NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity Had Planetary Protection Slip-Up (SPACE.com)

All NASA spacecraft sent to other planets must undergo meticulous procedures to make sure they don't carry biological contamination from Earth to their destinations.

However, a step in these planetary protection measures wasn't adhered to for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, now en route to the Red Planet, SPACE.com has learned.

The incident has become a lessons-learned example of miscommunication in assuring that planetary protection procedures are strictly adhered to.

The issue involves a set of drill bits carried by the Curiosity rover, which launched Nov. 26 to Mars. When project developers made an internal decision not to send the equipment through a final ultra-cleanliness step, it marked a deviation from the planetary protection plans scripted for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. [Photos: Watching the Mars Rover Curiosity Blast Off ]

That judgment, however, didn't reach NASA's chief protector of the planets until "very late in the game," said Catharine "Cassie" Conley, NASA's planetary protection officer. "They didn't submit the request for the deviation not to comply with their planetary protection plan until several months ago," she emphasized.

Conley told SPACE.com that the initial plan called for placing all three of the drill bits inside a sterile box. Then, after Curiosity landed, the box would be opened for access to the sterilized bits via the rover's robot arm, extracted one by one and fit onto a drill head as the mission progressed.

But in readying the rover for departure to Mars, the box was opened, with one drill bit affixed to the drill head, Conley said. Also, all of the bits were tested pre-launch to assess their level of organic contamination. While done within a very clean environment, that work strayed from earlier agreed-to protocols, she said.

"That's where the miscommunication happened," Conley said. "I will certainly expect to have a lessons-learned report that will indicate how future projects will not have this same process issue. I'm sure that the Mars exploration program doesn't want to have a similar process issue in the future. We need to make sure we do it right."

Equatorial target

Conley said the deviation from protocol was reinforced by science and project officials concluding that Curiosity's target landing spot, Gale Crater, is free of potentially life-harboring ice — at least at depths that the drill bits would penetrate.

"That reinforced the reasonableness of not having the drill bits sterilized, because there's unlikely to be 'special regions' in the Gale Crater landing site," Conley said.

The $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission was designed to comply with a requirement to avoid going to any site on the Red Planet known to have water or water-ice within 3.3 feet (1 meter) of the surface.

Adhering to cleanliness standards is a way to make sure the mission does not transport Earth life to Mars. Doing so preserves the ability to study that world in its natural state and also avoids contamination that would obscure an ability to find native life on that planet, if it exists.

Conley emphasized that the Curiosity assembly team and technicians did an excellent job of keeping Curiosity cleaner than any robot that NASA' s sent to Mars since the Viking lander in the 1970s.

Still, the decision to not keep the drill bits ultra-clean shows the process needs to be fixed, Conley said.

"It would have been better for them to check with me before they opened the box of bits to confirm that it was okay … rather than trying to ask for it afterwards," she said. "In this case it was fine. But for future missions we want to make sure that they ask beforehand."

Habitable environments

The Mars Science Laboratory is not a life-detection mission. Rather, it will study whether the Gale Crater area of Mars has evidence of past and present habitable environments.

"Direct life detection is inherently difficult, some would argue currently impossible, because there is no uniform agreement on life," said Scott Hubbard, the former "Mars Czar" for NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Hubbard is now a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., and author of the new book "Exploring Mars — Chronicles from a Decade of Discovery," published by the University of Arizona Press.

"There is no mathematical expression for life as there is gravity … only a series of attributes such as complexity, reproduction, metabolism, responsiveness and so on," Hubbard told SPACE.com. "We don't have a 'Star Trek' tricorder that says 'It's alive, Jim'."

Mars sample return

On-the-spot detection of life is difficult, underscoring the need to return to Earth well-selected samples from the Red Planet for analysis in a lab, Hubbard noted.

There are three reasons for pushing forward on a Mars return sample effort, he said: The best laboratory equipment can be employed, much of which cannot be reduced to spacecraft size; many labs and many scientists can be utilized to cross-check each other with alternate techniques; and discoveries can be followed and rechecked years later with new tools and techniques and hypotheses.

"The treaty-type agreements on planetary protection specify very rigorous levels of cleanliness to prevent forward and backward contamination," Hubbard said. "Spacecraft going to potential habitable zones on Mars must be cleaned to an amazing degree, even sterilized. Samples returned to Earth will be treated as if they were highly infectious until demonstrated otherwise."

Price tag estimates for a "Sample Receiving Facility" here on Earth have ranged as high as $300 million, Hubbard said. "Nevertheless, I think it is all worth it to find out 'Are we alone?'… 'Did life ever arise on Mars?'" he said.

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 magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

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Russian President Threatens Punishment for Recent Space Blunders (SPACE.com)

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has threatened to dole out strict punishments to officials responsible for a string of recent failures in the country's space program, according to news reports.

Medvedev threatened disciplinary action, heavy fines or even criminal penalties for the country's recent space woes, which have included a series of rocket crashes and lost spacecraft over the past 11 months, according to the Russian news agency Ria Novosti.

"The latest failures [in the space industry] seriously harm Russia's competitiveness," Medvedev said on Nov. 26, according to Ria Novosti. "This means that we need to conduct a serious analysis and punish those responsible."

The country's most recent blunder stranded a spacecraft in orbit around Earth, instead of sending it on its intended path toward Mars. The Phobos-Grunt probe was designed to collect samples from the Martian moon Phobos, but shortly after its launch on Nov. 8, the spacecraft's thrusters failed to fire in a maneuver that would have set it on course for the Red Planet.

An international effort is underway to rescue the $165 million mission, but flight controllers at the Russian Federal Space Agency and the European Space Agency have been struggling to regain contact with the probe, and time is quickly running out. [Photos: Russia's Mars Moon Mission]

The notoriously tight-lipped Russian Federal Space Agency has remained guarded about the status of Phobos-Grunt, which has fueled speculation that the possibility of saving the spacecraft or the mission is unlikely.

If the problem with Phobos-Grunt cannot be resolved, the vehicle will likely fall back to Earth sometime in mid-January, scientists have said. Phobos-Grunt is the 19th spacecraft Russia has launched toward Mars since 1960. None has achieved full mission success.

The Russian space program has also suffered four rocket failures within the past year, adding to the troubles.

In December 2010, three navigation satellites were lost after a Russian Proton rocket failed before it reached orbit. A military satellite and a communications satellite were also lost in two separate rocket malfunctions.

In August, a Soyuz rocket carrying a robotic cargo ship suffered a malfunction minutes after launch in what was a rare mishap for the typically reliable fleet of Soyuz boosters. The rocket and the Progress 44 cargo freighter crashed in Siberia and were destroyed.

Investigations into the accident traced the problem to a faulty gas generator in the rocket's third stage, and spaceflight operations were temporarily halted until the issue was resolved.

On Oct. 30, a Progress 45 cargo ship was successfully launched to the International Space Station, and a manned launch carrying three new crewmembers for the orbiting complex followed almost two weeks later.

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New Study Throws Dark Matter Finding Into Question (SPACE.com)

A new study of dark matter, the mysterious hidden stuff thought to pervade the universe, casts doubt on a previous finding that offered hope that dark matter had finally been seen.

In 2008, a European-Russian satellite called Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light nuclei Astrophysics (PAMELA) discovered a strange overabundance of particles called positrons, which are the antimatter counterpart to electrons. Matter and antimatter, which have the same mass but opposite charges, destroy one another when they meet.

According to theory, when a particle of dark matter collides with its antiparticle, they annihilate, unleashing a burst of energy and exotic particles. Dark matter is thought to make up 98 percent of all matter in the universe and 23 percent of its total mass and energy. Scientists have yet to directly detect invisible dark matter, but its existence is inferred based its gravitational pull on regular matter.

The positrons found by PAMELA were thought to be the products of dark matter annihilation with antimatter, and scientists were hopeful that the tantalizing discovery could prove the existence of the elusive dark matter.

But a new study has raised more questions about PAMELA's discovery. Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University in California confirmed the overabundance of positrons, but when they did not see a sudden drop-off of this excess beyond a certain energy level, they knew something was wrong.

"If the antimatter we measure is coming from the annihilation of dark matter particles, then the positron excess should drop off fairly suddenly at an energy level that corresponds with the mass of the dark matter particle," study co-author Stefan Funk, an assistant professor of physics at Stanford University, said in a statement.

Rather, Funk and his colleague, Justin Vandenbroucke, found that the number of positrons continued to increase in line with the level of energy. [7 Surprising Things About the Universe]

"Some have concluded that this altogether rules out dark matter as a source of the antimatter we're measuring," Funk said. "At the very least this means that if the positrons are coming from dark matter annihilation, then dark matter particles must have a higher mass than allowed by the PAMELA measurement."

But the results are not necessarily a definitive strike against the finding, the researchers said.

"We're taking an observational point of view and simply reporting the data that we observe," Vandenbroucke said. "However, I know that articles are already appearing that say our result likely rules out the dark matter interpretation. Personally, I think that is too strong of an interpretation."

Additional observations will be needed to settle the debate, the researchers said. One instrument in particular, the antimatter-hunting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), is expected to yield helpful results.

NASA's space shuttle Endeavour carried the AMS experiment to the International Space Station in May, where it was installed on the exterior of the complex. It has been operating ever since. This detector should be able to collect more precise data at higher energies, Vandenbroucke said.

"AMS has a very large magnet in its detector and so can naturally and very easily distinguish between electrons and positrons," Funk said. "That experiment will most likely be able to make a final statement on this. It's something we are all eagerly awaiting."

Funk and Vandenbroucke used NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which studies the highest energy forms of light. Since the telescope is designed to detect neutral light particles, called photons, it does not have a magnet to separate negatively charged electrons and positively charged positrons.

The researchers were forced to improvise, but luckily a natural magnet exists close to home: Earth. The planet's magnetic field naturally bends the paths of charged particles that almost continuously rain from space, they explained.

The scientists then studied geophysical maps of Earth and calculated how the planet filters out charged particles seen by the telescope, in a novel approach at the intersection of astrophysics and geophysics.

"The big takeaway here is how valuable it is to measure and understand the world around us in as many ways as possible," Vandenbroucke said. "Once you have this basic scientific knowledge, it's often surprising how that knowledge can be useful."

The researchers detailed their results in a paper submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Down with Light Pollution: Illinois Town Prizes Its Dark Side (SPACE.com)

A small town in Illinois has become the world's third International Dark Sky Community, a place that aims to protect the quality of its dark, star-filled sky by controlling the amount of outdoor lighting.

The town of Homer Glen was designated an International Dark Sky Community on Nov. 21. The town is located 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, and residents there have worked hard to promote the dark sky movement by raising awareness about the negative effects of light pollution from wasteful outdoor lighting.

The International Dark-Sky Association is a U.S.-based non-profit organization that was founded in 1988 to champion the dark sky movement. A primary goal of the organization's International Dark Sky Places program is to preserve the quality of dark skies around the world, which are valuable assets to astronomers and skywatchers.

Homer Glen's proximity to Chicago prompted officials to start education campaigns for smart lighting policy. Excessive outdoor lighting can cause what is known as sky glow above the horizon, which can reduce the quality of astronomical observations.

A group of citizens from Homer Glen started an advocacy group called the Illinois Coalition for Responsible Outdoor Lighting. Their efforts resulted in the 2010 adoption of a statewide resolution condoning responsible outdoor lighting.

Local astronomy groups in Homer Glen also organize stargazing events twice a year for roughly 250 members of the public. [Telescopes for Beginners]

But the dark sky movement is about more than just astronomy. The initiative is aimed at raising awareness of other negative effects of light pollution, including energy, health and ecological concerns.

In a ceremony in 2008 hosted by the International Dark-Sky Association and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), then-Lieutenant Governor of Illinois Pat Quinn praised Homer Glen for its "environmentally friendly" outdoor lighting policies and its promotion of Earth Hour, which is an annual global event organized by the WWF that encourages people to turn off lights and appliances for one hour to raise awareness about climate change.

"Homer Glen's dark sky ordinance conserves energy, protects wildlife, and reminds all of us of the natural beauty of a starry night," Quinn said in a statement.

Flagstaff, Ariz. was the first city to earn the International Dark Sky Community title, followed by Borrego Springs, Calif.

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Milky Way Radiation Reveals Itself to Distant NASA Probes (SPACE.com)

Decades after NASA's Voyager spacecraft began hurtling toward interstellar space, the twin probes are still shedding light on the universe, now by offering an unprecedented view of our own galaxy.

As they roam ever outward to the edge of the solar system, the two Voyager spacecraft are providing the first glimpse of Milky Way radiation that scientists have already seen coming from other galaxies. The data could lead to a better understanding of star formation, including the mystery surrounding the earliest stars in the universe, researchers said.

NASA launched the two Voyager spacecraft in 1977 to explore our solar system's giant planets and to study the electrically charged solar wind streaming from the sun. The probes far exceeded the expectations of mission planners, and to this day, they continue to beam back data.

The Voyagers are now providing us with the first glimpse of a critical type of ultraviolet radiation from our galaxy known as the Lyman-alpha line. This is the brightest band of light shed by hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe.

Studying the Lyman-alpha line can offer many insights into cosmic phenomena, such as star formation, the electrically charged environments in which the atmospheres of young planets evolve, and the shocked gas in interstellar space. [Photos from NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 Probes]

Astronomers have seen Lyman-alpha rays from other galaxies, helping them peer into the universe's early history. However, we have never seen ones from our own galaxy, because our sun essentially blinds our view.

Specifically, ultraviolet rays from our sun get scattered around by hydrogen entering our solar system from interstellar space. This leads to a haze that blinds us to Lyman-alpha rays from elsewhere in our galaxy. We can detect other galaxies' Lyman-alpha rays because they have shifted into longer optical and infrared wavelengths — ones that no longer get scattered by this hydrogen — as their galaxies rush away from us. This is similar to how ambulance sirens grow lower in pitch as the vehicle drives farther away.

Now Voyager 1 and 2 are far enough away from this ultraviolet haze for them to get a clear view of the Milky Way's Lyman-alpha rays.

"It is like beginning to see small candles within a brightly lit room," study lead author Rosine Lallement, a space scientist and astronomer at the Paris Observatory in Meudon, France, told SPACE.com.

The spacecraft have confirmed that most of these newfound rays appear to come from star-forming regions, as astronomers expected. Future study of the Milky Way's Lyman-alpha rays could help us better understand those from other galaxies, researchers added.

"This radiation traces where young hot stars are being born — therefore, knowing the amount of emitted Lyman-alpha radiation from a galaxy corresponds to the rate at which stars are being born," Lallement said. "A major goal is to detect the first apparition of stars in the young universe, so detecting Lyman-alpha from the most-distant ones and correctly interpreting the signal is one of the major challenges."

Ironically, just as the Voyager probes are getting their best views of these Milky Way rays, their ability to see them is failing. Due to lack of power, the ultraviolet spectrometer on Voyager 2 has been switched off, and that same instrument on Voyager 1 could get turned off soon as well.

Still, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which is currently on its way to Pluto, might soon be able to monitor these rays as well.

Lallement and her colleagues detailed their findings online in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Science.

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How NASA Could Get Its Spaceflight Groove Back (SPACE.com)

NASA's better days can appear long past to the public. The U.S. space agency that once landed a man on the moon now wrestles with questions of existential crisis after retiring its space shuttle fleet this year. But it may still have enough leftover mojo to boldly set new goals to go where no man has gone before — if it can shake off its instinct to always look for guidance from the president and Congress.

A chance exists for NASA to declare a new vision for space exploration, said Jeff Leitner, founder and dean of Insight Labs. His nonprofit group wants to help the space agency control its destiny based on the authority of its "smartest, badass scientists" and spaceflight achievements, rather than acting as a political football for lawmakers while waiting for someone to decide its next mission.

"If they were in Silicon Valley, we'd be worshiping them," said Jeff Leitner, founder and dean of Insight Labs. "But they're NASA, so we're cutting their budget."

Removing the blinders

Part of the uncertainty problem surrounding space exploration is that "the public narrative around NASA seems broken," Leitner explained. Even as news reports glowed over fantastical visions of possible new technologies from the secretive Google X lab in November, NASA was carefully preparing to launch its nuclear-powered Curiosity rover — the size of a Mini Cooper — to explore the possibility of life on Mars.

The other part of the problem may come from NASA's blindness to its own "cool" factor. That realization came to Leitner during a 3-hour Friday-morning talk among NASA representatives and big thinkers from all walks of life at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia on Nov. 18.

"We got there by having people in [the] room who are experts in science and technology say [to the NASA representatives], 'You know we're looking to you for that guidance on space exploration," and watch NASA be surprised by their own credibility," Leitner told InnovationNewsDaily.

NASA's blindness to its brand's coolness became more evident as the discussion wore on. Leitner and his Insight Lab colleagues posed a hypothetical to the NASA representatives: If they summoned Larry Page, Google cofounder, and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, to a meeting, would the Silicon Valley VIPs attend?

The NASA representatives said they didn't know. "Of course [they'd come], you're NASA!" Leitner and his colleagues responded.

Taking control

NASA's chance to take a new leadership role arises in a time when new countries and private spaceflight companies alike have begun crowding into an area once dominated by the United States and the former Soviet Union. That "fragmented environment" gives a chance for NASA to possibly become both architect and chief builder for space exploration.

"Somebody has to be the architect; NASA has earned that role," Leitner said. "We were in the building where Orville Wright had his office. If you're that guy, you get to declare the nation's priorities for flight."

By setting its own grand strategy, NASA could better hold a steady course despite new presidential administrations or changing budgets. That would buck the trend of allowing Congressionally-approved budgets to decide spaceflight missions and goals.

"NASA has an opportunity that they didn't know they had," Leitner explained."They currently judge their value in the world based on budgetary guidelines; that doesn't quite resonate with public perception or narrative."

One small step

Insight Labs organized its "Reclaiming Public Fascination" meeting with the goal of sparking a conversation among outside thinkers about changing NASA's public narrative and message. Such a target seemed more achievable in a 3-hour meeting than changing the mission of NASA or figuring out a new direction for technological breakthroughs.

But Insight Labs also aims to do much more than simply provide standard consulting advice to organizations for free. It aims to help tackle the big problems that keep the heads of government agencies and nonprofits up at night.

"A lot of people say, 'Here's how you can reorganize yourself to be more efficient,' but a lot of big-name organizations are solving the wrong problem," Leitner said. "We go way up the headwaters of the problem."

The Insight Labs founders have already begun more in-depth interviews with some of the thinkers who attended the meeting, and continue to talk with NASA about making slight changes to past assumptions to make the path forward easier. In one email, Leitner told a NASA contact that the space agency was still "planning for gravity in a zero-gee environment." Why not float free?

You can follow InnovationNewsDaily Senior Writer Jeremy Hsu on Twitter @ScienceHsu. Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook.

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Could Natural Nuclear Reactors Have Boosted Life on This and Other Planets? (SPACE.com)

Clara Moskowitz, Astrobiology Magazine
Space.com Clara Moskowitz, Astrobiology Magazine
space.com – Fri Dec 2, 10:15 am ET

While modern-day humans use the most advanced engineering to build nuclear reactors, Nature sometimes makes them by accident.

Evidence for a cluster of natural nuclear reactors has been found on Earth, and some scientists say our planet may have had many more in its ancient past. There's also reason to think other planets might have had their own naturally occurring nuclear reactors, though evidence to confirm this is hazy. If they did exist, the large amounts of radiation and energy released by such reactors would have had complicated effects on any life developing on this or other worlds, experts say.

Natural nuclear reactors occur when deposits of the radioactive element uranium build up in one spot, and eventually ignite a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction where uranium divides, in a process called fission, producing other elements. The reaction releases a powerful punch of energy.

This energy could prove beneficial and highly detrimental to developing life, depending on the circumstances. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

Only example

The only known examples of natural nuclear reactors on Earth were discovered in the Oklo region of Gabon, Africa, in 1972. French miners discovered that the uranium samples they extracted were depleted in the rare isotope uranium 235, the only naturally occurring material on Earth capable of sustaining fission reactions. It was as if the material had already gone through a nuclear reaction and been used up.

In fact, that's the scenario most supported by studies. Scientists think a concentration of uranium 235 there went critical around 2 billion years ago and underwent fission, just as it does inside man-made nuclear reactors.

"As far as we know, we only have evidence of natural reactors forming and operating at the one site in Gabon, but that demonstrates that it's possible, and our calculations suggest it was much more probable earlier in Earth's history," said Jay Cullen of the University of Victoria in Canada.

Cullen and Laurence A. Coogan, a colleague at the University of Victoria, researched how likely these reactions were when Earth was much younger, based on how much uranium in a given area is necessary for the material to go critical and start a self-sustaining fission reaction. They found that during the Archean epoch, between around 2.5 billion and 4 billion years ago, natural nuclear reactors could have been relatively frequent.

"It certainly seems more than likely that these sorts of reactors would have been much more common in the Earth's early history because the amount [of uranium] you need is actually quite small," Cullen told Astrobiology Magazine.

However, because there is such a poor geologic record left from so long ago, scientists have very little way of confirming this idea.

The spark of life

If natural nuclear reactors were present on early Earth, they could have had interesting effects on any nascent life.

The ionizing radiation released by a nuclear reaction can damage DNA, the precious instruction code built into every cell of life. If organisms were living too close to the site of a reactor, they could have been wiped out completely. However, life hanging out on the outskirts of a nuclear reactor might have received a smaller dose of radiation — not enough to kill it, but enough to introduce mutations in its genetic code that could have boosted the diversity in the local population.

"The ionizing radiation would actually provide some genetic variation," Cullen said. “That’s the quantity that natural selection is going to act upon, and it might help to promote change in organisms with time. I think that most people view ionizing radiation as a bad thing, but that’s not always necessarily so."

Furthermore, the nuclear reactors themselves could have provided an even greater boon to life by giving it the spark it needed to originate in the first place, some scientists think. Zachary Adam, now a graduate student at Montana State University in Bozeman, suggested the possibility in a 2007 paper in the journal Astrobiology, which he wrote  as a graduate student at the University of Washington.

Scientists don't know for sure how life got started on Earth, but they think it required some kind of burst of energy to start it off. This energy would have been required to break the bonds of simple elements such as carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, so that they could recombine to form the first complex organic molecules.

Other researchers have suggested that a strike of lightning might have provided the requisite energy, but Adam thinks that the energy released by a natural nuclear reactor might have provided the catalyst.

"I think it is at least as possible as other ideas, if not more plausible, but I realize everyone is partial to their own ideas," Adam said.

Life elsewhere?

If natural nuclear reactors might have helped life arise on this planet, it's also possible they've played a role in seeding life elsewhere.

So far, scientists' limited knowledge of the geology of extrasolar planets means they can't say how common natural nuclear reactors might be on other worlds. Adam said that some elements on early Earth that might have helped these reactors form don't seem to be as abundant on the surfaces of other planets.

For example, the moon's tidal forces on Earth, which used to be stronger than they are today due to the moon's closer proximity long ago, played a vital role in causing heavy minerals like uranium 235 to collect in dense patches on beaches, Adam said. The Earth had also differentiated into separate layers, including a crust and a mantle, which helped to separate out and concentrate the heavy radioactive elements.

These characteristics, especially crustal differentiation like that on Earth, don't seem to be as common among the other planets of the solar system, Adam said.

But not all experts are pessimistic about natural nuclear reactors on other worlds.

Plasma physicist John Brandenburg of Orbital Technologies Corp. analyzed results from NASA's Mars Odyssey Orbiter, which surveyed the surface of the Red Planet with various instruments, including a gamma-ray spectrometer. Brandenburg says the gamma-ray results show evidence of an abundance of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium, especially in one particular spot on Mars, which he attributes to a major nuclear reaction taking place there around half a billion years ago.

"Basically it looked as though Mars was covered with a thick layer of radioactive substances, and also the atmosphere was full of radiogenic products," Brandenburg said. "It's kind of a no-brainer at that point. There appears to have been a large radiological event on Mars and it appears to have been violent."

If such a huge nuclear event did occur, it would have been disastrous for any budding Martian life.

"It would have been a terrible catastrophe," Brandenburg said. "Whatever biosphere was on Mars at the time probably suffered a massive extinction event, and it really set back life on Mars."

However, many Mars geologists have greeted Brandenburg's proposal with skepticism.

"This hypothesis is not likely to be true," the University of Arizona's William Boynton, principal investigator for Mars Odyssey's gamma-ray spectrometer, wrote in an email. "Yes, we did find both thorium and uranium, and they are natural elements found everywhere. The amount varies, but the explanations are very mundane."

Boynton said he doubts that natural nuclear reactors like the ones in Gabon are common elsewhere.

"The natural reactor in Africa is real, but the reason it was of so much interest is that it is so rare," Boynton said. "I would say it is all but impossible that any natural reactor has happened anywhere else in the solar system. It may be it has only happened once on Earth!"

This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program.

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Saturn Moon's Icy Secrets Shine Bright in New NASA Images (SPACE.com)

New details about Enceladus, one of the icy moons orbiting Saturn, are revealed in new images of the bright and shimmering cosmic body.

The snapshots highlight some of the grooves in Enceladus' south polar region, including unexpected textures in the moon's ice. The photos, taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Nov. 6, are the highest-resolution images of this region obtained so far, according to NASA officials.

The new images of Enceladus come from data collected by a special radar instrument on Cassini, called the synthetic aperture radar.

The area photographed by Cassini does not include Enceladus' famous "tiger stripes," which are huge fissures on the moon's ice-covered surface that eject plumes of ice particles and water vapor. These icy geysers cover regions just a few hundred miles away from the stripes, NASA scientists said.

Researchers are scrutinizing an area on Enceladus that appears to have a very rough surface texture that glimmers peculiarly bright in Cassini's radar images. This patch is located at around 63 degrees south latitude and 51 degrees west longitude. [Video: Clearest Enceladus Views Yet Nabbed by Cassini Radar]

"It's puzzling why this is some of the brightest stuff Cassini has seen," Steve Wall, deputy leader of Cassini's radar team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "One possibility is that the area is studded with rounded ice rocks. But we can't yet explain how that would happen."

Scientists are also investigating an area where Cassini spotted grooved, water-ice bedrock. The spacecraft's images reveal unusual undulations and intricate patterns that have not previously been seen. This area is located at around 65 degrees south latitude and 293 degrees west longitude on the icy moon.

Cassini's observations also reveal a central groove in this area that is about 2,100 feet (650 meters) deep and 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) wide, with sides that slope at an angle of about 33 degrees.

Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon around Saturn, and new images of the satellite show some similarities to Titan, the largest moon orbiting the ringed planet.

The western foothills in the so-called Xanadu region of Titan are also very bright, as are regions surrounding a large impact crater called Sinlap. Whether these luminous areas shine because of the same or very different processes will be the subject of research as scientists continue to learn more about the moons of Saturn, NASA officials said.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft was launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. The spacecraft carried the European Space Agency's Huygens lander, which landed on Titan soon after Cassini arrived in orbit around the ringed planet.

In 2008, Cassini completed its primary mission to explore Saturn, its rings and moons. Since then, the mission has been extended twice, most recently to 2017.

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Unexpectedly Heavy Stars from Long Ago Puzzle Astronomers (SPACE.com)

Ancient stars found in the outer reaches of our Milky Way are surprisingly chock full of some of the heaviest chemical elements, which could have formed in the galaxy's early history, a new study reveals.

When astronomers found abnormally large amounts of heavy elements like gold, platinum and uranium in some of the oldest stars in the Milky Way they were puzzled, because an abundance of very heavy metals is typically only seen in much later generations of stars.

To investigate this mystery, researchers observed these ancient stars over the course of several years using the European Southern Observatory's fleet of telescopes in Chile. They trained their telescopes on 17 "abnormal" stars in the Milky Way that were found to be rich in the heaviest chemical elements.

The results of the study are detailed in the Nov. 14 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"In the outer parts of the Milky Way there are old 'stellar fossils' from our own galaxy's childhood," the study's lead author Terese Hansen, an astrophysicist at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement. "These old stars lie in a halo above and below the galaxy's flat disc. In a small percentage — approximately 1-to-2 percent of these primitive stars — you find abnormal quantities of the heaviest elements relative to iron and other 'normal' heavy elements." [Top 10 Star Mysteries]

Hansen and her colleagues calculated the orbital motions of the stars, which led to an important clue about what kind of mechanisms must have created the heavy elements in the stars.

According to the researchers, there are two possible theories to explain these ancient stars, both centered around supernova explosions, when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse in energetic bursts.

Shortly after the universe was created, it was dominated by light elements like hydrogen and helium. As clouds of these gasses clumped together and collapsed in on themselves under their own gravity, the first stars were formed.

At the heart of these stars, hydrogen and helium merged together and formed the first heavy elements like carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.

When these massive stars died in supernova explosions, they spread the newly formed elements as gas clouds into space. These gas clouds eventually collapsed in on themselves again to form new stars containing the heavier elements. Throughout this process, the newer generations of stars become richer and richer in heavy elements.

After a few hundred million years, all of the known chemical elements existed. But the very early stars contained only a thousandth of the amount of heavy elements that are seen in the sun and other stars today. Hansen and her colleagues suggest that some early stars may have been in close binary systems. In such a twin star system, when one star went supernova, it would have coated its companion star with a thin layer of heavy elementslike gold and uranium.

"My observations of the motions of the stars showed that the majority of the 17 heavy-element-rich stars are in fact single," Hansen said. "Only three belong to binary star systems — this is completely normal, 20 percent of all stars belong to binary star systems. So the theory of the gold-plated neighboring star cannot be the general explanation."

Another theory is that early supernovas could shoot jets of these elements in different directions, dispersing them into the surrounding clouds of gas that eventually formed some of the stars we see today in the Milky Way.This scenario could help explain how many of the old stars became abnormally rich in heavy elements, the researchers said.

"In the supernova explosion the heavy elements like gold, platinum and uranium are formed and when the jets hit the surrounding gas clouds, they will be enriched with the elements and form stars that are incredibly rich in heavy elements," Hansen said.

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Mysterious Ultra-Red Galaxies May Be Cosmic 'Missing Link' (SPACE.com)

Scientists have spied a new type of ultra-red galaxy lurking at the far reaches of the universe, a new study reports.

Using NASA's Spitzer space telescope, the astronomers spotted four remarkably red galaxies nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth — meaning it's taken their light about 13 billion years to reach us. So researchers are seeing the galaxies as they were in the early days of the universe, which itself is about 13.7 billion years old.

NASA's Hubble space telescope has imaged even more ancient galaxies, but the four ruddy objects seen by Spitzer are a breed apart, researchers said.

"Hubble has shown us some of the first protogalaxies that formed, but nothing that looks like this," study co-author Giovanni Fazio, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement. "In a sense, these galaxies might be a 'missing link' in galactic evolution."

The four newfound galaxies shine much more brightly in infrared light than in visible wavelengths, which is how the infrared-sensitive Spitzer was able to detect them. The research team still isn't sure why they're so strikingly red.

There are three main reasons why a galaxy may appear red, researchers said. First, it may be extremely dusty. Second, it could contain many old, red stars. Or third, the galaxy may be extremely distant, in which case the expansion of the universe has stretched its light to very long (and very red) wavelengths.

All three of these factors may be in play in the newfound galaxies' case, researchers said. But they're not sure, since much about them remains mysterious.

"We've had to go to extremes to get the models to match our observations," said study lead author Jiasheng Huang, also of the CfA.

The four galaxies are grouped together and appear to be physically associated, rather than constituting a chance alignment of like objects, researchers said.

The team hopes to study the galaxies further, perhaps employing powerful ground-based instruments such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile. And they'd like to find more examples of this new type of galactic "species."

"There's evidence for others in other regions of the sky," Fazio said. "We'll analyze more Spitzer and Hubble observations to track them down."

The astronomers reported their results online in the Astrophysical Journal.

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Spaceport America Showcases Private Space Industry's Half-Built Dream (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com reporter Clara Moskowitz visited Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, N.M., a site that's billed as the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport. Here's what she saw during her October 2011 visit.

After two hours of driving through the desert, a structure appears to rise from the sand. It's soft and rounded, and almost the same color as the beige terrain around it.

Yet as our tour bus drives closer, light glints off metal. What resembled a mushroom in shape and color from the distance starts to take form as a futuristic building. A hangar, in fact.

I am here at Spaceport America, a half-built dream to transform a desolate stretch of scrub brush into the worldwide capital of the commercial space industry. [Photos: Take a Tour of Spaceport America]

The facility, which will cost $209 million when all is said and done, is financed entirely by the state of New Mexico. Its taxpayers are betting that if we build it, they will come.

"They" refers to the nascent private space industry — firms that plan to launch paying tourists to space. Spaceport America already has its first big anchor tenant: British billionaire Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

Virgin Galactic has pledged to fly its SpaceShipTwo suborbital craft, which can carry six paying astronauts per flight, from the New Mexico spaceport. Branson himself was here recently to dedicate the main hangar, newly christened the "Gateway to Space."

When we arrive, I step off the bus onto an island of pavement in an ocean of sand.

It's clear that the terminal hangar and a nearby dome-shape office building, the Spaceport Operations Center, have been designed with style in mind as much as substance. Their curving shell-like roofs resemble flying saucers — a nod, perhaps, to the city of Roswell, N.M., about four hours away.

"This is part of the experience Virgin is selling," Chad Rabon, the spaceport's operations manager, told me. "The roof more or less looks like it's floating. It's very unique."

The spaceport team plans to complete construction on the main terminal next year. The 114,000 square-foot facility can house up to six SpaceShipTwo vehicles, and two of its WhiteKnightTwo motherships, which will carry the spaceships to midair before they ignite their rocket engines to climb to space.

Across from the hangar is a giant "spaceway," a specially built runway that's 2 miles long (3.2 km) and 200 feet wide (61 meters). The cement stretches out into the distance, cutting a swath of order in the wilderness of crumbling baked-dry dirt and scrawny weeds.

"This is really a whole city that we built out here in the middle of nowhere," said the spaceport's executive director, Christine Anderson. Everything has had to be built from scratch — not only the buildings, but also the power lines, water tanks and even a paved road out to the facility.

The location is part of its charm. Though inconvenient to get to, by the time I arrive, I feel I've already come on a journey. The nearest town is the 7,000-person Truth or Consequences, a spa town that changed its name from "Hot Springs" in 1950 to win a radio show contest. Between "T or C," as the locals call it, and the spaceport, the only living creatures to be seen are grazing cattle and bison.

Spaceport America's isolated location is just one factor in its favor as a space travel hub. It's located right next to the White Sands Missile Range, whose restricted airspace prevents any interference from passing aircraft traffic. The weather is consistently clear and unchanging, and its elevation of 4,200 feet (1,300 meters) means that it's that much easier and cheaper to get to space compared to launching from sea level.

The spaceport is almost ready. Now it just needs more customers to use it. Besides Virgin Galactic, some smaller suborbital rocket firms, such as UP Aerospace and Armadillo Aerospace, have also come onboard.

But eventually Spaceport America planners foresee more big-ticket tenants, and maybe even orbital launches taking place. They're also planning an intensive tourist experience, complete with a state-of-the-art visitor's center and simulation rides, to attract day visitors.

From my perspective, it should be worth checking out.

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 @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.

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Space 'Never Got Old,' NASA Astronaut Says (SPACE.com)

After living in space for nearly six months on the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Mike Fossum is still getting used to his "land legs."

Fossum and his crewmates, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, launched to the International Space Station in June. The trio returned to Earth 10 days ago, on Nov. 21, landing in a Russian Soyuz capsule on the frigid and snowy steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia.  

Fossum, who was commander of the space station's Expedition 29 mission, previously visited the orbiting outpost on two separate space shuttle missions. But, this return trip inside the notoriously cramped Soyuz spacecraft was a very different experience, he said.

"The trip home on a Soyuz spacecraft was very memorable," Fossum told reporters today (Dec. 1) in a series of live satellite interviews from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It was like riding a meteor home inside that fireball."

As the capsule made its scorching re-entry through Earth's atmosphere, Fossum described looking out the window next to him and being able to see the spacecraft's plasma trail.

"We had the full ride home in darkness and got to see the plasma trail and heat shield itself," Fossum explained. "You have these incandescent orange pieces of the heat shield screaming by the window. It was like a fireworks display."

Fossum and his crewmates were also the last space station residents to play host to a visiting space shuttle. NASA launched the shuttle Atlantis and a four-astronaut crew to the orbiting outpost on the agency's last-ever shuttle flight in July.

Being present for the final shuttle mission was a highlight for Fossum, who said that watching the orbiter back away from the complex for the final time was particularly poignant. [Photos: NASA's Last Shuttle Mission in Pictures]

"I caught a peek and managed to snap some photos of Atlantis as she was backing away for the last time," he said. "To see her back away on that final mission with the sensor boom across the payload bay — to me, it looked kind of like a salute as she backed away and headed home."

With Atlantis' jam-packed eight-day mission, the finality of the shuttle program did not sink in until the very end, when the hatches between the station and the orbiter were being sealed, Fossum said.

"It really wasn't until the end when the main job was done and we were down to taking the last photos, cleaning things up and getting ready to close the hatches, and we realized, we're closing this hatch for the last time in we-don't-know-how-long," he said.

With the retirement of the space shuttle program, NASA is currently relying on Russian-built rockets and spacecraft to take American astronauts to the space station. In the meantime, commercial companies are developing new spaceships to take cargo and humans to and from the orbiting complex.

These commercial vehicles are critical for NASA's future in human spaceflight, Fossum said.

"I think we need a second launch system for sure — a second way to get people to and from the space station," he said. "The Soyuz booster is a great program, very successful by any measure, but it still is a single program, and things can happen. Students of space history know things can happen, and we're not immune to things happening in the future. I hope we get another capability for getting humans to and from space soon."

Still, the veteran astronaut remains hopeful for the future, and spoke extensively about the exciting research projects that are being conducted at the International Space Station.

Fossum said the months he spent living on the orbiting outpost were a dream come true. Fossum said that while he's thankful to be back on terra firma with his friends and family, he will miss living in space, and hopes to be able to have the opportunity to fly again soon.

"For me, it never got old," Fossum said with a wide smile. "I hoped I could fly this mission until I was tired of living in space, but I didn't achieve that, so who knows. We'll see."

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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Alien Planet Is Rolling Over, Forcing 4 Others to Do Same (SPACE.com)

Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com Contributor
Space.com Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor
space.com – Thu Dec 1, 6:00 pm ET

A huge alien planet turns super-slow somersaults as it hurtles through space, dragging its four sibling planets along for the topsy-turvy ride, a new study suggests.

The giant exoplanet, known as 55 Cancri d, gets tugged by a faraway companion star as it orbits its own parent star. As a result, the planet performs a flip over the course of millions of years, and the other four planets in the system follow suit, researchers said.

"It kind of shepherds along the other planets," study lead author Nathan Kaib, of Queen's University in Canada, told SPACE.com.

Widely swinging planet

Located about 40 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer (the Crab), the 55 Cancri system contains two stars, one with five planets in a seemingly stable orbit.  The other star is almost 1,100 times as far away from them as the sun is from Earth, but it still affects them. The effect is not on the planets' orbits but on their axes. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

The axis of a planet runs through its center; the planet spins around it each day. The axes of most planets tend to line up more or less with the axis of their star. Most planets change the angle, or precess, slightly over time, but only a few swing significantly.

55 Cancri d is one of the swingers.

Kaib and his team ran more than 450 computer simulations of the 55 Cancri system, taking into account the influence of the companion star. The researchers decided that the spin axis of 55 Cancri d probably flips completely upside-down after millions of years. The planet's north pole finds itself pointed in the direction the south pole once claimed.

Even more intriguing, the planet, which is about four times the size of Jupiter, causes the smaller bodies in the system to swing with it.

The influence of the companion star was probably overlooked until now because it is so distant, Kaib explained.

"Other studies looking at the effect of binary stars on planets tend to focus on tighter binaries," he said.

Closer companions make for unstable orbits, but the 55 Cancri system showed no obvious sign of orbital disruption.

"This planetary system looks very well ordered," Kaib said.

Exactly how long it takes the planets to swing from top to bottom depends on the time it takes the two stars to circle one another. Unfortunately, that's tough to nail down, researchers said.

Kaib and his team modeled a variety of paths for the two stars and found that most of them resulted in severe axis shifts for all five planets.

The research was published in the December issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Observational follow-up

In its solar system, 55 Cancri d is the most distant of the five planets from their sun — a little farther than the distance between Jupiter and the sun. Three others are packed into orbits closer than Mercury is to the sun.

The closest of the five, the dense planet 55 Cancri e, completes the orbit of its sun in less than 18 hours. From Earth's viewpoint, the tiny planet passes directly in front of its parent star, which is expected to allow astronomers to measure a number of properties, including the angle of its spin orbit.

At about 8.5 times the mass of Earth, 55 Cancri e would be the smallest planet on which astronomers have detected a spin angle.

Kaib says that he spoke with several other observers experienced in determining the angle for extrasolar planets, and they are confident that it's possible to calculate the spin axis angle of 55 Cancri e.

But Kaib cautions that the observational evidence may not be conclusive. The simulations model the star as a perfect sphere, but like most rotating bodies, it probably contains a bulge around its equator. The tidal forces from this bulge could act to erase evidence of the tipping of the orbital axis.

Astronomers compare the axis of the planets to the axis of the star to calculate just how much the planets have tipped.

"As the planets precess, they could drag the star along with it," Kaib said.

The orbital inclination of the star would then increase along with those of the planets, so the whole system could wind up on its head.

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Space Washing Machine Could Blast Laundry with Microwaves (SPACE.com)

Jeremy Hsu, InnovationNewsDaily Senior Writer
Space.com Jeremy Hsu, Innovationnewsdaily Senior Writer
space.com – Fri Dec 2, 10:15 am ET

Imagine putting dirty clothes into a washing machine, leaving, and only coming back once the freshly cleaned clothes have been dried out by microwaves. That out-of-this-world-laundry concept could someday become a reality for astronauts and space explorers headed for the moon, asteroids or Mars.

Such a washing machine is designed to clean dirty astronaut clothing inside a sealed plastic bag that can also receive a drying blast of microwaves. The simple one-step process represents an energy- and water-efficient solution that spares space travelers from hauling a water-intensive washing machine up into space or bringing along disposable clothing.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station can get by with specially engineered, stink-free underwear and steady resupply missions launched from Earth. But longer-lasting missions beyond the moon won't have such luxuries.

"On a long-duration mission to Mars you won't have resupply — you either have to fly naked or have a washing machine," said William Michalek, project manager at the UMPQUA Research Company. "I haven't heard of them flying naked, and I don't think that's really an option."

NASA recently chose UMPQUA's washing-machine concept as part of its selection of Small Business Innovative Research proposals eligible to receive up to $125,000 in early funding.

An earlier version of UMPQUA's machine avoids making the foamy mixture of detergent, water and air — something that would be troublesome to handle in the seemingly weightless space environment. The company also faced the challenge of washing clothes without the tumbling or back-and-forth action of typical washing machines that require Earth's gravity to work.

"We developed a system of water jets inside a plastic bag with clothes and water and no air," Michalek told InnovationNewsDaily. "The jets would bend the clothes back and forth to work the soap solution through all the fibers."

The water only enters the plastic bag through connected tubes after all the air has been sucked out first. Once cleaning is done, the clothes stay in the bag within a larger chamber as a microwave generator irradiates them — similar to heating up a microwave meal inside a Tupperware container.

Finally, a tumble cycle uses air jets to make any space laundry extra soft. The design conveniently saves astronauts time they might normally spend switching wet clothes from a washer to a separate dryer.

UMPQUA plans to make a more energy- and water-efficient version of its device with the new NASA funding. It also wants to vaporize some of the water with outside vacuum pressure on the bag in order to temporarily free up more room inside the bag during the cleaning process — a concept it must prove within the next six months.

The company originally worked with Westinghouse, a home-appliances manufacturer, on the microwave-drying concept. That could still find its way into commercial washing machines on Earth, Michalek said.

But Westinghouse didn't like the idea of a combined washing and drying machine because it doesn't allow people to simultaneously wash and dry big loads of laundry quickly, even if it might be more time-efficient for astronauts' purposes.

So when might people on Earth see a water-efficient washing machine that combines both cleaning and drying?

"When we get to the point where we're wearing dirty clothes because we don't have enough water to wash them," Michalek said.

This story was provided by InnovationNewsDaily, sister site to SPACE.com. You can follow InnovationNewsDaily Senior Writer Jeremy Hsu on Twitter @ScienceHsu. Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook.

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Newfound Alien Planet Hot Enough to Melt Iron (SPACE.com)

Astronomers have found an alien planet not much bigger than Earth, but so blisteringly hot that life has no shot of gaining a foothold there.

The exoplanet, known as Kepler-21b, is just 1.6 times bigger than our home planet, making it a so-called "super Earth." But it orbits so close to its parent star that astronomers estimate its surface temperature to be about 2,960 degrees Fahrenheit (1,627 degrees Celsius) — hot enough to melt iron.

Researchers found Kepler-21b using NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. Kepler spots alien worlds using what's called the "transit method," which looks for telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet crosses in front of the star's face from Kepler's perspective, and blocks some of its light.

Astronomers then confirmed Kepler-21b with the help of telescopes at Arizona's Kitt Peak National Observatory.

Kepler-21b is located 352 light-years from Earth. Its mass is no more than 10 times that of our home planet, researchers said, but it sits just 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) from its host star and takes 2.8 days to complete one orbit. Earth, for comparison, zips around the sun at a distance of 93 million miles (150 million km).

Kepler-21b's parent star, known as HD 179070, is 1.3 times more massive than the sun. HD 179070 is a little hotter and brighter than our star, researchers said, and a little younger, too. Astronomers estimate its age at 2.84 billion years, compared to 4.6 billion years for the sun.

HD 179070 cannot be seen by the unaided eye, but a small telescope can easily pick it out, researchers said.

Since its launch in March 2009, the $600 million Kepler spacecraft has identified 1,235 alien planet candidates. Kepler-21b is just the 26th of these to be confirmed by follow-up observations, but Kepler scientists have estimated that at least 80 percent of the instrument's finds will end up being the real deal.

If that turns out to be the case, Kepler's discoveries will more than double the number of known alien planets, which currently stands at about 700. Astronomers think our Milky Way galaxy likely harbors billions of alien planets, though most are so far away that they'll be difficult for us to detect.

Researchers report the discovery of Kepler-21b in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

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Astronomers Discover 18 Huge New Alien Planets (SPACE.com)

Astronomers have found 18 new alien planets, all of them Jupiter-size gas giants that circle stars bigger than our sun, a new study reports.

The discoveries increase the number of known planets orbiting massive stars by 50 percent. The exoplanet bounty should also help astronomers better understand how giant planets form and grow in nascent alien solar systems, researchers said.

The haul comes just a few months after a different team of researchers announced the discovery of 50 newfound alien worlds, including one rocky planet that could be a good candidate for life. The list of known alien planets is now well over 700 and climbing fast.

Staring at 'retired' stars

The researchers surveyed about 300 stars using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and instruments in Texas and Arizona. They focused on so-called "retired" type A stars that are at least 1.5 times more massive than our own sun.

These stars are just beyond the main stage of life — hence the name "retired" — and are now ballooning out to become what's known as subgiant stars.

The team scrutinized these stars, looking for slight wobbles caused by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets. This process revealed 18 new alien worlds, all of them with masses similar to Jupiter's. All 18 planets also orbit relatively far from their stars, at a distance of at least 0.7 times the span from Earth to the sun (about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers). [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

Planet-formation theories

In addition to boosting the ever-growing alien planet tally, the new finds lend support to one of two theories that attempt to explain the formation and evolution of planets, researchers said.

This theory, called core accretion, posits that planets grow as gas and dust glom onto seed particles in a protoplanetary disk. Core accretion predicts that the characteristics of a planetary system — the number and size of planets, for example — depend strongly on the mass of the star.

The main competing theory, called gravitational collapse, holds that planets form when big clouds of gas and dust in the disk spontaneously collapse into clumps that become planets. According to this idea, stellar mass should have little impact on planet size, number and other characteristics.

As the exoplanet finds pile up, it seems that stellar mass does in fact play an important role. The 18 huge newfound alien worlds, which all orbit massive stars, add more evidence in support of core accretion, researchers said.

"It's nice to see all these converging lines of evidence pointing toward one class of formation mechanisms," study lead author John Johnson, of Caltech in Pasadena, said in a statement.

Johnson and his colleagues reported their results in the December issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

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Space Shuttle Pink Slip in Hand, LA Plans 'Mother of All Parades' for Endeavour (SPACE.com)

LOS ANGELES — Space shuttle Endeavour's transfer from NASA to the California Science Center for its public display was signed and sealed Tuesday (Oct. 11). Now all that remains for the retired orbiter is for it to be delivered — a feat local leaders promise will be as large a spectacle as it is a challenge.

"This is going to be a big, big event and a big, big object, and it is going to be a lot of work to get it but we couldn't be prouder," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at the title transfer ceremony held at the science center.

Using, appropriately enough, pressurized space pens to sign oversized title certificates, NASA's deputy associate administrator Richard Keegan and the California Science Center's (CSC) president Jeffrey Rudolph signed over and accepted the orbiter. [NASA's Space Shuttle Program In Pictures: A Tribute]

"The transfer of Endeavour, now done, from NASA to the California Science Center doesn't commemorate the end of Endeavour's work but the start of its next mission," Rudolph said. "We're committed to be excellent stewards for Endeavour and making sure it is successful on its new mission of advancing science learning and encouraging a passion for exploration as it was on its missions."

First signed, last to ship

Endeavour's delivery from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the west coast is not expected until next fall. In the interim, the space agency will continue preparing the spacecraft to be safe for public display while retaining its three main engines and other hardware for possible use with future launch vehicles.

The CSC, meanwhile, will use the time to construct a new temporary building to house Endeavour and raise the $200 million it needs to build a new Air and Space Center where the shuttle will stand, vertically, as its centerpiece.

Endeavour is the first of NASA's three retired space-flown orbiters to have its ownership transferred since the space shuttle program ended in August. Shuttle Discovery's title will be signed over to the Smithsonian after its arrival in Virginia, planned for next April. Atlantis will remain NASA property at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

Shuttle Enterprise, which didn't fly in space but was used for atmospheric test flights, is similarly set to be given to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City next year.

Mother of all parades

Just as it did when it landed in California after seven of its 25 space missions, only in reverse, Endeavour will make its final cross country trip from Kennedy Space Center to Los Angeles atop a modified Boeing 747 airliner.

Once on the ground at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), the shuttle will hit the road for the science center.

"It is going to circle [flying above] the L.A. area three times and then we're going to have a parade. The mother of all parades!" Villaraigosa announced. "People will be lining up the street from LAX through the great city of Inglewood, down Martin Luther King Boulevard — it is going to be a sight to be seen."

At 122 feet (38 meters) long and with a wingspan of 78 feet (24 meters), the shuttle is a much wider load than usual Los Angeles traffic. The city and neighboring Inglewood will need to remove and replace street signs, traffic lights, trees and other obstacles along Endeavour's way. Even then, the 13 miles between the airport and CSC will still be a slow roll using a NASA-furnished "overland transporter" — a wheeled-trailer — for the road trip.

"It is going to be amazing watching this space shuttle inch its way through the streets, going instead of 17,500 miles an hour [like when it was in orbit], maybe 1 mile per hour," Mike Fincke, an astronaut on Endeavour's STS-134 final flight crew, told collectSPACE during a press conference at the science center. "It's going to be a really motivating day, I think, for all us to watch the space shuttle inch its way here."

"It's going to be like the Pied Piper leading the kids," Fincke added. "There are going to be so many people coming and getting inspired. I'm really enthused about it. I think the team here has done a lot of homework. They've got a lot of work to go but I think they are going to pull it off brilliantly."

Temporary home

When Endeavour finally rolls up to the science center, a display building will be ready to house it. Construction on the new exhibit hall is set to begin soon.

"We've picked pretty much the design of what we're going to do in the location," CSC Vice President William Harris told collectSPACE. "Fortunately we have a space where it fits. The flow will be through the science center because it has to be an environmentally enclosed space that is also secure. We can provide that."

But that display, which will exhibit Endeavour horizontally as if it just landed back from space, is intended to be only temporary. For its permanent exhibit, the CSC is planning something much taller.

Continue reading at collectSPACE.com about the California Science Center’s planned vertical shuttle display and how you can join Team Endeavour by sponsoring a space shuttle tile.

Follow collectSPACE on Facebook and Twitter @collectSPACE and editor Robert Pearlman @robertpearlman. Copyright 2011 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

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Private Spaceship Factory Opens for Business in Calif. Desert (SPACE.com)

In a grand and ceremonious style, a factory site that will crank out private spaceships has opened its hangar doors.

The $8 million hangar was specifically designed to support the final stages of assembly and integration for prime customer Virgin Galactic’s fleet of passenger-carrying suborbital SpaceShipTwos and the mothership launch craft, WhiteKnightTwos.

Called the Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar, or FAITH, the special building was unveiled Sept. 19 at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. That’s the home port for Scaled Composites, builder of the SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnightTwo launch system. [Photos: SpaceShipTwo's First Glide Test Flight]

Important step

"The opening of the new facility is an important step on a journey that will culminate in commercial operations at Spaceport America" in New Mexico, said George Whitesides, CEO and president of Virgin Galactic, which will launch paying customers to suborbital space aboard SpaceShipTwo.

"The modern plant is energy-efficient and will provide ample space for future growth of The Spaceship Company. It can hold two WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft and several SpaceshipTwos at the same time," Whitesides told SPACE.com.

The Spaceship Company (TSC) was established to manufacture additional vehicle sets beyond the first pair from Scaled Composites.

"We believe there is tremendous possibility for growth in the future," Whitesides added.

FAITH is a 68,000-square-foot (6,317 square meters) structure. It's big enough to accommodate the first-ever side-by-side public viewing of WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo and the WhiteKnightOne/SpaceShipOne system, which happened at the grand opening ceremony.  

In 2004, SpaceShipOne bagged the $10 million Ansari X Prize as the world’s first privately developed piloted spacecraft.

Joint venture

TSC is the aerospace production joint venture of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, which teamed up to build the world’s first fleet of commercial spaceships and flying launch pads.

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is being built to carry six customers and two pilots on suborbital jaunts. That trek to the edge of space and back provides passengers several minutes of out-of-the-seat, zero-gravity experience. [Video: SpaceShipTwo's First Crewed Flight]

During the flight, space travelers are promised astounding views of the planet from the black sky of space for about 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) in every direction.

In the space reservation department, Virgin Galactic has signed up more than 450 individuals who have made deposits between $20,000 and the total per-seat cost of $200,000.

Total deposits received are over $57 million. Over 85,000 people from 125 countries have registered their interest in becoming a Virgin Galactic astronaut, according to the company.

Kick-in-the-pants velocity

The first fully built SpaceShipTwo is dubbed VSS Enterprise, and the WhiteKnightTwo is called VMS Eve. Both have already undergone a step-by-step test flight program.

Still ahead, however, are critical flights involving SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket motor. That engine is central to giving the craft a kick-in-the-pants velocity to attain a desired suborbital trajectory.

The progression of shake-out flights is necessary before Virgin Galactic can start safe and sound commercial operations, which will be based at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

FAITH was completed within 10 months, as scheduled and on budget by Bakersfield-based Wallace & Smith General Contractors. It can support the production of two WhiteKnightTwos and at least two SpaceShipTwo vehicles in parallel. Also, the facility can support major return-to-base maintenance for the rocket plane and carrier mothership fleet once in operation, officials said.

Workforce wants

FAITH is one of two facilities that TSC will use to produce commercial spacecraft. The other is a 48,000-square-foot (4,459 square meters) existing building at the Mojave Air and Space Port that TSC recently upgraded to serve as the company’s fabrication and vehicle sub-assembly facility.

TSC has secured options to expand the size of the FAITH facility and build an adjacent flight test hangar, as the customer base grows.

The opening of FAITH has been also billed as a means to boost local economies in California and New Mexico. TSC currently employs more than 80 people and is looking to double its work force within the next year, with numerous high-tech and engineering positions available in the next few months, according to TSC officials.

Others in the aerospace field see the opening of the new hangar as a good sign for the nascent space tourism industry.

"Not only are we welcoming a new neighbor at the Mojave Air and Space Port…we’re ushering in another phase in the development of commercial space travel," said Doug Shane, president of Scaled Composites. "It’s exciting to see the vision becoming a reality."

For more information on The Spaceship Company, visit: http://www.thespaceshipcompany.com

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 magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

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Let the Space Shuttle Rest in Peace, Experts Tell Congress (SPACE.com)

The space shuttle isn't going to fly again, no matter how often supporters of the iconic winged vehicle trot out the possibility, a panel told lawmakers Wednesday (Oct. 12) on Capitol Hill.

Ever since NASA grounded its shuttle fleet in July, some prominent voices have been calling for the venerable orbiters to be pressed back into service. But that's simply not going to happen, panelists said, so continuing to pound the drum won't do any good.

"This would have been a great research question three or perhaps four years ago," Joseph Dyer, chairman of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, told members of the House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology Wednesday. "But it's not a good question, or a practical question, at this time." [NASA's Space Shuttle Program In Pictures: A Tribute]

Gap in American spaceflight capabilities

The administration of President George W. Bush decided back in 2004 to end the shuttle program. And this finally came to pass in July, when the orbiter Atlantis wrapped up its STS-135 mission and touched down for the last time.

With the shuttles retired, the United States is now completely dependent on Russian Soyuz vehicles to ferry American astronauts to and from the International Space Station. NASA wants private spaceflight companies to take over this taxi service eventually, but that likely won't happen until 2015 at the earliest, officials have said.

A number of observers seem unwilling to accept this four- or five-year gap in American human spaceflight capabilities. One possible solution they offer is bringing the shuttle back.

For example, former Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan suggested as much last month in his testimony before this same House Science Committee, saying the nation should "get the shuttle out of the garage."

And at the same September hearing, Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon, maintained that proposals to continue flying the shuttle under commercial contract "should be carefully evaluated prior to allowing them [the shuttles] to be rendered 'not flightworthy' and their associated ground facilities to be destroyed."

Shuttles are museum-bound

House Science Committee member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) raised the possibility of reviving the shuttles again Wednesday, but Dyer shot it down.

And fellow panelist Thomas Stafford, chairman of the International Space Station Advisory Committee, was similarly bearish on the prospect, citing the time it would take to ramp up the shuttle's infrastructure once again.

For example, each space shuttle launch requires a huge expendable orange fuel tank to be built. There are no such tanks left, and restarting production of the tanks at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana would be difficult.

"One of the long poles in the tent is that external tank," Stafford said. "And that would probably take about two years to start up."

The current condition of the orbiters also makes it unlikely that they'll ever fly again. NASA technicians have been prepping Atlantis and its sister shuttles Discovery and Endeavour for their retirement roles as museum showpieces ever since they touched down. Already, some components of the orbiters that may harbor toxic residues, such as their main engines, have been removed. Other hardware has been taken off for potential use on future spacecraft.

Atlantis will head to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, Endeavour is bound for the California Science Center in Los Angeles and Discovery will end up at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

And NASA has already handed Endeavour's keys over to the California Science Center, so even the space agency is ready to say its goodbyes.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA Launches Satellite Command Game for Kids (SPACE.com)

NASA has launched an interactive, educational video game called NetworKing that gives kids an insider's perspective into how astronauts, mission controllers and scientists communicate during space missions.

NetworKing can be played online by installing a small browser plugin or can be downloaded to a computer for offline play. Developed by staff at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., the game depicts how the Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) network operates.

Players start small with one a single command base on Earth and can take on several clients who are operating Near Earth Network satellites. As they gain scientific and technological expertise, manage their network’s capacity and respond to calls for repair, they can construct a larger and more efficient network.

With enough resources, players can acquire more complex clients, such as the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope and the Kepler mission, and move into deep space.

Brief interactive tutorials are provided at the beginning of play and additional prompts will appear as play progresses if the system detects an action is needed on the part of the player.

In conjunction with NetworKing, the 3D Resources website also links visitors to the Station Spacewalk Interactive Game and the SCaN Interactive Demo that demonstrate the interaction between SCaN's ground-and-space facilities and NASA spacecraft.

To play the NetworKing game, go here.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, sister site to SPACE.com. Follow TechNewsDaily on Twitter @TechNewsDaily or on Facebook.

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