GSK further extends $2.6 billion Human Genome offer

LONDON (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline has again extended its $2.6 billion (1.7 billion pounds) offer to buy long-time partner Human Genome Sciences in a hostile stand-off with the U.S. biotech.

The offer - now extended until July 20 - remains pitched at $13 per share.

The decision by Britain's biggest drugmaker to push back the closing date comes as no surprise, since Human Genome effectively extended the battle two weeks ago by setting a July 16 deadline for definitive takeover offers.

In the wake of the GSK extension, Human Genome repeated its rejection of the offer as not reflecting the inherent value of the company.

Buying Human Genome would give GSK the full rights to drugs on which the two companies collaborate.

GSK said on Friday it remained willing to talk to Human Genome, adding: "Extension of the tender offer to 20 July will provide HGS shareholders the opportunity to evaluate the outcome of the HGS board's process relative to GSK's offer.

"Based on circumstances at that time, GSK will consider all available options regarding its offer but can make no assurance that the tender offer will be further extended."

The only company to have made an offer, GSK has consistently refused to participate in the auction process being run by Human Genome's advisers Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse .

Human Genome says it has had contact with other companies, but bankers say GSK has a big advantage over rivals because of its partnerships around key drugs.

The two companies together sell Benlysta, a new drug for the autoimmune condition lupus, and collaborate on two other experimental drugs for diabetes and heart disease that could become significant sellers.

GSK and Human Genome share rights to Benlysta, while GSK owns the majority of the commercial upside to the other products.

GSK's tender had been due to expire at 9 p.m on June 29. It was first extended on June 8 after GSK secured less than 1 percent of the biotech group's stock in an initial tender round. The latest extension expires on July 20 at 9 p.m.

(Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Matthew Tostevin and David Hulmes)

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Wait for it: Earth adds leap second Saturday night

WASHINGTON (AP) — Saturday night will stretch longer by a second. A leap second.

International timekeepers are adding a second to the clock at midnight universal time Saturday, June 30, going into July 1. That's 8 p.m. EDT Saturday. Universal time will be 11:59:59 and then the unusual reading of 11:59:60 before it hits midnight.

A combination of factors, including Earth slowing down a bit from the tidal pull of the moon, and an atomic clock that's a hair too fast, means that periodically timekeepers have to synchronize the official atomic clocks, said Daniel Gambis, head of the Earth Orientation Service in Paris that coordinates leap seconds.

The time it takes the Earth to rotate on its axis — the definition of a day — is now about two milliseconds longer than it was 100 years ago, said Geoff Chester, spokesman at the U.S. Naval Observatory, keeper of the official U.S. atomic clocks. That's each day, so it adds up to nearly three-quarters of a second a year.

Timekeepers add that leap second every now and then to keep the sun at its highest at noon, at least during standard time. This is the first leap second since January 2009 and the 25th overall. Gambis said the next one probably won't be needed until 2015 or 2016.

There should be no noticeable affect or inconvenience on computers or any other technology that requires precise timekeeping because they adjust for these leap seconds, Gambis said Friday.

Earlier this year, official timekeepers from across the world discussed whether to eliminate the practice of adding leap seconds. They decided they needed more time to think about the issue and will next debate the issue in 2015.

So for now, Chester said, "you get an extra second, don't waste it."

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Online:

Earth Orientation Center in Paris: http://bit.ly/LVB70Q

U.S. Naval Observatory: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/leapsec.html

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Cavemen Bones Yield Oldest Modern Human DNA

What may be the oldest fragments of the modern human genome found yet have now been revealed — DNA from the 7,000-year-old bones of two cavemen unearthed in Spain, researchers say.

These findings suggest the cavemen there were not the ancestors of the people found in the region today, investigators added.

Scientists have recently sequenced the genomes of our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. When it came to our lineage, the oldest modern human genomes recovered yet came from Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy found in the Alps in 1991. Researchers have salvaged DNA from even older human cells, but this comes from the mitochondria that generate energy for our bodies, and not from the nucleus where our chromosomes are housed. (Mitochondrial DNA is passed down only by mothers.)

Now researchers have rescued fragments of genomes from the remains of two cavemen unearthed in northern Spain.

"These are the oldest partial genomes from modern human prehistory," researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox, a paleogeneticist at the Spanish National Research Council, told LiveScience. [Image Gallery: Our Closest Human Ancestor]

The skeletons of two young adult males were discovered by chance in 2006 by cave explorers in a cavern high in the Cantabrian mountain range, whose main entrance is found at 4,920 feet (1,500 meters) altitude. Winters there are notably cold, which helped preserve the DNA in the bones.

These bones date back to the Mesolithic period, before agriculture spread to the Iberian Peninsula with Neolithic settlers from the Middle East. These cavemen were hunter-gatherers, judging by the ornament that one was found with of red-deer canines embroidered onto a cloth.

The scientists recovered 1.34 percent and 0.5 percent of the human genomes from the bones of these two cave men. Analyses revealed that current populations of the Iberian Peninsula, which includes Spain, Portugal and Andorra, are not genetically linked with these ancient hunter-gatherers. Instead, these cavemen were closer genetically to the current populations of northern Europe.

"There are many works that claim the Basques [of the Iberian Peninsula] could be descendants from Mesolithics that became isolated in the Basque country," Lalueza-Fox said. "We found the modern Basques are genetically not related to these two individuals."

The scientists also recovered the complete mitochondrial DNA of one of these cavemen. This revealed that European populations during the Mesolithic were very uniform genetically.

"Despite their geographical distance, individuals from the regions corresponding to the current England, Germany, Lithuania, Poland and Spain shared the same mitochondrial lineage," Lalueza-Fox said. "These hunters-gatherers shared nomadic habits and had a common origin."

The researchers now aim to complete the genomes of both cavemen. Such data could help "explore genes that have been modified with the arrival of the Neolithic in the European populations," Lalueza-Fox said.

The scientists detailed their findings online today (June 28) in the journal Current Biology.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Space Station Science at a Critical Point, NASA Says

DENVER — It's time to get serious about science in space, and the International Space Station is the perfect place to start, NASA officials said Tuesday (June 26).

"We are in a position in space research and space exploration where we have to push the ball and advance forward or we're about ready to retreat from space," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, told a crowd of researchers here at the first annual ISS Research and Development Conference.

Science experiments on the space station have been under way since the outpost's early days, of course. Construction of the orbiting laboratory began in 1998, and there has been a continuous human presence on the station since 2000. Now, however, there is little left to build and many opportunities to exploit, according to NASA speakers, who encouraged scientists to spread the word.

"We need to really reach out and push and use that same creativity and innovation that we used to build this wonderful facility to actually utilize it," Gerstenmaier said. [Infographic: The International Space Station Inside and Out]

In May, SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule successfully docked with the space station, becoming the first commercial spacecraft in history to do so. With SpaceX and other private companies providing transportation, private research companies will have the routine access they need to commit to space research, Gerstenmaier said. Meanwhile, upgrades like Earth-compatible power outlets and wireless internet connectivity will make it easier for terrestrially bound scientists to create experiments that will work in space, said Mike Suffredini, NASA's ISS Program Director.

Keeping humans in space

The human component to space exploration was at the forefront in NASA officials' messages. Human experimenters can be part of experiments, making observations in a way that an automated system never could, said NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati. And human perseverance can also yield surprising results.

For example, now-retired astronaut Shannon Lucid was once conducting a fluid physics experiment on the Russian research satellite Mir, Gerstenmaier said. Her job was to shake a container of liquid in an attempt to form a bubble in a certain spot. Based on computer models, researchers were certain that the experiment was physically impossible — but Lucid didn't know that. With communications temporarily interrupted between Mir and Earth, she kept at the experiment for over an hour. Finally, she got the bubble to form.

"It blew away their theory," Gerstenmaier said. "They believed their computer analysis. She didn't know that and really pushed that boundary."

Space station research can have applications for humanity on Earth — one experiment performed on the station uncovered immune system changes that can predict shingles, a painful skin disorder caused by the chickenpox virus, Suffredini said — as well as for future space travel and basic science.

Some instruments on the space station pull double duty. For example, Gerstenmaier said, a particle physics detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is designed to detect dark matter and antimatter. But it also detects cosmic rays, providing data that researchers can use to understand how exposure to these rays could affect astronauts during long-term space travel.

"I think of this as really a gateway to our future, to a universe of opportunity," Abdalati said of the ISS. "It's an opportunity to look outward, an opportunity to look inwards and an opportunity to look homeward."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappasor LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook& Google+.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Chinese astronauts parachute land after mission

BEIJING (AP) — China's first female astronaut and two other crew members emerged smiling from a capsule that returned safely to Earth on Friday from a 13-day mission to an orbiting module that is a prototype for a future space station.

The Shenzhou 9 parachuted to a landing on the grasslands of the country's sprawling Inner Mongolia region at about 10 a.m. (0200 GMT). China declared the first manned mission to the Tiangong 1 module — the space program's longest and most challenging yet — a major stride ahead for the country's ambitious space program.

About an hour later, mission commander and veteran astronaut Jing Haipeng, 45, emerged from the capsule, followed by crew mates Liu Wang, 43, and 33-year-old Liu Yang, China's first female astronaut.

The three, all experienced air force pilots, were lifted on to folding chairs and appeared in good health. They smiled, waved, chatted and saluted as state television ran live footage from the landing site.

"Tiangong 1, our home in space, was comfortable and pleasant. We're very proud of our nation," Liu Yang told national broadcaster CCTV.

Space program commander, Gen. Chang Wanchuan, declared the astronauts in good health and declared the mission "completely successful."

He was followed by Premier Wen Jiabao, who said the mission marked "absolutely important progress" for the space program.

The mission had included both remote control and piloted dockings with the module and extensive medical monitoring of the astronauts as part of preparations for manning a permanent space station.

China's next goals include another manned mission to the module originally scheduled for later this year but which may be delayed depending on an evaluation of the Shenzhou 9 mission and the condition of the Tiangong 1. China has been extremely cautious and methodical in its manned missions, with more than three years passing since the previous one, and all four have been relatively problem-free.

Chen Shanguang, director for the Chinese Astronaut Research and Training Center, told a news conference that preparations and selection of astronauts were already under way for the Shenzhou 10 mission.

Tiangong 1 is due to be retired in a few years and replaced with a permanent space station around 2020 that will weigh about 60 tons, slightly smaller than NASA's Skylab of the 1970s and about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space Station that China was barred from participating in, largely on objections from the United States. Possible future missions could include sending a rover to the moon, possibly followed by a manned lunar mission. Launched June 16 from the Jiuquan center on the edge of the Gobi desert in northern China, Shenzhou 9 is the latest success for China's manned space program that launched its first astronaut, Yang Liwei, into space in 2003, making China just the third nation after Russia and the U.S. to achieve that feat. China would also be the third country after the United States and Russia to send independently maintained space stations into orbit.

Earlier in the week, a spokeswoman said China spent 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) on its space program between 1992 and 2005 — a rare admission for a program with close links to the secretive military. By the time the next Shenzhou mission is completed, Beijing will have spent an additional 19 billion yuan ($3 billion), the spokeswoman said.

Wang Zhaoyao, director of China's manned space program office, said the program mirrors the rising global status of China.

"For any country, for any people, a space program is indispensable," Wang said.

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Associated Press writer Didi Tang contributed to this report.

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Saturn moon Titan may harbor ocean below surface

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Scientists reported Thursday on the strongest sign yet that Saturn's giant moon may have a salty ocean beneath its chilly surface.

If confirmed, it would catapult Titan into an elite class of solar system moons harboring water, an essential ingredient for life.

Titan boasts methane-filled seas at the poles and a possible lake near the equator. And it's long been speculated that Titan contains a hidden liquid layer, based on mathematical modeling and electric field measurements made by the Huygens spacecraft that landed on the surface in 2005.

The latest evidence is still indirect, but outside scientists said it's probably the best that can be obtained short of sending a spacecraft to drill into the surface — a costly endeavor that won't happen anytime soon.

The research looks convincing, said Gabriel Tobie of France's University of Nantes.

"If the analysis is correct, this is a very important finding," Tobie said in an email.

The finding by an international team of researchers was released online Thursday by the journal Science. The scientists pored over data from the orbiting Cassini spacecraft, which flew by Titan half a dozen times between 2006 and last year and took gravity measurements for a glimpse of its interior.

They found Titan got squeezed and stretched depending on its orbit around Saturn, suggesting the presence of a buried ocean. If Titan were solid rock and ice, such deformations would not occur.

"Titan is quite squishy," noted Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University, who was part of the research team.

Scientists did not delve into the characteristics of the ocean, but previous estimates suggested it could be 30 miles to 62 miles deep and contain traces of ammonia. Titan is one of the few worlds in the solar system with a significant atmosphere, and the presence of an underground ocean could help explain how Titan replenishes methane in its hazy atmosphere.

Having an internal body of water would also make Titan an attractive place to study whether it would be capable of supporting microbial life. Other moons on the shortlist: Jupiter's Europa, where an underground ocean is thought to exist and another Saturn moon, Enceladus, where jets have been seen spewing from the surface.

"Any environment that has liquid water needs to be investigated carefully," said planetary scientist Jean-Luc Margot of the University of California, Los Angeles, who had no role in the research.

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Online:

Cassini mission: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

___

Follow Alicia Chang's coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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NASA’s Flying Fish: Riding Aboard the Super Guppy Aircraft

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — On Saturday (June 30), visitors to The Museum of Flight in Seattle will get an up-close look at a very unusual NASA aircraft. In fact, it’s not uncommon for air traffic controllers and even fellow pilots who spot the "Super Guppy" to ask a simple but telling question: “What are you?”

I got to find out first-hand. On Thursday, I was invited by NASA to not just tour but fly aboard the Super Guppy , a bulbous cargo plane, as it flew between air bases near Los Angeles and San Francisco. The 90-minute trip up the California coast is one I won’t soon forget, and according to the Super Guppy’s flight crew, it was a rarity — perhaps even a first — for a civilian reporter.

I caught up with the Super Guppy — which is the last in a small fleet of Guppy aircraft flying after 50 years — at March Air Reserve Base in southern California. It’s there that I met the team I’d be flying with, including flight engineers Michael Robinson and David Elliot, aircraft mechanics and loadmasters Dan Thompson, Bob Coyne and Don Myrick, and pilots Dick Clark and Greg C. “Ray-J” Johnson.

If one of those names sounds familiar, it should. Johnson is a NASA astronaut and one of the stars of the IMAX movie “Hubble 3D.” Before piloting the Super Guppy, he piloted space shuttle Atlantis on the fifth and final mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

Before I boarded the Guppy, I had the chance to see it take off and land. Its “swollen” appearance — it looks like a cartoon anthropomorphic plane that held in a massive sneeze — is as deceptive as it is daunting. [Gallery: Soaring with Seattle's Space Shuttle Trainer]

The Guppy looks like it shouldn’t be able to fly, especially when you consider that its cargo hold, which measures 111 feet long by 25 feet wide by 25 feet high (34 by 8 by 8 meters) can carry payloads weighing upwards of 26 tons.

So when it came to take my seat, I’ll admit there was just a slight hesitation. Not that I doubted my flight crew’s skills or even the safety record of the Super Guppy, but just what it would feel like in-flight.

It didn’t help all that much seeing our payload for this leg of the Guppy’s three-day trip to Seattle sitting in the cargo hold. Inside the plane was a space shuttle. To be clear, it was just the 16,000-pound (7,300 kilograms), 28-foot (8.5 m) nose section of a shuttle mockup. Part of the Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT), the crew compartment was used to train every person who flew on the real shuttles over the span of three decades.

Now it was the FFT’s turn to fly — and mine.

Welcome aboard

I was shown to my chair, a two-seat couch in the rear of the Guppy’s cockpit. These seats, and the seats to my left, are where the aircraft’s mechanics sit. In front of me was the flight engineer’s station and in front of that, the pilots’ seats. What really caught my eye, though, was what was in front of them: windows, and a lot of them.

From outside, the sheer size and dimensions of the Super Guppy grab your attention. But inside, the panoramic, 180-degree view out the forward floor-length windows are the star attraction. The only way to get a better view of the ground would be to swing open the nose of the Guppy, which can rotate 200 degrees to load its large payloads.

From my seat at the rear of the cockpit, I had to crane my neck to see just a sliver of the action. But any thought of unbuckling my seat belt and standing up to get a better view was erased when the crew powered up the Guppy’s four turboprop engines for takeoff.

"We’re going to use most of the runway," Johnson said to his crewmates. The sudden burst of speed — we had been taxiing for a few minutes — pushed me back into my seat. It was a lot bumpier than a commercial airline, too. But the transition from ground to air was smooth, almost unnoticeable, and the climb to altitude was a lot slower than the commercial flight that brought me to California.

The gradual climb was a good thing, too. It gave Thompson, outfitted with knee pads and gloves, time to jump into the cargo hold to climb over and around the shuttle trainer to make sure it was still chained down and where it was supposed to be. [Images: NASA's Visions for Future Airplanes]

Once he finished, Myrick and Coyne went down into the lower cargo hold to shut the lower door that separates the unpressurized back of the plane from the pressurized cockpit.

We climbed to 14,000 feet (4,267 m), the Guppy’s cruising altitude, and were told by the tower to head out over the water for Santa Catalina Island and then head toward Los Angeles.

"There’s the Pacific Ocean, boys," said someone toward the front of the cockpit. "Ten bucks for anyone who sees a whale."

Window seat

The only cetacean in sight, however, was the flying variety. The aircraft may be called the Guppy, but it’s much more akin to a whale: large, slow-moving and possessing a voracious appetite — for fuel.

The most frequent callout among the crewmembers was a check of the remaining fuel, for the huge Guppy burns through its reserves at a rapid pace. As such, flying west and then north was not the most efficient use of the Guppy’s gas.

Clark called the tower and requested to go to VFR — visual flight rules — rather than follow the out-and-about flight plan the tower had chosen. We gradually banked right and began following the coast north.

It was about this time that my view got a whole lot better. Myrick had set a small garbage pail behind Clark and offered me a seat. From here, I had a bank of windows to my right and Clark to my left. I could view both the cockpit controls and the spectacular landscapes we were passing.

Sightseeing turns out to be a good way to pass the time. Both Clark and Johnson took turns pointing out airfields, city spots and natural landmarks. This wasn’t for my benefit; it was for them. I was just happy to take advantage of their geographical skills (and the GPS running on an Apple iPad positioned between them).

We flew over John Wayne Airport in Orange County, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and the nearby Rose Bowl stadium. In the distance we could see Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 m) the tallest peak in the continental United States. And depending on who you talk to on the crew, we may have seen Yosemite National Park, too.

But the most memorable sight, at least to me, was the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base. Clearly visible was Runway 22, the same landing strip where Johnson landed on space shuttle Atlantis in 2009. (After the flight, I asked Johnson about the differences between flying the shuttle and the Guppy. He told me the shuttle flies a lot faster but the Guppy flies a lot heavier.) [10 Military Aircraft That Never Made it Past Test Phase]

Thank you for flying

When we weren’t looking out the window, the crew focused on their flying — and their snacks. There were “Guppy Gummies” — I didn’t get a good look at them so I don’t know if they were fish-shaped or not — and beef jerky, Johnson’s favorite (he brought jerky with him to space).

I didn’t get the sense they were censoring their behavior because I was there, or because two GoPro cameras were documenting the trip for The Museum of Flight. Rather, they were a professional crew who respected the Super Guppy and were proud of their service to NASA.

The landing at Travis Air Force Base was much smoother than I expected. Make no mistake, it was still bumpy, but despite the crosswinds, the touchdown was far from jarring. You could almost forget that there was a space shuttle nose in the very large trunk. Almost.

Back on the ground, it was time for me to part ways with the Guppy. I’ll be in Seattle on Saturday, however, to see the cargo plane — and its crew — arrive to well-deserved fanfare. They may have been delivering a piece of space shuttle history, but their ride should enjoy a little time in the spotlight, too.

Robert Z. Pearlman is the editor of collectSPACE.com, the leading online space history publication and a SPACE.com partner. See collectSPACE.com for more photos and continuing coverage of the Super Guppy’s flight to Seattle.

You can follow @robertpearlman on Twitter or on Facebook. Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Asteroid hunters want to launch private telescope

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Who will protect us from a killer asteroid? A team of ex-NASA astronauts and scientists thinks it's up to them.

In a bold plan unveiled Thursday, the group wants to launch its own space telescope to spot and track small and mid-sized space rocks capable of wiping out a city or continent. With that information, they could sound early warnings if a rogue asteroid appeared headed toward our planet.

So far, the idea from the B612 Foundation is on paper only.

Such an effort would cost upward of several hundred million dollars, and the group plans to start fundraising. Behind the nonprofit are a space shuttle astronaut, Apollo 9 astronaut, former Mars czar, deep space mission manager along with other non-NASA types.

Asteroids are leftovers from the formation of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago. Most reside in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter but some get nudged into Earth's neighborhood.

NASA and a network of astronomers routinely scan the skies for these near-Earth objects. And they've found 90 percent of the biggest threats — asteroids at least two-thirds of a mile across that are considered major killers. Scientists believe it was a 6-mile-wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

But the group thinks more attention should be paid to the estimated half a million smaller asteroids — similar in size to the one that exploded over Siberia in 1908 and leveled more than 800 square miles of forest.

"We're playing cosmic roulette. We're flying around the solar system with these other objects. The laws of probability eventually catch up to you," said foundation chairman and former shuttle astronaut Ed Lu.

Added former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart: "The current priority really needs to be toward finding all of those asteroids which can do real damage if they hit or when they hit. It's not a matter of if; it's really a matter of when."

Asteroids are getting attention lately. NASA nixed a return to the moon in favor of a manned landing on an asteroid. Last month, Planetary Resources Inc., a company founded by space entrepreneurs, announced plans to extract precious metals from asteroids within a decade.

Since its birth, the Mountain View, Calif.-based B612 Foundation — named after the home asteroid of the Earth-visiting prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" — has focused on finding ways to deflect an incoming asteroid. Ideas studied include sending an intercepting spacecraft to aiming a nuclear bomb, but none have been tested.

Last year, the group shifted focus to seek out asteroids with a telescope.

It is working with Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., which has drawn up a preliminary telescope design. The contractor developed NASA's Kepler telescope that hunts for exoplanets and built the instruments aboard the Hubble Space Telescope.

Under the proposal, the asteroid-hunting Sentinel Space Telescope will operate for at least 5 1/2 years. It will orbit around the sun, near the orbit of Venus, or between 30 million to 170 million miles away from Earth. Data will be beamed back through NASA's antenna network under a deal with the space agency.

Launch is targeted for 2017 or 2018. The group is angling to fly aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which made history last month by lifting a cargo capsule to the International Space Station.

Experts said the telescope's vantage point would allow it to spy asteroids faster than ground-based telescopes and accelerate new discoveries. NASA explored doing such a mission in the past but never moved forward because of the expense.

"It's always best to find these things quickly and track them. There might be one with our name on it," said Don Yeomans, who heads the Near-Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which monitors potentially dangerous space rocks.

Aside from the technological challenges, the big question is whether philanthropists will open up their wallets to support the project.

Nine years ago, the cost was estimated at $500 million, said Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center at Harvard University who was part of the team that came up with the figure for NASA.

Spahr questions whether enough can be raised given the economy. "This is a hard time," he said.

The group has received seed money — several hundreds of thousands of dollars — from venture capitalists and Silicon Valley outfits to create a team of experts. Lu, the foundation chair, said he was confident donors will step up and noted that some of the world's most powerful telescopes including the Lick and Palomar observatories in California were built with private money.

"We're not all about doom and gloom," Lu said. "We're about opening up the solar system. We're talking about preserving life on this planet."

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Online:

NASA's Near-Earth Object Program: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov

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Alicia Chang can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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Can a genetic switch spice up supermarket tomato?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Using genetics, scientists have been able to dig up the dirt on why homegrown tomatoes taste so much sweeter than the ones in the supermarket.

Researchers found a genetic switch responsible for some of the sugar production within a tomato. A new study in Friday's edition of Science found that the common type of tomato bred for firmness and good shipping also inadvertently turns off the sugar-producing switch. That makes it less sweet and blander than garden varieties.

University of California Davis plant scientist Ann Powell said knowing the genetics behind the sugar-making could lead someday to development of sweeter tomatoes that also travel well.

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Space Station Crew to Return to Earth Sunday

Three astronauts living on the International Space Station will return home to Earth Sunday (July 1) after spending more than six months in orbit.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers are scheduled to undock from the space station in their Russian-built Soyuz capsule at 12:48 a.m. EDT (0448 GMT) Sunday.

The trio is expected to land at 4:14 a.m. EDT (0814 GMT) Sunday on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan.

"When a frontier feels like home, it is no longer a frontier; it has become "civilization." Those determined to wander must now pack their bags and move further into the cosmos," Pettit wrote in a blog post about his upcoming journey home. "Space station is very much on the frontier. It is only my temporary home, and now it is time for me to venture back to my real home."

Throughout their mission, Pettit and Kuipers have actively shared their orbital experiences with the public through Twitter, photos and blog posts. Pettit even penned a special poem, called "Last Day in Space," to commemorate his imminent return.

During their stint at the space station, Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers also played host to the first ever visiting commercial spacecraft in May — SpaceX's Dragon capsule. The unmanned Dragon spacecraft was launched to the orbiting outpost as part of a crucial test flight to demonstrate its ability to haul cargo to and from the station.

As the robotic spacecraft approached the orbiting complex, Pettit and Kuipers used the space station's robotic arm to manually attach it to the outpost.

SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract with NASA for 12 robotic cargo delivery flights.

Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers launched into space on Dec. 21, 2011, and arrived at the orbiting laboratory two days later. The spaceflyers began their stay as members of the station's Expedition 30 crew, but kicked off Expedition 31  with the departure of three previous station residents in April.

Kononenko served as commander of Expedition 31, but will pass the post on to fellow Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka in an official change-of-command ceremony Saturday (June 30), prior to his departure.

Padalka arrived at the space station in mid-May with NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Revin. The three will remain aboard the orbiting outpost until September. They will be joined by three more crewmembers later in July.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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How to Tweet to Aliens Tonight

Don't forget to contact aliens this evening.

All Twitter messages composed between 8 p.m. EDT Friday (June 29) and 3 a.m. EDT Saturday (June 30) tagged with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be collectively beamed up to space Aug. 15, toward a spot in the sky from which a possible alien signal originated.

The cosmic tweet is a belated reply to the Wow! signal, a mysterious radio transmission that was detected at the Big Ear radio observatory in Ohio in 1977 coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. At its peak, the 72-second transmission was 30 times more powerful than ambient radiation from deep space, prompting the volunteer astronomer Jerry Ehman to scrawl "Wow!" next to the data on a computer printout, giving the signal its name.

No one knows whether the seemingly unnatural blip of data really was beamed toward Earth by aliens, and despite great effort, scientists have never managed to detect a repeat transmission from the same spot in the sky. Thirty-five years on, the Wow! signal remains an anomaly.

Now, the Sagittarius aliens — if they do, in fact, exist — are finally getting humanity's response. The National Geographic Channel has organized the cosmic social media event to coincide with the premiere of its new series, "Chasing UFOs." [Roswell, Other Famous UFO Claims Get a Fresh Look]

All #ChasingUFOs tweets, as well as several 72-second video messages being created by celebrities, writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians and scientists, will be rolled into a single message for space, according to the National Geographic Channel. The message will then be encrypted with the help of astronomers at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and beamed skyward.

"More than likely, we will be using binary phase codes," or sequences of 1s and 0s, said Kristin Montalbano, a spokeswoman for the National Geographic Channel. "The [alien] scientists, on the other end, would theoretically be challenged to find a way to decrypt the transmission and understand our language," Montalbano told Life's Little Mysteries.

Hopefully, Twitter slang won't throw them off.

So, if you have something you'd like to say to E.T., let it rip — but make sure you keep it to 140 characters or less.

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

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Is Global Warming Fueling Colorado Wildfires?

DENVER — Devastating wildfires scorching the state of Colorado are linked to a nasty streak of hot weather across the central part of the country, but it's tougher to link them definitively to global warming, climatologists say.

Earlier research has found broad trends linking earlier spring weather, rising temperatures and increased forest fires, suggesting that climate change may play a role in fires like the Waldo Canyon blaze outside of Colorado Springs, which has burned more than 18,000 acres and consumed about 300 homes here. But linking a specific fire to the long-term trend of global warming isn't possible.

"You can't say it's climate change just because it's an extreme condition," said Colorado state climatologist Nolan Doesken. So far, Doesken told LiveScience, the spring of 2012 looks much like the spring of 1910, when warm temperatures hit early. That year, he said, was a bad one for fires. [Images: Devastating Colorado Fires]

Fire weather

The Waldo Canyon fire began on June 23 and has ripped through neighborhoods west of Colorado Springs, destroying a yet-unreleased number of homes. Just 130 miles (209 kilometers) to the north, the High Park wildfire outside of Fort Collins is well into its second week and has burned more than 87,000 acres. That fire killed one 62-year-old woman who was caught in her home.

Other significant fires in the state include a 300-acre blaze 1.5 miles (2.4 km) outside of Boulder, a 9,168-acre blaze near Mancos in the southwestern part of the state and a 23,400-acre wildfire in rugged terrain in the San Juan National Forest, also in the southwestern part of the state.

The immediate driver of these fires is a lack of moisture and a ridge of heat that has settled over the central United States, said New Jersey state climatologist Dave Robinson, who also directs the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University. After record snowpack last year, the Rocky Mountains did a 180 this year, Robinson said, seeing little moisture and early snowmelt.

"March and April are supposed to be your snowy months [in Colorado], and they weren't," Robinson told LiveScience. "Thus, the fire danger."

Meanwhile, a high-pressure system in the central part of the country is preventing cloud formation and allowing the sun to bake the ground, heating things up. On Tuesday (June 26) alone, 251 daily heat records were broken across the nation, according to the National Climatic Data Center. In the past week, more than 1,000 new daily heat records were put on the books. [The World's Weirdest Weather]

Climate change connection

Climate models predict that in a warming world, the West and Southwest will become drier and hotter — conditions ripe for wildfires. Whether recent hot summers and active fires are a sign of the change already happening is still under debate, though.

"Some would say there is a pattern, because we have had several years with exceptionally large fires over western states, particularly the Southwestern states, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado in particular," Doesken said. "Others would say, no, not enough data points yet to show that."

This year has been extreme in terms of heat and dryness, he said, as was 2002 (a record-breaking year for fires in Colorado). So far, 2012's weather looks very similar to the weather of 1910. That year, spring was warm and dry, which fed into a hellish fire season. Among the blazes was the Great Fire of 1910, also known as "the Big Burn," which destroyed 3 million acres of forest in Washington, Idaho and Montana.

Some studies do suggest that climate change is already affecting western wildfires. In 2006, researchers at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California analyzed 1,166 fires between 1970 and 2003 and found a dramatic increase in fire potency in the late 1980s. Though wildfire is a natural part of the western landscape, the researchers concluded that a warming climate was ramping up warm winters and springs, exacerbating natural fire cycles.

More recently, an analysis of 1,500 years of fire and tree-ring data revealed that a combination of climate change and human forest use could explain modern "megafires," the kind that destroy large swaths of forest. Fires were associated with a dry year following several wet years, because the moist periods allow undergrowth to spring up and provide fire fuel in dry years, researchers reported in May in the journal The Holocene. The study found that human activities such as livestock grazing and suppression of small fires compounded the problem, creating denser forests ripe for large blazes.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+. 

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Tiny Tyrannosaur's Mysterious Origins Divide Scientists

Years before the Mongolian president intervened in the auction of a tyrannosaur skeleton thought to have been illegally taken from that country, a fossilized dinosaur with similarly controversial origins followed a very different path.

Once removed from the rock, the bones of this dinosaur would, to some, reveal the existence of a new species of tiny but unmistakable predator. However, given few clues as to where these fossils came out of the ground, paleontologists have yet to resolve the debate about the dinosaur's true identity.

At a fossil show about nine years ago, a dealer approached Henry Kriegstein, a fossil collector and eye surgeon in Massachusetts, with photos of a block of rock that contained the remains of a small, meat-eating dinosaur curled up in a death pose. Enough of the fossils had been exposed for Kriegstein to suspect he was looking at a juvenile tyrannosaur, and he purchased the chunk of stone and fossil. [Image Gallery: Dinosaur Daycare]

An illegal export?

The dealer told Kriegstein that he had bought the fossils from someone else and offered only the most vague details about its origin, Kriegstein said. "I knew it came from Asia, so I had suspicions it may have been removed illegally."

He was suspicious because Asian nations, such as Mongolia and China, don't allow the export of fossils excavated within their borders. In the case of the tyrannosaur, a species known as Tarbosaurus bataar, paleontologists say the specimen originated in Mongolia, where law makes fossils the property of the state and smuggling them out a crime.

Too important to keep

Kriegstein said he sent his purchase to a commercial paleontological company, Western Paleontological Laboratories in Utah, to have the fossils removed from the rock. While work was under way, the company sent Kenneth Carpenter, a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, photos of the specimen.

"When they contacted me they had not finished the cleaning of the bones. It still had a lot of rock on it, but what I saw in the pictures was tantalizing. It looked different," said Carpenter, who is now curator of paleontology at the Prehistoric Museum at Utah State University-Eastern. [Image Gallery: Dinosaur Fossils]

Later, after seeing the fossils in person, Carpenter told Kriegstein in a letter that the fossils were important to science and should be donated to a museum.  

"I don't want to have an important specimen like that in my living room," Kriegstein said after receiving the letter.

He sent photos to Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist he admired.

Dinosaur detective work

"This was not a composite of multiple specimens or a forgery carved by a desperate fossil dealer.  I could see a mini tyrannosaur," Sereno wrote.

Kriegstein agreed to donate the dinosaur to the University of Chicago, so Sereno could formally describe it, requesting that the new dinosaur be named after his father, Roman Kriegstein.

Figuring out where the dinosaur came from was crucial to understanding what it was. In research published in the journal Science in 2009, Sereno and colleagues concluded it was taken from the ground in the Yixian Formation of northern China based on characteristics of the fossils, the sandstone that entombed them, and the mollusks and fish bones contained with them. This origin would make the specimen about 125 million years old.

Based on an examination of the bones, they suggested the 9-foot-long (less than 3 meters) specimen was something extraordinary: A miniature ancestor and look-alike to the giant tyrannosaurs epitomized by Tyrannosaurus rex and its Asian cousin, Tarbosaurus bataar. This little dinosaur, which they classified as a young adult, shared their distinctive features, including the oversize head with powerful jaws, puny arms and lanky hind legs for running, but it evolved much earlier, Sereno’s team concluded.  

Keeping with Kriegstein’s request, Sereno named the dinosaur Raptorex kriegsteini.

The debate

But not everyone accepts his take. A re-analysis published in PLoS ONE in 2011 by other researchers challenged Sereno's conclusion regarding the age of the dinosaur and its origin, suggesting the fossils actually belonged to a juvenile Tarbosaurus from Mongolia.

Carpenter, whose letter prompted Kriegstein to donate the fossils, agrees to this latter assessment, citing features of the vertebrae that he says indicate the dinosaur had not yet matured.

"Of course, it depends on where it comes from, if it is from rocks much older than any tarbosaur, then Paul is essentially correct," Carpenter said.

Tarbosaurus specimens have been found only in the Nemegt Formation in Mongolia, a rock formation dated to the Maastrichtian Age, beginning around 70 million years ago — much younger than Sereno's estimate for Raptorex.

"That is why it would be crucial to find out where this specimen came from," Carpenter said.

At this point, he puts the chances of a definitive answer at "zip," saying, "Nobody is going to come forward and say, 'Yes, we are the ones who plundered the site.'"

Sereno has stood by his initial conclusion — "We are confident it is not a tarbosaur," he said — although he considers the fossils origin to be in dispute and has continued looking for more conclusive evidence to tie them to a particular place. 

"We've tried every line of attack," he said. Currently, he is hoping mollusks found with the specimen will solve the puzzle.

Sereno has made arrangements to send the fossils to a museum in China near the site where he believes they were discovered.

Follow Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

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World's Oldest Meteorite Crater Found

A study of Greenland's rocks may have turned up something unexpected: the oldest and largest meteorite crater ever found on Earth.

Researchers think the crater was formed 3 billion years ago, making it the oldest ever found, said Danish researcher Adam Garde. The impact crater currently measures about 62 miles (100 kilometers) from one side to another. But before it eroded, it was likely more than 310 miles (500 km) wide, which would make it the biggest on Earth, Garde told OurAmazingPlanet.

The team has calculated it was caused by a meteorite 19 miles (30 km) wide, which, if it hit Earth today, would wipe out all higher life.

Mystery feature

In the 3 billion years since impact, the land has been eroded down to about 16 miles (25 km) below the original surface. But the effects of the intense shock wave and heat penetrated deep into the Earth, and remain visible today, said Garde, a researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. [Meteor Mania: How Well Do You Know 'Shooting Stars'?]

Garde had been conducting research on Greenland's geology and noticed several strange features that didn't make sense. One day in September 2009, he came up with the extreme explanation of an impact from a meteorite. His team collected samples over the years and published the results in the July issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. He's now "100 percent positive" it's a crater, for several reasons, he said.

For one, he found widespread crushed rocks in a circular shape that seemed to be caused by the shock waves of a massive impact. Second, there are deposits of a melted mineral called K-feldspar (or potassium-feldspar) that could have been liquefied only at extremely high heat, like that caused by an meteorite's crash-landing. There's also widespread evidence of weathering by hot water, which he thinks was caused by the ocean rushing into the crater after it struck the area. The area may have been covered by a shallow ocean at the time, but even if it wasn't, it doesn't matter, Garde said. "The crater from a meteorite that big would have caused the sea to rush in," he said.

Mining for minerals

John Spray, a meteorite expert at the University of New Brunswick, who wasn't involved in the research, said he thinks it's probably a meteor crater, but points out that it hasn't been proved, and may not be for some time. "It's very interesting and it's good science," he said. "But we don't really know how to recognize very old impact craters, because they are typically so highly modified."

That's because Earth is alive and constantly changing due processes such as erosion, precipitation and plate tectonics. At one time Earth likely had as many craters as the moon, which is essentially geologically dead. But these have mostly been wiped away, destroyed by erosion and the like.

Only around 180 impact craters have ever been discovered on Earth, and nearly one-third of them contain significant minerals deposits such as precious metals. The Canadian mining company, North American Nickel, is exploring the region where the potentially newfound crater is for nickel and other mineral deposits, company geologist John Roozendaal said. They are conducting airborne surveys and will soon do more mapping, small-scale sampling and drilling to see if they can find an area that could be economical to mine.

These impacts are of interest to mining companies not because of the large meteorites themselves — they typically vaporize — but because of the effect upon the Earth's surface. The impact heats rocks so much that metals can melt and then collect toward the bottom of the crater. Craters can also be important sources of oil and gas; the crushed, permeable rocks can act like a sponge, absorbing hydrocarbons.

Before this discovery, the oldest crater was thought to be the Vredefort crater in South Africa, estimated to be 2 billion years old. At 186 miles (300 km) wide, it's also the largest crater that remains visible. Scientists expect that there were many more craters formed around 3-4 billion years ago when Earth lacked a protective atmosphere.

Garde said the most interesting thing about the experience was finding an alternate explanation for something outside of his training. "I had a problem I couldn't solve in a region I knew very well," he said. "A meteor impact was the idea that made everything fall into place — It's not something I was looking for."

Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

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Leap Second Science: NASA Explains Earth's Longer Day Today

Today will be one second longer than usual, and we have the moon to thank for the extra time.

A "leap second" will be added to the world's official clocks this evening (June 30), to account for the fact that Earth's rotation is slowing ever so slightly — meaning our days are getting longer, at the rate of about 1.4 milliseconds every 100 years.

"At the time of the dinosaurs, Earth completed one rotation in about 23 hours," Daniel MacMillan, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. "In the year 1820, a rotation took exactly 24 hours, or 86,400 standard seconds. Since 1820, the mean solar day has increased by about 2.5 milliseconds."

It's happening because of tidal forces between the Earth and moon. This mutual gravitational jostling results in the transfer of our planet's rotational momentum to the moon, pushing it away from us at about 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) per year.

Earth's rotational slowdown won't stop until it becomes tidally locked to the moon, researchers say — meaning we will always show the same face to our celestial neighbor. The moon is tidally locked to Earth now, keeping its far side forever out of sight. [Hit Snooze: 10 Best Alarm Clocks]

Scientists figured out the planet's lagging rotation rate using a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry. VLBI measures how long it takes radio waves emitted by faraway active black holes called quasars — the brightest objects in the universe — to reach a network of telescopes set up around the world.

From the tiny differences in arrival times to these various instruments, researchers can calculate Earth's rotational speed and a number of other interesting characteristics about our planet and its path through space.

Decades ago, scientists realized that some measurements and technologies required more precise timekeeping than Earth's rotation could provide. So in 1967, they officially changed the definition of a second, basing it on measurements of electromagnetic transitions in cesium atoms rather than the length of a day.

Such "atomic clocks" are accurate to approximately one second in 200 million years, researchers say. The widely used time standard based on the cesium atom is called Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC.

Timekeepers add leap seconds to UTC every once in a while to square it up with another time standard that's based on Earth's day length. So June 30 will get an extra second just before 8 p.m. EDT (midnight GMT on July 1).

The master clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory will move to 7:59:60 p.m. EDT, or 23:59:60 UTC, before ticking over. In practice, this means that clocks in many systems will be turned off for one second, NASA researchers said.

Saturday's adjustment will mark the 25th time a leap second has been added since the practice was initiated in 1972. The most recent leap second was inserted on New Year's Eve of 2008.

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

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West's wildfires a preview of changed climate: scientists

(Reuters) - Scorching heat, high winds and bone-dry conditions are fueling catastrophic wildfires in the U.S. West that offer a preview of the kind of disasters that human-caused climate change could bring, a trio of scientists said on Thursday.

"What we're seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like," Princeton University's Michael Oppenheimer said during a telephone press briefing. "It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster ... This provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future."

In Colorado, wildfires that have raged for weeks have killed four people, displaced thousands and destroyed hundreds of homes. Because winter snowpack was lighter than usual and melted sooner, fire season started earlier in the U.S. West, with wildfires out of control in Colorado, Montana and Utah.

The high temperatures that are helping drive these fires are consistent with projections by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said this kind of extreme heat, with little cooling overnight, is one kind of damaging impact of global warming.

Others include more severe storms, floods and droughts, Oppenheimer said.

The stage was set for these fires when winter snowpack was lighter than usual, said Steven Running, a forest ecologist at the University of Montana.

Mountain snows melted an average of two weeks earlier than normal this year, Running said. "That just sets us up for a longer, dryer summer. Then all you need is an ignition source and wind."

Warmer-than-usual winters also allow tree-killing mountain pine beetles to survive the winter and attack Western forests, leaving behind dry wood to fuel wildfires earlier in the season, Running said.

"Now we have a lot of dead trees to burn ... it's not even July yet," he said. Trying to stop such blazes driven by high winds is a bit like to trying to stop a hurricane, Running said: "There is nothing to stop that kind of holocaust."

Fires cost about $1 billion or more a year, and exact a toll on human health, ranging from increased risk of heart, lung and kidney ailments to post-traumatic stress disorder, said Howard Frumkin, a public health expert at the University of Washington.

"Wildfire smoke is like intense air pollution," Frumkin said. "Pollution levels can reach many times higher than a bad day in Mexico City or Beijing."

The elderly, the very young and the ill are most vulnerable to the heat that adds to wildfire risk, he said. The strain of fleeing homes and living in communities in the path of a wildfire can trigger ailments like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety.

The briefing was convened by the science organization Climate Communications, with logistical support by Climate Nexus, an advocacy and communications group. An accompanying report on heat waves and climate change was released simultaneously at http://climatecommunication.org/new/articles/heat-waves-and-climate-change/overview/.

(This story corrects the name of group convening the briefing in last paragraph)

(Reporting By Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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