Space

Wired | A moon probe has found millions of tons of water on the moon’s north pole, NASA reported Monday. The vast source of water could one day be used to generate oxygen or sustain a moon base.

A NASA radar aboard India’s Chandrayaan-I lunar orbiter found 40 craters, ranging in size from 1 to 9 miles across, with pockets of ice. Scientists estimate at least 600 million tons of ice could be entombed in these craters.

The radar, called the Mini-SAR, sends pulses of left-polarized radio waves out to measure the surface roughness of the moon. While smooth surfaces send back a reversed, right-polarized wave, rough areas return left-polarized waves.

Ice, which is transparent to radio waves, also sends back left-polarized waves. The Mini-SAR measures the ratio of left to right circular polarized power sent back, or the circular polarized ratio (CPR). However, a high CPR alone can’t distinguish between rough patches and regions with ice.

The north pole craters had a high CPR on the inside, with a low CPR on the edges. That suggests a material enclosed in the craters, rather than surface roughness, caused the high CPR signal. According to NASA, the ice would have to be relatively pure ice and at least several feet thick to give this signature.

In November, NASA crashed a probe into the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole and also found evidence of water.

An Interview with Propulsion Physicist Marc Millis

Surfdaddy Orca

H+ Magazine | Marc Millis, former head of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, has designed ion thrusters, electronics for rocket monitoring, cryogenic propellant equipment, and even a cockpit display to guide free-fall aircraft flights. His recent retirement after nearly 30 years with NASA has freed him to devote full time to his Tau Zero Foundation, “using the dream of reaching other worlds as both a long-range goal and a catalyst for near-term progress.”

Millis and h+ Editor-in-Chief RU Sirius met during separate TEDxBrussels 2009 presentations — Millis’ talk dealt with finding and reaching habitable worlds while RU, naturally, talked about transhumanism. Here’s a video of Millis’ TEDx presentation:



Millis’ book, Frontiers of Propulsion Science, is a compendium on where things are with the science of space drives, warp drives, gravity control, and faster-than-light travel. It’s really a graduate-level text for someone with a substantial math and physics background. He says that one of his hopes now that he’s retired from NASA is to make the time to write a public companion version of the book with more artwork and simpler language to help convey the concepts.

Known for his level-headed, peer-reviewed thinking on such complex topics as hyperspace, quantum tunneling, and space colonization, Millis took time out to speak with h+ on a variety of topics including Alpha Centari, space and time travel paradoxes, space sails, the future of NASA’s space programs, Mars, space elevators, scramjets, and orbiting hotels.

Read full article

London Telegraph | Lord Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society and astronomer to the Queen, said the existence of extra terrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.

He made the remarks shortly after hosting the national science academy’s first conference on the possibility of alien life.

“They could be staring us in the face and we just don’t recognise them. The problem is that we’re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology,” he said.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there as aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

Lord Rees used the conference in January, entitled The Detection of Extra-terrestrial Life and the Consequences for Science and Society, to ask whether the discovery of aliens would cause terror or delight on earth.

He told Prospect magazine that improved telescopes made the chance of finding extra-terrestrial life “better than ever”.

But Dr Frank Drake, the world’s leading “ET hunter”, told the conference that satellite TV and the “digital revolution” was making humanity invisible to aliens by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space.

At present, the Earth is surrounded by a 50 light year-wide "shell" of radiation from analogue TV, radio and radar transmissions. But although the signals have spread far enough to reach many nearby star systems, they are rapidly vanishing in the wake of digital technology, according to Dr Drake.

The scientist, who founded the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence organisation in the United States, said digital TV signals would look like noise to a race of observing aliens.

There are no ‘black holes’, there is no ‘dark matter’, comets are not ‘dirty snowballs’, the sun is not a ‘nuclear furnace’, and the origins of world mythology are not primitive invention but can be directly linked to deep space exploration and leading-edge experiments in plasma physics.

Recent discoveries in space have amazed and perplexed scientists. Current popular theories in the sciences can neither predict nor explain the phenomena we are now observing. In THE THUNDERBOLTS PROJECT, American mythologist David Talbott and Australian physicist Wallace Thornhill and their associates propose a new theory which can both predict and explain these phenomena.

5,000 year old rock art, the origins of world mythology, planetary history, spectacular nebular forms in deep space, and high energy electric discharges in the plasma laboratory – all are inextricably linked by the Electric Model. In an extraordinary synthesis of the scientific disciplines THE THUNDERBOLTS PROJECT presents us with an astonishing new perspective on ancient history and leading-edge astronomy.

http://www.thunderboltsproject.com/home.html



Plasma Galaxies

Many of astronomy's most fundamental mysteries find their resolution in plasma behavior. Why do cosmic bodies spin, asked the distinguished astronomer Fred Hoyle, in summarizing the unanswered questions. Plasma experiments show that rotation is a natural function of interacting electric currents in plasma. Currents can pinch matter together to form rotating stars and galaxies. A good example is the ubiquitous spiral galaxy, a predictable configuration of a cosmic-scale discharge. Computer models of two current filaments interacting in a plasma have, in fact, reproduced fine details of spiral galaxies, where the gravitational schools must rely on invisible matter arbitrarily placed wherever it is needed to make their models "work".

The photograph of spiral galaxy M81 above is one of the first images returned by NASA's new Spitzer space telescope, an instrument that can detect extremely faint waves of infrared radiation, or heat, through clouds of dust and plasma that have blocked the view of conventional telescopes. The result is the picture of striking clarity.

Beneath this photograph we have placed snapshots from a computer simulation by plasma scientist Anthony Peratt, illustrating the evolution of galactic structures under the influence of electric currents. Through the "pinch effect", parallel currents converge to produce spiraling structures.

To see the connection between plasma experiments and plasma formations in space, it is essential to understand the scalability of plasma phenomena. Under similar conditions, plasma discharge will produce the same formations irrespective of the size of the event. The same basic patterns will be seen at laboratory, planetary, stellar, and galactic levels. Duration is proportional to size as well. A spark that lasts for microseconds in the laboratory may continue for years at planetary or stellar scales, or for millions of years at galactic or intergalactic scales.

Plasma experiments, backed by computer simulations of plasma discharge, are changing the picture of space. Plasma scientists, for example, are able to replicate the evolution of galactic structures both experimentally and in computer simulations without recourse to a popular fiction of modern astrophysics --the black hole. Astronomers require invisible, super-compressed matter as the center of galaxies because without Black Holes gravitational equations cannot account for observed movement and compact energetic activity. But charged plasma achieves such effects routinely.

PhysOrg | Eventually, the day will come when life on Earth ends. Whether that’s tomorrow or five billion years from now, whether by nuclear war, climate change, or the Sun burning up its fuel, the last living cell on Earth will one day wither and die. But that doesn’t mean that all is lost. What if we had the chance to sow the seeds of terrestrial life throughout the universe, to settle young planets within developing solar systems many light-years away, and thus give our long evolutionary line the chance to continue indefinitely?

According to Michael Mautner, Research Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University, seeding the universe with life is not just an option, it’s our moral obligation. As members of this planet’s menagerie, and a consequence of nearly 4 billion years of evolution, humans have a purpose to propagate life. After all, whatever else life is, it necessarily possesses an incessant drive for self-perpetuation. And the idea isn’t just fantasy: Mautner says that “directed panspermia” missions can be accomplished with present technology.

“We have a moral obligation to plan for the propagation of life, and even the transfer of human life to other solar systems which can be transformed via microbial activity, thereby preparing these worlds to develop and sustain complex life,” Mautner explained to PhysOrg.com. “Securing that future for life can give our human existence a cosmic purpose.”

As Mautner explains in his study published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Cosmology, the strategy is to deposit an array of primitive organisms on potentially fertile planets and protoplanets throughout the universe. Like the earliest life on Earth, organisms such as cyanobacteria could seed other planets, digest toxic gases (such as ammonia and carbon dioxide on early Earth) and release products such as oxygen which promote the evolution of more complex species. To increase their chances of success, the microbial payloads should contain a variety of organisms with various environmental tolerances, and hardy multicellular organisms such as rotifer eggs to jumpstart higher evolution. These organisms may be captured into asteroids and comets in the newly forming solar systems and transported from there by impacts to planets as their host environments develop.

Mautner has identified potential breeding grounds, which include extrasolar planets, accretion disks surrounding young stars that hold the gas and dust of future planets, and - at an even earlier stage - interstellar clouds that hold the materials to create stars. He explains that the Kepler mission may identify hundreds of biocompatible extrasolar planets, and astronomers are already aware of several accretion disks and interstellar clouds that could serve as targets. These potential habitats range in distance from a few light-years to 500 or more light-years away.

To transport the microorganisms, Mautner proposes using sail-ships. These ships offer a low-cost transportation method with solar sails, which can achieve high velocities using the radiation pressure from light. The microorganisms could be bundled in tiny capsules, each containing about 100,000 microorganisms and weighing 0.1 micrograms. Mautner predicts that the most challenging part of the process would be the precise aiming required in order for a mission to arrive at its target destination after hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years of travel.

Accounting for the difficulties of each of the steps involved, Mautner has calculated how many microbial capsules would be needed to ensure a reasonable probability of success. He concludes that a few hundred tons of microbial biomass “can seed dozens of new solar systems in an interstellar cloud with life for eons.” With launch costs of $10,000/kg, this amount of biomass would cost about $1 billion to launch. If we can aim precisely at planets in nearby solar systems, the mission would require significantly fewer capsules, smaller biomass, and lower costs. Mautner predicts that, while the technology is currently available, such an initiative will be easier to implement as space infrastructure develops and launch costs decrease.



As Mautner notes, several scientists have previously proposed ways to seed planets (notably, Venus and Mars) in our own solar system with microorganisms in order to alter the atmosphere and possibly make them habitable for humans. Also, some theories suggest that, on Earth, life-supporting nutrients and materials - or even life itself - may have come from somewhere else in the universe, arriving here on meteors, asteroids, and comets. In a sense, Mautner’s proposal would simply be helping life’s planet-hopping journey continue.

But, some critics might ask, what if extraterrestrial life already exists somewhere else, and we infect it with our own invasive genetic material? First of all, Mautner explains that we can minimize these chances by targeting very primitive locations where life could not have evolved yet. In addition, he argues that, since extraterrestrial life is not currently known to exist, our first concern should be with preserving our family of organic gene/protein life that we know exists.

In the long term, Mautner is hopeful that life can continue existing beyond our home planet. Using techniques from astroecology based on the energy output of stars, he calculates that the amount of sustainable life can be significant in other neighborhoods of the universe. Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure how everything will turn out after we’re long gone.

“May life last indefinitely?” he writes. “The habitable lifetime of the galaxy may depend on the dark matter and energy. These forces may need to be observed for many more eons to predict their future behaviour. During those cosmological times our descendants may understand nature more deeply and seek to extend life indefinitely.”

More information: Michael N. Mautner. “Seeding the Universe with Life: Securing Our Cosmological Future.” Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol. 5. journalofcosmology.com

Book: “Seeding the Universe with Life: Securing Our Cosmological Future” (available at amazon.com and ebookmall.com)

Websites:
Directed panspermia and the Society for Life in Space (SOLIS): panspermia-society.com
Astroecology and the future of life: www.Astro-Ecology.com
Ethical aspects: astroethics.com

By Jesus Diaz

Gizmodo | Hubble has discovered a mysterious X-shaped object traveling at 11,000mph. NASA says that P/2010-A2 may be a comet, product of the collision between two asteroids. Or a Klingon Bird of Prey. Either way, UCLA investigator David Jewitt is excited:

This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets. The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies.

OK, David, we will believe you until Jerry Bruckheimer finish his next movie, in which a "comet" suddenly stops, turns to Earth, and starts firing anti-matter rays against our underpants.

The weirdest thing, however, is not only the prettyful X-shaped debris pattern, but the fact that its 460-foot-wide nucleus is outside the dust halo and separated from the trail. This behavior is something which has never been seen before in a comet or any other solar-system-swooshing object.



The images—taken by Hubble between January 25 and January 29—lead NASA to believe that this is a product of the collision of two asteroids. The nucleus would be the "surviving remnant of a hypervelocity collision:

"If this interpretation is correct, two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight. The filamentary appearance of P/2010 A2 is different from anything seen in Hubble images of normal comets, consistent with the action of a different process.

In other words: They have no clue about what this is, and they are still speculating about how this object was formed. Maybe it's time to call Dr. Zarkov. [NASA]

U.S. space agency NASA has launched a new space telescope that will allow scientists to look at the universe closer than ever before. NASA's officials say the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, known as WISE, will help them to discover, photograph and research thousands of previously undetected stars, galaxies and potentially threatening asteroids.

MacKenzie Babb

VOA News | U.S. space agency NASA has launched a new space telescope that will allow scientists to look at the universe closer than ever before. NASA's officials say the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, known as WISE, will help them to discover, photograph and research thousands of previously undetected stars, galaxies and potentially threatening asteroids.

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered what is out there? Well, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer is on a mission to find out. Using a 41-centimeter telescope and infrared detectors, the spacecraft will spend the next nine months taking inventory of the cosmos.

WISE Deputy Project Scientist Amy Mainzer explains the mission's all-sky survey, which will provide what she calls a "Google map to the universe."

"It is literally looking everywhere, in the whole sky, and it will give us a map that we can use to find the most interesting places to look," said Amy Mainzer. "That is what we need to be able to use our big telescopes efficiently. And also, too, if you want to find the most rare and unusual types of objects in the universe, you need to look everywhere to be able to find them."

Mainzer says the panoramic picture of the sky WISE will provide is like a wide-angle lens for scientists, who will then use space telescopes, such as the Hubble and the upcoming James Webb, to zoom in on points of interest.

Researchers already have a good idea about some of the things WISE will find, such as ultra-luminous galaxies, thousands of previously unseen stars and about 100,000 undetected asteroids.

While Mainzer says most of these orbiting rocks will pose no harm to Earth, she does expect to find at least several-hundred new "near-Earth objects," or asteroids that may one day threaten civilization.

"Now, that does not necessarily mean that they will hit the Earth at any time, but it is possible," she said. "And, because of that, we would like to know more about the near-Earth object population."

WISE principal investigator Edward Wright says while scientists may not need to know the objects' size, composition and location right now, gathering such information is a necessary step toward future disaster prevention.

"So far, we do not know of anything on a collision course," said Edward Wright. "If we found out with enough warning, then it would be possible to launch a space mission and deflect the asteroid so it would not hit the earth, though we would need a lot of warning."

Asteroids are just one of the estimated one-million never-before-seen objects scientists anticipate WISE to uncover. But Mainzer and Wright agree the researchers' real expectation is to find the unexpected.

The last time the sky was mapped in infrared was in 1983 by the Infrared Astronomy Satellite. Though revolutionary for its time, the craft's digital camera had only 62 pixels. By contrast, the WISE camera has four million pixels, allowing it to photograph the universe with extraordinary sensitivity and in great detail.

NASA officials said Infrared technology will allow WISE to see the radiation emitted by otherwise invisible cool, dark objects.

Wright says WISE has been under consideration for 12 years, and has cost about $320 million to build.

Don't you just love it NASA have been venturing into space for 40 plus years and it takes a country in it's space infancy to come out with some fairly remarkable scientific claims? Granted that technology and detecting equipment today is light years ahead of instruments used in the past, but during their first space projects Indian is leading the way and openly sharing the information with the public. NASA just remember this ultimately you're funded through tax payers money so you owe it to us to be more forthcoming with the information you discover!

2012ChangesAreNow | Bangalore: Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) are on the brink of a path-breaking discovery. They may have found signs of life in some form or the other on the Moon.

They believe so because scientific instruments on India's first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, picked up signatures of organic matter on parts of the Moon's surface, Surendra Pal, associate director, Isro Satellite Centre (Isac), said at the international radar symposium here on Friday.

Organic matter consists of organic compounds, which consists of carbon -- the building block of life.

It indicates the formation of life or decay of a once-living matter.

Pal said the signatures were relayed back to the Bylalu deep space network station near Bangalore by the mass spectrometer on board the Indian payload, the moon impact probe (MIP), on November 14, 2008.

The relay of data happened moments before it crashed near the Moon's south pole. The MIP was the first experiment of the Chandrayaan-1 mission, which was launched on October 22, 2008.

Pal, however, did not elaborate, but concluded saying "the findings are being analysed and scrutinised for validation by Isro scientists and peer reviewers".

"It is too early to say anything," said the director of Isro's space physics laboratory R Sridharan, who is heading the team of MIP data analysis and study. He, however, did not deny the finding.

DNA later inquired with other senior Chandrayaan-1 mission scientists, who not only confirmed the finding, but gave further details.

"Certain atomic numbers were observed that indicated the presence of carbon components. This indicates the possibility of the presence of organic matter (on the Moon)," a senior scientist told DNA.

Interestingly, similar observations were made by the US's first manned Moon landing mission, the Apollo-11, in July 1969, which brought lunar soil samples back to Earth. But due to a lack of sophisticated equipment then, the scientists could not confirm the finding.

However, traces of amino acids, which are basic to life, were found in the soil retrieved by the Apollo-11 astronauts.

The Chandrayaan-1 scientists, at present, are analysing the source of origin of the Moon's organic matter. "It could be comets or meteorites which have deposited the matter on the Moon's surface; or the instrument that landed on the Moon could have left traces," a senior space scientist said.

"But the presence of large sheets of ice in the polar regions of the Moon, and the discovery of water molecules there, lend credence to the possibility of organic matter there," he said.

By Alexis Madrigal

Wired | With a big enough telescope and some good fortune, an amateur astronomer can look into the sky and see humans at the space station.



Here’s the proof. On March 21, 2009, astronaut Joe Acaba stepped into space for some extravehicular activity. Down on Earth, Ralf Vandebergh was in his backyard, pointing a 10 inch-telescope at the International Space Station as it passed over Europe.

In reviewing the photos he shot, he saw a few bright pixels appear precisely where the work was going on at exactly the moment it was being conducted. In other words, he was looking at an astronaut!

He posted this new video of his images to YouTube earlier this week.

“The best results occur mostly as a surprise when lighting angle, viewing angle, seeing, distance and other factors of the objects are favorable,” Vandebergh explains on his website.

We’re big fans, obviously, of photos of recognizable features on Earth taken from space, but here’s the reverse: a photo of a human in space taken from Earth. It’s a different kind of sublime, but just as awesome.

By Marcia Dunn

AP | NASA's newest rocket successfully completed a brief test flight Wednesday, the first step in a back-to-the-moon program that could yet be shelved by the White House.

The 327-foot Ares I-X rocket resembled a giant white pencil as it shot into the sky, delayed a day by poor weather.

Nearly twice the height of the spaceship it's supposed to replace — the shuttle — the skinny experimental rocket carried no passengers or payload, only throwaway ballast and hundreds of sensors. The flight cost $445 million.

NASA said the flight was a tremendous success, based on early indications.

"Oh, man. Well, how impressive is that," said Jeff Hanley, manager of NASA's space frontier program, known as Constellation. "You've accomplished a great step forward for exploration," he told launch controllers.

It was the first time in nearly 30 years that a new rocket took off from Kennedy Space Center. Columbia made the maiden voyage for the shuttle fleet back in 1981.

Liftoff, in fact, occurred 48 years and one day after the first launch of a Saturn rocket, a precursor to what carried astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program. The Saturn V moon rockets were the tallest ever built, an impressive 363 feet.

Wednesday's launch, three years in the making, represented the first step in NASA's effort to return astronauts to the moon. The White House, though, is re-evaluating the human spaceflight program and may dump the Ares I in favor of another type of rocket and possibly another destination.

The test flight attracted a large crowd.

The prototype moon rocket took off through a few clouds from a former shuttle launch pad at 11:30 a.m., 3 1/2 hours late because of bad weather. Launch controllers had to retest the rocket systems after more than 150 lightning strikes were reported around the pad overnight. Then they had to wait out interfering rain clouds, the same kind that thwarted Tuesday's try.

The ballistic flight did not come close to reaching space and, as expected, lasted a mere two minutes. That's how long it took for the first-stage solid-fuel booster to burn out and separate from the mock upper stage 25 miles up. But it will take months to analyze all the data from the approximately 725 pressure, strain and acceleration sensors.

Parachutes popped open and dropped the booster into the Atlantic, where recovery ships waited.

The upper portion of the rocket — all fake parts — were hurtled to an estimated altitude of 28 miles and then fell uncontrolled into the ocean. Those pieces were never meant to be retrieved.

It was all over in six minutes.

"Think about what we just did. Our first flight test and the only thing we're waiting on was weather," launch director Ed Mango told his team.

NASA contends the Ares I will be ready to carry astronauts to the International Space Station in 2015, four to five years after the shuttles are retired. But a panel of experts said in a report to President Barack Obama last week that it will be more like 2017, and stressed that the entire effort is underfunded.

The first Ares moon trip would be years beyond that under the current plan.

No matter what direction the Obama Administration takes, NASA managers expect to learn a lot from Wednesday's experimental flight, even if it's for another type of rocket. They said they already have learned a lot.

Hanley, for one, does not to hear anymore about the cloudy, electrically charged conditions — triboelectrification — that made it so difficult to get this test rocket off the ground. Future rockets will have proper protection.

"Whatever we end up flying, this will not be a problem," he promised.

New Scientist | AN asteroid exploded over Indonesia with the force of three Hiroshima bombs - and no one on Earth knew it was coming.

The New Scientist website reports the dramatic explosion over South Sulawesi, Indonesia, on October 8 underscores how blind humanity is to the danger of giant space rocks.

NASA estimated the explosion was the equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.

However, this time we were lucky - the blast caused no damage on the ground because it occurred at high altitude, 15 to 20km above Earth's surface.

While the explosion was heard by witnesses in Indonesia and picked up by international nuclear explosion detectors, the asteroid only became visible after it exploded.

Video images of the sky following the event showed a dust trail characteristic of an exploding asteroid, according to the New Scientist.

Researchers believe the asteroid was about 10 metres wide - too small for even our most powerful telescopes to spot.

But Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center, in the US state of Massachusetts, warns even an asteroid of this size could cause a lot of damage on the ground.

Read full article

By Philip Sherwell

Telegraph | Even as a rocket designed to help carry astronauts back to the Moon awaits take-off in Florida this week, asteroids have been singled out as the favoured destination for man's return to outer space.

An expert panel appointed by President Barack Obama to assess America's future spaceflight programme last week recommended bypassing the Moon in favour of a mission that sounds as if it is straight out of science-fiction.

The target would be an as yet-unidentified asteroid - one of the countless ancient pieces of debris from the dawn of the solar system that still circle the sun. It might measure just 500 yards across, with a surface area no greater than the Vatican City.

That stop would be a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of landing a man on Mars, the report suggested. But to achieve any such ambition, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) will need an extra $3 billion a year, on top of the $99 billion budgeted for the next decade, the panel warned.

Weather permitting, the agency will on Tuesday launch the super-slim Ares 1-X rocket for an unmanned two-minute test flight. The rocket was originally conceived as a replacement for the space shuttle, which is almost obsolete and will be decommissioned soon. it was also intended as a possible first step to taking American astronauts back to the Moon, after a gap that is already nearly 40 years.

The project could soon be cancelled, however. Instead, the experts have advised the White House to turn to private companies to carry cargo and astronauts through low-Earth orbits - including supplying the International Space Station (ISS) - and allow Nasa to focus its attention focussed on a further-flung final frontier.

That would be a crucial stage in the fast-developing global space race. In the near future, Russia will be a major player as the sole supplier of the ISS after the shuttle is decommissioned.

China is working on plans to develop its own space station by 2020, followed by a possible lunar trip, and India hopes to launch a manned spaceflight by 2015. No other state is close to pursuing its own human space operations.

Thomas Jones, a science author and former Nasa Shuttle astronaut who has conducted a series of spacewalks, is an enthusiastic cheerleader for "mission asteroid".

"It's exciting and exhilerating, and also very promising for scientific research as asteroids are the raw materials for our planets, left over from the time when the solar system was formed," he told The Sunday Telegraph.

Mr Jones, whose latest book Planetology: Unlocking the Secrets of the Solar System was published last year, listed the advantages of switching our attention to asteroids, which have almost no gravitiational field and are likely to be rich in minerals.

Raw materials such as water, nitrogen and phosphorus could be extracted and transported much more easily than any recovered from the Moon, where gravity is much greater. These resources could be crucial for supporting onward missions to Mars.

Reaching an asteroid - probably one on an orbit somewhere between Earth and Mars - could re-establish America's leadership in the space race. Forty years ago, Neil Amstrong's step on to the Moon - that famous "giant leap for mankind" - confirmed that US had surpassed the Sovet Union, formerly the frontrunners in space exploration.

Setting foot on an asteroid may be more complex than landing on the lunar surface. A specially designed landing craft would be required which would in effect "dock" with the asteroid - slowly approaching its surface until it touches, then firing harpoon-type tethers into the ground to hold it in contact, like tent pegs, in the almost weightless environment.

Such a step may not just be a matter of human exploration but also of human survival as scientists believe it is only a matter of time, even if that is measured in millenia, before one such space object will be found to be on a collision course with Earth.

A strike by a medium-sized asteroid could wipe out mankind, so the information that would be garnered by landing on one would be crucial to developing a method of diverting one in the future.

All of this is dependant on securing extra funding for an agency that the panel last week described as "at a tipping point...primarily due to mismatch of goals and resources".

The experts, led by Norman Augustine, former chief executive of Lockheed Martin, delivered a stark warning in the first sentence of its its 157-page report. "The US human spaceflight programme appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory," they declared.

Although the Ares 1-X will be test-launched this week as part of the current Constellation programme to send man back to the Moon, the panel recommends abandoning the rocket as its development is so far behind schedule, despite the $8 billion already invested in it.

Instead, they propose Nasa adopts a "flexible path" approach to more ambitious forays to the final frontier - including fly-bys of the Moon and Mars as well as asteroid visits.

Nasa administrator Charles Bolden said he would meet Mr Obama later this year to discuss the report.

The President is thought to be sceptical about the cost of the space programme, but gave fresh heart to space advocates in a speech about science on Friday in which he declared that innovation was in the DNA of Americans.

Jeff Foust, an aerospace analyst and commentator, said the priority for Nasa was to develop a "sustainable" human presence in space after the prohibitively costly programme of the 1960s.

"We reached the Moon 40 years ago, but it was so expensive that all we could basically do was go there, do some science and leave," he said. "Now we are looking at a series of stepping stone missions, learning what we can along the way."

He predicted that man might be able to visit an asteroid by the mid-2020s, aim for a mission to one of the Martian moons about 2030 and then a few years later aim for the holy grail of space exploration - a trip to the Red Planet itself.

Mr Foust, who edits and publishes the respected Space Review, spoke to The Sunday Telegraph from a meeting of commercial operators at the the world's first private spaceport in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

The mood there was predictably upbeat after the Augustine commission's backing for private space businesses to replace Nasa's role in low-Earth operations. But not everybody supported a historic shift in the skies.

"The Constellation programme is one we're committed to and very proud of," said Arizona Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whose husband is a Nasa shuttle pilot. "I don't want to bet the farm for human space exploration and the safety of our astronauts on unproven commercial businesses."

Blair Kuykendall

The Daily Beacon | A team of scientists, including Lawrence A. Taylor, professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has discovered the existence of water on the lunar surface.

Previously, the idea of water on the moon has been viewed with great skepticism, resulting from the assumption that the moon rock samples brought back from the Apollo mission were contaminated.

Trace amounts of water were found in the sample boxes, but scientists believed that the samples were contaminated by the presence of air from Earth.

Forty years have passed, and new satellite technology has aided scientists in discovering the composition of lunar soil. The soil contained chemical bonds between hydrogen and oxygen -- the molecular make-up of water.

This information was found through the analysis of data collected by a NASA craft known as the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3. Carried by an Indian satellite, this tool processes the information conveyed by light rays the sun reflects off the moon.

Since light is reflected by varying wavelengths after contact with different minerals, scientists are able to use this method to determine which minerals are present in a thin layer of soil.

The M3 searched for traces of bonds between hydrogen and oxygen in the top few centimeters of lunar soil. Scientists were shocked to discover the presence of water within this soil, Taylor said.

“There is a special spectra given off by compounds and molecules containing OH (hydroxyl) and HOH (water),” he said. “These signals are very pronounced and caused our M3 team to argue and discuss this finding for five months, until we were all agreeable to the presence of the water and its probable cause.”

Researchers have decided that this probable cause is solar wind.

When the sun generates nuclear fusion, it creates protons that are positively charged hydrogen atoms. Lacking the protection of an atmosphere similar to the Earth, the moon’s surface is constantly being attacked by this fast-moving hydrogen.

Since the moon’s soil is largely composed of oxygen, the impact of these hydrogen particles is thought to be strong enough to break apart oxygen bonds present in the soil. Thus, water is formed on the moon.

“What we have discovered is a type of water that has a most unusual origin, being the result of solar-wind bombardment of the highly reactive lunar soil,” Taylor said.

The results of these findings by scientists from the U.S. and India were reported in the online journal Scientific Express. The findings could prove extremely valuable in the future as NASA plans to return to the moon. Maps created with this research data could help astronauts locate useful water within the lunar soil.

“The ability of utilizing in-situ resources greatly facilitates our space exploration,” Yang Liu, a research associate working with Taylor on planetary sciences and lunar exploration, said. “The finding of ‘water’ on the lunar surface opens doors for more economical space exploration.”

Further implications for this research could be even more extensive in the future.

“The NASA crash lander, LCROSS, on October 9 will bring more supporting evidence for our find,” Taylor said. “We would hope that all this will lead to humans returning to the moon to establish a launching point, away from Earth’s gravity, from which to refuel and go onward to Mars and beyond into the solar system.”

This discovery was made possible by a partnership between NASA and UT to fund Taylor’s work.

“This has supplied funding for beaucoup students, postdocs, instrumentation, etc. that the university would not otherwise have been able to afford,” Taylor said. “This is but one example of what we do as professors to help the university, as they provide the best education for the money for all the students.”

Related: NASA Prepares To Bomb The Moon
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Telltale signs

T.S. Subramanian

Frontline | SCIENTISTS of the Space Physics Laboratory (SPL), Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram, the lead institute for one of the experiments on the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) of Chandrayaan-1, obtained “very clear signature of H2O (18 atomic mass unit, or amu) intensifying” in the thin atmosphere of the moon as the MIP, carrying a very sensitive mass spectrometer called ChACE (Chandra’s Altitudinal Composition Explorer), “raced towards the lunar surface” for more than 20 minutes on November 14, 2008, according to Professor Dr R. Sridharan, Director of the SPL. “Our conclusion is that there is water present in the thin atmosphere of the moon,” he asserted. Consistent signature was revealed by ChACE, which was developed as a payload by the SPL. “We got the spectrum covering a mass range of 1 to 100 amu all through…. For us, the finding of water vapour in the moon’s thin atmosphere is very important,” he added.

The MIP was one of the 11 scientific instruments on board Chandrayaan-1, India’s first scientific mission to the moon. The MIP sat like “a hat” on top of the spacecraft. A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lifted off from the spaceport at Sriharikota on October 22, 2008, and put Chandrayaan-1 in its initial orbit. A series of tricky manoeuvres saw the spacecraft reaching the lunar orbit at an altitude of 100 km on November 14.

After Chandrayaan-1 reached its lunar orbit, the MIP, with the Indian flag painted on its sides, hived itself away from the orbiter, raced towards the moon and crashed near the Shackleton Crater. Its journey towards the moon lasted more than 20 minutes. It had three instruments on board: ChACE, to “sniff” the moon’s very thin atmosphere as it descended towards the moon’s surface; a video camera (VIS) to take pictures of the lunar surface during its descent; and a radar altimeter to measure instantaneously the MIP’s altitude from the moon as the payload flew towards the lunar surface.

Sridharan dispelled misconceptions that the mass spectrometer detected water on the surface of the moon. It found water vapour in the moon’s thin atmosphere, he said. The purpose of the mass spectrometer was to analyse the gaseous constituents of the moon’s tenuous atmosphere. It was capable of analysing “how much [of gas] was present and what it is composed of,” he said. It did this in latitude and altitude after the MIP split away from Chandrayaan-1 and raced towards the moon’s surface. “The mass spectrometer was sensitive enough to analyse the presence of H2O in the form of gas – in the form of water vapour. It provided this data on November 14, [2008],” the SPL Director said.

Scientists of the SPL went ahead and analysed the constituents of the lunar atmosphere from the data given by the mass spectrometer. Sridharan said, “This was the first time that any composition measurement was done on the ‘sunlit’ side of the moon as the earlier attempts by the Apollo missions did not succeed owing to saturation effects. Any sensitive instrument such as the mass spectrometer is vulnerable to contamination, especially water vapour. So it becomes extremely important to glean out the signatures that belong exclusively to the lunar ambience.” The SPL scientists, therefore, went about differentiating the water vapour present in the latitude and altitude in the lunar atmosphere from possible instrument degassing.

Sridharan further explained: “That is why we took time to announce that there was water vapour present in the thin atmosphere of the moon. But there was one clue and we had to use it judiciously. If the water vapour was of instrument origin, it would have continued all through. But it cannot show the variations in latitude and altitude as the source itself is within. However, we had seen very clear signatures of H2O intensifying as the MIP raced towards the lunar surface…. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper [M3] of NASA, on board Chandrayaan-1, has also inferred [water molecules on the moon’s top surface]. There is a consistency [in the findings of the mass spectrometer and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper]. Our conclusion is that there is water vapour present in the thin lunar atmosphere…. We got the signatures all through.”

Any substance exists in three phases: solid, liquid and vapour. If a substance has one of these phases, the other phases will coexist depending on the ambient conditions. Further, owing to the large thermal cycling of the lunar surface, the lunar atmosphere went through cycles as it “breathed” in and out, Sridharan said. But the moon’s atmosphere is so thin that the breathing effect turns out to be phenomenal. While it breathed out, all gases get released owing to desorption, said the SPL Director.

Asked how significant the success of the MIP’s mass spectrometer and the finding of water on the moon by M3 were, Sridharan said: “As a person who was involved in this mission, it was a phenomenal success. For us, the whole experiment was a phenomenal success.”

The SPL team was on the job of analysing the data from the mass spectrometer. The team had to publish its findings and the world should accept it, he said. “The MIP mission was over long ago. While the world might have forgotten about it, we cannot. We are on the job of analysing the data. Maybe we will be working on the data for several years to come. For us, detecting water vapour in the moon’s thin atmosphere is very, very important.”

Y. Ashok Kumar, Project Director of the MIP, is also thrilled about the success of the MIP. The video camera on board the probe took about 3,000 pictures of the lunar surface right from the time it separated from the orbiter and crashed on the Shackleton Crater, he said. The video camera clicked away all through its descent. In fact, the MIP was switched on soon after the spacecraft entered the lunar orbit and the camera took pictures when the spacecraft was in this orbit itself, he said.

On whether it was true that it was A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, rocket engineer and former President, who suggested that ISRO keep MIP on board Chandrayaan-1, Ashok Kumar replied that “in a way, it was the brainchild of Mr. Kalam.” The former President suggested that since ISRO was sending a spacecraft all the way to the moon, “why not we have something that can crash on the moon”. An instrument, with India’s flag painted on its side, could “drop” on the moon and it would convey the message that “India has arrived on the moon”, Kalam had said.

The MIP landing on the moon was “both symbolic and significant”, Ashok Kumar said. It was significant because both the M3 and ChACE had revealed the presence of water on the moon. India, in its very first attempt, could put a spacecraft in the lunar orbit; it could land a payload on the moon’s surface; and the mass spectrometer was able to detect water vapour in the moon’s atmosphere. “All these are unique successes of the Chandrayaan-1 mission,” Ashok Kumar said. The 3,000 pictures of the lunar surface taken by the MIP’s video camera would help ISRO determine where the lander-cum-rover of Chandrayaan-2 mission should soft-land on the moon, he added.

By Alexis Madrigal

Wired | Two sunspots are visible on our star’s face for the first time in more than a year, possibly ending an unexpected lull in solar activity.

Solar flares rise and fall on an 11-year cycle, so scientists thought sunspot activity would pick up some time in 2008. It didn’t. And this year has been quiet, too. No sunspots have been visible on the sun for 80 percent of the days this year.

Sunspot activity is correlated with the total amount of energy we receive from the sun. If the sun’s activity were to change remarkably, it would have an influence on global climate. So, in the context of climate change, the fact that the current solar minimum has been the longest and deepest in more than a century has been of special interest. (Emphasis added)

In May, a big sunspot seemed to augur a return to normal, but it faded away and sunspotless days returned. The latest activity might not mark the end of the solar minimum, however. People have been counting sunspots since Galileo first observed one in the early 17th century. Through the 28 documented cycles, stretching from 1745 to today, some variation in cycle length has been observed.

That’s why NASA’s former chief sunspot watcher, Michael Kaiser, told us earlier this year that the minimum was “not out of the extreme ordinary.”

The photo above is of one of the sunspots, AR 1026. It was sent to Wired.com by solar photographer Trevor Little. Little lives in southern England and snaps his gorgeous photos with “a Solarmax 60 telescope and a Lumenera Skynyx 2-0m CCD camera.”

If you’re an astronomer and you want to share images with Wired Science, please tweet us @wiredscience or send an e-mail to our editor, Betsy Mason.

(For you sticklers out there, the polarity of solar storms alternates, so technically, a full solar cycle is 22 years long.)

By Steve Connor

The Independent | It's the planet that really shouldn't exist – or at least not for long. It is 10 times the size of Jupiter, orbits its own star in under 24 hours and should soon be spiralling into the surface of its searingly-hot sun.

Under the laws of physics, planet WASP-18b orbiting a star 1,000 light years from Earth is too big and too close to its sun for comfort. The tidal interactions between the two massive objects should be pulling them together in a deadly gravitational embrace.

British astronomers say they have made a highly unusual planetary discovery in finding WASP-18b. Either they just happened to have witnessed an exceptionally rare event that they have likened to winning the lottery, or they do not understand the tidal forces affecting distant planets beyond our own solar system.

"The problem with this planet is that it's very massive and very close to its star. It should be creating tidal bulging that makes it spiral into its star," said Professor Andrew Collier Cameron of St Andrew's University.

The planet is at least one billion years old, yet at this rate it should have no more than half a million years left before it crashes into its own star. The chances of finding it at this point in its life cycle is about 1 in 2,000.

Professor Cameron said: "This is another bizarre planet discovery. The situation is analogous to the way tidal friction is gradually causing the Earth's spin to slow down, and the Moon to spiral away from the Earth," he said. "In this case, however, the spin of the star is slower than the orbit of the planet, so the star should be spinning up, and the planet spiralling in," he said.

WASP-18b, one of more than 300 known "exoplanets" orbiting distant stars, was discovered by a team led by Coel Hellier of Keele University, whose study is published in the journal Nature.

It is a hot, Jupiter-like planet where temperatures exceed 2,100C – high enough to create clouds of silica-based gems, according to Professor Cameron. If anyone could visit this planet, and survive, they might see a sky full of diamonds and sapphires, he said.