NASA Announces Design for New Deep Space Exploration System

Washington DC (SPX)
Sep 15, 2011

NASA is ready to move forward with the development of the Space Launch System - an advanced heavy-lift launch vehicle that will provide an entirely new national capability for human exploration beyond Earth's orbit. The Space Launch System will give the nation a safe, affordable and sustainable means of reaching beyond our current limits and opening up new discoveries from the unique vantage point of space.

The Space Launch System, or SLS, will be designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments to Earth's orbit and destinations beyond. Additionally, the SLS will serve as a back up for commercial and international partner transportation services to the International Space Station.

"This launch system will create good-paying American jobs, ensure continued U.S. leadership in space, and inspire millions around the world," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we are doing at NASA. While I was proud to fly on the space shuttle, tomorrow's explorers will now dream of one day walking on Mars."

The SLS rocket will incorporate technological investments from the Space Shuttle Program and the Constellation Program in order to take advantage of proven hardware and cutting-edge tooling and manufacturing technology that will significantly reduce development and operations costs.

It will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system, which will include the RS-25D/E from the Space Shuttle Program for the core stage and the J-2X engine for the upper stage.

SLS will also use solid rocket boosters for the initial development flights, while follow-on boosters will be competed based on performance requirements and affordability considerations. The SLS will have an initial lift capacity of 70 metric tons.

That's more than 154,000 pounds, or 77 tons, roughly the weight of 40 sport utility vehicles. The lift capacity will be evolvable to 130 metric tons - more than 286,000 pounds, or 143 tons - enough to lift 75 SUVs. The first developmental flight, or mission, is targeted for the end of 2017.

This specific architecture was selected, largely because it utilizes an evolvable development approach, which allows NASA to address high-cost development activities early on in the program and take advantage of higher buying power before inflation erodes the available funding of a fixed budget.

This architecture also enables NASA to leverage existing capabilities and lower development costs by using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for both the core and upper stages. Additionally, this architecture provides a modular launch vehicle that can be configured for specific mission needs using a variation of common elements.

NASA may not need to lift 130 metric tons for each mission and the flexibility of this modular architecture allows the agency to use different core stage, upper stage, and first-stage booster combinations to achieve the most efficient launch vehicle for the desired mission.

"NASA has been making steady progress toward realizing the president's goal of deep space exploration, while doing so in a more affordable way," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. "We have been driving down the costs on the Space Launch System and Orion contracts by adopting new ways of doing business and project hundreds of millions of dollars of savings each year."

The Space Launch System will be NASA's first exploration-class vehicle since the Saturn V took American astronauts to the moon over 40 years ago. With its superior lift capability, the SLS will expand our reach in the solar system and allow us to explore cis-lunar space, near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons and beyond.

We will learn more about how the solar system formed, where Earth's water and organics originated and how life might be sustained in places far from our Earth's atmosphere and expand the boundaries of human exploration. These discoveries will change the way we understand ourselves, our planet, and its place in the universe.

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_Announces_Design_for_New_Deep_Space_Exploration_System_999.html.

Astronomers find extreme weather on an alien world

Toronto, Canada (SPX)
Sep 13, 2011

A University of Toronto-led team of astronomers has observed extreme brightness changes on a nearby brown dwarf that may indicate a storm grander than any seen yet on a planet. Because old brown dwarfs and giant planets have similar atmospheres, this finding could shed new light on weather phenomena of extra-solar planets.

As part of a large survey of nearby brown dwarfs - objects that occupy the mass gap between dwarf stars and giant planets - the scientists used an infrared camera on the 2.5m telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to capture repeated images of a brown dwarf dubbed 2MASS J21392676+0220226, or 2MASS 2139 for short, over several hours.

In that short time span, they recorded the largest variations in brightness ever seen on a cool brown dwarf.

"We found that our target's brightness changed by a whopping 30 per cent in just under eight hours," said PhD candidate Jacqueline Radigan, lead author of a paper to be presented this week at the Extreme Solar Systems II conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.

"The best explanation is that brighter and darker patches of its atmosphere are coming into our view as the brown dwarf spins on its axis," said Radigan.

"We might be looking at a gigantic storm raging on this brown dwarf, perhaps a grander version of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter in our own solar system, or we may be seeing the hotter, deeper layers of its atmosphere through big holes in the cloud deck," said co-author Professor Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and author of the recent book Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life beyond Our Solar System.

According to theoretical models, clouds form in brown dwarf and giant planet atmospheres when tiny dust grains made of silicates and metals condense. The depth and profile of 2MASS 2139's brightness variations changed over weeks and months, suggesting that cloud patterns in its atmosphere are evolving with time.

"Measuring how quickly cloud features change in brown dwarf atmospheres may allow us to infer atmospheric wind speeds eventually and teach us about how winds are generated in brown dwarf and planetary atmospheres," Radigan added.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Astronomers_find_extreme_weather_on_an_alien_world_999.html.

NASA unveils new launcher design for Mars missions

Washington (AFP)
Sept 14, 2011

NASA unveiled its plans Wednesday for a massive new launcher capable of powering manned space flights well beyond low-Earth orbit and ultimately to Mars.

NASA chief Charles Bolden made the announcement of the design for the new Space Launch System, which the space agency touted as the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V rocket put US astronauts on the moon.

"The next chapter of America's space exploration story is being written today," said Bolden.

"President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we are doing at NASA."

The launcher, which will take until 2017 to build and cost an estimated $35 billion, will fill a gap in US manned flight program created by the retirement of the last US space shuttle in July after 30 years of service.

But NASA said it will be far more powerful, capable of carrying much larger payloads beyond low-Earth orbit deep into space, and eventually to Mars.

Still, the so-called "Space Launch System" borrows heavily from the space shuttle, said John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

For instance, the first stage of the new launcher will use the shuttle's cryogenic engine fueled with a mix of hydrogen and oxygen kept at very low temperatures, he told AFP.

The system will be topped with a capsule initially capable of carrying into space payloads of 70 to 100 metric tonnes, and expanded over time to carry up to 130 metric tonnes.

"The booster will be America's most powerful since the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon and will launch humans to places no one has gone before," NASA said in a statement.

"The SLS will carry human crews beyond low-Earth orbit in a capsule named the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle," NASA said.

The first test launch is scheduled for 2017 followed by manned flights in 2021.

NASA could use it for a mission to an asteroid in 2025. NASA has indicated that it expects to send astronauts around Mars before eventually landing on the red planet, but not before 2030.

NASA's decision on the SLS design follows many months of deliberations while the space agency weighed different approaches that would ensure it could be adapted to changing missions and take advantage of new technologies that emerge in the future.

The project comes at a time when the United States is facing deep budget cuts that is likely to impinge on the costly space program, which is vital to the economies of a number of US states.

Bolden said the program will "create good-paying American jobs, ensure continued US leadership in space, and inspire millions around the world."

Champions of the space program in the US Congress welcomed the decision, noting that NASA has been losing jobs and had appeared to directionless after the end of the space shuttle program.

"This is perhaps the biggest thing for space exploration in decades," said Senator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut who represents Florida, a big beneficiary of NASA dollars.

Logsdon said however the vision for deep space exploration remains murky.

"Mars is a long way," he said, adding that getting there will take NASA "beyond the 2030s."

"The international community would prefer going back to the moon," he said. "This is possible if we have an integrated international plan with enough money to pay for this rocket and this spacecraft and pay for a landing vehicle."

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_unveils_new_launcher_design_for_Mars_missions_999.html.

NATO radar to be deployed in southeast: ministry

Ankara (AFP)
Sept 9, 2011

An early warning radar Turkey is planning to host as part of NATO's missile defense system will be deployed in a military facility base near Malatya in the southeast, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.

"The radar will be installed in a military base in Kurecik," in Malatya province, said the ministry in a statement.

Kurecik was hosting a US radar base in the past. The ministry statement also recalled that Turkey benefited from the base in the past for similar purposes.

The radar base is expected to be operational by the end of this year, according to the private NTV television.

Leaders of the 28-member NATO alliance gave their backing last year for the Europe-wide ballistic missile shield -- which US officials say is aimed at thwarting missile threats from the Middle East, particularly Iran.

Tehran criticized Ankara's decision, saying it would create tension and lead to "complicated consequences."

Turkey, a member of NATO since 1952, said the missile system targeted no specific country, adding that it only aimed at defending the NATO sphere.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/NATO_radar_to_be_deployed_in_southeast_ministry_999.html.

Bahrain medics continue hunger strike

Wed Sep 14, 2011

More than a dozen Bahraini nurses and doctors have entered the second week of their hunger strike as the anti-regime protesters await trial in a martial court, a report says.

Irish-trained surgeons Ali al-Ekri and Bassin Dahif along with 11 other doctors, nurses and paramedics are on a hunger strike in a Bahraini prison, Prof. Damian McCormack, who heads an Irish delegation of doctors and human rights activists to Bahrain, wrote in a letter to the Irish Times.

Among the detained protesters, one is diabetic and seven have already collapsed and are in need of intravenous fluids while one has attempted suicide and been prescribed anti-psychotic medication; they all refuse to take their medication, according to the document.

McCormack, who is affiliated with the World College of Surgeons and the World College of Physicians, also referred to a chronic compartment syndrome in another detained surgeon, who is at risk of “deep clots and embolism.”

“All continue to suffer from the physical and psychological effects of prolonged detention and torture,” he stated, adding that one consultant ophthalmologist recently released had suffered a stroke in detention.

The Dublin-based pediatrician recalls a royal decree issued by Bahrain's embattled King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in late June, which orders all protester cases referred to civilian courts.

“However, international human rights organizations are shocked to learn that the trial of the 20 medics who are accused with felonies will continue in a military court,'” the letter reads.

It further censured the continued brutal suppression of peaceful protests in Bahrain and the August 31 killing of teenage boy, struck by a tear gas canister at close range, on Eid al-Fitr.

McCormack accused the Bahraini regime of employing international lobbyists such as Jo Trippi and PR companies such as Qorvis in Washington and Bell Pottinger in London to conceal its continued violations of human rights.

He noted how Lualua TV, a Bahraini pro- democracy station based in London, is actively jammed from Bahrain via a European satellite and all internal electronic communications in Bahrain are monitored by “spy gear” provided by western companies such as Nokia Siemens.

“Over 1,400 protesters have been detained, 180 civilians have been sentenced in military courts, 32 people have been killed, over 60 journalists have been targeted or ejected and at least 22 opposition websites are censored in a country which would call itself civilized and peaceful,” McCormack went on to say.

The doctor further called on the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland to seek return of the honorary fellowship they awarded to King Hamad in 2006.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/199195.html.

'Saudi armored vehicles enter Yemen'

Wed Sep 14, 2011

Saudi Arabia has reportedly dispatched a convoy of armored vehicles and military assistance to Yemen to help Sana'a crack down on the popular revolution.

Sources affiliated with the Yemeni opposition were cited by the independent pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi as saying, “A motorcade of Saudi armored vehicles and military aid entered the Yemeni soil to help the forces of the regime of [Yemen's] Ali Abdullah Saleh,” Mehr News Agency reported on Wednesday.

The sources said it was the second time Riyadh was sending such vehicles to Yemen since the start of the revolution, which has been demanding an end to corruption and unemployment as well as Saleh's ouster.

Riyadh has a history of aiding Sana'a in carrying out a deadly suppressive campaign against Yemen's north-based Shia population, known as the Houthis.

In March, the kingdom deployed forces to Bahrain to abet the Bahraini regime's crackdown against a similar anti-government popular uprising.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/199172.html.

Saudi prince charged with rape

Thu Sep 15, 2011

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of King Abdullah, has landed in hot waters as a Spanish court reopens a three-year-old rape case against him.

The court started a probe into allegations that the Saudi multibillionaire raped a model on a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea in August 2008, according to a ruling seen by AFP Wednesday.

The case concerns Prince Talal, who is being asked to respond to a complaint of sexual assault against him by a model who was 20 at the time.

The prince denied the allegations and said he only heard of them on Tuesday.

A May 24 ruling by a court in the Balearic Islands said the complainant, who was not named, believed a drug was added to her drink in a nightclub on the island after she met the Saudi prince.

A judge in the Balearic island of Ibiza in May 2010 had ordered the case closed for lack of evidence, but the provincial court of the Balearic Islands overturned that ruling on May 24 and a court in Ibiza on July 27 reopened the proceedings to formally request assistance from the Saudi authorities to take a statement from the accused.

The 56-year-old prince has holdings in Citibank and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Forbes magazine lists him as the 26th richest person in the world with assets of $19.6 billion.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/199217.html.

Four Sentenced to Death

2011-09-14

Courts in Xinjiang sentence four Uyghurs to die for their alleged role in bloody attacks.

China has sentenced four ethnic Uyghurs to death in connection with a series of July attacks in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region which left dozens of people dead, state media reported Thursday, drawing condemnation from overseas groups.

Abdugheni Yusup, Ablikim Hasan, Muhtar Hasan, and Memetniyaz Tursun were handed the death sentence while two other men—Abdulla Eli and Pulat Memet—were sentenced to 19 years in prison and a five-year suspension of their political rights for their part in the attacks, according to tianshannet.com, a state-run website.

The mainly Muslim Uyghur minority has long chafed against Chinese rule in Xinjiang, and authorities have accused "terrorists" of operating in the region.

Tianshannet said that the defendants were convicted of “forming and participating in a terrorist organization, the illegal manufacture of explosives, premeditated homicide, arson, and several other related crimes” over an attack on a police station in Hotan and two separate attacks in Kashgar.

The verdicts were handed down Wednesday by intermediate courts in the two Silk Road cities, the report said.

It said the Hotan court convicted Abdugheni Yusup of leading a group of men carrying axes, machetes, and Molotov cocktails in a July 18 attack on the Nawagh Police Station in the city.

During the attack, the report said, the group killed one member of a security team, injured two bystanders, and took two hostages. The group also set fire to the police station and surrounding commercial property, it said.

When confronted by police, the report said, the group killed one armed police officer and injured a SWAT officer and another security team member.

Tianshannet said the Kashgar court convicted Ablikim Hasan of carrying out a July 30 attack on the Kashgar Fragrant Food Street, an alley of Chinese-owned restaurants, along with Urayim Memet, a Uyghur who was later killed by police.

During the attack, the report said, the two men killed a truck driver and rammed his vehicle into a group of bystanders. They then attacked onlookers with knives, it said, leaving a total of eight people dead and 31 injured.

The court also sentenced Muhtar Hasan who, along with four others, Tianshannet said, detonated an explosion in a vehicle and slashed bystanders with knives at another location in Kashgar, killing five people and injuring 13, including three police officers.

Memetniyaz Tursun was sentenced for training the perpetrators of the Kashgar attacks, the report said.

Sentence condemned

Rebiya Kadeer, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, strongly denounced the sentencing in statement Wednesday.

"Any country in which the court and press are not free makes it impossible to expect a fair and just verdict."

She called the court decision, which was handed down barely two months after the events took place, "motivated by hatred and politics," accusing the government of "trying to comfort some people in Chinese society with Fascist ideas" and "encouraging Chinese migrants" to Xinjiang.

Kadeer said that the Chinese government's policy of harshly punishing or crushing dissent has been used for decades without success, and that by handing down the sentence, authorities were only increasing tensions in the region.

"[The authorities] talked about how the incident was carried out, but they never talked about why they happened and never investigated the cause of the events, which was ethnic discontent," she said.

"What should be investigated are the unjust policies and who should have been brought to justice were the people who wrote these policies and carry them out ... Instead, they became the judges of the people."

Kadeer said that the Chinese government should be working to create "peaceful and equal living conditions" among China's ethnic nationalities.

"This should be achieved not through the power of guns, but through the power of civilization and justice."

Many of Xinjiang’s estimated 8 million Uyghurs complain of strict controls on their religion and culture that China enforces and resent influxes of Han Chinese migrant workers and businesses.

Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness despite China's ambitious plans to develop its vast northwestern frontier.

Source: Radio Free Asia.
Link: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/death-09142011181933.html.

Deportation Based on Bogus Claim

2011-09-07

Chinese officials may have falsified evidence to repatriate a Uyghur from Thailand.

Chinese authorities made a false claim to convince the Thai government to extradite a Uyghur last month for his alleged involvement in ethnic riots, according to a Uyghur exile group.

Nur Muhemmed was arrested by local police on Aug. 6 for illegally entering Thailand and was handed over to Chinese authorities in the capital Bangkok, making him one of the most recent of a number of Uyghurs who have been repatriated following pressure from Chinese authorities.

Reports by Japanese media suggest that Muhemmed may have fled Urumqi after Chinese authorities accused him of participating in ethnic unrest in the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in July 2009. At least 200 people were killed in the riots.

The Chinese Embassy in Bangkok also told Thai Immigration Bureau officials that Muhemmed was part of a Uyghur “terrorist” network responsible for bomb attacks and riots in Xinjiang.

But according to new evidence provided by Ilshat Hasan, vice-president of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association (UAA), Muhemmed had already been living in Thailand for nearly nine years as an illegal immigrant after moving to the country to escape religious persecution in China.

“As an illegal immigrant with no travel documents, and as a father of two children he had after marrying a local woman, Muhemmed had never left Thailand until his deportation,” Hasan told RFA.

Hasan said that Muhemmed moved to Thailand at the end of 2002, living in Chiangmai, in northern Thailand, for several months before relocating to the capital to apply for political asylum with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

While in the process of applying for asylum, Hasan said, Muhemmed met a Thai woman named Fatima whom he married in 2004. The couple had a daughter, named Sekine, in 2005.

“His application for asylum was denied by the UNHCR in 2006, and after the decision the family moved back to Chiangmai, where Muhemmed struggled to support his family,” Hasan said.

“When the July 5 [Urumqi] incident occurred, he was watching the events unfold on a television at the restaurant where he was working as a dishwasher.”

Escape from persecution

Hasan said that Muhemmed had left Urumqi for Thailand years earlier after a religious class he attended in his neighborhood was broken up by police who accused attendees of holding an illegal gathering.

Not long after the class was targeted, state security forces began to monitor Muhemmed and the other students, prompting him to leave the country without a passport.

“As an illegal immigrant, Muhammed always had difficulty finding a job. Most of the time, his family had to rely solely on Fatima’s business hawking goods on the street,” Hasan said.

In January this year, the family moved back to Bangkok after Muhemmed heard that he could obtain a Thai passport through the black market.
In March, the couple had a second daughter.

“When he was accused of being a terrorist and sent back to China, his daughter Sekine was five years old and his daughter Sayida was only three months old,” Hasan said.

At the time, Dolkun Isa, general secretary of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC), had called on Thailand to ignore pressure from the Chinese to repatriate Muhemmed, where Isa said he could face torture and even death upon his return.

“It is no secret how dangerous the current situation in East Turkestan [Xinjiang] is after the Hotan and Kashgar incidents,” Isa said, referring to deadly attacks in the two Silk Road cities by Uyghur groups against Chinese security personnel in July.

“It is easy to imagine what the fate of a Uyghur refugee might be in the case of a deportation at this time,” he said.

Chinese alerted

According to a Uyghur friend in Thailand who asked to remain anonymous, Muhemmed rarely called his parents unless there was an urgent need.

Several months ago, he said, Muhemmed had received information that his father was sick and had begun calling his family regularly.

“The telephone calls likely aroused the suspicion of the Chinese intelligence service and they decided to arrest him,” the friend said.

“This is the only reason I can imagine why he would have been targeted by China.”

Another Uyghur, a student in a Southeast Asian country, said that Muhemmed’s long disappearance would have alerted the attention of Chinese authorities.

“Disappearing for nine years without official knowledge—of course that would create a big question mark in the minds of China’s state security officials,” the Uyghur student said.

“For Uyghurs these days, everything is a crime, including disappearing, speaking your mind, or even thinking something deeply. This shows how tense relations have become between the Uyghur people and the Chinese state.”

Regional influence

China has used its economic influence in the region to detain and repatriate a number of Uyghurs authorities said were wanted in connection with deadly rioting that gripped the Xinjiang capital Urumqi in 2009, although they did not publicly provide any evidence of their involvement.

In the months that followed the violence in Urumqi, hundreds of Uyghurs were detained and at least nine were executed.

Aside from Thailand, Malaysian authorities in mid-August turned over 11 Uyghurs to Chinese authorities they had accused of involvement in a human trafficking ring, drawing criticism from two senior U.S. lawmakers.

Pakistan deported five Uyghurs to China weeks before the Malaysian extradition. The country had previously deported “Xinjiang separatists” to China on at least three occasions.

Cambodia deported the majority of 22 Uyghurs who sought refuge status there through the UNHCR shortly after they fled China in the aftermath of the 2009 ethnic violence in Urumqi.

In recent years, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos have all repatriated the Muslim Uyghurs, allegedly following pressure from Chinese authorities.

Many of Xinjiang’s estimated 8 million Uyghurs chafe at the strict controls on their religion and culture that China enforces and resent influxes of Han Chinese migrant workers and businesses.

Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness despite China's ambitious plans to develop its vast northwestern frontier.

Source: Radio Free Asia.
Link: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/claim-09072011163035.html.