CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven blasted into orbit Tuesday on what was to be the longest space station mission ever, a 16-day voyage to build a gangly robot and add a new room that will serve as a closet for a future lab.

The space shuttle roared from its seaside pad at 2:28 a.m., lighting up the sky for miles around as it took off on a multinational flight involving Canada and Japan.

It was a rare treat: The last time NASA launched a shuttle at nighttime was in 2006. Only about a quarter of shuttle flights have begun in darkness.

"Good luck and Godspeed, and we'll see you back here in 16 days," launch director Mike Leinbach radioed to the astronauts right before liftoff.

"Banzai," replied Endeavour's commander, Dominic Gorie, using a Japanese exclamation of joy. "God truly has blessed us with a beautiful night here, Mike, to launch, so let's light them up and give Him a show."

They did. The shuttle took flight with a flash of light, giving a peach-yellow glow to the low clouds just offshore before disappearing into the darkness.

Shortly after liftoff, the astronauts had to deal with alert messages regarding their ship's steering thrusters. Then for unknown reasons, the cooling system had to be switched from the primary to backup line. NASA said it was looking into the problems.

Gorie and his crew face a daunting job once they reach the international space station late Wednesday night. The astronauts will perform five spacewalks, the most ever planned during a shuttle visit.

The launching site was jammed with Canadians and Japanese representing two of the major partners in the international space station.

The Canadian Space Agency supplied Dextre, the two-armed robot that was hitching a ride aboard Endeavour, while the Japanese Space Agency sent up the first part of its massive Kibo lab, a storage compartment for experiments, tools and spare parts.

Also on hand for the liftoff was a 19-member congressional delegation led by Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, whose district includes Johnson Space Center in Houston. He is pushing for increased NASA funding.

For the first time since space station construction began nearly 10 years ago, all five major partners were about to own a piece of the orbiting real estate. The launch of the first section of Kibo, or Hope, finally propelled Japan into the space station action.

"Our Japanese people have been waiting for a very long, long time," said Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, the Japanese Space Agency's station program manager.

"With this flight I believe that we finally became a real partner of the (space station) project, not just one of the members on the list, after 20 some years of effort in the project," said Keiji Tachikawa, head of the Japanese Space Agency.

Work on the space station project began in the mid-1980s, with preliminary design work for Kibo (pronounced KEE'-boh) starting in 1990. Space station construction, however, was stalled over the years for various reasons, most recently the 2003 Columbia tragedy.

The main part of the Kibo lab will fly on the next shuttle mission in May, with the final installment, a porch for outdoor experiments, going up next year.

Altogether, the Japanese Space Agency has invested about $6.7 billion in the space station program, including a Kibo control center near Tokyo.

Canada's $200 million-plus Dextre, meanwhile, is designed to eventually take over some of the more routine outdoor maintenance chores from spacewalking astronauts.

Dextre, short for dexterous and pronounced like Dexter, will join the space station's Canadian-built robot arm, already in orbit for seven years.

In addition to working with their international payloads, Endeavour's astronauts will try out a caulking gun and high-tech goo on deliberately damaged shuttle thermal tile samples.

The test — part of NASA's ongoing post-Columbia safety effort — should have been performed last year, but was put off because of emergency space station repairs.

Astronaut Garrett Reisman will stay behind on the space station until June, swapping places with a Frenchman who accompanied Europe's Columbus lab into orbit in February.

A Japanese astronaut is also part of Endeavour's all-male crew.

Endeavour's countdown was the smoothest in years, officials said. Shortly after liftoff, however, the astronauts had to deal with a couple of problems that ended up being minor. They got alert messages for some of their ship's steering thrusters, but it turned out to be a bad electronics card. Then the primary cooling system failed, and they had to switch to the backup.

A cursory look at the initial launch images — fewer than usual because of the nighttime launch — showed only one significant loss of debris from the external fuel tank 83 seconds into the flight. But it appeared to miss the right wing.

In any event, Endeavour will be checked thoroughly in orbit for any potential damage, standard procedure ever since the loss of Columbia because of a foam strike.

"This is just a wonderful beginning to what's going to be a long and challenging mission for us," said LeRoy Cain, a shuttle manager who gave the final "go" for launch. "But we're really looking forward to it and we're ready to go, ready to get to work on orbit."

It is the second of six planned shuttle missions this year, all but one to the space station. NASA faces a 2010 deadline for finishing the station and retiring its shuttles.

Check out the article at Fox News.

Cool stuff! Man, do I need a Dextre at home!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Scientist have nailed down how and when the Earth will cease to exist.

The sun will slowly expand into a red giant, pushing the Earth further out into space, but not far enough.

Our home planet will be snagged by the sun's outer atmosphere, gradually plunging to its doom inside the fiery stellar furnace.

"The drag caused by this low-density gas is enough to cause the Earth to drift inwards, and finally to be captured and vaporized by the sun," explains astronomer Robert Smith of the University of Sussex in southern England.

Previous projections had all figured that the Earth would avoid falling into the sun, even during our star's red-giant phase.

The good news: This won't happen for another 7.6 billion years.

The bad news: Life on Earth will end long before then.

In fact, we've only got a billion years left before the slowly expanding sun boils off the oceans and reduces our planet to an uninhabitable cinder, says Smith.

That may sound like a long time, but in fact life on Earth's been around a lot longer than that — a total of 3.7 billion years, according to the latest estimates.

For those first three billion years, true, we were nothing but pond scum. Still, the new figures indicate the long story of life on our fair blue-green planet may be entering its last act.

Is there any way our future descendants can save themselves? Why, yes, explains Smith.

He cites a recent study emanating from the University of California, Santa Cruz. It proposes taming an asteroid to swing by the Earth every few thousand years, slowly nudging the Earth into higher solar orbit, enough to outpace the sun's own outward growth.

"This sounds like science fiction," says Smith. "But it seems that the energy requirements are just about possible and the technology could be developed over the next few centuries."

Check out the article at Fox News.

Holy crap does that sound like a bad day!

Labels: Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

U.S. Officials Plan to Shoot Down Satellite

WASHINGTON — Taking a page from Hollywood science fiction, the Pentagon said Thursday it will try to shoot down a dying, bus-size U.S. spy satellite loaded with toxic fuel on a collision course with the Earth.

The military hopes to smash the satellite as soon as next week — just before it enters Earth's atmosphere — with a single missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the northern Pacific Ocean.

One of the main goals of the satellite's destruction is to prevent any sensitive equipment from falling into the wrong hands.

"We are worried about something showing up on e-Bay," defense and intelligence expert John Pike said, adding that breaking up the satellite's pieces lessens the chance that sensitive U.S. technology could wind up in Chinese hands.

"What they have to be worried about is that a souvenir collector is going to find some piece, put it on e-Bay, and the Chinese buy it," said Pike, who is director of the defense research group GlobalSecurity.org.

The dramatic maneuver may well trigger international concerns, and U.S. officials have begun notifying other countries of the plan — stressing that it does not signal the start of a new American anti-satellite weapons program.

Military and administration officials said the satellite is carrying fuel called hydrazine that could injure or even kill people who are near it when it hits the ground.

That reason alone, they said, persuaded President Bush to order the shoot-down.

"That is the only thing that breaks it out, that is worthy of taking extraordinary measures," said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon briefing.

He predicted a fairly high chance — as much as 80 percent — of hitting the satellite, which will be about 150 miles up when the shot is fired.

The window of opportunity for taking the satellite down, Cartwright said, opens in three or four days and lasts for about seven or eight days.

"We'll take one shot and assess," he said. "This is the first time we've used a tactical missile to engage a spacecraft."

Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey discounted comparisons to an anti-satellite test conducted by the Chinese last year that triggered criticism from the U.S. and other countries.

"This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings," Jeffrey said. "Specifically, there was enough of a risk for the president to be quite concerned about human life."

There might also be unstated military aims, some outside the administration suggested.

Similar spacecraft re-enter the atmosphere regularly and break up into pieces, said Ivan Oelrich, vice president for strategic security programs at the Federation of American Scientists.

He said, "One could be forgiven for asking if this is just an excuse to test an anti-satellite weapon."

A key issue when China shot down its defunct weather satellite was that it created an enormous amount of space debris.

"All of the debris from this encounter, as carefully designed as it is, will be down at most within weeks, and most of it will be down within the first couple of orbits afterward," said Jeffrey. "There's an enormous difference to spacefaring nations in ... those two things."

He and others dismissed suggestions that this was simply an attempt by the U.S. to flex its muscles, and that officials were overstating the toxic fuel threat.

Left alone, the satellite would be expected to hit Earth during the first week of March. About half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft would be expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and would scatter debris over several hundred miles.

If the missile shot is successful, officials said, much of the debris would burn up as it fell. They said they could not estimate how much would make it through the atmosphere.

They said the largest piece that would survive re-entry would be the spherical fuel tank, which is about 40 inches wide — assuming it is not hit directly by the missile.

The goal, however, is to hit the fuel tank in order to minimize the amount of fuel that returns to Earth, Cartwright said.

A Navy missile known as Standard Missile 3 would be fired at the spy satellite in an attempt to intercept it just before it re-enters Earth's atmosphere.

It would be "next to impossible" to hit the satellite after that because of atmospheric disturbances, he said.

Known by its military designation US 193, the satellite was launched in December 2006. It lost power and its central computer failed almost immediately afterward, leaving it uncontrollable. It carried a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor.

Software associated with the Standard Missile 3 has been modified to enhance the chances of the missile's sensors recognizing that the satellite is its target. The missile's designed mission is to shoot down ballistic missiles, not satellites.

Other officials said the missile's maximum range, while a classified figure, is not great enough to hit a satellite operating in normal orbits.

"It's a one-time deal," Cartwright said when asked whether the modified Standard Missile 3 should be considered a new U.S. anti-satellite technology.

He said that if an initial shoot-down attempt fails, the military would have about two days to reassess and decide whether to take a second shot.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told reporters that analysis shows the hydrazine tank would survive a fall to Earth under normal circumstances, much as one did when the space shuttle Columbia crashed.

"The hydrazine which is in it is frozen solid, as it is now. Not all of it will melt," he said.

If the tank hits the ground it will have been breached because the fuel lines will have broken off and hydrazine will vent out, he said.

Jeffrey said members of Congress were briefed on the plan earlier Thursday and that diplomatic notifications to other countries were being made by the end of the day.

"It should be understood by all, at home and abroad, that this is an exceptional circumstance and should not be perceived as the standard U.S. policy for dealing with errant satellites," said House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton.

Check out the article at Fox News.

If you're interested in getting a look at this satellite before we blow it out of the sky, it will be easy to see with the unaided eye. Just go check out the Satellite US 192 page at Heavens-Above.com for more info. I'm kinda hoping I can catch a glimpse of the explosion... provided I don't get a close-up view of any falling debris!

Labels: Military, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

January 16, 2008—The first of many planned images from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft is showing astronomers a side of Mercury no one's ever seen before.

Mercury is tough to view from Earth, since it's so close to the sun. And when the Mariner 10 probe flew past the innermost planet in 1974 and 1975, only one side of the body was facing sunlight.

That's because Mercury rotates three times during every two orbits, so the same side of the planet is lit up every other time it is nearest to the sun—including during all of Mariner's flybys.

Added up, these factors have meant that although Mercury sits only about 57 million miles (92 million kilometers) away from Earth, for more than 30 years scientists have had almost no details about its other face.

But on Monday MESSENGER, the first mission to Mercury since the 1970s, snapped the first image of the "missing" half of the rocky world.

Among many new sights, the picture features the full Caloris Basin, a huge impact basin more than 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) across that sits on the border between the known and previously unknown regions of the planet.

More unprecedented images of the tiny planet are expected as the MESSENGER craft completes three flybys of Mercury before settling into orbit in March 2011.

From that point on, writes astronomer Phil Plait on the Bad Astronomy blog, "we'll get as many images of this tiny, hot, battered, dense and neglected planet as we can handle."

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

Awesome new photos! I can't wait to see the map of Mercury once Messenger gets settled into orbit!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Here we are, nearly eight years into the 21st century, and the most spectacular manned mission NASA can pull off is a trip to the International Space Station, a mere 210 miles above the Earth. Even the most ambitious part of NASA's current plans for human spaceflight involves visiting a celestial body we've already been to: the moon. Astronauts, space buffs and an unimpressed public hunger for space exploration that's more dramatic, more heroic, more new. Something like, say, landing astronauts on a distant rock hurtling through space at 15 miles per second.

That's exactly the kind of trip NASA has been studying. In fact, scientists at the space agency recently determined that a manned mission to a near-Earth asteroid would be possible using technology being developed today. The mission wouldn't be easy. A crew of two or three would spend months riding in a cramped spacecraft before reaching their barren, nearly gravity-free target. That such a mission is even being considered, though, says a lot about the versatility of NASA's next fleet of spacecraft and the ambitions the agency has for them. If nothing else, it's a signal that space exploration could soon get much more exciting.

The Allure of an Asteroid

This wouldn't be our first trip to an asteroid. We've been visiting them by proxy for years now, using unmanned space probes. In 2000 NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft arrived at 433 Eros, which a century earlier became the first near-Earth asteroid known to man; five years later, the Japanese Hayabusa probe touched down on asteroid 25143 Itokawa.

Yet unmanned probes have their limitations. NEAR Shoemaker and Hayabusa gathered a good deal of data, but we still don't know the exact composition and internal structure of the asteroids they visited. And although Hayabusa was designed to collect two small samples from Itokawa, it's doubtful the probe will actually have anything onboard when it returns in 2010.

Humans, however, could be much more effective. Unlike robots, we adapt to our environment in real time. "We spend weeks at a rock with a Mars rover, trying to determine what it is," says Rob Landis, an engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center and one of the co-leaders of the mission feasibility study. "An astronaut could make that determination in a matter of seconds."

A human crew could travel across an asteroid more intelligently than a robot, making it easier to deploy scientific instruments, collect samples, and zero in on the areas of greatest interest. "No doubt, on a human mission we would characterize an asteroid better than we ever have," says Bruce Betts, director of projects for the Planetary Society.

Plenty of characterization needs to be done. While most asteroids are a safe distance from Earth (in an approximately 190-million-mile-wide expanse between Mars and Jupiter), Jupiter's gravitational tug and, less often, collisions between asteroids can kick these objects into orbits that pass uncomfortably close to Earth. The 270-meter-wide asteroid 99942 Apophis, for example, will pass within roughly 24,000 miles of Earth in 2029, and could come back for a direct hit in 2036.

And if we're to have any hope of deflecting asteroids, we need to know a lot more about them than we do now. First off: What, exactly, are they made of? Measurements taken by Hayabusa indicate that 40 percent of Itokawa's volume is empty space. If some asteroids are truly this porous, that's helpful information for any plan to destroy or deflect an Earth-bound object.

Averting the apocalypse isn't the only reason to study near-Earth asteroids, though. They could be floating gold mines for future deep-space expeditions. Preliminary observations suggest that some asteroids are rich in useful minerals and, better yet, frozen water—the most valuable resource a space traveler could hope to find. If water could be extracted from asteroids, it could not only be used for drinking, but also broken down into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for rocket fuel. "It might be an ultimate way to get to Mars," Landis says.

Check out the article and the slideshow at Popular Science.

Just image the resources that could be discovered and the knowledge that would be gained by this venture. Truly exciting stuff!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

The original Earth-rise - taken by William Anders
during the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon on December 24, 1968.

A Japanese moon probe has replicated the famous Apollo-era "Earth-rise" photograph with modern high-definition imaging.

The Kaguya spacecraft, also called Selene, has been orbiting 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the moon since Oct. 18.

The new Earth-rise image shows our blue world floating in the blackness of space. It is a still shot taken from video made by the craft's high-definition television (HDTV) for space.

A second image, taken from a different location in the lunar orbit, has been dubbed Earth-set. A related series of still images shows our planet setting beyond the lunar horizon.

In the Earth-set image, Earth appears upside-down; visible are Australia and Asia. A region near the moon's south pole is seen in the foreground.

The footage was taken Nov. 7 using equipment provided by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK).

The orbiter mission is run by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Its first high-definition videos of Earth were sent back last month. The mission objectives are to obtain scientific data on the origin and evolution of the moon and to develop the technology for future lunar exploration.

Check out the article at Space.com.

Awesome images... I want to get my hands on that video! Congrats to JAXA on a successful mission, and thanks for sharing!

Labels: History, Images, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

With a series of small beeps from a spiky globe 50 years ago Thursday, the world shrank and humanity's view of Earth and the cosmos expanded.

Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, was launched by the Soviets and circled the globe Oct. 4, 1957. The Space Age was born. And what followed were changes to everyday life that people now take for granted.

What we see on television, how we communicate with each other, and how we pay for what we buy have all changed with the birth of satellites.

Communications satellites helped bring wars and celebrations from thousands of miles away into our living rooms. When we go outside, weather satellites show us whether we need to carry an umbrella or flee a hurricane. And global positioning system satellites even keep us from getting lost on unfamiliar streets.

Sputnik gave birth to more than mere technology. The threat of a Soviet-dominated space spurred the U.S. government to increase tenfold money spent on science, education and research. Satellite pictures of Earth inspired an embryonic environmental movement.

Spy and communications satellites also kept the world at relative peace, experts say. Just last week, scientists used commercial satellite images to document human rights violations in Myanmar.

When Sputnik was launched, the public thought a space future would consist of gigantic space stations and colonies on the moon and other planets. The fear was warfare in space raining down on Earth.

"The reality is that the things we expected did not come to pass, and the things that we did not fathom changed our lives in so many ways that we cannot even envision a life that's different at this point," said Roger Launius, senior curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

America got a taste of that in May 1998. Just one communications satellite malfunctioned. More than 30 million pagers went silent. Credit card payment approvals didn't work. National Public Radio and CNN's Airport Television Network went off the air in some places.

"The civilization we live in today is as different from the one that we lived in the mid-1950s as the mid-1950s were from the American revolution," said Howard McCurdy, an American University public policy professor. "It's hard to imagine these things happening without space. I guess I could have a computer, but I wouldn't be able to get on the Internet."

All thanks to an 184-pound metal ball with spikes shot into space by a country that doesn't exist anymore.

"The launch of Sputnik actually triggered heightened interest among the American people, not only in space, but in science, mathematics and education," said White House science adviser John Marburger. "It also opened up people's eyes to the possibility that space could actually be used for something."

Check out the article at Fox News.

It's amazing the technology that hostility and competition can breed. Where would we be now if not for the World Wars and the Cold War? I don't think we could even imagine!

Sputnik was not the original plan by the Russians... they used rockets from their ICBM program and threw together the simple little sphere with a radio transmitter in an effort to beat the USA to space. The only thing that they actually accomplished was to show the world that it could be done and that they did it first, and to broadcast the "Beep Heard Around the World."

Check out the:

• Sputnik I Photo Gallery (Fox)
• Sputnik I Photo Gallery (ABC)
• Sputnik I Wiki Entry
• Original Audio of Sputnik's Beep

Labels: History, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

On what started as a normal mid-August Saturday night, residents of a small, remote Peruvian town saw a bright light streak across the sky, heard a resounding bang and suddenly found themselves at the center of a media frenzy.

Initial suspicions of an airplane crash quickly spiraled into widespread reports that a meteorite had plummeted to Earth and left a smoking, boiling crater whose supposedly noxious fumes were reported to have sickened curious locals who went to peer at the hole.

Geologists doubted that the crater was actually caused by a meteorite, and firm explanations were offered that a meteorite would not even emit fumes and that the "sickness" was likely a case of mass hysteria.

Nevertheless, onlookers far and wide were fascinated by the idea that this event could be a real-life "Andromeda Strain," after the 1969 novel by Michael Crichton in which a mysterious rock from outer space carries a lethal microbe that kills nearly everyone infected by it.

So what is it about things falling from the sky that fills us with such fear that we make ourselves sick with panic?

Mass Hysteria

Media reports of the number of locals afflicted by a "mysterious disease" — with symptoms such as nausea, headaches and sore throats — after visiting the crater figured in every news article about the Aug. 15 event, with some reporting that as many as 600 people had fallen ill.

But doctors who visited the site told the Associated Press they found no evidence that the crater had actually sickened such a large number of people.

If noxious fumes did emanate from the crater, they were most likely the result of a hydrothermal explosion that could have actually formed the crater, or were released from the ground if and when the meteorite struck, according to many geologists.

Arsenic is found in the subsoil in that area of Peru and often contaminates the drinking water there, according to Peruvian geologists quoted on Sept. 21 by National Geographic News.

Arsenic fumes released from the crater could have sickened locals who went to look, said one geologist who examined the site.

Some health officials suggest instead that the symptoms described by the locals, the large number of people reporting those symptoms and the apparently rapid spread have all the hallmarks of a case of mass hysteria.

"The Peruvian event seems to be a rare case where we may be witnessing collective anxiety that is approaching near hysteria," said Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in England. "The major[ity] of the affected Peruvian town hinted that some of the mass anxiety is due to fear of imminent impacts and psychological stress, which is not surprising given the premature speculation and media hype."

Fear of Outer Space

Fear of a meteorite impact is nothing new — humans have long looked to the heavens with a wary eye.

"The fear of cosmic disaster, in particular cometary impacts, has existed in all cultures for millennia," Peiser told SPACE.com

But the space age revealed just how many dangers, including comets, meteors, asteroids and cosmic rays, await us in the final frontier.

"Only since the late 20th century, humankind has become aware of the risk posed by asteroids and comets," Peiser said. "Unfortunately, this risk has been wildly exaggerated by popular culture."

Our curiosity and fear of impact events has increased their coverage by the world media, Peiser says, which in turn has increased the number of meteorite impact reports, even when the evidence doesn't point that way.

While this fear is normal and understandable, it's been blown out of proportion so that the public thinks that impact risks are higher than they are, Peiser argues.

"Most people are simply not aware that we are making enormous progress in finding and identifying the population of Near Earth Objects and that the impact risk is thus diminishing year by year," Peiser said.

When meteorites have struck, they have never carried any hint of some mysterious space disease.

So much for the Andromeda Strain.

Check out the article at Fox News.

LOL! The Peruvian Chicken Little: "The sky is falling, the sky is falling... I think I'm coming down with something!"

Labels: Images, Space

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

The moon should be developed as a sanctuary for civilization in case of a cataclysmic cosmic impact, according to an international team of experts.

NASA already has blueprints to create a permanent lunar outpost by the 2020s.

But that plan should be expanded to include a way to preserve humanity's learning, culture, and technology if Earth is hit by a doomsday asteroid or comet, said Jim Burke of International Space University (ISU) in France.

An impact of the size that wiped out the dinosaurs hasn't happened since long before the rise of humans, he pointed out.

Yet scientists' expanding knowledge of asteroids and craters left throughout the solar system has created a consensus that Earth remains vulnerable to a civilization-crushing collision.

This calls for the creation of a space age Noah's ark, Burke said.

Lunar Ark

Humans are just beginning to send trinkets of technology and culture into space. NASA's recently launched Phoenix Mars Lander, for example, carries a mini-disc inscribed with stories, art, and music about Mars.

The Phoenix lander is a "precursor mission" in a decades-long project to transplant the essentials of humanity onto the moon and eventually Mars.

The International Space University team is now on a more ambitious mission: to start building a "lunar biological and historical archive," initially through robotic landings on the moon.

Laying the foundation for "rebuilding the terrestrial Internet, plus an Earth-moon extension of it, should be a priority," Burke said.

The founders of the group Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC) agreed that extending the Internet from the Earth to the moon could help avert a technological dark age following "nuclear war, acts of terrorism, plague, or asteroid collisions."

But the group also advocates creating a moon-based repository of Earth's life, complete with human-staffed facilities to "preserve backups of scientific and cultural achievements and of the species important to our civilization," said ARC's Robert Shapiro, a biochemist at New York University.

"In the event of a global catastrophe, the ARC facilities will be prepared to reintroduce lost technology, art, history, crops, livestock, and, if necessary, even human beings to the Earth," Shapiro said.

"The establishment of an ARC sanctuary would for the first time provide a compelling purpose for the colonization of space."

If the international lunar outpost of the 2020s expands into a colony and then a city, "it is possible that a whole new phase in civilization may develop—the branching of history into one stream on Earth and another on the moon," ISU's Burke added.

This "dual-world expansion" could be within reach by the end of this century, he said.

"Look at the last century, when we went from the Wright brothers to the Apollo missions—along with man's great expansion of his understanding of the cosmos."

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

What an exciting venture! I think that it's an excellent contingency plan for the preservation of our civilization... and yet another justification for the space program!

Labels: History, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

GOLDEN, Colorado -- Architectural and engineering teams have begun shaping the look and feel of New Mexico's Spaceport America, taking the wraps off new images today that showcase the curb appeal of the sprawling main terminal and hangar at the futuristic facility.

Last month, a team of U.S. and British architects and designers had been recommended for award to design the primary terminal and hangar facility at Spaceport America - structures that symbolize the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport.

When the 100,000 square-foot (9,290 square-meter) facility is completed -- the centerpiece of the world's first, purpose-built, commercial spaceport -- the structures will serve as the primary operating base for Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceliner, and also as the headquarters for the New Mexico Spaceport Authority.

The terminal and hangar facility will also provide room for aircraft and spacecraft, and Virgin Galactic's operations facilities, including pre-flight and post-flight facilities, administrative offices, and lounges. The spacious maintenance hangar can hold two White Knight Two carrier aircraft and five SpaceShipTwo spaceliners - vessels now under construction at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.

Destination experience

The terminal and hangar facility are projected to cost about $31 million, and will provide a "Destination Experience" for visitors to Spaceport America. Virgin Galactic intends to sign a 20-year lease for approximately 84,000 square feet (7,803 square meters) in the building.

"The URS/Foster team presented us with a concept that blends sensitivity to the environment, cutting-edge technology and a stunning image and shape when viewed from high above," noted Kelly O'Donnell, chair of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority in a press statement last month.

The design chosen is a low-lying, striking bit of construction that uses natural earth as a berm, and relies on passive energy for heating and cooling, with photovoltaic panels for electricity and water recycling capabilities. A rolling concrete shell acts as a roof with massive windows opening to a view of the runway and spacecraft.

According to a press statement, the low-lying, organic shape resembles a rise in the landscape, and will use local materials and regional construction techniques.

"A careful balance between accessibility and privacy is achieved, as visitors and astronauts enter the building through a deep channel cut in the landscape," the statement noted. "The walls will form an exhibition area leading to a galleried level above the hangar that houses the spacecraft and on through to the terminal building. Natural light enters via skylights, with a glazed façade reserved for the terminal building, establishing a platform for spectacular views onto the runway."

Construction on the 100,000 square-foot hangar and terminal facility is scheduled to begin in 2008.

Check out the article at Space.com.

WOW... I can't wait to check this place out when it's finished! I think I'll take a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to space tourism. I'd like to have a destination other than "fly into space, enjoy the view and float around for a few minutes, fly home." Maybe these guys need to build a space station resort as the destination, then I'll go.

Be sure to check out the official Spaceport American website!

Also check out the Future of Flight feature at Space.com... interesting stuff!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A robotic dirt and ice digger blasted off Saturday, August 4th, 2007 on a 422 million-mile journey to Mars that NASA hopes will culminate next spring in the first ever landing within the red planet's Arctic Circle.

The unmanned Delta rocket carrying the Phoenix Mars Lander rose from its seaside pad at 5:26 a.m., exactly on time, and hurtled through the clear moonlit sky. It was easily visible for nearly five minutes, a bright orange speck in a spray of stars.

If all goes as planned — a big if considering only five of the world's 15 attempts to land on Mars have succeeded — the spacecraft will set down on the Martian Arctic plains on May 25, 2008, and spend three months scooping up soil and ice, and analyzing the samples in minuscule ovens and mixing bowls.

The Phoenix Mars Lander won't be looking for evidence of life on Mars but rather traces of organic compounds in the baked and moistened samples, which would be a possible indicator of conditions favorable for life, either now or once upon a time.

If organic compounds are present on Mars, they're more likely to have been preserved in ice. That's why NASA is aiming for the planet's high northern latitudes, where ice is almost certainly lurking just beneath the surface.

Only about six inches of soft red soil should cover the ice, and so the digger shouldn't have to probe too deeply. The ice is expected to be as hard as concrete, and a drill on the scoop will help gather enough frozen samples. Some dirt and ice samples will be baked and their vapors analyzed. Other soil samples will be mixed with onboard water and the muddy soup examined by onboard microscopes.

"We're really going there just to understand whether the conditions might have been hospitable for microbial life at some point," said the University of Arizona's William Boynton, lead scientist for the oven experiment.

Even if organic molecules pop up, they could be from incoming meteorites, Boynton noted. "It is important, I think, to keep in mind that we are just looking for organic molecules to see if the conditions are right that they could survive," he said, "and that we aren't really going to be making any inference about whether these molecules are indicative of life."

Mars landings are especially risky. Only five of the 15 U.S., Russian and European attempts have worked, all of them American successes beginning with the 1976 Viking touchdowns. Given those odds, the Phoenix team said it did everything possible to test for failures and will continue to do so as the spacecraft flies to Mars. The entire mission costs $420 million.

NASA has never attempted to land a spacecraft on Mars at such a high northern latitude. A lander intended for the red planet's South Pole went silent immediately upon arrival in 1999. That failure, combined with the loss of the companion Mars orbiter, prompted NASA to cancel a 2001 lander mission. The parts from that scrapped mission were used for Phoenix, thus its name, which alludes to the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes.

Phoenix should help pave the way for human visitors, especially if it confirms the presence of water ice in large amounts near the pole, said Michael Meyer, NASA's lead Mars scientist. That would be a tremendous resource, he noted. But if organic matter is indeed found, it could pose a dichotomy: "As Mars gets more interesting, you may not want to send humans right away until you learn out a little bit more about the red planet and find out whether or not life ever got started there."

Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, whose novel "Green Mars" is one of dozens of writings going up on a disk aboard Phoenix, is thrilled to see another robot headed to Mars.

The photos beamed back by recent Mars spacecraft "are just astonishingly precise compared to what I got to deal with when I was working on my books," he said. "It's like putting on glasses after you've been semi-blind all your life."

"I'm quite confident that humans will go to Mars and I do think it's important," Robinson said Friday. "When people get there, they'll be able to do on the ground what maybe 100 robotic missions would have been able to do."

Check out the article at Fox News.

This is so interesting! What's more, it brings us one step closer to understanding Mars and sending manned missions there in the future!

Be sure to check out the Mars Exploration Timeline at the official Phoenix Mars Lander website.

Check out my previous Mars posts: Martian Terraforming and Water on Mars!

If you have never checked out Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, you don't know what you're missing!!!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Endeavour roared into orbit Wednesday carrying teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who was finally fulfilling the dream of Christa McAuliffe and the rest of the fallen Challenger crew.

Endeavour and its crew of seven rose from the seaside pad at 6:36 p.m. (2236 GMT), right on time, and pierced a solidly blue sky. They were expected to reach the international space station on Friday.

Once Endeavour was safely past the 73-second mark of the flight, the moment when Challenger exploded shortly after the call "Go at throttle up," Mission Control exclaimed, "Morgan racing toward space on the wings of a legacy."

Immediately after the shuttle reached orbit, Mission Control announced, "For Barbara Morgan and her crewmates, class is in session."

Morgan was McAuliffe's backup for Challenger's doomed launch in 1986 and, even after two space shuttle disasters, never swayed in her dedication to NASA and the agency's on-and-off quest to send a schoolteacher into space. She rocketed away in the center seat of the cabin's lower compartment, the same seat that had been occupied by McAuliffe.

McAuliffe's mother, Grace Corrigan, watched the launch on TV from her home in Massachusetts. "I'm very happy that it went up safely," she said. "We all send her our love," she added, her voice breaking.

More than half of NASA's 114 Teacher-in-Space nominees in 1985 gathered at the launch site, along with hundreds of other educators, all of them thrilled to see Morgan continue what McAuliffe began.

Also on hand was the widow of Challenger's commander, who said earlier in the day that she would be praying and pacing at liftoff and would not relax until Morgan was safely back on Earth in two weeks.

"The Challenger crew — my husband, Dick Scobee, the teacher Christa McAuliffe — they would be so happy with Barbara Morgan," said June Scobee Rodgers. "It's important that the lessons will be taught because there's a nation of people waiting, still, who remember where they were when we lost the Challenger and they remember a teacher was aboard."

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin met Tuesday night with several members of the Challenger astronaut families in town for the launch — although not the McAuliffe family — and said they did not seem worried.

"They didn't act like they came to see another tragedy," he said. "They're here to celebrate her having a chance to fly."

Check out the article at Fox News.

Congratulations Barbara Morgan and the Space Shuttle Endeavor STS-118 Crew! I'm sure that Christa McAuliffe would be happy that her mission is finally underway.

I remember witnessing the Challenger Disaster on the television in my 3rd Grade classroom. What a terrible day that was... I will never forget it. Words cannot express how happy I am to see this mission proceed!

Be sure to check out the STS-118 Mission feature at NASA.gov.

Labels: History, Images, Space

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Twenty-eight new planets have been discovered outside the solar system in the past year, scientists announced yesterday.

The new discoveries raise the total number of exoplanets—worlds that circle other stars—to 236.

Many of the discoveries were published in scientific journals over the past year.

Monday's announcement at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii, was the first time the finds were presented together to the public.

Most of the new planets are probably huge balls of gas, more like Jupiter than Earth.

But scientists say the increasing rate at which they're finding new exoplanets makes it almost certain that the galaxy is swarming with smaller, rocky, and potentially habitable worlds that have so far eluded detection.

"We're finally now getting a sense that our solar system is not a rarity," said Geoff Marcy, who led the California and Carnegie Planet Search team that made many of the discoveries.

"There are indeed tens of billions of planetary systems out there, no doubt some of them rocky Earths, lukewarm, and suitable for life."

Marcy, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke to National Geographic News from the Keck Observatory atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea, where many of the new exoplanets were first spotted.

Advanced Wobbles

Because exoplanets are too far away to be seen directly, the 28 new planets were discovered by looking for the so-called Doppler wobble among stars.

This technique is based on the idea that if an unseen planet orbits a star, its gravitational pull causes a slight "wobble" in the light wavelengths coming from that star.

In addition to revealing the 28 new planets, advances in this technique recently allowed a postdoctoral astronomer at the University of Geneva in Switzerland to pin down the size of a large exoplanet that was discovered almost two years ago by Marcy's team.

Finding Other "Earths"

Based on data gathered so far, of the more than 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, at least 10 percent are thought to have planetary systems, UC Berkeley's Marcy said.

And at least 30 percent of all stars that are known to host planets have more than one, scientists say.

"Many of them remind us of our home solar system," Marcy said.

"We're finding a lot of cases in which the larger planets—the Jupiters and the Saturns—orbit further from the star than the smaller planets, and that is in fact the case for our solar system," he said.

Among this year's exoplanet finds are at least four new multiple-planet star systems.

Astronomers are finding that stars harboring the most planets are those that are rich in heavier elements, such as silicon, oxygen, iron, and nickel.

This may give researchers a clue as to where to look for possible habitable worlds.

"It's those richer stars that we're focusing our attention on, because those heavy elements are the building blocks of rocky planets like our Earth," Marcy said.

After all, he said, "it's not just the planets that require the heavy elements, it's the organisms themselves, should any exist."

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

There are bound to be TONS of potential new homes for us... we just have to know where to look.

Be sure to check out my previous post on the topic: A New Home?

Labels: Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

The first known planet beyond the solar system that could harbor life as we know it has been discovered, scientists report.

The most Earthlike planet yet found, it orbits a red dwarf star and likely contains liquid water, said the European astronomers who made the discovery.

The planet is estimated to be only 50 percent larger than Earth, making it the smallest planet yet found outside the solar system, according to a team led by Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

Known as Gliese 581 c, the newfound world is located in the constellation Libra, some 20.5 light-years away.

The planet is named after the red dwarf star it orbits, Gliese 581, which is among the hundred closest stars to Earth.

Because the planet is 14 times nearer to its star than Earth is to the sun, a year there lasts just 13 days. Gravity on the planet's surface, though, may be twice as strong as Earth's gravity.

Despite the close proximity to its parent star, however, Gliese 581 c lies within the relatively cool habitable zone of its solar system. That's because red dwarfs are relatively small and dim, and are cooler than our sun, the team explained.

The scientists estimated the planet's surface temperature at between 32 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit (0 and 40 degrees Celsius).

"This means water can exist in liquid form," Udry said. "If you want life like our own, then you need water."

Rock or Oceans

The new world could feature familiar, rocky terrains or be completely covered with oceans, the researchers said.

In either case, Gliese 581 c will likely become a target for missions in search of extraterrestrial life, they added.

"We still have a long way to go before reaching that point. But for sure it's the best candidate we know of right now," Udry commented.

"The planet is really close to us," he said. Still, it would take 20 years to get there if traveling at the speed of light, and another 20 to return.

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

Interesting discovery! It would be nice if we had the technology to go check it out. I'm sure that we will in the future, hopefully in my lifetime!

Labels: Images, Space

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

View image with 3D Glasses

April 23, 2007 — Break out those 3-D glasses and get ready to see the sun in a whole new light.

NASA released the first three-dimensional images of the sun ever compiled, a feat made possible by the agency's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft.

Like a person's two eyes providing depth perception, the two spacecraft orbit the sun at a set distance from each other to offer a stereo view.

"The improvement with STEREO's 3-D view is like going from a regular x-ray to a 3-D CAT scan in the medical field," Michael Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a press release.

Until now, 2-D images of our star (such as the one at top) have allowed scientists to see the sun's weather, but the flat views made it difficult to decipher the exact motion of solar eruptions and the distance they spanned.

Understanding the sun's physics is critical, scientists say, because especially strong events called coronal mass ejections create radiation storms that can disrupt satellites and radio communications and can even knock out power grids on Earth.

The new 3-D images (such as the one at bottom) will help researchers better track these ejections—like meteorologists tracking hurricanes—and thus predict when and where violent storms are headed.

"Previous imagery did not show the front of a solar disturbance as it traveled toward Earth, so we had to make estimates of when the storm would arrive," STEREO investigator Russell Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory told Space.com.

"These estimates were uncertain by a day or so. With STEREO, we can track the front from the sun all the way to Earth and forecast its arrival within a couple hours."

Check out the article at National Geographic News.

I broke out an old pair of 3D glasses and checked out the images... AWESOME! These satellites have delivered more than I expected they would when they were launched last year!

I'd be very interested to see images of Earth if they would develop Earth Stereo satellites!

Be sure to check out all of the Stereo images at the NASA website.

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

The latest data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that the universe might be brimming with planets that have two suns like the desert world that Luke Skywalker called home.

More than half of all known star systems are binaries, with twin stars locked in a gravitational dance, NASA scientists say.

The new data show that dusty disks of debris that could be indicators of planet formation are just as abundant around binaries as they are around single stars.

"There could be countless planets out there with two or more suns," lead study author David Trilling of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in a press release.

Twin Suns

Existing techniques for looking directly for planets don't work very well when searching around binary stars.

Normally, planet hunters look for the so-called Doppler wobble as evidence of a planet's gravity tugging on its host star.

"But everything in a binary system is more complicated," Trilling told National Geographic News.

That's because, in addition to any planets in orbit, both stars are tugging on each other, he said. Each star's effect on the other would be great enough to mask the planet's effect.

So Trilling's team used Spitzer's infrared cameras to scan for planetary disks instead.

"Spitzer is very good at detecting emitted thermal radiation from dust," Trilling said. "When we're searching for the dust disks, we're looking at a wavelength at which the stars are faint but the dust is bright."

Of the 69 binary systems the team studied, 40 percent were shown to have these dusty disks, meaning they could very well have planets in orbit.

Tatooine Plausible

Astronomers had previously found that planetary disks exist in binary systems where the twin stars are very far apart from each other—about a hundred times farther apart than the distance between Earth and the sun.

Nearly 200 planets outside our solar system have been discovered so far with the wobble technique. About a quarter orbit one star in a binary system.

The latest project focused on binary stars that are much closer together—less than 500 times the distance between Earth and the sun.

What really astonished astronomers was that 60 percent of the tightly circling twin stars they saw had dusty disks—a setup that could create a scene like the Tatooine sunset in Star Wars.

Check out the article at National Geographic.

That would be quite a sight! Imagine how bad global warming would be with 2 suns!

It's amazing how binary star systems work! For more information, check out the Binary Star article at Wikipedia.

Labels: Images, Space

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism venture of billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, is the first step toward hypersonic travel between Earth-based cities, according to a company executive.

Hypersonic speeds are greater than five times the speed of sound. An aircraft flying that fast could theoretically reach London from New York in less than an hour.

Virgin Galactic's space flights will accustom passengers to flying at the extreme altitudes likely necessary for hypersonic travel, said Alex Tai, the venture's chief operating officer.

"The experiential rides that we're providing with Virgin Galactic are the first rung, or the stepping stone, for us to use space for other activities," Tai said.

"And the first one of those we'd like to look at is point-to-point travel on the planet," he continued.

The venture will explore the possibility of hypersonic travel as part of a memorandum of understanding it signed last month with the U.S. space agency NASA.

"If Virgin's going to go off and build a high-speed transoceanic passenger service craft of some sort, NASA's of course very interested," said Dan Coughlin, NASA's lead for the Virgin Galactic agreement at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Unique Skills

In 2004 NASA twice flew a demonstration vehicle successfully at hypersonic speeds. Since the demonstration flights, NASA researchers have continued to hone their engineering tools, but budget cuts and other priorities have put plans to build a hypersonic space plane on the back burner.

Nevertheless, "NASA has unique capability and unique engineering skills and facilities that we've developed over 40 or 50 years that could benefit Virgin," Coughlin said.

According to Tai, Virgin Galactic sees that benefit. The collaboration with NASA will allow the venture to tap the agency's engineering prowess to assess the feasibility of a hypersonic passenger service.

"We can't do it ourselves, so we've gone to the experts in the world, which are NASA," Tai said.

Virgin Galactic plans to take customers into space aboard SpaceShipTwo beginning in 2009. The round-trip flights will take off from Mojave. Tickets cost U.S. $200,000.

The two-and-a-half-hour trip, according to Tai, will accustom civilians to space travel much in the same way pilots returning from World War I accustomed civilians to air travel.

World War I pilots went from town to town taking people up for joy rides in their planes as a way to kick-start the airline industry, he said.

Virgin Galactic's spaceflights will also give passengers "an appreciation for the fragility of the Earth and a fantastic view," Tai noted.

"But the long-term goal—going from A to B—is probably where the larger market is," he added.

Check out the article at National Geographic.

I can't wait to book a seat on that flight! Just imagine the photo opportunities!

For more information on this awesome technology, check out A Closer Look at the X-43 Mission and X-43a Raises the Bar to Mach 9.6.

Of course, there are always military implications when dealing with technology such as this, check out my blog entry: Hypersonic Cruise Missile.

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Mars's southern polar ice cap contains enough water to cover the entire planet approximately 36 feet (11 meters) deep if melted, according to a new radar study.

It's the most precise calculation yet for the thickness of the red planet's ice, according to the international team of researchers responsible for the discovery.

Using an ice-penetrating radar to map the south pole's underlying terrain, the scientists calculated that the ice is up to 2.2 miles (3,500 meters) thick in places, said the study's leader, Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The radar, from the Mars Express orbiter, also revealed the surprising purity of the ice, Plaut added.

On average, the ice cap contained less than 10 percent dust, he said. The study will appear in the March 16, 2007 issue of the journal Science.

A Solid Find

The polar ice cap may also contain some frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, Plaut said. But there can't be much of it, because such a thick layer of dry ice would start to ooze sideways under its own weight.

"Only water ice could support itself that way," Plaut said.

Check out the article at National Geographic.

Amazing discovery! All of that water is sure to benefit future manned missions to Mars.

Labels: Images, Space

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

The interests of the Mars Society—an organization with the overarching goal of colonizing Mars—tend to elicit snickers from non-space fans. Why talk about building homes on Mars when we have problems on Earth like war, bird flu, AIDS and global warming? To the Mars enthusiast, these scourges simply count among the reasons to ditch this rock and head for the Red Planet.

Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society, likes to point out that Columbus encountered similar resistance from noobs when he pointed across the Atlantic. But Zubrin isn’t a seafarer—he's a scientist, with calculations that say people could create an oxygen atmosphere on Mars in just over 1,000 years. Compare that with other scientists’ predictions of 20,000 or 100,000 years, and he might seem like he's peddling interplanetary snake oil, but there’s no denying that his scheme for “terraforming” is thoroughly conceived.

Click here for an illustrated guide to Zubrin’s six-step plan for inhabiting Mars.

Check out the article at Popular Science.

I like Zubrin's ideas and I'm all for the future efforts to colonize and terraform Mars. In fact, I'd love to visit the red planet one day... I don't know about living there, but at least an extended vacation.

Well, we're definitely headed in the right direction. With NASA's recent announcement of a Permanent Moon Base, we'll have a great place to stage Mars missions from! Hopefully Mars Bases and terraforming will progress quickly from there.

The very idea of terraforming is fascinating! Check out the Terraforming Wiki Page for an interesting read, cool pics and other links.

If this is a subject that interests you, I highly recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy - consisting of Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. In this awesome work of science fiction, Robinson delves into the technological, social and political aspects in a realistic future of Martian colonization and terraforming. You'll find no light-sabres or warp drives in these books... just down-to-earth, well-written sci-fi!!!

Labels: Images, Space, Technology

Posted by | Permalink | Comments | links to this post