tesla's direct sales update.
> 
> Elon feels it not just getting to Mars but there needs to be a sustainable human City on Mars.
> 
> Elon says Spacex should recover and relaunch a first stage booster next year (2015).
> 
> For solar power, Elon thinks there is an over supply of low efficiency panels. What is needed is more high efficiency solar panels. He is thinking ahead to the need for high volume of high efficiency panels. Needing less area for high efficiency solar panels lowers the cost for installation and other overhead costs.



Elon Musk says that a sustainable human city is needed on Mars to achieve his multi-planetary goal


----------



## ScienceRocks

*

    New Horizons Mission Catches Pluto And Charon Waltzing*



> By Caleb A. Scharf | August 8, 2014
> 
> After a ten year journey, NASA&#8217;s New Horizons mission is still 420 million kilometers from the Pluto system &#8211; but that&#8217;s close enough to begin to see the orbital dance of an icy world and its major moon.



New Horizons Mission Catches Pluto And Charon Waltzing | Life, Unbounded, Scientific American Blog Network


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
Twin Alien Planets Could Boost Chances for Extraterrestrial Life*

Twin Alien Planets Could Boost Chances for Extraterrestrial Life


> Alien planets could host life well into their old age if they have companion worlds tugging at them, researchers say.
> 
> Such exoplanets could potentially be the longest-lived life-friendly areas in the universe, enduring for up to 10 trillion years, scientists added.
> 
> As planets age, they cool, with their hot molten cores solidifying over time. This probably makes them geologically active and therefore less habitable for life as we know it, scientists say. On Earth, life depends on the geological activity of plate tectonics to circulate rocks that can absorb or release carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that absorbs heat. Without plate tectonics, the planet might experience runaway heating or cooling, and thus potentially become uninhabitable.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Neptune's Moon Triton Spotlighted In 'Best-Ever' Map Created From Old Voyager Data


A scientist has created the best-ever global color map of Neptune's big moon Triton, using images taken by a NASA spacecraft 25 years ago.

Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston produced the map after restoring photos snapped by the Voyager 2 probe during its flyby of Neptune and Triton on Aug. 25, 1989. The new map has also been turned into a minute-long movie of Voyager 2's historic Triton encounter — the first and only time a spacecraft has ever visited the Neptune system.

The new map, which has a resolution of 1,970 feet (600 meters) per pixel, may help bring enigmatic Triton back into the spotlight. [Photos of Neptune, The Mysterious Blue Planet]


----------



## ScienceRocks

* New Horizons passes Neptune orbit on way to Pluto encounter *
By David Szondy
August 26, 2014
11 Pictures



Like a traveler on a very long road trip, a deep space probe has passed the last sign post before its destination. NASA has announced that its New Horizons probe has passed the orbit of Neptune – its last milestone before it flies by Pluto on July 14 next year. Launched in 2006, the piano-sized unmanned spacecraft is almost 2.75 billion mi (4.42 billion km) from Earth and is the fastest man-made object ever sent into space.  Read More


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA Team working on World’s most Powerful Rocket



> To help to send the astronauts into deep space and get them safely home again, scientists are working on a heavy-life rocket, known as the Space Launch System.
> 
> On Wednesday, NASA officials announced a major milestone in developing a heavy-lift system, which has a development budget of more than $7 billion. The NASA rocket, Space Launch System, is scheduled to make its initial launch no later than November 2018.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Rosetta: Landing Site Search Narrows*
Rosetta Landing Site Search Narrows - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 25, 2014



> The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission has chosen five candidate landing sites on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for its Philae lander. Philae's descent to the comet's nucleus, scheduled for this November, will be the first such landing ever attempted. Rosetta is an international mission spearheaded by the European Space Agency with support and instruments provided by NASA.
> 
> Choosing the right landing site is a complex process. It must balance the technical needs of the orbiter and lander during all phases of the separation, descent and landing, and during operations on the surface, with the scientific requirements of the 10 instruments on board Philae. A key issue is that uncertainties in navigating the orbiter close to the comet mean that it is possible to specify any given landing zone only in terms of an ellipse - covering about-four-tenths of a square mile (one square kilometer) - within which Philae might land.
> 
> "This is the first time landing sites on a comet have been considered," said Stephan Ulamec, Philae Lander Manager at the German Aerospace Center, Cologne, Germany. "The candidate sites that we want to follow up for further analysis are thought to be technically feasible on the basis of a preliminary analysis of flight dynamics and other key issues - for example, they all provide at least six hours of daylight per comet rotation and offer some flat terrain. Of course, every site has the potential for unique scientific discoveries."
> 
> For each possible zone, important questions must be asked: Will the lander be able to maintain regular communications with Rosetta? How common are surface hazards such as large boulders, deep crevasses or steep slopes? Is there sufficient illumination for scientific operations and enough sunlight to recharge the lander's batteries beyond its initial 64-hour lifetime without causing overheating?


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Radio telescopes settle controversy over distance to Pleiades*
Published: Friday, August 29, 2014 - 04:18 in Astronomy & Space


> Astronomers have used a worldwide network of radio telescopes to resolve a controversy over the distance to a famous star cluster -- a controversy that posed a potential challenge to scientists' basic understanding of how stars form and evolve. The new work shows that the measurement made by a cosmic-mapping research satellite was wrong. The astronomers studied the Pleiades, the famous "Seven Sisters" star cluster in the constellation Taurus, easily seen in the winter sky. The cluster includes hundreds of young, hot stars formed about 100 million years ago. As a nearby example of such young clusters, the Pleiades have served as a key "cosmic laboratory" for refining scientists' understanding of how similar clusters form. In addition, astronomers have used the measured physical characteristics of Pleiades stars as a tool for estimating the distance to other, more distant, clusters.
> 
> Until the 1990s, the consensus was that the Pleiades are about 430 light-years from Earth. However, the European satellite Hipparcos, launched in 1989 to precisely measure the positions and distances of thousands of stars, produced a distance measurement of only about 390 light-years.


Radio telescopes settle controversy over distance to Pleiades e Science News


----------



## ScienceRocks

*How can we find tiny particles in exoplanet atmospheres?*
*Aug 29, 2014 by Seth Shostak *







> It may seem like magic, but astronomers have worked out a scheme that will allow them to detect and measure particles ten times smaller than the width of a human hair, even at many light-years distance.  They can do this by observing a blue tint in the light from far-off objects caused by the way in which small particles, no more than a micron in size (one-thousandth of a millimeter) scatter light.





Read more at: How can we find tiny particles in exoplanet atmospheres


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA deep-space rocket, SLS, to launch in 2018*
*Aug 27, 2014 *




Artist concept of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) 70-metric-ton configuration launching to space. Credit: NASA


> The US space agency's powerful deep-space rocket, known as the Space Launch System (SLS), aims to blast off for the first time in 2018, NASA said Wednesday.
> 
> The SLS has been in development for three years already, and when finished it should propel spacecraft beyond Earth's orbit and eventually launch crew vehicles to Mars by the 2030s.
> 
> NASA has now completed a thorough review of the project, signifying formal space agency commitment to the 70 metric ton version of the SLS at a cost of $7.021 billion from 2014 to 2018.
> 
> "The program is making real, significant progress," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA.




Read more at: NASA deep-space rocket SLS to launch in 2018

I use it to send humans back to the moon. I'd then put a telescope on the other side of the moon with a base to man it.


----------



## Moonglow

I am looking forward to 2018 mars mission with great anticipation...


----------



## Moonglow

I could not find a link, but NASA is looking for contractors for it's new shuttle program.  The Air Force has had a re-entry plane in orbit over 600 days now..Wonder what they are doing up there??


----------



## ScienceRocks

* DeOrbiter microsatellite could put wayard satellites back on track *
By David Szondy
September 1, 2014






> Tel Aviv-based start up Effective Space Solutions claims that its DeOrbiter microsatellites could not only be used to dispose of defunct geosynchronous satellites, but could also rescue a pair of errant Galileo satellites currently trapped in the wrong orbit and put them back into service.


 Read More


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Russia May Continue ISS Work Beyond 2020*
4 September 2014





> Russia may continue working at the International Space Station (ISS) beyond 2020, Izvestia newspaper reported Monday.
> 
> "The issue of Russia's participation at the ISS after 2020 remains open, but there is a 90-percent chance that the state's leadership will agree to participate in the project further," the paper wrote citing a source at Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos.
> Russian space enterprises continue to make new modules for the space station according to the schedule, the paper said.



http://www.space-tra...d_2020_999.html


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Evidence of forming planet discovered 335 light years from Earth*



> An international team of scientists led by a Clemson University astrophysicist has discovered new evidence that planets are forming around a star about 335 light years from Earth.
> 
> The team found carbon monoxide emission that strongly suggests a planet is orbiting a relatively young star known as HD100546. The candidate planet is the second that astronomers have discovered orbiting the star.
> 
> Theories of how planets form are well-developed. But if the new study's findings are confirmed, the activity around HD100546 would mark one of the first times astronomers have been able to directly observe planet formation happening.




Read more at: Evidence of forming planet discovered 335 light years from Earth


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Half of all exoplanet host stars are binaries*



> (Phys.org) —Imagine living on an exoplanet with two suns. One, you orbit and the other is a very bright, nearby neighbor looming large in your sky. With this "second sun" in the sky, nightfall might be a rare event, perhaps only coming seasonally to your planet. A new study suggests that this could be far more common than we realized.



Read more at: Half of all exoplanet host stars are binaries


----------



## ScienceRocks

Project Dragonfly is competition to design interstellar laser sail probes that would be technological feasible by 2034 and launched by 2050



> Project Dragonfly is a feasibility study for an interstellar mission, conducted by small, distributed spacecraft, propelled primarily by laser sails. The spacecraft shall be capable of reaching the target star system within a century and be able to decelerate. We believe that such a mission can be conducted with technology available by 2024-2034 as well as a space infrastructure, available by 2050.
> 
> The competition's main objective is to identify innovative mission architectures that are feasible in terms of required technologies as well as required resources. The final design reports of the teams shall cover all areas, which are relevant for returning scientific data from such a mission: instruments, communication, laser sail design, power supply, secondary structure, deceleration propulsion etc. Furthermore, the technological as well as economic feasibility of the architecture shall be assessed by the teams.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA probe identifies clouds on Mars*


> WASHINGTON: The belief that Mars could support life received a boost when NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover identified clouds that researchers believe are most likely to have formed through the accumulation of water ice crystals or supercooled water droplets.
> 
> "Clouds are part of the planet's climate system," Robert Haberle, a planetary scientist from the NASA Ames Research Center was quoted as saying by Astrobiology Magazine.
> 
> "Their behaviour tells us about winds and temperatures," he explained.
> 
> "Some studies suggest that clouds in the past may have significantly warmed the planet through a greenhouse effect. A warmer environment is more conducive to life," Haberle added.
> 
> So far, Curiosity's main focus was downwards, drilling into Mars rock and sampling dust within its on-board chemistry laboratory.
> 
> Now, turning towards the skies, the robot has identified clouds. In a recent series of image ..




Read more at:
NASA probe identifies clouds on Mars - The Economic Times


----------



## ScienceRocks

Spacex has twelfth successful launch and musings on reuse, refueling and geosynch orbits



Quote



> SpaceX delivered another commercial communications satellite to orbit early Sunday, completing its second launch in just over a month for Hong Kong-based AsiaSat.
> 
> SpaceX confirmed the rocket deployed its payload as planned 32 minutes into the flight, earning the Falcon 9 a 12th successful flight in as many tries since 2010.
> 
> Because the launch was to a high orbit more than 20,000 miles up, the Falcon 9 booster did not have enough extra fuel for SpaceX to try flying it back to a soft ocean landing for recovery.


----------



## rdean

RetiredGySgt said:


> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?



Oh, did I mention that you don't know anything?

Ah, where to start?

First, it's Republicans controlling the house that controls the purse strings.

Second, your idiocy is coming too late.  There have already been private ships to the space station.


----------



## rdean

Matthew said:


> Humanity is the only species capable of insuring our survival in the long term. By spreading outwards we up our odds.
> 
> We built this country based on expansion, education and science.



Yea, who doesn't like education and science?


----------



## Moonglow

Humans are also the only species on the planet capable of destroying themselves and the planet...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*'Meteorite' smashes into Nicaraguan capital*



> A mysterious explosion that rocked Nicaragua's crowded capital Managua, creating a large crater, appears to have been caused by a small meteorite, officials said Sunday.
> 
> Amazingly, in a sprawling city of 1.2 million people, the impact near the international airport did not cause any known injuries, but it did leave a crater measuring 12 meters (39 feet) across and was felt throughout the capital late on Saturday.
> 
> Nicaraguan authorities believe it was a piece of the small asteroid dubbed "2014 RC," which passed very close to Earth on Sunday and was estimated by astronomers to be about 20 meters big, or the size of a house.



http://news.yahoo.co....xUNwYAZ5fQtDMD


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Stephen Hawking warns God particle has potential to 'end world' *
*timesofindia.indiatimes.com ^ * | Sep 8, 2014, 12.32 PM IST | Staff 




> LONDON: Stephen Hawking has recently warned that the God particle or Higgs boson has the potential to obliterate the universe.
> 
> The 72-year-old cosmologist said Higgs boson could become unstable at very high energy levels, which would lead to a "catastrophic vacuum decay" causing space and time to collapse and that there would not be any warning to the danger, the Daily Express reported.
> 
> Speaking in the preface to a new book called Starmus, the Cambridge-educated scientist said that the Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become mega-stable at energies above 100bn giga-electron-volts (GeV).
> 
> However, Hawking did also mention that the likelihood of such a disaster was unlikely to happen in the near future, but the danger of the Higgs becoming destabilized at high energy was too great to be ignored.
> 
> The Higgs boson was discovered in 2012 by scientists at CERN, who operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Jupiter's Moon Europa May Have Plate Tectonics Just Like Earth*
Jupiter s Moon Europa May Have Plate Tectonics Just Like Earth


> Jupiter's icy moon Europa, regarded as perhaps the solar system's best bet to host alien life, keeps getting more and more interesting.
> 
> Big slabs of ice are sliding over and under each other within Europa's ice shell, a new study suggests. The Jovian satellite may thus be the only solar system body besides Earth to possess a system of plate tectonics.
> 
> "From a purely science or geological perspective, this is incredible," study lead author Simon Kattenhorn of the University of Idaho told Space.com. "Earth may not be alone. There may be another body out there that has plate tectonics. And not only that, it's ice!"


----------



## william the wie

lurk post


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Europe readies 'space plane' for sub-orbital test flight*
*3 hours ago *







> The European Space Agency on Tuesday put the final touches to its first-ever "space plane" before blasting it into sub-orbit for tests aimed at eventually paving the way to the continent's first space shuttle.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Assembled in Italy, the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) is undergoing final ground tests at the ESA's headquarters in Noordwijk, north of The Hague, before being shipped to Kourou in French Guiana later this month.
> 
> On November 18 the sneaker-shaped IXV will take off aboard ESA's Vega rocket to a height of 450 kilometres (280 miles) where it will go into sub-orbital flight.
> 
> Set to fly for 100 minutes, the IXV will then re-enter Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 28,000 km/h over the Pacific Ocean, plunge into the water and then be picked up by a ship.
> 
> Bristling with 300 sensors, the IXV will collect myriad data including on what scientists refer to as aerothermodynamics, the heat exchange in gasses and solid surfaces at very high speed, usually supersonic flight.
> 
> The data will tell ESA's scientists how the IXV's structure holds up, as well as how its shape performs aerodynamically under extreme conditions.
> 
> "The IXV is the starting point and the mission is of huge importance for the future of space shuttles for Europe," Giorgio Tumino, the craft's mission manager, told journalists.
> 
> "This mission's key objective is to acquire the capability to come back to earth from orbit," he said.




Read more at: Europe readies space plane for sub-orbital test flight

Europe is about ready to become more advance then we're. I wish the military would allow NASA to use a copy of their space plane to keep us in front.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*First evidence for water ice clouds found outside solar system*
*6 hours ago *




Credit: A. Fujii


> A team of scientists led by Carnegie's Jacqueline Faherty has discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own Solar System. Water ice clouds exist on our own gas giant planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—but have not been seen outside of the planets orbiting our Sun until now. Their findings are published by _The Astrophysical Journal Letters_.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> At the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, Faherty, along with a team including Carnegie's Andrew Monson, used the FourStar near infrared camera to detect the coldest brown dwarf ever characterized. Their findings are the result of 151 images taken over three nights and combined. The object, named WISE J085510.83-071442.5, or W0855, was first seen by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Explorer mission and published earlier this year. But it was not known if it could be detected by Earth-based facilities.
> 
> "This was a battle at the telescope to get the detection," said Faherty.
> 
> Chris Tinney, an Astronomer at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, UNSW Australia and co-author on the result stated: "This is a great result. This object is so faint and it's exciting to be the first people to detect it with a telescope on the ground."
> 
> Brown dwarfs aren't quite very small stars, but they aren't quite giant planets either. They are too small to sustain the hydrogen fusion process that fuels stars. Their temperatures can range from nearly as hot as a star to as cool as a planet, and their masses also range between star-like and giant planet-like. They are of particular interest to scientists because they offer clues to star-formation processes. They also overlap with the temperatures of planets, but are much easier to study since they are commonly found in isolation.
> 
> W0855 is the fourth-closest system to our own Sun, practically a next-door neighbor in astronomical distances. A comparison of the team's near-infrared images of W0855 with models for predicting the atmospheric content of brown dwarfs showed evidence of frozen clouds of sulfide and water.
> 
> "Ice clouds are predicted to be very important in the atmospheres of planets beyond our Solar System, but they've never been observed outside of it before now," Faherty said.





Read more at: First evidence for water ice clouds found outside solar system


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mars is about to have some company now. Two spacecrafts - one from India and another from the US are about to enter Mars orbit. *

---



> The planet Mars is about to have some company. Two new spacecraft, one from the United States and the other from India, are closing in on the Red Planet and poised to begin orbiting Mars by the end of this month.
> 
> The U.S.-built probe, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, is expected to enter orbit around Mars on Sept. 21. Just days later, on Sept. 24, India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) orbiter is due to make its own Mars arrival when it enters orbit. Both MOM and MAVEN launched to space in 2013.
> 
> MAVEN is the first mission devoted to probing the Martian atmosphere, particularly to understand how it has changed during the planet's history.



Mars Probes from US and India Arrive at Red Planet This Month


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Assembly Complete for NASA’s First Orion Crew Module Blasting off Dec. 2014*
*universetoday.com ^ * | September 9, 2014 | Ken Kremer on 



> This past weekend, technicians completed assembly of NASA’s first Orion crew module at the agency’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O & C) Facility at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, signifying a major milestone in the vehicles transition from fabrication to full scale launch operations.
> 
> Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle and is scheduled to launch on its maiden uncrewed mission dubbed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) in December 2014. It replaces the now retired space shuttle orbiters.
> 
> The black Orion crew module (CM) sits atop the white service module (SM) in the O & C high bay photos, shown above and below.
> 
> The black area is comprised of the thermal insulating back shell tiles. The back shell and heat shield protect the capsule from the scorching heat of re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere at excruciating temperatures reaching over 4000 degrees Fahrenheit (2200 C)
> 
> ...
> 
> The Orion EFT-1 test flight is slated to soar to space atop the mammoth, triple barreled United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Dec. 4, 2014 .



(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New Horizons Makes its First Detection of Pluto’s Moon Hydra*

September 12, 2014


> Using its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), New Horizons made its first detection of Pluto's small, faint, outermost known moon, Hydra. The images were taken to practice the long-exposure mosaics that the New Horizons team will use to search for additional moons and potentially hazardous debris near Pluto as the spacecraft approaches the Pluto system in May and June 2015.
> 
> Analysis of those images in September by Science Team members John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute, and Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, revealed Hydra —a moon the mission didn’t expect to detect until next January, when New Horizons will be about twice as close as it was in July.



http://pluto.jhuapl....ws/20140912.php


----------



## ScienceRocks

Martian meteorite yields more evidence of the possibility of life on Mars


> The finding of a ‘cell-like’ structure, which investigators now know once held water, came about as a result of collaboration between scientists in the UK and Greece. Their findings are published in the latest edition of the journal Astrobiology.
> 
> While investigating the Martian meteorite, known as Nakhla, Dr Elias Chatzitheodoridis of the National Technical University of Athens found an unusual feature embedded deep within the rock.  In a bid to understand what it might be, he teamed up with long-time friend and collaborator Professor Ian Lyon at the University of Manchester.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Boeing, SpaceX win contracts to build 'space taxis' for NASA*
Boeing SpaceX win contracts to build space taxis for NASA Reuters



> (Reuters) - NASA will partner with Boeing and SpaceX to build commercially owned and operated "space taxis" to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, ending U.S. dependence on Russia for rides, officials said on Tuesday.
> 
> The U.S. space agency also considered a bid by privately owned Sierra Nevada Corp, but opted to award long-time aerospace contractor Boeing and California's SpaceX with contracts valued at a combined $6.8 billion to develop, certify and fly their seven-person capsules.
> 
> Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion to SpaceX's $2.6 billion. SpaceX is run by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, also the CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors.
> 
> “SpaceX is deeply honored by the trust NASA has placed in us," said Musk, a South Africa-born, Canadian American billionaire. "It is a vital step in a journey that will ultimately take us to the stars and make humanity a multi-planet species."


----------



## ScienceRocks

Astronomers Found a Star Inside a Star, 40 Years After It Was First Theorized


> The universe is massive, and we can’t see nearly all of it. That's the most exciting thing about space: The potential to find something completely unknown, something that brings fiction into fact, is ever-present.
> 
> Case in point: A rather strange celestial body called a Thorne–Żytkow object (TZO). Originally predicted in the 1970s, the first non-theoretical TZO was likely found earlier this year, based on calculations presented in a paper forthcoming in MNRAS.


----------



## ScienceRocks




----------



## ScienceRocks

*Smallest known galaxy with a supermassive black hole found*
*3 hours ago *







> A University of Utah astronomer and his colleagues discovered that an ultracompact dwarf galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking object. The finding suggests huge black holes may be more common than previously believed.



Read more at: Smallest known galaxy with a supermassive black hole found


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Next Generation Spacesuit like Second Skin*
Next Generation Spacesuit like Second Skin Space Nature World News



> Scientists from MIT have designed a next-generation spacesuit that acts practically as a second skin, and could revolutionize the way future astronauts travel
> 
> into space.
> 
> Astronauts are used to climbing into conventional bulky, gas-pressurized spacesuits, but this new design
> 
> could allow them to travel in style. Soon they may don a lightweight
> 
> , skintight and stretchy garment lined with tiny, muscle-like coils. Essentially the new suit acts like a giant piece of shrink-wrap, in which the coils contract and tighten when plugged into a power supply, thereby creating a "second skin."


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA's MAVEN spacecraft prepares for orbital insertion*

NASA s MAVEN spacecraft prepares for orbital insertion


> Mission operators working from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are undergoing final adjustments for orbital insertion of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, due to take place September 21. Achieving a stable orbit around the Red Planet would be the culmination of a 10-month voyage, during which the robotic explorer traveled 442 million miles (711 million km) after having ridden into space in November 2013 atop an Atlas V rocket.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*India's Mars Probe to attempt orbital insertion on Wed.*



> Success would make India the 4th nation to successfully get to Mars, the first one to do so on it's first attempt, and would be one of the cheapest missions ever.




http://indiatoday.in...e/1/384102.html


----------



## mamooth

Resupply mission to the ISS goes up, the fourth one using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

NASA Cargo Launches to Space Station aboard SpaceX Resupply Mission NASA


----------



## Vikrant

Matthew said:


> *India's Mars Probe to attempt orbital insertion on Wed.*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Success would make India the 4th nation to successfully get to Mars, the first one to do so on it's first attempt, and would be one of the cheapest missions ever.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://indiatoday.in...e/1/384102.html
Click to expand...


Rock on India and ISRO!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Japanese construction giant Obayashi announces plans to have a space elevator up and running by 2050*


> Once the realm of science fiction, a Japanese company has announced they will have a space elevator up and running by the year 2050.
> 
> If successful it would revolutionise space travel and potentially transform the global economy.
> 
> The Japanese construction giant Obayashi says they will build a space elevator that will reach 96,000 kilometres into space.
> 
> Robotic cars powered by magnetic linear motors will carry people and cargo to a newly-built space station, at a fraction of the cost of rockets. It will take seven days to get there.
> 
> The company said the fantasy can now become a reality because of the development of carbon nanotechnology.
> 
> "The tensile strength is almost a hundred times stronger than steel cable so it's possible," Mr Yoji Ishikawa, a research and development manager at Obayashi, said.


Japanese construction giant Obayashi announces plans to have a space elevator up and running by 2050 - ABC News Australian Broadcasting Corporation


----------



## ScienceRocks

mamooth said:


> Resupply mission to the ISS goes up, the fourth one using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
> 
> NASA Cargo Launches to Space Station aboard SpaceX Resupply Mission NASA



As far as I am concern the funding of spacex and solar energy will be the two things Obama's remembered for. Just like Nixon is known for the Epa.


----------



## mamooth

The stuff on the ISS resupply mission:

1. 600 kilos of crew supplies

2. A 3-D printer for zero-G. If it works, it gives the ISS some capability to manufacture their own parts.

3. Spinsat, a technology demonstration of a new electronic propulsion system for nanosatellites.
SpinSat

4. Space Station Integrated Kinetic Launcher for Orbital Payload Systems (SSIKLOPS, pronounced "cyclops"), a way to shoot out nanosatellites, instead of having to use the robotic arm.
Meet Space Station s Small Satellite Launcher Suite NASA

5. 20 white mice, and a bone density scanner for the mice.

6. ISS-Rapidscat, a microwave scanner to get detailed measurements of ocean winds.


----------



## Vikrant

India becomes the first Asian nation to reach Mars. It also becomes the first nation to succeed on the first try. 

---

NEW DELHI — India became the first Asian nation to reach the Red Planet when its indigenously made unmanned spacecraft entered the orbit of Mars on Wednesday — and the first nation in the world to successfully reach Mars on its first attempt.

India becomes first Asian nation to reach Mars orbit joins elite global space club - The Washington Post


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Water discovered on Neptune-sized planet outside our solar system*



> Scientists found water vapor on a Neptune-sized planet 124 light years away from Earth, the first time an exoplanet smaller than Jupiter has been found with water. Their results are published in the journalNature.
> 
> Astronomers figure out what elements compose an exoplanet by studying how light from the planet's star is absorbed as the planet passes in front of it. Until now, Neptune-sized and smaller planets hadn't been possible to study, probably because of heavy cloud cover. When HAT-P-11b passed in front of its host star, in the constellation Cygnus, it showed clearly the planet had water vapor.


----------



## mamooth

On Sep 16, the US government launched the CLIO satellite on an Atlas V from Cape Canaveral. The purpose of the satellite and the agency owning it has been kept secret. Amateur satellite watchers are waiting to see what the final orbit is, which will give clues as to the purpose.

ULA Atlas V successfully launches secretive CLIO mission NASASpaceFlight.com


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Moon's hidden valley system revealed*





> 1 October 2014
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Scientists have identified a huge rectangular feature on the Moon that is buried just below the surface.
> The 2,500km-wide structure is believed to be the remains of old rift valleys that later became filled with lava.
> Centred on the Moon's Procellarum region, the feature is really only evident in gravity maps acquired by Nasa's Grail mission in 2012.
> But knowing now of its existence, it is possible to trace the giant rectangle's subtle outline even in ordinary photos.
> Mare Frigoris, for example, a long-recognised dark stripe on the lunar surface, is evidently an edge to the ancient rift system.
> "It's really amazing how big this feature is," says Prof Jeffery Andrews-Hanna.
> "It covers about 17% of the surface of the Moon. And if you think about that in terms relative to the size of the Earth, it covers an area equivalent to North America, Europe and Asia combined," the Colorado School of Mines scientist told BBC News.
> "When we first saw it in the Grail data, we were struck by how big it was, how clear it was, but also by how unexpected it was.
> "No-one ever thought you'd see a square or a rectangle on this scale on any planet."






http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-29447159


----------



## ScienceRocks

Microsoft co-founder’s company may fund space-bound passenger plane




> Stratolaunch Systems, a commercial spaceflight startup company, might purchase a three-passenger version of Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser in a bid to implement its goals of putting both satellites and people into orbit beginning in 2018.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Vast glaciers carved out Martian Grand Canyon




> HUGE glaciers may once have crept through Mars' version of the Grand Canyon. That's according to new analysis of data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft, which has spotted telltale signs of minerals left in the glaciers' wake.
> 
> 
> 
> Rock formations around Valles Marineris, a system of canyons running more than 4000 kilometres across the Red Planet's equator, have hinted that it once held glaciers that melted and caused a megaflood. Now Selby Cull at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and colleagues have found mineralogical evidence that supports the idea.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Huge Cloud on Saturn's Moon Titan Is Made of Toxic Cyanide*

1 October 2014










> The discovery suggests that the air above Titan's poles can get much cooler than previously thought, scientists said. The huge cloud on Titan — it's about the size of Egypt — was first spotted by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2012, but only now is its cyanide composition understood.




http://www.space.com...moon-titan.html


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Russia to Launch New GLONASS Navigation System Satellite by Year End*


3 October 2014



> A new model of the Russian GLONASS navigation system satellite will be launched at the end of this year, the JSC Information Satellite Systems, a leading Russian satellite manufacturing company, announced Wednesday.
> 
> "In November-December, 2014 we will launch the new GLONASS-K spacecraft. The launch is planned to be implemented from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome [in northern Russia] using a Soyuz 2.1b carrier rocket," Yury Vygonsky, deputy general designer for space systems development, general engineering and satellite control at JSC Information Satellite Systems, told journalists.





http://www.gpsdaily....ar_End_999.html


----------



## mamooth

The ISS-Rapidscat wind measuring package was installed on the outside of the Space Station, and is sending back good data. Installation was done entirely with a robotic arm, no spacewalks necessary.

JPL News NASA s New Winds Mission Installed Gathers First Data

The OCO-2 satellite, which measures carbon dioxide, is in good shape and going through a lengthy calibration process now. The data should start flowing from it in December.

News - Orbiting Carbon Observatory


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Scientists Might Have Accidentally Solved The Hardest Part Of Building Space Elevators*

By Ajai Raj 13/10/2014

Vincent Crespi Lab/Penn State University:


> Diamond nanothreads are only a few atoms across, more than 20,000 times thinner than a human hair. They're also stronger and stiffer than any carbon nanotube or polymer to date, which could make them an ideal option for a space elevator tether.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*First results from MAVEN mission:*




> NASA's newest Mars orbiter, MAVEN, has returned its first observations of the red planet's upper atmosphere, laying a promising foundation for answering a nagging question about the planet's environment: What happened to an atmosphere that supported a warm and wet planet some 4 billion years ago, only to become the dry, chilled desert that astronomers see today?
> 
> Although its science mission has yet to begin, the craft already has revealed clues with the first detailed measurements of the upper atmosphere's hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, which back in the day would have appeared as water vapor and carbon dioxide – two potent gases for trapping heat near the surface.
> 
> This would have allowed liquid water to remain stable on the surface, providing potential habitats for microbial life.




from http://www.csmonitor...zzle-scientists


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Huge Flock of Minisatellites Aims to Photograph the Entire Earth Every Day*










> Tracking what’s happening on Earth from space is becoming more and more feasible as Earth-observing satellites increase in number and resolution. The USGS’s Landsat mission has an incredible 40-year record of the planet’s changing landscape, with virtually every spot imaged every eight days. It’s an incredible scientific asset. But what if you could see every bit of the globe, every single day? That opens a new range of possible uses for satellite imagery.
> 
> This is the mission of Planet Labs.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mercury's hidden water-ice revealed*


16 October 2014


> A Nasa spacecraft has provided the first optical images of ice within shadowed craters on Mercury.
> 
> It might seem curious that the closest planet to the Sun - where temperatures soar above 400C - could host water-ice.
> But some of the craters on this hothouse world are always shadowed from the Sun, turning them into cold traps.
> Using very low levels of light scattered off crater walls, scientists were able to build up a picture of what these frozen deposits look like.
> The work, by researchers involved with Nasa's Mercury Messenger mission, has been published in the journal Geology.
> Scientists suggested decades ago that water ice might be trapped in shadowed areas near the planet's poles. Then, in the 1990s, data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico revealed areas that strongly reflect radar - a characteristic of ice.




http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-29644406


----------



## ScienceRocks

New Study Sheds Light On Saturn’s “Death Star” Moon



> A new study recently published in the journal Science, has taken the “Death Star” moon out of science fiction, and placed it firmly in just….science.
> 
> While the Herschel Crater on the surface of Mimas does beg Star Wars, it also has a massive wobble, that until recently, wasn’t explained given the size of the moon. The wobble is about twice as big as one might expect from a moon that size if it was a regular solid structure, turns out it might not be solid.
> 
> The researchers who penned the study suggest two reasons for the wobble, either it has a vast ocean beneath the surface or a core that is not so much spherical as rugby ball-shaped.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*China Moving Forward with Big Space Station Plans*

October 16, 2014 09:52am ET


> Space travelers from around the globe recently got a firsthand sense of China's blossoming plans to explore Earth orbit and beyond.
> 
> At the 27th Planetary Congress of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), held in Beijing last month, China's space industry leaders extended an open invitation for other nations to take part in China's emerging space station program.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Yang told the ASE delegates that by about 2022, China's first space station would be fully operational.



http://www.space.com...tion-plans.html


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX Plans to Start Reusing Rockets Next Year*
SpaceX is building an ocean-based landing pad so that it can reuse its launch vehicles.
Elon Musk s SpaceX Will Start Reusing Launch Vehicles Next Year Cutting Costs MIT Technology Review

By Kevin Bullis on October 25, 2014

*Why It Matters*
It remains extremely expensive to put anything in space.


> Elon Musk says that next year SpaceX should demonstrate the ability to reuse one of the company’s launch vehicles, something that could reduce the cost of getting to space by a factor of about 10.
> 
> The idea of reusing spacecraft is not new. But if SpaceX were to land and reuse one of its rockets it would be a first, and it would make the second launch considerably cheaper. The company has struggled to make the landings work in several experiments though, and Musk says the proceedure may not work reliably for some time.


----------



## waltky

Granny says dey need to quit usin' dem old-timey Russkie rockets...

*Can space industry survive 2 explosions in 4 days?*
_Nov 1,`14  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fiery failures are no stranger to the space game. It's what happens when you push the boundaries of what technology can do, where people can go. And it happened again to Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo._


> In the past decade, the space industry has tried to go from risky and government-run to routine private enterprise - so routine that if you have lots of money you can buy a ticket on a private spaceship and become a space tourist.  More than 500 people have booked a flight, including Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher and little known space scientist Alan Stern.  But it all depends on flying becoming safe and routine. This week hasn't helped.
> 
> Three days after a private unmanned rocket taking cargo up to the International Space Station blew up six seconds into its flight, a test flight of SpaceShipTwo exploded Friday over the Mojave Desert with two people on board.  The developments reignited the debate about the role of business in space and whether it is or will ever be safe enough for everyday people looking for an expensive 50-mile-high thrill ride.  "It's a real setback to the idea that lots of people are going to be taking joyrides into the fringes of outer space any time soon," said John Logsdon, retired space policy director at George Washington University. "There were a lot of people who believed that the technology to carry people is safely at hand."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Wreckage lies near the site where a Virgin Galactic space tourism rocket, SpaceShipTwo, exploded and crashed in Mojave, Calif. Friday, Oct. 31, 2014. The explosion killed a pilot aboard and seriously injured another while scattering wreckage in Southern California's Mojave Desert, witnesses and officials said.
> 
> The question for space tourism might be, "if it survives," Logsdon said. But he thinks its momentum in recent years will keep it alive.  Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson expressed the same view Saturday after arriving in Mojave, California, to meet with the project workforce reeling from the accident.  "We would love to finish what was started some years ago, and I think pretty well all our astronauts would love us to finish it, love to go to space," he said. "Millions of people in the world would love to one day have the chance to go to space."
> 
> Federal estimates of the commercial space industry -only a little of it involving tourism - exceed $200 billion. NASA is counting on private companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to haul cargo to the space station. They are also spending billions to help SpaceX and Boeing build ships that will eventually take people there, too.  Internet pioneers Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have gotten into the space game. Aviation entrepreneur Branson and others are pushing a billion-dollar space tourism industry.  The Virgin Galactic and Orbital accidents have nothing in common except the words private space, Stern said. Still it raises issues about the space industry.  Some experts said they worry that private industry may just not be as safe as the government when it comes to going into space.
> 
> MORE


----------



## ScienceRocks

> The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has* initiated its Asteroid Redirect Mission*, an important first step in sending astronauts on trips to Mars in the future.
> 
> 
> The project, which has spent 18 months in the planning phases, involves *towing an asteroid into lunar orbit* to serve as a training platform for NASA astronauts and space probes. In one ARM proposal, a robotic spacecraft will seek out an asteroid of sufficient size before bringing it in to a stable orbit around the satellite; in the other an inflatable capture system could be deployed to secure the chunk of space rock.
> 
> The new plan has the* seal of approval from US President Barack Obama*, who has been an ally for the space agency and its plans to push the envelope on space exploration. The mission would be an excellent stepping stone to prepare for a Mars mission, according to most scientists.



from http://www.betawired...-trips/1412028/


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Virgin Galactic looks to resume tests in 2015*
*5 hours ago by Susan Montoya Bryan *


> The head of the space tourism company that suffered a tragic setback when its experimental rocket ship broke apart over the California desert says test flights could resume as early as next summer.





Read more at: Virgin Galactic looks to resume tests in 2015


----------



## ScienceRocks

Will Gaia Be Our Next Big Exoplanet Hunter?



> Early on the morning of Dec. 19, 2013, the pre-dawn sky above the coastal town of Kourou in French Guiana was briefly sliced by the brilliant exhaust of a Soyuz VS06 rocket as it ferried ESA’s “billion-star surveyor” Gaia into space, on its way to begin a five-year mission to map the precise locations of our galaxy’s stars. From its position in orbit around L2 Gaia will ultimately catalog the positions of over a billion stars… and in the meantime it will also locate a surprising amount of Jupiter-sized exoplanets – an estimated 21,000 by the end of its primary mission in 2019.
> 
> And, should Gaia continue observations in extended missions beyond 2019 improvements in detection methods will likely turn up even moreexoplanets, anywhere from 50,000 to 90,000 over the course of a ten-year mission. Gaia could very well far surpass NASA’s Kepler spacecraft for exoplanet big game hunting!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
NASA Statement on Successful Rosetta Comet Landing *
NASA Statement on Successful Rosetta Comet Landing NASA


> The following statement is from John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, about the successful comet landing by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft:
> 
> “We congratulate ESA on their successful landing on a comet today. This achievement represents a breakthrough moment in the exploration of our solar system and a milestone for international cooperation. We are proud to be a part of this historic day and look forward to receiving valuable data from the three NASA instruments on board Rosetta that will map the comet’s nucleus and examine it for signs of water.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Two more islands might exist on Titan*
* James Sullivan * | Science Recorder | November 12, 2014
Two more islands might exist on Titan Science Recorder


> Two new “magic islands” have recently been discovered on Titan, the giant moon of Saturn, following the discovery of a similar formation in one of the moon’s seas this summer: the immensely deep Kraken Mare, estimated to be 656 feet deep — three times the depth of Lake Superior.
> 
> The observations were revealed on Monday, captured by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the ringed giant planet since 2004. The moon is known to be a frozen land that somewhat resembles earth, with a number of seas, lakes and rivers that have appeared in its photographs. These islands of rock are referred to as magic islands, because of their ability to seemingly appear and reappear on the surface of the planet, a phenomenon that scientists suspect is caused by waves of liquid methane rippling over it.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*European Spacecraft Could Find 70,000 New Alien Worlds*
European Spacecraft Could Find 70 000 New Alien Worlds


> A European spacecraft that launched late last year could eventually discover 70,000 exoplanets, helping researchers better understand the number and characteristics of alien worlds throughout the galaxy, a new study reports.
> 
> The European Space Agency's star-monitoring Gaia mission, which launched in December 2013, should find about 21,000 alien planets over the course of its five-year mission and perhaps 70,000 distant worlds if it keeps operating for 10 years, the study found.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Comet lander 'working well', but may be on slope*



13 November 2014


> Europe's robot lab Philae was "working well" on the surface of its host comet, though likely perched on a steep slope, ground controllers said a day after the probe made its historic landing.
> Some data suggested the washing machine-sized probe may have touched down three times on the low-gravity comet, which is zipping towards the Sun at 18 kilometres per second (11 miles per second), according to updates from ground control.
> Philae's anchoring harpoons failed to deploy, but it still managed to send back scientific data for the European Space Agency (ESA) flagship mission as well as the first-ever picture taken from the surface of a comet.
> "Philae is working well. Its battery is working well and is providing power," mission head Philippe Gaudon of France's CNES space agency told AFP by phone from ground control in Toulouse on Thursday.





http://www.marsdaily..._slope_999.html


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Comet probe in race against time to crown stellar feat (Update)*





> Europe's deep-space robot lab Philae worked against the clock Friday, attempting to drill into a comet 510 million kilometres (320 million miles) from Earth to crown a historic exploration before its battery ...



Comet probe in race against time to crown stellar feat Update


----------



## ChrisL

SmedlyButler said:


> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
Click to expand...


Why would you want to cut our military budget?  Especially with the world in upheaval right now?  That would be stupid IMO.  Cut wasteful spending, okay.  Other than that though, I say no cuts to the military budget.  We need a strong and powerful military.  Like it or not, might makes right. That's the way it has always been and the way it will always be.


----------



## SmedlyButler

ChrisL said:


> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Why would you want to cut our military budget?  Especially with the world in upheaval right now?  That would be stupid IMO.  Cut wasteful spending, okay.  Other than that though, I say no cuts to the military budget.  We need a strong and powerful military.  Like it or not, might makes right. That's the way it has always been and the way it will always be.
Click to expand...


Here's the key to our disagreement on this issue, you say "Cut wasteful spending, okay..." I totally agree that the World is a very dangerous place right now and for the foreseeable future, and that the U.S. has to have a powerful and agile military equipped to respond to multiple kinds of threats. I believe it can accomplish that objective with a lot less money. The conservatives are right in this case, government wildly throwing money at the DoD is not going to accomplish the goal. Resources are not unlimited, they have to be allocated in a lot more intelligent way now than they have been in the last 50 yrs. You could take a look at a couple of examples to get an idea of what I mean. For instance the F-35 JSF...
_
"The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive, and possible the most error ridden, project in the history of the United States military. But DOD has sunk so much money into the F-35 — which is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the 55-year life of the program — that the Pentagon deemed it "too big to fail" in 2010.
Now, the Air Force has taken steps to make sure that the unmitigated disaster that the F-35 has become does not happen again.
The Air Force, in its 20-year strategic forecast entitled "America's Air Force: A Call to the Future," has called for an end to big-ticket programs like the F-35. Instead, it plans to invest in what DOD officials have called more "agile" weapons that can be adapted for multiple uses.
The report paints a future of the Air Force that resembles an innovative 21st Century company as opposed to a traditional fighting force. The document says that it's now impossible for the United States to build a strategy advantage with large, expensive programs that take years — in the case of the F-35, 14 years and counting to complete."......._LINK: CNBC

400 billion dollars spent to date and a cost of at least 1.5 trillion dollars over the life-span of the aircraft. And for this the armed forces, according to most of the experts I've read, are going to be getting a fighter that is going to under-achieve in the multiple roles it is supposed to fill. And from what I've read a few old much much cheaper A-10 Warthogs would be a more lethal platform in the air war against ISIS than a squadron of F-35's.

Another example I would urge you to look at is the Navy's LCS multi-billion dollar program. Some experts question whether some of these ships will even be survivable in the first few minutes of combat. Imagine asking the men and women of the Navy to man ships that may be vulnerable to even the glorified speedboats that Iran uses in the gulf.

We don't disagree that America has to maintain superior Armed Forces. We might disagree if it has to spend more money that the next 10 nations combined. Here's a chart of the top spenders;






So back to my original point in my other post. NASA. I think you're very mistaken if you don't think that the farther we get into the 21st century the more important capability in space will be to a nations defense. China will have men on the moon in the next decade or so, right now America is ceding dominance in space to them, and others. Also, doesn't it piss you off just a little that NASA can't even get astronauts to the space station without hitching a ride with the Russians? And the recent destruction of that private rocket shows that route is no where near safe enough or reliable enough yet.

Spend the available moneys smarter and in the long run you'll have to spend a lot less.


----------



## ScienceRocks

We spend 1/30th the amount on our space program as defense. Our space program does a lot of good and extends our species knowledge of our place in the universe.


THis is why I hate losertrians. These people want to destroy our scientific institutions and with it our country. They have no room to talk about Obama...As bad as he is.

*Space agency says Philae completes primary mission*



> The pioneering lander Philae completed its primary mission of exploring the comet's surface and returned plenty of data before depleted batteries forced it to go silent, the European Space Agency said Saturday.



Read more at: Space agency says Philae completes primary mission


----------



## ChrisL

SmedlyButler said:


> ChrisL said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Why would you want to cut our military budget?  Especially with the world in upheaval right now?  That would be stupid IMO.  Cut wasteful spending, okay.  Other than that though, I say no cuts to the military budget.  We need a strong and powerful military.  Like it or not, might makes right. That's the way it has always been and the way it will always be.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Here's the key to our disagreement on this issue, you say "Cut wasteful spending, okay..." I totally agree that the World is a very dangerous place right now and for the foreseeable future, and that the U.S. has to have a powerful and agile military equipped to respond to multiple kinds of threats. I believe it can accomplish that objective with a lot less money. The conservatives are right in this case, government wildly throwing money at the DoD is not going to accomplish the goal. Resources are not unlimited, they have to be allocated in a lot more intelligent way now than they have been in the last 50 yrs. You could take a look at a couple of examples to get an idea of what I mean. For instance the F-35 JSF...
> _
> "The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive, and possible the most error ridden, project in the history of the United States military. But DOD has sunk so much money into the F-35 — which is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the 55-year life of the program — that the Pentagon deemed it "too big to fail" in 2010.
> Now, the Air Force has taken steps to make sure that the unmitigated disaster that the F-35 has become does not happen again.
> The Air Force, in its 20-year strategic forecast entitled "America's Air Force: A Call to the Future," has called for an end to big-ticket programs like the F-35. Instead, it plans to invest in what DOD officials have called more "agile" weapons that can be adapted for multiple uses.
> The report paints a future of the Air Force that resembles an innovative 21st Century company as opposed to a traditional fighting force. The document says that it's now impossible for the United States to build a strategy advantage with large, expensive programs that take years — in the case of the F-35, 14 years and counting to complete."......._LINK: CNBC
> 
> 400 billion dollars spent to date and a cost of at least 1.5 trillion dollars over the life-span of the aircraft. And for this the armed forces, according to most of the experts I've read, are going to be getting a fighter that is going to under-achieve in the multiple roles it is supposed to fill. And from what I've read a few old much much cheaper A-10 Warthogs would be a more lethal platform in the air war against ISIS than a squadron of F-35's.
> 
> Another example I would urge you to look at is the Navy's LCS multi-billion dollar program. Some experts question whether some of these ships will even be survivable in the first few minutes of combat. Imagine asking the men and women of the Navy to man ships that may be vulnerable to even the glorified speedboats that Iran uses in the gulf.
> 
> We don't disagree that America has to maintain superior Armed Forces. We might disagree if it has to spend more money that the next 10 nations combined. Here's a chart of the top spenders;
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So back to my original point in my other post. NASA. I think you're very mistaken if you don't think that the farther we get into the 21st century the more important capability in space will be to a nations defense. China will have men on the moon in the next decade or so, right now America is ceding dominance in space to them, and others. Also, doesn't it piss you off just a little that NASA can't even get astronauts to the space station without hitching a ride with the Russians? And the recent destruction of that private rocket shows that route is no where near safe enough or reliable enough yet.
> 
> Spend the available moneys smarter and in the long run you'll have to spend a lot less.
Click to expand...


Oh, I agree that exploring space is important, and I was very disappointed when funding was taken from NASA, but there are SO MANY redundant and wasteful government agencies that could be cut.  Don't know how much money that would save though.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mysterious fast radio bursts from outer space: Astronomers baffled, admit they could be alien in origin*


> Up until this point, though, all of these readings were from the same telescope — and, as any scientist will tell you, it’s unwise to draw any conclusions from just a single patient or case study. Now, however, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico — almost 10,000 miles away from Parkes — has detected a fast radio burst as well. Now, some 13 years after it was first detected, and seven years of random-anomaly purgatory, astronomers are taking the FRB very seriously indeed.
> 
> As for what causes FRBs, no one knows — and that’s why the astronomical community is so darn excited. The 2013 Parkes study, which found four bursts while looking at a tiny patch of sky for a year, suggests that FRBs are actually quite common, perhaps occurring as regularly as once every 10 seconds. FRBs are also intensely bright. Such regularity and intensity probably rules out a few likely origins, such as the evaporation of black holes or the merger of neutron star pairs. Gamma ray bursts have the right kind of intensity, but they only happen once a day or so. One possible explanation is that FRBs are created by magnetars — not fantastical monsters that you might face in a game of Dungeons & Dragons, but rather special neutron stars that can flare up and release as much energy in a millisecond as our Sun releases in 300,000 years.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.bbc.com/n...onment-30097648



> Dr Fred Goessmann, principal investigator on the Cosac instrument, which made the organics detection, confirmed the find to BBC News. But he added that the team was still trying to interpret the results.
> 
> It has not been disclosed which molecules have been found, or how complex they are.
> 
> But the results are likely to provide insights into the possible role of comets in contributing some of the chemical building blocks to the primordial mix from which life evolved on the early Earth.
> 
> Preliminary results from the Mupus instrument, which deployed a hammer to the comet after Philae's landing, suggest there is a layer of dust 10-20cm thick on the surface with very hard water-ice underneath.


----------



## Politico

What drinnlee are you copyin


Matthew said:


> *Comet lander 'working well', but may be on slope*
> 
> 
> 
> 13 November 2014
> 
> 
> 
> Europe's robot lab Philae was "working well" on the surface of its host comet, though likely perched on a steep slope, ground controllers said a day after the probe made its historic landing.
> Some data suggested the washing machine-sized probe may have touched down three times on the low-gravity comet, which is zipping towards the Sun at 18 kilometres per second (11 miles per second), according to updates from ground control.
> Philae's anchoring harpoons failed to deploy, but it still managed to send back scientific data for the European Space Agency (ESA) flagship mission as well as the first-ever picture taken from the surface of a comet.
> "Philae is working well. Its battery is working well and is providing power," mission head Philippe Gaudon of France's CNES space agency told AFP by phone from ground control in Toulouse on Thursday.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.marsdaily..._slope_999.html
Click to expand...

What dribble are you copying now? That probe has been dead for three days since the brilliant landing in the shade. If they're lucky it may see sunlight sometime next spring.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Asteroid Mining To Become Reality, NASA Offers Contracts*
By Evan Roberts / November 23, 2014 at 15:37
Asteroid Mining To Become Reality NASA Offers Contracts






> NASA has set its eyes on new sources of possible revenue and among those new sources, asteroid mining is definitely an out-of-the-ordinary bet. There is certainly a lot of doubt concerning NASA’s decision, especially since mining operations are experiencing tremendous difficulties in cost management on Earth, let alone on asteroids. Contracts have already been signed with Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, two independent tech companies who intent to pursue asteroid mining.


----------



## ScienceRocks

I'd fund nasa 50 billion per year. we get more out of our space program than most anything else! Seriously, we can't be a first rate power without r&d!


* Lockheed Martin begins Insight Mars lander final assembly *
By David Szondy
November 21, 2014






> At some point in every project, you stop unpacking the parts and start putting them together. What's true for flat-pack furniture is also true for spacecraft, so Lockheed Martin has begun the Assembly, Test and Launch Operations (ATLO) phase of NASA's INterior exploration using Seismic investigations, geodesy and heat transport (InSight) Mars lander project. Scheduled to launch in 2016, the unmanned InSight probe will be the first deep-drilling mission sent to the Red Planet.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Musk is testing x-wing style fins, spaceport drone ship*




> In sum, Musk is showing off rockets with 'X-wings' and landing pads in the sea, said The Verge; Dante D'Orazio wrote about the Tweets on Sunday: The latest version of SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket has a set of four independently adjustable fins. "The grid fins are designed to deploy only after takeoff, when they'll work together with thrusters to help the rocket maneuver itself into position for those spectacular vertical landings." UPI noted the fins are referred to with 'x-wing config.' for the shape they make jetting out in four separate directions. Darrell Etherington of TechCrunch said the fins "could help spacecraft navigate upon re-entry after delivering personnel or cargo to an orbiting space station." The new modifications to the rocket should make atmospheric navigation easier, he added.




Read more at: http://phys.org/news...ceport.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX will attempt to land Falcon 9 boot December 9th on a floating platform and then reuse it*
*Next Big Future ^ * | Octiber 27, 2014 | Next Big Future 



> Elon Musk spoke at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department's 2014 Centennial celebration. The October 22-24 Centennial Symposium featuring some of the most illustrious names in aerospace reflecting on past achievement, celebrating today’s innovative research and education, and offering their perspectives on what lies ahead.
> 
> SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said his company will make a first attempt to land the booster stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform during the upcoming ISS resupply mission. If the attempt is successful, the company plans to refurbish and reuse the booster stage, making spaceflight history and paving the way for a significant reduction in the cost of access to space.
> 
> Propellant only makes up a tiny percentage (in the case of a Falcon 9 rocket, about 0.3 percent) of the cost of the craft, so being able to reuse all the hardware for multiple flights could potentially slash the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 10 or more.
> 
> SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that, on the fifth resupply mission planned for December 9th, the reusable rocket program is ready to go one step further: instead of a soft water landing, the first stage will attempt for the first time to propulsively land on a floating platform in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
> 
> "Before we boost back to the launch site and try to land there, we need to show that we can land with precision over and over again," said Musk. "So for the upcoming launch we've got a chance of landing on a floating platform. We have a huge platform that is being constructed at a shipyard in Louisiana right now which is 300 feet long by 170 feet wide (90 by 50 meters)."
> 
> "If we land on that [platform], I think we'll be able to refly that booster," Musk continued. "It's probably not more of a 50 percent chance of landing it on the platform [on the first try], but there's a lot of launches that will occur over the next year, at least a dozen, so I think it's quite likely, probably 80 or 90 percent likely, that one of those flights will be able to land and refly."
> 
> SpaceX Tests Fins On Reusable Rocket Flight | Video
> 
> The steerable fins provide control during fly back. They can be seen deploying about a minute and 15 seconds into the flight. This test flight of the Falcon 9 Reusable (F9R) occurred on June 17th, 2014. There was an analysis of a reusable launch system where the cost of developing the reusable launch system was $36 billion. If Spacex is successful they will have developed reusability for about $100 million.
> 
> There were also prior ideas involving large ground infrastructure such as giant magnetic launching systems
> 
> "The payload penalty for full and fast reusability versus an expendable version is roughly 40 percent," Musk says. "[But] propellant cost is less than 0.4 percent of the total flight cost. Even taking into account the payload reduction for reusability, the improvement is therefore theoretically over a hundred times."
> 
> A hundred times is an incredible gain. It would drop cost for Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket—a scaled-up version of the Falcon 9 that’s currently rated at $1000 per pound to orbit—to just $10. "That, however, requires a very high flight rate, just like aircraft," Musk says. "At a low flight rate, the improvement is still probably around 50 percent. For Falcon Heavy, that would mean a price per pound to orbit of less than $500.
> 
> Falcon Heavy is particularly amenable to reuse of the first stage—the two outer cores in particular, because they separate at a much lower velocity than the center one, being dropped off early in the flight.
> 
> Turnaround Time
> 
> Bringing down the cost of rocket launches isn’t just about reusability; as Musk’s quote suggests, it’s also about turnaround time. The original premise of the space shuttle program was that the vehicle would be turned around within days; it ended up being months, which is one of the reasons that it never met its cost goals.
> 
> What about a reusable Falcon? Musk says he expects "single-digit hours" between landing and next flight, at least for the lower stages. "For the upper stage, there is the additional constraint of the orbit ground track needing to overfly the landing pad, since cross-range [the distance to a landing site that it can fly to either side of its original entry flight path] is limited. At most this adds 24 hours to the upper-stage turnaround."
> 
> Translation: One of the other reasons that the shuttle was so expensive was that it had very large wings to give the vehicle a thousand miles of cross-range. The Air Force demanded this feature, which would have allowed the shuttle to return to its launch site after a single orbit, though it was never used. But SpaceX doesn’t mandate that cross-range feature. Therefore its craft would have to wait a little bit for the Earth to rotate and bring the landing site around again, but this would make SpaceX missions cheaper because the rockets don’t have to carry so much propellant in this stage.
> 
> What does it imply for flight rate? "Multiple flights per day for first stage and side boosters," Musk says. "At least one flight per day for the upper stage" (which costs much less, anyway).
> 
> So what does that mean for ticket prices in the future? Musk tells us that with daily flights, the cost will run about $100 per pound. For the average male, that means about 20,000 bucks. Start saving your money.
> 
> Is there demand for forty thousand flight per year ? 100 space flights per day at $100 per pound ?
> 
> There were 77 successful orbital launches in 81 attempts in 2013.
> 
> Those launches were for about $2000-8,000 per pound.
> 
> There are new far more capable cubesats. Having a lot of lower cost payload would boost demand for low cost launches.
> 
> Planetary Resources is making $1 million space telescopes.
> 
> Bigelow Aerospace wants to launch inflatable space stations for space hotels and for space stations for every nation with a space program.
> 
> Commercial satellites generate about $150 billion per year in revenue and use about $4 billion in launch services.
> 
> Daily launches of one reusable rocket is 365 launches. If you have 100 reusable rockets all flying daily then you need demand for 36,500 launches. If the payload capacity is 8 to 50 tons. This would be 180,000 tons to 1.8 million tons.
> 
> There would be need for more launch facilities.
> 
> There would need to be a system for rapidly prepping the payloads. Some kind of standard container system for loading them. A space version of a shipping container.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Venus Express gets one last boost of life *
By David Szondy
November 30, 2014






> The European Space Agency's Venus Express unmanned probe is being put through a series of maneuvers in hopes that its remaining fuel can push it into a higher orbit. If successful, the orbit change will give the spacecraft a bit more life before it plunges into the Venusian atmosphere it was sent to investigate


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Raise shields: Protective invisible barrier found surrounding Earth *
By David Szondy
November 29, 2014



 


> The idea of putting a _Star Trek_-like force field around the entire Earth seems like the fodder for a fairly silly science fiction epic out of the 1930s, but according to space scientists, such a barrier already exists. Discovered by a pair of NASA space probes, the natural shield protects the Earth and near-Earth satellites from so-called "killer electrons" with a precision that cuts it off like a wall of glass.


----------



## HenryBHough

Think of all the food stamps Our Kenyan Emperor could buy for his "people" with that space money.


----------



## ScienceRocks

HenryBHough said:


> Think of all the food stamps Our Kenyan Emperor could buy for his "people" with that space money.



Cutting science would make for a far poorer nation. Would be a sad day. That would be killing high paying jobs with real skills and putting people in the bread lines.


----------



## HenryBHough

Matthew said:


> HenryBHough said:
> 
> 
> 
> Think of all the food stamps Our Kenyan Emperor could buy for his "people" with that space money.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Cutting science would make for a far poorer nation. Would be a sad day. That would be killing high paying jobs with real skills and putting people in the bread lines.
Click to expand...


Indeed it WAS.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*A home-brew observatory detects exoplanet*
*36 minutes ago by Nancy Owano 

*




Credit: David Schneider


> David Schneider, a senior editor at _IEEE Spectrum_, was interested in exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun, but figured this kind of exercise as a home-based project was going to need expensive telescopes; he stumbled across a project at Ohio State University, where resourceful astronomers had figured out a way to spot exoplanets using a device with a lens designed for high-end cameras. Schneider's wheels turned, thinking he might also be able to pull this off if he got his hands on a charge-coupled-device detector not research-grade, and maybe he could forget about an expensive telescope as well? He also discovered an online posting by an amateur astronomer saying he had detected a known exoplanet using a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera with a telephoto lens.





Read more at: A home-brew observatory detects exoplanet


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Ground-based detection of super-Earth transit paves way to remote sensing of exoplanets*
*9 hours ago *




Earth and Super-Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL


> For the first time, a team of astronomers - including York University Professor Ray Jayawardhana - have measured the passing of a super-Earth in front of a bright, nearby Sun-like star using a ground-based telescope. The transit of the exoplanet 55 Cancri e is the shallowest detected from the ground yet, and the success bodes well for characterizing the many small planets that upcoming space missions are expected to discover in the next few years.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The international research team used the 2.5-meter Nordic Optical Telescope on the island of La Palma, Spain - a moderate-sized facility by today's standards - to make the detection. Previous observations of this planet transit had to rely on space-borne telescopes.
> 
> During its transit, the planet crosses its host star, 55 Cancri, located just 40 light-years away from us and visible to the naked eye, blocking a tiny fraction of the starlight, dimming the star by 1/2000th (or 0.05%) for almost two hours.
> "Our observations show that we can detect the transits of small planets around Sun-like stars using ground-based telescopes," says Dr. Ernst de Mooij, of Queen's University Belfast, UK, the study's lead author. "This is especially important because upcoming space missions such as TESS and PLATO should find many small planets around bright stars."
> 
> TESS is a NASA mission scheduled for launch in 2017, while PLATO is to be launched in 2024 by the European Space Agency; both will search for transiting terrestrial planets around nearby bright stars.





Read more at: Ground-based detection of super-Earth transit paves way to remote sensing of exoplanets


*Astronomers poised to capture image of supermassive black hole*
*9 hours ago by Matt Williams, Universe Today *


Artist’s concept of one of the most primitive supermassive black holes (central black dot) at the core of a young, star-rich galaxy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


> Scientists have long suspected that supermassive black holes (SMBH) reside at the center of every large galaxy in our universe. These can be billions of times more massive than our sun, and are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies.





Read more at: [url="http://phys.org/news/2014-12-astronomers-poised-capture-image-supermassive.html#jCp"]Astronomers poised to capture image of supermassive black hole[/URL]


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA launching new Orion spacecraft on test flight*



> NASA's quest to send astronauts out into the solar system begins this week with a two-laps-around-Earth test flight.
> 
> The new Orion spacecraft is not going to Mars just yet; Thursday's debut will be unmanned and last just 4½ hours. But it will be the farthest a built-for-humans capsule has flown since the Apollo moon missions, shooting 3,600 miles out into space in order to gain enough momentum to re-enter the atmosphere at a scorching 20,000 mph (32,000 kph).
> 
> The dry run, if all goes well, will end with a Pacific splashdown off Mexico's Baja coast. Navy ships will recover the capsule, a la Apollo, for future use.





Read more at: NASA launching new Orion spacecraft on test flight


----------



## FA_Q2

SmedlyButler said:


> ChrisL said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Why would you want to cut our military budget?  Especially with the world in upheaval right now?  That would be stupid IMO.  Cut wasteful spending, okay.  Other than that though, I say no cuts to the military budget.  We need a strong and powerful military.  Like it or not, might makes right. That's the way it has always been and the way it will always be.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Here's the key to our disagreement on this issue, you say "Cut wasteful spending, okay..." I totally agree that the World is a very dangerous place right now and for the foreseeable future, and that the U.S. has to have a powerful and agile military equipped to respond to multiple kinds of threats. I believe it can accomplish that objective with a lot less money. The conservatives are right in this case, government wildly throwing money at the DoD is not going to accomplish the goal. Resources are not unlimited, they have to be allocated in a lot more intelligent way now than they have been in the last 50 yrs. You could take a look at a couple of examples to get an idea of what I mean. For instance the F-35 JSF...
> _
> "The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive, and possible the most error ridden, project in the history of the United States military. But DOD has sunk so much money into the F-35 — which is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the 55-year life of the program — that the Pentagon deemed it "too big to fail" in 2010.
> Now, the Air Force has taken steps to make sure that the unmitigated disaster that the F-35 has become does not happen again.
> The Air Force, in its 20-year strategic forecast entitled "America's Air Force: A Call to the Future," has called for an end to big-ticket programs like the F-35. Instead, it plans to invest in what DOD officials have called more "agile" weapons that can be adapted for multiple uses.
> The report paints a future of the Air Force that resembles an innovative 21st Century company as opposed to a traditional fighting force. The document says that it's now impossible for the United States to build a strategy advantage with large, expensive programs that take years — in the case of the F-35, 14 years and counting to complete."......._LINK: CNBC
> 
> 400 billion dollars spent to date and a cost of at least 1.5 trillion dollars over the life-span of the aircraft. And for this the armed forces, according to most of the experts I've read, are going to be getting a fighter that is going to under-achieve in the multiple roles it is supposed to fill. And from what I've read a few old much much cheaper A-10 Warthogs would be a more lethal platform in the air war against ISIS than a squadron of F-35's.
> 
> Another example I would urge you to look at is the Navy's LCS multi-billion dollar program. Some experts question whether some of these ships will even be survivable in the first few minutes of combat. Imagine asking the men and women of the Navy to man ships that may be vulnerable to even the glorified speedboats that Iran uses in the gulf.
> 
> We don't disagree that America has to maintain superior Armed Forces. We might disagree if it has to spend more money that the next 10 nations combined. Here's a chart of the top spenders;
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So back to my original point in my other post. NASA. I think you're very mistaken if you don't think that the farther we get into the 21st century the more important capability in space will be to a nations defense. China will have men on the moon in the next decade or so, right now America is ceding dominance in space to them, and others. Also, doesn't it piss you off just a little that NASA can't even get astronauts to the space station without hitching a ride with the Russians? And the recent destruction of that private rocket shows that route is no where near safe enough or reliable enough yet.
> 
> Spend the available moneys smarter and in the long run you'll have to spend a lot less.
Click to expand...

Well said.


----------



## FA_Q2

Matthew said:


> We spend 1/30th the amount on our space program as defense. Our space program does a lot of good and extends our species knowledge of our place in the universe.
> 
> 
> THis is why I hate losertrians. These people want to destroy our scientific institutions and with it our country. They have no room to talk about Obama...As bad as he is.
> 
> *Space agency says Philae completes primary mission*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The pioneering lander Philae completed its primary mission of exploring the comet's surface and returned plenty of data before depleted batteries forced it to go silent, the European Space Agency said Saturday.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: Space agency says Philae completes primary mission
Click to expand...

Except you don't have a single clue what you ate talking about.   I am a fervent supporter of NASA and a libertarian.   All you have to offer  is vapid statements like funding them 50 billion without a single detail.  That's likely because you haven't a clue as to the details but seem to think your opinion should matter any way.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Really, you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board. What I am saying is that some government programs are beneficial to our society. What is wrong with that? Don't get me wrong, I do support removing red tape and scaling back the abuses of our government...There's plenty of this and I see some of your points on many issues having to do with them. The government is taking our rights away and doing the reverse when it comes to innovation. So it isn't all sugar and happy days, either.
But on the other hand, we're better off as a country having highly educated engineers, scientist, etc.  We have the best space program and weather service on earth. Science and research not only should be funded, but it must.  The life blood of why we're a first world technological nation is driven by this very fact.
I understand the private sector does a lot and I love the private sector as it can do things for less and doesn't have the red tape, but it certainly won't fund the research that we need to remain an undisputed science power, the weather service for all, and grants for education in science for the next generation if it doesn't have a profit margin stamped on it. All first world nations invest in science, research and R&D because they understand 1. That it creates a larger middle class with good paying jobs, which increases the GDP for all, 2. The nation has an edge in science and r&d which allows it to have things like the best military on earth, toys like we're typing on and cures for diseases that you may wake up tomorrow wishes we had.

I may not totally understand you as a libertarian, but this is "what" I as a person that watches science honestly believes is the best course of action for our nation to take.I point at over a hundred years of history with the national weather service and 60 years with nasa.


----------



## FA_Q2

Matthew said:


> Really, you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board. What I am saying is that some government programs are beneficial to our society. What is wrong with that? Don't get me wrong, I do support removing red tape and scaling back the abuses of our government...There's plenty of this and I see some of your points on many issues having to do with them. The government is taking our rights away and doing the reverse when it comes to innovation. So it isn't all sugar and happy days, either.
> But on the other hand, we're better off as a country having highly educated engineers, scientist, etc.  We have the best space program and weather service on earth. Science and research not only should be funded, but it must.  The life blood of why we're a first world technological nation is driven by this very fact.
> I understand the private sector does a lot and I love the private sector as it can do things for less and doesn't have the red tape, but it certainly won't fund the research that we need to remain an undisputed science power, the weather service for all, and grants for education in science for the next generation if it doesn't have a profit margin stamped on it. All first world nations invest in science, research and R&D because they understand 1. That it creates a larger middle class with good paying jobs, which increases the GDP for all, 2. The nation has an edge in science and r&d which allows it to have things like the best military on earth, toys like we're typing on and cures for diseases that you may wake up tomorrow wishes we had.
> 
> I may not totally understand you as a libertarian, but this is "what" I as a person that watches science honestly believes is the best course of action for our nation to take.I point at over a hundred years of history with the national weather service and 60 years with nasa.


This is your problem with libertarians then, as I see it:
*you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board.*
'Us people' may include some anarcho-capitalists but all libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists.  There are extremes in every political stripe but they do not dominate the whole. Libertarians do not, as a whole, want government to cease to exist.  Most of us just want government to stick to what it is supposed to do and leave the rest to us.

Government has a pivotal role in science namely because they are the only entity in existence that can take a billion dollars and light it on fire without a single good thing coming out of it.  That happens when you are pushing science, sometimes VERY large investments do not pan out and the commercial industry does not take kindly to that.  I am fairly certain that no commercial entity would be landing a drill on a comet right now but the government can invest that kind of capitol without a clear benefit and we all can reap the discovered rewards after they are worked out - if there are any.


----------



## ChrisL

FA_Q2 said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> Really, you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board. What I am saying is that some government programs are beneficial to our society. What is wrong with that? Don't get me wrong, I do support removing red tape and scaling back the abuses of our government...There's plenty of this and I see some of your points on many issues having to do with them. The government is taking our rights away and doing the reverse when it comes to innovation. So it isn't all sugar and happy days, either.
> But on the other hand, we're better off as a country having highly educated engineers, scientist, etc.  We have the best space program and weather service on earth. Science and research not only should be funded, but it must.  The life blood of why we're a first world technological nation is driven by this very fact.
> I understand the private sector does a lot and I love the private sector as it can do things for less and doesn't have the red tape, but it certainly won't fund the research that we need to remain an undisputed science power, the weather service for all, and grants for education in science for the next generation if it doesn't have a profit margin stamped on it. All first world nations invest in science, research and R&D because they understand 1. That it creates a larger middle class with good paying jobs, which increases the GDP for all, 2. The nation has an edge in science and r&d which allows it to have things like the best military on earth, toys like we're typing on and cures for diseases that you may wake up tomorrow wishes we had.
> 
> I may not totally understand you as a libertarian, but this is "what" I as a person that watches science honestly believes is the best course of action for our nation to take.I point at over a hundred years of history with the national weather service and 60 years with nasa.
> 
> 
> 
> This is your problem with libertarians then, as I see it:
> *you people say that you want to do away with government no matter if it works or not. This is the message you scream day and night on this very board.*
> 'Us people' may include some anarcho-capitalists but all libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists.  There are extremes in every political stripe but they do not dominate the whole. Libertarians do not, as a whole, want government to cease to exist.  Most of us just want government to stick to what it is supposed to do and leave the rest to us.
> 
> Government has a pivotal role in science namely because they are the only entity in existence that can take a billion dollars and light it on fire without a single good thing coming out of it.  That happens when you are pushing science, sometimes VERY large investments do not pan out and the commercial industry does not take kindly to that.  I am fairly certain that no commercial entity would be landing a drill on a comet right now but the government can invest that kind of capitol without a clear benefit and we all can reap the discovered rewards after they are worked out - if there are any.
Click to expand...


Yes, there is a definite difference between a libertarian and an anarchist.    People seem to get the two confused quite often.


----------



## ScienceRocks

I'll be dead and buried in the ground before I stop supporting space travel!

*New Horizons mission nearing Pluto after nine years in space*
*12 hours ago by Scott Dance, The Baltimore Sun *



> It took the spacecraft New Horizons, hurtling from Earth faster than any mission before it, a matter of hours to pass the moon's orbit and a year to reach Jupiter's gravity.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Nine years into its journey, it's finally approaching its destination: Pluto.
> 
> Much has changed since scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., conceived the mission a decade and a half ago. Astronomers found two more moons orbiting Pluto, observed changes in its thin atmosphere, and determined the distant object wasn't a planet, after all.
> 
> But they expect those discoveries to pale compared to the observations New Horizons will record once they wake it from hibernation Saturday, and as it approaches an encounter with Pluto in July. They organized the mission to learn more about Pluto's composition and characteristics, and how planets formed in the early universe.



Read more at: New Horizons mission nearing Pluto after nine years in space


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA Plans Manned Mars Mission For 2030*



> NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s – goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010.
> Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and robotic and human exploration as we expand our presence into the solar system. Its formation and evolution are comparable to Earth, helping us learn more about our own planet’s history and future. Mars had conditions suitable for life in its past. Future exploration could uncover evidence of life, answering one of the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos: Does life exist beyond Earth?










I predict China will beat us to Mars. This program will be defunded by the next tea party government and killed. If we do it at all it will be after 2040.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Japan's Epic Asteroid Mission Successfully Launches



> Japan on Wednesday successfully launched a probe destined for a distant asteroid on a six-year mission, just weeks after a European spacecraft's historic landing on a comet.
> 
> 
> The Japanese Hayabusa probe exploded on its re-entry to Earth, but a capsule possibly containing samples of asteroid dust survived. Discovery News' Ian O'Neill explains.
> 
> The robotic spacecraft, Hayabusa-2, blasted off aboard Japan's H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in the south of the country.
> 
> The rocket roared up out of the Earth's gravitational pull trailed by orange flames at 1:22 pm (0422 GMT) after launch delays due to bad weather.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*AMAZON CEO: 'I Want To See Millions Of People Living And Working In Space'*



> Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has an ambitious vision for the future of humanity.
> 
> When asked about why space exploration appears to be a common interest among tech entrepreneurs such as himself, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Bezos replied with the following:




Read Bezo's quote at: http://www.businessi...2#ixzz3KrPfuLAV


----------



## ScienceRocks

> NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is set to awake on Dec. 6 from the last of its 18 hibernation periods and prepare for its initial approach towards Pluto, which will take place on Jan. 15. The spacecraft is scheduled to come as close as 6,200 miles from the surface of Pluto on July 14, 2015 -- the closest any man-made object has come to the dwarf planet. The mission marks the first visit outside Neptune's orbit to the Kuiper Belt, which consists of Pluto and thousands of objects that have not yet been identified, according to Spaceflight Now, a space news website.



from http://abcnews.go.co...ory?id=27285504


----------



## CrusaderFrank

I'd take all the money out of Climate Change and fund real space exploration


----------



## ScienceRocks

* European Extremely Large Telescope gets final go-ahead *
By Chris Wood
December 4, 2014
3 Pictures





> The ESO has given its European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) the final green light, allowing construction to go ahead at the Chilean site. The telescope is expected to take around a decade to complete, with the final installation expected to facilitate discoveries in fields such as galaxy composition and exoplanets.
> 
> Construction of the E-ELT was preliminarily confirmed in June 2012, but with the proviso that 90 percent of the required funding (more than €1 billion or around US$1.3 billion) for the project be secured before main construction could begin. With the accession of Poland to the ESO, that line has now been crossed, and 11 of the 14 member states voted in favor of going ahead with project earlier this week (the remaining three members were absent and are expected to continue to support the project).
> 
> While work on the telescope itself was unable to begin until now, an exception was made for the groundbreaking ceremony, which took place in June of this year. Civil works, such as the construction of an access road, were also permitted to go ahead at the site. The contract for the telescope’s main structure and dome construction – the largest ever from the ESO – will be awarded in late 2015.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Moon's molten, churning core likely once generated a dynamo*
*45 minutes ago by Jennifer Chu *
Moon s molten churning core likely once generated a dynamo


> When the Apollo astronauts returned to Earth, they brought with them some souvenirs: rocks, pebbles, and dust from the moon's surface. These lunar samples have since been analyzed for clues to the moon's past. One outstanding question has been whether the moon was once a complex, layered, and differentiated body, like the Earth is today, or an unheated relic of the early solar system, like most asteroids.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Finding infant earths and potential life just got easier*



> Among the billions and billions of stars in the sky, where should astronomers look for infant Earths where life might develop? New research from Cornell University's Institute for Pale Blue Dots shows where - and when - infant Earths are most likely to be found. The paper by research associate Ramses M. Ramirez and director Lisa Kaltenegger, "The Habitable Zones of Pre-Main-Sequence Stars" will be published in the Jan. 1, 2015, issue of _Astrophysical Journal Letters_.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "The search for new, habitable worlds is one of the most exciting things human beings are doing today and finding infant Earths will add another fascinating piece to the puzzle of how 'Pale Blue Dots' work" says Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences.
> 
> The researchers found that on young worlds the Habitable Zone - the orbital region where water can be liquid on the surface of a planet and where signals of life in the atmosphere can be detected with telescopes - turns out to be located further away from the young stars these worlds orbit than previously thought.
> 
> "This increased distance from their stars means these infant planets should be able to be seen early on by the next generation of ground-based telescopes," says Ramirez. "They are easier to spot when the Habitable Zone is farther out, so we can catch them when their star is really young."




Read more at: Finding infant earths and potential life just got easier


----------



## ScienceRocks

Cosmic Radiation Less Of A Risk To Astronauts Than Previously Thought


> Cosmic radiation from space travel could be less harmful to astronauts than previously believed, data from experiments conducted on board and outside of the International Space Station (ISS) has revealed.
> 
> The MATROSHKA experiment, the first comprehensive measurement of long-term exposure of space travelers to cosmic radiation, brought together researchers from the European Space Agency (ESA) and colleagues from other institutions to determine precisely how much radiation astronauts are exposed to during long-term space travel.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Nasa’s Orion deep space capsule launches*

5 December 2014


> A rocket has launched from Florida carrying an unmanned version of the US space agency's new crew capsule - Orion.
> 
> The ship is designed eventually to take humans beyond the space station, to destinations such as the Moon and Mars.
> Orion's brief flight today will be used to test critical technologies, like its heat shield and parachutes.
> The Delta IV-Heavy rocket roared off the pad at Cape Canaveral at 07:05 local time (12:05 GMT).
> It will throw the conical ship to 6,000km above the planet, to set up a fast re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.
> This will generate temperatures in the region of 2,000C, allowing engineers to check that Orion's thermal protection systems meet their specifications.
> The mission teams will also get to watch how the parachutes deploy as they gently lower the capsule into Pacific waters off the coast of Mexico's Baja Peninsula.
> That splashdown is expected to occur at about 11:30 EST (16:30 GMT).
> Nasa has a drone in the area hoping to relay video of the final moments of descent.




http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-30343171

Moon, yes; Mars, no. We should be planning to build a planetary ship that is fully reusable for mars.


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA's Orion craft hits high point of 3,600 miles*
*Dec 05, 2014 by By Marcia Dunn *




A NASA Orion capsule on top of a Delta IV rocket lifts off on its first unmanned orbital test flight from Complex 37 B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Friday, Dec. 5, 2014 at Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)


> (AP)—NASA's new Orion spacecraft has hit its intended high point of 3,600 miles above Earth,* the farthest a spacecraft built for humans has traveled in four decades. *





Read more at: NASA s Orion craft hits high point of 3 600 miles


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Gaia space observatory could discover 70,000 new Jupiters*
Gaia space observatory could discover 70 000 new Jupiters


> After a 20-year search, astronomers have uncovered a grand total of 1,900 planets residing outside of the Solar System. According to a new Princeton study, the Gaia space observatory launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) could help that figure grow by a factor of ten by the end of the decade, eventually reaching 70,000 planets after 10 years of scouting.
> 
> The Gaia mission was launched late last year with the primary objective to accurately measure the position of up to a billion stars – one percent of the Milky Way’s population – via high-precision triangulation. In the process, the spacecraft is also expected to detect half a million quasars, tens of thousands of asteroids and comets within our solar system, and a large number of new, distant planets.
> 
> 
> As planets orbit a star, gravitational effects cause the star to wobble in periodic and predictable patterns. By examining the star’s movement and breaking down the different wave components to the wobble, astronomers can identify both the number and the mass of orbiting planets in a given planetary system (the amplitude of the wobble relates to the planet’s mass, the period to the time it takes to complete a full orbit). According to a recent study, Gaia’s instruments are expected to be able to characterize the wobble of stars up to 1,000 parsecs (3,262 light-years) away.
> 
> The mission was first approved by the ESA in 2000, but our knowledge on the nature and distribution of exoplanets has greatly improved since then (for instance, one recent study claims that the Milky Way alone may be home to over 100 million planets capable of supporting complex life). Astronomers at Princeton have therefore revised their estimations and now believe that the probe may be able to detect an astonishing 20,000 planets during its five-year nominal mission, or up to 70,000 planets if the mission is extended to 10 years.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dawn Spacecraft Sees Ceres*


> Discovered on January 1, 1801 by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, Ceres is the largest body in the main asteroid belt.
> 
> It is about 950 kilometers in diameter and has an apparent magnitude that can range from 6.7 to 9.3.
> 
> Ceres was the largest known asteroid in the asteroid belt until 2006. But in 2006, the International Astronomical Union formed a new class of objects known as dwarf planets. By definition a dwarf planet is spherical and travels in an orbit around the Sun, and Ceres fits this definition perfectly.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Strange Circular Mound in Athabasca Valles on Mars Puzzles NASA Scientists*




> The circular feature is about 2 km wide. It looks like a circular ‘island’ surrounded by a ‘sea’ of smooth-looking lava flows.
> 
> The region where the ‘island’ was spotted is called the Athabasca Valles. It is a geologically young 300-km-long outflow channel system located in north-central Elysium Planitia.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Reduced Light Curves from Campaign 0 of the K2 Mission*
Andrew Vanderburg
 1412.1827 Reduced Light Curves from Campaign 0 of the K2 Mission
(Submitted on 4 Dec 2014)


> After the failure of two reaction wheels and the end of its original mission, the Kepler spacecraft has begun observing stars in new fields along the ecliptic plane in its extended K2 mission. Although K2 promises to deliver high precision photometric light curves for thousands of new targets across the sky, the K2 pipeline is not yet delivering light curves to users, and photometric data from K2 is dominated by systematic effects due to the spacecraft's worsened pointing control. We present reduced light curves for 7743 targets proposed by the community for observations during Campaign 0 of the K2 mission. We extract light curves from target pixel files and correct for the motion of the spacecraft using a modified version of the technique presented in Vanderburg & Johnson (2014). We release the data for the community in the form of both downloadable light curves and a simple web interface, available at this https URL This ArXiv only report is meant to serve as data release notes -- for a refereed description of the technique, please refer to Vanderburg & Johnson (2014).




*Reduced Light Curves from K2 Campaign 0*
K2 Photometry

*Explore Campaign 0 data here!*


> Please contact us at *avanderburg [at] cfa [dot] harvard [dot] edu* with any questions about our data products or suggestions for how we might improve this interface and archive.
> After data from Campaign 0 of the K2 Mission was released in September 2014, we applied our technique from Vanderburg & Johnson (2014) to nearly 8000 targets and have released the data to the public. High quality Campaign 0 data spans 35 days, significantly longer than the duration of the engineering test, so we made some modifications to the technique of Vanderburg & Johnson, which we describe in our  data release notes.





 Our reduced light curves are available for download on this page as a tarball, at the following links: 

 Campaign 0 Corrected Light Curves only
Campaign 0 Light Curves with Diagnostics



> The first link includes only the corrected light curve - that is, there are two columns, one for time, and one for flux. All points when we detect that the thrusters are firing have been excluded. The second link includes the raw light curves, corrected light curves, "arclength" positions along the direction of _Kepler_'s pointing jitter, and a tag that indicates whether the thrusters are firing.
> 
> We have also uploaded our data in individual files and created webpages displaying the data and various diagnostic plots. You can access the data  here. The list includes the Guest Observer IDs for the targets, as proposed by the community. You can find the proposals corresponding to the Guest Observer IDs  online here.
> 
> Once again, like in the engineering test data, the correction can fail for stars with rapid or high amplitude astrophysical variability. In these cases, it could be better to use the raw data and the "arclength" positions in the diagnostics file to re-derive the SFF correction simultaneously with a model of the light curve.
> 
> If you have any questions, please email me at avanderburg [at] cfa [dot] harvard [dot] edu. If you would like to use this data in your own publication, please cite Vanderburg & Johnson (2014).


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Curiosity rover finds clues to how water helped shape Martian landscape*
*7 hours ago by Dwayne Brown *


> (Phys.org)—Observations by NASA's Curiosity Rover indicate Mars' Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This interpretation of Curiosity's finds in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes at many locations on the Red Planet.
> 
> "If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on Mars," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "A more radical explanation is that Mars' ancient, thicker atmosphere raised temperatures above freezing globally, but so far we don't know how the atmosphere did that."




Read more at: Curiosity rover finds clues to how water helped shape Martian landscape


----------



## ScienceRocks

*On Titan, mega winds have built sand dunes hundreds of feet high*
On Titan mega winds have built sand dunes hundreds of feet high Science Recorder


> Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is the only known planet other than Earth to have a dense atmosphere and stable bodies of liquid on its surface. Instead of water, however, methane and ethane fill Titan’s seas.
> 
> In Titan’s lower latitudes, the Cassini orbiter—which has been observing Saturn since 2004—has detected enormous wind-driven sand dunes that are hundreds of feet high and hundreds of miles in length, according to a statement by the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute.
> 
> The sand dunes are not composed of silicates like those here on Earth, said University of Tennessee planetary scientist Devon Burr in the statement. Burr, formerly SETI, is lead author of a paper published in the journal Nature that discusses the enormous dunes and how they are created.
> 
> Instead of silicates, the Titan’s dunes are composed of hydrocarbons and “may possibly include particles of water ice that are coated with these organic materials,” Burr says.
> 
> How this strange alien sand got there is still unknown, but even more baffling is the direction of the winds that create the dunes, SETI says.
> 
> Cassini’s observations indicate winds that blow in a more west-to-east direction, contrary to the prevailing easterlies. Because this defied reasonable expectations, the research team realized that adjustments had to be made to the usual models for wind transport to account for Titan’s denser atmosphere and more viscous sand.
> 
> Using a wind tunnel, the team discovered that the minimum wind speed necessary for transporting Titan’s hydrocarbon-laden sand was higher than the typical prevailing winds on this alien world.
> 
> The wind tunnel was “a bear to operate,” noted co-author John Marshall of SETI. But, he said, “Dr. Burr’s refurbishment of the facility as a Titan simulator has tamed the beast. It is now an important addition to NASA’s arsenal of planetary simulation facilities.”
> 
> This greater wind speed threshold explains the puzzle of the dunes’ alignment. Sometimes, Titan’s winds reverse direction and increase dramatically in intensity because of the Sun’s changing position in the Titanian sky. And because the minimum wind speed is so high, only the more powerful west-to-east winds can move and shape the dunes.
> Instead of silicates, the Titan’s dunes are composed of hydrocarbons and “may possibly include particles of water ice that are coated with these organic materials,” Burr says.
> 
> How this strange alien sand got there is still unknown, but even more baffling is the direction of the winds that create the dunes, SETI says.
> 
> Cassini’s observations indicate winds that blow in a more west-to-east direction, contrary to the prevailing easterlies. Because this defied reasonable expectations, the research team realized that adjustments had to be made to the usual models for wind transport to account for Titan’s denser atmosphere and more viscous sand.
> 
> Using a wind tunnel, the team discovered that the minimum wind speed necessary for transporting Titan’s hydrocarbon-laden sand was higher than the typical prevailing winds on this alien world.
> 
> The wind tunnel was “a bear to operate,” noted co-author John Marshall of SETI. But, he said, “Dr. Burr’s refurbishment of the facility as a Titan simulator has tamed the beast. It is now an important addition to NASA’s arsenal of planetary simulation facilities.”
> 
> This greater wind speed threshold explains the puzzle of the dunes’ alignment. Sometimes, Titan’s winds reverse direction and increase dramatically in intensity because of the Sun’s changing position in the Titanian sky. And because the minimum wind speed is so high, only the more powerful west-to-east winds can move and shape the dunes.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dust from a comet has been discovered for the first time on the Earth's surface*
*8 hours ago by Bob Yirka 

*




Credit: _Earth and Planetary Science Letters_, Volume 410, 15 January 2015, Pages 1–11.


> (Phys.org)—A combined team of researchers from Japan and the U.S. has found particles of comet dust in ice extracted from the Antarctic—the first time comet dust particles have been found on the surface of the Earth. In their paper published in the journal _Earth and Planetary Science Letters_, the researchers describe how they found the dust particles and what they've learned by analyzing them.




Read more at: Dust from a comet has been discovered for the first time on the Earth s surface


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX Will Try to Land Rocket on Floating Ocean Platform Next Week *









> SpaceX will apparently attempt something truly epic during next week's cargo launch to the International Space Station.
> 
> During the Dec. 16 launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which will send SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule toward the orbiting lab, the California-based company will try to bring the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth for a controlled landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.





http://www.space.com...g-platform.html


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## ScienceRocks

*New initiative gives you the chance to name an exoplanet*
New initiative gives you the chance to name an exoplanet


> The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the organization in charge of naming celestial objects, has set up a public contest that will let people all around the globe pick the names of 20 to 30 well-characterized exoplanets and their respective host stars by August next year.
> 
> It’s been 20 years since the first planet outside of our solar system was discovered, and nowadays the observations of Kepler and other powerful telescopes are bringing the exoplanet count close to an impressive two thousand mark. Most of these worlds, however, are only known by very dry and unimaginative scientific names (such as "CoRoT-4 b" or "PSR 1257 12 d") that do little justice to giant rogue planets without a host star or distant worlds made largely of diamonds.
> 
> The IAU is aiming to remedy that with a worldwide contest that will let organizations around the world propose popular names for up to 30 out of 305 well-known extrasolar planets, and will then let people around the globe have the final say by means of online voting.
> 
> Astronomy-related clubs and non-profits from all countries are free to register on the NameExoWorlds website, where the entire process will take place, until the end of the year. Next month these organizations will be asked to vote to select the 20 to 30 planets to be named, and later on they will be able to submit their naming proposals along with a 250-word rationale explaining their choice. Starting from April, the general public will be able to vote to select the names among the ones that have been proposed, with the final results set to be announced in August 2015.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA officially announces Manned Mars Mission*



> NASA is launching its boldest test flight in decades this week. An unmanned capsule will head off on Thursday to reach a distance of 3,600 miles from Earth—the farthest space mission with a craft designed to accommodate humans since the final Apollo 17 trip to the moon in 1972.
> 
> Called Orion, the program will mark a key initial step toward a human mission to Mars. Orion is also designed to excite the public’s imagination for deep-space exploration, much as the Apollo moon missions sparked an interest in space and produced civilian engineering triumphs. With the first test flight on Thursday, NASA wants to make it abundantly clear that much of the hardware that can get humans to Mars already exists and is ready to fly.
> 
> “My hope is that when we fly the capsule on Thursday, it will energize the public and energize that middle schooler [who] isn’t quite sure what he wants to do, but he likes math and science,” says Richard Boitnott, an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
> 
> 
> No one is about to strap on a suit and launch to Mars any time soon. Despite NASA’s excitement, the pace of development—driven by Congressional funding—means that the next Orion test flight won’t happen for nearly three years. The first flight with astronauts isn’t planned to take place until six years from now.



*
GOOD NEWS!!! Hopefully they will get better funding to make it reality.*


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## ScienceRocks

GREAT NEWS!!!

http://www.spacenews.com/article/civ...-spending-bill



> The appropriations bill, which funds NASA and most of the rest of the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year, gives the agency $17.99 billion for fiscal year 2015, including increases for several major exploration and science programs. That total is $530 million above the administration’s request of $17.46 billion for the agency, and about $100 million above separate House and Senate appropriations bills considered earlier this year.
> 
> Two major elements of NASA’s exploration strategy won funding boosts in the final bill. The Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket will receive $1.7 billion, an increase of $320 million over the administration’s request. The Orion spacecraft will get $1.194 billion, an increase of $141.2 million over the request.



under Bush it was more like 18.5 billion per year. Should be at least that again!


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## ScienceRocks

*Rosetta results: Comets 'did not bring water to Earth'*
*10 December 2014* Last updated at 22:52 GMT 
BBC News - Rosetta results Comets did not bring water to Earth 


> Scientists have dealt a blow to the theory that most water on Earth came from comets.
> 
> Results from Europe's Rosetta mission, which made history by landing on Comet 67P in November, shows the water on the icy mass is unlike that on our planet.
> 
> The team found that there was far more heavy water on Comet 67P than on Earth.
> 
> David Shukman reports on the findings.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*3-D Printer on Space Station Makes Its First Part*


> The international space station’s 3-D printer has produced its first part, ushering in what proponents hope will be a new age of off-Earth manufacturing.
> 
> The 3-D printer, which was designed and built by California-based startup Made in Space, created an extruder plate — a piece of itself — Nov. 24, wrapping up the task in about an hour. The milestone marks a step toward a future in which voyaging spaceships print out their own spare parts on the go and colonists on other worlds make what they need from the dirt beneath their boots, advocates say.
> 
> “This is the first object truly manufactured off of planet Earth,” Made in Space Chief Executive Aaron Kemmer said in an interview. “It’s a huge milestone, not only for Made in Space and NASA, but for humanity as a whole.”



- See more at: 3-D Printer on Space Station Makes Its First Part - SpaceNews.com


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## ScienceRocks

* ESA ATV tests new docking technology *
By Anthony Wood
December 11, 2014
3 Pictures


 


> The European Space Agency's (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Georges Lemaitre captured the International Space Station (ISS) in a new light in August, as it fired up a set of experimental sensors that may form the basis of the next generation of automated docking systems. Such tech will be vital for the increasingly-ambitious missions planned by NASA and its partners to explore the Red Planet and beyond.


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## ScienceRocks

Even in colour, Comet 67P is grey



> The first colour image from the Rosetta spacecraft shows that Comet 67P is even more dark and monochrome than expected.
> 
> Despite being carefully assembled from three images taken with red, green and blue filters, the shot still looks effectively black and white.
> 
> It comes from the Osiris camera, which is on board the orbiting craft that last month made history by dropping a lander onto the comet's surface.
> 
> The Osiris team says 67P is "as black as coal" and surprisingly uniform.


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## ScienceRocks

*MAVEN mission identifies links in chain leading to atmospheric loss*
*4 hours ago by Nancy Neal-Jones *


> Early discoveries by NASA's newest Mars orbiter are starting to reveal key features about the loss of the planet's atmosphere to space over time.
> 
> The findings are among the first returns from NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, which entered its science phase on Nov. 16. The observations reveal a new process by which the solar wind can penetrate deep into a planetary atmosphere. They include the first comprehensive measurements of the composition of Mars' upper atmosphere and electrically charged ionosphere. The results also offer an unprecedented view of ions as they gain the energy that will lead to their to escape from the atmosphere.




Read more at: MAVEN mission identifies links in chain leading to atmospheric loss


*MESSENGER data suggest recurring meteor shower on Mercury*
*10 hours ago by Nancy Neal-Jones *



> The closest planet to the sun appears to get hit by a periodic meteor shower, possibly associated with a comet that produces multiple events annually on Earth.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The clues pointing to Mercury's shower were discovered in the very thin halo of gases that make up the planet's exosphere, which is under study by NASA's MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft.
> 
> "The possible discovery of a meteor shower at Mercury is really exciting and especially important because the plasma and dust environment around Mercury is relatively unexplored," said Rosemary Killen, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, available online in Icarus.



Read more at: MESSENGER data suggest recurring meteor shower on Mercury


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## ScienceRocks

*The world's largest single-aperture telescope is completed in China*



> The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is a major new astronomical observatory built in Guizhou province, southwest China. Constructed between March 2011 and September 2016,* it becomes the largest single-aperture telescope in the world, half a kilometre wide and featuring a collecting area of 2.1 million sq ft (196,000 sq m). This dwarfs the next largest – the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico – which had held the title since 1963.* The dish itself sits within a natural depression and is unable to move, due to its enormous size. However, the surface shape is changeable and the feed cabin (where radio waves are focused) can be moved around. This provides a viewing angle of up to 40° from the vertical.
> 
> FAST is able to gaze three times further into space and survey the skies ten times faster than Arecibo. Its primary roles include mapping the neutral hydrogen within the Milky Way at very high resolution, tripling the number of known pulsars from 2,000 to 6,000, and listening for possible signals from alien civilisations at distances of up to 1,000 light years; far more stars can be monitored than in previous surveys. FAST is the latest in a whole series of massive new telescopes being built around the world in the early 21st century, heralding a new era of astronomy.





*Click to enlarge*




Credit: NASA / National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Curiosity rover finds active, ancient organic chemistry on Mars*
*1 hour ago by Dwayne Brown *


> (Phys.org)—NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's drill.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "This temporary increase in methane—sharply up and then back down—tells us there must be some relatively localized source," said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Curiosity rover science team. "There are many possible sources, biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock."


Read more at: Curiosity rover finds active ancient organic chemistry on Mars


*Curiosity rover makes first detection of organic matter on Mars*
*2 hours ago *



> The team responsible for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first definitive detection of organic molecules at Mars. Organic molecules are the building blocks of all known forms of terrestrial life, and consist of a wide variety of molecules made primarily of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. However, organic molecules can also be made by chemical reactions that don't involve life, and there is not enough evidence to tell if the matter found by the team came from ancient Martian life or from a non-biological process. Examples of non-biological sources include chemical reactions in water at ancient Martian hot springs or delivery of organic material to Mars by interplanetary dust or fragments of asteroids and comets.



Read more at: Curiosity rover makes first detection of organic matter on Mars


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter*
Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter -- ScienceDaily



> Could there finally be tangible evidence for the existence of dark matter in the Universe? After sifting through reams of X-ray data, scientists in EPFL's Laboratory of Particle Physics and Cosmology (LPPC) and Leiden University believe they could have identified the signal of a particle of dark matter. This substance, which up to now has been purely hypothetical, is run by none of the standard models of physics other than through the gravitational force. Their research will be published next week in _Physical Review Letters_.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Study finds an exoplanet, tilted on its side, could still be habitable if covered in ocean*
*1 hour ago by Jennifer Chu *




Credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT


> Nearly 2,000 planets beyond our solar system have been identified to date. Whether any of these exoplanets are hospitable to life depends on a number of criteria. Among these, scientists have thought, is a planet's obliquity—the angle of its axis relative to its orbit around a star.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earth, for instance, has a relatively low obliquity, rotating around an axis that is nearly perpendicular to the plane of its orbit around the sun. Scientists suspect, however, that exoplanets may exhibit a host of obliquities, resembling anything from a vertical spinning top to a horizontal rotisserie. The more extreme the tilt, the less habitable a planet may be—or so the thinking has gone.
> 
> Now scientists at MIT have found that even a high-obliquity planet, with a nearly horizontal axis, could potentially support life, so long as the planet were completely covered by an ocean. In fact, even a shallow ocean, about 50 meters deep, would be enough to keep such a planet at relatively comfortable temperatures, averaging around 60 degrees Fahrenheit year-round.
> 
> David Ferreira, a former research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), says that on the face of it, a planet with high obliquity would appear rather extreme: Tilted on its side, its north pole would experience daylight continuously for six months, and then darkness for six months, as the planet revolves around its star.





Read more at: Study finds an exoplanet tilted on its side could still be habitable if covered in ocean


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## ScienceRocks

*New space race aims at creating breathable air on Mars*
By Eric Mack

_December 17, 2014_
New space race aims at creating breathable air on Mars
3 Pictures


Mars One's vision of a Martian base



> The race to reach Mars is more like a decades-long marathon, but in the short term the latest space race involves inventing ways that might make setting up shop on the Red Planet possible. In the past few months alone, three teams have unveiled their visions of how humans might breathe on the fourth planet from the sun.
> 
> NASA hopes to conduct a manned mission to the Red Planet, but probably not until the mid-2030s. Meanwhile, SpaceX and Mars One are talking about making the trip in under 10 years from now. Whenever it is, establishing any kind of presence on Mars is going to require some new innovations just to deliver basic life support for anyone looking to stay for any extended duration.
> 
> Students from the University of Western Australia and Mars One astronaut candidate Josh Richards are finalists in the Mars One University competition, which would send key experiments to the surface of Mars in 2018. Mars One is a non-profit that has used a contest and media-centric approach to fund a one-way manned mission to establish a base on Mars, as soon as the mid-2020s.
> 
> The team, which calls its effort the "Helena Payload Project," hopes to demonstrate its method of extracting water from Martian soil and using electrolysis to produce breathable air.


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA’s TESS Mission Cleared for Next Development Phase*
NASA s TESS Mission Cleared for Next Development Phase International Space Fellowship


> NASA has officially confirmed the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, clearing it to move forward into the development phase. This marks a significant step for the TESS mission, which would search the entire sky for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Island Telescope sees Extra-Solar Planet, 55 Cancri e *


> A telescope based on the ground in La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, called Nordic, has seen 55 Cancri e, an extrasolar planet, which is twice the size of earth and has a parent star.
> 
> Nordic was the first one to observe the planet that revolves around a sun-like star. It saw 55 Cancri e in 2004. The size and proximity to a sun makes it akin to the planets that can support life. It is expected that the telescope was able to see the planet due to the 'transit method'.
> 
> It is when a dip comes in star's brightness level when a planet passes in front of it. The method has proved quite beneficial for space-based telescopes to study the super-earths or earth-like exoplanets.



- See more at: Island Telescope sees Extra-Solar Planet 55 Cancri e Perfect Science


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## ScienceRocks

* Details of the Technical Challenges for Reusing Rockets*


> During their next flight, SpaceX will attempt the precision landing of a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time, on a custom-built ocean platform known as the autonomous spaceport drone ship. While SpaceX has already demonstrated two successful soft water landings, executing a precision landing on an unanchored ocean platform is significantly more challenging.
> 
> The odds of success are not great—perhaps 50% at best. However this test represents the first in a series of similar tests that will ultimately deliver a fully reusable Falcon 9 first stage.
> 
> Returning anything from space is a challenge, but returning a Falcon 9 first stage for a precision landing presents a number of additional hurdles. At 14 stories tall and traveling upwards of 1300 m/s (nearly 1 mi/s), stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for reentry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm.


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## ScienceRocks

*India launches biggest ever rocket into space*
*2 minutes ago *




The Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mk-III rocket lifts off from The Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota Island, some 80kms north of Chennai, December 18, 2014


> India successfully launched its biggest ever rocket on Thursday, including an unmanned capsule which could one day send astronauts into space, as the country ramps up its ambitious space programme.
> 
> The rocket, designed to carry heavier communication and other satellites into higher orbit, blasted off from Sriharikota in the southeast state of Andhra Pradesh.
> 
> "This was a very significant day in the history of (the) Indian space programme," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K.S Radhakrishnan said from mission control as fellow scientists clapped and cheered.
> 
> ISRO scientists have been riding high since an Indian spacecraft successfully reached Mars in September on a shoe-string budget, winning Asia's race to the Red Planet and sparking an outpouring of national pride.
> 
> Although India has successfully launched lighter satellites in recent years, it has struggled to match the heavier loads sent up by other countries.
> 
> The new rocket, weighing 630 tonnes and capable of carrying 4 tonnes, is a boost for India's attempts to grab a greater slice of the $300-billion global space market.
> 
> "India, you have a new launch vehicle with you. We have made it again," ISRO mission director S. Somnath said.




Read more at: India launches biggest ever rocket into space


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## mamooth

Tomorrow's resupply mission to the ISS has been pushed to Jan. 6. SpaceX is investigating an unnamed issue found in the static test firing of the Falcon 9 rocket.

CRS-5 Launch Date NET Jan. 6 SpaceX


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## HenryBHough

Remember when America had an actual space program?


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## ScienceRocks

HenryBHough said:


> Remember when America had an actual space program?



We can have it again if we had leaders with real vision.


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## ScienceRocks

*Kepler proves it can still find planets*
*5 hours ago *




This artist's conception portrays the first planet discovered by the Kepler spacecraft during its K2 mission. A transit of the planet was teased out of K2's noisier data using ingenious computer algorithms developed by a CfA researcher. The …more


> To paraphrase Mark Twain, the report of the Kepler spacecraft's death was greatly exaggerated. Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, Kepler is still alive and working. The evidence comes from the discovery of a new super-Earth using data collected during Kepler's "second life."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Kepler has been reborn and is continuing to make discoveries. Even better, the planet it found is ripe for follow-up studies," says lead author Andrew Vanderburg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
> 
> NASA's Kepler spacecraft detects planets by looking for transits, when a star dims slightly as a planet crosses in front of it. The smaller the planet, the weaker the dimming, so brightness measurements must be exquisitely precise. To enable that precision, the spacecraft must maintain a steady pointing.





Read more at: Kepler proves it can still find planets
---------------------

Reborn Kepler Makes First Exoplanet Find of New Mission - SpaceRef


> NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft makes a comeback with the discovery of the first exoplanet found using its new mission -- K2.
> (…)
> The newly confirmed planet, *HIP 116454b*, is 2.5 times the diameter of Earth and follows a close, nine-day orbit around a star that is smaller and cooler than our sun, making the planet too hot for life as we know it. HIP 116454b and its star are 180 light-years from Earth, toward the constellation Pisces.



*
Confirmation and characterization of the protoplanet HD100546 b - Direct evidence for gas giant planet formation at 50 au*
 1412.5173 Confirmation and characterization of the protoplanet HD100546 b - Direct evidence for gas giant planet formation at 50 au



> We present the first multi-wavelength, high-contrast imaging study confirming the protoplanet embedded in the disk around the Herbig Ae/Be star HD100546. The object is detected at L' (~3.8 micron) and M' (~4.8 micron), but not at K_s (~2.1 micron), and the emission consists of a point source component surrounded by spatially resolved emission. For the point source component we derive apparent magnitudes of L'=13.92±0.10 mag, M'=13.33±0.16 mag, and K_s>15.43±0.11 mag (3-σ limit), and a separation and position angle of (0.457±0.014)'' and (8.4±1.4)∘, and (0.472±0.014)'' and (9.2±1.4)∘ in L' and M', respectively. We demonstrate that the object is co-moving with the central star and can reject any (sub-)stellar fore-/background object. Fitting a single temperature blackbody to the observed fluxes of the point source component yields an effective temperature of Teff=1028+227−253 K and a radius for the emitting area of R=6.0+2.5−2.6 Jupiter radii. The best-fit luminosity is L=(2.3+0.9−0.3)⋅10−4 solar luminosities. We quantitatively compare our findings with predictions from evolutionary and atmospheric models for young, gas giant planets, discuss the possible existence of a warm, circumplanetary disk, and note that the de-projected physical separation from the host star of (53±2) au poses a challenge standard planet formation theories. Considering the suspected existence of an additional planet orbiting at ~13-14 au, HD100546 is a unique laboratory to study the formation of multiple gas giant planets empirically.


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA considers possibilities for manned mission to Venus*
*10 hours ago by Bob Yirka 

*




HAVOC. Credit: NASA Langley Research Center


> (Phys.org) —NASA's Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate has issued a report outlining a possible way for humans to visit Venus, rather than Mars—by hovering in the atmosphere instead of landing on the surface. The hovering vehicle, which they call a High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), would resemble a blimp with solar panels on top, and would allow people to do research just 50 kilometers above the surface of the planet.




Read more at: NASA considers possibilities for manned mission to Venus


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## ScienceRocks

NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite NASA


> NASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. TESS will launch aboard a Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle, with liftoff targeted for August 2017 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
> 
> The total cost for NASA to launch TESS is approximately $87 million, which includes the launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry, and other launch support requirements.
> 
> TESS’s science goal is to detect transiting exoplanets orbiting nearby bright stars. During a three-year funded science mission, TESS will sample hundreds of thousands of stars in order to detect a large sample of exoplanets, with an emphasis on discovering Earth- and super-Earth-sized planets in the solar neighborhood.
> 
> The Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for management and oversight of the Falcon 9 v1.1 launch services for TESS. The TESS Mission is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with oversight by the Explorers Program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.



Space x rules!!!


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## ScienceRocks

*Astronauts at ISS use 3D printer to print a socket wrench *

Submitted by Safar Haddad on Fri, 12/19/2014 - 18:59






> Astronauts at the International Space Station, for the very first time have printed a wrench, designed on Earth and then transmitted to space for manufacturing directly at ISS.
> 
> This is done by the ‘Made In Space’, a California company that designed the 3D printer aboard the ISS. In the past, International Space Station Commander Barry Wilmore had mentioned about the need for a ratcheting socket wrench and so the team decided to create one.
> 
> Up till now, every time an astronaut needed a specific tool, it would have to be flown up on the next mission to the ISS, which took months.



- See more at: Astronauts at ISS use 3D printer to print a socket wrench Perfect Science


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## ScienceRocks

*  Google Lunar XPrize deadline extended to 2016 – Milestone Prize winners to be announced in January  *
By Chris Wood
December 19, 2014
3 Pictures


 


> Teams competing for the Google Lunar XPrize have been given some significant leeway to develop their projects, with the final deadline now pushed back to 2016. According to the competition’s judges, there’s been significant progress towards completing the lofty goal, with US$6 million in funding to be awarded in January 2015.


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## ScienceRocks

* NASA releases video of Orion re-entry *
By David Szondy
December 21, 2014
3 Pictures


 


> Proving that not all the space spectaculars are on the big screen at Christmas, NASA has released video taken from inside the Orion spacecraft during its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere earlier this month. The ten-minute video shows the final minutes before its December 10 splashdown as it made a fiery descent ahead of a parachute landing in the Pacific ocean.


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## ScienceRocks

*Russia successfully test-launches new rocket*
*6 minutes ago *


> Russia on Tuesday successfully test-launched its newest heavy-class Angara rocket, which has been developed with a view to launching manned spacecraft, the defence ministry said.
> 
> President Vladimir Putin oversaw by video link the launch of the Angara-A5 from Plesetsk in northern Russia at 0557 GMT, the defence ministry said in a statement.
> 
> The test launch of the light version of the Angara rocket ended in embarrassment in June due to a sudden automatic launch abort.
> 
> Designed to succeed Proton and other Soviet-era launchers, the Angara is billed as the first rocket to have been completely built after the collapse of the Soviet Union.




Read more at: Russia successfully test-launches new rocket


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## ScienceRocks

*Students aim to put cyanobacteria on Mars to generate oxygen*
*7 hours ago by Tomasz Nowakowski, Astrowatch.net *





Cyanobacteria Spirulina. Credit: cyanoknights.bio


> Mars is a very harsh and hostile environment for future human explorers and like any other known planet it has no breathable air. That could change someday, and it may be soon enough for our generation to witness it, as the student team from Germany has a bold vision to make a first step to terraform the Red Planet, turning it more Earth-like. The plan is to send cyanobacteria to Mars to generate oxygen out of carbon dioxide which is the main component of Martian atmosphere (nearly 96%). "Cyanobacteria do live in conditions on Earth where no life would be expected. You find them everywhere on our planet!" team leader Robert P. Schröder told astrowatch.net. "It is the first step on Mars to test microorganisms." The project is participating in the Mars One University Competition and if it wins, it will be send as a payload to Mars, onboard the Dutch company's mission to the Red Planet. Now everyone can vote to help make it happen by visiting the CyanoKnights.bio webpage.





Read more at: Students aim to put cyanobacteria on Mars to generate oxygen


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## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX reaches latest milestone *

http://www.valleymor...177aea36fb.html


> Space Exploration Technologies — SpaceX — has reached the first milestone in its quest to launch crews to the International Space Station from U.S. soil, through a Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract with NASA.
> 
> The space agency announced Dec. 19 that it had approved the milestone, which basically entailed SpaceX describing to NASA its “current design baseline,” including how the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket will be manufactured, launched, landed and the crew recovered.


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## ScienceRocks

Here is another of the one above.

* NASA approves first SpaceX milestone for Crew Dragon spacecraft *
By David Szondy
December 25, 2014






> At the moment, if you want to fly to the International Space Station, you're only option is to hitch a lift on one of Russia's 1970s-vintage Soyuz space capsules. That may not be the case for too much longer, with NASA announcing that it has approved the first milestone for the manned version of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.


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## ScienceRocks

*Scientists develop cost-effective & time-saving method to reach Mars *

Submitted by Safar Haddad on Thu, 12/25/2014 - 12:49






> A new method developed by a pair of scientist for transporting robotic rovers, satellites and astronaut-carrying spacecraft to Mars claims to be much more economic as well as time-saving than the existing method.
> 
> Under the existing method, called Hohmann transfer, a space craft, after rocketing through Earth's atmosphere, makes a beeline for Mars while barreling through space at a very high speed. As it approaches the Red Planet, its thrusters fire in the opposite direction to slam on the brakes and swing the craft into the planet's orbit.
> 
> While the current method has been tested and has proved to be reliable, it is also very expensive and time consuming. Moreover launches are quite limited to a very brief period when Earth and Mars are in an apt position for the mission launch.
> 
> However, a new method, called ballistic capture, can help solve al those issues. It would do away with the fuel-guzzling that Hohmann transfer method's high-speed braking requires. Rather than rocketing direct at the Red Planet, a craft using the ballistic capture technique would launch out ahead of the planet's orbital path.
> 
> The craft would gradually reduce its speed, hold in a place, and wait for the Red Planet to swing by. Eventually the gravitational power of Mars will pull the craft into its orbit as it approaches the right point.
> 
> Edward Belbruno, a longtime NASA scientist who co-authored the research paper with Francesco Topputo of the Polytechnic University of Milan, said, "This results in a substantial savings in capture from that of a classical Hohmann transfer under certain conditions. This transfer type may be of interest for Mars missions because of lower capture costs, moderate flight time and flexibility."



- See more at: Scientists develop cost-effective time-saving method to reach Mars Perfect Science


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## ScienceRocks

*Innovative use of pressurant extends MESSENGER's mission, enables collection of new data*
*12 hours ago *




Artist depiction of the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury. Credit: NASA / JHU/APL


> The MESSENGER spacecraft will soon run literally on fumes. After more than 10 years traveling in space, nearly four of those orbiting Mercury, the spacecraft has expended most of its propellant and was on course to impact the planet's surface at the end of March 2015. But engineers on the team have devised a way to use the pressurization gas in the spacecraft's propulsion system to propel MESSENGER for as long as another month, allowing scientists to collect even more data about the planet closest to the Sun.





Read more at: Innovative use of pressurant extends MESSENGER s mission enables collection of new data

*The passenger spacecraft where you can sit in the cockpit for $95,000: New pictures reveal the XCOR Lynx space plane is getting close to completion *



> The tourist spacecraft that could blast passengers into space for just $95,000 and let them sit in the cockpit is nearing completion, the firm behind it has revealed.
> 
> Passengers in the XCOR Lynx will be able to view the earth from over 330,000ft above the Earth in the two seater craft.
> 
> These pictures reveal the Spacecraft is entering the final stages of production - and is expected to blast off in 2016, despite fears that the tragic accident that hit rival Virgin Galactic could delay the industry as a whole.




Read more: The passenger spacecraft where you can sit in the cockpit for 95 000 New pictures reveal the XCOR Lynx space plane is getting close to completion Daily Mail Online 
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Venus Gets Weirder: CO2 Oceans May Have Covered Surface*
*Venus Gets Weirder CO2 Oceans May Have Covered Surface*
 by Charles Q. Choi, Space.com Contributor  |  December 28, 2014 08:37am ET







This image shows the surface of the northern hemisphere of Venus as observed by NASA's Magellan radar-mapping spacecraft, which peered through the planet's thick clouds
	
 during a mission that ended in 1994. Scientists now suspect Venus may have once harbored oceans of carbon dioxide in the ancient past.


> Venus may have once possessed strange oceans of carbon dioxide fluid that helped shape the planet's surface, researchers say.
> 
> Venus is often described as Earth's twin planet because it is the world closest to Earth in size, mass, distance and chemical makeup. However, whereas Earth is a haven for life, Venusis typically described as hellish, with a crushing atmosphere and clouds of corrosive
> 
> sulfuric acid floating over a rocky desert surface hot enough to melt lead.
> 
> Although Venus is currently unbearably hot and dry, it might have once had oceans like Earth. Prior research suggested that Venus possessed enough water in its atmosphere in the past to cover the entire planet in an ocean about 80 feet deep (25 meters) — if all that water could somehow fall down as rain. But the planet was probably too warm for such water to cool down and precipitate, even if the planet did have enough moisture.


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## ScienceRocks

*Earth-like planets in Milky Way hint at 'possibility of ancient life' *
By Eric Mack

_December 29, 2014_

2 Pictures


The KOI-3158 system compared to other known planets (Image credit: Tiago Campante)



> A team of scientists have found what they claim is the oldest Earth-sized planet in the Milky Way, hinting at the possibility of life elsewhere in our galaxy that is even more ancient than our own sun.
> 
> Dr. Tiago Campante, an Asteroseismology Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham (UK) who led the research team, presented their findings at a symposium in France earlier this year. The work centered on a system of five terrestrial-sized planets observed by the Kepler space telescope transiting the star KOI-3158, about 117 light years from us in the constellation Lyra.
> 
> KOI-3158 is actually part of what's called a hierarchical triple system including two smaller M dwarf stars. Kepler observed the five Earth-sized planets transiting the larger primary star, KOI-3158, which Campante says makes it the closest and brightest multi-planet system detected so far by Kepler.
> 
> But perhaps more interesting is the fact that the star system is estimated to be 11.2 billion years old, give or take 900 million years or so. "Which makes KOI-3158 the oldest known system of terrestrial-size planets," Campante told the symposium audience in the video below.
> 
> For some perspective, our own sun and solar system is believed to be less than 5 billion years old.
> 
> The planets circling KOI-3158 are also familiar in terms of their size, with the innermost being about the size of Mercury, followed by three Mars-sized intermediate planets and a fifth and largest planet that is bigger than the other four, but a bit smaller than Venus.
> 
> This system is far from being a total doppelganger for our own, however. It is super compact, with the planets' orbits around KOI-3158 as short as under 10 days. In fact, the orbits of all five planets would fall well within the orbit of Mercury around our own sun if you were to overlay the systems on top of each other.



Earth-like planets in Milky Way hint at possibility of ancient life


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## ScienceRocks

* Starscraper aims at cheaper, gentler suborbital rocket *
By David Szondy
December 30, 2014
56 Pictures


 


> The International Space Station (ISS) may get all the glory, but suborbital rocket flights still play a vital part in space research. The problem is that even though such flights only go to the edge of space, they are expensive, few in number, and put massive stresses on experiments. Partly funded by a Kickstarter campaign, students at Boston University are developing an inexpensive suborbital rocket for educational purposes that uses new engine designs to create a cheaper, reusable suborbital rocket that's easier on the payload.



Starscraper The Next Generation of Suborbital Rockets by BU Rocket Propulsion Group mdash Kickstarter


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## ScienceRocks

* Dawn begins Ceres approach for orbital rendezvous *
By David Szondy
December 30, 2014






> Like the end of a very long and eventful road trip, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has its main goal in sight. The space agency says that the unmanned probe has emerged from behind the Sun as it uses its ion propulsion to catch up with the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt and that mission control was able to re-establish contact. The craft has received instructions for executing a series of maneuvers that will take it on its final approach phase, which will end with it going into orbit around Ceres.




* Mystery of ‘Metallic Frost’ in Venusian Mountains Deepens*
Dec 29, 2014 by Sci-News.com
« PREVIOUS 
| Mystery of Metallic Frost in Venusian Mountains Deepens Space Exploration Sci-News.com

*According to a new analysis of twenty-year-old data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, mountainous regions in the Venus’ highlands are covered in an unidentified ferroelectric material.*




Venus in real colors, processed from Mariner 10 images. Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.



> The idea that the Venusian highlands are covered in a ‘metallic frost’ dates back to 1995, when Dr Raymond Arvidson of the Washington University’s McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences and his colleagues were analyzing the rich archives of data taken from Magellan mission.
> 
> Magellan’s primary objective was to map the surface of Venus using a technique known as synthetic aperture radar (SAR).
> 
> SAR images taken of mountainous regions in the planet’s highlands revealed a mysterious brightening effect.
> 
> Scientists surmised that this effect was due to a metal-containing ‘frost’ only a few millimeters in thickness frosting the mountains’ rugged surfaces.
> 
> Also observed were a handful of radio dark spots at the highest elevations. Both mysteries have defied explanation.
> 
> “There is general brightening upward trend in the highlands and then dark spots at the highest locations,” said Elise Harrington of Simon Fraser University, a co-author on the new study.
> 
> “Brightening, in this case, means the radio waves reflect well. Dark means the radio waves are not reflected. In other words, the higher you go on Venus, the more radio reflective the ground gets until it abruptly goes radio black. Like on Earth, the temperature changes with elevation. And the cooler temperatures at altitude lead to ice and snow, which create a similar pattern of brightening for Earth – but in visible light.”
> 
> “Among the possibilities on Venus are a temperature dependent chemical weathering process or heavy metal compound precipitating from the air – a heavy metal frost,” Ms Harrington said.
> 
> Getting to the bottom of these mysteries has been very hard because Venus has not been revisited since Magellan and no better data is available.
> 
> So Ms Harrington and her colleague, Dr Allan Trieman of Lunar and Planetary Institute, made do by re-purposing the old data.


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## Judicial review

This is better use of our money than the libs green projects.


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## Old Rocks

Don't worry about it. Wind and Solar are both kicking the shit out of conventional fossil fuels on price, and, with the advent of the grid scale battery, will, in a generation, become the primary source of electricity in our nation. Based on economics alone.


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## ScienceRocks

NASA’s Dawn commences approach phase towards dwarf planet Ceres



> US space agency NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has already commenced its approach phase towards dwarf planet Ceres. This would be for the first time when any spacecraft will land on the dwarf planet.
> 
> Recently, Dawn had emerged from solar conjunction during which it was on the sun’s opposite side that resulted in limiting the communication with antennas on the planet Earth.


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## ImGoing2Heaven

The Almighty never gave us permission to trespass into the Heavens.
Space exploration is of the devil!


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## ScienceRocks

ImGoing2Heaven said:


> The Almighty never gave us permission to trespass into the Heavens.
> Space exploration is of the devil!



The all almighty never gave us permission to have knowledge, think for our selfs or fuck pussy. think about it.

IF everything is gods plan. Well, space exploration like fucking pussy has been granted without saying a word. No go along and become educated.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Corot-35b : discovery of a planet in a polar orbit


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA team hacks Opportunity to treat Mars Rover's amnesia*
*1 hour ago by Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times *




NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity captured this southward uphill view after beginning to ascend the northwestern slope of "Solander Point" on the western rim of Endeavour Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


> NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has been working well into its golden years - after nearly 11 years roaming the Red Planet, it has survived more than 40 times past its warranty. But now, this trusty veteran explorer is experiencing some worrisome memory loss.
> 
> The long-lived rover has been having some senior moments, according to John Callas, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover mission (as Opportunity and its defunct twin Spirit are formally known). The episodes of amnesia stem from faulty flash memory - the kind of memory in your digital camera that allows your pictures to stay saved even after your device is turned off.
> 
> But flash memory doesn't last forever - and the seventh, final bank in the flash memory appears to be malfunctioning.




Nasa rules! 40 times longer than it was even planned to last and still moving!


Read more at: NASA team hacks Opportunity to treat Mars Rover s amnesia


----------



## ImGoing2Heaven

It's a waste of $


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## ScienceRocks

The urge to seek knowledge and explore is what makes us humans better than animals. Animals are forced to stay on this planet and wait to die. Believe me, 99.9% of all living things that has ever lived = dead.

* NASA Dawn Spacecraft Nears Dwarf Planet Ceres and New Horizon begins observing Pluto Jan 15 *







> NASA Dawn has entered its approach phase toward Ceres. The spacecraft will arrive at Ceres on March 6, 2015. NASA's Dawn spacecraft has entered an approach phase in which it will continue to close in on Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet never before visited by a spacecraft. Dawn launched in 2007 and is scheduled to enter Ceres orbit in March...
> Read more »


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## ImGoing2Heaven

Matthew said:


> *Students aim to put cyanobacteria on Mars to generate oxygen*
> *7 hours ago by Tomasz Nowakowski, Astrowatch.net *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Cyanobacteria Spirulina. Credit: cyanoknights.bio
> 
> 
> 
> Mars is a very harsh and hostile environment for future human explorers and like any other known planet it has no breathable air. That could change someday, and it may be soon enough for our generation to witness it, as the student team from Germany has a bold vision to make a first step to terraform the Red Planet, turning it more Earth-like. The plan is to send cyanobacteria to Mars to generate oxygen out of carbon dioxide which is the main component of Martian atmosphere (nearly 96%). "Cyanobacteria do live in conditions on Earth where no life would be expected. You find them everywhere on our planet!" team leader Robert P. Schröder told astrowatch.net. "It is the first step on Mars to test microorganisms." The project is participating in the Mars One University Competition and if it wins, it will be send as a payload to Mars, onboard the Dutch company's mission to the Red Planet. Now everyone can vote to help make it happen by visiting the CyanoKnights.bio webpage.
> [/QU
> Read more at: Students aim to put cyanobacteria on Mars to generate oxygen
> 
> 
> 
> first, there's no way for humans to survive on mars.
> Second Jesus would be furious if we changed and altered the heavens from his perfection. Third man can not travel through space, Apollo was a how by buzz armstrong
Click to expand...


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## ImGoing2Heaven

Jesus hates space travel!!!


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## ScienceRocks

ImGoing2Heaven said:


> Jesus hates space travel!!!



Go back into the tree, troll. 

I am sure your god believes that humans should all suffer without medical advances, electricy or anything else. He probably thinks we should be worshiping him within our caves.


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## ImGoing2Heaven

Man did not come from trees, atheist scum


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## ScienceRocks

I am sure your god believes that humans should all suffer without medical advances, electricy or anything else. He probably thinks we should be worshiping him within our caves.


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## ScienceRocks

Back to space!!!

Here is stuff to look forward for in 2015! The Space Missions and Events We re Most Looking Forward to in 2015 WIRED


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## ImGoing2Heaven

The space program in the 50s and 60s was the biggest hoax in human history.
Buzz Armstrong was the devils tool to lead man down a slippery slope of extreme sin, referred to by atheists as "space travel", referred to by the children of God as an invasion of hallowed grounds of Heaven!


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## ImGoing2Heaven

Matthew said:


> ImGoing2Heaven said:
> 
> 
> 
> Jesus hates space travel!!!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Go back into the tree, troll.
> 
> I am sure your god believes that humans should all suffer without medical advances, electricy or anything else. He probably thinks we should be worshiping him within our caves.
Click to expand...

Discovery and longevity is not heretical, as long as they are Biblical science based


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## ScienceRocks

God bless space exploration!!!

*Super-Earths have long-lasting oceans*
*7 hours ago *




This artist's depiction shows a gas giant planet rising over the horizon of an alien waterworld. New research shows that oceans on super-Earths, once established, can last for billions of years. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)


> For life as we know it to develop on other planets, those planets would need liquid water, or oceans. Geologic evidence suggests that Earth's oceans have existed for nearly the entire history of our world. But would that be true of other planets, particularly super-Earths? New research suggests the answer is yes and that oceans on super-Earths, once established, can last for billions of years.





Read more at: Super-Earths have long-lasting oceans


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Watch SpaceX launch its Falcon 9 rocket and try to land it on a barge*





 by Steve Dent |  @stevetdent  | 6mins ago







> Very soon at around 6:20 AM EST today (11:20 AM in the UK) SpaceX will launch one its mighty Falcon 9 rockets carrying a Dragon capsule, weather permitting. "Big deal!" you may well say. "What's another rocket launch?" We're sure you're not _that_ jaded (they're all amazing) but this one is pretty special. After the Dragon is up and away doing its thing (carrying ISS cargo, to be exact), the 14-story tall first stage will attempt to make a precision landing on an ocean platform only 300x100 feet in size. That's never been tried before, and even the normally brash Musk said "the odds of success are not great -- perhaps 50 percent at best." That makes things extra exciting, so grab your popcorn and check out the video below.


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## ScienceRocks

NASA s Kepler Marks 1 000th Exoplanet Discovery Uncovers More Small Worlds in Habitable Zones NASA

*NASA’s Kepler Marks 1,000th Exoplanet Discovery, Uncovers More Small Worlds in Habitable Zones *


> Two of the newly validated planets, *Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b*, are less than 1.5 times the diameter of Earth. Kepler-438b, 475 light-years away, is 12 percent bigger than Earth and orbits its star once every 35.2 days. Kepler-442b, 1,100 light-years away, is 33 percent bigger than Earth and orbits its star once every 112 days.
> Both Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b orbit stars smaller and cooler than our sun, making the habitable zone closer to their parent star, in the direction of the constellation Lyra. The research paper reporting this finding has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
> 
> With the detection of 554 more planet candidates from Kepler observations conducted May 2009 to April 2013, the Kepler team has raised the candidate count to 4,175. Eight of these new candidates are between one to two times the size of Earth, and orbit in their sun's habitable zone. Of these eight, six orbit stars that are similar to our sun in size and temperature. All candidates require follow-up observations and analysis to verify they are actual planets


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## ScienceRocks

* Most Earth-like planet ever discovered could be a cosy home for alien life *
*Most Earth-like planet ever discovered could be a cosy home for alien life Science The Guardian*
Kepler 438b is likely to be a rocky world in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone of its parent star where the temperature is just right for liquid water to flow




An Earth-like planet orbiting a star that has formed a planetary nebula. Earlier in its life, this planet may have resembled the newly discovered Kepler 438b. Illustration: David A Aguilar/CfA
Ian Sample, science editor

Tuesday 6 January 2015 13.15 EST


> An alien world that orbits a distant star in the constellation of Lyra may be the most Earth-like planet ever found outside the solar system.
> 
> The planet, named Kepler 438b, is slightly larger than Earth and circles an orange dwarf star that bathes it in 40% more heat than our home planet receives from the sun.
> 
> The small size of Kepler 438b makes it likely to be a rocky world, while its proximity to its star puts it in the “Goldilocks” or habitable zone where the temperature is just right for liquid water to flow.
> 
> A rocky surface and flowing water are two of the most important factors scientists look for when assessing a planet’s chances of being hospitable to life.
> 
> Kepler 438b, which is 470 light years away, completes an orbit around its star every 35 days, making a year on the planet pass 10 times as fast as on Earth. Small planets are more likely to be rocky than huge ones, and at only 12% larger than our home planet, the odds of Kepler 438b being rocky are about 70%, researchers said.






> One of the other planets, Kepler 442b, lies in the same constellation 1,100 light years away. It is about a third larger than Earth, receives about two thirds as much starlight, and has a 60% chance of being rocky, according to a report to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
> 
> Guillermo Torres, lead author on the study, said the size and amount of light falling on the planets made them the most Earth-like planets yet found beyond our solar system. Before their discovery, the exoplanets most similar to our own were Kepler 186f, which is 10% larger than Earth and receives a third as much light, and Kepler 62f, which is 40% larger and gets about 41% as much light.
> 
> The scientists do not know if the planets have atmospheres, but if they are cloaked in insulating layers of gas, the mean temperatures of Kepler 438b and 442b are expected to be about 60 and zero degrees Celsius respectively.
> 
> The Harvard-Smithsonian team used a computer program called Blender to confirm that the planets originally spotted by the Kepler space telescope were real. False sightings can happen when pairs of stars that lie behind the one being studied eclipse each other, causing the background light to dim slightly. In some cases, this can be mistaken for a planet moving in front of its star.
> 
> “The pair of stars can be way behind the target star, but if they are in the same line of sight, the result is a very tiny dimming that can look like a planet,” said Torres.


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## ScienceRocks

*Validation of 12 small Kepler transiting planets in the habitable zone*


 1501.01101 Validation of Twelve Small Kepler Transiting Planets in the Habitable Zone

VALIDATION OF TWELVE SMALL KEPLER TRANSITING PLANETS IN THE HABITABLE ZONE


> We present an investigation of twelve candidate transiting planets from Kepler with orbital periods ranging from 34 to 207 days, selected from initial indications that they are small and potentially in the habitable zone (HZ) of their parent stars. Few of these objects are known. The expected Doppler signals are too small to confirm them by demonstrating that their masses are in the planetary regime. Here we verify their planetary nature by validating them statistically using the BLENDER technique, which simulates large numbers of false positives and compares the resulting light curves with the Kepler photometry. This analysis was supplemented with new follow-up observations (high-resolution optical and near-infrared spectroscopy, adaptive optics imaging, and speckle interferometry), as well as an analysis of the flux centroids. For eleven of them (KOI-0571.05, 1422.04, 1422.05, 2529.02, 3255.01, 3284.01, 4005.01, 4087.01, 4622.01, 4742.01, and 4745.01) we show that the likelihood they are true planets is far greater than that of a false positive, to a confidence level of 99.73% (3) or higher. For KOI-4427.01 the confidence level is about 99.2% (2.6). With our accurate characterization of the GKM host stars, the derived planetary radii range from 1.1 to 2.7R⊕. All twelve objects are confirmed to be in the HZ, and nine are small enough to be rocky. Excluding three of them that have been previously validated by others, our study doubles the number of known rocky planets in the HZ. KOI-3284.01 and KOI-4742.01 are the planets most similar to the Earth discovered to date when considering their size and incident flux jointly.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Gemini Planet Imager produces stunning observations in its first year*
*7 hours ago *




GPI imaging of the planetary system HR 8799 in K band, showing 3 of the 4 planets. (Planet b is outside the field of view shown here, off to the left.) These data were obtained on November 17, 2013 during the first week of operation of GPI …more


> Stunning exoplanet images and spectra from the first year of science operations with the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) were featured today in a press conference at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle, Washington. The Gemini Planet Imager GPI is an advanced instrument designed to observe the environments close to bright stars to detect and study Jupiter-like exoplanets (planets around other stars) and see protostellar material (disk, rings) that might be lurking next to the star.





Read more at: Gemini Planet Imager produces stunning observations in its first year

Direct pictures. Is that proof enough for you?



*Potential signs of ancient life in Mars rover photos*
*12 hours ago by Johnny Bontemps, Astrobio.net *




A rock bed at the Gillespie Lake outcrop on Mars displays potential signs of ancient microbial sedimentary structures. Credit: NASA


> A careful study of images taken by the NASA rover Curiosity has revealed intriguing similarities between ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars and structures shaped by microbes on Earth. The findings suggest, but do not prove, that life may have existed earlier on the Red Planet.





Read more at: Potential signs of ancient life in Mars rover photos


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA Approves SpaceX's Plans to Send Astronauts to Space Station *

http://www.space.com...-milestone.html



> SpaceX's Dragon capsule is one step closer to flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
> 
> SpaceX has passed NASA's "certification baseline review," which required the California-based company to outline exactly how it plans to ferry crews to and from the orbiting lab using the Dragon spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket under SpaceX's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract with the space agency.



Great news


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## ScienceRocks

We need a dozen more keplers! This is about 3.5 years of real viewing time.


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## ScienceRocks

1501.01305 Kepler-445 Kepler-446 and the Occurrence of Compact Multiples Orbiting Mid-M Dwarf Stars

KEPLER-445, KEPLER-446 AND THE OCCURRENCE OF COMPACT MULTIPLES ORBITING MID-M DWARF STARS

We confirm and characterize the exoplanetary systems Kepler-445 and Kepler-446: two mid-M dwarf stars, each with multiple, small, short-period transiting planets. Kepler-445 is a metal-rich ([Fe/H]=+0.25 ± 0.10) M4 dwarf with three transiting planets, and Kepler-446 is a metal-poor ([Fe/H]=-0.30 ± 0.10) M4 dwarf also with three transiting planets. Kepler-445c is similar to GJ 1214b: both in planetary radius and the properties of the host star. The Kepler-446 system is similar to the Kepler-42 system: both are metal-poor with large galactic space velocities and three short-period, likely-rocky transiting planets that were initially assigned erroneously large planet-to-star radius ratios. We independently determined stellar parameters from spectroscopy and searched for and fitted the transit light curves for the planets, imposing a strict prior on stellar density in order to remove correlations between the fitted impact parameter and planet-to-star radius ratio for short-duration transits. Combining Kepler-445, Kepler-446 and Kepler-42, and isolating all mid-M dwarf stars observed by Kepler with the precision necessary to detect similar systems, we calculate that 21 +7 −5 % of mid-M dwarf stars host compact multiples (multiple planets with periods of less than 10 days) for a wide range of metallicities. We suggest that the inferred planet masses for these systems support highly efficient accretion of protoplanetary disk metals by mid-M dwarf protoplanets.


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## ScienceRocks

The Dark Energy Survey Begins to Reveal Previously Unknown Trans-Neptunian Objects



> Sometimes when you stare at something long enough, you begin to see things. This is not the case with optical sensors and telescopes. Sure, there is noise from electronics, but it’s random and traceable. Stargazing with a telescope and camera is ideal for staring at the same patches of real estate for very long and repeated periods. This is the method used by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), and with less than one percent of the target area surveyed, astronomers are already discovering previously unknown objects in the outer Solar System.
> 
> The Dark Energy Survey is a five year collaborative effort that is observing Supernovae to better understand the structures and expansion of the universe. But in the meantime, transient objects much nearer to home are passing through the fields of view. Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), small icy worlds beyond the planet Neptune, are being discovered. A new scientific paper, released as part of this year’s American Astronomical Society gathering in Seattle, Washington, discusses these newly discovered TNOs. The lead authors are two undergraduate students from Carleton College of Northfield, Minnesota, participating in a University of Michigan program.


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA Set to Attempt SLS Engine Test This Afternoon


> This afternoon, a space shuttle engine is scheduled to roar to life for the first time since 2011.
> 
> NASA has confirmed they will attempt a test firing of the RS-25 engine, which was installed on the A-1 test stand at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi last July. The RS-25, a reusable workhorse used to power space shuttles into orbit for three decades, is now slated for installation on the core state of the Space Launch System, NASA's heavy-lift rocket scheduled to debut in 2018. Imagery and video are not expected to be released until after the test is complete.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Spacex will try again to launch ISS mission with chance of proving reusable rocket viability*
Next Big Future Spacex will try again to launch ISS mission with chance of proving reusable rocket viability


> Spacex will again try to launch what could be a rocket that will attempt to successfully land its first stage on a barge. This will enable recovery and reuse. This is the link to the livestream broadcast on Saturday Weather is currently 80% “GO” for Falcon 9 and Dragon’s launch attempt tomorrow. Liftoff is targeting 4:47am EST – set your alarms.
> 
> Elon Musk is developing rockets that could be reused, rather than burn up on re-entry to earth’s atmosphere, in the belief they’ll drastically reduce the cost of trips to Mars. Launch has been delayed until Friday because of some Z actuator glitch.
> 
> He could make history -- and remake the space launch sector -- when new technology that captures spent rocket segments is put to the test for the first time today.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Made it to the drone ship, but landed a little too hard. Damn close.

Shows for a fact that it can be done with a little less speed next time.


----------



## bripat9643

SmedlyButler said:


> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
Click to expand...


Why don't we take the money from the Dept of Education?


----------



## ScienceRocks

Why not take the money from about 20 bases throughout the world? Like the ones in the eu that we're shutting down.

Tired of benefiting other people over ours.


----------



## ScienceRocks

And also, our space program already receives a tiny % of our budget(that isn't the cause of our debt!), but what I mean the 20 billion more we need for mars/year can come out of the closing of some bases.


Colliding black holes could warp space-time itself



> If the two black holes meet, they could release as much energy as 100 million supernova explosions as they shatter their galaxy, a new study finds.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*China plan for unmanned moon landing, Earth return advances*
*53 minutes ago *




This is a composite image of the lunar nearside taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in June 2009, note the presence of dark areas of maria on this side of the moon. Credit: NASA


> China's bold plan to land an unmanned spaceship on the moon before returning to Earth has moved another step forward with a test craft shifting into lunar orbit to conduct further tests, state media reported Sunday.
> 
> The service module of a lunar orbiter that flew back to Earth in November had been sitting in a position that brought in into sync with Earth's orbit, known as the second Lagrange point. It had separated from the orbiter in November.
> 
> The craft, loaded with support systems for operating a spaceship, will collect further data to aid planning of the 2017 Chang'e 5 mission, state broadcaster China Central Television said.
> 
> Chang'e 5 is being designed to make a soft landing on the moon and collect at least 2 kilograms (4 pounds) of rock and soil samples before returning to Earth.
> 
> If successful, that would make China only the third country after the United States and Russia to meet such a challenge.





Read more at: China plan for unmanned moon landing Earth return advances


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers seek widest view ever of the universe with new telescope*
*2 hours ago by Sandi Doughton, The Seattle Times *




Credit: LSST


> At the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society last week, the booth devoted to a revolutionary new telescope called the LSST got a lot of traffic.
> 
> Staffed by scientists from the University of Washington and other institutions, the display didn't feature sexy pictures of galaxies or nebulae, but it did include a sign that said LSST is hiring.
> 
> That was welcome news in a field where jobs can be hard to come by. It's also proof that after decades of planning and fundraising, a dream nurtured in part by UW and backed by Seattle billionaires is well on its way to reality.
> 
> On Saturday in Tuscon, Ariz., former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi joined other luminaries to celebrate completion of the telescope's 20-ton mirror assembly, which includes the largest convex mirror ever made. Simonyi, who has twice visited the International Space Station as a tourist, put up $20 million for the mirror. His former boss Bill Gates chipped in $10 million.
> 
> Construction of the $700 million telescope will begin in earnest this spring on a mountaintop in Chile's Atacama Desert.




Read more at: Astronomers seek widest view ever of the universe with new telescope


----------



## ScienceRocks

* NASA test fires SLS engine *
By David Szondy
January 12, 2015
2 Pictures






> The Orion spacecraft may have had its maiden flight, but it's still waiting for the Space Launch System (SLS) booster that will send it beyond the Moon. That wait got a bit shorter on Friday as NASA test fired the RS-25 engine that will power the SLS. The first of eight hot tests, it took place at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX supply ship arrives at space station with grocerie*


> *s*
> 
> A shipment of much-needed groceries and belated Christmas presents finally arrived Monday morning at the International Space Station.
> 
> The SpaceX company's supply ship, Dragon, pulled up at the orbiting lab two days after its liftoff from Florida. Station commander Butch Wilmore used a robot arm to grab the capsule and its 5,000 pounds of cargo, as the craft soared more than 260 miles above the Mediterranean.


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## ScienceRocks




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## ScienceRocks

1501.01623 The Occurrence of Potentially Habitable Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs Estimated from the Full Kepler Dataset and an Empirical Measurement of the Detection Sensitivity


> The Occurrence of Potentially Habitable Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs Estimated from the Full Kepler Dataset and an Empirical Measurement of the Detection Sensitivity
> 
> We present an improved estimate of the occurrence rate of small planets around small stars by searching the full four-year Kepler data set for transiting planets using our own planet detection pipeline and conducting transit injection and recovery simulations to empirically measure the search completeness of our pipeline. We identified 157 planet candidates, including 2 objects that were not previously identified as Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs). We inspected all publicly available follow-up images, observing notes, and centroid analyses, and corrected for the likelihood of false positives. We evaluate the sensitivity of our detection pipeline on a star-by-star basis by injecting 2000 transit signals in the light curve of each target star. For periods shorter than 50 days, we found an occurrence rate of 0.57 (+0.06/-0.05) Earth-size planets (1-1.5 Earth radii) and 0.51 (+0.07/-0.06) super-Earths (1.5-2 Earth radii) per M dwarf. Within a conservatively defined habitable zone based on the moist greenhouse inner limit and maximum greenhouse outer limit, we estimate an occurrence rate of 0.18 (+0.18/-0.07) Earth-size planets and 0.11 (+0.10/-0.05) super-Earths per M dwarf habitable zone. Accounting for the cooling effect of clouds by doubling the insolation limit at the inner edge of the habitable zone results in a higher occurrence rate of 0.27 (+0.16/-0.09) Earth-size planets and 0.25 (+0.11/- 0.07) super-Earths per M dwarf habitable zone.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Team in breakthrough research to discover new planets*
*15 minutes ago *


> Scientists from Queen's University Belfast have partnered with leading astrophysicists across Europe for a ground-breaking space research project that will form a crucial step in the quest to study small, rocky planets orbiting other stars and discover new planets.
> 
> The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) has achieved first light at the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile, and will reach a level of accuracy never before attained under observatory conditions. A suite of highly sensitive telescopes - parts of which have been manufactured in Belfast - will search for 'transiting exoplanets' which are planets that pass in front of their parent star and hence produce a small, periodic dimming of that star's light. Only a few such very delicate observations have ever been made, but NGTS should provide many more opportunities.





Read more at: Team in breakthrough research to discover new planets


----------



## ScienceRocks

Trans-Neptunian objects suggest that there are more planets in the solar system



> There could be at least two unknown planets hidden well beyond Pluto, whose gravitational influence determines the orbits and strange distribution of objects observed beyond Neptune. This has been revealed by numerical calculations made by researchers at the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Cambridge. If confirmed, this hypothesis would revolutionise solar system models.
> 
> Astronomers have spent decades debating whether some dark trans-Plutonian planet remains to be discovered within the solar system. According to the calculations of scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) not only one, but at least two planets must exist to explain the orbital behaviour of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO).


----------



## ScienceRocks

A NASA spacecraft's epic Pluto encounter is officially underway.

http://www.space.com...servations.html



> NASA's New Horizons probe today (Jan. 15) began its six-month approach to Pluto, which will culminate with the first-ever close flyby of the dwarf planet on July 14.
> 
> "We really are on Pluto's doorstep," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said last month during a news conference at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.


----------



## Old Rocks

This year looks to be as epic as the first Voyager discoveries. That changed our whole concept concerning the planets and their moons.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Planets outside our solar system more hospitable to life than thought*


> A study by astrophysicists at the University of Toronto suggests that exoplanets - planets outside our solar system - are more likely to have liquid water and be more habitable than we thought.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Planets with potential oceans could have a climate that is much more similar to Earth's than previously expected," said Jérémy Leconte, a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto, and lead author of a study published today in _Science Express_.
> 
> Scientists have thought that exoplanets behave in a manner contrary to that of Earth - that is they always show their same side to their star. If so, exoplanets would rotate in sync with their star so that there is always one hemisphere facing it while the other hemisphere is in perpetual cold darkness.
> 
> Leconte's study suggests, however, that as exoplanets rotate around their stars, they spin at such a speed as to exhibit a day-night cycle similar to Earth.



Read more at: Planets outside our solar system more hospitable to life than thought


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Three transiting Super-Earths around a nearby M dwarf star*





 by Edasich Today at 4:44 am
 1501.03798 A nearby M star with three transiting super-Earths discovered by K2
A nearby M star with three transiting super-Earths discovered by K2


> Small, cool planets represent the typical end-products of planetary formation. Studying the archi- tectures of these systems, measuring planet masses and radii, and observing these planets' atmospheres during transit directly informs theories of planet assembly, migration, and evolution. Here we report the discovery of three small planets orbiting a bright (Ks = 8.6 mag) M0 dwarf using data collected as part of K2, the new transit survey using the re-purposed Kepler spacecraft. Stellar spectroscopy and K2 photometry indicate that the system hosts three transiting planets with radii 1.5-2.1 R_Earth, straddling the transition region between rocky and increasingly volatile-dominated compositions. With orbital periods of 10-45 days the planets receive just 1.5-10x the flux incident on Earth, making these some of the coolest small planets known orbiting a nearby star; planet d is located near the inner edge of the system's habitable zone. The bright, low-mass star makes this system an excellent laboratory to determine the planets' masses via Doppler spectroscopy and to constrain their atmospheric compositions via transit spectroscopy. This discovery demonstrates the power of K2 and future space-based transit searches to find many fascinating objects of interest.



Really good news that k2 can find planets this small.  Kepler is king! Wish we could put a dozen of these up.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Lost Beagle2 probe found 'intact' on Mars*
BBC News  - ‎2 minutes ago‎



> The missing Mars robot Beagle2 has been found on the surface of the Red Planet, apparently intact. High-resolution images taken from orbit have identified its landing location, and it looks to be in one piece.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Here is the paper for the 3 new k2 planets
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1501.03798v1.pdf


----------



## ScienceRocks

*This is SpaceX's rocket crash-landing on the platform*









> You can see in the GIF above that the rocket touched down on the barge's landing surface at about 45 degrees to the horizontal. That was because the fins on the side of the rocket lost power, causing it to drift over to one side. As it fell towards the barge, the angle of approach meant the legs and then the engine sections smashed.
> 
> From there, residual fuel and oxygen left in the craft were able to combine and—BOOM—a rather dramatic explosion followed. Or, as Elon Musk puts it, there was a "Full RUD"—a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" event.





http://gizmodo.com/t...arge-1679890015


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Creating the world's largest ever satellite constellation*


> OneWeb Ltd will build, launch and operate the world’s largest ever satellite network. Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne programme will help make it possible with frequent satellite launches at a much lower cost and with greater reliability.
> 
> Virgin Galactic has always planned to build a commercial spaceline that can create positive change back on earth. Well, both human spaceflight and the satellite constellation have the potential to transform lives in ways that almost no other companies have done before.
> ~Richard Branson


----------



## ScienceRocks

* ESA spaceplane launch gets green light *
By David Szondy
January 17, 2015
7 Pictures






> The European Space Agency has given the green light for the launch of its unmanned spaceplane, Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV). The original plan for a launch atop a Vega rocket from the ESA space center in French Guiana last November was put on hold due to safety concerns about its trajectory. With these issues now resolved, lift off is rescheduled for February 11.


----------



## ScienceRocks

(*Detection of Potential Transit Signals in 17 Quarters of Kepler Mission Data*), some very interesting new candidates :

The first of these new candidates is on *KIC target 8311864 *and is the subject of a discovery paper already in the works that will be submitted for publication soon (Jenkins et al. 2015). The object has an orbital period of 384.85 days, a planet radius of 1.19 Re, and an equilibrium temperature of 221 K. Note that the stellar parameters for this system obtained through follow up spectroscopy are markedly different from those available to the SOC (Huber et al. 2014) for this run : the star is likely to be 1.2 Rs, providing a planet with a radius of 1.8 Re.

*KIC target 5094751*. This candidate has an orbital period of 362.5 days, a planet radius of 1.6 Re, and an equilibrium temperature of 301 K. This is KOI 123 (Kepler-109) which already has 2 confirmed planets.

*KIC target 5531953*. This candidate has an orbital period of 21.91 days, a planet radius of 0.78 Re, and an equilibrium temperature of 288 K. This is KOI 1681 which already has 3 dispositioned planet candidates.

*KIC target 8120820*. This candidate has an orbital period of 129.22 days, a planet radius of 1.84 Re, and an equilibrium temperature of 290 K.

*KIC target 9674320*. This candidate has an orbital period of 317.05 days, a planet radius of 1.66 Re, and an equilibrium temperature of 222 K.

*KIC target 7100673*. This candidate has an orbital period of 7.24 days, a planet radius of 0.77 Re, and an equilibrium temperature of 948 K. This is KOI 4032 which already has 4 dispositioned planet candidates, all with periods shorter than this one.

*KIC target 8105398*. This candidate has an orbital period of 224.15 days, a planet radius of 1.71 Re, and an equilibrium temperature of 292 K. This is KOI 5475.01

*KIC target 8105398*. This candidate has an orbital period of 5.68 days, a
planet radius of 0.55 Re, and an equilibrium temperature of 994 K. This is the second TCE detected on KOI 5475




 1501.03586 Detection of Potential Transit Signals in 17 Quarters of Kepler Mission Data

*Detection of Potential Transit Signals in 17 Quarters of Kepler Mission Data*

We present the results of a search for potential transit signals in the full 17-quarter data set collected during Kepler's primary mission that ended on May 11, 2013, due to the on-board failure of a second reaction wheel needed to maintain high precision, fixed, pointing. The search includes a total of 198,646 targets, of which 112,001 were observed in every quarter and 86,645 were observed in a subset of the 17 quarters. We find a total of 12,669 targets that contain at least one signal that meets our detection criteria: periodicity of the signal, a minimum of three transit events, an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio, and four consistency tests that suppress false positives. Each target containing at least one transit-like pulse sequence is searched repeatedly for other signals that meet the detection criteria, indicating a multiple planet system. This multiple planet search adds an additional 7,698 transit-like signatures for a total of 20,367. Comparison of this set of detected signals with a set of known and vetted transiting planet signatures in the Kepler field of view shows that the recovery rate of the search is 90.3%. We review ensemble properties of the detected signals and present various metrics useful in validating these potential planetary signals. We highlight previously undetected planetary candidates, including several small potential planets in the habitable zone of their host stars.


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA Exoplanet Archive

January 15, 2015: Nine more confirmed Kepler planets have a home in the archive. See data on Kepler-433 b, Kepler-434 b, Kepler-435 b, Kepler-445 b, Kepler-445 c, Kepler-445 d, Kepler-446 b, Kepler-446 c, and Kepler-446 d in the Confirmed Planets table.


Kepler-433b = KOI-206.01
Kepler-434b = KOI-614.01
Kepler-435b = KOI-680.01

 1501.01486 SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates. XV. KOI-614b KOI-206b and KOI-680b a massive warm Jupiter orbiting a G0 metallic dwarf and two highly inflated planets with a distant companion around evolved F-type stars


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Cluster satellites come within cosmic hairsbreadth *
By David Szondy
January 18, 2015
2 Pictures


 


> Space maneuvers have often been described as an orbital ballet, but the European Space Agency's (ESA) Cluster II satellites are currently in a ballet where the dancers are moving blindfolded at hypersonic speeds as they pass within a cosmic hairsbreadth of one another. That's because two of the Cluster satellites are flying within "touching distance" of one another as scientists try to learn more about the effects of solar wind on the Earth's magnetic field.


----------



## ScienceRocks

"Planet X" might actually exist — and so might "Planet Y."

Mysterious Planet X May Really Lurk Undiscovered in Our Solar System


> At least two planets larger than Earth likely lurk in the dark depths of space far beyond Pluto, just waiting to be discovered, a new analysis of the orbits of "extreme trans-Neptunian objects" (ETNOs) suggests.
> 
> Researchers studied 13 ETNOs — frigid bodies such as the dwarf planet Sedna that cruise around the sun at great distances in elliptical paths.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dawn delivers new image of Ceres*
*42 minutes ago 
*





Dawn delivers new image of Ceres
The Dawn spacecraft observed Ceres for an hour on Jan. 13, 2015, from a distance of 238,000 miles (383,000 kilometers). A little more than half of its surface was observed at a resolution of 27 pixels. This animated GIF shows bright and dark features. Credit: NASA


> (Phys.org)—As NASA's Dawn spacecraft closes in on Ceres, new images show the dwarf planet at 27 pixels across, about three times better than the calibration images taken in early December. These are the first in a series of images that will be taken for navigation purposes during the approach to Ceres.




Dawn delivers new image of Ceres


----------



## Judicial review

Amazing thread mathew.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* China discusses rocket larger than US Saturn V for 2028 that could launch 130 tons *







> According to an earlier report by China News Service, Liang Xiaohong, deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, disclosed that the Long March-9 is planned to have a maximum payload of 130 tons and its first launch will take place around 2028. "China is discussing the technological feasibility and requirements of the...


Read more »


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Two planets as big as Earth ‘could be on edge of solar system’*



> At least two as-yet undiscovered planets as big as Earth or larger may be hiding in the outer fringes of the solar system, scientists believe.
> 
> The secret worlds are thought to exist beyond the orbits of Neptune, the furthest true planet from the Sun, and the even more distant tiny “dwarf planet” Pluto.
> 
> The evidence comes from observations of a belt of space rocks known as “extreme trans-Neptunian objects” (Etnos).
> 
> Orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune, Etnos should be distributed randomly with paths that have certain defined characteristics. But a dozen of the bodies have completely unexpected orbital values consistent with them being influenced by the gravitational pull of something unseen.



http://www.theguardi...th-solar-system







A good outpost if we ever find this to be true!


-------------------------------------

A little space telescope teamwork confirms clear skies and water vapor on this exoplanet 120 light-years from Earth. HAT-P-11b, an exoplanet about four times the size of Earth, is the smallest planet from which molecules of any kind have been detected!


> NASA Telescopes Find Clear Skies and Water Vapor on Exoplanet NASA
> 
> Astronomers using data from three of NASA's space telescopes -- Hubble, Spitzer and Kepler -- have discovered clear skies and steamy water vapor on a gaseous planet outside our solar system. The planet is about the size of Neptune, making it the smallest planet from which molecules of any kind have been detected.
> 
> “This discovery is a significant milepost on the road to eventually analyzing the atmospheric composition of smaller, rocky planets more like Earth,” said John Grunsfeld, assistant administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Such achievements are only possible today with the combined capabilities of these unique and powerful observatories.”
> 
> Clouds in a planet’s atmosphere can block the view to underlying molecules that reveal information about the planet’s composition and history. Finding clear skies on a Neptune-size planet is a good sign that smaller planets might have similarly good visibility.
> 
> "When astronomers go observing at night with telescopes, they say 'clear skies' to mean good luck," said Jonathan Fraine of the University of Maryland, College Park, lead author of a new study appearing in Nature. "In this case, we found clear skies on a distant planet. That's lucky







NASA Telescopes Find Clear Skies and Water Vapor on Exoplanet


----------



## ScienceRocks

Obama Hails NASA Astronaut Set for 1-Year Space Voyage in State of the Union


> President Barack Obama recognized the first American astronaut who will spend a year in space during the State of Union address Tuesday night (Jan. 20).
> 
> NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, scheduled to launch to the International Space Station for a 12-month stay in March, was hailed for his role in advancing Obama's goal of sending astronauts to Mars. Kelly attended the speech as a guest of First Lady Michelle Obama.



At least Obama has a plan. Where  yours republicans? Seriously, slash and burn isn't going to keep us a ahead of nations like China very long.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Huge asteroid to whip past Earth on Monday*
*3 hours ago by By Marcia Dunn *


> An asteroid up to 1,800 feet (550 meters) across is headed Earth's way. But don't worry: It will miss us by 745,000 miles, about three times the distance between Earth and the moon.




Read more at: Huge asteroid to whip past Earth on Monday

Fund nasa and give them a mission of discovering them with enough time to put in place a plan.


----------



## Old Rocks

Just as with global warming, they will not do this until there is a major catastrophe. Sad, but you can see that from the attitude of the majority of people on this board.


----------



## westwall

Old Rocks said:


> Just as with global warming, they will not do this until there is a major catastrophe. Sad, but you can see that from the attitude of the majority of people on this board.








Really?  No one I know has ignored the threat from an asteroid impact.  Unlike the supposed disasters that will occur with a warmer globe (none of which have ever happened when it was in fact warmer mind you...but don't let facts get in the way of a good lie) there is NO DOUBT that an asteroid strike will end civilization.  None.  

We are the first creatures on this planet who have the ability to change that outcome and assholes push the non dangerous global warming horseshit to make money and gather power, while all the time an asteroid is getting closer and closer to impact.   

Assholes.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* NASA and Microsoft team up for virtual Mars exploration *
By David Szondy
January 23, 2015



 


> Years before the first astronauts set foot on Mars, scientists will already be there – virtually. Thanks to a collaboration between NASA and Microsoft aimed at advancing human-robot interactions, the space agency's OnSight software will allow researchers to explore a virtual Martian landscape created from data sent back by the Curiosity rover.



I hope they add the other rovers too.  I'd spend some time when they put it online.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New Horizons probe eyes Pluto for historic encounter*
*BBC News - New Horizons probe eyes Pluto for historic encounter*
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News






> When it gets to Pluto, the New Horizons probe will have a packed schedule of observations
> A Nasa probe is to start photographing the icy world of Pluto, after travelling 5bn km (3bn miles) and nine years to get near the dwarf planet.
> 
> The mission to Pluto is being billed as the last great encounter in planetary exploration.
> 
> It is one of the first opportunities to study a dwarf planet up close.
> 
> The pictures are critical to enable the New Horizons probe to position itself for a closer fly-by later this year.
> 
> As the probe is still 200 million km away, Pluto will be hardly discernable in the images - just a speck of light against the stars.
> 
> But the mission team says this view is needed to help line up the spacecraft correctly for its fly-by on 14 July.
> 
> "Optical navigation is one of those techniques where we image Pluto repetitively on approach to determine the position of the spacecraft relative to Pluto," explained Mark Holdridge, from the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) in Baltimore.
> 
> "We then perform a number of correction manoeuvres to realign our trajectory with the reference trajectory, thus ensuring we hit our aim point to travel through the Pluto system."
> 
> Any initial correction is likely to be made in March.


----------



## ScienceRocks

How Many Earths New Scientist


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Dawn probe data indicates ancient flowing water on Vesta *
By David Szondy
January 25, 2015
2 Pictures


 


> The last place you'd expect to find signs of water erosion is in the Asteroid Belt, but researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory say that data collected during the Dawn spacecraft's visit to Vesta indicates that it not only once had water, but that it formed gullies and other erosion features on its surface.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Modeling giant extrasolar ring systems in eclipse and the case of J1407b: sculpting by exomoons?*
 1501.05652 Modeling giant extrasolar ring systems in eclipse and the case of J1407b sculpting by exomoons 

The light curve of 1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6, a ∼16 Myr old star in the Sco-Cen OB association, underwent a complex series of deep eclipses that lasted 56 days, centered on April 2007. This light curve is interpreted as the transit of a giant ring system that is filling up a fraction of the Hill sphere of an unseen secondary companion, J1407b. We fit the light curve with a model of an azimuthally symmetric ring system, including spatial scales down to the temporal limit set by the star's diameter and relative velocity. The best ring model has 37 rings and extends out to a radius of 0.6 AU (90 million km), and the rings have an estimated total mass on the order of 100MMoon. *The ring system has one clearly defined gap at 0.4 AU (61 million km), which we hypothesize is being cleared out by a <0.8M⊕ exosatellite orbiting around J1407b. *This eclipse and model implies that we are seeing a circumplanetary disk undergoing a dynamic transition to an exosatellite-sculpted ring structure and is one of the first seen outside our Solar system.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Gigantic ring system around J1407b much larger, heavier than Saturn's*
*8 hours ago *






> Astronomers at the Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands, and the University of Rochester, USA, have discovered that the ring system that they see eclipse the very young Sun-like star J1407 is of enormous proportions, much larger and heavier than the ring system of Saturn. The ring system - the first of its kind to be found outside our solar system - was discovered in 2012 by a team led by Rochester's Eric Mamajek.




Read more at: Gigantic ring system around J1407b much larger heavier than Saturn s


----------



## ScienceRocks

*An ancient extrasolar system with five sub-Earth-size planets*
* 1501.06227 An ancient extrasolar system with five sub-Earth-size planets*


> The chemical composition of stars hosting small exoplanets (with radii less than four Earth radii) appears to be more diverse than that of gas-giant hosts, which tend to be metal-rich. This implies that small, including Earth-size, planets may have readily formed at earlier epochs in the Universe's history when metals were more scarce. We report Kepler spacecraft observations of Kepler-444, a metal-poor Sun-like star from the old population of the Galactic thick disk and the host to a compact system of five transiting planets with sizes between those of Mercury and Venus. We validate this system as a true five-planet system orbiting the target star and provide a detailed characterization of its planetary and orbital parameters based on an analysis of the transit photometry. Kepler-444 is the densest star with detected solar-like oscillations. We use asteroseismology to directly measure a precise age of 11.2+/-1.0 Gyr for the host star, indicating that Kepler-444 formed when the Universe was less than 20% of its current age and making it the oldest known system of terrestrial-size planets. We thus show that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe's 13.8-billion-year history, leaving open the possibility for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy. The age of Kepler-444 not only suggests that thick-disk stars were among the hosts to the first Galactic planets, but may also help to pinpoint the beginning of the era of planet formation.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* NASA developing robotic helicopter scout for Mars rovers *
By David Szondy
January 26, 2015
4 Pictures





> The next big discovery is always beyond the next hill, but what if you can't see over it? That's the problem facing NASA with its Mars rovers, so the space agency is looking into how robotic helicopters could help scout the land ahead and give engineers back on Earth data to help plot the best route.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dawn spacecraft captures best-ever view of dwarf planet*
*2 hours ago *


> *NASA's Dawn spacecraft has returned the sharpest images ever seen of the dwarf planet Ceres. The images were taken 147,000 miles (237,000 kilometers) from Ceres on Jan. 25, and represent a new milestone for a spacecraft that soon will become the first human-made probe to visit a dwarf planet.
> "We know so little about our vast solar system, but thanks to economical missions like Dawn, those mysteries are being solved," said Jim Green, Planetary Science Division Director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
> 
> At 43 pixels wide, the new images are more than 30 percent higher in resolution than those taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2003 and 2004 at a distance of over 150 million miles (about 241 million kilometers). The resolution is higher because Dawn is traveling through the solar system to Ceres, while Hubble remains fixed in Earth orbit. The new Dawn images come on the heels of initial navigation images taken Jan. 13 that reveal a white spot on the dwarf planet and the suggestion of craters. Hubble images also had glimpsed a white spot on the dwarf planet, but its nature is still unknown.
> 
> "Ceres is a 'planet' that you've probably never heard of," said Robert Mase, Dawn project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We're excited to learn all about it with Dawn and share our discoveries with the world."
> 
> 
> *



*

Read more at: Dawn spacecraft captures best-ever view of dwarf planet








Read more at: Dawn spacecraft captures best-ever view of dwarf planet*


----------



## ScienceRocks

What space x wants to do with the falcon heavy!

Fucking cool!


----------



## ScienceRocks

Spacex and Boeing should fly manned crews to the space station starting in 2017


> American spacecraft systems testing followed by increasingly complex flight tests and ultimately astronauts flying orbital flights will pave the way to operational missions during the next few years to the International Space Station. Those were the plans laid out Monday by NASA's Commercial Crew Program officials and partners as they focus on developing safe, reliable and cost-effective spacecraft and systems that will take astronauts to the station from American launch complexes.
> 
> According to Boeing, the company’s schedule calls for a pad abort test in February 2017, followed by an uncrewed flight test in April 2017, then a flight with a Boeing test pilot and a NASA astronaut in July 2017.


----------



## Votto

Matthew said:


> The first one was getting long so I made a second one  I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Link back to the first one
> Space exploration thread US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum
> 
> 
> *Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world*
> 15:58 31 January 2014 by Jeff Hecht
> For similar stories, visit the Astrobiology Topic Guide
> 
> Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world - space - 31 January 2014 - New Scientist
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earth may be our home, but another planet even cosier for life could be orbiting the star next door. A detailed analysis of what might make planets suitable for life says that Alpha Centauri B, the star closest to our sun, would be the perfect star to host a "superhabitable" planet  a world of islands, shallow seas and gentle slopes, where the conditions needed to support a diverse array of life forms would persist for up to 10 billion years. But the near-paradise would come at a cost to visitors from Earth: the pull of gravity would be about one-quarter stronger than on our home turf.
Click to expand...


Oh goodie, another world for collectivists to ruin.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Votto said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> The first one was getting long so I made a second one  I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Link back to the first one
> Space exploration thread US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum
> 
> 
> *Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world*
> 15:58 31 January 2014 by Jeff Hecht
> For similar stories, visit the Astrobiology Topic Guide
> 
> Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world - space - 31 January 2014 - New Scientist
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earth may be our home, but another planet even cosier for life could be orbiting the star next door. A detailed analysis of what might make planets suitable for life says that Alpha Centauri B, the star closest to our sun, would be the perfect star to host a "superhabitable" planet  a world of islands, shallow seas and gentle slopes, where the conditions needed to support a diverse array of life forms would persist for up to 10 billion years. But the near-paradise would come at a cost to visitors from Earth: the pull of gravity would be about one-quarter stronger than on our home turf.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Oh goodie, another world for collectivists to ruin.
Click to expand...


Don't whine about the economy because your ideas would destroy it.


----------



## Votto

Matthew said:


> Votto said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> The first one was getting long so I made a second one  I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Link back to the first one
> Space exploration thread US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum
> 
> 
> *Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world*
> 15:58 31 January 2014 by Jeff Hecht
> For similar stories, visit the Astrobiology Topic Guide
> 
> Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world - space - 31 January 2014 - New Scientist
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earth may be our home, but another planet even cosier for life could be orbiting the star next door. A detailed analysis of what might make planets suitable for life says that Alpha Centauri B, the star closest to our sun, would be the perfect star to host a "superhabitable" planet  a world of islands, shallow seas and gentle slopes, where the conditions needed to support a diverse array of life forms would persist for up to 10 billion years. But the near-paradise would come at a cost to visitors from Earth: the pull of gravity would be about one-quarter stronger than on our home turf.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Oh goodie, another world for collectivists to ruin.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Don't whine about the economy because your ideas would destroy it.
Click to expand...



Far be it from me.  I think that is why Obama wants to dedicate NASA to Islam.  That way he can populate the universe with people who have the best ideas.

Of course, there has not been much interest of late.  Perhaps Obama should move the Jews to Mars, that should generate some interest.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Roscosmos video replaces our Sun and Moon with well known stars and planets *
By Anthony Wood
January 28, 2015


> At some point in their lives, who hasn't looked up at the sky and gazed in wonder at Earth's closest companion? Hanging a dizzying 384,400 km (238, 606 miles) above us, the Moon has stood like a silent sentinel throughout our species' short existence. It has enticed some to visit and inspired others to look to the universe beyond. The Russian space agency Roscosmos recently released series of videos shot from the perspective of Earth, showing us what it would look like if other planets and stars took the place of our Moon and Sun.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Some potentially habitable planets began as gaseous, Neptune-like worlds*
*5 hours ago by Peter Kelley *




Strong irradiation from the host star can cause planets known as mini-Neptunes in the habitable zone to shed their gaseous envelopes and become potentially habitable worlds. Credit: Rodrigo Luger / NASA images


> Two phenomena known to inhibit the potential habitability of planets—tidal forces and vigorous stellar activity—might instead help chances for life on certain planets orbiting low-mass stars, University of Washington astronomers have found.
> 
> n a paper published this month in the journal _Astrobiology_, UW doctoral student Rodrigo Luger and co-author Rory Barnes, research assistant professor, say the two forces could combine to transform uninhabitable "mini-Neptunes"—big planets in outer orbits with solid cores and thick hydrogen atmospheres—into closer-in, gas-free, potentially habitable worlds.
> 
> Most of the stars in our galaxy are low-mass stars, also called M dwarfs. Smaller and dimmer than the sun, with close-in habitable zones, they make good targets for finding and studying potentially habitable planets. Astronomers expect to find many Earthlike and "super-Earth" planets in the habitable zones of these stars in coming years, so it's important to know if they might indeed support life.




Read more at: Some potentially habitable planets began as gaseous Neptune-like worlds


----------



## ScienceRocks

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics authors titles new.EP 


> *Planetary Candidates Observed by \ik V: Planet Sample from Q1-Q12 (36 Months)
> The Kepler mission discovered 2842 exoplanet candidates with 2 years of data. We provide updates to the Kepler planet candidate sample based upon 3 years (Q1-Q12) of data. Through a series of tests to exclude false-positives, primarily caused by eclipsing binary stars and instrumental systematics, 855 additional planetary candidates have been discovered, bringing the total number known to 3697. We provide revised transit parameters and accompanying posterior distributions based on a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm for the cumulative catalogue of Kepler Objects of Interest. There are now 130 candidates in the cumulative catalogue that receive less than twice the flux the Earth receives and more than 1100 have a radius less than 1.5 Rearth. There are now a dozen candidates meeting both criteria, roughly doubling the number of candidate Earth analogs. (…)*


*






From "Validation of 12 small Kepler planets in HZ" :
KOI 3255 is K-437b
KOI 3284 is K-438b
KOI 4087 is K-440b
but sizes are different...*

*

*


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA's Next Space Race: SpaceX vs. Boeing


> Two American spaceflight companies are quietly competing in a space race for the new era.
> 
> SpaceX and Boeing are vying to become the first private firms to fly astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA sometime in 2017. NASA chose both companies as part of the agency's commercial crew program, which may effectively end NASA's current sole reliance on Russian vehicles to get astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New Analysis Results*
*First Look at Kepler s Complete Primary Mission Data Set Drew Ex Machina*


> With the end of Kepler’s primary mission on May 11, 2013 when a second reaction wheel failure left the spacecraft unable to accurately point at its predetermined patch of the celestial sphere, a total of 17 quarters of data were available for analysis by the Kepler project’s data processing pipeline. A team led by Shawn Seader (SETI Institute/NASA Ames Research Center) has now submitted for publication the first results of an initial analysis of the _entire_ data set from Kepler’s primary mission.
> 
> Seader _et al._ used the latest version of the Transiting Planet Search (TPS) pipeline module to search the photometric data of 198,675 Kepler targets. Of these targets, 112,001 were observed in every quarter with 86,645 targets observed in a subset of the 17 quarters. They found a total of 12,669 targets that contained at least one signal that meets the following criteria for being a transit event:
> 
> - The transit events occurred at regular intervals
> - A minimum of three transit events are observed
> - The signal-to-noise ratio of the events is greater than a preset threshold
> - The transit events pass four consistency tests designed to weed out false positives
> 
> Seader _et al._ repeatedly searched targets that contained at least one sequence of transit-like events looking for other signals that met these criteria indicating possible multiple planet systems. This search added an additional 7,698 transit-like signals for a total of 20,367 – nearly four times the current official tally of confirmed planets and planet candidates. The team compared these prospective finds against the set of currently known and vetted planets discovered in the Kepler data and were able to recover 90.3% of them. The difference is believed to be the result of changes made to the TPS algorithm over the years to make it more conservative and less prone to false positives.
> 
> 
> 
> Looking at just the subset of the best 1,752 “golden KOIs” (Kepler Objects of Interest) which represent the most secure planet detections to date, Seader _et al._ were able to recover 99.1% during their processing of 17 quarters of data using the latest version of TPS. The team believes that further refinements to the TPS algorithm should improve the recovery rate while continuing to suppress false positives. With these improvements and factoring in that only about 10% of such detections prove to be false positives, it appears that Kepler’s eventual tally of planetary finds from its primary mission could reach on the order of at least _20,000 extrasolar planets_!
> 
> Seader _et al._ go on to report some details of eight new transit event sequences that had never been reported previously. Based on an initial analysis, six of these appear to be nearly Earth-size planets that seem to be in or near the habitable zones (HZ) of their sun. The other two candidates are of interest because they are smaller than the Earth. The properties of these eight planet candidates calculated using the data in Kepler’s current target data base are listed below in Table 1. The data are taken directly from Seader _et al._ except for the effective stellar flux value, Seff, which I calculated using information from the paper and Kepler’s target data base.
> 
> 
> While these results are *very* preliminary and will be subject to updates, two of these unconfirmed planets immediately caught my attention as orbiting Sun-like stars inside the conservative definition of the HZ by Kopparapu _et al._. By this definition, the inner edge of the HZ is defined as the Seff where a runaway moist greenhouse effect sets in. The outer edge of the HZ is defined by the Seff of the maximum greenhouse effect limit beyond which a CO2-dominated greenhouse can no longer maintain surface temperatures above freezing.





> *KIC 8311864*
> The planet candidate found orbiting KIC 8311864 has an orbital period of 384.85 days. Based on the initial assessment of the properties of this star, this planet candidate would have a radius 1.19 times that of the Earth (or RE) and an Seff I estimate to be 0.56. Based on the work by Rogers, which indicates that planets transition from being predominantly rocky to non-rocky at a radius no greater than 1.6 RE, it seems likely that this candidate is a rocky planet like the Earth (see “*Habitable Planet Reality Check: Terrestrial Planet Size Limit*”). With an effective temperature of 5,587° K (hinting that the star is a G-type star slightly cooler than the Sun), the HZ for KIC 8311864 as defined by Kopparapu _et al._ corresponds to an Seff from 1.08 to 0.34 assuming an Earth-mass planet orbiting this star indicating that this planet candidate is comfortably inside the HZ.
> 
> Even though this initial assessment seems very promising, a more in depth analysis currently underway by a team led by Jon Jenkins (NASA Ames Research Center) indicates that the stellar properties that they have derived from spectroscopic analysis of KIC 8311864 differ significantly from those currently in the Kepler target data base. Their data, which will be the subject of a discovery paper currently being prepared, indicate that this star is actually ~50% larger than originally thought. As a result, the radius of the planet candidate will also be larger – on the order of 1.8 RE. With this larger radius estimate, this planet candidate now has about a one-in-three chance of being a rocky planet and is more likely to be a mini-Neptune instead. The update in stellar properties also implies that the Seff might be about double the earlier estimate placing this world near the inner edge of the HZ.
> 
> While we will have to wait until the paper by Jenkins _et al._ is released to get all of the details and perform a better habitability assessment, this world’s prospects for being potentially habitable are not as good as first believed but it is still worth additional consideration. The situation with this new find also illustrates the need for follow-up observations of host stars to refine important stellar parameters which in turn affect the derived properties of planetary finds.
> 
> 
> 
> *KIC 9674320*
> The planet candidate found orbiting KIC 9674320 has an orbital period of 317.05 days. Assuming that the stellar parameters for KIC 9674320 in the Kepler target data base are accurate, this world has a radius of 1.66 RE and an Seff that I estimate to be 0.57. With an effective temperature of 5,370° K (hinting this star is a late G-type or maybe an early K-type star), the HZ for KIC 9674320 as defined by Kopparapu _et al._ has Seff values ranging from 1.06 to 0.33 for an Earth-mass planet. While the size of this planet makes it a bit more likely to be a mini-Neptune instead of a terrestrial planet, its Seff value seems to place it comfortably inside the HZ. As the episode with KIC 8322864 has shown us, however, detailed follow-up observations will be needed to pin down the properties of this planet candidate and its host star more accurately. But at this point, it seems to be a promising potentially habitable planet candidate orbiting a Sun-like star.



It's time to fund the tech in order to settle this question.


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## ScienceRocks

* NASA successfully launches SMAP satellite *
By Anthony Wood
January 31, 2015
4 Pictures





> On its third attempt, NASA has successfully launched its Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite atop a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket. The orbiter is designed to take high resolution moisture maps on a global scale, mapping the entire planet in the space of only two to three days. The maps will grant us an improved ability to forecast droughts, floods, and even aid agricultural workers in crop planning and rotation.  Read More


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Planetary Society's LightSail to make first test flight in May *
By David Szondy
February 1, 2015
3 Pictures





> Though we tend to think of private spaceflight as being in the SpaceX league, it also includes many smaller-scale efforts. For example, the non-profit Planetary Society has announced that its LightSail spacecraft will make its first test flight in May. The solar-propelled CubeSat will lift off as a piggyback cargo atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.


----------



## ScienceRocks

SpaceX nears pad abort test for human-rated Dragon capsule


> SpaceX is finishing up preparations for a major test of a rocket-powered abort system for the company’s new Dragon crew ferry spacecraft, targeting launch from Cape Canaveral in March after a pair of Falcon 9 missions in February.
> 
> The redesigned version of SpaceX’s cargo-carrying Dragon capsule should be ready for an uncrewed space mission by late 2016, said Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer. A piloted test flight will follow in early 2017, she said.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*White House Seeks $18.5 Billion NASA Budget, with Deep Space in Mind*
by Miriam Kramer, Space.com Staff Writer  |  February 02, 2015 04:20pm ET



> The White House
> 
> budget proposal for NASA in 2016 calls for a $500 million boost over the 2015 enacted budget and would keep NASA on its path to Mars, NASA chief Charles Bolden says.
> 
> The $18.5 billion budget request, presented by Bolden today (Feb. 2), includes funding for developing a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, and the agency's asteroid redirect mission (ARM). Officials think ARM could help pave the way for crewed missions to the Red Planet by the 2030s.
> 
> "NASA is firmly on a journey to Mars," Bolden said. "Make no mistake, this journey will help guide and define our generation."


White House Seeks 18.5 Billion NASA Budget with Deep Space in Mind

Good start! Should be at least 20 billion as it was under George W Bush.


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## ScienceRocks

*Video: Testing technologies for Europe's Intermediate Experimental Vehicle*
*26 minutes ago *
IXV, Europe's Intermediate Experimental Vehicle, will soon be launched by Vega into a suborbital path.


Read more at: Video Testing technologies for Europe s Intermediate Experimental Vehicle


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## ScienceRocks

*It's Official: We're On the Way to Europa*



> We're on the way to Europa.
> Without a doubt, the new commitment to Europa is the most exciting feature of the President's 2016 budget request for NASA, which was released earlier today. Also notable: a request of $18.5 billion overall for NASA, about $519 million more than it received in 2015 and higher than any request in four years. This increase, I argue, signifies a general acknowledgment that NASA is underfunded given its current mandate. It follows Congress' lead in increasing the budget last year, and proposes continued increases into the near future.
> So overall: a good budget. A very good budget.










WAHOOOOOO!!!! Come on republicans pass it, pass it now!!!!


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## ScienceRocks

*New Horizons returns new images of Pluto*
44 minutes ago






> (Phys.org)—Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh could only dream of a spacecraft flying past the small planet he spotted on the edges of the solar system in 1930. Yet the newest views of Pluto from NASA's approaching New Horizons probe – released today, on the late American astronomer's birthday – hint at just how close that dream is to coming true.



Read more at: New Horizons returns new images of Pluto


> "Pluto is finally becoming more than just a pinpoint of light," said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. "LORRI has now resolved Pluto, and the dwarf planet will continue to grow larger and larger in the images as New Horizons spacecraft hurtles toward its targets. The new LORRI images also demonstrate that the camera's performance is unchanged since it was launched more than nine years ago."








---

*Scientists predict earth-like planets around most stars*
*1 hour ago *




Goldilocks zone, where liquid water can exist. Credit: Aditya Chopra, ANU, adapted from NASA/JPL


> Planetary scientists have calculated that there are hundreds of billions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy which might support life.
> The new research, led by PhD student Tim Bovaird and Associate Professor Charley Lineweaver from The Australian National University (ANU), made the finding by applying a 200 year old idea to the thousands of exo-planets discovered by the Kepler space telescope.
> 
> They found the standard star has about two planets in the so-called goldilocks zone, the distance from the star where liquid water, crucial for life, can exist.
> 
> "The ingredients for life are plentiful, and we now know that habitable environments are plentiful," said Associate Professor Lineweaver, from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Research School of Earth Sciences.
> 
> "However, the universe is not teeming with aliens with human-like intelligence that can build radio telescopes and space ships. Otherwise we would have seen or heard from them.





Read more at: Scientists predict earth-like planets around most stars

I don't agree as some systems won't have earth sized planets in the right place. Maybe one out of every 5 stars. I'd think is far more likely.


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## ScienceRocks

January 2015 Update

Reaction Engines Ltd announces company growth and completion of first SABRE development milestone.


> This year, the Reaction Engines team are expanding in staff and activities to complete the SABRE demonstrator programme, with delivery on track for 2019. The company has relocated to larger premises on Culham Science Centre; consolidated its two manufacturing subsidiaries to a single new location in Didcot; and is recruiting across the company, ready for the design, manufacture and testing of the full SABRE engine cycle. This growth phase has also included the purchase of new, bespoke equipment which will enable Reaction Engines to manufacture its proprietary SABRE pre- coolers in-house, at full scale.
> 
> The key development activities over the first year of this programme have centred on intakes and combustion systems. This activity includes the recently completed Preliminary Requirements Review development milestone, and has been 50% funded by Reaction Engines' private capital. Matching funding has been provided by the UK Space Agency, through the European Space Agency. With the UK Government's commitment of £60m and private capital secured towards the next steps in this development phase, the Reaction Engines team are positive that a full static demonstration of the SABRE engine is achievable before the end of the decade, marking the greatest advance in propulsion since the jet engine.





http://www.reactione...ss_release.html


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## ScienceRocks




----------



## sealybobo

RetiredGySgt said:


> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?


Political hack says what?


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## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> Political hack says what?
Click to expand...

The question I have to ask.
I wonder what the republicans have to offer towards restoring America's power in space? Will they refund nasa and get us back on course??? If not, then you're no better.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX Takes Second Shot at Falcon 9 Landing on Sunday*
*SpaceX Takes Second Shot at Falcon 9 Landing on Sunday News Opinion PCMag.com*

By Damon Poeter
February 5, 2015 10:41pm EST
As part of the DSCVR weather satellite launch, SpaceX will try again to set down its rocket on a floating landing pad. 


> SpaceX on Sunday plans to make its second attempt at setting down a reusable Falcon 9 rocket on a floating landing platform as part of the launch of the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission from Cape Canaveral, Fla., NASA said.
> 
> The private space firm has been staging a series of Falcon 9 landing tests during recent launches for NASA and commercial satellite clients. Following several years of short-range tests with its Grasshopper reusable rocket, SpaceX began incorporating landing capabilities in its Falcon 9 first-stage booster for official missions, orchestrating controlled splashdowns in the Atlantic Ocean.
> 
> In early January, SpaceX attempted its first landing of a Falcon on a "drone spaceport ship," part of a cargo run ferrying about 5,000 pounds of supplies and scientific equipment to the International Space Station (ISS). The reusable rocket made it to its watery target but came down too hard during the landing and was destroyed.


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## ScienceRocks

*Update on EMDrive work at NASA Eagleworks - "Experimental Thrust is at 50 micronewtons"*



> There is information from Paul March on the testing of the controversial EMDrive at NASA Eagleworks. Paul commented on the NASA spaceflight forum.
> 
> Experimental Thrust is at 50 micronewtons but need at least 100 micronewtons to go to Glenn Research Center (GRC) for a replication effort in the next few months
> 
> The NASA Eagleworks Lab is still working on the copper frustum thruster that was reported on last summer at the AIAA/JPC. They have now confirmed that there is a thrust signature in a hard vacuum (~5.0x10^-6 Torr) in both the forward direction, (approx. +50 micro-Newton (uN) with 50W at 1,937.115 MHz), and the reversed direction, (up to -16uN with a failing RF amp), when the thruster is rotated 180 degrees on the torque pendulum.


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## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> Political hack says what?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The question I have to ask.
> I wonder what the republicans have to offer towards restoring America's power in space? Will they refund nasa and get us back on course??? If not, then you're no better.
Click to expand...


They say Obama cut NASA funding but considering the recession we were going through and it isn't like republicans were willing to pay for it.

Kennedy got us to the moon. Can you imagine were we'd be if instead of the cold war with Russia we spent all that time and money on going green to make sure the planet doesn't become uninhabitable and space exploration for that inevitable day.

I hope we can mine mars and build a moon size spaceship so we aren't in any hurry to get to the nearest inhabitable planet because like earth it won't last forever either.

We need to become nomads in space. Stay on a planet as long as you want but eventually you gotta bounce.


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## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX poised to launch resurrected space weather satellite*
*29 minutes ago *


> A $340 million sun-observing spacecraft that was initially dreamed up by former US vice president Al Gore is finally poised to launch Sunday after being kept in storage by NASA for years.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The unmanned Deep Space Climate Observatory is scheduled to blast off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 6:10 pm (2310 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
> 
> DSCOVR's goal is to help space weather forecasters by collecting data on solar wind and geomagnetic storms that can cause damage to electrical systems on Earth.
> 
> After the launch, SpaceX will make another attempt to guide the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to a controlled landing on an ocean platform, as part of the California-based company's goal of making rockets one day as reusable as airplanes.




Read more at: SpaceX poised to launch resurrected space weather satellite


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Rosetta prepares for a close encounter with Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko*
By Anthony Wood

Rosetta prepares for a close encounter with Comet 67P Churyumov Gerasimenko
February 7, 2015


> ESA's Rosetta orbiter is preparing to make a daring 6 km (3.7 miles) pass of one of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko's most active regions – an area on the comet's larger lobe designated as Imhotep. As the comet moves closer to the Sun, mission controllers are expecting to see an exponential increase in volatile activity, and ESA hopes that the new orbits planned for the little probe will allow scientists to gain a better understanding of these effects


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## ScienceRocks

Box 1 Better Than Earth Scientific American


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## ScienceRocks

*Breakthrough technologies could pave the way for cheaper, faster small-satellite launches*


> "We've made good progress so far toward ALASA's ambitious goal of propelling 100-pound satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) within 24 hours of call-up, all for less than $1 million per launch," Tousley said. "We're moving ahead with rigorous testing of new technologies that we hope one day could enable revolutionary satellite launch systems that provide more affordable, routine and reliable access to space."


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## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> *Breakthrough technologies could pave the way for cheaper, faster small-satellite launches*
> 
> 
> 
> "We've made good progress so far toward ALASA's ambitious goal of propelling 100-pound satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) within 24 hours of call-up, all for less than $1 million per launch," Tousley said. "We're moving ahead with rigorous testing of new technologies that we hope one day could enable revolutionary satellite launch systems that provide more affordable, routine and reliable access to space."
Click to expand...


One very small step. Yawn. Lol


----------



## ScienceRocks

Some space news from china!


http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/ch..._133978153.htm


> The orbiter conducted three times of tests between Friday and Saturday to modulate the speed, height and orbit in a simulative moon sampling mission, according to a statement of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense on Sunday.
> 
> Such technologies will possibly be used in the country's next lunar probe mission, Chang'e-5.




=-------
http://www.spaceflight101.com/change...n-updates.html



> The craft remains operational and entered its 14th hibernation period this week as the sun set at the landing site inside Mare Imbrium where Chang’e 3 landed on December 14, 2013, releasing the Yutu rover that was planned to operate for a three-month mission.
> 
> In a brief statement issued by the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) it was confirmed that the Chang’e 3 spacecraft entered its 14th lunar night on January 14. Updates on the mission’s progress and the status of the spacecraft were not available for most of 2014 and signals from Chang’e 3 that could be tracked by amateur observers on Earth were no longer to be found.
> 
> Last month, the Chang’e 3 lander celebrated its first anniversary on the lunar surface, surpassing its design life with both of its instruments still functioning well. The lander is equipped with a Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope and an Extreme UV Camera. The UV Telescope was designed to acquire imagery of galaxies, binary stars, active galactic nuclei and bright stars. A lunar-based telescope does not have to battle the effects of the atmosphere that are often the limiting factors for scientific observations of ground-based observatories.





----
http://gbtimes.com/china/chinas-luna...orbiting-earth


> China has released a stunning new image from it's recent lunar mission, showing the Moon in different phases as it orbits around the Earth.
> 
> The multiple exposure picture was taken by the service module of the Chang'e 5-T1 mission, from a stable orbit at the second Langrangian Point (also known as L2), on the far side of the Earth in respect to the Sun.
> 
> The shot is just the latest in a series of astonishing images that have emerged from the mission, giving wonderful perspectives of the Moon as our nearest neighbour in space. In October, the spacecraft sent back a shot of the Earth and Moon together while slinging around the far side of our celestial partner.


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## ScienceRocks

28 Months on Mars


> NASA’s Curiosity rover has explored Gale Crater for 833 Martian days, or Sols. And it has found evidence, written in red rocks and sand, of lakes and streams on a warmer, wetter, habitable Mars.



Watch!!! 

My take on what a dense atmosphere and oceans on mars means for other extrasolar planets.
This adds support that a larger planet like earth or larger with the right atmosphere would be habitual. I expect the 5 or 6 earth/super earth planets within the habitual zone probably have  atmospheres capable of supporting liquid water and most likely more.


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## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> 28 Months on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> NASA’s Curiosity rover has explored Gale Crater for 833 Martian days, or Sols. And it has found evidence, written in red rocks and sand, of lakes and streams on a warmer, wetter, habitable Mars.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Watch!!!
> 
> My take on what a dense atmosphere and oceans on mars means for other extrasolar planets.
> This adds support that a larger planet like earth or larger with the right atmosphere would be habitual. I expect the 5 or 6 earth/super earth planets within the habitual zone probably have  atmospheres capable of supporting liquid water and most likely more.
Click to expand...

I thought earth was one of the smaller planets and the big ones were the ones farther from the sun.

I remember hearing it might not be that way in every solar system but I bet its common.

Where are these 5 planets


----------



## ScienceRocks

Kepler 186f, Kepler 62e, kepler 438b, Gliese 667cc, Gliese 832c

List of potentially habitable exoplanets - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Earth so far is one of the smallest planets, BUT it is likely not so for the simple reason that not even kepler can see smaller then earth planets unless it gets very lucky.

The current theories have the big gas giants forming beyond the snowline where all the gas is(far away from the strong solar winds!). As they orbit the star(as ice giants/piles of rock) their massive gravity of being 8-12 earth masses pulls in this gas = jupiters, saturns, Neptune, etc. I am thinking the hot jupiters moved inwards towards their stars!


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## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Kepler 186f, Kepler 62e, kepler 438b, Gliese 667cc, Gliese 832c
> 
> List of potentially habitable exoplanets - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
> 
> Earth so far is one of the smallest planets, BUT it is likely not so for the simple reason that not even kepler can see smaller then earth planets unless it gets very lucky.
> 
> The current theories have the big gas giants forming beyond the snowline where all the gas is. As they orbit the store(as ice giants/piles of rock) their massive gravity of being 8-12 earth masses pulls in this gas = jupiters, saturns, Neptune, etc. I am thinking the hot jupiters moved inwards towards their stars!


So these giant planets might be livable for humans?  I've been wondering why we haven't discovered and verified a planet with life on it yet. What do we need to do to confirm? Do we need to send a unmanned ship first? How long will it take? I heard 70,000 years.  What's the plan?

So our telescopes can see possible inhabitable


----------



## ScienceRocks

Too see life we will need a "telescope" of either surface(HUGE!) or a spaced based one(smaller) that's capable of observing the light of one of those planets. And from this light we can tell what kind of elements make up the atmosphere.  I think the smallest planet that has been done is a little bigger than Neptune(17 earth masses). There's a couple of such telescopes planned for the 2020s that hopefully will give us a idea of the atmospheres of some of these planets.

A planet that's as far away as these would take millions of years at speeds of 40 to 50 thousand miles per hour to get to them. I'd suggest using anti-matter. which could go 10% of the speed of light!  Of course, I think Gliese 832c could be hundreds of thousands?

None of those 5 planets I posted above are above 8 earth masses...So they're super earth.


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## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Too see life we will need a "telescope" of either surface(HUGE!) or a spaced based one(smaller) that's capable of observing the light of one of those planets. And from this light we can tell what kind of elements make up the atmosphere.  I think the smallest planet that has been done is a little bigger than Neptune(17 earth masses). There's a couple of such telescopes planned for the 2020s that hopefully will give us a idea of the atmospheres of some of these planets.
> 
> A planet that's as far away as these would take millions of years at speeds of 40 to 50 thousand miles per hour to get to them. I'd suggest using anti-matter. which could go 10% of the speed of light!  Of course, I think Gliese 832c could be hundreds of thousands?
> 
> None of those 5 planets I posted above are above 8 earth masses...So they're super earth.


What does it means 8 earth masses? 8 times as big? That's fine as long as we can breathe.

Anti matter? What's that? Nuclear power? Do we know it will work? I think Sagan was talking about this in the cosmos. Wed get their in 40 years but several hundreds of years would have passed on earth. I'll look up anti matter but what would that do?


----------



## sealybobo

If you can explain how anti matter would work.

Remember in the cosmos they were showing the proton circling the atom and every so often it would disappear and then reappear? What's all that about? Where does it go?

Remember neutrenos? They even fly through the earth? Wtf?


----------



## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> Too see life we will need a "telescope" of either surface(HUGE!) or a spaced based one(smaller) that's capable of observing the light of one of those planets. And from this light we can tell what kind of elements make up the atmosphere.  I think the smallest planet that has been done is a little bigger than Neptune(17 earth masses). There's a couple of such telescopes planned for the 2020s that hopefully will give us a idea of the atmospheres of some of these planets.
> 
> A planet that's as far away as these would take millions of years at speeds of 40 to 50 thousand miles per hour to get to them. I'd suggest using anti-matter. which could go 10% of the speed of light!  Of course, I think Gliese 832c could be hundreds of thousands?
> 
> None of those 5 planets I posted above are above 8 earth masses...So they're super earth.
> 
> 
> 
> What does it means 8 earth masses? 8 times as big? That's fine as long as we can breathe.
> 
> Anti matter? What's that? Nuclear power? Do we know it will work? I think Sagan was talking about this in the cosmos. Wed get their in 40 years but several hundreds of years would have passed on earth. I'll look up anti matter but what would that do?
Click to expand...


Earth mass Earth mass - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia  or *1 M⊕ = 5.97219 × 10^24 kg*...Pretty much it's how heavy it is! Mass = Volume × Density...This means what's it's volume and what's its made out of = mass..If it is made out of ice(low density), but has a large volume = much less, than a world that's made out of iron and the same volume..Just Imagine that these worlds all have masses less than 8 times times ours and 2 times our radius!

On the otherhand, Kepler 438b and 186f are near our size!

442b





You maybe able to breath on a planet like Kepler 438b, Kepler 442b or Kepler 186f if it has the right elements within it for you to breath. Oxygen of around 20-25%, etc. Even then it might not be breathable as other gases that are very bad for us might be in high percentages.

Gravity of the larger ones may make it very hard to breath! Of course, I am talking about planets with higher gravity created by the 4-8 times mass planets...You will weight  more as mg=w!

Anti-matter is the opposite of matter! Antimatter - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


----------



## ScienceRocks

Isolated and stored anti-matter could be used as a fuel for interplanetary or interstellar travel[53] as part of an antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion or other antimatter rocketry, such as the redshift rocket. Since the energy density of antimatter is higher than that of conventional fuels, an antimatter-fueled spacecraft would have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio than a conventional spacecraft.

If matter-antimatter collisions resulted only in photon emission, the entire rest mass of the particles would be converted to kinetic energy. *The energy per unit mass (9×1016 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energies,[54] and about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the nuclear potential energy that can be liberated, today, using nuclear fission (about 200 MeV per fission reaction[55] or 8×1013 J/kg), and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible results expected from fusion (about 6.3×1014 J/kg for the proton-proton chain).* The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass-energy equivalence formula, _E = mc2_), or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT – slightly less than the yield of the 27,000 kg Tsar Bomb, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated.

Antimatter - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

making one kilogram approximately equal to 2.2046 avoirdupois pounds


----------



## fmdog44

Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Isolated and stored anti-matter could be used as a fuel for interplanetary or interstellar travel[53] as part of an antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion or other antimatter rocketry, such as the redshift rocket. Since the energy density of antimatter is higher than that of conventional fuels, an antimatter-fueled spacecraft would have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio than a conventional spacecraft.
> 
> If matter-antimatter collisions resulted only in photon emission, the entire rest mass of the particles would be converted to kinetic energy. *The energy per unit mass (9×1016 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energies,[54] and about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the nuclear potential energy that can be liberated, today, using nuclear fission (about 200 MeV per fission reaction[55] or 8×1013 J/kg), and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible results expected from fusion (about 6.3×1014 J/kg for the proton-proton chain).* The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass-energy equivalence formula, _E = mc2_), or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT – slightly less than the yield of the 27,000 kg Tsar Bomb, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated.
> 
> Antimatter - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
> 
> making one kilogram approximately equal to 2.2046 avoirdupois pounds



The technology finally exists to search for life.  "This is the first time in human history we have the technological reach to find life on other planets," Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at MIT, said. "People will look back at us as the generation who found Earth-like worlds."

The Kepler mission has identified more than 3,500 potential planets outside Earth's solar system, including 10 that are Earth-size and lie within their star's habitable zone. And the space-based Hubble and Spitzer telescopes recently imaged the atmospheres of an exoplanet directly.

I can't wait till we find the planet(s) that we can live on and start heading towards them.  

Around 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an "Earth-sized" planet in the habitable zone, with the nearest expected to be within 12 light-years distance from Earth.

Assuming 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, that would be 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way, rising to 40 billion if red dwarfs are included.  The rogue planets in the Milky Way possibly number in the trillions.


----------



## sealybobo

fmdog44 said:


> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.



We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.


----------



## Daryl Hunt

sealybobo said:


> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
Click to expand...


The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Daryl Hunt said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
Click to expand...


This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.


----------



## Daryl Hunt

Matthew said:


> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
Click to expand...


They came to Earth, read this message base and determined that there are no intellegent life on earth and they boogyed.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
Click to expand...

Notice most of them believe in god?


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
Click to expand...


I just thought if its going to take too long to get there we could send robots and hundreds of frozen eggs and sperm and make babies when we get there. The computers would raise them. No teaching god. Just teach them cooperation and treating others the way you want to treated. No need to make up god. We do the same to kids now with Santa clause


----------



## Daryl Hunt

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Notice most of them believe in god?
Click to expand...


I lean left from the center and yet, I believe in God, Christ and more.  I also believe in dying for my beliefs.  I already placed it on the line for my Country.  Can you say the same?


----------



## Daryl Hunt

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I just thought if its going to take too long to get there we could send robots and hundreds of frozen eggs and sperm and make babies when we get there. The computers would raise them. No teaching god. Just teach them cooperation and treating others the way you want to treated. No need to make up god. We do the same to kids now with Santa clause
Click to expand...


Hey, watch it.  I know that Santa is real.  I was told so in a crap game with the tooth fairy and easter bunny.


----------



## sealybobo

Daryl Hunt said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Notice most of them believe in god?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I lean left from the center and yet, I believe in God, Christ and more.  I also believe in dying for my beliefs.  I already placed it on the line for my Country.  Can you say the same?
Click to expand...



Fuck no! For what? For oil? Viet nam? Korea? 

Ww2 was worthy of risking my life and 911 but then enlisting would have put my life in Bush's hands and next thing I'm dying in Iraq or Iran. I respect and appreciate you but no I'm glad I didn't put my life in Bush's hands.

Now if we were invaded or if the Muslim world tries to take over Europe with the help of Russia and China I might be forced to.  These fucking leaders risk our lives too easily. You have balls. I went to college after high school. Why did you enlist and when?


----------



## Daryl Hunt

sealybobo said:


> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Notice most of them believe in god?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I lean left from the center and yet, I believe in God, Christ and more.  I also believe in dying for my beliefs.  I already placed it on the line for my Country.  Can you say the same?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Fuck no! For what? For oil? Viet nam? Korea?
> 
> Ww2 was worthy of risking my life and 911 but then enlisting would have put my life in Bush's hands and next thing I'm dying in Iraq or Iran. I respect and appreciate you but no I'm glad I didn't put my life in Bush's hands.
> 
> Now if we were invaded or if the Muslim world tries to take over Europe with the help of Russia and China I might be forced to.  These fucking leaders risk our lives too easily. You have balls. I went to college after high school. Why did you enlist and when?
Click to expand...


No I doubt you would fight unless you were to fight getting to a neutral country.


----------



## sealybobo

Daryl Hunt said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Notice most of them believe in god?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I lean left from the center and yet, I believe in God, Christ and more.  I also believe in dying for my beliefs.  I already placed it on the line for my Country.  Can you say the same?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Fuck no! For what? For oil? Viet nam? Korea?
> 
> Ww2 was worthy of risking my life and 911 but then enlisting would have put my life in Bush's hands and next thing I'm dying in Iraq or Iran. I respect and appreciate you but no I'm glad I didn't put my life in Bush's hands.
> 
> Now if we were invaded or if the Muslim world tries to take over Europe with the help of Russia and China I might be forced to.  These fucking leaders risk our lives too easily. You have balls. I went to college after high school. Why did you enlist and when?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> No I doubt you would fight unless you were to fight getting to a neutral country.
Click to expand...

That depends on the war. But no just like rich peoples kids don't die in wars neither do I. I'm no pawn.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Let's get back to space discussion focused on current space news and events.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Let's get back to space discussion focused on current space news and events.



I would definitely want to send liberals together in a ship and republicans In their own ship.  Well have the best scientists and they'll take creation scientists. Lol.

But I would send out ships the size of cities in twos. Just in case something happens to one. And they have to have ships that can land and mine planets comics and moons along the way for more metals and water.  Tardigrades can survive naked in space. What if we one day evolve so we can breath in the vacuum of space. Maybe?


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dark Galaxy: Mysterious Galaxy X Found Finally? Dark Matter Hunters Would Like To Believe So*



> Astronomers have long suspected strange ripples in hydrogen gas in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy are caused by the gravity of an unseen dwarf galaxy dominated by dark matter -- and now they think they've found this "Galaxy X."
> 
> The prediction of an invisible dark matter dwarf galaxy orbiting our Milky Way, made in 2009, may have had its "observational confirmation," say researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.



Opinions???


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dwarf stars discovered on collision course*
 Chris Burns   |   Feb 9, 2015
1





> One of our favorite telescopes in the world - the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), has aided in spotting a couple of stars set to collide. At the center of the planetary nebula Henize 2-428, two stars orbit one another. These two planetary bodies are both dwarf stars drawing ever-nearer to each other, eventually set to touch and create one massive explosion. A thermonuclear explosion, that is to say, with a Type "la" supernova to follow. Sadly, none of us living today will be around to see this event, as it'll take place some 700 years from now.


----------



## Judicial review

Boing and spaceX got a 6.8 billion contract, and will have the first manned space flight by 2017, perhaps they will get a much bigger contract once they have show success and cost reduction in doing this. Anotherwords doing it cheaper than NASA. If that's the case boeing and SpaceX could go on a hiring binge.

This would be my plan from soonest to latest -

1.) Make it free to take Math, all sciences, physics, space, and, space engineering classes ASAP. Congress should have zero issue funding that, because it's much cheaper than Obama's free 2 year tuition program.

2.) Give Boeing and Space X tens of billions every year in contracts. I believe if we can spend that much on alternative energy that doesn't even create jobs that last, better give it to these private businesses that we know will last and employ as many of these college graduates in math, science and space as they can potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs. It will make math and science important again and students will want to do it.

3.) Build a US Space stations right now. This should be NASA"s #1 priority now that space x and Boeing took a huge load off of them. We have to with the russians denying us access to the international station by 2020. Plus their is so outdated and there rockets are blowing up, and with our top private companies like Boeing creating the next big capsul

4.) Plan missions to the moon to start planning a port to be built there.

6.) After the us space station is built expand responsibilities to Boeing and Space X to build this port on the moon since it will be cheaper done by a private company. That means increase their yearly budget again. this is where space engineers will be needed many of them to expedite this.

7.) Build a super computer to put on the moon at the port..

8.) while all of this is going on NASA should be focused on sending information gathering rovers to Mars prior to any manned space travel to that planet. According to NASA's budget request they are doing exactly that. I'm also happy they are building a newer better version of the hubble telescope, and newer high tech fleet of satelites.

9.) Lastly - Missions to mars.


----------



## Judicial review

Check PM - Mathew.


----------



## fmdog44

Matthew said:


> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
Click to expand...

The mathematical probability that man would find a way to instill his will on others has been long established. If you were forced to bet one way or another which one would you choose, a hands off policy or an interference policy?  I'll bet the farm on the interference policy (for the good of the aliens of course). We may be explorers but we are also conquerors!!


----------



## sealybobo

Judicial review said:


> Boing and spaceX got a 6.8 billion contract, and will have the first manned space flight by 2017, perhaps they will get a much bigger contract once they have show success and cost reduction in doing this. Anotherwords doing it cheaper than NASA. If that's the case boeing and SpaceX could go on a hiring binge.
> 
> This would be my plan from soonest to latest -
> 
> 1.) Make it free to take Math, all sciences, physics, space, and, space engineering classes ASAP. Congress should have zero issue funding that, because it's much cheaper than Obama's free 2 year tuition program.
> 
> 2.) Give Boeing and Space X tens of billions every year in contracts. I believe if we can spend that much on alternative energy that doesn't even create jobs that last, better give it to these private businesses that we know will last and employ as many of these college graduates in math, science and space as they can potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs. It will make math and science important again and students will want to do it.
> 
> 3.) Build a US Space stations right now. This should be NASA"s #1 priority now that space x and Boeing took a huge load off of them. We have to with the russians denying us access to the international station by 2020. Plus their is so outdated and there rockets are blowing up, and with our top private companies like Boeing creating the next big capsul
> 
> 4.) Plan missions to the moon to start planning a port to be built there.
> 
> 6.) After the us space station is built expand responsibilities to Boeing and Space X to build this port on the moon since it will be cheaper done by a private company. That means increase their yearly budget again. this is where space engineers will be needed many of them to expedite this.
> 
> 7.) Build a super computer to put on the moon at the port..
> 
> 8.) while all of this is going on NASA should be focused on sending information gathering rovers to Mars prior to any manned space travel to that planet. According to NASA's budget request they are doing exactly that. I'm also happy they are building a newer better version of the hubble telescope, and newer high tech fleet of satelites.
> 
> 9.) Lastly - Missions to mars.



How is it cheaper when private companies do it?  Don't they have a profit motive?  This isn't something that is going to give a company a financial ROI.  Or maybe you think they'll give rides into space for a big fee?  

Why do we need a corporation that will no doubt have an overpaid CEO, VP, other executives who don't know science but they make more than the scientists do?  

How many scientists can you hire with that CEO money?


----------



## ScienceRocks

fmdog44 said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The mathematical probability that man would find a way to instill his will on others has been long established. If you were forced to bet one way or another which one would you choose, a hands off policy or an interference policy?  I'll bet the farm on the interference policy (for the good of the aliens of course). We may be explorers but we are also conquerors!!
Click to expand...


The reality of the universe is only the strong survive that are willing to do what it takes. If we're no longer willing to do what it takes. Will we survive the long term?


----------



## sealybobo

fmdog44 said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Daryl Hunt said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fmdog44 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Finding intelligent life will be a disaster as you know man being stupid will stick his nose where it does not belong and want to change them in to democrats and republicans, Christians and Muslims and we will do it all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would be better off if we found a planet with no intelligent life and no dinosaurs.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The Aliens already have.  They call it Dirball.  We call it Earth.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This is kind of sad that so many people hate humanity. No wonder they don't believe it can do great things and explore. All the faith of the 50's and 60's is gone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The mathematical probability that man would find a way to instill his will on others has been long established. If you were forced to bet one way or another which one would you choose, a hands off policy or an interference policy?  I'll bet the farm on the interference policy (for the good of the aliens of course). We may be explorers but we are also conquerors!!
Click to expand...


We know that something always goes wrong when one people go invade another country.  From Cortez to Columbus to Hitler to Bush.  Columbus worked out well for us but not so well for the Mexicans and Indians.  Bet they wish they had better border security back then.  

So I hope there is no intelligent life on the planet we go to.  Or I hope they are no more advanced than us humans were in the 9th century before guns were invented.  We could easily rule them with our automatic weapons and explosive devises.  But if they were crazy enough we'd have to have a lot of fire power to stop 50,000 men who were not afraid to die.  

If we went and they already had weapons and armies and rulers, I would be afraid they would want to experiment on us the same way we wanted to on ET.  Or how they enslaved us in Planet of the Apes just like we treat monkeys today.  Hopefully all this planet has is unintelligent life.  

What would we do if we found a planet with dinosaurs?  I would say wipe them off one continent but leave them alone everywhere else.


----------



## ScienceRocks

1502.02038 Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler VI Planet Sample from Q1-Q16 47 Months 

Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler VI: Planet Sample from Q1-Q16 (47 Months)

We present the sixth catalog of Kepler candidate planets based on nearly 4 years of high precision photometry. This catalog builds on the legacy of previous catalogs released by the Kepler project and includes 1493 new Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) of which 554 are planet candidates, and 131 of these candidates have best fit radii <1.5 R_earth. This brings the total number of KOIs and planet candidates to 7305 and 4173 respectively. We suspect that many of these new candidates at the low signal-to-noise limit may be false alarms created by instrumental noise, and discuss our efforts to identify such objects. We re-evaluate all previously published KOIs with orbital periods of > 50 days to provide a consistently vetted sample that can be used to improve planet occurrence rate calculations. We discuss the performance of our planet detection algorithms, and the consistency of our vetting products. The full catalog is publicly available at the NASA Exoplanet Archive


----------



## longknife

CNN provides this from Hubble @ Say cheese Hubble Telescope spots smiley face in space - CNN.com


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA solicits proposals for Precision Doppler Spectrometer at Kitt Peak



> The spectrometer, funded by NASA, will be deployed on an existing telescope at Kitt Peak, the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope. The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), which is funded by NSF, is a partner in the telescope and operates Kitt Peak
> The new spectrometer will be a world-class precision radial velocity instrument, with a *minimum velocity precision of better than 0.5 m/s (1 mph) and a goal of 0.1 m/s (0.2 mph).NASA has established an aggressive development schedule for the new spectrometer in order to make the instrument available for use by the astronomical community on a timescale relevant to the availability of data from the TESS mission (mid-FY18).*


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://spacenews.com/with-eye-on-spa...-rocket-stage/

The French space agency, CNES, on Jan. 5 said it has begun a small technology research program with Germany and other governments to develop a future liquid oxygen/methane-powered rocket stage that would be reusable.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*European Mini-Space Shuttle Aces 1st Test Flight*
by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer  |  February 11, 2015 10:30am ET
European Mini-Space Shuttle Aces 1st Test Flight


> A European mini-space shuttle prototype launched into space Wednesday (Feb. 11) and then zoomed back to Earth in a daring test of innovative technologies for future reusable spacecraft.
> 
> The European Space Agency's car-size Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) blasted off atop a Vega rocket from the European Spaceport in French Guiana at 8:40 a.m. EST (1340 GMT) Wednesday. The spacecraft was initially expected to launch at 8 a.m. EST, but a problem with telemetry delayed the liftoff within the one hour and 45 minute launch window. The craft came back to Earth about 100 minutes after launch, making a parachute-assisted splashdown in the middle
> 
> of the Pacific Ocean at about 10:20 a.m. (1520 GMT). A recovery ship is stationed near the splashdown zone and is on its way to collect the IXV, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*This is the most detailed map yet of our place in the universe *











> In a fascinating 2014 study for _Nature_, a team of scientists mapped thousands of galaxies in our immediate vicinity, and discovered that the Milky Way is part of a jaw-droppingly massive "supercluster" of galaxies that they named Laniakea.
> 
> What's interesting is that this structure is much bigger than anyone had realized. Astronomers had long grouped the Milky Way, Andromeda, and other galaxies around us in the Virgo Supercluster, which contained some 100 galaxy groups.
> 
> It's hard to wrap one's head around how enormous this is. Each of those points of light is an individual galaxy. Each galaxy contains millions, billlions, or even _trillions _of stars. Oh, and this all is just our little local corner of an even broader universe. There are many other galaxy superclusters out there.
> 
> But as Tully and his colleagues found, and as the map above shows, this Virgo Supercluster is just part of a much, much bigger supercluster — Laniakea. (The name, aptly enough, means "immeasurable heavens" in Hawaiian.)
> 
> So what happens when we zoom out? The paper notes that Laniakea borders another supercluster known as Perseus-Pisces. And the scientists defined the borders as where the galaxies are consistently diverging:










What happens if we zoom out even _further_? Even Laniakea and Perseus-Pisces are just one small pocket of the much broader universe. That universe consists of both voids and densely packed superclusters of galaxies. It looks something like this:










http://www.vox.com/2...iakea-milky-way


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> *This is the most detailed map yet of our place in the universe *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In a fascinating 2014 study for _Nature_, a team of scientists mapped thousands of galaxies in our immediate vicinity, and discovered that the Milky Way is part of a jaw-droppingly massive "supercluster" of galaxies that they named Laniakea.
> 
> What's interesting is that this structure is much bigger than anyone had realized. Astronomers had long grouped the Milky Way, Andromeda, and other galaxies around us in the Virgo Supercluster, which contained some 100 galaxy groups.
> 
> It's hard to wrap one's head around how enormous this is. Each of those points of light is an individual galaxy. Each galaxy contains millions, billlions, or even _trillions _of stars. Oh, and this all is just our little local corner of an even broader universe. There are many other galaxy superclusters out there.
> 
> But as Tully and his colleagues found, and as the map above shows, this Virgo Supercluster is just part of a much, much bigger supercluster — Laniakea. (The name, aptly enough, means "immeasurable heavens" in Hawaiian.)
> 
> So what happens when we zoom out? The paper notes that Laniakea borders another supercluster known as Perseus-Pisces. And the scientists defined the borders as where the galaxies are consistently diverging:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What happens if we zoom out even _further_? Even Laniakea and Perseus-Pisces are just one small pocket of the much broader universe. That universe consists of both voids and densely packed superclusters of galaxies. It looks something like this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.vox.com/2...iakea-milky-way
Click to expand...


To me it looks like we are in some living things body. A universe inside this living thing. On a molecular level. One million years to us is one day to it. And it is just something living inside something else. Etc.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Boeing CST-100: Next-Generation Spaceship*

11 February 2015









> The Boeing Co. is one of two companies funded by NASA to develop spacecraft for the International Space Station. In 2014, it received $4.2 billion to continue work on the CST-100 spacecraft that is expected to carry astronauts to the orbiting complex by 2017.
> 
> The firm is best known for its large passenger jets. In space, it has performed work on the space shuttle and the ISS, among other projects.
> The CST-100 is similar in shape to the Apollo spacecraft, but should have electronics that are half a century more advanced. Its gumdrop shape also looks somewhat like the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle being constructed right now by Lockheed Martin and its partners. Orion is designed to carry astronauts beyond low Earth orbit.






http://www.space.com...ng-cst-100.html


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Kepler-447b: a hot-Jupiter with an extremely grazing transit*


> We present the radial velocity confirmation of the extrasolar planet Kepler-447b, initially detected as a candidate by the Kepler mission. In this work, we analyze its transit signal and the radial velocity data obtained with the Calar Alto Fiber-fed Echelle spectrograph (CAFE). By simultaneously modeling both datasets, we obtain the orbital and physical properties of the system. According to our results, Kepler-447b is a Jupiter-mass planet ($M_p=1.37^{+0.48}_{-0.46} M_{\rm Jup}$), with an estimated radius of $R_p=1.65^{+0.59}_{-0.56} R_{\rm Jup}$ (uncertainties provided in this work are $3\sigma$ unless specified). This translates into a sub-Jupiter density. The planet revolves every $\sim7.8$ days around a G8V star with detected activity in the Kepler light curve. Kepler-447b transits its host with a large impact parameter ($b=1.076^{+0.112}_{-0.086}$), being one of the few planetary grazing transits confirmed so far and the first in the Kepler large crop of exoplanets. We estimate that only around 20% of the projected planet disk occults the stellar disk. The relatively large uncertainties in the planet radius are due to the large impact parameter and short duration of the transit. Within the transit time interval, we find the presence of large (somehow modulated) outliers during the transit. We propose and analyze different scenarios that could explain these brighter data points, including instrumental effects, additional perturbing bodies, stellar pulsations, rotation of a non-spherical planet, and spot-crossing events. However, short-cadence photometric data (at the 1 minute level) is still needed to unveil the nature of this observational effect.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers discover rare planet: Kepler-432b is a dense, massive celestial body with extreme seasons*
Astronomers discover rare planet Kepler-432b is a dense massive celestial body with extreme seasons -- ScienceDaily
February 12, 2015


> Two research groups of Heidelberg astronomers have independently of each other discovered a rare planet. The celestial body, called Kepler-432b, is one of the most dense and massive planets known so far. The teams, one led by Mauricio Ortiz of the Centre for Astronomy of Heidelberg University (ZAH) and the other by Simona Ciceri of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, report that the planet has six times the mass of Jupiter, but about the same size. The shape and the size of its orbit are also unusual for a planet like Kepler-432b that is revolving around a giant star. In less than 200 million years, this "red giant" will most likely swallow up the planet.
> 
> The results of this research were published in _Astronomy & Astrophysics._
> 
> "The majority of known planets moving around giant stars have large and circular orbits. With its small and highly elongated orbit, Kepler-432b is a real 'maverick' among planets of this type," says Dr. Davide Gandolfi from the state observatory Königstuhl, which is part of the Centre for Astronomy. Dr. Gandolfi is a member of the research group that discovered the planet. He explains that the star around which Kepler-432b is orbiting has already exhausted the nuclear fuel in its core and is gradually expanding. Its radius is already four times that of our Sun and it will get even larger in the future. As the star is reddish in colour, astronomers call it a "red giant."
> 
> The orbit brings Kepler-432b incredibly close to its host star at some times and much farther away at others, thus creating enormous temperature differences over the course of the planet's year, which corresponds to 52 Earth days. "During the winter season, the temperature on Kepler-432b is roughly 500 degrees Celsius. In the short summer season, it can increase to nearly 1,000 degrees Celsius," states astronomer Dr. Sabine Reffert from the state observatory Königstuhl. Kepler-432b was previously identified as a transiting planet candidate by the NASA Kepler satellite mission. From the vantage point of Earth, a transiting planet passes in front of its host star, periodically dimming the received stellar light.



Kepler-432b

Density is almost 8...Wow!


----------



## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> To me it looks like we are in some living things body. A universe inside this living thing. On a molecular level. One million years to us is one day to it. And it is just something living inside something else. Etc.



I was sitting there looking at this yesterday and thought it was exactly this. Wouldn't it be amazing if it was so?


----------



## ScienceRocks

I*XV Spaceplane successfully returns to Earth after ambitious Re-Entry Test*

http://www.spaceflight101.com/ixv-sp...ntry-test.html


> ESA’s Intermediate Experimental Vehicle successfully made a trip into space and back on Wednesday, being lofted on a sub-orbital trajectory by a Vega launch vehicle to complete half a lap around planet Earth to demonstrate re-entry technologies to pave the way for the development of future re-entry vehicles such as sample return craft, recoverable space-experiment platforms and reusable launch vehicles.
> 
> The IXV spaceplane made a thundering blastoff atop its Vega launcher at 13:40 UTC on Wednesday enjoying a flawless 18-minute ride on the all-solid fueled rocket and its liquid-fueled upper module. Being dropped off in a sub-orbital trajectory, IXV began its journey taking it around the planet, passing a maximum altitude of 413 Kilometers to set up re-entry over the Pacific Ocean where a recovery ship was stationed to retrieve the landed vehicle.
> 
> This re-entry was set up to represent an orbital re-entry in both speed and entry angle to validate the thermal protection system of the lifting-body IXV spacecraft as well as its control system consisting of steering flaps and thrusters, but no wings. Splashdown was confirmed at 15:19 UTC, marking the successful completion of IXV’s mission leading into months of data analysis.
> The main elements that are demonstrated by IXV include the development of a system capable of returning from Low Earth Orbit with a lifting system that is capable of reaching a large down range distance with significant cross-range capability using a combination of rockets and aerosurfaces. The IXV spacecraft is 5 meters long, 2.2 meters wide and 1.5 meters high with a launch mass of 1,845 Kilograms and a lift-to-drag-ratio of 0.7.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*The View from New Horizons: A Full Day on Pluto-Charon*
*Request Rejected*




T


> his time-lapse “movie” of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was recently shot at record-setting distances with the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. The movie was made over about a week, from Jan. 25-31, 2015. It was taken as part of the mission’s second optical navigation (“OpNav”) campaign to better refine the locations of Pluto and Charon in preparation for the spacecraft’s close encounter with the small planet and its five moons on July 14, 2015.
> 
> Pluto and Charon were observed for an entire rotation of each body; a “day” on Pluto and Charon is 6.4 Earth days. The first of the images was taken when New Horizons was about 3 billion miles from Earth, but just 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from Pluto – about 30% farther than Earth’s distance from the Sun. The last frame came 6½ days later, with New Horizons more than 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) closer.
> 
> The wobble easily visible in Pluto’s motion, as Charon orbits, is due to the gravity of Charon, which is about one-eighth as massive as Pluto and about the size of Texas.
> 
> Faint stars can be seen in background of these images. Each frame had an exposure time of one-tenth of a second, too short to see Pluto’s smaller, much fainter moons. New Horizons is still too far from Pluto and its moons to resolve surface features.









> *The Pluto-Charon Dance: *This close up look at Pluto and Charon, taken as part of the mission’s latest optical navigation (“OpNav”) campaign from Jan. 25-31, 2015, comes from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on NASA;s New Horizons spacecraft.
> 
> The time-lapse frames in this movie were magnified four times to make it easier to see Pluto and Charon orbit around their barycenter, a mutual point above Pluto’s surface where Pluto and Charon’s gravity cancels out – this is why Pluto appears to “wobble” in space. Charon orbits approximately 11,200 miles (about 18,000 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface.
> 
> Each frame had an exposure time of one-tenth of a second, too short to see Pluto’s smaller, much fainter moons.
> 
> "These images allow the New Horizons navigators to refine the positions of Pluto and Charon, and they have the additional benefit of allowing the mission scientists to study the variations in brightness of Pluto and Charon as they rotate, providing a preview of what to expect during the close encounter in July," says Alan Stern, the New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
> 
> The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory manages the New Horizons mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), headquartered in San Antonio, is the principal investigator and leads the mission. SwRI leads the science team, payload operations, and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. APL designed, built and operates the spacecraft.



_Image credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute._


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> To me it looks like we are in some living things body. A universe inside this living thing. On a molecular level. One million years to us is one day to it. And it is just something living inside something else. Etc.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I was sitting there looking at this yesterday and thought it was exactly this. Wouldn't it be amazing if it was so?
Click to expand...


It looks like when they show us DNA up close on a molecular level. The universe does look like a living thing.  And when we look at a drop of water its like a mini city in there.

It is truly incomprehensible.  All I know is this little planet and sun are going to die someday and I want humans to live forever.

Its funny religious people are worried about themselves living forever and I'm more concerned about the human race.

If we can clone humans can we clone fish chicken and cows?  Would water be a problem?  Is space cold because then we can probably figure out how to make water from ice?

What are some of the hurdles to leaving our solar system?


----------



## mamooth

Gravitational lensing effect makes cosmic smiley face.

A smiling lens ESA Hubble


----------



## sealybobo

mamooth said:


> Gravitational lensing effect makes cosmic smiley face.
> 
> A smiling lens ESA Hubble



Does everyone understand how many light years away those stars are?  They could actually not even really be there anymore. The light we see is 5 billion years old. It took 5 billion years for that light to reach earth.  For all we know they died out 4 or 3 or 2 or 1 billion years ago.

Don't quote me on the exact numbers.


----------



## mamooth

Matthew said:


> *SpaceX Takes Second Shot at Falcon 9 Landing on Sunday*



After 3 scrubbed launches (one due to a bad range radar, two due to high upper level winds), the DSCOVR satellite finally went up.

Following launch delays SpaceX DSCOVR satellite soars towards space - CSMonitor.com

Its main mission is to sit between the earth and sun and give advance warning of solar storms headed towards earth. It also has cameras pointing back towards earth, so it can provide regular pictures of the entire sunlit side of the earth.

The barge landing of the first stage was scrubbed due to high waves, but they did set it down slowly into the ocean.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Twinkle mission to take a closer look at exoplanet atmospheres *
By David Szondy
February 12, 2015
3 Pictures





> One reason exoplanets are so fascinating is the possibility that they may harbor life, but the definition of habitable used by astronomers is so broad that it could include planets that obviously aren't. To help zero in on the more likely candidates, a British-built satellite called Twinkle will look at the atmospheres of exoplanets to seek more definite signs of life, as well as clues as to the chemistry, formation and evolution of exoplanets.


----------



## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> To me it looks like we are in some living things body. A universe inside this living thing. On a molecular level. One million years to us is one day to it. And it is just something living inside something else. Etc.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I was sitting there looking at this yesterday and thought it was exactly this. Wouldn't it be amazing if it was so?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> It looks like when they show us DNA up close on a molecular level. The universe does look like a living thing.  And when we look at a drop of water its like a mini city in there.
> 
> It is truly incomprehensible.  All I know is this little planet and sun are going to die someday and I want humans to live forever.
> 
> Its funny religious people are worried about themselves living forever and I'm more concerned about the human race.
> 
> If we can clone humans can we clone fish chicken and cows?  Would water be a problem?  Is space cold because then we can probably figure out how to make water from ice?
> 
> What are some of the hurdles to leaving our solar system?
Click to expand...


The only way humans are going to last the next 3-4 million years is expansion. I feel the same way as you do and wish humanity would get off this rock! Yes, we've clones quite a few humans throughout the past two decades..Sheep for one.  No water wouldn't be a probably as moons like Europa have 3 times the fresh water as the earth and mars has enough water(if it was melted) would cover a flat surface the size of mars 36 meters deep. Most of the moons of Jupiter(besides io) and Saturn are made out of ice. 

We melt ice with adding energy, which speeds up the molecules. Also, inside our space ship or surface base, we'll have the right atmosphere with the right density for the molecules to bump into each to melt the ice.  We'll make our own environment!

A few hurdles is speed and will. Speed as it takes 11 years to get to Pluto at 60,000 mph! We'll need something that goes 10% of the speed of light to get anywhere! And that will take will as a lot of anti-science people will whine about spending a trillion bucks to do it.


----------



## Manonthestreet

China—along with every other space-active government—wants to mine helium-3 from the Moon. And now, by successfully navigating a space capsule through re-entry and landing, China's Chang'e 5 test space mission puts the country one step closer to its long term space dream.

Read more: China Might Trump the Rest of the World in the Moon Mining Race - Modern Notion


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> * Twinkle mission to take a closer look at exoplanet atmospheres *
> By David Szondy
> February 12, 2015
> 3 Pictures
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One reason exoplanets are so fascinating is the possibility that they may harbor life, but the definition of habitable used by astronomers is so broad that it could include planets that obviously aren't. To help zero in on the more likely candidates, a British-built satellite called Twinkle will look at the atmospheres of exoplanets to seek more definite signs of life, as well as clues as to the chemistry, formation and evolution of exoplanets.
Click to expand...


The link didn't explain what do they mean exo? Does that just mean they might have life?


----------



## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> * Twinkle mission to take a closer look at exoplanet atmospheres *
> By David Szondy
> February 12, 2015
> 3 Pictures
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One reason exoplanets are so fascinating is the possibility that they may harbor life, but the definition of habitable used by astronomers is so broad that it could include planets that obviously aren't. To help zero in on the more likely candidates, a British-built satellite called Twinkle will look at the atmospheres of exoplanets to seek more definite signs of life, as well as clues as to the chemistry, formation and evolution of exoplanets.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The link didn't explain what do they mean exo? Does that just mean they might have life?
Click to expand...


Extrasolar planets is what they should of said. We will have to see what the data says before we can tell whether they have life or not.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> To me it looks like we are in some living things body. A universe inside this living thing. On a molecular level. One million years to us is one day to it. And it is just something living inside something else. Etc.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I was sitting there looking at this yesterday and thought it was exactly this. Wouldn't it be amazing if it was so?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> It looks like when they show us DNA up close on a molecular level. The universe does look like a living thing.  And when we look at a drop of water its like a mini city in there.
> 
> It is truly incomprehensible.  All I know is this little planet and sun are going to die someday and I want humans to live forever.
> 
> Its funny religious people are worried about themselves living forever and I'm more concerned about the human race.
> 
> If we can clone humans can we clone fish chicken and cows?  Would water be a problem?  Is space cold because then we can probably figure out how to make water from ice?
> 
> What are some of the hurdles to leaving our solar system?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The only way humans are going to last the next 3-4 million years is expansion. I feel the same way as you do and wish humanity would get off this rock! Yes, we've clones quite a few humans throughout the past two decades..Sheep for one.  No water wouldn't be a probably as moons like Europa have 3 times the fresh water as the earth and mars has enough water(if it was melted) would cover a flat surface the size of mars 36 meters deep. Most of the moons of Jupiter(besides io) and Saturn are made out of ice.
> 
> We melt ice with adding energy, which speeds up the molecules. Also, inside our space ship or surface base, we'll have the right atmosphere with the right density for the molecules to bump into each to melt the ice.  We'll make our own environment!
> 
> A few hurdles is speed and will. Speed as it takes 11 years to get to Pluto at 60,000 mph! We'll need something that goes 10% of the speed of light to get anywhere! And that will take will as a lot of anti-science people will whine about spending a trillion bucks to do it.
Click to expand...


Imagine planting a few weeds and grasses and seeds that spread fast at first and then a few fish and pigs and rabbits and beaver on a planet and chickens on a raw planet. Also finches and sparrow. Whatever animals breed fast. Then we bring corn radishes onions potatoes apple trees pear trees grapes etc.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> * Twinkle mission to take a closer look at exoplanet atmospheres *
> By David Szondy
> February 12, 2015
> 3 Pictures
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One reason exoplanets are so fascinating is the possibility that they may harbor life, but the definition of habitable used by astronomers is so broad that it could include planets that obviously aren't. To help zero in on the more likely candidates, a British-built satellite called Twinkle will look at the atmospheres of exoplanets to seek more definite signs of life, as well as clues as to the chemistry, formation and evolution of exoplanets.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The link didn't explain what do they mean exo? Does that just mean they might have life?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Extrasolar planets is what they should of said. We will have to see what the data says before we can tell whether they have life or not.
Click to expand...

Why are they extra solar? Extra what? Does it just mean may have life or something more?


----------



## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> * Twinkle mission to take a closer look at exoplanet atmospheres *
> By David Szondy
> February 12, 2015
> 3 Pictures
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One reason exoplanets are so fascinating is the possibility that they may harbor life, but the definition of habitable used by astronomers is so broad that it could include planets that obviously aren't. To help zero in on the more likely candidates, a British-built satellite called Twinkle will look at the atmospheres of exoplanets to seek more definite signs of life, as well as clues as to the chemistry, formation and evolution of exoplanets.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The link didn't explain what do they mean exo? Does that just mean they might have life?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Extrasolar planets is what they should of said. We will have to see what the data says before we can tell whether they have life or not.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Why are they extra solar? Extra what? Does it just mean may have life or something more?
Click to expand...


Extrasolar = outside of our solar system and orbiting another star. 

_*Extrasolar*_ (From *extra*, Latin for outside or beyond, and *solar*, Latin for the Sun) is a term applied to any object that exists outside the Solar System


----------



## ScienceRocks

* SpaceX signs landing pad agreement with US Air Force *
By David Szondy
February 12, 2015
2 Pictures


 


> Cape Canaveral has seen decades of rockets lifting into space, and now it will act as home to the world's first space landing pad. Brigadier General Nina Armagno, commander of the US Air Force 45th Space Wing, signed an agreement with SpaceX; giving the company a five-year lease on Launch Complex 13 (LC-13) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, which will be converted to receive returning boosters and spacecraft making powered soft landings.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Hubble captures rare image of triple Jupiter transit *
By Anthony Wood





> NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a rare image of a triple transit, as three of Jupiter's largest moons cast their shadows on the gas giant's planetary disk. The three moons captured in the image – Europa, Callisto and Io, were among the first celestial objects observed with a telescope, and were instrumental in debunking the long held belief that the Earth was at the center of the universe.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* New tool processes Cassini snaps to provide clearest-ever view of Titan *
By Chris Wood
February 13, 2015
3 Pictures


 


> A new technique has been developed to suppress the noise in radar images of Titan captured by Cassini. The snaps are usually grainy in appearance due to electronic noise, but the new tool pulls back the curtain, providing the clearest view yet of Saturn’s largest moon.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* World's biggest solar telescope set for 2019 completion in Hawaii *
By Richard Moss
February 14, 2015
3 Pictures


 


> The US$344 million Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is designed to image the surface of the Sun in unprecedented detail and help scientists address fundamental questions about solar physics when it opens sometime in 2019. The DKIST has just entered the next phase in its construction, with a consortium of eight UK universities and businesses tasked with producing the telescope's all-important cameras. Once complete, it will be the biggest solar telescope in the world – dwarfing current titleholder Big Bear Solar Observatory in California and edging out the 4.07 m (13.12 ft) European Solar Telescope that's also currently under construction.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* NASA tests TGALS glider-based satellite launch system *
By David Szondy
February 14, 2015
8 Pictures


 


> Recently, DARPA unveiled its ALASA system for launching satellites from fighter planes. Now NASA is upping the ante with its Towed Glider Air-Launch System (TGALS), which is designed to launch satellites from a twin-fuselage towed glider. Under development by NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California, it's designed as an economical method for putting spacecraft into low-Earth orbit with the first test flight of a scale prototype having already been conducted.


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...ar-of-icy.html


> On February 9, Cassini's trajectory took it within 47,000 kilometers of Rhea. During the encounter Cassini acquired two very large mosaics on a gibbous Rhea, capturing its heavily cratered surface in beautiful detail. This is the first icy moon flyby of the second equatorial phase of the extended-extended mission. It is also the last close encounter that Cassini will ever have with Rhea. Now, we shouldn't be too sad about that, because of all of Saturn's non-Titan moons, Rhea is the one that Cassini has already done the best job of imaging. It's the second largest moon and since it is the one next closest to Saturn from Titan, Cassini's orbit has taken it relatively close to Rhea relatively frequently, providing plenty of imaging opportunities. I just searched, and there are already 5,219 images aimed at Rhea in the Cassini data archives, among them several big mosaics shot during similarly close encounters. Still, it's sad to know that we've now left Rhea behind for good.
> 
> To better understand the data that Cassini gathered during the most recent flyby, I sorted it all out into a single image. You can see that there are three global views from the wide-angle camera, and two large mosaics. The wide-angle views were shot only using a clear filter. The mosaics were shot at full resolution through a clear filter, then at half-resolution through ultraviolet, green, and infrared filters. A small area near Rhea's equator was imaged using two more filters, a longer-wavelength infrared and a blue filter, because there is an especially colorful feature there of interest to scientists.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*ABS-SatMex, aka ABS-3A/Eutelsat 115 West B *

Static fire: NET Feb. 22, 2015
Launch: NET Feb 27, 2015 
Window: 2301-2346 Local (Eastern)


> Launch may slip right into early March. May not.
> 
> Satellites: 2 Boeing 702SP commsats. The 702SP is a new commsat, these are the first, which uses no chemical propulsion - just electric Hall Effect thrusters and a much smaller quantity of xenon as a reaction mass. This drastically reduces the mass of the 702SP, allowing them to be launched in pairs (dual manifesting) on launchers smaller than Proton or Ariane 5.
> 
> As the bottom pic shows, they're lighter but not really "small."
> 
> Hall Effect thruster
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Stacked Boeing 702SP's


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mystery Mars haze baffles scientists*










> A mysterious haze high above Mars has left scientists scratching their heads.
> 
> The vast plume was initially spotted by amateur astronomers in 2012, and appeared twice before vanishing.
> Scientists have now analysed the images and say that say the formation, stretching for more than 1,000km, is larger than any seen before.
> Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers believe the plume could be a large cloud or an exceptionally bright aurora.
> However, they are unsure how these could have formed in the thin upper reaches of the Martian atmosphere.
> "It raises more questions than answers," said Antonio Garcia Munoz, a planetary scientist from the European Space Agency.
> Around the world, a network of amateur astronomers keep their telescopes trained on the Red Planet.
> They first spotted the strange plume in March 2012 above Mars' southern hemisphere.
> Damian Peach was one of the first stargazers to capture images of the phenomenon.
> He told BBC News: "I noticed this projection sticking out of the side of the planet. To begin with, I thought there was a problem with the telescope or camera.






http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-31491805


----------



## ScienceRocks

*A close call of 0.8 light years*



> A group of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have determined that 70,000 years ago a recently discovered dim star is likely to have passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, the Oort Cloud. No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close - five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri.




Read more at: A close call of 0.8 light years


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Laser 'ruler' holds promise for hunting exoplanets*


> The hunt for Earth-like planets around distant stars could soon become a lot easier thanks to a technique developed by researchers in Germany.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In a paper published today, 18 February, in the _New Journal of Physics_, the team of researchers have successfully demonstrated how a solar telescope can be combined with a piece of technology that has already taken the physics world by storm—the laser frequency comb (LFC).
> 
> It is expected the technique will allow a spectral analysis of distant stars with unprecedented accuracy, as well as advance research in other areas of astrophysics, such as detailed observations of the Sun and the measurement of the accelerating universe by observing distant quasars.



Read more at: Laser ruler holds promise for hunting exoplanets


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dawn captures sharper images of Ceres*
*8 hours ago *




These two views of Ceres were acquired by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) as the dwarf planet rotated. The images have been magnified from their original size. The Dawn …more


> Craters and mysterious bright spots are beginning to pop out in the latest images of Ceres from NASA's Dawn spacecraft. These images, taken Feb. 12 at a distance of 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) from the dwarf planet, pose intriguing questions for the science team to explore as the spacecraft nears its destination.



Read more at: Dawn captures sharper images of Ceres


----------



## ScienceRocks

1502.04715 A systematic search for transiting planets in the K2 data

*A systematic search for transiting planets in the K2 data*


> Photometry of stars from the K2 extension of NASA's Kepler mission is afflicted by systematic effects caused by small (few-pixel) drifts in the telescope pointing and other spacecraft issues. We present a method for searching K2 light curves for evidence of exoplanets by simultaneously fitting for these systematics and the transit signals of interest. This method is more computationally expensive than standard search algorithms but we demonstrate that it can be efficiently implemented and used to discover transit signals. We apply this method to the full Campaign 1 dataset and report a list of 36 planet candidates transiting 31 stars, along with an analysis of the pipeline performance and detection efficiency based on artificial signal injections and recoveries. For all planet candidates, we present posterior distributions on the properties of each system based strictly on the transit observables.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dark matter guides growth of supermassive black holes*
*10 hours ago *





This illustration shows two spiral galaxies - each with supermassive black holes at their center - as they are about to collide and form an elliptical galaxy. New research shows that galaxies' dark matter halos influence these mergers and the …more


> Every massive galaxy has a black hole at its center, and the heftier the galaxy, the bigger its black hole. But why are the two related? After all, the black hole is millions of times smaller and less massive than its home galaxy.



Read more at: Dark matter guides growth of supermassive black holes


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Alien star system buzzed the Sun*

19 February 2015











> An alien star passed through our Solar System just 70,000 years ago, astronomers have discovered.
> 
> No other star is known to have approached this close to us.
> An international team of researchers says it came five times closer than our current nearest neighbour - Proxima Centauri.
> The object, a red dwarf known as Scholz's star, cruised through the outer reaches of the Solar System - a region known as the Oort Cloud.
> Scholz's star was not alone; it was accompanied on its travels by an object known as a brown dwarf. These are essentially failed stars that lacked the necessary mass to get fusion going in their cores.
> The findings are published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
> Observations of the dim star's trajectory suggest that 70,000 years ago this cosmic infiltrator passed within 0.8 light years of the Sun. By comparison, Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years away.






http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-31519875


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Japan has increased their space budget by 18.5 percent over the current fiscal year that ends March 30. New budget for fiscal year 2015 is US$2.75 billion.*

http://spacenews.com/japan-boosts-sp...ecurity-focus/


> The education ministry, which controls the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, represents the largest share of the total 2015 space budget at 182 billion yen, a 19 percent rise from the present year. This includes a 5.5 billion yen increase, to 12.5 billion yen, for development of the H-3 rocket to replace the nation’s current workhorse, the reliable but expensive H-2A, in 2020.
> 
> The JAXA budget also includes money for three new projects: a next-generation data relay satellite to cope with growing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance traffic; an advanced optical imaging satellite that will carry a ballistic missile early warning sensor as a hosted payload in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense; and an effort to develop a new line of 150-kilogram multipurpose satellites that can be rapidly built and adapted to a range of missions.



Here is hoping the republicans pass the 500 billion increase for Nasa!!!


----------



## ScienceRocks

Ceres Shows Mystifying Faces and Perplexing White Spots to NASA s Dawn AmericaSpace


> The new photos are the best yet, showing two faces of Ceres as the Texas sized body rotates to reveal a pockmarked world, heavily crated and featuring multiple bright “white spots” that have mystified the scientists and public alike.
> 
> Scientists are keenly interested in Ceres as it may harbor an ocean of liquid water as large in volume as the oceans of Earth below a thick icy mantle despite its small size – and thus could be a potential abode for life.
> 
> I asked Russell if the white spots could be patches of surface water ice?
> 
> “There are team members who favor this!” Russell replied.


*
Two other moons of Pluto (Nix and Hydra), shown in the latest video.*

http://www.universetoday.com/119040/...smaller-moons/


> Now on the final leg of its journey to distant Pluto the New Horizons spacecraft has been able to spot not only the dwarf planet and its largest moon Charon, but also two of its much smaller moons, Hydra and Nix – the latter for the very first time!
> 
> The animation above comprises seven frames made of images acquired by New Horizons from Jan. 27 to Feb. 8, 2015 while the spacecraft was closing in on 115 million miles (186 million km) from Pluto. Hydra is noted by a yellow box and Nix is in the orange. (See a version of the animation with some of the background stars and noise cleared out here.)
> 
> What’s more, these images have been released on the 85th anniversary of the first spotting of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ.


-------

HubbleSite - NewsCenter - Hubble Gets Best View of a Circumstellar Debris Disk Distorted by a Planet 02 19 2015 - The Full Story


> Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to take the most detailed picture to date of a large, edge-on, gas-and-dust disk encircling the 20-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Mars Express images help decipher the geological history of the Red Planet *
By Chris Wood


 


> New images taken by the ESA’s Mars Express orbiter have provided a fresh look at a region believed to be hiding large volumes of water ice just beneath the surface – something that could serve as a water source for future manned missions to the Red Planet.


----------



## ScienceRocks




----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronauts Complete First of Three Spacewalks*
by Calla Cofield, Space.com Staff Writer  |  February 21, 2015 10:32am ET
Astronauts Complete First of Three Spacewalks








> Two NASA astronauts are safely back inside the International Space Station today (Feb. 20) after successfully completing the first of three scheduled spacewalks planned to prep the outpost for the arrivals of commercial spacecraft carrying astronauts in the coming years.
> 
> Barry "Butch" Wilmore, commander of Expedition 42, and flight
> 
> engineer Terry Virts successfully completed three scheduled tasks and an extra "get ahead" task during today's spacewalk, with no problems. The two astronauts ventured out of the station at about 8:00 a.m. EST (1300 GMT). They reentered the orbiting outpost just after 2:30 p.m. EST (1930 GMT). Wilmore and Virts are scheduled to perform two more spacewalks in the next eight days.



*NASA Space Submarine Could Explore Titan's Methane Seas*
*Robotic Submarine Could Explore Seas of Saturn s Moon Titan*


> COCOA BEACH, Fla. — The extraterrestrial seas of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, provide an ideal world for a robotic submarine to explore, and a team of scientists is working on an innovative mission concept that could make that vision a reality.
> 
> A submarine on Titan would open up the lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane that cover the cloudy Saturn moon to exploration. In a NASA video of the Titan Sub mission concept, the robotic submarine sails the Kraken Mare, the largest northern sea on Titan. That alien sea is nearly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) wide and 1,000 feet deep (300 meters).


----------



## ScienceRocks

*China's space program is catching up with that of the United States and Washington must invest in military and civilian programs if it is to remain the world's dominant space power, a congressional hearing heard on Wednesday*


> China's space program is catching up with that of the United States and Washington must invest in military and civilian programs if it is to remain the world's dominant space power, a congressional hearing heard on Wednesday.
> 
> Experts speaking to Congress's U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said China's fast advances in military and civilian space technology were part of a long-term strategy to shape the international geopolitical system to its interests and achieve strategic dominance in the Asia-Pacific.
> 
> They also reflect an enthusiasm for space exploration which in the United States has faded since the Apollo Program which landed Americans on the moon in 1969, they said.



Fucking shame we won't invest in our science programs enough to keep us a leader.


----------



## ScienceRocks

How Asteroid Mining Could Pay for Our First Space Colony


> Many of us dream of living on other planets, but are two things we'll need before it can actually happen: money and raw materials. Now some companies say they have a solution to this problem. They'll mine asteroids for valuable metal ores, and for basic resources like water that we'll need once we're far from Earth.
> Lucky for us, the cosmos is packed with the raw materials we need and crave. Scattered across our galaxy are trillions upon trillions of space rocks, filled with the water, precious metals, and other raw materials we'll need to fuel our cosmic diaspora.
> Mining asteroids is not just a dream—several enterprising companies are already getting the jump on it. Still, the technological barriers are immense, and we're just beginning to come to grips with the social and political implications of a space-based civilization. Here's what we already know—and need to know—about the industry that could make it happen.


----------



## longknife

Matthew said:


> How Asteroid Mining Could Pay for Our First Space Colony
> 
> 
> 
> Many of us dream of living on other planets, but are two things we'll need before it can actually happen: money and raw materials. Now some companies say they have a solution to this problem. They'll mine asteroids for valuable metal ores, and for basic resources like water that we'll need once we're far from Earth.
> Lucky for us, the cosmos is packed with the raw materials we need and crave. Scattered across our galaxy are trillions upon trillions of space rocks, filled with the water, precious metals, and other raw materials we'll need to fuel our cosmic diaspora.
> Mining asteroids is not just a dream—several enterprising companies are already getting the jump on it. Still, the technological barriers are immense, and we're just beginning to come to grips with the social and political implications of a space-based civilization. Here's what we already know—and need to know—about the industry that could make it happen.
Click to expand...


Good Lord! I was 8 or 9 years old (about 1947 or 48) when I read my first scifi book about mining in the asteroid belt. Cannot for the life of me remember who wrote it - probably Heinlein.


----------



## ScienceRocks

It's time to mine the asteroids and make back a thousand times what we put into space.  The losertrians would shit when we do! Short sighted fucks.

* Two Google Lunar XPRIZE teams are working together to get to the moon *
By Chris Wood
February 24, 2015
2 Pictures


 


> Two of the teams competing for the prestigious Google Lunar XPRIZE have announced a partnership, bringing them one step closer to landing on the moon. The HAKUTO team’s rover will hitch a ride on the Astrobotic Griffin lander when it sets off in the second half of 2016.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Aragoscope could be made to 1 kilometer or larger for detailed exoplanet imaging or blackholes in galactic cores*



> The Aragoscope: Ultra-High Resolution Optics at Low Cost starts from 1 hour into the video.
> 
> The goal is to create space telescopes with hundreds of meters of diameter.
> 
> The Aragoscope diffracts light into collection areas. A fraction of the light is collected. A hundred meter aragoscope with many 3 millimeter to one centimeter of width the diffracting rings would collect the light of a one meter telescope. The diffracting rings are a few microns across.



The Aragoscope could provide images up to 1,000 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Russia to keep its part of space station after its duty ends*
*37 minutes ago *


> (AP)—Russia's space agency expects the International Space Station to stay in orbit through 2024, and plans to create its own space outpost with its segment of the station after that.




Read more at: Russia to keep its part of space station after its duty ends


----------



## ScienceRocks

SpaceX hit another milestone in their quest to be the premier space launch company. SpaceX launched its 100th kerosene-fueled Merlin 1D rocket engine on a Falcon 9 rocket Feb. 11, underscoring what it says is an accelerated flight regime for the centerpiece of the company’s propulsion shop.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/02/22...lcon-9-rocket/


> The Falcon 9 rocket uses 10 Merlin engines on every mission — nine standard Merlin 1D powerplants on the launcher’s first stage and a single modified Merlin 1D optimized for firing outside the atmosphere on the second stage.
> 
> If you’re a purist, the 100th flight of a Merlin 1D engine on the Falcon 9’s booster stage will come this weekend with the launch of two communications spacecraft for Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast Satellite — a mission currently targeted for no sooner than Feb. 27.
> 
> Accounting for Merlin 1D flights in all its variants, the 100th unit of the engine flew Feb. 11 when a Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral with NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* MAVEN digs deeper into Martian atmosphere *
By David Szondy
February 24, 2015



 


> NASA’S Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter has taken a deep dive into the Martian atmosphere. The first of a series of five planned deep-dip maneuvers by the unmanned spacecraft, its purpose was to gather information about the lower limits of the upper regions of the Red Planet's atmosphere.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Latest images of Ceres taken from Dawn spacecraft! 

http://www.nasa.gov/...n/#.VO3vYUNOnQ_









> Dwarf planet Ceres continues to puzzle scientists as NASA's Dawn spacecraft gets closer to being captured into orbit around the object. The latest images from Dawn, taken nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers) from Ceres, reveal that a bright spot that stands out in previous images lies close to yet another bright area.
> 
> "Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin. This may be pointing to a volcano-like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic interpretations," said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles.
> 
> Using its ion propulsion system, Dawn will enter orbit around Ceres on March 6. As scientists receive better and better views of the dwarf planet over the next 16 months, they hope to gain a deeper understanding of its origin and evolution by studying its surface. The intriguing bright spots and other interesting features of this captivating world will come into sharper focus.
> 
> "The brightest spot continues to be too small to resolve with our camera, but despite its size it is brighter than anything else on Ceres. This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us," said Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Russia to Build Its Own Orbital Station After 2024*

25 February 2015


> Russia will continue using the International Space Station (ISS) until around 2024 and is planning to build its own orbital outpost using the existing ISS modules, Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said Tuesday.
> 
> "The configuration of a multi-purpose lab module, a docking module and a scientific-energy module allows us to build an orbital station to ensure Russia's access to outer space," Roscosmos Science and Technology Board said in a statement.
> In addition, Russia will actively study the Moon using robotic equipment in the next decade with the goal of sending manned missions to the Earth's satellite around 2030, the board said.




http://www.spacedail...r_2024_999.html


----------



## ScienceRocks

*They are spending US300 million to build a satellite tracking station in Argentina. Their first outside China. *

http://m.scmp.com/news/china/article...g-station-help


> President Cristina Fernandez’s government has said the project is part of China’s plans to reach the moon in 2020.
> 
> The satellite station under construction in southern Neuquen province is China’s first outside the country for its space exploration programme.
> 
> It will be used for monitoring and downloading data through an antenna with a 35-metre diameter.
> 
> It is expected to cost US$300 million and will be operational next year.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*A research team led by Chinese astronomers has discovered the most luminous supermassive quasar, a shining object produced by the black hole, ever found in the distant universe.*

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134020857.htm


> According to a new study published in the British journal "Nature" on Thursday, the quasar is 12 billion times the masses of the Sun and 430 trillion times brighter than the Sun.
> 
> The black hole, which is 12.8 billion light years from Earth, was first spotted through a 2.4 meter telescope in Lijiang in southwest China's Yunnan Province and its existence was confirmed by follow-up studies in the United States and Chile.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* NASA successfully opens 20-foot-wide SMAP antenna *
By Chris Wood





> NASA mission controllers have successfully deployed the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory’s reflector antenna, in what is an important step along the road towards the satellite becoming fully operational.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mystery Spot on Dwarf Planet Ceres Has Mysterious Partner*



> The intrigue surrounding Ceres continues to deepen as a NASA probe gets closer to the dwarf planet.
> The new photos of Ceres from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which is scheduled to arrive in orbit around Ceres on the night of March 5, reveal that a puzzling bright spot on the dwarf planet's surface has a buddy of sorts.
> "Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin," Dawn principal investigator Chris Russell, of UCLA, said in a statement. "This may be pointing to a volcanolike origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better
> 
> resolution before we can make such geologic interpretations."


----------



## ScienceRocks

Ancient Black Hole Is So Big It Doesn't Fit Current Theories: A Surprise From The Early Universe



> A black hole with the mass 12 billion times that of our sun has been discovered and appears to have attained that size by the time the universe was less than a billion years old, going against current theories of black hole formation, astronomers say.
> 
> The black hole, 12.8 billion light years from Earth, is powering a quasar with a luminosity of 420 trillion suns, the brightest quasar in the early universe ever observed, they say.
> 
> Current theories hold that the black hole and its quasar could not have grown so large and so bright so soon following the birth of the universe in the Big Bang around 13.7 billion years ago, astronomers say.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Ancient Black Hole Is So Big It Doesn't Fit Current Theories: A Surprise From The Early Universe
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A black hole with the mass 12 billion times that of our sun has been discovered and appears to have attained that size by the time the universe was less than a billion years old, going against current theories of black hole formation, astronomers say.
> 
> The black hole, 12.8 billion light years from Earth, is powering a quasar with a luminosity of 420 trillion suns, the brightest quasar in the early universe ever observed, they say.
> 
> Current theories hold that the black hole and its quasar could not have grown so large and so bright so soon following the birth of the universe in the Big Bang around 13.7 billion years ago, astronomers say.
Click to expand...

Would you go to mars one way? I bet half the people that applied would back out if picked.


----------



## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> Ancient Black Hole Is So Big It Doesn't Fit Current Theories: A Surprise From The Early Universe
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A black hole with the mass 12 billion times that of our sun has been discovered and appears to have attained that size by the time the universe was less than a billion years old, going against current theories of black hole formation, astronomers say.
> 
> The black hole, 12.8 billion light years from Earth, is powering a quasar with a luminosity of 420 trillion suns, the brightest quasar in the early universe ever observed, they say.
> 
> Current theories hold that the black hole and its quasar could not have grown so large and so bright so soon following the birth of the universe in the Big Bang around 13.7 billion years ago, astronomers say.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Would you go to mars one way? I bet half the people that applied would back out if picked.
Click to expand...


If the infrastructure was in place so I can live out my life on mars.  That and some form of a adapted internet!  The big goal with going to mars and setting up a colony is making sure it lives a natural and happy life.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> Ancient Black Hole Is So Big It Doesn't Fit Current Theories: A Surprise From The Early Universe
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A black hole with the mass 12 billion times that of our sun has been discovered and appears to have attained that size by the time the universe was less than a billion years old, going against current theories of black hole formation, astronomers say.
> 
> The black hole, 12.8 billion light years from Earth, is powering a quasar with a luminosity of 420 trillion suns, the brightest quasar in the early universe ever observed, they say.
> 
> Current theories hold that the black hole and its quasar could not have grown so large and so bright so soon following the birth of the universe in the Big Bang around 13.7 billion years ago, astronomers say.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Would you go to mars one way? I bet half the people that applied would back out if picked.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> If the infrastructure was in place so I can live out my life on mars.  That and some form of a adapted internet!  The big goal with going to mars and setting up a colony is making sure it lives a natural and happy life.
Click to expand...

The people going now know they'll only live something like 100 days.


----------



## sealybobo

Did you see some of the tapes sent in? People are nuts.


----------



## Delta4Embassy

That's a great point above about 'adapted internet.' Are the Mars-candidates aware that their precious cellphones will be useless? 

"Hey, why doesn't my smartphone work? I wanna go home!"


----------



## ScienceRocks

*The Curiosity robot confirms methane in Mars' atmosphere which may hint that existed life*


> The tunable laser spectrometer in the SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) instrument of the Curiosity robot has unequivocally detected an episodic increase in the concentration of methane in Mars' atmosphere after an exhaustive analysis of data obtained during 605 soles or Martian days.
> This has been revealed in an article authored by scientists from the MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) mission, recently published in _Science_. One of the authors of this article is Francisco Javier Martín-Torres, a researcher at the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences (CSIC-UGR).
> 
> This puts an end to the long controversy on the presence of methane in Mars, which started over a decade ago when this gas was first detected with telescopes from Earth. The controversy increased afterwards with the measurements obtained by orbiting satellites, some of which were occasionally contradictory. These new and incontrovertible data open paths for new research that can identify the sources that produce this gas—which could include some type of biological activity—and the mechanisms by means of which the gas is eliminated with such inexplicable speed.




Read more at: The Curiosity robot confirms methane in Mars atmosphere which may hint that existed life


----------



## ScienceRocks

* NASA Dawn's spacecraft will insert into dwarf planet Ceres orbit late next week and then spiral down for 20 months*


> NASA's Dawn spacecraft will be in orbit around Ceres in one more week. NASA has released a photo of Ceres Dwarf planet Ceres continues to puzzle scientists as NASA's Dawn spacecraft gets closer to being captured into orbit around the object.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Life 'not as we know it' possible on Saturn's moon Titan*


> A new type of methane-based, oxygen-free life form that can metabolize and reproduce similar to life on Earth has been modeled by a team of Cornell University researchers.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Taking a simultaneously imaginative and rigidly scientific view, chemical engineers and astronomers offer a template for life that could thrive in a harsh, cold world - specifically Titan, the giant moon of Saturn. A planetary body awash with seas not of water, but of liquid methane, Titan could harbor methane-based, oxygen-free cells.



Read more at: Life not as we know it possible on Saturn s moon Titan


----------



## ScienceRocks

SpaceX ABS/Eutelsat-1 Mission

*Sunday, March 1st, 2015* at *7:30 PM PST* on spacex


> In this mission, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket will deliver the ABS 3A and EUTELSAT 115 West B satellites to a supersynchronous transfer orbit. The ABS/Eutelsat-1 launch window is targeted to open at approximately 10:50pm EST on Sunday, March 1, 2015, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. If all goes as planned, the satellites will be deployed beginning approximately 30 minutes after liftoff.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* ESA offers CubeSats a deep space ride on asteroid mission *
By David Szondy
February 28, 2015
4 Pictures





> CubeSats offer a way to get into space on the cheap. They're compact, inexpensive, and they can piggyback on larger launch payloads to get into orbit. The trouble is, this piggybacking is often like trying to hitchhike cross country on a ride that only goes to the edge of town. The European Space Agency is widening the scope a little by opening a competition for CubeSats to ride into deep space on its Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM).


----------



## ScienceRocks

0115 GMT (8:15 p.m. EST on Sun.)


> Fueling of the 224-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket is underway at Cape Canaveral's Complex 40 launch pad after the SpaceX launch team issued a "go" to begin propellant loading.
> 
> The two-stage rocket burns RP-1 fuel -- a high-refined kerosene -- and liquid oxygen during today's 35-minute launch sequence.
> 
> Radio checks between the rocket and the Air Force's Eastern Range have begun at 8:05 p.m. EST (0105 GMT). First motion checks should begin at 8:20 p.m. EST (0120 GMT).
> 
> Testing of the Falcon 9 rocket's destruct mechanisms is scheduled for 9:05 p.m. EST (0205 GMT), and the launcher's on-board power systems will be activated at 9:20 p.m. EST (0220 GMT).


----------



## ScienceRocks

The Curiosity robot confirms methane in Mars atmosphere which may hint that existed life



> "These new and incontrovertible data open paths for new research that can identify the sources that produce this gas—which could include some type of biological activity—and the mechanisms by means of which the gas is eliminated with such inexplicable speed.
> 
> Since methane can be the product of biological activity—practically all the existing methane in Earth's atmosphere originates in this way—this has created great expectations that Martian methane could also be of a similar origin."


----------



## longknife

Matthew said:


> The Curiosity robot confirms methane in Mars atmosphere which may hint that existed life
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "These new and incontrovertible data open paths for new research that can identify the sources that produce this gas—which could include some type of biological activity—and the mechanisms by means of which the gas is eliminated with such inexplicable speed.
> 
> Since methane can be the product of biological activity—practically all the existing methane in Earth's atmosphere originates in this way—this has created great expectations that Martian methane could also be of a similar origin."
Click to expand...


 Isn't methane created by cow farts? Does that mean there were Martian cows?


----------



## ScienceRocks

SpaceX lofts two all-electric ion-drive comsats to Clarke orbit



> *Pics* Another month, another successful SpaceX launch. This time, a Falcon 9 sent into orbit a twin set of communications satellites that eschew chemical-engine propellant in favor of solar power.
> 
> Typically, half the weight of a satellite is its propulsion fuel, used to maneuver it into position once in space.
> 
> However, the two just-launched Boeing 702SP birds each use a xenon ion drive, which electrically stimulates ions of the noble gas to generate small amounts of thrust. Each engine needs just a tenth of the fuel load of traditional satellite propulsion systems.
> 
> As a result, the two lighter satellites (about 2.2 tonnes apiece) could be stacked for a single launch. The Falcon 9 can only carry a payload lighter than five tonnes to the birds' geostationary orbit 35,786 km (22,236 mi) above Earth – a distance first described by Arthur C. Clarke.


----------



## ScienceRocks

1503.00692 One of the closest planet pairs to the 3 2 Mean Motion Resonance confirmed with K2 observations and Transit Timing Variations EPIC201505350

*One of the closest planet pairs to the 3:2 Mean Motion Resonance, confirmed with K2 observations and Transit Timing Variations : EPIC201505350*


> Our search through two separate pipelines led to the independent discovery of EPIC201505350, a two-planet system of Neptune sized objects (4.2 and 7.2 R), orbiting a K dwarf extremely close to the 3:2 mean motion resonance. The two planets each show transits, sometimes simultaneously due to their proximity to resonance and alignment of conjunctions.
> Results. We obtain further ground based photometry of the larger planet with the NITES telescope, demonstrating the presence of large transit timing variations (TTVs) of over an hour. These TTVs allows us to confirm the planetary nature of the system, and place a limit on the mass of the outer planet of 386M eath.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Giant methane storms on Uranus*






> Most of the times we have looked at Uranus, it has seemed to be a relatively calm place. Well, yes its atmosphere is the coldest place in the solar system. But, when we picture the seventh planet in our solar system invariably the image of a calming blue hazy disc that the spacecraft Voyager 2 took in 1986 comes to mind.




Read more at: Giant methane storms on Uranus


----------



## ScienceRocks

* First satellites with all-electric propulsion call home *
By David Szondy
March 3, 2015
5 Pictures


 


> The launch of two new communications satellites may not seem like news these days, but it is when they're the first satellites with all-electric propulsion. Boeing announced that the two 702SP small platform satellites, called ABS-3A and EUTELSAT 115 West B, that launched on Sunday evening are sending back signals to mission control as they power towards geosynchronous orbit under ion drive.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* NASA releases new Ceres images prior to Friday encounter *
By David Szondy
March 3, 2015
5 Pictures





> As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft makes its final approach to Ceres, the ion-propelled spacecraft is sending the best images yet with more details about the surface of the dwarf planet. The images from Dawn have shown the presence of numerous craters and unusual bright spots that scientist hope will provide clues as to not only how Ceres formed and if it is still active, but the early history of the Solar System as well.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Science Shorts: How Big Is Pluto's Atmosphere?*

2 March 2015









> How big is Pluto's atmosphere? This is not a typical question one finds in planetary science. Earth's atmosphere has an equivalent thickness - the thickness if you compress the atmosphere to uniform pressure and density - of about 10 kilometers, or six miles. Compare this with the radius of Earth, 6,370 kilometers, and you see that the razor-thin thickness of Earth's atmosphere is about 0.17% of its radius.
> 
> Even if you consider the "outer limit" of Earth's neutral atmosphere, what we call the exobase, that reaches about 600 kilometers altitude, the atmosphere's equivalent thickness is only 10% of Earth's radius-still very thin. So the volume of Earth's atmosphere is tiny compared to Earth's volume.
> But now consider Pluto. Its atmosphere has a near-surface equivalent thickness of about 40 kilometers, which is almost 4% of its 1,200- kilometer (or so) radius. But the "outer limit" of Pluto's atmosphere is very difficult to define, although we know that it is very far from the surface.




http://www.spacedail...sphere_999.html


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New technique allows analysis of clouds around exoplanets*


> Analysis of data from the Kepler space telescope has shown that roughly half of the dayside of the exoplanet Kepler-7b is covered by a large cloud mass. Statistical comparison of more than 1,000 atmospheric models show that these clouds are most likely made of Enstatite, a common Earth mineral that is in vapor form at the extreme temperature on Kepler-7b. These models varied the altitude, condensation, particle size, and chemical composition of the clouds to find the right reflectivity and color properties to match the observed signal from the exoplanet.




Next Big Future Kepler Space Telescope data can be analysed to determine the composition of clouds on planets in other solar systems



> Researchers in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT describe a technique that analyzes data from NASA’s Kepler space observatory to determine the types of clouds on planets that orbit other stars, known as exoplanets.
> 
> The team, led by Kerri Cahoy, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, has already used the method to determine the properties of clouds on the exoplanet Kepler-7b. The planet is known as a “hot Jupiter,” as temperatures in its atmosphere hover at around 1,700 kelvins.
> 
> NASA’s Kepler spacecraft was designed to search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. It was pointed at a fixed patch of space, constantly monitoring the brightness of 145,000 stars. An orbiting exoplanet crossing in front of one of these stars causes a temporary dimming of this brightness, allowing researchers to detect its presence.
> 
> Researchers have previously shown that by studying the variations in the amount of light coming from these star systems as a planet transits, or crosses in front or behind them, they can detect the presence of clouds in that planet’s atmosphere. That is because particles within the clouds will scatter different wavelengths of light.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* China aims to have a rover on Mars by 2020 *


> China has ambitious plans to touch down on Mars by 2020, likely with a rover, and to collect its own samples from the red planet 10 years after that, a top aerospace scientist has revealed.



http://m.scmp.com/news/china/article...thin-six-years


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls In NASA Contracts, Google Cash*



> Investors are wondering how many years it will take before Tesla makes a profit. For Elon *Musk’s other big enterprise, SpaceX, the time is now.*
> Space Exploration Technologies, as the closely held company is formally known, has contracts worth $4.2 billion for hauling U.S. astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, and Pentagon officials say they expect to certify it soon for military payloads. And SpaceX’s business of launching satellites looks so promising that, in January, Google and Fidelity Investments together invested $1 billion in the Hawthorne, California–based company. That gives them a 10 percent stake that values SpaceX at $10 billion. Other investors include the Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners, and Capricorn. With 50 launches worth $5 billion on its manifest, SpaceX is making money, according to its website, although a spokesman wouldn’t say how much.



Spacex rules! I hope they work with the asteroid mining companies to make it a thousand times more profitable!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*



Four-star planetary sytem 30 Ari*

Planet Reared by Four Parent Stars NASA


> The newfound four-star planetary system, called 30 Ari, is located 136 light-years away in the constellation Aries. The system's gaseous planet is enormous, with 10 times the mass of Jupiter, and it orbits its primary star every 335 days. The primary star has a relatively close partner star, which the planet does not orbit. This pair, in turn, is locked in a long-distance orbit with another pair of stars about 1,670 astronomical units away (an astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and the sun). Astronomers think it's highly unlikely that this planet, or any moons that might circle it, could sustain life.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* NASA eying ion engines for Mars orbiter *
A Mars orbiter launching in 2022 is a prime candidate to test out new technologies — like ion drive engines, better solar arrays, and lightning-fast broadband communications between Earth and Mars — to help scientists return samples from the Martian surface, and eventually send humans there, according to Charles Whetsel, who oversees formulation of future Mars missions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/03/03...ching-in-2022/


> NASA officials want the agency’s next Mars orbiter to pull double duty as a communications relay station for a fleet of surface landers and as a trailblazer for a future round-trip sample return mission and human expeditions to the red planet.
> 
> Worried its fleet of Mars orbiter is aging, NASA intends to dispatch the spacecraft to the red planet in September 2022 to link ground controllers with rovers and extend mapping capabilities expected to be lost when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter stops functioning.
> 
> Engineers also want to add ion engines to the orbiter and fly the efficient electrically-powered thruster system to Mars for the first time, testing out a solar-electric propulsion package that officials say will be needed when astronauts visit the red planet.
> 
> Ion engines produce just a whisper of thrust, using electric power to ionize atoms of a neutral gas and spit out the particles at high speed. While the drive given by the thrusters is barely noticeable in one instant, they can operate for months or years, burning scant fuel compared to traditional chemical rockets.



Good news!


----------



## longknife

Matthew said:


> *SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls In NASA Contracts, Google Cash*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Investors are wondering how many years it will take before Tesla makes a profit. For Elon *Musk’s other big enterprise, SpaceX, the time is now.*
> Space Exploration Technologies, as the closely held company is formally known, has contracts worth $4.2 billion for hauling U.S. astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, and Pentagon officials say they expect to certify it soon for military payloads. And SpaceX’s business of launching satellites looks so promising that, in January, Google and Fidelity Investments together invested $1 billion in the Hawthorne, California–based company. That gives them a 10 percent stake that values SpaceX at $10 billion. Other investors include the Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners, and Capricorn. With 50 launches worth $5 billion on its manifest, SpaceX is making money, according to its website, although a spokesman wouldn’t say how much.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spacex rules! I hope they work with the asteroid mining companies to make it a thousand times more profitable!
Click to expand...


Well, the thought of the riches there should make a lot of investors salivate. There's only one problem - distance.


_Because the asteroid belt is between the Mars and Jupiter orbits, it is around 2.2 to *3.2 Astronomical Units* (AU) from the Sun – which is approximately 329,115,316 to 478,713,186 km. The average distance between objects is a massive 600,000 miles._


----------



## ScienceRocks

*'Habitable' planet GJ 581d previously dismissed as noise probably does exist*
*8 hours ago *




An artist’s impression of Gliese 581d, an exoplanet about 20.3 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Libra.


> A report published in _Science_ has dismissed claims made last year that the first super-Earth planet discovered in the habitable zone of a distant star was 'stellar activity masquerading as planets.' The researchers are confident the planet named GJ 581d, identified in 2009 orbiting the star Gliese 581, does exist, and that last year's claim was triggered by inadequate analysis of the data.





Read more at:  Habitable planet GJ 581d previously dismissed as noise probably does exist


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Orion's Launch Abort System Motor Exceeds Expectations*











> Three seconds.
> 
> 
> That’s all it took for the attitude control motor of NASA’s Orion Launch Abort System (LAS) to prove that its material can survive not only the intense temperatures, pressures, noise and vibrations experienced during a launch emergency but also 40 percent beyond. The LAS is being designed to bring a crew to safety should there be a problem in the launch pad or during ascent.
> 
> Built by Orbital ATK, the attitude control motor consists of a solid propellant gas generator, with eight proportional valves equally spaced around the outside of the three-foot diameter motor. Together, the valves can exert up to 7,000 pounds of steering force to the vehicle in any direction upon command from the Orion – the spacecraft that will one-day take humans to an asteroid and eventually Mars.
> 
> "For the first time, the motor demonstrated capability far enough above what it would see in flight," said Kevin Rivers, deputy director for the Flight Projects Directorate at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. "We can now have absolute confidence that the motor would perform flawlessly during a crewed mission."





http://www.nasa.gov/...s/#.VPngVeF2niE


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## ScienceRocks

NASA Spacecraft Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet | NASA


> NASA's Dawn spacecraft has become the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet. The spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles (61,000) kilometers from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet’s gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST (7:39 a.m. EST) Friday.
> 
> Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California received a signal from the spacecraft at 5:36 a.m. PST (8:36 a.m. EST) that Dawn was healthy and thrusting with its ion engine, the indicator Dawn had entered orbit as planned.
> 
> "Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet," said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at JPL. "Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres, home."





http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-s...1&MainCatID=11


> Liang Xiaohong explains China's space projects for 2015 during the annual meetings of the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held in Beijing.
> In addition to the launch of the CZ-11, Liang said that the CZ-5, China's next-generation heavy lift launch system will be revealed to the public for the first time at Hainan island's Wenchang Satellite Launch Center. Designed to match the capabilities of American EELV-sized vehicles such as the Delta IV, Atlas V, and Falcon 9, the CZ-5 is currently China's largest rocket system. *Its first flight is scheduled to take place this year as well.*


----------



## Vigilante

*Mystery 'noise' could be an Earth-like world...signals suggest habitable planet...22 light years...*

dailymail.co.uk ^
Astronomers believe mysterious signals - previously dismissed as stellar bursts - are coming from an Earth-like planet. The Gliese 581d planet has conditions that could support life, and is likely to be a rocky world, twice the size of Earth. Signals from the planet were initially discovered in 2010, but last year dismissed as noise from distant stars.


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## ScienceRocks

*The service module now orbiting the moon is still doing experiments to help the Chang'e 5 mission *

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134048142.htm



> China has ran tests close to the moon simulating an unmanned docking procedure needed in the country's next lunar mission.
> 
> The service module of the unmanned lunar orbiter currently in space to trial such techniques entered a target lunar orbit after breaking maneuvers, and flew to a suitable position for orbital docking between Tuesday and Saturday, said the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) on Sunday.
> 
> Liu Jizhong, deputy chief commander of the SASTIND's lunar probe project, said that the service module has proven the reliability of key technology needed for the docking of two spacecraft in the Chang'e-5 mission.


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## ScienceRocks

*The world's largest radio telescope takes A major step towards construction*
*3 hours ago *


> At their meeting last week at the SKA Organisation Headquarters near Manchester, UK, the SKA Board of Directors unanimously agreed to move the world's largest radio telescope forward to its final pre-construction phase. The design of the €650M first phase of the SKA (SKA1) is now defined, consisting of two complementary world-class instruments – one in Australia and one in South Africa – both expecting to deliver exciting and transformational science.


Read more at: The world s largest radio telescope takes A major step towards construction


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## ScienceRocks

*Venus, if you will, as seen in radar with the GBT*
*3 hours ago *


> From earthbound optical telescopes, the surface of Venus is shrouded beneath thick clouds made mostly of carbon dioxide. To penetrate this veil, probes like NASA's Magellan spacecraft use radar to reveal remarkable features of this planet, like mountains, craters, and volcanoes.
> Recently, by combining the highly sensitive receiving capabilities of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and the powerful radar transmitter at the NSF's Arecibo Observatory, astronomers were able to make remarkably detailed images of the surface of this planet without ever leaving Earth.
> 
> The radar signals from Arecibo passed through both our planet's atmosphere and the atmosphere of Venus, where they hit the surface and bounced back to be received by the GBT in a process known as bistatic radar.




Read more at: Venus if you will as seen in radar with the GBT


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## ScienceRocks

To get a idea of the sizes of the largest moons to the inner-planets...Well, here is a good idea.

There's a couple of moons that are bigger then Mercury and nearly as big as Mars!





----\

http://spacenews.com/commercial-crew...ter-contracts/


> While Mulholland and Reisman debated their relative strengths and weaknesses, the two left room for potential future collaboration. Mulholland noted that *Boeing has had discussions in the past with SpaceX about the technical compatibility of the CST-100 with the Falcon 9 as a backup to the Atlas 5*. “We were not given a bid for the Falcon 9 in this previous phase of the proposal, but we’ve had discussions with SpaceX,” he said.




* Mars may have had more water than the Arctic Ocean *
By David Szondy
March 9, 2015
2 Pictures


 


> In Edgar Rice Burroughs's _Barsoom_ novels, Earthman John Carter's adventures took place on the dry beds of Mar's ancient oceans. Now NASA scientist's say that may not be so far fetched. Though they haven't found signs of any thoats, they have estimated that Mars may once have had enough water to form a vast ocean surrounding its north pole of which only plains remain.



I am willing to bet that if Venus was where mars was it would be habitual. Certainly, it would be colder but it would be habitual. Kepler 186f and a few other cold side planets could still be so.


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## ScienceRocks

* Engine running on frozen carbon dioxide may power mission to Mars *
By Colin Jeffrey
March 10, 2015






> Future missions to Mars may well be powered by carbon dioxide fueled engines, thanks to a recent prototype developed by Northumbria and Edinburgh Universities. Exploiting a phenomenon known as the Leidenfrost effect, researchers hope that their engine could be powered by the vast amount of dry-ice deposits found on the red planet, thereby reducing the need to transport fuel on interplanetary missions.


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.spacedaily.com/m/reports/...e_lab_999.html


> Research on the Long March-5 carrier rocket - to be used to lift the Tiangong-2 lab into space - Tiangong-2's payload, and selection of astronauts for the mission are currently "progressing in an orderly manner," Zhou said.


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## ScienceRocks

*In 'milestone' toward Mars, NASA test-fires rocket*



> The most powerful solid rocket booster ever built was fired up for the first time Wednesday in a test that NASA described as a "significant milestone" toward Mars.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tied horizontally to the ground at the base of a Utah mountain, the 177-foot-long (54-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) booster was hot-fired for two minutes to see how the system would perform when eventually launched.
> 
> "Great test, just a fantastic result," said Alex Priskos, who manages the Boosters Office for the SLS program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
> 
> "This thing was about as perfect... as it could be."




Read more at: In milestone toward Mars NASA test-fires rocket


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## ScienceRocks

*Jupiter's Moon Ganymede Has a Salty Ocean with More Water than Earth*
by Miriam Kramer, Space.com Staff Writer  |  March 12, 2015 01:50pm ET
Jupiter s Moon Ganymede Has a Salty Ocean with More Water than Earth


> A salty ocean is lurking beneath the surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have found.
> 
> The ocean on Ganymede — which is buried under a thick crust of ice — could actually harbor more water than all of Earth's surface water combined, according to NASA officials. Scientists think the ocean is about 60 miles (100 kilometers) thick, 10 times the depth of Earth's oceans, NASA added. The new Hubble Space Telescope finding could also help scientists learn more about the plethora of potentially watery worlds that exist in the solar system and beyond.
> 
> "The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place," Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science, said during a news teleconference today (March 12). Scientists are particularly interested in learning more about watery worlds because life as we know it depends on water to thrive.





> Scientists have also found that Ganymede's surface shows signs of flooding. Young parts of Ganymede seen in a video map may have been formed by water bubbling up from the interior of the moon through faults or cryo-volcanos at some point in the moon's history, Green said.


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## ScienceRocks

*Japan space scientists make wireless energy breakthrough*
*15 hours ago *





Electricity gained from solar panels in space could one day be beamed to earth


> Japanese scientists have succeeded in transmitting energy wirelessly, in a key step that could one day make solar power generation in space a possibility, an official said Thursday.
> 
> Researchers used microwaves to deliver 1.8 kilowatts of power—enough to run an electric kettle—through the air with pinpoint accuracy to a receiver 55 metres (170 feet) away.





Read more at: Japan space scientists make wireless energy breakthrough


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## ScienceRocks

*Researchers study methane-rich plumes from Saturn's icy moon Enceladus*
*4 hours ago *


> *
> NASA's Cassini spacecraft has measured a curious abundance of methane spewing into the atmosphere of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. A team of American and French scientists published findings in Geophysical Research Letters suggesting two scenarios that could explain the methane abundance observed in the plumes. *


*

Read more at: Researchers study methane-rich plumes from Saturn s icy moon Enceladus
*


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## Vigilante

*Jupiter's moon Ganymede has vast underground ocean*

cbs ^
Larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede is one of four moons discovered by Galileo in 1610, easily visible in small telescope and large binoculars. The subsurface ocean confirmed by Hubble is believed to be at least 60 miles thick, containing more water than all of Earth's ocean's combined. As such, Ganymede joins a growing list of planets and moons in Earth's solar system, including Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, that are known to harbor vast reservoirs of liquid water. The latest findings using the Hubble Space Telescope build on earlier observations by NASA's Galileo spacecraft that showed Ganymede...


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## mamooth

Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission

The Magnetospheric Multiscale mission successfully launched yesterday, the purpose being to study earth's magnetic field in new and better ways. It's 4 identical satellites, which will eventually orbit in a pyramidal formation, separated by about a kilometer. The spacing allows the formation to detect how quickly the magnetic field lines move about, disconnect and reconnect.

It's mostly a "pure science" mission, but it can tell more about space weather and how to protect earth's communication and electrical grid, or how such magnetic processes work on the sun. One of those missions where you don't know what you'll find until you look.


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## ScienceRocks

* Liquid water, possible non-Earth life and manned mission or colonization targets in our solar system *
Next Big Future Liquid water possible non-Earth life and manned mission or colonization targets in our solar system



> Oceans trapped under ice appear to be pretty common in the solar system and one of them, on a small moon of Saturn’s, appears to be quite hot. Scientists reported evidence for hydrothermal vents on the Saturnian moon Enceladus, with temperatures of its rocky core surpassing 194 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees Celsius) in spots. The discovery, if confirmed, would make Enceladus the only place other than Earth where such chemical reactions between rock and heated water are known to be occurring today — and for many scientists, it would make Enceladus a most promising place to look for life.
> 
> Any place with liquid water is a candidate for microbial extraterrestrial life. Mars, Titan, Europa, Ceres, Enceladus, and Ganymede have the presence of water ice and speculation that life may exists there. There are now *six candidate locations for liquid water in solar system other than Earth*.
> 
> The Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, another team reported signs of another under-ice ocean, on Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter’s moons. Scientists are already convinced that there is a large ocean, also covered by ice, on another Jovian moon, Europa. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft had also found hints of hidden water on Ganymede and on another of Jupiter’s moons, Callisto.
> 
> Journal of Geophysical Review - The search for a subsurface ocean in Ganymede with Hubble Space Telescope observations of its auroral ovals
> 
> Europa is estimated to have twice the amount of water as Earth.
> 
> Scientists have long suspected that there was an ocean of liquid water on Ganymede — the largest moon in the solar system, at about 3,273 miles (5,268 kilometers) across — has an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface. The Galileo probe measured Ganymede's magnetic field in 2002, providing some data supporting the theory that the moon has an ocean. It is estimated that Ganymede has more water than Earth.
> 
> Liquid water moons of gas giants and in asteroid belts could be common outside our solar system as well. The most common of the thousands of exoplanets that have been identified are gas giants.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Enceladus could have a 10 kilometer thick liquid water Ocean under 30-40 kilometers of ice.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Enceladus_
> 
> Water appears to make up about 40 percent of Ceres' volume.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Saturn's moon Titan_
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Europa_
> 
> Water on Mars exists today almost exclusively as ice, with a small amount present in the atmosphere as vapour. The only place where water ice is visible at the surface is at the north polar ice cap.[2] Abundant water ice is also present beneath the permanent carbon dioxide ice cap at the Martian south pole and in the shallow subsurface at more temperate latitudes. More than five million cubic kilometers of ice have been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters. Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface.
> 
> Some liquid water may occur transiently on the Martian surface today but only under certain conditions.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Abstract - on Ganymede water*
> 
> We present a new approach to search for a subsurface ocean within Ganymede through observations and modeling of the dynamics of its auroral ovals. The locations of the auroral ovals oscillate due to Jupiter's time-varying magnetospheric field seen in the rest frame of Ganymede. If an electrically conductive ocean is present, the external time-varying magnetic field is reduced due to induction within the ocean and the oscillation amplitude of the ovals decreases. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations show that the locations of the ovals oscillate on average by 2.0° ±1.3°. Our model calculations predict a significantly stronger oscillation by 5.8° ± 1.3° without ocean compared to 2.2°±1.3° if an ocean is present. Because the ocean and the no-ocean hypotheses cannot be separated by simple visual inspection of individual HST images, we apply a statistical analysis including a Monte Carlo test to also address the uncertainty caused by the patchiness of observed emissions. The observations require a minimum electrical conductivity of 0.09 S/m for an ocean assumed to be located between 150 km and 250 km depth or alternatively a maximum depth of the top of the ocean at 330 km. Our analysis implies that Ganymede's dynamo possesses an outstandingly low quadrupole-to-dipole moment ratio. The new technique applied here is suited to probe the interior of other planetary bodies by monitoring their auroral response to time-varying magnetic fields.


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## ScienceRocks

* Lockheed Martin previews next generation space cargo ships *
By David Szondy
March 14, 2015
6 Pictures





> Lockheed Martin has provided a glimpse at the next generation of commercial spacecraft by revealing its proposal for NASA's Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) program. The new cargo ships, which Lockheed compares to the US transcontinental railroads of the 19th century, are designed to not only resupply the International Space Station, but also support manned deep space missions, such as the first expedition to Mars.


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## ScienceRocks

Life as We Know it Exists in Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Most Probably, NASA


> *Where there is water, there is life, much more when it’s warm. The discovery of an ocean underneath Enceladus may just be the shot in the arm that NASA needs to keep looking for more habitable places in the solar system. Maybe we don’t need to explore outside of our own domain after all. The news is welcomed with great anticipation by planet Earth.*
> 
> Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, discovered to have warm water enough for life. In 2004, Cassini, the biggest spacecraft to date by NASA , arrived in the orbit around Saturn. Since then, it’s sent back oodles of information about the planet and some of its attendant moons. As we all know, life doesn’t exist without the great significance of the components in all living matters; water, involving the elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur, source of heat, and enough time for life to develop. All this conditions exist on earth but scientists believe it may exist on other objects too. Through the e research, it was now confirmed that Saturn’s moon Enceladus, concealed with its thermal activity on its ocean floor which could make the conditions right for life.


----------



## Vigilante

*Particle jets reveal the secrets of the most exotic state of matter*

http://www.sciencedaily.com/ ^ Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences

Shortly following the Big Bang, the Universe was filled with a chaotic primordial soup of quarks and gluons, particles which are now trapped inside of protons and neutrons. Study of this quark-gluon plasma requires the use of the most advanced theoretical and experimental tools. Physicists have taken one crucial step towards a better understanding of the plasma and its properties.....


----------



## ScienceRocks

*A second minor planet may possess Saturn-like rings*
*6 hours ago *




Solar system. Credit: NASA


> There are only five bodies in our solar system that are known to bear rings. The most obvious is the planet Saturn; to a lesser extent, rings of gas and dust also encircle Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. The fifth member of this haloed group is Chariklo, one of a class of minor planets called centaurs: small, rocky bodies that possess qualities of both asteroids and comets.
> 
> Scientists only recently detected Chariklo's ring system—a surprising finding, as it had been thought that centaurs are relatively dormant. Now scientists at MIT and elsewhere have detected a possible ring system around a second centaur, Chiron.





Read more at: A second minor planet may possess Saturn-like rings


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## ScienceRocks

* ESA successfully corrects sixth Galileo satellite's orbit *
By Chris Wood
March 16, 2015
2 Pictures





> The ESA has successfully corrected the orbit of its sixth Galileo satellite following its launch into an elongated orbit in August 2014. It took 14 maneuvers to reposition the probe, which is designed to form part of a new global navigation system on par with existing GPS and Glonass solutions.


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## ScienceRocks

*Mercury's Odd Surface Features Mapped by NASA Spacecraft*
Mercury s Odd Surface Features Mapped by NASA Spacecraft


> Two new maps of Mercury taken by a NASA probe have identified never-before-seen formations on the planet's surface.
> 
> The previously unidentified regions of Mercury have compositions that differ significantly from the crust around them. Known as geochemical terranes, these zones provide insight into the formation of the outer skin of the planet. The maps appear in two new studies, which suggest that the most recently identified features may have formed not from the planet's crust but from just below it, in the mantle.
> 
> Created using the X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) and Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) instruments on NASA's MESSENGER probe, the maps are used to study the surface chemistry of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. This analysis will provide information about the concentrations of elements like potassium, uranium and sodium on Mercury's surface. The experiment will also provide scientists with ratios of silicon to other elements on the planet's surface.


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## Vikrant

India Allocates $1.2 Billion for Space Activities






India Allocates 1.2 Billion for ISRO Space Activities


----------



## ScienceRocks

SpaceX expected to more than double rocket engine production in two years


> (Reuters) - Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is rapidly increasing production of the engines that power its Falcon 9 rocket and expects to meet its target of 13 launches and two test flights this year, President Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters.
> 
> SpaceX, the technology upstart founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, is stepping up hiring of engineers and other workers to help boost production, including many from other sectors such as the automotive industry and the military, company officials said.
> 
> This year, the company expects to produce at least 180 engines, with that number set to increase to 240 next year, and 400 in 2017, Shotwell told Reuters in an interview late last week.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Best views yet of Mercury's ice-filled craters*

17 March 2015









Scientists have obtained the most detailed views yet of ice deposits inside the permanently shadowed craters at Mercury's north pole.


> The pictures were taken by Nasa's Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which has been orbiting just tens of kilometres from the planet's surface.
> This has allowed it to gather high-resolution data before the probe crashes into Mercury.
> This will end its four-year mission around the first planet from the Sun.
> You could be forgiven for wondering how a planet where temperatures soar above 400C could host water-ice.
> But some impact craters at the north pole of this scorching world are always shadowed from the Sun, turning them into cold traps.






http://m.bbc.co.uk/n...onment-31917308


----------



## Vikrant

Russia and India are looking to forge and develop cooperation in space monitoring and in the field of training forces to respond to emergency situations.






Russia India to join hands in space monitoring Russia India Report


----------



## Vikrant

Matthew said:


> *Best views yet of Mercury's ice-filled craters*
> 
> 17 March 2015
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Scientists have obtained the most detailed views yet of ice deposits inside the permanently shadowed craters at Mercury's north pole.
> 
> 
> 
> The pictures were taken by Nasa's Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which has been orbiting just tens of kilometres from the planet's surface.
> This has allowed it to gather high-resolution data before the probe crashes into Mercury.
> This will end its four-year mission around the first planet from the Sun.
> You could be forgiven for wondering how a planet where temperatures soar above 400C could host water-ice.
> But some impact craters at the north pole of this scorching world are always shadowed from the Sun, turning them into cold traps.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://m.bbc.co.uk/n...onment-31917308
Click to expand...


It looks like slurpee will not be a problem if we were to colonize Mercury


----------



## ScienceRocks

I wish Russia, India and China would get together to send people to mars. That is something that I'd be excited for.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* One-Year Mission to launch first joint extended stay aboard the ISS *
By Heidi Hoopes
March 17, 2015
10 Pictures


 


> Most missions to the International Space Station range from 160 to 180 days, but this month Russia and NASA will launch a joint year-long mission designed to more fully test the stress of space travel on the human body. ISS veterans Scott Kelly (US) and Mikhail Kornienko (Russia) have been training for two years for this daunting mission, culminating in departure slated for March 27, 2015, 3:42 p.m. EST. from the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*'Northern lights' observed on Mars*


18 March 2015











> A Nasa spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet has detected a mysterious aurora that reaches deep into the Martian atmosphere.
> 
> The Maven mission observed these "Christmas lights" for five days leading up to 25 December last year.
> Scientists have also discovered a dust cloud at high altitude, which does not match predictions.
> The preliminary results were presented at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas.
> The mission was designed to help solve the mystery of how the Red Planet lost most of its atmosphere and much of its water and other volatiles.
> "The question is how much water has been lost into the crust, how much has been lost to space. How much CO2 has been lost to the crust, how much to space," said Maven's chief scientist Prof Bruce Jakosky from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
> Ultraviolet aurora on Mars
> The bright ultraviolet auroral glow seen by Maven in December spanned Mars' northern hemisphere.




http://m.bbc.co.uk/n...onment-31953800


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Chinese Moon Probe Performs Sample-Return Tech Test in Lunar Orbit*

Chinese Moon Probe Performs Sample-Return Tech Test in Lunar Orbit


> China is reporting
> 
> new progress in shaking out procedures required for rocketing back to Earth samples from the moon.
> 
> The service module from China's experimental round-trip moon moon mission last year was used to test maneuvers in lunar orbit, including braking into a suitable position for orbital docking. The country's State Administration of Science, Technology
> 
> and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) noted the progress earlier this month, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
> 
> These practice steps mimic maneuvers to be used in the future Chang'e 5 sample-return moon mission being eyed for 2017.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Theoretical study suggests huge lava tubes could exist on moon*
*9 hours ago by Elizabeth K. Gardner *





The city of Philadelphia is shown inside a theoretical lunar lava tube. A Purdue University team of researchers explored whether lava tubes more than 1 kilometer wide could remain structurally stable on the moon. Credit: Purdue University/courtesy of David Blair


> Lava tubes large enough to house cities could be structurally stable on the moon, according to a theoretical study presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on Tuesday (March 17).





Read more at: Theoretical study suggests huge lava tubes could exist on moon


----------



## ScienceRocks

Successful Test Flights for Mars Landing Technology



> It's tricky to get a spacecraft to land exactly where you want. That's why the area where the Mars rover Curiosity team had targeted to land was an ellipse that may seem large, measuring 12 miles by 4 miles (20 by 7 kilometers).
> 
> Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have been developing cutting-edge technologies that would enable spacecraft to land at a specific location on Mars -- or any other planetary body -- with more precision than ever before. In collaboration with Masten Space Systems in Mojave, California, they have recently tested these technologies on board a high-tech demonstration vehicle called the Autonomous Descent and Ascent Powered-flight Testbed (ADAPT).


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Bigelow Aerospace's Inflatable Habitat Ready for Space Station Trip*
Bigelow Aerospace s Inflatable Habitat Ready for Space Station Trip



> A new, inflatable addition to the International Space Station is ready for its close-up.
> 
> NASA officials viewed Bigelow Aerospace's Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) at the company's facility in Las Vegas on March 12. BEAM is scheduled to depart later this year for NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and then blast toward the station atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster.
> 
> BEAM's time attached to the orbiting lab should provide a key test for expandable space habitats, which represent a dramatic departure from traditional metallic designs.
> 
> "We're fortunate to have the space station to demonstrate potential habitation capabilities like BEAM," Jason Crusan, director of Advanced Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. "Station provides us with a long-duration microgravity platform with constant crew access to evaluate systems and technologies
> 
> we are considering for future missions farther into deep space."









> Founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, Bigelow Aerospace has as a goal the creation of a new paradigm in space commerce and exploration via the development and use of expandable habitat technology. Expandable habitats are viewed as offering dramatically larger volumes than rigid, metallic structures as well as enhanced protection against both radiation and physical debris.
> 
> Additionally, expandable habitats are lighter than traditional systems, take up less room in a rocket fairing for launch, and are seen by advocates as a less-costly alternative.
> 
> As an example, BEAM will measure just 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide in its packed configuration aboard SpaceX's robotic Dragon resupply spacecraft. Once is deployed and inflated, it will add an additional 565 cubic feet (16 cubic m) of volume — about the size of a large family camping tent — that is accessible to astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory.
> 
> * Technology demonstration*
> NASA awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to provide BEAM, which will arrive at the space station in 2015 for a two-year technology demonstration.
> 
> After the module is berthed to the station's Tranquility node, astronauts will activate a pressurization system to expand the structure to its full size using air stored within the packed module.
> 
> Space station crewmembers will periodically enter the module to gather performance data
> 
> and conduct inspections. Following the test period, the module will be jettisoned from the station and burn up on re-entry to Earth's atmosphere.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Unmanned version of Dream Chaser spaceplane unveiled *
By David Szondy
March 20, 2015
5 Pictures





> Though the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Dream Chaser spaceplane was kicked out of the running to ferry crew to the ISS, a variation on the craft may still end up visiting the station. As part of its bid to win NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS2) contract, SNC has unveiled an unmanned autonomous version of Dream Chaser to carry cargo into orbit.


----------



## Vigilante

Saturn's Moon Enceladus Might Have Warm Ocean
Water Up to 194 Degrees Fahrenheit

Hydrothermal activity would mean there is a heat source in Enceladus's core that is interacting with rocks that are heating the Saturn moon's ocean. That means there could be life on the ocean floor as Earth has life at hot vents on ocean bottoms.



— “We think that the temperature at least in some part of the ocean
must be higher than 190 degrees Fahrenheit. If you could swim a little bit 
further from the really hot part, then it could be comfy.”

- Sean Hsu, Ph.D., Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Univ. of Colorado

— “[For such heat] the most exciting possibility is that there's ongoing chemical reactions between the rock inside Enceladus and the water.”

- Bill McKinnon, Ph.D., Planetary Scientist, Washington Univ.-St. Louis








Saturn's moon Enceladus is one of the brightest objects in our solar system
because it is covered in water ice that reflects sunlight.

Earthfiles.com Science Saturn s Moon Enceladus Might Have Warm Ocean Water Up to 194 Degrees Fahrenheit


----------



## Vigilante

U. K. Scientists “Confident” That Gliese 581d _Is_ 
A “Habitable Planet” Orbiting Red Giant Gliese 581.

“The existence (or not) of planet GJ 581d orbiting red giant Gliese 581 
is significant because it was the first Earth-like planet discovered in the 
‘Goldilocks’-zone around another star and it is a benchmark case
for the Doppler technique.”

- Guillem Anglada-Escude, Ph.D., Queen Mary University of London





This is an artist's illustration of a newly reaffirmed "Goldilocks planet"
20 light-years from Earth orbiting a red dwarf sun, Gleise 581, that is only 
about 29% the size of our sun. In 2009, when a spectrometer picked up a
"wobble" change in the wavelength of light around Gleise 581, scientists said
the wobble indicated a planet larger than Earth in the habitable zone that was not
too hot, not too cold, just right for life to exist. Then almost as quickly as 
the new planet was announced, Pennsylvania State University scientists dismissed
it as "star system noise or interference," not a real planet. Illustration 
courtesy Queen Mary Univ. of London.

Describing their model as more accurate to apply to the existing 2009 data, Queen Mary University of London astrophysicist Guillem Anglada-Escude, Ph.D., and his colleagues have published in the March 6, 2015 _Science_ journal that they are "confident" that the signal of GJ 581d is a real one, despite stellar variability. “There are always discussions among scientists about the ways we interpret data, but I’m confident that GJ 581d has been in orbit around Gliese 581 all along.


----------



## Vigilante

*Solar Eclipse Seen From Space*

The European Space Agency's Proba-2 had ringside seats for Friday's eclipse. The sun-watching minisatellite used its SWAP imager to capture the event as the Moon passed between the Earth and Sun. SWAP records what it sees in the ultraviolet wavelengths and caught the Sun's corona as the eclipse occurred.


----------



## ScienceRocks

New Alliance To Promote Space Development and Settlement Policies



> WASHINGTON — On the heels of a closed-door meeting that concluded space development and settlement should be long-term goals of the United States, a separate group of 11 organizations announced a new coalition that will promote policies to achieve those goals.
> 
> The Alliance for Space Development (ASD), led by the National Space Society and the Space Frontier Foundation, plans to advocate for legislation and other initiatives to achieve its goal of accelerating the development and settlement of space.


----------



## sealybobo

Vigilante said:


> U. K. Scientists “Confident” That Gliese 581d _Is_
> A “Habitable Planet” Orbiting Red Giant Gliese 581.
> 
> “The existence (or not) of planet GJ 581d orbiting red giant Gliese 581
> is significant because it was the first Earth-like planet discovered in the
> ‘Goldilocks’-zone around another star and it is a benchmark case
> for the Doppler technique.”
> 
> - Guillem Anglada-Escude, Ph.D., Queen Mary University of London
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is an artist's illustration of a newly reaffirmed "Goldilocks planet"
> 20 light-years from Earth orbiting a red dwarf sun, Gleise 581, that is only
> about 29% the size of our sun. In 2009, when a spectrometer picked up a
> "wobble" change in the wavelength of light around Gleise 581, scientists said
> the wobble indicated a planet larger than Earth in the habitable zone that was not
> too hot, not too cold, just right for life to exist. Then almost as quickly as
> the new planet was announced, Pennsylvania State University scientists dismissed
> it as "star system noise or interference," not a real planet. Illustration
> courtesy Queen Mary Univ. of London.
> 
> Describing their model as more accurate to apply to the existing 2009 data, Queen Mary University of London astrophysicist Guillem Anglada-Escude, Ph.D., and his colleagues have published in the March 6, 2015 _Science_ journal that they are "confident" that the signal of GJ 581d is a real one, despite stellar variability. “There are always discussions among scientists about the ways we interpret data, but I’m confident that GJ 581d has been in orbit around Gliese 581 all along.


It would be amazing if we could find and get to a planet where we would be the dominant species and take it over. We need a way to travel 20 light years in 40 years.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Within 25 light years

I'd look at *Gliese 667 Cc *Gliese 667 Cc - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia This world is only slightly further and has a esl of .84! While Gliese 832 c is even closer then Gliese 581d at 16 light years and has .81 esl!!! Gliese 832 c - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

A couple of other worlds that are closer but aren't confirmed are
Kapteyn b - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia a little over 13 light years .67 esl or slightly more favorable then mars with its .64!
and Tau Ceti e - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia 11.9 light years! .78 esl...


In fact Gliese 581d only has a esl of .53. Worse then mars....


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Chinese space authorities have announced plans to launch more than 40 different spacecraft into orbit this year.*

China to send over 40 spacecraft in 20 launches in 2015


> 2013 saw Chinese space authorities conduct 16 separate launches.
> 
> Zhao Xiaojin, director of the Space Department with the China Aerospace and Science Technology Corporation says most of the spacecraft to be put into orbit this year will be satellites.
> 
> "They will be mainly communication satellites, or geosynchronous satellites orbiting at the height of 36-thousand miles. There will also be some remote sensing satellites sent up to observe the earth, as well as navigation satellites for the Beidou system."
> 
> Chinese space authorities do say a number of "cutting-edge" technologies will also be tested for the first time.
> 
> This is scheduled to include the launch of the Yuanzheng I upper stage aircraft, dubbed the "space shuttle bus."
> 
> The experimental craft is scheduled to independently send a Beidou satellite into orbit after being launched into space from a terrestrial flight pattern in earth's atmosphere.



I wish they'd put up two things, 1. A Chinese Quickscatt satellite to get better surface winds on tropical cyclones and 2. a Chinese Kepler!  Both would kick ass.
*
SpaceX Aims To Debut New Version of Falcon 9 this Summer.*

http://spacenews.com/spacex-aims-to-...9-this-summer/


> SpaceX plans to inaugurate its new, more-powerful Falcon 9 rocket this summer, using the same Merlin 1D engine with a modified fuel mix and other changes to extend the company’s planned reuse of the first stage to cover all SpaceX launches, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said.
> 
> In March 16 and 17 appearances at the Satellite 2015 conference here, Shotwell said the new-version Falcon 9, which has yet to be named, *will be about 30 percent more powerful than the rocket’s current version.*


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.thehindu.com/news/nationa...=true#comments


> Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) teams will meet later in March to take stock of its status and plan the next steps that have come as a bonus.
> 
> “We need to consolidate and review the data so far, and also make the next plans,” V. Kesava Raju, Mars Mission Director for post-launch matters, told The Hindu. Detailed analyses of the data it has sent will not be available for some more months, though he said MOM had done a good amount of mapping and imaging. In the six months, the orbiter has been taking Martian surface pictures from distances of around 500 km to 70,000 km. It has mapped the terrain, studied the chemicals present, looked for methane, a sign of ancient or present life, and got a ringside view of a passing comet in October.
> 
> Dr. Raju said that as Mars and earth were both moving, the geometry had been changing. This allowed MOM to cover additional Martian surface. So far, MOM’s colour camera focussed on wide-angle long shots of Mars. “Perhaps, we can have imageries of higher resolution from shorter distances,” he said.


*
European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have received 15 proposals for a joint project between them. *


> The proposed missions will now be assessed for their technological feasibility and scientific merit. By the end of this year, the pool will be narrowed down to a winner or a handful of contenders, which will enter a study phase of around two years, with a final go-ahead expected in 2017.
> 
> The final selected mission will be led by principal investigators affiliated with both European and Chinese institutions, with an aim to launch in 2021.




http://www.nature.com/news/china-and...ission-1.17133


> The call is the EU’s first step on the path to more collaboration with China, says Fabio Favata, head of science planning and community coordination at ESA. Whether a bigger joint project follows will depend on how this one fares.
> 
> Although proposals can cover any scientific area — bar exploration of the Moon or Mars, which are covered by separate programmes at both agencies — the mission’s scope is limited by its funding. The EU will contribute just more than €50 million (US$53 million) to the project, which China is expected to match.
> 
> The call is a “win–win” situation for China and the EU, says Taotao Fang, an astronomer at Xiamen University in China, who is part of the team that proposed the MESSIER orbiter, a telescope studying galaxy formation.
> 
> China’s biggest gain will be learning from ESA’s experience in purely scientific missions, which have been rare in China’s space programme, says Linjie Chen, a member of the DSL team and an astrophysicist at the Chinese National Astronomical Observatories in Beijing.
> 
> ESA can gain from collaborating with a country with a healthy space programme backed by growing investment, adds Chen. In 2013, China became the first country since the 1970s to put a lander on the Moon. The country is planning a lunar sample-return mission in 2017 and aims to build a space station by 2020. China is also planning to launch four space-science missions, starting with the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) in November.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Within 25 light years
> 
> I'd look at *Gliese 667 Cc *Gliese 667 Cc - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia This world is only slightly further and has a esl of .84! While Gliese 832 c is even closer then Gliese 581d at 16 light years and has .81 esl!!! Gliese 832 c - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
> 
> A couple of other worlds that are closer but aren't confirmed are
> Kapteyn b - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia a little over 13 light years .67 esl or slightly more favorable then mars with its .64!
> and Tau Ceti e - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia 11.9 light years! .78 esl...
> 
> 
> In fact Gliese 581d only has a esl of .53. Worse then mars....


We need to be able to breath.


----------



## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> Within 25 light years
> 
> I'd look at *Gliese 667 Cc *Gliese 667 Cc - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia This world is only slightly further and has a esl of .84! While Gliese 832 c is even closer then Gliese 581d at 16 light years and has .81 esl!!! Gliese 832 c - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
> 
> A couple of other worlds that are closer but aren't confirmed are
> Kapteyn b - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia a little over 13 light years .67 esl or slightly more favorable then mars with its .64!
> and Tau Ceti e - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia 11.9 light years! .78 esl...
> 
> 
> In fact Gliese 581d only has a esl of .53. Worse then mars....
> 
> 
> 
> We need to be able to breath.
Click to expand...



The telescopes of the 2020's will hopefully answer this question.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Extrasolar Planets Are, Almost, Everywhere *

* The search for extrasolar planets*


> But then along came NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Over the past few years Kepler has been able to detect thousands of exoplanets and hundreds of multi-exoplanet systems.
> 
> Along with my PhD student
> 
> Tim Bovaird and Master’s student Steffen Jacobsen, we reasoned that if the TB relation had been such a useful (if somewhat imperfect) guide for predicting planets in our solar system, maybe it would be useful in predicting planets in the new exoplanetary systems detected by Kepler.
> 
> We checked the hundred or so systems where Kepler had found at least a few planets and we found that the majority of these exoplanetary systems adhered to the Titus-Bode relation even somewhat better than our solar system did.
> 
> Thus, we became convinced that the horse still had some miles left in her – that the semi-taboo Titus-Bode relation could provide useful hints about the periods of as-yet-undetected planets around other stars.
> 
> * Resurrection*
> Last year we used a generalised Titus-Bode relation to analyse 68 multi-planet systems with four or more detected exoplanets. We made predictions for the existence of more planets in these systems, based on the Titus-Bode relation.
> 
> So far, 5% of our predictions have been confirmed. This may sound like a small percentage, but given the inability of the Kepler telescope to see Earth-sized planets or smaller, a 5% detection rate is what you would expect to see if all the predictions were true.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Goldilocks zone or habitable zone around a star is where the temperature is just right to have liquid water. Our new result suggests that there are, on average, two planets in the habitable zone.
> Credit: Aditya Chopra, ANU, adapted from NASA/JPL
> View full size image
> Almost all of the exoplanets detected by Kepler are larger than Earth and very close to their host stars. This is almost certainly a selection bias.
> 
> It is very difficult for the Kepler telescope to spot planets that are far enough away from their host stars to be in the habitable zone (where the temperatures are in the range where H2O will be liquid water).
> 
> Using the Titus-Bode relation is a controversial indirect technique, but I think it’s the best one we have if we are interested in answering the question: How many planets (on average) are in the habitable zones of stars?
> 
> * How many potentially habitable planets?*
> Our answer to this question is 2 ± 1 and was published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The figures (above and below) illustrate our result.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The names on the left are the names of 31 Kepler exoplanetary systems. The blue dots are exoplanets detected by Kepler. Red and gray squares are our Titus-Bode-based predictions. The green horizontal band is the habitable zone. For comparison, the first system (at the top) is our solar system. The Earth is in the middle of the habitable zone.
> Credit: Author provided
> View full size image
> With about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, our result means there are 600 ± 300 billion planets in circumstellar habitable zones in our galaxy.
> 
> In the observable universe there are about 100 billion galaxies. Thus there are approximately 1022 stars in the observable universe and twice that many planets in circumstellar habitable zones in the universe.
> 
> That’s a lot of real estate for alien development
> 
> . Not all of these habitable zone planets will be wet and rocky like the Earth, but a fair fraction (about 30%) should be. Now we need some zippy interstellar spaceships to colonise and over-populate all these worlds before the aliens do.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Are there volcanoes on Ceres?*
* James Sullivan * | *@kingpiranha825| March 19, 2015*

*
Are there volcanoes on Ceres Science Recorder



Since its launch in September of 2007, Dawn has traveled over 3.1 billion miles to its rendezvous with Ceres.


The elusive bright spots found on dwarf planet Ceres might actually be volcanoes of ice – spouting hot water vapors off into space, meaning that perhaps this realm too might be a suitable place for life to exist. Images of the Dawn probe suggest that beneath its surface may be a life-giving ocean.

It is also likely that the plumes seen in the picture could be the result of patches of ice catching sunlight, an effect similar to that produced by comets.

The theories were proposed this week at the latest Lunar and Planetary Science conference held outside of Houston. They hope to learn more by mid-April, at which point the Dawn spacecraft will emerge from the dark side of Ceres, within the asteroid belt.

In January of 2014, the Herschel space observatory made the first official detection of water vapor on Ceres. In 2004, the Hubble telescope released images from the Hubble space telescope indicating the presence of water ice.

Two light spots were seen inside one of the craters in black-and-white images that were beamed to Earth back in mid-February when Dawn homed in on Ceres. A full, nine-hour rotation of the dwarf planet, revealed its brightest spot, overlooking a crater rim.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft began its orbit of Ceres early on Friday morning and will soon document all there is about it. Of course, the obvious question is whether it is capable of supporting life.

“We believe this could be some kind of outgassing,” said the camera’s supervisor, Andreas Nathues to New Scientist on Tuesday.
		
Click to expand...

*


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> *Extrasolar Planets Are, Almost, Everywhere *
> 
> * The search for extrasolar planets*
> 
> 
> 
> But then along came NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Over the past few years Kepler has been able to detect thousands of exoplanets and hundreds of multi-exoplanet systems.
> 
> Along with my PhD student
> 
> Tim Bovaird and Master’s student Steffen Jacobsen, we reasoned that if the TB relation had been such a useful (if somewhat imperfect) guide for predicting planets in our solar system, maybe it would be useful in predicting planets in the new exoplanetary systems detected by Kepler.
> 
> We checked the hundred or so systems where Kepler had found at least a few planets and we found that the majority of these exoplanetary systems adhered to the Titus-Bode relation even somewhat better than our solar system did.
> 
> Thus, we became convinced that the horse still had some miles left in her – that the semi-taboo Titus-Bode relation could provide useful hints about the periods of as-yet-undetected planets around other stars.
> 
> * Resurrection*
> Last year we used a generalised Titus-Bode relation to analyse 68 multi-planet systems with four or more detected exoplanets. We made predictions for the existence of more planets in these systems, based on the Titus-Bode relation.
> 
> So far, 5% of our predictions have been confirmed. This may sound like a small percentage, but given the inability of the Kepler telescope to see Earth-sized planets or smaller, a 5% detection rate is what you would expect to see if all the predictions were true.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Goldilocks zone or habitable zone around a star is where the temperature is just right to have liquid water. Our new result suggests that there are, on average, two planets in the habitable zone.
> Credit: Aditya Chopra, ANU, adapted from NASA/JPL
> View full size image
> Almost all of the exoplanets detected by Kepler are larger than Earth and very close to their host stars. This is almost certainly a selection bias.
> 
> It is very difficult for the Kepler telescope to spot planets that are far enough away from their host stars to be in the habitable zone (where the temperatures are in the range where H2O will be liquid water).
> 
> Using the Titus-Bode relation is a controversial indirect technique, but I think it’s the best one we have if we are interested in answering the question: How many planets (on average) are in the habitable zones of stars?
> 
> * How many potentially habitable planets?*
> Our answer to this question is 2 ± 1 and was published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The figures (above and below) illustrate our result.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The names on the left are the names of 31 Kepler exoplanetary systems. The blue dots are exoplanets detected by Kepler. Red and gray squares are our Titus-Bode-based predictions. The green horizontal band is the habitable zone. For comparison, the first system (at the top) is our solar system. The Earth is in the middle of the habitable zone.
> Credit: Author provided
> View full size image
> With about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, our result means there are 600 ± 300 billion planets in circumstellar habitable zones in our galaxy.
> 
> In the observable universe there are about 100 billion galaxies. Thus there are approximately 1022 stars in the observable universe and twice that many planets in circumstellar habitable zones in the universe.
> 
> That’s a lot of real estate for alien development
> 
> . Not all of these habitable zone planets will be wet and rocky like the Earth, but a fair fraction (about 30%) should be. Now we need some zippy interstellar spaceships to colonise and over-populate all these worlds before the aliens do.
Click to expand...


60 minutes did a story o Neal degrasse Tyson. He is a rock star who sells out stadiums.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Spectrally resolved detection of sodium in the atmosphere of HD189733b with the HARPS spectrograph
 1503.05581 Spectrally resolved detection of sodium in the atmosphere of HD189733b with the HARPS spectrograph

Among other results, a blueshift in the Na-line seems to imply winds of 8±2 km/s.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Shock wave experiment provides the best look yet at 'Warm dense matter' at cores of giant planets*
*35 minutes ago *




This illustration shows a cutaway view of Jupiter, which is believed to contain "warm dense matter" at its core. A study at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser has provided the most detailed measurements yet of a material's …more


> In an experiment at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, scientists precisely measured the temperature and structure of aluminum as it transitions into a superhot, highly compressed concoction known as "warm dense matter."





Read more at: Shock wave experiment provides the best look yet at Warm dense matter at cores of giant planets


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Wandering Jupiter accounts for our unusual solar system*
*Wandering Jupiter accounts for our unusual solar system e Science News*
Published: Monday, March 23, 2015 - 16:33 in Astronomy & Space


> Jupiter may have swept through the early solar system like a wrecking ball, destroying a first generation of inner planets before retreating into its current orbit, according to a new study published March 23 in _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_. The findings help explain why our solar system is so different from the hundreds of other planetary systems that astronomers have discovered in recent years. "Now that we can look at our own solar system in the context of all these other planetary systems, one of the most interesting features is the absence of planets inside the orbit of Mercury," said Gregory Laughlin, professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz and coauthor of the paper. "The standard issue planetary system in our galaxy seems to be a set of super-Earths with alarmingly short orbital periods. Our solar system is looking increasingly like an oddball."
> 
> The new paper explains not only the "gaping hole" in our inner solar system, he said, but also certain characteristics of Earth and the other inner rocky planets, which would have formed later than the outer planets from a depleted supply of planet-forming material.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/manga...-longer-749045


> India's maiden mission to Mars, Mangalyaan, has successfully completed six months in the Red Planet's orbit - the nominal period for which it was originally designed. The satellite could, however, last a long time in the Martian orbit, thanks to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)'s frugal ways.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA rover Opportunity completes marathon milestone on Mars*
*2 minutes ago *


> NASA says the Opportunity rover has passed the marathon mark for driving on Mars.
> 
> The space agency said Tuesday the rover's odometer checked in at 26.2 miles—the distance of a marathon.
> 
> The official time? Eleven years and two months.
> 
> Scientists and engineers will celebrate Opportunity's achievement by holding their own marathon relay at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission.
> 
> Last year, Opportunity broke the record for off-Earth distance traveled that was previously held by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 moon rover.
> 
> Opportunity and its twin Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 for what was supposed to be a three-month mission. Both uncovered geologic signs of ancient water.





Read more at: NASA rover Opportunity completes marathon milestone on Mars

What can I say? We got our monies worth!!!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Search for extraterrestrial intelligence extends to near-infrared optical signals*
New instrument will scan the sky for coded pulses of infrared light
*March 23, 2015*



Lick Observatory, home of NIROSETI (credit: Laurie Hatch)


> Astronomers have expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence into a new realm with detectors tuned to infrared light.
> 
> The idea was first proposed by Charles Townes, the late UC Berkeley scientist whose contributions to the development of lasers led to a Nobel Prize, in a paper [1] published in 1961.
> 
> Pulses from a powerful near-infrared laser could outshine a star, if only for a billionth of a second. Interstellar gas and dust is almost transparent to near-infrared, so these signals can be seen from greater distances. It also takes less energy to send the same amount of information using infrared signals than it would with visible light.


Search for extraterrestrial intelligence extends to near-infrared optical signals KurzweilAI

*NASA's Curiosity rover finds fresh signs of ingredients for life on Mars*
*14 hours ago by Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times *


> Mars's life-friendly past just got friendlier. Using samples previously collected by the NASA rover Curiosity, scientists have discovered evidence of nitrates in Martian rock: nitrogen compounds that on Earth are a crucial source of nutrients for living things.
> 
> The findings, published in the journal _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, lend further support to the idea that the Red Planet, now barren and dry, could once have hosted habitable environments.
> 
> Although planetary scientists have been on the hunt for organic carbon - the type of carbon-containing molecules that could be used and produced by living things - nitrogen also plays an essential role in life as we know it, said lead author Jennifer Stern, a planetary geochemist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.



Read more at: NASA s Curiosity rover finds fresh signs of ingredients for life on Mars


----------



## ScienceRocks

https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcre...test-profile//

*SpaceX Engine Test Demonstrates Pad Abort Test Profile*


> SpaceX ignited two of its SuperDraco engines together at the company’s Rocket Development Facility in McGregor, Texas, during a recent test of the reusable system. The firing was a demonstration of a pad abort test profile, with two SuperDraco engines igniting simultaneously and throttling as they will during an upcoming flight test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
> 
> The SuperDraco system is integral to the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft under development to carry crew to the International Space Station. Four SuperDraco pods, with two engines in each for a total of eight engines, are to be arranged on the Crew Dragon. During launch and ascent into space, the thrusters would be called on to push the spacecraft and crew out of danger in case of an abort.
> 
> The pad abort test will be performed under the company’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement with NASA. However, SpaceX will use the data gathered during the development flight as it continues on the path to certification. Under a separate Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program will certify SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Falcon 9 rocket, ground and mission operations systems to fly crews to and from the space station.


VINE video
Watch SpaceX s Vine Demo of pad abort test profile in TX 2 SuperDraco engines ignite simultaneously throttle as they would during the Pad Abort flight test ,


*Supermassive black hole clears star-making gas from galaxy's core*
*39 minutes ago *





A red-filter image of IRAS F11119+3257 (inset) from the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter telescope shows faint features that may be tidal debris, a sign of a galaxy merger. The background is a wider view of the region from the Sloan Digital …more


> Many nearby galaxies blast huge, wide-angled outpourings of material from their center, ejecting enough gas and dust to build more than a thousand stars the size of our sun every year. Astronomers have sought the driving force behind these massive molecular outflows, and now a team led by University of Maryland scientists has found an answer.





Read more at: Supermassive black hole clears star-making gas from galaxy s core


----------



## HenryBHough

If it were proven with absolute certainty that Earth will be destroyed by some rogue asteroid, maybe a comet, in 10,000 years....

An ab-so-fucking-loute certainty.

Would you change your way of living?

If so, how?


----------



## ScienceRocks

HenryBHough said:


> If it were proven with absolute certainty that Earth will be destroyed by some rogue asteroid, maybe a comet, in 10,000 years....
> 
> An ab-so-fucking-loute certainty.
> 
> Would you change your way of living?
> 
> If so, how?



I think I'd give some more of my income to nasa and space-x. We'd need to find a favorable extrasolar planet so we can start building the "fusion" or anti-matter generation ship in order to save our species.


----------



## ScienceRocks

1503.07528 Hubble Space Telescope search for the transit of the Earth-mass exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb

*Hubble Space Telescope search for the transit of the Earth-mass exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb*


> Results from exoplanet surveys indicate that small planets (super-Earth size and below) are abundant in our Galaxy. However, little is known about their interiors and atmospheres. There is therefore a need to find small planets transiting bright stars, which would enable a detailed characterisation of this population of objects. We present the results of a search for the transit of the Earth-mass exoplanet Alpha Centauri Bb with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We observed Alpha Centauri B twice in 2013 and 2014 for a total of 40 hours. We achieve a precision of 115 ppm per 6-s exposure time in a highly-saturated regime, which is found to be consistent across HST orbits. We rule out the transiting nature of Alpha Centauri Bb with the orbital parameters published in the literature at 96.6% confidence.* We find in our data a single transit-like event that could be associated to another Earth-size planet in the system, on a longer period orbit*



Promising that there's a good chance of another earth like planet further out....


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Five New Exoplanets Orbiting Three Metal-Rich, Massive Stars: Two-Planet Systems Including Long-Period Planets, and an Eccentric Planet*
 1503.07636 Five New Exoplanets Orbiting Three Metal-Rich Massive Stars Two-Planet Systems Including Long-Period Planets and an Eccentric Planet


> We report detections of new exoplanets from a radial velocity (RV) survey of metal-rich FGK stars by using three telescopes. By optimizing our RV analysis method to long time-baseline observations, we have succeeded in detecting five new Jovian-planets around three metal-rich stars HD 1605, HD 1666, and HD 67087 with the masses of 1.3M⊙, 1.5M⊙, and 1.4M⊙, respectively. A K1 subgiant star HD 1605 hosts two planetary companions with the minimum masses of Mpsini=0.96MJUP and 3.5MJUP in circular orbits with the planets' periods P=577.9 days and 2111 days, respectively. HD 1605 shows a significant linear trend in RVs. Such a system consisting of Jovian planets in circular orbits has rarely been found and thus HD 1605 should be an important example of a multi-planetary system that is likely unperturbed by planet-planet interactions. HD 1666 is a F7 main sequence star which hosts an eccentric and massive planet of Mpsini=6.4MJUP in the orbit with ap=0.94 AU and an eccentricity e=0.63. Such an eccentric and massive planet can be explained as a result of planet-planet interactions among Jovian planets. While we have found the large residuals of rms=35.6 m s−1, the periodogram analysis does not support any additional periodicities. Finally, HD 67087 hosts two planets of Mpsini=3.1MJUP and 4.9MJUP in orbits with P=352.2 days and 2374 days, and e=0.17 and 0.76, respectively. Although the current RVs do not lead to accurate determinations of its orbit and mass, HD 67087 c can be one of the most eccentric planets ever discovered in multiple systems.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Researchers stumble across Earth's largest asteroid impact zone *
By Darren Quick
March 26, 2015
4 Pictures





> Geophysicists conducting drilling as part of geothermal research claim to have stumbled across the largest asteroid impact zone ever found on Earth. Covering a 400 km (249 mi) wide area in Central Australia, the two ancient craters are believed to be the result of a single meteorite that split in two moments before crashing into the Earth.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*India's frugal Mars mission extended by six months*
*Mar 24, 2015 *


> India's famously frugal Mars mission has been extended by around six months thanks to a surplus of fuel on board the spacecraft, the country's space agency said Tuesday.
> 
> The Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft had been scheduled to wrap up its mission this month after India in September became the first Asian nation to reach the Red Planet, all on a shoe-string budget.
> 
> But scientists said the unmanned spacecraft would remain in orbit to study the planet's atmosphere and its surface after burning less fuel than expected over the last six months.



Read more at: India s frugal Mars mission extended by six months


----------



## bripat9643

HenryBHough said:


> If it were proven with absolute certainty that Earth will be destroyed by some rogue asteroid, maybe a comet, in 10,000 years....
> 
> An ab-so-fucking-loute certainty.
> 
> Would you change your way of living?
> 
> If so, how?



No.  In 10,000 years we can easily divert an asteroid on a trajectory to impact the Earth.  We can probably do it now.


----------



## ScienceRocks

bripat9643 said:


> HenryBHough said:
> 
> 
> 
> If it were proven with absolute certainty that Earth will be destroyed by some rogue asteroid, maybe a comet, in 10,000 years....
> 
> An ab-so-fucking-loute certainty.
> 
> Would you change your way of living?
> 
> If so, how?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No.  In 10,000 years we can easily divert an asteroid on a trajectory to impact the Earth.  We can probably do it now.
Click to expand...


I don't really understand why asteroid defense isn't a defense issue. We should have the ability to defend ourselfs at a moments notice from these things. Time for congress to wake up.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Liftoff! US, Russia Launch Historic One-Year Space Mission*
Liftoff US Russia Launch Historic One-Year Space Mission


> An American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut launched into space Friday to attempt something their two countries have never done together before: a one-year mission on the International Space Station that could help one day send humans to Mars.
> 
> The epic one-year space mission launched NASA's Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule at 3:42 p.m. EDT (1942 GMT) today (March 27) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it was early Saturday morning local time. Also flying on the Soyuz is cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, a crewmember who will live and work aboard the orbiting outpost for about six months, the usual length of time people spend on the station.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/vi..._134095733.htm


> "This is the last test of Long March-5's power system before its maiden flight. It means China's utilization of hydrogen has entered the application process," Li Hong, dean of China Academy Of Launch Vehicle Technology, said.
> 
> The rocket's first flight is scheduled for April next year. And there's no stopping there, as scientists continue to design carrier rockets with ever higher payload capacities.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Russia & US agree to build new space station after ISS, work on joint Mars project*

Published time: March 28, 2015 03:01


> In a landmark decision, Russian space agency Roscosmos and its US counterpart NASA have agreed to build a new space station after the current International Space Station (ISS) expires. The operation of the ISS was prolonged until 2024.
> 
> [...]
> 
> The next goal for the two agencies is a joint mission to Mars, NASA chief Charles Bolden told journalists.


Russia US agree to build new space station after ISS work on joint Mars project RT News

I hope they build it out of the bigelow inflatable tech that is being tested. Not only would it be cheaper but much bigger.

Bigelow Commercial Space Station - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


----------



## Vikrant

India places the 4th satellite in orbit to continue work on Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. This is a space based navigation system similar to U.S. GPS system. Now, all they have to do is build some roads  






India has continued deployment of its IRNSS navigation system Saturday, with the launch of the fourth satellite atop a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. Launched on schedule at 17:19 local time (11:49 UTC), the IRNSS-1D mission marks India’s first orbital launch of the year.


Indian Launch:

The IRNSS-1D satellite will join three others already in orbit, the fourth in a planned seven-satellite constellation which will provide India and its surrounding region with an independent satellite navigation system.

Operating in geosynchronous orbit, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) has been under development by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) since 2006, with the first satellite reaching orbit in mid-2013.

The IRNSS constellation calls for three geostationary satellites and four more in inclined geosynchronous orbits. The geostationary slots, located at 34, 83 and 132 degrees East will each be occupied by a single satellite, while the two inclined stations, at 55 and 111.75 degrees East will each be home to a pair of spacecraft.






PSLV launches with IRNSS-1D to open India s 2015 campaign NASASpaceFlight.com


----------



## ScienceRocks

india is building a crap load of roads as they care about infrastructure. India is doing great! 

How would you feel about using a gravity tractor to pull Ceres into orbit around our planet as another moon? It'd probably become a ocean moon.  Sounds exciting!


----------



## ScienceRocks

My idea of asteroid direct would be using gravity tractors to put Ceres into Orbit around the earth. It would become a water moon.  Now that would be impressive.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New insights found in black hole collisions*


> New research provides revelations about the most energetic event in the universe—the merging of two spinning, orbiting black holes into a much larger black hole.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> An international team of astronomers, including from the University of Cambridge, have found solutions to decades-old equations describing what happens as two spinning black holes in a binary system orbit each other and spiral in toward a collision.
> 
> The results, published in the journal _Physical Review Letters_, should significantly impact not only the study of black holes, but also the search for elusive gravitational waves – a type of radiation predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity – in the cosmos.


----------



## ScienceRocks

WASP-80b has a dayside within the T-dwarf range


> WASP-80b is a missing link in the study of exo-atmospheres. It falls between the warm Neptunes and the hot Jupiters and is amenable for characterisation, thanks to its host star's properties. We observed the planet through transit and during occultation with Warm Spitzer. Combining our mid-infrared transits with optical time series, we find that the planet presents a transmission spectrum indistinguishable from a horizontal line. In emission, WASP-80b is the intrinsically faintest planet whose dayside flux has been detected in both the 3.6 and 4.5 μm Spitzer channels. The depths of the occultations reveal that WASP-80b is as bright and as red as a T4 dwarf, but that its temperature is cooler. If planets go through the equivalent of an L-T transition, our results would imply this happens at cooler temperatures than for brown dwarfs. Placing WASP-80b's dayside into a colour-magnitude diagram, it falls exactly at the junction between a blackbody model and the T-dwarf sequence; we cannot discern which of those two interpretations is the more likely. Flux measurements on other planets with similar equilibrium temperatures are required to establish whether irradiated gas giants, like brown dwarfs, transition between two spectral classes. An eventual detection of methane absorption in transmission would also help lift that degeneracy.
> We obtained a second series of high-resolution spectra during transit, using HARPS. We reanalyse the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect. The data now favour an aligned orbital solution and a stellar rotation nearly three times slower than stellar line broadening implies. A contribution to stellar line broadening, maybe macroturbulence, is likely to have been underestimated for cool stars, whose rotations have therefore been systematically overestimated.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Stellar and Planetary Properties of K2 Campaign 1 Candidates and Validation of 18 Systems, Including a Planet Receiving Earth-like Insolation


> The extended Kepler mission, K2, is now providing photometry of new fields every three months in a search for transiting planets. In a recent study, Foreman-Mackey and collaborators presented a list of 36 planet candidates orbiting 31 stars in K2 Campaign 1. In this contribution, we present stellar and planetary properties for all systems. We combine ground-based seeing-limited survey data and adaptive optics imaging with an automated transit analysis scheme to validate 18 candidates as planets and identify 6 candidates as likely false positives. Of particular interest is EPIC 201912552, a bright (K=8.9) M2 dwarf hosting a 2.24 \pm 0.25 Earth radius planet with an equilibrium temperature of 271 \pm 16 K and an orbital period of 33 days. We also present two new open-source software packages that enabled this analysis: isochrones, a flexible tool for fitting theoretical stellar models to observational data to determine stellar properties, and vespa, a new general-purpose procedure to calculate false positive probabilities and statistically validate transiting exoplanets.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Rocky planets may orbit many double stars*
*42 minutes ago *





In this acrylic painting, University of Utah astrophysicist Ben Bromley envisions the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earthlike planet orbiting a pair of binary stars. In a new study, Bromley and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian …more


> Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars" is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.





Read more at: Rocky planets may orbit many double stars


----------



## ScienceRocks

* ESA tests the potential of grabbing derelict satellites using a simple net *
By Anthony Wood
March 30, 2015
2 Pictures


 


> The ESA has been testing the possibility of using one of mankind's earliest inventions to cope with one of its newest challenges, by testing a concept that would allow satellites to net and de-orbit space debris in a safe and controlled manner. Space debris is an ever-increasing problem, and agencies around the world are starting to take steps to preserve the low-Earth orbit environment vital for a sustainable space industry.


----------



## ScienceRocks

China has released more details of its circumlunar return and reentry spacecraft.

http://www.leonarddavid.com/chinas-c...n-new-details/


> A technical overview of the circumlunar mission has been published in Science China Technological Sciences. Lead author of the paper is MengFei Yang of the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing.
> 
> The aerodynamic design of China first small skip reentry capsule at hyper speed was verified by the successful reentry and landing, they report.
> 
> Seven new kinds of lightweight thermal protection material were developed for the capsule, promoting the development and use of composite material in China.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Seventh and eighth satellites join the Galileo constellation  *
By Chris Wood
March 31, 2015
3 Pictures


 


> Two new Galileo satellites have been successfully placed in orbit, joining the existing six probes in the constellation that aim to provide a European alternative to GPS and Glonass networks. The operation went off without a hitch – something that can't be said for the troubled assent of the fifth and sixth Galileo satellites


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New infrared telescope expands SETI’s search for alien life*
*New infrared telescope expands SETI s search for alien life ExtremeTech*

By Ryan Whitwam on April 1, 2015 at 1:17 pm
7 Comments







> For more than 50 years, scientists working on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have been scanning the heavens for a signal from beyond our solar system. Despite some interesting blips, there has been nothing conclusive so far. But maybe we simply haven’t been looking for the right things. A new infrared telescope instrument has been brought online in California that will let SETI look for signals being sent out with infrared pulses.
> 
> The new instrument is known as the Near-Infrared Optical Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (NIROSETI), and it’s housed at the University of California’s Lick Observatory. It’s not a completely new telescope, but is instead attached to the existing Nickel 1-meter telescope. From its position atop Mt. Hamilton, the newly enhanced telescope could search for alien civilizations thousands of light years away, much farther than you can manage with radio waves.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Over the next 12 to 18 months China will be introducing the following new space systems -

1) Long March 6 - the new launch vehicle for small satellites.

2) Long March 5 - their future work horse.

3) Long March 7 - their launch vehicle for astronauts and cargo ships.

4) Tiangong-2 - their next space station to test out technologies for their future space station.

5) Tianzhou-1 - their cargo ship

This will be followed by -

1) Chang'e 5 mission in 2017

2) Tiangong-3 in 2018

http://www.spaceflight101.com/long-m...st-launch.html


> The dual-engine cluster of the cryogenic third stage boosted the stack into an orbit of 194 by 25,307 Kilometers at an inclination of 55 degrees. After separation from the third stage that remained in this orbit, the YZ-1 Upper Stage assumed control for its first flight.
> 
> YZ1, known by its full name of Yuanzheng-1 which translates to Expedition-1, is a liquid-fueled upper stage capable of operating for six and a half hours during which it can conduct two burns spaced by a coast phase. The YZ-1 upper stage uses storable propellants, Unsymmetrical Dimethylhydrazine as fuel and Nitrogen Tetroxide oxidizer, consumed by a single main engine that delivers 6.5 Kilonewtons of thrust (663 Kilogram-force) at a specific impulse of 315 seconds.


------
Bam! 18 new planets from K2 data according to a preprint recently posted by Montet et al.

Astronomers are cranking' 'em out in record time.

Paper is undergoing peer review, but here is the link to the preprint:  1503.07866 Stellar and Planetary Properties of K2 Campaign 1 Candidates and Validation of 18 Systems Including a Planet Receiving Earth-like Insolation

... See More

This will make 22 planets discovered by k-2. Not bad!


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> *Rocky planets may orbit many double stars*
> *42 minutes ago *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In this acrylic painting, University of Utah astrophysicist Ben Bromley envisions the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earthlike planet orbiting a pair of binary stars. In a new study, Bromley and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian …more
> 
> 
> 
> Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars" is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: Rocky planets may orbit many double stars
Click to expand...

Why is it got to be uninhabited.


----------



## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Rocky planets may orbit many double stars*
> *42 minutes ago *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In this acrylic painting, University of Utah astrophysicist Ben Bromley envisions the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earthlike planet orbiting a pair of binary stars. In a new study, Bromley and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian …more
> 
> 
> 
> Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars" is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: Rocky planets may orbit many double stars
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Why is it got to be uninhabited.
Click to expand...



Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet.  We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Rocky planets may orbit many double stars*
> *42 minutes ago *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In this acrylic painting, University of Utah astrophysicist Ben Bromley envisions the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earthlike planet orbiting a pair of binary stars. In a new study, Bromley and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian …more
> 
> 
> 
> Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars" is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: Rocky planets may orbit many double stars
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Why is it got to be uninhabited.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet.  We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.
Click to expand...

Just because we lack the ability to detect it doesnt say whether or not life exists.


----------



## ScienceRocks

It certainly doesn't. We know very little as of this time.

*Black holes don't erase information, scientists say*
*4 hours ago by Charlotte Hsu *


> *The "information loss paradox" in black holes—a problem that has plagued physics for nearly 40 years—may not exist.
> 
> That's what some physicists have argued for years: That black holes are the ultimate vaults, entities that suck in information and then evaporate without leaving behind any clues as to what they once contained.*


*


Read more at: Black holes don t erase information scientists say
*


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Jupiter moon Ganymede found to have a large bulge at equator*
*8 hours ago by Bob Yirka report*




This natural color view of Ganymede was taken from the Galileo spacecraft during its first encounter with the Jovian moon. North is to the top of the picture and the sun illuminates the surface from the right. The dark areas are the older, …more


> (Phys.org)—A pair of space scientists, one with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston Texas the other with Washington University in St. Lois, has found evidence of a large bulge on Ganymede—the largest satellite in our solar system. In their presentation at this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Paul Schenk and William McKinnon outlined what they had observed and offered possible explanations for the existence of the bulge. As noted by National Geographic, the bulge, or protuberance, is approximately the size of Ecuador and about half the height of Mount Kilimanjaro.





Read more at: Jupiter moon Ganymede found to have a large bulge at equator


----------



## sealybobo

I


Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Rocky planets may orbit many double stars*
> *42 minutes ago *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In this acrylic painting, University of Utah astrophysicist Ben Bromley envisions the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earthlike planet orbiting a pair of binary stars. In a new study, Bromley and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian …more
> 
> 
> 
> Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars" is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: Rocky planets may orbit many double stars
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Why is it got to be uninhabited.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet.  We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.
Click to expand...

m Watching Interstellar with matthew Mcconaghy. Have you seen it? I'm curious how science fiction its going to be. How they gonna travel far enough to find anything?


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## sealybobo

RetiredGySgt said:


> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?


The rich corporations tea baggers libertarians and republicans dont want to pay taxes for NASA do they?


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## ScienceRocks

Spending on science is the last thing these people want. They want to fund their massive military and act like north Korea.

Nasa does the science that the corporations would never do. If it was up to corporations we wouldn't know 1/10th as much as we do. Thank you nasa! I'd like to see a huge increase in funding for Nasa...Of around 20 billion per year.


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## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> I
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Rocky planets may orbit many double stars*
> *42 minutes ago *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In this acrylic painting, University of Utah astrophysicist Ben Bromley envisions the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earthlike planet orbiting a pair of binary stars. In a new study, Bromley and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian …more
> 
> 
> 
> Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars" is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: Rocky planets may orbit many double stars
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Why is it got to be uninhabited.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet.  We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> m Watching Interstellar with matthew Mcconaghy. Have you seen it? I'm curious how science fiction its going to be. How they gonna travel far enough to find anything?
Click to expand...


Yes!

1. A planet close enough to do that to the water = not going to have a breathable atmosphere and likely will mean that you're doomed.
2. It hasn't been proven if there's wormholes. Secondly, how would we control them???? Doesn't seem likely.
3. I think we could build a ship to go to Saturn with humans.  With enough funding and decades of research I think we can do great things.
4. Yes, I believe there's habitual planets capable of some kind of life. Maybe within 16 to 20 light years.


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## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Spending on science is the last thing these people want. They want to fund their massive military and act like north Korea.


Interstellar is talking about how people dont want to spend on space travel when they are hungry.


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## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> I
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Rocky planets may orbit many double stars*
> *42 minutes ago *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In this acrylic painting, University of Utah astrophysicist Ben Bromley envisions the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earthlike planet orbiting a pair of binary stars. In a new study, Bromley and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian …more
> 
> 
> 
> Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars" is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: Rocky planets may orbit many double stars
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Why is it got to be uninhabited.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet.  We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> m Watching Interstellar with matthew Mcconaghy. Have you seen it? I'm curious how science fiction its going to be. How they gonna travel far enough to find anything?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Yes!
> 
> 1. A planet close enough to do that to the water = not going to have a breathable atmosphere and likely will mean that you're doomed.
> 2. It hasn't been proven if there's wormholes. Secondly, how would we control them???? Doesn't seem likely.
> 3. I think we could build a ship to go to Saturn with humans.  With enough funding and decades of research I think we can do great things.
> 4. Yes, I believe there's habitual planets capable of some kind of life. Maybe within 16 to 20 light years.
Click to expand...

What's at Saturn? Bfd.


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## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> Spending on science is the last thing these people want. They want to fund their massive military and act like north Korea.
> 
> 
> 
> Interstellar is talking about how people dont want to spend on space travel when they are hungry.
Click to expand...


Yep, interstellar is a future that shows our loserterian friends taking over and turning their back on science. Science that can save humanity.


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## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> I
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Rocky planets may orbit many double stars*
> *42 minutes ago *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In this acrylic painting, University of Utah astrophysicist Ben Bromley envisions the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earthlike planet orbiting a pair of binary stars. In a new study, Bromley and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian …more
> Read more at: Rocky planets may orbit many double stars
> 
> 
> 
> Why is it got to be uninhabited.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet.  We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> m Watching Interstellar with matthew Mcconaghy. Have you seen it? I'm curious how science fiction its going to be. How they gonna travel far enough to find anything?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Yes!
> 
> 1. A planet close enough to do that to the water = not going to have a breathable atmosphere and likely will mean that you're doomed.
> 2. It hasn't been proven if there's wormholes. Secondly, how would we control them???? Doesn't seem likely.
> 3. I think we could build a ship to go to Saturn with humans.  With enough funding and decades of research I think we can do great things.
> 4. Yes, I believe there's habitual planets capable of some kind of life. Maybe within 16 to 20 light years.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's at Saturn? Bfd.
Click to expand...


The worm hole


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## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> I
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> Why is it got to be uninhabited.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet.  We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> m Watching Interstellar with matthew Mcconaghy. Have you seen it? I'm curious how science fiction its going to be. How they gonna travel far enough to find anything?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Yes!
> 
> 1. A planet close enough to do that to the water = not going to have a breathable atmosphere and likely will mean that you're doomed.
> 2. It hasn't been proven if there's wormholes. Secondly, how would we control them???? Doesn't seem likely.
> 3. I think we could build a ship to go to Saturn with humans.  With enough funding and decades of research I think we can do great things.
> 4. Yes, I believe there's habitual planets capable of some kind of life. Maybe within 16 to 20 light years.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's at Saturn? Bfd.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The worm hole
Click to expand...

Catch me up. Do we ride worm holes to far distances?


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## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> I
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> Probably because we don't have the tech to detect them yet.  We really don't have the tech to detect earth size planets in long orbits either...Kepler came close but didn't last long enough.
> 
> 
> 
> m Watching Interstellar with matthew Mcconaghy. Have you seen it? I'm curious how science fiction its going to be. How they gonna travel far enough to find anything?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Yes!
> 
> 1. A planet close enough to do that to the water = not going to have a breathable atmosphere and likely will mean that you're doomed.
> 2. It hasn't been proven if there's wormholes. Secondly, how would we control them???? Doesn't seem likely.
> 3. I think we could build a ship to go to Saturn with humans.  With enough funding and decades of research I think we can do great things.
> 4. Yes, I believe there's habitual planets capable of some kind of life. Maybe within 16 to 20 light years.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's at Saturn? Bfd.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> The worm hole
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Catch me up. Do we ride worm holes to far distances?
Click to expand...


In the movie the ship goes to one system with 3 or 4 habitual planets. One of them has a massive black hole and the dumb physicist woman wants to land on that one, but they find out that the pull of the gravity is pulling the water into thousand foot tall mountains of water that slowly creeps across the planet. The bad news is the gravity of the black hole is causing time to slow and so they use up 7 years in one hour. They head to another one with the woman's old friend from earlier journey through the worm hole only to find out that this one is a icy hell. Her friend tries to kill them but they manage to beat him in the end...Sadly, the main actor then gets sucked into the black hole and the woman manages to reach the real habitual planet just in time as the ship had been fucked up pretty good.

I am sure there's such solar systems but there's a hole lot of fiction otherwise.


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## ScienceRocks

I'd like to see China and India do more with building telescopes like their own version of kepler. Now that would be nice.  Now that's something a fucking corporation can't or won't do!


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## ScienceRocks

China pushing ahead plans to build space-based Silk Road - Headlines features photo and videos from ecns.cn china news chinanews ecns cns


> Earlier media reports said China plans to launch another 120 satellites -- about 20 communications satellites, 70 remote sensing satellites and 30 navigation satellites. The number of Chinese satellites in orbit will overtake Russia in 2015 to rank second in the world.



Why not another Kepler China??


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## ScienceRocks

* NASA funds NextSTEP deep space propulsion including 100 hour*
Next Big Future NASA funds NextSTEP deep space propulsion including 100 hour VASIMR and advanced electric space drives


> NASA has selected 12 Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) to advance concept studies and technology development projects in the areas of advanced propulsion, habitation and small satellites.
> 
> Selected advanced electric propulsion projects will develop propulsion technology systems in the 50- to 300-kilowatt range to meet the needs of a variety of deep space mission concepts. State-of-the-art electric propulsion technology currently employed by NASA generates less than five kilowatts, and systems being developed for the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) Broad Area Announcement (BAA) are in the 40-kilowatt range.
> 
> The three NextSTEP advanced propulsion projects, $400,000 to $3.5 million per year per award, will have no more than a three-year performance period focused on ground testing efforts. NASA required a minimum of 50% cost sharing and/or matching for the proposed efforts, which may include prior industry investment.





> Ad Astra’s winning proposal for advancing the technology readiness of the VASIMR® engine was one of three selected in the field of advanced electric propulsion. Under this work, valued at approximately $10 million over three years, the partnership will advance the VASIMR® engine to a technology readiness level(TRL)greater than 5–a step closerto spaceflight –with a demonstration of the VX-200-SS™laboratory prototype, a fully integrated system capable of operating at high power continuously for a minimum of 100 hours
> 
> In 2013 , after more than $30 million in private capital , the company completed more than 10,000 successful high power firings of its most advanced VASIMR ® prototype , the VX - 200 ™ , in Ad Astra’s Houston vacuum chamber facility. These tests demonstrated the engine’s excellent firing repeatability and performance (6 N thrust, 5000 sec sp and a thruster efficiency greater than 70%) with no measurable signs of engine wear.
> 
> New technological advances (for higher 100 hour endurance) will be fully integrated into a test article called the VX-200SS™ (for steady state)


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## ScienceRocks

*Star's birth glimpsed 'in real time'*

3 March 2015












> Astronomers have witnessed a key stage in the birth of a very heavy star, using two radio telescope views of the process taken 18 years apart.
> 
> The young star is 4,200 light-years from Earth and appears to be surrounded by a doughnut-shaped cloud of dust.
> That cloud slows down the hot, ionised wind that the star blasts into space, causing it to form an elongated column perpendicular to the dusty ring.
> The new results represent "before and after" glimpses of that column forming.
> They were captured by the Very Large Array, a battery of 27 antennae in the New Mexico desert, and are published in the journal Science.
> "The comparison is remarkable," said first author Carlos Carrasco-Gonzalez, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The compact, rounded wind indicated by data from 1996 transforms - just 18 years later in 2014 - into a "distinctly elongated outflow".




http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-32168507


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## ScienceRocks

*Mission Manager Update: K2 in Campaign 4*
Mission Manager Update K2 in Campaign 4 NASA



> Now in its fourth observing campaign, the Kepler spacecraft continues to operate wonderfully since beginning its new K2 mission in May 2014. Data collected for Campaigns 0, 1 and 2 have been made available to the public through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Campaign 3 data will be processed with a scheduled delivery to MAST in June 2015.





> K2 began its fourth campaign on Feb. 8. The Campaign 4 target set includes nearly 16,000 target stars, which can be searched for exoplanets and examined for an array of astrophysical phenomena. This field includes two notable open star clusters—Pleiades and Hyades, the nearest open cluster to our solar system. Both are located in the constellation of Taurus.



 nasa should put up dozens of these


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## ScienceRocks

*Planned maneuver further extends MESSENGER orbital operations*



> MESSENGER mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., conducted a maneuver yesterday to raise the spacecraft's minimum altitude sufficiently to extend orbital operations and further delay the probe's inevitable impact onto Mercury's surface.




Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-maneuver-messenger-orbital.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*UMass Lowell gets grant to find Earth 2.0*
*NASA helps fund device to seek out planets like ours*
E-Mail
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...ct/dYGzTjoxJI8w8Hd5SSi8bN/story.html#comments
*By Rebecca Fiore*Globe Correspondent  March 04, 2015
NASA gives 5.6m to UMass Lowell for planet project - Metro - The Boston Globe


> NASA has given $5.6 million to the University of Massachusetts Lowell to build and test an imaging device to detect planets beyond our solar system that are capable of supporting life, officials said.
> 
> The grant, the first of its size, will be going to the university’s Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology. The center focuses on studying atmospheres and ionospheres of Earth and the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and the cosmos, officials said.
> 
> The apparatus, which is called a planetary imaging concept testbed using a recoverable experiment — coronagraph, or PICTURE-C, has a special optical-imaging system in its telescope that blocks light from stars to see other objects in space.
> 
> “PICTURE-C will enable us to image and characterize the disk of dust, asteroids, planets, and other debris orbiting the stars and gain a better understanding of the processes and dynamics that formed our solar system,” Supriya Chakrabarti, a UMass Lowell physics professor and the director of the center, said in a statement.


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## ScienceRocks

More and more the rest of the world is standing up for leadership of space. America is finished because of the gop! I wish they'd land a rover on Mercury!

As MESSENGER is saying it's farewell, two probes are taking shape here on planet earth. One from Europe and the other from Japan. They will travel together to Mercury in 2017 and take a touristy route to it and arrive in 2024.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/05...slips-to-2017/




> BepiColombo will be the first mission to Mercury by Europe and Japan, and the second to orbit the fleet-footed planet after NASA’s Messenger spacecraft.
> 
> First proposed to ESA in the 1990s, BepiColombo is one of the most difficult space missions ever attempted by Europe and the most ambitious probe ever sent to Mercury. Powered by ion engines and shielded to withstand scorching temperatures of nearly 700 degrees Fahrenheit at Mercury, BepiColombo has endured redesigns, upgrades and delays that have sent the mission’s cost more than 50 percent higher than original estimates.
> 
> ESA officials intended BepiColombo to launch on a medium-class Soyuz rocket, but the spacecraft outgrew the capacity of the Soyuz, forcing it to lift off on the more expensive Ariane 5.
> 
> Technicians in February mated BepiColombo’s European orbiter and transfer module for the first time at ESA’s test center in the Netherlands. Japan’s magnetospheric probe is due to arrive at ESA in April for final tests.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX, Sierra Nevada get more time to finish flight tests*

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/02...-flight-tests/



> NASA has extended development agreements with SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp. past a March 31 deadline, giving the companies more time to complete delayed tests on commercial spacecraft intended to one day ferry astronauts into space.
> 
> The extensions do not come with any extra funding from the space agency, which pays out money to the contractors as they complete predetermined milestones.
> 
> SpaceX now has until Dec. 31 to wrap up work under its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, or CCiCap agreement. Sierra Nevada’s amended agreement now extends until March 31, 2016, according to documents posted on NASA’s website.




@SpaceX
Continued progress on Pad 39A and its hangar that will house Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy at KSC:






Space-x is probably the greatest of Obama's achievements.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dawn Is In Excellent Shape One Month After Arriving at Ceres
Dawn Is In Excellent Shape One Month After Arriving at Ceres - SpaceRef*


> Since its capture by the gravity of dwarf planet Ceres on March 6, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has performed flawlessly, continuing to thrust with its ion engine as planned.
> 
> The thrust, combined with Ceres' gravity, is gradually guiding the spacecraft into a circular orbit around the dwarf planet. All of the spacecraft's systems and instruments are in excellent health.
> 
> Dawn has been following its planned trajectory on the dark side of Ceres -- the side facing away from the sun -- since early March. After it entered orbit, the spacecraft's momentum carried it to a higher altitude, reaching a maximum of 46,800 miles (75,400 kilometers) on March 18. Today, Dawn is about 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers) above Ceres, descending toward the first planned science orbit, which will be 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometers) above the surface.
> 
> The next optical navigation images of Ceres will be taken on April 10 and April 14, and are expected to be available online after initial analysis by the science team. In the first of these, the dwarf planet will appear as a thin crescent, much like the images taken on March 1, but with about 1.5 times higher resolution. The April 14 images will reveal a slightly larger crescent in even greater detail. Once Dawn settles into the first science orbit on April 23, the spacecraft will begin the intensive prime science campaign.


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA's Space Launch System to deploy 11 additional satellites on maiden launch
By Anthony Wood
April 7, 2015







> NASA is planning to maximize the scientific potential of the maiden launch of its next generation launch vehicle, the Space Launch System, by selecting 11 tiny satellites to ride shotgun. The little probes, known as CubeSats, will be transported in the SLS's upper stage adaptor, presenting a cost-effective delivery option for experiments designed to function beyond low-Earth orbit.



Why not send up another Kepler???


----------



## ScienceRocks

Here's the paper for CoRoT-28 b and CoRoT-29 b.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01532

Apparentlly CoRoT-29 b has an asymmetric light curve due an oblate star.




> Context. We present the discovery of two transiting extrasolar planets by the satellite CoRoT. Aims. We aim at a characterization of the planetary bulk parameters, which allow us to further investigate the formation and evolution of the planetary systems and the main properties of the host stars. Methods. We used the transit light curve to characterize the planetary parameters relative to the stellar parameters. The analysis of HARPS spectra established the planetary nature of the detections, providing their masses. Further photometric and spectroscopic ground-based observations provided stellar parameters (log g,Teff,v sin i) to characterize the host stars. Our model takes the geometry of the transit to constrain the stellar density into account, which when linked to stellar evolutionary models, determines the bulk parameters of the star. Because of the asymmetric shape of the light curve of one of the planets, we had to include the possibility in our model that the stellar surface was not strictly spherical. Results. We present the planetary parameters of CoRoT-28b, a Jupiter-sized planet (mass 0.484+/-0.087MJup; radius 0.955+/-0.066RJup) orbiting an evolved star with an orbital period of 5.208 51 +/- 0.000 38 days, and CoRoT-29b, another Jupiter-sized planet (mass 0.85 +/- 0.20MJup; radius 0.90 +/- 0.16RJup) orbiting an oblate star with an orbital period of 2.850 570 +/- 0.000 006 days. The reason behind the asymmetry of the transit shape is not understood at this point. Conclusions. These two new planetary systems have very interesting properties and deserve further study, particularly in the case of the star CoRoT-29.


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## ScienceRocks

*Eagleworks NASA updated EMDrive models show possible scaling to 2000 Newtons of propellantless propulsion with multikilowatt magnetron*



> If one envisions the quantum vacuum (Q-V) as a semi-virtual electrical plasma as Dr. White does, that would imply that the Poynting power flow vector would entrain the Q-V plasma and send it on its way toward the pillbox end of the cavity and then out of the cavity, the back-reaction on the cavity should be in the opposite direction towards the RF feed end of the Cannae test article, but the observed thrust vector is opposite to that surmise, i.e. toward the shorter RF sense antenna end of the cavity per the attached slide.


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## ScienceRocks

*Mars has belts of glaciers consisting of frozen water*
*19 hours ago *




Mars distinct polar ice caps, but Mars also has belts of glaciers at its central latitudes – between the blue lines, in both the southern and northern hemispheres. A thick layer of dust covers the glaciers, so they appear as the surface of …more


Mars has distinct polar ice caps, but Mars also has belts of glaciers at its central latitudes in both the southern and northern hemispheres. A thick layer of dust covers the glaciers, so they appear as surface of the ground, but radar measurements show that underneath the dust there are glaciers composed of frozen water. New studies have now calculated the size of the glaciers and thus the amount of water in the glaciers. It is the equivalent of all of Mars being covered by more than one meter of ice. The results are published in the scientific journal, _Geophysical Research Letters_.
Several satellites orbit Mars and on satellite images, researchers have been able to observe the shape of glaciers just below the surface. For a long time scientists did not know if the ice was made of frozen water (H2O) or of carbon dioxide (CO2) or whether it was mud.

Using radar measurements from the NASA satellite, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, researchers have been able to determine that is water ice. But how thick was the ice and do they resemble glaciers on Earth?

A group of researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have now calculated this using radar observations combined with ice flow modelling.

*"We have calculated that the ice in the glaciers is equivalent to over 150 billion cubic meters of ice – that much ice could cover the entire surface of Mars with 1.1 meters of ice*. The ice at the mid-latitudes is therefore an important part of Mars' water reservoir," explains Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-mars-belts-glaciers-frozen.html#jCp

Who said there's no water on mars? lol


----------



## ScienceRocks

*The solar system and beyond is awash in water*
*12 hours ago by Preston Dyches *




NASA is exploring our solar system and beyond to understand the workings of the universe, searching for water and life among the stars. Credit: NASA


> As NASA missions explore our solar system and search for new worlds, they are finding water in surprising places. Water is but one piece of our search for habitable planets and life beyond Earth, yet it links many seemingly unrelated worlds in surprising ways.
> 
> "NASA science activities have provided a wave of amazing findings related to water in recent years that inspire us to continue investigating our origins and the fascinating possibilities for other worlds, and life, in the universe," said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for the agency. "In our lifetime, we may very well finally answer whether we are alone in the solar system and beyond."
> 
> The chemical elements in water, hydrogen and oxygen, are some of the most abundant elements in the universe. Astronomers see the signature of water in giant molecular clouds between the stars, in disks of material that represent newborn planetary systems, and in the atmospheres of giant planets orbiting other stars.





 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-solar-awash.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

* Electric Solar Sails for mission to Uranus and for de-orbiting satellites *
 
1. Coulumb Drag Devices: Electric Solar Wind Sail Propulsion and Ionospeheric Deorbiting 


> * Plasma brake thrust is 16 times larger in pure oxygen plasma than in pure proton plasma
> * There is an altitude dependence. Below 700 km the thrust would continue to increase until 400-500 km (provided there is the right hardware design)



Next Big Future Electric Solar Sails for mission to Uranus and for de-orbiting satellites


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## ScienceRocks

You know what I want to do? Use a gravity tractor or a dozen of them to move Ceres smack into Venus.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Blue Origin's BE-3 engine cleared for flight
By David Szondy
April 8, 2015
4 Pictures






> Blue Origin has taken a step closer to lifting into space by announcing that its BE‑3 rocket engine has completed acceptance testing, opening the door to its first flight. The first new hydrogen engine to be developed in the US in over a decade, the BE-3 is part of Blue Origin's program to develop a completely reusable launch system.
> Less than two years ago, the BE-3 rocket engine made its first test firing at the company’s West Texas facility in Van Horn. Since then, according to Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, the 110,000-ft-lb engine has completed 30,000 seconds of firing time over 450 tests, which included multiple mission duty cycles, deep throttling, and off-nominal testing points. Bezos says that this opens the way for an eventual suborbital test flight.
> 
> The BE-3 is notable as the first new liquid hydrogen engine since the RS-68 engine for the Delta IV booster went into service in 2002. The BE-3, which can be continuously throttled between 110,000 ft-lb and 20,000 ft-lb thrust, is part of a vertical takeoff and landing Reusable Booster System, which will allow the spacecraft to fly again rather than be disposed off after one mission, as is the case with the conventional boosters.


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## ScienceRocks

*




Complex Organic Molecules Discovered in Infant Star System*


http://www.eso.org/public/unitedkingdom/news/eso1513/

*Complex Organic Molecules Discovered in Infant Star System*


> For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disc surrounding a young star. The discovery, made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), reaffirms that the conditions that spawned the Earth and Sun are not unique in the Universe. The results are published in the 9 April 2015 issue of the journal Nature
> (…)
> Importantly, the molecules ALMA detected are much more abundant than would be found in interstellar clouds. This tells astronomers that protoplanetary discs are very efficient at forming complex organic molecules and that they are able to form them on relatively short timescales


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## ScienceRocks

http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.8687

*The Mass of Kepler-93b and The Composition of Terrestrial Planets*



> Kepler-93b is a 1.478 +/- 0.019 Earth radius planet with a 4.7 day period around a bright (V=10.2), astroseismically-characterized host star with a mass of 0.911+/-0.033 solar masses and a radius of 0.919+/-0.011 solar radii. Based on 86 radial velocity observations obtained with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and 32 archival Keck/HIRES observations, *we present a precise mass estimate of 4.02+/-0.68 Earth masses. The corresponding high density of 6.88+/-1.18 g/cc is consistent with a rocky composition of primarily iron and magnesium silicate.* We compare Kepler-93b to other dense planets with well-constrained parameters and find that between 1-6 Earth masses, all dense planets including the Earth and Venus are well-described by the same fixed ratio of iron to magnesium silicate. There are as of yet no examples of such planets with masses > 6 Earth masses: All known planets in this mass regime have lower densities requiring significant fractions of volatiles or H/He gas. We also constrain the mass and period of the outer companion in the Kepler-93 system from the long-term radial velocity trend and archival adaptive optics images. As the sample of dense planets with well-constrained masses and radii continues to grow, we will be able to test whether the fixed compositional model found for the seven dense planets considered in this paper extends to the full population of 1-6 Earth mass planets.


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## eots




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## Mr.Right

SmedlyButler said:


> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
Click to expand...

Do we really need NASA?  I think space exploration should be privatized. There are several companies that would fit the bill. It would also allow for specialization. And private companies would also be more efficient.


----------



## eots

Mr.Right said:


> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Do we really need NASA?  I think space exploration should be privatized. There are several companies that would fit the bill. It would also allow for specialization. And private companies would also be more efficient.
Click to expand...

The need to have a way to get a return on investment..like taking passenger moon trips,  then eventually a Vegas style casino/premiere holiday destination..once those gambling profits start rolling in the possibilities are endless


----------



## ScienceRocks

Mr.Right said:


> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Do we really need NASA?  I think space exploration should be privatized. There are several companies that would fit the bill. It would also allow for specialization. And private companies would also be more efficient.
Click to expand...



Yes we do...The private sector won't do the science stuff. Nasa should stick to science and pushing the boundries of things. We wouldn't know 1/10th of what we do today if it wasn't for nasa. I promise you that a private corporation wouldn't do this and that is a fact.

I think nasa should get at least 30 billion per year in order to keep looking for new extrasolar planets and to do development of new space  tech for different missions to the outter-solar system. Nasa should also get the asteroid hunting mandate and the military command should be placed in control of defending our planet from them.

I honestly believe there comes a point that privatizion is a bad idea. This is one time that is so.


----------



## Mr.Right

Matthew said:


> Mr.Right said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Do we really need NASA?  I think space exploration should be privatized. There are several companies that would fit the bill. It would also allow for specialization. And private companies would also be more efficient.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Yes we do...The private sector won't do the science stuff. Nasa should stick to science and pushing the boundries of things. We wouldn't know 1/10th of what we do today if it wasn't for nasa. I promise you that a private corporation wouldn't do this and that is a fact.
> 
> I think nasa should get at least 30 billion per year in order to keep looking for new extrasolar planets and to do development of new space  tech for different missions to the outter-solar system. Nasa should also get the asteroid hunting mandate and the military command should be placed in control of defending our planet from them.
> 
> I honestly believe there comes a point that privatizion is a bad idea. This is one time that is so.
Click to expand...

Like I said, do we really need it? Wouldn't that money be better spent on things we really need? I mean, what has NASA given us that we can't live without? Waste of money IMHO.


----------



## ScienceRocks

eots said:


> Mr.Right said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Do we really need NASA?  I think space exploration should be privatized. There are several companies that would fit the bill. It would also allow for specialization. And private companies would also be more efficient.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The need to have a way to get a return on investment..like taking passenger moon trips,  then eventually a Vegas style casino/premiere holiday destination..once those gambling profits start rolling in the possibilities are endless
Click to expand...

But that doesn't ever include science and exploration. Nasa is the only option.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Mr.Right said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Mr.Right said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Do we really need NASA?  I think space exploration should be privatized. There are several companies that would fit the bill. It would also allow for specialization. And private companies would also be more efficient.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Yes we do...The private sector won't do the science stuff. Nasa should stick to science and pushing the boundries of things. We wouldn't know 1/10th of what we do today if it wasn't for nasa. I promise you that a private corporation wouldn't do this and that is a fact.
> 
> I think nasa should get at least 30 billion per year in order to keep looking for new extrasolar planets and to do development of new space  tech for different missions to the outter-solar system. Nasa should also get the asteroid hunting mandate and the military command should be placed in control of defending our planet from them.
> 
> I honestly believe there comes a point that privatizion is a bad idea. This is one time that is so.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Like I said, do we really need it? Wouldn't that money better spent on things we really need? I mean, what has NASA given us that we can't live without? Waste of money IMHO.
Click to expand...


You're a clueless piece of shit. How about knowledge and probably a thousand other things. You'd turn this country into a third world asshole. Why do we need nws or cdc or fda? Oh'yeah, to have a organizion able to do something when we really need to do something. You'd weaken this country before you'd admit that nasa is well worth it.

Nasa develops engines that also advance our military and much more.


----------



## Mr.Right

Matthew said:


> Mr.Right said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Mr.Right said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Do we really need NASA?  I think space exploration should be privatized. There are several companies that would fit the bill. It would also allow for specialization. And private companies would also be more efficient.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Yes we do...The private sector won't do the science stuff. Nasa should stick to science and pushing the boundries of things. We wouldn't know 1/10th of what we do today if it wasn't for nasa. I promise you that a private corporation wouldn't do this and that is a fact.
> 
> I think nasa should get at least 30 billion per year in order to keep looking for new extrasolar planets and to do development of new space  tech for different missions to the outter-solar system. Nasa should also get the asteroid hunting mandate and the military command should be placed in control of defending our planet from them.
> 
> I honestly believe there comes a point that privatizion is a bad idea. This is one time that is so.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Like I said, do we really need it? Wouldn't that money better spent on things we really need? I mean, what has NASA given us that we can't live without? Waste of money IMHO.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> You're a clueless piece of shit. How about knowledge and probably a thousand other things. You'd turn this country into a third world asshole. Why do we need nws or cdc or fda? Oh'yeah, to have a organizion able to do something when we really need to do something. You'd weaken this country before you'd admit that nasa is well worth it.
Click to expand...

Name one thing NASA has given us that we couldn't do without.


----------



## ScienceRocks

You sound like a member of the fucking Taliban that believes we shouldn't develop shit and we should just herd goats while living our lives praising the lord. You just don't believe we should spend shit on anything great or stand out as a world power You're asking for a weaker America.

You'd rip the innovative heart out of the most advance country in the history of our goddamn species to defends your bs belief system. I say this even as I love what Musk is doing and believe that the private sector will play a big roll in the future....But to say nasa is a waste of money? I think your fucking trillion dollar wars are a waste of money..I think your tax cuts to the most wealthy are a waste of fucking money...Knowledge and the leadership of our nation sure as fuck isn't. We need more of it or China is going to eat our lunch.

nasa is worth every fucking cent for the advances and knowledge they have provided us. Our species are no better then the dinosaurs without them. I don't think you'd want the defense of this planet in the hands of a bunch of out of private fat cats. Yeah, 99% of everything else in our universe is worth 30 billion/year...

People like you are kind of like the ghetto ******* as they never want better and don't want to learn. You'd have us down at that level...It makes me sick. I beg these people to wake up every day for years but here you want us to follow them. grrr. This simply is what civilized people do...We advance things and become better for it.


I support the private sector but nasa is part of our strength!


----------



## ScienceRocks

The understanding of our universe and just how complex it is. Not only that it gives us a chance to defend our planet from the threats that we face.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Godbless nasa as they add to human intelligence. Even if that was the only goddamn thing they ever did they'd be worth it.

They make us capable of saving our own fucking ass and we should all be thankful.


----------



## ScienceRocks

What has nasa did for us???


*NASA Technologies Benefit Our Lives
 www.nasa.gov/city. The new features highlight how space pervades our lives, invisible yet critical to so many aspects of our daily activities and well-being.
NASA Technologies Benefit Our Lives
Health and Medicine

Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs)  






Red light-emitting diodes are growing plants in space and healing humans on Earth. The LED technology used in NASA space shuttle plant growth experiments has contributed to the development of medical devices such as award-winning WARP 10, a hand-held, high-intensity, LED unit developed by Quantum Devices Inc. The WARP 10 is intended for the temporary relief of minor muscle and joint pain, arthritis, stiffness, and muscle spasms, and also promotes muscle relaxation and increases local blood circulation. The WARP 10 is being used by the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Navy as a noninvasive “soldier self-care” device that aids front-line forces with first aid for minor injuries and pain, thereby improving endurance in combat. The next-generation WARP 75 has been used to relieve pain in bone marrow transplant patients, and will be used to combat the symptoms of bone atrophy, multiple sclerosis, diabetic complications, Parkinson’s disease, and in a variety of ocular applications. (Spinoff 2005, 2008)

Infrared Ear Thermometers





Diatek Corporation and NASA developed an aural thermometer, which weighs only 8 ounces and uses infrared astronomy technology to measure the amount of energy emitted by the eardrum, the same way the temperature of stars and planets is measured. This method avoids contact with mucous membranes, virtually eliminating the possibility of cross infection, and permits rapid temperature measurement of newborn, critically-ill, or incapacitated patients. NASA supported the Diatek Corporation, a world leader in electronic thermometry, through the Technology Affiliates Program. (Spinoff 1991)

Artificial Limbs






NASA’s continued funding, coupled with its collective innovations in robotics and shock-absorption/comfort materials are inspiring and enabling the private sector to create new and better solutions for animal and human prostheses. Advancements such as Environmental Robots Inc.’s development of artificial muscle systems with robotic sensing and actuation capabilities for use in NASA space robotic and extravehicular activities are being adapted to create more functionally dynamic artificial limbs (Spinoff 2004). Additionally, other private-sector adaptations of NASA’s temper foam technology have brought about custom-moldable materials offering the natural look and feel of flesh, as well as preventing friction between the skin and the prosthesis, and heat/moisture buildup. (Spinoff 2005)

Ventricular Assist Device






Collaboration between NASA, Dr. Michael DeBakey, Dr. George Noon, and MicroMed Technology Inc. resulted in a lifesaving heart pump for patients awaiting heart transplants. The MicroMed DeBakey ventricular assist device (VAD) functions as a “bridge to heart transplant” by pumping blood throughout the body to keep critically ill patients alive until a donor heart is available. Weighing less than 4 ounces and measuring 1 by 3 inches, the pump is approximately one-tenth the size of other currently marketed pulsatile VADs. This makes it less invasive and ideal for smaller adults and children. Because of the pump’s small size, less than 5 percent of the patients implanted developed device-related infections. It can operate up to 8 hours on batteries, giving patients the mobility to do normal, everyday activities. (Spinoff 2002)

+ Back to Top

Transportation

Anti-Icing Systems






NASA funding under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and work with NASA scientists advanced the development of the certification and integration of a thermoelectric deicing system called Thermawing, a DC-powered air conditioner for single-engine aircraft called Thermacool, and high-output alternators to run them both. Thermawing, a reliable anti-icing and deicing system, allows pilots to safely fly through ice encounters and provides pilots of single-engine aircraft the heated wing technology usually reserved for larger, jet-powered craft. Thermacool, an innovative electric air conditioning system, uses a new compressor whose rotary pump design runs off an energy-efficient, brushless DC motor and allows pilots to use the air conditioner before the engine even starts. (Spinoff 2007)

Highway Safety






Safety grooving, the cutting of grooves in concrete to increase traction and prevent injury, was first developed to reduce aircraft accidents on wet runways. Represented by the International Grooving and Grinding Association, the industry expanded into highway and pedestrian applications. The technique originated at Langley Research Center, which assisted in testing the grooving at airports and on highways. Skidding was reduced, stopping distance decreased, and a vehicle’s cornering ability on curves was increased. The process has been extended to animal holding pens, steps, parking lots, and other potentially slippery surfaces. (Spinoff 1985)

Improved Radial Tires






Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company developed a fibrous material, five times stronger than steel, for NASA to use in parachute shrouds to soft-land the Vikings on the Martian surface. The fiber’s chain-like molecular structure gave it incredible strength in proportion to its weight. Recognizing the increased strength and durability of the material, Goodyear expanded the technology and went on to produce a new radial tire with a tread life expected to be 10,000 miles greater than conventional radials. (Spinoff 1976)

Chemical Detection






NASA contracted with Intelligent Optical Systems (IOS) to develop moisture- and pH-sensitive sensors to warn of potentially dangerous corrosive conditions in aircraft before significant structural damage occurs. This new type of sensor, using a specially manufactured optical fiber whose entire length is chemically sensitive, changes color in response to contact with its target. After completing the work with NASA, IOS was tasked by the U.S. Department of Defense to further develop the sensors for detecting chemical warfare agents and potential threats, such as toxic industrial compounds and nerve agents, for which they proved just as successful. IOS has additionally sold the chemically sensitive fiber optic cables to major automotive and aerospace companies, who are finding a variety of uses for the devices such as aiding experimentation with nontraditional power sources, and as an economical “alarm system” for detecting chemical release in large facilities. (Spinoff 2007)

+ Back to Top

Public Safety

Video Enhancing and Analysis Systems






Intergraph Government Solutions developed its Video Analyst System (VAS) by building on Video Image Stabilization and Registration (VISAR) technology created by NASA to help FBI agents analyze video footage. Originally used for enhancing video images from nighttime videotapes made with hand-held camcorders, VAS is a state-of-the-art, simple, effective, and affordable tool for video enhancement and analysis offering benefits such as support of full-resolution digital video, stabilization, frame-by-frame analysis, conversion of analog video to digital storage formats, and increased visibility of filmed subjects without altering underlying footage. Aside from law enforcement and security applications, VAS has also been adapted to serve the military for reconnaissance, weapons deployment, damage assessment, training, and mission debriefing. (Spinoff 2001)

Land Mine Removal





Due to arrangements such as the one between Thiokol Propulsion and NASA that permits Thiokol to use NASA’s surplus rocket fuel to produce a flare that can safely destroy land mines, NASA is able to reduce propellant waste without negatively impacting the environment, and Thiokol is able to access the materials needed to develop the Demining Device flare. The Demining Device flare uses a battery-triggered electric match to ignite and neutralize land mines in the field without detonation. The flare uses solid rocket fuel to burn a hole in the mine’s case and burn away the explosive contents so the mine can be disarmed without hazard. (Spinoff 2000)

Fire-Resistant Reinforcement 






Built and designed by Avco Corporation, the Apollo heat shield was coated with a material whose purpose was to burn and thus dissipate energy during reentry while charring, to form a protective coating to block heat penetration. NASA subsequently funded Avco’s development of other applications of the heat shield, such as fire-retardant paints and foams for aircraft, which led to the world’s first intumescent epoxy material, which expands in volume when exposed to heat or flames, acting as an insulating barrier and dissipating heat through burn-off. Further innovations based on this product include steel coatings devised to make high-rise buildings and public structures safer by swelling to provide a tough and stable insulating layer over the steel for up to 4 hours of fire protection, ultimately to slow building collapse and provide more time for escape. (Spinoff 2006)

Firefighter Gear






Firefighting equipment widely used throughout the United States is based on a NASA development that coupled Agency design expertise with lightweight materials developed for the U.S. Space Program. A project that linked NASA and the National Bureau of Standards resulted in a lightweight breathing system including face mask, frame, harness, and air bottle, using an aluminum composite material developed by NASA for use on rocket casings. Aerospace technology has been beneficially transferred to civil-use applications for years, but perhaps the broadest fire-related technology transfer is the breathing apparatus worn by firefighters for protection from smoke inhalation injury. Additionally, radio communications are essential during a fire to coordinate hose lines, rescue victims, and otherwise increase efficiency and safety. NASA’s inductorless electronic circuit technology contributed to the development of a lower-cost, more rugged, short-range two-way radio now used by firefighters. NASA also helped develop a specialized mask weighing less than 3 ounces to protect the physically impaired from injuries to the face and head, as well as flexible, heat-resistant materials—developed to protect the space shuttle on reentry—which are being used both by the military and commercially in suits for municipal and aircraft-rescue firefighters. (Spinoff 1976)

+ Back to Top

Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Temper Foam






As the result of a program designed to develop a padding concept to improve crash protection for airplane passengers, Ames Research Center developed a foam material with unusual properties. The material is widely used and commonly known as temper foam or “memory foam.” The material has been incorporated into a host of widely used and recognized products including mattresses, pillows, military and civilian aircraft, automobiles and motorcycles, sports safety equipment, amusement park rides and arenas, horseback saddles, archery targets, furniture, and human and animal prostheses. Its high-energy absorption and soft characteristics not only offer superior protection in the event of an accident or impact, but enhanced comfort and support for passengers on long flights or those seeking restful sleep. Today, temper foam is being employed by NASCAR to provide added safety in racecars. (Spinoff 1976, 1977, 1979, 1988, 1995, 2002, 2005)

Enriched Baby Food






Commercially available infant formulas now contain a nutritional enrichment ingredient that traces its existence to NASA-sponsored research that explored the potential of algae as a recycling agent for long-duration space travel. The substance, formulated into the products life’sDHA and life’sARA, can be found in over 90 percent of the infant formulas sold in the United States, and are added to the infant formulas sold in over 65 additional countries. The products were developed and are manufactured by Martek Biosciences Corporation, which has pioneered the commercial development of products based on microalgae; the company’s founders and principal scientists acquired their expertise in this area while working on the NASA program. (Spinoff 1996, 2008)

Portable Cordless Vacuums






Apollo and Gemini space mission technologies created by Black & Decker have helped change the way we clean around the house. For the Apollo space mission, NASA required a portable, self-contained drill capable of extracting core samples from below the lunar surface. Black & Decker was tasked with the job, and developed a computer program to optimize the design of the drill’s motor and insure minimal power consumption. That computer program led to the development of a cordless miniature vacuum cleaner called the Dustbuster. (Spinoff 1981)

Freeze Drying Technology






In planning for the long-duration Apollo missions, NASA conducted extensive research into space food. One of the techniques developed was freeze drying—Action Products commercialized this technique, concentrating on snack food. The foods are cooked, quickly frozen, and then slowly heated in a vacuum chamber to remove the ice crystals formed by the freezing process. The final product retains 98 percent of its nutrition and weighs only 20 percent of its original weight. Today, one of the benefits of this advancement in food preparation includes simple nutritious meals available to handicapped and otherwise homebound senior adults unable to take advantage of existing meal programs sponsored by government and private organizations. (Spinoff 1976, 1994)

+ Back to Top

Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Harnessing Solar Energy






Homes across the country are now being outfitted with modern, high-performance, low-cost, single crystal silicon solar power cells that allow them to reduce their traditional energy expenditures and contribute to pollution reduction. The advanced technology behind these solar devices—which are competitively-priced and provide up to 50 percent more power than conventional solar cells—originated with the efforts of a NASA-sponsored 28-member coalition of companies, government groups, universities, and nonprofits forming the Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) Alliance. ERAST’s goal was to foster the development of remotely piloted aircraft intended to fly unmanned at high altitudes for days at a time, requiring advanced solar power sources that did not add weight. As a result, SunPower Corporation created the most advanced silicon-based cells available for terrestrial or airborne applications. (Spinoff 2005)

Pollution Remediation






A product using NASA’s microencapsulating technology is available to consumers and industry enabling them to safely and permanently clean petroleum-based pollutants from water. The microencapsulated wonder, Petroleum Remediation Product or “PRP,” has revolutionized the way oil spills are cleaned. The basic technology behind PRP is thousands of microcapsules—tiny balls of beeswax with hollow centers. Water cannot penetrate the microcapsule’s cell, but oil is absorbed right into the beeswax spheres as they float on the water’s surface. Contaminating chemical compounds that originally come from crude oil (such as fuels, motor oils, or petroleum hydrocarbons) are caught before they settle, limiting damage to ocean beds. (Spinoff 1994, 2006)

Water Purification






NASA engineers are collaborating with qualified companies to develop a complex system of devices intended to sustain the astronauts living on the International Space Station and, in the future, those who go on to explore the Moon. This system, tentatively scheduled for launch in 2008, will make use of available resources by turning wastewater from respiration, sweat, and urine into drinkable water. Commercially, this system is benefiting people all over the world who need affordable, clean water. By combining the benefits of chemical adsorption, ion exchange, and ultra-filtration processes, products using this technology yield safe, drinkable water from the most challenging sources, such as in underdeveloped regions where well water may be heavily contaminated. (Spinoff 1995, 2006)

+ Back to Top

Computer Technology

Better Software






From real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the Moon and Mars, to real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle, NASA is collaborating with Google Inc. to solve a variety of challenging technical problems ranging from large-scale data management and massively distributed computing, to human-computer interfaces—with the ultimate goal of making the vast, scattered ocean of data more accessible and usable. With companies like InterSense, NASA continues to fund and collaborate on other software advancement initiatives benefiting such areas as photo/video image enhancement, virtual-reality/design, simulation training, and medical applications. (Spinoff 2005)

Structural Analysis






NASA software engineers have created thousands of computer programs over the decades equipped to design, test, and analyze stress, vibration, and acoustical properties of a broad assortment of aerospace parts and structures (before prototyping even begins). The NASA Structural Analysis Program, or NASTRAN, is considered one of the most successful and widely-used NASA software programs. It has been used to design everything from Cadillacs to roller coaster rides. Originally created for spacecraft design, NASTRAN has been employed in a host of non-aerospace applications and is available to industry through NASA’s Computer Software Management and Information Center (COSMIC). COSMIC maintains a library of computer programs from NASA and other government agencies and offers them for sale at a fraction of the cost of developing a new program, benefiting companies around the world seeking to solve the largest, most difficult engineering problems. (Spinoff 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1998)

Refrigerated Internet-Connected Wall Ovens






Embedded Web Technology (EWT) software—originally developed by NASA for use by astronauts operating experiments on available laptops from anywhere on the International Space Station—lets a user monitor and/or control a device remotely over the Internet. NASA supplied this technology and guidance to TMIO LLC, who went on to develop a low-cost, real-time remote control and monitoring of a new intelligent oven product named “ConnectIo.” With combined cooling and heating capabilities, ConnectIo provides the convenience of being able to store cold food where it will remain properly refrigerated until a customized pre-programmable cooking cycle begins. The menu allows the user to simply enter the dinner time, and the oven automatically switches from refrigeration to the cooking cycle, so that the meal will be ready as the family arrives home for dinner. (Spinoff 2005)

"]NASA Technologies Benefit Our Lives+ Back to Top[/URL]

Industrial Productivity

Powdered Lubricants






NASA’s scientists developed a solid lubricant coating material that is saving the manufacturing industry millions of dollars. Developed as a shaft coating to be deposited by thermal spraying to protect foil air bearings used in oil-free turbomachinery, like gas turbines, this advanced coating, PS300, was meant to be part of a larger project: an oil-free aircraft engine capable of operating at high temperatures with increased reliability, lowered weight, reduced maintenance, and increased power. PS300 improves efficiency, lowers friction, reduces emissions, and has been used by NASA in advanced aeropropulsion engines, refrigeration compressors, turbochargers, and hybrid electrical turbogenerators. ADMA Products has found widespread industrial applications for the material. (Spinoff 2005)

Improved Mine Safety






An ultrasonic bolt elongation monitor developed by a NASA scientist for testing tension and high-pressure loads on bolts and fasteners has continued to evolve over the past three decades. Today, the same scientist and Luna Innovations are using a digital adaptation of this same device for a plethora of different applications, including non-destructive evaluation of railroad ties, groundwater analysis, radiation dosimetry, and as a medical testing device to assess levels of internal swelling and pressure for patients suffering from intracranial pressure and compartment syndrome, a painful condition that results when pressure within muscles builds to dangerous levels. The applications for this device continue to expand. (Spinoff 1978, 2005, 2008)

Food Safety Systems






Faced with the problem of how and what to feed an astronaut in a sealed capsule under weightless conditions while planning for human space flight, NASA enlisted the aid of The Pillsbury Company to address two principal concerns: eliminating crumbs of food that might contaminate the spacecraft’s atmosphere and sensitive instruments, and assuring absolute freedom from potentially catastrophic disease-producing bacteria and toxins. Pillsbury developed the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) concept, potentially one of the most far-reaching space spinoffs, to address NASA’s second concern. HACCP is designed to prevent food safety problems rather than to catch them after they have occurred. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has applied HACCP guidelines for the handling of seafood, juice, and dairy products. (Spinoff 1991)
*


----------



## ScienceRocks

Want more???
Everyday Items Developed By NASA - Business Insider
To prove this point, every year since the mid-1970s, NASA has published a list of space technologies that have been integrated into everyday items. The tangible benefits span from life-saving medical devices to protective eyewear. To date, NASA has documented nearly 1,800 "spinoff" technologies. Here's a short list. 


Artificial limbs
Baby formula 
Cell-phone cameras
Computer mouse
Cordless tools 
Ear thermometer
Firefighter gear
Freeze-dried food
Golf clubs
Long-distance communication
Invisible braces
MRI and CAT scans
Memory foam 
Safer highways
Solar panels
Shoe insoles
Ski boots
Adjustable smoke detector
Water filters
UV-blocking sunglasses


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/everyday-items-developed-by-nasa-2012-8#ixzz3WtSPDHSC


----------



## Mr.Right

Matthew said:


> Want more???
> Everyday Items Developed By NASA - Business Insider
> To prove this point, every year since the mid-1970s, NASA has published a list of space technologies that have been integrated into everyday items. The tangible benefits span from life-saving medical devices to protective eyewear. To date, NASA has documented nearly 1,800 "spinoff" technologies. Here's a short list.
> 
> 
> Artificial limbs
> Baby formula
> Cell-phone cameras
> Computer mouse
> Cordless tools
> Ear thermometer
> Firefighter gear
> Freeze-dried food
> Golf clubs
> Long-distance communication
> Invisible braces
> MRI and CAT scans
> Memory foam
> Safer highways
> Solar panels
> Shoe insoles
> Ski boots
> Adjustable smoke detector
> Water filters
> UV-blocking sunglasses
> 
> 
> Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/everyday-items-developed-by-nasa-2012-8#ixzz3WtSPDHSC


If I'm not mistaken, just about everything you mentioned was accomplished with a non NASA partner, or simply funded by NASA. I didn't see one thing that couldn't have been accomplished without NASA.


----------



## eots

l can not help but be reminded the classic Frengi vs Vulcan schools of thought and the 13th and 79th rules of acquisition

Anything worth doing is worth doing for money
Beware of the Vulcan greed for knowledge.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*You say nasa is worthless? This proves you wrong.*

|

Top 10 NASA Inventions




The spaceship isn't NASA's only great invention.

Hemera/Thinkstock

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. government agency that runs the country's civilian space program, has accomplished some truly amazing feats since its inception in 1958 -- from beating the Soviet Union in the race to put astronauts on the moon, to exploring the surface of Mars with unmanned robotic vehicles. So you're probably not surprised to hear that NASA employs a pretty awesome brain trust of scientific and engineering talent in a wide array of fields, from astronomy and physics to chemistry, biology and materials science.

NASA has invented all sorts of technology to solve the peculiar problems of space exploration. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it created the revolutionary three-axis stabilization control design that enables satellites to point their antennas, instruments and solar panels with precision. Since then, it's been such a prolific problem solver that about one in every 1,000 U.S. patents is granted to someone working on a NASA project [source: Rayl].

In fact, the NASA workforce is so ingenious that quite a few of its inventions are useful for those of us who stay on the ground. The agency even has a special administrative branch, the Technology Utilization Program, which focuses on helping companies turn the ideas behind space gadgetry into industrial and consumer innovations.

The list of inventions is certainly long, but if we have to single out a few favorites, these 10 would top the list.

10
Memory Foam




If you're looking to pull one of these in a chair, you'd better hope it comes packed full of memory foam.

Photo courtesy Aaron Fotheringham

In the early 1960s, an aeronautical engineer named Charles Yost worked on technology designed to make sure that the Apollo command module and its astronauts could be recovered safely after landing. That experience came in handy four years later, when Yost was tapped to help NASA's Ames Research Center develop airplane seating that could absorb the energy of crashes and increase passengers' chances of survival. Yost created a special type of plastic foam that had the seemingly miraculous ability to deform and absorb tremendous pressure, then return to its original shape.

Researchers discovered that the "slow springback foam," as it was called initially, not only made passengers safer, it also made sitting for hours on long flights more comfortable because it allowed for a more even distribution of body weight.

In 1967, Yost formed his own company, Dynamic Systems Inc., which marketed the innovation as "temper foam." Since then, memory foam has found its way into scores of applications. In the 1970s and 1980s, pro football's Dallas Cowboys team used it to line players' helmets to reduce the trauma of impact on the field. Shoe manufacturers have called on the foam to create special high-comfort insoles. In hospitals, mattress pads and wheelchair seats made from the foam support patients with painful, dangerous sores on their bodies.

Companies continue to find new uses for memory foam and its descendants. A Colorado company uses a type of memory foam to build inflatable bumper rafts, which resist sinking, for whitewater rides at theme parks. A company in Kentucky builds it into horses' saddles and uses it to make prosthetic braces for injured animals [source: NASA Spinoff].

Next, we'll look at an invention with the smarts to protect NASA's high-tech equipment from the elements -- both on and off the Earth.

9
Anti-corrosion Coating
NO, NASA DIDN'T INVENT THAT
Two products are often mistakenly attributed to the space program:


Teflon (actually invented by DuPont back in 1938)
The powdered breakfast drink Tang (actually developed by General Foods, now Kraft Foods), even though it was on the menu when astronaut John Glenn ate and drank in space in 1962
One challenge with space exploration is that equipment must withstand radical conditions, from the heat of rocket exhaust to extreme cold in space. Surprisingly, one of the most destructive forces is the corrosive effect of saltwater-laden ocean spray and fog. It rusts gantries -- large frames that surround rocket launch sites -- and launch structures at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and other coastal facilities. Fortunately, in the 1970s, researchers at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center discovered that coating the equipment with a protective layer containing zinc dust and potassium silicate would help thwart the costly rusting.

In the early 1980s, a company called Inorganic Coatings Inc. used the concept to produce a nontoxic, water-based coating, IC 531 zinc silicate, which readily bonds with steel and dries within 30 minutes to a hard, ceramiclike finish. The coating has been applied to bridge girders, pipelines, oil rigs, dock equipment, buoys, tractor-trailer truck frames and even to the exteriors of U.S. Army tanks.

But perhaps the coating's most celebrated application came in the mid-1980s, when 225 gallons (852 liters) of it were applied to the inside of the Statue of Liberty, to help curb further deterioration of the century-old iconic figure [source: Space Foundation].

Next up, we'll meet technology with the ability to let us glimpse something as expansive as the cosmos and as tiny as the arteries traveling away from the human heart.

8
ArterioVision




ArterioVision pairs ultrasound equipment like this with NASA's software genius.

©iStockphoto/johnnyscriv

Since the mid-1960s, scientists in the image processing lab at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have been working to improve video imaging software, so that astronomers can turn space probe data into increasingly vivid, high-resolution images of distant planets and other celestial objects.

In recent years, medical researchers have applied some of NASA's software innovations to peer not into the sky but into patients' circulatory systems for signs of atherosclerosis, a common disease in which fatty material builds up inside arteries and threatens to cause heart attacks and strokes.

The California Institute of Technology, which manages JPL for NASA, licensed the technology to a private company, Medical Technologies International Inc. (MTI), whose chief engineer, Robert Seltzer, was a veteran JPL researcher. The result was ArterioVision software. It can be used with ultrasound equipment to perform a noninvasive examination of a patient's carotid artery, which carries blood to the brain.

Paired with ultrasound technologies, ArterioVision can detect signs of cardiovascular illness at very early stages, when it would otherwise evade detection by conventional tests. As a result, medical experts say that more patients may have a chance to curb the disease with dietary and lifestyle changes, rather than medication or surgery down the line [source: NASA]. Doctors' offices in all 50 U.S. states offer ArterioVision testing [source: Lockney].This next NASA invention has expanded lifestyle options for hearing-impaired individuals worldwide.

7
Cochlear Implants




Hearing aids amplify sound, but they don't clarify it.

Comstock/Thinkstock

In the late 1970s, Adam Kissiah Jr., a hearing-impaired engineer working on the space shuttle program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, knew all too well the shortcomings of conventional analog hearing aids. They simply amplified sound entering the ear without clarifying it. In an effort to solve the problem, he put to use his knowledge of NASA's advances in electronic sensing systems, telemetry, and sound and vibration sensors. He came up with the concept for a new type of hearing aid -- an implant that would produce digital pulses to stimulate the auditory nerve endings, which then would transmit the signals to the brain.

Kissiah went on to work with BioStim, a private company, to develop the new device. Kissiah's patented concepts were built upon by other manufacturers [source: Space Foundation]. Since then, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 219,000 patients have received cochlear implants [source: NIDCD]. The devices enable people who've been deaf since birth to hear for the first time. They've also restored hearing for those who still have a responsive auditory nerve but who've lost hearing due to trauma or disease [source: Space Foundation].

This application of space technology has made an enormous difference in the lives of people like Mike Scheerer, a Peoria, Ill., man in his late 50s, who received a cochlear implant in 2009 and heard songbirds singing in the trees in his neighborhood. "I would say that's the most beautiful thing I ever heard," he told the Peoria Star newspaper. "I had never heard birds before, that I can remember" [source: Davis].

NASA's role in revolutionizing our senses doesn't stop with hearing. Find out how the organization protects people's vision next.

6
Scratch-resistant Eyeglass Lenses
It may seem hard to believe, but there was a time when eyeglasses actually were made of glass. Not only were they heavy, but if the person wearing them was hit with something, the lens would shatter and spew tiny, vision-threatening shards of glass. For that reason, in 1972, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared that all sunglasses and prescription lenses be shatter-resistant, which essentially compelled lens makers to shift to more durable plastic.

Plastic provided better optics and absorbed ultraviolet light better, but there was one problem: Plastic lenses were frustratingly easy to scratch. That's where NASA scientist Ted Wydeven of the agency's Ames Research Center came in. While working on a water purification system for spacecraft, Wydeven coated a filter with a thin, plastic film, using an electric discharge of an organic vapor. The resulting coating was surprisingly tough, and NASA used the concept to develop an abrasion-resistant coating for space helmet visors and aerospace equipment. In 1983, Foster-Grant, the sunglasses manufacturer, commercialized the scratch-resistant coating, and today, the majority of eyeglasses sold in the United States are outfitted with plastic lenses that last 10 times as long as the old ones [source: Space Foundation ].

Can you guess which NASA invention holds the title as the most licensed technology from the agency as of 2010? Read on to see if you guessed right.

5
Remediating the Environment: Emulsified Zero-valent Iron




Shuttles left behind an awful lot of cleanup after their glorious departures. NASA came up with at least one solution to that problem.

Marc Serota/Getty Images

After NASA launches a shuttle into space, a slew of fuel and chemical waste remain on the launching pad and surrounding area.

One compound in particular, trichloroethylene, also called "trike," takes a long time to break down naturally in the ground. It's also known to cause health problems, including harmful effects to the nervous system and development [source: EPA].

The situation becomes more alarming when one considers the fact that cleanup wasn't a priority during the heyday of NASA's shuttle program before the mid-1970s [source: Waymer]. In fact, trike waste was placed into the ground, under the assumption the compound would evaporate (it didn't).

But NASA caught on and devised a method to break down the waste. Rather than physically removing it, NASA scientists Jacqueline Quinn and Kathleen Brooks Loftin invented a solution that helps break down trike into nontoxic byproducts with no harm to the environment. They won both the agency's commercial and government invention of the year in 2005.

The thick solution, called *emulsified zero-valent iron*, can be injected into groundwater, where it neutralizes toxic chemicals that pose a threat to the environment. The technology transitioned easily into commercial markets, with chemical, manufacturing and oil companies purchasing the solution to remediate land contaminated with toxic matter from their businesses. In fact, the solution became so popular, it's the agency's most licensed technology as of 2010 [source: Spinoff Magazine].

Diabetes and NASA paired together in the same sentence? Figure out their relationship on the next page.

4
*Insulin Pump*
What do NASA and diabetes have in common?

For starters, the agency has made treating the condition easier, thanks to researchers working on the Mars Viking spacecraft. At the time, the chance of traveling farther into space also presented challenges in monitoring astronauts' health, prompting the team to find new ways to oversee astronauts' vital signs.

Similar monitoring systems were adopted to help treat individuals with insulin-dependent diabetes, also known as Type 1 diabetes. As a result of the Goddard Space Flight Center's work, medical experts created implanted devices that can monitor a person's blood sugar levels and send signals to release insulin into his or her body when needed [source: NASA]. The technology, known today as an *insulin pump*, has helped monitor the health of people living with diabetes since the late '80s.
----
*Lifeshears*

After a NASA space shuttle trades Earth's atmosphere for the depths of the galaxy, it detaches itself from its rocket boosters. The technology responsible for making that flawless transition also boasts life-saving uses on the ground [source: Barrett].

Alongside Hi-Shear Technology Corporation of Torrance, NASA helped develop *Lifeshears* in 1994,* a type of cutting equipment that comes in handy during emergency and rescue situations* [source: Spinoff Magazine]. The invention's strengths draw from its reduced cost, weight and noise -- all of which place less stress on victims and rescuers when compared to large hydraulics and hoses required for previous operations. Instead, these shears are "pyrotechnically-actuated," meaning they draw a charge from a pyrotechnic reaction within the device's cartridge. It's the same concept NASA uses to separate shuttles from their booster rockets midair, except on a smaller scale.

*Charge-coupled Device*
|

Top 10 NASA Inventions




The spaceship isn't NASA's only great invention.

Hemera/Thinkstock

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. government agency that runs the country's civilian space program, has accomplished some truly amazing feats since its inception in 1958 -- from beating the Soviet Union in the race to put astronauts on the moon, to exploring the surface of Mars with unmanned robotic vehicles. So you're probably not surprised to hear that NASA employs a pretty awesome brain trust of scientific and engineering talent in a wide array of fields, from astronomy and physics to chemistry, biology and materials science.

NASA has invented all sorts of technology to solve the peculiar problems of space exploration. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it created the revolutionary three-axis stabilization control design that enables satellites to point their antennas, instruments and solar panels with precision. Since then, it's been such a prolific problem solver that about one in every 1,000 U.S. patents is granted to someone working on a NASA project [source: Rayl].

In fact, the NASA workforce is so ingenious that quite a few of its inventions are useful for those of us who stay on the ground. The agency even has a special administrative branch, the Technology Utilization Program, which focuses on helping companies turn the ideas behind space gadgetry into industrial and consumer innovations.

The list of inventions is certainly long, but if we have to single out a few favorites, these 10 would top the list.

10
Memory Foam




If you're looking to pull one of these in a chair, you'd better hope it comes packed full of memory foam.

Photo courtesy Aaron Fotheringham

In the early 1960s, an aeronautical engineer named Charles Yost worked on technology designed to make sure that the Apollo command module and its astronauts could be recovered safely after landing. That experience came in handy four years later, when Yost was tapped to help NASA's Ames Research Center develop airplane seating that could absorb the energy of crashes and increase passengers' chances of survival. Yost created a special type of plastic foam that had the seemingly miraculous ability to deform and absorb tremendous pressure, then return to its original shape.

Researchers discovered that the "slow springback foam," as it was called initially, not only made passengers safer, it also made sitting for hours on long flights more comfortable because it allowed for a more even distribution of body weight.

In 1967, Yost formed his own company, Dynamic Systems Inc., which marketed the innovation as "temper foam." Since then, memory foam has found its way into scores of applications. In the 1970s and 1980s, pro football's Dallas Cowboys team used it to line players' helmets to reduce the trauma of impact on the field. Shoe manufacturers have called on the foam to create special high-comfort insoles. In hospitals, mattress pads and wheelchair seats made from the foam support patients with painful, dangerous sores on their bodies.

Companies continue to find new uses for memory foam and its descendants. A Colorado company uses a type of memory foam to build inflatable bumper rafts, which resist sinking, for whitewater rides at theme parks. A company in Kentucky builds it into horses' saddles and uses it to make prosthetic braces for injured animals [source: NASA Spinoff].

Next, we'll look at an invention with the smarts to protect NASA's high-tech equipment from the elements -- both on and off the Earth.

9
Anti-corrosion Coating
NO, NASA DIDN'T INVENT THAT
Two products are often mistakenly attributed to the space program:


Teflon (actually invented by DuPont back in 1938)
The powdered breakfast drink Tang (actually developed by General Foods, now Kraft Foods), even though it was on the menu when astronaut John Glenn ate and drank in space in 1962
One challenge with space exploration is that equipment must withstand radical conditions, from the heat of rocket exhaust to extreme cold in space. Surprisingly, one of the most destructive forces is the corrosive effect of saltwater-laden ocean spray and fog. It rusts gantries -- large frames that surround rocket launch sites -- and launch structures at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and other coastal facilities. Fortunately, in the 1970s, researchers at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center discovered that coating the equipment with a protective layer containing zinc dust and potassium silicate would help thwart the costly rusting.

In the early 1980s, a company called Inorganic Coatings Inc. used the concept to produce a nontoxic, water-based coating, IC 531 zinc silicate, which readily bonds with steel and dries within 30 minutes to a hard, ceramiclike finish. The coating has been applied to bridge girders, pipelines, oil rigs, dock equipment, buoys, tractor-trailer truck frames and even to the exteriors of U.S. Army tanks.

But perhaps the coating's most celebrated application came in the mid-1980s, when 225 gallons (852 liters) of it were applied to the inside of the Statue of Liberty, to help curb further deterioration of the century-old iconic figure [source: Space Foundation].

Next up, we'll meet technology with the ability to let us glimpse something as expansive as the cosmos and as tiny as the arteries traveling away from the human heart.

8
ArterioVision




ArterioVision pairs ultrasound equipment like this with NASA's software genius.

©iStockphoto/johnnyscriv

Since the mid-1960s, scientists in the image processing lab at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have been working to improve video imaging software, so that astronomers can turn space probe data into increasingly vivid, high-resolution images of distant planets and other celestial objects.

In recent years, medical researchers have applied some of NASA's software innovations to peer not into the sky but into patients' circulatory systems for signs of atherosclerosis, a common disease in which fatty material builds up inside arteries and threatens to cause heart attacks and strokes.

The California Institute of Technology, which manages JPL for NASA, licensed the technology to a private company, Medical Technologies International Inc. (MTI), whose chief engineer, Robert Seltzer, was a veteran JPL researcher. The result was ArterioVision software. It can be used with ultrasound equipment to perform a noninvasive examination of a patient's carotid artery, which carries blood to the brain.

Paired with ultrasound technologies, ArterioVision can detect signs of cardiovascular illness at very early stages, when it would otherwise evade detection by conventional tests. As a result, medical experts say that more patients may have a chance to curb the disease with dietary and lifestyle changes, rather than medication or surgery down the line [source: NASA]. Doctors' offices in all 50 U.S. states offer ArterioVision testing [source: Lockney].This next NASA invention has expanded lifestyle options for hearing-impaired individuals worldwide.

7
Cochlear Implants




Hearing aids amplify sound, but they don't clarify it.

Comstock/Thinkstock

In the late 1970s, Adam Kissiah Jr., a hearing-impaired engineer working on the space shuttle program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, knew all too well the shortcomings of conventional analog hearing aids. They simply amplified sound entering the ear without clarifying it. In an effort to solve the problem, he put to use his knowledge of NASA's advances in electronic sensing systems, telemetry, and sound and vibration sensors. He came up with the concept for a new type of hearing aid -- an implant that would produce digital pulses to stimulate the auditory nerve endings, which then would transmit the signals to the brain.

Kissiah went on to work with BioStim, a private company, to develop the new device. Kissiah's patented concepts were built upon by other manufacturers [source: Space Foundation]. Since then, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 219,000 patients have received cochlear implants [source: NIDCD]. The devices enable people who've been deaf since birth to hear for the first time. They've also restored hearing for those who still have a responsive auditory nerve but who've lost hearing due to trauma or disease [source: Space Foundation].

This application of space technology has made an enormous difference in the lives of people like Mike Scheerer, a Peoria, Ill., man in his late 50s, who received a cochlear implant in 2009 and heard songbirds singing in the trees in his neighborhood. "I would say that's the most beautiful thing I ever heard," he told the Peoria Star newspaper. "I had never heard birds before, that I can remember" [source: Davis].

NASA's role in revolutionizing our senses doesn't stop with hearing. Find out how the organization protects people's vision next.

6
Scratch-resistant Eyeglass Lenses
It may seem hard to believe, but there was a time when eyeglasses actually were made of glass. Not only were they heavy, but if the person wearing them was hit with something, the lens would shatter and spew tiny, vision-threatening shards of glass. For that reason, in 1972, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared that all sunglasses and prescription lenses be shatter-resistant, which essentially compelled lens makers to shift to more durable plastic.

Plastic provided better optics and absorbed ultraviolet light better, but there was one problem: Plastic lenses were frustratingly easy to scratch. That's where NASA scientist Ted Wydeven of the agency's Ames Research Center came in. While working on a water purification system for spacecraft, Wydeven coated a filter with a thin, plastic film, using an electric discharge of an organic vapor. The resulting coating was surprisingly tough, and NASA used the concept to develop an abrasion-resistant coating for space helmet visors and aerospace equipment. In 1983, Foster-Grant, the sunglasses manufacturer, commercialized the scratch-resistant coating, and today, the majority of eyeglasses sold in the United States are outfitted with plastic lenses that last 10 times as long as the old ones [source: Space Foundation ].

Can you guess which NASA invention holds the title as the most licensed technology from the agency as of 2010? Read on to see if you guessed right.

5
Remediating the Environment: Emulsified Zero-valent Iron




Shuttles left behind an awful lot of cleanup after their glorious departures. NASA came up with at least one solution to that problem.

Marc Serota/Getty Images

After NASA launches a shuttle into space, a slew of fuel and chemical waste remain on the launching pad and surrounding area.

One compound in particular, trichloroethylene, also called "trike," takes a long time to break down naturally in the ground. It's also known to cause health problems, including harmful effects to the nervous system and development [source: EPA].

The situation becomes more alarming when one considers the fact that cleanup wasn't a priority during the heyday of NASA's shuttle program before the mid-1970s [source: Waymer]. In fact, trike waste was placed into the ground, under the assumption the compound would evaporate (it didn't).

But NASA caught on and devised a method to break down the waste. Rather than physically removing it, NASA scientists Jacqueline Quinn and Kathleen Brooks Loftin invented a solution that helps break down trike into nontoxic byproducts with no harm to the environment. They won both the agency's commercial and government invention of the year in 2005.

The thick solution, called *emulsified zero-valent iron*, can be injected into groundwater, where it neutralizes toxic chemicals that pose a threat to the environment. The technology transitioned easily into commercial markets, with chemical, manufacturing and oil companies purchasing the solution to remediate land contaminated with toxic matter from their businesses. In fact, the solution became so popular, it's the agency's most licensed technology as of 2010 [source: Spinoff Magazine].

Diabetes and NASA paired together in the same sentence? Figure out their relationship on the next page.

4
Insulin Pump
What do NASA and diabetes have in common?

For starters, the agency has made treating the condition easier, thanks to researchers working on the Mars Viking spacecraft. At the time, the chance of traveling farther into space also presented challenges in monitoring astronauts' health, prompting the team to find new ways to oversee astronauts' vital signs.

Similar monitoring systems were adopted to help treat individuals with insulin-dependent diabetes, also known as Type 1 diabetes. As a result of the Goddard Space Flight Center's work, medical experts created implanted devices that can monitor a person's blood sugar levels and send signals to release insulin into his or her body when needed [source: NASA]. The technology, known today as an *insulin pump*, has helped monitor the health of people living with diabetes since the late '80s.

The invention differed from previous insulin dispensers in that the device offered people a pre-programmed rate that was customizable based on the person's needs. It also removed the need for daily insulin injections [source: NASA Spinoff].

It turns out the same technology that allows NASA to sever shuttles from rockets also can free trapped victims. Head onward to find out how.

3
Lifeshears




Let's hope those cutters he's holding don't need to rescue you from a tough spot you're in, but if they do, be sure to thank NASA.

Image courtesy NASA/Spinoff

After a NASA space shuttle trades Earth's atmosphere for the depths of the galaxy, it detaches itself from its rocket boosters. The technology responsible for making that flawless transition also boasts life-saving uses on the ground [source: Barrett].

Alongside Hi-Shear Technology Corporation of Torrance, NASA helped develop *Lifeshears* in 1994, a type of cutting equipment that comes in handy during emergency and rescue situations [source: Spinoff Magazine]. The invention's strengths draw from its reduced cost, weight and noise -- all of which place less stress on victims and rescuers when compared to large hydraulics and hoses required for previous operations. Instead, these shears are "pyrotechnically-actuated," meaning they draw a charge from a pyrotechnic reaction within the device's cartridge. It's the same concept NASA uses to separate shuttles from their booster rockets midair, except on a smaller scale.

Lifeshears have helped search-and-rescue teams save individuals trapped in wrecked cars or collapsed buildings. The invention loosened victims from dangerous debris immediately following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centers in 2001.

Up next: a tiny invention with large potential.

2
*Charge-coupled Device*




Thanks, Hubble, for everything, including your cool CCD technology.

NASA/National Geographic/Getty Images

If you were to peek inside the Hubble Space Telescope, you'd find a lot of high-tech sensors and wiring. But one piece in particular has found its way into the medical realm on Earth.

*Charge-coupled devices* (CCDs) possess the ability to "digitize" light into data. In other words, they offer an easier way to convert light energy (from photons) into digital images than other imaging methods. In 1997, NASA created a "supersensitive" CCD for Hubble to increase the quality and breadth of phenomena it could image in the cosmos.

But the LORAD Corporation picked up on the idea for a new way to scan female patients for breast cancer [source: NASA]. Just as the supersensitive sensor allowed Hubble to gather more details about structures and events in space, the CCD allows doctors to perform more precise tests on women who may have breast cancer.


---

*Water Filters*
Even though astronauts do their jobs miles away from Earth's surface, they still rely on basic necessities we may take for granted. Take clean water, for example. How does NASA ensure that the water astronauts drink is safe?

This question spurred the agency to create special water filters in the 1970s to make certain astronauts had clean water in space [source: Marconi]. Working with Umpqua Research Company in Oregon, NASA crafted filter cartridges that use iodine to clean water supplies from the shuttles.

The technology, called the Microbial Check Valve, has gained momentum in cleaning water for municipal water plants. It has paved the way for devising other ways to filter the resource for human consumption. Such filters become especially important in areas where chemicals have contaminated groundwater supplies.


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## Mr.Right

No product is invented or produced without a need for it. If there was no NASA someone else would have done it, and would probably have done it cheaper.


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## ScienceRocks

1. all this innovation
2. The knowledge of our universe and what it is all about
3. The ability to save our own ass
4. Humanity spreading outwards and using all the resources of our universe.


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## Mr.Right

Matthew said:


> 1. all this innovation
> 2. The knowledge of our universe and what it is all about
> 3. The ability to save our own ass
> 4. Humanity spreading outwards and using all the resources of our universe.


Sounds like a science fiction novel. Lol. That sort of thing doesn't happen in real life.


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## ScienceRocks

*Health and medicine[edit source | edit]*
*Infrared ear thermometers[edit source | edit]*
Diatek Corporation and NASA developed an aural thermometer that measures the thermal radiation emitted by the eardrum, similar to the way the temperature of stars and planets is measured. This method avoids contact with mucous membranes, and permits rapid temperature measurement of newborn or incapacitated patients. NASA supported the Diatek Corporation through the Technology Affiliates Program.[9]

*Ventricular assist device[edit source | edit]*
Collaboration between NASA, Dr. Michael DeBakey, Dr. George Noon, and MicroMed Technology Inc. resulted in a heart pump for patients awaiting heart transplants. The MicroMed DeBakey ventricular assist device (VAD) functions as a “bridge to heart transplant” by pumping blood until a donor heart is available. The pump is approximately one-tenth the size of other currently marketed pulsatile VADs. Because of the pump’s small size, fewer patients developed device-related infections. It can operate up to 8 hours on batteries, giving patients the mobility to do normal, everyday activities.[10]

*Artificial Limbs[edit source | edit]*
NASA’s continued funding, coupled with its collective innovations in robotics and shock-absorption/comfort materials are inspiring and enabling the private sector to create new and better solutions for animal and human prostheses. Advancements such as Environmental Robots Inc.’s development of artificial muscle systems with robotic sensing and actuation capabilities for use in NASA space robotic and extravehicular activities are being adapted to create more functionally dynamic artificial limbs (Spinoff 2004). Additionally, other private-sector adaptations of NASA’s temper foam technology have brought about custom-moldable materials offering the natural look and feel of flesh, as well as preventing friction between the skin and the prosthesis, and heat/moisture buildup. (Spinoff 2005 url = http://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html

*Light-emitting diodes in medical therapies[edit source | edit]*
After initial experiments using light-emitting diodes in NASA space shuttle plant growth experiments, NASA issued a small business innovation grant that led to the development of a hand-held, high-intensity, LED unit developed by Quantum Devices Inc. that can be used to treat tumors after other treatment options are exhausted.[11]:10–11 This therapy was approved by the FDA and inducted into the Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame in 2000.

*Invisible braces[edit source | edit]*
Invisible braces are a type of transparent ceramics called translucent polycrystalline alumina (TPA). A company known as Ceradyne developed TPA in conjunction with NASA Advanced Ceramics Research as protection for infrared antennae on heat-seeking missile trackers. [12]

*Scratch-resistant lenses[edit source | edit]*
A sunglasses manufacturer called Foster Grant first licensed a NASA technology for scratch-resistant lenses, developed for protecting space equipment from scratching in space, especially helmet visors.[12]

*Space blanket[edit source | edit]*
So-called space blankets, developed in 1964, are lightweight and reflect infrared radiation. They are often included in first aid kits.

*Transportation[edit source | edit]*
*Aircraft anti-icing systems[edit source | edit]*



This ice-free airplane wing uses Thermawing's Aircraft Anti-Icing System, a NASA spin-off.
NASA funding under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and work with NASA scientists advanced the development of a thermoelectric deicing system called Thermawing, a DC-powered air conditioner for single-engine aircraft called Thermacool, and high-output alternators to run them both. Thermawing allows pilots to safely fly through ice encounters and provides pilots of single-engine aircraft the heated wing technology usually reserved for larger, jet-powered craft. Thermacool, an electric air conditioning system, uses a new compressor whose rotary pump design runs off an energy-efficient, brushless DC motor and allows pilots to use the air conditioner before the engine starts.[13]

*Highway safety[edit source | edit]*
Safety grooving, the cutting of grooves in concrete to increase traction and prevent injury, was first developed to reduce aircraft accidents on wet runways. Represented by the International Grooving and Grinding Association, the industry expanded into highway and pedestrian applications. Safety grooving originated at Langley Research Center, which assisted in testing the grooving at airports and on highways. Skidding was reduced, stopping distance decreased, and a vehicle’s cornering ability on curves was increased. The process has been extended to animal holding pens, parking lots, and other potentially slippery surfaces.[14]

*Improved radial tires[edit source | edit]*
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company developed a fibrous material, five times stronger than steel, for NASA to use in parachute shrouds to soft-land the Viking Lander spacecraft on the Martian surface. Recognizing the durability of the material, Goodyear expanded the technology and went on to produce a new radial tire with a tread life expected to be 10,000 miles (16,000 km) greater than conventional radials.[15]

*Chemical detection[edit source | edit]*
NASA contracted with Intelligent Optical Systems (IOS) to develop moisture- and pH-sensitive sensors to warn of corrosive conditions in aircraft before damage occurs. This sensor changes color in response to contact with its target. After completing the work with NASA, IOS was tasked by the U.S. Department of Defense to further develop the sensors for detecting chemical warfare agents and potential threats, such as toxic industrial compounds and nerve agents. IOS has sold the chemically sensitive fiber optic cables to major automotive and aerospace companies, who are finding a variety of uses for the devices such as aiding experimentation with nontraditional power sources, and as an economical “alarm system” for detecting chemical release in large facilities.[13]

*Public safety[edit source | edit]*
*Video enhancing and analysis systems[edit source | edit]*
Intergraph Government Solutions developed its Video Analyst System (VAS) by building on Video Image Stabilization and Registration (VISAR) technology created by NASA to help FBI agents analyze video footage. Originally used for enhancing video images from nighttime videotapes made with hand-held camcorders, VAS is a tool for video enhancement and analysis offering support of full-resolution digital video, stabilization, frame-by-frame analysis, conversion of analog video to digital storage formats, and increased visibility of filmed subjects without altering underlying footage. Aside from law enforcement and security applications, VAS has also been adapted to serve the military for reconnaissance, weapons deployment, damage assessment, training, and mission debriefing.[16]

*Fire-resistant reinforcement[edit source | edit]*
Built and designed by Avco Corporation, the Apollo heat shield was coated with a material whose purpose was to burn and thus dissipate energy during reentry while charring, to form a protective coating to block heat penetration. NASA subsequently funded Avco’s development of other applications of the heat shield, such as fire-retardant paints and foams for aircraft, which led to intumescent epoxy material, which expands in volume when exposed to heat or flames, acting as an insulating barrier and dissipating heat through burn-off. Further innovations include steel coatings devised to make high-rise buildings and public structures safer by swelling to provide a tough and stable insulating layer over the steel for up to 4 hours of fire protection, ultimately to slow building collapse and provide more time for escape.[17]

*Firefighting equipment[edit source | edit]*
Firefighting equipment in the United States is based on lightweight materials developed for the U.S. Space Program. NASA and the National Bureau of Standards created a lightweight breathing system including face mask, frame, harness, and air bottle, using an aluminum composite material developed by NASA for use on rocket casings. The broadest fire-related technology transfer is the breathing apparatus for protection from smoke inhalation injury. Additionally, NASA’s inductorless electronic circuit technology led to lower-cost, more rugged, short-range two-way radio now used by firefighters. NASA also helped develop a specialized mask weighing less than 3 ounces (85 g) to protect the physically impaired from injuries to the face and head, as well as flexible, heat-resistant materials—developed to protect the space shuttle on reentry—which are being used both by the military and commercially in suits for municipal and aircraft-rescue firefighters.[18][19][20][21]

*Consumer, home, and recreation[edit source | edit]*
*Temper foam[edit source | edit]*



Initially referred to as "slow spring back foam", temper foam matches pressure against it and slowly returns to its original form once the pressure is removed.
As the result of a program designed to develop a padding concept to improve crash protection for airplane passengers, Ames Research Center developed what is now called memory foam. Memory foam, or "Temper Foam", has been incorporated into mattresses, pillows, military and civilian aircraft, automobiles and motorcycles, sports safety equipment, amusement park rides and arenas, horseback saddles, archery targets, furniture, and human and animal prostheses. Its high-energy absorption and soft characteristics offer protection and comfort. Today, temper foam is being employed by NASCAR to provide added safety in racecars. Temper Foam was inducted into the Space Foundation Space Technology Hall of Fame in 1998.[10][11]:46–49[15][19][22][23][24]

*Enriched baby food[edit source | edit]*
Commercially available infant formulas now contain a nutritional enrichment ingredient that traces its existence to NASA-sponsored research on bread mold as a recycling agent for long-duration space travel. The substance, formulated into the products life’sDHA and life’sARA and based on microalgae, can be found in over 90% of the infant formulas sold in the United States, and are added to infant formulas in over 65 other countries. Martek Biosciences Corporation's founders and principal scientists acquired their expertise in this area while working on the NASA program. The microalgae food supplement was inducted into the Space Foundation Space Technology Hall of Fame in 2009.[25]

*Portable cordless vacuums[edit source | edit]*
For the Apollo space mission, NASA required a portable, self-contained drill capable of extracting core samples from below the lunar surface. Black & Decker was tasked with the job, and developed a computer program to optimize the design of the drill’s motor and ensure minimal power consumption. That computer program led to the development of a cordless miniature vacuum cleaner called the Dustbuster.[19]

*Freeze drying[edit source | edit]*
In planning for the long-duration Apollo missions, NASA conducted extensive research into space food. One of the techniques developed in 1938 by Nestlé was freeze drying. In the United States, Action Products later commercialized this technique for other foods, concentrating on snack food resulting in products like Space ice cream. The foods are cooked, quickly frozen, and then slowly heated in a vacuum chamber to remove the ice crystals formed by the freezing process. The final product retains 98%[_citation needed_] of its nutrition and weighs much less than before drying. The ratio of weight before and after drying depends strongly on the particular food item but a typical freeze-dried weight is 20% of the original weight. Today, one of the benefits of this advancement in food preservation includes simple nutritious meals available to handicapped and otherwise homebound senior adults unable to take advantage of existing meal programs.[18][26][27]

*Environmental and agricultural resources[edit source | edit]*



Water Security Corporation's Discovery Water Filtration System
*Water purification[edit source | edit]*
NASA engineers are collaborating with qualified companies to develop systems intended to sustain the astronauts living on the International Space Station and future Moon and space missions. This system turns wastewater from respiration, sweat, and urine into drinkable water. Commercially, this system is benefiting people all over the world who need affordable, clean water, especially in remote locations. By combining the benefits of chemical adsorption, ion exchange, and ultra-filtration processes, this technology can yield safe, drinkable water from the most challenging sources, such as in underdeveloped regions where well water may be heavily contaminated.[28][29]

*Solar Cells[edit source | edit]*
Single-crystal silicon solar cells are now widely available at low cost. The technology behind these solar devices—which provide up to 50% more power than conventional solar cells—originated with the efforts of a NASA-sponsored 28-member coalition forming the Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) Alliance. ERAST’s goal was to develop remotely piloted aircraft, intended to fly unmanned at high altitudes for days at a time and requiring advanced solar power sources that did not add weight. As a result, SunPower Corporation created advanced silicon-based cells for terrestrial or airborne applications.[11]:66–67

*Pollution remediation[edit source | edit]*
NASA’s microencapsulating technology enabled the creation of a "Petroleum Remediation Product," which safely cleans petroleum-based pollutants from water. The PRP uses thousands of microcapsules—tiny balls of beeswax with hollow centers. Water cannot penetrate the microcapsule’s cell, but oil is absorbed into the beeswax spheres as they float on the water’s surface. Contaminating chemical compounds that originally come from crude oil (such as fuels, motor oils, or petroleum hydrocarbons) are caught before they settle, limiting damage to ocean beds.[17][27]

*Computer technology[edit source | edit]*
*Structural analysis software[edit source | edit]*
NASA software engineers have created thousands of computer programs over the decades equipped to design, test, and analyze stress, vibration, and acoustical properties of a broad assortment of aerospace parts and structures. The NASA Structural Analysis Program, or NASTRAN, is considered one of the most successful and widely used NASA software programs. It has been used to design everything from Cadillacs to roller coaster rides. Originally created for spacecraft design, it has been employed in a host of non-aerospace applications and is available to industry through NASA’s Computer Software Management and Information Center (COSMIC). COSMIC maintains a library of computer programs from NASA and other government agencies and sells them at a fraction of the cost of developing a new program. NASA Structural Analysis Computer Software was inducted into the Space Foundation Space Technology Hall of Fame in 1988[9][15][18][19][20][22][23][24][26][30][31][32]

*Remotely controlled ovens[edit source | edit]*
Embedded Web Technology (EWT) software—originally developed by NASA for use by astronauts operating experiments on the International Space Station—lets a user monitor and/or control a device remotely over the Internet. NASA supplied this technology and guidance to TMIO LLC, which developed remote control and monitoring of a new intelligent oven product named “Connect Io.” With combined cooling and heating capabilities, Connect Io refrigerates food until a customized pre-programmable cooking cycle begins. The menu allows the user to simply enter the dinner time, and the oven automatically switches from refrigeration to the cooking cycle, so that the meal will be ready as the family arrives home for dinner.[11]

*NASA Visualization Explorer[edit source | edit]*
On July 26, 2011, NASA released the NASA Visualization Explorer app for the iPad. The application delivers real-time satellite data, including movies and stills, of Earth, that enable users to learn about subjects such as climate change, Earth's dynamic systems and plant life on land and in the oceans. The content is accompanied by short descriptions about the Data and why it is important.[33][34]

*Space Race Blastoff[edit source | edit]*
Although not technically a spinoff, NASA's first online game designed for social networks like Facebook. It is a trivia game that tests of their knowledge of NASA history, technology, science and pop culture.[35]

*OpenStack[edit source | edit]*
NASA developed a cloud compute platform to give additional compute and storage resources for its engineers, called Nebula. In July 2010, the Nebula code was released as open source and NASA partnered with Rackspace, to form the OpenStack project.[36] OpenStack is used in the cloud-based products from many companies in the cloud market.

*Industrial productivity[edit source | edit]*
*Powdered lubricants[edit source | edit]*



Oil-free coating PS300 (on these bushings) was created by Adma with NASA resources.
NASA developed a solid lubricant coating, PS300, which is deposited by thermal spraying to protect foil air bearings. PS300 lowers friction, reduces emissions, and has been used by NASA in advanced aeropropulsion engines, refrigeration compressors, turbochargers, and hybrid electrical turbogenerators. ADMA Products has found widespread industrial applications for the material.[11]

*Improved mine safety[edit source | edit]*
An ultrasonic bolt elongation monitor developed by a NASA scientist for testing tension and high-pressure loads on bolts and fasteners has continued to evolve over the past three decades. Today, the same scientist and Luna Innovations are using a digital adaptation of this same device for destructive evaluation of railroad ties, groundwater analysis, radiation, and as a medical testing device to assess levels of internal swelling and pressure for patients suffering from intracranial pressure and compartment syndrome, a painful condition that results when pressure within muscles builds to dangerous levels.[11][18]


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## eots

*Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition*
3.Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to

69. You could afford your ship without your government - if it weren't for your government


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## ScienceRocks

eots said:


> *Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition*
> 3.Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to
> 
> 69. You could afford your ship without your government - if it weren't for your government




LOL...None of this shit would of likely been developed if it wasn't for nasa. We wouldn't know 1/10th about our universe if it wasn't for nasa. I could care less about the worthless effin Ferengi...Greedy bastards.


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## Mr.Right

eots said:


> *Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition*
> 3.Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to
> 
> 69. You could afford your ship without your government - if it weren't for your government


Exactly! NASA is not very efficient at what does. Do you have any idea how much money they waste?


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## eots

Matthew said:


> eots said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition*
> 3.Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to
> 
> 69. You could afford your ship without your government - if it weren't for your government
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> LOL...None of this shit would of likely been developed if it wasn't for nasa. We wouldn't know 1/10th about our universe if it wasn't for nasa. I could care less about the worthless effin Ferengi...Greedy bastards.
Click to expand...

typical Vulcan..


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## Mr.Right

eots said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> eots said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition*
> 3.Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to
> 
> 69. You could afford your ship without your government - if it weren't for your government
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> LOL...None of this shit would of likely been developed if it wasn't for nasa. We wouldn't know 1/10th about our universe if it wasn't for nasa. I could care less about the worthless effin Ferengi...Greedy bastards.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> typical Vulcan..
Click to expand...

Do a Google search on NASA waste. This is why private enterprise should handle things. They need to make a profit.


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## Mr.Right

eots said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> eots said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition*
> 3.Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to
> 
> 69. You could afford your ship without your government - if it weren't for your government
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> LOL...None of this shit would of likely been developed if it wasn't for nasa. We wouldn't know 1/10th about our universe if it wasn't for nasa. I could care less about the worthless effin Ferengi...Greedy bastards.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> typical Vulcan..
Click to expand...

That's typical pointy eared Vulcan.


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## ScienceRocks

There's probably 5,000 extrasolar planets within 50 light years of here. Probably half a dozen planets that would be nice replacements for a generation ship if something happened to our earth.

Tell me, mr....How that isn't worth understanding.


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## Mr.Right

Matthew said:


> There's probably 5,000 extrasolar planets within 50 light years of here. Probably half a dozen planets that would be nice replacements for a generation ship if something happened to our earth.
> 
> Tell me, mr....How that isn't worth understanding.


Lol. Like I said. Science fiction. Never happen.


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## ScienceRocks

If you're pro civilization you'll support its goals. One of them is to advance knowledge and explore.


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## Mr.Right

Matthew said:


> If you're pro civilization you'll support its goals. One of them is to advance knowledge and explore.


I agree. but we need to do it on a budget. something NASA is incapable of doing. that's why it needs to be privatized.


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## ScienceRocks

Nasa rules!!! I doubt the dumb ass private sector would of mapped mars and found out all about our solar system.

We're a better species for having this knowledge.

*NASA image: Seasonal flows in the central mountains of Hale Crater*
*21 minutes ago *




Enlarge
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona


> Recurring slope lineae (RSL) are active flows on warm Martian slopes that might be caused by seeping water. One of the most active sites known on Mars is in the central peaks (uplifted mountains of deep bedrock) of Hale Crater.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-image-seasonal-central-mountains-hale.html#jCp


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## Mr.Right

Matthew said:


> Nasa rules!!! I doubt the dumb ass private sector would of mapped mars and found out all about our solar system.
> 
> We're a better species for having this knowledge.
> 
> *NASA image: Seasonal flows in the central mountains of Hale Crater*
> *21 minutes ago *
> 
> 
> 
> Enlarge
> Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
> 
> 
> 
> Recurring slope lineae (RSL) are active flows on warm Martian slopes that might be caused by seeping water. One of the most active sites known on Mars is in the central peaks (uplifted mountains of deep bedrock) of Hale Crater.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-image-seasonal-central-mountains-hale.html#jCp
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but how does knowing anything about Mars benefit us?


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## ScienceRocks

*Cosmic debris: Study looks inside the universe's most powerful explosions*


> A new study provides an inside look at the most powerful explosions in the universe: gamma-ray bursts.
> 
> These rare explosions happen when extremely massive stars go supernova. The stars' strong magnetic fields channel most of the explosion's energy into two powerful plasma jets, one at each magnetic pole. The jets spray energetic particles for light-years in both directions, at close to light speed.




Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-cosmic-debris-universe-powerful-explosions.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

150 billion cubic meters of water ice on Mars in glaciers covered by thick layer of 
 






> Mars has distinct polar ice caps, but Mars also has belts of glaciers at its central latitudes in both the southern and northern hemispheres. A thick layer of dust covers the glaciers, so they appear as surface of the ground, but radar measurements show that underneath the dust there are glaciers composed of frozen water.


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## ScienceRocks

*space-x with the help of NASA!!! Getting into space would be 1/10th the price it is today if they're successful!*

*SpaceX will try landing its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship again on Monday*



> SpaceX is on a quest to get things into orbit and be less wasteful doing it. After a less than successful test a few months ago, Elon Musk’s private space firm is set to test its reusable Falcon 9 first stage on Monday, April 13th as it launches a new International Space Station resupply mission. SpaceX will attempt to land that first stage vertically on its “spaceport drone ship” in the Atlantic Ocean after seeing the Dragon capsule safely to orbit.
> 
> Most of the launch platforms developed thus far have relied upon at least one or two stages, which decouple from the payload during the assent and drop harmlessly into the ocean. It’s necessary for the launch vehicle to shed this dead weight on its way to orbit, but it would be nice if these stages could be refueled and sent up again rather than being smashed. That’s the goal of SpaceX’s reusable rocket.



SpaceX will try landing its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship again on Monday ExtremeTech

The first attempt did everything perfectly until the last 10 seconds when it ran out of fuel.


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA projects to boost oxygen recovery from 50% to over 75% efficient for better life support systems*
 Next Big Future NASA projects to boost oxygen recovery from 50 to over 75 efficient for better life support systems


> NASA has selected four partners to develop game changing technologies with the potential to increase the oxygen recovery rate aboard human spacecraft to at least 75 percent while achieving high reliability. These oxygen recovery and recycling technologies will drive exploration and enable our human journey to Mars and beyond.
> 
> "Improving oxygen recovery while achieving high reliability is critical for any long-duration human spaceflight missions where oxygen resupply from Earth isn't available," said NASA Associate Administrator for Space Technology Michael Gazarik. "NASA recognizes that sustained technology investments must be made to mature the capabilities required to reach the challenging destinations that await exploration; such as cis-lunar space, an asteroid, and Mars. These ambitious projects will enable the critical life support systems needed for us to venture further into space and explore the high frontier and are another example of how technology drives exploration."


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## ScienceRocks

*At least ten planets, moons and dwarf planets have liquid oceans in our solar system and they likely have at least microbial life

Next Big Future At least ten planets moons and dwarf planets have liquid oceans in our solar system and they likely have at least microbial life*
NASA has found many moons and dwarf planets with life-sustaining liquid water.


> At least ten planets, moons and dwarf planets have liquid oceans in our solar system and there is frozen water ice on the moon, Mars and all over the asteroids and other moons.
> 
> NASA spacecraft have also found signs of water in permanently shadowed craters on Mercury and our moon, which hold a record of icy impacts across the ages like cryogenic keepsakes.
> Speaking at a public panel on Tuesday in Washington D.C., NASA scientists discussed the likelihood of finding organic life in our solar system. Given the surprising number of oceans residing throughout our celestial home, they say "it's definitely not an if, it's a when."





> NASA researchers say these revelations upend the earlier idea that, to find life, we need to look for planets within stars’ “habitable zones.” That theory suggests that in order for a space rock to harbor life, it needs to be at a certain "perfect" distance from a warm body (like Earth is from our sun). That way, the temperature is just right so that water can exist on the planet in liquid form.
> 
> But on Europa, liquid water exists even though the frigid moon is more than 400 million miles away from our star. It’s because the gravitational pull from Jupiter jerks the satellite around, causing enough friction and energy to heat up the liquid beneath the surface. Thus, the moon's water can remain as a liquid when it's so far from a light source.
> 
> "We now recognize that habitable zones are not just around stars, they can be around giant planets too," Green said. "We are finding out the solar system is really a soggy place."


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## ScienceRocks

*An exoplanet with an infernal atmosphere*
*2 hours ago *



> As part of the PlanetS National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR), astronomers from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE) and Bern, Switzerland, have come to measure the temperature of the atmosphere of an exoplanet with unequalled precision, by crossing two approaches.
> 
> The first approach is based on the HARPS spectrometer and the second consists of a new way of interpreting sodium lines. From these two additional analyses, researchers have been able to conclude that the HD189733b exoplanet is showing infernal atmospheric conditions: wind speeds of more than 1000 kilometres per hour, and the temperature being 3000 degrees. These results open up perspectives to approach the study of exoplanet atmospheres. They were published in two journals, _Astronomy & Astrophysics_ and _Astrophysical Journal Letters_.




Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-exoplanet-infernal-atmosphere.html#jCp

And we thought Venus was hell?


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## there4eyeM

Earth would be 'superhabitable' if humans had a bit more sense.


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## ScienceRocks

*Will asteroid 2012 TC4 hit Earth in October 2017?*
*1 hour ago by Tomasz Nowakowski, Astrowatch.net *







> On Oct. 12, 2017, the asteroid 2012 TC4 is slated to whizz by Earth dangerously close. The exact distance of its closest approach is uncertain, as well as its size. Based on observations in October 2012 when the space rock missed our planet, astronomers estimate that its size could vary from 12 to 40 meters. The meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, injuring 1,500 people and damaging over 7,000 buildings, was about 20 meters wide. Thus, the impact of 2012 TC4 could be even more devastating. "It is something to keep an eye on," Judit Györgyey-Ries, astronomer at the University of Texas' McDonald Observatory, told astrowatch.net. "We could see an airburst maybe broken windows, depending on where it hits."



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-asteroid-tc4-earth-october.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

*Violent methane storms on Titan may solve dune direction mystery*


> With its thick, hazy atmosphere and surface rivers, mountains, lakes and dunes, Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is one of the most Earthlike places in the solar system.
> 
> As the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft examines Titan over many years, its discoveries bring new mysteries. One of those involves the seemingly wind-created sand dunes spotted by Cassini near the moon's equator, and the contrary winds just above.
> 
> Here's the problem: Climate simulations indicate that Titan's near-surface winds—like Earth's trade winds—blow toward the west. So why do the surface dunes, reaching a hundred yards high and many miles long, point to the east?





 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-violent-methane-storms-titan-dune.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

*Computers models show that Mars has briny liquid water in the top 2 inches of soil each night and it evaporates in the morning*
   [URL='http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/04/computers-models-show-that-mars-has.html']Next Big Future Computers models show that Mars has briny liquid water in the top 2 inches of soil each night and it evaporates in the morning                                 [/URL]



> [URL='http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27329-nasas-curiosity-rover-finds-astronauts-could-farm-water-on-mars.html#.VSvvlfzF_wE']Liquid water collects in the Martian soil each night, before evaporating during the day, according to NASA's Curiosity rover.





> If future missions can confirm this water cycle, it means astronauts could one day farm moisture to provide drinking water on Mars.
> 
> Planetary scientists have seen a lot of evidence for frozen water at the Martian poles, and water vapour in the planet's atmosphere. Liquid water, on the other hand, has been harder to come by, as the temperature and atmospheric pressure at the surface is too low.
> 
> perchlorate salts in the planet’s soil are lowering the freezing temperature of water, setting up conditions for liquid brines to form at equatorial regions, new research from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows. Findings, published in this week’s Nature Geoscience, are based on nearly two years worth of atmospheric humidity and temperature measurements collected by the roving science laboratory Curiosity, which is exploring an ancient impact basin called Gale Crater near the planet’s equator.
> 
> The brines, computer models show, form nightly in the upper 2 inches of the planet’s soil as perchlorates absorb atmospheric water vapor. As temperatures rise in the morning, the liquid evaporate


[/URL]


----------



## ScienceRocks

*'Dwarf planet' Ceres spawns giant mystery (Update)*
*14 hours ago *



Enlarge
This map-projected view of Ceres was created from images taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft during its initial approach to the dwarf planet, prior to being captured into orbit in March 2015. The map is an enhanced color view that offers an …more


> First classified a planet, then an asteroid and then a "dwarf planet" with some traits of a moon—the more scientists learn about Ceres, the weirder it becomes.
> 
> And new observations of the sphere of rock and ice circling our Sun between Mars and Jupiter have added to the mystery, researchers said Monday.
> 
> Astrophysicists have been looking to a $473-million (446-million-euro) mission to test theories that Ceres is a water-rich planetary "embryo"—a relic from the birth of the Solar System some 4.5 billion years ago.
> 
> But an early batch of data from NASA's Dawn probe, unveiled at a conference of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), may have made the Ceres riddle even greater.
> 
> In orbit around Ceres since March 6 after a seven-and-a-half-year trek, Dawn peered at two bright spots on its surface deemed to be telltales of its chemical and physical ID.
> 
> But instead of explaining the spots, analysis found the two seemed to "behave distinctly differently," said Federico Tosi, who works on Dawn's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIR).
> 
> While Spot 1 is colder than its immediate surroundings, Spot 5 is not.
> 
> The spots are two of a known dozen or so which on photographs taken by Dawn resemble lights shining on a dull grey surface.




Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-dwarf-planet-ceres-spawns-giant.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Very Large Telescope** observations of Gomez’s Hamburger: Insights into a young protoplanet candidate*


> Planets are thought to form in the gas and dust disks around young stars. In particular, it has been proposed that giant planets can
> form via gravitational instability of massive extended disks around intermediate mass stars. However, direct observations to constrain
> this mechanism lack. We have spatially resolved the 8.6 and 11.2 µm emission of a massive edge on protoplanetary disk around an A
> star, Gomez’s Hamburger (GoHam), using VISIR at the Very Large Telescope. A compact region situated at a projected distance of
> 350 ± 50 AU South of the central star is found to have a reduced emission. This asymmetry is fully consistent with the presence of
> a cold density structure, or clump, identified in earlier CO observations, and we derive physical characteristics consistent with those
> observations: a mass of 0.8-11.4 Jupiter masses (for a dust to gas mass ratio of 0.01), a radius of the order of 102
> astronomical units,
> a local density of the order of 107
> cm−3
> . Based on this evidence, we argue that this clump, which we call GoHam b, is a promising
> candidate for a young protoplanet formed by gravitational instability, that could be representative of the precursors of massive planets
> observed around A stars, like HR 8799 or Beta-pictoris. Further studies at high angular resolution are needed to better constrain the
> physical properties of this object in order to confirm this proposal.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Looks like Falcon landed fine, but excess lateral velocity caused it to tip over post landing pic.twitter.com/eJWzN6KSJa

6,001 retweets   4,811 favorites







so fucking close


----------



## ScienceRocks

*United Launch Alliance developing reusable rocket called Vulcan*
 
United Launch Alliance Monday unveiled the name of its next rocket and it will be called Vulcan.


> The new rocket could launch as soon as 2019. It is ULA's response to competition from SpaceX and political pressure to phase out use of the Russian RD-180 engine powering its workhorse Atlas V rocket.
> 
> ULA CEO Tory Bruno said the rocket's design will allow recovery and reuse of the booster's main engines, the rocket's most expensive components.
> 
> ULA has partnered with Blue Origin, the Seattle-based firm privately funded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, to develop new American engines.
> 
> Plans also call for an eventual replacement of the Atlas V's Centaur upper stage.
> 
> Bruno said the Vulcan would be the "highest-performing, most cost-efficient rocket on the market."



Good to see others are getting into it.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA's Spitzer Spots Planet Deep Within Our Galaxy*
NASA s Spitzer Spots Planet Deep Within Our Galaxy NASA


> NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has teamed up with a telescope on the ground to find a remote gas planet about 13,000 light-years away, making it one of the most distant planets known.
> 
> The discovery demonstrates that Spitzer -- from its unique perch in space -- can be used to help solve the puzzle of how planets are distributed throughout our flat, spiral-shaped Milky Way galaxy. Are they concentrated heavily in its central hub, or more evenly spread throughout its suburbs?
> 
> "We don't know if planets are more common in our galaxy's central bulge or the disk of the galaxy, which is why these observations are so important," said Jennifer Yee of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a NASA Sagan fellow. Yee is the lead author of one of three new studies that appeared recently in the Astrophysical Journal describing a collaboration between astronomers using Spitzer and the Polish Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, or OGLE.
> 
> OGLE's Warsaw Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile scans the skies for planets using a method called microlensing. A microlensing event occurs when one star happens to pass in front of another, and its gravity acts as a lens to magnify and brighten the more distant star's light. If that foreground star happens to have a planet in orbit around it, the planet might cause a blip in the magnification.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dark matter becomes less 'ghostly'*



15 April 2015










The mysterious stuff known as dark matter just became less ghostly.

It makes up 85% of the total matter in the cosmos and comprises some 27% of the known Universe.
For the first time, the enigmatic quantity may have been caught interacting with other dark matter in a cluster 1.4 billion light-years away.
Previous studies of colliding galaxy clusters have shown that dark matter barely interacts with anything.


> And the finding, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, may hint at exotic physics - beyond the scope of current theories.
> According to widely accepted ideas, the visible matter in galaxies exists inside clumps of dark matter. Without dark matter's gravity to stabilise them, galaxies like the Milky Way would tear themselves apart as they spin.
> Yet despite its all-importance, dark matter's true nature remains elusive. It has been shown only to interact with the fundamental force of gravity.
> And while it is widely believed to be associated with a specific particle, the current theory of physics known as the Standard Model does not account for one.
> A team of astronomers led by Dr Richard Massey of Durham University studied a simultaneous collision of four galaxies in the cluster Abell 3827.






http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-32303622


----------



## ScienceRocks

SpaceX launch recap Dragon headed to space station but Falcon 9 landing fails again VIDEO ExtremeTech

Watch SpaceX s Vine Falcon 9 first stage landing burn and touchdown on Just Read the Instructions 

*According to Musk, the rocket actually landed on the ship fine.* But it had too much lateral velocity and tipped over immediately thereafter. You can see in the video above how the rocket swings to the side as it lines up at the last second. So yes, it was a failure, but this was still a step in the right direction. The last attempt following the January 2015 Dragon mission failed in a more dramatic fashion, when the steering fins on the Falcon 9 ran out of hydraulic fluid and the rocket smashed into the deck of the ship.

If SpaceX can get vertical rocket landings figured out, it could dramatically lower the cost of getting cargo into space. These landing attempts will continue, and once SpaceX masters the landing procedure, it plans to bring reusable rockets down on land where they can be quickly refueled for another launch. The next Falcon 9 launch for NASA is currently scheduled for June 19th. Fingers crossed they can land this one.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*
NASA releases first color image of Pluto and its moon Charon*







> NASA has just released the first color image ever taken of Pluto and its moon Charon. The image was taken by the Ralph color imager that is stationed aboard the New Horizon spacecraft -- the fastest ever launched -- which is on a historic mission to study Pluto up-close.
> 
> The image was taken on April 9 and sent down to researchers on Earth the following day. A preliminary reconstruction for now, the image will be "redefined" by the research team at a later date. Captured from a distance of 71 million miles, the picture does not give too clear a look at Pluto and the Texas-sized Charon. New Horizons plans to release color images of surface features of Pluto as it gets closer to its scheduled July 14 flyby of the dwarf planet and its system of at least five moons.



Nasa rocks!!! They deserve 100,000,000,000 per year!!! 99% of everything else deserves that much.


----------



## ScienceRocks




----------



## ScienceRocks

*This amazing map shows just how little of our galaxy we’ve explored so far*
*This amazing map shows just how little of our galaxy we ve explored so far ExtremeTech*

By Jamie Lendino on April 15, 2015 at 3:07 pm
Comment



> *Share This article*
> 380
> Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OLGE), astronomers have discovered a planet that’s roughly 13,000 light-years from Earth — one of the furthest ever such exoplanets ever discovered. The official name for it is OGLE-2014-BLG-0124L, which like most of these, rolls right off the tongue. Not much is known about this planet other than the fact that it’s a gas giant.
> 
> Coinciding with the discovery, NASA/JPL has released an artist’s rendering of a map showing exactly where we’ve found exoplanets to date. It’s amazing: We’ve barely scratched the surface of our own galaxy, which is 100,000 light-years across, even after finding more than 1,800 exoplanets so far (and 4,600 other possible suspects). Each time we get a little push or bump in technology or search methods, we’re able to push our search that much further out.
> 
> There are many methods scientists use to find exoplanets, and nearly all of them are indirect in some way (i.e. not visibly observed). Let’s review three of the most common ones.
> 
> *The ‘transit’ method:* Scientists discovered the first exoplanets using ground telescopes and what’s called pulsar timing and radial velocity, but a more common method used since the turn of the century is the ‘transit’ method. It’s pretty simple; when a planet crosses in front of a star, that star dims ever so slightly. So going by the distance to that star, and the relative sizes of the star and planet, you can confirm a planet is orbiting a star by the regular, very small dips in brightness.
> 
> In the map below (click it for a larger version), most of the planets found this way are in the orange-pink circle around our Solar System. More recently, scientists are sifting through data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, using the transit method and others to find possible candidates. Exoplanets found with Kepler are shown with the orange-pink “cone” that extends outward, representing the space telescope’s field of view.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Gravitational microlensing:* Astronomers are also working with a technique called microlensing (illustrated below) to reach these further-out exoplanets, like the one that’s 13,000 light-years away. The gravitational field of the star acts like a lens that magnifies the light from a distant background star. If there’s a planet present, that will affect the results in an extremely tiny, but still detectable way. Exoplanets found with microlensing are in yellow. The furthest-out one we found so far is about 25,000 light years away, and sits just near the center of our galaxy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Direct observation and imaging: *This one is extremely tough with our current level of technology, and only relatively recently (2008) was it confirmed that the first exoplanet was found in this manner. In these cases, usually the planet is very young, emits infrared light, and is far enough from the glare of the star that you can pick it out.
> 
> We’re finding everything from so-called “super Earths” to hot Jupiters and massive gas giants. But all of this is not just about finding other worlds. There’s the search for exoplanets (and exomoons) in general, and then specifically the search for planets that could harbor alien life. For the latter, scientists have been looking in what’s called the ‘Goldilocks’ zone. And of course, we’re still looking within our own Solar System for alien life as well.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA Is Studying How to Replace Mirrors in Its Telescopes With Glitter*
3
Sarah Zhang and 24 others







> Space telescope Hubble and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope are made with huge, expensive mirrors. And that can be a problem when you’re paying to launch the thing into space. So instead of one big mirror, how about thousands, or even millions, of tiny ones? In other words, how about glitter?


 »   Yesterday 7:40pm


> Orbiting Rainbows is in fact a very real system being considered by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A telescope reflecting light with glitter clouds could potentially be a lot cheaper than the $8.7 billion James Webb Space Telescope.
> 
> So how will it work? JPL explains in a press release today:
> 
> In the proposed Orbiting Rainbows system, the small cloud of glitter-like grains would be trapped and manipulated with multiple laser beams. The trapping happens because of pressure from the laser light — specifically, the momentum of photons translates into two forces: one that pushes particles away, and another that pushes the particles toward the axis of the light beam. The pressure of the laser light coming from different directions shapes the cloud and pushes the small grains to align in the same direction. In a space telescope, the tenuous cloud would be formed by millions of grains, each possibly as small as fractions of a millimeter in diameter.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Russia to build own space station by 2023: Putin
dailytimes.com ^

"By 2023, we plan to create our own national space station in orbit. This is something far-off in the future, but also necessary for us from the point of view of our national economy," Putin said. Russia and NASA recently agreed to keep operating and financing the International Space Station (ISS) at least until 2024, but future joint space projects remain in doubt, as relations between Russia and the United States have plunged to post-Cold War lows over the Ukraine conflict.
The Kremlin strongman said that Russia needed its own space station to be able to view its own territory properly from space. "We use the ISS actively for science and the economy, but from the ISS only five per cent of the area of Russia can be seen. From a national station, we should be able to see the whole of the area of our huge country. It goes without saying we will bring this project to fruition, and without any doubt, it will be under our control," the Russian president said.
Russia said earlier this year that it planned to create its own space station using its modules from the ISS after it is mothballed. In March, the head of Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), said at Baikonur after meeting his NASA counterpart that Russia would work jointly with the US on a project of a new orbital station.

---
I think America should build one 10 times its size and make it the station for our planetary space ship.

*


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## ScienceRocks

Overnight, Dragon will execute a series of burns that bring the spacecraft within 200 meters of the International Space Station, and then finally to the capture point 10 meters from the space station. Grapple by the station’s robotic arm is targeted for 7am ET / 4am PT – watch live at www.spacex.com/webcast.


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## ScienceRocks

So very fucking close!

You'd almost think that one of the legs had a problem.


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## ScienceRocks

*Dawn spacecraft captures a sunlit Ceres on cam*





 by Mariella Moon |  @mariella_moon | 1hr ago







> The Dawn spacecraft has recently captured the sharpest pictures of Ceres to date, showing the dwarf planet's bright, sunlit north pole. NASA's space probe has been steadily making its way to the celestial body since 2012 after a 14-month stint orbiting the asteroid Vesta. It fired up its ion thrusters in March to slowly approach the Texas-sized proto-planet and settle into orbit, until it reaches an altitude of 233 miles from the surface. Its ultimate goal? To take 3D images and create a high-res map of Ceres, which might harbor some form of water.


----------



## ScienceRocks

A celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope: 25 years in orbit
By Anthony Wood
April 17, 2015
34 Pictures






> April 24 will mark a significant milestone in the life of one of mankind's greatest scientific instruments – the 25-year anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. This bus-sized piece of scientific equipment has become a household name, thanks to the incredible scientific insights and iconic images returned by the legendary telescope over the course of its quarter-century tenure in low-Earth orbit. Join us as we celebrate the history and achievements of NASA's flagship space telescope.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Dark Matter Might Not Be As Dark As We Thought
Dark Matter Might Not Be As Dark As We Thought IFLScience*



> Signs have emerged of dark matter interacting with a force other than gravity. Since the most popular explanation for dark matter is of particles that interact only weakly, if at all, with forces other than gravity, the discovery could either refine our understanding of these interactions or force a complete rethink.
> 
> The conclusion comes from the observation of anomalous behavior in a galactic demolition derby zone 1.3 billion light-years away where four galaxies are smashing into each other.
> 
> Durham University's Dr. Richard Massey reports in _The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society_ that the cluster of galaxies known as Abell 3827 is positioned so that it acts as a gravitational lens for more distant objects. This gave Massey and a team from 15 other institutions the chance to map the distribution of matter though the cluster – the more heavily clumped the matter, the more it will bend distant light.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...tmosphere.html


> What is the solar system moon with the densest atmosphere? Most space fans know that the answer is Titan; with a surface atmospheric pressure of 1.4 bars, its air is thicker than Earth's. A few of you might know that Triton's is the next densest. But what's the third? Fourth? Do any other moons even have atmospheres? In fact, they do; and one such atmosphere has just been discovered.
> 
> No other moon's atmosphere is quite like Titan's smoggy sky. From space, we can see straight to the other moons' surfaces, with no clouds or haze in the way. Most moons' atmospheres are extremely tenuous, so much so that their constituent molecules never collide with each other. Such collisionless atmospheres are called exospheres. The Moon has an exosphere, as does the planet Mercury.
> 
> A very few moons have atmospheres that are dense enough for their gas molecules to collide with each other. This can happen even in a pretty thin atmosphere. Triton's had a surface pressure of 14 microbars when Voyager 2 flew by. As the seasons have progressed on Triton the atmospheric pressure has increased by a factor of three or four, but it's still 20,000 times less dense than Earth's. Still, when air molecules can collide, you can have wind, and even weather. Such an atmosphere can also offer a moon's surface some protection from the particles flung around in giant planet magnetospheres. You can see on Triton how upper-level winds blow the tops of its geysers away. If we're very lucky, we'll see similar features when New Horizons passes Pluto this summer. (Pluto's atmosphere is denser than Triton's.)







_NASA / JPL / Ted Stryk_



> *Triton color global view*
> Voyager 2 acquired the images for this high-resolution mosaic of Triton on August 25, 1989. The south pole is at the left; several of Triton's famous south polar geysers are visible. Toward the equator at right, Triton is covered with a strange "cantaloupe terrain".
> So which moons other than Titan and Triton have weather? We think there are two. The third-densest atmosphere in the solar system is Io's. From observations with the Submillimeter Array, Arielle Moullet and three coauthors measured sulfur dioxide, sulfur monoxide, and sodium chloride in its air. (Yes, salt is a constituent of Io's atmosphere!) Some of these gases, probably including all of the salt, is fed directly to Io's atmosphere by its constantly erupting volcanoes, but there's too much sulfur dioxide for all of it to be volcanic; some of it has to come from sublimating sulfur dioxide frost.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _NASA / JPL / SSI / Gordan Ugarkovic_
> 
> *Animation of Tvashtar and Pele's Plumes*
> This animation, composed of UV3 frames from the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) taken on January 2, 2001 and magnified by a factor of 2, shows plumes from Io's Tvashtar and Pele Paterae (volcanoes).
> At the surface, the peak pressure is around 1.9 nanobars -- that is to say, Earth's atmosphere is 200 million times denser than Io's. But it's still an atmosphere, and a variable one. Io's surface breathes over the course of its day, exhaling sulfur dioxide as it warms in sunlight, and pulling it back down to the surface as it cools at night. The volcanoes heat their local areas, making patches of denser atmosphere and out-flowing winds.
> 
> One of the weirdest things in Io's atmosphere is a consequence of it having no magnetic field while being embedded inside Jupiter's. Jupiter's magnetic field sweeps across Io's atmosphere once each Jupiter day, slamming into the back of Io's atmosphere. The magnetic field moves the ions in Io's atmosphere, but not the neutral molecules, so the moving ions crash into the neutral molecules, moving as a current through Io's resistant neutral atmosphere. The interaction of Jupiter's magnetic field with Io's ionosphere has a visible manifestation as a glowing Io footprint within Jupiter's aurora. (For further reading, I recommend this PDF of a PowerPoint presentation on Io's atmosphere that had no name on it -- please speak up in the comments if you know whose presentation it is!)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _NASA/ESA, John Clarke (University of Michigan)_
> 
> *Satellite footprints in Jupiter's northern aurora*
> Auroras are curtains of light resulting from high-energy electrons racing along the planet's magnetic field into the upper atmosphere. The electrons excite atmospheric gases, causing them to glow. The image shows the main oval of the aurora, which is centered on the magnetic north pole, plus more diffuse emissions inside the polar cap. Though the aurora resembles the same phenomenon that crowns Earth's polar regions, the Hubble image shows unique emissions from the magnetic "footprints" of three of Jupiter's largest moons. (These points are reached by following Jupiter's magnetic field from each satellite down to the planet). Auroral footprints can be seen in this image from Io (along the left hand limb), Ganymede (near the center), and Europa (just below and to the right of Ganymede's auroral footprint). These emissions, produced by electric currents generated by the satellites, flow along Jupiter's magnetic field, bouncing in and out of the upper atmosphere. They are unlike anything seen on Earth.
> Okay, so how about the fourth densest atmosphere? A new paper in press at Icarus by Nathanial Cunningham and five coauthors suggests that there is one more known collisional atmosphere among the solar system's moons. The fourth densest moon atmosphere in the solar system is (drum roll please):
> 
> Callisto.
> 
> Callisto?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _NASA / JPL / Ted Stryk_
> 
> *Callisto in color from Galileo orbit E11*
> Galileo captured this global view of Callisto on its 11th orbit of Jupiter, on November 5, 1997.
> Cunningham and coauthors used the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on Hubble to detect the telltale ultraviolet emission of atomic oxygen and determine its abundance. Oxygen probably forms at Callisto when water ice molecules at the surface are split into hydrogen and oxygen atoms; some of the lightweight hydrogen escapes from the atmosphere entirely, leaving the heavier oxygen behind. John Spencer (who was second author on the paper) helped me convert from atmospheric column abundances to surface pressures. Cunningham and coauthors' work suggests that Callisto's leading hemisphere has a surface atmospheric pressure of 26 picobars -- that is, it is 40 billion times less dense than Earth's -- but that the air over its trailing hemisphere may be 10 times denser.
> 
> A dynamic atmosphere, even though very thin, slightly shifts our view of Callisto. Callisto is the outermost of the Galilean satellites and also, to use a highly technical term, the deadest. Its gravity field suggests that, unlike the other Galilean moons, it never got warm enough to differentiate into a rocky core and icy mantle, remaining instead a primitive mixture of ice and rock all the way down. A couple of years ago, Jeff Moore postulated that Titan might not have internal geological activity and may just be "Callisto with weather." It turns out that Callisto may have weather! Callisto's atmosphere is more than dense enough for its molecules to collide with each other.
> 
> Oxygen atmospheres form at Europa and Ganymede for the same reason that they form at Callisto. But their oxygen atmospheres are a factor of a few less dense than Callisto's, making theirs exospheres, not collisional atmospheres. No wind, and no weather. (At least not at present.)
> 
> So here you go: the unlikely set of four solar system moons known to have atmospheres dense enough for weather. In order: Saturn's moon Titan; Neptune's moon Triton; and Jupiter's moons Io and Callisto.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _NASA / JPL / SSI / Ted Stryk / Jason Perry / Emily Lakdawalla_
> 
> *Moons with atmospheres*
> There are four moons in the solar system that are known to have collisional atmospheres. In order of decreasing atmospheric column density, they are: Saturn's Titan, Neptune's Triton, and Jupiter's Io and Callisto.
> One final remark. I think that the discovery of a collisonal atmosphere at Callisto is an incredibly cool result, the kind of thing you'd see on all the space blogs. The reason that you don't see it on other blogs is because it hasn't been the subject of a press release, and press releases drive most news reporting. If you read other space sites today, you'll probably read about how the moon formed or an observation of organic molecules in an infant stellar system, two cool results that were the subjects of press releases today. You may even read about the discovery (again) of subsurface ice on Mars. But there are lots of other things being discovered out there. You can find out about them by reading the tables of contents of the main planetary science journals, like _Icarus_, the _Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets_, _Planetary and Space Science_, and others. That's how I found out about Callisto's atmosphere!


----------



## ScienceRocks

Dawn Glimpses Ceres' North Pole


> After spending more than a month in orbit on the dark side of dwarf planet Ceres, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has captured several views of the sunlit north pole of this intriguing world. These images were taken on April 10 from a distance of 21,000 miles (33,000 kilometers), and they represent the highest-resolution views of Ceres to date.


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## ScienceRocks

*ULA Vulcan launcher will return to Earth by helicopter *
By David Szondy
April 18, 2015
10 Pictures





> The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has entered the reusable launcher race with its Next Generation Launch System (NGLS), also known as the Vulcan rocket. This replacement for the current generation of launch systems will incorporate a rocket engine assembly that jettisons from the first stage and is snared in mid-air by a helicopter after reentering the Earth's atmosphere


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## ScienceRocks

Ocean Worlds are Common [including recent estimates from Mars and Ganymede] pic.twitter.com/AE5eYwNwEV






Latest distribution of exoplanets: So many terran worlds and counting. pic.twitter.com/G7AKRWgwJh






Over 4,200 @*NASAKepler* exoplanet candidates so far. pic.twitter.com/UQf1g60gAl


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## ScienceRocks

Nice video of the water moons!
Watch NASA Solar System s Vine Meet the water worlds of the solar system. Could they harbor life Details http 1.usa.gov 1PDLXKm NASABeyond


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## ScienceRocks

http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.04379

*THE K2-ESPRINT PROJECT I: DISCOVERY OF THE DISINTEGRATING ROCKY PLANET
WITH A COMETARY HEAD AND TAIL EPIC 201637175B*


> We present the discovery of a transiting exoplanet candidate in the K2 Field-1 with an orbital period of 9.1457 hours: EPIC 201637175b. The highly variable transit depths, ranging from ∼0% to 1.3%, are suggestive of *a planet that is disintegrating via the emission of dusty effluents*. We characterize the host star as anM-dwarf with Teff ≃ 3800. We have obtained ground-based transit measurements with several 1-m class telescopes and with the GTC. These observations (1) improve the transit ephemeris; (2) confirm the variable nature of the transit depths; (3) indicate variations in the transit shapes; and (4) demonstrate clearly that at least on one occasion the transit depths were significantly wavelength dependent. The latter three effects tend to indicate extinction of starlight by dust rather than by any combination of solid bodies. The K2 observations yield a folded light curve with lower time resolution but with substantially better statistical precision compared with the ground-based observations. We detect a significant “bump’ just after the transit egress, and a less significant bump just prior to transit ingress. We interpret these bumps in the context of a planet that is not only likely streaming a dust tail behind it, but also has a more prominent leading dust trail that precedes it. This effect is modeled in terms of dust grains that can escape to beyond the planet’s Hill sphere and effectively undergo ‘Roche lobe overflow’, even though the planet’s surface is likely underfilling its Roche lobe by a factor of 2.



Wow, sucks to be that planet!


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## ScienceRocks

*Japan planning moon mission: space agency*



> Japan plans to launch an unmanned mission to the moon as a stepping stone to a future visit to Mars, officials and local media said Monday.
> 
> The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unveiled the plan for a moon lander to a council of the cabinet office and the ministry of education, culture, sports science and technology, a JAXA official said.
> 
> If successful, Japan will be the fourth country to send an unmanned probe to the moon after Russia, the United States and China.
> 
> "This is an initial step and a lot of procedures are still ahead before the plan is formally approved," the official said.





 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-japan-moon-mission-space-agency.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers probe inner region of young star and its planets*
*2 hours ago *




Enlarge
The planetary system of HR 8799. Most of the light of the star has been erased by the processing of the images and the four planets, identified from b to e in the order of their discovery, are easily detected. Credit: A.-L. Maire / LBTO


> Astronomers have probed deeper than before into a planetary system 130 light-years from Earth. The observations mark the first results of a new exoplanet survey called LEECH (LBT Exozodi Exoplanet Common Hunt), and are published today in the journal _Astronomy and Astrophysics_.
> 
> The planetary system of HR8799, a young star only 30 million years old, was the first to be directly imaged, with three planets found in in 2008 and a fourth one in 2010.
> 
> "This star was therefore a target of choice for the LEECH survey, offering the opportunity to acquire new images and better define the dynamical properties of the exoplanets orbiting," said Christian Veillet, director of the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO).





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-astronomers-probe-region-young-star.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

*Curiosity rover making tracks and observations*
*37 minutes ago *




NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Navigation Camera (Navcam) to capture this scene toward the west just after completing a drive that took the mission’s total driving distance on Mars past 10 kilometers (6.214 miles). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


> NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is continuing science observations while on the move this month. On April 16, the mission passed 10 kilometers (6.214 miles) of total driving since its 2012 landing, including about a fifth of a mile (310 meters) so far this month.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-curiosity-rover-tracks.html#jCp

*This Image May Suggest The Destructive Powers Of A White Dwarf Star*

11

Chris Mills shared a post by Cheryl Eddy





This stunning Chandra image of ngc6388 suggests that “a white dwarf star may have ripped apart a planet as it came too close.” »   Yesterday 9:08pm


*Enceladus's Ice Volcanoes Are Feeding Saturn's Rings*

15

Maddie Stone and 22 others





Saturn’s ice moon Enceladus is being slowly devoured by the gas giant’s rings, according to a series of new NASA images that show ghostly tendrils escaping the moon’s cryo-volcanoes and shooting off into space. Whoa. »   Yesterday 5:20pm

-----
US Air Force confirms hypersonic SABRE engine is feasible 




An analysis undertaken by the United States’ Air Force Research Laboratory (‘AFRL’) has confirmed the feasibility of the Reaction Engines Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (‘SABRE’) engine cycle concept. Reaction Engines is famous for their
Skylon Spaceplane single stage to orbit design and the Mach 5 Lapcat A2 commercial hypersonic passenger plane design.

The analysis was undertaken by AFRL as part of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (‘CRADA’) with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Aerospace Systems Directorate (AFRL/RQ). These investigations examined the thermodynamic cycle of the SABRE concept and found no significant barrier to its theoretical viability provided the engine component and integration challenges are met.

Reaction Engines Ltd. (REL) and AFRL are now formulating plans for continued collaboration on the SABRE engine; the proposed work will include investigation of vehicle concepts based on a SABRE derived propulsion system, testing of SABRE engine components and exploration of defence applications for Reaction Engines’ heat exchanger technologies.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-...1-1338746.aspx



> While the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has put the country in global limelight because of its low-cost mission to Mars, its commercial wing, Antrix, has started witnessing a robust growth with more countries approaching it with offers to launch their satellites.
> 
> One such proposal of commercial satellite launch is due for June this year in which three DMC-3 earth observation satellites along with one micro and one nano satellite built by UK's Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) will be launched into space.
> 
> The mission is designated as PSLV- C28/ DMC-3 which has been taken under a commercial agreement between Antrix Corporation Limited and DMC International Imaging (DMCII), a wholly-owned subsidiary of SSTL.
> 
> Noteworthy, Antrix entered into a launch services agreement with a company from US in 2014 for launching their earth observation micro satellite.
> 
> This is the first time when Antrix will be launching a US-built satellite on-board PSLV.
> 
> Recently, Antrix also entered into a launch services agreement with another company from US for launching seven nano satellites of US on-board PSLV.


----------



## ScienceRocks

2M1938+4603 (AB)b - Circumbinary planet in a sdB+M dwarf system


A circumbinary planet orbiting a sdB+M system in Kepler's field.

Detection of a planet in the sdB + M dwarf binary system 2M1938+4603



> We analyze 37 months of Kepler photometry of 2M1938+4603, a binary system with a pulsating hot subdwarf primary and an Mdwarf
> companion that shows strong reflection effects.We measured the eclipse timings from more than 16 000 primary and secondary
> eclipses and discovered a periodic variation in the timing signal that we ascribe to a third body in the system. We also discovered a
> significant long-term trend that may be an evolutionary effect or a hint of more bodies. Upon the assumption that the third body is
> orbiting in the same plane as the primary, we establish that it must be a Jupiter-mass object orbiting with a period of 416 days at a
> distance of 0.92AU. This mass is the lowest among all tertiary components detected in similar systems.



2M1938 4603 AB b - Circumbinary planet in a sdB M dwarf system


----------



## ScienceRocks

> SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk confirmed a throttle issue was the cause of failed landing attempt of a Falcon 9 first stage last week, and that it plans to make another landing attempt in June.



http://spacenews.com/throttle-issue-...-hard-landing/


----------



## ScienceRocks

* "World's first battery-powered rocket" readied for launch *
By David Szondy
April 20, 2015
9 Pictures





> Though there have been tremendous advances in space technology in recent years, when it comes to getting into space, we're still like cavemen trying to get beyond the breakers on a floating log – at least, that's the view of New Zealand-based company Rocket Lab. In the hopes of increasing the number of satellite launches to over 100 a year and placing constellations of small satellites into orbit numbering in the thousands, the company has developed a* "battery-powered" rocket engine to lift its Electron launch vehicle at almost a tenth of the cost of conventional boosters.*





> Liquid rocket engines are hungry beasts that require huge quantities of propellants for every second of flight. To manage this, engines use turbopumps to feed propellants into the combustion chamber. In a conventional design, a centrifugal or axial-flow turbopump is driven by a gas turbine. This has done the job very well since the first rocket turbopumps were developed in the 1940s, but they're complex, heavy affairs that need their own fuel systems to operate.
> 
> Rocket Lab's idea for making a lighter, simpler liquid rocket is its Rutherford engine. Named after New Zealand-born physicist Ernest Rutherford, it's an electric turbopump engine that burns a mixture of liquid oxygen and RP-1 rocket fuel, which is a highly refined type of kerosene. Unlike conventional engines, in the Rutherford, the gas-powered turbine to run the pump is replaced with a brushless DC motor and lithium polymer batteries, and provides enough fuel for the Rutherford to generate 4,600 lbf (20,462 N) of thrust and a specific impulse of 327 seconds.



Very interesting!


----------



## ScienceRocks

Scarred: Long shadows bring Rhea surface features into sharp relief. New @*CassiniSaturn* Image http://go.nasa.gov/1D6q8sJ pic.twitter.com/lFIk8H5eTJ


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## ScienceRocks

*KOI-372: a young extrasolar system with two giant planets on wide and eccentric orbits
 1504.04625 KOI-372 a young extrasolar system with two giant planets on wide and eccentric orbits*
Authors: L. Mancini, J. Lillo-Box, J. Southworth, L. Borsato, D. Gandolfi, S. Ciceri, D. Barrado, R. Brahm, Th. Henning
(Submitted on 17 Apr 2015)


> Abstract: We confirm the planetary nature of KOI-372b (aka Kepler object of interest K00372.01), a giant transiting exoplanet orbiting a solar-analog G2V star. The mass of KOI-372b and the eccentricity of its orbit were accurately derived thanks to a series of precise radial velocity measurements obtained with the CAFE spectrograph mounted on the CAHA 2.2-m telescope. A simultaneous fit of the radial-velocity data and Kepler photometry revealed that KOI-372b is a dense Jupiter-like planet with a mass of Mp=3.25 Mjup and a radius of Rp=0.882 Rjup. KOI-372b is moving on a quite eccentric orbit, e=0.172, making a complete revolution around its parent star in 125.6 days. The semi-major axis of the orbit is 0.4937 au, implying that the planet is close to its habitable zone (roughly 0.5 au from it). By analysing the mid-transit times of the 12 transit events of KOI-372b recorded by the Kepler spacecraft, we found a clear transit time variation, which is attributable to the presence of a planet c in a wider orbit. We estimated that KOI-372c has a mass between 0.13 and 0.31 Mjup, also revolving on an eccentric orbit (e=0.17-0.24) in roughly 460 days, at a mean distance of 1.2 au from the host star, within the boundaries of its habitable zone. The analysis of the CAFE spectra revealed a relatively high photospheric lithium content, A(Li)=2.48 dex, suggesting that the parent star is relatively young. From a gyrochronological analysis, we estimate that the age of this planetary system is 1.0 Gyr.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates XVI. Tomographic measurement of the low obliquity of KOI-12b, a warm Jupiter transiting a fast rotator*


> We present the detection and characterization of the transiting warm Jupiter KOI-12b, first identified with Kepler with an orbital period of 17.86 days. We combine the analysis of Kepler photometry with Doppler spectroscopy and line-profile tomography of time-series spectra obtained with the SOPHIE spectrograph to establish its planetary nature and derive its properties. To derive reliable estimates for the uncertainties on the tomographic model parameters, we devised an empirical method to calculate statistically independent error bars on the time-series spectra. KOI-12b has a radius of 1.43±0.13RJup and a 3σ upper mass limit of 10MJup. It orbits a fast-rotating star (vsini⋆ = 60.0±0.9 km s−1) with mass and radius of 1.45±0.09 MSun and 1.63±0.15 RSun, located at 426±40 pc from the Earth. Doppler tomography allowed a higher precision on the obliquity to be reached by comparison with the analysis of the Rossiter-McLaughlin radial velocity anomaly, and we found that KOI-12b lies on a prograde, slightly misaligned orbit with a low sky-projected obliquity λ = 12.6−2.9+3.0∘. The properties of this planetary system, with a 11.4 magnitude host-star, make of KOI-12b a precious target for future atmospheric characterization.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Matthew said:


> 2M1938+4603 (AB)b - Circumbinary planet in a sdB+M dwarf system
> 
> 
> A circumbinary planet orbiting a sdB+M system in Kepler's field.
> 
> Detection of a planet in the sdB + M dwarf binary system 2M1938+4603
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We analyze 37 months of Kepler photometry of 2M1938+4603, a binary system with a pulsating hot subdwarf primary and an Mdwarf
> companion that shows strong reflection effects.We measured the eclipse timings from more than 16 000 primary and secondary
> eclipses and discovered a periodic variation in the timing signal that we ascribe to a third body in the system. We also discovered a
> significant long-term trend that may be an evolutionary effect or a hint of more bodies. Upon the assumption that the third body is
> orbiting in the same plane as the primary, we establish that it must be a Jupiter-mass object orbiting with a period of 416 days at a
> distance of 0.92AU. This mass is the lowest among all tertiary components detected in similar systems.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 2M1938 4603 AB b - Circumbinary planet in a sdB M dwarf system
Click to expand...



Here is more information!
The Extrasolar Planet Encyclopaedia 2M 1936 4603 b


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Environmental control of deep convective clouds on Titan: The combined effect of CAPE and wind shear on storm dynamics, morphology, and lifetime*
*Authors*

Environmental control of deep convective clouds on Titan The combined effect of CAPE and wind shear on storm dynamics morphology and lifetime - Rafkin - 2015 - Journal of Geophysical Research Planets - Wiley Online Library


> Titan has deep convective clouds driven by the release of latent from methane condensation. As on Earth, the presence of convective available potential energy (CAPE), which quantifies the amount of energy available through condensation, is required for storms to develop. While CAPE is a requirement for storms, the dynamics, morphology, and longevity of storms on Earth is controlled by both CAPE and wind shear, often expressed as a ratio in the form of the bulk Richardson Number. The impact of CAPE and wind shear on storms in a Titan-like environment are explored through numerical simulation. Model results indicate that Titan storms should respond to changes in the Richardson Number in a manner similar to storms on Earth. Very long-lived storms (>24 h) propagating for 1000 km or more might be possible on Titan when CAPE and wind shear are properly balanced. Some of the simulated storms exhibit dynamics similar to squall lines. Varying amounts of shear in the Titan environment might explain the variety of convective cloud expressions—varying from short-lived single cell storms to longer-lived linear features and large cloud bursts—identified in Cassini orbiter and ground-based observations. The varying amounts and spatial distribution of precipitation, as well as surface winds associated with storms, should have implications on the formation of fluvial and aeolian features and on the exchange of methane with the surface and lakes.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Most powerful space telescope ever to launch in 2018*



> As the Hubble Space Telescope celebrates 25 years in space this week, NASA and its international partners are building an even more powerful tool to look deeper into the universe than ever before.
> The James Webb Space Telescope will be 100 times more potent than Hubble, and will launch in 2018 on a mission to give astronomers an unprecedented glimpse at the first galaxies that formed in the early universe.
> 
> "JWST will be able to see back to about 200 million years after the Big Bang," NASA said on its website.




 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-powerful-space-telescope.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

Astronomers observe first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star in the visible light spectrum
By Anthony Wood
April 22, 2015
1 Comment






> A team of ESO astronomers working from the La Silla Observatory, Chile, has detected the first direct reflection of light from an exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star. The exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, is what is known as a hot Jupiter, a prevalent form of gas giant that sits much closer to its parent star than our own Jovian neighbor.





> This particular gas giant is no stranger to fame, 25 years ago 51 Pegasi b made the (scientific) headlines for being the very first exoplanet to be discovered around a star sharing the same core characteristics as our own Sun.
> 
> Back then, and still now, the primary method of detecting an exoplanet was to observe distant stars for a prolonged period, and look for a dip in brightness as an orbiting planetary body made a transit across the disk of the distant light source. From this occultation, astronomers are able to discern many characteristics of an exoplanet, including its atmosphere, with varying degrees of certainty. This method is known as transmission spectroscopy. However, the established method has severe limitations, as it is unable to detect and characterize any planets whose orbits do not lie directly between their parent star and Earth.



.


> The recent observation was made using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument mounted on the ESO's 3.6 meter telescope. By using the spectrum of light thrown out from the parent star as a template, and looking for the same light signature reflecting off the atmosphere of the exoplanet as it made its orbit, the team was able to directly observe 51 Pegasi b.
> 
> The beauty of being able to directly image a planet is that you do not have to depend on the heavens quite literally aligning, allowing for more frequent and in depth analysis of distant planets that may otherwise have been undetectable.
> 
> “This type of detection technique is of great scientific importance, as it allows us to measure the planet’s real mass and orbital inclination, which is essential to more fully understand the system" states Jorge Martins of the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, and the Universidade do Porto, Portugal, and lead of the team which made the new observation. "It also allows us to estimate the planet’s reflectivity, or albedo, which can be used to infer the composition of both the planet’s surface and atmosphere."
> 
> However there are significant difficulties in employing the technique, at least on the observatories currently available. For one, the light cast out by the parent star is liable to drown out the relatively feeble reflection exhibited by an exoplanet, and the issue is compounded by the various noises and effects that work to distort detailed images of distant celestial objects.
> 
> However, the success of HARPS in directly observing 51 Pegasi b stands as testimony to the workability of the imaging technique, and it looks set to become even more effective.
> 
> The new method will benefit from the next generation of observatories that are currently under construction, such as the European Extremely Large Telescope, a 40 m (131 ft) class monster that will have the capacity to return images 16 times sharper than any taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the meantime, the team is anticipating first light from the ESPRESSO spectrograph mounted on ESO's imaginatively named Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Immobilized Yutu rover still providing valuable lunar data*
*16 hours ago by Christopher Packham report*





Chang’e-3 landing site and the rover Yutu’s track. Crater A is blocky, indicating penetration through the regolith. Crater B is the largest one without blocks in the landing area. The APXS (LS1–LS2) and VNIS (CD5–CD8) analysis positions and …more


> (Phys.org)—The Chinese Chang'e 3 mission to the moon successfully landed and deployed the Yutu rover in December 2013. Although the rover experienced operational difficulties after 14 days, it is still gathering and transmitting useful lunar data.
> 
> The lander and rover are located in the basin of the Mare Imbrium, the second-largest lunar mare after the Oceanus Procellarum. Recently, a collaborative of researchers from a number of Chinese science institutions published a paper in the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ analyzing data collected by the Chang'e 3 mission that reveals the volcanic history of the northeastern part of the Imbrium basin.




Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-immobilized-yutu-rover-valuable-lunar.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA forms unprecedented coalition to search for alien life on exoplanets

NASA forms unprecedented coalition to search for alien life on exoplanets ExtremeTech*


> One of the foremost exercises in astronomy today is the search for alien worlds — and, ultimately, the existence of life beyond planet Earth. To date, astronomers have found more than 1,800 exoplanets, using a variety of techniques over the past 20 years like the “transit method” and gravitational microlensing. The search also got a big boost back when the Kepler Space Telescope was launched. The data from Kepler alone has provided over 1,000 of those 1,800 confirmed exoplanets, with thousands of additional candidates waiting in the wings for further study.
> 
> Now, it turns out NASA’s going to turn this whole finding-exoplanets thing up another notch. The agency has announced it’s bringing together experts from a variety of scientific fields in a new coalition to search for alien life on planets outside our solar system. Dubbed NExSS, or the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, the new group plans to study the various components that make up an exoplanet, along with how each one interacts with its neighboring planets and parent star.
> 
> “This interdisciplinary endeavor connects top research teams and provides a synthesized approach in the search for planets with the greatest potential for signs of life,” said Jim Green, NASA’s Director of Planetary Science, in a statement. “The hunt for exoplanets is not only a priority for astronomers, it’s of keen interest to planetary and climate scientists as well.”


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers find runaway galaxies*
We know of about two dozen runaway stars, and have even found one runaway star cluster escaping its galaxy forever. Now, astronomers have spotted 11 runaway galaxies that have been flung out of their homes ...


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## ScienceRocks

HD 100546 b, as well as additional parameters for 11 planets: 70 Vir b (new default), WASP-2 b, WASP-4b, WASP-5b, WASP-52 b, KELT-1 b, CoRoT-2 b, XO-2 b, TrES-1 b, HD 189733 b and GJ 436 b. See their Overview pages or go the Confirmed Planets interactive table.

2015 Exoplanet Archive News


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX* is planning another CRS launch on the 27th of April. If it's not delayed, they will eclipse their own record for rapid launching. Their prior record is 14 days, this will compress it to 13.







http://www.nasaspace...cial-crew-test/


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## ScienceRocks

*Mysterious X-37B Military Space Plane to Fly Again Next Month*
*Mysterious X-37B Military Space Plane to Fly Again Next Month
*
by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer  |  April 24, 2015 06:47pm ET



> The United States Air Force's X-37B space plane will launch on its fourth mystery mission next month.
> 
> The unmanned X-37B space plane, which looks like a miniature version of NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiter, is scheduled to blast off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on May 20.



Glad to see the airforce getting into space! They have far deeper pockets and China & Russia are real threats. Wish they'd install a laser on it so it can blow up some Chinese shit.


----------



## ScienceRocks

SABRE engine concept passes US Air Force feasibilty test
By David Szondy
April 26, 2015
8 Pictures






> Reaction Engines' Skylon reusable spaceplane project has been given a boost, with analysis by the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) confirming the feasibility of the SABRE engine cycle concept that lies at its heart.
> 
> The feasibility study conducted as part of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the AFRL’s Aerospace Systems Directorate (AFRL/RQ) looked at the thermodynamic cycle of the SABRE concept. That is, whether the engine is able to do what Reaction Engine claims it can do. According to AFRL, there's no theoretical problem with the concept if the engine is properly built and integrated.
> 
> The SABRE (Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) is a scramjet. That is, it reduces the propellant load because it acts as a jet while in the atmosphere and a rocket in space, so it doesn't have to carry as much oxygen to burn the liquid hydrogen fuel. It does so at velocities above Mach 5 (4,500 mph, 7,200 km/h) before flying into space, when it switches to rocket mode to achieve the even faster speeds needed to reach orbit.




Now this would be a awesome space plane as it would work like a plane then switch into a space vehicle.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/sp...nned-missions/


> Two proposed missions would scour the moon’s upper crust for deposits of ice that may support moon bases.
> 
> We may soon be one sip of water closer to living on the moon, at least if NASA’s plans pan out. The space agency has announced their intention to send two new missions to the moon to analyze and mine pockets of frozen water. The projects, nicknamed Lunar Flashlight and Resource Prospector Mission (RPM), will launch in late 2017 and 2018, respectively.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Three Super-Earths Orbiting HD 7924
http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.06629


> We report the discovery of two super-Earth mass planets orbiting the nearby K0.5 dwarf HD 7924 which was previously known to host one small planet. The new companions have masses of 7.9 and 6.4 M⊕, and orbital periods of 15.3 and 24.5 days. We perform a joint analysis of high-precision radial velocity data from Keck/HIRES and the new Automated Planet Finder Telescope (APF) to robustly detect three total planets in the system. We refine the ephemeris of the previously known planet using five years of new Keck data and high-cadence observations over the last 1.3 years with the APF. With this new ephemeris, we show that a previous transit search for the inner-most planet would have covered 70% of the predicted ingress or egress times. Photometric data collected over the last eight years using the Automated Photometric Telescope shows no evidence for transits of any of the planets, which would be detectable if the planets transit and their compositions are hydrogen-dominated. We detect a long-period signal that we interpret as the stellar magnetic activity cycle since it is strongly correlated with the Ca II H and K activity index. We also detect two additional short-period signals that we attribute to rotationally-modulated starspots and a one month alias. The high-cadence APF data help to distinguish between the true orbital periods and aliases caused by the window function of the Keck data. The planets orbiting HD 7924 are a local example of the compact, multi-planet systems that the Kepler Mission found in great abundance.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*MESSENGER Executes Last Orbit-Correction Maneuver, Prepares for Impact*

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_roo...tus+Reports%29



> MESSENGER mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., conducted the last of six planned maneuvers on April 24 to raise the spacecraft's minimum altitude sufficiently to extend orbital operations and further delay the probe's inevitable impact onto Mercury's surface.
> 
> With the usable on-board fuel consumed, this maneuver expelled gaseous helium -- originally carried to pressurize the fuel, but re-purposed as a propellant. Without a means of boosting the spacecraft's altitude, the tug of the Sun's gravity will draw the craft in *to impact the planet on April 30, at about 8,750 miles per hour (3.91 kilometers per second)*, creating a crater as wide as 52 feet (16 meters).


----------



## ScienceRocks

Hall ion thrusters to fly on X-37B spaceplane
By David Szondy
April 28, 2015
3 Pictures






> The US Air Force's most public secret, the X-37B unmanned spaceplane, is now a little less top secret. The Air Force has revealed that when the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) 4 mission lifts off from Cape Canaveral AFB on May 20, it will be carrying a Hall thruster as part of an experiment to improve the design for use on Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) military communications spacecraft.


----------



## danielpalos

Some on the left believe we should advance rail gun technology and miniaturization in order to launch probes to their destinations.


----------



## ScienceRocks

danielpalos said:


> Some on the left believe we should advance rail gun technology and miniaturization in order to launch probes to their destinations.



I think we should advance it on war ships.  Be they on the water or sea...I think we should look into SABRE engine concept passes US Air Force feasibilty test  if Musk isn't successful.  I want a element of control over my flight and riding in a rail gun shell doesn't give it to me!


*Robotically discovering Earth's nearest neighbors*
*7 hours ago *



Enlarge
Artist's impression of a view from the HD 7924 planetary system looking back toward our sun, which would be easily visible to the naked eye. Since HD 7924 is in our northern sky, an observer looking back at the sun would see objects like the …more


> A team of astronomers using ground-based telescopes in Hawaii, California, and Arizona recently discovered a planetary system orbiting a nearby star that is only 54 light-years away. All three planets orbit their star at a distance closer than Mercury orbits the sun, completing their orbits in just 5, 15, and 24 days.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-robotically-earth-nearest-neighbors.html#jCp


----------



## danielpalos

With advances in technologies, we could launch hundreds of probes.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Early Results from VLT-SPHERE: Long-Slit Spectroscopy of 2MASS 0122-2439B, a Young Companion Near the Deuterium Burning Limit


> We present 0.95-1.80 μm spectroscopy of the ∼12-27 MJup companion orbiting the faint (R∼13.6), young (∼120 Myr) M-dwarf 2MASS J01225093--2439505 ("2M0122--2439 B") at 1.5 arcsecond separation (50 AU). Our coronagraphic long-slit spectroscopy was obtained with the new high contrast imaging platform VLT-SPHERE during Science Verification. The unique long-slit capability of SPHERE enables spectral resolution an order of magnitude higher than other extreme AO exoplanet imaging instruments. With a low mass, cool temperature, and very red colors, 2M0122-2439 B occupies a particularly important region of the substellar color-magnitude diagram by bridging the warm directly imaged hot planets with late-M/early-L spectral types (e.g. β Pic b and ROXs 42Bb) and the cooler, dusty objects near the L/T transition (e.g. HR 8799bcde and 2MASS 1207b). We fit BT-Settl atmospheric models to our R≈350 spectrum and find Teff=1600±100 K and log(g)=4.5±0.5 dex. Visual analysis of our 2M0122-2439 B spectrum suggests a spectral type L3-L4, and we resolve shallow J-band alkali lines, confirming its low gravity and youth. Specifically, we use the Allers & Liu (2013) spectral indices to quantitatively measure the strength of the FeH, VO, KI, spectral features, as well as the overall H-band shape. Using these indices, along with the visual spectral type analysis, we classify 2M0122-2439 B as an intermediate gravity (INT-G) object with spectral type L3.7±1.0.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Even with their economic problems, Russia has not cut down their budget to explore Mars - more specifically their aim to bring back a sample of soil from there.1st from Phobos than later from Mars itself.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/expedition_m.html



> Surprisingly, the Expedition-M project appeared to survive the budget cuts at the beginning of 2015, which claimed a number of high-cost and long-term projects.
> 
> In April 2015, the development of the spacecraft was included into the proposed draft of the 10-year Federal Space Program beginning in 2016. At the time, the launch of the Expedition-M spacecraft was scheduled on the Angara-5 rocket with the KVTK space tug in the first half of 2024 from Vostochny, replacing the Proton rocket in Baikonur.
> 
> However the mission was now re-purposed for returning samples from Phobos, instead of Mars. The technology could still pave the way to the Mars sample return in 2030s.


----------



## mamooth

Dyson sphere search comes up empty.

Alien Supercivilizations Absent from 100 000 Nearby Galaxies - Scientific American

If a very advanced civilization had enclosed many of the stars in their galaxy in Dyson spheres, the result would be visible here as an unusually high amount of infrared coming from that galaxy, in proportion to its visible light. Nothing like that was found.

While that does not mean there are no Dyson spheres, it does mean the speculation that Dyson spheres would be a standard feature of alien civilizations is wrong.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Evaluating NASA’s Futuristic EM Drive*
*Evaluating NASA s Futuristic EM Drive NASASpaceFlight.com*
April 29, 2015 by José Rodal, Ph.D, Jeremiah Mullikin and Noel Munson - subedited by Chris Gebhardt 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	





> A group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.
> *
> EM Drive:*
> 
> Last summer, NASA Eagleworks – an advanced propulsion research group led by Dr. Harold “Sonny” White at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) – made waves throughout the scientific and technical communities when the group presented their test results on July 28-30, 2014, at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio.
> 
> Those results related to experimental testing of an EM Drive – a concept that originated around 2001 when a small UK company, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd (SPR), under Roger J. Shawyer, started a Research and Development (R&D) program.



Who ever that says Nasa doesn't advance humanity and carry its worth isn't very intelligent. In fact, they should become Amish and stop voting.


----------



## ScienceRocks

ESA to collaborate with Japan in daring asteroid mission
By Anthony Wood
April 29, 2015
2 Pictures






> ESA has announced its intent to aid the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA) with its ambitious Hayabusa-2 mission to retrieve material samples from an asteroid, and return said samples to Earth by the year 2020. Following a successful launch last December atop a H-IIA rocket, the probe will now benefit from 400 hours of tracking and telemetry from ESA's 35 m (115 ft) diameter dish at Malargüe, Argentina.



Japan and the ESA is going to do about what Obama wants to do...America should out do them with a base on the fucking moon by 2020!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASANewHorizons* detects Pluto surface features, including possible polar cap: http://go.nasa.gov/1zqp7kO

https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CDyM3iFVEAIvkJl.mp4

 These "movies" show a series of New Horizons images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, taken at 13 different times spanning 6.5 days, starting on April 12 and ending on April 18, 2015. During that time, the NASA spacecraft's distance from Pluto decreased from about 69 million miles (93 million kilometers) to 64 million miles (104 million kilometers). 

The pictures were taken with the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI. Pluto and Charon rotate around a center-of-mass (also called the "barycenter") once every 6.4 Earth days, and these LORRI images capture one complete rotation of the system. The direction of the rotation axis is shown in the figure. In one of these movies, the center of Pluto is kept fixed in the frame, while the other movie is fixed on the center of mass (accounting for the "wobble" in the system as Charon orbits Pluto).

In the annotated versions of the movies, a 3x-magnified view of Pluto is displayed in the inset to the lower right, highlighting the changing brightness across the disk of Pluto as it rotates. Because Pluto is tipped on its side (like Uranus), when observing Pluto from the New Horizons spacecraft, one primarily sees one pole of Pluto, which appears to be brighter than the rest of the disk in all the images. Scientists suggest this brightening in Pluto's polar region might be caused by a "cap" of highly reflective snow on the surface. The "snow" in this case is likely to be frozen molecular nitrogen ice. New Horizons observations in July will determine definitively whether or not this hypothesis is correct.

In addition to the polar cap, these images reveal changing brightness patterns from place to place as Pluto rotates, presumably caused by large-scale dark and bright patches at different longitudes on Pluto's surface. In all of these images, a mathematical technique called "deconvolution" is used to improve the resolution of the raw LORRI images, restoring nearly the full resolution allowed by the camera's optics and detector.


----------



## danielpalos

Matthew said:


> *Will asteroid 2012 TC4 hit Earth in October 2017?*
> *1 hour ago by Tomasz Nowakowski, Astrowatch.net *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Oct. 12, 2017, the asteroid 2012 TC4 is slated to whizz by Earth dangerously close. The exact distance of its closest approach is uncertain, as well as its size. Based on observations in October 2012 when the space rock missed our planet, astronomers estimate that its size could vary from 12 to 40 meters. The meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, injuring 1,500 people and damaging over 7,000 buildings, was about 20 meters wide. Thus, the impact of 2012 TC4 could be even more devastating. "It is something to keep an eye on," Judit Györgyey-Ries, astronomer at the University of Texas' McDonald Observatory, told astrowatch.net. "We could see an airburst maybe broken windows, depending on where it hits."
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-asteroid-tc4-earth-october.html#jCp
Click to expand...

Just one more reason to advance rail gun technology; so we can launch probes or asteroid defense


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## ScienceRocks

danielpalos said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *Will asteroid 2012 TC4 hit Earth in October 2017?*
> *1 hour ago by Tomasz Nowakowski, Astrowatch.net *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Oct. 12, 2017, the asteroid 2012 TC4 is slated to whizz by Earth dangerously close. The exact distance of its closest approach is uncertain, as well as its size. Based on observations in October 2012 when the space rock missed our planet, astronomers estimate that its size could vary from 12 to 40 meters. The meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, injuring 1,500 people and damaging over 7,000 buildings, was about 20 meters wide. Thus, the impact of 2012 TC4 could be even more devastating. "It is something to keep an eye on," Judit Györgyey-Ries, astronomer at the University of Texas' McDonald Observatory, told astrowatch.net. "We could see an airburst maybe broken windows, depending on where it hits."
> 
> 
> 
> Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-asteroid-tc4-earth-october.html#jCp
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Just one more reason to advance rail gun technology; so we can launch probes or asteroid defense
Click to expand...


Its a good idea.  How about launching gravity tractors?


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## danielpalos

It may require a federal research university to Eureka! those concepts and technologies.


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## dblack

official poverty


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## ScienceRocks

dblack said:


> official poverty



WTF are you talking about???  How the hell does developing the ability to defend our planet from asteroids or high paying jobs = poverty. You people come off as insane as the left when it comes to black crime. jezzz.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Earth-sized virtual telescope to study supermassive black hole at center of Milky Way 
By Colin Jeffrey
April 29, 2015
3 Pictures





> In astronomy, much like many other other aspects of life, bigger is better. Taking this adage to heart, astronomers at the University of Arizona are helping to build a virtual radio telescope the size of the Earth itself. With a resolution factor more than a thousand times greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, the new Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will be used to study in fine detail the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA researchers confirm enigmatic EM-Drive produces thrust in a vacuum*




> A group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.
> The NASASpaceflight.com group has given consideration to whether the experimental measurements of thrust force were the result of an artifact. Despite considerable effort within the NASASpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artifact, the EM Drive results have yet to be falsified.
> 
> After consistent reports of thrust measurements from EM Drive experiments in the US, UK, and China – at thrust levels several thousand times in excess of a photon rocket, and now under hard vacuum conditions – the question of where the thrust is coming from deserves serious inquiry.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Most comprehensive map of the universe yet could pinpoint dark matter
By Dario Borghino
April 30, 2015







> Astrophysicists from the University of Waterloo have compiled the most comprehensive 3D map of our cosmic surroundings to date. The map describes how ordinary matter is distributed in space up to a distance of about a billion light-years away from us. This survey will help scientists better understand the distribution of dark matter and explain why, to some extent, galaxies are moving erratically with respect to us.


----------



## danielpalos

dblack said:


> official poverty


yes, it would be solving for an official poverty of Perfect Knowledge.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Spectacular 5th SpaceX Launch in 2015 Sets Record Pace, Clears Path for Critical Flights Ahead


> SpaceX set a new internal record pace for time between blastoffs of their workhorse Falcon 9 rocket with Monday’s spectacular dusky liftoff of Turkmenistan’s first satellite into heavily overcast skies that has cleared the path ahead for a busy manifest of critical flights starting with a critical pad abort test for NASA just a week from today.
> 
> After a 49 minute delay due to grim weather conditions, weather officials finally found a “window in the clouds” that permitted the Falcon 9 to launch on Monday, April 27, 2015 at 7:03pm EDT (2303 GMT).


--------------------------------


*Bezos' space company tests suborbital rocket*
*Bezos space company tests suborbital rocket - CNET*

Blue Origin pulls off its first unmanned test flight from a site in west Texas. The spacecraft, which reached an altitude of 58 miles, is designed to become a reusable vehicle for space tourists someday.



> Blue Origin, a spacecraft startup owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, carried out an unmanned maiden test flight of its New Shepard suborbital rocket Wednesday, the company revealed early Thursday.
> 
> A dramatic video posted on the Blue Origin website showed the squat rocket being erected on a launch platform at the company's west Texas development facility followed by a brief countdown -- with Bezos looking on -- then a smooth liftoff and a vertical climb to an altitude of 58 miles.



Believe it or not I love what the private sector is doing and when it comes to low orbit there's no question in my mind that they will play a increasing part in space exploration. But, when it comes to science and real exploration,,,Nasa rules!


----------



## ScienceRocks

Emdrive Roger Shawyer believes midterm EMdrive interstellar probe could flyby Alpha Centauri  




Roger Shawyer invented the Emdrive. NASA is testing the EMdrive and the Cannae drive and getting interesting results Shawyer presented in October, 2014. EMDrive results have not been conclusively proven yet and there is no proven underlying theory and any scaling has not been determined. There are interesting results in the 50-900 micronewton...


----------



## Politico

I was wondering how long it would take for you to post that crap.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Giant telescope takes close look at Jupiter's moon Io*
*4 minutes ago by Daniel Stolte *




Io as imaged by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH


> With the first detailed observations through imaging interferometry of a lava lake on a moon of Jupiter, the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory places itself as the forerunner of the next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes.
> 
> Io, the innermost of the four moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610 and only slightly bigger than our own moon, is the most geologically active body in our solar system. Hundreds of volcanic areas dot its surface, which is mostly covered with sulfur and sulfur dioxide.
> 
> The largest of these volcanic features, named Loki after the Norse god often associated with fire and chaos, is a volcanic depression called patera in which the denser lava crust solidifying on top of a lava lake episodically sinks in the lake, yielding a raise in the thermal emission that has been regularly observed from Earth. Loki, only 124 miles in diameter and at least 373 million miles from Earth, was, up until recently, too small to be looked at in detail from any ground-based optical/infrared telescope.



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-giant-telescope-jupiter-moon-io.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Pulsar with widest orbit ever detected*
*2 hours ago by Charles Blue *



Enlarge
Artist's impression of pulsar PSR J1930-1852 shown in orbit around a companion neutron star. Discovered by a team of high school students, this pulsar has the widest orbit ever observed around another neutron star. Credit: B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)


> A team of highly determined high school students discovered a never-before-seen pulsar by painstakingly analyzing data from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Further observations by astronomers using the GBT revealed that this pulsar has the widest orbit of any around a neutron star and is part of only a handful of double neutron star systems.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-pulsar-widest-orbit.html#jCp



*New exoplanet too big for its stars*
*6 hours ago *



Enlarge
An artist's impression of HATS-6. Credit ANU


> The Australian discovery of a strange exoplanet orbiting a small cool star 500 light years away is challenging ideas about how planets form.
> 
> 
> "We have found a small star, with a giant planet the size of Jupiter, orbiting very closely," said researcher George Zhou from the Research School of Astrophysics and Astronomy.
> 
> "It must have formed further out and migrated in, but our theories can't explain how this happened."
> 
> In the past two decades more than 1,800 extrasolar planets (or exoplanets) have been discovered outside our solar system orbiting around other stars.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-exoplanet-big-stars.html#jCp

The more we learn the more we need to learn.  If two or three stars can form and obrit each other...Why the hell can't any size of planet? I've come to the conclusion that a brown dwarf is a "planet of 13 Jupiter masses", which is kind of obvious as they tell us about it all the time and that a red dwarf(m-class) is around 60 jupiters. We find a shit load of them orbiting the larger star so I am starting to think that there's little difference in the formation method between planet and star. Star just gets far luckier and takes up more shit! And once it has enough gravity it ignites fusion!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New 'Super Earth' Exoplanets Spotted Around Nearby Star*
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer  |  May 01, 2015 06:19am ET





New Super Earth Exoplanets Spotted Around Nearby Star


> Astronomers have discovered two new alien worlds a bit larger than Earth circling a nearby star.
> 
> The newfound exoplanets, known as HD 7924c and HD 7924d, are "super Earths" with masses about 7.9 and 6.4 times greater, respectively, than that of our home planet, researchers said. The planets orbit the star HD 7924, which lies just 54 light-years from the sun — a mere stone's throw considering the size of the Milky Way, which is on the order of 100,000 light-years wide.
> 
> The discovery brings the number of known planets in the HD 7924 system to three. (Another super Earth, called HD 7924b, was spotted there in 2009.) HD 7924b, HD 7924c and HD 7924d all lie closer to their host star than Mercury does to the sun. They complete one orbit in five, 15 and 24 days, respectively, researchers said.


----------



## mamooth

Mars One Finalist Explains Exactly How It s Ripping Off Supporters Matter Medium

---
“When you join the ‘Mars One Community,’ which happens automatically if you applied as a candidate, they start giving you points,” Roche explained to me in an email. “You get points for getting through each round of the selection process (but just an arbitrary number of points, not anything to do with ranking), and then the only way to get more points is to buy merchandise from Mars One or to donate money to them.”

“Community members” can redeem points by purchasing merchandise like T-shirts, hoodies, and posters, as well as through gifts and donations: The group also solicits larger investment from its supporters. Others have been encouraged to help the group make financial gains on flurries of media interest. In February, finalists received a list of “tips and tricks” for dealing with press requests, which included this: _“If you are offered payment for an interview then feel free to accept it. _*We do kindly ask for you to donate 75% of your profit to Mars One.”*

The result, said Roche, is that high-profile prospects — including those in a list of “Top 10 hopefuls” published last month in _The Guardian_ —  are, in fact, simply the people who have generated the most money for Mars One. A spokeswoman confirmed by email that the positions were “based on the supporter points that our community can earn,” but said that “this number of points is unrelated to our selection process.”
---


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## ScienceRocks

The number one sign that it is a fraud is the fact that 80% of the goal of getting to mars is the transport. You can spend 50, 60 or even 80 million bucks to get the Russians to launch a couple of people to the space station...I seriously doubt such a organiizion will be able to get transport from Russia, China, Japan, India, or the US that could possibly go to mars with enough room for even a couple of people for under a 5 billion. Private corps suck at doing anything truly great.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX mile-high escape test will feature 'Buster' the dummy*
*1 hour ago by By Marcia Dunn *




In this May 29, 2014 file photo, The SpaceX Dragon V2 spaceship is unveiled at its headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. SpaceX is just days away from shooting up a crew capsule to test a launch escape system designed to save astronauts' lives. …more

SpaceX is just days away from shooting up a crew capsule to test a launch escape system designed to save astronauts' lives.

Buster, the dummy, is already strapped in for Wednesday's nearly mile-high ride from Cape Canaveral, Florida. He'll be alone as the mock-up capsule is fired from a ground test stand and soars out over the Atlantic, then parachutes down.

SpaceX is working to get astronauts launched from Cape Canaveral again, as is Boeing. NASA hired the two companies to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station to reduce its reliance on Russian rockets.
SpaceX mile-high escape test will feature Buster the dummy

Eon Musk rules!


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## ScienceRocks

On April 31th, 2015, measurements of the EmDrive experimental engine suggest that Faster-Than-Light space travel might be a possibility.[3].

On May 1st, 2015, the independent forum NASAspaceflight.com made the claim that 'Despite considerable effort within the NASASpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artifact, the EM Drive results have yet to be falsified.'. [4]. NASA

Wouldn't be fucking amazing if we could go even 1/10th the speed of light? That would charge a lot of shit.


----------



## Old Rocks

Oort cloud, here we come! Better develop some kind of shielding mechanism. Even a grain of sand at c/10 would be catastrophic.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/23/te...ander-planned/


> The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), divulged the plan to an expert panel, including members of the cabinet and the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry on Monday.
> 
> "This is an initial step and a lot of procedures are still ahead before the plan is formally approved," a JAXA spokesperson told reporters.
> 
> If it is approved, the agency will reportedly use its Epsilon solid-fuel rocket technology to carry and deploy a SLIM probe -- the acronym stands for "Smart Lander for Investigating Moon" -- on the surface of the celestial body.



If America wants to compete it better spend more and get a plan!


----------



## ScienceRocks

Coldest Star Found—No Hotter Than Fresh Coffee

By *Andrew Fazekas*, for National Geographic News
Coldest Star Found No Hotter Than Fresh Coffee


> *According to a new study, a star discovered 75 light-years away is no warmer than a freshly brewed cup of coffee.*
> 
> Dubbed CFBDSIR 1458 10b, the star is what's called a brown dwarf. These oddball objects are often called failed stars, because they have starlike heat and chemical properties but don't have enough mass for the crush of gravity to ignite nuclear fusion at their cores.
> 
> With surface temperatures hovering around 206 degrees F (97 degrees C), the newfound star is the coldest brown dwarf seen to date. (Related: "Dimmest Stars in Universe Spotted?")
> 
> "Over the years there has been steady but slow progress in pushing the boundaries of finding the coldest stars," said study leader Michael Liu, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii.
Click to expand...





> "But with this latest discovery we have made a big leap forward—besting the previous record holder by at least 150 Kelvin [270 degrees F, or 150 degrees C]," he said.
> 
> *Coldest Star May Have Watery Atmosphere?*
> 
> With an estimated mass of only 6 to 15 times that of Jupiter, CFBDSIR 1458 10b is the smaller and dimmer member of a binary system in which two brown dwarfs are locked in close orbit.
> 
> Liu and his team spotted the pair's faint infrared signature using the W.M. Keck Observatory and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, both on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.




I thought the lower limit is 13 Jupiter masses? So the odds would favor this being a planet.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Europe's Next Space Chief Wants a Moon Colony on the Lunar Far Side*
Europe s Next Space Chief Wants a Moon Colony on the Lunar Far Side


> COLORADO
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SPRINGS, Colorado — The incoming leader of the European Space Agency is keen on establishing an international base on the moon as a next-step outpost beyond the International Space Station (ISS).
> 
> Johann-Dietrich Wörner expressed his enthusiasm for a moon colony at the Space Foundation’s National Space Symposium, a gathering of global, commercial, civil, military and "new space" experts that was held here from April 13 to April 16.
> 
> "It seems to be appropriate to propose a permanent moon station as the successor of ISS," Wörner said. This station should be international, "meaning that the different actors can contribute with their respective competencies and interests." [Living on the Moon: What It Would Be Like (Infographic)]


----------



## ScienceRocks

*The Detail That Goes Into Making Orion's Windows Is Incredible*







> Given how high-tech spacecraft tend to be, I was surprised to learn that existing space vehicles tend to use good old-fashioned glass (albeit a rather expensive kind). But for the next-gen Orion spacecraft, NASA has been working overtime to find something stronger, lighter, and just a little less fragile.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134209220.htm


> Chinese researchers have used 3D printing technology to make a safer space suit for astronauts while spacewalking.
> 
> A research center under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation used a 3D printer to create the vent pipes and the flanges connecting the pipes used on extravehicular space suit, according to a recent report from China Space News.
> 
> The vent pipe and the flange as a whole can improve the reliability and safety of the space suit, and suits can be made more efficiently. Researchers will use the technique to make more parts, says the report.
> 
> The technology has been approved by the Scientific Research Training Center for Chinese Astronauts.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Demory et al. (2015) "Variability in the super-Earth 55 Cnc e"
http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.00269


> 4-sigma variation in the dayside thermal emission. Cause is uncertain, but they also find a smaller radius (and thus higher density) planet, which has implications for the composition:
> Using internal structure models of super-Earths (Madhusudhan et al. 2012), we find that the mass and bulk radius of the planet, given by the minimum radius observed, are consistent with an Earth-like interior composition of the planet, i.e. composed of an Iron core (30% by mass) overlaid by a silicate mantle and crust. Previous studies which used a larger radius of the planet required a thick water envelope (Demory et al. 2011; Gillon et al. 2012; Winn et al. 2011) or a carbon-rich interior (Madhusudhan et al. 2012), neither of which are now required but cannot be ruled out either.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers find first evidence of changing conditions on a super-Earth*
The ability to peek into the atmospheres of rocky “super-Earths” and observe conditions on their surfaces marks an important milestone toward identifying habitable planets outside the solar system.
By University of Cambridge, United Kingdom  |  Published: Tuesday, May 05, 2015


> For the first time, researchers led by the University of Cambridge have detected atmospheric variability on a rocky planet outside the solar system and observed a nearly threefold change in temperature over a two-year period. Although the researchers are quick to point out that the cause of the variability is still under investigation, they believe the readings could be due to massive amounts of volcanic activity on the surface. The ability to peek into the atmospheres of rocky “super-Earths” and observe conditions on their surfaces marks an important milestone toward identifying habitable planets outside the solar system.
> 
> Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the researchers observed thermal emissions coming from the planet, called 55 Cancri e — orbiting a Sun-like star located 40 light-years away in the constellation Cancer — and for the first time found rapidly changing conditions, with temperatures on the hot “day” side of the planet swinging between 1,800° and 4,900° F (1,000° and 2,700° C).



Astronomers find first evidence of changing conditions on a super-Earth Astronomy.com





Artist’s impression of super-Earth 55 Cancri e, showing a hot partially-molten surface of the planet before and after possible volcanic activity on the day side.




> “This is the first time we’ve seen such drastic changes in light emitted from an exoplanet, which is particularly remarkable for a super-Earth,” said Nikku Madhusudhan of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “No signature of thermal emissions or surface activity has ever been detected for any other super-Earth to date.”
> 
> Although the interpretations of the new data are still preliminary, the researchers believe the variability in temperature could be due to huge plumes of gas and dust, which occasionally blanket the surface that may be partially molten. The plumes could be caused by exceptionally high rates of volcanic activity, higher than what has been observed on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons and the most geologically active body in the solar system.
> 
> “We saw a 300 percent change in the signal coming from this planet, which is the first time we’ve seen such a huge level of variability in an exoplanet,” said Brice-Olivier Demory of the University’s Cavendish Laboratory. “While we can’t be entirely sure, we think a likely explanation for this variability is large-scale surface activity, possibly volcanism, on the surface is spewing out massive volumes of gas and dust, which sometimes blanket the thermal emission from the planet so it is not seen from Earth.”
> 
> 55 Cancri e is a “super-Earth,” a rocky exoplanet about twice the size and eight times the mass of Earth. It is one of five planets orbiting a Sun-like star in the constellation Cancer and resides so close to its parent star that a year lasts just 18 hours. The planet is also tidally locked, meaning there is a permanent “day” side and a “night” side. Since it is the nearest super-Earth whose atmosphere can be studied, 55 Cancri e is among the best candidates for detailed observations of surface and atmospheric conditions on rocky exoplanets.
> 
> Most of the early research on exoplanets has been on gas giants similar to Jupiter and Saturn since their enormous size makes them easier to find. In recent years, astronomers have been able to map the conditions on many of these gas giants, but it is much more difficult to do so for super-Earths: exoplanets with masses between one and 10 times the mass of Earth.
> 
> Earlier observations of 55 Cancri e pointed to an abundance of carbon, suggesting that the planet was composed of diamond. However, these new results have muddied those earlier observations considerably and opened up new questions.
> 
> “When we first identified this planet, the measurements supported a carbon-rich model,” said Madhusudhan, who along with Demory is a member of the Cambridge Exoplanet Research Center. “But now we’re finding that those measurements are changing in time. The planet could still be carbon rich, but now we’re not so sure — earlier studies of this planet have even suggested that it could be a water world. The present variability is something we’ve never seen anywhere else, so there’s no robust conventional explanation. But that’s the fun in science — clues can come from unexpected quarters. The present observations open a new chapter in our ability to study the conditions on rocky exoplanets using current and upcoming large telescopes.”


----------



## danielpalos

I believe we should advance technologies to the point where we can accomplish this even if only for local solar system surveys:
*A Swarm of Probes to the Stars*

*We should also be advancing RailGun technologies for close support.*

*Railgun - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia*http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=18968


----------



## ScienceRocks

I'd love to see that happen Danielpalos, but with the republicans holding the power I am afraid we'll be lucky to have anything by 2020. I'd love to see nasa getting 40, 50 or 100 billion per year. Can you imagine what we'd be able to do???

I bet we could find 200 or 300 thousand extrasolar planets by 2030 if we invested in telescopes like we should.

I bet we could have a base on the moon and mars!!!

I bet we could mine asteroids and add trillions of bucks to our economy!

I bet we could put together a good defense for asteroids in no time flat. This is a serious issue that the anti-space people don't seem to care about but they sure as fuck should.

Our country is better off spending money on science as that comes back into the economy in the mid to long term. We have a choice...Do we want to be north Korea or do we want to be a first world technological advance society???

I honestly pray Obama veto's the living hell out of the gop budget.


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/uot-uot050515.php


> The team, led by Daniel Tamayo from the Centre for Planetary Science at U of T Scarborough and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, found that circular gaps in a disk of dust and gas swirling around the young star HL Tau are in fact made by forming planets



http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.00882

*Evidence of fast pebble growth near condensation fronts in the HL Tau protoplanetary disk*


> Water and simple organic molecular ices dominate the mass of solid materials available for planetesimal and planet formation beyond the water snow line. Here we analyze ALMA long Baseline 2.9, 1.3 and 0.87mm continuum images of the young star HL Tau, and suggest that the emission dips observed are due to rapid pebble growth around the condensation fronts of abundant volatile species. Specifically, we show that the prominent innermost dip at 13AU is spatially resolved in the 0.87mm image, and its center radius is coincident with the expected mid-plane condensation front of water ice. In addition, two other prominent dips, at distances of 32 and 63 AU, cover the mid-plane condensation fronts of pure ammonia or ammonia hydrates and clathrate hydrates (especially with CO and N2) formed from amorphous water ice. The spectral index map of HL Tau between 1.3 and 0.87mm shows that the flux ratios inside the dips are statistically larger than those of nearby regions in the disk. This variation can be explained by a model with two dust populations, where most of solid mass resides in a component that has grown into decimeter size scales inside the dips. Such growth is in accord with recent numerical simulations of volatile condensation, dust coagulation and settling.


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## ScienceRocks

*Discovery of a young planetary mass companion to the nearby M dwarf VHS J125601.92-125723.9*

In a search for common proper motion companions using the VISTA Hemisphere Survey and 2MASS catalogs we have identified a very red (J-Ks=2.47 mag) late-L dwarf companion of a previously unrecognized M dwarf VHS J125601.92-125723.9, located at a projected angular separation of 8.06"+/-0.03". From low-resolution optical and near-IR spectroscopy we classified the primary and the companion as an M7.5+/-0.5 and L7+/-1.5, respectively. The primary shows weaker alkali lines than field dwarfs of similar spectral type, but still consistent with either a high-gravity dwarf or a younger object of hundreds of millions of years. The secondary shows spectral features characteristic for low surface gravity objects at ages below several hundred Myr, like the triangular shape of the H-band continuum and alkali lines weaker than in field dwarfs of the same spectral type. The absence of lithium in the atmosphere of the primary and the likely membership to the Local Association allowed us to constrain the age of the system to the range of 150-300 Myr. We report a measurement of the trigonometric parallax pi=78.8+/-6.4 mas, which translates into a distance of 12.7+/-1.0 pc; the pair thus has a projected physical separation of 102+/-9 AU. We derived the Lbol of the components and compared them with theoretical evolutionary models to estimate the masses and effective temperatures. For the primary, we determined log(Lbol/LSun)=-3.14+/-0.10, and a mass of 73 (+20,-15} MJup at the boundary between stars and brown dwarfs and Teff of 2620+/-140 K. *For the companion we obtained log(Lbol/LSun)=-5.05+/-0.22 and a mass of 11.2 (+9.7,-1.8 ) MJup placing it near the deuterium-burning mass limit. The effective temperature derived from evolutionary models is 880 (+140,-110) K, about 400-700 K cooler than expected for field late-L dwarfs.*


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## danielpalos

Matthew said:


> I'd love to see that happen Danielpalos, but with the republicans holding the power I am afraid we'll be lucky to have anything by 2020. I'd love to see nasa getting 40, 50 or 100 billion per year. Can you imagine what we'd be able to do???
> 
> I bet we could find 200 or 300 thousand extrasolar planets by 2030 if we invested in telescopes like we should.
> 
> I bet we could have a base on the moon and mars!!!
> 
> I bet we could mine asteroids and add trillions of bucks to our economy!
> 
> I bet we could put together a good defense for asteroids in no time flat. This is a serious issue that the anti-space people don't seem to care about but they sure as fuck should.
> 
> Our country is better off spending money on science as that comes back into the economy in the mid to long term. We have a choice...Do we want to be north Korea or do we want to be a first world technological advance society???
> 
> I honestly pray Obama veto's the living hell out of the gop budget.


i believe we should advance those technologies which can enable more practicable use them, as well.


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## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX successfully completes Launch Abort System test*
By Anthony Wood
May 6, 2015
4 Pictures





> SpaceX has carried out a successful test of its Launch Abort System (LAS) for the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The test, which took place at Space Launch Complex 40 of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station represents a major stop towards getting the spacecraft human rated under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract. NASA hopes that commercial spacecraft such as the Crew Dragon will return manned spacecraft launches back to American soil sometime in 2017.


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## ScienceRocks

*UAE to explore Mars' atmosphere with probe named 'Hope' (Update)*
UAE to explore Mars atmosphere with probe named Hope Update 


> The United Arab Emirates' planned 2020 mission to Mars will study the planet's atmosphere and be appropriately named "Hope," members of the project team revealed Wednesday.
> 
> Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced initial plans for the unmanned probe last year. It is the first Mars mission attempted anywhere in the Arab world.
> 
> An invitation-only event Wednesday in Dubai was a chance for officials to unveil many of the finer details. And they did it with a good dose of Gulf flair—soaring music and computer animations projected onto a movie screen in a chandelier-filled beachside palace. One of the world's largest yachts, Dubai, was berthed outside.
> 
> "This mission to Mars is really for the hope of the Arab world and will send them a message to say you can be better, you can improve your country," Sheikh Mohammed, who is also the Emirates' vice president and prime minister, told reporters after the event.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Fresh evidence for how water reached Earth found in asteroid debris*


> Water delivery via asteroids or comets is likely taking place in many other planetary systems, just as it happened on Earth, new research strongly suggests.



*Geochemical process on Saturn's moon linked to life's origin*


> New work from a team including Carnegie's Christopher Glein has revealed the pH of water spewing from a geyser-like plume on Saturn's moon Enceladus. Their findings are an important step toward determining ...


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## ScienceRocks

*Ancient star raises prospects of intelligent life*
Can life survive for billions of years longer than the expected timeline on Earth? As scientists discover older and older solar systems, it's likely that before long we'll find an ancient planet in a habitable ...


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## mamooth

Maybe.

Class M red dwarfs, the longest lived stars, probably can't support life. In order for a planet orbiting a red dwarf to be warm enough, it would have to be very close to the star, which would cause it to become tidally locked to the star. One face always frozen, one face always hot. Not conducive to life.

Class K orange stars also live very long lives. Kepler-444, K-class, 0.75 solar masses. Right kind of star, but like the article says, the planets are too close in.

On the other end of the scale, any star bigger/hotter than F7 (1.2 solar masses) would be putting out enough UV radiation to sterilize the land. Ocean life only.

So, K class (orange), G (yellow, like our sun), and lower-end F (white) are realistic possibilities for life. From 0.6 - 1.2 solar masses.

(OBAFGKM. Oh, be a fine girl, kiss me. Stellar classification, hottest to coldest.)


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## mamooth

This guy tries for a more complete version of the Drake equation. His estimate is 1 in 12,000 stars having a planet with intelligent life. That works out to 25 million such stars in the Milky Way, with an average distance between them of 88 light years.

An Estimate for N


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## ScienceRocks

*Carl Sagan’s solar sail spacecraft is finally getting a real-world test*

By Ryan Whitwam on May 8, 2015 at 3:00 pm
Comment
Carl Sagan s solar sail spacecraft is finally getting a real-world test ExtremeTech








> The Planetary Society is preparing to test a spacecraft proposed by legendary astronomer (and founder of the Planetary Society) Carl Sagan. The vessel is called LightSail, and as you might expect, it uses a light sail for propulsion. The fascinating design has been successfully tested on Earth, but now it’s going to be launched to the upper atmosphere to test the deployment of its huge mylar sails in flight.
> 
> Solar sail technology relies upon a well-understood fact of spaceflight. While light doesn’t have mass, it does have momentum, which can be transferred to a vessel. It’s something space agencies have had to correct for since the early days of spaceflight. Of course, the effects on a small spacecraft are almost nil, but that’s why LightSail has big sheets of mylar. Basically, as photons make contact with the solar sail material, some of it is absorbed, while the rest is reflected. This exerts a small amount of pressure on the sail — enough to push a craft along.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA to fly material testing experiment on X-37B spaceplane*
By David Szondy
May 9, 2015
4 Pictures





> More details have been revealed about the X-37B spaceplane's upcoming OTV-4 mission. When it launches on May 20 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the (not entirely) secret X-37B will carry a NASA experiment called Materials Exposure and Technology Innovation in Space (METIS) designed to test new materials for use in future spacecraft.


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## ScienceRocks

*More details of the third stage of the proposed four-stage Angara-5V.*

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/angara_urm2v.html



> For the first time since the mighty Energia rocket flew its final mission in 1988, a new Russian booster propelled by hydrogen will take to the sky onboard the Angara-5V rocket in the first half of 2020s. Provisionally known as URM-2V, it will serve as the third stage of the four-stage Angara-5V.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*The Five Planets in the Kepler-296 Binary System All Orbit the Primary: A Statistical and Analytical Analysis*



> Kepler-296 is a binary star system with two M-dwarf components separated by 0.2 arcsec. Five transiting planets have been confirmed to be associated with the Kepler-296 system; given the evidence to date, however, the planets could in principle orbit either star. This ambiguity has made it difficult to constrain both the orbital and physical properties of the planets. Using both statistical and analytical arguments, this paper shows that all five planets are highly likely to orbit the primary star in this system. We performed a Markov-Chain Monte Carlo simulation using a five transiting planet model, leaving the stellar density and dilution with uniform priors. Using importance sampling, we compared the model probabilities under the priors of the planets orbiting either the brighter or the fainter component of the binary. A model where the planets orbit the brighter component, Kepler-296A, is strongly preferred by the data. Combined with our assertion that all five planets orbit the same star, the two outer planets in the system, Kepler-296 Ae and Kepler-296 Af, have radii of 1.53 +/- 0.26 and 1.80 +/- 0.31 R_earth, respectively, and receive incident stellar fluxes of 1.40 +/- 0.23 and 0.62 +/- 0.10 times the incident flux the Earth receives from the Sun. This level of irradiation places both planets within or close to the circumstellar habitable zone of their parent star.


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## ScienceRocks

*Image: Chaos on watery Europa*
*5 hours ago *




Enlarge
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona


> Jupiter's moon Europa is brimming with water. Although it is thought to be mostly made up of rocky material, the moon is wrapped in a thick layer of water – some frozen to form an icy crust, some potentially pooled in shallow underground lakes or layers of slush, and vast quantities more lurking even deeper still in the form of a giant subsurface ocean.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-image-chaos-watery-europa.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

*A Closer Look At Ceres' Mysterious Bright Spots Reveals We Were Wrong*



> With our ever closer looks at Ceres’ surface, we’ve been hoping to get close enough to finally see a bit more about where those two mystery light splotches were coming from. Well, now we have. And, it turns out that we were wrong about one very basic fact: There were not two of them.
> 
> *There were actually lots and lots.*
> 
> After taking a look at the surface from 8,400 miles away (the closest look yet), NASA scientists reported back two things: One, that the two bright spots were actually composed of many smaller bright spots, and, two, that their brightness was due to sunlight.


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA challenges public for ideas to make a Mars colony more sustainable*
By Anthony Wood
May 11, 2015






> NASA has launched a public challenge with the aim of innovating technologies vital for the establishment of a colony on Mars. The agency is focused on a mission to the Red Planet, and has already taken the first vital steps. However, whilst simply reaching Mars with a cargo of healthy astronauts would be a monumental triumph, maintaining a permanent presence on so inhospitable a planet could prove to be a much greater technological challenge.



I find a sizable mars cave and seal it off.  This would 1. block some of the U.V and Radiation from the sun and 2. Protect the crew from the elements.


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## orogenicman

Battle of the Heavyweight Rockets – SLS could face Exploration Class rival

Battle of the Heavyweight Rockets SLS could face Exploration Class rival NASASpaceFlight.com

I don't know if anyone has posted this before, but this is a very interesting article that was published last year in which some here might have an interest.  It's a good read with lots of external links to related topics. 

Enjoy,


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## danielpalos

_*Non-rocket space launch* (NRS) refers to concepts for launch into space where some or all of the needed speed and altitude are provided by something other than expendable rockets.[1] A number of alternatives to expendable rockets have been proposed. In some systems such as skyhook, rocket sled launch, and air launch, a rocket is used to reach orbit, but it is only "part" of the system.


Present-day launch costs are very high – $10,000 to $25,000 per kilogram from Earth to low Earth orbit (LEO).[2] As a result, launch costs are a large percentage of the cost of all space endeavors. If launch costs can be made cheaper the total cost of space missions will be reduced. Fortunately, due to the exponential nature of the rocket equation, providing even a small amount of the velocity to LEO by other means has the potential of greatly reducing the cost of getting to orbit.


Getting launch costs down into the hundreds of dollars per kilogram range would make many of the proposed large scale space projects such as space colonization, space-based solar power[3] and terraforming Mars[4] possible.

...

A rail gun is a pair of conductive rails with a projectile between them. A coil gun similarly could be used for a non-rocket space launch.--_Source: Non-rocket spacelaunch - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


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## orogenicman

A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.


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## danielpalos

orogenicman said:


> A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.


it depends on acceleration; "runways" could be longer than an aircraft carrier; and, in space it would be easier than rocket based missions.


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## orogenicman

danielpalos said:


> orogenicman said:
> 
> 
> 
> A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.
> 
> 
> 
> it depends on acceleration; "runways" could be longer than an aircraft carrier; and, in space it would be easier than rocket based missions.
Click to expand...


Any rail gun large enough to launch a man-rated module would have to exert nearly 20,000 Gs to get it into LEO orbit, thus spaghettifying anyone in the module, to say nothing of the extreme heat exerted on the projectile.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New spacesuit tech simulates gravity on a personal scale*
By David Szondy
May 11, 2015
2 Pictures





> One thing that space definitely lacks is "down." Zero gravity isn't just disorienting, it also affects astronauts' health. Draper Laboratory's NASA-funded Variable Vector Countermeasure Suit (V2Suit) uses a new spacesuit technology to create a sort of artificial gravity that provides astronauts with a sense of up and down while helping relieve some of the detrimental effects of weightlessness.


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## danielpalos

orogenicman said:


> danielpalos said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> orogenicman said:
> 
> 
> 
> A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.
> 
> 
> 
> it depends on acceleration; "runways" could be longer than an aircraft carrier; and, in space it would be easier than rocket based missions.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Any rail gun large enough to launch a man-rated module would have to exert nearly 20,000 Gs to get it into LEO orbit, thus spaghettifying anyone in the module, to say nothing of the extreme heat exerted on the projectile.
Click to expand...

how do rockets achieve similar results?


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## orogenicman

danielpalos said:


> orogenicman said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> danielpalos said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> orogenicman said:
> 
> 
> 
> A rail gun will spaghettify any human being trying to use it to get into space.
> 
> 
> 
> it depends on acceleration; "runways" could be longer than an aircraft carrier; and, in space it would be easier than rocket based missions.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Any rail gun large enough to launch a man-rated module would have to exert nearly 20,000 Gs to get it into LEO orbit, thus spaghettifying anyone in the module, to say nothing of the extreme heat exerted on the projectile.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> how do rockets achieve similar results?
Click to expand...


A rail gun projectile moves at hypersonic speeds almost instantaneously.  Rockets don't.  And modern man-rated rockets rarely accelerate over 3-4 Gs during the course of the launch.


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## orogenicman




----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA-funded research seeks to produce breathable oxygen on Mars*
By Anthony Wood
May 12, 2015
2 Pictures





> Establishing and maintaining a permanent human presence on Mars promises to be one of the most technologically challenging ventures ever undertaken by our species. A key aspect of the endeavor is to create an environment in which human beings can survive and flourish – this requires a ready supply of oxygen. NASA is working with Indiana-based company Techshot Inc. in order to develop a solution with the potential to produce an abundant source of oxygen with minimal assistance from Earth.


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## danielpalos

orogenicman said:


>


i believe cannon ball sized space probes would do quite nicely.


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## ScienceRocks

I agree with you that a probe(without humans) maybe workable.  But you're talking about a serious rail-gun!


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## ScienceRocks

Great to see some focus on Venus!!! Maybe focus on the habitual zone above the clouds to see if a floating colony maybe possible.



*Venus Plane Pushed for Next NASA Next Frontiers Mission*
by Dan Leone, Space News Writer  |  May 12, 2015 11:06am ET
Venus Plane Pushed for Next NASA Next Frontiers Mission


> WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman is developing an inflatable, propeller-powered aircraft for a years-long cruise in the sulfurous skies of Venus and is gearing up to enter the concept in NASA's next New Frontiers planetary science competition.
> 
> That Northrop believes its Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform, or VAMP, could be ready to compete for about $1 billion in NASA funding as soon as Oct. 1 is a testament to the company's confidence in the concept, which despite arousing the intrigue of some Venus scientists is technically immature and likely to face competition from finalists of NASA's last New Frontiers contest.
> 
> "I think we can be ready," Ron Polidan, Northrop's Redondo, California-based chief architect of civil systems, told SpaceNews.


----------



## orogenicman

danielpalos said:


> orogenicman said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> i believe cannon ball sized space probes would do quite nicely.
Click to expand...


A hardened probe could, in theory be launched into orbit with a rail gun.  This has been theorized for decades.  But the issue you raised earlier, I believe, was using rail guns to launch people into space.  And I'm afraid that is simply not possible.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astrophysicists prepare weather forecasts for planets beyond our solar system*
*4 minutes ago *

Astrophysicists prepare weather forecasts for planets beyond our solar system


> "Cloudy for the morning, turning to clear with scorching heat in the afternoon."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> While this might describe a typical late-summer day in many places on Earth, it may also apply to planets outside our solar system, according to a new study by an international team of astrophysicists from the University of Toronto, York University and Queen's University Belfast.
> 
> Using sensitive observations from the Kepler space telescope, the researchers have uncovered evidence of daily weather cycles on six extra-solar planets seen to exhibit different phases. Such phase variations occur as different portions of these planets reflect light from their stars, similar to the way our own moon cycles though different phases.
> 
> Among the findings are indications of cloudy mornings on four of them and hot, clear afternoons on two others.
> 
> "We determined the weather on these alien worlds by measuring changes as the planets circle their host stars, and identifying the day-night cycle," said Lisa Esteves, a PhD candidate in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and lead author of the study published today in _The Astrophysical Journal_.
> 
> "We traced each of them going through a cycle of phases in which different portions of the planet are illuminated by its star, from fully lit to completely dark," said Esteves.
> 
> Because the planets are very near to their stars, they are expected to rotate counter-clockwise - just as the majority of objects in our solar system do - with the right side moving in the direction of each planet's orbit. This causes an eastward movement of the planet's surface and therefore an eastward circulation of atmospheric winds. As a result, clouds that form on the planet's night side, where temperatures are cooler while it faces away from its host star, would be blown to the planet's morning side.
> 
> "As the winds continue to transport the clouds to the day side, they heat up and dissipate, leaving the afternoon sky cloud-free," said Esteves. "These winds also push the hot air eastward from the meridian, where it is the middle of the day, resulting in higher temperatures in the afternoon."
> 
> For four of the planets, the researchers saw excess brightness in the Kepler data that corresponds to when the morning side is visible. For the other two, they saw an excess when the evening side is visible.
> 
> "By comparing the planets' previously determined temperatures to the phase cycle measurements provided by Kepler, we found that the excess brightness on the morning side is most likely generated by reflected starlight," said Esteves. "These four planets are not hot enough to generate this excess light through thermal emission.
> 
> "The excess light seen on the two very hot planets can be explained by thermal emission," said Esteves. "A likely explanation is that on these two planets, the winds are moving heat towards the evening side, resulting in the excess brightness."
> 
> The Kepler telescope was the ideal instrument for the study of exoplanet phase variations. The very precise measurements it provided and the vast amount of data it collected allowed astronomers to measure the tiny signals from these distant worlds. Most of the planets examined in this study are very hot and large, with temperatures greater than 1600 degrees Celsius and sizes comparable to Jupiter - conditions far from hospitable to life but excellent for phase measurements.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Ether compounds could work like DNA on oily worlds*
*11 hours ago by Adam Hadhazy, Astrobiology Magazine *

Ether compounds could work like DNA on oily worlds


> In the search for life beyond Earth, scientists have justifiably focused on water because all biology as we know it requires this fluid. A wild card, however, is whether alternative liquids can also suffice as life-enablers. For example, Saturn's frigid moon Titan is awash in inky seas of the hydrocarbon methane.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here on warm, watery Earth, the molecules DNA and RNA serve as the blueprints of life, containing creatures' genetic instruction manuals. An immense family of proteins carries out these instructions.
> 
> Yet in a hydrocarbon medium on Titan, these molecules could never perform their profound chemical duties. Other molecules must therefore step up to the plate if non-water-based, alien life is to operate and evolve in a Darwinian sense, with genetic changes leading to diversity and complexity.
> 
> A new study proposes that molecules called ethers, not used in any genetic molecules on Earth, could fulfill the role of DNA and RNA on worlds with hydrocarbon oceans. These worlds must be a good deal toastier though than Titan, the study found, for plausibly life-like chemistry to take place.
> 
> "The genetic molecules we have proposed could perform on 'warm Titans'," said paper lead author Steven Benner, a distinguished fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, a private scientific research organization based in Alachua, Florida.



---

Space exploration fucking rocks!!!!


NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute











 Gallery
OurDwarfPlanetDreamsareComingintoFocushotos

View Caption + 
The term "dwarf planet" wasn't defined until the infamous International Astronomical Union (IAU) vote in 2006, but this year, 9 years later, we are beginning to get our first ever close-up views of two of our solar system's most famous dwarf planets: Pluto and Ceres. VIDEO: Pluto Flyby and Black Holes: Top Space Events for 2015 Currently spiraling in on Ceres, the innermost dwarf planet inhabiting the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, NASA's Dawn spacecraft is slowly revealing a cratered and complex world, details of which that have so far eluded even Hubble's powerful vision. Dawn is scheduled to make final orbital insertion around Ceres in March 2015 where it is destined to remain after its fuel runs out as a permanent human-made satellite of Ceres. A comparison image of the Hubble and Dawn views of Ceres is shown above. ANALYSIS: NASA Spacecraft Ready to Unlock Ceres' Mysteries But Dawn is just the first dwarf planet encounter of 2015. In July, NASA's New Horizons mission will flyby Pluto and its system of moons, exploring the mysterious Kuiper Belt. Between Hubble's blurry observations of Ceres and Pluto and this year's NASA encounters, many artists' impressions of these enigmatic worlds have guessed at what lies in store for our robotic explorers. But how do they measure up now we are beginning to see Ceres' and Pluto's surfaces?
Hubble (left): NASA, ESA, and J. Parker (Southwest Research Institute); Dawn (right): NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA; edit: Ian O'Neill/Discovery News






View Caption + 
This artist's impression of Ceres shows NASA's Dawn spacecraft in orbit around the dwarf planet. As opposed to an ice encrusted world, this visualization shows a cratered, moon-like surface. NEWS: Tantalizing Detail Seen on Mysterious Dwarf Planet
Walter Myers/Stocktrek Images/Corbis






View Caption + 
Again with Dawn in view, this artist's impression shows an active Ceres complete with water vapor escaping from a possible sub-surface ocean. Water vapor was detected in the vicinity of Ceres by Hubble, so Dawn will be on the look-out for any trace of geysers venting water. ANALYSIS: Water Plume 'Unequivocally' Detected at Dwarf Planet Ceres
Walter Myers/Stocktrek Images/Corbis






View Caption + 
As seen by Hubble from afar, curious white patches and possible variations in Ceres' surface composition can be seen. However, any detail in these images have so far prevented planetary scientists from fully understanding the dwarf planet's true nature. NEWS: What is That Mysterious White Blob on Ceres?
NASA, ESA, J. Parker (Southwest Research Institute), L. McFadden (University of Maryland)






View Caption + 
But now, as Dawn fast approaches orbital insertion, we're being treated to a bounty of data that shows a possibly ancient, rocky surface. Those curious white patches originally spied by Hubble are also snapping into view -- but what are they? Theories abound, but they may be tentative signs of subsurface water escaping to space and freezing on the surface. These are all signs of cryovolcanism, a dynamic that may dominate dwarf planet surface morphology. NEWS: Dwarf Planet's Puzzling Landscape Snaps into View
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA






View Caption + 
From afar, NASA's Dawn mission is able to watch Ceres rotate, as this series of observations on Feb. 4 shows. ANALYSIS: Craters Pop as NASA’s Dawn Probe Approaches Ceres
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA






View Caption + 
As Dawn gets up-close and personal with Ceres, the drama in the outer solar system is only just beginning to unfold. After 9 years of flying toward Pluto, NASA's New Horizons mission has begun approach preparations for its flyby in July. VIDEO: Pluto Getting Bigger in New Horizons Probe's Window From ground-based and Hubble observations, there at tantalizing clues that this frozen world has a surprisingly dynamic surface with a thin atmosphere that changes during Pluto's 248 year orbit around the sun. In this artist's impression of New Horizons flying over Pluto, an atmosphere has been included with cryovolcanos -- the latter of which planetary scientists hope to confirm in July.







View Caption + 
Pluto has a system of known moons, the largest of which, Charon, may be considered to be Pluto's binary partner. As Charon orbits Pluto, its powerful gravitational field tugs the dwarf planet off center, a dynamic that New Horizons has observed as it approaches. ANALYSIS: NASA Probe Captures First Pluto Approach Photos
Ron Miller/Stocktrek Images/Corbis






View Caption + 
This artist's conception shows Pluto's moon Charon eclipsing the dwarf planet. Twice every orbit around the sun, each world eclipses the other. NEWS: Tally-Ho on Targets for New Horizons After Pluto
Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Corbis






View Caption + 
When Hubble spies on Pluto, it can see the different shades of the dwarf planet's surface rotate. As shown here in these blotchy images, little detail is obvious, but large regions with differing albedo (reflectiveness) may reveal huge craters, vast plains or mountains. But until New Horizons gets close, these regions will remain a mystery.
NASA/Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS






View Caption + 
In this digital illustration rendered from 3-D NASA data of Pluto, an attempt has been made at matching observations with possible surface features.
William Radcliffe/Science Faction/Corbis






View Caption + 
In July 2014, NASA's New Horizons looked ahead and spied its ultimate goal: Pluto and Charon. Although tiny pinpricks of light, the pair can be seen orbiting one another in a binary dance that shifts Pluto off center. Both masses actually orbit an invisible point in space, above Pluto's surface, known as the Pluto-Charon barycenter. These observations have increased calls for Pluto to be redefined (yet again) as a 'binary planet.' MORE: Can We Call Pluto and Charon a 'Binary Planet' Yet?
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute






View Caption + 
Having spotted Charon months ago, New Horizons is now beginning to see Pluto's wider family of moons pop into view. Shown here are moons Nix (yellow diamond) and Hydra (orange diamond). MORE: Pluto's Tiny Moons Spied by Incoming NASA Probe
NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Southwest Research Institute






View Caption + 
Once NASA's New Horizons mission careens through the Pluto-Charon system, assuming it doesn't hit any debris on its way through, its mission in the Kuiper Belt has only just begun. Hubble is currently being used to identify possible icy targets after the spacecraft's Pluto encounter. Shown here is an artist's impression of another dwarf planet, Eris, that was discovered in 2005. Originally thought to be the tenth planet of the solar system, its discovery led to the IAU's decision to reclassify these small worlds as dwarf planets, demoting Pluto in the process, leaving us with 8 planets. But as we approach Pluto and begin to understand Ceres, just because they are dwarf planets doesn't mean they're not rich and dynamic places to explore. Our voyage of dwarf planet discovery has only just begun and regardless of our need to classify celestial objects, Pluto and Ceres hold some fascinating clues to planetary formation and solar system evolution. For more, regularly check on the NASA Dawn and NASA New Horizons mission web sites.
Corbis



‹


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## ScienceRocks

*New Horizons Probe Mission Spies Pluto's Entire Moon Family*

New Horizons Probe Mission Spies Pluto s Entire Moon Family Discovery News


> Having already discerned the dwarf planet has distinct surface features, perhaps even a polar ice cap, NASA’s New Horizons mission has now spotted not just Pluto’s largest moons, but the smallest natural satellites too.
> 
> Imaged at a distance of over 55 million miles (88 million kilometers) from the Plutonian system between April 25 and May 1, this animated sequence of five 10 second observations by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument show Pluto’s largest moon Charon, plus smaller moons Nix and Hydra, and it has also pinpointed, for the first time, the recently-discovered moons Kerberos and Styx.
> 
> ANALYSIS: NASA Probe Spies Possible Polar Ice Cap on Pluto
> 
> “New Horizons is now on the threshold of discovery,” said mission science team member John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., in a NASA news release. “If the spacecraft observes any additional moons as we get closer to Pluto, they will be worlds that no one has seen before.”



May 12, 2015 09:12 PM ET // by  Ian O'Neill 









 View Related Gallery »


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## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers directly image nearby Super-Jupiter exoplanet*

By Jamie Lendino on May 12, 2015 at 1:26 pm
Comment
Astronomers directly image nearby Super-Jupiter exoplanet ExtremeTech



> Astronomers have pinpointed the location of over 1,800 exoplanets over the past few decades, using a variety of indirect techniques like gravitational microlensing and the ‘transit’ method. Last month, NASA announced it has formed a coalition to search for alien life on exoplanets, and a few weeks ago, a team of researchers measured the visible light spectrum of one for the first time. Now a different team of astronomers in Spain has _directly imaged_ a ‘Super Jupiter’-sized exoplanet (shown above).
> 
> The giant planet is estimated to be only 150-300 million years old and 11 times the mass of Jupiter. It orbits a red dwarf star that’s 40 light years away from us — making it the closest exoplanet we’ve imaged to date. Dubbed VHS 1256b, the exoplanet orbits its star at roughly 100 times the distance the Earth orbits the Sun, and 20 times further than Jupiter orbits the Sun, the team said in a statement. The team consists of researchers from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canaries, the Centre of Astrobiology, and the Polytechnic University of Cartagena in Spain.
> 
> “As [VHS 1256b] is young, its atmosphere is still relatively warm, [at] around 1,200 degrees Celsius,” said Bartosz Gauza, a researcher who studied for his doctorate at the IAC, and is the first author on the paper. “And it is still sufficiently luminous for us to be able to detect it with the VISTA telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).”










> It’s also close enough for us to study its atmosphere. VHS 1256b appears red when measured in the near-infrared, where the exoplanet emits most of its light. (It’s the tiny red dot in the left photo above.) “In its atmosphere,” said Victor Sánchez Béjar, an IAC researcher and co-author, “we have found traces of water vapor and of alkali metals, which are normal for this type of planet — but not of methane, which is also expected at these temperatures.” Given this and the planet’s distance from the sun, it’s unlikely to be one in what scientists refer to as the habitable zone for just-right, Goldilocks alien worlds.


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## Mac1958

Sunset on Mars, from Curiosity:


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## ScienceRocks

Air Force should certify Spacex Falcon 9 no later than June 2015 and Allow Spacex to nearly Halve the cost of Air Force Launches
 






> The Air Force expects to certify SpaceX no later than June to compete for space launches, under an updated agreement that streamlines the certification process Once certified, SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 launch vehicle, can compete for national security space launches against United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin team that currently...



You just got to love Eon Musk! This man could end up cutting space flight by 80% if his first stage ideas work out.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA research reveals Europa's mystery dark material could be sea salt*
*13 hours ago *




The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa looms large in this reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute


> NASA laboratory experiments suggest the dark material coating some geological features of Jupiter's moon Europa is likely sea salt from a subsurface ocean, discolored by exposure to radiation. The presence of sea salt on Europa's surface suggests the ocean is interacting with its rocky seafloor—an important consideration in determining whether the icy moon could support life.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-nasa-reveals-europa-mystery-dark.html#jCp

*NASA's Space Launch System enters its critical design review phase*
By Anthony Wood
May 13, 2015
2 Pictures





> NASA's imaginatively-named Space Launch System (SLS), has entered its critical design review phase, which will see the leviathan rocket given the go-ahead for full-scale construction. The review represents a major milestone that must be passed with flying colors if the SLS is to make its intended maiden launch date, which is currently slated for 2017.



The modern saturn5!!!

----

*Falcon Heavy enabler for Dragon solar system explorer*

Falcon Heavy enabler for Dragon solar system explorer NASASpaceFlight.com
May 11, 2015 by Chris Bergin






> SpaceX head Elon Musk has revealed plans to utilize the Falcon Heavy and Dragon 2 vehicles for science missions throughout the solar system. Citing Dragon 2’s capability as a “science delivery platform”, Mr. Musk claimed the crew-capable spacecraft could also be tasked with landing scientific payloads at destinations ranging from the Moon and Mars – and even as far afield as Europa.
> 
> *Dragon 2 – from Pad Abort to Solar System Adventures:*
> 
> Mr. Musk, speaking after the Dragon 2 vehicle successfully conducted a Pad Abort test under the NASA Commercial Crew Program milestones, has big plans for his spacecraft.
> 
> Dragon 2 (revealed as the Dragon “V2″) is the crew variant of the cargo Dragon spacecraft that is currently enjoying numerous successful resupply runs to the International Space Station (ISS).


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA selects concepts for phase I of the 2015 NIAC program*
NASA selects concepts for phase I of the 2015 NIAC program


> The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts NIAC program has announced 15 phase I winners in its quest to make science fiction science fact. The aim of the program is to encourage the innovation of ideas with the potential to transform future aerospace and exploration operations, but more importantly, it grants us a tantalizing and often fantastical glimpse of what the future may hold.
> 
> 
> In the past, NIAC has given rise to a fascinating blend of concepts, from the mundane to the overtly ambitious. In recent years it has filled our heads with ideas of futuristic aerospace concepts and submarines on Titan*. *The 15 successful 2015 phase I recipients haven't failed to add a sense of wonder to proceedings.


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## ScienceRocks

*Circular orbits for small extrasolar planets*
*5 hours ago by Louise Børsen-Koch *




Credit: Aarhus University



> Orbits of 74 small extrasolar planets are found to be close to circular, in contrast to previous measurements of massive exoplanets. The results, to be published in the _Astrophysical Journal_ are obtained by the SAC researchers Vincent Van Eylen and Simon Albrecht.
> 
> Researchers based at Aarhus University have measured the orbital eccentricity of 74 small extrasolar planets and found their orbits to be close to circular, similar to the planets in the solar system. But in contrast to previous measurements of more massive exoplanets where highly eccentric orbits are commonly found. These findings have important implications for planet formation theory, as well as planet occurrence rates and habitability. These findings are a major step that will improve understanding of the planet formation mechanisms that lead to high orbital eccentricities.




Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-circular-orbits-small-extrasolar-planets.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

*Eccentricity from transit photometry: small planets in Kepler multi-planet systems have low eccentricities*
Authors: Vincent Van Eylen, Simon Albrecht
(Submitted on 11 May 2015)


> Abstract: Solar system planets move on almost circular orbits. In strong contrast, many massive gas giant exoplanets travel on highly elliptical orbits, whereas the shape of the orbits of smaller, more terrestrial, exoplanets remained largely elusive. Knowing the eccentricity distribution in systems of small planets would be important as it holds information about the planet's formation and evolution, and influences its habitability. We make these measurements using photometry from the Kepler satellite and utilizing a method relying on Kepler's second law, which relates the duration of a planetary transit to its orbital eccentricity, if the stellar density is known. Our sample consists of 28 bright stars with precise asteroseismic density measurements. These stars host 74 planets with an average radius of 2.6 R⊕ . We find that the eccentricity of planets in Kepler multi-planet systems is low and can be described by a Rayleigh distribution with σ = 0.049 ± 0.013. This is in full agreement with solar system eccentricities, but in contrast to the eccentricity distributions previously derived for exoplanets from radial velocity studies. Our findings are helpful in identifying which planets are habitable because the location of the habitable zone depends on eccentricity, and to determine occurrence rates inferred for these planets because planets on circular orbits are less likely to transit. For measuring eccentricity it is crucial to detect and remove Transit Timing Variations (TTVs), and we present some previously unreported TTVs. Finally transit durations help distinguish between false positives and true planets and we use our measurements to confirm six new exoplanets.




Van Eylen & Albrecht "Eccentricity from transit photometry: small planets in Kepler multi-planet systems have low eccentricities"
http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.02814

Eccentricity constraints on a bunch of planets, plus verification of six planets in the systems Kepler-92 (already host to two confirmed planets), Kepler-449 and Kepler-450.

----
Kepler 92 goes from 2 to 6 planets
Kepler 449 and Kepler 450 is confirmed.


------------------------------------------------------------------

*Long-lived, long-period radial velocity variations in Aldebaran: A planetary companion and stellar activity*


> We investigate the nature of the long-period radial velocity variations in Alpha Tau first reported over 20 years ago. We analyzed precise stellar radial velocity measurements for Alpha Tau spanning over 30 years. An examination of the Halpha and Ca II 8662 spectral lines, and Hipparcos photometry was also done to help discern the nature of the long-period radial velocity variations. Our radial velocity data show that the long-period, low amplitude radial velocity variations are long-lived and coherent. Furthermore, Halpha equivalent width measurements and Hipparcos photometry show no significant variations with this period. Another investigation of this star established that there was no variability in the spectral line shapes with the radial velocity period. An orbital solution results in a period of P = 628.96 +/- 0.90 d, eccentricity, e = 0.10 +/- 0.05, and a radial velocity amplitude, K = 142.1 +/- 7.2 m/s. Evolutionary tracks yield a stellar mass of 1.13 +/- 0.11 M_sun, which corresponds to a minimum companion mass of 6.47 +/- 0.53 M_Jup with an orbital semi-major axis of a = 1.46 +/- 0.27 AU. After removing the orbital motion of the companion, an additional period of ~ 520 d is found in the radial velocity data, but only in some time spans. A similar period is found in the variations in the equivalent width of Halpha and Ca II. Variations at one-third of this period are also found in the spectral line bisector measurements. The 520 d period is interpreted as the rotation modulation by stellar surface structure. Its presence, however, may not be long-lived, and it only appears in epochs of the radial velocity data separated by ∼ 10 years. This might be due to an activity cycle. The data presented here provide further evidence of a planetary companion to Alpha Tau, as well as activity-related radial velocity variations.




----------------------------------------------------------------------

*Astronomers baffled by discovery of rare quasar quartet*
*12 minutes ago *




Image of the region of the space occupied by the rare quasar quartet. The four quasars are indicated by arrows. The quasars are embedded in a giant nebula of cool dense gas visible in the image as a blue haze. The nebula has an extent of one …more


> Using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, a group of astronomers led by Joseph Hennawi of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have discovered the first quadruple quasar: four rare active black holes situated in close proximity to one another. The quartet resides in one of the most massive structures ever discovered in the distant universe, and is surrounded by a giant nebula of cool dense gas. Because the discovery comes with one-in-ten-million odds, perhaps cosmologists need to rethink their models of quasar evolution and the formation of the most massive cosmic structures. The results are being published in the May 15, 2015 edition of the journal _Science_.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-astronomers-baffled-discovery-rare-quasar.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

*Futuristic Laser Space Engine Passes Its First Test*

*Someday it could get us to the moon within hours and Mars within days*



> In 2013, Y.K. Bae scored funding from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program to study an amazing new kind of propulsion: Thrust that comes not from liquid rockets but from lasers continuously fired at the spacecraft, which would steadily gain momentum in the frictionless vacuum of space. It's called the Photonic Laser Thrust system, and it could drastically reduce the amount of fuel needed for space missions. And now, Bae has announced that lab tests of the technology were successful.
> In the experiment, Bae fired a laser at a one-pound mock spaceship on a frictionless track and successfully produced thrust. The laser bounced continuously between two mirrors inside a cavity at the bottom of the simulated spaceship, building momentum of 1.1 milliNewtons.


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## ScienceRocks

The Universe is full of rogue stars, rogue planets and galaxies that were tough for older telescopes to see   






> Millions of overlooked galaxies When researchers took a closer look at surveys of galaxies in the local universe, they found many had been mischaracterised. More careful analysis of images revealed that 21 galaxies that originally looked like big 3D clouds of stars – "giant elliptical galaxies" – were actually flat 2D disc galaxies with


...


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## danielpalos

Rail gun technology is already here; easily portable; would benefit from solar power in space and is cost effective, especially with any advance in miniaturization that could enable space capable probes to gather some fixed Standard of metrics and about the size of a cannon ball.


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## ScienceRocks

DARPA aims for 100 times better space telescopes and Spy satellites
 




State-of-the-art imagery of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO), up to 2,000 km (1,200 miles) high, can achieve resolution of 1 pixel for every 10 cm today, providing relatively crisp details. But image resolution for objects in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), a favorite parking place for space assets roughly 36,000 km (22,000 miles) high,...


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## ScienceRocks

Spacex Falcon 9 certified for medium risk NASA launches and another Russian Launch Failure
 




SpaceX has been certified by NASA’s for Falcon 9 rockets to carryout Category 2 space missions. These are ”medium risk’ launches such as satellites and less expensive space probes. The Atlas 5, Delta 2 and Pegasus XL rockets operate under this certification. It took three years for SpaceX to have its Falcon 9 to complete the certification...


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## ScienceRocks

*International Space Station may get laser cannon to vaporize orbital debris
International Space Station may get laser cannon to vaporize orbital debris ExtremeTech
*


> The International Space Station (ISS) has been forced to alter trajectory numerous times over the years, but not for any scientific of logistical reason — it was necessary to avoid collisions with space junk. The day of simply stepping out of the way could be coming to an end, though. Researchers from Japan’s Riken Computational Astrophysics Laboratory have proposed a system that could blast dangerous space debris out of the sky before it comes close to the ISS.


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## danielpalos

Cool.  Advances in such technologies could help with space objects in near Earth vicinity.


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## ScienceRocks

Tiny Solar Sail 'Cubesat' Launching with X-37B Space Plane on Wednesday
19 May 2015









> A tiny solar-sailing spacecraft will hitch a ride on the rocket that blasts the United States Air Force's X-37B space plane into orbit on its latest mystery mission tomorrow (May 20).
> 
> The robotic X-37B spacecraft is scheduled to launch tomorrow at 10:45 a.m. EDT (1445 GMT) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The booster will also loft 10 tiny "cubesats," including a spacecraft called LightSail, which is about the size of a loaf of bread.
> LightSail is part of the nonprofit Planetary Society's effort to develop and advance solar sail technology. Solar sails harness solar radiation pressure, which imparts a tiny but continuous push that can accelerate a spacecraft to tremendous speeds over time.
> Solar sailing holds a great deal of promise for cubesats, advocates say. These tiny spacecraft don't have a lot of room for onboard fuel, and they generally launch as ride-alongs on rockets carrying much more expensive primary payloads.
> "The group buying the rocket — the primary payload — they get a little bit nervous about, say, 10 miniature fuel banks on your cubesat when they have a multimillion-dollar payload sitting on top of it," said Jason Davis, a digital editor at The Planetary Society, which is headed by former TV "Science Guy" Bill Nye.
> "That's what's kind of kept cubesats limited thus far," Davis told Space.com. "So we're trying to show that solar sailing is one way that you can have sort of free propulsion, which could conceivably take cubesats to the next level."






http://www.space.com...pace-plane.html


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## ScienceRocks

Second planet at HD 110014, and disconfirmed planets at HD 47536, HD 122430 and HD 70573

RAFT I: Discovery of new planetary candidates and updated orbits from archival FEROS spectra
http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04796


> A recent reanalysis of archival data has lead several authors to arrive at strikingly different conclusions for a number of planet-hosting candidate stars. In particular, some radial velocities measured using FEROS spectra have been shown to be inaccurate, throwing some doubt on the validity of a number of planet detections. Motivated by these results, we have begun the Reanalysis of Archival FEROS specTra (RAFT) program and here we discuss the first results from this work. We have reanalyzed FEROS data for the stars HD 11977, HD 47536, HD 70573, HD 110014 and HD 122430, all of which are claimed to have at least one planetary companion. We have reduced the raw data and computed the radial velocity variations of these stars, achieving a long-term precision of ~ 10 m/s on the known stable star tau Ceti, and in good agreement with the residuals to our fits. We confirm the existence of planets around HD 11977, HD 47536 and HD 110014, but with different orbital parameters than those previously published. In addition, we found no evidence of the second planet candidate around HD 47536, nor any companions orbiting HD 122430 and HD 70573. Finally, we report the discovery of a second planet around HD 110014, with a minimum mass of 3.1 Mjup and a orbital period of 130 days. Analysis of activity indicators allow us to confirm the reality of our results and also to measure the impact of magnetic activity on our radial velocity measurements. These results confirm that very metal-poor stars down to [Fe/H]~ -0.7 dex, can indeed form giant planets given the right conditions.


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## ScienceRocks

*ESA spacecraft detects the presence of enormous Martian supervolcano*
By Anthony Wood
May 21, 2015
4 Pictures





> ESA's Mars Express orbiter has captured images that may indicate the presence of supervolcanoes on the surface of Mars. If the findings are later confirmed, the existence of these leviathan volcanoes may greatly inform current theories on climate formation, as eruptions from the supervolcanoes could have dramatically altered the Martian global environment.


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## ScienceRocks

LightSail Sends First Data Back to Earth
 





The Planetary Society’s LightSail spacecraft is sending home telemetry data following a Wednesday commute to orbit aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Deployment from the Centaur upper stage occurred at 1:05 p.m. EDT (17:05 p.m. UTC), and LightSail crossed into range of its Cal Poly San Luis Obispo ground station at 2:20 p.m....


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## Mac1958

This is a freakin' great thread, Matthew.

I've said to myself, "holy crap, how cool" to most of the posts.

.


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## ScienceRocks

In the Late-2020s a microlensing survey could tell if Rogue planets are more common than planets around Stars
 






> The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is a proposed infrared space observatory which was selected by National Research Council committee as the top priority for the next decade of astronomy. The WFIRST space telescope could be in space by 2024 if it is started in 2017. Estimates suggested that every planetary system in the galaxy...


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## ScienceRocks

Large Survey Telescope will image the entire sky every few nights for a thousand fold increase in survey power
 




The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a planned wide-field "survey" reflecting telescope that will photograph the entire available sky every few nights. The LSST is currently in its design and mirror-development phases. Site construction is scheduled to begin in October 2014, with engineering first light in 2019, science first light...


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## ScienceRocks

Mind Boggling: NASA Discovers "The Most Luminous Galaxy in the Universe"



> (Washington, DC)—A remote galaxy shining with the light of more than 300 trillion suns has been discovered using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The galaxy is the most luminous galaxy found to date and belongs to a new class of objects recently discovered by WISE—extremely luminous infrared galaxies, or ELIRGs.
> 
> "We are looking at a very intense phase of galaxy evolution," said Chao-Wei Tsai of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, lead author of a new report appearing in the May 22 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. "This dazzling light may be from the main growth spurt of the galaxy's black hole."
> 
> The brilliant galaxy, known as WISE J224607.57-052635.0, may have a behemoth black hole at its belly, gorging itself on gas. Supermassive black holes draw gas and matter into a disk around them, heating the disk to roaring temperatures of millions of degrees and blasting out high-energy, visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light. The light is blocked by surrounding cocoons of dust. As the dust heats up, it radiates infrared light.
> 
> Immense black holes are common at the cores of galaxies, but finding one this big so "far back" in the cosmos is rare. Because light from the galaxy hosting the black hole has traveled 12.5 billion years to reach us, astronomers are seeing the object as it was in the distant past. The black hole was already billions of times the mass of our sun when our universe was only a tenth of its present age of 13.8 billion years


.


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## longknife

Certainly not a typical galaxy. Explained @ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150525100810.htm


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## ScienceRocks

*KELT-8b: A highly inflated transiting hot Jupiter and a new technique for extracting high-precision radial velocities from noisy spectra*



> We announce the discovery of a highly inflated transiting hot Jupiter discovered by the KELT-North survey. A global analysis including constraints from isochrones indicates that the V = 10.8 host star (HD 343246) is a mildly evolved, G dwarf with Teff=5754+54-55 K, logg=4.078+0.049-0.054, [Fe/H]=0.272±0.038, an inferred mass M∗=1.211+0.078-0.066 M⊙, and radius R∗=1.67+0.14-0.12 R⊙. The planetary companion has mass MP=0.867+0.065-0.061 MJ, radius RP=1.86+0.18-0.16 RJ, surface gravity loggP=2.793+0.072-0.075, and density ρP=0.167+0.047-0.038[/sub] g cm[sup]-3. The planet is on a roughly circular orbit with semimajor axis a=0.04571+0.00096-0.00084 AU and eccentricity e=0.035+0.050-0.025. The best-fit linear ephemeris is T0=2456883.4803±0.0007 BJDTDB and P=3.24406±0.00016 days. This planet is one of the most inflated of all known transiting exoplanets, making it one of the few members of a class of extremely low density, highly-irradiated gas giants. The low stellar logg and large implied radius are supported by stellar density constraints from follow-up light curves, plus an evolutionary and space motion analysis. We also develop a new technique to extract high precision radial velocities from noisy spectra that reduces the observing time needed to confirm transiting planet candidates. This planet boasts deep transits of a bright star, a large inferred atmospheric scale height, and a high equilibrium temperature of Teq=1675+61-55 K, assuming zero albedo and perfect heat redistribution, making it one of the best targets for future atmospheric characterization studies.


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/co...ssions-in-2017



> The Commercial Crew Program ordered its first crew rotation mission from The Boeing Company. SpaceX, which successfully performed a pad abort test of its flight vehicle earlier this month, is expected to receive its first order later this year. Determination of which company will fly its mission to the station first will be made at a later time. The contract calls for the orders to take place prior to certification to support the lead time necessary for the first mission in late 2017, provided the contractors meet certain readiness conditions.


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## ScienceRocks

More details of Chandrayaan 2 and its payload.

http://indianexpress.com/article/tec...2-by-2015-end/


> ISRO has set 2017-18 as a target for launching Chandrayaan-2, which is being developed as an “indigenous” mission. “The preliminary design review is over and the flight models are under fabrication. We will be delivering the payload by the end of this year or at the beginning of next year,” Misra added. SAC is developing three major payloads namely the Terrain Mapping Camera-2 (TMC-2), Imaging Infra-Red Spectrometer (IIRS) and L&S Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (L&S-band SAR). All these three payloads will be part of the orbiter that will encircle the moon.
> 
> Most of the equipment being developed at SAC are advanced versions of those on Chandrayaan-1 which was lost mid-way during the mission in 2009. For instance, the TMC-1 that had accompanied Chandrayaan-1 mission had mapped only 45 percent of the moon’s surface. TMC-2, which will be only two-third the weight of it’s predecessor, will be mapping the remaining surface and will be creating a three-dimensional map of the lunar surface.
> 
> Meanwhile, the L&S-Band SAR will be the first indigenously developed microwave sensor to be flown in a planetary mission. This equipment will not only help detect water-ice, but it will also have the capability to estimate the quantum of water present in a particular area. It will also map polar regions and lunar craters.
> 
> The IIRS is also an advanced version to the spectrometers – Hyper Spectral Imager (of SAC), Moon Mineralogy Mapper (NASA) and Near Infrared Spectrometer (Germany) – flown onboard the Chandrayaan-1. Such an instrument which can also look at the permanently shadowed areas of polar regions of the moon is being development for the first time in ISRO.


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA’s New Horizons Sees More Detail as It Draws Closer to Pluto*
*
NASA s New Horizons Sees More Detail as It Draws Closer to Pluto NASA*
What a difference 20 million miles makes! Images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft are growing in scale as the spacecraft approaches its mysterious target. The new images, taken May 8-12 using a powerful telescopic camera and downlinked last week, reveal more detail about Pluto’s complex and high contrast surface. 
















> These images show Pluto in the latest series of New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) photos, taken May 8-12, 2015, compared to LORRI images taken one month earlier. In the month between these image sets, New Horizons’ distance to Pluto decreased from 68 million miles (110 million kilometers) to 47 million miles (75 million kilometers), as the spacecraft speeds toward a close encounter with the Pluto system in mid-July. The April images are shown on the left, with the May images on the right. All have been rotated to align Pluto’s rotational axis with the vertical direction (up-down), as depicted schematically in the center panel. Between April and May, Pluto appears to get larger as the spacecraft gets closer, with Pluto’s apparent size increasing by approximately 50 percent. Pluto rotates around its axis every 6.4 Earth days, and these images show the variations in Pluto’s surface features during its rotation. These images are displayed at four times the native LORRI image size, and have been processed using a method called deconvolution, which sharpens the original images to enhance features on Pluto. Deconvolution can occasionally add “false” details, so the finest details in these pictures will need to be confirmed by images taken from closer range in the next few weeks. All of the images are displayed using the same linear brightness scale.
> 
> The images were taken from just under 50 million miles (77 million kilometers) away, using the  Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons. Because New Horizons was approximately 20 million miles closer to Pluto in mid-May than in mid-April, the new images contain about twice as many pixels on the object as images made in mid-April.
> 
> A technique called image deconvolution sharpens the raw, unprocessed pictures beamed back to Earth. In the April images, New Horizons scientists determined that Pluto has broad surface markings – some bright, some dark – including a bright area at one pole that may be a polar cap. The newer imagery released here shows finer details. Deconvolution can occasionally produce spurious details, so the finest details in these images will need confirmation from images to be made from closer range in coming weeks.
> 
> "As New Horizons closes in on Pluto, it's transforming from a point of light to a planetary object of intense interest," said NASA's Director of Planetary Science Jim Green. "We're in for an exciting ride for the next seven weeks."
> 
> “These new images show us that Pluto’s differing faces are each distinct; likely hinting at what may be very complex surface geology or variations in surface composition from place to place,” added New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “These images also continue to support the hypothesis that Pluto has a polar cap whose extent varies with longitude; we’ll be able to make a definitive determination of the polar bright region’s iciness when we get compositional spectroscopy of that region in July.”
> 
> The images New Horizons returns will dramatically improve in coming weeks as the spacecraft speeds closer to its July 14 encounter with the Pluto system, covering about 750,000 miles per day.
> 
> “By late June the image resolution will be four times better than the images made May 8-12, and by the time of closest approach, we expect to obtain images with more than 5,000 times the current resolution,” said Hal Weaver, the mission’s project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.
> 
> Following a January 2006 launch, New Horizons is currently about 2.95 billion miles from home; the spacecraft is healthy and all systems are operating normally.


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## ScienceRocks

*Boeing awarded first commercial manned space mission contract*
By David Szondy
May 28, 2015
2 Pictures





> Commercial passenger spaceflight has gone on the books with Boeing announcing that it's received the first contract ever issued to a private company to carry out a manned space mission. The NASA task order means that Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft will ferry crews to the International Space Station (ISS) on up to six missions.


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## ScienceRocks

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134262236.htm



> China's space capabilities are ranked the fourth in the world, and the gap between the leading powers is narrowing, according to a report issued recently by a Chinese research organization.
> 
> China is at a crucial period developing from a major power to a great power in space, says an evaluation by the Beijing Institute of Space Science and Technology Information, affiliated to the China Academy of Space Technology.
> 
> Last year saw a record 92 launches around the world, with 262 spacecraft put into orbit. The institute for the first time evaluated the space capabilities of 20 countries and regions across six aspects: strategy, product systems, infrastructure, industrial scale, innovation and international influence.
> 
> It rated the United States, Europe, Russia, China, Japan and India as the leading powers in space.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA begins testing InSight, next Mars lander, for 2016 mission

NASA begins testing InSight next Mars lander for 2016 mission ExtremeTech*




> NASA has had a remarkable record when it comes to successful missions on the Red Planet, dating back to 1976 with Viking 1 and 2, Pathfinder and Sojourner in 1997, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in 2004, and Curiosity‘s crazy ‘7 minutes of terror’ landing in 2012. Each time, the spacecraft rovers are orders of magnitude more sophisticated, and two of the last three rovers are still doing science. Now NASA’s set to do it all over again come March 2016 with the InSight spacecraft, which will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and land on Mars roughly six months later.
> 
> Once on the surface, the mission is scheduled to last two years — 720 days, or 700 sols — and begin delivering science data in October 2016.





> “Today, our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way, making great progress on the journey to Mars,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, in a statement. “Together, humans and robotics will pioneer Mars and the solar system.”
> 
> InSight will be as large as a car, and instead of looking for signs of life or studying surface rock composition, it’s directed at learning more about the interior of Mars. The name is an unwieldy acronym that reflects that: Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. Currently, NASA has begun testing the craft’s ability to operate in and survive deep space travel, as well as the famously harsh conditions on the surface of the Red Planet.


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## ScienceRocks

*MIT study on exoplanet orbits may narrow parameters in search for life*
By Anthony Wood
June 1, 2015






> A team of researchers from MIT and Aarhus University, Denmark, have discovered that Earth-sized exoplanets orbit their parent stars in the same way that our planet orbits our own Sun – maintaining a roughly equidistant circular orbit. The discovery further narrows the characteristics of worlds that could potentially play host to extraterrestrial life.


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## ScienceRocks

*Herschel images present a stunning insight into the distribution of matter in our galaxy*
By Anthony Wood
June 1, 2015
3 Pictures





> Three stunning new images from ESA's Herschel Space Observatory are providing new insights into how matter is distributed in our galaxy. Observations made by the orbital telescope have led astronomers to conclude that our galaxy is threaded with filamentary structures similar to those featured in the newly-released images, the smallest of which stretches across 170 light years of space.


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## ScienceRocks

*Green light for Magellan super-scope*


3 June 2015








> Construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope has been given the go-ahead.
> One of the largest optical observing systems ever conceived, the GMT will sit atop Cerro Las Campanas in Chile.
> With its 24.5m-wide primary mirror system, astronomers should be able to see the first objects to emit light in the Universe, investigate dark energy and dark matter, and identify potentially habitable planets.
> The GMT's international partners have all approved the $500m assembly phase.
> Contracts against this money can now be awarded to suppliers.
> Three are already at various stages of production (one is actually finished); the other four will begin their manufacture very soon.
> "We expect in late 2021, possibly in early 2022, we will put three or four primary mirrors in the telescope, start doing some engineering, start doing some astronomy, and by that point we will have the largest (optical) telescope on the planet by a good margin," said GMT director, Pat McCarthy.
> "We'll then slowly integrate the rest of the mirrors as they come along so that by 2024 or 2025, we should have all seven mirrors in the telescope," he told BBC News.






http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-32984957


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## longknife

*Space Station Remodelling*








Why is the Lame Street Media giving out so little news about this huge advancement for science in general? Because NASA not has to pay Russia to get our astronauts there? Of because re-supply is being done by private companies.


They make a huge change to the station and not a peep!


Read the story @ Space Station remodelling


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## ScienceRocks

*Hubble studies Pluto's wobbly moons*

5 June 2015








> Hubble has revealed fascinating new details about Pluto's four smaller moons.
> At a distance of five billion km, the telescope only sees the satellites as faint pinpricks of light, and yet it has been able to discern information on their size, colour, and rotational and orbital characteristics.
> Hubble finds the little objects to be somewhat chaotic in their behaviour.
> They are very likely wobbling end over end as they move through their orbits.
> "If you can imagine what it would be like to live on [these moons], you would literally not know where the Sun was coming up tomorrow," said Mark Showalter from the Seti Institute, US.
> "The Sun might rise in the west and set in the east. The Sun might rise in the west and set in the north for that matter.
> "In fact, if you had real estate on the north pole… you might discover one day you’re on the south pole."






http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-33005898


----------



## ScienceRocks

ESA reveals candidates for new space science missions Spaceflight Now


> In a separate announcement Thursday, ESA unveiled its top three picks for a new “medium-class” science mission due for launch in 2025.
> 
> The three candidate missions — ARIEL, THOR and XIPE — were culled from a list of 27 proposals. They will now undergo thorough evaluations before ESA officials decide on one project to proceed toward launch.


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2015/06/...oster-engines/



> Details are contained in a patent application titled, Simplified Reusable Module for Launcher. Media reports say the company has been working on the project, which is code named Adeline, since 2010 and has conducted demonstration flights. The system could be used on any rocket, *including the Ariane 6 that is now under development*.


 More information in spacenews.com

http://spacenews.com/meet-adeline-ai...spacex-rocket/


> Airbus Defence and Space on June 5 unveiled the product of what it said was a five-year effort to design a reusable Ariane rocket first-stage engine and avionics package, a project company official said was stimulated by SpaceX’s work on reusable rockets.
> 
> Airbus officials said they believe they have resolved some of the issues inherent in Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX’s reusability effort, notably the exposure of the first stage engine to high-speed stresses as it descends through the atmosphere to its landing zone.
> 
> Airbus’s Adeline — short for Advanced Expendable Launcher with Innovative engine Economy — also imposes a much smaller performance penalty on its rocket than is the case for SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 first stage, all the while reusing 80 percent of the stage’s economic value — the engine, avionics and propulsion bay.


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## ScienceRocks

*Deployment! LightSail Boom Motor Whirrs to Life*


> LightSail's tiny solar sail deployment motor sprung to life Sunday afternoon, marking an important milestone for The Planetary Society’s nail-biting test mission. Sail deployment began at 3:47 p.m. EDT (19:47 UTC) off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, as the spacecraft traveled northwest to southeast.
> Telemetry received on the ground showed motor counts climbing to the halfway point before LightSail traveled out of range. Power levels were consistent with ground-based deployment tests, and the spacecraft’s cameras were on. "All indications are that the solar sail deployment was proceeding nominally," wrote mission manager David Spencer in an email update.


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## ScienceRocks

A lower-mass WASP-18 b's analogue, (apparently) in multiple system too.

WASP-121 b: a hot Jupiter in a polar orbit and close to tidal disruption



> We present the discovery by the WASP-South survey, in close collaboration with the Euler and TRAPPIST telescopes, of WASP-121 b, a new remarkable short-period transiting hot Jupiter, whose planetary nature has been statistically validated by the PASTIS software. The planet has a mass of 1.183+0.064−0.062 MJup, a radius of 1.865 ± 0.044 RJup, and transits every 1.2749255+0.0000020−0.0000025 days an active F6-type main-sequence star (V=10.4, 1.353+0.080−0.079 M⊙, 1.458 ± 0.030 R⊙, Teff = 6460 ± 140 K). A notable property of WASP-121 b is that its orbital semi-major axis is only ∼1.15 times larger than its Roche limit, which suggests that the planet might be close to tidal disruption. Furthermore, its large size and extreme irradiation (∼7.1109 erg s−1cm−2) make it an excellent target for atmospheric studies via secondary eclipse observations. Using the TRAPPIST telescope, we indeed detect its emission in the z′-band at better than ∼4σ, the measured occultation depth being 603 ± 130 ppm. Finally, from a measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect with the CORALIE spectrograph, we infer a sky-projected spin-orbit angle of 257.8+5.3−5.5 deg. This result indicates a significant misalignment between the spin axis of the host star and the orbital plane of the planet, the planet being in a nearly polar orbit. Such a high misalignment suggests a migration of the planet involving strong dynamical events with a third body.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA's "flying saucer" completes second test*
By Anthony Wood
June 9, 2015
2 Pictures





> NASA has put a new supersonic parachute design through its paces in the second test of its flying saucer-like Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD). The technology is being developed for future exploration of Mars, where it would allow NASA and its partners to land heavier payloads on the surface.


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## ScienceRocks

*Spacecraft built from graphene could run on nothing but sunlight*




> GRAPHENE to the stars. The material with amazing properties has just had another added to the list. It seems these sheets of carbon one atom thick can turn light into action, maybe forming the basis of a fuel-free spacecraft.
> Graphene was discovered accidentally by researchers playing with pencils and sticky tape. Its flat structure is very strong and conducts electricity and heat extremely well. Yongsheng Chen of Nankai University in Tianjin, China, and his colleagues have been investigating whether larger arrangements of carbon can retain some of these properties. Earlier this year they published details of a "graphene sponge", a squidgy material made by fusing crumpled sheets of graphene oxide.
> While cutting graphene sponge with a laser, they noticed the light propelled the material forwards. That was odd, because while lasers have been used toshove single molecules around
> 
> 
> 
> 
> , the sponge was a few centimetres across so should be too large to move.


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-hubble-telescope-detects-sunscreen-layer-on-distant-planet



> NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected a stratosphere, one of the primary layers of Earth’s atmosphere, on a massive and blazing-hot exoplanet known as WASP-33b.
> The presence of a stratosphere can provide clues about the composition of a planet and how it formed. This atmospheric layer includes molecules that absorb ultraviolet and visible light, acting as a kind of “sunscreen” for the planet it surrounds. Until now, scientists were uncertain whether these molecules would be found in the atmospheres of large, extremely hot planets in other star systems.
> These findings will appear in the June 12 issue of the Astrophysical Journal


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/pr...4,5,6,15,17,34


"This test was highly visible and provided volumes of important information, which serves as tangible proof that our team is making significant progress toward launching crews on American rockets from America soon," said Jon Cowart, partner manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program. "The reams of data collected provide designers with a real benchmark of how accurate their analyses and models are at predicting reality. As great as our modern computational methods are, they still can't beat a flight test, like this, for finding out what is going on with the hardware."

The successful test of SpaceX's Crew Dragon launch escape capabilities demonstrated the spacecraft's ability to save astronauts in the unlikely event of a life-threatening situation on the launch pad.

"This is the first major flight test for a vehicle that will bring astronauts to space for the entire Commercial Crew Program," said Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX. "The successful test validated key predictions as it relates to the transport of astronauts to the space station. With NASA's support, SpaceX continues to make excellent and rapid progress in making the Crew Dragon spacecraft the safest and most reliable vehicle ever flown."


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## ScienceRocks

*HAT-P-55b: A Hot Jupiter Transiting a Sun-like Star*

We report the discovery of a new transiting extrasolar planet, HAT-P-55b. The planet orbits a V = 13.207 +/- 0.039 sun-like star with a mass of 1.013 +/- 0.037 solar masses, a radius of 1.011 +/- 0.036 solar radii and a metallicity of -0.03 +/- 0.08. The planet itself is a typical hot Jupiter with a period of 3.5852467 +/- 0.0000064 days, a mass of 0.582 +/- 0.056 Jupiter masses and a radius of 1.182 +/- 0.055 Jupiter radii. This discovery adds to the increasing sample of transiting planets with measured bulk densities, which is needed to put constraints on models of planetary structure and formation theories.

*New entry: HAT-P-56 b.*

An inflated massive Hot Jupiter transiting a bright F star followed up with K2.0 observations

We report the discovery of HAT-P-56b by the HATNet survey, an inflated hot Jupiter transiting a bright F type star in Field 0 of NASA's K2 mission. We combine ground-based discovery and follow-up light curves with high precision photometry from K2, as well as ground-based radial velocities from TRES on the FLWO~1.5m telescope to determine the physical properties of this system. HAT-P-56b has a mass of Mp≈2.18MJ, radius of Rp≈1.47RJ, and transits its host star on a near-grazing orbit with a period of P≈ 2.7908 d. The radius of HAT-P-56b is among the largest known for a planet with Mp>2MJ. The host star has a V-band magnitude of 10.9, mass of 1.30 M⊙, and radius of 1.43 R⊙. The periodogram of the K2 light curve suggests the star is a γ Dor variable. HAT-P-56b is an example of a ground-based discovery of a transiting planet, where space-based observations greatly improve the confidence in the confirmation of its planetary nature, and also improve the accuracy of the planetary parameters.


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## ScienceRocks

*Lava Lake on Jupiter Moon Io Triggers 'Hotspots' Seen from Earth *
by Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor  |  June 11, 2015 12:12pm ET
Lava Lake on Jupiter Moon Io Triggers Hotspots Seen from Earth


> New images of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io show "hotspots" happening in different areas of a volcanic lake. Even more surprising given the lake's small size: the images were taken from Earth.
> 
> The pictures of the lake, called Loki Patera, suggest the thermal activity may happen as lava on top of the lake crusts over and falls into the liquid below, triggering emissions visible from Earth in ground telescopes. Astronomers even managed to create a video of Jupiter's moon Europa casting a shadow on the lava lake based on their observations.
> 
> Astronomers have detected emissions from the Io's lava lake, which is 124 miles wide (200 kilometers) lake from our planet, but only as a single glow. Researchers got a better look with the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham in southeastern Arizona. The telescope has two 8.4-meter mirrors
> 
> gazing at the sky, 6 meters (20 feet) apart from each other.


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## ScienceRocks

*Japan announces plans to send probe to Martian moon*
Japan's space agency JAXA has announced its intention to send a spacecraft to one of Mar's moons, collect a sample from its surface and then return to Earth to allow for analyzing the sample. If successful,

---

*NASA prepares for first interplanetary CubeSats on agency's next mission to Mars*
When NASA launches its next mission on the journey to Mars – a stationary lander in 2016 – the flight will include two CubeSats. This will be the first time CubeSats have flown in deep space.


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## ScienceRocks

*'Hello Earth!': Comet probe Philae wakes up*
The European space probe Philae woke up overnight after nearly seven months in hibernation as it hurtled towards the Sun on the back of a comet, mission control said Sunday.


----------



## mamooth

"Goresat" reaches final station. 

NOAA s Satellite and Information Service NESDIS 

The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has reached its final position at the L1 Lagrange point between earth and sun, about one million miles from earth. From that vantage point, its sensors pointed at the sun will give earth an early warning of approaching solar storms. And a camera pointed back at earth will give constant measurements of earth's total reflectance/albedo, not to mention some very pretty whole-earth photos.


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## Vikrant

New Delhi: In a technology that can bring down costs significantly of launching satellites, India will test reusable launch vehicle in July, the government on Monday said.

The Indian Space Research (ISRO) will also launch Astrosat, India's first dedicated satellite for astronomy by September 2015.

...

India to test reusable launch vehicle in July ISRO - IBNLive


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## ScienceRocks

*MIT engineers unveil an inflatable shelter for camping on the Moon*



> Scientists have been exploring dwelling designs that will allow astronauts to sleep on the moon – but what about good old fashioned camping? Two MIT engineers have developed a solar-poweredinflatable pod that could allow astronauts to spend days on the lunar surface without having to return to base for life support. The mobile camper would allow two NASA astronauts to spend the night to conduct research, with protection from the sun and a support system for vitals and equipment.
> Moon exploration thus far has been limited, with astronaut explorers only able to examine themoon’s surface for short periods of time as they need to return to their landing modules for life support. The MIT engineers’ new “camping system” could allow for two astronauts to take their time with research and exploration on the lunar surface, in an easily packed system that, deflated, takes up as much space as a refrigerator and weighs just 273 pounds.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*A 15-yr-old UK schoolboy has discovered a new (exo)planet*



> A 15-yr-old schoolboy has discovered a new planet orbiting a star 1000 light years away in our galaxy. Tom Wagg was doing work-experience at Keele University when he spotted the planet by finding a tiny dip in the light of a star as a planet passed in front of it.
> ``I'm hugely excited to have a found a new planet, and I'm very impressed that we can find them so far away'', says Tom, now aged 17.  It has taken two years of further observations to prove that Tom's discovery really is a planet.
> Tom (photos below) found the planet by looking at data collected by the WASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) project, which surveys the night skies monitoring millions of stars to look for the tell-tale tiny dips (transits) caused by planets passing in front of their host star.
> Tom's planet has been given the catalogue number WASP-142b, being the 142nd discovery by the WASP collaboration. It is in the Southern constellation of Hydra. While astronomers worldwide have now found over 1000 extra-solar planets, Tom is possibly the youngest ever to have done so.


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## ScienceRocks

*Pluto just 4 weeks, 20 million miles away for spacecraft*
*1 hour ago by By Marcia Dunn *




This image made available by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute on June 11, 2015 shows four computer-enhanced views of Pluto, taken by New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). …more


> NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is at Pluto's doorstep, following an incredible journey of nine years and 3 billion miles.
> 
> 
> Four weeks from Tuesday—on July 14—New Horizons will make its closest approach to Pluto. The spacecraft will fly within 7,750 miles, inside the orbits of Pluto's five known moons. That's the approximate distance between Seattle and Sydney.
> 
> It will be the first spacecraft to explore the tiny, icy world once considered a full-fledged planet.




Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-pluto-weeks-million-miles-spacecraft.html#jCp

*Saturn spacecraft to buzz icy moon Dione June 16*
*10 hours ago by Preston Dyches *




Cassini's penultimate encounter with Saturn's moon Dione is slated for June 16. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


> NASA's Cassini spacecraft will make a close flyby of Saturn's moon Dione on June 16, coming within 321 miles (516 kilometers) of the moon's surface. The spacecraft will make its closest approach to Dione at 1:12 p.m. PDT (4:12 p.m. EDT) on June 16.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> During the flyby, Cassini's cameras and spectrometers will observe terrain that includes "Eurotas Chasmata," a region first observed 35 years ago by NASA's Voyager mission as bright, wispy streaks. After the Voyager encounter, scientists considered the possibility that the streaks were bright material extruded onto the surface by geologic activity, such as ice volcanoes. Cassini's close flybys and sharp vision later revealed the bright streaks to be an intricate network of braided canyons with bright walls, called linea.
> 
> Cassini will also try to detect and determine the composition of any fine particles being emitted from Dione, which could indicate low-level geologic activity.
> 
> Mission controllers expect images to begin arriving on Earth within a few days of the encounter.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-saturn-spacecraft-icy-moon-dione.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/measuring-the-mass-of-a-mars-size-exoplanet

Daniel Jontof-Hutter, a research associate at the Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, led a team of astronomers in a study to measure the mass of all three planets by precisely observing the times each planet passed in front of, or transited, the star Kepler-138


*Measuring the mass of a Mars-size exoplanet*


> Determining the size of an Earth-size exoplanet by the amount of starlight it blocks hundreds of light-years away once was the realm of science fiction. Measuring the mass of such a small planet based on its gravity was another level entirely, but astronomers have done just that for an exoplanet fifty percent the size of Earth.
> 
> Researchers using NASA's Kepler mission data have measured the mass of a Mars-size exoplanet that is about one tenth the mass of Earth. Called Kepler-138b, it is the first exoplanet smaller than Earth to have both its mass and size measured.  This significantly extends the range of planets with measured densities.






> By measuring both the mass and size of an exoplanet, scientists can calculate the density and infer the bulk composition to determine if a planet is predominantly made of rock, water or gas. Tiny Kepler-138b's density is consistent with a rocky composition like Earth or Mars, but further observations are needed before astronomers can definitively say that it is a rocky world.
> 
> 
> 
> Kepler-138b is the innermost of three planets that orbit Kepler-138, a star less than half the size of our sun and roughly 30 percent cooler. The Kepler-138 system is located about 200 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lyra.
> 
> The outer two planets, Kepler-138c and Kepler-138d, are approximately the size of Earth. Kepler-138c is likely to be rocky, whereas Kepler-138d is less dense and cannot be made of the same mix of material as Earth. All three planets orbit too close to their star for liquid water to exist on the surface and support life, as we know it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This plot shows the masses and sizes of the smallest exoplanets for which both quantities have been measured. The solar system planets (shown in red) are for comparison.The three Kepler-138 planets (shown in orange) are among the four smallest exoplanets with both size and mass measurements. Kepler-138b is the first exoplanet smaller than Earth to have both its mass and size measured. This significantly extends the range of planets with measured densities.
> Credits: NASA Ames/W Stenzel
> Mars-size Kepler-138b gets a mass
> "The substantial difference between the densities of the two larger planets tells us that not all planets similar to Earth in size are rocky," said Jack Lissauer, co-author and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Further study of small planets will help provide more understanding of the diversity that exists in nature, and will help determine if rocky planets like Earth are common or rare."


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## ScienceRocks

More for space travel!!! wahooo

New Horizons - YouTube


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## ScienceRocks




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## ScienceRocks

*Traces of Earliest Stars That Enriched Cosmos Are Spied*
By DENNIS OVERBYEJUNE 17, 2015

Inside
Supported By

Photo




An artist's impression of the distant galaxy CR7. Scientists say light from the galaxy has been traveling to us for 12.9 billion years. Credit M. Kornmesser/European Southern Observatory


> Astronomers said Wednesday that they had discovered a lost generation of monster stars that ushered light into the universe after the Big Bang and jump-started the creation of the elements needed for planets and life before disappearing forever.
> 
> Modern-day stars like our sun have a healthy mix of heavy elements, known as metals, but in the aftermath of the Big Bang only hydrogen, helium and small traces of lithium were available to make the first stars.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Titan's atmosphere even more Earth-like than previously thought*
*20 hours ago *



Enlarge
True-color image of layers of haze in Titan's atmosphere. Credit: NASA


> Scientists at UCL have observed how a widespread polar wind is driving gas from the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. The team analysed data gathered over seven years by the international Cassini probe, and found that the interactions between Titan's atmosphere, and the solar magnetic field and radiation, create a wind of hydrocarbons and nitriles being blown away from its polar regions into space. This is very similar to the wind observed coming from the Earth's polar regions.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-titan-atmosphere-earth-like-previously-thought.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA’s planned Europa mission spacecraft is a go*

By Jamie Lendino on June 19, 2015 at 10:12 am
32 Comments
NASA s planned Europa mission spacecraft is a go ExtremeTech






*Share This article*


> Scientists have wondered about possible alien life on Jupiter’s moon Europa, and it’s looking like we’re going to get our first real look at the problem. NASA has announced that the agency has shifted its planned Europa mission, which is to conduct a detailed survey and investigate the moon’s habitability, into the so-called development phase — meaning that it’s no longer theoretical and that it’s going to happen. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California will run the mission in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University.


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## ScienceRocks

*Study suggests active volcanism on Venus
An international team of scientists has found some of the best evidence yet that Venus, Earth's nearest neighbor, is volcanically active.*


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## ScienceRocks

*3-D printed rocket engine aims for flight record*
*Jun 15, 2015 by Deborah Osae-Oppong *



Enlarge
UC San Diego Chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space were able to successfully test the latest version of their 3-D-printed rocket engine. Credit: Erik Jepson/UC San Diego


> On a hot, dusty Friday evening in May, a caravan of five cars packed with UC San Diego students rolled onto FAR site in the Mojave Desert—a 10-acre property established by the Friends of Amateur Rocketry, Inc. to safely test and launch rockets. It took three tries, but the UC San Diego chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space were able to successfully test the latest version of their 3-D-printed rocket engine.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-d-rocket-aims-flight.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

Signs of volcanic activity found on Venus -
There Might Be Active Volcanos On Venus Popular Science


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## ScienceRocks

*Detecting exoplanets close to their host star: Astronomers develop breakthrough optical component*
*8 hours ago *



Enlarge
A double image of the star Eta Crucis taken through the vector-APP coronagraph installed at MagAO. The two main images of the star exhibit D-shaped dark holes on complementary sides. Credit: Leiden University, University of Arizona


> Astronomers have successfully commissioned a new type of optic that can reveal the image of an exoplanet next to its parent star. The 'vector Apodizing Phase Plate' (vector-APP) coronagraph was installed at the 6.5-m Magellan Clay telescope in Chile in May 2015, and the first observations demonstrated an unprecedented contrast performance very close to the star, where planets are more likely to reside. These results will be presented by PhD student Gilles Otten this Monday afternoon to the scientific community at the "In the Spirit of Lyot" conference organized by the Centre for Research in Astrophysics of Québec and researchers at the University of Montreal.



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-exoplanets-host-star-astronomers-breakthrough.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

*Pluto pictured in colour for first time: New Horizons probe sends back images ahead of its historic arrival in just three weeks*

*Scientists in Colorado have revealed new images of Pluto and Charon*
*They are the first colour images of the two by the New Horizons probe*
*Pluto appears beige-orange and Charon is grey in the images*
*New Horizons will arrive at the Plutonian system on 14 July*
By Jonathan O'Callaghan for MailOnline

Published: 09:00 EST, 22 June 2015  | Updated: 10:49 EST, 22 June 2015

Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft has returned its first colour images of Pluto and its moon Charon.

It is now just three weeks until the spacecraft makes its historic flyby of the dwarf planet, a moment that has been decades in the making.

And in these latest images, it can be seen that Pluto and Charon have different colours - although exactly why is not yet known. 







Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3134577/First-colour-images-Pluto-New-Horizons-spacecraft-sends-images-ahead-historic-arrival-just-three-weeks.html#ixzz3dr2JmnSf 
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook


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## ScienceRocks

China's R&D in docking technology has given them the world's most sensitive "eye" that enables the autonomous rendezvous and docking of two spacecraft -- flying eight times faster than bullets -- more efficiently and safely.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134345725.htm



> The "eye" is China's newly developed third-generation rendezvous and docking CCD optical imaging sensor. It will be used on China's second orbiting space lab, Tiangong-2, the Chang'e-5 lunar probe and the permanent manned space station, according to China Academy of Space Technology (CAST).
> 
> China plans to launch Tiangong-2 in 2016, and send Chang'e-5 to collect samples from the moon and return to earth around 2017. It also aims to put a permanent manned space station into service around 2022.





http://spaceref.com/mars/mars-orbite...ound-mars.html



> Mars Orbiter spacecraft has outlived its prime mission life and is healthy and operational. The spacecraft, which had earlier entered the 'blackout phase' (due to Mars moving behind the Sun from Earth's perspective), is gradually coming out of that phase. The spacecraft health data is now being received. The current elliptical orbit of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft has a periareion (nearest point to Mars) of 474 km and an apoareion (farthest point to Mars) of 71, 132 km.
> 
> The payloads onboard the Spacecraft were last operated in May 2015, and performance of all payloads were satisfactory. *Mars Colour Camera (MCC) of the spacecraft had taken 405 frames so far.* Operations of all payloads will restart in a few weeks from now.




*Chandrayaan-2 is taking shape.*

http://indianspacestation.com/resear...yaan-2-to-isro



> HAL has delivered ‘Orbiter Craft Module Structure’ of Chandrayaan-2 to ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC).
> 
> Chandrayaan-2 is a two module configuration spacecraft comprising of the ‘Orbiter Craft’ and the ‘Lander Craft’.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Pluto And Charon: 99.5% of The Way There
 




A guest post by Joseph Friedlander The New Horizons Probe is rapidly approaching the Pluto/Charon system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute Details at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=181 Details at: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150622 Notice...



> These images, taken by New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), show four different "faces" of Pluto as it rotates about its axis with a period of 6.4 days. All the images have been rotated to align Pluto's rotational axis with the vertical direction (up-down) on the figure, as depicted schematically in the upper left.
> 
> From left to right, the images were taken when Pluto's central longitude was 17, 63, 130, and 243 degrees, respectively. The date of each image, the distance of the New Horizons spacecraft from Pluto, and the number of days until Pluto closest approach are all indicated in the figure.
> These images show dramatic variations in Pluto's surface features as it rotates. When a very large, dark region near Pluto’s equator appears near the limb, it gives Pluto a distinctly, but false, non-spherical appearance. Pluto is known to be almost perfectly spherical from previous data.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mars crater wetter than thought, had water tracks in the last million years*
*9 hours ago by Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times *




Valles Marineris, Mars. Credit: NASA


> Mars is thought to have had a watery past, but when exactly it transitioned to its dry and dusty present is up for debate. Now, though, a team of scientists studying the marks on a young Martian crater has found signs that waterlogged debris flowed down the Red Planet's slopes surprisingly recently - within the last million years.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-mars-crater-wetter-thought-tracks.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Giant comet-like tail discovered on small exoplanet*
*16 minutes ago *







> The prospect of finding ocean-bearing exoplanets has been boosted, thanks to a pioneering new study.
> 
> An international team of scientists, including from the University of Exeter, has discovered an immense cloud of hydrogen escaping from a Neptune-sized exoplanet.
> 
> Such a phenomena not only helps explain the formation of hot and rocky 'super-earths', but also may potentially act as a signal for detecting extrasolar oceans. Scientists also believe they can use the discovery to envisage the future of Earth's atmosphere, four billion years from today.
> 
> The ground-breaking research is presented in the respected scientific journal, _Nature_.




 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-red-dwarf-planet-hydrogen-massive.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Best evidence of active lava flows spotted on Venus*
By Anthony Wood - June 24, 2015  3 Pictures 


ESA's Venus Express has found the best evidence yet that our planetary neighbor experiences active volcanism, as depicted in this artist's impression (Credit: ESA - AOES Medialab)


> ESA's Venus Express spacecraft has found the best evidence yet of active lava flows on Venus. Earlier missions to Venus have shown that the surface bears the unmistakable scarring of fierce, ancient volcanic activity. However, prior to Venus express, no mission had been successful in directly imaging clues to contemporary volcanism. This quirk has baffled scientists for years, as it has long been assumed that Venus hosts an internal heat source, and that heat has to escape somehow.
> 
> Venus is often given the moniker "Earth's twin", owing to the fact that it possesses a similar mass and composition to our planet. In reality, the landscape of Venus is scarred and barren, cloaked in a thick, toxic atmosphere that has created a runaway greenhouse effect resulting in a surface temperature of 462° C (864° F).
> 
> Previous observations of Venus' atmosphere have obliquely hinted at the presence of active volcanism. For example, a spike in sulphur dioxide levels in Venus' upper atmosphere between 2006 and 2007 seemed to suggest a fierce but brief bout of volcanic activity, the after effects of which gradually subsided over the following five years.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Rosetta mission extended by nine months*
By David Szondy





> ESA has announced that its Rosetta comet orbiter mission will be extended by nine months. The unmanned spacecraft that rendezvoused with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last year will carry out further observations until September 2016, by which time it will be too far from the Sun to power itself and will land on the comet.



Read More


----------



## ScienceRocks

*DARPA: We Are Engineering the Organisms That Will Terraform Mars*



> It’s no secret that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is investing heavily in genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Whether that excites or terrifies you depends on how you feel about the military engineering totally new life forms. If you’re in the excitement camp, however, here’s a nugget for you: DARPA believes that it's on the way to creating organisms capable of terraforming Mars into a planet that looks more like Earth.
> 
> The goal of terraforming Mars would be to warm up and potentially thicken its atmosphere by growing green, photosynthesizing plants, bacteria, and algae on the barren Martian surface. It’s a goal that even perpetual techno-optimists like Elon Musk think isn’t going to happen anytime soon, but it’s a goal that DARPA apparently already has its eyes on.
> If you look at genome annotation software today, it’s not built to quickly find engineer able systems [and genes]. It’s built to look for an esoteric and interesting thing I can publish an academic paper on.”
> 
> “This torrent of genomic data we’re now collecting is awesome, except they sit in databases, where they remain data, not knowledge. Very little genetic information we have is actionable"


----------



## ScienceRocks

51 Eri b - Jupiter-like planet discovered by GPI









Two Jupiter-masses, ~12 AU from its star.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exclusive-astronomers-discover-the-most-jupiter-like-exoplanet-ever


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro...g_clearer.html





> I was looking at a pair of fresh ones taken just today, June 25, at 05:37 UTC (just after midnight, more or less, U.S. time), when New Horizons was just 22.9 million kilometers from Pluto. They’re amazing. Both Pluto and its large moon Charon show all kinds of features, as you can see at the top of this article (the only processing I did was a straight enlargement and a brightness/contrast fiddle). Overall, Charon is much darker than Pluto, but even then surface features are clearly visible.
> ADVERTISING
> 
> But that bright spot on Pluto surprised me. That’s near its north pole, and it’s been seen before in earlier images, basically as a splotch. In this image it’s quite obvious.
> 
> I wondered if perhaps this was an image artifact, like a particle hit on the detector, but in fact it’s the same in the other image taken 30 seconds earlier. Here are the two shots side by side:


----------



## ScienceRocks

Spacex talks about how and why they want to land rockets
 






> Elon Musk’s SpaceX is scheduled to resupply the International Space Station on Sunday. Previously resupply missions with an Orbital Antares rocket and Russia’s Progress 59 spacecraft failed. SpaceX has quickly grown into one of the world’s premier space flight companies. And as Orbital ATK recovers from its failed launch, SpaceX is now the...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Multiple planets or exomoons in Kepler hot Jupiter systems with transit timing variations? ⋆ *
R. Szabó1, Gy. M. Szabó1,2,3, G. Dálya4, A. E. Simon1,2, G. Hodosán1,4 and L. L. Kiss1,2,5
Astronomy Astrophysics A A 
1 Konkoly Observatory, MTA CSFK, Konkoly-Thege Miklós út 15-17 1121 Budapest Hungary 
e-mail: rszabo@konkoly.hu 
2 ELTE Gothard–Lendület Exoplanet Research Group, 9704 Szombathely, Szent Imre herceg út 112, Hungary 
3 Dept. of Exp. Physics & Astronomical Observatory, University of Szeged, 6720 Szeged, Hungary 
4 Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, 1117 Budapest, Hungary 
5 Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Received: 30 July 2012 
Accepted: 1 March 2013


> HAT-P-7b, KOI-13, 127, 183, 188, 190, 196, 225, 254, 428, 607, 609, 684, 774, 1176) probably show TTVs due to a systematic observational effect: long cadence data sampling is regularly shifted transit-by-transit, interacting with the transit light curves, introducing a periodic bias, and leading to a stroboscopic period. For other systems, the activity and rotation of the host star can modulate light curves and explain the observed TTVs. By excluding the systems that were inadequately sampled, showed TTV periods related to the stellar rotation, or turned out to be false positives or suspects, we ended up with seven systems. Three of them (KOI-186, 897, 977) show the weakest stellar rotation features, and these are our best candidates for dynamically induced TTV variations.
> 
> _Conclusions. _Those systems with periodic TTVs that we cannot explain with systematics from observation, stellar rotation, activity, or inadequate sampling, may be multiple systems or even exomoon hosts.


----------



## ScienceRocks

I will predict that* America(as in NASA) will NEVER send Americans to Mars.* Yes, I said it and I am serious as 18 billion per year isn't nearly enough. More so when you consider the probes, satellites, telescopes, etc....

I predict that we will likely become a third world country by 2040 with the demographic shift...So we won't be able to...Personally, I'd watch China or India. America is dead.


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## CrusaderFrank

Zero out anything connected to global warming and let private companies built the ships and funds the missions to colonize and capitalize on the materials on the Moon and Mars


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## mamooth

Private company builds rocket that goes "boom" today, an unmanned SpaceX resupply rocket to the space station. It exploded at 2:20 after launch, right before 1st stage separation. There was a problem with lox tank overpressurization in the second stage.

SpaceX rocket explodes after launch - Jun. 28 2015


----------



## Politico

They are blowing stuff up left and right. What a bunch of idiots.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Reaction Engines UK will have new tests of their Skylon Single stage to orbit Sabre Spaceplane engines prototype
 







> Reaction Engines Ltd. have begun their latest round of rocket engine testing in Westcott, UK. The SABRE engine requires a novel design of the rocket engine's thrust chamber and nozzle to allow operation in both air-breathing and rocket modes, as well as a smooth transition between the two. The Advanced Nozzle project is demonstrating the...


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## ScienceRocks

*New Horizons two weeks from Pluto flyby*
Posted on June 30, 2015 by William Harwood
New Horizons two weeks from Pluto flyby Spaceflight Now

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION




New Horizons captured this view Pluto and its moon Charon early June 29. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute


> NASA’s New Horizons probe, now just 10 million miles from Pluto and 14 days from a historic July 14 flyby, is operating in near flawless fashion, making increasingly detailed observations of the enigmatic dwarf planet and its large moon Charon, project engineers and scientists reported Tuesday.
> 
> “If you’ve been looking at the pictures on the (New Horizons) website, you can see that Pluto and Charon are becoming more distinct in their surface features,” said mission operations manager Alice Bowman. “Every day is bringing new features into light.”
> 
> Streaking through space at more than 30,000 mph, New Horizons is on track to pass within about 7,800 miles of Pluto a few seconds shy of 7:50 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) on July 14. Fourteen minutes later, the spacecraft will pass within 17,900 miles of Charon, the largest of Pluto’s five known moons.
> 
> Throughout the encounter, New Horizons will train its cameras and other instruments on Pluto and its retinue of moons for unprecedented close-range observations, revealing a never-before-seen world at the edge of the solar system.
> 
> Over the next few days, Bowman said, engineers plan to uplink the complex sequence of commands that will be executed aboard the spacecraft during the flyby. At the same time, they will be analyzing the probe’s flight path to determine whether another small trajectory correction maneuver might be needed to make sure the spacecraft hits the desired close-approach aim point.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.09072

*No evidence for activity correlations in the radial velocities of Kapteyn's star*

Stellar activity may induce Doppler variability at the level of a few m/s which can then be confused by the Doppler signal of an exoplanet orbiting the star. To first order, linear correlations between radial velocity measurements and activity indices have been proposed to account for any such correlation. The likely presence of two super-Earths orbiting Kapteyn's star was reported in Anglada et al. (2014, MNRAS 443L, 89A), but this claim was recently challenged by Robertson et al. (2015, ApJ 805L, 22R) arguing evidence of a rotation period (143 days) at three times the orbital period of one of the proposed planets (Kapteyn's b, P=48.6 days), and the existence of strong linear correlations between its Doppler signal and activity data. By re-analyzing the data using global optimization methods and model comparison, we show that such claim is incorrect given that; 1) the choice of a rotation period at 143 days is unjustified, and 2) the presence of linear correlations is not supported by the data. *We conclude that the radial velocity signals of Kapteyn's star remain more simply explained by the presence of two super-Earth candidates orbiting it.* We also advocate for the use of global optimization procedures and objective arguments, instead of claims lacking of a minimal statistical support.


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## ScienceRocks




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## ScienceRocks

*New model of cosmic stickiness favors 'Big Rip' demise of universe
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150630155221.htm


The universe can be a very sticky place, but just how sticky is a matter of debate.

That is because for decades cosmologists have had trouble reconciling the classic notion of viscosity based on the laws of thermodynamics with Einstein's general theory of relativity. However, a team from Vanderbilt University has come up with a fundamentally new mathematical formulation of the problem that appears to bridge this long-standing gap.

The new math has some significant implications for the ultimate fate of the universe. It tends to favor one of the more radical scenarios that cosmologists have come up with known as the "Big Rip." It may also shed new light on the basic nature of dark energy.
*


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## ScienceRocks

*It's the pits: Comet appears to have sinkholes, study says* 
Jul 1, 1:18 PM (ET)By MALCOLM RITTER
Excite News - It s the pits Comet appears to have sinkholes study says




(AP) This Dec. 21, 2014 photo made by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft and...Full Image

p {margin:12px 0px 0px 0px;}


> NEW YORK (AP) — Comets are basically dirty snowballs, but it turns out they can have a very Earth-like feature: sinkholes.
> 
> That's what scientists think after analyzing data from a comet observed by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft. The researchers suggest that 18 large holes on its surface are sinkholes, created by the collapse of its surface into a porous interior.
> 
> Some pits are hundreds of yards deep, which gives glimpses of the comet's interior. In some cases, the pits were seen spewing jets of gas and dust, as the sun's warmth turned the ice inside them into a gaseous form.
> 
> Other comets have pits too, but they don't look like the apparent sinkholes on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.


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## Vikrant

Matthew said:


> *It's the pits: Comet appears to have sinkholes, study says*
> Jul 1, 1:18 PM (ET)By MALCOLM RITTER
> Excite News - It s the pits Comet appears to have sinkholes study says
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (AP) This Dec. 21, 2014 photo made by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft and...Full Image
> 
> p {margin:12px 0px 0px 0px;}
> 
> 
> 
> NEW YORK (AP) — Comets are basically dirty snowballs, but it turns out they can have a very Earth-like feature: sinkholes.
> 
> That's what scientists think after analyzing data from a comet observed by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft. The researchers suggest that 18 large holes on its surface are sinkholes, created by the collapse of its surface into a porous interior.
> 
> Some pits are hundreds of yards deep, which gives glimpses of the comet's interior. In some cases, the pits were seen spewing jets of gas and dust, as the sun's warmth turned the ice inside them into a gaseous form.
> 
> Other comets have pits too, but they don't look like the apparent sinkholes on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Click to expand...


Neat looking rock!


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## ScienceRocks

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/...age=20150701-2



> New color images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft show two very different faces of the mysterious dwarf planet, one with *a series of intriguing spots along the equator that are evenly spaced. Each of the spots is about 300 miles in diameter, with a surface area that's roughly the size of the state of Missouri.*
> 
> Scientists have yet to see anything quite like the dark spots; their presence has piqued the interest of the New Horizons science team, due to the remarkable consistency in their spacing and size.


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/progress-m28m.html


The launch of Progress M-28M was originally planned for Aug. 6, 2015, however after the loss of Progress M-27M on April 28, the next cargo mission to the ISS was moved forward. A draft of the emergency schedule penciled the launch as early as June 30, however it was eventually set for July 3, at 07:52 Moscow Time, when orbital mechanics would enable a fast six-hour rendezvous profile with the station. In contrast, the launch on June 30, would require a two-day flight. However, within 24 hours after the new flight manifest had been approved, a previously unplanned ISS maneuver on June 8 to avoid space junk forced mission planners to switch to a two-day rendezvous profile even in case of an on-time launch on July 3 at 07:55 Moscow Time.


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## longknife

*We Can't Resupply the International Space Station*


But the Russians certainly can! See video @ Progress resupply craft successfully en route for ISS euronews world news


----------



## Vikrant

...

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) will lift off on its 30th flight from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, on July 10 with the heaviest ever payload (1,440kg) ever for a commercial launch.

PSLV-C28 will launch the UK’s three identical optical earth observation satellites (DMC3) built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), each weighing 447kg.

It will also carry a micro and a nano satellite, both for the UK. Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will be using the high-end XL version of PSLV for the ninth time.

“India has established itself as an efficient commercial launch pad for foreign satellites.

...

India s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle Isro to put 5 UK satellites in orbit on July 10 - IBC World News


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## ScienceRocks

*Progress 60 spacecraft shakes off the bad luck to re-supply the ISS*
By Anthony Wood - July 6, 2015  3 Pictures 



The Russian-made Progress 60 cargo craft has successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) following a two-day orbital rendezvous period. In the wake of a series of spacecraft losses, the successful execution of the Progress 60 mission will allow the space station's crew and administrators to breath a little easier.


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## ScienceRocks

NASA releases more photos from Pluto
 




These are the most recent high-resolution views of Pluto sent by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, including one showing the four mysterious dark spots on Pluto that have captured the imagination of the world. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) obtained these three images between July 1 and 3 of 2015, prior to the July 4 anomaly that...


-----------------
NASA Dawn in second orbit around Ceres after recovering from system anomaly
 




NASA's Dawn spacecraft is healthy and stable, after experiencing an anomaly in the system that controls its orientation. It is still in its second mapping orbit 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) above dwarf planet Ceres. On June 30, shortly after turning on its ion engine to begin the gradual spiral down to the next mapping orbit, its protective...


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## ScienceRocks

Sky News ^ | July 6, 2015

Experts discover dark material is being constantly replenished and say: "Something must be doing that at a fairly prolific rate."Evidence of alien life is "unequivocal" on the comet carrying the Philae probe through space, two leading astronomers have said. The experts say the most likely explanation for certain features of the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, such as its organic-rich black crust, is the presence of living organisms beneath an icy surface. Rosetta, the European spacecraft orbiting the comet, is also said to have picked up strange "clusters" of organic material that resemble viral particles. But neither Rosetta nor its lander probe, Philae,...

------------------------------

Well, if this is true then it is mind blowing news.


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## ScienceRocks

*Opportunity's 7th Mars winter to include new study area*
*16 hours ago by Guy Webster *



Enlarge
Road trip! This compilation of images from hazard-avoidance cameras on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity between January 2004 and April 2015 shows the rover's-eye-view of the Martian marathon covering 26.2 miles(42.2 kilometers) from …more

Operators of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity plan to drive the rover into a valley this month where Opportunity will be active through the long-lived rover's seventh Martian winter, examining outcrops that contain clay minerals.

Opportunity resumed driving on June 27 after about three weeks of reduced activity around Mars solar conjuntion, when the sun's position between Earth and Mars disrupts communication. The rover is operating in a mode that does not store any science data overnight. It transmits the data the same day they're collected.

The rover is working about half a football field's length away from entering the western end of "Marathon Valley," a notch in the raised rim of Endeavour Crater, which is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 and has been studying the rim of Endeavour since 2011.

Engineers and scientists operating Opportunity have chosen Marathon Valley as the location for the solar-powered rover to spend several months, starting in August, to take advantage of a sun-facing slope loaded with potential science targets.

Marathon Valley stretches about three football fields long, aligned generally east-west. Observations of the valley using the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have detected exposures of clay minerals holding evidence about ancient wet environmental conditions. Researchers plan to use Opportunity to investigate relationships among these clay-bearing deposits.

The team plans to drive Opportunity this month to sites on the valley's northern side, where the slope faces south. Right now, it is early autumn in the southern hemisphere of Mars. The shortest day of the hemisphere's winter won't come until January. As the sun's daily track across the northern sky gets shorter, the north-facing slope on the southern side of the valley will offer the advantage of tilting the rover's solar panels toward the sun, to boost the amount of electrical energy production each day.

Phys.org media player ...














Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-opportunity-7th-mars-winter-area.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

Latest NASA map of Pluto will get 1000 times better over the 2 weeks
 






> This is the latest map of Pluto created from images taken from June 27 to July 3 by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons, combined with lower-resolution color data from the spacecraft’s Ralph instrument. The center of the map corresponds to the side of Pluto that will be seen close-up during New Horizons’ July 14 flyby....


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## ScienceRocks

*Prandtl-m, the aircraft which could be the first to fly on Mars*



> Since the ’90s, NASA has been actively exploring the surface of Mars. Armstrong Flight Research Centar is testing a prototype of an autonomous aircraft called Prandtl-m which could be the first to fly on Mars. Its name comes from Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Land on Mars.
> Prandtl-m will be a small, autonomous aircraft made of fiberglass or carbon fiber causing it to weigh less than 2.6 pounds. Since Mars has less gravity (0.377 gravity ratio) than the Earth, this weight will allow the aircraft to fly more efficiently. This year Nasa will be conducting some high-altitude tests with Prandtl-m at 100,000 feet and 450,000 feet to simulate what would be like to fly in Martian airspace.
> 
> The plan is to fold-up Prandtl-m inside spacecraft. Once the spacecraft reaches Mars, Prandtl-m will be deployed over the planet. It will be able to glide through its atmosphere for 20 miles and gather various data. After the glide, the aircraft will land and probably will continue to operate with a different function.


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## ScienceRocks

NASA just released a new image of Pluto, first since @*NASANewHorizons* anomaly on July 4


----------



## ScienceRocks

Third generation space telescope 1000 times better than Hubble could scan exoplanets for decent statistics of whether life is common
 




There is a proposed High-Definition Space Telescope (HDST) which would have a mirror up to 12 meters across. That's 5 times the width of the 2.4-metre Hubble, which revolutionized astronomy with its sharp views of the cosmos, and nearly twice as wide as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is being readied for its 2018 launch. An...


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## ScienceRocks




----------



## ScienceRocks

*Rare system of five stars discovered*


8 July 2015



> Astronomers have discovered a very rare system of five connected stars.
> The quintuplet consists of a pair of closely linked stars - binaries - one of which has a lone companion; it is the first known system of its kind.
> The pair of stars orbit around a mutual centre of gravity, but are separated by more than the distance of Pluto's orbit around the Sun.
> The findings have been presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.
> The unusual system lies 250 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered in data gathered by the SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) project.
> This uses relatively small and low-cost cameras in the Canary Islands and South Africa to image much of the sky every few minutes.
> Measurements of the brightness of individual stars are, over years, assembled into light curves - plots of brightness against time.
> When the stars pass in front of one another, they produce a regular pattern of pairs of dips in the light curve.
> Data from the new system revealed the existence of two binary stars, one of which was a so-called contact binary.


----------



## Desperado

Old Rocks said:


> OK, where are the GOP bills to add funds to NASA? Same place their bills to fund the study of the affects of global warming are.


Easy take the Money we give Israel and other Mideastern Countries and give that to NASA


----------



## ScienceRocks

Desperado said:


> Old Rocks said:
> 
> 
> 
> OK, where are the GOP bills to add funds to NASA? Same place their bills to fund the study of the affects of global warming are.
> 
> 
> 
> Easy take the Money we give Israel and other Mideastern Countries and give that to NASA
Click to expand...



I think we need to cut welfare, fix our healthcare system and end all foreign aid. Once we do that then we can give 50 billion per year to nasa.

 The high paying skill based jobs are a great way to spend it.


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## ScienceRocks

NASA closer to sending astronauts to Mars - CNNPolitics.com




> NASA took a key step forward in the goal to land a person on Mars on Thursday, naming the first four astronauts to train for a commercial trip to Mars.
> 
> Robert Behnken, Sunita Williams, Eric Boe and Douglas Hurley will train to fly to space on commercial crew vehicles, NASA said.
> 
> "We are on a journey to Mars, and in order to meet our goals for sending American astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s we need to be able to focus both on deep space and the groundbreaking work being done on the International Space Station," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden.


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.universetoday.com/121292/...gical-wonders/


Today’s image release clearly shows a world growing more geologically diverse by the day.

“We’re close enough now that we’re just starting to see Pluto’s geology,” said New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur, on NASA’s website. Niebur, who’s keenly interested in the gray area just above the whale’s “tail” feature, called it a “unique transition region with a lot of dynamic processes interacting, which makes it of particular scientific interest.”


----------



## ScienceRocks

*A Venus-Mass Planet orbiting a Brown Dwarf*
 1507.02388 A Venus-Mass Planet Orbiting a Brown Dwarf Missing Link between Planets and Moons



> The co-planarity of solar-system planets led Kant to suggest that they formed from an accretion disk, and the discovery of hundreds of such disks around young stars as well as hundreds of co-planar planetary systems by the {\it Kepler} satellite demonstrate that this formation mechanism is extremely widespread. Many moons in the solar system, such as the Galilean moons of Jupiter, also formed out of the accretion disks that coalesced into the giant planets. We report here the discovery of an intermediate system OGLE-2013-BLG-0723LB/Bb composed of a Venus-mass planet orbiting a brown dwarf, which may be viewed either as a scaled down version of a planet plus star or as a scaled up version of a moon plus planet orbiting a star. The latter analogy can be further extended since they orbit in the potential of a larger, stellar body. For ice-rock companions formed in the outer parts of accretion disks, like Uranus and Callisto, the scaled masses and separations of the three types of systems are similar, leading us to suggest that formation processes of companions within accretion disks around stars, brown dwarfs, and planets are similar.


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## ScienceRocks

*New Image of Pluto: 'Houston, We Have Geology'*
* July 11, 2015 by Tricia Talbert *



Tantalizing signs of geology on Pluto are revealed in this image from New Horizons taken on July 9, 2015 from 3.3 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) away.


> It began as a point of light. Then, it evolved into a fuzzy orb. Now – in its latest portrait from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft – Pluto is being revealed as an intriguing new world with distinct surface features, including an immense dark band known as the "whale."





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-image-pluto-houston-geology.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

Skylon spaceplane developers reveal the antifreeze method for the sabre hypersonic engine
 






> Reaction Engines of the UK is developing the hypersonic Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (Sabre). It is designed to power a vehicle from a standing start to Mach 5.5 in air-breathing mode, and from the edge of the atmosphere to low Earth orbit in pure rocket mode. A fundamental enabler of the concept is a complex heat-exchanger system...



I don't know why nasa or some rich American won't copy this.


----------



## danielpalos

I believe rail gun technology could help us launch more probes for better coverage.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Kepler-453 b.
http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/DisplayOverview/nph-DisplayOverview?objname=Kepler+453+b&type=CONFIRMED_PLANET


----------



## ScienceRocks

Charon is beginning to look spectacular, with fresh rayed craters and a series of vast chasms. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/charon-s-chasms-and-craters… pic.twitter.com/X591VPSn6k




Another #*PlutoFlyby* image just released. Check out Charon: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/charon-s-chasms-and-craters… pic.twitter.com/h5jET19cTm


----------



## ScienceRocks




----------



## ScienceRocks

*Surprise! Pluto is bigger than scientists thought*


> NASA's New Horizons settles the size debate. Pluto may be classified as a dwarf planet, but it's larger than many estimates.
> 
> Pluto's ego took a major blow in 2006 when it was demoted from a full-on planet to a dwarf planet. It can take back some of that pride with the news that NASA's New Horizons mission has discovered it's a bigger space object than many scientists expected.
> 
> NASA announced Monday that Pluto is 1,473 miles in diameter, which the space agency says is "somewhat larger than many prior estimates." The determination was made using images collected by the probe's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI).


Surprise Pluto is bigger than scientists thought - CNET


----------



## ScienceRocks




----------



## ScienceRocks

*New Horizons speeds past Pluto and into the history books*
By David Szondy - July 14, 2015  6 Pictures 





> The first age of deep space planetary exploration came to an end today as NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto at 7:49 am EDT. The nuclear-powered unmanned probe sped past the dwarf planet at a distance of 7,750 miles and a speed of 31,000 mph, making it the final classical planet to be visited by a spacecraft.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Here's the best image of Pluto in false color (2015-07-13)
‪#‎NewHorizons‬ ‪#‎PlutoFlyby‬


----------



## danielpalos

I have recently been watching a documentary about alien artifacts on the moon.  Why not simply "rail gun" launch a few probes to find out.


----------



## ScienceRocks

danielpalos said:


> I have recently been watching a documentary about alien artifacts on the moon.  Why not simply "rail gun" launch a few probes to find out.



Rail guns shoot objects up to around 100 miles
The moon is 230,000 miles
This would be a very small probe of around 20-50 pounds.
How would you slow it down to enter orbit around the moon? You can't carry much if any fuel on board in order to carry camera', science instruments. etc.

This is even more mind blowing if you wish to land this object on the moon.


----------



## danielpalos

Matthew said:


> danielpalos said:
> 
> 
> 
> I have recently been watching a documentary about alien artifacts on the moon.  Why not simply "rail gun" launch a few probes to find out.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rail guns shoot objects up to around 100 miles
> The moon is 230,000 miles
> This would be a very small probe of around 20-50 pounds.
> How would you slow it down to enter orbit around the moon? You can't carry much if any fuel on board in order to carry camera', science instruments. etc.
> 
> This is even more mind blowing if you wish to land this object on the moon.
Click to expand...

The probes just need to escape enough gravity to go on their merry way and shouldn't need much  more than surveying instruments for a solar system survey.


----------



## danielpalos

Or, maybe we can build two of the largest observatories ever built (for stereo vision), on the dark side of the moon.

It may be a good opportunity for "Lunar Archeology"


----------



## ScienceRocks

Hydra! #*PlutoFlyby* pic.twitter.com/Q2gixfYGP2





Overlay of LEISA data on RALPH images from earlier in the week pic.twitter.com/V92nZJAX1H


----------



## ScienceRocks

Just in from ‪#‎NewHorizons‬, a clean shot of Charon. Use ‪#‎askNASA‬ to ask questions on social >> http://ow.ly/PEQUI





Jon Spencer: Seeing young surface. No impact craters. Tall, tall mountains. #*plutoflyby* pic.twitter.com/I37yk7OIrb





Mountains on Pluto up to 11,000 feet high, probably water-ice, among "youngest surfaces...in the solar system" http://1.usa.gov/1TD1niW

New from Charon


----------



## ScienceRocks

"Charon has a 4-6 mile deep canyon + troughs, cliffs." says Cathy Olkin, NH Dep Proj Scientist http://go.nasa.gov/1LaqoAB


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Jupiter twin discovered around solar twin*
Astronomers have used the ESO 3.6-metre telescope to identify a planet just like Jupiter orbiting at the same distance from a Sun-like star, HIP 11915. According to current theories, the formation of Jupiter-mass planets ...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mountains on Pluto: Surface photo reveals surprises*
NASA scientists find clues that Pluto could still be alive with geological activity, based on scans from the New Horizons probe.

Pluto is a complex little ice world.

All it took was one photo from the surface of Pluto to spark new questions about the distant dwarf planet. Mountains as high as 11,000 feet were found in the first surface photo released by NASA -- and this could be a sign that it's still geologically active.


----------



## ScienceRocks

As more New Horizons data come in, more and more questions come up.




Latest New Horizons picture of Charon: oddly familiar
The New Horizons team released one more picture from Tuesday's encounter, one of three high-resolution images from a mosaic that crossed the center of Charon's disk, and it took me a while to figure out what it reminded me of.
planetary.org


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Planetary Resources finally deploys first spacecraft after explosive setback*
By Eric Mack - July 16, 2015  5 Pictures 





> The asteroid-mining industry has taken a step closer to becoming an actual thing, with the successful deployment of Planetary Resources' Arkyd 3 Reflight (A3R) spacecraft from the International Space Station Wednesday night. The A3R's three-month mission will be used to test and validate some basic technologies that the company hopes to incorporate in future spacecraft that will prospect near-Earth asteroids for potentially valuable resources.



Read More


----------



## ScienceRocks

*The Rosetta mission ahead of perihelion*
By Anthony Wood - July 16, 2015  15 Pictures 



Reaching 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko with Rosetta was an incredible feat of science and engineering that has revolutionized how we understand comets, but the fact is that the orbiter and its Philae partner are just entering the interesting part of their mission. Join us as we take a look at what can be expected as Rosetta travels ever closer to the Sun.


----------



## ScienceRocks

The @*NASANewHorizons* #*PlutoFlyby* reveals evidence of carbon monoxide ice on Pluto. http://go.nasa.gov/1HW0g5y pic.twitter.com/zzz6OiWWxA






NASA releases animated flyby of Pluto's icy mountains, plains #*PlutoFlyby* pic.twitter.com/hIbwg16hfB



New Horizons Reveals Pluto's Extended Atmosphere [With video] http://srs.gs/bJ7 #*PlutoFlyBy* pic.twitter.com/BmmnwbijCo







10:48 AM - 17 Jul 2015 · Details


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA's Juno probe is now less than one year away from its rendezvous with Jupiter.




NASA Spacecraft Less Than 1 Year from Jupiter
NASA's Juno probe is now less than one year away from its rendezvous with Jupiter. Juno, which launched in August 2011, is scheduled to slip into orbit around the gas giant on July 4, 2016.
oak.ctx.ly


----------



## ScienceRocks

Stunning NASA image reveals Pluto’s icy plains #*PlutoFlyby* | http://fxn.ws/1Gr9cis pic.twitter.com/ArAzExMDBt






Two new informally named regions! #*PlutoFlyby* pic.twitter.com/nFxFwt2p5q


----------



## ScienceRocks

Simply stunning.




Soar Over Pluto's Heart at 77,000 Kilometers in This New Animation
This animated flyover of the Norgay mountains and Sputnik plains on Pluto are based on the freshly-delivered close-approach images from the New Horizons...
on.io9.com|By Mika McKinnon


----------



## ScienceRocks

76,133 Views

NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Scientists working with our New Horizons spacecraft have observed Pluto’s atmosphere as far as 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) above the surface of the planet, demonstrating that Pluto’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere is quite extended. Details: http://go.nasa.gov/1KbD876 ‪#‎PlutoFlyby‬


----------



## ScienceRocks

Several EPIC# stars have been assigned K2-# designations. (No word on Neptune)
http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu./docs/exonews_archive.html#17July2015


EPIC 201367065 = K2-3
EPIC 201208431 = K2-4 
EPIC 201338508 = K2-5
EPIC 201384232 = K2-6
EPIC 201393098 = K2-7
EPIC 201445392 = K2-8
EPIC 201465501 = K2-9
EPIC 201577035 = K2-10
EPIC 201596316 = K2-11
EPIC 201613023 = K2-12
EPIC 201629650 = K2-13
EPIC 201635569 = K2-14
EPIC 201736247 = K2-15
EPIC 201754305 = K2-16
EPIC 201855371 = K2-17
EPIC 201912552 = K2-18
EPIC 201505350 = K2-19


----------



## ScienceRocks

*China reveals plans for far side Moon landing; calls for international cooperation on “experimental verification for lunar base”*


> The Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) has outlined its early plans for putting a lander and rover on the far side of the Moon. No country has attempted such a mission before.
> 
> A presentation submitted to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (pdf) states that the robotic mission, currently named Chang’e-4, will launch in 2018 or 2019 and will include a relay satellite.
> 
> The paper notes key objectives as performing the ‘first soft landing on the lunar farside in human history’, demonstrating technologies of lunar data relay, landing and roving on complicated terrains of the lunar farside, and lunar night power generation, and a number of scientific goals.
> 
> The project will be open to cooperation with other countries and organisations, at the mission level, regarding equipment used, and telemetry, communication and data.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*ESA Wants To Build 'Village' On Dark Side Of The Moon*



> The new Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) envisions the building of a lunar village at the far side of the moon.
> 
> Quite futuristic for space exploration, but that is exactly why it is called the future.
> 
> "A moon village shouldn't just mean some houses, a church and a town hall," said Professor Johann-Dietrich Woerner in his new job for a week. To Woerner, the futuristic moon village calls for the world to bring together partners contributing to the community supported by robotic and astronaut missions, as well as support communication satellites.
> 
> The former Chair of the German space agency believes that going back to the moon and building a village on its far side will further help in a deeper exploration of the solar system.
> 
> 
> Woerner, who now looks after Europe's new observation, navigation, weather and communication satellites, the International Space Station (ISS), missions to Mercury, Mars and Jupiter and a sleepy lander on a comet shaped like a duck, notes how interesting the lunar village could be.
> 
> 
> "The Americans are looking to go to Mars very soon - and I don't see how we can do that - before going to Mars we should test what we could do on Mars on the Moon," added Woerner.
> 
> He explained that the giant 3D printer that NASA plans to use on a base in Mars could be better tried out first on the moon. The challenges of learning to live in an alien world could be made easier, especially in an emergency and when the extraterrestrial community is just four days away.



Maybe the esa and china can do this? I wouldn't count on nasa because of the loserterian wanting to cut everything.


----------



## danielpalos

I believe it would be an excellent opportunity to establish twin observatories on the dark side of the moon; and, perhaps, some "lunar archeology".


----------



## ScienceRocks

I agree....

July 17, 2015: We've more than tripled our K2 confirmed planet count with the addition of 16 systems from Campaign 1. Click to view their respective Overview pages: K2-4 b, K2-5 b & c, K2-6 b, K2-7 b, K2-8 b, K2-9 b, K2-10 b, K2-11 b, K2-12 b, K2-13 b, K2-14 b, K2-15 b, K2-16 b & c, K2-17 b, K2-18 b, and K2-19 b & c. We've also added an additional set of parameters for K2-3 b & c. You can also view their parameters through the Confirmed Planets interactive table.

2015 Exoplanet Archive News


----------



## ScienceRocks

Six views of Pluto revealing some of the weird & WONDERFUL terrain... http://fb.me/40BmX60f9 pic.twitter.com/sUDJkiuNkE


----------



## ScienceRocks

Gliese 892 - six planets (as least one planet in transit)


----------



## mamooth

The Hunt For Extraterrestrial Life Just Got A Groundbreaking 100 Million Investment - Forbes
---
The tantalizing possibility of finding intelligent life beyond Earth got a little closer on Monday, when billionaire technology investor Yuri Milner announced he was investing $100 million of his personal fortune into a new scientific search that’s unprecedented in its scale and scope. 

....

The program will cover 10 times more of the sky than previous programs, and spark an unprecedented flood of new data on the radio spectrum in space, which is traditionally seen as the best place to do SETI. When the project kicks off in January, one day of data collection will be equivalent to a year’s worth of previous global research by SETI scientists, said Andrew Siemion, a director at the University of Berkeley’s SETI research centre, who will act as a lead investigator with Milner’s project. 
---


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New NASA's DSCOVR satellite provides breathtaking view of Earth*
By Anthony Wood - July 21, 2015  6 Pictures 



NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has returned a breathtaking image of planet Earth from a distance of roughly one million miles from the homeworld. The image captures the full disk of our planet showing a stunning sunbathed vista of blue oceans and swirling clouds, with glimpses of the North and Central America land masses.


----------



## ScienceRocks

New Horizons captures two of Pluto's smaller moons | Astronomy.com
New Horizons has captured its first images of Pluto's moons Nix and Hydra, which were both discovered in 2005 with the Hubble Space Telescope.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) gets its first planet, KMT-2015-1b

Hwang et al. (2015) "KMT-2015-1b: a Giant Planet Orbiting a Low-mass Dwarf Host Star Discovered by a New High-cadence Microlensing Survey with a Global Telescope Network"
 1507.05361 KMT-2015-1b a Giant Planet Orbiting a Low-mass Dwarf Host Star Discovered by a New High-cadence Microlensing Survey with a Global Telescope Network


----------



## ScienceRocks

"The largest-scale laser system would employ 50 to 70 gigawatts of power to propel the craft forward, about as much as is used to launch current spacecraft to Earth orbit. That laser setup, which Lubin described in a proposal paper, could propel a tiny spacecraft with a [one gram] 3.3-foot (1 meter) sail up to 26 percent the speed of light in 10 minutes.

Such a craft could reach Mars in 30 minutes, catch up with Voyager ...

See More



Lasers Could Blast Tiny Spacecraft to the Stars
Blasting tiny, waferlike sailing spacecraft with powerful lasers could slash interstellar flight times from thousands of years to mere decades, one researcher says.
space.com


----------



## ScienceRocks

*A new NASA-funded study lays out a plan to return humans to the Moon*


> Humans could return to the Moon in the next decade and live there a decade after, a new study claims. The announcement was made on the 46th anniversary of the Apollo 11 crew's first steps on the lunar surface.
> The study, performed by NexGen Space LLC and partly funded by NASA, concludes that the space agency could land humans on the Moon in the next five to seven years, build a permanent base 10 to 12 years after that, and do it all within the existing budget for human spaceflight. The way for NASA to do this is to adopt the same practice that it's using for resupplying the International Space Station (and will eventually use for crew transport) — public-private partnerships with companies like SpaceX, Orbital ATK, or the United Launch Alliance.
> NASA can cut the cost of establishing a human presence on the Moon "by a factor of 10," according to Charles Miller, NexGen president and the study's principal investigator. Savings of that magnitude would allow NASA to expand its ambitions for lunar exploration without reaching beyond the almost $4 billion per year it receives for human spaceflight.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA's making a big exoplanet announcement this week, watch it live!*
We're excited.
NASA s making a big exoplanet announcement this week watch it live - ScienceAlert
FIONA MACDONALD
22 JUL 2015


> NASA has had a pretty big month already, but apparently the US space agency's not done yet. The Ames Research Centre team has just revealed that they'll be making a big announcement on Thursday at 4pm UTC (9am PDT on Thursday, or 2am AEST on Friday) about the exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission. And speculation is already running wild that they may be about to announce the discovery of a new Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of a star... in other words, a potential new home for humanity (or prime spot to look for extraterrestiral life). You can watch the announcement live at the bottom of this page.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Second Mountain Range Rises from Pluto's 'Heart' (Photo)*
by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer  |  July 21, 2015 05:48pm ET







Second Mountain Range Rises from Pluto s Heart Photo 



> Pluto has a big heart — big enough to accommodate at least two sets of mountains, a new photo from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveals.
> 
> New Horizons has spotted a second mountain range inside Tombaugh Regio, the 1,200-mile-wide (2,000 kilometers) heart-shaped feature that mission team members named after Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh.
> 
> This newfound range rises up to 1 mile (1.6 km) above Pluto's frigid surface, making it comparable in height to the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, NASA officials said. Tombaugh Regio's other known mountain range, by contrast, is more similar to the tall and jagged Rocky Mountains, topping out at more than 2 miles (3.2 km) in elevation.






> The newly discovered range lies just west of the ice plains known as Sputnik Planum and is 68 miles (110 km) northwest of the taller mountain range, which mission scientists are calling Norgay Montes after Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who along with Edmund Hillary completed the first-ever ascent of Mt. Everest, in 1953. (Tombaugh Regio, Norgay Montes and other such names remain informal monikers until they're officially approved by the International Astronomical Union.)
> 
> The new photo, which New Horizons captured during its historic Pluto flyby on July 14, shows a startling complexity of terrain within Tombaugh Regio, researchers said.
> 
> "There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily cratered terrain to the west," Jeff Moore, leader of New Horizons' geology, geophysics and imaging team, said in a statement today (July 21) upon the photo's release.


----------



## jon_berzerk

RetiredGySgt said:


> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?



yes they have mostly been reassigned to the man made global warming scam


----------



## ScienceRocks

Second Mountain Range Rises from Pluto s Heart Photo


----------



## ScienceRocks

jon_berzerk said:


> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> yes they have mostly been reassigned to the man made global warming scam
Click to expand...



Then you haven't been paying attention. haha. We just took about 1800 photo's of pluto, Charon, etc...We are orbiting the largest Asteroid/Dwarf planet Cures and we have about 3 orbiters around Mars with 3 working rovers! Next year we will have a lander that will be used to learn more about further into the crust of Mars landing their! A whole lot more good stuff to come if I have my way!!!

Of course that isn't your reason for being in this thread. Your reason to be in this thread is to demand that we defund everything and go back to the 18th century. You don't believe America should lead in anything outside of cow farts and bombs like North Korea. America leads because we value science...That is just a cold hard fact. The goat fuckers of the middle east don't' and they don't lead.

People like you have won the past 40 years and kept America from building a outpost on the moon or mars. It is you that has done that and you are blaming people that know what we need to do to get it done? hahahaha I really don't understand your beef against getting at the resources of our solar system but it just doesn't make any sense.

I know more about space exploration in the tip of my little finger  then you will ever know and I know that we're building a rocket that is nearly as big as the saturn 5. HOpefully, we will finally go back to the moon.


----------



## ScienceRocks

What's sad is you haven't been reading my thread  You'd know all these things if you had!

*New Method Finds Best Exoplanet Candidates for Telescope Time*



















> If life exists on planets beyond our solar system, its presence could be obscured by the haze and clouds in the planet's atmosphere.
> 
> Even next generation telescopes — such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as well as ground-based telescopes like the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) — will have a hard time penetrating such hazy worlds in search of biomarkers. Astronomers Amit Misra and Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington have developed a new technique to check if a planet has clear skies, which will make it easier for astrobiologists to target the most promising exoplanet candidates for life.
> 
> Their research has been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute element of the Astrobiology Program at NASA.




New Method Finds Best Exoplanet Candidates for Telescope Time


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New Horizons reveals more mountains in Pluto's heart*

22 July 2015


> The latest images from the New Horizons spacecraft have revealed another range of ice mountains on Pluto.
> The frozen peaks were found on the lower-left edge of the dwarf world's "heart" and are 1-1.5km-high.
> They sit between a patch of icy, flat terrain, called Sputnik Planum, which scientists believe is less than 100 million years old, and a dark area dating to billions of years ago.
> More close-ups will be unveiled on Friday at a press conference.










http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-33622408


----------



## mamooth

Matthew said:


> NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has returned a breathtaking image of planet Earth from a distance of roughly one million miles from the homeworld. The image captures the full disk of our planet showing a stunning sunbathed vista of blue oceans and swirling clouds, with glimpses of the North and Central America land masses.



NASA says they'll eventually be putting all the images on a publicly accessible web page, an image every 1.8 hours. They say mid-September.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Stephen Hawking: Intelligent Aliens Could Destroy Humanity, But Let's Search Anyway http://www.msn.com/en-in/news/techandscience/stephen-hawking-intelligent-aliens-could-destroy-humanity-but-lets-search-anyway/ar-AAdjNKY?ocid=mailsignoutmd…


----------



## ScienceRocks

Space exploration rocks! Loserterianism sucks!

Two different views of the 5-km mountain on Ceres, processed from NASA. http://fb.me/6Ou9ipG1r


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Kepler-452b: Earth's Bigger, Older Cousin -- Briefing Materials*
NASA will host a news teleconference at noon EDT Thursday, July 23 to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

The first exoplanet orbiting another star like our sun was discovered in 1995. Exoplanets, especially small Earth-size worlds, belonged within the realm of science fiction just 21 years ago. Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamed about for thousands of years -- another Earth.

The briefing participants are:


John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington
Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California
Jeff Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at SETI Institute in Mountain View, California
Didier Queloz, professor of astrophysics at Cambridge University, United Kingdom

NASA Media Advisory
NASA Press Release

*Figure 1*

Kepler measures the brightness of stars. The data will look like an EKG showing the heart beat. Whenever a planet passes in front of its parent star as viewed from the spacecraft, a tiny pulse or beat is produced. From the repeated beats we can detect and verify the existence of Earth-size planets and learn about the orbit and size of the planet.
Credits: NASA Ames and Dana Berry

*Figure 2*





Credits: NASA

*Figure 3*




The sweep of NASA Kepler mission’s search for small, habitable planets in the last six years. The first planet smaller than Earth, Kepler-20e, was discovered in December 2011 orbiting a Sun-like star slightly cooler and smaller than our sun every six days. But it is scorching hot and unable to maintain an atmosphere or a liquid water ocean. Kepler-22b was announced in the same month, as the first planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star, but is more than twice the size of Earth and therefore unlikely to have a solid surface. Kepler-186f was discovered in April 2014 and is the first Earth-size planet found in the habitable zone of a small, cool M dwarf about half the size and mass of our sun. Kepler-452b is the first near-Earth-Size planet in the habitable zone of a star very similar to the sun.
Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel
Searching for Habitable Worlds
*Figure 4*




This artist's concept depicts one possible appearance of the planet Kepler-452b, the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of star that is similar to our sun. The habitable zone is a region around a star where temperatures are right for water -- an essential ingredient for life as we know it -- to pool on the surface. Scientists do not know if Kepler-452b can support life or not. What is known about the planet is that it is about 60 percent larger than Earth, placing it in a class of planets dubbed "super-Earths." While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a better than even chance of being rocky. Kepler-452b orbits its star every 385 days. The planet's star is about 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It is a G2-type star like our sun, with nearly the same temperature and mass. This star is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun. As stars age, they grow in size and give out more energy, warming up their planets over time.
Credits: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
Soaking up the Rays of a Sun-like Star
*Figure 5*




This size and scale of the Kepler-452 system compared alongside the Kepler-186 system and the solar system. Kepler-186 is a miniature solar system that would fit entirely inside the orbit of Mercury. The habitable zone of Kepler-186 is very small compared to that of Kepler-452 or the sun because it is a much smaller, cooler star. The size and extent of the habitable zone of Kepler-452 is nearly the same as that of the sun, but is slightly bigger because Kepler-452 is somewhat older, bigger and brighter. The size of the orbit of Kepler-452b is nearly the same as that of the Earth at 1.05 AU. Kepler-452b orbits its star once every 385 days.
Credits: NASA/JPL-CalTech/R. Hurt
Kepler-452 and the Solar System
*Figure 6*




Since Kepler launched in 2009, twelve planets less than twice the size of Earth have been discovered in the habitable zones of their stars. These planets are plotted relative to the temperature of their star and with respect to the amount of energy received from their star in their orbit in Earth units. The light and dark shaded regions indicate the conservative and optimistic habitable zone. The sizes of the blue disks indicate the sizes of these exoplanets relative to one another and to the image of Earth, Venus and Mars, placed on this diagram for reference. Note that all the exoplanets discovered up until now are orbiting stars which are somewhat to significantly cooler and smaller than the sun. Kepler-452b is the first planet less than twice the size of Earth discovered in the habitable zone of a G-type star.
Credits: NASA Ames/N. Batalha and W. Stenzel
*Figure 7*


Today Kepler-452b is receiving 10 percent more energy from its parent star than the Earth is from the Sun. If Kepler-452b had the same mass as Earth it would be on the verge of experiencing the runaway greenhouse effect and the loss of its water inventory. However, since it is 60 percent bigger than Earth, it is likely to be approximately five Earth masses, which provides additional protection from the runaway greenhouse effect for another 500 million years. Kepler-452b has spent six billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth.
Credits: NASA Ames/J. Jenkins
*Figure 8*




Today Kepler-452b is receiving 10 percent more energy from its parent star than the Earth is from the Sun. If Kepler-452b had the same mass as Earth it would be on the verge of experiencing the runaway greenhouse effect and the loss of its water inventory. However, since it is 60 percent bigger than Earth, it is likely to be approximately five Earth masses, which provides additional protection from the runaway greenhouse effect for another 500 million years. Kepler-452b has spent six billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth.
Credits: NASA Ames/J. Jenkins


*Figure 9*




Twelve Exoplanet discoveries from Kepler that are less than twice the size of Earth and reside in the habitable zone of their host star. The sizes of the exoplanets are represented by the size of each sphere. These are arranged by size from left to right, and by the type of star they orbit, from the M stars that are significantly cooler and smaller than the sun, to the K stars that are somewhat cooler and smaller than the sun, to the G stars that include the sun. The sizes of the planets are enlarged by 25X compared to the stars. The Earth is shown for reference.
Credits: NASA/JPL-CalTech/R. Hurt
A Kepler's Dozen: Small Habitable Zone Planets
*Figure 10*




There are 4,696 planet candidates now known with the release of the seventh Kepler planet candidate catalog - an increase of 521 since the release of the previous catalog in Jan. 2015. The blue dots show planet candidates from previous catalogs, while the yellow dots show new candidates from the seventh catalog. New planet candidates continue to be found at all periods and sizes due to continued improvement in the detection techniques. Notably, several of these new candidates are near-Earth-sized and at long orbital periods, where they have a chance of being rocky with liquid water on their surface.
Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel
Kepler Planet Candidates, July 2015
*Figure 11*




Highlighted are new planet candidates from the seventh Kepler planet candidate catalog that are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in the stars' habitable zone—the range of distances from a star where liquid water could exist on the surface of an orbiting planet. The dark green area represents an optimistic estimate for the habitable zone, while the light green area represents a more conservative estimate for the habitable zone. The candidates are plotted as a function of the star's surface temperate on the vertical axis and by the amount of energy the planet candidate receives by its host star. Open yellow circles show new planet candidates in the seventh catalog. Open blue circles show candidates from previous catalogs. Filled-in circles represent candidates that have been confirmed as planets due to follow-up observations. Note that the new candidates tend to be around stars more similar to the sun, representing progress in finding planets that are similar to the Earth in size and temperature that orbit sun-like stars.
Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel
Twelve New Small Kepler Habitable Zone Candidate
*Figure 12*




A unique feature of the seventh Kepler candidate catalog is that it is the first to fully automate the assessment of transit-like signals. The total height of each bar shows the total number of Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs), or transit-like signals, in each catalog. The blue area shows the number that was assessed, which includes all newly found KOIs. The grey area shows the number that were not able to be assessed due to time constraints imposed by manual assessment, which includes KOIs assessed in previous catalogs. As a result of the new automated procedures employed in this seventh catalog, all KOIs could be assessed. The resulting impact is that we are able to deliver a more uniform planet candidate catalog that utilizes the entire Kepler dataset, which will enable more accurate estimates of the number of small habitable zone planets in our galaxy.
Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel and SETI Institute/J. Coughlin
*Figure 13*




Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel


----------



## ScienceRocks

A Kepler's Dozen: Small Habitable Zone Planets - Kepler-452b makes a dozen! http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/a-keplers-dozen-small-habitable-zone-planets…






Comparison between Earth and Kepler-452b (their host stars too!). http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-kepler-mission-discovers-bigger-older-cousin-to-earth…


----------



## ScienceRocks

*China starts assembling world's biggest radio telescope*
* July 24, 2015 *


China has started assembling the world's largest radio telescope, which will have a dish the size of 30 football pitches when completed, state media reported as Beijing steps up its ambitions in outer space.
China starts assembling world s biggest radio telescope


----------



## ScienceRocks

Amazing Pluto! Glaciers of nitrogen ice flowing into mountains of water ice. #*PlutoFlyby* @*NewHorizons2015*










Stunning Nightside Image Reveals Pluto’s Hazy Skies
Backlit by the sun, Pluto’s atmosphere rings its silhouette like a luminous halo in this image taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.
nasa.gov


----------



## ScienceRocks

So much for Nasa only being a islamic outreach!!! You loserterians must have iq's of 20!!!!

*Most powerful rocket ever edges closer to lift-off*
By Anthony Wood - July 24, 2015  1 Picture 



NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) has completed its critical design review – a major stepping stone on the way to becoming certified for manned spaceflight. Once complete, the SLS will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever constructed, capable of taking humans to hitherto unreachable destinations including a manned mission Mars.


----------



## ScienceRocks

RT @*coreyspowell* Pluto's Charon -a jigsaw puzzle of chasms, streaks, light & dark craters. by @*EliBonora* #*PlutoFlyby*


----------



## ScienceRocks

Intrigued scientists take a second look at rocks found by @*MarsCuriosity*. http://go.nasa.gov/1MplTBx


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## ScienceRocks

Kepler Mission Discovers a Near-Twin of Earth Orbiting Sunlike Star - Scientific American

« …In addition to Kepler 452 b, the team has discovered 11 yet-to-be-confirmed candidate planets that appear to be small, rocky and potentially suitable for life. One of them, presently known only as KOI-7235.01, looks to be only 15 percent larger than Earth, and orbits right in the middle of its star’s habitable zone. If confirmed, it would surpass even Kepler 452 b to become the most Earth-like world astronomers have ever found beyond our solar system… »


----------



## ScienceRocks

Signs of glacier flows on three worlds: Earth, Mars, Pluto. (Images via @*NASA_Landsat*, @*HiRISE*, @*NewHorizons2015*)





NASA's next great exploration will target Europa, a truly extraordinary world. http://1.usa.gov/1eqdOP6 @*NASAEuropa*


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Direct Thrust Measurements of an EMDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects *







> The Emdrive has been proposed as a propellantless space propulsion. NASA had investigated and found measurable propulsion. Now German researchers Emdrive experiments have eliminated other possible sources of error and still measure a small (20 micronewtons) of propulsive force. There is a lot of discussion of the Emdrive experiment on...


----------



## ScienceRocks

Cassini sees a bright basin on Saturn's moon Tethys http://bit.ly/1VK9hcr


----------



## ScienceRocks

'Trillion-Dollar Asteroid' Zooms by Earth as Scientists Watch (Video) http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3fax7





Yet, stupid people whine about how there's nothing up there and it is a waste. Dumb people!


----------



## Wry Catcher

Matthew said:


> * Direct Thrust Measurements of an EMDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Emdrive has been proposed as a propellantless space propulsion. NASA had investigated and found measurable propulsion. Now German researchers Emdrive experiments have eliminated other possible sources of error and still measure a small (20 micronewtons) of propulsive force. There is a lot of discussion of the Emdrive experiment on...
Click to expand...


This posted today:

 Impossible EM Propulsion Engine Confirmed by Scientists - IGN


----------



## westwall

Wry Catcher said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> * Direct Thrust Measurements of an EMDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Emdrive has been proposed as a propellantless space propulsion. NASA had investigated and found measurable propulsion. Now German researchers Emdrive experiments have eliminated other possible sources of error and still measure a small (20 micronewtons) of propulsive force. There is a lot of discussion of the Emdrive experiment on...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> This posted today:
> 
> Impossible EM Propulsion Engine Confirmed by Scientists - IGN
Click to expand...






Yes, I was looking at some of the test results.  If they can scale this thing up, and it still works, it would open the solar system up to manned exploration in a heartbeat.  I hope it is proven to work!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mars orbiter prepares for next year's InSight lander arrival *
By David Szondy - July 29, 2015  1 Picture 





> Space travel is a constant exercise in forward planning, with mission control thinking years and sometimes decades in advance. A case in point is NASA's InSight Mars lander, which is scheduled to touchdown on the Red Planet on September 26, 2016. This may be more than a year away, but the space agency is already moving its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) into a new orbit to provide communications support during the landing.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New color map highlights diverse geological features on Ceres*
By Anthony Wood - July 29, 2015  2 Pictures 



NASA has released a global color map of the dwarf planet Ceres showing the highs and lows of topography on the rocky body's surface. The new map comes with new official names for many of the craters and other geological features dotting the surface of the planet, named for religious figures from a variety of cultures approved by the International Astronomical Union.


----------



## ScienceRocks

EPIC 206011691: two super-Earth planets orbiting an M0 dwarf 65 parsecs away.

Petigura et al. (2015) "Two Transiting Earth-size Planets Near Resonance Orbiting a Nearby Cool Star"
 1507.08256 Two Transiting Earth-size Planets Near Resonance Orbiting a Nearby Cool Star


----------



## ScienceRocks

KOI-2138 b, a Super-Earth orbiting quite a... massive A star:.

The Extrasolar Planet Encyclopaedia KOI-2138 b


----------



## ScienceRocks

Surprising Comet Discoveries by @*ESA_Rosetta*'s Philae Lander Unveiled http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3ftoi


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA's Spitzer Confirms Closest Rocky Exoplanet*
NASA s Spitzer Confirms Closest Rocky Exoplanet NASA


> Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of the nearest rocky planet outside our solar system, larger than Earth and a potential gold mine of science data.
> 
> Dubbed HD 219134b, this exoplanet, which orbits too close to its star to sustain life, is a mere 21 light-years away. While the planet itself can't be seen directly, even by telescopes, the star it orbits is visible to the naked eye in dark skies in the Cassiopeia constellation, near the North Star.
> 
> HD 219134b is also the closest exoplanet to Earth to be detected transiting, or crossing in front of, its star and, therefore, perfect for extensive research.
> 
> "Transiting exoplanets are worth their weight in gold because they can be extensively characterized," said Michael Werner, the project scientist for the Spitzer mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "This exoplanet will be one of the most studied for decades to come."
> 
> The planet, initially discovered using HARPS-North instrument on the Italian 3.6-meter Galileo National Telescope in the Canary Islands, is the subject of a study accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
> 
> Study lead author Ati Motalebi of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland said she believes the planet is the ideal target for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.





> HD 219134b was first sighted by the HARPS-North instrument and a method called the radial velocity technique, in which a planet's mass and orbit can be measured by the tug it exerts on its host star. The planet was determined to have a mass 4.5 times that of Earth, and a speedy three-day orbit around its star.
> 
> Spitzer followed up on the finding, discovering the planet transits its star. Infrared measurements from Spitzer revealed the planet's size, about 1.6 times that of Earth. Combining the size and mass gives it a density of 3.5 ounces per cubic inch (six grams per cubic centimeter) -- confirming HD 219134b is a rocky planet.



Yes, a 1.6 earth radi planet has been confirmed!  A super earth.

---===================================

Telescopes Find Distant Uranus-Sized Planet Through Microlensing http://buff.ly/1MAcAjk


----------



## ScienceRocks

Planetary Resources Moves Closer to Mining Asteroids



> Redmond, Washington – July 15, 2015 – Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company, is taking steps towards its goal of opening up democratic access to the Solar System’s resources. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded the company two grants to advance the  innovative designs of a compact hyperspectral imager and a 3D printed integrated structure and propulsion system. These technologies will play major roles in Planetary Resources’ mission to detect and identify commercially viable near-Earth asteroids.


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## MDiver

Now that possibly habitable exoplanets have been located, perhaps it is time for ALL major powers to unite their space propulsion programs for the purpose of researching faster-than-light propulsion.


----------



## Vikrant

Humans will never unite till we are attacked by aliens


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/NAS...rival_999.html

*With its biggest orbit maneuver since 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will prepare this week for the arrival of NASA's next Mars lander, InSight, next year.*

A planned 77-second firing of six intermediate-size thrusters on July 29 will adjust the orbit timing of the veteran spacecraft so it will be in position to receive radio transmissions from InSight as the newcomer descends through the Martian atmosphere and touches down on Sept. 28, 2016. These six rocket engines, which were used for trajectory corrections during the spacecraft's flight from Earth to Mars, can each produce about 22 newtons, or five pounds, of thrust.

"Without making this orbit change maneuver, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would be unable to hear from InSight during the landing, but this will put us in the right place at the right time," said MRO Project Manager Dan Johnston of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.


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## ScienceRocks

Russia Formally Commits to International Space Station Through 2024 http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3gayt


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## ScienceRocks

*Philae lander finds ingredients for life*
Complex molecules that could be key building blocks of life, the daily rise and fall of temperature, and an assessment of the surface properties and internal structure of the comet are just some of the highlights of the first scientific analysis of t...


----------



## ScienceRocks

Study says that brown dwarfs, sometimes called 'failed stars,' can produce powerful auroras: http://go.nasa.gov/1N2l3sL

 




Very cool maps with the informal feature names on #*Pluto* and #*Charon* ! #*PlutoFlyby* @*NewHorizons2015*


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA developing lunar drones *



NASA is developing lunar drones to explore and collect samples from lava tunnels left from ancient volcanoes. (I believe the first picture used on the DM article is actually for use on Mars as it uses fans rather than cold gas thrusters that are present on the images further down).


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Strange red "arcs" discovered on Saturnian moon Tethys*
By Anthony Wood - August 3, 2015  2 Pictures 





> New images taken from NASA's Cassini spacecraft appear to show unusual redish arcs marking the surface of the Saturn's icy moon Tethys. The strange features cover significant stretches of the moon's surface, and have left astronomers baffled as to their origins.


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## ScienceRocks

Curiosity’s 3 Year Martian Road-Trip Tells Tantalizing Tales Of Water | Video http://dlvr.it/Bl6QB5


The Not Planets World, comparing surface area of the non-planets in our solar system to Earth, by @*kristofferaberg*.


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## ScienceRocks

> A small Colorado company has successfully tested a new type of propulsion technology that it believes could eventually enable low-cost, single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicles.






Startup Makes Progress in Beamed Propulsion for Reusable Launch Vehicles


> Broomfield, Colorado-based Escape Dynamics announced July 17 it carried out a small-scale test in the laboratory of its beamed microwave thruster.


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## danielpalos

I still vote for rail gun technology that can "shoot" "cannon ball" sized probes that can accomplish a solar system survey and then position themselves for better use by academia.


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## ScienceRocks

27m27 minutes ago

Japan's space agency managed to adjuste the course of its Venus orbiter five ... https://www.inside.com/space/u6ko3/Japan-s-space-agency-managed-to-adjuste-the-course?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=twitterhandle&utm_campaign=@GoInsideSpace… #*space* #*news*


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## ScienceRocks

* Escape Dynamics Microwave launch designs and technical details *





Escape Dynamics primary objective is to develop a rapidly reusable, single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) launch system and introduce space access solutions to customers at a price point 10x below the cost of current alternatives. Escape Dynamics recently completed tests where propulsion was generated using microwaves. Escape Dynamics is developing...
Read more »


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New record: Keck Observatory measures most distant galaxy*
A team of astrophysicists using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii has successfully measured the farthest galaxy ever recorded and more interestingly, captured its hydrogen emission as seen when the Universe was less than ...


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## ScienceRocks

*Diminutive Lunar IceCube satellite to scan Moon for water and other resources*
By David Szondy - August 6, 2015  4 Pictures 



Recently, NASA has been looking at CubeSats as a way of carrying out economical deep space missions. One of the first of these may be shoebox-sized satellite called the Lunar IceCube, which is designed to look for water ice and other resources on the Moon. Tentatively aimed to launch on the first Orion mission scheduled to fly by 2018, it is intended to not only uncover materials for future deep-space missions and lunar colonization, but also as a technology demonstrator for a new class of interplanetary probes.


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## ScienceRocks

Salt flat indicates some of the last vestiges of Martian surface water http://buff.ly/1PaPLRP


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## I amso IR

MDiver said:


> If all the major space players and private enterprise got involved, we could probably create a craft to go to the nearest star, but, more likely, we will just continue being the parasites we are on this planet and eventually kill it off and us along with it.



I amso IR;

Short of a massive number of nuclear weapons or an occasional comet, meteor, or space alien of incredibly advanced knowledge, chances of us, we, they and them destroying earth are slim to none. At present there are so many millions of acre's of unused farm land, food shortage's would be a form of genocide as opposed to starvation from hunger. Food shortages are a product stemming from commercial business farms not individual farmers. Control the food supply and you control the populations. Finally, building the space ship you desire is possible and could be commenced near the orbiting earth station currently in orbit around earth. It is not a matter of can we do it, but rather when we do it. When NASA is comfortable with the knowledge base, only then will NASA be comfortable doing the project. And SpaceX can spout all they want, but they still need to be able to land their reusable rocket for starters. Giving one's life to land on Mar's with no chance of return is stupidity. Being able to transport living quarters and everything else needed to sustain life for an indefinite period is the problem. Getting there, no problem, staying there and surviving, problem, coming back, semi problem, dying there, no problem. Overall rating, problems. By the way, I'm 75 and way too old to consider the trip. I really like mother earth.


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## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers discover a tenth transiting "Tatooine"*
Astronomers at the 29th International Astronomical Union General Assembly will announce on August 14 the discovery of a new transiting "circumbinary" planet, bringing the number of such known planets into double digits. A ...


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## ScienceRocks

* DARPA funds next phase of XS-1 spaceplane project *





DARPA awarded Virgin Galactic and two others contracts to investigate how spaceplane could slash cost of putting satellites into space. DARPA aims to build a reusable vehicle that it hopes will provide “quick, affordable and routine” access to space, which it says is “increasingly critical for both national and economic security”. Darpa...


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA marks Curiosity's third anniversary with new interactive online tools*
By David Szondy - August 8, 2015  6 Pictures 



The Curiosity rover has now been on Mars for three years, and to mark the occasion, NASA has released two new tools designed to both educate the public and help scientists select future landing sites. The tools allow visitors to learn more about Curiosity and its mission and explore the Martian surface by climbing aboard Curiosity for a virtual tour.


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## ScienceRocks

This image shows the far side of the moon, illuminated by the sun, as it crosses between the DSCOVR spacecraft's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) camera and telescope, and the Earth - one million miles away.


http://www.scienceda...50805191732.htm


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## ScienceRocks

Cassini sees Rhea's cratered landscape with Saturn's ringplane and atmosphere as a background http://buff.ly/1HMJwnI






Today Cassini images a crescent Titan from 1.72 million kilometers (1.07 million miles) away http://buff.ly/1Rnqjxf


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## I amso IR

Matthew said:


> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
Click to expand...


 amso IR responds

(quote)
The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"

Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.


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## ScienceRocks

I amso IR said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
Click to expand...



There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.


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## I amso IR

Matthew said:


> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
Click to expand...


I amso IR responds;

Matthew, the quote which you posted and also myself, when read carefully


Matthew said:


> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
Click to expand...


I amso IR responds

Matthew, forgive me for being so silly as the quotes shown above, when read with understanding and clarity of thought seem to indicate the rock in question was found, located, recovered, some 50,000 years ago. Ergo, my slight problem with 49,900 year problem, give or take. Being a history buff, of sorts, it seems to me that the possibility exists that an error might in fact have been stated by the original writer of that article and by yourself for quoting said error. You see Matt, brace yourself, some true scoop coming your way, 50,000 years ago there were not an awful lot of folks exploring the Antarctica. 50,000 years ago, there was not even a BIC lighter to light your funny cigarette. Matt, 50,000 years ago, believe it or not, there were not even cell phones because batteries had not been made yet, at least on this planet. You might be a scientist Matt, but you are failing history badly, as 50,000 years ago there were no people wandering around Antarctica looking for rocks from outer space since no one, if anyone, had even used the term "outer space". 50,000 years ago, Matthew, I will even make it darker for you, *50,000*  years ago, which your article states was when the rock was found, is prior to the settlement of the Western Hemisphere, hence my questioning of the rock being found at that point in time. Now I realize you "outer space" types simply love to talk in terms of billions. That is ok by me. But get your facts straight as to how long mankind has been prancing around the earth looking for space rocks. Is this plain enough for you Matthew? I do not hate science, Matt, I watch it daily on the Science Channel, History Channel, NASA Channel and I even read texts on space. Yes I can and do read and also comprehend. But as for your 50,000 year old expeditions to the Antarctica, that sucks! It did not happen, Matt! 
Cordially Yours, I am so IR.


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## I amso IR

I amso IR said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I amso IR responds;
> 
> Matthew, the quote which you posted and also myself, when read carefully
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I amso IR responds
> 
> Matthew, forgive me for being so silly as the quotes shown above, when read with understanding and clarity of thought seem to indicate the rock in question was found, located, recovered, some 50,000 years ago. Ergo, my slight problem with 49,900 year problem, give or take. Being a history buff, of sorts, it seems to me that the possibility exists that an error might in fact have been stated by the original writer of that article and by yourself for quoting said error. You see Matt, brace yourself, some true scoop coming your way, 50,000 years ago there were not an awful lot of folks exploring the Antarctica. 50,000 years ago, there was not even a BIC lighter to light your funny cigarette. Matt, 50,000 years ago, believe it or not, there were not even cell phones because batteries had not been made yet, at least on this planet. You might be a scientist Matt, but you are failing history badly, as 50,000 years ago there were no people wandering around Antarctica looking for rocks from outer space since no one, if anyone, had even used the term "outer space". 50,000 years ago, Matthew, I will even make it darker for you, *50,000*  years ago, which your article states was when the rock was found, is prior to the settlement of the Western Hemisphere, hence my questioning of the rock being found at that point in time. Now I realize you "outer space" types simply love to talk in terms of billions. That is ok by me. But get your facts straight as to how long mankind has been prancing around the earth looking for space rocks. Is this plain enough for you Matthew? I do not hate science, Matt, I watch it daily on the Science Channel, History Channel, NASA Channel and I even read texts on space. Yes I can and do read and also comprehend. But as for your 50,000 year old expeditions to the Antarctica, that sucks! It did not happen, Matt!
> Cordially Yours, I am so IR.
Click to expand...


I amso IR responds

Matthew, I ask you to forgive my snide remarks in the above posts. My momma would not be proud of me and frankly neither am I. I apologize. The rock in question, I believe, was found during 2003, in Antarctica, not 50,000 years ago as reported and is thought to be over 1 billion years old. There is an article on Space.com with reference to the rock. Again, sorry for the rebuke, not my true style. Also, I live for both history and science as hobbies. The subjects inter mesh well and have so much to offer and learn from. I amso IR.


----------



## ScienceRocks

I love space exploration and I wish we'd spend a lot more on it.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Astronauts are about to eat food grown in space. Technology has looped far enough around to make farming an astonishing achievement yet again.


----------



## westwall

Matthew said:


> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
Click to expand...







It is no doubt a typo but, as there were no humans in Antarctica 50,000 years ago, he has a point.  Matthew you really need to calm down a bit.  Your accusations that repubs hate science is not born out by fact and merely serves to mark you as a shrill, hysterical, child.


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## ScienceRocks

westwall said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is no doubt a typo but, as there were no humans in Antarctica 50,000 years ago, he has a point.  Matthew you really need to calm down a bit.  Your accusations that repubs hate science is not born out by fact and merely serves to mark you as a shrill, hysterical, child.
Click to expand...



There's carbon and argon dating that we can do to find the age of the impact. If we couldn't do that then how could we even tell how old all the other old impacts were.

If we can tell 65 million years ago we certainly can tell one when one happens 50,000...Wouldn't you agree?? 

It just makes me angry to see people attack and went to do away with the best science institutions on this planet. Most of this world could only dream to have we enjoy and yet so many can't see this..I've criticized them many times in my life, but I could see the great value that they bring to this country. I have a serious problem hearing people demand that we defund them. Demand accountability, not destruction of our national ability to adapt in our world.


----------



## westwall

Matthew said:


> westwall said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is no doubt a typo but, as there were no humans in Antarctica 50,000 years ago, he has a point.  Matthew you really need to calm down a bit.  Your accusations that repubs hate science is not born out by fact and merely serves to mark you as a shrill, hysterical, child.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's carbon and argon dating that we can do to find the age of the impact. If we couldn't do that then how could we even tell how old all the other old impacts were.
> 
> If we can tell 65 million years ago we certainly can tell one when one happens 50,000...Wouldn't you agree??
> 
> It just makes me angry to see people attack and went to do away with the best science institutions on this planet. Most of this world could only dream to have we enjoy and yet so many can't see this..I've criticized them many times in my life, but I could see the great value that they bring to this country. I have a serious problem hearing people demand that we defund them. Demand accountability, not destruction of our national ability to adapt in our world.
Click to expand...










Most of those methods won't tell you when an object fell to Earth.  Fortunately, with the Antarctic, we have a good way of estimation with the ice buildup.  I agree with you on the accountability vs defunding of the various science programs.  Sadly though, the bureaucrats run the show and they are corrupt.  The only way to deal with corruption is defunding the way our government is set up.  Currently.  

Hopefully someone much smarter than us will come along and develop a method to watch the bean counters so that the money gets funneled to where it is needed most.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Scramjet-based project looks to blast Australia into space*
By Darren Quick - August 9, 2015  1 Picture 





> The list of spacefaring nations remains small, but thanks to continuing advances in technology that promise to reduce the financial and logistical hurdles involved, the numbers are set to increase. One country that could be joining the club, if the University of Queensland (UQ) and Heliaq Advanced Engineering get their way, is Australia. The two are teaming up on a project intended to deliver payloads weighing from 50 to 500 kg (110 to 1,102 lb) into orbit.


----------



## longknife

Matthew said:


> Astronauts are about to eat food grown in space. Technology has looped far enough around to make farming an astonishing achievement yet again.



*Space Kale on Menu*








On the space station menu for today, Read the story @ Astronauts to eat first space-grown food - CNN.com


----------



## I amso IR

westwall said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I am so IR responds
> 
> westwall, yes, I had a point but played it badly. I meant my original post to have a bit of humor, not realizing who/what I was dealing with. That is why I apologized for my reaction. Trying to figure some of these folks is a challenge. I have been to Reddit and other sites and quite frankly get sick and tired of the childish crap people post. I was hoping this site would prove different as it offers a varied and wide selection of topics and degrees of civility. As I told another, wish in one hand and crap in the other, see which fills first! I wish to be civil and learn, but 95% are unwilling to or cannot for reasons of their own. Just wanted you as a mod to understand I am not a total jerk, yet! Nice talking to someone who seemingly understands. Thanx
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is no doubt a typo but, as there were no humans in Antarctica 50,000 years ago, he has a point.  Matthew you really need to calm down a bit.  Your accusations that repubs hate science is not born out by fact and merely serves to mark you as a shrill, hysterical, child.
Click to expand...


----------



## westwall

I amso IR said:


> westwall said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 18 years have passed since scientists from NASA tried to prove that water once existed on Mars and now, the theory is back with even stronger arguments. According to a team of experts at the agency&#8217;s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aMartian meteorite called Yamato 000593 contains distinct structures and compositional characteristics which could suggest that biological processes happened on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.  The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow. The team from NASA also suggests that an event caused the meteorite to detach from Mars around 12 million years ago.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I am so IR responds
> 
> westwall, yes, I had a point but played it badly. I meant my original post to have a bit of humor, not realizing who/what I was dealing with. That is why I apologized for my reaction. Trying to figure some of these folks is a challenge. I have been to Reddit and other sites and quite frankly get sick and tired of the childish crap people post. I was hoping this site would prove different as it offers a varied and wide selection of topics and degrees of civility. As I told another, wish in one hand and crap in the other, see which fills first! I wish to be civil and learn, but 95% are unwilling to or cannot for reasons of their own. Just wanted you as a mod to understand I am not a total jerk, yet! Nice talking to someone who seemingly understands. Thanx
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is no doubt a typo but, as there were no humans in Antarctica 50,000 years ago, he has a point.  Matthew you really need to calm down a bit.  Your accusations that repubs hate science is not born out by fact and merely serves to mark you as a shrill, hysterical, child.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...







Your lofty ideals and hopes are certainly laudatory but sadly I fear you will be disappointed.  This is a community of people.  People being what they are you will have liars and scoundrels and perverts all posting at the same time.  You will also, fortunately, have some good reasoned people posting here.   Our mission is to separate the wheat from the chaff and as is true in the real world there is far more chaff than wheat.


----------



## ScienceRocks

I guess I am just a stupid liar even through I spent over 22 years of my life learning about science. Makes me feel sad and hurt. 

Should I even try to keep people informed anymore? I simply said that I trusted nasa and that there's ways to find the age of said impacts....Some of the libertarian members on this board makes me feel that republicans really do want to defund science so maybe I am generalizing on this but I guess when I am in intense debate my emotions do weird things.


----------



## I amso IR

Matthew said:


> I guess I am just a stupid liar even through I spent over 22 years of my life learning about science. Makes me feel sad and hurt.
> 
> Should I even try to keep people informed anymore? I simply said that I trusted nasa and that there's ways to find the age of said impacts....Some of the libertarian members on this board makes me feel that republicans really do want to defund science so maybe I am generalizing on this but I guess when I am in intense debate my emotions do weird things.



I amso IR responds;

Matt, come on guy, stop whipping on yourself and take time to really, read responses. I cannot think folks are simply picking on you for the fun of it. When I read the post with regards to the Mars rock, the statement that it had been "discovered" 50,000 years ago jumped out to me. If I may offer a bit of friendly advice. Instead of posting every article you feel the need to post, narrow your search down to one or two and build on them. That way your readers will be able to focus on a particular subject and follow it. You cannot please all folks all of the time, Matt. So concentrate on those who are interested in what you say. Above all, proof read what you post to insure it is accurate and to the point. I do not think you are a dummy, Matt. A tad over zealous perhaps, but not a dummy. Have a nice day. I amso IR


----------



## I amso IR

westwall said:


> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> westwall said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I am so IR responds
> 
> westwall, yes, I had a point but played it badly. I meant my original post to have a bit of humor, not realizing who/what I was dealing with. That is why I apologized for my reaction. Trying to figure some of these folks is a challenge. I have been to Reddit and other sites and quite frankly get sick and tired of the childish crap people post. I was hoping this site would prove different as it offers a varied and wide selection of topics and degrees of civility. As I told another, wish in one hand and crap in the other, see which fills first! I wish to be civil and learn, but 95% are unwilling to or cannot for reasons of their own. Just wanted you as a mod to understand I am not a total jerk, yet! Nice talking to someone who seemingly understands. Thanx
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is no doubt a typo but, as there were no humans in Antarctica 50,000 years ago, he has a point.  Matthew you really need to calm down a bit.  Your accusations that repubs hate science is not born out by fact and merely serves to mark you as a shrill, hysterical, child.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your lofty ideals and hopes are certainly laudatory but sadly I fear you will be disappointed.  This is a community of people.  People being what they are you will have liars and scoundrels and perverts all posting at the same time.  You will also, fortunately, have some good reasoned people posting here.   Our mission is to separate the wheat from the chaff and as is true in the real world there is far more chaff than wheat.
Click to expand...


----------



## I amso IR

westwall said:


> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> westwall said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars *
> 
> NASA Proves Water Existed on Mars
> 
> 
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I am so IR responds
> 
> westwall, yes, I had a point but played it badly. I meant my original post to have a bit of humor, not realizing who/what I was dealing with. That is why I apologized for my reaction. Trying to figure some of these folks is a challenge. I have been to Reddit and other sites and quite frankly get sick and tired of the childish crap people post. I was hoping this site would prove different as it offers a varied and wide selection of topics and degrees of civility. As I told another, wish in one hand and crap in the other, see which fills first! I wish to be civil and learn, but 95% are unwilling to or cannot for reasons of their own. Just wanted you as a mod to understand I am not a total jerk, yet! Nice talking to someone who seemingly understands. Thanx
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is no doubt a typo but, as there were no humans in Antarctica 50,000 years ago, he has a point.  Matthew you really need to calm down a bit.  Your accusations that repubs hate science is not born out by fact and merely serves to mark you as a shrill, hysterical, child.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your lofty ideals and hopes are certainly laudatory but sadly I fear you will be disappointed.  This is a community of people.  People being what they are you will have liars and scoundrels and perverts all posting at the same time.  You will also, fortunately, have some good reasoned people posting here.   Our mission is to separate the wheat from the chaff and as is true in the real world there is far more chaff than wheat.
Click to expand...


I amso IR responds;

You seem to have a warm spot for the Lockheed "Blackbird". I made a career of the Army so never had anything to do with it. However, it has kept my attention for many years. She was and still is "one of a kind". I walked around one on display in Nebraska and was overwhelmed by her size. She was and I suppose still is leaking on the tarmac. She could move over the ground quickly but was a hungry beast from what I understand. I envy you, if you have stick time. Rockets be damned, 71 is where it is and always will be. Regards, I am so IR. 
P.S. I chuckle when folks talk about verticle climb.  I watched a U2 do that years ago, out of Ton Sa Nut, RVN. Thrust is nothing new! A hammer is not pretty and is clumsy, but will attain Mach 5, if that is one's intent. Looks are a plus for the 71, absolutely beautiful!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers discover new planet orbiting two stars*
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150810162049.htm


> A team of astronomers including a San Francisco State University researcher has discovered a new planet orbiting a pair of stars, the 10th "circumbinary" planet discovered by NASA's Kepler Mission and a milestone for the 6-year-old spacecraft.
> 
> The planet, known as Kepler-453b, is located within its host stars' "habitable zone," the area around the stars in which life could potentially exist. And the somewhat fortuitous nature of its discovery indicate there could be more like it than previously believed, according to Stephen Kane, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University and member of the team that made the discovery.
> 
> "If we had observed this planet earlier or later than we did, we would have seen nothing and assumed there was no planet there," Kane said. "That suggests that there are a lot more of these kinds of planets than we are thinking, and we're just looking at the wrong time."




This is amazing  Amazing that we got lucky enough to spot it or we'd have to wait another half century. Luck!


----------



## westwall

I amso IR said:


> westwall said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> westwall said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I amso IR said:
> 
> 
> 
> amso IR responds
> 
> (quote)
> The meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica approximately 50,000 years ago, was formed about 1.3 billion years ago,,,(quote"
> 
> Does the scientific community happen to have the name of the individual who found this rock approximately 50,000 years ago in the Antarctica? Was he, she an American? I have a small problem with 50,000 years. Some where around 49,900 years, give or take.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There's ways to date objects but of course I wouldn't expect someone that hates science to understand this.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I am so IR responds
> 
> westwall, yes, I had a point but played it badly. I meant my original post to have a bit of humor, not realizing who/what I was dealing with. That is why I apologized for my reaction. Trying to figure some of these folks is a challenge. I have been to Reddit and other sites and quite frankly get sick and tired of the childish crap people post. I was hoping this site would prove different as it offers a varied and wide selection of topics and degrees of civility. As I told another, wish in one hand and crap in the other, see which fills first! I wish to be civil and learn, but 95% are unwilling to or cannot for reasons of their own. Just wanted you as a mod to understand I am not a total jerk, yet! Nice talking to someone who seemingly understands. Thanx
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is no doubt a typo but, as there were no humans in Antarctica 50,000 years ago, he has a point.  Matthew you really need to calm down a bit.  Your accusations that repubs hate science is not born out by fact and merely serves to mark you as a shrill, hysterical, child.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your lofty ideals and hopes are certainly laudatory but sadly I fear you will be disappointed.  This is a community of people.  People being what they are you will have liars and scoundrels and perverts all posting at the same time.  You will also, fortunately, have some good reasoned people posting here.   Our mission is to separate the wheat from the chaff and as is true in the real world there is far more chaff than wheat.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I amso IR responds;
> 
> You seem to have a warm spot for the Lockheed "Blackbird". I made a career of the Army so never had anything to do with it. However, it has kept my attention for many years. She was and still is "one of a kind". I walked around one on display in Nebraska and was overwhelmed by her size. She was and I suppose still is leaking on the tarmac. She could move over the ground quickly but was a hungry beast from what I understand. I envy you, if you have stick time. Rockets be damned, 71 is where it is and always will be. Regards, I am so IR.
> P.S. I chuckle when folks talk about verticle climb.  I watched a U2 do that years ago, out of Ton Sa Nut, RVN. Thrust is nothing new! A hammer is not pretty and is clumsy, but will attain Mach 5, if that is one's intent. Looks are a plus for the 71, absolutely beautiful!
Click to expand...







I have a little bit of stick time in a F-86 but that's it for fast movers.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> The first one was getting long so I made a second one  I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Link back to the first one
> Space exploration thread US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum
> 
> 
> *Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world*
> 15:58 31 January 2014 by Jeff Hecht
> For similar stories, visit the Astrobiology Topic Guide
> 
> Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world - space - 31 January 2014 - New Scientist
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Earth may be our home, but another planet even cosier for life could be orbiting the star next door. A detailed analysis of what might make planets suitable for life says that Alpha Centauri B, the star closest to our sun, would be the perfect star to host a "superhabitable" planet  a world of islands, shallow seas and gentle slopes, where the conditions needed to support a diverse array of life forms would persist for up to 10 billion years. But the near-paradise would come at a cost to visitors from Earth: the pull of gravity would be about one-quarter stronger than on our home turf.
Click to expand...

I just heard on NPR scientists met in Hawaii and concluded the universe is getting old. It is dying. It was all burning brighter a billion years ago. Don't ask me how they learned this but Christians now know roughly how much time before the end of days.

You ready to know how much time we have left? About 10 billion years left. So we've already hit our midlife crisis 2 billion years ago. It's all downhill from here.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*WASP-47: A Hot Jupiter System with Two Additional Planets Discovered by K2*
Juliette C. Becker, Andrew Vanderburg, Fred C. Adams, Saul A. Rappaport, Hans Martin Schwengeler
(Submitted on 10 Aug 2015)


> Using new data from the K2 mission, we show that WASP-47, a previously known hot Jupiter host, also hosts two additional transiting planets: a Neptune-sized outer planet and a super-Earth inner companion. We measure planetary properties from the K2 light curve and detect transit timing variations, confirming the planetary nature of the outer planet. We performed a large number of numerical simulations to study the dynamical stability of the system and to find the theoretically expected transit timing variations (TTVs). The theoretically predicted TTVs are in good agreement with those observed, and we use the TTVs to determine the masses of two planets, and place a limit on the third. The WASP-47 planetary system is important because companion planets can both be inferred by TTVs and are also detected directly through transit observations. The depth of the hot Jupiter's transits make ground-based TTV measurements possible, and the brightness of the host star makes it amenable for precise radial velocity measurements. The system serves as a Rosetta Stone for understanding TTVs as a planet detection technique.



 1508.02411 WASP-47 A Hot Jupiter System with Two Additional Planets Discovered by K2

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.02411v1.pdf


----------



## ScienceRocks

*'Young Jupiter' 51 Eridani b: Why Directly Imaging an Exoplanet Is Big (Kavli Q+A)*
 Young Jupiter 51 Eridani b Why Directly Imaging an Exoplanet Is Big

Adam Hadhazy, The Kavli Foundation  |  August 13, 2015 02:00pm ET

_Adam Hadhazy, writer and editor for The Kavli Foundation, contributed this article to _Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights_._


> Astronomers have spied a new alien world, 51 Eridani b, that they believe strikingly resembles a young Jupiter. With a mass only about twice that of our Solar System's
> 
> king planet, 51 Eridani b stands as perhaps the coldest and smallest exoplanet ever to be directly imaged. What's more, it bears the strongest exoplanetary signatures so far of the gas methane, which is prominent in Jupiter's atmosphere.
> 
> 51 Eridani b is the first world discovered using the Gemini Planet Imager, an international project led by Bruce Macintosh of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University. The results appear today in the journal Science and in the Stanford news story "Astronomers discover 'young Jupiter' exoplanet."





> Mounted on the 8-meter Gemini South Telescope in Chile, the Imager began searching for giant planets circling 600 young stars in November 2014. In December, 51 Eridani b turned up around a star approximately 100 light years away. The newfound world orbits its parent star at a distance a bit farther than that of Saturn around our sun. Overall, the planet and its star are just 20 million years young — spring chickens compared to our 4.6-billion-year-old Solar System.
> 
> Because of its youth, 51 Eridani b smolders at 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius), but it is still more than three million times less luminous than its stellar host. The Imager was specifically designed to spot fledging exoplanets by separating their faint light from the overwhelming glare of their host stars, thus offering a revealing look back into the early, murky eras of planetary formation.



*Methane, water enshroud nearby Jupiter-like exoplanet*



> The Gemini Planet Imager has discovered and photographed its first planet, a methane-enshrouded gas giant much like Jupiter that may hold the key to understanding how large planets form in the swirling accretion disks around stars.
> 
> The GPI instrument, which is mounted on the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile, is the size of a small car and was designed, built and optimized for imaging and analyzing the atmospheres of faint Jupiter-like planets next to bright stars, thanks to a device that masks the star's glare.
> 
> In December 2104, GPI began searching hundreds of nearby young stars, and after a mere month, University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral fellow Robert De Rosa began looking at the initial data. He soon noticed something large orbiting a young star in a triple-star system only 100 light years from Earth. He and graduate student Jason Wang summoned the GPI team, which confirmed the planet.




Read more at: Methane water enshroud nearby Jupiter-like exoplanet


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Powerful comet activity pushes back solar wind*
By Anthony Wood - August 13, 2015  4 Pictures 



Rosetta has detected a powerful jet of activity emitted from the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P). The force of the outburst, which is believed to be travelling at 10 m per sec (32 ft per sec), was strong enough to temporarily repel the solar wind – a constant stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun, that work to convey our star's magnetic field across the solar system.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Scientists Discover High Levels of Crystalline Silicate Material on Mars. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1844…


----------



## ScienceRocks

SLS Engine Roars through Flight Test in Mississippi http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2015/20150813-sls-engine-roars-through-test.html…


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## ScienceRocks

Space Technology Ireland is to design and build Ireland's very first spacecraft. http://www.joe.ie/news/ireland-is-joining-the-space-race-with-our-first-ever-spacecraft/508119?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=onsite_share…


----------



## ScienceRocks

*India's Mars Orbiter Captures Striking View of Red Planet's Canyons*
















India's Mars Orbiter, which arrived at the Red Planet late last year, has just sent back a beautiful shot of the Ophir Chasma, a system of deep valleys and scalloped terrain in the Valles Marineris region. Areas with major geological features like this tend to show off the various layers of materials making up the surface. The picture above was taken July 19 from 1,857 kilometers (1,154 miles), but the scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation also reconstructed what it might look like from nearby.

The "Mangalyaan" orbiter has been a major success story. It was constructed on a budget a fraction the size of most space missions — in fact, it cost less than the blockbuster space film "Gravity." It's not carrying state-of-the-art equipment like NASA's Maven orbiter, which entered orbit at nearly the same time. India's mission is more of a proof of concept, showing that the country is more than capable of undertaking serious space exploration.

This success not only means great views like this one, but validation of ISRO's technology and methods. Mangalyaan's original six-month mission is long over, but the orbiter will continue sending data as long as it remains functional.

India s Mars Orbiter Captures Striking View of Red Planet s Canyons - NBC News


----------



## Vikrant

^

Those pictures are nice. Aren't they? 

But it is about much more than just pretty pictures. It is about developing cutting edge technology to lift up the nation and humanity.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Vikrant said:


> ^
> 
> Those pictures are nice. Aren't they?
> 
> But it is about much more than just pretty pictures. It is about developing cutting edge technology to lift up the nation and humanity.




You're right about that!  This is one hell of a achievement of human kind and it directly leads to lifting humanity out of poverty. Education and high paying jobs is the best way to do that!


----------



## ScienceRocks

Cassini to Make Last Close Flyby of Saturn Moon Dione - Astrobiology Magazine http://buff.ly/1PgAcHv





In prep for #*JourneyToMars*, engineers weld the @*NASA_Orion* crew module for EM-1 mission: http://go.nasa.gov/1J2yPrn

 





*Astronomers discover the biggest thing in the Universe*
By David Szondy - August 16, 2015  1 Picture 



There's some pretty big stuff out there in the Universe, but how big is the biggest? According to a team of Hungarian-US scientists led by Lajos Balazs, the largest regular formation in the Universe is a ring of nine galaxies 7 billion light years away and 5 billion light years wide. Though not visible from Earth, the newly discovered feature covers a third of our sky.


----------



## Vikrant

Wow! That is huge.


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## ScienceRocks

*'Mini-Atmosphere’ Detected Around Bright Spots On Ceres*


> The odd bright spots perched upon the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres have revealed an unexpected quality, as NASA recently observed the largest of them generating a localized “mini-atmosphere” within their respective crater.
> 
> The observation was made by the Dawn spacecraft, according to Space.com, as it focused on the odd formations at the base of Ceres’ Occator crater. When viewed from the proper angle, the bright spots appear to be undergoing a process of sublimation, generating a haze within the 57-mile-wide (92 kilometers) crater that represents a de facto atmosphere as Dawn’s principal investigator, Christopher Russell, pointed out in a presentation on Tuesday.
> “If you look at a glancing angle, you can see what seems to be haze, and it comes back in a regular pattern,” he observed.


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## ScienceRocks

*LADEE spacecraft finds neon in lunar atmosphere*
* August 17, 2015 by William Steigerwald *



Artist’s concept of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft in orbit above the moon. Credit: NASA Ames / Dana Berry


> The moon's thin atmosphere contains neon, a gas commonly used in electric signs on Earth because of its intense glow. While scientists have speculated on the presence of neon in the lunar atmosphere for decades, NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft has confirmed its existence for the first time.





Read more at: LADEE spacecraft finds neon in lunar atmosphere


----------



## ScienceRocks

Earth-Like Alien World Could Have Vast Oceans


> A small, rocky planet could host liquid water on its surface, if it also contains a carbon-dioxide atmosphere, researchers say.
> The planet, which scientists have dubbed Kepler-62f, has a diameter 40 percent larger than that of Earth, and could contain oceans of water if its atmosphere keeps the planet warm


----------



## ScienceRocks

A Farewell Look at Dione: http://www.universetoday.com/121938/cassinis-farewell-look-at-dione/… @*CassiniSaturn* 's fifth and final flyby of the Saturnian moon.














Cassini just encountered Saturn's moon Dione for the last time. Raw images here http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/index.cfm…






Images from Cassini's last flyby of Dione are coming in! Check them out here: http://1.usa.gov/1cYcqgy


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Scientists think 'planetary pebbles' were the building blocks for the largest planets*


> Researchers at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Queen's University in Canada have unraveled the mystery of how Jupiter and Saturn likely formed. This discovery, which changes our view of how all planets might have ...



*Mystery of exploding stars yields to astrophysicists*


> A longstanding mystery about the tiny stars that let loose powerful explosions known as Type Ia supernovae might finally be solved.



*High-energy observatory launches this week*


> If everything goes according to plan, on Wednesday, Aug. 19, at 6:45 a.m. St. Louis time, NASA TV will broadcast the launch of a cargo container at the Tanegashima Space Center off the southern coast of Japan. In addition ...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*PIA19809: Curiosity Finds Hydrogen-Rich Area of Mars Subsurface* 



Catalog Page for PIA19809


> Curiosity's Russian-made instrument for checking hydration levels in the ground beneath the rover detected an unusually high amount at a site near "Marias Pass," prompting repeated passes over the area to map the hydrogen amounts.
> 
> The instrument is named Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, or DAN. It detects hydrogen by the effect of hydrogen atoms on neutrons entering the ground either from cosmic rays and Curiosity's power source (DAN's passive mode) or from the instrument's neutron pulse generator (DAN's active mode). DAN recognizes which neutrons have bounced off hydrogen from their rerduced energy level.
> 
> This map, covering an area about 130 feet (40 meters) across, shows results from DAN's multiple traverses over the area, with color coding for levels of hydrogen detected. The red coding indicates amounts of hydrogen three to four times as high as the amounts detected anywhere previously along Curiosity's traverse of about 6.9 miles (11.1 kilometers) since landing in August 2012. The inset map at lower right shows the full traverse through Sol 1051 (July 21, 2015), with names assigned to rectangles within Gale Crater for geological mapping purposes. The vertical bar at left indicates the color coding according to counts per second in DAN's passive mode.
> 
> The hydrogen detected by DAN is interpreted as water molecules or hydroxyl ions bound within minerals or water absorbed onto minerals in the rocks and soil, to a depth of about 3 feet (1 meter) beneath the rover. The amount of hydrogen is often expressed as "water equivalent hydrogen" based on two hydrogen atoms per molecule of water.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Rare alignment of Jupiter's three largest moons causes a triple eclipse.





Curiosity Rover Snaps Awesome Selfies on Mars During Mountain Trek http://dlvr.it/BvNszl


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## Vikrant

^ Exotic looking view!


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Germany ramping up mach 20 hypersonic commercial plane and spaceplane project *







> SpaceLiner is an advanced concept for a suborbital, hypersonic, winged passenger transport, which is currently under investigation at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, or DLR) since 2005. The DLR projected that, if funded and development is continued, it could field an operational spaceplane in the 2035-2040s. It...


Read more »


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## ScienceRocks

*MarsCuriosity* Rover Snaps Awesome Selfies on Mars During Mountain Trek http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3kevv
 




NASA Orders 2 More Space Station Cargo Missions from Orbital ATK http://dlvr.it/BvmPZp


----------



## ScienceRocks

Trifonov et al. "Precise radial velocities of giant stars VIII. Testing for the presence of planets with CRIRES Infrared Radial Velocities"
[1508.04769] Precise radial velocities of giant stars VIII. Testing for the presence   of planets with CRIRES Infrared Radial Velocities

Testing whether the infrared radial velocities agree with the optical ones. Eight systems for which planets have been reported pass the IR test.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Cassini's final breathtaking close views of Dione*
* August 21, 2015 by Preston Dyches *



This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward Saturn's icy moon Dione, with giant Saturn and its rings in the background, just prior to the mission's final close approach to the moon on August 17, 2015. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
A pockmarked, icy landscape looms beneath NASA's Cassini spacecraft in new images of Saturn's moon Dione taken during the mission's last close approach to the small, icy world. Two of the new images show the surface of Dione at the best resolution ever.



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-08-cassini-breathtaking-views-dione.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

Russia eyes reviving its Reusable Space Shuttle Program http://bit.ly/1h1dpVc


----------



## ScienceRocks

*A Galaxy Collision Has Been Discovered *

19 August 2015


> Astronomers led by Prof. Quentin Parker at the University of Hong Kong and Prof. Albert Zijlstra at the University of Manchester have discovered the closest ever galaxy collision.
> 
> It's 30 million light years away, but that's fairly nearby by astronomical standards. The galaxy has been named "Kathryn's Wheel", partly after the wife of one of the astronomers, and partly because it looks a bit like the firework.





http://uk.ign.com/ar...been-discovered


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## ScienceRocks

If you're planning to visit Pluto, don't forget the map! #*NewHorizons* #*PlutoFlyby* #*Pluto* #*NASA*

NewHorizons2015, NASA New Horizons and AlanStern


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Plasma Rocket Technology Receives NASA Funding Boost*

Plasma Rocket Technology Receives NASA Funding Boost



> A potential advancement in the United States' electric propulsion capability for the future of spaceflight is being underscored by a new NASA contract to support work on the VASIMR project – short for the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Copenhagen Suborbitals dreams big with Spica rocket*
By Anthony Wood - August 25, 2015  12 Pictures 





> Meet Copenhagen Suborbitals (CS), the small Danish organization with a big dream – launching a human being into space, and returning them safely to Earth in a shoestring-budget micro rocket. The CS website conveys a simple mission statement, to prove that access to space does not have to come in the form of an exorbitantly expensive government-subsidized project. CS is proving that a driven group of individuals can achieve what would at first glance appear to be the unachievable, and strike a blow for the democratization of space.


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## ScienceRocks

.@*ESAGaia*'s first year of scientific observations: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Gaia/Gaia_s_first_year_of_scientific_observations…



















Stellar density map
25 August 2015


> Last Friday, 21 August, ESA’s billion-star surveyor, Gaia, completed its first year of science observations in its main survey mode.
> 
> After launch on 19 December 2013 and a six-month long in-orbit commissioning period, the satellite started routine scientific operations on 25 July 2014. Located at the Lagrange point L2, 1.5 million km from Earth, Gaia surveys stars and many other astronomical objects as it spins, observing circular swathes of the sky. By repeatedly measuring the positions of the stars with extraordinary accuracy, Gaia can tease out their distances and motions through the Milky Way galaxy.
> 
> For the first 28 days, Gaia operated in a special scanning mode that sampled great circles on the sky, but always including the ecliptic poles. This meant that the satellite observed the stars in those regions many times, providing an invaluable database for Gaia’s initial calibration.
> 
> At the end of that phase, on 21 August 2014, Gaia commenced its main survey operation, employing a scanning law designed to achieve the best possible coverage of the whole sky.
> 
> Since the start of its routine phase, the satellite recorded 272 billion positional or astrometric measurements 54.4 billion brightness or photometric data points, and 5.4 billion spectra.
> 
> The Gaia team have spent a busy year processing and analysing these data, en route towards the development of Gaia’s main scientific products, consisting of enormous public catalogues of the positions, distances, motions and other properties of more than a billion stars. Because of the immense volumes of data and their complex nature, this requires a huge effort from expert scientists and software developers distributed across Europe, combined in Gaia’s Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC).
> 
> “The past twelve months have been very intense, but we are getting to grips with the data, and are looking forward to the next four years of nominal operations,” says Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA.


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## ScienceRocks

.@*NASA_Dawn* sends the sharpest views of #*Ceres* yet: http://go.nasa.gov/1PPP4O4


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## ScienceRocks

*Lockheed Martin's satellite cooler gets triple the power*
By David Szondy



Space is cold, but not cold enough for satellite sensors that need to be kept at cryogenic temperatures. Lockheed Martin’s lightweight High Power Microcryocooler is designed to keep these vital components cold, and it now packs three times the power density of previous systems.


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## ScienceRocks

Dynamical study of GJ 3305, the companion M+M binary to 51 Eridani.

Montet et al. "Dynamical Masses of Young M Dwarfs. I. Masses and Orbital Parameters of GJ 3305 AB, the Wide Binary Companion to the Imaged Exoplanet Host 51 Eri"
[1508.05945] Dynamical Masses of Young M Dwarfs. I. Masses and Orbital Parameters of   GJ 3305 AB, the Wide Binary Companion to the Imaged Exoplanet Host 51 Eri


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## ScienceRocks

[1508.06520] The GAPS Programme with HARPS-N@TNG X. The multi-planet system KELT-6:   detection of the planet KELT-6 c and measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin   effect for KELT-6 b

*The GAPS Programme with HARPS-N@TNG X. The multi-planet system KELT-6: detection of the planet KELT-6 c and measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for KELT-6 b
*
Aims. For more than 1.5 years we monitored spectroscopically the star KELT-6 (BD+312447), known to host the transiting hot Saturn KELT-6b, because a previously observed long-term trend in radial velocity time series suggested the existence of an outer companion. Methods. We collected a total of 93 new spectra with the HARPS-N and TRES spectrographs. A spectroscopic transit of KELT-6b was observed with HARPS-N, and simultaneous photometry was obtained with the IAC-80 telescope. Results. We proved the existence of an outer planet with a mininum mass Mpsini=3.71±0.21 MJup and a moderately eccentric orbit (e=0.21+0.039−0.036) of period P∼3.5 years. We improved the orbital solution of KELT-6b and obtained the first measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, showing that the planet has a likely circular, prograde, and slightly misaligned orbit, with a projected spin-orbit angle λ=−36±11 degrees. We improved the KELT-6b transit ephemeris from photometry, and we provided new measurements of the stellar parameters. KELT-6 appears as an interesting case to study the formation and evolution of multi-planet systems


----------



## Vikrant

SRIHARIKOTA:  The Indian space agency has already lined for putting US NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite into orbit using its GSLV-Mk II rocket, its chief said today.

"As a part of cooperation with the US space agency NASA, we will be launching a satellite using GSLV-Mk II in 2021," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar told reporters.

According to him, there is good international market for launching two tonne satellites which ISRO would be targeting.

He said ISRO has to repeat its launch success of its GSLV Mk II rocket to gain the confidence of satellite owners.

ISRO will also be launching four nano-satellites from US as a piggy back luggage for its Astrosat to be launched next month using its another rocket polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV).

ISRO successfully launched its communication satellite GSAT-6 using its GSLV Mk II rocket today.

"The launch proves that the successful launch of communication satellite GSAT-14 last January was not a flash in the pan," said Mr Kumar.

ISRO officials told IANS that around 10 satellites have been identified for launch using GSLV-Mk II.

Queried about the status of testing a reusable launch vehicle, Mr Kumar said the plan is to test fly a scaled down model (1/6th size of real size model) later this year.

India to Launch a Heavier US Satellite With GSLV Rocket


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## ScienceRocks

NASA Concludes Series of Engine Tests for Next-Gen Rocket
08/27/2015 05:34 PM EDT

NASA has completed the first developmental test series on the RS-25 engines that will power the agency’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on missions deeper into space than ever before.


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## ScienceRocks

apparently 'Stephen Hawking says he has a way to escape from a black hole'


https://www.newscien...m-a-black-hole/


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## ScienceRocks

Official Nomenclature of Ceres (August 2015)


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA May Soon Explore Uranus And Neptune Following Pluto Mission*


> It's been 26 years since a NASA flyby to Neptune and the agency dropped some big news at the Outer Planets Assessment Group meeting, saying that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) will be studying a flagship mission to Neptune or Uranus, or even both.
> 
> If the mission is approved, the resulting spacecraft will be following in the footsteps of the Mars2020 and Europa Multiple Flyby missions. According to Jim Green, NASA's Planetary Science Division Director, the proposed mission should not exceed $2 billion. Previous flagship missions include the Voyager, Galileo and Cassini.



NASA May Soon Explore Uranus And Neptune Following Pluto Mission : SCIENCE : Tech Times


----------



## Wry Catcher

Mars simulation project: 6 people start 1 year of isolation in Hawaii dome

Getting serious for the first trip to Mars!


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## ScienceRocks

*Space Launch System fires up*
By David Szondy



NASA is another step closer to manned deep-space missions with the completion of the latest round of RS-25 rocket engine tests. Based on the engines that sent the Space Shuttle into orbit, the new power plants will form the core of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket slated to flyby Mars in 2018.


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## ScienceRocks

* Expandable space stations will be tested and proven in space within 12 months and then larger modules will increase space station size per cost by over ten times *






Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas, Nevada, has entered into a joint agreement with NASA to leverage the company’s B330 inflatable space habitat for use with NASA’s human space flight program. With the space agency eyeing deep space destinations – such as an asteroid and perhaps one day Mars – the systems could enable crews to travel deeper into...

*Nextstep B330*


> Using a NextSTEP contract, Bigelow will work with NASA to investigate how the B330 platform might be used to support robust, safe, and affordable human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.
> 
> The B330, unlike traditional space station habitats, is an inflatable design. The advantage is you gain more volume for a given mass. For example, the Destiny module on the International Space Station (ISS) is a 15-ton section with a volume of 3,743 cubic feet (106 cubic meters). The B330 has a mass of approximately 20 tons but has a gigantic 11,654 cubic feet (330 cubic meters) of interior volume.
> 
> The advantages of the inflatable habitat do not end there. The B330 has superior ballistics protection to the ISS, something to consider when dealing with potential micrometeorites. Any small object penetrating the outer Kevlar shell will break into many smaller pieces and become embedded in the flexible foam and Kevlar layers.
> 
> With 24 to 36 layers (depending on location) the B330 can be as hard as concrete when fully expanded. Additionally, the B330 has radiation shielding equivalent to the ISS to protect the crew from solar storms. The B330 is equipped with solar panels, thermal radiators, and large windows and is capable of supporting a crew of six.


----------------
The future of space stations! Much more room, much earlier to get into space and much cheaper!


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## ScienceRocks

Spitzer Parallax of OGLE-2015-BLG-0966: A Cold Neptune in the Galactic Disk
[1508.07027] Spitzer Parallax of OGLE-2015-BLG-0966: A Cold Neptune in the Galactic   Disk

We report the detection of a Cold Neptune m_planet=21+/-2MEarth orbiting a 0.38MSol M dwarf lying 2.5-3.3 kpc toward the Galactic center as part of a campaign combining ground-based and Spitzer observations to measure the Galactic distribution of planets. This is the first time that the complex real-time protocols described by Yee et al. (2015), which aim to maximize planet sensitivity while maintaining sample integrity, have been carried out in practice. Multiple survey and follow-up teams successfully combined their efforts within the framework of these protocols to detect this planet. This is the second planet in the Spitzer Galactic distribution sample. Both are in the near-to-mid disk and clearly not in the Galactic bulge.


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## ScienceRocks

* 1 to 10 billion earthlike planets in the Milky Way Galaxy *





Researchers combine constraints on galaxy formation histories with planet formation models, yielding the Earth-like and giant planet formation histories of the Milky Way and the Universe as a whole. In the Hubble Volume (10^13 Mpc3 ), we expect there to be ∼ 10^20 Earth-like and ∼ 10^20 giant planets; our own galaxy is expected to host ∼...


----------



## ScienceRocks

Tiny Space Telescope to Aim at 'Super-Earth' Atmospheres http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3mopz







> With a budget of just 50 million pounds ($79 million), the Twinkle satellite team plans to launch into low-Earth orbit in three to four years if it can get the funding. There, it will study
> 
> the infrared (heat) signatures of at least 100 nearby worlds a few hundred light-years away. This will be possible even with a tiny mirror of 50 centimeters (20 inches) compared to a larger telescope like Hubble (2.4 meters/8 feet), the lead scientist told Discovery News.
> 
> "We have identified a niche of science that could be done very well even with a relatively more modest instrument," said Giovanna Tinetti, an astrophysicist at University College
> 
> London. Because the planets will be hothouse worlds that are relatively close by Earth, their infrared signatures are so strong that astronomers can infer the presence of molecules, clouds, weather and climate even in a small telescope, she said.





NASA Mulling Life-Hunting Mission to #*Saturn* Moon Enceladus http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3mnfl


----------



## ScienceRocks

The transiting super-Earth sized planet 55 Cancri e has made the headlines frequently this year with the discovery of possible signs of volcanism as astronomers continue to refine the properties of this hot alien world. But in addition to 55 Cnc e, this system is known to host four other planets including 55 Cnc f which orbits just inside this system's habitable zone. With a mass about half that of Saturn, it is unlikely that 55 Cnc f is habitable, but it could possibly support habitable moons if they are large enough




Habitable Planet Reality Check 55 Cancri f | Drew Ex Machina
Scientific research, news and ponderings from the mind of Andrew LePage.
drewexmachina.com


In addition to finding extrasolar planets, NASA's Kepler mission is also capable of detecting the larger moons of these worlds. But while finding an "exomoon" is possible in theory, in practice such detections are proving to be quite difficult as the case with the Kepler 90g has demonstrated.




The Case for a Moon of Kepler 90g | Drew Ex Machina
Scientific research, news and ponderings from the mind of Andrew LePage.
drewexmachina.com


----------



## ScienceRocks

@*CassiniSaturn* pic of Tethys (processed by @*kevinmgill*)


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ne...edule_999.html


> The first prototype of a new Russian manned spacecraft for launch to the International Space Station (ISS) and the Moon may be created ahead of schedule, president of Russian space manufacturer RSC Energia Vladimir Solntsev told RIA Novosti on Saturday. The International Aviation and Space Salon MAKS 2015 is currently underway in the town of Zhukovsky near Moscow, and is due to finish on Sunday.
> 
> "We have agreed with the engineers... to reduce the time for construction and production of the first copy of this spaceship. Despite the fact that we have voiced and agreed on the first launch in 2021, we have set the task to build the prototype by 2019, and I think that we will succeed, " Solntsev told reporters at the MAKS


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Soyuz carrying 3-man crew blasts off for orbiting station*
A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian, a Dane and a Kazakh blasted off on Wednesday for a two-day trip to the International Space Station.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*World's most powerful digital camera gets the go-ahead*
By David Szondy - September 1, 2015  4 Pictures 



A smartphone with a 16-megapixel camera may seem cutting edge, but it won't impress astronomers now that the US Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has given the green light to start construction of the world's largest digital camera. With a resolution of 3.2-gigapixels (enough to need 1,500 high-definition television screens to display one image), the new camera is at the heart of the 8.4-meter (27.5-ft) Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) now under construction atop Cerro Pachón in Chile.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*First Falcon Heavy Launch Scheduled for Spring*
by Jeff Foust — September 2, 2015




An illustration of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Credit: SpaceX
PASADENA, Calif. — The long-delayed first flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch vehicle is now scheduled for April or May of 2016, a company official said Sept. 1.

Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Space 2015 conference here, Lee Rosen, vice president of mission and launch operations for SpaceX, said the company was also wrapping up work on the renovated launch pad that rocket will use.

“It’s going to be a great day when we launch that, some time in the late April-early May timeframe,” he said of the Falcon Heavy.

- See more at: First Falcon Heavy Launch Scheduled for Spring - SpaceNews.com


----------



## ScienceRocks

[1509.00723] Detecting ring systems around exoplanets using high resolution   spectroscopy: the case of 51Pegb

*Detecting ring systems around exoplanets using high resolution spectroscopy: the case of 51Pegb*

In this paper we explore the possibility that the recently detected reflected light signal of 51\,Peg\,b could be caused by a ring system around the planet. We use a simple model to compare the observed signal with the expected signal from a short-period giant planet with rings. We also use simple dynamical arguments to understand the possible geometry of such a system. We provide evidence that, to a good approximation, the observations are compatible with the signal expected from a ringed planet, assuming that the rings are non-coplanar with the orbital plane. However, based on dynamical arguments, we also show that this configuration is unlikely. In the case of coplanar rings we then demonstrate that the incident flux on the ring surface is about 2\% the value received by the planet, a value that renders the ring explanation unlikely. The results suggest that the signal observed cannot in principle be explained by a planet+ring system. We discuss, however, the possibility of using reflected light spectra to detect and characterize the presence of rings around short-period planets. Finally, we show that ring systems could have already been detected by photometric transit campaigns, but their signal could have been easily misinterpreted by the expected light curve of an eclipsing binary.


----------



## ScienceRocks

MAVEN Using Stars To Study Mars' Atmosphere @*NASA* http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3n75d


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2015/09/...t-spring-2016/


> After a three-year delay, SpaceX plans to fly its Falcon Heavy launch vehicle for the first time next spring, followed quickly by three additional flights of the 28-engine rocket by the end of 2016.
> 
> Lee Rosen, SpaceX’s vice president of mission and launch operations, laid out the ambitious schedule for the heavy-lift rocket during an appearance at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Space 2015 conference in Pasadena earlier this week.
> 
> The first flight in April or May will be a demonstration mission of the new launch vehicle, which features three modified Falcon 9 cores with 27 engines as its first stage. Falcon Heavy is designed to lift more 53 metric tons (58.4 tons) into low Earth orbit.


----------



## ScienceRocks

The Russians are planing to send a probe to the moon in 2016 in the Boguslavsky crater, near the Moon's South Pole. The last time they sent a probe to the moon was in 1976 - 40 years between the two probes.

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...nding_999.html


> "The main difference from Soviet missions, which brought back space material to Earth, is that research will be carried out directly on board the probe," explained Vladislav Tretyakov, a researcher in nuclear planetology at the Russian Space Research Institute [IKI].
> 
> "Secondly, we must ensure survival during lunar nights, which back then was only achieved only by our 'Lunokhod' rover."
> 
> "And of course, this is the first polar mission, insofar as all the previous missions, including ours and those from other nations, were [conducted] at equatorial latitudes."
> 
> Most of the instruments for the spacecraft, named 'Luna-Globe' are being made at the IKI; a life-sized model of the probe is currently being exhibited for visitors to the International Air Show in the Moscow suburb of Zhukovsky.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Chang'e 5 will be landing on the earth facing side of the moon and Chang'e 4 on the other side.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...le-return.html


> It's not clear where on the Moon this is, or what the scale of the image is. Planetary cartographer extraordinaire Phil Stooke attempted to narrow it down from the lengths of the shadows in the craters: "The terminator was crossing the Mare Crisium area over the few days the images were taken. I had been expecting a landing in Oceanus Procellarum, but the sun would have been overhead there, and these images have shadows suggesting a lower sun elevation. Possibly a site in the eastern maria, but west of Crisium. Not much to go on yet."
> 
> When I first read this news I was terribly confused because I thought that I'd heard that they had planned a landing on the farside. But I was recalling the wrong mission. It's Chang'e 4 -- the backup module to Chang'e 3 -- that is planned for a future landing on the lunar farside. That launch is not planned until around 2020.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Flower Power: Giant 'Starshades' Prepped for Exoplanet Hunting
*http://dlvr.it/C3Y9Tw


In an attempt to better characterize planets beyond the solar system, some scientists are turning to big, flower-shaped disks known as starshades.

Intended to be used in space in combination with a separately flying telescope, a starshade would block the light from a parent
	
 star, allowing dim exoplanets to be observed and studied. But before the first starshade can be sent to space, the technology must be tested on Earth — and that's not a trivial task.

"The unique architecture of the starshade — namely, the size and separation needed — make it difficult to test cheaply," Anthony Harness, a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told Space.com.


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA's @*MarsCuriosity* is beaming home amazing photos of the Red Planet. http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3now3





Farthest Galaxy Found 600,000 Years After the Big Bang via @*ScienceDaily* http://buff.ly/1JU5i3v


----------



## longknife

*The Starliner is set for blast off! Boeing opens massive facility to build spacecraft that will see US return to manned spaceflight*










Starliner, formerly known CST-100, is expected to begin ferrying astronauts to the ISS within two years

It may also take paying customers to low-Earth orbit and the unique sensation of sustained weightlessness

Spacecraft is being built at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, at a former space shuttle hangar



Read more: Boeing Starliner will see US return to manned spaceflight


----------



## ScienceRocks

First Pieces of NASA’s Orion for Next Mission Come Together at Michoud
09/08/2015 12:46 PM EDT


> NASA is another small step closer to sending astronauts on a journey to Mars. On Saturday, engineers at the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans welded together the first two segments of the Orion crew module that will fly atop NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on a mission beyond the far side of the moon.




RT @*IFLScience* This "Hedgehog" robot could hop and tumble over asteroids and comets. http://bit.ly/1UAvRAT


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Parsing photons in the infrared, astronomers uncover signs of earliest galaxies*


> Astronomers from the University of California, Irvine and Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute have generated the most accurate statistical description yet of faint, early galaxies as they existed in the universe


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.02323.pdf

ABSTRACT
We report the discovery of KELT-10b, the rst transiting exoplanet discovered us-
ing the KELT-South telescope. KELT-10b is a highly in ated sub-Jupiter mass planet

:
*WASP-120b, WASP-122b and WASP-123b: Three newly discovered planets from the WASP-South survey*
O.D.Turner, D. R. Anderson, A. Collier Cameron, L. Delrez, M. Gillon, C. Hellier, E. Jehin, M. Lendl, P. F. L. Maxted, F. Pepe, D. Pollacco, D. Queloz, D. Sègransan, B. Smalley, A. M. S. Smith, A. H. M.J. Triaud, S. Udry, R. G. West
(Submitted on 7 Sep 2015)


> We present the discovery by the WASP-South survey of three planets transiting moderately bright stars (V ~ 11). WASP-120b is a massive (5.0MJup) planet in a 3.6-day orbit that we find likely to be eccentric (e = 0.059+0.025-0.018) around an F5 star. WASP-122b is a hot-Jupiter (1.37MJup, 1.79RJup) in a 1.7-day orbit about a G4 star. Our predicted transit depth variation cause by the atmosphere of WASP-122b suggests it is well suited to characterisation. WASP-123b is a hot-Jupiter (0.92MJup, 1.33RJup) in a 3.0-day orbit around an old (~ 7 Gyr) G5 star.



[1509.02210] WASP-120b, WASP-122b and WASP-123b: Three newly discovered planets from   the WASP-South survey


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## ScienceRocks

China now confirms the Chang'e 4 will be the 1st craft to land on the far side of the moon before 2020. This clearly indicates Chang'e 5 to be launched in 2017 will be landing on the moon surface facing earth.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134603260.htm


> China is planning to be the first country to land a lunar probe on the far side of the moon, a Chinese lunar probe scientist said Tuesday.
> 
> The mission will be carried out by Chang'e-4, a backup probe for Chang'e-3, and is slated to be launched before 2020, said Zou Yongliao from the moon exploration department under the Chinese Academy of Sciences at a deep-space exploration forum Tuesday.
> 
> Zou said government organs have ordered experts to assess the plan over the past 12 plus months. "China will be the first to complete the task if it is successful."


----------



## Sun Devil 92

The far left plans to go to the sun....

At night.


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## ScienceRocks

Sun Devil 92 said:


> The far left plans to go to the sun....
> 
> At night.



Since most of the most intelligent people on this planet are "far leftist" I am assuming that they wouldn't do such a thing...A satellite on the far side of the sun? Maybe!


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## ScienceRocks

Ceres' Bright Spots Seen in Striking New Detail http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4714…


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## ScienceRocks

* Photonic laser propulsion roadmap to laser pushed wafersats to 25% lightspeed *






DE-STAR, or Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation, is the brainchild of UC Santa Barbara physicist Philip Lubin and Gary B. Hughes. DE-STAR initial objective is to deflect asteroids. The DE-STAR system could be leveraged for many other uses, such as stopping the rotation of a spinning asteroid and achieving relativistic...
Read more »


----------



## ScienceRocks

New from Mars Express: a sweeping view over the south pole of #*Mars* http://ow.ly/S1Kx9


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## ScienceRocks

* Elon Musk discusses making Mars more habitable by nuking the poles and being reading to ferry astronauts to ISS within 2-3 years*


> Elon Musk told Stephen Colbert, Spacex will be ready for human passengers within two to three years. Mars is "a fixer upper of a planet," Musk says, but it can be made to be more like Earth if it can be made hotter. When it comes to turning on the planetary furnace, there's a slow way and fast way, he explained. The slow way is to release greenhouse gases, the same process being blamed for global warming on Earth. The fast...



Personally, I'd set up a few thousand ground carbon machines that put the stuff into the atmosphere...After a few hundred years maybe I'd plant a shit ton of grass like plant to change the atmosphere with more oxygen.


----------



## ScienceRocks

'Completely wild': Pluto close-ups from New Horizons boggle astro-minds http://nbcnews.to/1Og84GI


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## ScienceRocks

SpaceX Unveils The Interior Of Crew Dragon | Video http://dlvr.it/C6jfdd

Musk rules!


*New Photos of Pluto Show a World More Complex and Beautiful Than Ever*
New Photos of Pluto Show a World More Complex and Beautiful Than Ever


> An "over-the-top" complex mix of craters, ice flows, mountains, valleys and apparent dunes coexist on Pluto in the latest amazing images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
> 
> "Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of process that rival anything we've seen in the solar system," New Horizons' principal investigator Alan Stern, from the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado
> 
> , said in a statement. "If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top — but that's what is actually there." At Space.com, we combined the new Pluto images into an awesome video.
> 
> After a break to send particle, solar-wind and space-dust data
> 
> back to Earth, the New Horizons spacecraft has resumed sending images snapped during its July 14 flyby of Pluto. The new images released today (Sept. 10) have resolutions of up to 440 yards (400 meters) per pixel, and they show a chaotic hodgepodge of features offering many scientific puzzles.



Look at the video and pics at the link!


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Underground magma ocean could explain Io's 'misplaced' volcanoes*
* September 10, 2015 by William Steigerwald *



This five-frame sequence of images from the New Horizons spacecraft captures the giant plume from Io's Tvashtar volcano. Credit: Credits: NASA/JHU Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute


> Tides flowing in a subsurface ocean of molten rock, or magma, could explain why Jupiter's moon Io appears to have its volcanoes in the "wrong" place. New NASA research implies that oceans beneath the crusts of tidally stressed moons may be more common and last longer than expected. The phenomenon applies to oceans made from either magma or water, potentially increasing the odds for life elsewhere in the universe.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-underground-magma-ocean-io-misplaced.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

Firefly Space Systems successfully tested its first engine, the Firefly Rocke... https://www.inside.com/space/u6plq/Firefly-Space-Systems-successfully-tested-its-firs?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=twitterhandle&utm_campaign=@GoInsideSpace… #*space* #*news*






Arianespace successfully launches two Galileo navigation satellites [URL='http://t.co/BWIhfQcwCl']http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/arianespace/arianespace-successfully-launches-two-galileo-navigation-satellites/…



[/URL]


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Steps to Interstellar laser pushed propulsion and a 16 year trip to Alpha Centauri *



> The impossible task of traveling 25.6 trillion miles to Alpha Centauri, our closest star, is now possible. Using a Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation (DE-STAR), a versatile, scalable phased-array laser system, it can be reached in a short 16 years. Our project entails carrying out both computational and experimental studies of specific uses of DE-STAR to investigate photon recycling and spacecraft propulsion. Photon recycling is a unique term used to describe a form of energy conservation relative to this project. This effect will greatly improve the efficiency of spacecraft making interstellar flight more plausible. What lies beyond our solar system is one of the biggest mysteries of mankind and it finally has the potential to be solved.
> 
> The DESTAR interstellar laser propulsion system is modular, scalable and on a very rapid development path. It lends itself to a roadmap.
> 
> There has been a game change in directed energy technology whose consequences are profound for many applications including photon driven propulsion. This allows for a completely modular and scalable technology without "dead ends".
> 
> Laser efficiencies are near 50%. The rise in efficiency will not be one of the enabling elements along the road map but free space phase control over large distances during the acceleration phase will be. This will require understanding the optics, phase noise and systematic effects of our combined on-board metrology and off-board phase servo feedback.


----------



## ScienceRocks

[1509.02917] A HARPS view on K2-3
*
A HARPS view on K2-3*

K2 space observations recently found that three super-Earths transit the nearby M dwarf K2-3. The apparent brightness and the small physical radius of their host star rank these planets amongst the most favourable for follow-up characterisations. The outer planet orbits close to the inner edge of the habitable zone and might become one of the first exoplanets searched for biomarkers using transmission spectroscopy. We used the HARPS velocimeter to measure the mass of the planets. The mass of planet b is 8.4±2.1 M⊕, while our determination of those planets c and d are affected by the stellar activity. With a density of 4.32+2.0−0.76 gcm−3, planet b is probably mostly rocky, but it could contain up to 50% water.
==================


K2-3 is 2.14 times bigger then earth by radius and probably has oceans that are many thousands of miles deep...Think about that for a second.

There's a chance that this has a mass over 10 times that of earth and is another mega earth.

I just looked through the paper and C and D mass isn't yet 100% but what I found was interesting...C mass is a lot like Kepler 138d as it is very low but only 1.6 earth radi's...Well, it maybe another gas dwarf! On the otherhand,,,,k2-3d has a mass of over 11 times that of earth with 1.53 radi's...So it has a density of 17.5! That is 3 times that of earth...So likely mostly iron...

Weird how one planet can get all the heavy stuff and the other gets screwed.

==========================
*SpaceX shows off Crew Dragon interior*

 David Szondy 
September 11, 2015
 5 PICTURES 





> Last year, SpaceX unveiled its Crew Dragon, which is scheduled to begin ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2017. Now the company is giving the public a look at the interior. Sporting a minimalist design, it's intended to not only provide safety, but a considerable degree of comfort.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA releases first clear image of Pluto's small moon Nix*

By Loren Grush on September 11, 2015 02:08 pm


> Today, NASA released the first crisp image of Pluto's jellybean-shaped moon Nix. The photo was taken by the New Horizons probe on July 14th as the spacecraft flew by Pluto.
> 
> Until now, the only close-up photo we had of Nix was a blurry, enhanced-color image. From that photo, NASA estimated that Nix is 26 miles long and 22 miles wide, shaped a bit like a football. This new picture, taken by New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), reveals the moon isn't smooth but rough around the edges. There also appears to be a large crater on its surface.





http://www.theverge....ix-new-horizons


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Russian cosmonaut back after record 879 days in space*


> Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka returned safely to Earth with two other astronauts from the International Space Station Saturday with the record for having spent the most time in space.




*Mars panorama from Curiosity shows petrified sand dunes*
* September 12, 2015 *



Large-scale crossbedding in the sandstone of this ridge on a lower slope of Mars' Mount Sharp is typical of windblown sand dunes that have petrified. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS


> Some of the dark sandstone in an area being explored by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows texture and inclined bedding structures characteristic of deposits that formed as sand dunes, then were cemented into rock.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-mars-panorama-curiosity-petrified-sand.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*First Image of Planet Birth Shows Tightly Packed Worlds*
by Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor  |  September 11, 2015 05:27am ET






> A controversial space image does indeed show the first picture
> 
> of planets being born, a new study confirms.
> 
> When an image of the system
> 
> HL Tau was unveiled last year, it sparked controversy over whether or not grooves in the disk of dust surrounding the star could be explained by the presence of newly formed giant planets. Now, a new paper suggests that the orbit of those planets could serve to stabilize rather than eject one another, as had originally been suggested. That means this image is the first time scientists have observed a forming planetary system, and a tightly packed one at that.
> 
> "The big question is, are we really seeing giant planets carving out the disk out of which they are forming?" lead author Daniel Tamayo, from the University of Toronto in Canada, had said in a presentation at the Emerging Researchers for Exoplanet Science Symposium hosted at Pennsylvania State University in April.


----------



## ScienceRocks

RT @*paoecua* A mist of water ice crystals hangs in the Gran Canyon of Mars, Valles Marineris






New Pluto Images Show Possible Dunes, Crepuscular Rays, Unimaginable Complexity http://www.universetoday.com/122309/new-pluto-images-show-possible-dunes-crepuscular-rays-unimaginable-complexity/…


----------



## ScienceRocks

*World's first all-electric propulsion satellite goes on line*

 David Szondy 
September 13, 2015





> Boeing has announced that the first satellite with all-electric propulsion is now fully operational. Launched last March, the ABS-3A 702SP (small platform) satellite was formally handed over to its owner, Bermuda-based telecommunications company ABS, on August 31. It will provide communications services to the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.





> ABS-3A launched on March 1 atop a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX’s Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida along with EUTELSAT 115 West B. The geosynchronous comsat's key technology is its Xenon Ion Propulsion System (XIPS). Previously, hybrid systems that use a mix of chemical and ion propellants have been sent into orbit, but this is the first time a satellite has been deployed with an all-electric drive.
> 
> Boeing says that the technology is based on 210,000 hours of ion propulsion flight experience and is 10 times more efficient than liquid-fueled rockets. Four 25-cm (9.8-in) thrusters using xenon as a propellant allow the 702SP satellite to maintain stationkeeping while using only 5 kg (11 lb) of fuel per year. This is a great saving because the satellite needs less fuel and smaller thrusters, which reduces launch costs.
> 
> After launch, the XIPS drive allowed ABS-3A to power itself into geosynchronous orbit, where it is stationed at 3° West longitude. A second 702SP satellite (ABS-2A) for ABS is scheduled to launch next year.
> 
> "With a successful launch, testing, and execution of orbit operations, we were able to deliver the first 702SP to ABS about one month earlier than planned," says Mark Spiwak, president, Boeing Satellite Systems International. "The 702SP product line was designed to bring the latest technology into the hands of customers seeking adaptable and affordable solutions. In addition, the 702SP’s patented dual-launch capability helps customers share launch costs, which can significantly lower overall expenses for a satellite owner."


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers peer into the 'amniotic sac' of a planet-hosting star*
Astronomers have successfully peered through the 'amniotic sac' of a star that is still forming to observe the innermost region of a burgeoning solar system for the first time.


----------



## ScienceRocks

North Korea plans to put a satellite into orbit using a rocket widely seen as a long-range missile in the making. http://nyti.ms/1irxhlz


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Hubble photograph of a quasar ejecting nearly 5,000 light years from the M87 galaxy *5,000 lightyears. That means what you're seeing— this ejection— spans the same amount of time as between the construction of the pyramids and today. Its material at the end of the jet flew out of the core of M87 _before humans had even invented writing._


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## ScienceRocks

*Cassini Finds Global Ocean in Saturn's Moon Enceladus*



Illustration of the interior of Saturn's moon Enceladus showing a global liquid water ocean between its rocky core and icy crust. Thickness of layers shown here is not to scale.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
View Unlabeled Image


> A global ocean lies beneath the icy crust of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus, according to new research using data from NASA's Cassini mission.
> 
> Researchers found the magnitude of the moon's very slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can only be accounted for if its outer ice shell is not frozen solid to its interior, meaning a global ocean must be present.
> 
> The finding implies the fine spray of water vapor, icy particles and simple organic molecules Cassini has observed coming from fractures near the moon's south pole is being fed by this vast liquid water reservoir. The research is presented in a paper published online this week in the journal Icarus.
> 
> Previous analysis of Cassini data suggested the presence of a lens-shaped body of water, or sea, underlying the moon's south polar region. However, gravity data collected during the spacecraft's several close passes over the south polar region lent support to the possibility the sea might be global. The new results -- derived using an independent line of evidence based on Cassini's images -- confirm this to be the case.
> 
> "This was a hard problem that required years of observations, and calculations involving a diverse collection of disciplines, but we are confident we finally got it right," said Peter Thomas, a Cassini imaging team member at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and lead author of the paper.
> 
> Cassini scientists analyzed more than seven years' worth of images of Enceladus taken by the spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since mid-2004. They carefully mapped the positions of features on Enceladus -- mostly craters -- across hundreds of images, in order to measure changes in the moon's rotation with extreme precision.
> 
> As a result, they found Enceladus has a tiny, but measurable wobble as it orbits Saturn. Because the icy moon is not perfectly spherical -- and because it goes slightly faster and slower during different portions of its orbit around Saturn -- the giant planet subtly rocks Enceladus back and forth as it rotates.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Blue Origin to launch from Florida*

 David Szondy 


 4 PICTURES 



In a statement on the company's blog, Blue Origins founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced today that Cape Canaveral has been selected as the launch site for its orbital launch vehicle.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Matthew said:


> *Cassini Finds Global Ocean in Saturn's Moon Enceladus*
> 
> 
> 
> Illustration of the interior of Saturn's moon Enceladus showing a global liquid water ocean between its rocky core and icy crust. Thickness of layers shown here is not to scale.
> Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
> View Unlabeled Image
> 
> 
> 
> A global ocean lies beneath the icy crust of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus, according to new research using data from NASA's Cassini mission.
> 
> Researchers found the magnitude of the moon's very slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can only be accounted for if its outer ice shell is not frozen solid to its interior, meaning a global ocean must be present.
> 
> The finding implies the fine spray of water vapor, icy particles and simple organic molecules Cassini has observed coming from fractures near the moon's south pole is being fed by this vast liquid water reservoir. The research is presented in a paper published online this week in the journal Icarus.
> 
> Previous analysis of Cassini data suggested the presence of a lens-shaped body of water, or sea, underlying the moon's south polar region. However, gravity data collected during the spacecraft's several close passes over the south polar region lent support to the possibility the sea might be global. The new results -- derived using an independent line of evidence based on Cassini's images -- confirm this to be the case.
> 
> "This was a hard problem that required years of observations, and calculations involving a diverse collection of disciplines, but we are confident we finally got it right," said Peter Thomas, a Cassini imaging team member at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and lead author of the paper.
> 
> Cassini scientists analyzed more than seven years' worth of images of Enceladus taken by the spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since mid-2004. They carefully mapped the positions of features on Enceladus -- mostly craters -- across hundreds of images, in order to measure changes in the moon's rotation with extreme precision.
> 
> As a result, they found Enceladus has a tiny, but measurable wobble as it orbits Saturn. Because the icy moon is not perfectly spherical -- and because it goes slightly faster and slower during different portions of its orbit around Saturn -- the giant planet subtly rocks Enceladus back and forth as it rotates.
Click to expand...

Cassini Finds Global Ocean in Saturn's Moon Enceladus


----------



## Votto

RetiredGySgt said:


> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?



That's right.

Obama is too busy monitoring our finite resources in an infinite universe to be too concerned with space exploration.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Astronomers peer into the ‘amniotic sac’ of a planet-hosting star | Astronomy Now


> High-resolution Br γ spectro-interferometry of the transitional Herbig Ae/Be star HD 100546: a Keplerian gaseous disc inside the inner rim
> We present spatially and spectrally resolved Br γ emission around the planet-hosting, transitional Herbig Ae/Be star HD 100546. Aiming to gain insight into the physical origin of the line in possible relation to accretion processes, we carried out Br γ spectro-interferometry using AMBER/VLTI from three different baselines achieving spatial and spectral resolutions of 2–4 mas and 12 000. The Br γ visibility is larger than that of the continuum for all baselines. Differential phases reveal a shift between the photocentre of the Br γ line – displaced ∼0.6 mas (0.06 au at 100 pc) NE from the star – and that of the K-band continuum emission – displaced ∼0.3 mas NE from the star. The photocentres of the redshifted and blueshifted components of the Br γ line are located NW and SE from the photocentre of the peak line emission, respectively. Moreover, the photocentre of the fastest velocity bins within the spectral line tends to be closer to that of the peak emission than the photocentre of the slowest velocity bins. Our results are consistent with a Br γ-emitting region inside the dust inner rim ( ≲ 0.25 au) and extending very close to the central star, with a Keplerian, disc-like structure rotating counter-clockwise, and most probably flared (∼25°). Even though the main contribution to the Br γ line does not come from gas magnetically channelled on to the star, accretion on to HD 100546 could be magnetospheric, implying a mass accretion rate of a few 10−7 M⊙ yr−1. This value indicates that the observed gas has to be replenished on time-scales of a few months to years, perhaps by planet-induced flows from the outer to the inner disc as has been reported for similar systems.


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## ScienceRocks

*Watching an exoplanet in motion around a distant star*
* September 16, 2015 *





A series of images taken between November 2013 to April 2015 with the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) on the Gemini South telescope in Chile shows the exoplanet β Pic b orbiting the star β Pictoris, which lies over 60 light-years from Earth. In …more


> A team of astronomers has given us our best view yet of an exoplanet moving in its orbit around a distant star. A series of images captured between November 2013 to April 2015 shows the exoplanet β Pic b as it moves through 1.5 years of its 22-year orbital period.
> 
> First discovered in 2008, β Pic b is a gas giant planet ten to twelve times the mass of Jupiter, with an orbit roughly the diameter of Saturn's. It is part of the dynamic and complex system of the star β Pictoris which lies over 60 light-years from Earth. The system includes comets, orbiting gas clouds, and an enormous debris disk that in our Solar System would extend from Neptune's orbit to nearly two thousand times the Sun/Earth distance.
> 
> Because the planet and debris disk interact gravitationally, the system provides astronomers with an ideal laboratory to test theories on the formation of planetary systems beyond ours.
> 
> Maxwell Millar-Blanchaer, a PhD-candidate in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, is lead author of a paper to be published September 16th in the _Astrophysical Journal_. The paper describes observations of the β Pictoris system made with the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) instrument on the Gemini South telescope in Chile.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-exoplanet-motion-distant-star.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

Researchers at @*NASA* propose using @*SpaceX* Falcon/Dragon for Mars sample return mission http://news.yahoo.com/red-dragon-mars-sample-return-mission-could-launch-114405239.html…


Dragon on Mars.






----------------------------------------
More about SOHO’s 3000th comet: http://ow.ly/SgQ1I (& via @*sungrazercomets* @*NASASunEarth*)


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> North Korea plans to put a satellite into orbit using a rocket widely seen as a long-range missile in the making. http://nyti.ms/1irxhlz


My military buddy said china broke a code or truce and blew up one of their satellites and eventually that crap will hit our satellites and eventually it'll be junk in space.

He then tells me china wants to mine the moon and there's unlimited amount of fuel on the moon. On the surface?

Then he tells me how they are working on dropping this tungsten carbide or titanium strong steel and they can drop them from space and it has the power of a nuke without the fallout.

He said the moon is the ultimate high ground.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Check out #*NASANewHorizons* Spectacular Backlit Panorama of #*Pluto*! http://go.nasa.gov/1ijKD2B





*Prof. Abel Méndez* retweeted
 *Damian Peach* ‏@*peachastro*  3h3 hours ago

I produced a colour version of the wonderful @*NASANewHorizons* Pluto crescent image using global colour data. #*Pluto*






http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/pics/Pluto-Wide-FINAL-9-17-15.jpg



* Spiderfab could enable 100+ meter space telescopes by 2022 *

Spiderfab was presented at the Future in space Operations workshop.


> • SpiderFab architecture combines robotic assembly with additive manufacturing techniques adapted for space
> • On orbit fabrication enables order.of.magnitude improvements in packing efficiency and launch mass for large systems
> >Higher Power, Resolution, Sensitivity and Bandwidth
> • On.orbit fabrication with SpiderFab will enable NASA to accomplish 10X more science.per.dollar
> • NIAC and SBIR work has validated feasibility of the key processes for SpiderFab
> • They are preparing technology for flight demonstrations
> • Affordable pathfinder demo can create new mission capability


----------



## ScienceRocks




----------



## ScienceRocks

Hot Jupiters have close siblings example WASP-41 http://www.iap.fr/col2015/talks/wednesday/neveu_vanmalle.pdf


*WASP-47: A Hot Jupiter System with Two Additional Planets Discovered by K2*
*[1508.02411] WASP-47: A Hot Jupiter System with Two Additional Planets Discovered by   K2*
Juliette C. Becker, Andrew Vanderburg, Fred C. Adams, Saul A. Rappaport, Hans Martin Schwengeler
(Submitted on 10 Aug 2015)


> Using new data from the K2 mission, we show that WASP-47, a previously known hot Jupiter host, also hosts two additional transiting planets: a Neptune-sized outer planet and a super-Earth inner companion. We measure planetary properties from the K2 light curve and detect transit timing variations, confirming the planetary nature of the outer planet. We performed a large number of numerical simulations to study the dynamical stability of the system and to find the theoretically expected transit timing variations (TTVs). The theoretically predicted TTVs are in good agreement with those observed, and we use the TTVs to determine the masses of two planets, and place a limit on the third. The WASP-47 planetary system is important because companion planets can both be inferred by TTVs and are also detected directly through transit observations. The depth of the hot Jupiter's transits make ground-based TTV measurements possible, and the brightness of the host star makes it amenable for precise radial velocity measurements. The system serves as a Rosetta Stone for understanding TTVs as a planet detection technique.


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA's Orion spacecraft passes key review*

 Anthony Wood 
September 18, 2015
 3 PICTURES 





> NASA's Orion spacecraft has overcome its latest hurdle on the road to becoming human-rated, with the completion of a technical and programmatic review (TPR). Once finished, Orion will be the first spacecraft designed to allow astronauts to operate beyond Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) since the Apollo program. Eventually, NASA envisions using the capsule as a key component in the planned asteroid redirect mission, and the ongoing endeavor to one day put a man on Mars.




=====
2 minutes ago

Fly over Pluto’s icy mountains and frozen plains from @*NASANewHorizons* July 14th #*PlutoFlyby* http://go.nasa.gov/1JfbVge https://amp.twimg.com/v/0bc8d2f5-05ae-4523-9f9d-16dcf62e711b…


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## ScienceRocks

* Titan’s “bucket brigade” brings liquid to moon’s north pole *
_Posted by nbompey_

*By Larry O’Hanlon*




This near-infrared, color mosaic from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows the sun glinting off of Titan’s north polar seas. A new study suggests a “bucket brigade” “bucket brigade” brings liquid to moon’s north pole.
_Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho_


> Researchers think they have found a veritable bucket brigade that has been slowly but surely drenching the north pole of Saturn’s moon Titan – the only world in the solar system, other than Earth, to have lakes, seas and rainy weather.
> 
> For about a decade – ever since the Cassini–Huygens probe peered through Titan’s smoggy atmosphere to reveal its surface – Titan’s extra wet northern region has puzzled scientists.
> 
> Because Titan only receives a hundredth of the energy that Earth gets from the Sun, and averages about 180 degrees below zero Celsius (292 degrees below zero Fahrenheit), the seas and stormy weather on Titan are made of liquid methane, which can exist at very low temperatures. The moon’s northern pole is full of these methane lakes and seas. By contrast, the southern hemisphere of Titan has only one significant body of liquid.
> 
> Scientists have resorted to models to try and reproduce the conditions that create the world’s wet northern region.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Two new K2 confirmed planets! K2-21 b http://goo.gl/QTJ9IP & K2-21 c http://goo.gl/q26sli


Discoveries from the prime Kepler mission demonstrated that small planets (< 3 Earth-radii) are common outcomes of planet formation. While Kepler detected many such planets, all but a handful orbit faint, distant stars and are not amenable to precise follow up measurements. Here, we report the discovery of two small planets transiting K2-21, a bright (K = 9.4) M0 dwarf located 65$\pm$6 pc from Earth. We detected the transiting planets in photometry collected during Campaign 3 of NASA's K2 mission. Analysis of transit light curves reveals that the planets have small radii compared to their host star, 2.60 $\pm$ 0.14% and 3.15 $\pm$ 0.20%, respectively. We obtained follow up NIR spectroscopy of K2-21 to constrain host star properties, which imply planet sizes of 1.59 $\pm$ 0.43 Earth-radii and 1.92 $\pm$ 0.53 Earth-radii, respectively, straddling the boundary between high-density, rocky planets and low-density planets with thick gaseous envelopes. The planets have orbital periods of 9.32414 days and 15.50120 days, respectively, and have a period ratio of 1.6624, very near to the 5:3 mean motion resonance, which may be a record of the system's formation history. Transit timing variations (TTVs) due to gravitational interactions between the planets may be detectable using ground-based telescopes. Finally, this system offers a convenient laboratory for studying the bulk composition and atmospheric properties of small planets with low equilibrium temperatures.

Two Transiting Earth-size Planets Near Resonance Orbiting a Nearby Cool Star

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.08256v2.pdf


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## ScienceRocks

* DARPA looks to revolutionize orbiting satellites with robotic refueling, repair and construction *







> Pamela Melroy, deputy director of the tactical technology office at DARPA, said such a robotic system could be used to refuel, repair and construct spacecraft at GEO, Cheryl Pellerin writes. Pellerin reports GEO is a stable space environment that is approximately 36,000 kilometers away from Earth but has high levels of radiation that could...


Read more »


----------



## ScienceRocks

China launches new type of carrier rocket: state media: China on Sunday launched a new type of rocket that will... http://fb.me/24t5N24tJ


Long March 6 debut launch photos! http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/09/china-debut-launch-long-march-6/…












This is the 2nd of their new space toys to be introduced. In a few days time they will be introducing their next one - Long March 11.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/...-long-march-6/

China initiated a new era in its space exploration with the debut of a new family of launch vehicle. The first Long March-6 (Chang Zheng-6) rocket was successfully launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, with a multi-payload cargo of 20 small satellites. Launch took place at 2300:00 UTC on Saturday.


=======================


God, do I wish China would do their own Kepler extrasolar planet telescope and send men to the moon and mars! Go CHINA!


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## ScienceRocks

'A crowdsourced group of planetary detectives may have spotted a massive cloud of comets orbiting a distant star.'

https://www.newscien...g-distant-star/


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## ScienceRocks

This is very interesting
http://nexsci.caltech.edu/conferences/2015/fellows15/talks/crossfield_sagan_talk.pdf


=====
Today's daily #*Ceres* image: A shadowy view of craters http://go.nasa.gov/1ituDeq


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## ScienceRocks

Animation Shows Topography on Ceres | Planetary Science Institute


> PSI’s David O’Brien made this Ceres topographic globe animation.
> 
> This color coded map from NASA’s Dawn mission shows the highs and lows of topography on the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres.
> 
> The color scale extends 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) below the surface in purple to 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) above the surface in brown. Bright “white” features do not represent elevation.





http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...w/49051138.cms


> "Mars (mission) is expected to last for many years now, because it has gone through solar conjunction also; so we don't see much of a problem," ISRO Chairman AS Kiran Kumar told reporters here.
> 
> "We had planned it only for six months. Then we were not expecting so much fuel to remain after we completed our insertion activity," he said.
> 
> Pointing out that about 35kg of fuel was still left, he said, "There is still a lot of fuel... all other subsystems are working fine and so far ..


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## ScienceRocks

​
*Radio telescopes could spot stars hidden in the galactic center*


> The center of our Milky Way galaxy is a mysterious place. Not only is it thousands of light-years away, it's also cloaked in so much dust that most stars within are rendered invisible. H



*Comet surface changes before Rosetta's eyes*


> In the months leading to the perihelion of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Rosetta scientists have been witnessing dramatic and rapid surface changes on the Imhotep region, as reported in a paper to be published in Astronomy ...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*World and Science* ‏@*WorldAndScience*  21h21 hours ago

The surface of Venus as seen from Soviet Venera probes in 1981

 



Uranus under excellent conditions on Sept. 20, 2015 http://sen.com/images/damian-peach#2109… image credit: @*sen* / @*peachastro*





Crater Copernicus with a rising sun. Has a crater floor of two halves. The upper half is uneven and the lower smooth.






#*Mars* geology near Mt Sharp becomes more & more intruiguing, @*MarsCuriosity* Sol 1112 http://www.midnightplanets.com/

Emily Lakdawalla, Planetary Society, Corey S. Powell and *7 others*




Curiosity cruising along some Martian rock late yesterday afternoon (Sol 1112) #*Mars* #*rocknroll*






The boosters of our @*NASA_SLS* rocket are being prepared for their second hot-fire ground test: http://go.nasa.gov/1OSpLwe











#*Space*: color-composite of #*Titan*'s high-level #*hazes* https://www.flickr.com/photos/lightsinthedark/13766566433… via @*JPMajor*






@*ESA_Rosetta* has seen a daily water-ice cycle on #*comet* #*67P*. Find out more: http://ow.ly/SA0Np




Meet the magnetar, a star so magnetic your body would dissolve within 600 miles of it: http://bit.ly/1FdkflG


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## ScienceRocks

* Spacex Heavy capable of sending a Dragon V2 capsule to Europa *







> The Falcon Heavy is the next Spacex rocket. The current plan is for the first launch in the spring of 2016. The Spacex dragon 2 It is the second version of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft which will be a human-rated vehicle capable of making a terrestrial soft landing. It includes a set of four side-mounted thruster pods with two SuperDraco...


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## ScienceRocks

*3D modeling of GJ1214b's atmosphere: vertical mixing driven by an anti-Hadley circulation*

*[1509.06814] 3D modeling of GJ1214b's atmosphere: vertical mixing driven by an   anti-Hadley circulation*
Benjamin Charnay, Victoria Meadows, Jérémy Leconte
(Submitted on 23 Sep 2015)


> GJ1214b is a warm sub-Neptune transiting in front of a nearby M dwarf star. Recent observations indicate the presence of high and thick clouds or haze whose presence requires strong atmospheric mixing. In order to understand the transport and distribution of such clouds/haze, we study the atmospheric circulation and the vertical mixing of GJ1214b with a 3D General Circulation Model for cloud-free hydrogen-dominated atmospheres (metallicity of 1, 10 and 100 times the solar value) and for a water-dominated atmosphere. We analyze the effect of the atmospheric metallicity on the thermal structure and zonal winds. We also analyze the zonal mean meridional circulation and show that it corresponds to an anti-Hadley circulation in most of the atmosphere with upwelling at mid-latitude and downwelling at the equator in average. This circulation must be present on a large range of synchronously rotating exoplanets with strong impact on cloud formation and distribution. Using simple tracers, we show that vertical winds on GJ1214b can be strong enough to loft micrometric particles and that the anti-Hadley circulation leads to a minimum of tracers at the equator. We find that the strength of the vertical mixing increases with metallicity. We derive 1D equivalent eddy diffusion coefficients and find simple parametrizations from Kzz=7x10^2xP_{bar}^{-0.4} m^2/s for solar metallicity to Kzz=3x10^3xP_{bar}^{-0.4} m^2/s for the 100xsolar metallicity. These values should favor an efficient formation of photochemical haze in the upper atmosphere of GJ1214b.



http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.06814v1.pdf

Looks like a mini neptune with mostly a gas like atmopshere.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Researcher's experimental ion drive outperforms NASA's HiPEP engine - http://gizm.ag/1OxB7Xo






> It seems as if the age of the bench-top breakthrough in rocket science is not a thing of the past. Dr Patrick Neumann of the University of Sydney has developed a new ion drive as part of his PhD thesis that is claimed to outperform the best one devised by NASA. According to Neumann, his new drive, which is still in the experimental stage, is more efficient than the latest High Power Electric Propulsion (HiPEP) ion engine and holds the promise of "Mars and back on a tank of fuel."


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New high-res Pluto images show "snakeskin surface"*

 Anthony Wood 
September 25, 2015
 5 PICTURES 





> NASA has released the highest resolution views of Pluto to date, as the agency's New Horizons spacecraft continues its intensive year-long data transfer. The gallery includes, for the first time, data from the spacecraft's infrared spectrometer, which has mapped the distribution of methane ice on the dwarf planet.


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA to build settlements on Mars using materials found on red planet http://on.rt.com/6s8n







> An Australian-based architecture firm has unveiled a number of images depicting a potential future Mars settlement that could be built using a kind of 3D printer. The project has been shortlisted by the US Space Agency NASA.
> The Foster + Partners firm which took part in the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge organized by America Makes and NASA has created a futuristic design of a 93-square-meter astronaut base on Mars. The project is now among the 30 finalists chosen by NASA and the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute.
> 
> The settlement is supposed to be built from rigolith – which is found on Mars – by semi-autonomous robots that would arrive on the red planet ahead of astronauts.


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## Spinster

Matthew said:


> Official Nomenclature of Ceres (August 2015)


Looks worse than the desert. Space exploration hasn't really netted a whole lot. Just blasting gazillion of dollars into nowhere land, IMO.

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk


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## ScienceRocks

Spinster said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Official Nomenclature of Ceres (August 2015)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Looks worse than the desert. Space exploration hasn't really netted a whole lot. Just blasting gazillion of dollars into nowhere land, IMO.
> 
> Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...


What has god done for humanity...Nothing, I thought so! Space exploration has innovated thousands of things that we use and have made our lives vastly better. Of course, mr.idiot wouldn't understand this as he hasn't studied it before he opened his pie hole! hahaha. Which is of course typical for your kind.

It has given us knowledge, it has given thousands of innovations, and it has made the better part of a million secured high paying jobs....People like you are like the muslim brotherhood as you simply believe we should plant our heads in a holy book and fuck exploration, science, education and the betterment of our species. Scum is what you're.

Does your little brain realize that our solar system has probably a *thousand times* more resources of value then our little planet...but, heck, lets just stay here until we use up all our own planet until it is gone without a means to get more...Well, of course destroying the environment as we do so.


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## ScienceRocks

What has spending trillions of dollars on a pointless war of nation building in iraq done??? Thousands of our young boys dead that could of became scientist and advanced humanity. That could of innovated and explored our universe!!!!

Fuck the muslim brotherhood and fuck the tea party!!!

One more thing...here is what nasa has done for society! NASA Technologies Benefit Our Lives
NASA spin-off technologies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I fully expect you tea party bastards to convert to islam and shout allah akkkk barrr pretty fucking soon!


=====

*Infrared ear thermometers*
Diatek Corporation and NASA developed an aural thermometer that measures the thermal radiation emitted by the eardrum, similar to the way the temperature of stars and planets is measured. This method avoids contact with mucous membranes, and permits rapid temperature measurement of newborn or incapacitated patients. NASA supported the Diatek Corporation through the Technology Affiliates Program.[8]

*Ventricular assist device*
Collaboration between NASA, Dr. Michael DeBakey, Dr. George Noon, and MicroMed Technology Inc. resulted in a heart pump for patients awaiting heart transplants. The MicroMed DeBakey ventricular assist device (VAD) functions as a "bridge to heart transplant" by pumping blood until a donor heart is available. The pump is approximately one-tenth the size of other currently marketed pulsatile VADs. Because of the pump’s small size, fewer patients developed device-related infections. It can operate up to 8 hours on batteries, giving patients the mobility to do normal, everyday activities.[9]

*Artificial Limbs*
NASA’s continued funding, coupled with its collective innovations in robotics and shock-absorption/comfort materials are inspiring and enabling the private sector to create new and better solutions for animal and human prostheses. Advancements such as Environmental Robots Inc.’s development of artificial muscle systems with robotic sensing and actuation capabilities for use in NASA space robotic and extravehicular activities are being adapted to create more functionally dynamic artificial limbs (Spinoff 2004). Additionally, other private-sector adaptations of NASA’s temper foam technology have brought about custom-moldable materials offering the natural look and feel of flesh, as well as preventing friction between the skin and the prosthesis, and heat/moisture buildup. (Spinoff 2005 url = NASA Technologies Benefit Our Lives

*Light-emitting diodes in medical therapies*
After initial experiments using light-emitting diodes in NASA space shuttle plant growth experiments, NASA issued a small business innovation grant that led to the development of a hand-held, high-intensity, LED unit developed by Quantum Devices Inc. that can be used to treat tumors after other treatment options are exhausted.[10]:10–11 This therapy was approved by the FDA and inducted into the Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame in 2000.


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## ScienceRocks

resources like you can't believe, but hey, it is all a boondogoo to idiots like you
'Trillion Dollar Baby' Asteroid Has Wannabe Space Miners Salivating

More water then 5 earths are within the outter-moons of our solar system...


----------



## Spinster

Yea, yea, yea. There's been a few advancements made, but those resulted from the old Star Trek series having given fodder to the imagination of engineers and the like. As far as space exploration really being responsible for a host of creature comforts, it's hardly been a pay off. Matthew, do you get aroused when you ridicule others on the Board? You sure seem to get off on it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## ScienceRocks

We're simply a far better country for nasa and space exploration. There's really no debate and one day if we have any intelligence at all we'll go get the resources....

here is some more innovation!

*Highway safety*
Safety grooving, the cutting of grooves in concrete to increase traction and prevent injury, was first developed to reduce aircraft accidents on wet runways. Represented by the International Grooving and Grinding Association, the industry expanded into highway and pedestrian applications. Safety grooving originated at Langley Research Center, which assisted in testing the grooving at airports and on highways. Skidding was reduced, stopping distance decreased, and a vehicle’s cornering ability on curves was increased. The process has been extended to animal holding pens, parking lots, and other potentially slippery surfaces.[13]

*Improved radial tires*
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company developed a fibrous material, five times stronger than steel, for NASA to use in parachute shrouds to soft-land the Viking Lander spacecraft on the Martian surface. Recognizing the durability of the material, Goodyear expanded the technology and went on to produce a new radial tire with a tread life expected to be 10,000 miles (16,000 km) greater than conventional radials.[14]

*Chemical detection*
NASA contracted with Intelligent Optical Systems (IOS) to develop moisture- and pH-sensitive sensors to warn of corrosive conditions in aircraft before damage occurs. This sensor changes color in response to contact with its target. After completing the work with NASA, IOS was tasked by the U.S. Department of Defense to further develop the sensors for detecting chemical warfare agents and potential threats, such as toxic industrial compounds and nerve agents. IOS has sold the chemically sensitive fiber optic cables to major automotive and aerospace companies, who are finding a variety of uses for the devices such as aiding experimentation with nontraditional power sources, and as an economical "alarm system" for detecting chemical release in large facilities.[12]

*Public safety*
*Video enhancing and analysis systems*
Intergraph Government Solutions developed its Video Analyst System (VAS) by building on Video Image Stabilization and Registration (VISAR) technology created by NASA to help FBI agents analyze video footage. Originally used for enhancing video images from nighttime videotapes made with hand-held camcorders, VAS is a tool for video enhancement and analysis offering support of full-resolution digital video, stabilization, frame-by-frame analysis, conversion of analog video to digital storage formats, and increased visibility of filmed subjects without altering underlying footage. Aside from law enforcement and security applications, VAS has also been adapted to serve the military for reconnaissance, weapons deployment, damage assessment, training, and mission debriefing.[15]

*Fire-resistant reinforcement*
Built and designed by Avco Corporation, the Apollo heat shield was coated with a material whose purpose was to burn and thus dissipate energy during reentry while charring, to form a protective coating to block heat penetration. NASA subsequently funded Avco’s development of other applications of the heat shield, such as fire-retardant paints and foams for aircraft, which led to intumescent epoxy material, which expands in volume when exposed to heat or flames, acting as an insulating barrier and dissipating heat through burn-off. Further innovations include steel coatings devised to make high-rise buildings and public structures safer by swelling to provide a tough and stable insulating layer over the steel for up to 4 hours of fire protection, ultimately to slow building collapse and provide more time for escape.[16]

*Firefighting equipment*
Firefighting equipment in the United States is based on lightweight materials developed for the U.S. Space Program. NASA and the National Bureau of Standards created a lightweight breathing system including face mask, frame, harness, and air bottle, using an aluminum composite material developed by NASA for use on rocket casings. The broadest fire-related technology transfer is the breathing apparatus for protection from smoke inhalation injury. Additionally, NASA’s inductorless electronic circuit technology led to lower-cost, more rugged, short-range two-way radio now used by firefighters. NASA also helped develop a specialized mask weighing less than 3 ounces (85 g) to protect the physically impaired from injuries to the face and head, as well as flexible, heat-resistant materials—developed to protect the space shuttle on reentry—which are being used both by the military and commercially in suits for municipal and aircraft-rescue firefighters.[17][18][19][20]

*Consumer, home, and recreation*
*Temper foam*




Initially referred to as "slow spring back foam", temper foam matches pressure against it and slowly returns to its original form once the pressure is removed.
As the result of a program designed to develop a padding concept to improve crash protection for airplane passengers, Ames Research Center developed what is now called memory foam. Memory foam, or "Temper Foam", has been incorporated into mattresses, pillows, military and civilian aircraft, automobiles and motorcycles, sports safety equipment, amusement park rides and arenas, horseback saddles, archery targets, furniture, and human and animal prostheses. Its high-energy absorption and soft characteristics offer protection and comfort. Temper Foam was inducted into the Space Foundation Space Technology Hall of Fame in 1998.[9][10]:46–49[14][18][21][22][23]

*Enriched baby food*
Commercially available infant formulas now contain a nutritional enrichment ingredient that traces its existence to NASA-sponsored research on bread mold as a recycling agent for long-duration space travel. The substance, formulated into the products life’sDHA and life’sARA and based on microalgae, can be found in over 90% of the infant formulas sold in the United States, and are added to infant formulas in over 65 other countries. Martek Biosciences Corporation's founders and principal scientists acquired their expertise in this area while working on the NASA program. The microalgae food supplement was inducted into the Space Foundation Space Technology Hall of Fame in 2009.[24]

*Portable cordless vacuums*
For the Apollo space mission, NASA required a portable, self-contained drill capable of extracting core samples from below the lunar surface. Black & Decker was tasked with the job, and developed a computer program to optimize the design of the drill’s motor and ensure minimal power consumption. That computer program led to the development of a cordless miniature vacuum cleaner called the Dustbuster.[18]

*Freeze drying*
In planning for the long-duration Apollo missions, NASA conducted extensive research into space food. One of the techniques developed in 1938 by Nestlé was freeze drying. In the United States, Action Products later commercialized this technique for other foods, concentrating on snack food resulting in products like Space ice cream. The foods are cooked, quickly frozen, and then slowly heated in a vacuum chamber to remove the ice crystals formed by the freezing process. The final product retains 98%[_citation needed_] of its nutrition and weighs much less than before drying. The ratio of weight before and after drying depends strongly on the particular food item but a typical freeze-dried weight is 20% of the original weight. Today, one of the benefits of this advancement in food preservation includes simple nutritious meals available to handicapped and otherwise homebound senior adults unable to take advantage of existing meal programs.[17][25][26]


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Honestly, I'd rather live in an advance civilization and do great things like nasa does then fight for what the muslim brotherhood fights for!!!!*


*Water purification*
NASA engineers are collaborating with qualified companies to develop systems intended to sustain the astronauts living on the International Space Station and future Moon and space missions. This system turns wastewater from respiration, sweat, and urine into drinkable water. Commercially, this system is benefiting people all over the world who need affordable, clean water, especially in remote locations. By combining the benefits of chemical adsorption, ion exchange, and ultra-filtration processes, this technology can yield safe, drinkable water from the most challenging sources, such as in underdeveloped regions where well water may be heavily contaminated.[27][28]

*Solar Cells*
Single-crystal silicon solar cells are now widely available at low cost. The technology behind these solar devices—which provide up to 50% more power than conventional solar cells—originated with the efforts of a NASA-sponsored 28-member coalition forming the Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) Alliance. ERAST’s goal was to develop remotely piloted aircraft, intended to fly unmanned at high altitudes for days at a time and requiring advanced solar power sources that did not add weight. As a result, SunPower Corporation created advanced silicon-based cells for terrestrial or airborne applications.[10]:66–67

*Pollution remediation*
NASA’s microencapsulating technology enabled the creation of a "Petroleum Remediation Product," which safely cleans petroleum-based pollutants from water. The PRP uses thousands of microcapsules—tiny balls of beeswax with hollow centers. Water cannot penetrate the microcapsule’s cell, but oil is absorbed into the beeswax spheres as they float on the water’s surface. Contaminating chemical compounds that originally come from crude oil (such as fuels, motor oils, or petroleum hydrocarbons) are caught before they settle, limiting damage to ocean beds.[16][26]

*Computer technology*
*Structural analysis software*
NASA software engineers have created thousands of computer programs over the decades equipped to design, test, and analyze stress, vibration, and acoustical properties of a broad assortment of aerospace parts and structures. The NASA Structural Analysis Program, or NASTRAN, is considered one of the most successful and widely used NASA software programs. It has been used to design everything from Cadillacs to roller coaster rides. Originally created for spacecraft design, it has been employed in a host of non-aerospace applications and is available to industry through NASA’s Computer Software Management and Information Center (COSMIC). COSMIC maintains a library of computer programs from NASA and other government agencies and sells them at a fraction of the cost of developing a new program. NASA Structural Analysis Computer Software was inducted into the Space Foundation Space Technology Hall of Fame in 1988.[8][14][17][18][19][21][22][23][25][29][30][31]

*Remotely controlled ovens*
Embedded Web Technology (EWT) software—originally developed by NASA for use by astronauts operating experiments on the International Space Station—lets a user monitor and/or control a device remotely over the Internet. NASA supplied this technology and guidance to TMIO LLC, which developed remote control and monitoring of a new intelligent oven product named "Connect Io." With combined cooling and heating capabilities, Connect Io refrigerates food until a customized pre-programmable cooking cycle begins. The menu allows the user to simply enter the dinner time, and the oven automatically switches from refrigeration to the cooking cycle, so that the meal will be ready as the family arrives home for dinner.[10]

*NASA Visualization Explorer*
On July 26, 2011, NASA released the NASA Visualization Explorer app for the iPad. The application delivers real-time satellite data, including movies and stills, of Earth, that enable users to learn about subjects such as climate change, Earth's dynamic systems and plant life on land and in the oceans. The content is accompanied by short descriptions about the Data and why it is important.[32][33]

*OpenStack*
NASA developed a cloud compute platform to give additional compute and storage resources for its engineers, called Nebula. In July 2010, the Nebula code was released as open source and NASA partnered with Rackspace, to form the OpenStack project.[34] OpenStack is used in the cloud-based products from many companies in the cloud market.

*Software catalog*
NASA released a software catalog in 2014 that made over 1,600 pieces of software available to the public at no charge.[35][36]

*Industrial productivity*
*Powdered lubricants*




Oil-free coating PS300 (on these bushings) was created by Adma with NASA resources.
NASA developed a solid lubricant coating, PS300, which is deposited by thermal spraying to protect foil air bearings. PS300 lowers friction, reduces emissions, and has been used by NASA in advanced aeropropulsion engines, refrigeration compressors, turbochargers, and hybrid electrical turbogenerators. ADMA Products has found widespread industrial applications for the material.[10]

*Improved mine safety*
An ultrasonic bolt elongation monitor developed by a NASA scientist for testing tension and high-pressure loads on bolts and fasteners has continued to evolve over the past three decades. Today, the same scientist and Luna Innovations are using a digital adaptation of this same device for destructive evaluation of railroad ties, groundwater analysis, radiation, and as a medical testing device to assess levels of internal swelling and pressure for patients suffering from intracranial pressure and compartment syndrome, a painful condition that results when pressure within muscles builds to dangerous levels.[10][17]

*Food safety*
Faced with the problem of how and what to feed an astronaut in a sealed capsule under weightless conditions while planning for human space flight, NASA enlisted the aid of The Pillsbury Company to address two principal concerns: eliminating crumbs of food that might contaminate the spacecraft’s atmosphere and sensitive instruments, and assuring absolute absence of disease-producing bacteria and toxins. Pillsbury developed the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) concept to address NASA’s second concern. HACCP is designed to prevent food safety problems rather than to catch them after they have occurred. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has applied HACCP guidelines for the handling of seafood, juice, and dairy products.[8]


----------



## ScienceRocks

*There's growing speculation NASA is about to announce it has discovered flowing water on Mars*


> NASA today made a very brief announcement that it’s preparing to share details of a “major science finding” early next week.
> 
> The space agency gave out a list of participants who will speak, and notice of a “brief question-and-answer session”, so there’s not a lot to go on.
> 
> But a couple of names on the list have journalists and bloggers speculating that NASA is about announce it has found evidence of water on Mars. Possibly even flowing water.


http://www.businessi...-on-mars-2015-9

wow, this would be pretty big!


*Opportunity Mars rover preparing for active winter*


> NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is conducting a "walkabout" survey of "Marathon Valley," where the rover's operators plan to use the vehicle through the upcoming Martian winter, and beyond, to study the context ...



11 fucking earth years and still going...How about that! Supposed to have lasted only 90 days.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Mars' Mysterious Dark Streaks Spur Exploration Debate http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3rimu


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.popsci.com/watch-spacex-r...-rocket-engine


> SpaceX rockets have been grounded since an explosion in June destroyed a cargo shipment to the International Space Station. Investigations into the accident pinpointed a failure in struts holding a high-pressure helium tank.
> 
> But it sounds like SpaceX is just about ready to get back into the game. At a forum in Berlin on Thursday, SpaceX CEO said, “We hope to launch again in a couple of months — I guess maybe six to eight weeks or so from now — and if things go well, we’ll be able to land the rocket, although I’ll be happy if it just gets to orbit, of course... But hopefully, it will come back to land as well, and that will be an important milestone for space exploration.”
> 
> The updated engine design was already planned before the explosion, and SpaceX is taking pains to ensure that the struts don't fail again.
> 
> The new engines will boast an extra boost. According to Spaceflight Now, each of the nine engines on the Falcon 9 rocket will provide 170,000 pounds of sea level thrust—up from 147,000 on the previous version.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Hot Jupiters with relatives: discovery of additional planets in orbit around WASP-41 and WASP-47*
M. Neveu-VanMalle, D. Queloz, D. R. Anderson, D. J. A. Brown, A. Collier Cameron, L. Delrez, R. F. Díaz, M. Gillon, C. Hellier, E. Jehin, T. Lister, F. Pepe, P. Rojo, D. Ségransan, A. H. M. J. Triaud, O. D. Turner, S. Udry
(Submitted on 25 Sep 2015)
We report the discovery of two additional planetary companions to WASP-41 and WASP-47. WASP-41 c is a planet of minimum mass 3.18 \pm 0.20 M_{\rm Jup}, eccentricity 0.29 \pm 0.02 and orbiting in 421 \pm 2 days. WASP-47 c is a planet of minimum mass 1.24 \pm 0.22 M_{\rm Jup}, eccentricity 0.13 \pm 0.10 and orbiting in 572 \pm 7 days. Unlike most of the planetary systems including a hot Jupiter, these two systems with a hot Jupiter have a long period planet located at only \sim1 AU from their host star. WASP-41 is a rather young star known to be chromospherically active. To differentiate its magnetic cycle from the radial velocity effect due the second planet, we use the emission in the H\alpha line and find this indicator well suited to detect the stellar activity pattern and the magnetic cycle. The analysis of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect induced by WASP-41 b suggests that the planet could be misaligned, though an aligned orbit cannot be excluded. WASP-47 has recently been found to host two additional transiting super Earths. With such an unprecedented architecture, the WASP-47 system will be very important for the understanding of planetary migration.
[1509.07750] Hot Jupiters with relatives: discovery of additional planets in orbit   around WASP-41 and WASP-47


========

*Enceladus's measured physical libration requires a global subsurface ocean*
[1509.07555] Enceladus's measured physical libration requires a global subsurface   ocean

P. C. Thomas, R. Tajeddine, M. S. Tiscareno, J. A. Burns, J. Joseph, T. J. Loredo, P. Helfenstein, C. Porco
(Submitted on 24 Sep 2015)
Several planetary satellites apparently have subsurface seas that are of great interest for, among other reasons, their possible habitability. The geologically diverse Saturnian satellite Enceladus vigorously vents liquid water and vapor from fractures within a south polar depression and thus must have a liquid reservoir or active melting. However, the extent and location of any subsurface liquid region is not directly observable. We use measurements of control points across the surface of Enceladus accumulated over seven years of spacecraft observations to determine the satellite's precise rotation state, finding a forced physical libration of 0.120 ± 0.014{\deg} (2{\sigma}). This value is too large to be consistent with Enceladus's core being rigidly connected to its surface, and thus implies the presence of a global ocean rather than a localized polar sea. The maintenance of a global ocean within Enceladus is problematic according to many thermal models and so may constrain satellite properties or require a surprisingly dissipative Saturn.


====
*New model suggests dark matter is made of electrically charged particles*

 Dario Borghino 
September 27, 2015
 2 PICTURES 



Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory believe that dark matter may be composed of electrically charged particles that are bound by a yet-unknown force and have somehow managed to escape detection. The theory could be verified with the help of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mystery Solved: Water DOES Flow on Mars*


Mystery Solved: Water DOES Flow on Mars




NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UNIV. OF ARIZONA


> Scientists have their first evidence that trickles of liquid water play a role in sculpting mysterious dark streaks that appear during summertime months on Mars, a finding that has implications for potential life on Mars, as well as planning for future human expeditions.
> 
> The discovery, reported Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, follows years of speculation and studies to learn why the faces of some cliff walls on Mars are streaked with narrow dark slopes, some more than 300 feet long, that appear when temperatures are warm and then vanish during the winter chill.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA Confirms Water Currently Flows On Mars*

http://www.space.com...-discovery.html

Quote

Liquid water flows on Mars today, boosting the odds that life could exist on the Red Planet, a new study suggests.

The enigmatic dark streaks on Mars — called recurring slope lineae (RSL) — that appear seasonally on steep, relatively warm Martian slopes are caused by salty liquid water, researchers said. 
"Liquid water is a key requirement for life on Earth," study lead author Lujendra Ojha, of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told Space.com via email. "The presence of liquid water on Mars' present-day surface therefore points to environment that are more habitable than previously thought." 


Ojha was part of the team that first discovered RSL in 2011, by studying images captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).


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## ScienceRocks

[1509.07912] A Six-Planet System Orbiting HD 219134

*A Six-Planet System Orbiting HD 219134*


> We present new, high-precision Doppler radial velocity (RV) data sets for the nearby K3V star HD 219134. The data include 175 velocities obtained with the HIRES Spectrograph at the Keck I Telescope, and 101 velocities obtained with the Levy Spectrograph at the Automated Planet Finder Telescope (APF) at Lick Observatory. Our observations reveal six new planetary candidates, with orbital periods of P=3.1, 6.8, 22.8, 46.7, 94.2 and 2247 days, spanning masses of msini=3.8, 3.5, 8.9, 21.3, 10.8 and 108 M_earth respectively. Our analysis indicates that the outermost signal is unlikely to be an artifact induced by stellar activity. In addition, several years of precision photometry with the T10 0.8~m automatic photometric telescope (APT) at Fairborn Observatory demonstrated a lack of brightness variability to a limit of ~0.0002 mag, providing strong support for planetary-reflex motion as the source of the radial velocity variations. The HD 219134 system, with its bright (V=5.6) primary provides an excellent opportunity to obtain detailed orbital characterization (and potentially follow-up observations) of a planetary system that resembles many of the multiple-planet systems detected by Kepler, and which are expected to be detected by NASA's forthcoming TESS Mission and by ESA's forthcoming PLATO Mission.


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## ScienceRocks

Mars Gets More Habitable with Water Discovery, Scientists Say http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3rx6d





This is great news for kepler 62f and Kepler 186f as their thick atmospheres from them being bigger then earth will almost certainly make them a sure bet for having flowing surface water. Sure they're cold but I wouldn't say they can't have life.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Earth-like planets around small stars likely have protective magnetic fields, aiding chance for life*
* September 29, 2015 by Peter Kelley *



This artist's concept depicts a planetary system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Earth-like planets orbiting close to small stars probably have magnetic fields that protect them from stellar radiation and help maintain surface conditions that could be conducive to life, according to research from astronomers at the University of Washington.






A planet's magnetic field emanates from its core and is thought to deflect the charged particles of the stellar wind, protecting the atmosphere from being lost to space. Magnetic fields, born from the cooling of a planet's interior, could also protect life on the surface from harmful radiation, as the Earth's magnetic field protects us.

Low-mass stars are among the most common in the universe. Planets orbiting near such stars are easier for astronomers to target for study because when they transit, or pass in front of, their host star, they block a larger fraction of the light than if they transited a more massive star. But because such a star is small and dim, its habitable zone—where an orbiting planet gets the heat necessary to maintain life-friendly liquid water on the surface—also lies relatively close in.



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-earth-like-planets-small-stars-magnetic.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

India successfully launched its first hi-tech telescopes into space to study the stars, as New Delhi seeks to take another step in its ambitious space programme.

A rocket carrying the 1.5-tonne mini space observatory, called Astrosat, along with six foreign satellites, blasted off on schedule from India’s main southern spaceport of Sriharikota on Sunday.

“About 20 minutes after a perfect lift-off at 10am from our spaceport, the rocket has placed Astrosat in the intended orbit,” mission director B Jayakumar said at Sriharikota, about 55 miles from Chennai.

The launch comes a year after India became the first Asian country to send a successful mission to Mars to study the planet, beating rival China and sparking an outpouring of national pride. The unmanned probe, still orbiting Mars, cost a fraction of the missions launched earlier by the US, Russia and European countries.

India’s Astrosat, which includes a telescope that uses X-rays, is expected to orbit 400 miles above the Earth and will study parts of the universe, including black holes and the magnetic fields of stars.

Astrosat, which reportedly cost 1.8bn rupees (£17.7m) to build, has been compared by local media to the Hubble telescope launched by Nasa in 1990. However, Astrosat is much smaller and has a lifespan of five years. The rocket also carries six foreign satellites, including one from the US.

The launch came as the prime minister, Narendra Modi, wound up a visit to Silicon Valley in the US, where he urged top technology companies to bring investment and jobs to India.

India’s successful and frugal Mars mission dominated newspaper front pages at the time and sparked huge pride in its home-grown space programme, while Modi hailed it as a sign of the country’s technological potential.

• This article was amended on 29 September 2015. An earlier version said that Astrosat weighs 150, rather than 1.5 tonnes.

India successfully launches first hi-tech telescopes into space

The 1,550-kg Astrosat, the latest major project by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), *is the first satellite in the world capable of studying the universe in the widest yet range of multi-wavelength electromagnetic spectrum.*

...

India launches Astrosat, Asia’s unique eye in space


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## ScienceRocks

This is one slice of an incredible high resolution,... http://bit.ly/1hcKflF




NASA New Horizons, NewHorizons2015 and AlanStern


----------



## ScienceRocks

*KELT-14b and KELT-15b: An Independent Discovery of WASP-122b and a New Hot Jupiter*
Joseph E. Rodriguez, Knicole D. Colon, Keivan G. Stassun, Duncan Wright, Phillip A. Cargile, Daniel Bayliss, Joshua Pepper, Karen A. Collins, Rudolf B. Kuhn, Michael B. Lund, Robert J. Siverd, George Zhou, B. Scott Gaudi, C.G. Tinney, Kaloyan Penev, T.G. Tan, Chris Stockdale, Ivan A. Curtis, David James, Stephane Udry, Damien Segransan, Allyson Bieryla, David W. Latham, Thomas G. Beatty, Jason D. Eastman, Gordon Myers, Jonathan Bartz, Joao Bento, Eric L. N. Jensen, Thomas E. Oberst, Daniel J. Stevens
(Submitted on 29 Sep 2015)


> We report the discovery of KELT-14b and KELT-15b, two hot Jupiters from the KELT-South survey. KELT-14b, an independent discovery of the recently announced WASP-122b, is an inflated Jupiter mass planet that orbits a ∼5.0+0.3−0.7 Gyr, V = 11.0, G2 star that is near the main sequence turnoff. The host star, KELT-14 (TYC 7638-981-1), has an inferred mass M∗=1.18+0.05−0.07 M⊙ and radius R∗=1.37±−0.08 R⊙, and has Teff=5802+95−92 K, logg = 4.23+0.05−0.04 and [Fe/H] = 0.33±−0.09. The planet orbits with a period of 1.7100588±0.0000025 days (T0=2457091.02863±0.00047) and has a radius RP=1.52+0.12−0.11 RJ and mass MP = 1.196±0.072 MJ, and the eccentricity is consistent with zero. KELT-15b is another inflated Jupiter mass planet that orbits a ∼ 4.6+0.5−0.4 Gyr, V = 11.2, G0 star (TYC 8146-86-1) that is near the "blue hook" stage of evolution prior to the Hertzsprung gap, and has an inferred mass M∗=1.181+0.051−0.050 M⊙ and radius R∗=1.48+0.09−0.04 R⊙, and Teff=6003+56−52 K, logg=4.17+0.02−0.04 and [Fe/H]=0.05±0.03. The planet orbits on a period of 3.329441±0.000016 days (T0 = 2457029.1663±0.0073) and has a radius RP=1.443+0.11−0.057 RJ and mass MP=0.91+0.21−0.22 MJ and an eccentricity consistent with zero. KELT-14b has the second largest expected emission signal in the K-band for known transiting planets brighter than K<10.5. Both KELT-14b and KELT-15b are predicted to have large enough emission signals that their secondary eclipses should be detectable using ground-based observatories.


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## ScienceRocks

*Amazing new images of Charon hint at violent past*

01 October 15





> The latest high-resolution images of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, have revealed a world that appears on the verge of splitting in two.
> 
> It had been predicted that Charon would be a unremarkable, crater-covered moon, but new images show a complex mix of mountains, canyons, landslides and a varied, colourful surface.



http://www.wired.co....w-horizon-pluto


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## ScienceRocks

A planet each for four northern circumpolar stars.

Lee et al. "Search for exoplanet around northern circumpolar stars - Four planets around HD 11755, HD 12648, HD 24064, and 8 Ursae Minoris"
[1509.09012] Search for exoplanet around northern circumpolar stars - Four planets   around HD 11755, HD 12648, HD 24064, and 8 Ursae Minoris

*Search for exoplanet around northern circumpolar stars - Four planets around HD 11755, HD 12648, HD 24064, and 8 Ursae Minoris*
B.-C. Lee, M.-G. Park, S.-M. Lee, G. Jeong, H.-I. Oh, I. Han, J.W. Lee, C.-U. Lee, S.-L. Kim, K.-M. Kim
(Submitted on 30 Sep 2015)


> Aims. This program originated as the north pole region extension of the established exoplanet survey using 1.8 m telescope at Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory (BOAO). The aim of our paper is to find exoplanets in northern circumpolar stars with a precise radial velocity (RV) survey. Methods. We have selected about 200 northern circumpolar stars with the following criteria: Dec. > 70 degree, 0.6 < B-V < 1.6, HIPPARCOS_scat < 0.05 magnitude, and 5.0 < mv < 7.0. The high-resolution, fiber-fed Bohyunsan Observatory Echelle Spectrograph (BOES) was used for the RV survey. Chromospheric activities, the HIPPARCOS photometry, and line bisectors were analyzed to exclude other causes for the RV variations. Results. In 2010, we started to monitor the candidates and have completed initial screening for all stars for the last five years. We present the detection of four new exoplanets. Stars HD 11755, HD 12648, HD 24064, and 8 UMi all show evidence for giant planets in Keplerian motion. The companion to HD 11755 has a minimum mass of 6.5 M_Jup in a 433-day orbit with an eccentricity of 0.19. HD 12648 is orbited by a companion of minimum mass of 2.9 M_Jup having a period of 133 days and an eccentricity of 0.04. Weak surface activity was suspected in HD 24064. However, no evidence was found to be associated with the RV variations. Its companion has a minimum mass of 9.4 M_Jup, a period of 535 days, and an eccentricity of 0.35. Finally, 8 UMi has a minimum mass of 1.5 M_Jup, a period of 93 days with an eccentricity of 0.06.


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## ScienceRocks

Forbes
*Giant Magellan Telescope To Image Nearby Rocky Exoplanets; Detect Cosmos ...*
Forbes  - ‎Sep 28, 2015‎


> Yet this unique shape will allow the GMT to detect rocky *extrasolar planets* about 2.5 times further than existing ground-based telescopes, says McCarthy.
> 
> In this era of telescopic behemoths, what will the Giant Magellan telescope (GMT) offer to exceed its forthcoming ground-based rivals?
> 
> That’s the first question I posed to GMT Project Director Patrick McCarthy, who told me the $1.05 billion optical telescope will have a resolving power ten times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope.
> 
> Now scheduled for full completion in 2024 at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, the GMT, says McCarthy, will enable a field of view nearly as large as a full Moon. This wide field, he says, will allow us to observe many distant galaxies at one time, or to dissect nearby galaxies.
> 
> “We should [also] be able to see Jupiter- and Saturn-like planets forming around stars in the Milky Way’s Orion and Taurus star-forming complexes with relative ease,” said McCarthy.


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA's @*MarsCuriosity* is beaming home amazing photos of the Red Planet. http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3sr70


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Characterization of the K2-19 Multiple-Transiting Planetary System via High-Dispersion Spectroscopy, AO Imaging, and Transit Timing Variations*
Norio Narita, Teruyuki Hirano, Akihiko Fukui, Yasunori Hori, Roberto Sanchis-Ojeda, Joshua N. Winn, Tsuguru Ryu, Nobuhiko Kusakabe, Tomoyuki Kudo, Masahiro Onitsuka, Laetitia Delrez, Michael Gillon, Emmanuel Jehin, James McCormac, Matthew Holman, Hideyuki Izumiura, Yoichi Takeda, Motohide Tamura, Kenshi Yanagisawa
(Submitted on 5 Oct 2015)
K2-19 (EPIC201505350) is a unique planetary system in which two transiting planets with radii ~ 7 REarth (inner planet b) and ~ 4 REarth (outer planet c) have orbits that are nearly in a 3:2 mean-motion resonance. Here, we present results of ground-based follow-up observations for the K2-19 planetary system. We have performed high-dispersion spectroscopy and high-contrast adaptive-optics imaging of the host star with the HDS and HiCIAO on the Subaru 8.2m telescope. We find that the host star is relatively old (>8 Gyr) late G-type star (Teff ~ 5350 K, Ms ~ 0.9 MSun, and Rs ~ 0.9 RSun). We do not find any contaminating faint objects near the host star which could be responsible for (or dilute) the transit signals. We have also conducted transit follow-up photometry for the inner planet with KeplerCam on the FLWO 1.2m telescope, TRAPPISTCAM on the TRAPPIST 0.6m telescope, and MuSCAT on the OAO 1.88m telescope. We confirm the presence of transit-timing variations, as previously reported by Armstrong and coworkers. We model the observed transit-timing variations of the inner planet using the synodic chopping formulae given by Deck & Agol (2015). We find two statistically indistinguishable solutions for which the period ratios (Pc/Pb) are located slightly above and below the exact 3:2 commensurability. Despite the degeneracy, we derive the orbital period of the inner planet Pb ~ 7.921 days and the mass of the outer planet Mc ~ 20 MEarth. Additional transit photometry (especially for the outer planet) as well as precise radial-velocity measurements would be helpful to break the degeneracy and to determine the mass of the inner planet.
[1510.01060] Characterization of the K2-19 Multiple-Transiting Planetary System via   High-Dispersion Spectroscopy, AO Imaging, and Transit Timing Variations


*Photo-dynamical mass determination of the multi-planetary system K2-19*
S. C. C. Barros, J. M. Almenara, O. Demangeon, M. Tsantaki, A. Santerne, D. J. Armstrong, D. Barrado, D. Brown, M. Deleuil, J. Lillo-Box, H. Osborn, D. Pollacco, L. Abe, P. Andre, P. Bendjoya, I. Boisse, A. S. Bonomo, F. Bouchy, G. Bruno, J. Rey Cerda, B. Courcol, R. F. Díaz, G. Hébrard, J. Kirk, J.C. Lachurié, K. W. F. Lam, P. Martinez, J. McCormac, C. Moutou, A. Rajpurohit, J.-P. Rivet, J. Spake, O. Suarez, D. Toublanc, S. R. Walker
(Submitted on 5 Oct 2015)
K2-19 is the second multi-planetary system discovered with K2 observations. The system is composed of two Neptune size planets close to the 3:2 mean-motion resonance. To better characterise the system we obtained two additional transit observations of K2-19b and five additional radial velocity observations. These were combined with K2 data and fitted simultaneously with the system dynamics (photo-dynamical model) which increases the precision of the transit time measurements. The higher transit time precision allows us to detect the chopping signal of the dynamic interaction of the planets that in turn permits to uniquely characterise the system. Although the reflex motion of the star was not detected, dynamic modelling of the system allowed us to derive planetary masses of Mb=44±12M⊕ and Mc=15.9±7.0M⊕ for the inner and the outer planets respectively, leading to densities close to Uranus. We also show that our method allows the derivation of mass ratios using only the 80 days of observations during the first campaign of K2. 

[1510.01047] Photo-dynamical mass determination of the multi-planetary system K2-19


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## ScienceRocks

*3D modeling of GJ1214b's atmosphere: formation of inhomogeneous high clouds and observational implications*

*[1510.01706] 3D modeling of GJ1214b's atmosphere: formation of inhomogeneous high   clouds and observational implications*
Benjamin Charnay, Victoria Meadows, Amit Misra, Jérémy Leconte, Giada Arney
(Submitted on 6 Oct 2015)


> The warm sub-Neptune GJ1214b has a featureless transit spectrum which may be due to the presence of high and thick clouds or haze. Here, we simulate the atmosphere of GJ1214b with a 3D General Circulation Model for cloudy hydrogen-dominated atmospheres, including cloud radiative effects. We show that the atmospheric circulation is strong enough to transport micrometric cloud particles to the upper atmosphere and generally leads to a minimum of cloud at the equator. By scattering stellar light, clouds increase the planetary albedo to 0.4-0.6 and cool the atmosphere below 1 mbar. However, the heating by ZnS clouds leads to the formation of a stratospheric thermal inversion above 10 mbar, with temperatures potentially high enough on the dayside to evaporate KCl clouds. We show that flat transit spectra consistent with HST observations are possible if cloud particle radii are around 0.5 micron, and that such clouds should be optically thin at wavelengths > 3 microns. Using simulated cloudy atmospheres that fit the observed spectra we generate transit, emission and reflection spectra and phase curves for GJ1214b. We show that a stratospheric thermal inversion would be readily accessible in near and mid-infrared atmospheric spectral windows. We find that the amplitude of the thermal phase curves is strongly dependent on metallicity, but only slightly impacted by clouds. Our results suggest that primary and secondary eclipses and phase curves observed by the James Webb Space Telescope in the near to mid-infrared should provide strong constraints on the nature of GJ1214b's atmosphere and clouds.





*MOA-2010-BLG-353Lb A Possible Saturn Revealed*
N. J. Rattenbury, D. P. Bennett, T. Sumi, N. Koshimoto, I. A. Bond, A. Udalski, F. Abe, A. Bhattacharya, M. Freeman, A.Fukui, Y. Itow, M. C. A. Li, C. H. Ling, K. Masuda, Y. Matsubara, Y. Muraki, K. Ohnishi, To. Saito, A. Sharan, D. J. Sullivan, D. Suzuki, P. J. Tristram, S. Kozlowski, P. Mroz, P. Pietrukowicz, G. Pietrzynski, R. Poleski, D. Skowron, J. Skowron, I. Soszynski, M. K. Szymanski, K. Ulaczyk, L. Wyrzykowski
(Submitted on 5 Oct 2015)
[1510.01393] MOA-2010-BLG-353Lb A Possible Saturn Revealed


> We report the discovery of a possible planet in microlensing event MOA-2010-BLG-353. This event was only recognised as having a planetary signal after the microlensing event had finished, and following a systematic analysis of all archival data for binary lens microlensing events collected to date. Data for event MOA-2010-BLG-353 were only recorded by the high cadence observations of the OGLE and MOA survey groups. If we make the assumptions that the probability of the lens star hosting a planet of the measured mass ratio is independent of the lens star mass or distance, and that the source star is in the Galactic bulge, a probability density analysis indicates the planetary system comprises a 0.9^{+1.6}_{-0.53} M_{Saturn} mass planet orbiting a 0.18^{+0.32}_{-0.11} M_{sun} red dwarf star, 6.43^{+1.09}_{-1.15} kpc away. The projected separation of the planet from the host star is 1.72^{+0.56}_{-0.48} AU. Under the additional assumption that the source is on the far side of the Galactic bulge, the probability density analysis favours a lens system comprising a slightly lighter planet.


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## ScienceRocks

Blue Origin Reaches Milestone in BE-4 Rocket Engine Development @*blueorigin* http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3tc4e





ExoMars Mission Will Arrive on Time, Despite Hiccup http://dlvr.it/CMqmQy


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## ScienceRocks

*A New Analysis of the Exoplanet Hosting System HD 6434*
Natalie R. Hinkel, Stephen R. Kane, Genady Pilyavsky, Tabetha S. Boyajian, David J. James, Dominique Naef, Debra A. Fischer, Stephane Udry
(Submitted on 6 Oct 2015)
The current goal of exoplanetary science is not only focused on detecting but characterizing planetary systems in hopes of understanding how they formed, evolved, and relate to the Solar System. The Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey (TERMS) combines both radial velocity (RV) and photometric data in order to achieve unprecedented ground-based precision in the fundamental properties of nearby, bright, exoplanet-hosting systems. Here we discuss HD 6434 and its planet, HD 6434b, which has a M_p*sin(i) = 0.44 M_J mass and orbits every 22.0170 days with an eccentricity of 0.146. We have combined previously published RV data with new measurements to derive a predicted transit duration of ~6 hrs, or 0.25 days, and a transit probability of 4%. Additionally, we have photometrically observed the planetary system using both the 0.9m and 1.0m telescopes at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, covering 75.4% of the predicted transit window. We reduced the data using the automated TERMS Photometry Pipeline, developed to ensure consistent and accurate results. We determine a dispositive null result for the transit of HD 6434b, excluding the full transit to a depth of 0.9% and grazing transit due to impact parameter limitations to a depth of 1.6%

[1510.01746] A New Analysis of the Exoplanet Hosting System HD 6434


Wow, what a view! http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA19912… #*Mars* #*Curiosity*






*Celebrating 20 years of exoplanet discovery*

 Anthony Wood 
October 7, 2015
 10 PICTURES 



This month marks the 20th anniversary of the first discovery of a planet orbiting a Sun-like star outside of our solar system – 51 Pegasi b. This event represented a watershed moment in astronomy, and since this point, over 1,800 exoplanets have been discovered, with over 1,000 spotted by NASA's Kepler space telescope.


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## ninja007

science, infrastructure, r&d!


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## ScienceRocks

Tell me why any of those is bad for America? If you can't then I am right.


http://www.davidreneke.com/stop-pres...t-about-pluto/

One of NASA’s principal investigators has let slip the space agency will be making another huge announcement this week regarding Pluto. Stand by for what could be a major revelation!

And if Dr Alan Stern’s comments to a packed hall at the University of Alberta in Canada are anything to go by, we might very well be talking about alien life forms. According to The Guardian, Mr Stern was showcasing the highest resolution photos of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, when he made some huge announcements.

“This world is alive,” he said. “It has weather, it has hazes in the atmosphere, active geology.” Mr Stern said *NASA would be releasing new data and images this Friday (Australian time) that will change everything we know about the solar system*. “NASA won’t let me tell you what we’re going to tell you on Thursday. It’s amazing,” he said.


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## CrusaderFrank

Matthew said:


> Tell me why any of those is bad for America? If you can't then I am right.
> 
> 
> http://www.davidreneke.com/stop-pres...t-about-pluto/
> 
> One of NASA’s principal investigators has let slip the space agency will be making another huge announcement this week regarding Pluto. Stand by for what could be a major revelation!
> 
> And if Dr Alan Stern’s comments to a packed hall at the University of Alberta in Canada are anything to go by, we might very well be talking about alien life forms. According to The Guardian, Mr Stern was showcasing the highest resolution photos of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, when he made some huge announcements.
> 
> “This world is alive,” he said. “It has weather, it has hazes in the atmosphere, active geology.” Mr Stern said *NASA would be releasing new data and images this Friday (Australian time) that will change everything we know about the solar system*. “NASA won’t let me tell you what we’re going to tell you on Thursday. It’s amazing,” he said.


....and its still not a planet. 

Reinstate Plutos status!


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## ScienceRocks

Frank, I agree with you 100%. It has 70 years of history of being a planet and would be the perfect low limit that defines planet and dwarf planet.


*Curiosity Rover Team Confirms Ancient Lakes on Mars*
Curiosity Rover Team Confirms Ancient Lakes on Mars - SpaceRef




©NASA

Mount Sharp



> A new study from the team behind NASA's Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity has confirmed that Mars was once, billions of years ago, capable of storing water in lakes over an extended period of time.
> 
> Using data from the Curiosity rover, the team has determined that, long ago, water helped deposit sediment into Gale Crater, where the rover landed more than three years ago. The sediment deposited as layers that formed the foundation for Mount Sharp, the mountain found in the middle of the crater today.
> 
> "Observations from the rover suggest that a series of long-lived streams and lakes existed at some point between about 3.8 to 3.3 billion years ago, delivering sediment that slowly built up the lower layers of Mount Sharp," said Ashwin Vasavada, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and co-author of the new Science article to be published Friday, Oct. 9.




“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt?" @*NASANewHorizons* http://go.nasa.gov/1hsAXlx


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## ScienceRocks

*An Exo-Jupiter Candidate in the Eclipsing Binary FL Lyr*
V. S. Kozyreva, A. I. Bogomazov, B. P. Demkov, L. V. Zotov, A. V. Tutukov
(Submitted on 7 Oct 2015)
Light curves of the eclipsing binary FL Lyr acquired by the Kepler space telescope are analyzed. Eclipse timing measurements for FL Lyr testify to the presence of a third body in the system. Preliminary estimates of its mass and orbital period are > 2M_Jupiter and > 7 yrs. The times of primary minimum in the light curve of FL Lyr during the operation of the Kepler mission are presented.


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## ScienceRocks

*The Laplace resonance in the Kepler-60 system*

*[1510.02776] The Laplace resonance in the Kepler-60 system*
Krzysztof Gozdziewski, Cezary Migaszewski, Federico Panichi, Ewa Szuszkiewicz
(Submitted on 9 Oct 2015)


> We investigate the dynamical stability of the Kepler-60 planetary system with three super-Earths. We first determine their orbital elements and masses by Transit Timing Variation (TTV) data spanning quarters Q1-Q16 of the KEPLER mission. The system is dynamically active but the TTV data constrain masses to ~4 Earth masses and orbits in safely wide stable zones. The observations prefer two types of solutions. The true three-body Laplace MMR exhibits the critical angle librating around 45 degrees and aligned apsides of the inner and outer pair of planets. In the Laplace MMR formed through a chain of two-planet 5:4 and 4:3 MMRs, all critical angles librate with small amplitudes of ~30 degrees and apsidal lines in planet's pairs are anti-aligned. The system is simultaneously locked in a three-body MMR with librations amplitude of ~10 degrees. The true Laplace MMR can evolve towards a chain of two-body MMRs in the presence of planetary migration. Therefore the three-body MMR formed in this way seems to be more likely state of the system. However, the true three-body MMR cannot be disregarded a priori and it remains a puzzling configuration that may challenge the planet formation theory.


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## ScienceRocks

[1510.02511] A narrow, edge-on disk resolved around HD 106906 with SPHERE

*A narrow, edge-on disk resolved around HD 106906 with SPHERE*

HD~106906AB is so far the only young binary system around which a planet has been imaged and a debris disk evidenced thanks to a strong IR excess. As such, it represents a unique opportunity to study the dynamics of young planetary systems. We aim at further investigating the close (tens of au scales) environment of the HD~106906AB system. We used the extreme AO fed, high contrast imager SPHERE recently installed on the VLT to observe HD~106906. Both the IRDIS imager and the Integral Field Spectrometer were used. We discovered a very inclined, ring-like disk at a distance of 65~au from the star. The disk shows a strong brightness asymmetry with respect to its semi-major axis. It shows a smooth outer edge, compatible with ejection of small grains by the stellar radiation pressure. We show furthermore that the planet's projected position is significantly above the disk's PA. Given the determined disk inclination, it is not excluded though that the planet could still orbit within the disk plane if at a large separation (2000--3000 au). We identified several additional point sources in the SPHERE/IRDIS field-of-view, that appear to be background objects. We compare this system with other debris disks sharing similarities, and we briefly discuss the present results in the framework of dynamical evolution









[1510.02747] Direct imaging of an asymmetric debris disk in the HD 106906 planetary   system

*Direct imaging of an asymmetric debris disk in the HD 106906 planetary system*

We present the first scattered light detections of the HD 106906 debris disk using Gemini/GPI in the infrared and HST/ACS in the optical. HD 106906 is a 13 Myr old F5V star in the Sco-Cen association, with a previously detected planet-mass candidate HD 106906b projected 650 AU from the host star. Our observations reveal a near edge-on debris disk that has a central cleared region with radius ∼50 AU, and an outer extent >500 AU. The HST data show the outer regions are highly asymmetric, resembling the ''needle'' morphology seen for the HD 15115 debris disk. The planet candidate is oriented ∼21deg away from the position angle of the primary's debris disk, strongly suggesting non-coplanarity with the system. We hypothesize that HD 106906b could be dynamically involved in the perturbation of the primary's disk, and investigate whether or not there is evidence for a circumplanetary dust disk or cloud that is either primordial or captured from the primary. We show that both the existing optical properties and near-infrared colors of HD 106906b are weakly consistent with this possibility, motivating future work to test for the observational signatures of dust surrounding the planet


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## ScienceRocks

AIDA: NASA and ESA Announce Double Mission to Asteroid Didymos in planetary defense test http://www.sci-news.com/space/science-aida-mission-asteroid-didymos-didymoon-03307.html…





Much better to learn how to destroy or move one now then 3 months away from impact!


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## ScienceRocks

* Within 80 days Elon Musk should reveal a detailed design for the Mars Colonial Transport Rocket*




Elon Musk has indicated that Spacex would reveal the design for a Mars Colonial Transport Rocket by the end of the year. This means the design should be revealed within 80 days. SpaceX began development of the large Raptor rocket engine for the Mars Colonial Transporter before 2014, but the MCT will not be operational earlier than the mid-2020s. Musk...


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA is testing CubeSat-based laser communications *

 Chris Wood 
October 14, 2015




NASA has teamed up with The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo to test a new CubeSat-mounted laser communication system. While the mission, known as the Optical Communications and Sensor Demonstration (OCSD), has already been successfully placed in orbit, the team is currently working to resolve an issues with its attitude control system.


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## ScienceRocks

*China Exclusive: China aims to go deeper into space*

2015-10-15 13:43:49





> BEIJING, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- As China's exploration of the moon progresses, its space experts have begun considering going deeper into the solar system - to Mars, asteroids and Jupiter - and a manned deep-space mission.
> 
> At a recent conference on deep-space exploration in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, an official urged scientists and technologists to have a pioneering spirit.
> 
> "When exploring the unknown, we should not just follow others. China should be more creative," said Liu Jizhong, director of the lunar exploration program and space engineering center under the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.





Read more: http://news.xinhuane...c_134716387.htm


This is why china is going to be the super power in the future. They will likely mine the resources and we earth bound America won't be able to compete with them.

What is America's republican party want for America? Oh'yess, everything from paving our roads to educating our children is a fucking boondogoo.

I hate them.


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## danielpalos

I believe we merely need socialism to bailout capitalism with another, deep space race.


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## ScienceRocks

*The Ĝ Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. IV. The Signatures and Information Content of Transiting Megastructures*
Jason T. Wright, Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Ming Zhao, Daniel Jontof-Hutter, Eric B. Ford
(Submitted on 15 Oct 2015)
Arnold (2005), Forgan (2013), and Korpela et al. (2015) noted that planet-sized artificial structures could be discovered with Kepler as they transit their host star. We present a general discussion of transiting megastructures, and enumerate ten potential ways their anomalous silhouettes, orbits, and transmission properties would distinguish them from exoplanets. We also enumerate the natural sources of such signatures. 
Several anomalous objects, such as KIC 12557548 and CoRoT-29, have variability in depth consistent with Arnold's prediction and/or an asymmetric shape consistent with Forgan's model. Since well motivated physical models have so far provided natural explanations for these signals, the ETI hypothesis is not warranted for these objects, but they still serve as useful examples of how nonstandard transit signatures might be identified and interpreted in a SETI context. Boyajian et al. 2015 recently announced KIC 8462852, an object with a bizarre light curve consistent with a "swarm" of megastructures. We suggest this is an outstanding SETI target. 
We develop the normalized information content statistic M to quantify the information content in a signal embedded in a discrete series of bounded measurements, such as variable transit depths, and show that it can be used to distinguish among constant sources, interstellar beacons, and naturally stochastic or artificial, information-rich signals. We apply this formalism to KIC 12557548 and a specific form of beacon suggested by Arnold to illustrate its utility.
[1510.04606] The \^G Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy   Supplies. IV. The Signatures and Information Content of Transiting   Megastructures


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## ScienceRocks

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2015/10/...arly-december/

SpaceX is looking for its Falcon 9 to return to flight by late November or early December, a company official said.

“We believe in the next six to eight weeks we’ll be able to return to flight,” Lee Rosen, SpaceX vice president of mission and launch operations, said on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress under way this week in Jerusalem.

The Falcon 9, which failed after 18 successful flights, will carry a communications satellite for Luxembourg-based SES SA.

The rocket also will deliver a tiny satellite for SpacePharma, a privately owned Israeli start-up, which developed a miniaturised laboratory for microgravity research.

The return to flight will mark the first launch of an upgraded Falcon 9 booster designed to lift heavier payloads into orbit.


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## ScienceRocks

* Lunar Fuel and refueling greatly reduce cost of a Mars Mission *





A MIT group has found that taking a detour to the moon to refuel would reduce the mass of a Mars mission upon launch by 68 percent. The most mass-efficient path involves launching a crew from Earth with just enough fuel to get into orbit around the Earth. A fuel-producing plant on the surface of the moon would then launch tankers of fuel...


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## ScienceRocks

Europe and Russia mission to assess Moon settlement

Quote

16 October 2015










> The European and Russian space agencies are to send a lander to an unexplored area at the Moon's south pole.
> 
> It will be one of a series of missions that prepares for the return of humans to the surface and a possible permanent settlement.
> 
> The spacecraft will assess whether there is water, and raw materials to make fuel and oxygen.
> 
> BBC News has obtained exclusive details of the mission, called Luna 27, which is set for launch in five years' time.
> 
> The mission is one of a series led by the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, to go back to the Moon.







http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-34504067


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## ScienceRocks

*HATS-17b: A Transiting Compact Warm Jupiter in a 16.3 Days Circular Orbit*
R. Brahm, A. Jordán, G. Á. Bakos, K. Penev, N. Espinoza, M. Rabus, J. D. Hartman, D. Bayliss, S. Ciceri, G. Zhou, L. Mancini, T.G. Tan, M. de Val-Borro, W. Bhatti, Z. Csubry, J. Bento, T. Henning, B. Schmidt, V. Suc, J. Lázár, I. Papp, P. Sári

[1510.05758] HATS-17b: A Transiting Compact Warm Jupiter in a 16.3 Days Circular   Orbit
(Submitted on 20 Oct 2015)
We report the discovery of HATS-17b, the first transiting warm Jupiter of the HATSouth network. HATS-17b transits its bright (V=12.4) G-type (M⋆=1.131 ± 0.030 M⊙, R⋆=1.091+0.070−0.046 R⋆) metal-rich ([Fe/H]=+0.3 dex) host star in a circular orbit with a period of P=16.2546 days. HATS-17b has a very compact radius of 0.777 ± 0.056 RJ given its Jupiter-like mass of 1.338 ± 0.065 MJ. Up to 50% of the mass of HATS-17b may be composed of heavy elements in order to explain its high density with current models of planetary structure. HATS-17b is the longest period transiting planet discovered to date by a ground-based photometric survey, and is one of the brightest transiting warm Jupiter systems known. The brightness of HATS-17b will allow detailed follow-up observations to characterize the orbital geometry of the system and the atmosphere of the planet.


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## ScienceRocks

*The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets. XXXVII. Bayesian re-analysis of three systems. New super-Earths, unconfirmed signals, and magnetic cycles*
R. F. Díaz (1), D. Ségransan (1), S. Udry (1), C. Lovis (1), F. Pepe (1), X. Dumusque (2, 1), M. Marmier (1), R. Alonso (3,4), W. Benz (5), F. Bouchy (1,6), A. Coffinet (1), A. Collier Cameron (7), M. Deleuil (6), P. Figueira (8), M. Gillon (9), G. Lo Curto (10), M. Mayor (1), C. Mordasini (5), F. Motalebi (1), C. Moutou (6, 11), D. Pollacco (12), E. Pompei (10), D. Queloz (1, 13), N. Santos (8, 14), A. Wyttenbach (1) ((1) Observatoire astronomique de l'Université de Genève, Versoix, Switzerland, (2) Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, (3) Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, (4) Dpto. de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, (5) Physikalisches Institut, Universitat Bern, Bern, Switzerland, (6) Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LAM (Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille), Marseille, France, (7) School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, North Haugh, St Andrews, UK, (8) Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, CAUP, Porto, Portugal, (9) Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium, (10) European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile, (11) Canada France Hawaii Telescope Corporation, Kamuela, USA, (12) Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, (13) Cavendish Laboratory, J J Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, UK, (14) Departamento de Física e Astronomia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal)
(Submitted on 21 Oct 2015)
We present the analysis of the entire HARPS observations of three stars that host planetary systems: HD1461, HD40307, and HD204313. The data set spans eight years and contains more than 200 nightly averaged velocity measurements for each star. This means that it is sensitive to both long-period and low-mass planets and also to the effects induced by stellar activity cycles. We modelled the data using Keplerian functions that correspond to planetary candidates and included the short- and long-term effects of magnetic activity. A Bayesian approach was taken both for the data modelling, which allowed us to include information from activity proxies such as log(R′HK) in the velocity modelling, and for the model selection, which permitted determining the number of significant signals in the system. The Bayesian model comparison overcomes the limitations inherent to the traditional periodogram analysis. We report an additional super-Earth planet in the HD1461 system. Four out of the six planets previously reported for HD40307 are confirmed and characterised. We discuss the remaining two proposed signals. In particular, we show that when the systematic uncertainty associated with the techniques for estimating model probabilities are taken into account, the current data are not conclusive concerning the existence of the habitable-zone candidate HD40307 g. We also fully characterise the Neptune-mass planet that orbits HD204313 in 34.9 days.


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## ScienceRocks

Russian space agency announces plans for manned Moon mission



By Jessica Orwig 28/10/2015


Before 2030, Russia plans to land its first cosmonauts on the moon, and Europe wants a piece of the action.
They're a little late for the great space race of the 1960s, but the mission is an admirable push for the reignited interest in manned deep-space travel.

On Tuesday, at a space and technology conference in Moscow, the head of Roscosmos Energia — Russia's version of NASA — announced: "A manned flight to the moon and lunar landing is planned for 2029."


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## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers may have identified giant planets in the dust around young stars*

 Chris Wood 
October 29, 2015
 2 PICTURES 





> A new NASA study has suggested that gigantic spiral patterns seen around very young stars may be a telltale sign of gigantic, unseen planets in their orbit. If proved accurate, the theory would allow for a new method of planet detection, while providing an invaluable look at planet birth.


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## ScienceRocks

*Cassini completes plunge through Enceladus' icy plume*

 Chris Wood 
October 29, 2015




It's been a busy year for Cassini, making observations of Hyperion and Dione, before discovering evidence of a global ocean beneath the moon Enceladus' icy surface. Now the probe is back at Enceladus for another flyby, completing its deepest-ever dive through the body's icy plume.


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## ScienceRocks

*Nasa tracking Asteroid TB145 with radio telescopes*

9 hours ago

An asteroid called TB145 will pass within a few hundred thousand kilometres of the earth.

Astronomers only discovered its existence this month.

Scientists say it will not hit us for a least 100 years.

Tim Allman reports.


http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-34684761


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## ScienceRocks

A new hot Jupiter

EPIC 204129699b, a grazing transiting hot Jupiter on an 1.26-day orbit around a bright solar like star

We report the discovery of EPIC 204129699b, the first confirmed transiting hot Jupiter detected by the K2 space mission. We combined K2 photometry with FastCam lucky imaging and FIES and HARPS high-resolution spectroscopy to confirm the planetary nature of the transiting object and derived the system parameters. EPIC 204129699b is a 1.8-Jupiter-mass planet on an 1.26-day-orbit around a G7V star (M* = 0.91 Msun, R* = 0.78 Rsun). The planetary radius is poorly constrained (0.7 < Rp < 1.4 RJup ), owing to the grazing transit and the low sampling rate of the K2 photometry. The short orbital period and the brightness of the host star (V = 10.8 mag) make the system amenable to atmospheric characterization.


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## ScienceRocks

*BAE Systems and Reaction Engines to develop hypersonic space engine*

 David Szondy 
November 2, 2015
 15 PICTURES 





> Reaction Engines' single-stage-to-orbit Skylon spacecraft took a step closer to reality today as BAE Systems announced that would buy a 20 percent stake in the company as part of an agreement to help develop Reaction's Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) hypersonic engine designed to propel the Skylon orbiter.


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## ScienceRocks

Chaplin @*unibirmingham*: Spacecraft operations improvement have increased K2 precision near Kepler level. #*K2SciCon*







Crossfield: #*K2mission* is finding temperate, earth-sized planets amenable to RV and HST/JWST follow-up. #*K2SciCon*


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## ScienceRocks

There's so many good reasons to fund science that it is shocking that anyone would think otherwise.



*Jan Hattenbach* ‏@*JanHattenbach*  Oct 30

#*2015TB145* "we didn't know it existed until Oct.10" Or: why funding #*astronomy* is important. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/great-pumpkin-asteroid-1.3287983…


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## ScienceRocks

Is deep space travel a step closer to reality? Nasa reveals successful test of 'impossible' fuel-free engine that breaks the laws of physics

Quote

6 November 2015










> An 'impossible' fuel-free engine, which could take a humans to Mars in just 10 weeks, is still defying science after another batch of tests by Nasa suggested the thruster does work.
> 
> The so-called EM Drive creates thrust by bouncing microwaves around in an enclosed chamber, and uses only solar power.
> 
> When the concept was first proposed, it was considered implausible because it went against the laws of physics - and subsequent tests of the engine have shown that the idea could revolutionise space travel.
> 
> Now Nasa has provided the first update on the test in months, and it seems to suggest that the futuristic engine does, in fact, work.







http://www.dailymail...-knows-why.html


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## ScienceRocks

47th DPS Meeting Science Schedule and Events | American Astronomical Society

Abstract from 47th DPS meeting this week page 636)

*An Exo-Venus Around a Cool, Nearby Star*
I. Angelo; 1, 2; J. F. Rowe; 2, 3; S. B. Howell; 2;
1. Physics and Astronomy, UC Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
2. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States.
3. SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, United States.

Abstract (2,250 Maximum Characters):


> We present the discovery and planetary confirmation of* KOI-3138*, a likely Earth-sized (1.08 Earth radii ) planet in a 9-day orbit around a nearby M Dwarf star. A planet transit was detected around KOI-3138 with the Kepler spacecraft and confirmed via false positive analysis using data from the UK Infrared telescope, Digital Sky Survey, and DSSI Speckle imaging. The planet’s short orbital period places it close to its host star, making it an interesting Venus analog around a cool star.
> It remains possible, although unlikely, that KOI-3138.01 instead orbits a bound, undetected binary companion to KOI-3138. Under these conditions, the planet becomes a mini-Neptune-sized planet orbiting a brown dwarf with a mass of ~0.05 solar mass. Follow-up radial velocity measurements on the host star are required in order to accurately assess the likelihood of this possibility. Specifically, detection of a significant radial velocity ( ~725 m/s) upon observation of KOI-3138 will indicate the presence of a bound companion that was not detected by our false positive analysis procedures. Such a companion, if detected, cannot be ruled out as the host star around which KOI-3138.01 orbits.
> KOI-3138.01 is too small to induce a detectable “wobble" in its host star. We therefore make no conclusions about mass or composition. However, there is reasonable incentive to determine these properties in the hopes of understanding the nature of habitable zones around M-type stars. Kepler-186f, a previously discovered Earth-like exoplanet, is similar in size to KOI-3138.01 and orbits the outer reaches of its star’s conservative habitable zone. KOI-3138.01, also Earth-sized, orbits a similar star but resides much closer in. The two planets together span the range of distances within the habitable zones of M Dwarfs. Determining the composition and atmosphere of KOI-3138.01 is therefore useful in understanding the nature of habitable zone boundaries of such star types. This task may in fact be possible with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will characterize atmospheric compositions of nearby Earth-sized planets like KOI-3138.01 and thereby provide insight into the habitability of both known and to-bediscovered exoplanets.


----------



## ScienceRocks

A candidate second planet in HD 100546's disk

Resolving the HD 100546 Protoplanetary System with the Gemini Planet Imager: Evidence for Multiple Forming, Accreting Planets

We report Gemini Planet Imager H band high-contrast imaging/integral field spectroscopy and polarimetry of the HD 100546, a 10 $Myr$-old early-type star recently confirmed to host a thermal infrared bright (super)jovian protoplanet at wide separation, HD 100546 b. We resolve the inner disk cavity in polarized light, recover the thermal-infrared (IR) bright arm, and identify one additional spiral arm. We easily recover HD 100546 b and show that much of its emission originates an unresolved, point source. HD 100546 b likely has extremely red infrared colors compared to field brown dwarfs, qualitatively similar to young cloudy superjovian planets, however, these colors may instead indicate that HD 100546 b is still accreting material from a circumplanetary disk. Additionally, we identify a second point source-like peak at $r_{proj}$ $\sim$ 13 AU, located just interior to or at inner disk wall consistent with being a 10--20 $M_{J}$ candidate second protoplanet-- "HD 100546 c" -- and lying within a weakly polarized region of the disk but along an extension of the thermal IR bright spiral arm. Alternatively, it is equally plausible that this feature is a weakly polarized but locally bright region of the inner disk wall. Astrometric monitoring of this feature over the next 2 years and emission line measurements could confirm its status as a protoplanet, rotating disk hot spot that is possibly a signpost of a protoplanet, or a stationary emission source from within the disk.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA reveals evidence of cryovolcanos on Pluto*

 Anthony Wood 
November 10, 2015
 4 PICTURES 



NASA has identified evidence of ice volcanoes present on the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto. The news comes as New Horizon's team discusses new scientific discoveries made by the spacecraft during its July flyby, at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society, in Maryland.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*GJ 1132b earth-sized rocky planet at 39 l.y*





 by Led_Zep Today at 3:54 pm

New exoplanet in our neighborhood

The new planet, named GJ 1132b, is Earth-sized and rocky, orbiting a small star located a mere 39 light-years from Earth, making it the closest Earth-sized exoplanet yet discovered. Astrophysicists from MIT and elsewhere have published these findings today in the journal Nature.
(…)
Berta-Thompson and his colleagues discovered the planet using the MEarth-South Observatory, a Harvard University-led array of eight 40-centimeter-wide robotic telescopes located in the mountains of Chile.
(...)
Based on the amount of starlight the planet blocks, and the radius of the star, scientists calculated that planet GJ 1132b is about 1.2 times the size of Earth. From measuring the wobble of its host star, they estimate the planet’s mass to be about 1.6 times that of Earth. Given its size and mass, they could determine its density — and they believe it to be rocky, like Earth

Link Nature :
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v527/n7577/full/nature15762.html

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/MEarth/gj1132b.pdf


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## ScienceRocks

*'Most distant' Solar System object spied *

11 November 2015









Astronomers have identified the most distant object yet in the Solar System.

Observations with Japan's Subaru telescope reveal the likely icy body to be some 15.5 billion km from the Sun - about three times further away than even far-flung Pluto.

Scientists say their initial studies suggest that the object - catalogued as V774104 - is some 500-1,000km across.

It will need to be tracked over time to learn the shape and extent of its orbit through the Solar System.

The discovery was announced at the 47th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences, taking place in National Harbor near Washington DC.

The team behind the find is led by Scott Sheppard, from the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Chad Trujillo, from the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.

They specialise in detecting Solar System outliers.



http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-34787422


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## ScienceRocks

*Cassini finds monstrous ice cloud in Titan's south polar region*
* November 12, 2015 by Elizabeth Zubritsky *



As winter sets in at Titan’s south pole, a cloud system called the south polar vortex (small, bright “button”) has been forming, as seen in this 2013 image. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
New observations made near the south pole of Titan by NASA's Cassini spacecraft add to the evidence that winter comes in like a lion on this moon of Saturn.






Scientists have detected a monstrous new cloud of frozen compounds in the moon's low- to mid-stratosphere – a stable atmospheric region above the troposphere, or active weather layer.

Cassini's camera had already imaged an impressive cloud hovering over Titan's south pole at an altitude of about 186 miles (300 kilometers). However, that cloud, first seen in 2012, turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. A much more massive ice cloud system has now been found lower in the stratosphere, peaking at an altitude of about 124 miles (200 kilometers).


----------



## CrusaderFrank

Matthew said:


> There's so many good reasons to fund science that it is shocking that anyone would think otherwise.
> 
> 
> 
> *Jan Hattenbach* ‏@*JanHattenbach*  Oct 30
> 
> #*2015TB145* "we didn't know it existed until Oct.10" Or: why funding #*astronomy* is important. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/great-pumpkin-asteroid-1.3287983…



Need to redirect the money we're wasting on global warming and domestic spying towards this project


----------



## ScienceRocks

Yep, I agree...

*Giant Magellan Telescope: Super-scope project breaks ground*
A ceremony has been held to mark the start of construction of one of the key astronomical facilities of the next decade - the Giant Magellan Telescope.

The GMT will be built atop Cerro Las Campanas in Chile.


> With its 24.5m-wide primary mirror system, it should be able to probe the first objects to emit light in the Universe, to investigate dark energy and dark matter, and to identify potentially habitable planets.
> 
> The international project is US-led.
> 
> The non-American partners come from Australia, Brazil, and Korea, with Chile as the host country.
> 
> Representatives were invited to the mountain top on Wednesday to celebrate the occasion.
> 
> Two-and-a-half-thousand cubic metres of rock have already been removed to flatten the peak of Las Campanas to make it ready for the works.
> 
> *Three-way race*
> Engineers can now start to bring in the components that make up the GMT's structure.
> 
> Its main reflecting surface will comprise seven 8.4m mirrors. These are currently in the process of being fabricated.



Giant Magellan Telescope: Super-scope project breaks ground - BBC News


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ne..._2016_999.html


> China is preparing to launch a new-generation quick-response rocket in 2016 to seize more of the international commercial launch market, industry insiders said.
> 
> The Kuaizhou-11, or Fast Vessel-11, is being developed by the Fourth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, a major supplier of missiles to the People's Liberation Army. Its first launch is planned for late 2016 or early 2017, said Zhang Di, head of the company's space projects department, at the First China Commercial Launch Forum in Wuhan, Hubei province, on Friday.
> 
> Zhang said the solid-fuel rocket will be able to place a 1-metric-ton payload into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers. Prelaunch preparations will take very little time, and the launch can be conducted on rough terrain.



God do I wish the chinese would invest into extrasolar plantary telescops and space based kepler telescopes.

I'd like to see them build a 40 meter ground base
and then build a base on the moon and mars

----

Another picture taken by MOM has been released. This time it is a image of Arabia Terra. 

http://spaceref.com/mars/arabia-terr...tm_source=t.co

Arabia Terra is a large upland region in the north of Mars located mostly in the Arabia quadrangle. It is densely cratered and heavily eroded. This battered topography indicates great age, and Arabia Terra is presumed to be one of the oldest terrains on the planet. Gill Crater is an impact crater in the Arabia quadrangle of Mars.

This image is taken by Mars Color Camera on 22nd October 2015 at an altitude of 14893 km with a resolution of 774 m.


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## ScienceRocks

*Two Transiting Low Density Sub-Saturns from K2*
Erik A. Petigura, Andrew W. Howard, Eric D. Lopez, Katherine M. Deck, Benjamin J. Fulton, Ian J. M. Crossfield, David R. Ciardi, Eugene Chiang, Eve J. Lee, Howard Isaacson, Charles A. Beichman, Brad M. S. Hansen, Joshua E. Schlieder, Evan Sinukoff
(Submitted on 14 Nov 2015)
We report the discovery and confirmation of two sub-Saturn planets orbiting a bright (V = 11.3), metal-rich ([Fe/H] = 0.42 ± 0.04 dex) G3 dwarf in the K2 Campaign 2 field. The planets are 5.68 ± 0.56 Earth-radii and 7.82 ± 0.72 Earth-radii and have orbital periods of 20.8851 ± 0.0003 d and 42.3633±0.0006 d, near to the 2:1 mean-motion resonance. We obtained 32 radial velocities (RVs) with Keck/HIRES and detected the reflex motion due to EPIC-203771098b and c. These planets have masses of 21.0 ± 5.4 Earth-masses and 27.0 ± 6.9 Earth-masses, respectively. With low densities of 0.63 ± 0.25 g/cc and 0.31 ± 0.12 g/cc, respectively, the planets require thick envelopes of H/He to explain their large sizes and low masses. Interior structure models predict that the planets have fairly massive cores of 17.6 ± 4.3 Earth-masses and 16.1 ± 4.2 Earth-masses, respectively. They may have formed exterior to their present locations, accreted their H/He envelopes at large orbital distances, and migrated in as a resonant pair. The proximity to resonance, large transit depths, and host star brightness offer rich opportunities for TTV follow-up. Finally, the low surface gravities of the EPIC-203771098 planets make them favorable targets for transmission spectroscopy by HST, Spitzer, and JWST.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.04497v1.pdf

-----

If there was one thing I wish the Chinese would do I'd have to say building a 100 meter ground base like the VLT, ELT or GMT would top the list.

That thing would be as good as kepler and would be far cheaper to maintain.


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## ScienceRocks

A one year feasibility study to do a joint Venus mission between the USA and NASA has been approved. If it takes off then possible launch date is late 2020s.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/11/12...ission-resume/


> NASA has resumed discussions with Russia on a potential joint robotic mission to Venus in the late 2020s after the Ukraine crisis stalled the partnership, according to scientists involved in the talks.
> 
> Russian scientists have studied the Venera-D mission to Venus more than a decade as a follow-up to the Soviet-era Venera and Vega probes to the second rock from the sun.
> 
> Rob Landis, a program executive at NASA Headquarters, told a meeting of the Venus Exploration Analysis Group last month that the discussions are taking a “100,000-foot view” of the mission.
> 
> *NASA has only committed to a year-long feasibility study*, which will produce a report for top NASA and Russian managers to decide whether to pursue a cooperative mission to Venus, Landis said Oct. 27 at the VEXAG meeting in Washington.
> 
> The joint science definition team met in Moscow from Oct. 5-8, and scientists plan two more face-to-face meetings in the Russian capital over the next year. Scientists from the Moscow-based Space Research Institute, known by the Russian acronym IKI, are in charge of the Venera-D concept.



This is good news from the Russian front. Russia will have a budget of roughly $37 billion to last through 2025. 

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Pu...itive_999.html


> "Russian rockets must be reliable and competitive, meet requirements of leading domestic and foreign customers," the president stressed.
> 
> Putin stressed the development and equipment of the International Space Stations with the newest technologies should be a priority for the Russian Federal Space Program.
> 
> Fundamental space exploration should also be prioritized, the president said. According to the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the Federal Space Program will have *a budget of roughly $37 billion to last through 2025*.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Congress Says Yes to Space Mining, No to Rocket Regulations



> SPACE: THE FINAL franchise. These are the entrepreneurs funding near space voyages and starship enterprises. Their continuing mission statement: to explore lucrative new orbits, to seek out new ores and new deregulations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
> 
> Capitalistic Captain Kirks rejoice! Yesterday the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act soared through both congressional houses with vacuum-like ease. First and foremost, the bill protects private spaceflight from regulatory oversight, giving the industry up to 8 years to get its innovations in place before government overseers step in and start counting rivets. But more interesting (if less immediately applicable), the bill lets entreprenauts keep whatever nonliving souvenirs they find out in the void, opening the door to everything from asteroid-based gold mines to comet-collected rocket fuel. The next step is President Obama’s desk, but he’s likely to sign.



Great news! We need a economic basis and the private sector is very good at doing such. I love science but we need the infrastructure if we want to do more serious science.




​
*First photo of planet in making captured*
There are 450 light-years between Earth and LkCa15, a young star with a transition disk around it, a cosmic whirling dervish, a birthplace for planets.


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## ScienceRocks

A new free-floating planet in the Upper Scorpius association

We report on a deep photometric survey covering an area of 1.17 deg2 in the young Upper Scorpius stellar association using VIMOS Iz and UKIDSS ZJHK data taking several years apart. The search for the least massive population of Upper Scorpius (∼5-10 Myr, 145 pc) is performed on the basis of various optical and infrared color-color and color-magnitude diagrams, including WISE photometry, in the magnitude interval J=14.5-19 mag (completeness), which corresponds to substellar masses from 0.028 through 0.004 M⊙ at the age and distance of Upper Scorpius. We also present the proper motion analysis of the photometric candidates, finding that two objects successfully pass all photometric and astrometric criteria for membership in the young stellar association. One of them, UScoJ155150.2−213457, is a new discovery. We obtained low resolution, near-infrared spectroscopy (R∼450, 0.85--2.35 μm) of this new finding using the FIRE instrument. We confirmed its low-gravity atmosphere expected for an Upper Scorpius member (weak alkaline lines, strong VO absorption, peaked H-band pseudocontinuum). By comparison with spectroscopic standards, we derive a spectral type of L6±1, and estimate a mass of ≈0.008-0.010 M⊙ for UScoJ155150.2−213457. The colors and spectral slope of this object resemble those of other young, cool members of Upper Scorpius and σ Orionis (∼3 Myr) and field, high gravity dwarfs of related classification in contrast with the very red indices of field, low gravity, L-type dwarfs of intermediate age. UScoJ155150.2−213457, which does not show infrared flux excesses up to 4.5 μm, becomes one of the least massive and latest type objects known in the entire Upper Scorpius stellar association.


----------



## ScienceRocks

WASP-135b: a highly irradiated, inflated hot Jupiter orbiting a G5V star





> We report the discovery of a new transiting planet from the WASP survey. WASP-135b is a hot Jupiter with a radius of 1.30 pm 0.09 Rjup, a mass of 1.90 pm 0.08 Mjup and an orbital period of 1.401 days. Its host is a Sun-like star, with a G5 spectral type and a mass and radius of 0.98 pm 0.06 Msun and 0.96 pm 0.05 Rsun respectively. The proximity of the planet to its host means that WASP-135b receives high levels of insolation, which may be the cause of its inflated radius. Additionally, we find weak evidence of a transfer of angular momentum from the planet to its star.



-------------------


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## ScienceRocks

HATS-15 b and HATS-16 b: Two massive planets transiting old G dwarf stars

We report the discovery of HATS-15 b and HATS-16 b, two massive transiting extrasolar planets orbiting evolved (∼10 Gyr) main-sequence stars. The planet HATS-15 b, which is hosted by a G9V star (V=14.8 mag), is a hot Jupiter with mass of 2.17±0.15MJ and radius of 1.105±0.0.040RJ, and completes its orbit in nearly 1.7 days. HATS-16 b is a very massive hot Jupiter with mass of 3.27±0.19MJ and radius of 1.30±0.15RJ; it orbits around its G3 V parent star (V=13.8 mag) in ∼2.7 days. HATS-16 is slightly active and shows a periodic photometric modulation, implying a rotational period of 12 days which is unexpectedly short given its isochronal age. This fast rotation might be the result of the tidal interaction between the star and its planet.


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/11/18...roaches-venus/

Imamura said the Akatsuki spacecraft, named for the Japanese word for dawn, will zoom 541 kilometers, or 336 miles, above Venus for a 20-minute insertion burn using the probe’s secondary attitude control thrusters. Japanese ground controllers have programmed the probe to use the backup rocket jets after a faulty valve knocked out Akatsuki’s main engine during its first attempt to enter orbit around Venus in December 2010.

Four of the eight attitude control thrusters aboard Akatsuki will fire for 20 minutes and 33 seconds to slow the spacecraft down enough for Venus’ gravity to pull it into an egg-shaped orbit that skims above the planet’s cloud tops on the low end and ranges several hundred thousand miles in altitude at peak altitude.

The reaction control thrusters, originally designed to help point the spacecraft, were not rated for such a hefty propulsive maneuver.

“In the original plan, we used these RCS (thrusters) only for attitude control — mostly using these thrusters only for unloading angular momentum — so we did not expect such a long (burn),” Imamura said last month in a presentation to NASA’s Venus Exploration Analysis Group. “So yes … this kind of operation is rather dangerous, but in the previous (burns) already conducted, we have already tested 10 minutes of propulsion, so 20 minutes is not very long compared to the (maneuvers) we have already conducted.”


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA calls on SpaceX to send astronauts to ISS*


> SpaceX received orders Friday from the US space agency to send astronauts to the International Space Station in the coming years, helping restore US access to space, NASA said.




Great news!


*New detector perfect for asteroid mining, planetary research*


> The grizzled asteroid miner is a stock character in science fiction. Now, a couple of recent events - one legal and the other technological - have brought asteroid mining a step closer to reality.
> The legal step was taken when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed a bill titled H.R. 2262—SPACE Act of 2015. The bill has a number of measures designed to facilitate commercial space development, including a provision that gives individuals or companies ownership of any material that they mine in outer space. According to one estimate, asteroid mining could ultimately develop into a trillion-dollar market.
> The technological development is a new generation of gamma-ray spectroscope that appears perfectly suited for detecting veins of gold, platinum, rare earths and other valuable material hidden within the asteroids, moons and other airless objects floating around the solar system - just the type of "sensor" that will be needed by asteroid miners to sniff out these valuable materials.
> 
> The concept was developed by a team of scientists from Vanderbilt and Fisk Universities, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Planetary Science Institute. It is described in the article "New ultra-bright scintillators for planetary gamma-ray spectroscopy" published Oct. 23 in the _SPIE Newsroom_. SPIE is the International Society for Optics and Photonics and the _SPIE Newsroom_ highlights noteworthy scientific achievements in the area of optics and photonics.


----------



## longknife

*SpaceX to Take US Astronauts to Space Station*



About time! No longer have to depend on the Russians to get us there. A private company is already sending supplies so this appears to be an expansion of the effort to put more private companies into space exploration.



Read more @ Nasa give SpaceX its first contract to send astronauts to ISS


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## ScienceRocks

Great news longknife!!! The only way humans can expand into space is for their to be a economic interest in doing so. Space mining and so much more that have to do with the economic side of things is very important.

-------

Curiosity Rover Headed to Dark Sand Dunes on Mars http://oak.ctx.ly/r/40hnv







US Air Force Seeks New Space Situational Awareness Data to Track Threats http://oak.ctx.ly/r/40fki






Why NASA Europa Probe Will Study Jupiter Moon's Dust http://oak.ctx.ly/r/40d1x






*Could Liquid Lakes Form on Mars Today?*


> Despite its frigid temperatures, Mars might be able to host lakes of water on its surface today, a new study
> 
> suggests.
> 
> Although extremely small amounts of water would quickly evaporate in Mars' low-pressure atmosphere, water from sources such as aquifers could last long enough to pool, with larger pools remaining liquid for at least a year, researchers said.
> 
> "Nobody's doubting that liquid water was on Marsat some point," Jules Goldspiel, of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, told Space.com. "The question I was interested in is, given today's conditions, which are hostile to liquid water, could you [still] get it."
> 
> He created a simulation to determine if liquid water could puddle and form pools to remain liquid today.
> 
> "You could get it for a little while, potentially," said Goldspiel, who presented his results Nov. 12 at the 47th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in National Harbor, Maryland.
> 
> * Flow, water, flow!*
> Billions of years ago, Mars had a thick atmosphere and a relatively warm
> 
> surface with lots of liquid water. But the Red Planet lost most of its air to space billions of years ago and, as a result, is very cold and dry today.
> 
> For example, surface temperatures on present-day Mars can dip below minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius). And the planet has low surface pressures, so small amounts of liquid water quickly turn to gas.
> 
> "If you put water on the surface, either it evaporates or [it] freezes
> 
> ," Goldspiel said.



A planet as big as earth like Kepler 186f, bigger then earth like Kepler 62f or 296f is in about the same area as mars. They'd probably have the atmosphere to have oceans and favorable temperatures if they didn't have a run away snowball earth event.


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## ScienceRocks

If you were to download the entire catalog of photos taken at Saturn to date by Cassini and then animate them like a flipbook, how long would it take to watch them all pass by? The Wall Street Journal's Visual Correspondent Jon Keegan has your answer: nearly four hours.


========================
China is making progress on the construction of their radio telescope. The just installed the "retina" of the telescope. It is where all the signals from the panels are collected. The telescope itself is still on schedule to be completed by September 2016.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20..._134840638.htm


> Chinese scientists on Saturday tested the installation of the "retina" of the world's largest ever radio telescope to be completed in September next year.
> 
> Technicians lifted a 30-tonne feed cabin of the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope - or FAST - above a half-finished dish-like reflector measuring 500 meters in diameter and 1.6 kilometers in perimeter.
> 
> Once completed, the cabin, home to a feed source which collects signals from the universe, will be suspended 140 to 160 meters above the reflector made up of 4,450 panels.




I wish China would build a reflective telescope with a 100 meter mirror or a whole bunch adding up to it.. List of largest optical reflecting telescopes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## ScienceRocks

SpaceX will have its first manned mission in 2017 http://pops.ci/tK6Mh7






Even better news!


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## ScienceRocks

*The DEdicated MONitor of EXotransits (DEMONEX): Seven Transits of XO-4b*

*[1511.06402] The DEdicated MONitor of EXotransits (DEMONEX): Seven Transits of XO-4b*
S. Villanueva Jr., J. D. Eastman, B. S. Gaudi
(Submitted on 19 Nov 2015)
The DEdicated MONitor of EXotransits (DEMONEX) was a 20 inch robotic and automated telescope to monitor bright stars hosting transiting exoplanets to discover new planets and improve constraints on the properties of known transiting planetary systems. We present results for the misaligned hot Jupiter XO-4b containing 7 new transits from the DEMONEX telescope, including 3 full and 4 partial transits. We combine these data with archival light curves and archival radial velocity measurements to derive the host star mass M∗=1.293+0.030−0.029M⊙ and radius R∗=1.554+0.042−0.030R⊙ as well as the planet mass MP=1.615+0.10−0.099MJ and radius RP=1.317+0.040−0.029RJ and a refined ephemeris of P=4.1250687±0.0000024 days and T0=2454758.18978±0.00024BJDTDB. We include archival Rossiter-McLaughlin measurements of XO-4 to infer the stellar spin-planetary orbit alignment λ=−40.0+8.8−7.5 degrees. 
We test the effects of including various detrend parameters, theoretical and empirical mass-radius relations, and Rossiter-McLaughlin models. We infer that detrending against CCD position and time or airmass can improve data quality, but can have significant effects on the inferred values of many parameters --- most significantly RP/R∗ and the observed central transit times TC. In the case of RP/R∗ we find that the systematic uncertainty due to detrending can be three times that of the quoted statistical uncertainties. The choice of mass-radius relation has little effect on our inferred values of the system parameters. The choice of Rossiter-McLaughlin models can have significant effects of the inferred values of vsinI∗ and the stellar spin-planet orbit angle λ.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Mars will get ring like Saturn, scientists predict*

Source: *CBC News* 

*Mars will get ring like Saturn, scientists predict* 

*Moon Phobos is making a death spiral that will result in it getting torn to pieces, study suggests* 

CBC News Posted: Nov 23, 2015 2:14 PM ET Last Updated: Nov 23, 2015 3:31 PM ET 


> The Red Planet could find itself wearing a stylish new accessory in tens of millions of years.
> 
> A ring like Saturn's will likely form from the shattered remains of Mars's moon Phobos when that moon breaks apart in about 20 to 40 million years, predict planetary scientists in a new paper published Monday.
> 
> The ring is expected to last for up to 100 million years.
> 
> Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons, is gradually spiralling towards Mars. As it gets closer, Mars's gravity is pulling harder on the side closest to the planet, producing forces known as "tidal stresses."




*-snip-* 

Read more: Mars will get ring like Saturn, scientists predict


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## ScienceRocks

*2017 and 2018 will mean a lot more exoplanet discoveries and mearsuring their atmospheres *







> New space telescopes will be put up over the next few years to help with the search for planets outside our solar system. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. In a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, TESS will monitor more than 200,000...


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## ScienceRocks

*The initial physical conditions of Kepler-36 b & c*

*[1511.07385] The initial physical conditions of Kepler-36 b & c*
James E. Owen, Timothy D. Morton
(Submitted on 23 Nov 2015)
The Kepler-36 planetary system consists of two exoplanets at similar separations (0.115 & 0.128 AU), which have dramatically different densities. The inner planet has a density consistent with an Earth-like composition, while the outer planet is extremely low-density, such that it must contain a voluminous H/He envelope. Such a density difference would pose a problem for any formation mechanism if their current densities were representative of their composition at formation. However, both planets are at close enough separations to have undergone significant evaporation in the past. We constrain the core mass, core composition, initial envelope mass, and initial cooling time of each planet using evaporation models conditioned on their present-day masses and radii, as inferred from Kepler photometry and transit timing analysis. The inner planet is consistent with being an evaporatively stripped core, while the outer planet has retained some of its initial envelope due to its higher core mass. Therefore, both planets could have had a similar formation pathway, with the inner planet having an initial envelope mass fraction of ≲10% and core mass of ∼4.4 M⊕, while the outer had an initial envelope mass fraction of order 15−30% and core mass ∼7.3 M⊕. Finally, our results indicate that the outer planet had a long (≳30 Myr) initial cooling time, much longer than would naively be predicted from simple time-scale arguments. The long initial cooling time could be evidence for a dramatic early cooling episode such as the recently proposed "boil-off" process.


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## ScienceRocks

*Jeff Bezos' rocket lands safely after space flight
Jeff Bezos' rocket lands safely after space flight*



> *Jeff Bezos' rocket ship achieved a breakthrough Monday by traveling 329,839 feet into outer space and then landing upright upon its return to earth.*
> In the past, rockets were disposed of after launching space craft into outer space. Reusable rockets would substantially reduce the cost of space flight.
> 
> Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) founder Bezos started his space company, Blue Origin, in the hopes of using his New Shepard rocket to carry tourists into space.
> 
> "Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts -- a used rocket," Bezos said. "Full reuse is a game changer, and we can't wait to fuel up and fly again."



Wow!!!!!!!!!!


----------



## ScienceRocks




----------



## ScienceRocks

Planetary Candidates from the First Year of the K2 Mission
[1511.07820] Planetary Candidates from the First Year of the K2 Mission

The Kepler Space Telescope is currently searching for planets transiting stars along the ecliptic plane as part of its extended K2 mission. We processed the publicly released data from the first year of K2 observations (Campaigns 0, 1, 2, and 3) and searched for periodic eclipse signals consistent with planetary transits. * Out of 59,174 targets we searched, we detect 234 planetary candidates around 208 stars. These candidates range in size from gas giants to smaller than the Earth, and range in orbital periods from hours to over a month.* We conducted initial reconnaissance spectroscopy of 68 of the brighter candidate host stars, and present high resolution optical spectra for these stars. We make all of our data products, including light curves, spectra, and vetting diagnostics available to users online.



00000---------------------------

NASA has captured the first ever images of a full day on Pluto, and it looks so, so pretty… http://ift.tt/1MOaZSZ


----------



## ScienceRocks

* A Blue, Neptune-Size Exoplanet Around a Red Dwarf Star *
A team of astronomers have used the LCOGT network to detect the signature of water, Rayleigh scattering, through the atmosphere of a Neptune-size transiting exoplanet, suggesting a blue sky on this world which is only 100 light years away from us. The result was published in the Astrophysical Journal on November 20 (and is available on ArXiV).

Transits occur when an exoplanet passes in front of its parent star, reducing the amount of light we receive from the star by a small fraction. When the orbit of an exoplanet is aligned just right for transits to occur, astronomers can measure the planet’s size at different wavelengths in order to generate a spectrum of its atmosphere. The spectrum then reveals the substances present in the planet’s atmosphere, and therefore its composition. This measurement is most often performed using infrared light, where the planet is brightest and most easily observed. During the last few years, researchers have been probing the atmospheres of several small exoplanets with large ground and space-based telescopes, but have found it challenging to determine their composition using this method. This is either because the planets have clouds (which obscure the atmosphere) or because the measurements were not sufficiently precise.





_Image credit: NAOJ_


> At four times the size of the Earth, GJ 3470b is a transiting exoplanet closer in size to our own planet than to the hot Jupiters which so far make up the majority of exoplanets with well-characterized atmospheres. Astronomers led by Diana Dragomir of the University of Chicago have followed up on a discovery by a different group, whose results tentatively hinted at the presence of Rayleigh scattering in the atmosphere of GJ 3470b. Dr. Dragomir’s team acquired and combined transit observations from all of LCOGT’s observatory sites (Hawaii, Texas, Chile, Australia and South Africa) to conclusively confirm the detection of Rayleigh scattering for GJ 3470b.
> 
> The result is significant for several reasons. GJ 3470b is the smallest exoplanet for which a detection of Rayleigh scattering exists. While this planet is also believed to be cloudy or hazy, the measurement tells astronomers that the planet has a thick hydrogen-rich atmosphere covered by haze which scatters blue light at blue. Indeed, the sky is blue on GJ 3470b. Moreover, the planet orbits a small (red dwarf) star, which means it blocks a large amount of light during every transit, making the transit easier to detect and the planet more easily characterisable. Finally, this measurement is the first clear detection of a spectroscopic feature in the atmosphere of an exoplanet that was made only with small (1.0m and 2.0m) telescopes. The team has also supplemented the LCOGT data with observations obtained from the 1.5m Kuiper Telescope in Arizona.
> 
> Dr. Dragomir, who carried out the project while she was a researcher at LCOGT, says that “this detection brings us closer to understanding the nature of increasingly smaller exoplanets through the use of a novel approach which allows us to probe the atmospheres of exoplanets even if they are cloudy.” At the same time, the result highlights the role that meter-size telescopes can play toward characterising the atmospheres of these worlds.



A Blue, Neptune-Size Exoplanet Around a Red Dwarf Star | LCOGT


----------



## ScienceRocks

http://www.leonarddavid.com/europes-...off-next-year/


> The voyage of Europe’s ExoMars 2016 spacecraft is moving closer to the Red Planet – departing the clean rooms of Thales Alenia Space in Cannes for shipment to Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
> 
> This ExoMars spacecraft is headed for a March 2016 liftoff atop a Proton booster.



*NASA's James Webb Space Telescope gets its first mirror*

 Chris Wood 
November 26, 2015
 2 PICTURES 





> Construction is well under way on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) – the space agency's next generation installation, scheduled to launch in 2018. The instrument is really starting to take shape, with engineers successfully installing the first of 18 mirrors.


----------



## Moonglow

NASA And Aerojet Sign $1.16B Deal For Deep Space Project Rocket Engines - See more at: NASA And Aerojet Sign $1.16B Deal For Deep Space Project Rocket Engines : Related Articles | OOYUZ


----------



## Moonglow

My youngest son(13) wants to go to Mars...


----------



## Spinster

Moonglow said:


> My youngest son(13) wants to go to Mars...



Junior astronaut, huh?


----------



## Moonglow

Spinster said:


> Moonglow said:
> 
> 
> 
> My youngest son(13) wants to go to Mars...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Junior astronaut, huh?
Click to expand...

I also wanted to be in the space program when I was his age..


----------



## ScienceRocks

Moonglow said:


> Spinster said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Moonglow said:
> 
> 
> 
> My youngest son(13) wants to go to Mars...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Junior astronaut, huh?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I also wanted to be in the space program when I was his age..
Click to expand...



Cool!  Space is the exploration of our day and there's so much to be learned. WE haven't even started to scratch the surface too it and the resources make the new world of the 16th century look like childs play.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Over the last few weeks some kepler updates on mass and radius have updated at exoplanet.eu.  http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog/calculators

I calculated the density with the calculator


Kepler 100b 1.305 radi/7.34 mass = 18.22g/cm^3 density 
Kepler 100c 2.22 radi/.86 mass = .4335 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 100d 1.514 radi/3 mass = 4.767 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 103b 3.476 radi/9.9 mass = 1.3g/cm^3 density
Kepler 103c 5.319 radi/36.2 mass = 1.327 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 106b .82 radi/.15 mass = 1.501 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 106c 2.5 radi/10.44 mass = 3.685 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 106d .95 radi/7.9 mass = 50.81g/cm^3 density
Kepler 106e 2.56 radi/11.17 mass = 3.672 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 109b 2.338 radi/1.3 mass = .5608 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 109c 2.63 radi/2.22 mass = 1.326 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 60c 2.5 radi/6 mass = 2.118 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 60b 2 radi/3 mass = 2.068 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 60d 2.6 radi/3.5 mass = .3344 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 37b .32 radi/2.78 mass = 467.9 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 37c .75 radi/10  mass = 130.7 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 37d 1.94 radi/12.2 mass = 9.215 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 113b 1.82 radi/11.7 mass = 10.7 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 113c 2.17 radi/8.6 mass = 4.641 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 131b 2.41 radi/16.13 mass = 6.353 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 131c .84 radi/8.3 mass = 77.21 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 406b 1.43 radi/6 mass = 11.32 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 406c .85 radi/2.71 mass = 24.34 g/cm^3
Kepler 93b 1.483 radi/4 mass = 6.761 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 10b 1.473 radi/3.33 mass = 5.746 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 10c 2.323 radi/17.2 mass = 7.566 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 23b 1.694 radi/15.2 mass = 17.24 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 23d 2.236 radi/17 mass = 8.388 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 23c 3.12 radi/60.1 mass = 10.91 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 25c 5.154 radi/14 mass = .5642 g/cm^3 density
Kepler 25d 89.9 mass

----------------------------------

*Scientists May Have Just Discovered a Parallel Universe Leaking Into Ours [View all]*
Scientists May Have Just Discovered a Parallel Universe Leaking Into Ours 
We may have just, for the first time ever, caught a momentous glimpse of a parallel universe bumping against our own. 

Scientists say that signals from the furthest reaches of space suggest that the fabric of our universe is being disrupted by another universe. The discovery could provide proof of the multiverse theory, which says that there are many alternate universes. 





?resize=634%2C492 
Dr. Ranga-Ram Chary, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, examined data from the cosmic microwave background gathered by the European Space Agency’s Planck Space Telescope. Within this glow left over from the moments after the Big Bang, he discovered a number of spots where the microwave light was far brighter than it should be. He claims that theses may be signals caused by the interaction between our universe and another one a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang around 13.8 billion years ago.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*The K2-ESPRINT Project III: A Close-in Super-Earth around a Metal-rich Mid-M Dwarf*


> Teruyuki Hirano, Akihiko Fukui, Andrew W. Mann, Roberto Sanchis-Ojeda, Eric Gaidos, Norio Narita, Fei Dai, Vincent Van Eylen, Chien-Hsiu Lee, Hiroki Onozato, Tsuguru Ryu, Nobuhiko Kusakabe, Ayaka Ito, Masayuki Kuzuhara, Masahiro Onitsuka, Misako Tatsuuma, Grzegorz Nowak, Enric Pallè, Ignasi Ribas, Motohide Tamura, Liang Yu
> (Submitted on 26 Nov 2015)
> We validate a candidate super-Earth (Rp=2.38±0.25R⊕) on a close-in orbit (P=2.26 days) around EPIC 206318379, a metal-rich M4-type dwarf in the Campaign 3 field of the K2 mission. Our follow-up observations included multi-band transit observations from the optical to the near infrared, low-resolution spectroscopy, and high-resolution adaptive-optics (AO) imaging. The phase-folded K2 transit light curve has a V-shape because the transit duration around this small star is comparable to the 30-minute K2 cadence. However, the light curves from our follow-up observations exhibit a sharp ingress and/or egress and flat bottom, ruling out a grazing eclipse of a binary system. We perform a global fit to all ground-based observations using a Gaussian process-based method and show that the transit depths in all passbands (r′2,zs,2,J,H,Ks) are within 2.2σ of the K2 value. Based on a model of the background stellar population and the absence of nearby sources in our AO imaging, we estimate the probability that a background eclipsing binary could cause a false positive to be <2×10−5. We also show that given the almost constant transit depths in the five passbands, EPIC 206318379 cannot have a physically associated companion later than M4, and the probability that it has another M4 dwarf is low as well (≈0.0721+0.023−0.036), even in which case the size of EPIC 206318379b falls on the planetary regime. EPIC 206318379b has the same radius (within 1σ) and experiences a similar irradiation from its host star as the well-studied GJ 1214b. A comparison between the atmospheric properties of these two objects with future observations would be especially interesting.



[1511.08508] The K2-ESPRINT Project III: A Close-in Super-Earth around a Metal-rich   Mid-M Dwarf


----------



## ScienceRocks

*James Webb 'Pathfinder Telescope' successfully completes second super-cold optical test*
* November 30, 2015 by Rob Gutro *



Engineers inspect the James Webb Space Telescope's 'pathfinder telescope' after its second super-cold optical test in Chamber A at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Credit: NASA/ Chris Gunn


> Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope's "pathfinder telescope," or "Pathfinder" completed its second super-cold optical test that resulted in the first checkout of specialized optical test equipment designed to illuminate the telescope's optics through to the instrument focal planes, and the procedures used to operate this test equipment.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-james-webb-pathfinder-telescope-successfully.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Ten Multi-planet Systems from K2 Campaigns 1 & 2 and the Masses of Two Hot Super-Earths*

*[1511.09213] Ten Multi-planet Systems from K2 Campaigns 1 & 2 and the Masses of Two   Hot Super-Earths*

*http://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.09213v1.pdf*
Evan Sinukoff, Andrew W. Howard, Erik A. Petigura, Joshua E. Schlieder, Ian J. M. Crossfield, David R. Ciardi, Benjamin J. Fulton, Howard Isaacson, Kimberly M. Aller, Christoph Baranec, Charles A. Beichman, Brad M. S. Hansen, Heather A. Knutson, Nicholas M. Law, Michael C. Liu, Reed Riddle
(Submitted on 30 Nov 2015)
We present a catalog of 10 multi-planet systems from Campaigns 1 and 2 of the K2 mission. We report the sizes and orbits of 24 planets split between six 2-planet systems and four 3-planet systems. These planets stem from a systematic search of the K2 photometry for all dwarf stars observed by K2 in these fields. We precisely characterized the host stars with adaptive optics imaging and analysis of high-resolution optical spectra from Keck/HIRES and medium-resolution spectra from IRTF/SpeX. The planets are mostly smaller than Neptune (19/24 planets) as in the Kepler mission and all have short periods (P<50 d) due to the duration of the K2 photometry. The host stars are relatively bright (most have Kp<12.5 mag) and are amenable to follow-up planet characterization. For EPIC 204221263, we measured precise radial velocities using Keck/HIRES and provide initial estimates of the planet masses. *EPIC 204221263b is a short-period super-Earth with a radius of 1.55±0.16R⊕, a mass of 12.0±2.9M⊕, and a high density consistent with an iron-rich composition*. The outer planet EPIC 204221263c is a lower density sub-Neptune-size planet with a radius of 2.42±0.29R⊕ and a mass of 9.9±4.6M⊕ that likely has a substantial envelope. This new planet sample demonstrates the capability of K2 to discover numerous planetary systems around bright stars.


----

*The Kepler-454 System: A Small, Not-rocky Inner Planet, a Jovian World, and a Distant Companion*
[1511.09097] The Kepler-454 System: A Small, Not-rocky Inner Planet, a Jovian World,   and a Distant Companion

(Submitted on 29 Nov 2015)


> Kepler-454 (KOI-273) is a relatively bright (V = 11.69 mag), Sun-like starthat hosts a transiting planet candidate in a 10.6 d orbit. From spectroscopy, we estimate the stellar temperature to be 5687 +/- 50 K, its metallicity to be [m/H] = 0.32 +/- 0.08, and the projected rotational velocity to be v sin i <2.4 km s-1. We combine these values with a study of the asteroseismic frequencies from short cadence Kepler data to estimate the stellar mass to be 1.028+0:04-0:03 M_Sun, the radius to be 1.066 +/- 0.012 R_Sun and the age to be 5.25+1:41-1:39 Gyr. We estimate the radius of the 10.6 d planet as 2.37 +/- 0.13 R_Earth. Using 63 radial velocity observations obtained with the HARPS-N spectrograph on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and 36 observations made with the HIRES spectrograph at Keck Observatory, we measure the mass of this planet to be 6.8 +/- 1.4M_Earth. We also detect two additional non-transiting companions, a planet with a minimum mass of 4.46 +/- 0.12 M_J in a nearly circular 524 d orbit and a massive companion with a period >10 years and mass >12.1M_J . The twelve exoplanets with radii <2.7 R_Earth and precise mass measurements appear to fall into two populations, with those <1.6 R_Earth following an Earth-like composition curve and larger planets requiring a significant fraction of volatiles. With a density of 2.76 +/- 0.73 g cm-3, Kepler-454b lies near the mass transition between these two populations and requires the presence of volatiles and/or H/He gas.




*Detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth 55 Cancri e*
A. Tsiaras, M. Rocchetto, I. P. Waldmann, O. Venot, R. Varley, G. Morello, G. Tinetti, E. J. Barton, S. N. Yurchenko, J. Tennyson
(Submitted on 28 Nov 2015)


> Before the discovery of extrasolar planets, super-Earths belonged in the realm of science fiction. However, they appear to constitute the most common planetary type in our galaxy. We know very little about these planets beyond very basic planetary and orbital parameters. The WFC3 camera onboard the HST has enabled the spectroscopic observations of the atmospheres of two super-Earths, GJ1214b and HD97658b, with unprecedented precision; but the published spectra of these two objects are featureless, suggesting an atmosphere covered by thick clouds or made of molecular species much heavier than hydrogen. We report here the analysis of the observations performed with the WFC3 of a third, very hot, super-Earth, 55 Cancri e. Given the brightness of 55 Cancri, the observations were obtained in scanning mode, adopting a very long scanning length and a very high scanning speed. These observational parameters are coupled with the geometrical distortions of the instrument, so we have developed a specialized pipeline to de-correlate the signal from the systematics. We measure the transit depth per wavelength channel with an average relative uncertainty of 21 ppm and find a spectral modulation of about 100 ppm. These results suggest that 55 Cancri e is surrounded by an atmosphere, which is hydrogen-rich. Our fully Bayesian spectral retrieval code, TauREx, has identified HCN to be one of the possible trace gases in the atmosphere. While additional observations in a broader wavelength range will be needed to confirm the HCN detection, we discuss here the implications of such result. We adopt a chemical scheme developed with combustion specialists and validated by a wide range of experiments. Our chemical model indicates that a relatively high mixing ratio of HCN would reveal a high C/O ratio, suggesting the atmosphere of 55 Cancri e is a carbon-rich environment.




[1511.08901] Detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth 55 Cancri e


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX May Try Land-Based Rocket Landing This Month, NASA Official Says*

*SpaceX May Try Land-Based Rocket Landing This Month, NASA Official Says*


> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX may try to make history with its next launch later this month, returning its rocket to a landing pad rather than an ocean-based platform, a NASA official said today (Dec. 1).
> 
> Carol Scott, who works technical integration for SpaceX within NASA's Commercial Crew Program
> 
> , told reporters here at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today that SpaceX's first attempt at a land-based rocket landing may be coming sooner than the public expects.





*The First Cold Neptune Analog Exoplanet: MOA-2013-BLG-605Lb*
*[1512.00134] The First Cold Neptune Analog Exoplanet: MOA-2013-BLG-605Lb*
(Submitted on 1 Dec 2015)


> We present the discovery of the first Neptune analog exoplanet, MOA-2013-BLG-605Lb. This planet has a mass similar to that of Neptune or a super-Earth and it orbits at 9∼14 times the expected position of the snow-line, asnow, which is similar to Neptune's separation of 11asnow from the Sun. The planet/host-star mass ratio is q=(3.6±0.7)×10−4 and the projected separation normalized by the Einstein radius is s=2.39±0.05. There are three degenerate physical solutions and two of these are due to a new type of degeneracy in the microlensing parallax parameters, which we designate "the wide degeneracy". The three models have (i) a Neptune-mass planet with a mass of Mp=21+6−7Mearth orbiting a low-mass M-dwarf with a mass of Mh=0.19+0.05−0.06M⊙, (ii) a mini-Neptune with Mp=7.9+1.8−1.2Mearth orbiting a brown dwarf host with Mh=0.068+0.019−0.011M⊙ and (iii) a super-Earth with Mp=3.2+0.5−0.3Mearth orbiting a low-mass brown dwarf host with Mh=0.025+0.005−0.004M⊙. The 3-D planet-host separations are 4.6+4.7−1.2 AU, 2.1+1.0−0.2 AU and 0.94+0.67−0.02 AU, which are 8.9+10.5−1.4, 12+7−1 or 14+11−1 times larger than asnow for these models, respectively. The Keck AO observation confirm that the lens is faint. This discovery suggests that Neptune-like planets orbiting at ∼11asnow are quite common. They may be as common as planets at ∼3asnow, where microlensing is most sensitive, so processes similar to the one that formed Uranus and Neptune in our own Solar System may be quite common in other solar systems.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA space telescopes see magnified image of the faintest galaxy from the early universe*





> Astronomers harnessing the combined power of NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have found the faintest object ever seen in the early universe. It existed about 400 million years after...



*Exiled exoplanet likely kicked out of star's neighborhood*





> A planet discovered last year sitting at an unusually large distance from its star - 16 times farther than Pluto is from the sun - may have been kicked out...




*Evidence that our Sun could release ‘superflares’ 1000x greater than previously recorded*
Could release energy equivalent to a billion megaton bombs, potentially disastrous for life on Earth
*December 2, 2015*





> Astrophysicists have discovered a stellar “superflare” on a star observed by NASA’s Kepler space telescope with wave patterns similar to those that have been observed in the Sun’s solar flares. (Superflares are flares that are thousands of times more powerful than those ever recorded on the Sun, and are frequently observed on some stars.)
> 
> The scientists found the evidence in the star KIC9655129 in the Milky Way. They suggest…


read more


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Cosmic Girl: 747 becomes Virgin Galactic's new mothership *

 David Szondy 
December 3, 2015
 6 PICTURES 



Virgin Galactic has a new mothership for its small satellite launch service. "Cosmic Girl" is a 747- 400 commercial jet aircraft that once served with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Airlines and has now been seconded to act as the an aerial platform for sending small payloads into orbit using the LauncherOne orbital vehicle.


----------



## ScienceRocks

​*New Horizons returns first of the best images of Pluto*
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto it obtained during its July flyby – and the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades.

*ALMA spots monstrous baby galaxies cradled in dark matter*
Astronomers discovered a nest of monstrous baby galaxies 11.5 billion light-years away using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The young galaxies seem to reside at the junction of gigantic filaments ...

*A new technique to gauge the distant universe*
Scientists have developed a technique to use quasars – powerful sources driven by supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies – to study the universe's history and composition. To demonstrate the new method, based ...

*LRO finds Apollo 16 booster rocket impact site*
After decades of uncertainty, the Apollo 16 S-IVB impact site on the lunar surface has been identified. S-IVBs were portions of the Saturn V rockets that brought astronauts to the moon. The site was identified in imagery ..

-----
*MinXSS CubeSat launches to ISS to study Sun's soft X-rays*
* December 4, 2015 by Sarah Frazier *



The NASA-funded MinXSS CubeSat will launch December 2015 to study soft X-rays from the sun. There have not yet been long-term studies of these soft X-rays, but observations show they may be important clues to understanding what heats the …more


> On Dec. 4, the bread loaf-sized Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer, or MinXSS, CubeSat is scheduled to rocket to space alongside thousands of pounds of supplies and science experiments destined for the International Space Station. MinXSS will study the spectroscopy of soft x-rays, a particular type of light from the sun. This light is highly variable and can impact Earth's upper atmosphere, which can in turn affect communications such as GPS and radio.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-minxss-cubesat-iss-sun-soft.html#jCp


----------



## longknife

*Space Exploration*

‘*False positives:’ More than half of NASA’s Kepler exoplanets aren’t actually planets*






_A five-year study of exoplanet data captured by the Kepler space observatory found that half the exoplanet candidates aren’t planets at all. They are either too small (brown dwarfs) or eclipsing binary stars (failed stars). _

More @ ‘False positives:’ More than half of NASA’s Kepler exoplanets aren’t actually planets


----------



## ScienceRocks

That's a crock.

It is the BIG Jupiter suspected worlds that are 50% false positives. They're mostly brown dwarfs or stars...Small earth, Neptune and worlds smaller then 7 earth radius's are about 90% real.


Rt.com really needs to hire some real reporters.


An international team1 led by Alexandre Santerne from Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA2), made a 5-year radial velocity3 campaign of Kepler’s giant exoplanet candidates, using the SOPHIE4 spectrograph (Observatory of Haute-Provence, France), and found that 52,3% were actually eclipsing binaries5, while 2,3% were brown dwarfs6.  Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço


----------



## ScienceRocks

*New Horizons Returns First of the Best Images of Pluto*


> NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto it obtained during its July flyby – and the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades.
> 
> Each week the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft transmits data stored on its digital recorders from its flight through the Pluto system on July 14. These latest pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel – revealing features less than half the size of a city block on Pluto’s diverse surface. In these new images, New Horizons captured a wide variety of cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains.
> 
> “These close-up images, showing the diversity of terrain on Pluto, demonstrate the power of our robotic planetary explorers to return intriguing data to scientists back here on planet Earth,” said John Grunsfeld, former astronaut and associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “New Horizons thrilled us during the July flyby with the first close images of Pluto, and as the spacecraft transmits the treasure trove of images in its onboard memory back to us, we continue to be amazed by what we see."
> 
> These latest images form a strip 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide on a world 3 billion miles away. The pictures trend from Pluto’s jagged horizon about 500 miles (800 kilometers) northwest of the informally named Sputnik Planum, across the al-Idrisi mountains, over the shoreline of Sputnik, and across its icy plains. (To view the strip in the highest resolution possible, click here and zoom in.)




New Horizons Returns First, Best Images of Pluto








*For the first time, astronomers have measured the radius of a black hole*

http://phys.org/news/2012-09-astronomers-radius-black-hole.html#nRlv



> Now, an international team, led by researchers at MIT's Haystack Observatory, has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy—the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.
> 
> The scientists linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a telescope array called the "Event Horizon Telescope" (EHT) that can see details 2,000 times finer than what's visible to the Hubble Space Telescope. These radio dishes were trained on M87, a galaxy some 50 million light years from the Milky Way. M87 harbors a black hole 6 billion times more massive than our sun; using this array, the team observed the glow of matter near the edge of this black hole—a region known as the "event horizon."
> 
> "Once objects fall through the event horizon, they're lost forever," says Shep Doeleman, assistant director at the MIT Haystack Observatory and research associate at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. "It's an exit door from our universe. You walk through that door, you're not coming back."




~~
~~









> Caught up in this spiraling flow are magnetic fields, which accelerate hot material along powerful beams above the accretion disk The resulting high-speed jet, launched by the black hole and the disk, shoots out across the galaxy, extending for hundreds of thousands of light-years. These jets can influence many galactic processes, including how fast stars form.
> 
> ~~
> ~~
> 
> According to Einstein's theory, a black hole's mass and its spin determine how closely material can orbit before becoming unstable and falling in toward the event horizon. Because M87's jet is magnetically launched from this smallest orbit, astronomers can estimate the black hole's spin through careful measurement of the jet's size as it leaves the black hole. Until now, no telescope has had the magnifying power required for this kind of observation.









(more)


Jet-Launching Structure Resolved Near the Supermassive Black Hole in M87 - ScienceAbstract


> Approximately 10% of active galactic nuclei exhibit relativistic jets, which are powered by the accretion of matter onto supermassive black holes. Although the measured width profiles of such jets on large scales agree with theories of magnetic collimation, the predicted structure on accretion disk scales at the jet launch point has not been detected. We report radio interferometry observations, at a wavelength of 1.3 millimeters, of the elliptical galaxy M87 that spatially resolve the base of the jet in this source. The derived size of 5.5 ± 0.4 Schwarzschild radii is significantly smaller than the innermost edge of a retrograde accretion disk, suggesting that the M87 jet is powered by an accretion disk in a prograde orbit around a spinning black hole.



=====
Another Lava earth found within k2-19...This one will be D.
EPIC 201505350 d 1.14 earth radi. Calculated temperature 1252.0 K

Probably a ocean of lava as big as the fucking pacific on this baby!

It's not all bad as k2-3d seems to be a super earth within the habitual zone!

The Extrasolar Planet Encyclopaedia — K2-3 d

1.51 earth radi and 11.1 times our mass...This works out to a density close to iron! This world would be tropical in nature if it has water on its surface.


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## ScienceRocks

*Three's a charm as Cygnus CRS-4 mission lifts off*

 David Szondy 
December 6, 2015
 5 PICTURES 





> It was third time lucky today as the unmanned Orbital Sciences/ATK Cygnus CRS-4 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Following two previous delays due to bad weather, the privately owned and operated Cygnus spacecraft set off atop an Atlas V rocket at 4:44 pm EST to rendezvous with the International Space Station.


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## ScienceRocks

*Akatsuki probe enters orbit around Venus*

 David Szondy 
December 6, 2015
 3 PICTURES 





> Space exploration rarely gives second chances, but the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) took advantage of a big one today. The Agency has confirmed that its Akatsuki space probe has successfully made it into orbit around the planet Venus on its second attempt. The first try was way back on December 7, 2010, when a malfunction of the main engine sent the spacecraft back into orbit around the Sun.


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## ScienceRocks

*Second team with verified launch contract kicks off XPRIZE space race*

 Stu Robarts 
December 8, 2015





> Having previously announced that it had signed a launch contract in pursuit of the Google Lunar XPRIZE, Moon Express has now received official verification of the contract from XPRIZE. It is the second team receive verification, after SpaceIL. The news kicks off a new space race.




*Astronomers trace the magnetic field of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy*

 Anthony Wood 
December 8, 2015





> A team of astronomers has successfully detected magnetic fields present around the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. It is thought that these magnetic fields are the driving factor behind a mechanism that sends intense pulses of galaxy sculpting radiation blasting thousands of light-years into space from the event horizon of a spinning black hole.



*Rare mergers of binary neutron stars found as the source of radioactive plutonium-244 in nature*


> In a letter published in the prestigious journal Nature Physics, a team of scientists from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem suggests a solution to the Galactic radioactive plutonium puzzle.




*New US space mining law to spark interplanetary gold rush*


> Flashing some interplanetary gold bling and sipping "space water" might sound far-fetched, but both could soon be reality, thanks to a new US law that legalizes cosmic mining.




​
*Peering through Titan's haze*
This composite image shows an infrared view of Saturn's moon Titan from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, acquired during the mission's "T-114" flyby on Nov. 13, 2015.


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## ScienceRocks

*Planet Hunters. VIII. Characterization of 41 Long-Period Exoplanet Candidates from Kepler Archival Data*

*[1512.02559] Planet Hunters. VIII. Characterization of 41 Long-Period Exoplanet   Candidates from Kepler Archival Data*
(Submitted on 8 Dec 2015)


> The census of exoplanets is incomplete for orbital distances larger than 1 AU. Here, we present 41 long-period planet candidates in 38 systems identified by Planet Hunters based on Kepler archival data (Q0-Q17). Among them, 17 exhibit only one transit, 14 have two visible transits and 10 have more than three visible transits. For planet candidates with only one visible transit, we estimate their orbital periods based on transit duration and host star properties. The majority of the planet candidates in this work (75%) have orbital periods that correspond to distances of 1-3 AU from their host stars. We conduct follow-up imaging and spectroscopic observations to validate and characterize planet host stars. In total, we obtain adaptive optics images for 33 stars to search for possible blending sources. Six stars have stellar companions within 4". We obtain high-resolution spectra for 6 stars to determine their physical properties. Stellar properties for other stars are obtained from the NASA Exoplanet Archive and the Kepler Stellar Catalog by Huber et al. (2014). We validate 7 planet candidates that have planet confidence over 0.997 (3-{\sigma} level). These validated planets include 3 single-transit planets (KIC-3558849c, KIC-5951458b, and KIC-8540376d), 3 planets with double transits (KIC-8540376c, KIC-9663113c, and KIC-10525077b), and 1 planet with 4 transits (KIC-5437945c). This work provides assessment regarding the existence of planets at wide separations and the associated false positive rate for transiting observation (17%-33%). More than half of the long-period planets with at least three transits in this paper exhibit transit timing variations up to 41 hours, which suggest additional components that dynamically interact with the transiting planet candidates. The nature of these components can be determined by follow-up radial velocity and transit observations.



*A Multiple Scattering Polarized Radiative Transfer Model: Application to HD 189733b*
*[1512.02308] A Multiple Scattering Polarized Radiative Transfer Model: Application to   HD 189733b*
Pushkar Kopparla, Vijay Natraj, Xi Zhang, Mark R. Swain, Sloane J. Wiktorowicz, Yuk L. Yung
(Submitted on 8 Dec 2015)


> We present a multiple scattering vector radiative transfer model which produces disk integrated, full phase polarized light curves for reflected light from an exoplanetary atmosphere. We validate our model against results from published analytical and computational models and discuss a small number of cases relevant to the existing and possible near-future observations of the exoplanet HD 189733b. HD 189733b is arguably the most well observed exoplanet to date and the only exoplanet to be observed in polarized light, yet it is debated if the planet's atmosphere is cloudy or clear. We model reflected light from clear atmospheres with Rayleigh scattering, and cloudy or hazy atmospheres with Mie and fractal aggregate particles. We show that clear and cloudy atmospheres have large differences in polarized light as compared to simple flux measurements, though existing observations are insufficient to make this distinction. Futhermore, we show that atmospheres that are spatially inhomogeneous, such as being partially covered by clouds or hazes, exhibit larger contrasts in polarized light when compared to clear atmospheres. This effect can potentially be used to identify patchy clouds in exoplanets. Given a set of full phase polarimetric measurements, this model can constrain the geometric albedo, properties of scattering particles in the atmosphere and the longitude of the ascending node of the orbit. The model is used to interpret new polarimetric observations of HD 189733b in a companion paper.


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## ScienceRocks

*New clues to Ceres' bright spots and origins*

10 December 2015




> Ceres reveals some of its well-kept secrets in two new studies in the journal Nature, thanks to data from NASA's Dawn spacecraft. They include highly anticipated insights about mysterious bright features found all over the dwarf planet's surface. In one study, scientists identify this bright material as a kind of salt. The second study suggests the detection of ammonia-rich clays, raising questions about how Ceres formed.
> 
> Ceres has more than 130 bright areas, and most of them are associated with impact craters. Study authors, led by Andreas Nathues at Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany, write that the bright material is consistent with a type of magnesium sulfate called hexahydrite. A different type of magnesium sulfate is familiar on Earth as Epsom salt.



http://www.spacedail...rigins_999.html

*Two New Long-Period Giant Planets from the McDonald Observatory Planet Search and Two Stars with Long-Period Radial Velocity Signals Related to Stellar Activity Cycles\*
[1512.02965] Two New Long-Period Giant Planets from the McDonald Observatory Planet   Search and Two Stars with Long-Period Radial Velocity Signals Related to   Stellar Activity Cycles


> We report the detection of two new long-period giant planets orbiting the stars HD 95872 and HD 162004 (psi1 Draconis B) by the McDonald Observatory planet search. The planet HD 95872b has a minimum mass of 4.6 M_Jup and an orbital semi-major axis of 5.2 AU. The giant planet psi1 Dra Bb has a minimum mass of 1.5 M_Jup and an orbital semi-major axis of 4.4 AU. Both of these planets qualify as Jupiter analogs. These results are based on over one and a half decades of precise radial velocity measurements collected by our program using the McDonald Observatory Tull Coude spectrograph at the 2.7 m Harlan J. Smith telescope. In the case of psi1 Draconis B we also detect a long-term non-linear trend in our data that indicates the presence of an additional giant planet, similar to the Jupiter-Saturn pair. The primary of the binary star system, psi1 Dra A, exhibits a very large amplitude radial velocity variation due to another stellar companion. We detect this additional member using speckle imaging. We also report two cases - HD 10086 and HD 102870 (beta Virginis) - of significant radial velocity variation consistent with the presence of a planet, but that are probably caused by stellar activity, rather than reflexive Keplerian motion. These two cases stress the importance of monitoring the magnetic activity level of a target star, as long-term activity cycles can mimic the presence of a Jupiter-analog planet.



------
Barnaby Norris reckons imaging Earths at 1AU might be in reach within the next 10 years! Next-gen ground-based telescopes crucial #*5AEW*
*----*


There's a little black spot on a star today—storm larger than Earth http://go.nasa.gov/1NkNz8e @*NASAKepler* @*NASAspitzer* https://vine.co/v/iZqjj2v6B5Y
----

*Spitzer and Kepler detect Jupiter-like storm on small star*
Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a tiny star with a giant, cloudy storm, using data from NASA's Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes. The dark storm is akin to Jupiter's Great Red Spot: a persistent, raging storm .
----
Zooming in on #*Pluto*'s patterns of pits, a newly downloaded image from @*NASANewHorizons*: http://go.nasa.gov/1Y695mb


#*Ceres* has more than 130 bright areas! Here are Occator and Oxo in context http://go.nasa.gov/1OVT1B0






-----
*NASA tests ICESat-2's laser aim*
Close enough doesn't cut it in the spacecraft assembly cleanroom at NASA Goddard's Space Flight Center, where engineers are building an elevation-measuring instrument to fly on the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 ...


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## ScienceRocks

* Spacex scheduled to return to flight on December 19  *


> SpaceX could return its Falcon 9 rocket to flight as soon as next week, a mission that would close out Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's 2015 launch campaign. CEO Elon Musk on Thursday said the company was "aiming" to test-fire a Falcon 9's main engines on Wednesday at Launch Complex 40, then launch "about three days later." The potential Dec. 19 launch would be SpaceX's first since a Falcon 9 broke apart about two minutes..


.


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## ScienceRocks

*Astronomers Find New Object, Possible Super-Earth In Our Solar System *


10 December 2015








> Astronomers using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found a distant object in the direction of Alpha Centauri. The object appears to be in the outer region of our solar system, and depending on its distance could be a hypothesized ”super-Earth.”
> 
> ALMA is capable of precise observations at short microwave wavelengths, typically emitted by cold gas and dust. But objects on the edge of our solar system also emit light in this range, and would be too cool and distant to be observed by infrared telescopes. In 2014, ALMA found a faint object in the direction of Alpha Centauri A & B. The object was again observed in May of this year, this time more clearly. Given that the object is within a few arcseconds of the Alpha Centauri system, it would seem reasonable to presume that it could be part of that system, possibly gravitationally bound as Alpha Centauri D. The Centauri system is about 4 light years away, and at that distance (given the object’s brightness at submillimeter wavelengths) it would have to be a red dwarf star. But such a star would also be clearly visible in the infrared, so if this object is Alpha Centauri D we should have seen it long ago.







The new object (labelled U) as seen by ALMA. Credit: R. Liseau, et al.



> Another possibility (which seems more likely to the object’s discoverers) is that it is about 300 AU away and about 1.5 times the size of Earth, making it the first “super-Earth” found in our solar system. Observations of trans-Neptunian objects have led to some speculation that one or two super-Earth’s could lurk in the outer solar system, so it’s not out of the question. There’s reason to be cautious of this idea, however, because of its location. Alpha Centauri is about 42 degrees away from the ecliptic. Most large solar system lay within a few degrees of the ecliptic, and even Sedna’s orbit is only inclined about 12 degrees from it. The chances of a super-Earth with such a highly inclined orbit seems very unlikely.


http://www.forbes.co...r-solar-system/


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## ScienceRocks

*Orbital Architectures of Planet-Hosting Binaries: I. Forming Five Small Planets in the Truncated Disk of Kepler-444A*
Trent J. Dupuy, Kaitlin M. Kratter, Adam L. Kraus, Howard Isaacson, Andrew W. Mann, Michael J. Ireland, Andrew W. Howard, Daniel Huber
[1512.03428] Orbital Architectures of Planet-Hosting Binaries: I. Forming Five Small   Planets in the Truncated Disk of Kepler-444A

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.03428v1.pdf
(Submitted on 10 Dec 2015)


> We present the first results from our Keck program investigating the orbital architectures of planet-hosting multiple star systems. Kepler-444 is a metal-poor triple star system that hosts five sub-Earth-sized planets orbiting the primary star (Kepler-444A), as well as a spatially unresolved pair of M dwarfs (Kepler-444BC) at a projected distance of 1.8" (66 AU). We combine our Keck/NIRC2 adaptive optics astrometry with multi-epoch Keck/HIRES RVs of all three stars to determine a precise orbit for the BC pair around A, given their empirically constrained masses. We measure minimal astrometric motion (1.0±0.6 mas yr−1, or 0.17±0.10 km s−1), but our RVs reveal significant orbital velocity (1.7±0.2 km s−1) and acceleration (7.8±0.5 m s−1 yr−1). We determine a highly eccentric stellar orbit (e=0.864±0.023) that brings the tight M dwarf pair within 5.0+0.9−1.0 AU of the planetary system. We validate that the system is dynamically stable in its present configuration via n-body simulations. We find that the A−BC orbit and planetary orbits are likely aligned (98%) given that they both have edge-on orbits and misalignment induces precession of the planets out of transit. We conclude that the stars were likely on their current orbits during the epoch of planet formation, truncating the protoplanetary disk at ≈2 AU. This truncated disk would have been severely depleted of solid material from which to form the total ≈1.5 MEarth of planets. We thereby strongly constrain the efficiency of the conversion of dust into planets and suggest that the Kepler-444 system is consistent with models that explain the formation of more typical close-in Kepler planets in normal, not truncated, disks.




*Single Transit Candidates from K2: Detection and Period Estimation*
*[1512.03722] Single Transit Candidates from K2: Detection and Period Estimation*
H.P. Osborn, D.J. Armstrong, D.J.A. Brown, J. McCormac, A.P. Doyle, T.M. Louden, J. Kirk, J.J. Spake, K.W.F. Lam, S.R. Walker, F. Faedi, D.L. Pollacco
(Submitted on 11 Dec 2015)


> Photometric surveys such as Kepler have the precision to identify exoplanet and eclipsing binary candidates from only a single transit. K2, with its 75d campaign duration, is ideally suited to detect significant numbers of single-eclipsing objects. Here we develop a Bayesian transit-fitting tool ("Namaste: An Mcmc Analysis of Single Transit Exoplanets") to extract orbital information from single transit events. We achieve favourable results testing this technique on known Kepler planets, and apply the technique to 7 candidates identified from a targeted search of K2 campaigns 1, 2 and 3. We find EPIC203311200 to host an excellent exoplanet candidate with a period, assuming zero eccentricity, of 540+410−230 days and a radius of 0.51±0.05RJup. We also find six further transit candidates for which more follow-up is required to determine a planetary origin. Such a technique could be used in the future with TESS, PLATO and ground-based photometric surveys such as NGTS, potentially allowing the detection of planets in reach of confirmation by Gaia.


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## ScienceRocks

​
*Hubble reveals diversity of exoplanet atmosphere: Largest ever comparative study solves missing water mystery*
Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope to study the atmospheres of ten hot, Jupiter-sized exoplanets in detail, the largest number of such planets ever studied.
 




This image shows an artist’s impression of the ten hot Jupiter exoplanets studied by David Sing and his colleagues. The images are to scale with each other. HAT-P-12b, the smallest of them, is approximately the size of Jupiter, while …more


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-hubble-reveals-diversity-exoplanet-atmosphere.html#jCp---------------------

*A new spin on star-forming galaxies*
Australian researchers have discovered why some galaxies are "clumpy" rather than spiral in shape—and it appears low spin is to blame.
-------------------------
*Study finds evidence for more recent clay formation on Mars*
Recent orbital and rover missions to Mars have turned up ample evidence of clays and other hydrated minerals formed when rocks are altered by the presence of water. Most of that alteration is thought to have happened during ...
--------------

FEATURE ARTICLE: Soyuz TMA-19M set to launch in landmark moment for UK spaceflight - http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/12/soyuz-tma-19m-launch-landmark-uk-spaceflight/…
-------------------
F9 FT preparing for a Static Fire on the East Coast this week. F9 v1.1 mating on the West Coast today!

Chris B - NSF added,

 
*NASA_LSP*  @NASA_LSP
At Vandenberg Air Force Base in Ca. the Jason-3 spacecraft is being mated to the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket today. More: Engineers Attaching Jason-3 Spacecraft to Falcon 9 Rocket | Kennedy Space Center

-------------------


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## ScienceRocks

* 3 planets around Wolf 1061 at 14 l.y (one in HZ)*





 by Led_Zep Today at 10:32 am

Discovery: Nearby star hosts closest alien planet in the “habitable zone” - UNSW Science for society


> UNSW Australia astronomers have discovered the closest potentially habitable planet found outside our solar system so far, orbiting a star just 14 light years away.
> The planet, more than four times the mass of the Earth, is one of three that the team detected around a red dwarf star called Wolf 1061.
> 
> “It is a particularly exciting find because all three planets are of low enough mass to be potentially rocky and have a solid surface, and the middle planet, Wolf 1061c, sits within the ‘Goldilocks’ zone where it might be possible for liquid water – and maybe even life — to exist,” says lead study author UNSW’s Dr Duncan Wright.
> 
> “It is fascinating to look out at the vastness of space and think a star so very close to us – a near neighbour – could host a habitable planet.
> 
> “While a few other planets have been found that orbit stars closer to us than Wolf 1061, those planets are not considered to be remotely habitable,” Dr Wright says.
> 
> The three newly detected planets orbit the small, relatively cool and stable star about every 5, 18 and 67 days.  Their masses are at least 1.4, 4.3 and 5.2 times that of Earth, respectively.
> 
> The larger outer planet falls just outside the outer boundary of the habitable zone and is also likely to be rocky, while the smaller inner planet is too close to the star to be habitable.
> 
> The discovery will be published in _The Astrophysical Journal Letters_.
> 
> The UNSW team made the discovery using observations of Wolf 1061 collected by the HARPS spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6 metre telescope in La Silla in Chile.


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## ScienceRocks

*Tentative planetary orbital constraints of some scenarios for the possible new Solar System object recently discovered with ALMA*
*[1512.05288] Tentative planetary orbital constraints of some scenarios for the   possible new Solar System object recently discovered with ALMA*
Lorenzo Iorio
(Submitted on 16 Dec 2015)


> Some of the scenarios envisaged for the possible new Solar System object, whose discovery with the ALMA facility has been recently claimed in the literature, are preliminarily put to the test by means of the orbital motions of some planets of the Solar System. It turns out that the current ranges of admissible values for any anomalous secular precession of the perihelion of Saturn, determined in the recent past with either the EPM2011 and the INPOP10a planetary ephemerides without modeling the action of such a potential new member of the Solar System, do not rule out the existence of a putative Neptune-like pointlike perturber at about 2500 au. Instead, both a super-Earth at some hundreds of au and a Jovian-type planet up to 4000 au are strongly disfavored. An Earth-sized body at 100 au would have a density as little as ∼0.1−0.01gcm−3, while an unusually large Centaur or (Extreme) Trans Neptunian Object with linear size of 220−880km at 12−25au would have density much larger than ∼1gcm−3.



*Three planets orbiting Wolf 1061*
D.J. Wright, R.A. Wittenmyer, C.G. Tinney, J.S. Bentley, Jinglin Zhao
(Submitted on 16 Dec 2015)
[1512.05154] Three planets orbiting Wolf 1061


> We use archival HARPS spectra to detect three planets orbiting the M3 dwarf Wolf1061 (GJ 628). We detect a 1.36 Mearth minimum-mass planet with an orbital period P = 4.888d (Wolf1061b), a 4.25 Mearth minimum-mass planet with orbital period P = 17.867d (Wolf1061c), and a likely 5.21 Mearth minimum-mass planet with orbital period P = 67.274d (Wolf1061d). All of the planets are of sufficiently low mass that they may be rocky in nature. The 17.867d planet falls within the habitable zone for Wolf 1061 and the 67.274d planet falls just outside the outer boundary of the habitable zone. There are no signs of activity observed in the bisector spans, cross-correlation full-width-half-maxima, Calcium H & K indices, NaD indices, or H-alpha indices near the planetary periods. We use custom methods to generate a cross-correlation template tailored to the star. The resulting velocities do not suffer the strong annual variation observed in the HARPS DRS velocities. This differential technique should deliver better exploitation of the archival HARPS data for the detection of planets at extremely low amplitudes.



*Rotation and winds of exoplanet HD 189733 b measured with high-dispersion transmission spectroscopy*
*[1512.05175] Rotation and winds of exoplanet HD 189733 b measured with   high-dispersion transmission spectroscopy*
M. Brogi, R. J. de Kok, S. Albrecht, I. A. G. Snellen, J. L. Birkby, H. Schwarz
(Submitted on 16 Dec 2015)


> Giant exoplanets orbiting very close to their parent star (hot Jupiters) are subject to tidal forces expected to synchronize their rotational and orbital periods on short timescales (tidal locking). However, spin rotation has never been measured directly for hot Jupiters. Furthermore, their atmospheres can show equatorial super-rotation via strong eastward jet streams, and/or high-altitude winds flowing from the day- to the night-side hemisphere. Planet rotation and atmospheric circulation broaden and distort the planet spectral lines to an extent that is detectable with measurements at high spectral resolution. We observed a transit of the hot Jupiter HD 189733 b around 2.3 {\mu}m and at a spectral resolution of R~105 with CRIRES at the ESO Very Large Telescope. After correcting for the stellar absorption lines and their distortion during transit (the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect), we detect the absorption of carbon monoxide and water vapor in the planet transmission spectrum by cross-correlating with model spectra. The signal is maximized (7.6{\sigma}) for a planet rotational velocity of (3.4+1.3−2.1) km/s, corresponding to a rotational period of (1.7+2.9−0.4) days. This is consistent with the planet orbital period of 2.2 days and therefore with tidal locking. We find that the rotation of HD 189733 b is longer than 1 day (3{\sigma}). The data only marginally (1.5{\sigma}) prefer models with rotation versus models without rotation. We measure a small day- to night-side wind speed of (−1.7+1.1−1.2) km/s. Compared to the recent detection of sodium blue-shifted by (8±2) km/s, this likely implies a strong vertical wind shear between the pressures probed by near-infrared and optical transmission spectroscopy.




*Monster planet is 'dancing with the stars'*
* December 16, 2015 *






> A team made up almost entirely of current and former Carnegie scientists has discovered a highly unusual planetary system comprised of a Sun-like star, a dwarf star, and an enormous planet sandwiched in between.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-monster-planet-stars.html#jCp


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## ScienceRocks

*ESA's Euclid dark matter mission moves one step closer to planned 2020 launch*

 Chris Wood 
December 17, 2015






> The European Space Agency's (ESA) planned Euclid mission, which aims to study dark matter and dark energy, has reached a key pre-flight milestone. The endeavour has now passed its preliminary design review, allowing the team to actually start building the spacecraft.



*James Webb Space Telescope set to be lifted into orbit atop an Ariane 5 launch vehicle*

 Anthony Wood 
December 17, 2015






> ESA has announced the finalization of a contract with Arianespace that will see its next generation James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) lift off into Earth orbit atop an Ariane 5 launch vehicle. The ascent will take place from the agency's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana in Oct. 2018.




I know I already posted about this twice but I'll do so again as it is important news!
*Closest potentially habitable planet found just 14 light years away*

 David Szondy 
December 17, 2015
 3 PICTURES 





> Our nearest cosmic neighbors may be closer than we think. A team of astronomers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have announced the discovery of what could be the closest habitable planet beyond the Solar System. Orbiting the red dwarf star Wolf 1061 in the constellation of Ophiuchus, the planet is only 14 light years from Earth, which is closer than the exoplanet Gliese 667Cc's 22 light years.




*Cassini closes in on Enceladus, one last time*


> A thrilling chapter in the exploration of the solar system will soon conclude, as NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft makes its final close flyby of the ocean-bearing moon Enceladus. Cassini is scheduled to fly past ...


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## ScienceRocks

*Rocket landing at Cape Canaveral planned after SpaceX launch (liftoff TODAY 5:29pm PST/8:29pm EST)*
*SpaceFlightNow.com ^ * | 19DEC2015 | Stephen Clark






* Artist's concept of a Falcon 9 booster stage descending to a landing site at Cape Canaveral. Credit: SpaceX *

Assuming SpaceX's plans come to fruition, a Falcon 9 flight from Cape Canaveral on Sunday will end with a vertical rocket-assisted landing at an abandoned Cold War-era launch facility a few miles away.

SpaceX confirmed the rocket's first stage, a slender cylindrical kerosene-fed rocket body standing 156 feet tall, will aim for a controlled touchdown at a landing pad the company rented from the U.S. Air Force less than six miles south of the Falco 9's Complex 40 launch pad.

Liftoff is set for a 60-second window opening at 8:29 p.m. EST Sunday (0129 GMT Monday). A backup launch opportunity is available Monday.

A statement released by SpaceX on Saturday said the company planned to recover the Falcon 9's first stage booster at Landing Zone 1, previously known as Space Launch Complex 13, an Atlas launch facility that was last used in 1978.

The Federal Aviation Administration was expected to formally approve the landing attempt in SpaceX's commercial launch license.

The Falcon 9's second stage engine will continue driving into orbit with 11 Orbcomm message relay satellites, the primary objective of Sunday's launch, after the first stage unlatches and falls away from the upper stage about three minutes after liftoff.

The first stage will flip around with pulses from cold gas thrusters, then re-ignite a subset of its nine Merlin main engines to propel itself back toward Cape Canaveral from the northeast.





* Launch Complex 13, or Landing Zone 1, is circled in this map of Cape Canaveral. Credit: Air Force Space and Missile Museum*

On final descent, the rocket's center engine will fire up for a landing burn as four legs extend from the base of the booster. Maneuverable grid fins attached to the top of the first stage will help ensure aerodynamic stability.

Touchdown at Landing Zone 1, which sits just north of the eastern tip of Cape Canaveral on Air Force property, is expected within 20 minutes of launch, but the exact time has not been disclosed.

SpaceX has tried to land Falcon 9 boosters on an ocean-going barge in the Atlantic Ocean after two launches earlier this year, but the rockets tipped over after touchdown on the ship. The flight profile to steer the rocket back toward the coast - essentially reversing its course more than 60 miles up in space - has never been tried before, but the final landing sequence should be similar to the descents over the ocean.

The landing will be at night at Cape Canaveral, but the flash of the final descent burn could be visible to spectators.

A video of a landing attempt on SpaceX's autonomous spaceport drone ship after an April launch showed the rocket's fall toward the landing target, slowed down by the single-engine descent burn, then cold gas thrusters firing in an effort to keep the rocket upright.

(Video of failed landing attempt.)

SpaceX officials said a sonic boom could also accompany the landing as the rocket slows from supersonic speed.

'Just as when the space shuttle returned from space, there is a possibility that residents of northern and central Brevard County, Fla. may hear a sonic boom during landing,' SpaceX said in a statement. 'A sonic boom is the thunder-like noise a person on the ground hears when an aircraft or other type of aerospace vehicle flies overhead faster than the speed of sound.

'Residents of the communities of Cape Canaveral, Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Courtenay, Merritt Island, Mims, Port Canaveral, Port St. John, Rockledge, Scottsmoor, Sharpes, and Titusville in Brevard County, Fla. are mostly likely to hear a sonic boom, although what residents experience will depend on weather conditions and other factors,' the statement said.

The Air Force's 45th Space Wing, the unit which runs the Cape Canaveral spaceport, plans to evacuate much of the base for the historic landing attempt, the first of its kind on Florida's Space Coast.

If the rocket lands intact, SpaceX engineers will inspect the booster, scrutinizing it to learn how the vehicle weathered the re-entry and how much refurbishment is needed before flying again.

Sunday's launch also marks the first flight of an upgraded version of the Falcon 9, carrying condensed, super-cold propellants, larger fuel tanks and uprated engines to carry heavier payloads into orbit. The extra performance, coupled with the relatively light weight of the Orbcomm satellites - each one is about the size of a refrigerator - leaves ample propellant for the return to Cape Canaveral.

'If successful, this test would mark the first time in history an orbital rocket has successfully achieved a land landing,' SpaceX said in a press release.

Elon Musk, SpaceX's chief executive, tweeted about the landing early Saturday.

(Elon Musk's Twitter page.)

Blue Origin, another entrepreneurial space company founded by Amazon.com's billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, achieved a successful vertical takeoff and landing of its New Shepard booster in Texas in November. While the Falcon 9 rocket is built for orbital launches, the New Shepard is suborbital, traveling just beyond the internationally-recognized 62-mile (100-kilometer) boundary of space.

While the New Shepard is a smaller-scale rocket than the Falcon 9, a point Musk made in a series of tweets after the Blue Origin landing, the suborbital launcher became the first commercial vehicle to take off under its own power, reach space and return to safe landing on the ground.


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## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX Makes History: Successfully Launches, Lands Falcon 9 Rocket*

Source: *NBC*


> SpaceX's successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket on Monday night, the first from the private spaceflight company since its rocket exploded on liftoff in June.
> 
> The first stage of the rocket, used to propel the payload to 100km (62 miles) or so until the second stage takes over, then successfully landed on Earth again at a prepared landing zone. This is the first time SpaceX has ever attempted to land a rocket on land. Previous attempts, all unsuccessful, were attempted on floating landing pads.




<snip>

Read more: SpaceX Makes History: Successfully Launches, Lands Falcon 9 Rocket

*
32:30 for the launch and 41 for the start of the landing.*


Wahooo!!

------------------------------------------------------------------

[1512.06149] Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler. VII. The First Fully Uniform   Catalog Based on The Entire 48 Month Dataset (Q1-Q17 DR24)

*Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler.
VII. The First Fully Uniform Catalog Based on The Entire 48 Month Dataset (Q1-Q17 DR24)*


> We present the seventh Kepler planet candidate catalog, which is the first to be based on the entire, uniformly processed, 48 month Kepler dataset. This is the first fully automated catalog, employing robotic vetting procedures to uniformly evaluate every periodic signal detected by the Q1-Q17 Data Release 24 (DR24) Kepler pipeline. While we prioritize uniform vetting over the absolute correctness of individual objects, we find that our robotic vetting is overall comparable to, and in most cases is superior to, the human vetting procedures employed by past catalogs. This catalog is the first to utilize artificial transit injection to evaluate the performance of our vetting procedures and quantify potential biases, which are essential for accurate computation of planetary occurrence rates. With respect to the cumulative Kepler Object of Interest (KOI) catalog, we designate 1,478 new KOIs, of which 402 are dispositioned as planet candidates (PCs). Also, 237 KOIs dispositioned as false positives (FPs) in previous Kepler catalogs have their disposition changed to PC and 118 PCs have their disposition changed to FP. This brings the total number of known KOIs to 8,826 and planet candidates to 4,696. We compare the Q1-Q17 DR24 KOI catalog to previous KOI catalogs, as well as ancillary Kepler catalogs, finding good agreement between them. We highlight new PCs that are both potentially rocky and potentially in the habitable zone of their host stars, many of which orbit solar-type stars. This work represents significant progress in accurately determining the fraction of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. The full catalog is publicly available at the NASA Exoplanet Archive.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA team moves closer to building a 3-D printed rocket engine*


> A NASA team moved a step closer to building a completely 3-D printed, high-performance rocket engine by manufacturing complex engine parts and test firing them together with cryogenic liquid hydrogen and oxygen to produce ...




better landing video


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX's new high-res images get up close and personal with historic rocket landing*

 Nick Lavars 
December 22, 2015
 12 PICTURES 





> SpaceX made history yesterday, successfully landing a first stage rocket booster after carrying cargo into space. If you caught this landmark event live, or in the near aftermath, then chances are it was via the exhilarating but distant SpaceX stream. The company has now released a set of high-res images offering a more detailed look at its achievement.



85,000 miles out never looked so good. Take a look at @*CassiniSaturn* new images. http://oak.ctx.ly/r/44o0l





------------------------------
NASA Europa Mission May Land on Potentially Life-Hosting Jupiter Moon http://dlvr.it/D4Z921
----------------------------------

SpaceX Rocket Landing Is a Giant Leap Toward a City on Mars, Elon Musk Says http://dlvr.it/D4YFDr

---------------------------------

*Chinese rover analyzes moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years*
In 2013, Chang'e-3, an unmanned lunar mission, touched down on the northern part of the Imbrium basin, one of the most prominent of the lava-filled impact basins visible from Earth.


----------------------------------
*Andromeda IV turns out to be a solitary gas-rich dwarf galaxy*
(Phys.org)—Andromeda IV, discovered in 1972 by Canadian astronomer Sidney Van den Berghan, is believed to be an irregular satellite of our neighboring Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31. Now, a new study conducted ..

------------------------------------
*Lowdown on Ceres: Images from Dawn's closest orbit*
NASA's Dawn spacecraft, cruising in its lowest and final orbit at dwarf planet Ceres, has delivered the first images from its best-ever viewpoint. The new images showcase details of the cratered and fractured surface. 3-D ...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Chinese rover analyzes moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years*


24 December 2015


> In 2013, Chang'e-3, an unmanned lunar mission, touched down on the northern part of the Imbrium basin, one of the most prominent of the lava-filled impact basins visible from Earth.
> 
> It was a beautiful landing site, said Bradley L. Jolliff, PhD, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who is a participant in an educational collaboration that helped analyze Chang'e-3 mission data. The lander touched down on a smooth flood basalt plain next to a relatively fresh impact crater (now officially named the Zi Wei crater) that had conveniently excavated bedrock from below the regolith for the Yutu rover to study.
> 
> Since the Apollo program ended, American lunar exploration has been conducted mainly from orbit. But orbital sensors primarily detect the regolith (the ground-up surface layer of fragmented rock) that blankets the Moon, and the regolith is typically mixed and difficult to interpret.
> 
> Because Chang'e-3 landed on a comparatively young lava flow, the regolith layer was thin and not mixed with debris from elsewhere. Thus it closely resembled the composition of the underlying volcanic bedrock. This characteristic made the landing site an ideal location to compare in situ analysis with compositional information detected by orbiting satellites.



http://www.spacedail..._years_999.html


​
*Image: Boulders on a Martian landslide*


> The striking feature in this image, acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 19, 2014, is a boulder-covered landslide along a canyon wall. Landslides ...




*James Webb Space Telescope mirror halfway complete*
* December 28, 2015 by Laura Betz *



This rare overhead shot of the James Webb Space Telescope shows the nine primary flight mirrors installed on the telescope structure in a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/


> Chris Gunn
> Inside NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's massive clean room in Greenbelt, Maryland, the ninth flight mirror was installed onto the telescope structure with a robotic arm. This marks the halfway completion point for the James Webb Space Telescope's segmented primary mirror.





Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-james-webb-space-telescope-mirror.html#jCp

------
Rocky Planet Found Around Star with Least Metal Yet - http://Space.com http://bit.ly/1QVUATd

-------

NASA's Plutonium-238 Reserves Get Boost For Space Missions | Video http://dlvr.it/D7dCR6


----------



## ScienceRocks

Another 1.6 radi planet confirmed solid!!!

227th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society | American Astronomical Society

Abstract of the AAS 227th meeting, next week :

138.13 – The mass of the super-Earth orbiting the
brightest Kepler planet hosting star
HD 179070, aka Kepler-21, is a V = 8.25 oscillating F6IV star and the
brightest exoplanet host discovered by Kepler. An early analysis of
the Q0 – Q5 Kepler light curves by Howell et al. (2012) revealed
transits of a planetary companion, *Kepler-21b*, with a radius of 1.6
R_Earth and an orbital period of 2.7857 days. However, they could
not determine the mass of the planet from the initial radial velocity
observations with Keck-HIRES, and were only able to impose a 2s
upper limit of about 10 M_Earth. Here we present *82 new radial
velocity observations of this system obtained with the HARPS-N
spectrograph*. We detect the Doppler shift signal of Kepler-21b at the
3.6s level, and measure a *planetary mass of 5.9 ± 1.6 M_Earth*. We
also update the radius of the planet to 1.65 ± 0.08 R_Earth, using the
now available Kepler Q0 – Q17 photometry for this target. The mass
of Kepler-21b appears to fall on the apparent dividing line between
super-Earths that have lost all the material in their outer layers and
those that have retained a significant amount of volatiles. Based on
our results Kepler-21b belongs to the first group.


*
Lunar Leap: Europe Is Reaching for a Moon Base by the 2030s *

December 30th 2015








> There is growing interest in Europe to prioritize the moon as humanity's next deep-space destination.
> 
> The moon, supporters say, can serve as a springboard to push the human exploration of the solar system, with Mars as the horizon goal. So Europe is ratcheting up what it sees as the strategic significance of the moon by pushing forward on lunar-exploration missions that would involve both humans and robots.
> 
> Calling the effort a "comeback to the moon," European space planners envision a series of human missions to the lunar vicinity starting in the early 2020s. Those missions, according to the plan, will include coordination between astronauts and robotic systems on the lunar surface. Robots would land first, paving the way for human explorers to set foot on the moon later. [Video: New Moon Missions? Europe Says Yes]
> 
> Europe's lunar intentions were clearly evident at an international symposium this month to discuss plans for a return to the moon. The European Space Agency (ESA) hosted the two-day symposium, called "Moon 2020-2030 – A New Era of Coordinated Human and Robotic Exploration," on Dec. 15 at the European Space Research and Technology Center in Noordwijk, Netherlands. More than 200 scientists and space officials from 28 countries attended the meeting.





http://www.space.com...bpr=17610706465


 
*  NASA under orders to build a deep-space habitat by 2018*
*  December 30, 2015 at 3:23 pm *



> Congress has instructed NASA to step up the development of a “habitation module” that can take astronauts on deep space missions.


----------



## ScienceRocks

* Elon Musk indicates the falcon 9 is ready for relaunch *







> Elon Musk says the Falcon 9 that was just landed is back in the hangar at Cape Canaveral. No damage found, ready to fire again. Falcon 9 back in the hangar at Cape Canaveral. No damage found, ready to fire again.A photo posted by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Dec 31, 2015 at 4:18pm PST ...




*Astronomers find new way to measure the pull of gravity at the surface of distant stars*


> Researchers have found a new way to measure the pull of gravity at the surface of a star. For distant stars with planets orbiting them, this information is key in determining whether any of those planets can harbour life.


----------



## ScienceRocks

2015 Exoplanet Archive News

New Planets: We're ringing in the new year with 12 more planets, bringing the confirmed planet count to 1,930. The new planets are HD 32963 b, KIC 3558849 b (Kepler-455 b), KIC 5951458 b (Kepler-456 b), KIC 8540376 b & c (Kepler-457 b & c), KIC 9663113 b (Kepler-458 b), KIC 10525077 b (Kepler-459 b), KIC 5437945 b (Kepler-460 b), K2-25 b, and Wolf 1061 b, c & d. View their individual Overview pages by clicking on their names, or view their aggregate data in the Confirmed Planets table.
---
Not exactly impressed. This better not be all we get out of this!


====

*Andromeda galaxy scanned with high-energy X-ray vision*


> NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has captured the best high-energy X-ray view yet of a portion of our nearest large, neighboring galaxy, Andromeda. The space mission has observed 40 "X-ray binaries"—intense ...





​*Chandra finds supermassive black hole burping nearby*


Evidence for powerful blasts produced by a giant black hole has been discovered using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This is one of the nearest supermassive black holes to Earth that is currently undergoing such violent ...



​*Rare galaxy with 2 black holes has 1 starved of stars*
An astrophysicist has discovered something even rarer than a double-black hole galaxy: a skinny black hole.

*Three Saturnian moons in one image*
* January 5, 2016 *



What looks like a pair of Saturnian satellites is actually a trio upon close inspection.



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-saturnian-moons-image.html#jCp


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA's Kepler Comes Roaring Back with 100 New Exoplanet Finds*
*NASA's Kepler Comes Roaring Back with 100 New Exoplanet Finds*
by Sarah Lewin, Staff Writer  |  January 05, 2016 06:31pm ET 


> KISSIMMEE, Fla. — NASA's Kepler spacecraft has bounced back nicely from the malfunction that ended its original exoplanet hunt more than two years ago.
> 
> Kepler has now discovered more than 100 confirmed alien planets during its second-chance K2 mission, researchers announced today (Jan. 5) here at the 227th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).
> -----
> Researchers had expressed hope that K2 could pick up some additional exoplanets and interesting structures in the sky. The extended mission has certainly delivered, spotting a few dozen confirmed planets, and now the tally will jump dramatically.
> 
> The first five K2 campaigns, which each looked at a different part of the sky, "have produced over 100 validated planets," Ian Crossfield, an astronomer at University of Arizona
> 
> , said today during a presentation at the AAS meeting. "This is a validation of the whole K2 program's ability to find large numbers of true, bona fide planets."
> 
> Crossfield said that Kepler observed more than 60,000 stars and found 7,000 transitlike signals during the first five 80-day observation campaigns. A validation process whittled some of these signals down to planet candidates, and then finally to validated planets, each of which has just a 1 percent chance of being a false positive, Crossfield added.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Asteroid-Mining Company 3D-Prints Object from Space Rock Metals http://dlvr.it/DCz0KS


Start date approved! Latest on the formulation phase for the WFIRST @*NASA* #*aas227* http://oak.ctx.ly/r/465rn






Monster Galaxy Cluster Is Biggest Ever in the Early Universe http://dlvr.it/DD3MBF

​
*Fermi Space Telescope sharpens its high-energy vision*


> Major improvements to methods used to process observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have yielded an expanded, higher-quality set of data that allows astronomers to produce the most detailed census of the ...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX to try another Falcon 9 sea-barge landing *

 David Szondy 
January 10, 2016
 4 PICTURES 





> Now that SpaceX has managed to land a space rocket at Cape Canaveral, the company is taking another shot at landing on a barge. NBC News says that SpaceX has confirmed a report tweeted today by space journalist Charles Lurio stating that SpaceX will attempt to land a Falcon 9 booster on a drone barge in the Pacific Ocean as part of the Jason 3 mission launch on January 17.



*Largest age map of the Milky Way reveals how our galaxy grew up*


> Proud parents chart the growth of their children, but astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have taken on a bigger task: charting the growth of our own Milky Way.



NASA's Next Major Space Telescope Project Officially Starts in February
----------------


> NASA's Next Major Space Telescope Project Officially Starts in February
> 
> NASA has been using the additional funding to perform technology development work, including for the mission's two key instruments : a wide field camera and a coronagraph that can be used to directly observe extrasolar planets.
> 
> launch in August 2024


----------



## ScienceRocks

Two Small Temperate Planets Transiting Nearby M Dwarfs in K2 Campaigns 0 and 1
[1601.02706] Two Small Temperate Planets Transiting Nearby M Dwarfs in K2 Campaigns 0   and 1


> The prime Kepler mission revealed that small planets (<4 R_earth) are common, especially around low-mass M dwarfs. K2, the re-purposed Kepler mission, continues this exploration of small planets around small stars. Here we combine K2 photometry with spectroscopy, adaptive optics imaging, and archival survey images to analyze two small planets orbiting the nearby, field age, M dwarfs K2-26 (EPIC 202083828) and K2-9. K2-26 is an M1.0 +/- 0.5 dwarf at 93 +/- 7 pc from K2 Campaign 0. We validate its 14.5665 d period planet and estimate a radius of 2.67^+0.46_-0.42 R_earth. K2-9 is an M2.5 +/- 0.5 dwarf at 110 +/- 12 pc from K2 Campaign 1. K2-9b was first identified by Montet et al. 2015; here we present spectra and adaptive optics imaging of the host star and independently validate and characterize the planet. Our analyses indicate K2-9b is a 2.25^+0.53_-0.96 R_earth planet with a 18.4498 d period. K2-26b exhibits a transit duration that is too long to be consistent with a circular orbit given the measured stellar radius. Thus, the long transits are likely due to the photoeccentric effect and our transit fits hint at an eccentric orbit. Both planets receive low incident flux from their host stars and have estimated equilibrium temperatures <500 K. K2-9b may receive approximately Earth-like insolation. However, its host star exhibits strong GALEX UV emission which could affect any atmosphere it harbors. K2-26b and K2-9b are representatives of a poorly studied class of small planets with cool temperatures that have radii intermediate to Earth and Neptune. Future study of these systems can provide key insight into trends in bulk composition and atmospheric properties at the transition from silicate dominated to volatile rich bodies.​




*Exoplanet Transits Registered at the Universidad de Monterrey Observatory. Part I: HAT-P-12b, HAT-P-13b, HAT-P-16b, HAT-P-23b and WASP-10b*

[1601.02292] Exoplanet Transits Registered at the Universidad de Monterrey   Observatory. Part I: HAT-P-12b, HAT-P-13b, HAT-P-16b, HAT-P-23b and WASP-10b
Pedro V. Sada, Felipe G. Ramón-Fox
(Submitted on 11 Jan 2016)


> Forty transits of the exoplanets HAT-P-12b, HAT-P-13b, HAT-P-16b, HAT-P-23b and WASP-10b were recorded with the 0.36m telescope at the Universidad de Monterrey Observatory. The images were captured with a standard Johnson-Cousins Rc and Ic and Sloan z' filters and processed to obtain individual light curves of the events. These light curves were successfully combined for each system to obtain a resulting one of higher quality, but with a slightly larger time sampling rate. A reduction by a factor of about four in per-point scatter was typically achieved, resulting in combined light curves with a scatter of ~1 mmag. The noise characteristics of the combined light curves were verified by comparing Allan variance plots of the residuals. The combined light curves for each system, along with radial velocity measurements from the literature when available, were modeled using a Monte Carlo method to obtain the essential parameters that characterize the systems. Our results for all these systems confirm the derived transit parameters (the planet-to-star radius ratio, Rp/R*; the scaled semi-major axis, a/R*; the orbital inclination, i; in some cases the eccentricity, e; and argument of periastron of the orbit, {\omega}), validating the methodology. This technique can be used by small college observatories equipped with modest-sized telescopes to help characterize known extrasolar planet systems. In some instances, the uncertainties of the essential transit parameters are also reduced. For HAT-P-23b, in particular, we derive a planet size 4.5 +- 1.0% smaller. We also derive improved linear periods for each system, useful for scheduling observations.​



*Orbital Dynamics of Exoplanetary Systems Kepler-62, HD 200964 and Kepler-11*

[1601.02110] Orbital Dynamics of Exoplanetary Systems Kepler-62, HD 200964 and   Kepler-11
Rajib Mia, Badam Singh Kushvah (Department of Applied Mathematics, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India)
(Submitted on 9 Jan 2016)


> The presence of mean-motion resonances (MMR) in exoplanetary systems is a new exciting field of celestial mechanics which motivate us to consider the present work to study the dynamical behaviour of exoplanetary systems by time evolution of the orbital elements of the planets. Mainly we study the influence of planetary perturbations on semi-major axis and eccentricity. We identify (_r_+1):_r_ mean-motion resonance terms in the expression of disturbing function and obtain the perturbations from the truncated disturbing function. Using the expansion of the disturbing function of three body problem and an analytical approach, we solve the equations of motion. The solution which is obtained analytically is compared with that of obtained by numerical method to validate our analytical result. In the present work we consider three exoplanetary systems namely Kepler-62, HD 200964 and Kepler-11. We have plotted the evolution of the resonant angles and found that they librate around constant value. In view of this, our opinion is that two planets of each system Kepler-62, HD 200964 and Kepler-11 are in 2:1, 4:3 and 5:4 mean motion resonances respectively.​


http://english.cntv.cn/2016/01/11/AR...al160111.shtml



> The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology has begun preliminary research on the Long March 9. The work has been approved by the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, which is in charge of the nation's space programs.
> 
> According to sources at the academy, it plans to take up to five years to design and develop a liquid oxygen/kerosene engine with 460 metric tons of thrust and a oxygen/liquid hydrogen engine with 220 tons of thrust.
> 
> The rocket will have a launch weight of 3,000 tons and is *scheduled to make its maiden flight around 2030*, the sources said, adding that it will play a key role in helping to land astronauts on the moon.
> 
> The Long March 9's technical specifications have still to be disclosed.
> 
> But Li Tongyu, head of aerospace products at the academy, said its diameter and height will be much greater than those of the Long March 5, which is undergoing final tests and will make its first flight soon. The Long March 9's thrust will also be much stronger, Li said.
> 
> "Our current launch vehicles, including the Long March 5, will be able to undertake the country's space activities planned for the next 10 years, but they will not have the capacity to carry out the nation's long-term space programs," according to Li.
> 
> Li Jinghong, deputy chief designer of the Long March 3A at the academy, cited technical estimates stating that* the Long March 5 will require four launches before fulfilling a manned mission to the moon, while the Long March 9 will need only one*.



Russia surprises once again. Just when we thought the Angara series of rockets will the future for Russia, they come out with the Soyuz-5 family of rockets.

Soyuz-5 (Feniks) rocket



> Soyuz-5 could eventually replace current rockets in the Soyuz family capable of delivering up to eight tons of payload to the low Earth orbit. Moreover, follow-on variants could carry 16 tons, thus replacing Zenit, and 25 tons, matching Proton in the current Russian fleet. Farther into the future, Soyuz-5 could pave the way to heavy and super-heavy rockets, as well as to low-cost reusable space boosters.
> 
> As of 2015, the price tag for a single launch of the Soyuz-5.1 variant, including the Fregat upper stage, was expected to be as low as $50 million to match or even outcompete the US Falcon rocket series on the international market.
> 
> However the Soyuz-5 rocket, which is still on the drawing board, overlaps the capabilities of the new-generation Angara family, which reached the launch pad in 2014. Still, engineers at TsSKB Progress were banking on the fact that a slowly emerging propulsion technology relying on methane would justify the development of at least an experimental rocket to prove the viability of the new fuel for future space launchers. Under such a scenario, the Soyuz-5 could serve as a precursor to a reusable booster stage in the next-generation space transportation system.


----------



## ScienceRocks

NASA's Juno Spacecraft Breaks Solar Power Distance Record



> NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter has broken the record to become humanity's most distant solar-powered emissary. The milestone occurred at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST, 19:00 UTC) on Wednesday, Jan. 13, when Juno was about 493 million miles (793 million kilometers) from the sun.
> 
> The previous record-holder was the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, whose orbit peaked out at the 492-million-mile (792-million-kilometer) mark in October 2012, during its approach to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.



http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/mi...launches-2016/



> This year should also see maiden flights of the next-generation Long March 5 and Long March 7 rockets. The largest Long March 5 rocket (CZ-504) is a 203.4-foot (62-meter) tall heavy-lift launch vehicle designed to be able to deliver up to 25 metric tons of payload to low-Earth orbit (LEO) and up to 14 metric tons to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). Weighing 810 metric tons, it is described as being the heaviest and most technologically challenging member of the Long March rocket family. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology is carrying out final tests of this booster to prepare it for its *first flight scheduled for September*.
> 
> The 174.2 feet (53 meters) tall Long March 7 is a medium-heavy launch vehicle with a mass of 594 metric tons. It will be capable of launching nearly 13.5 metric tons to LEO and about 5.5 metric tons into a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). Although, this booster is designed to deliver satellites into space, its structure is based on the Long March 2F rocket employed for crewed missions. The date of the first Long March 7 flight hasn’t been disclosed yet.



*New Dawn image release provides high-res views of Ceres' craters*


 Anthony Wood 
January 13, 2016
 4 PICTURES 





> High resolution images snapped by NASA's Dawn spacecraft capture four of Ceres' craters in stunning detail. Dawn recently completed transitioning to its third and final mapping orbit, which will see the spacecraft collect its most detailed images and readings to date from a height of roughly 240 miles (385 km) above the dwarf planet's surface.




*Astronomers detect ultra-weak magnetic fields in two metallic-line stars*



> (Phys.org)—A team of astronomers led by Aurore Blazère of the Paris Observatory has discovered ultra-weak magnetic fields in metallic-line stars Beta Ursae Majoris and Theta Leonis. Motivated by a recent detection of a ...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX to launch ocean satellite, try water return Sunday*



> A $180 million satellite to study the world's oceans in a changing climate will blast off Sunday atop a Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX will try to land on a floating platform after launch.



*Extreme turbulence roiling 'most luminous galaxy' in the universe*



> The most luminous galaxy in the Universe - a so-called obscured quasar 12.4 billion light-years away - is so violently turbulent that it may eventually jettison its entire supply of star-forming gas, according to new observations ...



*Signs of second largest black hole in the Milky Way: Possible missing link in black hole evolution*



> Astronomers using the Nobeyama 45-m Radio Telescope have detected signs of an invisible black hole with a mass of 100 thousand times the mass of the Sun around the center of the Milky Way. The team assumes that this possible ...



*Comets can't explain weird 'alien megastructure' star after all*​Quote


> The weirdest star in the cosmos just got a lot weirder. And yes, it might be aliens.
> Known as KIC 8462852, or Tabby’s star, it has been baffling astronomers for the past few months after a team of researchers noticed its light seemed to be dipping in brightness in bizarre ways. Proposed explanations ranged from a cloud of comets to orbiting “alien megastructures”.
> Now an analysis of historical observations reveals the star has been gradually dimming for over a century, leaving everyone scratching their heads as to the cause.
> 
> The first signs of this space oddity came from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, which continually watched the star’s region of the sky between 2009 and 2013. Most planet-hosting stars show small, regular dips in light when their planets pass in front of them. But Tabby’s star dipped erratically throughout the four years, sometimes losing as much as 20 per cent of its brightness.​


----------



## mamooth

The SpaceX launch of the JASON-3 satellite was fully successful. JASON-3 will measure sea levels in detail, continuing the work of JASON-2. JASON-3 will move right next to JASON-2 for a while, so they can match calibrations, then it will be moved to a separate orbit.

The SpaceX landing-at-sea was a partial success, as the rocket fell over after landing.

SpaceX Launch Successful, But Drone Ship Landing Fails






Other than ISS resupply missions, there aren't any NASA launches this year. But Cape Canaveral is having a busy rocket season, launching the more mundane payloads like communication satellites, GPS satellites and top secret military/intelligence agency satellites.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*NASA astronaut posts photos of the first flower grown in space*



> NASA just grew a flower in space, moving us one step closer to creating the life-sustaining space gardens from sci-fi movies like Sunshine and The Martian.
> 
> Astronaut Scott Kelly arrived on the International Space Station in March 2015, as part of a year-long mission with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko. The mission's main purpose is to study the effects of a long-term stay in space, but their presence overlapped with NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren's experiments with growing plants in space.
> 
> On Saturday, Kelly shared the result of one of those experiments on Twitter.



Scott Kelly on Twitter^tfw 





*First ever flower grown in space makes its debut! #SpaceFlower #zinnia #YearInSpace * 


> The ISS astronauts previously harvested their first crop of romaine lettuce last year, but flowering plants like zinnias are far more complicated to grow. Farmed using methods developed by NASA's Veggie program, the edible zinnias sprouted from "pillows" full of fertilizer, seeds, water and clay, and are illuminated by LEDs.




NASA astronaut posts photos of the first flower grown in space

*ESO's GRAVITY instrument achieves first light*


 Anthony Wood 
January 18, 2016
 2 PICTURES 





> Astronomers have achieved first light with a powerful instrument that will allow scientists to probe the environments surrounding black holes. The GRAVITY instrument is in the process of being installed in the tunnels below the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) located at the Paranal Observatory, Chile.




​
*NASA image: Pluto's haze in bands of blue*



> This processed image is the highest-resolution color look yet at the haze layers in Pluto's atmosphere. Shown in approximate true color, the picture is constructed from a mosaic of four panchromatic images from the Long Range .


..


A Pair of Giant Planets around the Evolved Intermediate-Mass Star HD 47366: Multiple Circular Orbits or a Mutually Retrograde Configuration
[1601.04417] A Pair of Giant Planets around the Evolved Intermediate-Mass Star HD   47366: Multiple Circular Orbits or a Mutually Retrograde Configuration


> We report the detection of a double planetary system around the evolved intermediate-mass star HD 47366 from precise radial-velocity measurements at Okayama Astrophysical Observatory, Xinglong Station, and Australian Astronomical Observatory. The star is a K1 giant with a mass of 1.81+-0.13M_sun, a radius of 7.30+-0.33R_sun, and solar metallicity. The planetary system is composed of two giant planets with minimum mass of 1.75^{+0.20}_{-0.17}Mjup and 1.86^{+0.16}_{-0.15}Mjup, orbital period of 363.3^{+2.5}_{-2.4} d and 684.7^{+5.0}_{-4.9} d, and eccentricity of 0.089^{+0.079}_{-0.060} and 0.278^{+0.067}_{-0.094}, respectively, which are derived by a double Keplerian orbital fit to the radial-velocity data. The system adds to the population of multi-giant-planet systems with relatively small orbital separations, which are preferentially found around evolved intermediate-mass stars. Dynamical stability analysis for the system revealed, however, that the best-fit orbits are unstable in the case of a prograde configuration. The system could be stable if the planets were in 2:1 mean-motion resonance, but this is less likely considering the observed period ratio and eccentricity. A present possible scenario for the system is that both of the planets have nearly circular orbits, namely the eccentricity of the outer planet is less than ~0.15, which is just within 1.4sigma of the best-fit value, or the planets are in a mutually retrograde configuration with a mutual orbital inclination larger than 160 degree.​




http://www.leonarddavid.com/chinas-2...lans-detailed/


> *China is pushing the throttle forward in its 2016 space exploits*, an agenda that includes a piloted space mission and the maiden flights of two new boosters.
> 
> According to state-run news agencies, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has spotlighted plans to launch this year the Tiangong 2 space laboratory and the Shenzhou 11 crewed spacecraft and to test-fly the Long March 5 and Long March 7 rockets.
> 
> In a statement on the company’s website: “This year will see more than 20 space launches, the most missions in a single year.”


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Researchers discover 'Planet Nine'*

Source: *USA Today*


> Caltech researchers say they have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a "bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system."
> 
> Dubbed Planet Nine, it has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does distant Neptune. The researchers say it would take Planet Nine up to 20,000 years to orbit the sun.
> 
> "This would be a real ninth planet," said researcher Mike Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg professor of planetary astronomy. "There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It's a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that's still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting."
> 
> Brown says the planet has 5,000 times the mass of Pluto and is so big there should be no debate about whether it is a true planet.




Read more: Researchers find evidence of ninth planet in solar system

I hope it turns out to be around 5 earth masses so it can be a super earth instead of a smaller neptune.


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## ScienceRocks

*SPACEX CONDUCTS HOVER TEST OF CREW DRAGON*



-----------------
*Evidence for a previously unknown Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System that is 5000 times bigger than Pluto*



Astronomers say they have compelling evidence of something bigger and farther away than Pluto and this something would definitely satisfy the current definition of a planet. Evidence indicates there is an undiscovered planet 5000 times bigger than Pluto Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly...





------------------------------
*Two giant planets detected around an evolved intermediate-mass star*

(Phys.org)—HD 47366 is an evolved star almost twice as massive as our sun. Located about 260 light years from the Earth, the star is approximately 1.6 billion years old, and, as it turns out, hosts two giant planets with ...


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## ScienceRocks

*Lockheed Martin shrinks the telescope*


 David Szondy 
January 21, 2016
 5 PICTURES 





> After 400 years, the original telescope design is getting a major upgrade. Part of a DARPA funded project, Lockheed Martin's Segmented Planar Imaging Detector for Electro-optical Reconnaissance (SPIDER) telescope replaces the large primary lenses used in refracting telescopes with an array of tiny ones that allow the instruments to shrink by a factor of 10 to 100.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin sent its rocket to space... again*

*SpaceX went further, but Blue Origin has struck back by actually re-using a rocket.*



> As Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos continue their battle to develop re-usable rocket technology first, the Amazon man's company has news to announce tonight. Its video shows its New Shepard rocket -- that previously flew to suborbital altitude of 100km -- doing it all over again. According to Blue Origin, instead of just being the first rocket to cross the Karman Line and then land vertically back on the Earth, it's now the first one to have done it twice. There are still arguments that what Blue Origin is doing is easier than SpaceX's attempts (not actually going into low-Earth orbit and it's moving slower), but it's still an amazing achievement.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*KOI-2939b: the largest and longest-period Kepler transiting circumbinary planet*

Veselin B. Kostov, Jerome A. Orosz, William F. Welsh, Laurance R. Doyle, Daniel C. Fabrycky, Nader Haghighipour, Billy Quarles, Donald R. Short, William D. Cochran, Michael Endl, Eric B. Ford, Joao Gregorio, Tobias C. Hinse, Howard Isaacson, Jon M. Jenkins, Eric L. N. Jensen, Ilya Kull, David W. Latham, Jack J. Lissauer, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Tsevi Mazeh, Tobias W. A.Muller, Joshua Pepper, Samuel N. Quinn, Darin Ragozzine, Avi Shporer, Jason H. Steffen, Guillermo Torres, Gur Windmiller, William J. Borucki
(Submitted on 1 Dec 2015)


> We report the discovery of a new Kepler transiting circumbinary planet (CBP). This latest addition to the still-small family of CBPs defies the current trend of known short-period planets orbiting near the stability limit of binary stars. Unlike the previous discoveries, the planet revolving around the eclipsing binary system KOI-2939 has a very long orbital period (~1100 days) and was at conjunction only twice during the Kepler mission lifetime. Due to the singular configuration of the system, KOI-2939b is not only the longest-period transiting CBP at the time of writing, but also one of the longest-period transiting planets. With a radius of 1.06+/-0.01 RJup it is also the largest CBP to date. The planet produced three transits in the light-curve of KOI-2939 (one of them during an eclipse, creating a syzygy) and measurably perturbed the times of the stellar eclipses, allowing us to measure its mass to be 1.52+/-0.65 MJup. The planet revolves around an 11-day period eclipsing binary consisting of two Solar-mass stars on a slightly inclined, mildly eccentric (e_bin = 0.16), spin-synchronized orbit. Despite having an orbital period three times longer than Earth's, KOI-2939b is in the conservative habitable zone of the binary star throughout its orbit.​



*
Kepler-47: A Three-Planet Circumbinary System*


> Kepler-47 is the most interesting of the known circumbinary planets. In the discovery paper by Orosz et al. (2012) two planets were detected, with periods of 49.5 and 303 days around the 7.5-day binary. In addition, a single "orphan" transit of a possible third planet was noticed. Since then, five additional transits by this planet candidate have been uncovered, leading to the unambiguous confirmation of a third transiting planet in the system. The planet has a period of 187 days, and orbits in between the previously detected planets. It lies on the inner edge of the optimistic habitable zone, while its outer sibling falls within the conservative habitable zone. The orbit of this new planet is precessing, causing its transits to become significantly deeper over the span of the Kepler observations. Although the planets are not massive enough to measurably perturb the binary, they are sufficiently massive to interact with each other and cause mild transit timing variations (TTVs). This enables our photodynamical model to estimate their masses. We find that all three planets have very low-density and are on remarkably co-planar orbits: all 4 orbits (the binary and three planets) are within ~2 degrees of one another. Thus the Kepler-47 system puts interesting constraints on circumbinary planet formation and migration scenarios.



-----------------------------

Transit timing variations (TTVs) of Kepler-10c indicate the likely presence of a third planet in the system, KOI-72.X. The TTVs and RVs are consistent with KOI-72.X having an orbital period of 24, 71, 82, or 101 days, and a mass from 1-7 M⊕.


---------------------
ULA has contracted Blue Origin to design and build a reusable engine for their Vulcan launch vehicle which is intended to be a direct competitor to the Falcon 9. I can understand the comparison made to Virgin Galactic because they haven't achieved recovery of an orbital booster stage yet, but a comparison to SpaceX is perhaps more apt based on the ultimate ambition.






_Rendering of ULA's Vulcan rocket intended to be partially reusable. _


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## ScienceRocks

*Planet with 900,000-year orbit lies a trillion kilometers from its sun*


 David Szondy 
January 25, 2016
 4 PICTURES 






> In an astronomical astronomical discovery, scientists have identified what's believed to be the widest known planetary system. Situated about 104 light years from Earth, a planet that could be 15 times the size of Jupiter is in a 900,000-year orbit at a mind-boggling distance of 1 trillion km from its parent star – that's 7,000 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun.
> The focus of studies by British, American, and Australian scientists, 2MASS J2126 was discovered in an infrared sky survey. Initial findings allowed astronomers to estimate the object's age, which in turn allowed them to determine its mass. It's mass was too low to be a failed star, so it was at first thought to be a free-floating planet. That is, a planet that isn't part of a star system, but floats like a cosmic orphan through interstellar space.



*Goodbye ground control: Nanosatellites achieve first autonomous orbital maneuver*


 David Szondy 
January 25, 2016






> One of the advantages of bread loaf-sized nanosatellites is their potential to act as a swarm that can equal the power of a single larger satellite, but with more flexibility and at lower cost. Deep Space Industries has taken a major step in that direction in a successful test involving two autonomous Canadian satellites, which carried out the first orbital maneuver without human supervision.


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## ScienceRocks

EPIC210957318b and EPIC212110888b: two inflated hot-Jupiters around Solar-type stars
[1601.07635] EPIC210957318b and EPIC212110888b: two inflated hot-Jupiters around   Solar-type stars

EPIC211089792 b: an aligned and inflated hot jupiter in a young visual binary
[1601.07680] EPIC211089792 b: an aligned and inflated hot jupiter in a young visual   binary

Confirmation of Two Hot Jupiters from K2 Campaign 4
[1601.07844] Confirmation of Two Hot Jupiters from K2 Campaign 4

*
A Neptune-sized Exoplanet Consistent with a Pure Rock Composition*
[1601.07608] A Neptune-sized Exoplanet Consistent with a Pure Rock Composition


> We report the discovery of BD+20594b, a Neptune-sized exoplanet consistent with a pure rock composition, made using photometry from Campaign 4 of the two-wheeled Kepler (K2) mission. The host star is a bright (V=11.04, Ks=9.37), slightly metal poor ([Fe/H]=−0.15±0.05 dex) solar analogue located at 152.1+9.7−7.4 pc from Earth, for which we find a radius of R∗=0.928+0.055−0.040R⊙ and a mass of M∗=0.961+0.032−0.029M⊙. A joint analysis of the K2 photometry and HARPS radial velocities reveal that the planet is in a ≈42 day orbit around its host star, has a radius of 2.23+0.14−0.11R⊕, and a mass of 16.3+6.0−6.1M⊕. The data at hand are most consistent with a pure rock composition with a low volatile content, potentially making it a rare exception among Neptune-sized exoplanets discovered so far.


*
Statistics of Long Period Gas Giant Planets in Known Planetary Systems*
[1601.07595] Statistics of Long Period Gas Giant Planets in Known Planetary Systems



> We conducted a Doppler survey at Keck combined with NIRC2 K-band AO imaging to search for massive, long-period companions to 123 known exoplanet systems with one or two planets detected using the radial velocity (RV) method. Our survey is sensitive to Jupiter mass planets out to 20 AU for a majority of stars in our sample, and *we report the discovery of eight new long-period planets, in addition to 20 systems with statistically significant RV trends indicating the presence of an outer companion beyond 5 AU*. We combine our RV observations with AO imaging to determine the range of allowed masses and orbital separations for these companions, and account for variations in our sensitivity to companions among stars in our sample. *We estimate the total occurrence rate of companions in our sample to be 52 +/- 5% over the range 1 - 20 M_Jup and 5 - 20 AU.* Our data also suggest a declining frequency for gas giant planets in these systems beyond 3-10 AU, in contrast to earlier studies that found a rising frequency for giant planets in the range 0.01-3 AU. This suggests either that the frequency of gas giant planets peaks between 3-10 AU, or that outer companions in these systems have a different semi-major axis distribution than the overall gas giant planet population. Our results also suggest that hot gas giants may be more likely to have an outer companion than cold gas giants. We find that planets with an outer companion have higher average eccentricities than their single counterparts, suggesting that dynamical interactions between planets may play an important role in these systems.



*Giant gas cloud boomeranging back into Milky Way*
Since astronomers discovered the Smith Cloud, a giant gas cloud plummeting toward the Milky Way, they have been unable to determine its composition, which would hold clues as to its origin. University of Notre Dame astrophysicist ...


----------



## ScienceRocks

*SpaceX completes successful test of parachutes for manned Dragon capsule*
SpaceX completes successful test of parachutes for manned Dragon capsule | ExtremeTech



> As SpaceX tries to perfect reusable rockets, it’s also working on another important project — manned spaceflight. SpaceX and Boeing are both part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to fly manned missions between Earth and the International Space Station. Sending unmanned cargo modules to the station is one thing, but there are a lot of test that need to be completed before any people will be climbing into the Dragon v2 capsule. SpaceX has accomplished an important milestone objective with the successful test of Dragon’s parachute system.
> 
> The design of the Dragon v2 isn’t completely final, and this test was only focused on the effectiveness and reliability of the parachutes. Thus, it’s not a Dragon spacecraft tethered to the parachutes — that’s a “weight simulant” that stands in for a fully loaded crew module. Four parachutes were rigged to the mock spacecraft to slow its descent just as they would the real thing.




*Fungi survive on the ISS under Mars-like conditions*

 Chris Wood 
January 29, 2016






> Results are back from one of the latest experiments hosted on the International Space Station (ISS), with researchers from Spain's National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) using the facility to study how hardy fungi species, collected from the Antarctic, cope under simulated Martian conditions. The results are helping scientists gain insights relevant to the search for life on the Red Planet.




​
*Image: Pluto's widespread water ice*
Data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft point to more prevalent water ice on Pluto's surface than previously thought.


----------



## ScienceRocks

A new @*NASA* office aims to protect us all from Earth-menacing space rocks http://oak.ctx.ly/r/48vyq






Pluto is icier than we thought: http://oak.ctx.ly/r/48wa1 @*NASANewHorizons*






Violent Impact That Created Moon Mixed Lunar and Earth Rocks http://oak.ctx.ly/r/48v56






Ancient Babylonian astronomers were about 1,500 years ahead of their time: http://oak.ctx.ly/r/48sgt #*Jupiter*


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Pluto might have icebergs that float in frozen nitrogen* 

By Rachel Feltman February 4 at 2:39 PM 





> Pluto is weird. Good weird, but definitely weird. The latest findings from NASA's New Horizons mission help confirm that beautiful weirdness: According to the latest scientific analysis of photos and data from the July flyby, Pluto is home to rock-hard glaciers made of water ice (note: planetary scientists use the terms "water ice" or "frozen water" instead of the more obvious "ice," because ice on other planets can be made of all sorts of molecules other than good old H2O).
> 
> These water ice glaciers float around on frozen nitrogen, which is much more common on the frigid dwarf planet. Because of the temperature on Pluto (minus-380 degrees Fahrenheit, on average), water ice glaciers are likely as hard as mountains made of rock are on Earth. Meanwhile, nitrogen – which doesn't even freeze until it hits minus-346 degrees – is icy but flowing, like glaciers on Earth.
> 
> That water ice may be hard as rock, but it's still less dense than frozen nitrogen. NASA scientists believe the water ice hills break apart and are carried atop the nitrogen flows, causing them to move in chains and cluster together based on the flow pattern.
> 
> In some areas of Sputnik Planum (an informal name for the plains of ice flows that sit in Pluto's "heart") these water ice mountain clusters span 12 miles across.
> 
> The informally named Challenger Colles (a tribute to the lost crew of NASA's Challenger shuttle), which is 22 miles by 37 miles across, could be a cluster of "beached" water ice mountains shoved into place by the nitrogen flows, according to the mission scientists.



*-snip-* 

Read more: Pluto might have icebergs that float in frozen nitrogen



*NASA's Juno spacecraft completes Jupiter rendezvous burn*

http://www.gizmag.co...-jupiter/41679/

  Anthony Wood
  February 4, 2016


> NASA's Juno spacecraft has successfully completed a maneuver designed to fine tune its orbit around the Sun, preparing it for a rendezvous with Jupiter in just over five months' time. The probe will be required to undertake one further burn on May 31 in order to complete the fine-tuning of its trajectory



*Asteroid mining initiative announced by Luxembourg*


> The Luxembourg government yesterday announced a series of measures to position the country as a European hub in the exploration and use of space resources. Amongst the key steps undertaken will be the development of a legal and regulatory framework that provides certainty about the future ownership of minerals extracted from Near Earth Objects (NEO's), such as asteroids.



http://www.futuretim...g/2016/02/4.htm

*  A Distant Supermassive Black Hole Emits Giant “Death Rays” Larger Than Our Galaxy  *


> Astronomers have released a new X-ray/radio composite image of the distant galaxy Pictor A, showing a huge jet of high-energy particles produced by a supermassive black hole.  They were also able to determine how this jet, over three times the size of the Milky Way galaxy, produces such powerful X-ray emissions.


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## ScienceRocks

*NASA tests solar sail deployment for asteroid-surveying CubeSat NEA Scout*

9 February 2016








> Progress continues on the journey to Mars as NASA plans to send astronauts deeper into space than ever before, including to an asteroid and ultimately to the surface of Mars. Before humans embark on the journey, the agency will survey an asteroid to learn about the risks and challenges asteroids may pose to future human explorers.
> 
> One way NASA will do this is by performing a reconnaissance flyby of an asteroid with Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, or NEA Scout. NEA Scout - a CubeSat, or small satellite - will launch as a secondary payload on the inaugural flight of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), the world's most powerful rocket, scheduled to launch in 2018. Information gained from NEA Scout's flyby will enhance the agency's understanding of asteroids and their environments and will help reduce risk for future exploration of asteroids and small planetary bodies.



http://www.spacedail..._Scout_999.html

SpaceX is Kicking Production Into High Gear



> At the Federal Aviation Administration’s Commercial Space Transportation Conference, SpaceXannounced that they will be shifting their focus from the testing and development of Falcon 9rocket cores towards mass production.
> 
> 
> 
> That’s right, we are about to have a slew of SpaceX rockets on our hands.




*

Site of Martian lakes linked to ancient habitable environment*


10 February 2016




> Groundwater circulation beneath a massive tectonic rift zone located along the flanks of some the solar system's largest volcanic plateaus resulted in the formation more than 3 billion years ago of some the deepest basins on Mars, according to a new paper by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist J. Alexis Palmero Rodriguez.
> 
> These basins could have been episodically covered, perhaps during hundreds of millions of years, by lava and water lakes that were discharged from subsurface pressurized sources, Rodriguez writes in "Groundwater Flow Induced Collapse and Flooding in Noctis Labyrinthus, Mars" that appears in Planetary and Space Science.
> 
> This shows an area on Mars that could possibly have harbored life.





http://www.marsdaily...onment_999.html


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## ScienceRocks

* Spacex planning to launch every 2 to 3 weeks and achieve 70% landing success rate in 2016 *







> Elon Musk is confident about Spacex's ability to land rockets in 2016 and he predicted a 70% success rate for the year. If all goes as planned, Spacex will achieve a launch rate of once every two to three weeks, according to a recent comment from SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell. Spacex is transforming its rocket factory. It is going...



​
*Proto-planet has two masters*
A Rice University researcher will discuss images that may show the formation of a planet—or a planetary system—around a distant binary star at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ...


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## ScienceRocks

First Ever SuperEarth Atmosphere Detected --"It's Carbon Rich and a Very Exotic Place" http://goo.gl/LyslTG






*First detection of super-earth atmosphere*


> For the first time astronomers were able to analyse the atmosphere of an exoplanet in the class known as super-Earths. Using data gathered with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and new analysis techniques, the exoplanet ...



*Astronomers detect five new 'hot Jupiters'*


> (Phys.org)—Giant exoplanets, like the so-called 'hot Jupiters' that are similar in characteristics to the solar system's biggest planet and orbit very close to their host stars, are excellent targets for astronomers in ...


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## ScienceRocks

*Hubble directly measures rotation of cloudy 'super-Jupiter'*


> Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have measured the rotation rate of an extreme exoplanet by observing the varied brightness in its atmosphere. This is the first measurement of the rotation of a massive exoplanet ...



*Longest-lasting stellar eclipse discovered*


> Imagine living on a world where, every 69 years, the sun disappears in a near-total eclipse that lasts for three and a half years.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Virgin Galactic unveils new SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity*

 David Szondy 
February 19, 2016
 8 PICTURES 





> Over a year after a fatal test flight accident, Virgin Galactic is back as CEO Sir Richard Branson today unveiled the new spacecraft that will replace the ill-fated SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Spaceship (VSS) Enterprise. Sporting a new silver and white livery and pulled by a Land Rover Autobiography, the new vehicle was wheeled out before an invited audience and named VSS Unity by Professor Stephen Hawking via a recorded message.



*NASA forges ahead with next major space telescope*

 David Szondy 
February 20, 2016






> NASA is moving forward with plans for its next big eye in the sky: the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST). Scheduled to fly in the mid-2020s – after the 2018 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope – the new orbital instrument will have a field of view 100 times bigger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, but with the same power.




* Photonic Laser Propulsion to send a 100 kg vehicle to Mars in 3 days and to get to wafercraft to 30% of the speed of light by 2035 *







> Philip Lubin describes his appraoch to achieving laser driving spacecraft propulsion in the near term 100kg robotic craft could be sent to Mars in 3 days 1kg could go overnight to Mars 50-100 GW could send a wafercraft to 30% of the speed of light and i would involve 10 minutes A system that is about 100 times the mass of the space station...



* Reaching the newly discovered Planet 9 which is about 18 times farther than Pluto  *







> Adam Crowl has a great series of article about space missions to the newly discovered super-earth or Neptune like Planet 9. Power, Distance and Time are inextricably linked in rocketry 1. An important concept is the Power-to-Mass ratio or specific power – units being kilowatts per kilogram (kW/kg). Any power source produces raw energy,...




* Pluto's moon Charon used to have a subsurface ocean *







> Images from NASA’s New Horizons mission suggest that Pluto’s moon Charon once had a subsurface ocean that has long since frozen and expanded, pushing outward and causing the moon’s surface to stretch and fracture on a massive scale. The side of Pluto’s largest moon viewed by NASA’s passing New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015 is characterized...



*New research explores asteroid deflection using spacecraft to crash into body at high speeds*


> Asteroids headed for a collision with the Earth, if found early enough, can be acted upon to prevent the potentially devastating consequences of an impact. One technique to divert an asteroid, called kinetic impact, uses ...


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## sealybobo

SmedlyButler said:


> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
Click to expand...

2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.

Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here


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## ScienceRocks

sealybobo said:


> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
Click to expand...



I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
Click to expand...

I like the idea of an international space project. Yes, let's partner with China. You don't go to war with your partners.


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## sealybobo

China wouldn't even have to pay. We'll just take it off the money we owe them.


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## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
Click to expand...

Nope! Did you just see Stephen hawkin on ABC news? They have this spaceship the size of a computer chip that might be able to do interstellar travel. And he believes the must be other intelligent life in other star systems. Send 20,000 of those things out to every direction. I guess they can travel really fast


----------



## Votto

Progs, the reason aliens hide from us.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
Click to expand...

Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.

Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.


----------



## ScienceRocks

Votto said:


> Progs, the reason aliens hide from us.



Cavemen like you liberterians are probably why. WE're not ready.


----------



## ScienceRocks

*Stephen Hawking and Billionaire Team Up on $100 Million Quest to Find Alien Life*

Source: *ABC NEWS*

Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner are teaming up in a $100 million hunt for alien life that will rely on a fleet of postage stamp-sized spacecraft to explore the universe. 
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will also join Milner and Hawking on the board of Breakthrough Starshot, a philanthropic initiative to focus on space exploration and the search for life in the universe. 

Astronomers believe an Earth-like planet could exist within the "habitable zones" of Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth, located 25 trillion miles (or 4.37 light-years) away. 

Each nanocraft would carry cameras, photon thrusters, power supplies, navigation and communication equipment, and the newly engineered "lightsail," which would propel each probe. If a single nanocraft makes it to Alpha Centauri after a 20-year journey, it would take an additional four years to transmit that information back to Earth. 

Read more: Stephen Hawking and Billionaire on the Hunt for Alien Life

Damn, this is impressive if this can carry all the tools on a postage stamp!


----------



## ScienceRocks

Kepler is now recovered and stable.

Mission Manager Update: Kepler Recovered from Emergency and Stable


----------



## mamooth

Air Force weather satellite explodes in orbit -- Defense Systems

Interesting, that such an old satellite still had enough energy stored inside to literally explode.


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
Click to expand...


Don't give up.  

Finding a new planet that orbits a distant star isn't such a big deal anymore — astronomers have discovered around 2,000. But no one knows if any of these planets has a moon.  Finding the first moon outside our solar system _would_ be a big deal partly because when it comes to places that life could call home, moons may outnumber planets. Any alien life that's out there might well be on a moon.  NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has revealed that around 2 percent of sun-like stars have a rocky planet orbiting in the region where temperatures are right for liquid water to exist. But there are five times more gaseous planets in that habitable zone and those gas giants could be orbited by smaller, potentially habitable moons.  This question about the occurrence rate of moons is really salient to the question of whether we're alone in the universe or not," says Kipping. "Because it does seem that gas giants are at the right position for life more often than rocky planets."

I'd certainly like to see a moon that is at least the size of Mars," he says. "When you get to that size, then you can start talking about moons that maybe hold on to an atmosphere for a long period of time."  Even in our own backyard, Jupiter and Saturn are circled by moons called Europa and Enceladus that are thought to have oceans. But whatever water might be there is hidden beneath miles of ice.  For now, scientists can only wonder what might be swimming around down there.  It could be that 100 years from now we'll know that the Earth is one of a handful of bodies in the solar system that’s habitable and most of them are moons. 

Hot On The Trail Of Alien Moons


----------



## FA_Q2

sealybobo said:


> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
Click to expand...

Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.  

To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.


----------



## sealybobo

FA_Q2 said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
Click to expand...

What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.

So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet? 

Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.

What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.

And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?

Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs


----------



## FA_Q2

sealybobo said:


> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> 
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
Click to expand...

The time horizon is how long these things take to return results.  In the grand scheme of things, 24 years is not long.  In a lifetime, that is very long indeed.  I would love to se the results of a few of these things.  Unfortunately I need to wait a minimum of 24 years to do so.

It would just be nice if it were closer to a few years.  Understand that 24 years is only for a single system that is as close as they get.  For the vast majority of exploration, this simply would not work.  Getting the results from a single system would be damn amazing though.


----------



## sealybobo

FA_Q2 said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The time horizon is how long these things take to return results.  In the grand scheme of things, 24 years is not long.  In a lifetime, that is very long indeed.  I would love to se the results of a few of these things.  Unfortunately I need to wait a minimum of 24 years to do so.
> 
> It would just be nice if it were closer to a few years.  Understand that 24 years is only for a single system that is as close as they get.  For the vast majority of exploration, this simply would not work.  Getting the results from a single system would be damn amazing though.
Click to expand...


Then lets focus on Europa first

Jupiter's moon Europa doesn't look like a particularly inviting place for life to thrive; the icy satellite is nearly 500 million miles (800 million kilometers) from the sun, on average.

But beneath its icy crust lies a liquid ocean with more water than Earth contains. This ocean is shielded from harmful radiation, making Europa one of the solar system's
	
 best bets to host alien life.

That's one of the reasons Europa is so alluring to scientists. It has all the elements thought to be key for the origin of life: water, energy, and organic chemicals, the carbon-containing building blocks of life, scientists said at an event called "The Lure of Europa,"

- See more at: Jupiter's Icy Moon Europa: Best Bet for Alien Life?

Hell, there's life in our solar system probably and we just don't know it yet.

6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in the Solar System - See more at: 6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in Solar System

A lot more moons out there than there are planets.
Why We’re Looking for Alien Life on Moons, Not Just Planets


----------



## FA_Q2

sealybobo said:


> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> 
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> The time horizon is how long these things take to return results.  In the grand scheme of things, 24 years is not long.  In a lifetime, that is very long indeed.  I would love to se the results of a few of these things.  Unfortunately I need to wait a minimum of 24 years to do so.
> 
> It would just be nice if it were closer to a few years.  Understand that 24 years is only for a single system that is as close as they get.  For the vast majority of exploration, this simply would not work.  Getting the results from a single system would be damn amazing though.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Then lets focus on Europa first
> 
> Jupiter's moon Europa doesn't look like a particularly inviting place for life to thrive; the icy satellite is nearly 500 million miles (800 million kilometers) from the sun, on average.
> 
> But beneath its icy crust lies a liquid ocean with more water than Earth contains. This ocean is shielded from harmful radiation, making Europa one of the solar system's
> 
> best bets to host alien life.
> 
> That's one of the reasons Europa is so alluring to scientists. It has all the elements thought to be key for the origin of life: water, energy, and organic chemicals, the carbon-containing building blocks of life, scientists said at an event called "The Lure of Europa,"
> 
> - See more at: Jupiter's Icy Moon Europa: Best Bet for Alien Life?
> 
> Hell, there's life in our solar system probably and we just don't know it yet.
> 
> 6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in the Solar System - See more at: 6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in Solar System
> 
> A lot more moons out there than there are planets.
> Why We’re Looking for Alien Life on Moons, Not Just Planets
Click to expand...

I would love to see some serious research done on Europa (and other possibilities within our own solar system).  I have been an advocate for increasing NASA's budget and scope by a lot for a long time.  

Unfortunately, we seem to be more focused on war than science


----------



## sealybobo

Matthew said:


> Kepler is now recovered and stable.
> 
> Mission Manager Update: Kepler Recovered from Emergency and Stable


NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets.  This is the single largest finding of planets to date.  This more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler and gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth.   

Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent – the minimum required to earn the status of “planet.” An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques. 

Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy.  In the newly-validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this exclusive group.


----------



## HUGGY

sealybobo said:


> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> 
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
Click to expand...



We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.


----------



## FA_Q2

HUGGY said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
Click to expand...

Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.


----------



## sealybobo

FA_Q2 said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SmedlyButler said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RetiredGySgt said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are aware of course that Obama with support of the Democrats stripped NASA of anyway to reach orbit or space? We must hire private enterprise to deliver materials to the space station and must use Russia to send people into space.
> 
> We have no space vehicle and no plans to make another. Ohh did I mention that Obama and the democrats cut NASA's budget to the bone?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where's the money to come from? Oh yeah it's all Obama's fault. How about taking a few billion from the military's 700b.? After all with a Nasa budget of around 17b, 2 or 3b would be a real shot in the arm.Congress got the will to do that? Do you Sarge?
> 
> "A NASA authorization bill drafted by the Republican majority of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology proposes to slash NASA's funding to $16.6 billion for 2014  $300 million less than it received in 2013, and $1.1 billion less than President Obama requested for NASA in 2014. The bill  which authorizes spending levels but provides no actual funding  would roll back NASAs funding to a level $1.2 billion less than its 2012 budget."
> 
> LINK: Space.com
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 2aguy is on another thread trying to make the same argument that liberals hate space travel.
> 
> Clearly the corporations must be eyeballing this and seeing how they can make a fortune ripping us off in space and here
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
Click to expand...

We are such a young species on the cusp of enlightenment. Will we blow ourselves up first?

We go back 7 million years and only in the last 50,000 we've advanced very rapidly but we always suffer setbacks. That's the rich and religions and Kings causing war.


----------



## sealybobo

FA_Q2 said:


> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> 
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
Click to expand...

We will locate a planet that's ripe and send our seed ship to somehow get man there so we can reproduce and populate that planet. Its what humans do. We didn't stay in England we settled the west. I would go.


----------



## FA_Q2

sealybobo said:


> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> 
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> We will locate a planet that's ripe and send our seed ship to somehow get man there so we can reproduce and populate that planet. Its what humans do. We didn't stay in England we settled the west. I would go.
Click to expand...

Yes we will.  I would go in a heartbeat as well.  There is nothing quite like the idea of expanding to a new frontier.  We are explorers by nature - it is built into us.


sealybobo said:


> We are such a young species on the cusp of enlightenment. Will we blow ourselves up first?
> 
> We go back 7 million years and only in the last 50,000 we've advanced very rapidly but we always suffer setbacks. That's the rich and religions and Kings causing war.


I do not know if we will blow ourselves up first or not but I do know that the only way to survive as a species will be to, at one point, expand onto other planets.  

Right now we are dependent on the earth.  When it dies - we die.  Something as simple as a bad solar flare could end the entire human race as we know it.  Once we have moved out of the solar system, we will no longer be dependent on any singular entity or event.


----------



## sealybobo

FA_Q2 said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> 
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> We will locate a planet that's ripe and send our seed ship to somehow get man there so we can reproduce and populate that planet. Its what humans do. We didn't stay in England we settled the west. I would go.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Yes we will.  I would go in a heartbeat as well.  There is nothing quite like the idea of expanding to a new frontier.  We are explorers by nature - it is built into us.
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> We are such a young species on the cusp of enlightenment. Will we blow ourselves up first?
> 
> We go back 7 million years and only in the last 50,000 we've advanced very rapidly but we always suffer setbacks. That's the rich and religions and Kings causing war.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I do not know if we will blow ourselves up first or not but I do know that the only way to survive as a species will be to, at one point, expand onto other planets.
> 
> Right now we are dependent on the earth.  When it dies - we die.  Something as simple as a bad solar flare could end the entire human race as we know it.  Once we have moved out of the solar system, we will no longer be dependent on any singular entity or event.
Click to expand...

1. Any planet we find will one day die too.

2. Maybe we need multiple planet size spacecrafts. That's why I'm excited about mars. Easier to mine asteroids from Mars. Need lots of steel to build a planet size spaceship. Not really a planet but small moon. Hundreds of them. 

3.What about in 10 billion years when the last star in our universe dies? Maybe we will blow ourselves up and that will cause the next big bang. But seriously what happens at the end of our universe? 13 billion down ten billion to go so they say


----------



## FA_Q2

sealybobo said:


> 1. Any planet we find will one day die too.


Irrelevant.  It will not doe at the same time.  Right now we are at the mercy of a single sunspot, asteroid or a million other astrological disasters that we can do nothing about.


> 2. Maybe we need multiple planet size spacecrafts. That's why I'm excited about mars. Easier to mine asteroids from Mars. Need lots of steel to build a planet size spaceship. Not really a planet but small moon. Hundreds of them.


That is a much further off idea and only in the realm of sci-fi.  Not going to say impossible but we have much simpler things to tackle first.


> 3.What about in 10 billion years when the last star in our universe dies? Maybe we will blow ourselves up and that will cause the next big bang. But seriously what happens at the end of our universe? 13 billion down ten billion to go so they say


Who knows.  Who knows what life may look like in that time.  I would doubt we would be able to recognize what we were if we managed to actually stick around that long.  That is a time frame that is mind boggling particularly considering how fast technology moves.


----------



## HUGGY

FA_Q2 said:


> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Matthew said:
> 
> 
> 
> I've given up. I love exploration and seeing this nation leading in science but that is coming to a end. Maybe I'll personally watch China do these things as we go backwards.
> 
> 
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
Click to expand...


It will take a VERY long time to get any appreciable number of people to hop on a space craft and travel possibly for 2 or three generations just so they can have more elbow room.


----------



## sealybobo

HUGGY said:


> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> 
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> It will take a VERY long time to get any appreciable number of people to hop on a space craft and travel possibly for 2 or three generations just so they can have more elbow room.
Click to expand...

As long as they have that hologram room like they did on star trek next generation. Imagine a room where anything you want can happen.


----------



## HUGGY

sealybobo said:


> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> 
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> We will locate a planet that's ripe and send our seed ship to somehow get man there so we can reproduce and populate that planet. Its what humans do. We didn't stay in England we settled the west. I would go.
Click to expand...


Most likely any voyage of that type would require a few generations in time to complete.  Maybe some kind of suspended animation where the participants are "frozen" for the greatest part of the voyage.  It sounds risky to me.  Maybe a rotation of "live" people at the wheel in case the unforeseen happens.  I wouldn't trust 100% in automation for such an endeavor.


----------



## sealybobo

HUGGY said:


> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> 
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> We will locate a planet that's ripe and send our seed ship to somehow get man there so we can reproduce and populate that planet. Its what humans do. We didn't stay in England we settled the west. I would go.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Most likely any voyage of that type would require a few generations in time to complete.  Maybe some kind of suspended animation where the participants are "frozen" for the greatest part of the voyage.  It sounds risky to me.  Maybe a rotation of "live" people at the wheel in case the unforeseen happens.  I wouldn't trust 100% in automation for such an endeavor.
Click to expand...

You made me think what if we had eggs and spirm and robots and baby formula and all the technology for robots to raise the humans once the ship arrives.


----------



## FA_Q2

HUGGY said:


> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.
> 
> Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
> 
> 
> 
> Very interesting.  That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.
> 
> To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> It will take a VERY long time to get any appreciable number of people to hop on a space craft and travel possibly for 2 or three generations just so they can have more elbow room.
Click to expand...

I disagree.  I think you could manage it right now if we had reliable info on another planet and the financial backing.  There are 7 BILLION people on this planet.  Many of them want to do some AMAZINGLY asinine shit.  Traveling to another planet will get plenty of volunteers.  What is missing is the enormous expense that would take and the information that such a trip would yield results.


----------



## HUGGY

sealybobo said:


> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FA_Q2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> HUGGY said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> sealybobo said:
> 
> 
> 
> What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.
> 
> So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?
> 
> Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.
> 
> What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.
> 
> And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?
> 
> Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other  expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> We will locate a planet that's ripe and send our seed ship to somehow get man there so we can reproduce and populate that planet. Its what humans do. We didn't stay in England we settled the west. I would go.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Most likely any voyage of that type would require a few generations in time to complete.  Maybe some kind of suspended animation where the participants are "frozen" for the greatest part of the voyage.  It sounds risky to me.  Maybe a rotation of "live" people at the wheel in case the unforeseen happens.  I wouldn't trust 100% in automation for such an endeavor.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> You made me think what if we had eggs and spirm and robots and baby formula and all the technology for robots to raise the humans once the ship arrives.
Click to expand...


What?  The robots would keep the "ingredients" for human life in liquid nitrogen for the voyage?  What would they do to duplicate a womb?  How would these robots simulate a "birth"?  Seems like raising "normal" human babies would be problematic.  Maybe THAT"S where the hologram environment kicks in to give the children something like a "normal" human experience as the children develop.


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## ScienceRocks

I think humanity should go for it as it preservers our species and makes sure we can't be wiped out if something happens to the earth. But more so, just because we're a species that loves to explore.

Within my opinion, only about 3-4 planets of the 1200 released today get me anywhere near excited. One of them is kind of like kepler 452b  Another is kind of like Kepler 62e.


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## sealybobo

ScienceRocks said:


> http://www.leonarddavid.com/europes-...off-next-year/
> 
> 
> 
> The voyage of Europe’s ExoMars 2016 spacecraft is moving closer to the Red Planet – departing the clean rooms of Thales Alenia Space in Cannes for shipment to Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
> 
> This ExoMars spacecraft is headed for a March 2016 liftoff atop a Proton booster.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *NASA's James Webb Space Telescope gets its first mirror*
> 
> Chris Wood
> November 26, 2015
> 2 PICTURES
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Construction is well under way on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) – the space agency's next generation installation, scheduled to launch in 2018. The instrument is really starting to take shape, with engineers successfully installing the first of 18 mirrors.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...

This Sunday instead of learning about the lord I learned about the James Webb telescope set to be launched in 2020?

What do we know about planets in the habitable zone?  As of right now we don't know if they have life or not, correct?  So there is imo at least a 50 50 chance planets that are in the habitable zone have life.  What that life looks like who knows but life none the less.  

Science is great.


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## sealybobo

ScienceRocks said:


> I think humanity should go for it as it preservers our species and makes sure we can't be wiped out if something happens to the earth. But more so, just because we're a species that loves to explore.
> 
> Within my opinion, only about 3-4 planets of the 1200 released today get me anywhere near excited. One of them is kind of like kepler 452b  Another is kind of like Kepler 62e.


You mean excited as far as us being able to live on them?  I agree.  It'll be great if life is on Europa but that doesn't mean I can go swim there.


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## CrusaderFrank

Why does Saturn's moon Titan have 700mph+ winds?


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## Fort Fun Indiana

CrusaderFrank said:


> Why does Saturn's moon Titan have 700mph+ winds?


You rest. We will look that up for you.


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