Space news and Exploration II

[CrusaderFrank]

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

The ESO has given its European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) the final green light, allowing construction to go ahead at the Chilean site. The telescope is expected to take around a decade to complete, with the final installation expected to facilitate discoveries in fields such as galaxy composition and exoplanets.

Construction of the E-ELT was preliminarily confirmed in June 2012, but with the proviso that 90 percent of the required funding (more than €1 billion or around US$1.3 billion) for the project be secured before main construction could begin. With the accession of Poland to the ESO, that line has now been crossed, and 11 of the 14 member states voted in favor of going ahead with project earlier this week (the remaining three members were absent and are expected to continue to support the project).

While work on the telescope itself was unable to begin until now, an exception was made for the groundbreaking ceremony, which took place in June of this year. Civil works, such as the construction of an access road, were also permitted to go ahead at the site. The contract for the telescope’s main structure and dome construction – the largest ever from the ESO – will be awarded in late 2015.

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

Finding infant earths and potential life just got easier

Among the billions and billions of stars in the sky, where should astronomers look for infant Earths where life might develop? New research from Cornell University's Institute for Pale Blue Dots shows where - and when - infant Earths are most likely to be found. The paper by research associate Ramses M. Ramirez and director Lisa Kaltenegger, "The Habitable Zones of Pre-Main-Sequence Stars" will be published in the Jan. 1, 2015, issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"The search for new, habitable worlds is one of the most exciting things human beings are doing today and finding infant Earths will add another fascinating piece to the puzzle of how 'Pale Blue Dots' work" says Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences.

The researchers found that on young worlds the Habitable Zone - the orbital region where water can be liquid on the surface of a planet and where signals of life in the atmosphere can be detected with telescopes - turns out to be located further away from the young stars these worlds orbit than previously thought.

"This increased distance from their stars means these infant planets should be able to be seen early on by the next generation of ground-based telescopes," says Ramirez. "They are easier to spot when the Habitable Zone is farther out, so we can catch them when their star is really young."

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

Cosmic Radiation Less Of A Risk To Astronauts Than Previously Thought

Cosmic radiation from space travel could be less harmful to astronauts than previously believed, data from experiments conducted on board and outside of the International Space Station (ISS) has revealed.

The MATROSHKA experiment, the first comprehensive measurement of long-term exposure of space travelers to cosmic radiation, brought together researchers from the European Space Agency (ESA) and colleagues from other institutions to determine precisely how much radiation astronauts are exposed to during long-term space travel.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Nasa’s Orion deep space capsule launches

5 December 2014

A rocket has launched from Florida carrying an unmanned version of the US space agency's new crew capsule - Orion.

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

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

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

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

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

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

After a 20-year search, astronomers have uncovered a grand total of 1,900 planets residing outside of the Solar System. According to a new Princeton study, the Gaia space observatory launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) could help that figure grow by a factor of ten by the end of the decade, eventually reaching 70,000 planets after 10 years of scouting.

The Gaia mission was launched late last year with the primary objective to accurately measure the position of up to a billion stars – one percent of the Milky Way’s population – via high-precision triangulation. In the process, the spacecraft is also expected to detect half a million quasars, tens of thousands of asteroids and comets within our solar system, and a large number of new, distant planets.


As planets orbit a star, gravitational effects cause the star to wobble in periodic and predictable patterns. By examining the star’s movement and breaking down the different wave components to the wobble, astronomers can identify both the number and the mass of orbiting planets in a given planetary system (the amplitude of the wobble relates to the planet’s mass, the period to the time it takes to complete a full orbit). According to a recent study, Gaia’s instruments are expected to be able to characterize the wobble of stars up to 1,000 parsecs (3,262 light-years) away.

The mission was first approved by the ESA in 2000, but our knowledge on the nature and distribution of exoplanets has greatly improved since then (for instance, one recent study claims that the Milky Way alone may be home to over 100 million planets capable of supporting complex life). Astronomers at Princeton have therefore revised their estimations and now believe that the probe may be able to detect an astonishing 20,000 planets during its five-year nominal mission, or up to 70,000 planets if the mission is extended to 10 years.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Dawn Spacecraft Sees Ceres

Discovered on January 1, 1801 by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, Ceres is the largest body in the main asteroid belt.

It is about 950 kilometers in diameter and has an apparent magnitude that can range from 6.7 to 9.3.

Ceres was the largest known asteroid in the asteroid belt until 2006. But in 2006, the International Astronomical Union formed a new class of objects known as dwarf planets. By definition a dwarf planet is spherical and travels in an orbit around the Sun, and Ceres fits this definition perfectly.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Strange Circular Mound in Athabasca Valles on Mars Puzzles NASA Scientists

The circular feature is about 2 km wide. It looks like a circular ‘island’ surrounded by a ‘sea’ of smooth-looking lava flows.

The region where the ‘island’ was spotted is called the Athabasca Valles. It is a geologically young 300-km-long outflow channel system located in north-central Elysium Planitia.

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

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

Reduced Light Curves from K2 Campaign 0
K2 Photometry

Explore Campaign 0 data here!

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

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

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

The first link includes only the corrected light curve - that is, there are two columns, one for time, and one for flux. All points when we detect that the thrusters are firing have been excluded. The second link includes the raw light curves, corrected light curves, "arclength" positions along the direction of Kepler's pointing jitter, and a tag that indicates whether the thrusters are firing.

We have also uploaded our data in individual files and created webpages displaying the data and various diagnostic plots. You can access the data here. The list includes the Guest Observer IDs for the targets, as proposed by the community. You can find the proposals corresponding to the Guest Observer IDs online here.

Once again, like in the engineering test data, the correction can fail for stars with rapid or high amplitude astrophysical variability. In these cases, it could be better to use the raw data and the "arclength" positions in the diagnostics file to re-derive the SFF correction simultaneously with a model of the light curve.

If you have any questions, please email me at avanderburg [at] cfa [dot] harvard [dot] edu. If you would like to use this data in your own publication, please cite Vanderburg & Johnson (2014).

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

(Phys.org)—Observations by NASA's Curiosity Rover indicate Mars' Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.

This interpretation of Curiosity's finds in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes at many locations on the Red Planet.

"If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on Mars," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "A more radical explanation is that Mars' ancient, thicker atmosphere raised temperatures above freezing globally, but so far we don't know how the atmosphere did that."

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is the only known planet other than Earth to have a dense atmosphere and stable bodies of liquid on its surface. Instead of water, however, methane and ethane fill Titan’s seas.

In Titan’s lower latitudes, the Cassini orbiter—which has been observing Saturn since 2004—has detected enormous wind-driven sand dunes that are hundreds of feet high and hundreds of miles in length, according to a statement by the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute.

The sand dunes are not composed of silicates like those here on Earth, said University of Tennessee planetary scientist Devon Burr in the statement. Burr, formerly SETI, is lead author of a paper published in the journal Nature that discusses the enormous dunes and how they are created.

Instead of silicates, the Titan’s dunes are composed of hydrocarbons and “may possibly include particles of water ice that are coated with these organic materials,” Burr says.

How this strange alien sand got there is still unknown, but even more baffling is the direction of the winds that create the dunes, SETI says.

Cassini’s observations indicate winds that blow in a more west-to-east direction, contrary to the prevailing easterlies. Because this defied reasonable expectations, the research team realized that adjustments had to be made to the usual models for wind transport to account for Titan’s denser atmosphere and more viscous sand.

Using a wind tunnel, the team discovered that the minimum wind speed necessary for transporting Titan’s hydrocarbon-laden sand was higher than the typical prevailing winds on this alien world.

The wind tunnel was “a bear to operate,” noted co-author John Marshall of SETI. But, he said, “Dr. Burr’s refurbishment of the facility as a Titan simulator has tamed the beast. It is now an important addition to NASA’s arsenal of planetary simulation facilities.”

This greater wind speed threshold explains the puzzle of the dunes’ alignment. Sometimes, Titan’s winds reverse direction and increase dramatically in intensity because of the Sun’s changing position in the Titanian sky. And because the minimum wind speed is so high, only the more powerful west-to-east winds can move and shape the dunes.
Instead of silicates, the Titan’s dunes are composed of hydrocarbons and “may possibly include particles of water ice that are coated with these organic materials,” Burr says.

How this strange alien sand got there is still unknown, but even more baffling is the direction of the winds that create the dunes, SETI says.

Cassini’s observations indicate winds that blow in a more west-to-east direction, contrary to the prevailing easterlies. Because this defied reasonable expectations, the research team realized that adjustments had to be made to the usual models for wind transport to account for Titan’s denser atmosphere and more viscous sand.

Using a wind tunnel, the team discovered that the minimum wind speed necessary for transporting Titan’s hydrocarbon-laden sand was higher than the typical prevailing winds on this alien world.

The wind tunnel was “a bear to operate,” noted co-author John Marshall of SETI. But, he said, “Dr. Burr’s refurbishment of the facility as a Titan simulator has tamed the beast. It is now an important addition to NASA’s arsenal of planetary simulation facilities.”

This greater wind speed threshold explains the puzzle of the dunes’ alignment. Sometimes, Titan’s winds reverse direction and increase dramatically in intensity because of the Sun’s changing position in the Titanian sky. And because the minimum wind speed is so high, only the more powerful west-to-east winds can move and shape the dunes.

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

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

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

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

SpaceX will apparently attempt something truly epic during next week's cargo launch to the International Space Station.

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

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the organization in charge of naming celestial objects, has set up a public contest that will let people all around the globe pick the names of 20 to 30 well-characterized exoplanets and their respective host stars by August next year.

It’s been 20 years since the first planet outside of our solar system was discovered, and nowadays the observations of Kepler and other powerful telescopes are bringing the exoplanet count close to an impressive two thousand mark. Most of these worlds, however, are only known by very dry and unimaginative scientific names (such as "CoRoT-4 b" or "PSR 1257 12 d") that do little justice to giant rogue planets without a host star or distant worlds made largely of diamonds.

The IAU is aiming to remedy that with a worldwide contest that will let organizations around the world propose popular names for up to 30 out of 305 well-known extrasolar planets, and will then let people around the globe have the final say by means of online voting.

Astronomy-related clubs and non-profits from all countries are free to register on the NameExoWorlds website, where the entire process will take place, until the end of the year. Next month these organizations will be asked to vote to select the 20 to 30 planets to be named, and later on they will be able to submit their naming proposals along with a 250-word rationale explaining their choice. Starting from April, the general public will be able to vote to select the names among the ones that have been proposed, with the final results set to be announced in August 2015.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA officially announces Manned Mars Mission

NASA is launching its boldest test flight in decades this week. An unmanned capsule will head off on Thursday to reach a distance of 3,600 miles from Earth—the farthest space mission with a craft designed to accommodate humans since the final Apollo 17 trip to the moon in 1972.

Called Orion, the program will mark a key initial step toward a human mission to Mars. Orion is also designed to excite the public’s imagination for deep-space exploration, much as the Apollo moon missions sparked an interest in space and produced civilian engineering triumphs. With the first test flight on Thursday, NASA wants to make it abundantly clear that much of the hardware that can get humans to Mars already exists and is ready to fly.

“My hope is that when we fly the capsule on Thursday, it will energize the public and energize that middle schooler [who] isn’t quite sure what he wants to do, but he likes math and science,” says Richard Boitnott, an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center.


No one is about to strap on a suit and launch to Mars any time soon. Despite NASA’s excitement, the pace of development—driven by Congressional funding—means that the next Orion test flight won’t happen for nearly three years. The first flight with astronauts isn’t planned to take place until six years from now.

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

GREAT NEWS!!!

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

The appropriations bill, which funds NASA and most of the rest of the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year, gives the agency $17.99 billion for fiscal year 2015, including increases for several major exploration and science programs. That total is $530 million above the administration’s request of $17.46 billion for the agency, and about $100 million above separate House and Senate appropriations bills considered earlier this year.

Two major elements of NASA’s exploration strategy won funding boosts in the final bill. The Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket will receive $1.7 billion, an increase of $320 million over the administration’s request. The Orion spacecraft will get $1.194 billion, an increase of $141.2 million over the request.

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

 

[ScienceRocks]

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

Scientists have dealt a blow to the theory that most water on Earth came from comets.

Results from Europe's Rosetta mission, which made history by landing on Comet 67P in November, shows the water on the icy mass is unlike that on our planet.

The team found that there was far more heavy water on Comet 67P than on Earth.

David Shukman reports on the findings.

 

[ScienceRocks]

3-D Printer on Space Station Makes Its First Part

The international space station’s 3-D printer has produced its first part, ushering in what proponents hope will be a new age of off-Earth manufacturing.

The 3-D printer, which was designed and built by California-based startup Made in Space, created an extruder plate — a piece of itself — Nov. 24, wrapping up the task in about an hour. The milestone marks a step toward a future in which voyaging spaceships print out their own spare parts on the go and colonists on other worlds make what they need from the dirt beneath their boots, advocates say.

“This is the first object truly manufactured off of planet Earth,” Made in Space Chief Executive Aaron Kemmer said in an interview. “It’s a huge milestone, not only for Made in Space and NASA, but for humanity as a whole.”

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