SPACE NEWS

SPACE NEWS
--within the Solar System
.

. . All of 05.
2006 Solar-area News

Dec 29, 05: China's plans to send a spacecraft around the moon have reached a new stage, with the unmanned orbiter and rocket entering production and testing, China's top aerospace official said.
. . The Chang'e 1 Lunar Orbiter and a launch rocket are being assembled and tested, and the launch site and command system are also taking shape, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Luan said the craft is still on schedule to be launched in 2007. The unmanned lunar orbiter is part of China's plan to eventually land astronauts --called "taikonauts" by the Chinese government-- on the moon before 2020.
. . China launched its first man into space in 2003, and in October 2005 it sent another spacecraft carrying two men into orbit for five days. Another manned orbit is planned for 2007.
. . In the United States, the Bush administration announced a $104 billion plan in September to return Americans to the moon by 2018. Japan has also announced plans to land a person on the moon by 2025.

Dec 24, 05: Add one more crater to the already beat-up Moon. Astronomers have recorded a tiny blip northwest of Mare Imbrium, a flash caused by a meteoroid hit within the "Sea of Showers". While such impacts are not uncommon, it was only in 1999 that a meteoroid hit was first recorded as it took place. This new observation of a run-in between Moon and meteoroid was recorded on Nov. 7, spotted by Robert Suggs, Space Environment team lead in the Natural Environments Branch of the Marshall Center’s Engineering Directorate in Huntsville, Alabama.
. . The rock is estimated to have been about 12 cm in diameter and to have left a crater 3 meters by 0.4 meters. The flash "was about as bright as a 7th magnitude star", Suggs said. That's dimmer than the faintest star a person can see with the unaided eye.

Dec 22, 05: Astronomers aided by the Hubble Space Telescope have spied two more rings encircling Uranus, the first additions to the planet's ring system in nearly two decades. The faint, dusty rings orbit outside of Uranus' previously known rings, but within the orbits of its large moons. Scientists now believe the seventh planet [eighth, if you count Luna --as you should] from the sun possesses 13 rings. Scientists speculate that the rings may not have been discovered during the spacecraft flyby because of their faintness.
. . The newly discovered rings are made up of short-lived, faint bands of dust grains that are constantly being replenished by erosion of larger space bodies. Scientist think the dust in the outermost ring is being supplied by the moon Mab, discovered in 2003.

Dec 24, 05: The largest new ring is twice the diameter of the planet's previously known rings. The new rings are so far from the planet that they are being called Uranus's "second ring system."
. . Hubble also spotted two new small satellites. One shares its orbit with one of the newly discovered rings. Most surprisingly, the orbits of Uranus's family of inner moons have changed significantly in the last decade, the new data reveal.
. . Collectively, the discoveries mean Uranus has a densely packed, rapidly changing, and possibly unstable dynamical system of orbiting bodies.
. . Showalter and collaborator Jack Lissauer of the NASA Ames Research Center propose that the outermost ring is replenished by a 18km-wide companion satellite, named Mab, which they first saw in 2003 using Hubble. Meteoroid impacts continually blast dust off the surface of Mab, and the dust then spreads out into a ring around Uranus.
. . Other small moons are linked to rings, including Amalthea at Jupiter, Pan at Saturn, and Galatea at Neptune.
. . Showalter and Lissauer have measured numerous changes to the orbits of Uranus's inner moons since 1994. "This appears to be a random or chaotic process, where there is a continual exchange of energy and angular momentum between the moons. The changes in the last ten years are small, but the thing about chaos is that small changes build up exponentially with time. As a result, this suggests that the entire system is orbitally unstable." The moons may begin to collide in a few million years.
. . The inner ring orbits in the midst of the moons but has no visible body to re-supply it with dust. "This ring may be the telltale sign of an unseen belt of bodies a few feet to a few miles in size", Showalter said. He proposes that the collisional disruption of a moon in Uranus's past could have produced the debris ring they now observe.

Dec 22, 05: Japan is seeking to expand its space exploration program. Earlier this year, JAXA said it would send its first astronauts into space and set up a base on the moon by 2025.
. . JAXA also wants to upgrade built-in life support mechanisms to allow continuous use of a suit up to a week, and hopes to use it to participate in the U.S. moon exploration project planned for 2018. An upgraded space suit would involve heat resistance and anti-radiation technology, bulletproof materials and robot mechanisms.

Dec 22, 05: Could the outer solar system harbor planetary samples nabbed from a passing star? That's a question some astronomers are asking as they try to explain "Buffy", a recently discovered, frigid mini-planet 300 to 600 miles across. It orbits the sun just beyond the edge of the Kuiper Belt, once every 440 years at a distance ranging from 52 to 62 astronomical units.
. . Those of its nearest neighbors are more elliptical. More puzzling, Buffy's orbit is severely tilted compared with those of planets, comets, and Kuiper Belt objects --some 47 degrees off kilter from the rest of the solar system. It's a feature that defies all but the most convoluted explanations.
. . Dr. Kenyon, a senior scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., explains that the sun probably was born as part of a cluster of stars whose combined gravity bound members only loosely to the group.
. . Thus, over the 4 billion years since the sun formed, the clutch of suns would have scattered. One escapee could have dropped off samples of its planetary building blocks - perhaps Buffy - in the outer reaches of our solar system as it headed off on its own spin about the galaxy.
. . They're running computer simulations to see if an encounter with another cluster member early in the sun's history might have given Sedna, another object beyond the Kuiper Belt, its highly inclined, extremely elliptical orbit.
. . The two calculated that if another star passed close enough to the sun and with the right trajectory, there was at least a 50 percent chance that it could have tugged Sedna out of the Kuiper Belt and into its current orbit.
. . But as the two reviewed their calculations, they also found that there was a 10 percent chance that the two stars actually could have swapped material from the extended disks of planetary building blocks that surrounded each of them. Depending on conditions, the sun could have captured up to one-third of the objects orbiting the passing star at distances of from 60 to 80 AU.
. . He and his colleague would like to run the model again to see if it yields estimates of the number of these objects astronomers could expect to find.

Dec 22, 05: The more scientists have learned about Mars in recent years, the more some believe that finding life might involve a deep drilling project.
. . With the surface of the red planet desolate and mostly dry, one consistently appealing idea has been that pockets of underground water might harbor microbes. The problem is, studies have suggested reaching the pockets might require drilling a thousand feet (hundreds of meters) below the surface.
. . P. Buford Price, a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has an idea for another place to look. If there is any life in the belly of Mars, some of it might be found around meteor craters, where rock has been tossed up from deep down.
. . On Earth, even in solid rock 200 meters below the surface, methanogens have been found to thrive. Methanogens are ancient relatives of bacteria that take in hydrogen and carbon dioxide and emit methane.
. . Price and his colleagues have found that the same creatures deep in Antarctic ice emit enough methane to affect concentrations of the gas detected in drilling projects. Methane pockets in ice cores taken from Greenland registered levels of the gas that in spots were 10 times higher than expected. Under Antarctic ice, his team was able to detect concentrations of methanogens as low as 16 per cubic inch.
. . "Detecting this concentration of microbes is within the ability of state-of-the-art instruments, if they could be flown to Mars and if the lander could drop down at a place where Mars orbiters have found the methane concentration highest", Price said. "There are oodles of craters on Mars from meteorites and small asteroids colliding with Mars and churning up material from a suitable depth, so if you looked around the rim of a crater and scooped up some dirt, you might find them if you land where the methane oozing out of the interior is highest."

Dec 21, 05: A group of telescopes using the world's biggest digital cameras will soon start scanning the sky from the Hawaiian Islands, tracking down thousands of the smaller, dimmer and overlooked objects in the Sun's neighborhood. The reason? Hunting for those dangerous space rocks that still elude detection. Objects as dim as 24th magnitude --250 times fainter than objects detected by the current champ in asteroid spotting LINEAR-- will pop out of the background and be analyzed for their threat potential.
. . "The cameras will each have 1.4 billion pixels and will be read out in a few seconds as the telescope slews to a new target." Photographed through the unusually wide-angled telescopes, each 30-60 second exposure will take up about 2 Gigabytes of data, and take about a minute for the computers to process. At this rate, Pan-STARRS will be collecting about 10 Terabytes of data each night.

Dec 15, 05: A distant object named Buffy has been spotted circling the sun far beyond Neptune in a strange tilted orbit that is making some astronomers question how the outer reaches of the solar system formed. Officially called 2004 XR 190 by the International Astronomical Union but code-named Buffy, the object is now about 58 times as far from the sun as Earth, and twice as far from the sun as Neptune. At this distance from the heart of the planetary system, Buffy is a considered a Kuiper Belt object, but an odd one.
. . Most Kuiper Belt objects are contained in this thick swath of space, and most have elliptical orbits, which means they get much closer to Neptune during parts of their orbits. They generally orbit in the same plane as most of the planets and other solar system objects. But Buffy's circular track means it stays beyond the 50 astronomical unit range for its entire orbit, never getting much closer than 52 astronomical units, or AU, and sometimes swinging out to 62 AU.
. . The only other known object that never gets within the 50 AU boundary is Sedna, which flings out to 900 AU and swoops in to 76 AU. But Sedna's orbit is typically elliptical, while Buffy goes around in a near-perfect circle. And Buffy's orbit is tilted at a 47 degree angle from the rest of the solar system.

Dec 14, 05: Now some 290 million km distant from Earth, Hayabusa is over 550 km away from Itokowa, chugging through space at a modest 5 km per hour. Turning on the craft's propulsive ion engine this week is planned.
. . The European Space Agency (Esa) says initial testing of a new plasma drive for spacecraft has been a success. The 'double layer thruster' is a new kind of ion drive which could give much more power than existing versions. It works by accelerating charged particles between two layers of argon plasma, gas where the atoms have been stripped of electrons. Esa says it has 'proven the principle', and will proceed with simulations and perhaps bigger prototypes.
. . Esa already uses an ion drive on its Smart 1 Moon probe, and the US space agency Nasa deployed one on Deep Space 1, which flew out to Comet Borrelly in 2001.
. . The new drive developed by Esa and the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris uses a different way of accelerating ions. "When the solar wind, a plasma of electrified gas released by the Sun, hits the magnetic field of the Earth, it creates a boundary consisting of two plasma layers. "Each layer has differing electrical properties, and this can accelerate some particles of the solar wind across the boundary, causing them to collide with the Earth's atmosphere and create the aurora."
. . In 2003, researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra created a plasma double layer in the laboratory. The European team has now replicated the Australian findings and shown that the double layer can remain stable enough to accelerate ions reliably. Their Helicon Double Layer Thruster uses radio waves to ionise argon gas; the ions are accelerated across the junction between the two plasma layers.
. . ESA believes this approach could lead to drives which are as small and economical as the one on board Smart 1, but much more powerful, which would enable craft to accelerate and decelerate faster. Its next step is to construct computer simulations of the double layer thruster, and then use these simulations in designing larger prototypes.

Dec 14, 05: A Japanese space probe launched in an attempt to bring back the first ever rock samples from an asteroid will likely stay in space for three years longer than planned, Japan's space agency said. It apparently succeeded in landing twice on the asteroid Itokawa, nearly 300 million km from Earth last month. After examining data from the unmanned probe, however, JAXA said last week it had likely failed to collect samples.
. . JAXA said it had lost control of the direction of the probe due to a fuel leak after the landing, forcing it to delay a plan for Hayabusa to approach Earth and drop a capsule containing the samples into the Australian outback in June 2007. The return has been put back until June 2010. Hayabusa would likely miss a window of opportunity for moving into the correct orbit for a return to Earth.

Dec 8, 05: Laurance Doyle, SETI: We can calculate evolutionary histories of Luna. (It is still moving away due to the Earth's tidal pull at about one inch per year. The majority of the tidal dragging comes from Earth's rotational slowdown, with most being caused by waters dragging over the fairly shallow Bering Sea.) In doing some of these kinds of calculations for Mars, it was discovered that the direction of Mars' rotational axis could flip rather suddenly. Now this is not the normal "precession" (as it is called) of a few degrees that changes, for example, our north star though the millennia. Mars was calculated to have flipped its rotation axis up to 90 degrees in as little as a couple of million years. This was a result of the orbital angular momentum, under certain circumstances, being transferred to the rotational angular momentum and causing a coupling that led to such a flip in rotation axis direction.
. . So why has this not occurred on Earth, whose axis has seemingly not flipped by more than a few degrees? The apparent explanation is that the Moon absorbs any transfer of orbital to rotational angular moment, preventing the flip.
. . So, perhaps if the moon had not come off the Earth, our world would still be spinning fast enough to stabilize itself against flipping. Thus there may be many other habitable planets without a large moon, but the inhabitants will have even fewer hours in their day than we do.
. . Moving out at an inch a year, in about 1.6 billion years the moon will no longer be able to stabilize our planet's spin. We'll have to be ready for a climatologically wild ride by then unless we figure out what to do. Eventually the Earth will have the same rotation period as the moon's orbit (i.e., the day will equal the month) and then the moon may be expected to fall back toward the Earth, forming a ring perhaps not dissimilar to those around Saturn.

Dec 7, 05: The international Cassini spacecraft has found visual evidence that Saturn's moon Enceladus is geologically active. Recent images taken by the spacecraft show streams of fine, icy particles rising from the moon's south pole, suggesting they originated from warm zones in the region.
. . Cassini passed through the plume stretching up to 300 miles above Enceladus' surface in July. During that flyby, instruments aboard the spacecraft measured the plume's makeup and found water vapor and icy particles.
. . The discovery puts Enceladus in the class of geologically active moons with Jupiter's Io and Neptune's Triton. It's unclear what causes the geologic activity, but scientists think it's due to internal heating caused by radioactivity or tides.

Dec 7, 05: As NASA prepares to once again send humans to the surface of Luna, Russia is also developing its own plans for future manned spaceflight. The country's Clipper project to develop a six-person spacecraft to deliver astronauts into Earth orbit, and potentially beyond, appears in some ways to be the Russian Federal Space Agency's answer to NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).
. . "We're starting to design this new transportation system to support the International Space Station (ISS) once it's complete", said Nikolay Sevastiyanov, president of the Russian aerospace contractor RSC-Energia, during a recent space conference where the program was discussed.
. . The winged crew vehicle, Clipper, would launch atop a Russian Soyuz 2-3 booster and could form the heart of potential Moon- or Mars-bound craft, according to RSC-Energia designs. Separate cargo pods could also launch atop a separate Soyuz rocket. Both the Clipper vehicle and cargo pods would be towed to the ISS.
. . Like NASA's current space vision, which separates astronaut crews and cargo into two launch vehicles that rendezvous in orbit, Russia's Clipper program is also divided into a two-rocket job. But instead of the two different launchers required for NASA's current lunar exploration plan, Russian and ESA officials expect to launch crew and cargo atop variants of the Soyuz 2-3 rocket. "It's really an end-to-end space system, not just a vehicle", Thirkettle said.
. . Clipper would not be able to reach the ISS on its own. Instead, plans call for a space tug dubbed Parom to swoop down from the space station, latch up the crew-carrying spacecraft, and then tow it up.

Dec 6, 05: The sedimentary rocks in the Martian plains where Opportunity landed painted a picture of a past environment some 3 billion to 4 billion years ago that fluctuated between being very acidic and arid -—conditions that were probably unfavorable to life.
. . The Gusev Crater region where Spirit touched down revealed an even more violent history. Three outcrops examined by the rover displayed deposits of water-altered debris from explosive events. Hot ash rained from the sky and space objects bombarded the surface about 4 billion years ago. During that time, water was present, but not a large amount
. . The European Space Agency said its Mars Express spacecraft found evidence that Mars underwent a major global climate change. Data collected by the spacecraft showed that Mars once was moist and had surface water that disappeared about 3 1/2 billion years ago, leaving the planet dry and cold.

Dec 9, 05: The X Prize Foundation has completed a study on how the Federal Government --NASA-- can establish cash prizes to spur human-carrying orbital spacecraft. A Human Orbital Vehicle (HOV) challenge would build upon NASA's Centennial Challenges program. Presently, however, that effort is limited in the size of prizes offered by the space agency, now no greater than $250,000. The HOV Challenge, as identified in the X Prize Foundation study, would best be served if $100 million to $500 million could be offered by NASA.
. . An X Prize Foundation statement points out that the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 --now making its way through Congress-- will allow the civilian space agency to award much larger prizes.
. . Tier One would offer $75 million in prizes for a non-reusable, two-to-three seat orbital vehicle that flies to low Earth Orbit and is recovered safely. The first place winner would snag $50 million. A second place winner would garner $25 million.
. . A Tier Two effort would tender $225 million in prizes for reusable, two-to-three seat orbital vehicle that is a high capacity craft that flies twice within 60 days. First place winner would receive $150 million, while second place is pegged at $75 million.
. . Teams vying for these prizes would be able to compete for both tiers, or may elect to compete only for one tier. Ideally, prize purses are tax free.

Dec 3, 05: NASA has announced a series of new Centennial Challenges this year, including contests to develop systems for new astronaut gloves, suborbital vehicles and devices to excavate and pull oxygen from Moon dirt.
. . The program also held its first actual competitions in October during the 2005 Beam Power and Tether Centennial Challenges, which drew 11 teams to compete in two events for a pair of $50,000 first prizes. Both awards went unclaimed, but NASA has promised larger cash prizes for the 2006 meet.

Dec 3, 05: NASA announced two new cash prizes, each with a weighty $250,000 purse, in a pair of contests aimed at developing robotic systems for space exploration. The space agency is challenging innovators to build an autonomous aerial vehicle to navigate a tricky flight path or robots capable of building complex structures with only limited guidance from their human handlers. The aerial vehicle challenge may yield the same type of probes that could one day soar through the atmospheres of Mars and the Saturnian moon Titan.

Dec 1, 05: Researchers released their newest findings in a series of seven reports: When the Huygens probe touched down on Titan, it landed on a relatively soft patch of material similar to lightly packed snow, researchers announced today. But to get to that soft patch, Huygens had to descend through a treacherous atmosphere where winds raged up to 420 kph, temperatures dropped as low as -333 degrees F, and lightning was likely.
. . While these images did not show the pools of liquid hydrocarbon that many scientists expected, they do show the signs of flowing liquid in the form of brightness variations around the outlines of "ponds" and a "coastline" as well as what appear to be slopes carved by liquid drainage.
. . Images taken after landing show several small stones and pebbles and that the general topography of the region is fairly flat, varying only a meter or so in height. Images and other instruments ruled out the presence of extensive methane ground fogs on the landing site.
. . The surface of the landing site was neither hard nor fluffy soft, instead having characteristics similar to wet clay, lightly packed snow, or wet or dry sand, into which the probe sank a tiny bit after landing. The composition of surface vapors near the probe showed that the surface was wet with methane, which evaporated as the warm probe landed in the cold soil. The surface was also rich in organic compounds –-such as cyanogen and ethane-– not detected in the atmosphere.
. . Scientists had long suspected that Titan's atmosphere was moving around the planet faster than the planet was rotating –-a physical characteristic known as superrotation and previously observed on Venus. Now, data from the probe's DISR instrument and the Doppler Wind Experiment have confirmed that Titan's methane filled clouds do indeed superrotate.
. . While the uppermost clouds –-about 125 km above the surface-– spin around the planet at about 420 kph, wind speeds gradually decline as they near the surface. Here, generally weak winds, gusting no more than a meter or two per second, were observed in the lowest 5 km of the probe's descent. The probe passed through one other region of near zero wind speeds, from altitudes 100 to 55 km. Scientists cannot explain this yet.
. . During its descent, Huygens provided the first in situ look at what chemicals exist in Titan's atmosphere. The atmosphere is mainly nitrogen and methane, but scientists didn't know how these chemicals originated – did they arrive in their present form or were they originally part of other molecules and were chemically altered to the states seen today.
. . The gas argon 36 was detected by the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer in very low abundance, and scientists say this indicates that nitrogen was originally present as part of ammonia. Also, the early atmosphere of the planet was at least five times denser with nitrogen than it is now, suggesting that some of the gas has been lost into space.
. . Ratios of carbon isotopes also indicate that the atmosphere is also leaking methane, and that there must be some period method for replenishment, although none was observed. Some researchers predicted there would be a large methane surface or subsurface reservoir that replenished the atmosphere, although that too was not seen. Also missing from the observations was the signs of methane rain, which scientists believed showered the planet's surface.
. . It could be that cyrovolcanoes –-similar to terrestrial volcanoes except they spew liquid water and ammonia from subsurface reservoirs-– could be providing both the atmosphere and the surface with nitrogen and methane.
. . The Aerosol Collector and Pyrolyser (ACP) instrument analyzed particles as it passed through the clouds and reported the presence of nitrogen-containing organic compounds, which may include amino, imino, and nitrile groups –-key components to protein formation here on Earth.
. . These particles also clump together, perhaps providing a foundation for cloud formation, and affect temperatures and wind speeds throughout the atmosphere. They also fall as kind of steady organic rain on Titan's surface, the researchers write, and could produce a global blanket with a potential thickness of a kilometer or more.
. . Temperature at the surface averaged around -289 degrees F, which is warm enough for the existence of lakes and rivers of liquid natural gas.
. . The HASI instrument also detected electric activity that is similar to lightning's signature. This was spotted around 37 miles above the planet's surface, which is also the region where the wind speed dropped to near zero.

Nov 30, 05: Saturn's planet-size moon Titan has dramatic weather, with freezing temperatures, carbon- and nitrogen-rich clouds and possibly lightning, scientists said, describing a world that may have looked like Earth before life developed.

Nov 21, 05: A newly released study has focused on how best to return people to the Moon, reporting that future lunar missions can be done for under $10 billion - far less than a NASA price tag.
. . According to SpaceDev's chief, Jim Benson, the private group has found that a more comprehensive series of missions could be completed in a fraction of the time and for one-tenth of the cost of the NASA estimate.

Nov 20, 05: A NASA spacecraft is halfway toward Mars where it is expected to collect more data on the Red Planet than all previous Martian explorations combined.
. . Once in orbit, the two-ton spacecraft will join a trio of probes currently flying around Mars. The orbiter is loaded with some of the most sophisticated science instruments ever flown into space, including a telescopic camera that can snap the sharpest pictures yet of the planet's rust-colored surface. Only about 2% of the planet has been seen at high resolution. It also will continue to seek evidence of water, scan the surface for sites to land future robotic explorers and serve as a communications link to relay data to Earth.
. . Its primary mission ends in 2010, but scientists say it has enough fuel to last until 2014.

Nov 20, 05: There are a trio of longstanding views of what Earth might have looked like in its formative years: a moon-like desert, a fiery volcanic hell, or a waterworld.
. . A new study concludes Earth had continents and oceans 4.3 billion years ago, which is just a geological eyeblink after the planet is thought to have formed, in the wake of the Sun's birth 4.6 billion years ago.
. . A world with water and land and somewhat moderate temperatures and volcanic conditions would have been habitable. That does not mean there was life, but the conditions were in place.
. . The conclusion is based on an analysis of hafnium, a rare element in ancient minerals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. The rocks are thought to be among the oldest on Earth, dated to 4.4 billion years ago. "The evidence indicates that there was substantial continental crust on Earth within its first 100 million years of existence. The air would have been an unbreathable mix of carbon dioxide, water vapor, sulfur gases and methane. Yet for many microbes, "this is the preferred environment."

Nov 16, 05: The NASA Ames Research Center will direct at least four unmanned missions to the moon with the aim of mapping the entire lunar surface, seeking water sources and scouting safe landing spots for future astronaut visits, officials from the space agency said.
. . They could possibly handle five robotic missions ahead of the next planned human landings on the moon, which are scheduled to happen by 2018. Two of the robotic spacecraft are already being built, and the first unmanned launch is scheduled for 2008. The first is an orbiting mapper. A second robot craft, currently under development at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will then attempt a precision landing near the south pole to hunt for possible water sources and flat areas safe enough for human landings.

Nov 9, 05: Landing on an "asteroid", which is no more than a spinning pile of rubble, is very difficult to achieve. Instead, the gravity tractor would travel alongside the asteroid and gradually pull it off course, using nothing more than the gravitational pull between the two bodies.
. . Lu and Love calculated that, with sufficient warning, a 20-ton gravity tractor could safely deflect an asteroid 200 meters across in about a year of towing. "By using gravity as your tow line, you can sidle up to an asteroid. Maintain it for a year and that should give it enough nudge to miss the earth 20 years later", Love added.
. . The clock is ticking on the chance to put their plan into action. An asteroid is due to pass close to earth on Friday, April 13, 2029. But the chances of impact are put at comfortingly long odds of 5,560 to one.

Nov 9, 05: Temperatures on Venus average 450 degrees Celsius. There are theories that intense volcano activity could have created an extreme greenhouse atmosphere that is responsible for the current conditions on Venus, whose atmosphere is almost entirely comprised of carbon dioxide.
. . Atmospheric pressure is 90 times greater than on Earth and no space probe that has gone into the planet's atmosphere has survived for long, with a Russian device setting the record of 110 minutes before melting in the heat.

Nov 3, 05: The potential for a newly discovered "asteroid" smacking into the Earth in 2036 cannot be discounted. NASA has sketched out a response strategy in the outside possibility that the space rock becomes a true threat. The object was found last year through the efforts of NASA's Spaceguard Survey. In 1998 NASA formally initiated the Spaceguard Survey by adopting the objective of finding 90% of the near Earth asteroids larger than 1K diameter within the next decade --before the end of 2008.
. . Asteroid 99942 Apophis --first labeled as 2004 MN4-- is estimated to be roughly 320 meters in diameter. Were it to strike Earth, it would not set off global havoc but would generate significant local or regional damage.
. . Worrisome to asteroid watchers is the exceptionally close flyby of Earth by Apophis on April 13, 2029. So close in fact, the space rock will be naked-eye visible as it darts by. And what can't be ruled out at this time is that Apophis may pass through a gravitational "keyhole" - a spot that alters the asteroid's trajectory as it zips by our planet and might put it on the bee-line lane for banging into Earth seven years later.
. . The group requested that NASA carry out an analysis that included the possibility of placing an active radio transponder on the object. Doing so at a fairly early date would yield the requisite orbital accuracy of the asteroid as it sped through space.
. . Such a probe, if dispatched, Schweickart stated, would provide knowledge of the asteroid's orbit in time to initiate a deflection mission in the unlikely event one should be required.
. . That NASA reply came with an appended detailed analysis by Steven Chesley of NASA'S NEO Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
. . "The key conclusion to be taken from this analysis", Cleave explained in the letter, "is that aggressive (i.e., more expensive) action can reasonably be delayed until after the 2013 observing opportunity. For Apophis, the 16 years available after 2013 are sufficient to recognize and respond to any hazard that still exists after that time."
. . The ruin stemming from asteroid Apophis colliding with Earth would potentially be very great. Indeed, the consequences, Schweickart suggested, would dwarf those seen as a result of the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, hurricanes Katrina and Rita in September of this year, and the Pakistan earthquake last month.
. . In regards to global preparedness in handling these unusually devastating events of late, "it's basically out of sight...out of mind", Schweickart said.

Nov 3, 05: Stunning imagery was returned by Japan's Hayabusa space probe as it drew closer to its celestial target: asteroid Itokawa.
. . The ultra-small (591 grams) device lander is dubbed MINERVA --short for MIcro/Nano Experimental Robot Vehicle for Asteroid. This small hopping robot lander totes along a set of color cameras. Two of the tiny cameras can produce stereo images of the surface conditions at the landing area of MINERVA. A third camera is mounted on the robot to scan more distant regions of the asteroid's surface and can operate while the lander moves from spot to spot.

Nov 2, 05: To solve the mystery of life's origin, scientists can no longer focus solely on Earth. They must take the entire universe into account. Reason: the discovery of nitrogen-carrying aromatic hydrocarbons throughout the universe.
. . Prior to their recent discovery in space, scientists had thought these biologically important molecules were unique to Earth. One type is the main ingredient in chocolate. Others carry genetic information in DNA.
. . The existence of these molecules in interstellar space was considered impossible 20 years ago. "Now, we know better.... As a class, they are more abundant than all other known interstellar polyatomic molecules combined."
. . The finding has profound significance for the occurrence of organic life. These kinds of molecules are key ingredients in the primordial chemical soup from which scientists think organic life may have arisen. "Seeing their signature across the universe tells me they are accessible to young planets just about everywhere", says Douglas Hudgins, lead author of the report.
. . some of the chemicals are already present throughout space long before planet formation occurs and, if they land in a hospitable environment, can help jump-start the origin of life."
. . The Deep Impact probe that smashed into the comet Tempel 1 on July 4 revealed a high concentration of organic chemicals beneath the comet's surface.

Oct 31, 05: Two small moons have been discovered orbiting Pluto, bringing the little object's count to three and leaving scientists to wonder how it could be. While scientists had predicted there might be more moons, the newfound setup is surprising nonetheless, in part because Pluto is smaller than Luna.
. . The newfound moons orbit about 44,000 km from Pluto, more than twice as far as Charon, Pluto's other satellite. They are 5,000 times dimmer than Charon. Preliminary observations suggest they are in circular orbits around Pluto and in the same plane as Charon, which suggests they probably formed at the same time.
. . The leading theory for the formation of Charon involves a large object striking Pluto. The debris from that collision could have formed the two smaller moons, Weaver speculates. It can't be ruled out that they might have been captured into the system, but that seems very unlikely, he said. For now, Pluto is the only Kuiper Belt object known to have more than one companion.
. . "These Hubble images represent the most sensitive search yet for objects around Pluto", said team member Andrew Steffl of the Southwest Research Institute, "and it is unlikely that there are any other moons larger than about 16km across in the Pluto system."
. .The two new moons are between 45 to 160 km in diameter, Weaver said. There is not enough data to pin their size down exactly, however. More Hubble observations are planned for February to confirm the discoveries and pin down the orbits. The moons are catalogued as S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2 for now. Once they are confirmed, the discoverers will suggest names, to be approved by the International Astronomical Union.

Oct 25, 05: After three days of grueling competition and friendly shoulder-to-shoulder innovation, over $100,000 in prize money remained in the vault at the close of the Space Elevator Games --the premier event of NASA's new X-Prize-styled series of Centennial Challenges.
. . The Beam Power Challenge tasks designers with building an unmanned machine, weighing 22 to 45 kg, capable of pulling itself up a 10-cm wide, 61-meter long ribbon suspended from a crane, and powered only by the energy beamed up from a 10,000-Watt xenon searchlight. Seven teams vied for the $50,000 first prize, five from across the U.S. and two from Canada.
. . The University of Saskatchewan team, led by Edwin Zhang, reached the highest altitude under beamed power, about one third of the full distance. At that point, their 10.7-square-foot (one-square meter) array of space-grade solar cells yielded insufficient energy to continue. Other entrants used various solar array schemes and even Stirling engines driven by the searchlight's thermal energy.
. . In the second event, the Tether Challenge, four teams offered their best formulation for an ultra-light, ultra-strong ribbon material. During one-on-one tug-of-wars, each of the entrants were tested to their breaking points.
. . This year's unclaimed prize money will be added to next year's.

Oct 25, 05: A new high-resolution map of Mars's magnetic field indicates that the red planet's crust once moved like present-day Earth's. The map was pieced together from observations of Mars's magnetic field taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). It reveals that the planet's surface was shaped in the same manner as Earth's –-by giant crustal plates pulling apart or smashing together.
. . Confirming that Mars experienced plate tectonics at some point in its history helps explain some of the mysteries of Mars geology. The Tharsis volcanoes – which include the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons – lie in a straight line, but until now, scientists couldn't say why. With the new map, it is likely that they were formed from the motion of a crustal plate sitting over a "hotspot" in the mantle, just as the Hawaiian Islands are thought to have formed.
. . The Valles Marineris is a large canyon six times as long and eight times as deep as the Grand Canyon. It is 4,500 km long, 200 km wide, and nearly seven miles deep. Its features resemble what a tectonic plate being pulled apart would look like on Earth, and its stripe pattern is oriented in a way that scientists would expect from the plate motions implied by the new map.
. . Mons Olympus is 26,000 meters (84,500 feet) high.

Oct 24, 05: Venus: While the atmosphere reflects most of the Sun’s radiation, there are regions in the upper layer of clouds that absorb nearly half of the ultraviolet light aimed at the planet. These spots occur globally, showing up in one area and then another, sort of like an algae bloom in the ocean. They also appear to contain an abundance of a type of sulfur compound unlike any seen here on Earth.
. . Scientists haven’t been able to explain what in the region is absorbing all the ultraviolet light. Some scientists think that these mysterious regions could contain photosynthetic microbial organisms, like those that live in the water droplets of clouds in Earth’s atmosphere.
. . "They might do photosynthesis in the ultraviolet as opposed to the visual spectrum. It’s a tremendous amount of energy if you can make use of it instead of being killed by it", said David Grinspoon, a planetary scientist for NASA.
. . Venus’s clouds appear to have everything life needs to get started, including energy sources and a liquid medium, although it remains to be seen if the droplets are stable enough to last long enough for organisms to live and reproduce.
. . It’s not quite as hot in the upper layer of clouds as it is on the surface, and there is even a little oxygen around, produced when ultraviolet light reacts with carbon dioxide. Although, just because on our planet many forms of life crave oxygen and can’t stand excessive sulfur, that doesn’t mean that’s how it works other places. Itmay not happen on Venus because the lower atmosphere is too thick for lightning to work through.
. . The surface of Venus looks geologically young, about 500 million years old. The planet is essentially devoid of impact craters, suggesting that at some point there was a significant geologic event that resurfaced the entire planet. This is another debated idea, though, since the surface shows no obvious plate tectonics or seismic activity, and we also can’t tell whether it is still volcanically active.
. . The planet rotates counterclockwise, opposite Earth and most other planets, and does so exceedingly slow –-one day on Venus equals 243 Earth days. Scientists have speculated that a massive collision with an asteroid long ago may have reversed and slowed down Venus’s spin. This event may have also set off a global volcanic reaction that led to the planet’s resurfacing.
. . Venus Express is only the fourth mission dedicated to studying Venus.

Oct 19, 05: The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a rare look at the moon to gauge the amount of oxygen-bearing minerals in the lunar soil that could be mined by astronauts and used in a new moon mission. The data also will benefit a lunar reconnaissance spacecraft to be launched in 2008.
. . The telescope's ultraviolet observations of two Apollo landing sites and an unexplored but geologically intriguing area will help scientists pick the best spots for robot and human exploration.
. . It has observed the moon just once before, in the late 1990s. The moon is a difficult target for the space telescope, which was not designed to track the fast-moving orb.

Oct 19, 05: A new rocket engine, known as the Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator (IPD), was being tested at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The program was suspended after the hurricanes caused heavy damage to the center and left many workers homeless.
. . The IPD is designed to provide nearly twice as much thrust as current space shuttle engines and to do it safer and more efficiently. It does this by using unique "full flow" preburners that provide more thrust than traditional rocket engines while operating at cooler temperatures.
. . In current space shuttle engines, a liquid hydrogen fuel and a liquid oxygen oxidizer are both fed into a combustion chamber and ignited. The reaction produces a hot high-pressure gas that is pushed through a nozzle to create thrust.
. . Both liquid fuel and oxidizer must be fed into the combustion chamber very rapidly. In the case of the space shuttle's main engine, an entire swimming pool's worth of fuel is used up in only 25 seconds. To move that much fuel that quickly, a turbopump with high-speed turbines is used. In a traditional liquid-fuel rocket engine, a small amount of the fuel is "preburned", just enough to power up the turbopump so it can begin siphoning off the rest of the fuel into the combustion chamber. A similar process occurs with the oxidizer.
. . The IPD works differently. Instead of only send small amounts of fuel and oxidizer to the preburners, the IPD engine sends all of the fuel and all of the oxidizer. This causes the turbopump's turbines to spin more quickly, producing more thrust. It's like a pinwheel spinning faster as more wind is blown through its blades.
. . A major advantage of this type of full flow engine is that it runs cooler than traditional engines, which can reach temperatures of more than 3,000 degrees F. The IPD engine, in contrast, runs several hundred degrees cooler. Reducing operating temperatures could drastically extend the life of the rocket engines. Current shuttle main engine require maintenance and refurbishing after about 10 flights. IPD engines are intended to fly 100 times or more between maintenance periods, and engineers hope to be able to boost that number to 200.
. . In addition to the full flow preburners, the IPD engine also sports hydrostatic bearings rather than traditional ball bearings in support of the turbo pump's rotors. The hydrostatic bearings will float on a layer of liquid during operation, thereby reducing their overall wear and extending their usefulness.
. . When completed, the IPD will be capable of generating 250,000 pounds of thrust --double the performance of the most advanced booster engines currently available.

Oct 19, 05: A close flyby of Saturn's grayish moon Dione reveals it is a mature, frigid world with hints of tectonic activity, new observations suggest. The U.S./European Cassini spacecraft flew within 500km of the Dione's pale surface last week, showing it possessed a heavily cratered surface but no presence of an atmosphere.
. . Orbiting Saturn within the tenuous E-ring, Dione possesses fine streaks that crosscut its surface. Parallel grooves splash across the terrain, which are interrupted by larger, asymmetrical bright fractures. Scientists believe the cracks and fractures were caused by changes in the moon's crust.

Oct 16, 05: The discovery of a new planetoid has set off a bitter feud between American and Spanish scientists while raising questions about the ethics of Internet research.
. . The dispute began in July when Michael Brown, a professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, discovered a new planetoid in the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt.
. . Days before announcing his discovery, however, a group of Spanish astronomers claimed the new planetoid. American researchers said they learned that the Spanish scientists had discovered where Brown was aiming a Chilean telescope by using an Internet search engine. "This is a wake-up call for scientists", Brown said.
. . The object at the center of the dispute, which is about 1,600 KM in diameter, had been photographed numerous times in the past, but no one had realized it was a planetoid.

Oct 9, 05: NASA will use robots to help complete the International Space Station by 2010, to work inside and outside new spacecraft as they become capable of traveling to other planets, and to help turn the moon into a "launching point" to other worlds by 2020.
. . Some of the key "rookies" include:
. . # Robonaut, the humanoid device mentioned above that can replicate human hand and arm movement and perform tasks such as drilling, painting and others;
. . # MiniAERemote, a beach ball-sized flying vehicle that can float outside the space shuttle and photograph sections of the craft that cannot be observed any other way. "All boats need lifeboats, and all spacecraft need a MiniAERemote", Ambrose said. "It would have been nice to have had this on the Apollo 13 mission—it would have relieved a lot of consternation."
. . # SpiderNaut, a 600-pound spider-like vehicle ("an arachnid", Ambrose said) that can carry people and other robots to a work site over any kind of terrain.
. . A new four- or six-wheel lunar robot that can carry people and/or other robots to a workplace, then follow the astronaut-driver to wherever he or she goes. "Sort of like a dog that follows you around until you say 'heel'."
. . Perhaps the most advanced capabilities are in evidence on the Robonaut, Ambrose said. "The hands and arms on these devices are amazing. They have hundreds of sensor points and can approximate human movement to a very fine degree. The fingers can feel around a drill handle and find the trigger, then feel the vibration of the drill and use the right amount of pressure to do the job."
. . Innova Holdings Inc. is working with NASA to design and build a sophisticated robotic arm designed specifically to repair and maintain the Hubble Space Telescope. That robot will be launched sometime in 2007, will dock itself to the telescope, and will perform a number of maintenance and repair jobs to keep the $14 billion (and counting) telescope in operation. The Hubble Space Telescope is expected to stay in operation until 2020, when it will be ditched in the Pacific Ocean.

Oct 2, 05: The astronomers who claim to have discovered the 10th planet in the solar system have another intriguing announcement: It has a moon.
. . The moon discovery is important because it can help scientists determine the new planet's mass. In July, Brown announced the discovery of an icy, rocky object larger than Pluto in the Kuiper Belt, a disc of icy bodies beyond Neptune. Brown labeled the object a planet and nicknamed it Xena after the lead character in the former TV series "Xena: Warrior Princess." The moon was nicknamed Gabrielle, after Xena's faithful traveling sidekick.
. . By determining the moon's distance and orbit around Xena, scientists can calculate how heavy Xena is. For example, the faster a moon goes around a planet, the more massive a planet is.
. . But the discovery of the moon is not likely to quell debate about what exactly makes a planet. The problem is there is no official definition for a planet and setting standards like size limits potentially invites other objects to take the "planet" label.
. . Possessing a moon is not a criterion of planethood. Brown said he expected to find a moon orbiting Xena because many Kuiper Belt objects are paired with moons.
. . The newly discovered moon is about 250km wide and 60 times fainter than Xena, the farthest-known object in the solar system. It is currently 9 billion miles away from the sun, or about three times Pluto's current distance from the sun.
. . Scientists believe Xena's moon was formed when Kuiper Belt objects collided with one another. The Earth's moon formed in a similar way when Earth crashed into an object the size of Mars.
. . The moon was first spotted by a 10-meter telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii on Sept. 10. Scientists expect to learn more about the moon's composition during further observations with the Hubble Space Telescope in November.

Oct 2, 05: The Cassini spacecraft has provided new images of Saturn's moons Tethys and Hyperion, showing features not seen before. Last weekend, Cassini flew closer than ever before to each of them.
. . Tethys has a scarred, ancient surface, an icy landscape with steep cliffs and craters. A giant rift called Ithaca Chasma cuts across it. Much of the topography in this region, including that of Ithaca Chasma, has been thoroughly hammered by impacts. This appearance suggests that the event that created Ithaca Chasma happened very long ago.
. . Astronomers described Hyperion as spongy-looking with dark-floored craters that speckle its surface. Scientists don't know what the dark material is. In addition, the new images suggest the possibility that Hyperion's crater walls have experienced multiple episodes of landslides.
. . Cassini flew by Hyperion at a distance of 500 km. Hyperion is 266 km wide. It has an irregular shape, and spins in a chaotic rotation. Much of its interior is empty space; it's like a pile of rubble, scientists say.
. . Cassini was within 1,500 km of Tethys, a moon that is 1,071 km in diameter.

Sept 29, 05: The European Space Agency (Esa) is proposing joining forces with Russia to develop a new vehicle for human spaceflight, the Clipper. The six-person spaceplane would give European astronauts autonomous access to the space station and Luna.
. . Russia is planning to replace its ageing Soyuz capsule with the Clipper and is seeking international partners. Regarded as the workhorse of Russia's manned and unmanned space fleet, it is one of the most reliable spacecraft ever built. But Russia is looking to the future and is planning to replace the Soyuz with a new vehicle that would be capable of taking cosmonauts into lunar orbit.
. . By joining forces with Russia, Europe would have access to a fixed number of seats on the vehicle, perhaps one or two per flight, for use by its own astronauts. Russia, in return, would have access to certain technologies that are more sophisticated in Europe.
. . Russia intends to build the Clipper within the next decade, carrying out the first automatic test flight in 2011, and the first manned flights in 2012 The fleet would gradually be phased in, finally replacing the Soyuz in 2014. The Clipper would allow Russia and Europe to collaborate with the Americans on lunar exploration, allowing six astronauts to orbit the Moon and to act as a back-up rescue craft, if needed.

Sept 21, 05: The Martian surface has undergone dramatic changes in the last few years with the appearance of new gullies and fresh boulder tracks, new images show. The photos, taken by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, suggest that the Red Planet is perhaps more active than previously thought.
. . The spacecraft, in its ninth year in orbit, spotted two fresh gullies on a Martian sand dune that were not present in 2002. Scientists think the gullies might have formed when frozen carbon dioxide trapped by windblown sand vaporized, releasing gas that allowed the sand to flow freely.
. . The spacecraft also took images of boulder tracks at another site that were not there two years ago. The tracks were probably caused by dozens of boulders rolling down a slope from strong wind or a quake, scientists said.
. . Researchers also noted that impact craters forming since the 1970s suggest that crater-formation is a slow process, occurring at one-fifth the pace previously thought. The pace is important because it is used to estimate the age of Martian surfaces.

Sept 21, 05: An international group of astronomers trying to define the term planet may be finally nearing a decision, but a consensus is unlikely. If a decision is soon rendered as expected, with or without consensus, the result will be less of a definition, however, and more a string of qualifying adjectives.
. . The upshot: Astronomers will likely continue using the term planet, or they might switch to planetary mass object. And either way, they will put other terms in front of it to define each type, such as gas giant, terrestrial, asteroidal and perhaps even traditional or historic. The sorts of adjectives that might be used is not totally agreed upon. The terms Trans-Neptunian and cisjovian are based on location, not composition.
. . In the end, the phrase "nine planets" will almost surely be relegated to the history books.

Sept 19, 05: NASA unveiled its $104 billion plan to return Americans to the moon by 2018 aboard a capsule-like vehicle the space agency's chief described as "Apollo on steroids."
. . Like the Apollo program that carried the first humans to the moon in 1969, the new system would put crew members into a capsule sitting atop a rocket, and would have a separate heavy-lift vehicle to take only cargo into orbit. "It is very Apollo-like ... but bigger." The capsule's base would be considerably larger than Apollo's --18 feet compared with 3.9 meters-- and it would weigh about 50% more, Griffin said. It would carry six people, instead of Apollo's three, and be able to stay in lunar orbit for six months. He said the program will cost 55% of what Apollo cost, in constant dollars spread over 13 years.
. . The new space system is meant to replace the aging and now-grounded shuttle fleet, but would use some shuttle components, including its solid rocket boosters, main engine and massive external tank.
. . The next moon mission would get there in several stages, with a cargo vehicle launching to Earth orbit, where it would dock with a later launch of the crew capsule. It would then be propelled to lunar orbit, with a landing craft, whose bottom half is meant to stay on the moon as a long-term base.
. . Moon voyagers would return to the capsule in the top half of the lander and travel back to Earth, floating down safely with the help of parachutes and airbags to the projected landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Sept 14, 05: Recent findings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft and new discoveries about organisms here on Earth that thrive in extreme conditions are causing scientists to rethink the possibility that there may be life on Saturn's cloudy moon Titan.
. . Several of the key elements crucial for life on Earth are also present on Titan, including liquid reservoirs, organic molecules and ample energy sources. It has a dense nitrogen-rich atmosphere and a natural process for producing hydrogen and carbon containing molecules called hydrocarbons that are essential for life on Earth. Astronomers have long seen Titan as a place that had the preconditions for life, but most scientists saw it as too inhospitable to actually contain biology today. The Sun's ultraviolet light reacts with nitrogen and methane high in the upper reaches of Titan's atmosphere, producing the orange smog and a steady stream of organic materials that fall steadily onto that moon's surface.
. . Many of the natural forces that shape the Earth's landscape are also active on Titan, including shifting continental plates, wind erosion, possibly oceans -—albeit of ethane and methane and not water—- and volcanoes.
. . It has a dense nitrogen-rich atmosphere and a natural process for producing hydrogen and carbon containing molecules called hydrocarbons that are essential for life on Earth. Astronomers have long seen Titan as a place that had the preconditions for life, but most scientists saw it as too inhospitable to actually contain biology today.
. . If life does exist on Titan, a good place to look for it may be in hot springs connected to hydrocarbon reservoirs, said David Grinspoon, a researcher at SwRI's Space Science and Engineering Division.
. . Grinspoon speculated that life on Titan, if there is any, might be able to produce energy by mixing acetylene, a hydrocarbon abundant in Titan's atmosphere, with hydrogen. The energy could then be harnessed to power metabolism or to heat their surroundings.
. . "In environments that are energy-rich but liquid-poor, like near the surface of Titan, natural selection may favor organisms that use their metabolic heat to melt their own watering holes", Grinspoon said.

Sept 12, 05: The Japanese space probe Hayabusa has approached within 20 km of its target, planetisimal Itokawa. ISAS scientists report that images taken by Hayabusa show a contrast of rocky and hilly regions and a smooth area on the asteroid. Further analysis of the imagery and other data may help decipher its origin and evolution.
. . The plan is for Hayabusa to depart Itokawa carrying onboard samples of asteroid Itokawa, and then head back to Earth. The probe's sample return canister would parachute back to Earth in June of 2007.
. . The touchiest and most difficult aspect of the mission is clearly gathering samples. The spacecraft will descend by autonomous adjustments of its propulsion engine --while transmitting images of the whole process to Earth. Due to spacecraft's distance from Earth and the communications lag --some 10 minutes-- most of the essential decisions have to be made by the spacecraft itself.
. . According to ISAS updates on the mission, the spacecraft will release a target marker onto the body. This small marker is to glow brightly on the surface, reflecting light from a flash beam transmitted from the spacecraft. The probe uses onboard gear, including a laser ranging device to descend.
. . After making a close approach, and prior to a final touch down, the spacecraft is to stop using its propulsion engine and then enters into a free fall descent. This is to prevent the steering jets on the probe from contaminating the asteroid's surface. From this point, the engine stays halted until the completion of sampling. After the free fall descent, sampling starts as soon as the landing of a sampler horn on the surface is detected. Right after sampling, the spacecraft starts the engine, and immediately lifts off.
. . If successful, Japan's Hayabusa mission would be the first spacecraft in history to return samples from a 'tisimal.

Sept 12, 05: Astronomers have produced a new color map of Pluto, the most distant planet in our Solar System, using images from the Hubble Space Telescope. The detailed map shows areas likely to be methane frost and a bright spot perhaps made of frozen carbon monoxide. Producing the map has taken two years of computer processing.
. . The researchers, led by Marc Buie of the Lowell Observatory, have found dark areas thought to be dirty water-ice and brighter ones indicating nitrogen frost. Red areas indicate methane ice and possibly other organics (carbon-based molecules). The methane frost seems to be everywhere, running into dark and light areas on "a hemispheric level." An unusual bright spot near the center of the global map could indicate the presence of carbon monoxide.
. . The US space agency's (Nasa) New Horizons spacecraft will set off for an encounter with Pluto and Charon next year, but will not arrive until 2015 at the earliest.
. . Another team has obtained the most precise estimate yet for the size of its moon, Charon, with data gathered during the planet's eclipse of a star. This figure could be used to calculate a more accurate size for Pluto itself. They used the data from this event to tie down the radius of Charon to 602.5km, plus or minus one kilometer --the most precise figure yet. The density for Charon is 1.73 (plus or minus 0.08) grams per cubic centimeter.
. . Dr Buie explained that Pluto seemed to be very similar to Neptune's moon Triton, which is thought to be a Kuiper belt object captured by Neptune's gravity. This is despite the fact that the process of capture should have altered Triton's surface drastically through heating. "I'm surprised Triton and Pluto aren't more different than they are."

Sept 10, 05: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) announced today that it will develop a Falcon 9 booster --an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) class vehicle. The Falcon 9 would be capable of launching approximately 9,500 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in its medium configuration and 25,000 kg to LEO in its heavy configuration, a lift capacity "greater than any other launch vehicle."
. . In the medium configuration, Falcon 9 would be priced at $27 million per flight with a 3.6 meter fairing and $35 million with a 5 m fairing. Prices include all launch range and third party insurance costs, making Falcon 9 the most cost efficient vehicle in its class worldwide.
. . "The prices we are showing do not account for reusability, so I'm hopeful that we will be able to reduce costs significantly over time. Also, this is still the first generation of our propulsion technology", Musk said. The SpaceX Merlin 2 engine will benefit from a very significant thrust upgrade and also be considerably cheaper per pound of thrust than Merlin 1, he said.

Sept 10, 05: Earth and Saturn's moon Titan show striking similarities because both occupy "sweet spots" in our Solar System, researchers have said. Many processes that occur on Earth also take place on the moon, say scientists. Wind, rain and volcanism and tectonic activity all seem to play a role in shaping Titan's surface.
. . One scientist even sees a way that life could survive on the freezing world. "Titan is perhaps the most Earth-like place in the Solar System other than Earth, in terms of the balance of processes", says Jonathan Lunine, of the University of Arizona, who is an interdisciplinary scientist for Cassini-Huygens. But the chemistry that drives these processes is radically different between the two worlds. For example, methane seems to perform many of the same roles on Titan that water plays on Earth.
. . Scientists have revealed new details about Titan at the meeting in Cambridge. Ralph Lorenz of the University of Arizona, said that the river channels and flows on Titan are fashioned by "monsoon" events. It takes a relatively long time for methane to build up to a point where it can rain down on Titan's surface. Scientists, therefore, think rains are only occasional, but catastrophic, when they occur.
. . Evidence also suggests Titan is constantly being resurfaced by a fluid mixture of water and ammonia spewed out by volcanoes and hot springs, explaining why Titan is not littered with impact craters like its neighbors.
. . David Grinspoon of the Southwest Research Institute says organisms could occupy specific niches, such as hot springs. They could use acetylene, in reaction with hydrogen gas, to release enough energy to power metabolism, and possibly to heat their environments.

Sept 10, 05: Astronomers have discovered the fastest rotating object for its size in the Solar System. The Kuiper Belt Object 2003 EL61, discovered in July, rotates once every 3.9 hours.
. . Rather than being spherical like Pluto, the object has a shape much like a squashed rugby ball. "For an object almost the size of Pluto, this has very dramatic consequences." Planets are spherical because gravity pulls them in all directions. But as spin rates start to increase, bodies that would otherwise be spherical can begin to stretch into a flat sphere.
. . By knowing its shape, astronomers have been able to determine the object is about two-and-a-half times denser than ice. And they have also been able to find that its reflectivity is almost that of pure snow.
. . 2003 EL61 is big enough that gravity is the dominant force governing it rather than its internal structure. But, said Chad Trujillo of the California Institute of Technology, it could be approaching the kind of rotation rate where a body of its size would get torn apart. It is common to spin as fast as 2003 EL61, but these are small, fairly solid objects with low gravity. 2003 EL61 is distinct because it is a large object dominated by gravity, much like a planet.
. . Dr Trujillo said a spiralling-in effect of the object and its moon could have caused 2003 EL61 to spin at its fast rate. [I can't imagine how...]

Sept 8, 05: New observations of a young star and its surroundings are like a snapshot of the solar system when it was forming, astronomers announced. The star, just a million years old, is surrounded by a disk of dust, the sort of "protoplanetary" disk from which planets formed around our Sun, according to theory. In the disk is a gap that astronomers say likely was formed by one or more giant gas planets, something similar to Jupiter and the other planets we're familiar with.
. . The planets have not been imaged. Rather, the dust and the gap have been seen. The thinking is that when giant planets develop, they gather the dust from their orbital path, sweeping clean a region of space around the star. Similar setups have been seen around other stars, but few have been so young. This is the first evidence for a planet around a star so young that is also Sol-like.
. . If the system were overlaid onto the Solar System, the newly discovered gap would extend roughly from the orbit of Jupiter to the orbit of Uranus --the same size as the space occupied by our own giant planets.

Ion drives are computer controlled, have essentially no moving parts, and offer over 90& efficiency, compared with a maximum of about 35% for chemical rockets. The drives use inert gasses like xenon as propellant. Positive and negative electric grids accelerate the ions and spit them out at tremendous speeds—better than 88,000 mph in the case of the Deep Space 1 probe.
. . The really good news is that there's plenty of room for improvement. The limiting factor for the speed of the ejected propellant ions, and for the thrust they produce, is voltage at the grids, and that —in theory— is unlimited.
. . In 1994, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre mathematically described a warp drive's workings—not how to build one so much as what abilities you'd need to do so. Creating a warp bubble using an Alcubierre warp drive would scrunch up spacetime in the direction of motion and expand it behind. But although the bubble itself would be surfing along faster than the speed of light, spacetime inside would be unaffected, and a ship there would stand still.

Sept 7, 05: Comet Tempel 1, the target of NASA's Deep Impact probe, turns out to be quite fragile, with no more substance than a snowbank, scientists said. "The comet is mostly empty, mostly porous", said Michael A'Hearn, a comet specialist at the University of Maryland. "Probably all the way in, there is no bulk ice. The ice is all in the form of tiny grains." The comet's dust and ice grains form a fluffy structure of fine particles held together loosely by a weak gravitational pull. The surface of Tempel 1 is pocked with apparent impact craters, features that have not been detected before on close-up observation of two other comets.
. . Deep Impact collided purposely with Tempel 1 on July 4, freeing a plume of primordial material from its nucleus, the first time astronomers have been able to glimpse the interior of a comet. An analysis of material in the plume showed a huge increase in the amount of molecules that contain carbon. This suggests that comets like Tempel 1 contain a substantial amount of organic material, which means they might have brought such material to Earth early in the planet's history at a time when asteroid and meteor strikes were common.
. . Before Deep Impact, scientists had gotten close-up looks at the nuclei of only two comets, Borelly and Wild 2. Tempel 1 is much different from either of those, yet in the grand scheme it is likely still a garden variety comet, A'Hearn and his colleagues said. There is more dust than ice, but the ratio is less than 10-to-1. More significant to the new data is the revelation that there's not much there. "The comet is mostly empty", A'Hearn said, adding that it is probably more than 75% porous with perhaps no solid core. Instead, it's likely made of ice grains loosely packed through and through.
. . "We are assembling a list of comet ingredients that will be used by other scientists for years to come", said Carey Lisse of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. The Spitzer 'orbital 'scope used its infrared cameras to monitor material kicked up by the Deep Impact probe.
. . Lisse's team found standard comet components, such as silicate --smaller than typical sand grains. There were surprises, too, such as clay and carbonates --the stuff of seashells. These were unexpected because they are thought to require liquid water to form. A'Hearn said scientists are still analyzing the chemicals that came out of the Tempel 1, from ammonia and acetylene to hydrogen cyanide. None of the molecules are different from what previous ground-based observations had revealed, however.
. . Although a fascinating result, it spells bad news for the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, which seeks to put a lander on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2010. Now, Dr A'Hearn says the powdery structures might pose problems for Rosetta's lander Philae, which has to grip on to the surface. The Philae lander would use its mechanical legs to dig diagonally into the surface of Churyumov- Gerasimenko to hold itself down. "It means it's really hard to understand how you're going to attach the Rosetta lander to the surface. I don't think the gravity's strong enough for it to sink in, but if there is any outgassing, that will whip it back up."

Sept 7, 05: Neil Armstrong said today that a manned mission to Mars will not happen for at least 20 years —-but the effort might be easier than what it took to send him to the moon in 1969.
. . The first man to walk on the moon noted that scientists must develop better onboard spacecraft technology and stronger protection shields from harmful space radiation before a manned flight to the Red Planet can be accomplished. "It will certainly be 20 years or more before that happens."

Sept 8, 05: The largest known "aster"oid could contain more *fresh water than Earth, and looks like our planet in other ways, according to a new study that further blurs the line between planets and large space rocks.
. . Astronomers took 267 images of Ceres using the Hubble. From these images and subsequent computer simulations, they suggest Ceres may have a rocky inner core and a thin, dusty outer crust. A team led by Peter Thomas of Cornell University said today that Ceres is nearly spherical, which suggests that gravity controls its shape. Also, the body's non-uniform shape indicates that material is not evenly distributed throughout the inside. These and other new clues, including Ceres' low density, point to an interior loaded with ice, they said.
. . Ceres has long been considered one of the tens of thousands of bodies that make up the belt between Mars and Jupiter. At 930 km in diameter –-about the width of Texas-– it's the largest asteroid in the belt, accounting for about 25% of the belt's total mass.
. . Astronomers had thought Ceres might never have been heated enough to create layers of material. But computer models now suggest Ceres has a differentiated interior –-dense material in the core and lighter stuff near the surface. Possible configurations include a mantle rich in water ice around a rocky core. If this mantle is composed of at least 25% water, Ceres would have more fresh water than Earth, according to a statement released by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Hubble.
. . On Earth, fresh water makes up only a thin layer just a few kms deep in some places, less in others. The water layer proposed for Ceres, while smaller in circumference, is many km thicker.
. . The total volume of all water on Earth is about 1.4 billion cubic kilometers, around 41 million of which is fresh water. If Ceres' mantle accounts for 25% of the asteroid's mass, that would translate to an upper limit of 200 million cubic kms of water, Parker said.
. . Since all the nine "regular" planets have differentiated interiors, this new view of Ceres has some astronomers calling Ceres a "mini-planet", adding fuel to an ongoing debate over exactly what qualifies as a planet.
. . In 2015, scientists will get a close up look at Ceres when the NASA Dawn mission orbits it.

Sept 7, 05: A test of an inflatable Earth orbiting module is slated for liftoff early next year, bankrolled by a go-it-alone, do-it-yourself entrepreneur keen on providing commercial space habitats for research and manufacturing, among other duties. Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, Nevada is readying a test prototype of the firm's expandable habitat design and looking to launch the hardware in the first quarter of 2006.

Sept 5, 05: The particles that make up Saturn's rings are more like "fluffy" snowballs than hard ice cubes, as some scientists had previously described them. And these grains have been found to be spinning more slowly than thought, according to new data from the US-European Cassini space probe. This is even the case in parts of the rings that are densely packed and where there should be many collisions.
. . Observations from Cassini also show several faint, thread-like ringlets, or minor rings, around Saturn's F ring in fact form a single spiral arm that encircles the planet. The spiral is constantly being created and destroyed through its interactions with one of Saturn's moons.
. . When a small moon in Saturn orbit gets close enough to the ringlets, or strands, the gravitational force it exerts scatters the particles. After about a year, these organise themselves into a single spiral arm. But successive interactions with the satellite destroy the spiral after two years.

Sept 5, 05: NASA's next Mars lander, the Phoenix mission, will head for the northern arctic region of the red planet in 2007, not only ready to dig for subsurface water ice but also probe for habitats of present day life.
. . Phoenix is the first in NASA's Scout Program. This class of mission is deemed as innovative & relatively low-cost. Work on preparing Phoenix for its Earth departure has reached the half-way point. Many of the scientific instruments for Phoenix were already built, needing little or no modification for Mars duties. Still, the craft is undergoing extensive testing and technological tweaking.
. . Unlike the wheeled Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, the Phoenix is a stationary lander. Once firmly sitting on the planet, the craft literally swings into action, using a robotic arm to furrow into the local landscape, as well as analyze bits of scooped up material with a bevy of instruments. On arrival at its exploration site in May 2008, Phoenix is designed to investigate the ice/soil boundary. Touching down inside the arctic circle, just before summer on Mars and at the end of spring, ice will have retreated from the area. "We're going to land on dry soil. We can start digging immediately."
. . Phoenix has two prime directives. First is to probe the history of liquid water that may have existed in that area as recently as 100,000 years ago. Scientists will analyze the chemistry and mineralogy of the soil and ice using lander instruments.
. . Furthermore, Phoenix will assess the habitability of the martian polar environment by tasking sophisticated chemical experiments to assess the soil's composition of life-giving elements such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and hydrogen. Phoenix will dig deep enough into the soil to analyze the soil environment, presumably protected from ultraviolet rays, and look for organic signatures and assess the potential habitability of the subsurface.
. . When Phoenix plows through Mars' atmosphere in May 2008 and speeds toward the planet's surface, its touchdown won't rely on airbags and bouncing to full-stop --as has been the case for the last three NASA Mars landings. Once free of a parachute, Phoenix will depend upon an "ease on down" propulsion system that was last utilized on the failed Mars Polar Lander mission.
. . In the descent to Mars, however, Phoenix thrusters will gulp and heave out hydrazine. The engine effluents striking the landing spot in which Phoenix will conduct science "is a matter of some concern to those members of the science team", Smith explained. While the most ultra-pure hydrazine is to be used, some un-combusted fuel will reach the surface.
. . A camera system begins snapping images of the surrounding terrain and the area in which the robotic arm will be digging. Also, gear onboard starts to sample the weather at the landing site. Presently, only a UHF antenna is on the lander, meaning all communications with the spacecraft are handled through Mars orbiters.
. . A critical item on Phoenix is a 2.35-meter long robot arm. "It's quite a strong arm", Smith noted, "but not strong enough to dig through solid ice." Like a back hoe, this appendage can use its sharp prongs and serrated blades to tear and scrape the soil. In the first few weeks of the Phoenix mission, the arm is destined to dig very rapidly, "just to see if we can find quickly the depth to ice."
. . Samples successfully scooped up by the arm are placed into a Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) - a combination high-temperature furnace and mass spectrometer instrument that scientists will use to analyze martian ice and soil samples. Specimens are also delivered to water chambers and a microscope station.
. . However, before the agile robot arm is put to work, it must first unsheathe itself from a sterilized "body bag" in which it is housed during the ride to Mars. That's necessary as the arm itself will also be sterilized.
. . The Phoenix lander is to dig away at Mars for about three months. As Sun-provided solar energy diminishes at the site, less battery power is available to run the craft's robotic arm. "Then we go into weather station mode...for maybe another two months." As the ice starts advancing off Mars' northern polar cap and moves southward, Phoenix will become entombed in several feet of solid carbon dioxide. The lander is not designed to survive being buried in solid dry-ice for six to seven months!
. . Additionally, the lander begins the search for evidence of organic molecules by searching for some of them within the martian ice record.

Sept 5, 05: Future visitors to Mars in need of water may find large quantities stored away in sand dunes held together with ice, a leading geologist said. While channels and ridges in the Martian landscape indicate that water once flowed across it and probes have detected ice in the soil, Bourke believes she has found topographical evidence that some of its giant dunes are about 50% water.
. . One of those sites is a dune in the southern hemisphere's Kaiser Crater which, at 4750 meters high and 6.4km wide, Bourke believes could be the solar system's biggest.
. . Her studies of the Red Planet's terrain reveal dunes with earthly traits. Unlike shifting Saharan desert dunes, but much like those found in Antarctica, they have physical features suggesting something is helping keep their distinctive shapes.

Sept 5, 05: New observations by the international Cassini spacecraft reveal that Saturn's trademark shimmering rings, which have dazzled astronomers since Galileo's time, have dramatically changed over just the past 25 years. Among the most surprising findings is that parts of Saturn's innermost ring —-the D ring-— have grown dimmer since the Voyager spacecraft flew by the planet in 1981, and a piece of the D ring has moved 125 miles inward toward Saturn. While scientists puzzle over what caused the changes, their observations could reveal something about the age and lifetime of the rings.
. . Scientists are interested in Saturn's rings because they are a model of the disk of gas and dust that initially surrounded the sun. Studying them could yield important clues about how the planets formed from that disc 4.5 billion years ago.

Sept 1, 05: Primary launch window for New Horizons is January 11 - February 14, 2006. If the spacecraft roars skyward within the first 18 days of that window, scooting by Jupiter for a gravity assist, it will reach Pluto in 2015. "It'll be the fastest spacecraft ever to Jupiter... 13 months after launch", Stern said. "We pass the Moon in just nine hours." If liftoff is after February 2 --depending on exact launch date-- New Horizons zips to Pluto direct --sans Jupiter-- and arrives at Pluto in 2019-2020.
. . What's in store for New Horizons is a five-month-long flyby reconnaissance of Pluto-Charon in summer 2015. In extended mission mode, the spacecraft then heads farther into the Kuiper Belt to scrutinize one or two of the ancient, icy mini-worlds that dwell far beyond Neptune's orbit.
. . Another crucial milestone must be met: Approval to use a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), the nuclear power source that provides the electrical energy to operate the spacecraft's mechanical and electronic systems in the cold darkness of deep space.

The velocity change (delta) required to attain low earth orbit, just 300 km up, is more than twice that needed to go on from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to Luna. Robert Heinlein's "Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere." It's comparable to that needed for reasonable travel times from LEO to other planets, thousands of times farther away.

Aug 30, 05: Japan is planning to develop a new rocket that will carry nearly double the payload of its troubled H-2A booster and carry cargo to the International Space Station. The new rocket, to be called the H-2B, will be launched in 2008 and carry a payload of up to 8 tons, compared with the payload of 4 to 6 tons for the H-2A. The H-2B will have two engines, instead of the H-2A's one, and four booster rockets.

Aug 30, 05: There is a hot spot on one of Saturn's moons which should not be there and has yet to be explained, scientists said.It is located at the south pole of Enceladus, a moon with a diameter of just 500 km which orbits Saturn at a distance of around 238,000 km.
. . The hot spot is unusual because it occurs at the pole, scientists said. Usually, the hottest part of any planet or moon is around the equator, as is the case with the earth. This suggests that the heat at Enceladus' southern pole is generated from within.
. . The scientists expected to find that the temperature was around 80 degrees Kelvin (-193 degrees Celsius at its hottest point, which they assumed would be near the equator. Instead, they found that the heat was concentrated at the south pole, where the temperature hit 91 degrees Kelvin near a series of fissures, or "tiger stripes" on the moon's surface.
. . The scientists have come up with two theories to explain the hot spot. The first is that the heat comes from decaying radioactive material below the moon's surface and the second is that it is caused by gravitational tides. But they say neither theory adequately explains the heat. The team says the hot spot suggests there might be volcanoes and geysers on Enceladus. If this is true, it would be one of only three "active" moons known to man. The others are Io, which orbits Jupiter, and Triton, which circles Neptune.
. . Saturn has 31 known moons.

Aug 26, 05: Nasa is trying to use the Hubble Space Telescope to scout possible locations as part of George Bush's push to revisit the Moon by 2018. Air, water and electricity are the key requirements of any habitation. Because it would be prohibitively expensive to ship out supplies, these would need to be produced on the Moon itself. For the raw materials are in plentiful --if not easily extractable-- supply. What Nasa is looking for are sites with a good supply of ilmenite, a mineral from which to extract oxygen, hydrogen and helium.
. . "It would be not too difficult to make bricks and mortar from lunar rocks, and ilmenite would provide a nice supply of titanium, a light strong metal, and iron." As a moon base would be involved in research, its equipment would need to be shielded from the interference spewed out by Earth's electronic chatter. This means a site on the far side of the Moon, says Professor Pillinger. Which does rather leave its inhabitants stuck for communicating with those back home. The answer, he says, is to deploy a battery of satellites to relay messages.

Aug 25, 05: The giant iron ball at the center of the Earth appears to be spinning a bit faster than the rest of the planet. The solid core that measures about 2,400km in diameter is spinning about one-quarter to one-half degree faster, per year, than the rest of the world, scientists now say.
. . The spin of the Earth's core is an important part of the dynamo that created the planet's magnetic field, and researcher Xiaodong Song said he believes magnetic interaction is responsible for the different rates of spin.
. . They analyzed 30 quakes occurring in the South Atlantic and measured at 58 seismic stations in Alaska and found differences in the travel times and shape of the waves, indicating differences in the core as the waves passed through the center of the Earth. Analyzing those differences, they calculated that the core is spinning slightly faster than the rest of the planet and is a bit lumpy.
. . Earth's core is made of a solid inner part and a fluid outer part, all of it mostly iron. That solid inner core is surrounded by a fluid outer core about 6,800km across. The solid inner core has an uneven consistency, with some parts denser than others, and this can either speed up or slow down shock waves from earthquakes as they pass through.
. . Since the planet is divided into 360 degrees of longitude, a core spinning one-quarter to one-half degree faster than the outer surface could take between 700 and 1,400 years to get one full revolution ahead.

Aug 24, 05: The lead contractor building the mirrors on NASA's Webb Space Telescope, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., asked Cleveland-based Brush Wellman Inc. to make the mirror panels, using berylium. The telescope is set for launch in 2011 and could give scientists an unprecedented view of the early universe.
. . NASA chose beryllium over glass, which is what the Hubble telescope's mirror is made of, because the metal is stiff and dampens vibration so that the view is stable. Webb's 21-foot-wide mirror is six times the area of Hubble's and weighs about one-third of Hubble's 2,200 pounds. The Webb telescope's detectors are far more advanced and should be able to capture infrared waves.

Aug 24, 05: Small gullies on Mars were carved by water recently and would be prime locations to look for life, NASA scientists said. There have been many studies of Martian gullies that concluded water was involved. But most of the features are ancient, or if they seemed modern then there were questions about how the water could stay liquid long enough to do the carving.
. . "The gully sites may also be of prime importance for human exploration of Mars because they may represent locations of relatively near surface liquid water, which can be accessed by crews drilling on the red planet." Any potential long-term human presence on Mars would require a water source, both for drinking and to be broken down into hydrogen [AND oxygen!] as fuel for return flights.

Aug 23, 05: During the early morning hours of April 13, 2029, observers in Asia and North Africa will have a chance to witness a rare celestial event as an "asteroid", 99942 Apophis, passes within 20,000 miles of Earth. "It's not gonna knock your socks off, and it certainly won't be the brightest object in the sky, but it'll be easily observable with the naked eye." The approach of an asteroid this large --Apophis is about 300 meters in diameter-- and this close to Earth occurs only about once every 1,500 years.
. . Tidal forces from Earth's gravity will twist and churn the asteroid's insides and deform its exterior as it passes by the planet. Scheeres said that currently, the plan is to use ground-based radar to monitor the asteroids movements and telescopes to observe changes in its surface features and rotation.
. . But even the most sophisticated ground-based observations won't be sufficient for gathering detailed information about the interior of the asteroid. That kind of detail would require that a network of probes capable of measuring acceleration and seismic activity be embedded in the asteroid's surface. Another possibility would be to place a probe in orbit around the asteroid in order to keep tabs on it and to map its surface. No such space missions are currently in the works.
. . Apophis was discovered last year. Scientists now predict there is about a 1-in-10,000 chance that the asteroid will hit Earth in 2036, on yet another of its trips around the Sun on a course that crosses the orbit of Earth. Some scientists think it prudent to launch a space mission to determine whether Apophis poses a significant threat. in 2029, Apophis' path will be bent significantly by Earth's gravity. They don't know the exact outcome.
. . In July, former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart sent a letter to NASA administrator Mike Griffin urging the agency to investigate whether in 2029 Apophis might enter certain gravitational "keyholes" near Earth that would alter the asteroid's flight path in a manner that could put it on a more certain collision course with our planet in 2036. In order to more accurately track its movements, Schweickart also proposed launching a space mission to place a radio transponder on Apophis. An official to response to Schweickart's letter is expected from NASA within the next few weeks.
. . "You don't have to change the course of the comet very much to miss the keyhole if you do it a number of years in advance", said Clark Chapman, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado. Most scientists agree that 2029 is the absolute deadline if an intervention mission is to be launched. After 2029, the distance Apophis would need to be moved in order to avoid an impact would be too great given current technologies.
. . In his letter, Schweickart said plans for a space mission to place a transponder on the Apophis should be in place by 2014 and that an intervention mission, should it prove necessary, be launched prior to 2029.

Aug 15, 05: The Cassini spacecraft made its latest flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus, revealing an unexpected hot spot on the moon's south pole. The finding flipped everything scientists knew about Enceladus on its head, because what should have been a dead moon appeared to be geologically active and what was supposed to be the moon's coldest region turned out to be its warmest.
. . Cassini's July flyby of Enceladus had it dipping within 170km of the moon's icy surface, its closest approach yet. In addition to the south pole hot spot, Cassini also revealed that the "icy veins" were actually a series of fractures on the moon's surface. Even more surprising, the fractures appeared to be active, violently spewing a slushy jet of warm water and ice onto the surface.
. . Together, the venting fractures and the hot spot provide strong evidence for geologic activity on Enceladus. If true, the findings could explain the moon's connection with one of Saturn's rings, a relationship that has puzzled scientists for years.
. . Saturn's E ring stretches over 300,000 km from its inside edge to its outer bound and is made up of microscopic particles of ice and dust. The ring is so faint that scientists didn't discover it until about 30 years ago, but when they did, they noticed a curious thing: the ring was brightest around Enceladus, which, along with some of Saturn's other moons, wades through the E ring's plane of debris while circling the planet. This observation caused some scientists to suspect that Enceladus was somehow supplying material for the ring.
. . In one scenario, geysers or water volcanoes on the surface of Enceladus spewed out clouds of ice and dust into the moon's atmosphere, and because the moon is so small and its gravity so weak, only about 500 km in diameter, the ice and dust soon float off into space.
. . Why the south pole is so active is still a mystery. One theory is that radioactive material left over from the moon's formation billions of years ago is acting as a heat source.
. . Enceladus takes as long to rotate on its axis as it does to make one orbit around Saturn, thus only one of its hemispheres faces Saturn.

Aug 12, 05: China is preparing to launch its first ever lunar orbiter in 2007. The spacecraft will pave the way for future missions, which may include China putting a lander on the Moon. The expedition, christened Chang'e-1 after the Chinese Moon goddess, will map the moon in 3D in an effort to identify future landing sites. Designs for the spacecraft have been completed and development will begin next month, officials say.

Aug 11, 05: Our Sun was already shining brightly more than 4.5 billion years ago, as dust and gas was swirling into what would become the planets of the solar system, U.S. researchers reported.
. . They said their finding is the first conclusive evidence that the so-called protosun affected the developing the solar system by emitting enough ultraviolet energy to catalyze the formation of organic compounds, water and other elements necessary for the evolution of life on Earth. They studied chemical "fingerprints" preserved in primitive chondrite meteorites. It is no good looking for anything on Earth, which has undergone extensive change since it was formed. But primitive meteorites have been less subject to chemical reactions since they were formed.
. . Astronomers believe that wind from the protosun blew matter from the core into the flat accretion disk --the layer of gas and matter from which meteorites, asteroids and planets later formed.
. . The UCSD team determined that a slight excess of one isotope of sulfur, called 33S, suggests that there were photochemical reactions going on when the little chunks of meteorite coalesced. "This measurement tells us for the first time that the sun was on, that there was enough ultraviolet light to do photochemistry", Thiemens said. "Knowing that this was the case is a huge help in understanding the processes that formed compounds in the early solar system."

Aug 10, 05: Scientists have spotted a planetisimal with more than one moon --the first discovery of its kind. Astronomers found a second moonlet orbiting 87 Sylvia, zooming around the sun in the "asteroid" belt. It was previously thought to be one of 60 with just one moon. It may even have more, smaller satellites. Satellites up to 5 km wide could lurk between the two known moons.
. . 87 Sylvia is one of the largest known planetisimals. It is potato-shaped, about 280 km in diameter and 380 km long. It was discovered in 1866.
. . Sylvia was named for Rhea Sylvia, the mythical mother of the founders of Rome. Now its moons will be called Romulus and Remus, for the ancient city's founders. Romulus is 18 km across and orbits the main body every 87.6 hours. Remus, the newfound object, is 7 km wide and orbits Sylvia every 33 hours. Sylvia completes one rotation about its axis every 5 hours and 11 minutes.
. . The small satellites are thought to be collision debris that went into orbit rather than falling back. The main body's low density and known size allowed astronomers to calculate that it must be a rubble pile, rather than a solid rock. "It could be up to 60% empty space."

Hubble orbits at about 380 miles above Earth. This is the highest altitude mission for the shuttle, 130 miles above the International Space Station's orbit.

Aug 3, 05: Scientists peering through a ground-based telescope say the surface of Saturn's planet-sized moon Titan appears dry and not awash in oceans of liquid hydrocarbons as is commonly believed.
. . Titan —one of two moons in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere-— has long baffled scientists because it's surrounded by a thick blanket of nitrogen and methane. Scientists have speculated that the atmospheric methane probably came from seas of liquid methane and ethane. But telescopes and orbiting spacecraft have yet to turn up evidence of a global ocean of methane on Titan. In the latest study, scientists using the Keck II telescope in Hawaii failed to see any reflections of sunlight that would indicate a body of liquid on the frozen moon.
. . But last month, Cassini photographed what appeared to be the best evidence yet of a liquid hydrocarbon lake. The spacecraft noticed a dark spot on Titan's south pole about the size of Lake Ontario that could be the site of a past or present lake, scientists had said. More flybys are needed to confirm the finding.

Aug 3, 05: Scientists speculated today on a solution to a longstanding mystery of why Luna is overloaded with nitrogen. It came from Earth, they say. If the idea is correct, then the Moon could serve as an attic of information that could reveal when Earth's magnetic field was jumpstarted shortly after the planet formed.
. . Luna is thought to have formed when a Mars-sized object slammed into Earth in a glancing blow that kicked up a bunch of superheated material. The stuff orbited Earth, cooled, and condensed into a satellite. It was all so hot that nitrogen and other so-called volatile elements didn't survive, theoretically leaving the Moon bereft of them.
. . But examinations of lunar soil brought back by Apollo astronauts finds plenty of nitrogen. Some would have arrived on the solar wind, but there's more than the Sun ought to have contributed. It's possible the lunar nitrogen arrived via interplanetary dust. But that idea hasn't been proved, nor are the potential quantities pinned down. The new scenario is based on the possibility that Earth's magnetic field was not born with the planet 4.5 billion years ago, but developed sometime thereafter when the molten iron core took on a "differential rotation."
. . The magnetic field serves as a protective shield, blocking many (but not all) of the charged particles that stream in from the Sun and keeping cosmic rays largely at bay, too. Before the magnetic field formed, nitrogen molecules in Earth's atmosphere broke down into nitrogen ions, and ions in the outer atmosphere escaped freely to the Moon, Ozima's team figures.
. . Back then, Earth and the Moon were much closer than they are today, so it would have been easier for the satellite's gravity to lure the ions in. If that's the case, then scientists should be able to find out when the magnetic field turned on by checking if the amount of nitrogen is significantly higher in lunar soil of a particular age.
. . Scientists also think Luna may be loaded with terrestrial rocks that were kicked up long ago by asteroid impacts. Literally tons of rocks that pack clues to Earth's early history could be sitting within inches of the lunar surface.

Aug 2, 05: "The word planet is simply not a scientific word, it is a cultural word." - Mike Brown, leader of the "10th planet" discovery team. The claim of a 10th planet has set off a fresh round of debate and international talks aimed at defining the most vexing term in astronomy: the word planet. A formal *proposal could come within a week or two. But some astronomers see no easy resolution. Now, the guy who stirred the latest dust is trying to snuff the whole debate by repositioning planet as a cultural term that no longer has any scientific meaning.
. . The IAU, responsible for nomenclature of all things beyond Earth, has been mulling a planet definition since at least 1999. An IAU Working Group specifically set up to develop a recommendation has been stalled for the past six months.
. . A synopsis of Stern's thinking: A planet is a body that directly orbits a star, is large enough to be round because of self gravity, and is not so large that it triggers nuclear fusion in its interior. If adopted, the wording would bring our solar system's tally of known planets to about two dozen.
. . Stern favors calling the smaller objects dwarf planets, for example. Other astronomers prefer the term minor planet. Another term bandied about is Kuiper Belt planets. Some don't like the idea of applying the planet label at all. [How 'bout: 3 kinds of planets... ROCKY (close to sun), GAS GIANT (mid-distance), KBO (far out). "Round" low-limit on KBO size.]
. . The new world has been given the provisional designation of 2003 UB313. But Brown has 10 years in which to think of a catchier name and have it approved by a panel of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
. . Names for persons or events known primarily for their military or political activities are acceptable only after 100 years have elapsed since the person died or the event occurred.
. . Yet no matter what the group comes up with, you can bank on at least one more year of debate. For a definition to be made official, it must be voted on at an IAU General Assembly meeting. The next one is in Prague in August, 2006.

Aug 1, 05: The Spirit Mars rover is within striking range of attaining a once out-of-the-question mission milestone: Reaching the summit of Husband Hill at its Gusev crater exploration site, high in the Columbia Hills, named after the astronauts lost in the tragic shuttle reentry accident of 2003. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think our chances of making it to the summit look pretty good now", said Steve Squyres. scaling Husband Hill has been slow going, primarily due to the rich bounty of observations on the way.
. . "At the summit, we will probably spend some time doing a large panorama", Crumpler said. "One of the goals there will be to take a hard look at the basin to the south where one of the long-term targets of interest --'Home Plate'-- is located. Specifically, we will want to see what the best route might be."

July 29, 05: BIG NEWS!! Astronomers have discovered an object in the solar system that is larger than Pluto. The new planet, known as 2003UB313, has been identified as the most distant object ever detected orbiting the sun. They are calling it the 10th planet, but already that claim is contested. The new world's size is not at issue --the very definition of planethood is. His best estimate is that it is 3,380 km wide, about 1-1/2 times the diameter of Pluto.
. . If it's not a planet, it is not No. 10, other astronomers say. Some astronomers view it as a Kuiper [KOY-per] Belt object and not a planet. The Kuiper Belt is a region of frozen objects beyond Neptune. Pluto is called a Kuiper Belt object by many astronomers. Brown himself has argued in the past for Pluto's demotion from planet status, because of its diminutive size and eccentric and inclined orbit. But today he struck a different note. Offering additional justification, Brown said 2003 UB313 appears to be surfaced with methane ice, as is Pluto. That's not the case with other large Kuiper Belt objects, however.
. . Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, called the discovery "a major step." But Boss would not call it a planet at all. Instead, he said Pluto and other small objects beyond Neptune should be called, at best, "Kuiper Belt planets." The very definition of what constitutes a planet is currently being debated by Boss and others in a working group of the International Astronomical Union. Boss said the group has not reached consensus after six months of discussion. Last year, for example, Brown's team found Sedna, which is about three-fourths as large as Pluto. Others include 2004 DW and Quaoar.
. . Brown and Trujillo first photographed the new planet with the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope on Oct. 31, 2003. However, the object was so far away --9.7 billion miles from the sun-- that its motion was not detected until they reanalyzed the data in January of this year. In the last seven months, the scientists have been studying the planet to better estimate its size and its motions. The new planet orbits the sun once every 560 years and is now at its farthest point from Earth. In about 280 years, the planet will be as close as Neptune. One hypothesis is that at some point in its history, Neptune likely flung it up into its 44-degree orbit.
. . It went undiscovered for so long because its orbit is tilted at a 45-degree angle to the orbital plane of the other planets, and travels in an elliptical orbit. It's so far away that an observer standing on its surface could cover the view of the sun with the head of a pin, Brown said. It was sufficiently bright, however, for amateur astronomers to track it in the early morning sky --if they have a good 'scope. [As Earth moves, it'll soon be an evening target.]
. . Scientists infer the size of a solar-system object by its brightness and distance. The reflectiveness of the new planet is not known, however, which is why the estimate of its diameter ranges from one to two times the size of Pluto. But those constraints are well supported by the data, Brown said. The upper size limit is constrained by results from the Spitzer Space Telescope, which records heat in the form of infrared light. Because the Spitzer can't detect the new planet, the overall diameter must be less twice Pluto's size. Earth is about 12,700 km in diameter.

July 29, 05: Breaking news! [& see above --a *different* object, announced just a couple hours later!! ] Astronomers found a large object in the Solar System's outer reaches. It's being hailed as "a great discovery". Details are still sketchy. It never comes closer to the Sun than Neptune and spends most of its time much further out than Pluto. It is one of the largest objects ever found in the outer Solar System.
. . It also has a tiny moon --one of several objects out there now known to have a satellite. The main object in the two-body system, designated as 2003 EL61, is 32% as massive as Pluto and is estimated to be about 70% of Pluto's diameter. The mass estimate is very firm, within 1 or 2%.
. . Brown figures 2003 EL61 has a diameter of around 1,500 km. Sedna is between 1,300 and 1,800 km in diameter. Pluto --so far the largest KBO-- is about 2,250 km across. [I'd hoped it was bigger than Pluto, just to quell the nonsense that Pluto was called a planet.]
. . It is significantly inclined to the main plane of the solar system where all of the planets travel. The moon around 2003 EL61 is small, making up only about 1% of the mass of the system. "This satellite is the smallest satellite relative to its primary known in the Kuiper belt", Brown said. "Pluto's satellite, Charon, is about 10% of the mass of Pluto. [Moons make mass-estimates much easier.]
. . Marsden, of the Minor Planet Center, said it is surprising the object was not discovered earlier. He said it was probably just barely to faint to be spotted in the sky survey done by Clyde Tombaugh that led to the discovery of Pluto 75 years ago.

July 29, 05: A giant patch of frozen water has been pictured nestled within an unnamed impact crater on Mars' far northern latitudes. This pic was taken by the Mars Express, the European Space Agency probe. The highly visible ice is sitting in a crater which is 35 km wide, with a maximum depth of about two km. The team have also been able to detect faint traces of water ice along the rim of the crater and on the crater walls. It boosts the chances that manned missions can eventually be sent there.
. . Scientists believe the water ice is present all year round because the temperature and pressure are not sufficient to allow it to change states. Researchers studying the images are sure it is not frozen carbon dioxide (CO2), because CO2 ice had already disappeared from the north polar cap at the time the image was taken.

July 29, 05: Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus, long thought to be cold and still, appears to have active ice volcanoes, scientists reported. A recent flyby of the international Cassini spacecraft found evidence of a huge cloud of water vapor over the moon's south pole and dramatic warm zones of heat leaking out of the icy moon. If confirmed, the discovery would put Enceladus in the class of geologically active moons with Jupiter's Io and Neptune's Triton.
. . The July 14 flyby, in which Cassini flew within 177 km of Enceladus, confirmed that the moon possessed a significant atmosphere, possibly created by volcanism, geysers or gases escaping from the surface or the interior. The planet-sized Titan is the only other Saturn moon known to have a thick atmosphere. An analysis by Cassini's science instruments found that about two-thirds of the atmosphere was water vapor and the temperature of the south pole measured minus-188 degrees Celcius.
. . Since reaching the ringed planet last summer, Cassini has made three close flybys of Enceladus, the shiniest object in the solar system. Recent images snapped by the spacecraft revealed distinctive geological features on the snow-white moon. Its south pole was covered with house-sized ice boulders and showed no evidence of impact craters --an indication that the terrain is much younger than the rest of the moon's surface.

Mars Plan Envisions Comfy Colony: See the file.

July 27, 05: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is awaiting launch atop its Titan 5 rocket, which is set to loft the spacecraft toward the red planet on Aug. 10 in a 7:53 a.m. EDT.
. . The orbiter weighs about 2,180 kg, but came in about 51 kg underweight, allowing engineers to fill that weight with additional propellant, extending its flight lifetime out to about 2014. It's the most powerful suite of instruments ever sent to another planet.
. . The orbital spacecraft is expected to be the vanguard for two landers NASA plans to launch toward Mars in the next five years, and will identify potential landing targets. The Phoenix lander is currently scheduled to launch in 2007 and touchdown in the planet's polar region. A large rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, is expected to launch in 2009.
. . After launch, it should take MRO about six months to reach Mars, then another seven months or so to slow adjust its eccentric orbit into a 250-mile (400-kilometer) high circle. The orbiter will use aerobraking to adjust its orbit, swooping in close to Mars and using its atmosphere to slow the spacecraft.
. . These are the biggest solar arrays ever sent to another planet. They span a total of about 20 square meters and carry about 7,000 solar cells. All those cells are need to generate the five kilowatts of power in Earth orbit, though that power output will diminish to about two kw at Mars.

July 27, 05: The Sun likely contains nearly three times more neon than previously thought, according to a new study. The finding, if shown to be accurate, solves a theoretical problem regarding how stars in general work. The question of the Sun's neon abundance has been a sensitive topic among astronomers in recent years.
. . One of these techniques involved capturing particles from the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that continuously streams from the Sun, and tallying up the total number and type of atoms present from each element. Another involved X-rays; neon does not appear in the visible spectrum of light but it shines brightly in X-rays.
. . Based on these techniques, astronomers came up with a value for the Sun's neon concentration that differed from the value used in the astrophysicist's model by a factor of three.
. . They got around these problems by measuring the neon abundance of 21 nearby Sun-like stars using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By stepping back, they measured the average X-ray emission from the stars. What the researchers found was that the nearby stars contained three times more neon than was calculated for the Sun. "Either the Sun is a freak in its stellar neighborhood, or it contains a lot more neon than we think."

July 26, 05: Near midnight of July 11, several telescopes in Chile caught a rare and wonderful sight: the shadow of Pluto’s moon, Charon, as it passed in front of --or occulted-- a distant star. The observations, now being analyzed, may pin down the size of the moon and whether or not it has an atmosphere. Preliminary indications from one group seem to suggest little or no gaseous envelope.
. . Knowing exactly where the shadow will pass over on the Earth requires continuous refinements. "A few days before, the predictions were still bouncing around several 100 kilometers north and south", said Jay Pasachoff of Williams College. "It was a considerable relief that the actual path went over our telescopes."
. . Charon has about 10% the mass of Pluto. "If we know the density, we can say whether it is half rock and half ice, or two-thirds rock and one-third ice." Pluto --which has a density twice that of water-- is believed to be about 70% rock and 30% ice. Comparing this to the make-up of Charon may give scientists a clue as to how the moon was formed. One of the more popular theories for Charon's origin is that it was created after something smashed into Pluto --similar to the collision that likely created Earth’s Moon.
. . Two occultations by Pluto in 2002 revealed that its atmosphere --which is about 10,000 times thinner than Earth’s-- was warmer than expected. The highly elliptical orbit of Pluto causes the temperature of its atmosphere to oscillate between --274 and --391 degrees F, as the planet’s distance to the Sun varies between 30 AU and nearly 50 AU.
. . On the surface of Charon, which is just as cold as Pluto, astronomers have detected frozen water. But this ice will be "as hard as steel", Elliot said, and therefore, one should not expect any water vapor around the moon. In contrast, other ices, like carbon monoxide and nitrogen, could have escaped --or sublimated-- off the surface. But the object’s gravity is probably not strong enough to hold onto these gases for very long.
. . In the future, there should be several more opportunities for occultations, as Pluto and Charon will be passing in front of the heart of the galaxy where the majority of stars are located.

July 22, 05: The U.S. Air Force is utilizing a small spacecraft to explore a range of future military applications such as in-space servicing and repair, as well as close-up inspection of satellites in support of future space operations. It rocketed into space on April 11. The micro-spacecraft tips the scales at roughly 100 kilograms and is about the size of a dishwasher, plus outstretched solar panels.
. . The XSS-11 is to exhibit the ability to autonomously plan and rendezvous with approved space objects near the satellite's orbit. During its projected year to year-and-a-half mission the satellite will rendezvous with several U.S.-owned objects in its orbit - inactive or dead research satellites or old rocket stages. XSS-11 is now closing in on its first object, a revisit actually, of the Minotaur fourth stage that dropped the spacecraft off in space.
. . Thanks to miniaturization of items like communications hardware and cameras, there are a number of missions that can be accomplished via micro-satellite, duties that would have involved much larger spacecraft in the past.
. . Clearly, the XSS-11 can be viewed as technologically trial-running military space control objectives. The ability to snuggle up next to an enemy satellite, disable sensors, or even destroy an aggressor's spacecraft could well benefit from XSS-11 lessons learned.
. . When XSS-11's onboard fuel is reading near-empty, he said, the plan is to use the last of the propellant to meet a deorbit criteria. It has a projected 18-month lifetime.

July 21, 05: A new study of gas in meteorites suggests Mars was bitterly cold for pretty much all of the past 4 billion years, putting the freeze on hopes that the red planet had any extended wet periods during which life could have flourished. Several rocks that were once near the surface of Mars, and have in the past few million years been kicked up by impacts that sent them to Earth, have been freezing cold for most of the past four billion years, the study concludes.
. . While the findings don't rule out the possibility of life on Mars, they indicate that biology's best shot would have come in the first 500 million years of the red planet's 4.5-billion-year existence. "Our research doesn't mean that there weren't pockets of isolated water in geothermal springs for long periods of time, but suggests instead that there haven't been large areas of freestanding water for four billion years", said Caltech graduate student David Shuster.
. . Argon decays at a known rate that varies with temperature. The amount of argon in a rock can be used to infer the maximum temperature the rock has experienced. Only a tiny amount of argon that would have existed in the rocks initially has leaked away. Shuster said the rock could not have been above freezing for more than a million years during the past 3.5 billion years.

July 20, 05: Scientists have stumbled on a way to passively monitor the shaking of an planetisimal to learn what it is made of. A new study of four-year-old data from NASA's NEAR-Shoemaker mission indicates that a set of vibrations caused by a collision with another space rock played a major role in sculpting the mug of Eros.
. . The idea was first put forth in 2001, but it was speculative. Now, an outside expert says, they hypothesis is solid as a rock, and it tells a story of Eros' composition. Importantly, similar analyses could be used to passively peak inside other space rocks.
. . Eros is 33 km long and about 13 km wide. It is the most well studied "asteroid". NEAR-Shoemaker mapped Eros in detail back in 2000-2001 before officials executed a controlled and dramatic crash landing, the first-ever touchdown on an "asteroid".
. . Among Eros' most striking features is an impact crater 7.6 km wide that scientists have determined was carved fairly recently. Another curious aspect to Eros is that across nearly 40% of its surface, all craters up to about .5 km wide have been erased. The smooth surface has puzzled scientists since the NEAR landing.
. . The new study nixed one theory by determining that the vanished craters could not have been covered by material ejected in the recent large impact. Further, the locations of the erased craters suggests they were jiggled out of existence by the internal vibrations caused in the impact. "Our observations indicate that the interior of Eros is sufficiently cohesive to transmit seismic energy over many kilometers, and the outer several tens of meters [yards] of the asteroid must be composed of relatively non-cohesive material." A rubble pile, Asphaug explains, would dampen vibrations during an impact. That would leave more small craters intact, causing the asteroid to appear older based on the conventional method of analysis.
. . Given the success of NASA's recent Deep Impact mission, which crashed a small probe into a comet, Asphaug sees value in a similar project that would first place seismic sensors on a space rock, so that the interior could be mapped during the collision.

Saturn's Enceladus measures some 500km in diameter and is described as the most reflective object in the Solar System, throwing back about 90% of the sunlight that hits it. Orbiting at a distance of approximately 237,400 km, it sits in the middle of the outermost ring --the E ring. This is composed of tiny ice particles that only last for hundreds of years. So, researchers believe there has to be a source of them and that source is most probably Enceladus. Likewise, with the atmosphere, Enceladus does not possess the gravitational attraction necessary to hold on to a cloud of water ions, so this must be being replenished also.
. . Theoretical study, too, has suggested where the energy comes from to drive activity: from tidal heating as Saturn's gravitation field pulls on Enceladus as it moves around an eccentric orbit.

Each shuttle was designed for 100 trips into space. Discovery, the dean of the fleet, has launched only 30 times. The entire fleet has gone up only 113 times. Its designers envisioned a lot more wear but over a much shorter time. The original design called for a 10-year life span.

July 19, 05: In the international space station simulation chamber, 100 stalks of wheat were part of the crew. Bingham, the chief scientist at the Space Dynamics Laboratory was running a study with 100 wheat stalks in a growth chamber on the simulator, just one of many experiments in Bingham's ongoing study of vegetation growth in space.
. . In the ground simulation, the Russian crew tended to the plants on the side when not performing their regular duties during the half-year they spent in a simulated space station flight. "When it came time to harvest the wheat, the crew said it was the hardest thing they had to do during their whole flight because they viewed it as killing their crew members." The task of attending to the growth chambers results in a much more important psychological benefit that may prove vital in long-term manned spaceflight, such as that observed in the 1996 simulation.
. . In September 2002, the resulting growth chamber called Lada (named for the Russian goddess of spring) was launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket to the international space station. Since its inception, Lada has been used to repeatedly harvest fast-growing plants such as peas, mizuna (a Russian leafy vegetable), wheat, peppers and rice with "no detrimental effects." It is expected to be used through 2006. Two growth chambers require about 90 watts to operate.
. . NASA has worked on the development of an external chamber where plants could grow under low atmospheric pressure conditions like those on the surface of Mars. NASA also is looking to incorporate plants into other aspects of a spacecraft's systems, such as air revitalization and water recovery.

July 14, 05: Following its "smashing" success earlier this month with comet Tempel 1, the Deep Impact Flyby spacecraft is being readied for potential retargeting to yet another scientific destination. This new object of desire, comet 85P/Boethin, was spotted in 1975. The comet experienced two close approaches to Jupiter during the 20th century. It will make two close approaches to Earth and two close approaches to Jupiter during the first half of the 21st century.
. . Using an Earth swingby, the spacecraft could be re-targeted to comet 85P/Boethin in late 2008. "To my mind, one of the key results of the Deep Impact mission is that there are major differences between the nuclei of Halley, Borrelly, Wild 2 and Tempel 1", Yeomans noted. "Tempel 1, at least, does not seem to conform to the 'fresh surface --no impact craters-- crusted over dirty iceball model' that seemed so popular prior to Deep Impact." [I saw what looked very like a crater in the pix...]

July 12, 05: The Deep Impact collision with Comet Tempel 1 on July 4.
. . The 820-pound impactor struck the comet's surface at approximately a 25-degree angle. Data indicate the comet has a cratered surface that is too soft to be made of ice, once thought to be the main component of comets. The impactor-induced crater was not visible directly due to the thick cloud of dust, but researchers estimate it to be at least 100 meters wide.
. . "The major surprise was the opacity of the plume the impactor created and the light it gave off", said Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland. "That suggests the dust excavated from the comet's surface was extremely fine, more like talcum powder than beach sand." Hot vapor containing water and carbon dioxide was detected by Deep Impact's flyby instrument. Some hydrocarbons were also detected. Researchers continue to comb through the mountains of data looking for other comet ingredients, while space- and ground-based telescopes monitor the collision aftermath from afar. The amount of dust seems to indicate that the comet is not held together very tightly. This might seem surprising, but it is not unreasonable for gravity to keep together a loose powder ball, scientists say.
. . Scientists originally called comets "dirty snowballs", but recent evidence of a dearth of water has made snowy dirtballs seem more appropriate. A comet like Tempel 1, which has a short orbital period of 5.68 years, has been baked by the Sun many, many times. Its outer edge was expected to be dry down to a meter, but if little water is detected, this dry zone will need to be extended theoretically deeper. The comet is surrounded by a boundary layer –-called the cometopause-– which the solar wind cannot penetrate. This is similar to the Earth's magnetopause, but the comet's protective shield is due to gas pressure rather than a magnetic field.
. . It was not until the comet material passed the cometopause –-several thousands of miles out from the comet-– that the solar wind could excite it to emit X-rays. From the length of delay, scientists can rectify the size of cometopause with how fast material was blasted off the surface. O'Brien estimates that several tens of thousands of tons of material were liberated by the collision.
. . Tempel 1 has now separated itself from the flyby spacecraft by many million of miles, as it heads out away from the Sun. Any additional data will have to come from on or near Earth.

July 6, 05: A spacecraft not designed to spot space rocks is approaching its 1,000th comet discovery. An image sometime this summer from the Sun-watching SOHO probe will reveal the mission's milestone. Most comets are discovered by ground telescopes, often by seasoned comet hunters. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft was engineered to watch solar eruptions and the ensuing space weather that sometimes bombards Earth. But early on in the mission, armchair astronomers figured out they could become comet discoverers using SOHO images posted to the Web.
. . The comets found with SOHO are very near the Sun, otherwise they wouldn't appear in the craft's field of view. These Sun grazers, as they are called, often escape other detection because they cannot be spotted amid the overwhelming glare. SOHO is equipped with a device that blocks light from the Sun's main disk so detailed images can be made of the solar atmosphere and surrounding space. "Before SOHO was launched, only 16 sun grazing comets had been discovered by space observatories."
. . Some 85% of all SOHO comets belong to the Kreutz group, named because their orbits take them within 500,000 miles of the Sun's visible surface. Some make a trip around the Sun and head back out to the far reaches of the solar system on wildly elongated orbits. Others don't make it, being gravitationally drawn right into the star on close approach.

July 4, 05: A washing machine-sized probe, which performed three final targeting maneuvers in the mission's last two hours, crashed into comet Tempel 1's brightest spot right on schedule, snapping images of its rocky terrain up until 3.7 seconds before impact. The craft was vaporized immediately following the collision, which occurred at 37,100 kph (23,000 mph).
. . Experts had disagreed on how dense the comet's nucleus would be, but the size of Sunday's blast appeared to rule out a more porous composition that would have brought the probe to a slower halt.
. . The spectacular collision, 83 million miles away (7 1/2 light-minutes) from Earth, unleashed a spray of below-surface material formed billions of years ago during the creation of the solar system. It was the first time a craft came in contact with a comet's nucleus.
. . The probe, which performed three final targeting maneuvers in the mission's last two hours, crashed into comet Tempel 1's brightest spot right on schedule, snapping images of its rocky terrain up until 3.7 seconds before impact. Images taken by the impactor, showing a comet's nucleus in far greater detail than ever before, revealed several circular craters on the surface of Tempel 1. The mother ship, which recorded the impact of the blast from as close as 311 miles away, survived the mission unscathed.
. . Yeomans hoped that the success of Deep Impact would lead to more ambitious missions. "The next step is to actually rendezvous with a comet, orbit it, and then land and do surface analysis", Yoemans said. "Which is what the Europeans expect to do with the Rosetta spacecraft in 2014." Ultimately, Yeomans said that the most ambitious mission would be to land on a comet, take a sample and return it for study in Earth-based laboratories. "There have been proposals to do just that. Nothing funded", Yoemans said. "But we're thinking that way."
. . The probe —-on battery power, using thrusters to get a perfect aim-— took pictures right up to the final moments, revealing crater-like features. The last image was taken three seconds before impact.
. . The energy produced from the impact was equivalent to exploding five tons of dynamite. All gas converts to plasma, the "fourth state of matter", at temperatures above about 5,000 degrees Kelvin.

July 1, 05: Saturn's vast and majestic ring system has its own atmosphere --separate from that of the planet itself, according to data from the Cassini spacecraft. And Saturn is rotating seven minutes more slowly than when probes measured its spin in the 70s and 80s --an observation experts cannot yet explain. [The only atmosphere that's not a sphere!]
. . By making close flybys of the ring system, Cassini has been able to determine that the atmosphere around the rings is composed principally of molecular oxygen (O2). "As water comes off the rings, the hydrogen is lost from it, leaving the oxygen." Saturn's rings consist largely of water ice mixed with smaller amounts of rocky matter. Dr Coates said the ring atmosphere was probably kept in check by gravitational forces and a balance between loss of material from the ring system and a resupply of material from elsewhere.
. . Scientists admitted they were surprised by the finding that Saturn's rotation is slowing. Professor Dougherty said it was possible the instruments were observing "rotational regions" closer to the surface of Saturn rather than anything to do with the dynamo itself. "If you sit down and think about it, it's very difficult to come up with a scenario where the interior of the planet is slowing down", she said.

June 29, 05: Deep Impact's scheduled run-in with a comet this holiday weekend may not be a one hit wonder. Scientists are studying other potential targets after the spacecraft completes its dramatic mission at Comet Tempel 1. Possible: a 3.5 year cruise to Comet Boethin.
. . Particular attention will be paid to how much dust and debris that spews out from the comet has hit the Flyby craft. As the spacecraft passes through the inner coma of Comet Tempel 1 it is in danger of being struck by small particles that could damage the control, imaging and communication systems. To minimize this potential damage, the Flyby spacecraft is rotated before it passes through the inner coma. If the reassessment is positive, a good portion of the remaining fuel on the Flyby vehicle will be used to put it on a 3.5-year jaunt to reach Comet Boethin.

June 28, 05: The Cassini spacecraft did not find convincing evidence for methane seas that scientists had predicted would exist. But the smoggy moon is back in the news today as a new Cassini image reveals a dark feature that scientists speculate might be a lake. The feature is 230 km long by 70 wide, or about the size of Lake Ontario.
. . It's also possible the feature was once a lake, but has since dried up, leaving behind dark deposits. The smooth outline might be the result of a process unrelated to rainfall, such as a sinkhole or a volcanic caldera.

Mimas (398 km); Janus (181 km); Prometheus (102 km). Mimas always presents the same hemisphere toward Saturn so that, like Luna, the length of its day is the same as the period it takes to orbit its planet (approximately 22.5 hours for Mimas).

June 16, 05: After nearly four years of delays, the world's first solar-sail-powered spacecraft is ready for its day in the sun. Cosmos 1 will rocket into space June 21 aboard a modified Russian missile --to an altitude of about 500 miles. It has eight triangular sails, made from highly reflective, 50-foot-long Mylar sheets. With each day that passes, the spacecraft is expected to gain another 100 mph in speed.
. . The demonstration will last no more than several weeks, according to the Planetary Society. By then, the spacecraft's fragile sails will have disintegrated. A spacecraft with stronger sails could keep accelerating indefinitely, breaking out of Earth orbit and heading for other planets --or even the edge of the solar system-- faster than any other spacecraft has gone before. In three years, a solar sail could be traveling faster than 100,000 mph. And it could do it without a drop of onboard fuel.

Panspermia: A piece of moss found by Russian researchers was revivified after being frozen for 40,000 years, indicating that comets could have carried the seeds of life, or even living organisms, to Earth.

June 13, 05: The large black mass on Titan, Saturn's unusual moon, isn't an ocean after all, scientists now believe. Images from the Cassini-Huygens space probe, a project headed up largely by the European Space Agency, seem to have sunk a theory that a dark region 27 kms in diameter on Titan might be a liquid or viscous sea. Instead, scientists interpret the feature as a [liquid-] "ice volcano" that also spews plumes of frozen methane, which were also theorized to exist. "The suite of instruments onboard Cassini and the observations at the Huygens landing site reveal that a global ocean is not present."
. . Titan's atmosphere contains 2% to 3% methane. One of the goals of Cassini-Huygens is to try to figure out what replenishes that methane.

June 14, 05: In the wake of the success if the Cassini mission to Saturn, there is overwhelming support for dispatching a spacecraft to Jupiter's moon, Europa - an ice-covered world that may support an ocean, possibly teeming with life. Another high-priority target is Titan, a moon of Saturn. The on-going Cassini mission that dropped off Europe's Huygens lander has shown Titan to be an outlandish mini-world, deserving of further, intensive scrutiny. One "trial balloon" of a concept is to study Titan using a blimp-like vehicle that floats over the moon's surface.
. . The first New Frontiers spacecraft --the nuclear-powered New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt-- is headed for a January 2006 departure. While the nuclear launch approval process still remains, the spacecraft itself is undergoing final testing.
. . A Europa Orbiter mission has been on start/stop status for many years. Scientists are keen on resolving for sure "the ocean notion". That is, whether or not an ocean truly exists underneath Europa's icy facade. A top science goal of the Europa Orbiter would be to confirm or rule out the presence of a subsurface ocean on the moon. Additionally, an intensive study would be done of Europa's icy crust, to scout out possible zones of liquid. The spacecraft would also scan for organic and inorganic material on Europa --as related to its astrobiology potential and help set the stage for future exploration.
. . Saturn's Titan appears set to challenge even Mars as a priority target of exploration. Lorenz is an advocate for a Titan airborne platform. It would cover vast distances of Titan's terrain, flying over possible lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane. A new vista would be surveyed by the aerial platform every day. The airship would offer up, down, and side-looking sensing and carry out other research. Under autonomous control, the robotic airship might even deploy sample devices, even mini-robots lowered by tether onto Titan, Lorenz speculated.

June 13, 05: The next mission to land a man on the moon will take place in 2015 at the earliest, the new chief of the United States' space program said, adding the mission could be followed by the construction of a multinational space station there. But NASA has not yet decided what vehicles will be used to reach the moon, or what will succeed the aging space shuttle fleet, which is due to be retired in 2010.

June 8, 05: Displays of colorful lights known as aurora occur on Mars, scientists announced. Terrestrial auroral displays, known also as the Northern Lights in the Northern Hemisphere, wow skywatchers routinely in parts of the far North.
. . The phenomenon on Mars is created in the same manner. But Mars has a much thinner atmosphere and only weak magnetic fields, its internal dynamo having died out long ago. Remnants of martian magnetism exist in pockets of rock, and that's where the new study focused. "We have discovered the aurora exactly at the place of maximal magnetic field on the surface of Mars, as recorded previously by NASA Mars Global Surveyor."

June 8, 05: The international Cassini spacecraft has spotted what appears to be an ice volcano on Saturn's planet-size moon, a finding that may help explain the source of Titan's thick atmosphere. Infrared images snapped by the orbiting Cassini reveal a 30-km-wide dome that appears to be a cryovolcano, a volcanic-like vent that spews forth ice instead of lava. Scientists theorize the volcano at one time spat out icy plumes that released methane into Titan's atmosphere.
. . Titan is the only moon in the Solar System that has a significant atmosphere --made up of nitrogen and a little methane. Its atmosphere is similar to that of primordial Earth and scientists believe that studying it could provide clues to how life began.
. . Scientists have long speculated that the organic materials in Titan's atmosphere were formed by seas or lakes of methane or ethane, but the latest Cassini images did not show any evidence that Titan is awash in pools of methane. Methane is a highly flammable gas on Earth, but it is liquid on Titan because of the intense atmospheric pressure and cold.
. . Although the ice volcano is inactive, scientists believe similar volcanoes may exist elsewhere on Titan that ooze a methane-water ice mixture to the surface.
. . While the ice volcano hypothesis was intriguing, higher-resolution images could reveal that the structure could turn out to be something other than a volcano.
. . Forty-five flybys are planned during Cassini's four-year mission. The next one will be Aug. 22.

June 3, 05: NASA is moving ahead with plans to put a long-armed lander on Mars' icy north pole to search for clues for water and possible signs of life, the space agency said. The $386 million Phoenix Mars is scheduled to touch down in the Martian arctic in May 2008. The stationary probe will use its robotic arm to dig into the icy terrain and scoop up soil samples to analyze. Scientists hope the Phoenix mission will yield clues to the geologic history of water on the Red Planet and determine whether microbes existed in the ice.
. . Phoenix rose from the ashes of previous missions. The lander for Phoenix was built to fly as part of the 2001 Mars Surveyor program. But the program was scrapped after the high-profile disappearance of the Mars Polar Lander in 1999.

June 2, 05: The cometTempel 1 is 14 by 4km, or roughly one-half the size of Manhattan. Using space and ground measurements, astronomers have also derived that the comet rotates about once every two days. The comet's surface can be described as a black matte finish that reflects just four% of the sunlight that falls on it.

June 1, 05: NASA's Spirit rover photographed a streak of light that was likely part of a martian meteor shower. The picture is the first of a shooting star above Mars. Further, the flash has been traced back to its parent comet. And now astronomers figure they should be able to forecast martian meteor showers. "We can expect an intense Cepheid shower on Mars, on Dec. 20, 2007."
. . If you were on Mars and held a fist at arm's length, resting it on the horizon, the meteor would have shown barely above your fist ... 14.2 degrees off the horizon. The streak of light was about 200-300 km away from the rover. It couldn't be at high altitude, as the red planet has a very very thin atmosphere compared to Earth.

May 25, 05: By using a computer to play a complex game of "what if", scientists have developed a tale of chaos in the early solar system that they say explains several mysteries. "I never dreamed it would be so spectacularly successful." In a single stroke, he and his colleagues say, the tale answers such questions as:
. . _What set off an intense asteroid bombardment some 3.9 billion years ago that created huge lava-filled basins on the moon and may have set back the development of life on Earth?
. . _Why did Jupiter and Saturn leave their circular orbits and take on the more oval paths seen today? And how did their orbits became so tilted compared to other planets?
. . _Why does Jupiter share its orbit around the sun with a swarm of asteroids?
. . It adopts what Levison called the controversial position that the solar system started out as quite compact. In this scenario, for example, Neptune starts out less than 15 times as far away from the sun as Earth is now, rather than the 23 times other scientists propose.
. . Here's what the scenario suggests:
. . As the planets tugged on the rubble, the rubble tugged back, and that nudged Uranus, Neptune and Saturn outward from the sun and Jupiter inward, as previous research has suggested. That in turn affected how long each planet took to complete an orbit of the sun, since a wider orbit takes longer. At some point, Saturn started taking exactly twice as long as Jupiter to complete a lap.
. . Then all hell broke loose.
. . Because of their tugs on each other, Jupiter and Saturn began to leave circular orbits and follow more oval-shaped paths similar to what's observed today. That wreaked gravitational havoc on the much less massive Uranus and Neptune, making their orbits "totally nuts", Levison said. It sent the two planets outward and into the ring of planetary rubble which, as Levison put it, went "kaplooey."
. . It's as if Saturn were a bowler, Uranus or Neptune the ball, and the rubble chunks the pins, he said. The gravity of the intruding planets scattered the rubble, and one result was the bombardment of Earth and the moon.
. . The work also explains the presence and highly tilted orbits of Jupiter's "Trojans", asteroids that share essentially the same orbit as Jupiter. While some scientists have suggested they formed near Jupiter, the scenario suggests they developed far away and were captured in Jupiter's orbital path just after Saturn and Jupiter hit their crucial 2-to-1 ratio in orbit times.
. . Renu Malhotra, a professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona, called the work "very interesting and provocative", but said it's probably not the last word on the subject.

May 25, 05: A new computer simulation makes predictions of how the Solar System evolved.
. . Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus have eccentricities of 6, 9 and 8%, respectively. The inclinations of the outer planets are as much as 2 degrees from the main plane of the solar system. These small perturbations are difficult to account for, since gas and debris leftover from planet formation would tend to drag the planets into neat, circular orbits.
. . Over time, these planet-debris interactions likely caused Jupiter to end up closer to the Sun, while the three other planets moved further out. The major turning point in the story, the shock, happened when the main characters --Jupiter and Saturn-- migrated into a gravitational "sweet spot" called a resonance. This is when one planet's year is an integer multiple of the other's. An integer is a whole number, like 1, 2 or 3, as opposed to a fractional number. This synchronicity of orbits can excite small perturbations --effectively "pumping up" eccentricities and inclinations-- as well as knocking other stuff around.
. . The strongest resonance is 1:2, corresponding to one planet making a single orbit for every two orbits of the other. The current ratio for Jupiter and Saturn is approximately 1:2.5 --no longer a resonance. The scientists suspect that the two gas giants started out much closer and then migrated apart, passing through the 1:2 resonance --thereby unleashing total mayhem in the outer solar system.
. . In different runs of the simulation, these ice giants sometimes swap places, and occasionally one of them gets ejected. In general, however, the two planets settle down in large radius orbits, which is where they are found today.
. . In their simulations, the researchers can track the amount of planetesimals thrown into the inner solar system, and they estimate that Luna would have been struck by approximately 10 quadrillion tons of material, which is very close to what was laid down during the LHB (late heavy bombardment).

May 25, 05: Saturn reflects X-rays from solar eruptions, astronomers said today. Previous observations found the same phenomenon at Jupiter. So when either of these planets is located on the far side of the Sun, from our point of view, they could be used to monitor back-side solar activity.

May 25, 05: Pluto might have been hit long ago by a virtual twin in a collision that created the ninth planet's moon Charon, according to a new computer simulation. The scenario is similar to the leading theory for the creation of Luna, another cosmic crack-up that involved a Mars-sized object slamming into our own planet, an idea that dates back to the 1970s and is now widely accepted as the most probable. Imagine them merging into one another at a freeway onramp, though at a rather sharp angle of about 60 degrees.
. . Charon is a whopping 10 to 15% as massive as Pluto. Luna is about 1% as massive as our planet. No other satellites are anywhere near as weighty in comparison to their host planets.
. . "I don't see a way to easily distinguish between capture vs. impact just based on the densities of the objects", Canup said. She goes on to point out that other two-object systems in the Kuiper Belt can't have formed by collision. These frozen, rocky pairs have too much overall spin or are too far apart, so they likely were created when one captured the other. One possible way to bolster the simulation would be to look into the internal structure of Pluto for clues of an impact, Canup said.
. . The first good opportunity to explore Pluto and Charon --and any other hidden moons that might lurk in the system-- will come in about 2015, with the expected arrival of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

May 24, 05: The Voyager 1 spacecraft is on the verge of slicing into interstellar space, NASA officials said today. Experts had thought the craft was at the solar system's edge back in 2003, but the claim was disputed. Now team members agree that the Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is plunging through the outer layer of the solar system, where the Sun's influence ends and the electrified solar wind slams into the thin expanse of gas between stars. In fact, scientists don't know where the edge is. They assume it moves, as changes in the speed and intensity of the solar wind force the boundary in and out. "The consensus of the team now is that Voyager 1, at 14 billion km from the Sun, has at last entered the heliosheath, the region beyond the termination shock."
. . When the solar wind meets interstellar gas, a teardrop-shaped shockwave develops as it is slowed dramatically from an average speed of up to 1.5 million mph (700 kilometers per second). The solar wind, made of charged particles constantly streaming from the Sun, becomes denser and hotter at that point.
. . Voyager 1 has sent back measurements of a stronger magnetic field at its current location. That indicates the solar wind speed has decreased. The magnetic field does not gain overall strength, but it becomes more dense and so stronger at any given location. The magnetic field in November 03 had increased in strength 1.7 times compared to previous levels. In December 04, it jumped another factor of 2.5 and has remained at this higher level until now. "Voyager's observations over the past few years show that the termination shock is far more complicated than anyone thought." The leading edge of the solar system, as it orbits the Milky Way, is called the bow shock. It resembles the ripples of water raised by the bow of a boat. Voyager 1 still has years to go before it crosses the bow shock. Each probe could operate through the year 2020.

May 23, 05: A private team of space-savvy civilians has hit a major milestone in plans to launch the first spacecraft propelled by sunlight. The solar-sail-propelled Cosmos 1 vehicle, hailed as the world's first solar sail spacecraft, has left its Moscow testing center and now bound to Severomorsk, Russia, where it will be loaded into a modified intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and readied for a June 21 launch.
. . The Cosmos 1 spacecraft consists of a small central hub and eight triangular sail blades, each packed into a container the size of a coffee can. Hollow tubes along the sides of each mylar blade are inflated with nitrogen gas to deploy the sail, the components of which can be rotated to control the spacecraft.
. . Ann Druyan, the flight's program director and head of Ithaca, New York's Cosmos Studios, which provided the bulk of funding for the solar sail mission.
. . The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched and deployed two large solar sails in August 2004.

May 23, 05: "We're at the point in history where the human race is coming off the planet once and forever. We are the payloads of the future." ~Diamandis. He added that something very natural will happen when private orbital flights arise. "When you're in orbit, you are two-thirds of the way to anywhere."
. . Groups such as Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures, Mineta said, "are champing at the bit" to get the first tourists into space. "Suborbital space will be the first step for some of these companies...but orbital tourism is the ultimate goal."

May 20, 05: The first team of scientists to invent a way to extract breathable oxygen from lunar soil will be awarded $250,000, NASA announced. Inventors who attempt the Moon Regolith Oxygen (or MoonROx) challenge will have just eight hours to extract at least 5kg of breathable oxygen from a simulated form of lunar soil. Most participants are likely to build devices that use heat and chemicals.
. . The MoonROx contest is the third to be unveiled under the space agency's new Centennial Challenges program. NASA hopes the program will spark technical innovations, in the same way last year's independent Ansari X Prize spurred the first private flight into space.
. . In March, NASA announced awards of $50,000 each to the first teams to develop a space-age tether and a wireless method for powering robots.

See Not So Picture Perfect: Proposed Lunar Landing Site Has Drawbacks, By Peter Kokh:
. . The hype for the "perfect site" for a first moonbase at the Moon’s south pole (Mt. Malapert) and more recently for a rival north polar site, continues to get good press, and to all appearances, just about everyone is on the bandwagon. I have serious reservations, however, and have found that there are others who share them, but find it difficult or unpromising to buck the trend.

May 16, 05: SmallTug is an experimental microsatellite that would launch in 2008 to demonstrate the potential of solar electric-powered tugs to transport materials between Earth orbit and Luna. The company’s president, Jason Andrews, said the 90kg satellite would spend six months spiraling out 1.5 million kilometers toward the sun to a stable orbital location known as Lagrange Point 1 before returning to Earth’s orbit. Along the way, the SmallTug would collect space environmental data important to designing solar electric-propelled unmanned cargo missions, for example, that would take their time moving through the Van Allen radiation belts to the Moon and other destinations beyond Earth orbit.
. . Andrews said the SmallTug would incorporate other work funded by NASA under the human and robotic technology awards, including possibly a 600-kilowatt Hall thruster being developed by Sacramento, Calif.-based Aerojet, a GenCorp company, under a $32.66 million contract. Aerojet said in a release that the Hall thruster it is working on would represent a thirtyfold increase in total power and thrust delivered.

May 11, 05: A study in 2003 found the core of Mars, at least the outer part, is liquid. Surveys in the 1990s of magnetic fields on Mars, by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor, detected the signatures of relatively intense magnetism in some of the planet's more modern surfaces. But the fields were found to be very weak in two large and old impact basis, called Hellas and Argyre. Each basin, carved out by a colossal space rock, is more than 3 billion years old. The data implied that Mars had a weak magnetic field back then.
. . The Paris Earth Physics Institute found that rocks in the 2-billion-year-old Vredefort impact crater in South Africa --the oldest such structure on Earth-- are highly magnetized, yet from above the magnetism appears weak. Two other ancient craters reveal similar differences. The basic reason is simple: While magnetism is strong in individual rocks, the direction varies from rock to rock in these impact craters, so when examined from a distance, they cancel each other out.
. . Based on differing mineral structures in the rocks, Gilder and his colleagues hypothesize that when a space rock hits, the shock of the event would briefly create intense localized magnetic fields. Rocks that cool during this initial period would be magnetized with orientation related to these temporary field. Other rocks would cool more slowly, and would take on the planet's magnetic orientation.

May 11, 05: This makes 47! The international Cassini spacecraft has spied a tiny new moon hidden in a gap in Saturn's outer ring, scientists said. The moon was spotted earlier this month in the center of the Keeler gap, making waves in the gap edges as it orbits. Tentatively called S/2005 S1, the moon is about 85,000 miles from the center of Saturn.
. . The Keeler gap is located about 250km inside the outer edge of the A ring, which is also the outer edge of the bright main ring system. The new object is about 7km across and reflects about half the light falling on it --a similar brightness to that found in particles of the nearby rings. "We anticipate that many of the gaps in Saturn's rings have embedded moons, and we'll be in search of them from here on."
. . S/2005 S1 is the second moon known to exist within Saturn's shimmering rings. The other is Pan, which orbits in the Encke gap. All of Saturn's other known moons are outside the main ring system.

May 11, 05: NASA-funded scientists are tweaking microtechnology to produce compact systems that produce breathing oxygen or rocket propellant, vital components of any manned space mission. They're looking at collecting the carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and breaking it down for crew needs.
. . Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL), where NASA has awarded a contract to develop the technology. Using local resources could reduce the cost of a moon or Mars mission by about 40%, according to NASA studies.

Phoebe has more rocks and less ice than the rest of Saturn's moons. In fact, its density matches that of Neptune's moon Triton and the TNO Pluto. It's possible that a comet may have hit Phoebe's surface and left behind material from the outer solar system. Phoebe is an ice-rich body overlain with a thin layer of dark material. The layering might occur during the crater formation, when ejecta thrown out from the crater buries the pre-existing surface that was itself covered by a relatively thin, dark deposit over an icy mantle.

May 9, 05: Nearly six years after NASA’s Mars Polar Lander vanished during a landing attempt on the Red Planet, a scientist said he has spotted what appears to be wreckage of the spacecraft. The observation came during a re-examination of grainy, black-and-white images taken by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor. "The observation of a single, small dot at the center of the disturbed location suggests that the vehicle remained more or less intact after its fall." A NASA team concluded a rocket engine shut off prematurely, causing the spacecraft to plummet about 40 meters to almost certain destruction.

May 4, 05: Saturn's pock-marked moon Phoebe could be a comet that was captured by the gravity of the ringed planet. Data from the Cassini spacecraft suggests it originated in the frozen outer Solar System region called the Kuiper Belt --a reservoir for comets.
. . The tiny satellite is very different in its chemical composition to Saturn's larger moons and circles the planet in the opposite direction to them. Analysis of Phoebe's surface shows that it is one of the most complex Solar System objects yet studied. Scientists have identified water-ice, possible clays, iron-bearing minerals and organics such as aromatic compounds, alkanes and nitriles on the 220km-wide Saturnian satellite. More complex organics also seem to be there, but scientists are yet to characterize them.

May 4, 05: Astronomers have discovered 12 new moons orbiting Saturn, bringing its number of natural satellites to 46. The moons are small, irregular bodies --probably only about 3-7km in size-- that are far from Saturn and take about two years to complete one orbit. All but one circles Saturn in the opposite direction to its larger moons - a characteristic of captured bodies.
. . Jupiter is the planet with the most moons, 63 at the last count. Saturn now has 46. Uranus has 27 and Neptune 13.
. . Astronomers have found that all four giant planets --Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune-- possess about the same number of small irregular satellites irrespective of the mass of the planet, the orbit of the satellites, or if they were captured or formed in orbit. This observation remains unexplained.

May 2, 05: Scientists working with a synthetic material 100-times thinner than a piece of paper are testing their theory that the sun can power interplanetary spacecraft. They believe that streams of solar energy particles called photons can push a giant, reflecting sail through space the way wind pushes sailboats across water.
. . The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has invested about $30 million in space-sail technology, something that existed solely in science-fiction novels a decade ago. Yet the reflective solar sail could power missions to the sun and beyond within a decade.
. . The Space Systems division developed the solar sail, which is being tested in the world's largest vacuum chamber. The first sail tested in space will be about 130 feet on each side. Those on an actual mission could be twice as large. While its thrust is low, it would be continuous so that the craft accelerates steadily, eventually reaching speeds of tens of thousands of miles an hour. Changing the sail's angle to the sun would allow the craft to slow down or speed up. "Just by morphing its shape, we can get it to turn."

May 2, 05: Vittorio Formisano is head of research at Italy's Institute of Physics and Interplanetary Space. He showed evidence of the presence of formaldehyde in the atmosphere. Formaldehyde is a breakdown product of methane, which was already known to be present in the Martian atmosphere, so in itself its presence is not so surprising. But Formisano measured formaldehyde at 130 parts per billion.
. . To astrobiologists, it was an amazing claim. It means huge amounts of methane must be produced on Mars. (While methane lasts for hundreds of years in the atmosphere, formaldehyde lasts for only 7.5 hours.) "It requires that 2.5 million [metric] tons of methane are produced a year", said Formisano.
. . In February, he presented data at the Mars Express Science Conference. With no known geological source of formaldehyde on Mars, it's clear where Formisano's suspicions lie. "I believe there is extremely high probability that microbial subsurface life exists on Mars", he said, while acknowledging that although he believes in Martian life, he can't yet prove it.
. . The European Space Agency certainly wants to send a rover to Mars. But NASA has its own surface mission planned. Scheduled to arrive in late 2010, the Mars Science Laboratory rover will use an array of instruments to look for evidence of life. "Europe and the U.S. are in a friendly competition to find life first."

Apr 27, 05: European Space Agency (ESA) officials are taking steps to shift into high gear the building of the ExoMars robotic rover mission. The lander would be launched in 2011, likely onboard a Soyuz Fregat 2b booster from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.
. . On arrival at Mars, ExoMars would be equipped to scout about for the leftover traces of long-gone life or still thriving biology on the far-away world. Furthermore, the ESA robot is to help identify potential peril for a future humans-to-Mars mission - now resident on NASA planning charts as the year 2030.
. . ExoMars will be outfitted with the Pasteur payload --a wide-ranging suite of international instruments, including U.S. experiments, designed to characterize the martian biological environment. ExoMars would feature improved mobility over that of NASA's dual rovers --Spirit and Opportunity. A drill would be able to bore into topside terrain to some 2.5 meters in depth.
. . Before sending people to Mars, NASA-sponsored study teams have been busy identifying biohazard risk, atmospheric risk, radiation risk, dust and surface material risk, terrain/trafficability risk, transit issues, entry, descent and landing questions, concerns about surface operations, and science planning issues. There are some hazards on Mars that you can't identify and characterize with on-the-spot measurements. Samples are necessary.

Apr 27, 05: Cassini flew within 1000km of Titan's frozen surface on April 16 and discovered a hydrocarbon-laced upper atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere is mainly made up of nitrogen and methane, the simplest type of hydrocarbon. But scientists were surprised to find complex organic material in the latest flyby. Because Titan is extremely cold —-about minus 290 degrees-— scientists expected the organic material to condense and rain down to the surface.

Apr 20, 05: NASA will accelerate development efforts for a new manned spacecraft that will follow the retirement of the agency's shuttle fleet. A new spacecraft --the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV)-- has been tapped as its replacement, but is not expected to fly its first human-carrying mission until at least 2014. Eliminating that gap between [shuttle retirement] and a new vehicle, and making sure it has the ability to dock with the ISS, is imperative.
. . Space agencies in both Europe and Japan are currently developing their own spacecraft to deliver cargo to the ISS.

Apr 20, 05: Scientists from the University of Colorado have found bacteria that live in the rocks of a hot, acidic environment in Yellowstone National Park. Such extremophiles --organisms that can tough it out at sub-zero temperatures or with little water-- are the cat's meow to astrobiologists, who want to determine the origin of life here on Earth, as well as estimate good spots to look for life elsewhere. "The pores in the rocks where these creatures live have a pH value of one, which dissolves nails."
. . The most abundant microbes, surprisingly, were a new species of Mycobacterium. Bacteria from this group, which can cause tuberculosis and leprosy, had never been seen around a geyser before.

Apr 19, 05: Evidence for intense local enhancements in methane on Mars has been bolstered by ground-based observations. The methane, as well as water on Mars, was detected using state-of-the-art infrared spectrometers stationed atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii and in Cerro Pachón, Chile. In scientific terms, the methane line detected is "very strong indeed".
. . The methane could be the result of biological processes. It could also be an "abiotic" geochemical process, however, or the result of volcanic or hydrothermal activity. The tiny fraction of atmospheric methane on our planet is churned out almost entirely biologically with only a very small contribution from abiotic processes.
. . It also requires a very rapid decay of methane --more rapid than photochemistry would allow. On Mars, the photochemical lifetime of methane is very short --roughly 300 years. Therefore, any methane now lingering within the martian atmosphere must have been released recently.
. . Using the Keck facility in Hawaii, Mumma said his team could look for seven different types of molecules at Mars, allowing them to chip away at the question of biological versus geochemical production of methane.
. . Culling out from the data the release locales of methane on Mars is critical to the selection of future landing sites.

Apr 15, 05: A NASA robotic spacecraft equipped with navigational computers and sensors was launched into orbit Friday to rendezvous with a Pentagon satellite without the help of astronauts or human controllers. If the $110 million mission is successful, it could lay the groundwork for future projects like robotic delivery of cargo to space shuttles and automated docking and repair between spacecraft in orbit. During the 24-hour mission, DART will attempt several automated tasks, including maneuvering around the satellite, making close approaches and moving away.

Apr 13, 05: Astronomers say they have identified a place on the Moon that lies in permanent sunlight and close to regions suspected to hold water ice: in short, an ideal location for a tentative lunar colony. The spot is located on a highland close to the lunar north pole, between three large impact craters. The temperature there is estimated to range between minus 40 and minus 60 C, which by lunar standards is relatively balmy --and stable. By comparison, the temperature on the Moon's equator ranges from minus 180 C to plus 100 C.
. . Because the area is bathed in perpetual sunlight, a future human outpost on the Moon could draw on abundant solar energy. In addition, the lunar pioneers could tap into supplies of water if --as some scientists speculate-- ice lurks in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles.

Apr 12, 05: A detailed study of a huge solar eruption reveals that a series of smaller explosions combined in a domino effect to fuel the blast. The findings improve understanding of the Sun's most powerful events and could lead to better forecasting of the tempests.
. . Scientists don't know exactly what triggers such eruptions. They are associated with strong magnetic fields, however, and emanate from sunspots, which are cooler regions of the Sun that correspond to bottled-up magnetic energy. "Sunspots are at the surface of the Sun, and are essentially the footprints of the magnetic field."
. . Researchers had thought the big eruptions are created when magnetic field lines from the core of a sunspot become tangled and reconnect high in solar atmosphere, or corona. The new study contradicts that assumption. The X-7 flare started when plasma from below the Sun's surface broke suddenly through.

Apr 8, 05: Europe has confirmed its intention to try again to land on Mars, to search for evidence of past or present life. The European Space Agency mission, which would include a roving robot, would leave Earth in June 2011 and arrive at the Red Planet in June 2013. The 500-million-euro mobile laboratory would "sniff" the air for signs of biology and listen to the ground for evidence of Marsquakes.
. . One is ExoMars - a large rover that flies with a relay orbiter. An ExoMars-lite version would use orbiters already at Mars to send home its data.
. . And then there is BeagleNet, a twin lander design with smaller rovers, which delivers improved versions of the instruments that flew with Beagle 2.
. . The must haves include:
. . * a drill or "mole", such as the one designed for Beagle 2, that could go under the oxidised surface of Mars to find water and help investigate the subsurface geochemistry.
. . * "life-marker" experiments that would analyse the soil, rocks and gases in the atmosphere for signs of biological activity. Life traces would have specific chemical "signatures".
. . * a seismometer to detect Marsquakes and other geological activity.
. . No one has got as far as identifying landing sites yet, but they could include the locations shown by Europe's Mars Express orbiter to have local "hot spots" of methane in the atmosphere.

Apr 6, 05: Boosted by a return to success for its satellite launch program and needled by China's achievements, Japan's space agency wants to put a manned space station on the moon, though it may struggle to raise funds. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unveiled a long-term vision today.
. . China's state media say it has abandoned plans to send astronauts to the moon for financial reasons.

Apr 4, 05: Lunar dust is extremely abrasive --and unavoidable-- as astronauts quickly learned during the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s. Within hours, the dust covered the astronauts' spacesuits and equipment, scratching lenses and corroding seals. Under prolonged exposure, the explorers would be at risk for everything from mechanical failures in spacesuits and airlocks to lung disease, said researchers last week at a NASA workshop focused on the issue.
. . "Dust is the No. 1 environmental problem on the moon", said Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who reported having a severe allergic reaction to moon dust during his mission in 1972. "We need to understand what the (biological) effects are. It smelled like spent gunpowder."
. . Moon dust is much more jagged than dust on Earth because there's no water or wind on the moon to toss it around and grind down its edges. Some of the dust particles are only a few microns wide. This makes it easy for the particles to get deep into the lungs and stay there. Scientists worry that this could eventually lead to fatal lung diseases similar to silicosis.
. . Also, the dust is littered with bonded shards of glass and minerals known as agglutinates, which were formed in the heat of meteorite impacts. Agglutinates have not been found on Earth, and scientists worry that the human body may not be able to expel them efficiently if inhaled. "They have sharp angles, with arms that stick out and little hooks. It's like Velcro."
. . Estimates are that researchers will need 100 tons of space dust for testing in the run-up to a new moon mission.

Mar 25, 05: "NASA is planning to begin human explorations of the moon between 2015 and 2020 in preparation for human expeditions to Mars", said Russell Kerschmann, chief of the Life Sciences Division at NASA. NASA scientists are worried about just how toxic lunar dust might be to future Moonwalkers. How to prevent its potentially hazardous effects if a person is exposed to the material is on the space agency's need-to-know list.

Mar 16, 05: The space probe Cassini discovered a significant atmosphere around the Saturnian moon Enceladus during two recent passes. Scientists speculate the atmosphere comes from volcanoes, geysers or some other kind of sub-surface activity. Cassini made passes on Feb. 17 and March 9 and discovered the atmosphere using a magnetometer, which discovered a magnetic field on the moon. Because gravity is weak on Enceladus, a continuous source is needed to maintain the atmosphere. The 310-mile-wide moon is icy and considered the most reflective object in the solar system, bouncing back about 90% [albedo]of the sunlight.

No meteorite was ever found on the Moon - even with all the survey work done there by both robots and humans. The question of how many meteorites litter the surface of Mars is an intriguing one. This might have to do with proximity to the asteroid belt, but especially the dry conditions on Mars. That's where we find lots of meteorites on Earth, in dry deserts of northern Africa, Australia, and New Mexico, and the cold desert of Antarctica.

Mar 11, 05: Pluto [a KBO, not a planet] appears to rotate on its axis once every 6.39 days and has a mass estimated to be just 0.0022 [!] that of the Earth. In 1988, an extremely thin atmosphere was detected. We know that its surface pressure is about 100,000 times smaller than that on Earth but still large enough for us to expect weather, winds, haze, chemistry, and an ionosphere. It's 2,274 km. Charon is more than half its size: 1,172 km.

Mar 7, 05: Space weather forecasters have it even tougher than regular weather forecasters. In trying to predict long-range solar activity, they have to rely on a picture of just the half of the Sun they can see. Storms brewing on the backside are hidden from view until they rotate to the front.
. . Jupiter to the rescue. The giant gas planet reflects solar activity, scientists have learned. And when Jupiter is on the other side of the solar system, it can act as a mirror for flare-ups from the back side of the Sun.
. . Data from the spacecraft Galileo seem to imply that the solid core of Jupiter is less than three Earth masses.

Mar 1, 05: Formaldehyde has been found in the martian atmosphere, according to a senior scientist working with the Mars Express orbiter. If correct, the discovery provides strong evidence that Mars is either extremely geologically active, or harboring colonies of microbial life. But many experts are not yet convinced.
. . The most likely source of formaldehyde (CH2O) is the oxidation of methane (CH4), which has already been identified in the martian skies. The truly eye-opening part is the sheer quantity of formaldehyde that Formisano claims to have found: about 10 to 20 times more than there is of methane. This means that estimates of martian methane production must be revised upwards substantially, as most of the gas is oxidized as soon as it comes out of the ground, he says. "If you consider formaldehyde as oxidized methane, then Mars is producing 2.5 million tons of methane a year." This is simply too much to be accounted for by any known geological process, he says, so some other source (possibly life) must be involved. However, other planetary scientists say the planet alone could still be responsible.
. . A molecule of methane can typically survive for about 350 years in the atmosphere before being broken down by the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. So the possibility remained that the gas could have been delivered to the planet by a colliding comet, or by an occasional release from an underground reservoir.
. . Formaldehyde is far more unstable, surviving for just 7.5 hours or so before breaking apart. The majority of scientists agree that methane is the most likely precursor for formaldehyde on Mars, so this means that the planet's production of methane must be an ongoing, continuous process, says Formisano. He also points out that he has found higher concentrations of methane directly above an area of Mars that seems to be covered in pack ice.

Phoebe: Images obtained using the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) suggest that the tiny moon contains ice at shallow depths-perhaps just 300 to 500 meters below the darker surface material.

Mar 1, 05: Japan plans to start building a manned base on the moon and a space shuttle within the next 20 years. It's space agency, JAXA, hopes to develop a robot to conduct probes on the moon by 2015, then begin constructing a solar-powered manned research base on the moon and designing a reusable manned space vessel like the U.S. space shuttle by 2025. Japan planned to develop a robot to explore the moon in five years and within 10 years the technology to let humans stay on the moon for extended periods. In 20 years, it will start development of the space station to be built on the moon to conduct scientific research.
. . Cash-strapped Russia has not launched a planetary mission since 1996. The Russians hope to launch their next unmanned mission in 2009 to land on Phobos, a moon orbiting Mars.

Feb 21, 05: Ice appears to form the bedrock of Titan, he said, and there is some suggestion of cryovolcanoes, volcanic-like vents that spew forth ice instead of lava. Owen said features detected by the Cassini spacecraft, orbiting Titan, show channels resembling volcanic features on Earth, but they may have been carved by creeping ice, not molten rock.
. . Titan's intense cold and atmospheric pressure —-about 1 1/2 times that of Earth-— keep methane in a liquid state. Researchers earlier said there are methane showers on Titan and a methane fog. In Titan's intense cold, chips of ground ice could be like beach sand, drifting with the flow of methane.

Feb 21, 05: On the Martian rover mission, said Spirit took a self-portrait with one of its cameras that shows the craft's solar power panels coated with a reddish grime. This cuts down on the amount of sunlight the craft can use to make electrical power. A self-portrait by Opportunity shows that its solar panels are clean, "like it's just off the showroom floor."

A new-found rock that once careened through the Martian sky and bounced to a stop on the red planet’s surface is most definitely not an alien meteorite. It's apparently a chunk of Mars ejected in the past from a crater impact.

Feb 21, 05: A huge, frozen sea lies just below the surface of Mars, a team of European scientists has announced. Their assessment is based on pictures of the planet's near-equatorial Elysium region that show plated and rutted features across an area 800 by 900km. The team thinks a catastrophic event flooded the landscape five million years ago and then froze out. Sediments covered the ice, locking it in place. If this discovery is confirmed by follow-up observations, it would be a first for a region at such a low latitude.
. . Mars Express has now been in orbit around the Red Planet for a year. It has already confirmed US observations that substantial water-ice lies at the poles, on its own and mixed with carbon dioxide ice and dirt. The probe will soon deploy its Marsis (Mars Advance Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding) instrument, which has been designed to find the planet's subterranean permafrost.

Feb 17, 05: New photos taken by Cassini's optical camera and radar mapping instruments show what seems to be a crater or ringed basin bigger than the island of Sri Lanka. Astronomers believe the 273-mile-wide depression could have been formed by a massive comet or asteroid strike.

Feb 17, 05: Water was common across a vast region of ancient Mars, creating habitable conditions for long stretches of time billions of years ago, scientists said Thursday. New data reveal water in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars extended across hundreds of thousands of square miles, at least as groundwater and possibly as shallow lakes or seas. The work significantly expands the amount of surface area on Mars known to have once been water-laden, and it extends the period of time that the water was present. The findings mean that the conditions for life were present.
. . The signature of water is a scrawl of various minerals known as evaporates, which are left behind when water turns to vapor. Other research has turned up clay minerals that also require water to form. Importantly, these clay minerals can form in more neutral pH waters, unlike the very acidic environments that are thought to have created the minerals in the etched terrains. "This could be very important in the identification of regions that supported habitable conditions."
. . There's a catch, however. "All the locations where we find these signatures are ancient, probably formed in the first billion years of Mars' history."

Feb 16, 05: A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water. They've found methane signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth.
. . Stoker and other researchers have long theorized that the Martian subsurface could harbor biological organisms that have developed unusual strategies for existing in extreme environments. They based their case in part on Mars’ fluctuating methane signatures that could be a sign of an active underground biosphere and nearby surface concentrations of the sulfate jarosite.
. . NASA has no firm plans for sending a drill-equipped lander to Mars, but the agency is planning to launch a powerful new rover in 2009 that could help shed additional light. The Mars Science Laboratory, the nuclear-powered rover will range farther than any of its predecessors and will be carrying an advanced mass spectrometer to sniff out methane with greater sensitivity than any instrument flown to date.

Feb 16, 05: Cassini made its first close fly-by of Saturn's moon Enceladus. It snapped pictures of the icy moon's surface, which is the most reflective surface in the Solar System. Enceladus is 505 kilometers across. Tectonic activity may be responsible for the fault-lines and ridges. Images reveal terrain fractured by cracks and covered in ridges. The lack of craters suggests that, like Titan, the surface of Enceladus is constantly being refreshed by a lava-like mixture of frozen chemicals.

Although Huygens has confirmed the presence of large amounts of methane on Titan, they have found very little of the ethane they had expected.

Feb 14, 05: Besides Pluto, astronomers have found about 1,000 other small icy objects beyond Neptune. There may be as many as 100,000 in what's called the Kuiper Belt. The New Horizons mission, which hopes to launch a probe to Pluto next year, possibly reaching it as early as 2015.

Feb 13, 05: Titan's winds are flowing in the direction of its rotation (from west to east) at nearly all altitudes. The maximum speed of roughly 120m/s (430 km/h) was measured at an altitude of about 120km. The winds are weakest near the surface and increase slowly with altitude up to around 60km.

Feb 9, 05: By combining Doppler shift data from the Green Bank Telescope and other radio instruments, astronomers now know that while Titan's winds are relatively weak at the moon's surface, they reach nearly 434 km an hour at an altitude of about 120 km. At an altitude of about 59 km, Huygens found highly variable winds that may be a region of vertical wind shear.

Feb 9, 05: In the Jan. 7 issue of the journal Science, researchers working on the European Biodeep project reported the discovery of new microbes in the anoxic basins, or ‘brine lakes’, located off the coast of Sicily. It is these types of conditions, particularly the high concentrations of magnesium chloride, that have scientists imagining what the environments of other planets might consist of, and whether they contain life.
. . "Ascertaining the nature of the subsurface on other planets is tricky, but there is growing evidence for hypersaline environments of Mars and Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Indeed, Europa is believed to have a subsurface ocean rich in magnesium salts."
. . Since light cannot penetrate water of this depth, there are no photosynthetic bacteria in the basins. Most of the organisms the Biodeep workers have found reduce sulfates to run their metabolism.
. . Some of the microbes McGenity’s group found were completely unknown; including a new group of Archaea they have named MSBL-1. McGenity speculates that these microbes are methanogens because they are related to methane producing Archaea and no other methane-producing microbes were found in the basins, which are abundant with methane.
. . The European Mars Express mission detected hints of methane in Mars’s atmosphere last year, and some astrobiologists have speculated that the methane could be a by-product of extremophilic methanogens or some other form of microbial life.
. . Endoliths and Hypoliths are two types of extremophiles that live inside rocks or between the mineral grains. Endoliths have been found over 2 miles below the Earth’s surface, and if they can stand the heat, they could dwell much deeper. Early observations show that they feed on surrounding iron, potassium, or sulfur. Water is scarce at these depths, and this slows down the procreation cycle of the organisms – some reproduce only once every 100 years!
. . Hypoliths are photosynthetic organisms, so the rocks they live in must be translucent, like quartz. Hypoliths are commonly found in extreme deserts in cold climates.

Feb 7, 05: An "asteroid" [planetisimal] expected to fly past Earth in 2029 will be visible to the naked eye, scientists projected. The "asteroid" is roughly estimated to be a little more than 320 meters wide. Were an asteroid the size of 2004 MN4 to hit Earth, it would cause local devastation and regional damage. It would not be expected to cause any sort of global disruption. It's a once-in-a-millennium event. And you may want to buy plane tickets now, as the flyby will be visible only from Europe, Africa and western Asia.
. . The 2029 event will be the closest brush by a good-sized asteroid known to occur. The rock will pass Earth inside the orbits of some satellites. No other asteroid has ever been clearly visible to the unaided eye.
. . On April 13, 2029, it will be about 36,350 km from Earth's center. That is just below the altitude of geosynchronous satellites. Only two have come closer, and they were only tens of meters wide. It won't hit the moon, either.
. . Last fall, an even larger asteroid made a notable flyby. That rock, called Toutatis, is about 4.6 by 2.4 km. Its closest approach, widely photographed, was about four times the distance to the moon. It was not visible to the naked eye.
. . On average, one would expect a similarly close Earth approach by an asteroid of this size only every 1,300 years or so. The 323-day orbit of 2004 MN4 lies mostly within the orbit of Earth.
. . The 2029 flyby will bend the rock's path and change the circumstances of later close passes to Earth. "However, our current risk analysis for 2004 MN4 indicates that no subsequent Earth encounters in the 21st century are of concern."

Feb 4, 05: There's a hot spot at the tip of Saturn's south pole. Not that the temperatures are all that balmy: At the hottest stratospheric spot, it's -122 degrees C (-188 F). The infrared images captured by the Keck I telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island suggest a warm polar vortex —-a large-scale weather pattern likened to a jet stream on Earth that occurs in the upper atmosphere. It's the first such hot vortex ever discovered in the solar system, & is believed to contain the highest temperatures on Saturn; the scientists did not give a temperature estimate.. Thescientists say the images are the sharpest thermal views of Saturn ever taken from the ground.
. . On Earth, the Arctic Polar Vortex is typically located over eastern North America in Canada and plunges cold arctic air to the northern Plains in the United States. [I know...]
. . One reason: it's been sitting in the sunlight for about 18 years. Saturn, which takes many earth years to orbit the sun, just had its summer solstice in 2002. Scientists may learn more from the data coming from the infrared spectrometer on the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn.

Feb 4, 05: The best way to make Mars habitable would be to inject synthetic greenhouse gases into its atmosphere, researchers said. Scientists and science-fiction authors have long pondered terraforming Mars, melting the vast stores of ice in its polar caps to create an environment suitable for humans.
. . The new research suggests that forcing global warming by injecting greenhouse gases may be the best way to terraform. Artificially created gases could be 10,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide in warming up the Red Planet. The gases that would work the best are flourines and could be made from elements readily available on Mars.
. . Adding 300 parts per million of the gas mixture into the Martian air would trigger a runaway greenhouse effect, according to the models. The polar ice sheets that would slowly evaporate. The newly released carbon dioxide would cause further warming and melting. Atmospheric pressure would rise. The process would take hundreds or thousands of years to complete.

Feb 4, 05: Life on Titan? There might be lakes of liquid ethane and methane on Titan, but the biological compounds we know about just don’t dissolve in those. The Arrhenius equation suggests that, at –180 C, chemistry is 16 orders of magnitude more sluggish than at room temperature. In other words, even if life cooked up on Earth in five minutes, it will still be another 100 billion years before it might do so on Titan.
. . You might solve both problems by going underground. There’s a decent chance that ammonia-water aquifers lurk under Titan’s surface, and that could be good news for life. "An ammonia-water mixture is, to me, just as exciting as liquid water reservoirs", says Grinspoon. But Jakosky points out that any sudsy, subterranean retreats would be far from the surface, where the food supply might be.
. . Grinspoon notes that ultraviolet light from the sun will convert some of Titan’s methane and ethane-rich upper atmosphere into acetylene. "These energy-rich, big acetylene molecules would fall to the surface and accumulate", he suggests. It would be kind of like having wheat fields in the sky. Acetylene manna from heaven. "And if microscopic Titans feed on this stuff, maybe they’d give off some body heat, making their own little liquid water holes."
. . There’s the possibility that earlier in its history, Titan’s atmosphere was thicker (there’s some evidence for that, notes Jakosky). If so, maybe there was once more of a greenhouse effect.

Jan 31, 05: Like Earth and Venus, the night side of Mars emits a subtle glow, scientists reported. It was detected by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter. An emission is produced when one atom of nitrogen combines with one atom of oxygen to form nitric oxide, NO. On Mars, the emission is at an altitude between 60 and 80 km.

Jan 28, 05: New calculations reveal that large planetoids may have formed hundreds of times farther from the Sun than previously thought. One such object, Sedna, discovered in 2003, is close to the size of the TNO Pluto.
. . Sedna may have formed at its current distance, or even further out. Sedna has a highly elliptical orbit; at its furthest, Sedna will be about 940 times further from the Sun than the Earth (940 AU). Stern says Sedna may have been born in a circular orbit at about 500 AU; it's current elliptical orbit is probably the result of a close encounter with a passing star or another large body in orbit around the Sun. Scientists have also advanced the theory that Sedna was not created in this solar system at all, but was pulled from a passing star early in the formation of the solar system.

Jan 27, 05: Skycorp, a satellite company, had offered to create a solar-electric space tug, an ion-rocket powered stage that, when launched to rendezvous with Hubble, dock with the spacecraft and gradually move it into the ISS’s orbit, a major orbital plane change of about 30 degrees. (This could not be accomplished using a chemical stage.) As noted by Dennis Wingo, author and founder of Skycorp, about a year ago, a similar system is being developed by industry to rescue and extend the lifetime of expensive Comsats. The vehicle would have been assembled at the space station manually due to the large solar arrays needed for the ion engine.
. . Once in the ISS’s plane, the Hubble’s orbit would be lowered to match that of the space station. The Hubble could then be serviced directly by the crew, before or after visiting the station, without needing to make a special trip, and the Hubble replacement parts would be able to be included on the regular shuttle manifest for the Station. This would have greatly reduced the risk and cost of the repair, and would have left the Hubble in an orbit where it could inexpensively be serviced in the same fashion again. NASA sidetracked the whole idea, apparently due fears of their inexperience with in-orbit assembly, in favor of another very expensive, ($2-3 billion) and very technically risky endeavor (the robotic mission).
. . Since NASA itself insists that Hubble will soon have to be de-orbited by a similar docking-capable vehicle, their attitude makes no sense.
. . The Hubble is the only large visible light and ultra-violet space telescope we have in operation. Many of the wavelengths it receives cannot be seen on the ground at all. The same is true of the current Spitzer Telescope, which sees using mid-range and thermal Infrared frequencies. The James Webb Space Telescope will cover far-red, optical infrared and thermal infra-red wavelengths, and will probably not be ready for launch and use until about 2012. This would leave us without any Visible or Ultra-violet space telescope for about 5 years. Hubble also has an ability to stare at one object in space for many hours or days, which no ground-based telescope can match.
. . ~John K Strickland, Jr. is on the board of the National Space Society.

Jan 28, 05: On Jan. 20, 2005, a giant sunspot named "NOAA 720" exploded. The blast sparked an X-class solar flare, the most powerful kind, and hurled a billion-ton cloud of electrified gas (a "coronal mass ejection") into space. Solar protons accelerated to nearly light speed by the explosion reached the Earth-Moon system minutes after the flare--the beginning of a days-long "proton storm."
. . Here on Earth, no one suffered. Our planet's thick atmosphere and magnetic field protects us from protons and other forms of solar radiation. Luna has no atmosphere or magnetic field to deflect radiation." Protons rushing at the Moon simply hit the ground --or whoever might be walking around outside.
. . It was particularly rich in high-speed protons packing more than 100 million electron volts (100 MeV) of energy. Such protons can burrow through 11 centimeters of water. A thin-skinned spacesuit would have offered little resistance. "An astronaut caught outside when the storm hit would've gotten sick", says Francis Cucinotta, NASA's radiation health officer at the Johnson Space Center. At first, he'd feel fine, but a few days later symptoms of radiation sickness would appear: vomiting, fatigue, low blood counts. These symptoms might persist for days.
. . The ISS is heavily shielded, plus the station orbits Earth inside our planet's protective magnetic field. "The crew probably absorbed no more than 1 rem." A typical dental x-ray, for example, delivers about 0.1 rem.
. . An astronaut protected by no more than a space suit would have absorbed about 50 rem of ionizing radiation. That's enough to cause radiation sickness. "But it would not have been fatal." To die, you'd need to absorb, suddenly, 300 rem or more. You can get 300 rem spread out over a number of days or weeks with little effect. Spreading the dose gives the body time to repair and replace its own damaged cells. But if that 300 rem comes all at once ... "we estimate that 50% of people exposed would die within 60 days without medical care."
. . A moonwalker caught in the August 1972 storm might have absorbed 400 rem. Deadly? "Not necessarily", he says. A quick trip back to Earth for medical care could have saved the hypothetical astronaut's life. An Apollo command module with its aluminum hull would have attenuated the 1972 storm from 400 rem to less than 35 rem.

Jan 27, 05: Saturn's largest moon contains all the ingredients for life, but senior scientists studying data from a European probe ruled out the possibility Titan's abundant methane stems from living organisms. Methane is destroyed by ultraviolet light, so Titan must have a source deep inside. One believes a hydro-geological process between water and rocks deep inside the moon could produce the methane. The process is called serpentinization and is basically the reaction between water and rocks at 100 to 400 degrees Celsius.

Jan 27, 05: Pluto might have been hit long ago by a virtual twin in a collision that created the ninth planet's moon Charon, according to a new computer simulation. The scenario is similar to the leading theory for the creation of Earth's Luna, another cosmic crack-up that involved a Mars-sized object slamming into our own planet. [again, Luna is NOT a moon, it's a co-planet; & Pluto is NOT a planet. -JKH]
. . Charon is a whopping 10 to 15% as massive as Pluto. Luna is about 1% as massive as our planet. No other satellites are anywhere near as weighty in comparison to their host planets. That similarity doesn't mean Luna and Charon formed in the same way, but it suggested a relationship.
. . The most likely alternative is that Pluto captured Charon, just as some small moons of Saturn and Jupiter are thought to have lured into orbit. Imagine them merging into one another at a freeway onramp, though at a rather sharp angle of about 60 degrees. "After the initial oblique impact, the impactor is partially sheared apart into an 'arm' of material", Canup said. "The impactor material largely recoalesces into an intact moon which is torqued gravitationally into a stable orbit through its interactions with the distorted figure of the planet." Pluto was temporarily contorted into the unlikely shape of an egg.
. . The simulation does a good job explaining the presence of a moon so massive as Charon, and it also aptly describes the overall angular momentum, or spin, of the two-object system. "An impact seems the simplest way to form the pair", Canup said.
. . With the Earth-Luna system, a glancing collision fits well with the objects' present-day spin and mass. It also explains Luna's overall iron-depleted composition, which is similar to the outer portions of Earth of which the satellite was presumably forged.
. . The first good opportunity to explore Pluto and Charon --and any other hidden moons that might lurk in the system-- will come in about 2015 with the expected arrival of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
. . A popular notion for small rocky satellites --like Charon and any other that might exist around Pluto-- is that they are captured. But that's a rare event for any planet. "The probability of a two-body gravitational capture is phenomenally low", Stern said, even for objects that pass reasonably close. "Less than one-in-a-million."
. . Once Pluto has an object in orbit, the planet is surprisingly capable of keeping it there. Pluto, less massive than Earth, and more distant from the Sun, could retain a satellite orbiting as far as 1 million k away. "That's a huge volume of space that could have satellites."

Jan 26, 05: An outburst of energy emanated from the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy just 350 years ago Earth-time, astronomers announced. The eruption was detected now because it is currently interacting with a cloud of hydrogen gas that's 350 light-years from the black hole.
. . Though the eruption was seen only indirectly, a similar one could occur in the future and would be detectable by space-orbiting telescopes. The finding confirms suspicions that the relatively calm black hole is not always quiescent.
. . Most large galaxies contain a central black hole. When gas spirals in toward such an immense gravity sinkhole, a portion of the gas is consumed while some is spat back out. Along the way, the material is superheated and gives off X-rays and other radiation in a highly turbulent region. This causes the cores of very active galaxies to shine brilliantly.
. . The Milky Way, however, seems to be on a diet. Other than some intense radio emissions, it's central black hole, called Sgr A* (pronounced 'Sagittarius A star') emits surprisingly little.
. . The new study, using data from the European Space Agency's orbiting Integral observatory, found that compared to today, the black hole released nearly a million times more energy during the outburst, which lasted about a decade.

Jan 25, 05: New meteorite data lends support to a controversial theory that the violent explosion of a star was involved in the creation of the Sun and its planets. The primitive space rock contains signs that a short-lived, radioactive form of the element chlorine may have been present in the early Solar System. A US-Chinese team claims the most likely source of this "isotope" was a supernova --or exploding star. The new theory proposes that our star and its planetary system were born in a dense interstellar cloud, or nebula, filled with short-lived, massive stars that exploded with immense energy and an intense release of radiation.
. . This space relic formed shortly after the creation of the Solar System. The team found a rare isotope of sulphur - sulphur-36 - in the meteorite, which can be produced through the radioactive decay of a form of chlorine called chlorine-36. Because the sulphur isotope was found in an ancient mineral "inclusion" in the meteorite called sodalite, the researchers believe chlorine-36 could have been present in the early Solar System. Chlorine-36 can form in two ways: by a supernova explosion, or by a nebular cloud being bombarded by radiation near the forming Sun.

Jan 25, 05: UV light would destroy all the methane on Titan within 10 million years if it were not being constantly renewed.
. . "...models of Titan's interior show there should be an ocean about 100km deep at around 300km below the surface." If the models are correct, this ocean would be composed mostly of liquid water with about 15% ammonia at a temperature of about -80C. "We have liquid water, organics not so far away; we have everything on Titan to make life."
. . If methane-producing microbes had colonized this habitable zone, scientists might detect its chemical signature by looking at the relationship of two forms (or isotopes) of the element carbon - C12 and C13. Living cells preferentially incorporate C12. So compounds produced by living things should be depleted of "heavier" isotopes such as C13. Scientists should be able to measure this ratio in data sent back by the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) instrument on Huygens.
. . However, Professor Atreya favours the geological process of serpentinisation as a more likely source of the Saturnian moon's methane. In serpentinization, geothermal activity generates methane through the oxidation of metals such as iron, chromium and magnesium which could be contained in crustal rocks below Titan's surface. Another possibility is that methane molecules are trapped in a water-ice matrix called clathrate (or methane hydrate).

Jan 22, 05: Scientists continue to explore Mars for elusive signs of life. A new tool should help in the hunt. The Mars Organic Analyzer (MOA) can detect and identify amino acids with 1,000 times greater sensitivity than the Viking probes that landed on the Red Planet in 1976.
. . Alison M. Skelley of the University of California at Berkeley and her colleagues designed the briefcase-size MOA, which includes laser spectroscopy, tiny pumps, valves and fluid channels. In laboratory samples, the new system detected amino acids present in parts per trillion. The MOA is being developed for the European Space Agency's (ESA) ExoMars mission, scheduled to launch in 2009.

Jan 21, 05: The Mars rover Opportunity has discovered what scientists said was the first meteorite of any type ever identified on another planet. It encountered the basketball-sized hunk of iron and nickel during a study of its landing site on the Meridiani Planum, and used its onboard instruments to confirm the meteorite's origins. It is still partly polished and shiny.

Jan 21, 05: A probe to Titan has found that liquid methane rains lash Saturn's largest moon, a freezing, primitive but active world of ridges, peaks, river beds and deserts scoured by the same forces of erosion as Earth, scientists said. "There is liquid that is flowing on the surface of Titan. It is not water — it is much too cold — it's liquid methane, and this methane really plays the same big role on Titan as water does on Earth. There must be some source of methane inside Titan which is releasing the gas into the atmosphere. It has to be continually renewed, otherwise it would have all disappeared."
. . Titan has river systems and deltas, protrusions of frozen water ice cut through by channels, apparent dried out pools where liquid has perhaps drained away, and stones —-probably ice pebbles-— that appear to have been rounded by erosion.
. . The bottoms of the dried-out river channels are coated with what seem to be particles of smog that fall out of Titan's atmosphere, coating the whole terrain. The dirt apparently gets washed off the ridges to collect in the river beds. It did not appear to be raining when Hyugens descended through Titan's haze on parachutes, "but it has been raining not long ago."

Jan 20, 05: Scientists believe some of the white streaks seen in photographs taken by Huygens are ridges of ice that were exposed when they were washed clean of the dark, organic silt that regularly falls from the smog-filled sky.
. . As for what it would feel like to walk on Titan, it's possible that a human laden with gear would quickly crunch through a thin crust of frozen chemicals or ice and then sink several centimeters into a mud-like substance. That's what seemed to happen to the 700-pound Huygens.

Jan 20, 05: Lofted into orbit on April 24, 1990, Hubble is doing some of its best science ever, astronomers say, because previous upgrades by spacewalking astronauts have made its suite of instruments ever more powerful. It has long outlived its initial mission scope.
. . There is no other telescope, currently operating or planned, on the ground or in space, that can see as far into the universe in visible light with Hubble's consistency, astronomers agree. The James Webb Telescope --the closest thing to a Hubble replacement-- is planned for launch in the next decade. It will be an infrared observatory, however, and won't record visible light.
. . The prospect of the White House cutting off funding for any possible mission to service and save the Hubble Space Telescope caught the astronomy community largely by surprise.

Jan 19, 05: Scientists have confirmed that the Opportunity Mars rover has run across a meteorite. Opportunity has been using both cameras and science gear to study the intriguing pitted rock on Mars, now dubbed "Heat Shield Rock".
. . "...depending on the size, it may indicate that it fell during the time of a thicker atmosphere, she said. "But we haven't done the calculation yet. Things much bigger than it appears to be wouldn't be slowed down by today's thin atmosphere [on Mars], and thus they would make a crater rather than a 'soft landing'", Leshin explained. She also conjectured about the shiny nature of the object. "Is it because meteorites don't react with the atmosphere as on Earth, or has it been sandblasted?" Lastly, iron metal is one of the most susceptible things to weathering/rust in the presence of water. "Thus, a nicely preserved meteorite --unless we're unlucky and it fell yesterday, which we would never know-- strongly supports the idea that current weathering rates [on Mars] are incredibly low."

Jan 19, 05: Sent Marsward atop an Atlas 5 booster, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will tip the scales at 2,180 kg at liftoff. Brimming with science instruments --rooted to a potent chassis of electronic, propulsion, and mechanical gear-- MRO will be the largest spacecraft to orbit the red planet. Less than two years from now, MRO is tasked to start a series of global mapping, regional survey and targeted observations from a near-polar, low-altitude Mars orbit. It will fly closer to the martian surface than any other orbiter has ever gone.
. . MRO will scope out a landing site for NASA's Phoenix lander. That mission is to land in the northern polar region of Mars in May 2008. Once on the surface, the stationary lander is to use its robotic arm to expose the upper few feet of surface material in a search for ice.
. . Similarly, locating the Mars Science Laboratory's touchdown zone in October 2010 is another priority, Zurek noted, with MRO able to find the best place on Mars for the greatest scientific return from that highly capable rover.

Jan 19, 05: Planet-building is dusty work, and now two space telescopes have captured images of cosmic construction materials: disks of dust circling stars about the same size as our sun. Pictures from NASA's Hubble and Spitzer telescopes give the clearest look yet at the early and late phases of the planetary construction process.
. . The Hubble Space Telescope managed to see a very young sun-like star --a mere 50 million to 250 million years old-- with a big ring of potentially planet-forming dust around it. This is old enough to form a gas planet, but probably too young to have produced an Earth-like rocky planet, scientists said.
. . Observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope indicate six middle-aged sun-like stars with much thinner dust disks around them. At about 4 billion years old, these six are almost as old as the sun. Astronomers already knew these stars harbored planets, because they had been detected earlier by watching the characteristic wobble that the unseen planets' gravity produces in the stars they circle.
. . Spitzer was looking for dust disks around these stars, which in this case would be remnants of planetary construction.

Jan 15, 05: Data sent back by the Huygens space probe from the Saturnian moon Titan show a frozen, orange world shrouded in a methane-rich haze with dark ice rocks dotting a riverbed-like surface the consistency of wet sand.
. . It entered Titan's atmosphere at an altitude of 1,270km (usta be 789 miles). It took more than two hours to float to the icy surface, where it defied expectations of a quick death and continued to transmit for at least two hours. A heated tube from the craft showed surface material evaporating and producing more methane.
. . Pictures snapped by the Titan probe and a low, whooshing sound picked up by an on-board microphone drew gasps and applause from scientists. A picture of a pale orange landscape with a spongy surface topped by a thin crust. Instruments on the probe have detected winds of about 15 mph.
. . "We hope to ultimately get 20 panaromic images." Initially thought to be rocks or ice blocks, they are more pebble-sized. The two rock-like objects just below the middle of the image are about 15 centimeters and 4 centimeters across, at a distance of about 85 centimeters from the camera. The surface is darker than originally expected, consisting of a mixture of water and hydrocarbon ice. There is also evidence of erosion at the base of these objects, indicating possible fluvial activity.

Jan 12, 05: Currently mid-way through their NASA-funded study, the researchers are working to determine whether a set of electrically charged shield spheres atop 40-meter masts could deflect radiation from a populated moonbase. If it proves possible, such a radiation-proof screen --called an electrostatic shield-- could protect astronauts from the long-lasting, and possibly fatal, radiation hazards of spaceflight beyond the Earth's magnetic field.
. . Researchers have said that a major radiation event during the any of six Apollo moon landings could have been catastrophic to the astronauts who carried them out. But Apollo crews lived on the moon for days at most, while long-term mission will run much longer.

Jan 11, 05: A Roman statue of Atlas --the mythical titan who carried the heavens on his shoulders-- holds clues to the long-lost work of the ancient astronomer Hipparchus, an astronomical historian said. The statue in question is known as the Farnese Atlas, a 7-foot tall marble work in Naples, Italy.
. . What makes it important to scientists is not the titan's muscular form but the globe he supports: carved constellations adorn its surface in exactly the locations Hipparchus would have seen in his day, suggesting that the sculptor based the globe on the ancient astronomer's star catalog, which no modern eyes have seen. Hipparchus, who flourished around 140-125 BC, is believed to have been one of the world's first path-breaking astronomers.
. . An analysis of the positions of the constellation figures on Atlas's globe allowed Schaefer to date the work to 125 BC, plus or minus 55 years. This would have been within the range when Hipparchus would have been working.

Jan 6, 05: NASA has given the go-ahead to a Canadian firm to work on a possible robot-salvage mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The awarding of the HST contract work is a milestone in a go/no go decision due next summer when NASA will decide whether or not to proceed with the observatory's servicing by robotic means. The Canadian firm built the Canadarm --the robotic arm technology often used on space shuttle missions.
. . Based on Canada's space robotics technology called Dextre --the dual-armed robot built by MDA under contract to the Canadian Space Agency to conduct exterior maintenance of the International Space Station. That robot is specially designed to perform complex tasks in the harsh environment of space, such as installing and removing batteries, power supplies, computer units, and scientific payloads.

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