SpaceX: Finally a successful liftoff for Falcon9 and Dragon Capsule to ISS!

NASA approves:

SpaceX Launches Falcon 9/Dragon on Historic Mission

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered into space and delivered a Dragon cargo capsule into orbit on May 22, 2012. The launch began an ambitious mission to show that the company is ready to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

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"We're now back on the brink of a new future, a future that embraces the innovation the private sector brings to the table," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "The significance of this day cannot be overstated. While there is a lot of work ahead to successfully complete this mission, we are off to a good start."

Working with an instantaneous launch window, SpaceX, short for Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, Calif., proceeded through a flawless countdown. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida came at 3:44 a.m. EDT, just as the station was crossing 249 miles above the North Atlantic.

"Every bit of adrenaline in my body released at that moment," said Elon Musk about the moment the rocket lifted off the pad. Musk is the founder, CEO and chief designer of SpaceX. "People were really giving it their all. For us, it was like winning the Super Bowl."

The launch came three days after the rocket aborted a previous launch attempt. William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, lauded the company for getting the craft ready for the successful launch.

"They stayed focused and kept moving forward," Gerstenmaier said. "Things are moving in the right direction."

Dragon is carrying about 1,200 pounds of supplies for the crew of the station and experiments designed by students. The spacecraft can hold 7,300 pounds of material for delivery to the station, but since this is a test flight, the manifest was limited to important but not critical materials. Food and clothing make up the bulk of the supplies.

The launch put the Dragon on a course to rendezvous with the space station in three days. A detailed series of navigation and other systems tests will be performed in space before the capsule is allowed to move close enough to the station for astronauts to grab it with the robot arm and connect it to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module.

The tests include a careful approach to the station that calls for the spacecraft to pause several times. The space station crew also will show that they can communicate directly with the uncrewed Dragon capsule. If all the testing goes well, they will go ahead with the rendezvous and berthing.

"There's still a thousand things that have to go right, but we are looking forward to this exciting mission," said Alan Lindemoyer, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program.

The Dragon will remain connected to the station for about three weeks, allowing astronauts to empty it before loading used scientific equipment inside for the return to Earth. Reversing the process of connecting the spacecraft to the station, astronauts will use the robotic arm to remove the Dragon capsule. The Dragon will then de-orbit and return to Earth under parachutes, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.

Steven Siceloff NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center


Source: NASA.gov

NASA's Kepler Mission Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

We're getting there! Finally something really worth posting and getting excited about, after some evil tidings connected to Phobos Grunt and other missions.

NASA article:

NASA's Kepler Mission Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star
12-05-11

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.


(By NASA) This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's habitable zone -- the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. The planet is 2.4 times the size of Earth, making it the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star like our sun.
Scientists do not yet know if the planet has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition. It's possible that the world would have clouds in its atmosphere, as depicted here in the artist's interpretation. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Kepler's results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA's science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe."


(By NASA) Kepler-22b -- Comfortably Circling within the Habitable Zone - This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-22, a star system containing the first "habitable zone" planet discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. The habitable zone is the sweet spot around a star where temperatures are right for water to exist in its liquid form. Liquid water is essential for life on Earth.
Kepler-22's star is a bit smaller than our sun, so its habitable zone is slightly closer in. The diagram shows an artist's rendering of the planet comfortably orbiting within the habitable zone, similar to where Earth circles the sun. Kepler-22b has a yearly orbit of 289 days. The planet is the smallest known to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It's about 2.4 times the size of Earth. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Kepler discovers planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets that cross in front, or "transit," the stars. Kepler requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet.

"Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who led the team that discovered Kepler-22b. "The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third transit over the 2010 holiday season."

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planet candidates the spacecraft finds. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away. While the planet is larger than Earth, its orbit of 290 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our world. The planet's host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type, although it is slightly smaller and cooler.

Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates reported in February 2011, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed. This milestone will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The Kepler team is hosting its inaugural science conference at Ames Dec. 5-9, announcing 1,094 new planet candidate discoveries. Since the last catalog was released in February, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler has increased by 89 percent and now totals 2,326. Of these, 207 are approximately Earth-size, 680 are super Earth-size, 1,181 are Neptune-size, 203 are Jupiter-size and 55 are larger than Jupiter.

The findings, based on observations conducted May 2009 to September 2010, show a dramatic increase in the numbers of smaller-size planet candidates.

Kepler observed many large planets in small orbits early in its mission, which were reflected in the February data release. Having had more time to observe three transits of planets with longer orbital periods, the new data suggest that planets one to four times the size of Earth may be abundant in the galaxy.

The number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates has increased by more than 200 and 140 percent since February, respectively.

There are 48 planet candidates in their star's habitable zone. While this is a decrease from the 54 reported in February, the Kepler team has applied a stricter definition of what constitutes a habitable zone in the new catalog, to account for the warming effect of atmospheres, which would move the zone away from the star, out to longer orbital periods.

"The tremendous growth in the number of Earth-size candidates tells us that we're honing in on the planets Kepler was designed to detect: those that are not only Earth-size, but also are potentially habitable," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif. "The more data we collect, the keener our eye for finding the smallest planets out at longer orbital periods."

NASA's Ames Research Center manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters.


Source: NASA.gov

Let's fuel 2012 doomsday scenarios! How to prevent humanity from a mad asteroid strike.

For a change, let us contemplate about the need of 2012 doomsday defense. No irony intended here, of course.

Article:

To Deflect Killer Asteroids, Humanity Must Work Together

by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 04 October 2011


An artist's illustration of a large asteroid headed for Earth. CREDIT: ESA

PASADENA, Calif. — The biggest obstacle in deflecting a killer asteroid away from Earth may be humanity's inability to get along.

We already have the technological know-how to prevent dangerous space rocks from barreling into our planet, provided we detect them in time. But this vital job would require a great deal of international cooperation, experts say, and history has shown that working together is not our species' strong suit.
"Somebody's got to make the decision to actually mount the deflection, and do it," said former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation, a group dedicated to predicting and preventing catastrophic asteroid impacts on Earth.

"That is not technical, but it's the toughest problem of all," Schweickart said here at the California Institute of Technology on Sept. 28, during a panel discussion called "Moving an Asteroid." [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]

VIDEO: Asteroid Bound - Animated Look at NASA's New Mission


Not if, but when
Our planet has always been pummeled by space rocks. A 6-mile (10-kilometer) asteroid slammed into Earth 65 million years ago, for example, wiping out the dinosaurs.

A potentially civilization-ending asteroid will bear down on Earth at some point, panelists stressed. It's a question of when, not if — and it could happen uncomfortably soon, they said.
Over the eons, asteroids big enough to cause serious damage today (not necessarily the extinction of our species, but disruptions to the global economy and civilizations around the world) have struck Earth every 200 to 300 years, Schweickart said. [5 Reasons to Care About Asteroids]

While the dinosaurs were helpless victims of this death from the sky, 21st-century humans don't have to be.
"What's cool is, we can do something about it," said panelist Bill Nye, executive director of the Planetary Society and former host of the science-themed TV show "Bill Nye the Science Guy."


An artist's impression of a giant space rock slamming into Earth 65 million years ago near what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. A consortium of scientists now says this was indeed what caused the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. CREDIT: NASA/Donald E. Davis

Giving asteroids a push
Humanity has the technical skills to move asteroids in several different ways, panelists said. We can hurl a large body into them, for example, changing their orbit with one dramatic impact.

NASA did just that in 2005, sending a small probe careening into the comet Tempel 1 to determine the icy wanderer's composition. The goal in that case was science rather than planetary defense, but the key is that humanity knows how to do it with today's technology.

Asteroid deflection could also work in more subtle ways.
Scientists could sidle an unmanned spacecraft up next to a potentially dangerous asteroid, then let the duo cruise through space together for months or years. Over time, the probe's modest gravity would tug the asteroid into a different, more benign orbit, Schweickart said.
This so-called "gravity tractor" technique would allow for precise deflection, making it perhaps the most attractive option, provided we have enough lead time.

Scientists know how to do this, too. Various robotic missions have met up with asteroids over the years, with some even landing on or touching the space rocks. Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft even plucked some pieces off one in 2005, then sent the samples back to Earth for analysis.

If we didn't have very much warning time, and if the threatening space rock was too big to just knock around with an impactor, we could try to blast it apart with a nuclear missile. But this option should only be employed as a last resort, as it may end up doing more harm than good, panelists said.
"Momentum is conserved," Nye said. "If you blow it up, then the whole giant spray of rocks is coming at the Earth instead of one."


A concept spacecraft could use gravity to tow asteroids away from a collision course with earth. CREDIT: Dan Durda - FIAAA / B612 Foundation

Global cooperation needed
A potential asteroid strike would represent a global problem that the world would most likely have to tackle together, Schweickart said.
Cost is one issue that would bring nations together, though likely not the main one. A deflection mission might cost $500 million to $1 billion, Schweickart estimated. So it wouldn't exactly break the bank of the United States or another world power, but fairness would still seem to dictate that the costs be shared.

But many countries would want to be involved to make sure their own voices were being heard, and their own interests were being protected.
Say, for example, that an asteroid appeared to be headed for impact in the north Atlantic Ocean. Russia or China might push for a plan to nudge the asteroid to the west, away from them. The goal, of course, would still be to divert the asteroid away from Earth entirely — but Asia might be spared if the mission moved the asteroid a little, but not enough.

Conversely, the United States and Canada might want to move the asteroid in the other direction. [Natural Disasters: Top 10 U.S. Threats]
"That's why this geopolitical issue is very, very sticky," Schweickart said. "We've got to have agreement between nations."

Starting early
Such agreement might be tough to come by, especially since an effective deflection mission would have to be initiated early to have the best chance of success. We'd need lots of lead time, for example, to launch a gravity tractor spacecraft and give it time to tug on the asteroid.

In fact, we'd have to launch the mission before we were absolutely sure that the space rock in question was actually going to strike Earth, according to Schweickart.
"If you wait until you know, it's too late to act," he said.

Schweickart is pushing hard to raise awareness of the asteroid threat, and to convince people of the need to plan accordingly. He's afraid that the world will have a hard time pulling the trigger on a potentially civilization-saving mission.

"The likelihood is, we're going to end up with a big international debate until the day it hits," Schweickart said. "That's the most likely scenario."

Source:  Space.com

Diamond planet discovered - Ka-ching, ladies?

Now would you mind having some nice planet-sized diamond sparkling on your ring finger? Space science is all about the bling.

Article:

Surprise! Alien Planet Made of Diamond Discovered
by Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com Contributor - 25 August 2011


This illustration shows the alien planet around pulsar PSR J1719-1438, where ultra-high pressures caused carbon to crystallize in the remnant of a dead star. The planet is made of diamond and orbits a dense pulsing star with a radius smaller than that of our sun. CREDIT: Swinburne Astronomy Productions

A newly discovered alien planet that formed from a dead star is a real diamond in the rough.

The super-high pressure of the planet, which orbits a rapidly pulsing neutron star, has likely caused the carbon within it to crystallize into an actual diamond, a new study suggests.

The composition of the planet, which is about five times the size of Earth, is not its only outstanding feature. [Illustration of the diamond alien planet]
The planet's parent star is a special kind of flashing star known as a millisecond pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star formed from a supernova. The entire system, which is only the second of its kind ever discovered, is located about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Serpens (The Snake).

A gem of a find
Seventy percent of millisecond pulsars found have a companion, which provides additional energy to ramp up the pulsars' rapid rotation. Generally, this companion is a dying star called a white dwarf; more than 180 millisecond pulsars have been found with white dwarfs over the years.

Theonly planet known to be orbiting in such a system was detected in 1992 — until now."The pulsar was found in December 2009," lead scientist Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, told SPACE.com via email."We've been on the trail of the companion ever since." [The Strangest Alien Planets

Video: Massive diamond plaent orbits neutron star, astronomers find

From the ashes of a supernova
Known as PSR J1719-1438, this particular pulsar completes more than 10,000 rotations in a minute. Tiny and compact, it's only about 12 miles (20 kilometers) across, but it has a mass that is 1.4 times that of our sun.

PSR J1719-1438 transformed from an average star to a radio pulsar when a dying star in a binary system exploded. The compact core of the star formed with a very high rotation speed from the ashes of the supernova.
When the second star in the system reached the end of its life, it expanded as a red giant and finally morphed into a white dwarf. The pulsar began to suck mass off its companion, causing the pulsarto spin faster and faster until it attained its breakneck speed.

From dying star to diamond planet
What happened next depends on the system. Most white dwarfs continue to orbit the new millisecond pulsar, but some are consumed by it.

"The fate depends upon the mass of the white dwarf and how far it is from the pulsar," Bailes said.
If it is both close and massive, the two spiral together. Astronomers assume this is what happened to the 30 percent of millisecond pulsars found without a companion. [Top 10 Star Mysteries]

In the case of the diamond planet, astronomers think that the core of the white dwarf failed to merge completely with its companion.
"When they got very close, the star lost a lot of its matter and moved out to its safe distance of about a solar radius," Bailes said.

Now tiny, having lost more than 99.9 percent of its original mass and no longer engaged in the fusion reactions that drive a star, the dead core is classified as a planet.
Ironically, the star-turned-planet is larger than its sun. With a diameter of about 37,300 miles (60,000 km), it's five times the size of Earth, but 3,000 times larger than the millisecond pulsar it orbits.

The planet itself orbits the pulsar in a little more than two hours. The entire system would fit within the diameter of our sun.
The research was published online in the Aug. 25 edition of the journal Science.

Source: Space.com

Space junk could be tackled by housekeeping spacecraft

The increasing amount of shutdown satellites, telescopes, rockets etc. and their leftovers are becoming more and more of a problem. One way to clean the "space waste dump" might be to send dedicated cleaning satellites removing the debris.

BBC article on the topic:

Space junk could be tackled by housekeeping spacecraft

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News - 9 August 2011

Scientists have proposed a viable solution to the growing problem of space junk.

The idea involves launching a satellite to rendezvous with the largest space debris, such as spent rocket bodies.
The satellite would then affix a propellant kit, driving the debris to its doom in the Earth's atmosphere.


Low-Earth orbit is an increasingly crowded space. Source.

The authors claim the scheme, in the journal Acta Astronautica, could inexpensively remove five to 10 such objects per year of operation.

The scope of the problem is enormous; more than 17,000 objects of a size greater than 10cm reside in low-Earth orbit. But the greater problem on the horizon is that each of the largest of these represents the potential to create thousands more.

"In our opinion the problem is very challenging and it's quite urgent as well," said Marco Castronuovo, the Italian Space Agency researcher who authored the paper.

"The time to act is now; as we go farther in time we will need to remove more and more fragments," he told BBC News.

In 2007, China demonstrated an anti-satellite system, destroying one of its own defunct satellites and creating 2,000 extra bits of debris in the process. More recently, a collision between US and Russian satellites created even more.


Spent rockets represent some of the largest, most dangerous space junk. Source.

What is feared is a kind of chain reaction, called the Kessler syndrome after the Nasa scientist who first described it in 1978, in which fragments hit other fragments which in turn hit more, creating a cloud of debris that will make vast swathes of low-Earth orbit completely unusable.

The debris presents a risk not only to other man-made satellites in orbit, but occasionally also to the International Space Station and manned space missions.

Space politics

The new research identifies more than 60 objects at a height of about 850km, and two thirds of those weigh more than three tonnes each - many moving near a speed of 7.5km/s. Most of these largest threats are spent rocket bodies, and it is there that Dr Castronuovo thinks the effort should begin.

"It's difficult from a political point of view; many of these objects belong to nations that are not willing to co-operate or do not allow access to their objects even if they are at the end of their operative life, and there is no international regulation on who should remove the objects that are left in space," he said.

"If we start concentrating on the spent rocket bodies - which do not have sensitive equipment on board -it should not pose any problem to the owner to give permission to remove them; and there's no doubt they are not operative anymore."

Dr Castronuovo proposes a scheme in which small satellites are deployed on seven-year missions, each with two robotic arms: one to intercept a rocket body or failed satellite and hang on, and another to affix an ion-engine thruster that will drive the debris out of orbit.
The satellites would then release the debris, hopping from one to the next in a choreographed dance with five to ten large objects per year.

"The proximity operations and manoeuvring talked about here is not easy, but the technology is getting there for that; the idea that you go and attach yourself to something in orbit is becoming more credible," said Stuart Eves, principal engineer for Surrey Satellite Technology.
"People have come up with all sorts of daft ideas... that are really science fiction at the moment. Something like this is a lot more practical."
Nevertheless, the greater problem may be political, as any proposal struggles to be seen as a purely aimed at space junk, Dr Castronuovo said.

"This kind of approach could be seen as a threat to operative systems; if you have the power to go to an object in space and pull it down, nothing prevents you from going to an operative satellite and pulling it down, so it's really a delicate matter."


Source: BBC News

DNA in space? Biological building blocks found in meteorites!

New evidence life on Earth may have come from space objects like meteorites or comets?

Time Article:

SPACE
DNA scraps found in meteorites

By Michael D. Lemonick Thursday - Aug. 11, 2011

Scientists have been finding evidence of life inside meteorites for well over 100 years — that, or the building blocks of life. The claims of life have been debunked every time, most recently just this past March. It always turns out to be a wishful interpretation of chemicals, minerals and tiny structures inside the meteorite that could be the fossilized husks of long-dead bacteria — but almost certainly aren't.


Meteorites contain a large variety of nucleobases, an essential building block of DNA. Credit: Chris Smith / NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The building blocks, though, have proved a lot more convincing. As far back as the 1960s, it was clear that amino acids, which link up to form proteins, can and do form in space. And now scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., are claiming that another set of molecules crucial to life have also rained down on Earth: adenine and guanine, two of the four so-called nucleobases that, along with cytosine and thymine, form the rungs of DNA's ladder-like structure. (See pictures of meteors that fell from the sky.)

By itself, that wouldn't mean much, says Michael Callahan, lead author of a new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "People have been finding nucleobases in meteorites since the late 1960s," he says. But they've always been among the handful of nucleobases common to organisms on Earth, so contamination on the ground after the meteorite landed has been the most likely explanation. "When I picked up on this research," says Callahan, a chemist with Goddard's Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory, "I was convinced that it was all contamination."

But once he and his collaborators got hold of samples from 12 meteorites that had landed mostly in Antarctica and ran them through the lab's liquid chromatograph and mass spectrometer, they discovered all sorts of other molecules — substances that were similar in structure but not biologically useful. That was a surprise; if a meteorite picked up its biological traces on the ground, the adenine and guanine would have been accompanied by other, equally familiar molecules — not these substances that were not quite nucleobases but not quite not either. (See TIME's photo-essay "The Hubble Telescope's Greatest Hits.")

"That," says Callahan, "argues against the idea that someone sneezed on the meteorites." Another argument against earthly contamination is that when the scientists took samples of ice and soil from the sites where the meteorites were found, they saw the usual terrestrial mix of organic molecules but not their nonbiological cousins. If the molecules came from the landing sites rather than from space, you'd expect to see the nonbiological cousins as well.

A third line of evidence comes from the fact that life-related substances are common in space. Hydrogen cyanide, ammonia and water — critical to building biology — are known to exist throughout the cosmos, and when you mix them together in a lab, says Callahan, "it's pretty easy to make nucleobases." It's not even a little bit of a stretch to imagine that the same processes could happen on, or in, a meteorite. It's also at least plausible that life would never have arisen on our planet without a liberal dose of space chemicals, delivered to Earth on a barrage of meteorites billions of years ago. (See "Space Discovery: Asteroids May Have Served as Incubators of Life.")

The new research doesn't address the question of panspermia, the not entirely crazy idea that life arrived on our planet fully formed as viruses or bacteria that developed on another world. If that turns out to be the case — if we find microbes on Mars or on a meteorite, for example, with DNA identical to ours — we might face the disturbing fact that we're the contamination on a formerly pristine planet.

What the new research does is reinforce an idea that astronomers and biologists — and, increasingly, the people who call themselves astrobiologists — find very convincing: since the raw materials of life are common in the universe, and since we now know that planets are common as well, it's hard to imagine how the Milky Way could not be teeming with life. Our species may continue to be special in a lot of ways — but perhaps a little less so than we thought.


Source: TIME health magazine

Perseids meteor shower - great time to gaze into space!

The night of Friday, August 12 into the early morning of Saturday, August 13 will certainly be the best time of the year to watch meteor showers. Everyone, get your telescopes out of the garret!

Article:

Stay 'Up All Night' to Watch the Perseids!

08.12.11 - NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama

Looking for a good reason to enjoy an August evening? This year's Perseid meteor shower peaks on the night of Friday, Aug. 12 and into the early morning of Saturday, Aug 13. The Perseids are considered the best meteor shower of the year by many, but with the full moon washing out all but the brightest meteors, rates will probably only be 20-30 per hour at most -- weather permitting. The Perseids rate in the southern hemisphere is quite a bit lower, since the Perseid radiant doesn't climb above the horizon.


Perseid meteor shower. Image credit: NASA / Michael Menefee. Full resolution.

Watch the Perseids! Live Video/Audio Feed

A live video/audio feed of the Perseid shower will be embedded below on the night of the chat. The camera is mounted at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. During the day, you'll see a dark gray box -- the camera is light-activated and will turn on at dusk each evening. At night you'll see white points, or stars, on a black background. You can also access these links to more all sky cameras to have other views of the sky.

Before the camera activates, you can still hear the audio of meteors passing through the sky, creating blips, pings and whistles. The meteors themselves don't make sounds, but they ionize the air around them as they burn up. These ionized air molecules reflect radio waves back to our antenna.

More About the Perseids

The Perseids have been observed for at least 2,000 years and are associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. Each year in August, the Earth passes through a cloud of the comet's debris. These bits of ice and dust -- most over 1,000 years old -- burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. The Perseids can be seen all over the sky, but the best viewing opportunities will be across the northern hemisphere. Those with sharp eyes will see that the meteors appear to radiate from the direction of the constellation Perseus.


Source: nasa.gov

Oxygen molecules discovered in deep space for first time

After even organic molecules containing ethyl alcohol can be observed in deep space, it does not come as a surprise there also is oxygen.

Article:

Oxygen Molecules Discovered in Deep Space for First Time

Date: 01 August 2011 - SPACE.com Staff

Astronomers can finally breathe a sigh of relief: A team of scientists has discovered the first oxygen molecules in deep space, capping a nearly 230-year search for the elusive cosmic molecule.


The Herschel space telescope found the molecules in a dense patch of gas and dust adjacent to star-forming regions in the Orion nebula. CREDIT: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech / space.com

The oxygen molecules were detected in a star-forming region of the Orion nebula, roughly 1,500 light-years from Earth, by the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory. The observatory used its large telescope and infrared detectors to hone in on the species, which is thought to be common in the cosmos, but has so far been hard to find.

Individual atoms of oxygen (called atomic oxygen) are common in space, particularly around massive stars. But molecular oxygen, which is formed of two bonded oxygen atoms and makes up about 20 percent of the air we breathe on Earth, has eluded astronomers until now.

"Oxygen gas was discovered in the 1770s, but it's taken us more than 230 years to finally say with certainty that this very simple molecule exists in space," Paul Goldsmith, NASA's Herschel project scientist at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. Goldsmith is lead author of a recent paper describing the findings in the Astrophysical Journal. [Spectacular Photos of Nebulas in Deep Space]

Astronomers searched for the elusive oxygen molecules in space for decades using balloons, as well as ground- and space-based telescopes. The Swedish Odin telescope spotted the molecule in 2007, but the detection could not be confirmed. The discovery by the Herschel team has been confirmed, cementing the existence of molecular oxygen in space.


The squiggly lines, or spectra, reveal the signatures of oxygen molecules, detected in the Orion nebula by the Hershel Space Observatory. CREDIT: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech / space.com

Goldsmith and his colleagues suggest that oxygen is actually locked up in water ice that coats tiny dust grains. They think the oxygen detected by Herschel in the Orion nebula was formed after starlight warmed the icy grains, releasing water, which was converted into oxygen molecules.

"This explains where some of the oxygen might be hiding," said Goldsmith. "But we didn't find large amounts of it, and still don't understand what is so special about the spots where we find it. The universe still holds many secrets."

The researchers plan to continue their hunt for oxygen molecules in other star-forming regions.

"Oxygen is the third most common element in the universe and its molecular form must be abundant in space," said Bill Danchi, Herschel program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Herschel is proving a powerful tool to probe this unsolved mystery. The observatory gives astronomers an innovative tool to look at a whole new set of wavelengths where the tell-tale signature of oxygen may be hiding."

Source: space.com

Liquid flowing water discovered on Mars

Could we take a bath once we managed to land a manned capsule on Mars? Recent observations show evidence for possible liquid water on the planetary surface. Now thath probably comes quite unexpected and might be another indicator life could exist somewhere on Mars.

Water Flows Discovered on Mars

Link & HD version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBam6B9wrdI

Article by NASA:

Warm-Season Flows on Slope in Martian Newton Crater
This series of images shows warm-season features that might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today. Evidence for that possible interpretation is presented in a report by McEwen et al. in the Aug. 5, 2011, edition of Science.

These images come from observations of Newton crater, at 41.6 degrees south latitude, 202.3 degrees east longitude, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In time, the series spans from early spring of one Mars year to mid-summer of the following year. The images have been adjusted to correct those taken from oblique angles to show how the scene would look from directly overhead.

The features that extend down the slope during warm seasons are called recurring slope lineae. They are narrow (one-half to five yards or meters wide), relatively dark markings on steep (25 to 40 degree) slopes at several southern hemisphere locations. Repeat imaging by HiRISE shows the features appear and incrementally grow during warm seasons and fade in cold seasons. They extend downslope from bedrock outcrops, often associated with small channels, and hundreds of them form in rare locations. They appear and lengthen in the southern spring and summer from 48 degrees to 32 degrees south latitudes favoring equator-facing slopes. These times and places have peak surface temperatures from about 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit to 80 degree above zero Fahrenheit (about 250 to 300 Kelvin). Liquid brines near the surface might explain this activity, but the exact mechanism and source of the water are not understood.

The series is timed to dwell two seconds on the first and last frames and one second on intermediate frames, though network or computer performance may cause this to vary.


This image combining orbital imagery with 3-D modeling shows flows that appear in spring and summer on a slope inside Mars' Newton crater. Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona / space.com / Full resolution

Other imagery related to these new findings from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/gallery/gallery-index.html.

The legend on each image gives the exact HiRISE observation number (e.g. ESP_011428_1380 for the first image) so that additional image products from the observation and information about the observation can be found on the HiRISE website (e.g., the first image of the series is from ESP_011428_1380, at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_011428_1380).

The legend also marks the Mars year and seasonal identifier (Ls) for each image. The Mars years begin with the first years of Mars exploration by robot spacecraft. This sequence includes images from Mars Year 29 and Mars Year 30. Ls stands for longitude of the sun, dividing the year into 360 degrees to mark the seasons. Ls = 180 is the beginning of southern spring, Ls = 270 is the beginning of southern summer, and Ls = 360 (or 0) is the beginning of southern autumn.

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft.


Source: nasa.gov

Scientists invent heat-regulating building materials

Materials research is progressing rapidly nowadays. Building structures could profit from self-regulating materials soon, making buildings far more efficient and ecological.

Article:

Scientists Invent Heat-Regulating Building Material

ScienceDaily - August 4, 2011

A new material that can retain and release heat according to specific temperature requirements could make a significant difference to the cost of heating and cooling buildings, scientists say.

Researchers based at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) believe their invention -- which could be used in existing structures as well as new builds -- could offer considerable energy savings. The novel non-deformed energy storage phase change material (PCM) has the unique advantage of possessing a larger energy storage capacity with faster thermal response than existing materials and could be cheaply manufactured.


Could future buildings be a lot more energy efficient thanks to heat-regulating materials?
This visualization shows the proposed Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. An article about this 1000m+ skyscraper will follow soon. Source: worldarchitecturenews.com

If, for example, the required optimum temperature in a room is 22°C, the material can be fixed so that it starts absorbing any excess heat above that temperature.

The heat-regulating material, devised by researchers at the University's Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies, could be applied anywhere, from walls and roofs to wallpaper.

The material looks like a circular tablet with the circumference of a large coin in the laboratory. It can be manufactured in a variety of shapes and sizes, including so small that it can be sprayed as an unobtrusive microscopic film to surfaces.

The building material was recently awarded a patent application approval in China and patent applications are in the pipeline in other countries.

The scientists responsible for the breakthrough are project leader Professor Jo Darkwa, who is Director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies, Research Associate Oliver Su and, PhD student Tony Zhou.

Professor Darkwa said: "The construction industry produces more carbon emissions than any other industry in the world -- even more than aviation. In China, the building sector is one of the highest energy consuming sectors, accounting for about 30 per cent of total energy usage and also a significant proportion of pollutant emissions.

"This material, if widely used, could make a major impact in the world's efforts to reduce carbon emission."

The basic structure of the material has to be engineered for a specific temperature before it is used. The next developmental steps will include creating material which can be used for both heating and cooling applications.

"The material won't make air-conditioners obsolete, because you still need an air conditioner to control humidity and air movement. This material purely reduces the amount of excessive heat energy in a room," said Professor Darkwa.

The University is looking to develop the material further as well as commercialise it and already has a number of sponsors and partners involved in the research, including the Ningbo Science and Technology Bureau -- which provided important funding and support for the initial two-year research -- and private companies based in China.

The material could potentially save up to 35 per cent of energy in a building and scientists believe it could also be used in solar panels and LED (light-emitting diode) lighting to enhance the efficiency of these alternative energy-generating technologies.

In October, UNNC will be the site of China's second international symposium on low carbon buildings when scientists, researchers, government officials and practitioners will gather to present and discuss recent research outputs and demonstration projects.

The research project was supported through grants from organisations that including the Ningbo government, KK Chung Educational Group, Hong Kong-based Sustainable Sourcing Ltd and China's Suntech Ltd.


Source: ScienceDaily

Earth may once have had two moons

Astonishing discoveries all over lately. Exciting times for space science!

Article:

Earth may once have had two moons
3 August 2011 - By Matt McGrath Science reporter, BBC World Service

A new theory suggests the Earth once had a small second moon that perished in a slow motion collision with its "big sister".
Researchers suggest the collision may explain the mysterious mountains on the far side of our Moon.
The scientists say the relatively slow speed of the crash was crucial in adding material to the rarely-seen lunar hemisphere.


The collision would have occurred at a relatively low speed (2.4 km/s), say the scientists. Image source: Spiegel Online.

Details have been published in the journal Nature.

The researchers involved hope that data from two US space agency (Nasa) lunar missions will substantiate or challenge their theory within the next year.

For decades, scientists have been trying to understand why the near side of the Moon - the one visible from Earth - is flat and cratered while the rarely-seen far side is heavily cratered and has mountain ranges higher than 3,000m.


Collision of the Moon with a second, smaller moon. Around 100 million years after development of the Earth-Moon system. The smaller moon gets "absorbed" by the Far Side of the Moon. The graphic shows snapshots of this process (time in hours). Source: Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) of Universität Bern / astronews.com.

Various theories have been proposed to explain what's termed the lunar dichotomy. One suggests that tidal heating, caused by the pull of the Earth on the ocean of liquid rock that once flowed under the lunar crust, may have been the cause.

But this latest paper proposes a different solution: a long-term series of cosmic collisions.

The researchers argue that the Earth was struck about four billion years ago by another planet about the size of Mars. This is known as the global-impact hypothesis. The resulting debris eventually coalesced to form our Moon.

Slow-motion impact

But the scientists say that another, smaller lunar body may have formed from the same material and become stuck in a gravitational tug of war between the Earth and the Moon.

Dr Martin Jutzi from the University of Bern, Switzerland, is one of the authors of the paper. He explained: "When we look at the current theory there is no real reason why there was only one moon.

"And one outcome of our research is that the new theory goes very well with the global impact idea."

After spending millions of years "stuck", the smaller moon embarked on a collision course with its big sister, slowly crashing into it at a velocity of less than three kilometres per second - slower than the speed of sound in rocks.

Dr Jutzi says it was a low velocity crash: "It was a rather gentle collision at around 2.4km per second; lower than the speed of sound - that's important because it means no huge shocks or melting was produced.

At the time of the smash, the bigger moon would have had a "magma ocean" with a thin crust on top.

The scientists argue that the impact would have led to the build-up of material on the lunar crust and would also have redistributed the underlying magma to the near side of the moon, an idea backed up by observations from Nasa's Lunar Prospector spacecraft.

In a commentary, Dr Maria Zuber from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, US, suggests that while the new study "demonstrates plausibility rather than proof", the authors "raise the legitimate possibility that after the giant impact our Earth perhaps fleetingly possessed more than one moon".

The researchers believe one way of proving their theory is to compare their models with the detailed internal structure of the moon that will be obtained by Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

They will also be looking to high resolution gravity mapping set to be carried out next year by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission.

But according to Dr Jutzi the scientists would prefer to get their hands on samples from the far side of the Moon to prove their theory.

"Hopefully in future, a sample return or a manned mission would certainly help to say more about which theory is more probable."


The Far Side of the Moon. Image source: NASA.
Some facts:
* It takes the Moon about the same amount of time to rotate on its axis as it does to complete an orbit of the Earth
* This is known as "synchronous rotation" and explains why the Moon always presents its familiar near side to Earth
* The near side is covered in smooth, dark lunar maria (Latin for "seas") created by magma erupting on the surface
* The far side is more rugged, with a thicker crust pock-marked by impact craters; the highest point on the Moon is located on the far side
* In 1959, the USSR's unmanned spacecraft Luna 3 became the first to photograph the far side; many of the features have been given Soviet names


Source: bbc.co.uk

I, Robot? A robot that can learn, think and act by itself!

Robotic technology is progressing really fast these days. The Tokyo Institute of Technology now came up with something really impressive: An intelligent humanoid robot, capable of learning and decision-making in a real environment.

Video documentary by DigInfo TV:

Link & HD video: YouTube

Perhaps there will be a need to implement the Three Laws of Robotics by Isaac Asimov soon - or to rethink them.

An article covering the recent breakthrough:

AUGUST 1, 2011 3:20 PM PDT
Japanese robot pours fake drinks with fake ice

Japanese researchers are developing a robot that can adapt its behavior to new situations and make educated guesses about new challenges based on its knowledge.

Tokyo Institute of Technology's Osamu Hasegawa and collaborators are working on a robot that operates based on an algorithm they've termed a self-organizing incremental neural network (SOINN), which is designed for unsupervised learning tasks.


The robot of the TIOT. Credit: Video screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET

The humanoid bot has a head, cameras, and two arms. In an experiment, when it's told to serve water, it can identify a cup, grasp it and then pour pellets, acting as the liquid, into the cup.
As seen in the video, the experiment isn't exactly mind-blowing. But practical artificial intelligence that works in real-world situations will require robots like this one to be able to figure out what a cup is, and how to pour water.

The SOINN system can filter useful sensory data from background noise, as well as mine the Internet and the experiences of other robots for knowledge. Hasegawa gave the example of an elder-care robot in Japan querying another in England on how to make tea.


German cooking robot PR2 paired with Rosie, preparing a Bavarian breakfast. Credit: Technical University Munich.

The idea of globally networked robots querying each other for how-to tips could gain traction with the advent of Willow Garage's open-source ROS operating system (see: PR2, German robot make breakfast of champions) - which is powering bots around the world. Let's just hope they don't get any dangerous ideas.

Source: news.cnet.com

Look, we have a chaser! Trojan asteroid sharing Earth's orbit

NASA's WISE mission (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) made an astonishing discovery: The Earth has an asteroid following its orbit!

Article:

NASA's WISE Mission Finds First Trojan Asteroid Sharing Earth's Orbit

PASADENA, Calif. - 27-7-11
Astronomers studying observations taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission have discovered the first known "Trojan" asteroid orbiting the sun along with Earth.


This artist's concept illustrates the first known Earth Trojan asteroid, discovered by WISE. The asteroid is gray and its extreme orbit is shown in green. Image credit: Paul Wiegert, University of Western Ontario, Canada. Source, full screen & caption: NASA

Trojans are asteroids that share an orbit with a planet near stable points in front of or behind the planet. Because they constantly lead or follow in the same orbit as the planet, they never can collide with it. In our solar system, Trojans also share orbits with Neptune, Mars and Jupiter. Two of Saturn's moons share orbits with Trojans.

Scientists had predicted Earth should have Trojans, but they have been difficult to find because they are relatively small and appear near the sun from Earth's point of view.

"These asteroids dwell mostly in the daylight, making them very hard to see," said Martin Connors of Athabasca University in Canada, lead author of a new paper on the discovery in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature. "But we finally found one, because the object has an unusual orbit that takes it farther away from the sun than what is typical for Trojans. WISE was a game-changer, giving us a point of view difficult to have at Earth's surface."

The WISE telescope scanned the entire sky in infrared light from January 2010 to February 2011. Connors and his team began their search for an Earth Trojan using data from NEOWISE, an addition to the WISE mission that focused in part on near-Earth objects, or NEOs, such as asteroids and comets. NEOs are bodies that pass within 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) of Earth's path around the sun. The NEOWISE project observed more than 155,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and more than 500 NEOs, discovering 132 that were previously unknown.


Asteroid 2010 TK7 is circled in green, in this single frame taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA. Source, full screen & caption: NASA

The team's hunt resulted in two Trojan candidates. One called 2010 TK7 was confirmed as an Earth Trojan after follow-up observations with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

The asteroid is roughly 1,000 feet (300 meters) in diameter. It has an unusual orbit that traces a complex motion near a stable point in the plane of Earth's orbit, although the asteroid also moves above and below the plane. The object is about 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) from Earth. The asteroid's orbit is well-defined and for at least the next 100 years, it will not come closer to Earth than 15 million miles (24 million kilometers). An animation showing the orbit is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=103550791.

"It's as though Earth is playing follow the leader," said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Earth always is chasing this asteroid around."

A handful of other asteroids also have orbits similar to Earth. Such objects could make excellent candidates for future robotic or human exploration. Asteroid 2010 TK7 is not a good target because it travels too far above and below the plane of Earth's orbit, which would require large amounts of fuel to reach it.

"This observation illustrates why NASA's NEO Observation program funded the mission enhancement to process data collected by WISE," said Lindley Johnson, NEOWISE program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We believed there was great potential to find objects in near-Earth space that had not been seen before."

NEOWISE data on orbits from the hundreds of thousands of asteroids and comets it observed are available through the NASA-funded International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

JPL manages and operates WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. The mission was selected under NASA's Explorers Program, which is managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah.

The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more WISE information visit: nasa.gov/wise.


Source: nasa.gov

Howdy, P4! You are Pluto's moon number 4!

The Hubble Space Telescope just revealed that Pluto obviously has a fourth moon, that remained undiscovered until now. It was provisorily called "P4" by astronomers (Wiki article). This is just another sign how little we know about our own solar system so far - and how many great discoveries may remain for us out there!

Pluto Moon P4 in its orbit:

Two labeled images of the Pluto system, released on July 20, 2011, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 ultraviolet visible instrument with newly discovered fourth moon P4 circled. The image on the left was taken on June 28, 2011. The image of the right was taken on July 3, 2011. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI institute) - Full Size.

Article:

Pluto Has Another Moon, Hubble Photos Reveal

Date: 20 July 2011 Time: 09:35 AM ET - SPACE.com Staff

A tiny new moon has been discovered around Pluto, the fourth and smallest one yet found orbiting the dwarf planet, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal.
The moon, which has been temporarily named P4, was spotted in a Hubble survey searching for rings around Pluto.

The tiny satellite is estimated to be between 8 and 21 miles (13 to 34 kilometers) wide. For comparison, Pluto's largest moon Charon is 648 miles (1,043 km) across. The dwarf planet's other moons, Nix and Hydra, range between 20 to 70 miles across (32 to 113 km). [Photo of Pluto's new moon]
"I find it remarkable that Hubble's cameras enabled us to see such a tiny object so clearly from a distance of more than 3 billion miles (5 billion km)," Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. said in a statement. Showalter led this observational survey with Hubble.


Illustration of the Pluto Satellite System orbits with newly discovered moon P4 highlighted. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

New moon around Pluto
Pluto's new moon is located between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, which Hubble also discovered in 2005. Charon was discovered in 1978 at the U.S. Naval Observatory and was first resolved using Hubble in 1990 as a separate body from Pluto.

The finding is a result of ongoing work to support NASA's New Horizons mission, which is scheduled to fly through the Pluto system in 2015. The mission is designed to provide new insights about worlds at the edge of our solar system.
Hubble's photos of Pluto's surface and the discovery of its satellites have been invaluable for planning for New Horizons' close encounter.
"This is a fantastic discovery," said New Horizons' principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "Now that we know there's another moon in the Pluto system, we can plan close-up observations of it during our flyby."

Pluto's moon system
The dwarf planet's entire moon system is believed to have formed by a collision between Pluto and another planet-sized body early in the history of the solar system. The galactic smashup flung material that combined into the family of satellites observed around Pluto.

Our own moon is thought to have been created by a similar collision between Earth and a Mars-sized body 4.4 billion years ago. Lunar rocks that were returned to Earth from the Apollo missions led to this theory, and scientists think material blasted off Pluto's moons by micrometeoroid impacts may form rings around the dwarf planet.
So far, Hubble's photographs have yet to show any such rings, but the detection of P4 shows that big discoveries can sometimes be unexpected.

"This surprising observation is a powerful reminder of Hubble's ability as a general purpose astronomical observatory to make astounding, unintended discoveries," Jon Morse, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
P4 was first seen in a photo taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on June 28. It was confirmed in subsequent Hubble pictures taken on July 3 and July 18. The moon was not seen in earlier Hubble images because the exposure times were shorter.

There is a chance that P4 appeared as a very faint smudge in images from 2006, but was overlooked because it appeared obscured, scientists said.
Pluto was discovered in 1930, but its planethood was thrown into question when the International Astronomical Union came up with a new definition of "planet" in 2006. That year, Pluto was demoted to the status of "dwarf planet," a newly created category to describe many other objects in the Kiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune.

Source: space.com

Welcome back, Space Shuttle Atlantis!

The Space Shuttle Atlantis has landed and thus completed its final mission, STS-135. This is the end of the Space Shuttle era, but of course not the end of manned spaceflight.
Rather a beginning, a new era. We will see a lot of new exciting missions leaping ahead in the future, such as Mars Science Laboratory. For this mission, NASA just approved that the Gale Crater on the Mars surface will be the target for Curiosity, the new Mars rover. Information about this can be obtained here.

Space Shuttle Atlantis Final Landing, mission STS-135 comes to its end on July 21, 2011.

Link. Video description: Space shuttle Atlantis final landing and touch down.The STS-135 crew touched the space shuttle Atlantis down at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida just before dawn on July 21, 2011, wrapping up the final mission STS-135 of the 30-year NASA space shuttle program. A moment marked in history of the final landing of the NASA space shuttle Atlantis.

BBC article on the topic.

Photos of Space Shuttle Atlantis and ISS during STS-135:

Final sunrise above Atlantis seen from ISS in space

Source & full resolution: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Aurora Australis (polar lights) and Space Shuttle Atlantis as seen from ISS

Source & full resolution: foxcrawl.com


Source & full resolution: tomsastroblog.com

An older photo showing Space Shuttle Atlantis departing from the International Space Station, November 25 2009 as seen from ISS (STS-129, Expedition 21)

Source: luckybogey.wordpress.com / Full resolution

Atlantis approaching ISS on November 18, 2009. With blue Mother Earth making a beautiful background.

Source: luckybogey.wordpress.com / Full resolution


The landing of Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 2011:

Source & full resolution & more: BBC


Source & full resolution: Tucson Sentinel / NASA


Source & full resolution: miteredcode.com

The audience.

Source & full resolution: BBC

After sun rises.

Source & full resolution: BBC


And, as a bonus for all ISS/Shuttle/space fans: Space Shuttle Discovery time lapse video in HD!


By NASA Goddard Photo and Video. Flickr page with descriptions and HD view.

Houston, we have feedback from 4 Vesta!

The asteroid mission DAWN is now delivering closeup images of the asteroid 4 Vesta.


Source: NASA / Wiki - Full resolution (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on July 17, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 9,500 miles (15,000 kilometers) away from the protoplanet Vesta. Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 0.88 miles (1.4 kilometers). Vesta has a mean diameter of 529 km.

Article by space.com:

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has beamed home the first close-up photo of the huge asteroid Vesta, just days after entering orbit around the distant space rock.
The new photo, which Dawn snapped for navigation purposes on Sunday (July 17), shows Vesta in greater detail than ever before, researchers said. Astronomers have been observing the gigantic space rock for 200 years, first with ground telescopes and later orbiting observatories, but have never been able to see it so clearly, they added.

"We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system," said Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell, of UCLA, in a statement. [Photos: See the first close-up photos of Vesta]
"This region of space has been ignored for far too long. So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta's history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons," Russell added.


This composite image shows the comparative sizes of eight asteroids. Until now, Lutetia, with a diameter of 81 miles (130 kilometers), was the largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft, which occurred during a flyby. Vesta, which is also considered a protoplanet because it's a large body that almost became a planet, dwarfs all other small bodies in this image, with diameter of approximately 330 miles (530 km). CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA/ESA


Read more: NASA Spacecraft Snaps First Close-Up Photo of Huge Asteroid Vesta

From Dusk till DAWN: Going to Vesta, the big asteroid

NASA's Dawn Asteroid Mission now reaches the level of recognizable visual results and interesting explorations.

We now get to see more of the 2nd largest asteroid in the Asteroid Belt:

Source: NASA (with article)

Image description by behindtheblack.com:
Another image of Vesta from Dawn has been released. This image was taken on July 9 from a distance of 26,000 miles away. It is definitely an improvement over the previous image, with more small details becoming visible. However, I once again wonder about the softness of the image. Look at the limb of the planet. It is soft against the black sky. This is not what one would expect from perfectly focused camera. Dawn goes into orbit around Vesta next week.

An info graphic on the DAWN mission for exploring Vesta: How NASA's Dawn Asteroid Mission works (space.com)