The Great Beyond

After years of disappointment (for me, anyway) the Space Elevator Games has got a winner! Yes, NASA will have to open its purse and pay up.

To recap: the Space Elevator Games is a competition supported by the Spaceward Foundation with cash prizes donated by NASA. It’s all about making a space elevator to go into space. Easy so far. Since 2005 there has been an (almost) annual competition for teams demonstrating some of the integral parts of a space elevator. These include: a tether strong, thin and light enough to reach many hundreds of kilomteres into space and not snap; a climber to clamber up the tether; a way of powering the climber from the ground.

No team had managed to win any of the prize money in the first three competitions. Then last year difficulties finding a venue meant that the games were postponed until various times throughout this year. Between 4 and 6 November (i.e. right now) at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center the climber/power beaming event is happening.

And guess what, someone managed to win a prize! Yes, on the first day of the competition LaserMotive, a team from Seattle, managed to beam a laser at the underside of a platform which powered it so that it could scoot up a 900m long piece of cable in the allotted time required to be eligible for a prize - 4 minutes, 2 seconds. This qualifies the team for the portion of the prize put aside for being able to travel faster than 2 metres per second, which could be up to $900,000 according to reports.

The other two teams in round one, the University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team, and the Kansas City Space Pirates, didn’t make it.

The news of the successful attempt has spread far, with stories. Amongst others, at the Guardian, the Telegraph, Discover and the AP.

There are two more rounds as the competition continues today and tomorrow, we’ll keep you posted. But if you feel so inclined, you can keep up yourself on Twitter, or at the Spaceward Foundation's live coverage.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 05, 2009
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Ever since the end of the Cold War, the division of the Pentagon responsible for launching a massive nuclear (counter)attack has been at loose ends. All those early-warning radars and space surveillance networks don't seem quite so important without the threat of Soviet warheads coming over the horizon line.

But it looks like US Strategic Command (formerly Strategic Air Command) may have a new mission—space traffic controller. Ever since the collision of a US Iridium satellite with a defunct Russian military communications satellite back in February, StratCom has stepped up its efforts to monitor the increasingly crowded space known as low-earth orbit.

On Tuesday, General Kevin Chilton, the head of StratCom, announced that the organization is tracking some 800 manoeuvrable satellites on a daily basis for possible collisions. StratCom hopes to add another 500 objects by the end of the year.

That's pretty impressive, but it’s a long way from comprehensive: the Air Force estimates that there are around 20,000 satellites, spent rocket stages and other objects whizzing around earth. That's up from 14,000 just a few years ago.

Iridium

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on November 05, 2009
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The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has snapped the Phoenix lander encased in carbon dioxide frost on the surface of the Red Planet.

“The amount of carbon dioxide frost is increasing as late winter transitions to early spring, so the layer of frost is getting thicker in each image, slowly encasing the lander,” says NASA. “The maximum thickness was expected to be on the order of tens of centimetres, which would have reached its peak in September 2009.”

Whether Phoenix will live up to its name remains to be seen. It stopped communicating with Earth last November and NASA will start listening in 2010 to see if it is able to re-establish contact after the frost melts.

Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 05, 2009
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Any day now, the non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) will launch a high-altitude balloon with a rocket tied to the bottom from a ship in the Black Sea.

Actually its three rockets tied in what one reader creatively describes as "nunchuck staging". When the balloon reaches altitude, the first of the string of rockets will fire, carrying a small probe on a short suborbital trip. If all goes well, this proof-of-concept mission will pave the way for a launch balloon-based moon launch.

It's an unusual, some might argue slightly crazy, approach to rocketeering. But Bogdan Sburlea, ARCA's Project Manager, thinks it will work. He graciously agreed to answer some questions about this unorthodox proof-of-concept rocket, known as Helen.

How are you planning on attaching the Helen’s stages together? Will you use cable? Rope?

We will use cables of different diameters, the cable from the balloon to the first stage being the thickest.

How will you separate each stage when it has finished firing?

Actually, the separation will not take place after the previous stage finished firing. We will have about two seconds of simultaneous firing for stage one and two and later on for stage two and three. There are two reasons. The first is to avoid chaotic tensions in the cables. Firing the next stage before the previous stage shuts down means that there will be no moment in time when the tension in the cable becomes zero. The second reason is to avoid a collision between the stages.

Yes, the previous stage will become unstable during these few moments and will alter its trajectory. It will be enough to avoid a collision with the next stage. For separation, we use a pneumatic system for stages two and 3.

Are you worried that pendulum motion (swinging from side-to-side) might cause the rocket to become unstable?

This is not a concern for us, we modelled it and it works. If we are talking about the risks, that's a different story. There are associated risks with many critical activities, but we hope that we covered everything.

How high do you hope the rocket will carry the test vehicle? Will it go into orbit?

No, it will not. This is just a test. We need to check the launch from the water, the usage of world's largest solar balloon, not to mention the stabilization method and the strange position of the stages. We've got enough things to test; reaching orbit is not an objective for this launch.

How much have you spent developing the Helen? Who is paying?

We decided not to disclose the budget for the moment. There are many sources for the current budget, sponsorships and donations.

Do you have popular support in Romania?

Yes, we do. Many people are interested in what we do.

What will you do if the launch fails?

We will continue. Did SpaceX quit after the first failure? Or after the second failure?

Do you really think it will work?

Yes, we do. We have a huge advantage by being a small, private company: we can afford to test this.

When do you hope to get to the moon?

Before Google Lunar X Prize ends. We will do our best.

If you haven't seen it already (and chances are if you're a regular reader, you have), here's a video showing the Helen's flight plan:

Continue reading "EXCLUSIVE: Romania's lunar ballooners speak!" »

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on November 04, 2009
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NASA’s Cassini mission has sent back this rather cool picture of Enceladus, taken as the space probe plunged through the plume of water erupting from the moon’s south pole yesterday.

“The spacecraft is going to approach within about 100 kilometres (62 miles) of the surface,” said mission scientist Bonnie Buratti before the fly-through. “We’ve been closer before (25 kilometres or 15 miles), but we’ve never plunged quite so deeply into the heart of the plume.”

[hat tip elakdawalla]

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 03, 2009
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Astrophysicists have discovered that star-forming regions in nearby galaxies shine brightly with gamma-rays -- yet more evidence that supernovae are a driving engine behind cosmic rays, the particles that continuously bombard the Earth. The results were announced today by the Fermi gamma ray space telescope team, which is holding a symposium this week in Washington DC to celebrate its one-year results.

The Fermi team looked at a nearby satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and found gamma-rays -- the most energetic part of the electromagnetic spectrum -- emanating from a known starburst region. This suggests that the life-and-death fury in these regions -- strong winds from massive, short-lived and hot stars, and shock waves from supernovae explosions -- is responsible for accelerating cosmic rays, which in turn create a gamma-ray signal. Cosmic rays are protons or other ionized particles, and they create light in the form of similarly high-energy gamma rays when they collide with other material.

Team member Jürgen Knödlseder, of the Center for the Study of Space Radiation in Toulouse, France, said he was surprised to see how well confined the gamma-rays were to the starburst region. In the Milky Way, cosmic rays have been whipped into a diffuse halo by galactic magnetic fields. Knödlseder says that perhaps the chaotic region creates an intense and tangled magnetic field that keeps the cosmic rays in place.

Scientists from the Veritas observatory -- a ground-based gamma-ray observatory -- chipped in with results from a two year survey. These showed that gamma-rays of even higher energy than those detected by Fermi are streaming in from two nearby galaxies with known star-forming regions. This suggests that not only are star-forming regions responsible for generating the gamma-rays (via cosmic rays), but that the regions can make very high energy particles indeed.
Image: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

Posted by Eric Hand on November 02, 2009
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Progress is being made in the Northrop Grumman lunar lander challenge, part of the X-prize to And you can see it!

Over the weekend attempts were made to collect some of the loot in the prize purse, and Team Masten Space Systems, from Mojave, California, succeeded. This bags the company $1 million for their successful take off, flying around and landing again on a simulated lunar surface.

Here a short film of the second attempt.

Another valiant attempt was made by Unreasonable Rocket, a father-and-son team consisting of Paul and Paul Breed (according to NASA Watch). Their vehicle made a great attempt at the slightly less hard level 1 test (no fake lunar rocks and obstacles in the way, just a flat landing pad) but ran out of fuel at the last minute, causing it to land with a thump and break a leg.

Check it out below the fold.

Continue reading "Lunar lunacy - X-prize lifts off!" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 02, 2009
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Over the weekend, Romanians loaded the much-vaunted (on this blog anyway) moon-balloon aboard the naval frigate NSSL 281 Constanta. Here are some photos of the loading (more here).

From these pictures, it's clear to me that the non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) is serious like a heart attack about this moon-balloon plan. If all goes well, a critical test flight validating the moon-balloon concept will fly later this week over the Black Sea. I've put some questions to their spokesperson about the balloon strategy, and I'll post them as soon as I get them!

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on November 02, 2009
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Here's the latest in a rash of scientific legal trouble: A University of Florida researcher and his wife have been arrested on charges of defrauding NASA, the Air Force and the US Navy out of millions.

Samim Anghaie, a professor and head of the University of Florida's Innovation Nuclear Space Power and Propulsion Institute, was indicted on 50 counts of wire fraud and 17 counts of money laundering, along with two charges of conspiracy. His wife, Sousan, was also charged with making false statements.

In February the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raided Anghaie's offices at the University of Florida. They were reportedly looking for evidence that Anghaie had funneled money out of 13 grants totaling US$3.4 million.

According to this article in the Orlando Sentinel, the Anghanies now stand accused of creating fake employment records and depositing paychecks in their own back accounts and the accounts of their sons.

Meanwhile, the couple allegedly ripped off the work of graduate students and postdocs and passed it off as the research of their company, New Era Technology. They also are accused of using data from other laboratories, including one in Russia.

In other scientific lockdown news, lunar researcher Stewart Nozette is being held without bond on espionage charges. Nozette, a long-time NASA and Department of Energy consultant, was arrested in October after he allegedly gave secrets to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli spy.

This hasn't been Nozette's only trouble with the law. The Washington Post reports that he pleaded guilty in January to defrauding NASA and the Department of Defense out of $265,205 between 2000 and 2006. He reportedly used the money to pay off old debts and to cover costs for his swimming pool.

Nozette has pleaded not guilty to the latest charge of attempted espionage. According to the AP the Justice Department could seek the death penalty in the case.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on November 02, 2009
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The words Russia and nuclear always stoke the fires of hacks who hark back to the cold war. But this time the finger hovering over the red button will be launching a rocket to Mars, rather than a missile to end civilisation.

So news that Russia is planning a nuclear-powered rocket to get men to Mars (and back again?) has got widespread attention. The report comes from Russian news agency RIA Novosti who have a short account of Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov’s address to a meeting of the commission on the modernization of the Russian economy. The spacecraft is still being designed, Perminov is reported as saying, with final plans finished by 2012. The cost will be at least 17 billion rubles, or $580 million.

Beyond that the report is patchy, but thanks to Rachel Courtland over at New Scientist and an AP story we can learn that at the moment rockets can be powered by the heat given off by certain decaying radioactive isotopes, or by using nuclear fission to generate electricity.

The Russian reactor is probably going to produce a megawatt or more of electrical power from a fission reactor. This kind of reactor/engine will be much more efficient once in space, but could kill the crew from exposure to massive doses of radiation on lift off. And according to the NS story, the budget really won’t buy much in terms of fission-reactor-powered-rockets. And the Register suggests that Russia will struggle to gather that 17 billion rubles regardless of whether it will be enough. Does Lada make rockets?

Image: A Lada car, from Wikimedia Commons

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on October 30, 2009
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A parachute failure has left a serious dent in part of the Ares 1-X rocket that NASA test fired on Wednesday.

Although NASA announced the launch as a success, it seems one of three parachutes meant to ensure a stage of the booster rocket drifted slowly back down failed. Although the chute deployed correctly, it later deflated.

“At this point, we don’t know why,” says NASA spokeswoman Jennifer Morcone (Florida Today). “We’ll recover the booster and the hardware and then figure out what went wrong on deployment.”

Divers who recovered the rocket stage took impressive photos of a seriously large dent. They are meant to deliver the stage to NASA today, where analysis of what went wrong will begin.

“So until that point, everything is probably speculation,” says shuttle integration manager Mike Moses (Space.com).

The launch was also slightly marred by the fact that the dummy upper stage of the rocket tumbled rather than continuing gracefully nose first (CNET, WAFF).

Image: United Space Alliance

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 30, 2009
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NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden isn't afraid let feelings and emotions reign at NASA. Speaking at a NASA Advisory Council meeting on Thursday at Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, Bolden choked up after viewing a short clip of the Ares 1-X test launch. "You don't launch a new rocket every day," he said, his voice breaking. "That was very special to me." It's not the first time that Bolden's emotions have gotten the best of him. NASA's Captain Kirk is clearly different from former administrator Mike Griffin, who once referred to himself as Spock.
Image: NASA

Posted by Eric Hand on October 30, 2009
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No typo there, they really are shooting for the moon in a balloon. At least that's the plan of the non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA), which is using an oldie but sort-of-goodie idea for getting something into space: Tie a rocket to a balloon, launch the balloon and then launch the rocket from the stratosphere.

The US briefly tried this strategy in the 1950s, but they eventually abandoned it in favour of more stable launch pads, like the one that the Ares 1-X used. There's a few advantages to the more concrete approach: It's easier to orient your rocket from the ground, you don't have to worry about it blowing away, and critically, it's not going to fall on anybody.

It's in part due to that last safety concern that a Romanian frigate is carrying ARCA's Helen test rocket into the Black Sea. The Helen is a tour-de-force in Transylvanian technology. Rather than launching a rocket with a complicated staging system, they're just tying their stages together with string. When the first stage runs out they'll cut the cord and fire the second, and the third, and onward until they deliver their payload (which appears to be some sort of orange football or rugby ball, depending on your nationality).

The Helen, Romania's third test flight, could launch as soon as tomorrow. Stay tuned moon and vampire lovers alike for all your ARCA coverage!

Credit: ARCA

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on October 28, 2009
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NASA's successor to the space shuttle, the Ares 1, has successfully completed it's first experimental test flight. The Ares 1-X lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 11:30AM local time after a morning of weather delays. Roughly 40 km above the Atlantic ocean the first stage of the rocket successfully separated, marking the end of the test.

The successful test comes at a critical time for NASA, which is under enormous budgetary pressures. Earlier this autumn, an independent presidential panel suggested it might be cheaper to cancel the Ares 1 vehicle and move the money into commercial development.

NASA TV is replaying the launch for anyone who wants a look.

credit: NASA

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on October 28, 2009
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NASA's test of the Ares 1-X, the prototype space shuttle replacement, has been called off due to weather. Clouds over the site raised the risk of triboelectrification--a build-up of static electricity on the rocket's body as it flies through weather that can lead to communications problems. Winds at the launch pad were also a factor.

Mission planners will try again at 8:00AM Eastern Time tomorrow.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on October 27, 2009
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America has always had a good line in space rhetoric. Khrushchev may have got their first, but Kennedy said it best.

This hasn’t escaped the notice of the Augustine commission, which has been examining NASA’s human spaceflight programme (see: Presidential panel narrows NASA’s options). Today the commission put out its final report, with the title page stating it was “Seeking A Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation”. There’s even a quote from Kennedy inside.

But this is not a report brimming with hope. This is how it opens:

The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources.

It goes on:

It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations. Such is the case today.

What should be done about this then?

Continue reading "US human spaceflight ‘on an unsustainable trajectory’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 23, 2009
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Attempts to free the Mars rover Spirit are getting more realistic. After five months sitting stuck in sticky ground, engineers back on Earth have moved on with their tests, this time going to a different room to practice moving the replica Spirit in its sand box at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.

This means that the team can only move the replica rover based on data and images received back from it – just like as happens with the Mars-bound rover. They’ve been sending Spirit two days of instructions at a time, to do in double-quick time.

Meanwhile, according to the press release, an independent panel has been called for to review the plans to try and drive Spirit out of its sticky situation. This panel will form and deliberate from the end of this month. Within two weeks after the results of the review, Spirit will “probably begin extraction moves”.

We’ll update you as soon as we know more. Let’s hope that this will lead to a decision to try and free the rover. Better to die trying than not try at all I say. It would be unbearable to see Spirit destined to be a Martian weather station for the rest of its days.

Image: Taken by the genuine Spirit, of its arm, credit NASA/JPL-Caltech

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on October 21, 2009
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NASA has rolled out its Ares I-X rocket in preparation for a planned 27 October launch date.

The rocket – a test flight for vehicle planned to replace the Space Shuttle – is now on the pad.

Will Ares ever actually heave humans into space though? Both the Guardian and the Times suggest that Obama may cut the expensive project.

Nature’s Eric Hand has also looked at the possibility, see: NASA’s Moon goals under review and Presidential panel narrows NASA's options.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 20, 2009
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posted on behalf of Geoff Brumfiel

A prominent scientist who led a mission to find water on the Moon has been arrested on charges of espionage by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Stewart Nozette, a 52-year-old former government physicist, allegedly tried to sell details of US missile detection satellites in exchange for cash. Nozette's worked for pretty much every military shop in the US government including the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the Defense Advanced Research Project's Administration (DARPA). He also served on president George H. W. Bush's space council and worked with NASA.

He's well known in scientific circles for conceiving the 1994 Clementine mission, which used a military test satellite to discover some of the first traces of water on the Moon's South Pole. More recently, he has been a co-investigator on Chandrayaan-1, the Indian Moon mission, and on an instrument aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This isn't the first time Nozette has been in trouble with the government. According to press reports, a small non-profit Nozette ran came under investigation by NASA in 2006 for misusing funds to pay for utilities, three mortgages and use of the La Jolla Tennis Club.

This time the charges are more serious. According to a 16th October affidavit signed by FBI agent Leslie Martell, Nozette was contacted last month by an undercover officer posing as an agent working for the Israeli Intelligence Agency, Mossad. According to transcripts reprinted in the affidavit, Nozette agreed to accept money in exchange for his past access to top secret documents.

Work for Israel was nothing new for Nozette, the affidavit says that between 1998 and 2008, an Israeli aerospace company "wholly owned by the Government of the State of Israel" paid Nozette some $225,000. "I thought I was working for you already," Nozette told the agent in a transcript reproduced in the affidavit. "I mean that's what I always thought, the [foreign company] was just a front."

In September and October, Nozette allegedly provided details of a "prototype overhead collection system" to the FBI agent in exchange for cash payments of $2,000 and $9,000 dollars. He will appear later today in United States District court for the District of Columbia to face a single charge of attempted espionage.

UPDATE - read the full story here: Moon scientist arrested on spy charges

NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 20, 2009
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A huge haul of exoplanetary treasure has just been revealed. To those of you who’ve read more stories about exoplanets than you’ve had hot dinners, this news is unlikely to send you into throes of excitement. Neverthless, the haul of 32 new exoplanets announced by the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) team is significant (press release).

The planets may not be the biggest, fattest, smallest or Earthiest, but they show that the chances of us finding Earth-like planets are pretty high. Stéphane Udry from the Geneva Observatory, who announced tha findings during a conference in Porto, Portugal, says that the HARPS results show that astronomers are going about this in the right way so far: “We know that close to 40% of solar-type start have low mass planets. Low mass planets are everywhere, basically,” he says.

The search, done by the HARPS team on the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6 metre telescope at La Silla, in Chile’s Atacama desert, turned up two candidate planets that are six times the mass of Earth, and two planet candidates that are five times the mass of the Earth. The smallest exoplanet found so far was also by the HARPS team, and was about two Earth masses (see “Exoplanets lighten up“).

Continue reading "Exoplanets, exoplanets, everywhere" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on October 19, 2009
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The massive bubble of influence for the Sun, within which the Earth and the rest of the Solar System whirl around the galaxy, has an unexpected shape, say scientists for NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), who report their first results today in Science.
The heliosphere is the space created by a steady stream of particles from the Sun, called the solar wind, that slam into galactic particles and reach a standstill. Here's Nature's kitchen-sink analogy. IBEX measures the neutral particles created at this collisional boundary.
Most thought the heliosphere had a raindrop shape, with the nose of the drop pointing in the direction of the Sun's galactic velocity. Instead, IBEX detected a strange, unexpected ribbon-like shape. It is also interesting that Voyager 1 and 2 -- which measured the heliosphere's boundary as they burst through the bubble 30 years after their launch -- just barely missed this snaking feature on the sky.

Posted by Eric Hand on October 16, 2009
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The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera which is currently whizzing round the Red Planet aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned this rather awesome picture of sand dunes on the surface.

‘Bad Astronomer’ Phil Plait had a chat with HiRISE’s Alfred McEwen and has a nice explanation of what is actually going on here:

…what [makes] this picture so spectacular are the graceful blue-gray swirls arcing across the dunes. These are caused by dust devils, which are a bit like mini-tornadoes.
…
The important thing to note here is that the sand in the craters of Mars is actually dark grey in colour, since it’s made of basalt. The reason it looks red in pictures is because covering the sand is a thin layer of much finer dust, and the dust is what’s red. When a dust devil moves over the Martian surface, it can pick up the very light dust particles, but not the heavier sand grains. So those blue-grey swirls are tracks where the dust devil has vacuumed up the dust, revealing the darker sand underneath.

Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 16, 2009
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NASA has come over all violent for today’s Moon mission, where a rocket stage has smashed into the surface of our satellite, hopefully sending up a plume of scientific goodness.

“This marks the end of the LCROSS flight mission,” NASA broadcast just moments ago. A shepherding spacecraft observed the impact of a proceeding spent rocket stage and then itself smashed into the Moon.

The actual live impact was a bit of a bust, with nothing very clear on the video feed. Still, the Moon has been well and truly hit.

Previous missions have also used ‘impactors’ to kick up Moon dust and help us see what the Moon is made of (hint: not cheese), but today’s LCROSS impact has been characterized by a bombastic tone. This is not an impact, according to the media. Instead, NASA has BOMBED THE MOON.

This tone hasn’t been helped by incidents such as the software lead for LCROSS tweeting, “Red Leader, this is Gold Leader. We’re starting our attack run now.”

In addition, the space agency has had to contend with conspiracy theories about today’s impact, including that it is ‘bombing the Moon’ to destroy evidence of a secret base.

A full news story on the impact will be up later today on Nature News. In the mean time I shall leave you with these words from Rush Limbaugh:

If there are smarter people than us out there -- and, of course, goes without saying they would have to be -- and they have brought peace throughout the universe except for earth and we're bombing the moon, this could set up a retaliatory attack! You know, wait 'til the meteorites organize when they hear about this, folks.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 09, 2009
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You can exhale now. The near-Earth asteroid Apophis has even less of a chance of hitting Earth than before, NASA has announced. The new calculations lower the chances of doomsday, for a 2036 close approach, by a factor of five for the 270-metre asteroid: from 1 in 45,000 to 1 in 250,000. The calculations were based on observations from a Hawaiian telescope and were announced at a conference in Puerto Rico -- the location of that famous asteroid super-spotter, the Arecibo radio telescope, which also factored into the new probability estimate.
Initially, Apophis was thought to have a 2.7 percent chance of impacting Earth in 2029. Though that has been ruled out, the asteroid will still swing closer than some Earth-orbiting satellites, and that whip-around may end up altering its course. That's why the Planetary Society sponsored a contest to a design a small tracking spacecraft which would allow more precise measurements of its path.
Image: UH/IA

Posted by Eric Hand on October 08, 2009
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US President Barack Obama is having a star party at the White House on Wednesday, the same day he awards the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

A White House advisory says that Wednesday evening, " the President and First Lady will host an event at the White House for middle-school students to highlight the President’s commitment to science, engineering and math education as the foundation of this nation’s global technological and economic leadership and to express his support for astronomy in particular—for its capacity to promote a greater awareness of our place in the universe, expand human knowledge, and inspire the next generation by showing them the beauty and mysteries of the night sky."

Organizers of the International Year of Astronomy helped push this event through. If you know of other sitting presidents who participated in astronomical events -- other than the ever-popular chat-with-astronauts-in-space -- please leave them in the comments thread below. Bill Clinton did go to the Arecibo telescope in June 2008, but of course long after he was out of office.

Posted by Alex Witze on October 02, 2009
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Over on New Scientist's website, Rachel Courtland has done a nice piece about some big trouble for the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) project atop Mount Haleakala in Hawaii.

Pan-STARRS is an ambitious project to digitally survey the night sky. When it's completed, four mirrors will scan the sky for killer asteroids, distant planets, and all sorts of stuff. The massive digital database it produces will also be able to provide insights into big cosmological questions, like the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. In many ways, it will compete with a much larger project known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). According to the Pan-STARRS website, it hopes to do "some" of LSST's science before the larger telescope came online and at a quarter of the cost.

The two projects couldn't be more different. The LSST is a giant 8.4 meter survey telescope planned for Cerro Pachón in Chile at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. It has been peer-reviewed and is being methodically developed through a public-private funding consortium.

By contrast, Pan-STARRS is funded through a budget earmark from Senator Dan Inouye (Democrat-Hawaii). For those unschooled in the ways of Washington, an earmark is essentially a giveaway by a member of congress to their constituency and in this case it means that the Air Force is required to provide the project with around US$10 million each year. While LSST hums and haws over its design, Pan-STAARS has been slapping together a 1.4-billion-pixel digital camera and optics for a prototype telescope. The astronomers involved use whatever they can find, including parts from E-Bay.

For the moment, it seems that the Pan-STAARS approach isn't working—the telescope is taking images that are about half as sharp as they should be. The team has just begun taking their prototype apart in hopes of fixing the problem. According to Courtland's article, the main problem seems to be with the joints holding up the telescope's secondary mirror.

That doesn't mean that Pan-STAARS won't beat LSST in the end. The latest repairs should only take a few weeks, and the larger telescope is not expected to come online until 2017.

Image: Brett Simison

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on October 02, 2009
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The European Space Agency has released this bubbling snap from performance testing on its Herschel spacecraft. The SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver) and PACS (Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer) instruments trained their eyes in parallel on the Southern Cross constellation in our Milky Way galaxy. Each uses slightly different wavelengths of light, and their views are overlaid in this composite image. It reveals cold interstellar material "condensing in a continuous and interconnected maze of filaments and strings of newly-forming stars in all stages of development," says ESA.

Herschel's third instrument, the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HiFi), is still out of action, though the mission is due to start routine operations next week.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on October 02, 2009
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NASA’s Mercury probe Messenger suffered a glitch during its third and final fly-by of the planet yesterday, meaning it was unable to collect all the data researchers had hoped for.

The probe’s mission team are being upbeat about the flyby though, saying Messenger did gain the vital gravity assist it needs to enter orbit around Mercury in 2011.

“With more than 90 percent of the planet’s surface already imaged, Messenger’s science team had drafted an ambitious observation campaign designed to tease out additional details from features uncovered during the first two flybys,” says a statement. “But an unexpected signal loss prior to closest approach hampered those plans.”

Apparently, a glitch in the probe’s power systems tripped a fault management system and the spacecraft went into safe mode. Messenger still managed to grab data on its approach to the planet, says Eric Finnegan of the Johns Hopkins University.

Everything now appears to be back to normal on board.

Of course, things being what they are, Messenger has its own first-person twitter feed, where it noted, “Just in case you were wondering, I’m OK. There was a slight hiccup, but I’m doing well. All of my data has been downloaded.”

Images (left to right): four days out, 55 hours out, 44 hours out, uh oh! All images: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington except blue screen of death, via Wikipedia

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 01, 2009
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Hey! There’s ice on Mars!

Just over a year ago the Great Beyond noted the frequency of stories telling us that water existed on Mars. Well, we now have another story saying the same thing. This time, observations from HiRISE, the high resolution camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have shown ice below the surface, revealed after meteorites have walloped into the planet’s surface.

The ice was spotted when it was first uncovered, and monitored for 200 days. Just as was expected, the ice faded away and turned to vapour.

So ok, maybe I’m a bit cynical about being bored hearing about ice on Mars. This one does seem to push our understanding a bit further because this ice is much closer to the equator than would have been expected.

They also found that the ice was purer than expected, only about one percent of it was dirt. This is important because pure ice forms differently to mucky ice, and now gives Mars scientists some more data to work with the try and understand the geology of Mars, and the reasons for ice and water being there below the surface.

The work, by Shane Byrne from the University of Arizona and his colleagues was published in Science. As always, ice on Mars is big news and has been picked up a’plenty (LA times, CSM, Ottawa Citizen which, incidentally finds the news shocking).

It seems this has been a good couple of weeks for NASA and quests for water in non-Earthly bodies.

Image: NASA

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on September 25, 2009
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The first antennae of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) began the array's slow invasion of Chajnantor, a 5000-metre high plateau in the Chilean Andes, aboard a bright yellow crawler yesterday. The final ALMA observatory will link 66 such antennae in changing configurations on the 5000-metre-high plateau. The site's dry, thin air will enable the observatory to make very precise measurements of millimetre-wavelength and submillimetre-wavelength sources in the universe, including "cold clouds of gas and dust where new stars are being born and remote galaxies towards the edge of the observable universe," according to the ESO.

Photo: ESO

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 23, 2009
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European spacecraft Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce) begins its finely tuned gravitational measurements this week.

The BBC explains that the mission will track ocean movement and should improve on existing measurements of the Earth's surface and its gravitational field--known as the geoid. Low solar activity and a calm upper atmosphere this week mean that the ion-powered spacecraft can fly just about 254.75 kilometres above the surface, plus or minus 50 metres, even lower than the 268 kilometres mission planners hoped for. The lower it flies, the more sensitive its measurements, which can detect changes in gravity as small as one 10-trillionth of gravity at the surface.

For Nature's previous coverage, see Gravity mission to launch (Nature News, 11 March 2009) and on GOCE is Go! (The Great Beyond, 17 March 2009) from the time of Goce's launch from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. In case the science proves overwhelming, the European Space Agency has provided a helpful visual demonstration that Goce, (spacecraft, right) will map the gravity (represented here by apples, center) of the Earth (bottom).

Continue reading "Goce tunes in to geoid" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 23, 2009
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The Cassini spacecraft science team is taking advantage of equinox sunlight on Saturn to study its gossamer rings. But they're finding the rings aren't quite as delicate as they expected.

"We thought the plane of the rings was no taller than two stories of a modern-day building and instead we've come across walls more than two miles high," Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging chief at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, told NASA's press office. "Isn't that the most outrageous thing you could imagine? It truly is like something out of science fiction."

Continue reading "Equinox glimpse of Saturn's rings dazzles astronomers" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 22, 2009
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NASA seeded a cloud high in the night sky Saturday night using a Black Brant XII rocket. The rocket's 4th stage released exhaust gases at around 278 kilometres, where they created a short-lived artificial cloud which reflected sunlight and was visible for hundreds of kilometres up and down the east coast of the US.

The space agency regularly observes naturally-occurring cases of noctilucent clouds using its AIM satellite, according to Space.com. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Department of Defense's Space Test Program managed this weekend's Controlled Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE), which was the first man-made noctilucent cloud.

Continue reading "Seeded cloud lit the night sky" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 21, 2009
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The European Space Agency released images from Planck's 2-week test run today. The results of this test will help astronomers calibrate the spacecraft, which contains instruments cooled to 0.1 degrees Kelvin, for its upcoming 15-month observing run.

Planck began its first-light test run on 13 August, measuring 15-degree strips of the sky in nine different frequencies. It is tasked with making two all-sky maps of the cosmic microwave background, which is the background noise left over from the early universe.

Continue reading "Planck tunes in to cosmic noise" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 17, 2009
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Astronomers from a major European planet-hunting team announced improved measurements of the density of a small exoplanet at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany, confirming earlier guesses that CoRoT-7b is more Earth-like than Jupiter-like.

The zippy little planet, previously estimated at 5-10 times the Earth's mass with a radius less than twice the Earth's, was first announced in February 2009 (Tiniest exoplanet found, Nature News, 3 February 2009). Today's more complete analysis appears in Astronomy and Astrophysics, in which the authors report that CoRoT7-7b's mass is likely just about five times that of the Earth. The study relies on 70 hours of spectroscopic observations over several months to more firmly establish the relative masses of the host star CoRoT-7 and its planetary companions, and also reveals the presence of a second rocky planet.

Continue reading "Exoplanet's BMI hints at rocky surface" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 16, 2009
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A private prototype built by Armadillo Aerospace completed a mock lunar mission in Texas yesterday. The 850-kilogram craft took off, flew 50 metres, landed, and returned, completing the 180-second flight time required by NASA's Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. So far, Armadillo Aerospace is the only company to have claimed any money ($350,000) from the 2-tier prize system, for completing a shorter flight on easier terrain, which Nature reported on The Great Beyond last year.

The prize for the second tier will be $1 million, but two other private companies will also attempt the challenge this autumn, according to NASA. Several science and tech news outlets are carrying the story (Best title: "Flying armadillo has the power to escape the moon" New Scientist. Cool photo: Space Fellowship). To get the story from the horse's mouth: check out Armadillo Aerospace's news page. More pretty pictures at their gallery.

Photo: Looks like Sputnik. Armadillo Aerospace via Popular Science.

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 15, 2009
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The drama over NASA's future continues. Just a few days after the Augustine commission delivered a report that puts the agency's new moon rockets in doubt, Alliant Techsystems conducted an Earth-rattling test of the booster that would power one of those rockets, known as the Ares 1. The ground test of the five stage booster, which spewed the exhaust of 1.4 million pounds of fuel across the Utah desert, is a prelude to the Ares 1-X flight test that is supposed to go up this autumn. In the wake of the Augustine report, which said that the Ares 1 plan is dead without more money, former NASA administrator Mike Griffin sent around an impassioned email, exhorting leaders to give credit to the actual hardware that's being built for Ares 1. Its "technical problems are on display because actual work is being accomplished, whereas other options have no problems because no work is being done," Griffin wrote.
Image: NASA, Walt Lindblom

Posted by Eric Hand on September 11, 2009
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Japan successfully launched its space station resupply ship today*, aboard a new rocket.

“We would like to express our profound appreciation for the cooperation and support of all related personnel and organizations that helped contribute to the successful launch,” said the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in a statement.

The Japanese resupply vehicle is, says CNET, “a critical milestone for the post-shuttle space station program”. While Russia and Europe have their own space station resupply vehicles, the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle has a pressurized section, meaning it can carry things they cannot.

Equally, as AFP points out, this HTV can be modified to carry human beings. Along with the new and more powerful rocket used in this launch, the success strengthens Japan’s position in the space race.

[* At 2:01:46 am Japan Standard Time, so technically yesterday for many time zones.]

Image: JAXA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 11, 2009
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ARCA stands on the eve of lunar domination

The Indian moon probe has failed; the future of the US space programme is in question; low-earth orbit is littered with junk. But at a time when there are so many reasons to say "no" to space, Romania is saying "da!" (that's yes in Romanian).

The brave members of the non-profit Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) are determined to get to the moon in a balloon. Yep, a balloon. According to Xinhua (sadly about the only non-Romanian outfit to cover the story), they are planning a test launch next month!

Regular readers of the blog already know of my moon-balloon obsession. It sounds insane but it's not: The idea is to launch a balloon with a rocket hanging from the bottom. Once at altitude, the rocket will fire, carrying a bizarre beach-ball probe on its glorious mission of seleno-Carpathian conquest.

This rocket-balloon trick was briefly tried by the Americans in the 1950s, but it was eventually abandoned in favor of other kinds of rockets that couldn't be blown off the test range by a strong gust (not kidding!).

ARCA is too bold to be deterred by these problems. Yesterday they announced that their first moon-balloon prototype will launch in October. Once again, they're bristling with innovation: Rather than working with costly staging systems of the sort that keep causing Korean satellites to crash, the Romanians have a plan. They're going to tie the second and third stages to the first with a bit of cable. Once the first stage is done, they'll cut the cable and fire the second. When that runs out, they'll cut the cord and fire the third! If you're in doubt about whether this can work, ARCA has created another incredible video for you to watch that shows just how it will happen (see below).

Once again, there is some method to this madness: The team hopes that the dangling weight of the second stage and payload behind the first will help to stabilize the rocket and keep it pointing straight away from the earth. Assuming all goes well the Romanians will launch a suborbital probe from the Black Sea next month.

Joking aside, there is something about the wacky sincerity of ARCA's plans that makes me really hope this works. I'm very excited to see what will happen!

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on September 10, 2009
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NASA has released the first images from the upgraded Hubble telescope. Looks like the iconic orbiting observatory is working just fine after its May upgrade which saw it get new batteries, gyroscopes and and a thorough overhaul of its instruments.

It also got a new camera and a new spectrograph from the astronauts who spent five days under Hubble's hood. The upgrade, almost certain to be Hubble's last, should keep it producing tip-top images until 2014. It's taken a few months to focus, test and calibrate the instruments, but by the looks of this snap of the Butterfly Nebula, it's been worth the wait.

Still, while everyone is slapping each other on the back, it's worth remembering that it took a hell of a lot of fighting to get the repair done. Over time, a series of glitches had taken their toll on the telescope, and back in 2003, astronomers were already lobbying for Hubble to be serviced to help it live beyond its original decommissioning date of 2010.

The following year, President George W. Bush gave NASA a sweeping new vision for human space exploration which left Hubble as an unfortunate budget casualty - at that stage it was likely to be dead by 2007.

But scientists would not give up on their prized 'scope. The NASA administrator at the time, Sean O'Keefe, said that a manned repair mission was too risky in the wake of the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster, so there was a huge effort to work out whether a robotic servicing mission could do the job.

Nope, said a National Academies panel at the end of 2004 - you need astronauts to do the job. But the NASA budget unveiled the following year had no cash for a manned mission, effectively signing Hubble's death warrant.

It was October 2006 before Hubble's fortunes improved and a manned servicing mission was finally approved.

One key player in the campaigning for Hubble was Barbara Mikulski, Democrat senator for Maryland, now chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. Today, Mikulski gloried in her victory by declaring, "I fought for the Hubble repair mission because Hubble is the people's telescope". Goodness me. Meanwhile, Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said that the telescope is "significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade."

According to NASA, future observations will range from "studying the population of Kuiper Belt objects at the fringe of our solar system to surveying the birth of planets around other stars and probing the composition and structure of extrasolar planet atmospheres."

Posted by Mark Peplow on September 09, 2009
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After yesterday’s scientific poll, the result is in: Chandrayaan-1’s loss has not dented the reputation of ISRO. This is rocket science after all, as has been pointed out by commenters.

Despite the miscalculation of how hot it is on the moon, then, the mission is being seen as a positive experience for India by some. Unfortunately, more bad-sounding news has reached us today via Aviation Week, which has looked at a joint project with Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). This tandem experiment would help look for ice at the Moon’s poles. The first attempt in August wasn’t successful, according to Stewart Nozette, principal investigator on the LRO's Mini-RF, who tells AW that this was because of a pointing problem.

The second attempt for the chance to make use of the two craft at once was about to start when Chandrayaan-1 went silent, scuppering any chance to use the two missions in tandem.

Nozette is not bitter, “ISRO should be congratulated," he told AW. "They did a good job, but the moon is somewhat of a harsh environment."

Image: NASA

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on September 08, 2009
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The saga of India’s ill-fated Moon probe, Chandrayaan-1 continues. We learned in July this year that it took the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) three months to admit some serious instrument failures, and then at the end of August the mission was declared over, when communication with the satellite was lost ten months into a two year mission.

Now, according to the Times of India, the problems with Chandrayaan-1, which was meant to produce a topological and mineralogical map of the Moon, began way before launch. T K Alex, director, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, told the TOI “We assumed that the temperature at 100km above the Moon's surface would be around 75 degrees Celsius. However, it was more than 75 degrees and problems started to surface. We had to raise the orbit to 200km."

So, when in May this year Chandrayaan’s orbit of the Moon was raised from 100 kilometres to 200 kilometres it wasn’t as was explained at the time, to get a better view of the Moon. It was actually to try and cool things down. The temperature problems that arose from not knowing the temperature of the Moon started to cause problems as long ago as November last year, a month after launch.

Chandrayaan-1 must be now seen as a learning experience for ISRO. But a costly experience of $80 million.

Another ISRO official is quoted by the Press Trust of India saying the mission ended because of a bus management problem – a piece of hardware that performs “vital control functions”. This, the official claims could have led to the severing of the radio link between the satellite and Earth.

There is apparently a meeting taking place with scientists involved in the mission to review the performance of the mission (Hindustan Times) and ISRO director S Satish is quoted as being happy with the data that has been collected.

The legacy of this mission is unclear – a second Chandrayaan craft is planned to launch in 2013 and will include a rover to sample lunar rocks and send the data back to an orbiting spacecraft. But surely the failure will have damaged ISRO’s reputation in the eyes of the international space science community. Or not? What do you think?

Image: NASA

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on September 07, 2009
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Thousands of new images snapped over the past few months by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe have just been unveiled.

It’s a treat for those of you who, like me, could spend a happy half-hour just goggling at the beauty of these geological forms, while marvelling at the technical achievement of photographing them and beaming them back to Earth.

Here’s a couple to get you going: ‘Possible Evaporites Near Fan in Coprates Region’ (left) and ‘Crater with Light-Toned Floor and Ejecta Material Near Iani Chaos’ (right).

The rest are here.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Posted by Mark Peplow on September 03, 2009
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Astronomers have found what they say is the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth. The 4,053 metre high-up site, known as Ridge A, has average winter temperatures of -70 degrees Celsius. The air is almost completely free of water, and there is nearly no turbulence in the air-- making for perhaps the best telescope observing conditions on Earth. Astronomers have said before that they want to build telescopes at other plateau sites known as Dome A and Dome C, where a telescope could compete with ones two to three times larger at the existing top sites in Hawaii and Chile. This is all well and good, but you're still going to have to convince astronomers to put on the parkas, go down there and build the things. There are reasons why astronomers like to wear Hawaiian shirts.

Posted by Eric Hand on September 02, 2009
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JAXA, Japan's space exploration agency, has created a strange little applet on its Web site called "Moonbell". It takes topographic data gathered by the agency's Kaguya orbiter, and translates them into patterns of ascending and descending musical notes. You can either follow a pre-ordained orbit through the lunar hills and hollows, or, in "free scratch" mode, carve out your own route across the Moon. Now if only the music wasn't so awful -- it sounds like a drunk knocking his head against a piano keyboard, though I suppose it does reflect the ups and downs of the terrain. Maybe there's a way to link to music a bit more appropriately astral -- something like Brian Eno's Bloom iPhone app?
Image: JAXA

Posted by Eric Hand on September 01, 2009
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So are two of Southern California’s premier scientific institutions doomed by the wildfires currently ravaging the Los Angeles basin?

In the case of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the answer appears to be no. The massive Station Fire, which so far has torched more than 105,000 acres in the mountains north of Los Angeles, has been dancing with the fringes of the municipality of La Cañada Flintridge. That’s where JPL – despite its official mailing address of Pasadena – is actually physically located. But according to city officials, the fire has moved out of the area and is no longer a threat. JPL is reopening today, and mission engineers will start re-operating the NASA rovers on Mars.

The situation is far more dire for the historic Mount Wilson Observatory, which the Station Fire is approaching from the west. Staff there are no doubt remembering the 2003 firestorm that obliterated the major research telescopes on Mt. Stromlo, Australia.

Continue reading "California wildfires creep closer to observatory" »

Posted by Alex Witze on September 01, 2009
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Posted on behalf of K.S. Jayaraman

India’s planned 2-year moon mission, launched last year, ended 14 months prematurely today. Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) have abruptly lost radio contact with the lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1.

ISRO spokesman S. Satish said that attempts to re-establish contact had failed and that the spacecraft may crash any time on the lunar surface. The end of India's first lunar mission comes four months after the onboard device for determining the orientation of the spacecraft started malfunctioning on 26 April.

An ISRO release said that the spacecraft had made more than 3,400 orbits around the moon, sent more than 70,000 images, and had met most of the scientific objectives of the mission.

Posted by Alex Witze on August 29, 2009
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Another day, another new exoplanet acting funny and inspiring headlines that portend the death of physics. This week in Nature, astronomers reported a pretty cool find: WASP-18b is 10 times the mass of Jupiter, 50 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun, and whizzes around its star in less than a day. So how can something so big dart around so close to its star?

There are a few explanations: A) the planet might have been caught "moments" (about a million years) before its plasmatic death; B) the star WASP-18 may exert weaker tidal forces than we'd expect; or C) we need to rewrite the laws of physics.

How about...C? Both the LA Times print edition and the Independent declare that the planet "Defies the Laws of Physics" (the Times' website has a more toned-down version, describing the situation as a "puzzle"), and Scientific American claims the planet "Shouldn't Exist", though to be fair, so did the Nature press release.

On a more scientific note, scenario A seems more likely than B, and a number of news stories provide a fair breakdown of the two (AP, Science, National Geographic). Option B is more tantalizing, and some articles quote the paper's accompanying perspective, where astronomer Douglas Hamilton noted that the odds of discovering a planet at the brink of death was "only about 1 in 1,000". But that really doesn't seem like too long a shot, especially since atronomers have discovered almost 400 planets.

Even if B is true, that just means there's more to learn about tidal interactions — not about the laws of physics.

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 27, 2009
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Oops. NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) accidentally burned up most of its extra fuel last Saturday in one of those favored euphemisms of the spaceflight world, an anomaly.

The glitch apparently happened when a sensor that's supposed to detect how the spacecraft is oriented in space malfunctioned, causing the thrusters to burn up a lot of fuel trying to re-position the probe. Mission managers say they've got enough fuel -- but only just -- to accomplish LCROSS's primary goal of smashing into a crater near the lunar south pole, in hopes of kicking up evidence of ice there.

Ames center director Pete Worden (@worden) is occasionally twittering about it, and says that the mission can still reach any of its candidate target craters as long as nothing else goes wrong. "We're still in the black on propellant, but not by a lot," mission manager Dan Andrews told Spaceflight Now. Follow @LCROSS_NASA on Twitter for the perkiest updates of all.

LCROSS is currently looping along a trajectory to put it on course for a lunar impact on 9 October.

Image: Crescent Earth and crescent moon as seen from LCROSS on 17 August

Posted by Alex Witze on August 26, 2009
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NASA has again scrubbed the launch of a shuttle due to problems with hydrogen.

Leaks of the liquid fuel repeatedly pushed back the launch of Endeavour and now Discovery has also encountered the Curse of the NASA Hydrogen.

At 10:12 GMT yesterday the space agency announced that it had begun filling Discovery’s external tank with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. But at 11:01 a problem was encountered with a ‘fill-and-drain valve’ and the planned launch of mission STS-128 was abandoned.

“When launch controllers commanded it to close, they did not receive the ‘closed’ indication,” says NASA. “There is a concern that the valve is either open or partially open, but that needs to be evaluated for confirmation.”

CNET’s Space Shot blog notes that there could be a problem with the valve, or there could just be a problem with the sensor that measures the position of the valve:

If it turns out the position sensor was to blame--and if NASA managers can get comfortable launching Discovery without full instrumentation in a critical system--then a launch attempt Friday at 12:22 a.m. EDT might be feasible.

But if engineers are forced to open the shuttle's engine compartment and replace any suspect components, launch could be delayed to around October 17.

There is one small silver lining for the astronauts in this cloud. “Bad luck again, but maybe we can have dinner with the families,” wrote Christer Fuglesang on his twitter feed.

Image: NASA TV

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 26, 2009
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In an alarming escalation on the Korean peninsula, South Korea has demonstrated the ability to launch a satellite into the ocean. The announcement comes just months after North Korea announced that its newest communications satellite had triumphantly plunged into the Pacific.

Ok, obviously I'm being facetious here. South Korea's much-anticipated launch of its Korea Space Launch Vehicle 1 (KSLV-1) ended in failure this morning, much to the disappointment of everyone on that side of the demilitarized zone. There's still no clear answer on what went wrong. The Korean Times reports that the first stage, a brand new Russian engine, burned smoothly, and that a "kick motor" to separate the first and second stages also worked. But after that, all bets were off. Confusingly, the South Korean report says that the rocket appeared flying at 342 km above Australia rather than the expected 306 km.

Whatever the cause of the anomaly, the satellite has yet to be detected in orbit. Russian and South Korean officials are now meeting to discuss the likely cause of the failure.

This launch does appear to put the South slightly ahead of the North in the Korean space race. North Korea's Unha-2 failed to reach orbit in April after the third stage failed to separate from the second. The satellite and stage splashed down several thousand kilometres down range in the Pacific. The KSLV-1, by contrast, made it all the way to the outback.

In all seriousness, what both South and North Korea's launches remind us is that space launches are really difficult—and not just for newcomers. The United States managed to ocean-launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory earlier this year.

Image: KARI

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on August 25, 2009
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After years of analysis, the spacecraft that flew through a comet and brought its dust back to earth has given us the news we wanted – the building blocks of life, amino acids, are out there in space.

Stardust set off to encounter comet Wild-2 in 1999, returning with its bounty – comet grains trapped in an aerogel – in early 2006. The scientist involved got busy, beavering away to work out what was in the grains, ruling out contamination and trying to assess what molecules existed in space.

At the time of the first swathe of papers, published in Science in December 2006, including this one, there were hints that amine molecules were present. This is a tantalising link to the presence of amino acids, the building blocks of life.

So the latest results from the Stardust team confirms the presence of glycine, an amino acid, in the Stardust data. This was presented at the American Chemical Society meeting currently happening in Washington, DC by Jamie Elsila of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Our discovery supports the theory that some of life’s ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts,” says Elsila (press release).

Now some three years ago I recall talking to an excited Stardust team member, Jason Dworkin also from Goddard. He was pretty sure, although not certain, even then that he was going to see glycine. His caveat at the time was that it wouldn’t be clear whether this was cometary or not.

The news now is that Dworkin, who is on the same team as Elsila, can be happy that he was right. Glycine was not a contaminant, but part of the comet. The consequences of this discovery? Well, the researchers say that this could suggest life, or at least the ingredients to make life, are common, not rare. We are not alone…

This news has caused some press excitement, see Information Week, Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, Examiner (check out that headline).

Image: NASA

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 18, 2009
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NASA test launched a new inflatable heat shield today at its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

“Our inflation system, which is essentially a glorified scuba tank, worked flawlessly and so did the flexible aeroshell,” says Neil Cheatwood, the project’s principal investigator (press release). “We’re really excited today because this is the first time anyone has successfully flown an inflatable re-entry vehicle.”

The project concept is to use an inflatable shell as a heat shield for probes entering the atmosphere of planets like Mars. As Nature’s Eric Hand noted in his piece previewing the Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment, the next generation of probes are reaching the limits of size that can be protected by a rigid heat shield.

Inflatable shields might be the way forward and today’s mission is a technology demonstration for such systems. Succumbing to RAS Syndrome, Wallops tweeted today that: “The IRVE experiment deployed and preliminary reports indicate all systems performed nominally,”

With its 20 minute flight up beyond the atmosphere and back down, IRVE may produce data to help protect future missions from burning up. The experiment itself has been consigned to a watery grave.

“After its brief flight IRVE will fall into the Atlantic Ocean about 90 miles down range from Wallops,” says NASA. “No efforts will be made to retrieve the experiment or the sounding rocket.”

Image: testing of IRVE / NASA/Sean Smith

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 17, 2009
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It has been an exciting week or two for Saturn, our planetary next-door-neighbour-but-two.

Last week a paper in Nature reported that in the otherwise balmy tropics of Titan, Saturn’s moon, a storm was brewing. Emily Schaller at the University of Hawaii and colleagues have images from the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. These show clouds forming a huge storm about the size of India. The existence of storm clouds in these tropical latitudes could finally help explain the presence of streams and rivers on the moon (press release).

Meanwhile on Saturn itself it is the equinox, where the Sun passes over the equator of Saturn and this has given Cassini, the spacecraft currently travelling around out near Saturn, the chance to gather some intriguing data. The equinox means that the rings cast long shadows, and from those shadows new bodies are emerging, like the small object seen in Saturn’s B ring on the main image to this post (press release).

Leader of Cassini’s imaging team Carolyn Porco told the BBC that we should expect more. “Over the next week or two, the [Cassini] imaging team will be poring over these precious gems to see what other surprises await us,” she said, with an assurance that any news would be announced as soon as possible.

Image: NASA

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 17, 2009
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Nature News has completed ApolloPlus40, a Twitter project which re-visited the Apollo 11 mission in real time, 40 years later.

The project, conceived by former Chief News & Features Editor Oliver Morton, attracted around 5,000 followers in the weeks leading up to and after the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing.

Feedback from ApolloPlus40 followers ranged from encouraging to humbling, via downright odd:

Jun 17th: Snufkin @ApolloPlus40 - my dad worked on this mission & one of my first memories was him feeding me @ night while watching it on TV.

Jun 24th: industwetrust @ApolloPlus40 - Tweeting the Apollo 11 Mission - welcome to a brand new kind of narrative poem http://2dl84.tk

Jul 16th: Fek_Lar @ApolloPlus40 I think you'll find that Dr. Aldrin was technically a scientist when he walked on the moon. Schmitt was the only geologist.

Jul 20th: giagia Come on! Come on! @ApolloPlus40

Aug 13th: mikemietlicki RIP @ApolloPlus40 is now space trash.

Thanks to our re-tweet-happy followers, ApolloPlus40 echoed throughout the internet. CNET called the project "a real-time news report, forty years later," in its Apollo 11 commemoration roundup and plenty of bloggers passed it along. We got mentions in Portuguese and Russian. An editor at Forbes.com asked me to write a personal take on the experience and I gave an interview for BBC Radio 5 [audio, 4:18].

For the Nature News team, producing ApolloPlus40 gave us a taste of the training, protests, technical glitches and tension that must have gone on in the real mission control back in the 60s. It's a shame there's no audio recording of my editor's voice when he called me right before the real-time launch countdown.

On that note we leave you with this suggestion from one follower:

Aug 13th: cdbarker@ApolloPlus40 Thanks for the great work. Please please please consider a relaunch next April for Apollo 13?

Image: Screenshot from ApolloPlus40

Posted by Lucas Laursen on August 14, 2009
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Just a day after the first discovery of a planet with an orbit that goes in the direction opposite to the spin of its star – a gas giant WASP-17b – a second such planet has been reported.

Two teams of scientists, one led by Joshua Winn of MIT and another by Norio Narita at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, picked out a previously known planet HAT-P-7b, that is, like WASP-17b, around 1000 light years away from Earth. It also orbits its star in the direction opposite to star’s own rotation. Both teams have submitted papers for peer review but have not yet been accepted. [New Scientist].

Winn avoided the temptation to make any "you wait ages for a retrograde orbit planet and then two come along at once" comments, instead observing that the coincidence of discoveries was "funny".

"We're catching so many planets these days, we're bound to see some of the oddballs. These aren't going to be the last ones," Adam Burrows of Princeton University told New Scientist.

Posted for Mico Tatalovic

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on August 14, 2009
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Researchers have discovered the first planet that orbits its star in the direction opposite to the star’s own spin. The planet, dubbed WASP-17b, is also the lowest density exoplanet known so far: it is only 6-14% as dense as the gas giant Jupiter, and with twice the volume of Jupiter it might also be the largest planet found to day.(ArXiv

Most planets orbit their star in the same direction as the star’s own spin – all are thought to have formed from the same initial cloud of gas and dust. But orbits can be tilted by the gravitational pull of passing objects - some asteroids’ and comets’ orbits are tilted so much that they end up orbiting the sun in the opposite direction, for example. Although planets with tilted orbits have been detected before, this is the first one that is titled so much (by 150%) that the planet actually orbits its star in the opposite direction.

"All the others have been going in more or less the right direction, just tilted at crazy angles," says Andrew Collier Cameron of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and co-author of the paper submitted to Astrophysical Journal, adding that the WASP-17b, which lies 1000 light years away from Earth "really throws the cat among the pigeons." (New Scientist)

It remains unclear what tilted this planet’s orbit so much. Two contending theories are that a gravitational pull from either a passing object or a still-undetected companion star have caused the tilt (BBC).

Posted for Mico Tatalovic

Image: ESA/C. Carreau

Posted by Mark Peplow on August 13, 2009
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The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is still snapping away as it orbits the red planet, and here’s its latest picture. We’ve seen stunning views of Victoria Crater before, I admit, but this is from a slightly different angle and … well, dammit, it’s just beautiful, isn’t it?

The Mars rover Opportunity spent 2 years from September 2006 exploring in and around Victoria, particularly looking at the geology of the steep, rugged walls of the 800-metre-wide crater. If you look really close at the hi-res images, you can just make out the rover’s tracks around the crater’s edge.

Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Posted by Mark Peplow on August 12, 2009
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Spinning around in space, Kepler, the telescope launched in March this year to go and seek out extrasolar planets, is working just fine. And to prove it, the researchers running the mission have a paper in Science.

The data was all taken during ten days of the craft’s commissioning phase, and shows that it is sensitive to measuring the atmosphere of planets around other stars. There are the pictures – light curves of the planet HAT-P-7b, a planet about 1000 light years away from us. The measurements mean that Kepler can do what it set out to do – and that is to see a planet transiting, or passing in front of its star (MIT press release).

This bodes well for the future of the mission, and maybe, just maybe, it will bring us news of another world like ours before the year is out.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 07, 2009
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When astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper lost her toolbag while working outside the International Space Station last year she must have known it might return to haunt her.

Now it has: the $100,000 bag likely met a fiery death up in the atmosphere on Monday, according to the US Air Force's Joint Space Operations Center.

"Based on its size and composition, we expect the object to completely burn up before hitting the Earth," officials said (Space.com).

On ABC News, Ned Potter writes:

Astronaut Heidimarie Stefanyshyn-Piper may accidentally have committed the most high-tech act of littering in history. But the Earth's atmosphere has cleaned up after her.

Image: the toolbag drifts away in November 2008 / NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 05, 2009
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Posted for Mico Tatalovic

NASA’s Opportunity rover has discovered what appears to be the largest meteorite ever found on Mars. Dubbed ‘Block Island’ the rock measures 60 cm across (press release).

Opportunity first stumbled across the rock on 18 July, before snapping pictures to send to Earth and motoring calmly on. "The images came down after we had already passed," says planetary scientist Albert Yen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California (Space.com).

Scientists then instructed the rover, which was on its way to examine Endeavour Crater some 15km away, to backtrack and have a closer look.

Using its onboard spectrometer to assess the rock's chemical composition, Opportunity confirmed the rock was indeed a meteorite, probably a fragment of the rock responsible for blasting out the 800m wide Victoria Crater Opportunity had been exploring for a year until it climbed out last August.

Investigating such meteorites may help scientists better understand the asteroid belt, as well as providing clues about climate on Mars; signs of weathering, including rust, could provide important clues to the presence of liquid water. Using the size of the meteorite in models could also shine light on the Red Planet’s atmosphere at the time of the impact.

"We didn't drive Opportunity to Endeavour Crater to find meteorites, but we found one that's pretty darn big," Ray Arvidson, a member of the rover team from the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri told New Scientist. "It might tell us more about the meteorite, and more importantly, it might tell us more about Mars."

Image: close up image of "Block Island" taken on July 28 / NASA/JPL-Caltech

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 04, 2009
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The space shuttle Endeavour is due to land in Florida today, touching down at 10:48 am, local time.

Yesterday one of the thrusters that will help control the craft's speed during descent failed during testing. NASA says, “This will not be an issue for landing.”

Endeavour put new batteries into the International Space Station and continued the installation of the Kibo science lab. It leaves behind it an improved space station and one of the oddest mix tapes you’re ever likely to hear.

As their mission ends, here’s a round up of what songs have woken the crew during their time in space.

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 31, 2009
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The European Southern Observatory has released what it claims are “the sharpest ever views of the supergiant star Betelgeuse”.

One team of scientists detected a plume of gas erupting into space from the surface of Betelgeuse on their image, which was created by combining several exposures into one super-sharp-shot (right).

However, this picture was still not sharp enough, as there is “a clear indication that the whole outer shell of the star is not shedding matter evenly in all directions,” according to study author Pierre Kervella (press release).

To determine why a sharper image was needed. So a second team combined the light from three 1.8-metre telescopes. This created an image with four times as much detail as the previous one. Based on this researchers decided that convection of gas in the star is likely to be behind the plume.

Continue reading "Betelgeuse: super sharp shots" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 30, 2009
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A monster of a Moon-book could shortly be gracing your coffee-table, provided you have a hefty amount of money in your bank account.

Billing itself as “a unique tribute to the defining scientific mission of our time” – that being the 1969 Apollo Moon mission – the book combines text by Norman Mailer with glossy reproductions of NASA photographs and, for a select few, even a piece of the Moon.

The cost of Moonfire? A mere $1,000. That’s without the Moon piece.

If you want a bit of Moon rock with your book you will have to cough up a lot more. Creed Poulson, of publishers Taschen America, told the Times, “It will be thousands, hundreds of thousands, of dollars. Kind of like a diamond.”

In total 1969 copies of Moonfire will be published in two editions. The first 1957 will be costly and lavish but sans rock. For the remaining 12, Taschen says:

Each copy comes with a unique specimen of lunar rock, ranging in weight from a slice of the moon at 0.4 grams to 30.34 grams, one of the largest lunar meteorites ever found on Earth.

On the basis that you can’t afford this, here’s how to make your own.

First, pick yourself up a copy of Mailer’s original book, ‘Of A Fire On The Moon’ (cost: about $20). Download yourself a selection of Apollo 11 photos from NASA and have them nicely printed out (cost: free). Glue these together in a nice big box (cost: dependent on box). Add some Moon rock (cost: about $1,000 or $2,000 if you’re lucky).

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 27, 2009
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More pictures have emerged of the collision that gave Jupiter a new scar earlier this month.

The new scar is believed to have resulted from a comet slamming into the planet. After being spotted by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley (first picture) it was imaged by two telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii (second pictures).

Now a third telescope on Mauna Kea and, most excitingly, the Hubble Space Telescope have focused in on the impact site. Here are the shots from them both (Gemini Observatory right, Hubble left):

For more on the impact see our previous blog posts:

Jupiter smash: more pictures - July 21, 2009
Jupiter Spotted - July 20, 2009

Image left: NASA, ESA, H. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), and the Jupiter Impact Team
Image right: Imke de Pater, UC Berkeley; Heidi B. Hammel, Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO; Travis Rector, UA Anchorage; Gemini Observatory

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 27, 2009
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Today’s space picture comes from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Galaxy NGC 1097 is about 50 million light-years away. The spiral galaxy has at its core a black hole (press release).

It is, says NASA, “a wild creature of the dark”:

The black hole is huge, about 100 million times the mass of our sun, and is feeding off gas and dust along with the occasional unlucky star. Our Milky Way's central black hole is tame by comparison, with a mass of a few million suns.

The odd blue intruder in the top right is a companion galaxy that “could have plunged through, poking a hole” says George Helou, deputy director of the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “But we don’t know this for sure. It could also just happen to be aligned with a gap in the arms.”

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 24, 2009
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Mission controllers aborted yesterday's spacewalk from the International Space Station after one astronaut's suit malfunctioned.

Carbon dioxide levels in Chris Cassidy's spacesuit began to rise during the maintenance mission he was undertaking with Dave Wolf. NASA suspects the problem may trace to a lithium hydroxide canister which is supposed to remove the gas to maintain breathability inside the suit.

“It seems like the canister itself is experiencing some problems,” Aki Hoshide told the team from Houston (Reuters, CNET). “It’s not an imminent failure. We just wanted to make sure that you guys are back in the airlock.”

The problem meant Wolf and Cassidy were unable to finish their planned replacement of several huge batteries on the outside of the space station.

Image: Cassidy in an early shot from the same mission, with the checklist for extravehicular activity floating in front of him / NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 23, 2009
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Britain is considering upgrading its national space centre to a full blown space agency to take the UK to-infinity-and-beyond / where-no-man-has-gone-before / etc.

Currently the country’s British National Space Centre oversees the space science sector, but it operates as a partnership of six government departments, two research councils and two other government bodies. As the Daily Telegraph notes, “critics say the inability of this club sometimes to adopt coherent positions on complex programmes means that UK delegations often find themselves marginalised when they go into international negotiations”.

A new consultation – which launches properly today – will ask whether a single agency would be a better way to go.

Continue reading "UK government wants a space agency" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 21, 2009
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New pictures have emerged of the new spot on Jupiter, probably caused by an impacting comet.

NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea in Hawaii came up with this image after amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley of Australia alerted the world to the spot (see: Jupiter Spotted - July 20, 2009).

“We were extremely lucky to be seeing Jupiter at exactly the right time, the right hour, the right side of Jupiter to witness the event. We couldn’t have planned it better,” says Glenn Orton, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California (press release).

Meanwhile, the W.M. Keck Observatory, also on Mauna Kea, came up with this image.

Paul Kalas, a UC Berkeley astronomer, thinks the smash will prove a valuable follow up to ideas coming from work done on the impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994. “Now we have a chance to test these ideas on a brand new impact event,” he says (press release).

Image top: NASA/JPL/Infrared Telescope Facility
Image lower: Paul Kalas (UCB), Michael Fitzgerald (LLNL/UCBUCLA), Franck Marchis (SETI Institute/UCB), James Graham (UCB)

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 21, 2009
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Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley has spotted a new spot on Jupiter (right). It's not much to look at, but for astronomers, it's reminiscent of the impact of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which slammed into the gas giant in 1994.

A second comet impact would be very exciting, but it's perhaps a little early to say whether it's a collision or just some weather. On Bad Astronomy, astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons, who was involved in the Shoemaker-Levy observations, points to a past example of a weather system being mistaken for an impact.

The situation is developing fast. Glenn Orton, a planetary scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has been watching Jupiter with NASA Infrared Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and he confirms via e-mail to the Great Beyond that it does look like an impact.

Wesley appears to be keeping up with things on this webpage.

Image: A. Wesley

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on July 20, 2009
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NASA today released some stunning pictures of several Apollo landing sites, as imaged from orbit by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the space agency's latest return to the Moon.

They are stunning less in their pixelated detail than in what they actually represent: the remnants of spacecraft built and piloted by humans to the surface of another world. The picture of the Apollo 14 site (right) shows the path scuffed by astronauts between their lunar module lander and the site where they set up a raft of scientific instruments. In its eloquent evocation of the loneliness of space travel it brings to mind the descent image of the Mars Phoenix spacecraft above the backdrop of the Heimdall crater.

If you can't get enough of Apollo reminiscing, check out Nature's special on the Apollo 11 landing here.

Posted by Alex Witze on July 17, 2009
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NASA has released its report of what cause the US$273 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) to end up at the bottom of the ocean.

The report essentially confirms what was known shortly after the launch: OCO failed to reach orbit because the protective fairing that surrounded the satellite didn't separate from the rest of the Taurus XL rocket. With the fairing in place, the upper stage of the rocket was simply too heavy to reach orbit, and it instead ended up crashing into the icy waters surrounding Antarctica.

The exact cause behind the fairing failure will probably never be known, but the aptly named "mishap investigation board" has narrowed it down to one of four causes:

*First, is the possible failure of an explosive joint used to literally blow the fairing off the rocket.

*Second, a failure in the electrical subsystem controlling that joint.

*The third possibility would be a failure of the hydraulics that provide pressure to thrusters used to separate the fairing.

*Last but not least, the board postulates that a stray cord snagged in a joint or side rail might have been to blame.

The closing of the mishap investigation will be little comfort to OCO scientists, who are still waiting to see whether NASA will build them a replacement. But the successful conclusion is good news for Glory, an aerosol-observing satellite that is set to launch in January on the same Taurus XL model of rocket.

Image: NASA

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on July 17, 2009
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Sixth time lucky the space shuttle Endeavour launched on Wednesday. But an old problem has returned to haunt NASA: Space foam.

The shuttle Columbia’s tragic ending was caused by a large piece of foam that came off the fuel tank during launch and punched a hole in the shuttle’s wing. On re-entry this hole allowed heat to reach deep into the wing and destroy the spacecraft and its crew of seven.

As Endeavour launched on Wednesday, a camera on the outside of the shuttle showed a number of insulation foam chunks falling off the external fuel tank.

Over at Cnet, William Harwood has a great explanation about what actually happened.

Harwood spoke to shuttle Program Manager John Shannon, who says that the foam seems to have peeled off in strips, instead of bubbling up into little pieces.

"It's not thick foam at all. The foam is about a half an inch thick, so it kind of came off in little sheets in about seven or eight different areas. We don't understand why that happened. It looks like the base primer just was not holding onto the foam well,” Shannon says.

The foam came from the intertank area – which separates the hydrogen and oxygen sections of the fuel tank. This isn’t usually the place where foam comes from if it falls off. An Aviation Week story speculates that this was because of the five scrubbed launches meant that the fuel tanks had to be drained and re-filled five extra times, although the piece doesn’t expand upon why that might cause the insulation to strip off in flight.

Some reports are suggesting – perhaps prematurely – that the foam problem could ground the fleet, and damage NASA’s chances of completing its task to build the International Space Station before the shuttle fleet is retired some time in 2010 (Reuters, Discovery, ABC).

The shuttle has docked with the ISS, and its astronauts have been taking a close look at the shuttle with their external camera to check for damage. They are set to return after 16 days.

The foamy lumps aren’t expected to cause any troubles. "There is nothing that we have seen on the orbiter that causes us any concern," says Shannon.

Image: NASA via cnet

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 17, 2009
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India’s first Moon-orbiting satellite suffered a key instrument failure almost three months ago – but scientists kept news of the problem under wraps while they rushed to find a work-around.

Madhavan Nair, chair of the Bangalore-headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has now ‘fessed up to the world’s media: all is salvaged, he says, and in any case the mission is pretty much successfully concluded, science-wise.

The unmanned Chandrayaan-1, which launched last October, developed a fault on 26 April in its onboard orienteering “star sensor”, which keeps the probe’s instruments pointing Moon-wards. On 19 May, the satellite was raised from a 100km orbit to a higher, more stable 200-km orbit above the Moon’s surface. ISRO scientists enlisted the aid of onboard gyroscopes and an antenna mechanism to keep the satellite pointed the right way. Science reports that Nair says there was no need to go public, since there was “no degradation or deterioration in the mission”.

Other media reports quote ISRO officials saying the quality of pictures beamed from the satellite have been compromised, and the mission may have to be cut short (BBC).

Nair told reporters that in any case, 90 percent of the two-year mission's objectives has already been achieved. (AP). Chandrayaan-1 has taken high-resolution images, hurled an impact probe near the Moon’s south pole in November, and has also found hints of ice at the lunar north pole. “The scientific community is extremely happy with the already obtained data and the results of analysis could be expected in about 6 months to 1 year,” an ISRO press release states.

Image: the bright rim of the Moretus crater at the Moon's south pole/ISRO

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on July 17, 2009
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After six aborted attempts, space shuttle Endeavour finally launched, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon mission.

For full immersive coverage of Apollo's historic lift-off, see the real-time ApolloPlus40 Twitter project by Nature News; and an interactive recreation at We Choose the Moon.

Back to the present-day merely-Space Station-orbiting Endeavour: appropriately for a launch delayed by fuelling glitches and thunderstorms, all was not perfect. Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's space operations chief, says eight or nine pieces of foam insulation came off the external fuel tank during launch, and that the shuttle was hit two or three times about two minutes into the flight (AP). The impacts came where the right wing joins the shuttle fuselage.

Whether the damage will prevent Endeavour making the return flight to Earth in 16 days is not yet clear. Space station residents will take more detailed pictures on Friday. Still, if needs be, the astronauts could move into the space station for a few weeks and await another shuttle back, Gerstenmaier said.

Endeavour's seven crew members, now in orbit around the International Space Station, are expecting a 16-day mission, including five spacewalks.

Image credit: NASA/Jeffrey Marino

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on July 16, 2009
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How about this for a mixed bag of space rocket news: The space shuttle Endeavour’s launch was delayed again yesterday – more bad weather. But the company hoping to replace the shuttle when it retires, SpaceX, did manage to successfully hoik a satellite into orbit on their Falcon-1 vehicle.

The space shuttle will try again tomorrow, with NASA predicting that the weather in Florida will be kinder to them by then: “The outlook is better on Wednesday, with only a 40 percent chance of weather conditions prohibiting liftoff” (press release).

SpaceX, meanwhile, successfully launched their Falcon 1 rocket from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on the island of Omelek. You can watch it for yourself here. The rocket was carrying with it a Malaysian imaging satellite, which is now in orbit. This, the second successful and fifth overall launch attempt for the company will be seen as significant step: Two successful launches in a row and a paying customer’s satellite in orbit to boot.

So, why then should we hear that another communications satellite company, Avanti, wanted to raise money so it can avoid using the next-generation SpaceX rocket Falcon-9? According to this report the reason Avanti raised the $68 million was to switch from an as-yet unbuilt Falcon-9 launcher to the more commonly used Ariane-5. Why would they do that? Well, the report suggests that it’s to soothe the worries of nervous investors, seeing as Falcon-9’s inaugural launch didn’t happen in 2007 as first planned, but is now slated for later this year.

Image: NASA

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 14, 2009
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The space shuttle, Endeavour, was postponed again this weekend. The shuttle has been blighted with problems, first technical problems with the fuel tank had to be fixed, and then twice at the weekend bad weather prompted the postponement.

There will be another try later today. This launch will see the delivery of a porch to the International Space Station to give the chance to expose experiments to the vacuum of space.

For an explanation of the havoc that weather can cause on launches, take a look here.

Other coverage:
ITN has a video of lightning hitting the launch pad
Reuters
The Canadian Press
CNN

Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 13, 2009
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Up at the second Lagrangian point, where last week Planck became the coldest object in space, its travelling companion, Herschel, has released the first images from one of the instruments on board, SPIRE.

The pics are test images, and when compared to images of the same galaxies, by the Spitzer space telescope, look pretty good (press release).

In fact, they look loads better than the Spitzer versions of the same galaxies – namely Messier 66 and Messier 74.

These images are taken with as-yet-uncalibrated instruments, so the future for Herschel looks like it could be pretty exciting.

Images: Herschel image: ESA and the SPIRE Consortium, Spitzer image: NASA / Spitzer SINGS

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 13, 2009
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Galileo Galilei – there’s no stopping him. Not content with chucking things off the top of the leaning tower of Pisa, or making nifty telescopes to stare at the stars with, it is now being mooted that ol’ GG discovered Neptune, some 200 years or so before it was officially discovered.

Its widely accepted that in 1612 and again in 1613 Galileo must have observed Neptune, although at the time he thought it was a star, spotted during his observation of Jupiter’s moons. But physicist David Jamieson from the University of Melbourne, Australia, says that history has judged Galileo incorrectly – and that his notebooks reveal that he knew he was looking at a planet after all.

Jamieson noticed that on January 28 1613 Galileo makes note of a “star” that seemed to have moved in relation to its nearest starry neighbour – behaviour only seen by planets when observed from Earth. An earlier entry, from January 6 1613 also has an unlabelled black dot in the position now recognised to be where Neptune sits.

Jamieson thinks this dot was added later, possibly on January 28th. “I believe this dot could reveal he went back in his notes to record where he saw Neptune earlier when it was even closer to Jupiter but had not previously attracted his attention because of its unremarkable star-like appearance," he says (press release).

How will we ever know for sure? There’s a chance that trace element analysis could tell the difference between when different inks were used. Or maybe, Jamieson suggests, somewhere in one of Galileo’s letters or notes he wrote one of his famous coded messages or anagrams claiming he’d discovered the planet, and this note is just waiting to be discovered.

Even better as a conspiracy theory (my own special theory) – maybe this note, if such a thing exists, was actually discovered by the astronomers who claimed Neptune for themselves in 1846; Johann Gottfried Galle, working at the Berlin observatory on predictions made by Urbain Le Verrier. Then, while revelling in their own glory, maybe they destroyed Galileo’s encrypted message.

The plot thickens…

Image: NASA

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 10, 2009
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The Mars programmes for NASA and the European Space Agency are going to merge, following a bilateral meeting between the agencies in Plymouth, England last week. [BBC]
The agencies' two science chiefs, NASA's Ed Weiler and ESA's David Southwood, have been talking about the need for this for months. Now they apparently have nailed something down, though the agencies are being deliberately vague on exactly what was agreed to -- they don't want to spoil the agreement while Southwood rounds up approvals from ESA's member states. "When we started out, David and I were the only ones that thought this could happen," Weiler told a group of planetary scientists at NASA headquarters today. "David called it the most successful ESA and NASA bilateral he has ever seen."
Joint missions happen all the time. What's novel here would be a joint programme. That, says Weiler, offers the flexibility to trade commitments over the course of multiple years. In particular, the agencies are trying to hash out Mars mission planning for launch opportunities in 2016, 2018 and 2020. ESA has ExoMars; NASA wants to send a trace-gas detecting orbiter. One likely scenario is just a big joint mission in 2018. The 2016 launch date for ExoMars was a poor one for orbital mechanics and martian weather, and by sharing the same launch rocket in 2018, money would be saved.
Image: ESA

Posted by Eric Hand on July 09, 2009
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When really big stars die, they explode in a big blast called a supernova. Supernovae are super bright, and that makes them easy to see from far away. Very far away. 11 Billion lightyears to be exact.

That's the distance record that a group of authors is reporting in this week's Nature. The authors combed through archival data from a digital survey conducted by the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope atop beautiful Mauna Kea, and they found three of the most distant supernovae ever.

Distance records are always popular, and so this story's been getting a lot of pickup.

These supernovae came from an era when the universe was around 2.5 billion years old, but as Jeff Cooke at the University of California, Irvine, explained to on this week's Nature podcast—they're still older than the very first generation of stars, which existed when there was nothing but hydrogen and helium in the universe. Cooke hopes the fireworks from those first stars will be spotted soon using the same technique.

Image: Artist's rendition of supernova / M. Weiss/NASA/CXC

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on July 09, 2009
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Charles Bolden, President Barack Obama's appointment to be NASA's administrator, had plenty of support at his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday. He thanked an entire busload of friends and family, filling an overflow room, who had come to Washington DC from his home state, South Carolina. He had three Republican Senators -- two from South Carolina, and one from Texas, where Bolden now lives -- vying to claim him as a prodigal son. And he had the chief architect of his eventual appointment, Florida Senator Bill Nelson, extolling his virtues as an "overcomer" who rose through the ranks of the Marine Corps (he's a retired general) and astronaut corps (he flew on four shuttle missions) despite growing up in the segregated south.

But Bolden didn't need much help. On a busy day for Congress, little time was left for actual questioning. Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the chairman of the Senate committee that handled the confirmation, was the only politician to put NASA's dilemma in blunt terms. He described NASA as "not what it was", an agency "adrift". He reminded Bolden that NASA's budget had to be "earned every year." What was he going to do about it?

Several themes emerged in the responses from Bolden and Lori Garver, appointed to be Bolden's deputy after handling Obama's campaign space policies. First, they would emphasize the Earth-exploring aspects of NASA -- a shift towards Earth science that's already being seen in NASA budgets. "We have to look at Earth, our planet, and NASA has to lead in providing remote sensors, space-borne sensors, to understand not just what's out there, but what's in here," said Bolden.

Second, they mentioned the importance of NASA R&D -- and of using the International Space Station for this. Somewhat weirdly, they focused on potential life science research on the ISS, even though many scientists take a dim view of this. The billions of dollars that NASA spends on planetary science throughout the solar system and astrophysics through the universe didn't get a mention.

Third, Bolden said that NASA had to make space exploration more entrepreneurial. He cited the example of a friend who was using venture capital to pursue a rocket engine that could take people to Mars in "39 days instead of 8 to 11 months." "The government cannot fund everything we need to do," he said.

And finally, Bolden says NASA needs to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers who will help replace an aging workforce and develop the technologies for a human mission to Mars, which he wants, but which he says is two decades away. He acknowledged noticing a different attitude towards space among schoolchildren. "If I go to a classroom today, it's different than when I went when I was an astronaut in 1980," he said. "I could ask, 'How many of you want to be an astronaut?' -- and every hand went up. When I go today and ask that question, I may see three hands. All of them want to go into business." An anecdote which doesn't seem so terrible if space is somehow going to be an entrepreneurial goldmine. Here's Bolden just after the hearing today, as he was being whisked out of the Senate Russell Building.

Posted by Eric Hand on July 08, 2009
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Among stodgy government agencies, DARPA, the skunkworks within the US Defence Department, has a sleek reputation for producing cool killer apps (and not just for killing -- recent projects include work on improving vaccine effectiveness). The acronym carries so much cachet that other agencies are copying it. In 2008, the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Agency (IARPA) got its first director, in an effort to ramp up the blue-sky research efforts of the US intelligence community. In this year's stimulus package, Congress gave the Department of Energy money to get something called ARPA-E going, since EARPA just didn't quite have the same ring to it.

Now, the National Academies is telling NASA not to miss out. In a review of the US civil space programme released today -- not to be confused with the Augustine Commission review of NASA's human spaceflight programme -- a panel of scientists is calling for NASA to have its own ARPA. But what would it be called? NARPA? ARPA-S, for Space? SARPA? This would be fitting, since DARPA was formed in 1958 as something of a space research agency in response to Sputnik.

Posted by Eric Hand on July 07, 2009
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Space.com is reporting that the United States Department of Defense (DOD) is rethinking a decision that cut off astronomers from access to data on incoming meteors.

The DOD has collected the data with a network of satellites and sensors designed to detect atmospheric nuclear detonations. The same sensors can spot a meteor streaking across the sky, and for over a decade, the military has provided astronomers with some of that data on an ad-hoc basis.

As we reported, that relationship came to a screeching halt earlier this year, when in March, a memo from Air Force Space Command, which operates the satellites, cautioned against sharing data with scientists. The decision was apparently made because DOD officials were worried that the data could reveal details of the US monitoring system.

But now, Brigadier General Robert Rego, the space command's mobilization assistant to the director of air, space and nuclear operations, says that the organization is considering once again sharing data with scientists, albeit in a more carefully vetted way. The new process will be faster, more systematic, and it in compliance with classification procedures, he says. It could begin within the next few months.

Image: USAF

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on July 06, 2009
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The Planck telescope, which launched in May with another telescope Herschel, has reached its destination – the second Lagrangian point 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth. It has also reached its working temperature – a chilly 0.1 degrees above absolute zero, making the craft officially the coldest thing in space.

On the Planck science website, the temperature 0.1K is written in big red letters and the feeling is one of jubilation: “This is a very big milestone for Planck... Hurrah !”

Of course, this news isn’t exactly unexpected – the real news would have been if Planck’s coolers had failed to cool the instrument sufficiently, because this would have made it impossible to carry out the mission to measure the cosmic microwave background.

But any excuse to write corny headlines like “ESA’s Planck is Truly Too Cool” (Errr, actually, it isn’t *too* cool, rather it is just cool enough), or "ESA’s Planck Telescope is One Cool Spacecraft" (technically correct) . We also get a nice analogy from the press release about the trouble Planck has picking out the tiny variations in the CMB. Seeing the tiny changes in temperature, that might be remnants of the big bang, is comparable to measuring from Earth the heat produced by a rabbit sitting on the Moon.

Image: ESA – D. Ducros

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 06, 2009
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NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back its first pictures since it went into orbit round the Moon.

“Our first images were taken along the moon’s terminator – the dividing line between day and night – making us initially unsure of how they would turn out,” says Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in Tempe. principal investigator for the probe’s camera (press release).

“Because of the deep shadowing, subtle topography is exaggerated, suggesting a craggy and inhospitable surface. In reality, the area is similar to the region where the Apollo 16 astronauts safely explored in 1972.”

The pictures, he says, show that LRO is nearly ready to get on with its mission of looking for potential landing sites and resources for any future return of humans to the Moon.

More
New focus on the Moon – Arizona State
Hi def Moon shots from 2007 Japanese Moon mission – The Great Beyond
From 2008: a newly processed 42-year-old Moon image taken in 1966 by the Lunar Orbiter 1 (LO1) – The Great Beyond

Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 03, 2009
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Phoenix has been incommunicado since the end of October, the Mars mission ending just before a shell of carbon dioxide ice would entomb the three-legged lander. But the legacy of this little lander that sort of could keeps on living. A suite of papers published today in Science rounds up the lander's greatest hits, all of which had been published as the mission went along. In summary:

Continue reading "Phoenix: A life" »

Posted by Eric Hand on July 02, 2009
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NASA has finally worked out how to put fuel in the tank of its space shuttle.

After multiple launch attempts for Endeavour were abandoned due to hydrogen fuel leaking from the external tank the space agency announced that yesterday’s 'tanking test' has been successful.

“There were absolutely no leak indications whatsoever noted on the two leak detectors,” says Launch Director Pete Nickolenko (statement).

“We’ll continue to look at the data, and our next step is to move toward launch.”

All this should mean that Endeavour is good to go on 11 July. As CNET notes though, all this faffing with the fuel means NASA has only a four day window to launch, before having to delay to 27 July in order to make way for a Russian space station resupply mission launch on the 24th.

More coverage
NASA: Fuel test a success, shuttle launch day set – AP
No leaks in Endeavour's fuel tank: NASA – AFP
Shuttle ready for launch after fuel tests, NASA says – Xinhua

Image: work on the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate of the external fuel tank, suspected source of the fuel leak, on 24 June / NASA - Jack Pfaller

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 02, 2009
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Sea Launch, the imaginatively named company that launches rockets from the sea, says it will continue its “normal business operations” despite filing for bankruptcy last week.

The company told Satellite Today it will be almost-business-as-usual while it goes through Chapter 11 restructuring in the US.

Continue reading "Sea Launch is sinking" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 30, 2009
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After several cases where reports of its death were much exaggerated, the Ulysses space probe is to finally cease operations.

Exactly when is not entirely clear, as NASA says it will tell the probe to turn off its transmitter on “Monday, June 30”. Whenever Ulysses is actually put down, it deserves a round of applause, having spent over 18 years in space.

The old voyager has been on a strange orbit, speeding past the Sun’s poles three times to help researchers puzzle out the mysteries of the solar wind. As the European Space Agency, a partner with NASA on the mission, says, it has defied “several earlier expectations of its demise”, including a couple from Nature (see: Closer than ever to the Sun).

“We expected the spacecraft to cease functioning much earlier,” says Paolo Ferri, of ESA’s European Space Operations Centre. “Its longevity is a tribute to Ulysses’s builders and the people involved in operations over the years.”

Sadly though the scientific return on investment no longer justifies keeping Ulysses running. On the bright side, Richard Marsden, ESA’s Ulysses mission manager, notes that the probe will in effect become a man-made comet.

“Whenever any of us look up in the years to come, Ulysses will be there, silently orbiting our star, which it studied so successfully during its long and active life,” he tells MSNBC.

Headline watch
Ulysses Hears the Siren's Song – NASA press release
Light goes out on solar mission – BBC
After 19 years, Ulysses solar probe to go dark – AP
Tales of brave Ulysses – Christian Science Monitor

Image: NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 29, 2009
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NASA has announced a ‘Tanking Test’ for next week Wednesday to see if it has managed to repair a hydrogen leak that scuppered its two most recent attempts to launch the space shuttle Endeavour.

Crew at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida are still working on a plate attached to the shuttle’s external fuel tank, pinpointed as the source of the leak in a line that vents hydrogen from the tank. Seals on the ‘Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate’ were due to be inspected yesterday.

“They think they have a pretty good handle on what they think caused the leak,” says NASA spokesperson Candrea Thomas (SPACE.com). “The tanking test will tell, but they’re confident they’ve got this thing figured out.”

The next launch attempt is scheduled for 11 July.

Meanwhile, CNET News reports a different problem with another shuttle. A loose knob on shuttle Atlantis has become wedged against a window and engineers are struggling to remove it:

While the knurled knob is pressing against the pane in two locations, it's not yet clear whether the glass has suffered any measurable damage. But access is tight and engineers considering removal options must make sure they don't inadvertently damage the glass. Replacing a pressure pane, one official said, could take months because part of the cockpit instrumentation would have to be moved or disconnected to provide clearance.

Image: NASA staff work on the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate / NASA, Jack Pfaller

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 26, 2009
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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has reached the Moon.

“I am now 450km above the moon....” said the probe’s Twitter feed at 11.00 UK time today.

Minutes later it noted, “The moon has capture me! I am there! :-) … I am now in orbit about the moon!! :-)”.

LRO is orbiting; now let's have some recon! Perhaps someone should also update the feed’s location information so it no longer says ‘Greenbelt, MD’. (For more on LRO see Nature: Moon mission tackles water question.)

“The engines have been burning now for 15, 20 minutes,” Mike Wargo, NASA’s chief lunar scientist, told NASA TV just moments ago. “We’ve been captured stably by the moon. We’re there.”

Later today you can watch live video of the lunar swingby of sister mission LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite), live from 2:10 pm GMT. Till then, here’s a video of the takeoff of both LCROSS and LRO (hat tip: Bad Astronomy).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 23, 2009
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Late Friday afternoon, NASA announced the winners to its most recent competition in the "small explorer" or SMEX programme, which is a chance for principal investigators, often from universities, to offer up their bold new ideas and have NASA pay for their chance to be in charge.
After a year-long competition among six finalists -- which had themselves been winnowed down from 32 -- NASA picked two. The first, called Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), will use an ultraviolet solar telescope to study the chromosphere, a thin and poorly understood layer of the Sun's atmosphere just above its surface. It is led by Alan Title, of the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, California.
The second, called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX (GEMS), will measure the polarization of X-rays emanating from black holes and neutron stars and use this to build a picture of the way these objects distort matter and space with their intense gravitational and magnetic fields. It is led by Jean Swank, of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The missions each will receive $105 million, plus the use of a launch vehicle. IRIS could launch by the end of 2012, while both are supposed to launch by 2015.
I'm sure they are stellar proposals, no pun intended, with rock-solid science potential. But I think it's fair to say that finding another Earth outside our solar system is a far cry more sexy than most heliophysics missions. And among the missing in the final cut was the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a favorite among certain blogs and even our editor here at Nature. It would have found extrasolar Earths that CoRoT and Kepler will miss, and ones close enough to home to be meaningfully followed up by the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope. As Centauri Dreams blog said, "From the PR perspective, TESS was a gold-plated winner."

Posted by Eric Hand on June 22, 2009
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NASA's return to the Moon is off and running. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite both rode into the sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida,aboard an Atlas V rocket on 18 June. The threat of thunderstorms had the launch in question right up until the very end, but conditions were declared 'green' with less than 30 minutes remaining.

LRO is now heading directly to the moon, and expected to reach it on Tuesday. LCROSS is in a looping orbit around Earth that will send it plunging into a crater near the moon's south pole on 9 October, to look for water ice. If you can't wait until then for your lunar south pole action, check out a gorgeous new composite map of the south pole craters available here.

The Twitter feed of Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center, is always good for moon gossip -- including the Russian vodka on tap at the post-launch party.

Image: NASA

Posted by Alex Witze on June 19, 2009
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Things are very quiet on the surface of the Sun just now… a little too quiet. Normally, the surface of the sun is covered "sun spots," areas of magnetic activity that are usually accompanied by flares and "coronal mass ejections," giant streams of material that can seriously disrupt life on earth.

Lately there's not much happening over on good old Sol. For the past few years we've been in a "solar minimum"—a period of reduced activity. Most people expected that the minimum would end last year, but it seems to be stretching on longer than expected.

Now a group of scientists at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona think that they've finally figured out why. Using long-term observations from the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) facility, the team was able to watch an east-to-west jet stream some 1,000-7,000 km below the sun's surface. They presented their results at the Solar Physics Division meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

The jet stream has moved sluggishly from the polar regions of the sun to the equator, and that's delayed the onset of the latest solar cycle. Soon however that may all change—the scientists believe that the jet stream has reached a critical point where it can rekindle sunspots and start the cycle anew. So keep an eye on our nearest star, but please remember not to stare at the Sun directly.

Image: SOHO/Nasa

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on June 17, 2009
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Cross-post from In The Field:

Nature News twitters the Apollo 11 moon mission as it happened -- 40 years on. Followers can read about technical milestones, political challenges, and related events in the space race starting today, just over a month before the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing.

The Tweets, located at http://twitter.com/ApolloPlus40, will follow Apollo 11’s crew to the moon and back, and taper off during the weeks following the mission to give followers the context surrounding the moon mission and its fallout for science and the wider world. Accompanying information will also be available on our In The Field blog.

Photo: NASA

Reformatted after original posting.

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 17, 2009
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NASA has abandoned its attempt to launch the shuttle Endeavour today after another hydrogen leak.

A 13 June launch attempt was called off for the same reason.

“We’re going to step back and figure out what the problem is and go fix it,” says Space Shuttle Program Manager LeRoy Cain. “Once we get it fixed and we’re confident that we have a solution that’s going to work and allow us to go fly safely, then we'll proceed forward.”

At the moment the next launch attempt is scheduled for 11 July. All eyes are now on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which is being wheeled out today for a launch tomorrow atop an Atlas V rocket.

On his twitter feed, Endeavour mission commander Mark Polansky says, “I’m sure you all know that we postponed again. It’s a reminder that spaceflight is NOT routine. We will fly home to Houston this morning.”

Image: the Ground Umbilical Carrier Panel area on space shuttle Endeavour's external fuel tank, site of the hydrogen leaks / NASA TV

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 17, 2009
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