New Look at Exploding Stars Provides Cosmic Yardstick (SPACE.com)

Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com Contributor
Space.com Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor
space.com – Thu Aug 11, 2:14 pm ET

In universe spanning more than a billion light-years, distance can't be measured with a ruler. To judge how far away objects are, astronomers must rely on other objects whose properties are already known — such as certain kinds of exploding stars called supernova.  

New research is shedding light on the identity of one of these "standard candles," so-called because their brightness is standard enough that their true distance can be deduced from it.

Astronomers are hoping that analyzing one specific type of supernova explosion will give them a better understanding of how frequently it differs from another type. That, in turn, should allow for even more precise measurements of distance in the universe.

One dwarf or two

When a compact, dying star known as a white dwarf orbits another star closely enough, its strong gravitational pull can ultimately rip its partner apart. But the massive survivor can pack only so much material onto its surface. When its critical point is reached, it explodes as a Type 1a supernova.  

These events can be divided into two categories. One involves only the single white dwarf and its victim. The other involves two white dwarfs, with one destroying the other.  New research, published in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Science, takes a look at just how commonplace the single-white-dwarf version of a Type 1a supernova may be. [Video: Supernovas – Destroyers and Creators]

When two white dwarfs are orbiting one another and the smaller one moves too close, it is almost instantly torn apart, creating a disk to orbit its destructive companion.

Almost immediately, the disk falls onto the remaining star, pushing it over the critical mass threshold and causing an explosion.

But when the second star in a pair isn't a white dwarf, things move slower. The stars don't get as close, and tidal forces manage to pull away only some of the gas from the near side of the second star. The white dwarf feeds on the material until it eventually reaches the critical mass, exploding as a supernova.

"Both models agree that the explosion is an accreting white dwarf," the lead author of the study, Assaf Sternberg at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, told SPACE.com via email. "The disagreement is on the origin of the accreted material."

It is this material that interested Sternberg and his team. When the destroyed star is a white dwarf, the material is quickly consumed, but when it is not, traces of the gas linger even after the explosion.

The international team of astronomers used the Keck telescope in Hawaii  and the Magellan telescope in Chile to study the sodium in gas clouds around 41 Type 1a supernovas. Sodium is an element found in most stars but not in white dwarfs.

From the sample taken, the team determined that at least 24 percent of the explosions did not involve white dwarfs as the companion.

This number was a lower limit: Half or even all of the pairings could involve only one white dwarf star. The researchers couldn't specifically target which explosions contain white dwarfs and which do not. Instead, they looked for a distribution. They found more systems with sodium than would be found if there were an equal number of double-white-dwarf and single-white-dwarf systems.

Judging distances

Josh Simon, of the Carnegie Institute, explained how this event helps determine distances in the universe.

"If you know that the light bulb is 60 watts, then you can figure out how far away the light is from you by measuring how bright it looks," he told SPACE.com by email.

But the second star in the set could be a number of things. Simon likened the different pairings to light bulbs of varying wattage.

"You can't tell the difference between a 50-watt bulb nearby, a 60-watt bulb a bit further away, or a 100-watt bulb even farther away than that," Simon said.

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'Dog Days' of Summer End With Dog Star's Sky Return (SPACE.com)

The so-called "Dog Days" of summer in the Northern Hemisphere officially came to an end this week, when the Sirius, the bright Dog Star, returned the night sky.

Everyone talks about "Dog Days" but few may know what the expression actually means. Some might suggest it signifies hot, sultry days "not fit for a dog." (If during you live in Dallas or Oklahoma City this summer, you may probably more than agree with this particular definition.) Others, meanwhile, may say it's the weather in which dogs go mad.

But the actual Dog Days, or "Canicular" days as they're known, are defined as the period from July 3 through Aug. 11 when the Dog Star, Sirius, rises in conjunction (or nearly so) with the sun. As a result, the classical Greek and Roman belief was that the combination of the brightest luminary of the day (the sun) and the brightest star of night (Sirius) were responsible for the extreme heat that is experienced during the middle of the northern summer. Other effects, according to the ancients, were droughts, plagues and madness.

A more sensible view was put forward by the astronomer Geminus around 70 B.C. He wrote: "It is generally believed that Sirius produces the heat of the Dog Days, but this is an error, for the star merely marks a season of the year when the sun’s heat is the greatest." [The 9 Hottest Places on Earth]

The sky map of for the star Sirius here shows where it currently appears in the predawn sky.

Dog star's night sky legacy

In ancient Egypt, the New Year began with the return of Sirius. It was, in fact, the "Nile Star" or the "Star of Isis" of the early Egyptians. Interestingly, some 5,000 years ago, this star's "heliacal rising" (appearing to rise just prior to the sun) occurred not in August, as is the case today, but rather on or around June 25. 

When the ancient Egyptians saw Sirius rising just before the sun, they knew that the "Nile Days" were at hand. Its annual reappearance was a warning to people who lived along the Nile River. The star always returned just before the river rose, and so announced the coming of floodwaters, which would add to the fertility of their lands. People then opened the gates of canals that irrigated their fields. 

Priests, who were the calendar keepers, sighted the first rising of the Dog Star from their temples. At the temple of Isis-Hathor at Denderah is a statue of Isis, which is located at the end of an aisle lined by tall columns. A jewel was placed in the goddess’ forehead. [Skywatching Events for August 2011]

The statue was oriented to the rising of Sirius, so that the light from the returning Dog Star would fall upon the gem. When the priests saw the light of the star shining upon the gem for the first time, they would march from the temple and announce the New Year.  In the temple appears the inscription: "Her majesty Isis shines into the temple on New Year’s Day, and she mingles her light with that of her father Ra on the horizon."

The Dog Star returns this week

This week, just before sunrise, Sirius can again be glimpsed rising just above the southeast horizon for those living in mid-northern latitudes. At more southerly latitudes, Sirius is already conspicuous, twinkling above the horizon at dawn. 

Sirius is the brightest star of the constellation Canis Major, the "Greater Dog" in Latin. According to Burnham's Celestial Handbook other names for it include "The Sparkling One" or "The Scorching One."

The star appears a brilliant white with a tinge of blue, but when the air is unsteady, or when it is low to the horizon as it is now, it seems to flicker and splinter with all the colors of the rainbow. At a distance of just 8.7 light-years, Sirius is the fifth-nearest known star. Among the naked-eye stars, it is the nearest of all, with the sole exception of Alpha Centauri. 

So regardless of how hot your local weather is, or has been, this appearance of Sirius — a star we most associate with the winter season — now rising just ahead of the sun, is a subtle reminder that the hottest part of the year is now behind us and a promise that a change toward cooler weather is only weeks away. 

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.

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NASA Sun-Watching Satellite Spots Comet Elenin in Deep Space (SPACE.com)

A NASA spacecraft  aimed at the sun shifted its unblinking gaze to an approaching comet last week to snap a new photo of the icy object as it flew by.

The image shows the comet Elenin as it passed within 4.3 million miles (7 million kilometers) of one of NASA's twin Stereo sun-watching spacecraft during a series of deep space photo sessions that began on Aug. 1. NASA rolled the Stereo-B satellite to give its instruments a view of the comet flyby, officials said.

From Stereo's observations, the fuzzy comet Elenin can be seen streaking across a small portion of the sky. The comet was seen by Stereo's HI-2 telescope between Aug. 1 to 5, and by the higher resolution HI-1 telescope between Aug. 6 to 12, NASA officials said. Stereo mission scientists planned to take photos for one-hour every day through Aug. 12. [See the Stereo probe's new comet Elenin photo]

"From August 15 onward, the comet enters the HI-1 telescope's nominal field of view, at which time we should enjoy continuous viewing of the comet," NASA researchers explained in an update posted to the Stereo mission website.

Comet Elenin is expected to become brighter over the next few days, and could be detectable using Stereo's coronagraph instrument between Aug. 20 and Sept. 1, NASA officials said. Mission managers are then expecting the comet to become visible to another sun-watching spacecraft – NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) – for six days, beginning on Sept. 23.

Comet Elenin was discovered in December by Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin, who spotted the icy wanderer using the International Scientific Optical Network's robotic observatory near Mayhill, New Mexico. 

Viewed from Earth, comet Elenin presently appears as a faint smudge of light in deep sky exposures. By late August the comet could be visible to the naked eye as a dim "fuzzy star" with a tail. [Best Close Encounters with Comets]

Comet Elenin will fly through the inner solar system in October 2011 and be 22 million miles (35 million kilometers) away at its closest approach to our planet, NASA scientists have said. The comet is not expected to be particularly dazzling, but the flyby may be a good chance to study a relatively young comet from the outer solar system.

Some doomsday theorists have pinned the Nibiru rogue planet hypothesis on the small comet.

Conspiracy theorists say a planet, known as Nibiru, will swing in from the outskirts of our solar system and collide with Earth and wipe out humanity in 2012. Since no rogue planet has been found in the outer solar system, some people have argued that comet Elenin will be the true culprit in the Nibiru-Earth collision.

NASA has dismissed the notion that comet Elenin is anything other than a dim, wimpy comet. It poses no threat to Earth, making its closest pass at a distance roughly 100 times farther than the distance from Earth to the moon.

NASA's identical twin Stereo spacecraft were launched in October 2006. They are offset from one another, one flying ahead of the Earth and the other behind. The name "Stereo" is short for Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory.

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Fund Raising Effort Reopens SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array (ContributorNetwork)

The Allen Telescope Array, a dedicated cluster of radio telescopes dedicated to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is back in business thanks to a fund raising effort conducted by the SETI Institute.

The ATA, which was built thanks to private funding from Microsoft executive Paul Allen, was forced to shut down through lack of funding. The fund raising effort, according to Space.Com, has raised the $200,000 necessary from about 2,000 donors to reopen the facility and to recommence the search for ET's radio signals. One of the donors, coincidentally, was actress Jodi Foster, who played an astronomer who finds signals from aliens in the film "Contact," based on the novel by Carl Sagan.

SETI or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has had a long a storied history, ever since Project Ozma in 1960. SETI has been primarily a privately funded effort since NASA's effort was defunded by the Congress in the mid 1990s. The defunding of NASA's SETI was part of a wave of political attacks on big science projects in the early to mid 1990s that also terminated the Super Conducting Super Collider and almost ended the space station project.

The Allen Telescope Array consists of a 42 small dishes spread out over an area near the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles northeast of San Francisco, California. Each dish is 20 feet or 6 meters in diameter, making them relatively small. However the ATA tracks areas of the sky simultaneously to conduct radio astronomy, especially of other galaxies, as well as conducting SETI operations. It is hoped that ATA will eventually consist of 350 dishes, making it one of the most powerful radio astronomy facilities on the planet. In this way the detecting power of the small dishes, when the ATA is eventually completed, would be combined as a "phased array" to make it the equivalent of a single dish 114 meters in diameter and the angular resolution of a dish 700 meters across. The plummeting price of electronics and the relatively small size of the dishes make the ATA a nimble observatory that can track targets in the sky relatively quickly. As technology improves, the dishes, because of their relatively small size, can be more easily upgraded or replaced than a single, large dish.

Besides SETI, ATA is "--being used for radio astronomy observations of our galaxy and other galaxies, gamma ray bursts and transient radio sources, and SETI." The ATA has been in operation since 2007 and has already garnered a great deal of radio astronomy science, including radio images of a number of galaxies.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard .

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NASA probe to asteroid begins collecting data (AP)

PASADENA, Calif. – The Dawn spacecraft has begun collecting data about the asteroid Vesta.

The NASA probe made its first detailed observations of the surface Thursday from a distance of 1,700 miles and will spend the next several weeks taking images from that altitude. Afterward, it will spiral closer to the asteroid to get a better view.

Dawn slipped into orbit around Vesta last month after a four-year journey and beamed up early pictures revealing a rocky body with radically different northern and southern hemispheres.

Vesta resides in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists hope to better understand the conditions of the early solar system by studying asteroids.

Dawn will circle Vesta for year before moving on to a bigger asteroid, Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.

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Superfast Military Aircraft Crashed in Pacific Ocean, DARPA Says (SPACE.com)

This story was updated at 5:42 p.m. ET.

An unmanned military plane billed as the "fastest aircraft ever built" crashed into the Pacific Ocean today (Aug. 11) after a malfunction caused it to stop sending signals while flying at more than 20 times the speed of sound, military officials said.

The flying prototype, called the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2), plunged into the ocean after shifting into a mode that allows it to fly Mach 20, or about 13,000 mph, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which oversaw the test flight.

The rocket-launched vehicle is part of an advanced weapons program, called Conventional Prompt Global Strike, which is working to develop systems of reaching an enemy target anywhere in the world within one hour. It blasted off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 7:45 a.m. PDT (1445 GMT). [Photos: DARPA Hypersonic Glider's Mach 20 Test]

"More than nine minutes of data was collected before an anomaly caused loss of signal," DARPA officials explained in a statement. "Initial indications are that the aircraft impacted the Pacific Ocean along the planned flight path."

The update means that today's Falcon HTV-2 test flight, the second performed by DARPA, lasted longer than the project's first flight in April 2010. That first flight lasted nine minutes and ended when an earlier hypersonic vehicle detected an anomaly and also crashed itself into the ocean.

"Here's what we know," said Air Force Maj. Chris Schulz, DARPA HTV-2 program manager, in a statement. "We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight." [10 Military Aircraft that Never Made it Past the Test Phase]

DARPA officials said that according to telemetry from today's HTV-2 flight, the hypersonic vehicle separated from its Minotaur 4 rocket booster as planned, then shifted into the proper configuration for Mach 20 flight — a major feat.

What happens next, though, is a mystery.

"We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight," Schulz said. "It's vexing; I'm confident there is a solution. We have to find it."

The Falcon HTV-2 aircraft is a wedge-shaped plane equipped with thrusters and aerosurfaces designed to provide control during hypersonic flight. It is built to withstand extreme heating since the flying at Mach 20 can subject it to temperatures of up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, according to DARPA officials, who called it the fastest flying vehicle ever constructed.

"To address these obstacles, DARPA has assembled a team of experts that will analyze the flight data collected during today's test flight, expanding our technical understanding of this incredibly harsh flight regime," Schulz said. "As today's flight indicates, high-Mach flight in the atmosphere is virtually uncharted territory."

To reach hypersonic speeds, the HTV-2 launched into suborbital space atop a Minotaur rocket. The vehicle then popped free of the booster and re-entered Earth's atmosphere.

During today's test flight, DARPA scientists expected the HTV-2 aircraft to use small rocket thrusters to control its re-entry, then pitch itself up to increase altitude and control. After that, the vehicle was expected to enter a long glide phase in order to perform a set of preprogrammed maneuvering tests while flying at about 13,000 mph.

Once those tests were complete, the vehicle was expected to crash itself into the ocean to end the mission. But during the actual flight, ground stations lost contact with the HTV-2 vehicle earlier than planned.

An engineering review board to analyze that data in order to help shape future global strike programs, DARPA officials said.

You can follow SPACE.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA Opens New Office for Deep Space Missions (SPACE.com)

To embark on its next chapter in human space exploration, NASA has created a new department to oversee manned spaceflight in the post-space-shuttle era.

The department is called the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, and combines two previous organizations, the Space Operations Directorate and the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.

The reorganization is part of top-to-bottom changes moving through the space agency, which finds itself at a turning point. This year NASA retired its 30-year-old space shuttle program, which was the focus and most visible part of its activities over the last few decades. The agency is now gearing up for an era of human missions to deep space, including trips back to the moon, then on to asteroids and Mars.

President Obama has charged NASA to put astronauts on a space rock by 2025, and on the Red Planet by the mid 2030s. To reach those goals, the United States must develop a new heavy-lift rocket capable of traveling that far, and a capsule to bring people safely there and back again. [Photos: NASA's New Spaceship for Deep Space]

The new Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate will be responsible for overseeing all this and more.

"America is opening a bold new chapter in human space exploration," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "By combining the resources of Space Operations and Exploration Systems, and creating the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, we are recommitting ourselves to American leadership in space for years to come."

While NASA is targeting human missions farther out into the solar system than ever before, it hopes to pass on the torch of low-Earth orbit travel to the private space industry. The new office will oversee NASA's Commercial Crew Development program, which aims to stimulate the development of private spacecraft to carry people to orbit, as well as the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, which does the same for cargo.

Meanwhile, NASA will continue operating the International Space Station. Until private spaceships are ready, U.S. astronauts will rent rides to the station aboard Russian rockets. The orbiting laboratory is planned to run through at least 2020. This, too, will be supervised from the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier, previously the associate administrator for Space Operations, will head the new office.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Space Junk Cleanup Poses Grand Challenge for 21st Century (SPACE.com)

The buildup of space debris orbiting the Earth, which poses a threat to spacecraft and the environment, has reached a critical point, scientists say.

The space junk trend no longer can be reversed by full compliance with mitigation measures now in place; it will get worse without more-aggressive action such as active debris removal, or ADR. And that just might pose the biggest engineering challenge of the 21st century, according to J.-C. Liou of the Orbital Debris Program Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"As the international community gradually reaches a consensus on the need for ADR, the focus will shift from environment modeling to completely different challenges: technology development, systems engineering, and operations," Liou explained in the July edition of NASA's Orbital Debris Quarterly News, issued by his office in Houston.

Liou told SPACE.com: "Orbital debris is an environment problem … and it's everybody's problem, not just the United States' or a NASA problem. All the spacefaring nations share the same environment." [Worst Space Debris Events of All Time]

Liou said that even if nations are in 100 percent compliance of all the measures now in effect to help curb space junk — guidelines more than a decade in the making — "it would not be enough. … We have reached that point. We need to take more aggressive measures."

In the meantime, smashups between objects in space lead to fragmentation, constantly creating more debris.

Four Cs of space junk cleanup

A long-term strategic plan for removing orbital clutter requires the four C's, Liou says — four critical steps needed at the international level:

Consensus on active debris removal.Cooperation: the removal targets may belong to a different country.Collaboration:  It is highly unlikely that any single organization or country can accomplish the goal by itself.Contributions: Cost-sharing will be the key for engaging in active debris removal.

"In the next five to 10 years, I think we'll be in a much better place than where we are today in terms of trying to remediate the environment," Liou predicted. [Video: The Expanding Danger of Space Debris ]

Space debris removal operations

Liou said that five key questions must be addressed at the beginning of any ADR planning. They are: Where is the most critical region for ADR? What are the mission objectives? Which debris should be removed first? What are the benefits to the environment? How should the operations be carried out?

To control the future increase in space debris or reduce the number of fragmentations, officials should focus removal operations on large rocket bodies or spacecraft — objects at least several meters long, Liou explained. And to reduce mission-ending threats to operational spacecraft, the focus should be on the 5-millimeter to 1-centimeter debris.

"Targeting anything outside these two size regimes will not be an effective means to remediate the environment, nor to mitigate mission-ending risks to operational spacecraft," Liou concluded.

First things first

Over the years, a number of space debris removal ideas have been proposed, from space tethers, giant foam balls and laser beams to garbage scows and even huge fishing nets.

But Liou said what’s needed is a first-things-first approach.

"We need to be more specific about the question we want to address. You don't want to spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to just go up there and remove debris when you cannot quantify the benefits to the environment," Liou pointed out. "We need to take a very focused, efficient approach to address the key problems."

Liou added that orbital debris-removal appraisals currently underscore two criteria: "It's not just based on size or mass, it's based on the collision probability and mass."

That being the case, if the goal is to stabilize the debris population environment in low-Earth orbit at today's levels, about five large, intact objects need to be removed per year.

Many — but not all — of the potential targets in the current environment are spent Russian upper stages.

Road map needed

As for next steps, Liou flagged the recent National Space Policy, a White House document released in June 2010.

That policy, for one, calls upon NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense to pursue research and development of technologies and techniques to mitigate and remove debris in orbit now, reduce hazards and increase understanding of the current and future debris environment.

What's needed now, Liou said, is an implementation plan or a road map. This long-term plan would engage international partners regarding orbital debris removal.

"International collaboration will be the key," Liou concluded. "We all need to work together to move forward."

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of this year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World.

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Hubble Telescope Finds Glowing 'Necklace' in Space (SPACE.com)

Talk about bling! A giant "necklace" glowing brightly in space is the centerpiece of a new photo from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

The cosmic object, which is appropriately named the Necklace Nebula, is a recently discovered planetary nebula, made up of the glowing remains of an ordinary, sun-like star. The Necklace Nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta.

Planetary nebulas form when stars similar to our sun deplete their store of hydrogen fuel. The stars' outer layers expand and cool, creating a massive envelope of dust and gas. Radiation flowing out from the dying star ionizes this envelope, causing it to glow. [See Hubble's photo of the Necklace Nebula]

Despite the implications of their name, planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets. Rather, the term refers to their apparent resemblance to giant planets when they were observed through early telescopes.

The Necklace Nebula consists of a bright ring, measuring 12 trillion miles (more than 19 trillion kilometers) wide. The dense, luminescent knots of gas around the ring resemble the necklace's jewels. [50 Deep Space Nebula Photos]

A pair of stars orbiting close to one another produced this nebula, which is formally known as PN G054.2-03.4. About 10,000 years ago, one of the aging stars ballooned until it engulfed its companion star. The smaller star, though consumed, continued orbiting inside its larger companion, increasing the more massive star's rotation rate.

As a result, the bloated companion star spun so fast that a large part of its gaseous envelope expanded into space. Due to centrifugal force, most of the escaping gas seeped out along the star's equator, producing a ring. The embedded knots are densely packed clumps of gas in the ring.

The stars in the pair are so close — only a few million miles apart, they appear as one bright dot in the center of the ring. The stars are whirling so furiously around each other that they complete a full orbit in a little more than a day.

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NASA May Miss Its Astronauts as They Leave with the End of the Space Shuttle Program (ContributorNetwork)

The Daily Caller has published a piece that asks a pertinent question. That question is, now that the space shuttle program is over and there is no government run space flight program in sight, what is NASA going to do with its astronauts?

Rep. Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, is quoted as saying, "I firmly believe if we lose this talent, it won't be to another state or industry, but to another country."

Johnson is likely being overwrought. Russia has a very vigorous cosmonaut program and does not need to outsource it to unemployed American astronauts. Similarly, countries with nascent space programs such as China or India would prefer to train and fly their own nationals. At best, any ex NASA astronaut would find a job training or consulting for another country's space program.

Also, whether an astronaut is headed out the door of NASA depends on what kind he or she is. The Pilot Astronaut, who used to fly the space shuttle, would not have much to do and would likely seek other opportunities. Space flying opportunities will be limited to some of the commercial space companies such as SpaceX, but there are jobs in the executive suite or in consulting available for anyone with the job of astronaut on their resume. Academic, entrepreneurship, and even politics are other career possibilities, judging how former astronauts have handled their post NASA careers in the past.

Mission Specialists, scientists and engineers, will still fly on the International Space Station. With the completion of the shuttle program, the ISS is about to fulfill its potential as a microgravity research facility. Along those lines, if and when Bigelow Aerospace manages to deploy its private space station built of inflatable modules, NASA will have another venue to send researchers to.

But the bigger question is, if the United States is actually planning to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit on voyages of exploration, how badly will the experience and talent now headed for the exits is going to be missed. To be sure, the mechanics of flying to the Moon or an asteroid will be different than those of flying a winged space craft to and from low Earth orbit, but the question is still pertinent.

The first man to fly the space shuttle as a command pilot was John Young, who had previously flown two Gemini missions and two Apollo missions. Other Apollo era astronauts who flew the shuttle included Jack Lousma, who had flown previously on a Skylab Mission, Ken Mattingly, who flew on Apollo 16, Vance Brand, who had flown on the Apollo-Soyuz test project, Paul Weitz, who had flown on a Skylab, and Owen Garriott, who had flown on a Skylab mission.

Having a small cadre of experienced space pilots was no doubt beneficial to getting the space shuttle program off the ground. Currently NASA does not even envision a piloted test flight of its space exploration system, planned to consist of a MPCV, formally known as Orion, and the heavy lift space launch system until 2021. It is entirely possible that NASA will not have any experienced pilot astronauts in its employ by then.

Of course one work around would be to hire commercial space pilots from one or more of the commercial space taxi services that NASA plans to have in operation by 2015. That would be something of an irony that NASA, which pioneered space flight, would have to turn to the private sector for the talent it will need to take the next step beyond low Earth orbit.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly.

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NASA Primes Twin Moon Gravity Probes for September Launch (SPACE.com)

Jason Rhian, SPACE.com Contributor
Space.com Jason Rhian, Space.com Contributor
space.com – 1 hr 2 mins ago

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A set of twin lunar probes are gearing up for a planned September launch to the moon,  with NASA set to attach the spacecraft duo to their rocket soon.

The twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory spacecraft (nicknamed GRAIL) are poised to launch moonward on Sept. 8 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base here.

The GRAIL mission is designed to discover details of the moon's gravity field from the inside out. The twin probes will fly in tandem to scan the lunar crust to the core, in hopes of collecting measurements for the most accurate gravitational map of the moon ever produced.

"Unlike many other planetary missions GRAIL consists of two spacecraft which are mirror images of one another," said Sami Asmar a member of the GRAIL science team. "So they cannot be interchanged or switched and they will fly together in formation transmitting radio information between the two spacecraft – this allows us to peer into the moon from the core to the crust." [Photos: Our Changing Moon]

Cleaning up for the moon

The GRAIL probes are currently being housed in a clean room near NASA's Kennedy Space Center here. Anyone who enters the ultra-clean facility is required to wear a protective white jumpsuit, sometimes referred to as a "bunny suit."

This head-to-toe outer layer leaves only the eyes exposed, but it is just the first precautionary tier in a multi-layered system designed to keep the spacecraft clean before it is sent to our nearest celestial neighbor.

All camera equipment brought in to photograph the twin GRAIL spacecraft must be cleaned under the supervision of specially trained contamination-control specialists, and strict rules govern what type of equipment can be brought into the facility. These regulations extend even to pens and paper — no conventional writing utensils are allowed inside the clean room, since ordinary paper can carry particles that could clog vital systems on the spacecraft in the microgravity environment of space.

Shoot for the moon

Grail is slated to launch from Launch Complex 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sept. 8 at 8:37 a.m. EDT (1237 GMT). The two probes will ride on a Delta 2 rocket, in what will be the final launch of a Delta 2 from the Air Force-run spaceport.

After the probes lift off, the journey to the moon will last about 3 1/2 months. After that, the science mission is set to last for a total of 90 days. GRAIL is similar to the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment or GRACE mission which launched in 2002 and made detailed measurements of Earth's gravity field. [Infographic: Inside Earth's Moon]

 "GRAIL will have a trans-lunar cruise of about three-and-a-half months, they will arrive at the moon on New Year’s Eve 2012," said Bruce Reid, the mission's launch service provider manager.  "Once there they will completely map the gravity of the moon. This is important for not only future missions, but to also provide us with a better understanding other terrestrial planets.”

The GRAIL science team is made up of a number of scientists, including former NASA astronaut Sally Ride, who is assisting with the project’s public outreach efforts.

GRAIL is the second of three NASA missions launching over the next few months to explore the solar system.

On Aug. 5, NASA launched the Juno spacecraft toward Jupiter. It will take the probe five years to reach the gas giant planet.

NASA's newest Mars rover, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, is currently scheduled to launch in late November.

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA Prepares Next Mars Rover for November Launch (SPACE.com)

Robert Z. Pearlman, SPACE.com contributor
Space.com Robert Z. Pearlman, Space.com Contributor
space.com – Sat Aug 13, 12:30 pm ET

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's next Mars rover, the car-size Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, is almost ready to fly to the Red Planet.

Beginning tomorrow (Aug. 13), technicians at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will begin folding up the six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover to pack it inside its heat shield.

Targeted to launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral on the day after Thanksgiving (Nov. 25), Curiosity was shown off to the media on Friday inside the clean room where it has been undergoing final tests and preparations for its journey to Mars. [Photos: NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity]

The rover, which at 10 feet (3 meters) long has been likened to the size of a Mini Cooper, was in its fully-deployed posture. The next time it will be in the same configuration will be after it is deposited on the surface of Mars in August 2012.

"We're going to start buttoning up the hatches here," said Torsten Zorn, a robotics engineer with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Tuck and stow

Over the next three or so days, Zorn and his fellow team members will work to fold down Curiosity's high-gain antenna, which will enable the rover to communicate directly with Earth. Technicians will also lock down the Remote Sensing Mast, which supports Curiosity's two stereo navigation cameras used for driving the rover and two science instruments to investigate the rover's surroundings.

They will also fold up Curiosity's instrument-tipped arm, capable of reaching out more than 7 feet (2 meters) to collect and study samples of the Martian surface.

Finally, technicians will tuck in Curiosity's six wheels, which are designed to roll the rover over obstacles up to 25 inches (65 centimeters) high and to travel distances up to 660 feet (200 meters) per day on the Martian terrain.

"[We] just fold them up, like a little insect," Zorn said.

Packing for flight

Once all the folding, stowing and tucking is complete, the Curiosity rover will be ready to be mated with its descent stage vehicle and then fitted inside a tightly-packaged cruise stage and aeroshell that will protect the rover on its nine-month trip to Mars. That whole package will then be placed inside a protective shell called a fairing and eventually stacked atop the Atlas 5 rocket.

In the days leading up to liftoff, engineers will install Curiosity's nuclear power source: a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which produces electricity from the heat of plutonium-238's radioactive decay. This long-lived power supply will provide Curiosity with an operating lifespan on Mars' surface of at least a full Mars year (687 Earth days, or 1.9 Earth years).

After arriving at Mars, the spacecraft will steer itself through Mars' atmosphere with a series of S-curve maneuvers similar to those used by astronauts piloting NASA's now-retired space shuttles. During the three minutes before touchdown, the spacecraft will slow its plunge to the ground with a parachute, then use retro rockets mounted around the rim of an upper stage to further slow its approach.

In the final seconds before Curiosity's landing, the upper stage will act as a sky crane, lowering the upright rover on a tether to the surface. [Video: Curiosity to Make Unusual Landing on Mars]

Bigger and better

Curiosity is about twice as long and five times as heavy as NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which launched in 2003 and are still on the Martian surface.

Curiosity inherited many design elements from its earlier, smaller cousins — including six-wheel drive, a "rocker-bogie" suspension system and cameras mounted on a mast to help the mission's team on Earth select exploration targets and driving routes. However,  unlike Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity has equipment to gather samples of rocks and soil, process them and distribute them to onboard test chambers that are inside analytical instruments.

Those instruments include some of the most advanced scientific gear ever used on Mars' surface and a payload more than 10 times as massive as those of the earlier Mars rovers. Using these tools, Curiosity will investigate whether conditions on Mars may be favorable for microbial life today and for preserving clues in the rocks about possible past life.

Robert Pearlman is a SPACE.com contributor and editor of collectSPACE.com. You can follow him @robertpearlmanor on Facebook. Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.

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2 NASA Space Shuttles Meet Nose-to-Nose (SPACE.com)

Two NASA space shuttles, each on the road to retirement, posed nose-to-nose Thursday (Aug. 11) while switching places at the space agency's Florida spaceport.  

To stage the maneuver, NASA rolled Discovery out of the giant Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and moved it to a hangar-like building called the Orbiter Processing Facility-1, or OPF-1. Meanwhile, the shuttle Endeavour (which was already inside the hangar) was moved out and over to the massive VAB.  

"Endeavour and Discovery switched locations — a shuttle shuffle," Kennedy Space Center spokesman Allard Beutel told SPACE.com. "It's just a storage thing, is what it comes down to — we have three shuttles and two locations." [Images: Two Shuttles Meet Nose to Nose]

When the two spacecraft passed one another on the same road, space shuttle shutterbugs went wild. The result: Never-before-seen photos of two-thirds of NASA's shuttle fleet in the same place at the same time.

"We've never had two shuttles pass each other to go to two separate locations," Beutel said. "This was the first time we've ever done this."

The two space shuttles, along with their sibling Atlantis, are being readied for retired life at museums now that NASA has finished flying the orbiters.

Thursday's double-shuttle move will allow technicians to work on Discovery inside the OPF-1 in preparation for shipping it to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington, D.C., around April 2012.

Work is also ongoing inside the nearby Orbiter Processing Facility-2, where Atlantis is being prepped for its retirement home at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center, down the road.

Atlantis was the last shuttle to fly; it landed July 21, finishing the 135th and final mission of the 30-year space shuttle program. Atlantis is due to travel almost seven miles to the Visitors Center in early 2013.

For the time being, Endeavour will rest dormant inside the VAB, which was where NASA stacked orbiters with their external tanks and solid rocket boosters in preparation for launch. Sometime next summer Endeavour will travel across the country atop a special Boeing 747 jet to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, where it will live out its days.

NASA named the three recipients of the flown shuttles earlier this year, crushing the hopes of about 20 other museums that had lobbied to host an orbiter. New York's Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum will also get a shuttle, the test vehicle Enterprise (currently housed at the Smithsonian), which never made it to space.

Before Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis can be put on display, they must be processed to remove all hazardous parts and materials, especially any residual rocket fuel lingering in the Forward Reaction Control System and the Orbital Maneuvering Systems Engines.

Those systems have been removed and sent to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for intensive cleaning. Once they are safe, they'll be shipped back and reinstalled on the orbiters before they are sent to museums.

"The entire system is completely cleaned out so there's not even a modicum of toxic chemicals left, so 20 years from now, someone standing under a shuttle doesn't get dripped on," Beutel said.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Orion spaceship set for new round of tests in Colo (AP)

DENVER – A spaceship Lockheed Martin is building for NASA is being prepared for the next round of tests as engineers attach a tower designed to lift the ship and its astronauts to safety if something goes wrong during launch.

Lockheed Martin said Friday the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and abort system will be subjected to sound vibration tests at the company's facility near Denver.

The vibrations will emulate the sound pressure levels of a launch and deployment of the abort system.

Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, Md., has a $7.5 billion contract to build the Orion capsule. It was originally intended for use in a Moon mission that President Barack Obama canceled last year.

NASA says Orion will take four astronauts on 21-day trips. The destination hasn't been determined.

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Perseid Meteor Shower Dazzles Skywatchers Despite Full Moon (SPACE.com)

Skywatchers around the world caught stunning views of the Perseid meteor shower overnight Friday (Aug. 12) despite a bright full moon that threatened to outshine the annual "shooting star" display's peak.

The Perseid meteor shower is often the most dazzling meteor shower of the year, but a fluke of timing put the peak of this year's space rock light show in competition with the August full moon. But accounts from skywatchers suggest the Perseids did not disappoint, despite the moon's interference.

In Woking, Surrey, in England, skywatcher and photographer Carolyne Jackson waited patiently in her backyard, camera at the ready, for a break in the clouds in order spot a meteor. [Skywatcher Photos: The 2011 Perseid Meteor Shower]

"I kept this up for an hour and then reviewed the shots," Jackson told SPACE.com in an email. "Most contained nothing and with having a full moon and light pollution I was not expecting to see anything ... then bingo, on my 27th shot, there was this beauty." [See Jackson's Perseid meteor photo]

The Perseid meteor shower has been observed by skywatchers for at least 2,000 years, according to NASA. The meteors are actually pieces of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. The meteor shower gets its name Perseid from its origin point in the night sky: the constellation Perseus.

Every August, Earth flies through the comet's cloud of debris and the tiny bits of Swift-Tuttle (most of them more than 1,000 years old) burn up in the atmosphere as they streak at nearly 133,200 mph. According to the website Spaceweather.com, international observers reported up to 20 meteors per hour during the Perseids' peak.

"Saw 5 here in Brooklyn," New York City skywatcher Miloy Quezada wrote in a post to SPACE.com's Facebook page. "We were laying on our building's roof, my 2-yr-old couldn't figure out what his dad and I kept pointing at. At first it feels like your eyes are playing tricks on you. It was great to see God's amazing creations."

Just outside New York City, in West Orange, New Jersey, two dazzling fireballs marked the highlight of the Perseid meteor shower, as seen by this reporter.

NASA held an online skywatching party for the Perseids, providing a live camera view where meteors streaked across the frame of an all-sky camera at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. NASA astronomer Bill Cooke and his fellow meteor scientists Danielle Moser and Rhiannon Blaauw hosted a webchat for the Perseids to answer questions from what seemed to be a throng of eager skywatchers online.

In addition to the Perseids and the nearly full moon of August, and is known as the Full Sturgeon moon among other names, the International Space Station also made an appearance in the Friday night sky.

Cooke snapped an eye-catching photo of the space station streaking over Huntsville using one of the Perseid all-sky cameras and posted it on Twitter, where he posts updates as @MeteorScientist.

"ISS pass over Huntsville at 9 tonight," Cooke wrote. The space station is making a series of passes over the United States this week. Here are some tips to spot the space station in the night sky.

Some of the best views of the Perseid meteor shower actually occurred earlier this week, when the moon was not at its brightest and therefore didn't wash out the shooting star display.

Photographer and amateur astronomer Nick Rose managed to catch a view of the Perseids on Aug 10 from Millbrae, Calif., just outside San Francisco.  [See Nick Rose's Perseid meteor photo here]

"With around 90 or so photos I took this morning only one of them had a Perseid meteor," Rose told SPACE.com in an email. "Even though Perseus is in the direction of the San Francisco International airport with a lot of [light pollution] I was still able to get a pretty good photo."

Back in New York City, skywatcher Peter Orrick was amazed at what he saw on Aug. 10.  

"I was in Central Park and noticed a bright streak across the sky crossing from east to west then it split into two streaks!" Orrick told SPACE.com in an Aug. 10 email. "I'd never seen a meteor that bright!"

Editor's note: If you snapped an amazing photo of a Perseid meteor this year and would like to share it with SPACE.com for our Perseids 2011 gallery, please send them to managing editor Tariq Malik at: meteor showers of 2011 here.

You can follow SPACE.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Perseid Meteor Shower Light Show Peaks Tonight (SPACE.com)

In a double weekend treat, one of the most well-known and reliable meteor showers — the Perseid meteor shower — will reach its peak overnight Friday (Aug. 12) as the International Space Station flies across the sky above many U.S. cities.

The annual Perseid meteor shower returns this week, but is expected to hit its peak activity in the overnight hours of Friday and Saturday (Aug. 13). While the full moon of August may interfere with the meteor display, the best time to catch the pretty light show (weather permitting) is during the predawn hours, especially on Saturday morning, experts at NASA advise. 

And if you're looking skyward before dawn this week, you might also be able to glimpse the space station overhead. [Photos: Amazing Perseid Meteor Shower Displays]

The International Space Station will be making a series of early morning flybys over the U.S. throughout this week and into the weekend, NASA officials said. The massive orbiting complex shines bright enough that its visibility in the sky is not drowned out by moonlight or city lights.

NASA's space station tracker lists local flyby times, including those for several major cities such as Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York, that are expected to have good viewing opportunities on Friday and Saturday.

NASA is inviting the public to participate in a Perseids webchat and "all-night" meteor shower viewing party, hosted by astronomer Bill Cooke and his team from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The webchat will begin at 11:00 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT) on Friday (Aug. 12) and will last until 5:00 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT) on Saturday (Aug. 13).

The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year as Earth passes through a stream of dust particles and debris from the Comet Swift-Tuttle. As these specks of comet dust hit the top of Earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to 140,000 miles per hour (225,000 kilometers per hour), they are heated and form bright meteor streaks that can be seen across the sky.

These meteors stream out of the constellation of Perseus, which is how the meteor shower got the name "Perseids." [Top 10 Perseid Meteor Shower Facts]

Skywatchers around the world are currently counting more than a dozen Perseids each hour, according to NASA and the International Meteor Organization. The light show should reach its peak between Aug. 12 and 13, as Earth orbits near the heart of the comet debris stream.

This year, however, the full moon occurs one hour after the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, which could outshine some of the fainter Perseids that would normally be visible against a darker sky, according to NASA. But before dawn, the full moon will be relatively low and the meteor count should be high at that time. [Video: Perseid Meteor Shower 2011 Guide]

The meteor shower will likely be viewed best under dark country skies, which will help eliminate light pollution.

Gaherty also reminds meteor watchers to have patience, as the streaks usually come in bunches, with wait times in between. He recommends budgeting at least an hour or two of skywatching to catch a good glimpse of this year's shower. 

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of a Perseid meteor this year and would like to share it with SPACE.com for a possible story or gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at: tmalik@space.com.

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Lions Kill and Go Away, to Kill Again Another Day (LiveScience.com)

Lions apparently flee the scenes of their crimes, withdrawing after successful kills while other potential prey are still on high alert, researchers have found by using satellites to track some of the deadly African cats.

This research into the minds of lions sheds light on why and when large predators move on from one hunting ground to the next, a crucial decision when the stakes are survival or starvation. In turn, such insights could lead to better designs of protected areas for African lions, whose numbers have shrunk by half in 30 years.

Deciphering the strategies of predators is difficult enough when they are captive, not to mention when they are free to range far in the wild.

"Such fieldwork is time-consuming, difficult and potentially dangerous," said researcher Marion Valeix, an ecologist at the University of Oxford in England and the French National Center for Scientific Research.

Scientists have had two ideas regarding why large mammalian carnivores depart a hunting ground. In the "unsuccessful hunt" hypothesis, predators hunt everything they can and then move on. In the alternate "patch disturbance" hypothesis, hunters leave after a successful kill to give remaining prey time to lower their guard — allowing the predators to return and blindside them. [Lions Attack Humans When Full Moon Wanes]

To see which strategy lions adopted, researchers followed the movements of eight African lions wearing global positioning system collars and ranging over about 2,700 square miles (7,000 square kilometers) in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.

Scientists matched the whereabouts of these big cats with 164 lion kills tracked down between 2005 and 2007. They found that after 87 percent of kills, the lions traveled at least three miles (five kilometers) or more, suggesting they were departing the scenes of their crimes.

"We showed the need for these animals to rotate their hunting between several hunting grounds — for example, waterholes in the Hwange ecosystem," Valeix told LiveScience. "This has implications regarding the configuration and size of lion home range and needs to be taken into account in the design of small conservation reserves."

Most studies focusing on large carnivores have considered them and large herbivores to be rather static variables.

"The most important implication of our findings is that they make a strong case for the crucial need to consider the behavior of large carnivores and large herbivores in a dynamic framework — lions continuously adjust to the behavior of their prey, which continuously adjust to the whereabouts of their predators."

In the future, the scientists plan to study both the behavior of predator and prey at the same time. They detailed their new findings in the August issue of the journal American Naturalist.

Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

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Donations help reactivate SETI's search for aliens (AP)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – An array of 42 radio telescopes seeking signs of intelligent life in the universe will continue that work after private donors raised enough money to keep them going.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, Institute received more than $200,000, including donations from actress Jodie Foster, to keep operating, The San Jose Mercury News reported (http://bit.ly/pM9vHo).

The array was originally a joint project between the SETI Institute and the UC Berkeley Astronomy Laboratory, which pulled out earlier this year because of the loss of National Science Foundation grants and state budget cuts.

Senior SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak said he was gratified the money could be raised during these tough economic times.

"But people still think this very fundamental question — is there somebody out there as intelligent or more so than us? — is important and worth doing," he said.

The telescopes will be turned back on in September, recalibrated and operated 24 hours a day for the rest of the year as more funds are sought.

The array costs $2.5 million a year to operate with a full staff of 10 people. As a whole, the SETI Institute has an $18 million budget and 140 employees. The funding which comes from donors, NASA and the National Science Foundation.

SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson told supporters in a letter that his goal is to raise $5 million so that the radio dishes can be pointed at 1,235 new so-called "exoplanets" that were announced in February by NASA's Kepler mission.

The array is not only used to search for E.T.s, but is also contributing to research into black holes, pulsars and magnetic fields in the Milky Way.

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Information from: San Jose Mercury News, http://www.sjmercury.com

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Two of NASA's space shuttles meet nose-to-nose (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA's retired space shuttles are trading places.

In a rare nose-to-nose encounter, Discovery and Endeavour met outside the shuttle hangar Thursday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Discovery moved into the hangar and Endeavour went to the Vehicle Assembly Building.

The switch was necessary for NASA to continue preparing both spaceships for their future homes. Discovery will head next spring to a Virginia hangar belonging to the Smithsonian Institution. Endeavour will then be transported to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Atlantis — which recently completed the last shuttle flight — will remain at Kennedy for public display.

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Online:

NASA: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_sc/storytext/us_sci_space_shuttle/42578679/SIG=10tqef4au/*http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

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Power companies prepare as solar storms set to hit Earth

NEW YORK | Sat Aug 6, 2011 1:04pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three large explosions from the Sun over the past few days have prompted U.S. government scientists to caution users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days.

"The magnetic storm that is soon to develop probably will be in the moderate to strong level," said Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

He said solar storms this week could affect communications and global positioning system (GPS) satellites and might even produce an aurora visible as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin.

An aurora, called aurora borealis or the northern lights in northern latitudes, is a natural light display in the sky in the Arctic and Antarctic regions caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere.

Major disruptions from solar activity are rare but have had serious impacts in the past.

In 1989, a solar storm took down the power grid in Quebec, Canada, leaving about six million people without power for several hours.

The largest solar storm ever recorded was in 1859 when communications infrastructure was limited to telegraphs.

The 1859 solar storm hit telegraph offices around the world and caused a giant aurora visible as far south as the Caribbean Islands.

Some telegraph operators reported electric shocks. Papers caught fire. And many telegraph systems continued to send and receive signals even after operators disconnected batteries, NOAA said on its website.

A storm of similar magnitude today could cause up to $2 trillion in damage globally, according to a 2008 report by the National Research Council.

"I don't think this week's solar storms will be anywhere near that. This will be a two or three out of five on the NOAA Space Weather Scale," said Kunches.

SOLAR SCALE

The NOAA Space Weather Scale measures the intensity of a solar storm from one being the lowest intensity to five being the highest, similar to scales that measure the severity of hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

The first of the three solar explosions from the sun this week already passed the Earth on Thursday with little impact, Kunches said, noting, the second was passing the Earth now and "seems to be stronger."

And the third, he said, "We'll have to see what happens over the next few days. It could exacerbate the disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field caused by the second (storm) or do nothing at all."

Power grid managers receive alerts from the Space Weather Prediction Center to tell them to prepare for solar events, which peak about every 12 years, Tom Bogdan, director of the center said.

He said the next peak, called a solar maximum, was expected in 2013.

"We're coming up to the next solar maximum, so we expect to see more of these storms coming from the sun over the next three to five years," Bogdan said.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Alden Bentley)

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NASA's Juno probe sets sail for Jupiter

An Atlas V rocket with NASA's Juno spacecraft payload is seen the evening before its planned launch at Space Launch Complex 41 of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, August 4, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Bill Ingalls/NASA

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Fri Aug 5, 2011 4:55pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday, sending a robotic scout on its way to Jupiter to gather details about how the solar system formed.

The Atlas 5 rocket carrying NASA's Juno spacecraft lifted off at 12:25 p.m. (1625 GMT), the first step in a five-year, 445-million mile (716-million km) odyssey to the largest planet in the solar system.

Launch was delayed almost an hour while United Launch Alliance fixed a technical problem with ground support equipment. The Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture builds and flies Atlas and Delta rockets for NASA, as well as the military and commercial customers.

"Next stop is Jupiter," an elated Scott Bolton, head of the Juno science team, told reporters after launch. "I couldn't be happier. This is sort of like a dream come true."

Upon arrival in July 2016, Juno is to spend a year in an unprecedented polar orbit around the giant planet, measuring its water content, mapping its magnetic fields and searching for signs of a solid core.

With more than twice the mass than all its sibling planets combined, Jupiter is believed to hold a key piece to the puzzle of how the planets formed some 4.65 billion years ago from the gas and dust left over after the birth of the sun.

"We're really looking for the recipe for planet formation," said Bolton, who is with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

"We're going after the ingredients of Jupiter by getting the water abundance as well as very precise measurements of the gravity field that will help us understand whether there's a core of heavy elements or a core of rocks in the middle of Jupiter."

INSIDE RADIATION BELTS

The measurements will help scientists sort through theories about what the early solar system looked like and how Jupiter, believed to be the first planet to form, was created.

To make its observations, Juno will soar as close as 3,100 miles above Jupiter's cloud tops, the first spacecraft to fly inside the planet's radiation belts.

With its sensitive electronics housed in a vault of titanium, Juno should last through 33 orbits around Jupiter, which is about a year on Earth.

Its last maneuver will be a plunge into the planet's thick atmosphere, which will incinerate the probe to avoid possible contamination of Jupiter's water-bearing moons.

Now that NASA has retired its shuttle fleet, the U.S. space spotlight is shifting toward the robotic probes and observatories that have brought the biggest leaps in understanding the cosmos.

More than 10,000 people flocked to the Cape Canaveral area to watch the Atlas launch, the first rocket to fly from Florida since the shuttle's retirement last month. That was part of an outreach effort by NASA, which typically invites around 300 guests for an unmanned rocket launch.

"We're extremely excited about coupling the energy that the nation has for human spaceflight into understanding what we're doing in science because right now science is really the positive face of this agency," said Jim Adams, NASA's deputy director for planetary science.

The Juno mission is the second in NASA's lower-cost, scientist-led New Frontiers program, and it was accomplished on schedule and within its $1.1 billion budget.

The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics of Denver, Colorado.

In addition to launching science probes and other satellites, United Launch Alliance is in the process of certifying its Atlas 5 rockets to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, one of several possible commercial rockets contending to replace NASA's space shuttle fleet.

(Editing by Jane Sutton and Xavier Briand)

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Military loses contact with hypersonic test plane

DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) is shown in this undated artist's conception, released August 11, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/DARPA/Handout

WASHINGTON | Thu Aug 11, 2011 3:22pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An unmanned experimental aircraft designed to glide down from the upper atmosphere at 20 times the speed of sound lost contact with ground control on its second test flight on Thursday, a Pentagon agency said.

The Falcon HTV-2 was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a rocket and successfully separated from the launch vehicle, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said.

The arrowhead-shaped plane was expected to separate from the rocket near the peak of its ascent and glide back to earth, reaching hypersonic speed before rolling and plunging into the Pacific ocean, according to a test diagram posted online.

About 10 minutes after the flight began, DARPA tweeted that the mission was "on track, entering glide phase." But about 26 minutes later, DARPA tweeted that its monitoring stations had lost contact with the glider.

"Downrange assets did not reacquire tracking or telemetry," DARPA tweeted about an hour later. "HTV-2 has an autonomous flight termination capacity."

The loss of communications in the final stages of the test flight was a failure for the agency. During the initial flight test in April, researchers lost contact with the vehicle about nine minutes into the flight.

The Falcon HTV-2 glider is part of the Defense Department's effort to build what it calls a "prompt global strike" capability that would enable it to hit targets worldwide within an hour with conventional or nuclear warheads.

(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Anthony Boadle)

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Riots, wild markets: Did space storms drive us mad?

This aurora australis image was taken during a geomagnetic storm that was most likely caused by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun on May 29, 2010 from The International Space Station located over the Southern Indian Ocean at an altitude of 350 kilometers (220 miles) and posted on NASA website June 21, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center/Handout

By Rosalba O'Brien

LONDON | Fri Aug 12, 2011 11:02am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Rollercoaster financial markets and the worst riots Britain has seen in decades have made it quite a week for a time of year that is usually so dead the newspapers are filled with "silly season" tales of amusing pet antics.

Everyone is pointing fingers -- at blundering politicians, hooded thugs, disaffected youths, bumbling police and greedy bankers -- but could the cause for all the madness really be the star at the center of our solar system?

There isn't a lot of evidence pointing to little green men involving themselves in Earthly affairs, but the sun has been throwing bursts of highly charged particles into space in a phenomenon known as coronal mass ejections or CMEs.

Three large CMEs prompted U.S. government scientists to warn of solar storms that can cause power blackouts and the aurora borealis, or northern lights, caused by disturbances in the Earth's atmosphere, have been spotted as far south as England and Colorado, NASA said.

"Earth's magnetic field is still reverberating from a CME strike on August 5th that sparked one of the strongest geomagnetic storms in years", website SpaceWeather said.

Some academics have claimed that such geomagnetic storms can affect humans, altering moods and leading people into negative behavior through effects on their biochemistry.

Some studies have found evidence that hospital admissions for depression rise during geomagnetic storms and that incidents of suicide increase.

A 2003 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that such storms could affect the stock market, as traders were more likely to make pessimistic choices.

"Unusually high levels of geomagnetic activity have a negative, statistically and economically significant effect on the following week's stock returns for all US stock market indices," the authors found in their report.

It could of course be mere coincidence that this has been a rollercoaster week on the markets, and that Britain was rocked by a wave of ferocious rioting and looting.

But market watchers may take comfort from the fact that the space weather forecast for Friday has gone quiet again.

They shouldn't be too complacent though. The solar cycle is on an upswing due to peak in 2013 and there are likely to be more geomagnetic storms heading Earth's way in the months to come.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Climate scientists shine new light on methane mystery

Farmers work in a padi field at Khokana village, located south of Nepal's capital Kathmandu July 27, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar

By David Fogarty

SINGAPORE | Thu Aug 11, 2011 7:25am EDT

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Atmospheric levels of methane, 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) at trapping heat, stayed steady for two decades to 2006 on wider fertilizer use to grow rice or a surge in natural gas demand, according to two separate studies in the journal Nature.

Climate researcher Fuu Ming Kai from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Singapore research center said in one study that methane output from rice fields in the Northern Hemisphere dropped during the period as fertilizers replaced manure and because of reduced water use.

In the second study, Murat Aydin at the University of California, Irvine, concluded that a drop in methane emissions from more efficient burning of fossil fuels and a surge in natural gas demand.

The studies aim to solve a puzzle that has confounded climate scientists for years: why did methane levels in the atmosphere, after rising steadily for many years, taper off in the mid-1980s in a dip lasting two decades?

Solving the puzzle is crucial because methane levels have risen more than 150 percent since the start of the industrial revolution, compared with CO2's 40 percent increase, and are on the rise again.

While the studies reach different conclusions, both studies point to human activities as the reason for the slowdown.

"In general most of the methane sources come from the Northern Hemisphere," Fuu told Reuters.

The main methane sources come from burning fossil fuels, rice paddies, coal mines, livestock and clearing and burning of tropical forests.

"We looked at the isotope data to see how it's changed over the past 20 to 30 years. And what we saw is a trend in the isotope signature and especially in the Northern Hemisphere."

Fuu said long-term data and comparing methane levels between the both hemispheres helped researchers conclude that about half the decrease in Northern Hemisphere methane emissions could be explained by reduced emissions from rice agriculture in Asia over the past three decades.

"It is important to know what the mechanism is behind the slow down. If you know this, you can adopt a suitable policy to reduce methane emissions," Fuu said.

Aydin concluded the drop coincided with rapid natural gas production as the fuel became increasingly price competitive with oil and other fossil fuel, instead of flaring it off. The gains came even though overall fossil fuel use increased as cleaner burning technologies helped keep methane emissions in check, he said.

"We speculate that the rising economic value of natural gas during the late 20th Century and the deployment of cleaner technologies led to sharp reductions in the release of light hydrocarbons into the atmosphere," the study says.

(Editing by Ed Lane)

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Orange goo washing ashore in Alaska is egg mass, scientists say

Microscopic crustacean eggs which washed up on an Alaskan shore are shown in this undated handout photo from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to Reuters August 8, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Auke Bay Laboratories/NOAA/Handout

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska | Mon Aug 8, 2011 5:10pm EDT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - A mysterious orange goo that washed ashore in an Alaska village last week and sparked pollution concerns turns out to be a mass of crustacean eggs or embryos, government scientists said on Monday.

Tests of a sample sent by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation produced the results, officials at a laboratory belonging to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Fisheries Service Center said.

"We now think these are some sort of small crustacean egg or embryo, with the lipid oil droplet in the middle causing the orange color," Jeep Rice, a lead scientist at the Juneau laboratory, said in a news release.

"So this is natural. It is not chemical pollution; it is not a man-made substance," Rice said.

Last week's appearance of the orange substance in the Alaska village of Kivalina initially baffled villagers and experts.

Residents of the Inupiat Eskimo village on Alaska's northwest coast said they had never seen anything like it before, and U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska environmental officials examined it and determined that it was not a petroleum product or other known pollutant.

The material is sticky, but becomes a powder when dried, said Julie Speegle, a spokeswoman for NOAA's Fisheries Service in Alaska.

Scientists who made the preliminary identification are confident that they are correct, Speegle said.

"I would say we're pretty darn sure that they're microscopic eggs," she said. "We just don't know what species."

To get a more precise identification, Speegle said, scientists at the Auke Bay lab have sent samples to NOAA's Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research in Charleston, South Carolina.

"As soon as they receive a sample, they will be doing a more in-depth analysis," she said.

Kivalina, a village of nearly 400 people, is located at the tip of a barrier reef jutting out into the Chukchi Sea.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb)

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Donors helping to reboot California listening post for aliens

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES | Sat Aug 13, 2011 6:51pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California institute plans to reboot its listening post for intelligent life in space, with private donations to replace government cutbacks.

Back in April, due to a lack of funding, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute was forced to shut down its $30 million radio telescope array designed to hear potential signals from aliens -- if they exist.

But officials with the nonprofit institute in northern California's Mountain View appealed for donations. This week they said the total raised had slightly surpassed their $200,000 goal.

That was due to generosity from more than 2,400 donors, including actress Jodie Foster and Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, they said.

As a result, the institute said it expects to restart the telescope array in September and run it at least through the end of the year.

The plan is still dependent upon the center receiving an unspecified amount of funds from the U.S. Air Force to track space debris that could damage satellites.

Thomas Pierson, chief executive of the SETI Institute, said he expects the nearly finalized deal with the Air Force will, combined with the private funds, allow the group's so-called Allen Telescope Array to again listen for space chatter.

"For those who are interested in understanding whether intelligent life might be out there elsewhere in our galaxy, the Allen Telescope Array and our SETI team doing the research is the best bet," Pierson said.

The search for aliens is a scientific discipline currently underway by a small number of U.S. universities and groups in Australia, Argentina and Italy, Pierson said.

The Allen Telescope Array is the first instrument designed from the ground-up, with the goal of listening for signals from extraterrestrial life, Pierson said.

It is named after Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen, one of its chief benefactors, and consists of dozens of dish-like antennas operated as one large radio telescope.

Located in a remote area in the shadow of Lassen Peak, east of Redding, California, it began initial operations in 2007, according to the SETI Institute.

The array is part of the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, a facility of the University of California, Berkeley.

The SETI project was hit hard by recent federal government budget cuts and by cost-savings at UC Berkeley.

Pierson said the 27-year-old SETI Institute, which aside from overseeing the telescope array also researches origins of life in extreme environments and conducts public education, had received two-thirds of its funding from government sources.

Now, the institute is in a "transition phase" as it seeks more private funds and ways to control costs in order to continue operating the telescope array beyond 2011, he said.

The array costs $1.5 million a year to run. Fortunately for the institute, it has high-profile advocates.

Oscar-winner Foster, who played an alien-seeking scientist in the 1997 film "Contact," explained her support in a statement on a fund-raising website created for the array.

"The Allen Telescope Array could turn science fiction into science fact, but only if it is actively searching the skies," she said.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)

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Spermless mosquitoes could help halt malaria spread

A puddle full of mosquitoes is seen in Jimani on the border between Dominican Republic and Haiti in this picture taken October 10, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz

By Kate Kelland

LONDON | Mon Aug 8, 2011 3:27pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Releasing genetically modified, spermless male mosquitoes into the wild could in future help to prevent malaria transmission and reduce the chances of large outbreaks of the killer disease, British scientists said on Monday.

Researchers from Imperial College London sterilized male mosquitoes by genetically modifying them to neutralize a gene required for sperm production.

In a study to see how these mosquitoes would fare when trying to get a mate, they found that female mosquitoes cannot tell if the males they mate with are fertile, or spermless and therefore unable to fertilize the females' eggs.

The researchers said findings suggest that in future it might be possible to control the size of the malaria-carrying mosquito population by introducing a genetic change that makes males sterile. Female mosquitoes would then unknowingly mate with the modified males and fail to produce any offspring.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that affects up to 300 million people and kills nearly 800,000 every year. Its threat is greatest in Africa, where the World Health Organization says a child dies of malaria about every 45 seconds.

Public health experts are working toward the eventual global eradication of malaria, but progress is slow and there is a constant need for better and cheaper ways to get there.

"In the fight against malaria, many hope that the ability to genetically control the mosquito vector will one day be a key part of our armory," said Flaminia Catteruccia from Imperial's life sciences department, who led the study.

But she added that for these currently theoretical control ideas to work in practice, scientists have to establish whether the insects would continue to mate as normal, unaware that their sexual mechanisms had been tampered with.

After mating for the first and only time in her life, the female mosquito goes through certain physiological changes, then eats a meal of blood, and lays a batch of eggs.

In this research, Catteruccia's team found that this behavior pattern was the same whether or not the mating had produced fertilized eggs that could hatch into mosquito larvae.

Using Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes -- the species primarily responsible for malaria spread in Africa -- the team created spermless males by injecting ordinary mosquito eggs with a protein that disrupts the development of their testes and prevents them from producing sperm as adults.

Crucially, this did not interfere with any other sexual function or behavior in either the female or the male, they explained in their study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists said they were also encouraged to find that after mating with a spermless male, the female made no attempt to find another mate -- and so effectively missed out on the opportunity to reproduce and pass on her genes.

This was contrary to what they had expected based on studies of other species such as fruit flies, where females tend to mate with more than one male to ensure their eggs are fertilized.

Another group of British scientists said last year they had created genetically sterile Aedes aegypti mosquitoes which early field trials suggested could be used to halt the rapid spread of another infectious disease, dengue fever.

(Editing by David Stamp)

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Scientists unravel genetic clues to multiple sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis patient Sue Sutton (L) embraces Dare, a two-legged Sheltie dog used in therapy for disabled people in Denver, Colorado July 15, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking

By Kate Kelland

LONDON | Wed Aug 10, 2011 3:55pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have found 29 new genetic variants linked to multiple sclerosis (MS) and say the findings should help drugmakers focus treatment research on precise areas of the immune system.

In a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, researchers said the newly-found links point to the idea that T-cells -- a type of white blood cell responsible for mounting an immune response -- and chemicals called interleukins play a key role in the development of the debilitating disease.

Drugs in development that target the immune system include rituximab, sold under the brand name Rituxan by Roche and Biogen to fight leukemia, Tysabri from Biogen and Elan, Lemtrada, sold as Campath by Sanofi's unit Genzyme for cancer, and Abbott and Biogen's Zenapax or daclizumab.

"We have implicated genes that are highly relevant to the actions of those drugs," said Alastair Compston of Cambridge University, who co-led the study. "It is now clear that multiple sclerosis is primarily an immunological disease. This is the way to nail this disease and get on top of it."

Mid-stage trial data for daclizumab released on Tuesday showed the drug on a par with other new medicines for MS, but some of he side-effects were worrisome.

Multiple sclerosis is one of the most common neurological conditions among young adults, affecting around 2.5 million people worldwide.

It occurs when the protective coating, known as the myelin sheath, around nerve fibres in the brain and spinal cord begins to break down, slowing the brain's communication with the rest of the body.

The affected pathways -- responsible for everyday activities such as seeing, walking, feeling, thinking and controlling the bowel and bladder -- lose the ability to function properly and are eventually destroyed.

In a second study in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Genetics on Wednesday, researchers found that many of the genes linked to MS are also linked to other autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's disease and Type 1 diabetes. This also points to potential new uses for existing drugs in development, they said.

"We have known for some time that many devastating diseases of the immune system must have common genetic causes," said Chris Cotsapas of Yale University in the United States, who led the PLoS study. "Now we have the outline of a map that tells us where we can look for common treatments."

Most people who develop MS experience their first symptoms in their 20s and 30s, but Compston and colleagues told a briefing in London the trigger for the disease could happen in early childhood when genetic risk factors coincide with some as yet unknown environmental factor.

For their study, Compston and Peter Donnelly of Oxford University worked with some 250 other researchers and studied the DNA from 9,772 people with multiple sclerosis and compared it with a control group of more than 17,300 healthy people.

Their analysis confirmed 23 previously known genetic links and identified another 29 new genetic variants.

Experts think both genetic and environmental factors are equally important in determining who is likely to develop MS, and taken together, the known genetic variants probably explain about 20 percent of the genetic links, they said.

Previous research has suggested a link between Vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of MS. Compston's team said that along with the many genes which play a role in the immune system, they had also found two involved in the metabolism of Vitamin D -- which mostly comes from sunlight -- lending weight to a possible link between genes and the environment.

(Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)

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