2 Americans dead in typhoon in Philippines

November 12, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department says two Americans have died in the typhoon tragedy in the Philippines.

Spokeswoman Jen Psaki (SAH'-kee) says that number could go up as the department receives additional information. She says the U.S. Embassy in Manila is providing consular assistance to the families of those who died. She says a team of embassy officials planned to travel to the impacted area on Wednesday to further assist victims.

The official death toll is more than 1,700, but as many as 10,000 are feared dead and more than 9 million people have been affected by the storm in the archipelago nation of more than 7,000 islands.

Philippine typhoon deaths climb into thousands

Associated Press
By JIM GOMEZ
10.11.2013 Sunday

TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) — As many as 10,000 people are believed dead in one Philippine city alone after one of the worst storms ever recorded unleashed ferocious winds and giant waves that washed away homes and schools. Corpses hung from tree branches and were scattered along sidewalks and among flattened buildings, while looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water.

Officials projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach areas cut off by flooding and landslides. Even in the disaster-prone Philippines, which regularly contends with earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical cyclones, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record.

Haiyan hit the eastern seaboard of the Philippine archipelago on Friday and quickly barreled across its central islands before exiting into the South China Sea, packing winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour) that gusted to 275 kph (170 mph), and a storm surge that caused sea waters to rise 6 meters (20 feet).

It wasn't until Sunday that the scale of the devastation became clear, with local officials on hardest-hit Leyte Island saying that there may be 10,000 dead in the provincial capital of Tacloban alone. Reports also trickled in from elsewhere on the island, and from neighboring islands, indicating hundreds, if not thousands more deaths, though it will be days before the full extent of the storm's impact can be assessed.

"On the way to the airport we saw many bodies along the street," said Philippine-born Australian Mila Ward, 53, who was waiting at the Tacloban airport to catch a military flight back to Manila. "They were covered with just anything — tarpaulin, roofing sheets, cardboards." She said she passed "well over 100" dead bodies along the way.

In the storm's aftermath, people wept while retrieving the bodies of loved ones from inside buildings. On a street littered with fallen trees, roofing material and other wreckage, all that was left of one large building were the skeletal remains of its rafters.

The airport in Tacloban, about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Manila, was a muddy wasteland of debris, with crumpled tin roofs and overturned cars. The airport tower's glass windows were shattered, and air force helicopters were flying in and out as relief operations got underway. Residential homes lining the road into Tacloban city were all blown or washed away.

"All systems, all vestiges of modern living — communications, power, water — all are down," Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said after visiting Tacloban on Saturday. "There is no way to communicate with the people."

Haiyan raced across the eastern and central Philippines, inflicting serious damage to at least six of the archipelago's more than 7,000 islands, with Leyte, neighboring Samar Island, and the northern part of Cebu appearing to take the hardest hit. It weakened as it crossed the South China Sea before approaching northern Vietnam. It was forecast to hit land Monday morning.

On Leyte, regional police chief Elmer Soria said the provincial governor had told him there were about 10,000 deaths there, primarily from drowning and collapsed buildings. Most of the deaths were in Tacloban, a city of about 200,000 that is the biggest on Leyte Island. A mass burial was planned for Sunday in a nearby town.

On Samar, Leo Dacaynos of the provincial disaster office said 300 people were confirmed dead in one town and another 2,000 were missing, while some towns have yet to be reached by rescuers. He pleaded for food and water and said power was out and there was no cellphone signal, making communication possible only by radio.

Reports from the other affected islands indicated dozens, perhaps hundreds more deaths.

The massive casualties occurred even though the government had evacuated nearly 800,000 people ahead of the typhoon. About 4 million people were affected by the storm, the national disaster agency said.

President Benigno Aquino III flew around Leyte by helicopter on Sunday and landed in Tacloban to get a firsthand look at the disaster. He said the government's priority was to restore power and communications in isolated areas and deliver relief and medical assistance to victims.

Challenged to respond to a disaster of such magnitude, the Philippine government also accepted help from its U.S. and European allies.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directed the military's Pacific Command to deploy ships and aircraft to support search-and-rescue operations and airlift emergency supplies, while European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso sent Aquino a message saying "we stand ready to contribute with urgent relief and assistance if so required in this hour of need."

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered his condolences and said U.N. humanitarian agencies were working closely with the Philippine government to respond quickly with emergency assistance, according to a statement.

The Philippines is annually buffeted by tropical storms and typhoons, which are called hurricanes and cyclones elsewhere on the planet. The nation is positioned alongside the warm South Pacific where typhoons are spawned. Many rake the islands with fierce winds and powerful waves each year, and the archipelago's exposed eastern seaboard often bears the brunt.

Even by the standards of the Philippines, however, Haiyan is a catastrophe of epic proportions and has shocked the impoverished and densely populated nation of 96 million people. Its winds were among the strongest ever recorded, and it appears to have killed many more people than the previous deadliest Philippine storm, Thelma, which killed around 5,100 people in the central Philippines in 1991.The deadliest disaster on record was the 1976 magnitude-7.9 earthquake that triggered a tsunami in the Moro Gulf in the southern Philippines, killing 5,791.

Haiyan's winds were so strong that Tacloban residents who sought shelter at a local school tied down the building's roof, but it was ripped off anyway and the school collapsed, City Administrator Tecson Lim said. It wasn't clear how many died there.

The city's two largest malls and groceries were looted and the gasoline stations destroyed by the typhoon. Police were deployed to guard a fuel depot to prevent the theft of fuel. Two hundred additional police officers came to Tacloban on Sunday from elsewhere in the country to help restore law and order.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Aquino was "speechless" when he told him of the devastation the typhoon had wrought in Tacloban.

"I told him all systems are down," Gazmin said. "There is no power, no water, nothing. People are desperate. They're looting."

Tacloban, in the east-central Philippines, is near the Red Beach on Leyte Island where U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur waded ashore in 1944 during the Second World War and fulfilled his famous pledge: "I shall return."

It was the first city liberated from the Japanese by U.S. and Filipino forces and served as the Philippines' temporary capital for several months. It is also the hometown of former Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos, whose nephew, Alfred Romualdez, is the city's mayor.

One Tacloban resident said he and others took refuge inside a parked Jeep to protect themselves from the storm, but the vehicle was swept away by a surging wall of water.

"The water was as high as a coconut tree," said 44-year-old Sandy Torotoro, a bicycle taxi driver who lives near the airport with his wife and 8-year-old daughter. "I got out of the Jeep and I was swept away by the rampaging water with logs, trees and our house, which was ripped off from its mooring.

"When we were being swept by the water, many people were floating and raising their hands and yelling for help. But what can we do? We also needed to be helped," Torotoro said.

In Torotoro's village, bodies could be seen lying along the muddy main road, as residents who had lost their homes huddled with the few possessions they had managed to save. The road was lined with trees that had fallen to the ground.

Vice Mayor Jim Pe of Coron town on Busuanga, the last island battered by the typhoon before it blew away to the South China Sea, said most of the houses and buildings there had been destroyed or damaged. Five people drowned in the storm surge and three others were missing, he said by phone.

The sound of the wind "was like a 747 flying just above my roof," he said. His family and some of his neighbors whose houses were destroyed took shelter in his basement.

Tim Ticar, a local tourism officer, said 6,000 foreign and local tourists were stranded on the popular resort island of Boracay, one of the tourist spots in the typhoon's path.

UNICEF estimated that about 1.7 million children are living in areas impacted by the typhoon, according to the agency's representative in the Philippines Tomoo Hozumi. UNICEF's supply division in Copenhagen was loading 60 metric tons of relief supplies for an emergency airlift expected to arrive in the Philippines on Tuesday.

"The devastation is ... I don't have the words for it," Interior Secretary Roxas said. "It's really horrific. It's a great human tragedy."

___

Associated Press writers Oliver Teves and Teresa Cerojano in Manila, and Minh Tran in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report.

Thai Senate kills contentious amnesty bill

November 12, 2013

BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand's Senate has defeated an amnesty bill that could have led to the return from exile of deposed former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, but opponents of the bill vowed to continue their protests against the government.

The main opposition Democrat Party called for civil disobedience and a three-day nationwide strike beginning Wednesday in what is seen as a campaign to bring down the government led by Thaksin's sister, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

Critics say the amnesty bill was an attempt by the government to whitewash Thaksin's alleged crimes and pave the way for his return. Thaksin, a highly divisive figure, fled the country in 2008 to escape a two-year jail term on a corruption charge.

The Senate voted 141-0 late Monday to reject the bill after the ruling party withdrew its support. Although the more-powerful lower house can legally pass legislation without Senate approval after a 180-day wait, Yingluck and the government coalition parties have pledged that the bill will not be revived.

Demonstrations against the bill have spread since it was passed by the lower house on Nov. 1. Their target was to oppose the bill and Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 coup over allegations of corruption and disrespect for King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Disputes between Thaksin's supporters and opponents arouse fierce passions which culminated in a 2010 military crackdown on Thaksin supporters that left about 90 people dead. Paving the way for Thaksin's return has been an unspoken priority of Yingluck's government, which won an absolute parliamentary majority in 2011 elections due largely to Thaksin's popularity in rural areas and among the urban poor, who benefited from his government's populist programs.

The bill also triggered opposition from the pro-government supporters who wanted to prosecute those behind the killings during the 2010 crackdown. On Monday evening, Democrat Party lawmakers called for a three-day strike by businesses and schools to allow people to join the protests; a withholding of taxes that allegedly go for corruption; the display of the national flag; and the blowing of whistles, which have become a tool of protest, near government leaders.

Democrat lawmaker and former Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban, along with eight other party lawmakers, said they were resigning their parliamentary seats to lead the anti-government campaign. The resignations are a legal shield for the party, which could face dissolution if its lawmakers were found guilty of trying to unlawfully unseat a constitutional government.

Although the protests have drawn a high profile and are the strongest ever against Yingluck's government, it was unclear if they are sustainable, especially in view of the overwhelming support Yingluck's government has in Parliament.

The original draft of the bill did not extend amnesty to the leaders of both the pro- and anti-Thaksin groups, but a House committee in mid-October suddenly changed the bill to include both. The last-minute change led to criticism that it was planned all along to encompass Thaksin.

"If Mr. Thaksin and other leaders had not been added to the amnesty bill coverage, the majority of the people would have agreed to give amnesty to the ordinary people affected (in the conflict)," said Prinya Thaewanarumitkul, a law professor at Bangkok's Thammasat University.

MAVEN Aims To Answer Where Did the Water on Mars Go

Pasadena CA (JPL)
Nov 13, 2013

The planet Mars, with its rust red countenance and barren character, presents itself as an object of mystery and intrigue. It is also a catalyst for ongoing scientific inquiry.

Previous space probes have revealed valleys, channels and ocean beds marking the Martian surface, suggesting the presence of abundant flowing water in earlier times.

Such tantalizing clues give way to the obvious question: where did the water go? Scientists believe it may have something to do with the planet's thin atmosphere. The atmosphere is too thin today to support liquid water on the surface, but that elicits another query; what led to Mars' atmospheric depletion?

Such questions are at the heart of the next Mars space probe developed by Lockheed Martin and now being prepped for launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida - the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission, or MAVEN.

Scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V-401 rocket during a three-week window that opens Nov. 18, MAVEN represents the first spacecraft mission dedicated to exploring Mars' upper atmosphere.

MAVEN will seek to gauge how solar activity contributes to atmospheric loss and the role that escape of gas from the atmosphere into space has played over time. This information will help scientists gain insight into the history of the planet's atmosphere and climate, liquid water and planetary habitability for microbial life.

Lockheed Martin shipped MAVEN to Kennedy on Aug. 2 aboard a C-17 transport aircraft that took off from Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colo. Lockheed Martin Space Systems designed, assembled and tested the spacecraft at its Waterton facility near Denver.

The one-year assembly and testing period prior to shipment ran very smoothly, according to Guy Beutelschies, Lockheed Martin MAVEN program manager.

"MAVEN is a good example of what is possible when you get a mission that matches well to the design and resources and when you put a team on the job whose members are used to working together," said Beutelschies. "We enjoyed a relatively smooth development. We're on schedule, on budget and right where we want to be on our journey to the launch pad. The team is working very few issues right now; we're just executing to our plan."

Lockheed Martin engineers and technicians who were deployed to Florida with the spacecraft ran MAVEN through its final processing in preparation for launch. Activities included re-installing the high-gain antenna, installing flight batteries, software testing, payload deployment tests, a final solar array deployment and illumination test, spin balancing, and propellant loading.

Once launched, MAVEN will embark on a 10-month journey to Mars and will enter orbit around the planet in September 2014. It will then spend five weeks getting into the final science-mapping orbit, performing payload related deployments, and configuring all systems for the science phase. MAVEN will then begin a one-Earth-year primary science mission.

MAVEN's instruments will permit scientists to study the upper atmosphere and ionosphere, pinpoint the rate of gas loss to space currently and calculate backward in time to determine the total loss to space through time. MAVEN will boast three instrument packages, including:

+ The Particles and Fields Package, integrated by the University of California at Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, contains six instruments that will characterize the Mars solar wind and ionosphere. Three of the instruments were built by the Cal-Berkeley lab, one was built jointly with the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements (CESR) in France, one was built jointly with the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (CU/LASP), and the Magnetometer was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

+ The Remote Sensing Package, built by CU/LASP, will measure global aspects of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere.

+ The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer, built by NASA Goddard, will determine the composition and isotopes of neutrals and ions.

MAVEN's Principal Investigator is Dr. Bruce Jakosky from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and NASA Goddard manages the project.

Heritage of both hardware and people played a big role in making MAVEN assembly and testing successful. Lockheed Martin capitalized on design knowledge from previous Mars orbiters to develop MAVEN.

"Lockheed Martin is fortunate to have participated on all NASA missions to Mars over the last 40 years, so we had lots to build on," said Beutelschies. "The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was our starting point for the design and hardware. When you look at MAVEN, its structures and subsystems, you can trace the lineage to MRO." The avionics and software are based on updated versions that flew on the recent Juno mission to Jupiter.

For Beutelschies, the heritage he really likes to discuss is the people involved in MAVEN, who brought to the effort valuable experience, having worked previous Mars orbiters.

"We have people experienced with designs, processes and procedures we used on a long line of interplanetary spacecraft," said Beutelschies. "We have people who have worked half a dozen interplanetary missions. We have a keen dynamic culture and are used to working with each other and with the hardware and software."

Along with the hardware and people experience, strong customer relations proved to be another key factor in enabling a strong production and test regime, according to Beutelschies.

"We've had an extremely good working relationship with the customer; they treat us as a partner, and they recognize the experience we bring to the game," said Beutelschies. "In turn, we seek to be as responsive as possible to the customers and scientists. A lot of the smoothness of MAVEN's production and testing is because of that great relationship we enjoy."

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/MAVEN_Aims_To_Answer_Where_Did_the_Water_on_Mars_Go_999.html.

A New Threat from Space

Bethesda MD (SPX)
Nov 13, 2013

On February 15, 2013, the world was awakened with the fear of a new space threat. The Chelyabinsk meteor entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia at about 0920 local time with an estimated speed of 18.6 km/s (66,960 km/h).

It quickly became a super-bright fireball over the southern Ural region. In fact, the light from the meteor was brighter than that of the sun. Observers felt intense heat from the fireball.

The Chelyabinsk meteor's shallow angle of entry almost allowed it to skip off the upper atmosphere and continue in heliocentric orbit. However, the angle of entry was just steep enough to allow atmospheric friction to slow its initial velocity below the earth escape speed of 11 km/s and below Earth orbital speed of 7.9 km/s.

This resulted in the object exploding in an air burst over Chelyabinsk Oblast, at a height of about 23.3 km.

The explosion generated a great deal of heat and a bright flash. In addition the event produced many small fragmentary meteorites and a powerful shock wave. Fortunately, the atmosphere absorbed most of the energy, estimated as the equivalent of approximately 440 kilotons of TNT. This is 20 to 30 times more energy than released at Hiroshima at the end on WW II.

This event demonstrated that a small asteroid could pose a bigger danger than previously thought. Astronomers have mapped about 1,000 such objects-between 10 meters and 50 meters in diameter in near-earth orbit, similar to the 20-meter-dimater asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk. However, astronomers think there are a million of these rocks that have not yet been detected.

Prior to the Chelyabinsk event experts thought near Earth asteroids had to be at least one kilometer in diameter to be a significant threat to Earth. The unexpected explosive force of the Chelyabinsk meteor has shifted more of the concern to smaller bodies with diameters between 10 and 50 meters.

This reassessment has increased the threat to human life from asteroids. Furthermore, small asteroids cannot be detected in advance of Earth encounter.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/A_New_Threat_from_Space_999.html.

Olympic torch returns home from space station

November 11, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian space capsule carrying the Sochi Olympic torch and three astronauts returned to Earth on Monday from the International Space Station in a flawless landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz capsule landed at 8:49 local time (0249 GMT), about three and a half hours after undocking from the station with Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin, American Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano of Italy aboard.

The unlit Olympic torch was brought to the ISS on Thursday when three new crew members arrived. Two Russian crew members took it on a spacewalk Saturday. The capsule descended through brilliantly clear skies under a parachute.

Yurchikhin, the mission commander, was extracted from the capsule within about 10 minutes of touchdown and carried to a reclining chair, where he was put under a blanket against the minus-4 (25 F) chill and began adjusting to the pull of gravity after 166 days of weightlessness.

The torch, in a protective bag, was brought out and given to Yurchikhin to hold after it was unwrapped. He waved it a little and smiled. Nyberg was quickly given dark glasses to protect her eyes against the intense sunlight. Parmitano, the last out, appeared thrilled, grinning broadly and pumping his fists.

All three were to be taken for tests at a medical tent at the landing site, then flown to the city of Karaganda for a welcome ceremony. Six people remain aboard the space station: Russians Oleg Kotov, Sergei Ryazansky and Mikhail Tyurin; NASA's Michael Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio; and Koichi Wakata of Japan.

Olympic torch taken on first spacewalk

November 09, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — An Olympic torch took a spacewalk for the first time Saturday, carefully held by two Russian cosmonauts outside the International Space Station as it orbited some 260 miles above Earth.

Video streamed by NASA showed Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazanskiy carrying the unlit torch of the Sochi games, which bobbed weightlessly at the end of a tether in a darkness dotted by stars. The two gingerly maneuvered to take photos of the torch against the background of the planet, the orb's edge glowing with sunrise.

They then returned it to the space station before continuing with other tasks on a spacewalk that was to last about six hours, including attaching a footrest and a camera platform to the exterior of the orbiting laboratory.

The torch was launched into space from the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday morning. It will return to Earth with a three-man crew on Monday. The torch will not burn aboard the space outpost because lighting it would consume precious oxygen and pose a threat to the crew.

The Olympic torch was taken aboard the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis in 1996 for the Atlanta Summer Olympics, but this is the first it time it has been taken outside a spacecraft. The Sochi Olympic flame started its relay on Oct. 7, four months ahead of the Winter Games, and it is to cover some 65,000 kilometers (39,000 miles). Most of the time the flame will be safely encased in a lantern.

On Saturday, the flame was somewhere nearly as cold and remote as the torch's temporary residence in outer space — the Siberian city of Yakutsk.

Mars probe named in honor of 19th century astronomer Schiaparelli

Paris (UPI)
Nov 09, 2013

An instrument module set to land on Mars has been named "Schiaparelli" after the 19th century Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, European scientists say.

The entry, descent and landing demonstrator module will fly on the 2016 ExoMars mission, a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency and Russia's Roscosmos space agency. Schiaparelli will make a controlled landing on Mars, entering the atmosphere at 13,000 mph and using parachutes and thrusters to brake to less than 10 mph before landing less than 8 minutes later, and ESA release said Friday.

The module will collect data on the atmosphere during entry and descent, and its instruments will perform local environment measurements at the landing site in a region of plains known as Meridiani Planum.

The module's name was chosen to honor Schiaparelli, who made telescopic observations of Mars, naming what he thought were seas and continents. He also saw what he thought were linear features on the surface, calling them canali which in Italian means channels, but the word was later mistranslated to canals.

Despite the mistaken identification of martian features, Schiaparelli's work was the first systematic investigation of the Red Planet.

"Considering the importance of Giovanni Schiaparelli's pioneering observations of Mars, it was an easy decision to give his name to the ExoMars module that is paving the way to the further exploration of the Red Planet," Alvaro Gimenez, ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, said.

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Mars_probe_named_in_honor_of_19th_century_astronomer_Schiaparelli_999.html.

Indian Mars mission on track, makes first engine burns

New Delhi (AFP)
Nov 09, 2013

India's Mars spacecraft has completed the first of a series of engine firings designed to free it from Earth's gravitational pull and propel it towards the Red Planet, scientists said Friday.

The first "orbit-raising maneuver", which involves the firing of a liquid fuel thruster, was performed Thursday followed by the second firing on Friday, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said.

"The second orbit raising maneuver of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 02:18:51 hours (IST) on November 8, with a burn time of 570.6 seconds has been successfully completed," the Bangalore-headquartered ISRO said in a statement.

India began the quest to become the first Asian country to reach Mars on Tuesday with the successful launch from its southern space station of a 1.35 ton unmanned probe, which is strapped to a rocket.

As it lacks the power to fly directly to Mars, the probe will orbit Earth for nearly a month and the thruster firings are designed to build up the necessary velocity to break free from our planet's gravitational pull.

Only once all six of the engine firing maneuvers have been successfully completed will it begin the second stage of its nine-month journey to Mars.

The main aim of the mission is to detect methane in the Martian atmosphere, which could provide evidence of some sort of life form on the fourth planet from the sun.

India has never before attempted inter-planetary travel, and more than half of all missions to Mars have ended in failure, including China's in 2011 and Japan's in 2003.

The cost of the project, at 4.5 billion rupees ($73 million), is less than a sixth of the $455 million earmarked for a Mars probe by NASA which will launch later this month.

ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan has called the mission a "turning point" for India's space ambitions and one which would go on to prove the country's capabilities in rocket technology.

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Indian_Mars_mission_on_track_makes_first_engine_burns_999.html.