China's first space lab in operation for over 1000 days

Beijing (XNA)
Sep 29, 2014

Tiangong-1, China's first space lab, has been in orbit for 1092 days since it was launched on September 29, 2011. The space lab, which is in sound condition, is able to complete more operation time in orbit, according to Wang Zhaoyao, director of China's manned space program office.

Careful maintenance and monitoring will be carried out to ensure that the space lab, which was initially designed to stay in orbit for two years, will still be operational.

The 8.5-tonne Tiangong-1, with a length of 10.4 meters and maximum diameter of 3.35 meters, provides a 15-cubic-meter space for three astronauts to live and work.

It docked with the manned Shenzhou-9 spacecraft with three astronauts on board in June 2012. In June 2013, Shenzhou-10 docked with the lab and three astronauts delivered a physics lesson aboard Tiangong-1.

According to Wang, the Tiangong-2 space lab is scheduled to be launched in 2016, and the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft and Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft will be launched to dock with it.

Around 2022, the nation's first space station will be completed.

Since the government approved a manned station program in 2010, the program has been progressing steadily, with various modules, space vehicles and ground facilities under development.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chinas_first_space_lab_in_operation_for_over_1000_days_999.html/.

A colorful gathering of middle-aged stars

Paris (SPX)
Nov 28, 2014

NGC 3532 is a bright open cluster located some 1300 light-years away in the constellation of Carina (The Keel of the ship Argo). It is informally known as the Wishing Well Cluster, as it resembles scattered silver coins which have been dropped into a well.

It is also referred to as the Football Cluster, although how appropriate this is depends on which side of the Atlantic you live. It acquired the name because of its oval shape, which citizens of rugby-playing nations might see as resembling a rugby ball.

This very bright star cluster is easily seen with the naked eye from the southern hemisphere. It was discovered by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille whilst observing from South Africa in 1752 and was cataloged three years later in 1755. It is one of the most spectacular open star clusters in the whole sky.

NGC 3532 covers an area of the sky that is almost twice the size of the full Moon. It was described as a binary-rich cluster by John Herschel who observed "several elegant double stars" here during hisstay in southern Africa in the 1830s. Of additional, much more recent, historical relevance, NGC 3532 was the first target to be observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, on 20 May 1990.

This grouping of stars is about 300 million years old. This makes it middle-aged by open star cluster standards. The cluster stars that started off with moderate masses are still shining brightly with blue-white colors, but the more massive ones have already exhausted their supplies of hydrogen fuel and have become red giant stars. As a result the cluster appears rich in both blue and orange stars.

The most massive stars in the original cluster will have already run through their brief but brilliant lives and exploded as supernovae long ago. There are also numerous less conspicuous fainter stars of lower mass that have longer lives and shine with yellow or red hues. NGC 3532 consists of around 400 stars in total.

The background sky here in a rich part of the Milky Way is very crowded with stars. Some glowing red gas is also apparent, as well as subtle lanes of dust that block the view of more distant stars. These are probably not connected to the cluster itself, which is old enough to have cleared away any material in its surroundings long ago.

This image of NGC 3532 was captured by the Wide Field Imager instrument at ESO's La Silla Observatory in February 2013.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/A_colorful_gathering_of_middle_aged_stars_999.html.

Frost-covered chaos on Mars

Paris (ESA)
Nov 28, 2014

Thanks to a break in the dusty 'weather' over the giant Hellas Basin at the beginning of this year, ESA's Mars Express was able to look down into the seven kilometer-deep basin and onto the frosty surface of Hellas Chaos.

Hellas Basin sits in the southern highlands of Mars and is one of the Solar System's largest impact basins, with a diameter of 2300 km. It is thought to have formed some 3.8-4.1 billion years ago, during the heavy bombardment that subjected all the inner Solar System planets to a heavy rain of asteroids and comets.

Since its formation, Hellas has been sculpted by wind, ice, water and volcanic activity. It is also where most global dust storms on Mars originate.

The region presented here, known as Hellas Chaos, lies in the southern central part of the basin. The high-resolution stereo camera on Mars Express captured it on 23 January.

Much of the scene is dusted with carbon dioxide frost, although in places the underlying surface is exposed. In contrast to the frosty terrain, the ridges running through the center of the image appear golden, probably from the low Sun angle of around 25 . Flows of sediments are also visible on some portions of their flanks.

Immediately to the north (right) of the ridges, the elevation drops down into a large east-west trough (best seen in the topography map), the floor of which displays many small knobs with a rough surface.

To the right again, the curved outline of large sublimation pits can be seen, interspersed with polygonal-patterned terrain. These features develop as a result of the contraction and relaxation during freeze-thaw cycles as the seasons change.

A few distinct impact craters can also be seen in this scene. For example, at the bottom right, one with a layered rim exhibits some dark internal streaks that could be dunes shaped by prevailing winds.

In the top-right corner, a large flat-topped 'mesa' rises from the surface. The flanks of the mesa are covered with dust that seems to flow down into the surrounding depression. Here, the material is pushed together, presumably from successive flows producing parallel ridges of piled sediment layers.

Smaller craters can also be seen in the right-hand part of the image, some with debris blankets that appear fluidised, indicating the presence of subsurface ice that melted during the impacts that created the craters.

In the left-hand portion of the image, there are also two large, noteworthy features. At the lower left, there appear to be the remains of two overlapping craters, with the eroded rim of the smaller one sitting inside a larger crater. Both display eroded walls and host interesting internal features.

Meanwhile, in the top-left corner of the image, a region of lower elevation is littered by curious ridges and blocks of material that exhibit the same rough textures as the knobs in the central part of the image.

The origin of the Hellas Chaos region in general is widely debated. One idea is that large amounts of sediments were deposited inside the Hellas Basin and later eroded by wind and water.

Another idea suggests that volcanic activity might be the cause. The context map shows extensive lava flows around the 'chaos', perhaps related to the nearby volcano Amphitrites Patera.

Alternatively, floods of lava inside the Hellas Basin, following the formation of the basin itself, could have given rise to the structures seen in this region today.

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Frost_covered_chaos_on_Mars_999.html.

Star Trek-like invisible shield found thousands of miles above Earth

Boulder CO (SPX)
Nov 28, 2014

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered an invisible shield some 7,200 miles above Earth that blocks so-called "killer electrons," which whip around the planet at near-light speed and have been known to threaten astronauts, fry satellites and degrade space systems during intense solar storms.

The barrier to the particle motion was discovered in the Van Allen radiation belts, two doughnut-shaped rings above Earth that are filled with high-energy electrons and protons, said Distinguished Professor Daniel Baker, director of CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

Held in place by Earth's magnetic field, the Van Allen radiation belts periodically swell and shrink in response to incoming energy disturbances from the sun.

As the first significant discovery of the space age, the Van Allen radiation belts were detected in 1958 by Professor James Van Allen and his team at the University of Iowa and were found to be comprised of an inner and outer belt extending up to 25,000 miles above Earth's surface.

In 2013, Baker -- who received his doctorate under Van Allen -- led a team that used the twin Van Allen Probes launched by NASA in 2012 to discover a third, transient "storage ring" between the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts that seems to come and go with the intensity of space weather.

The latest mystery revolves around an "extremely sharp" boundary at the inner edge of the outer belt at roughly 7,200 miles in altitude that appears to block the ultrafast electrons from breeching the shield and moving deeper towards Earth's atmosphere.

"It's almost like theses electrons are running into a glass wall in space," said Baker, the study's lead author. "Somewhat like the shields created by force fields on Star Trek that were used to repel alien weapons, we are seeing an invisible shield blocking these electrons. It's an extremely puzzling phenomenon."

A paper on the subject was published in Nature.

The team originally thought the highly charged electrons, which are looping around Earth at more than 100,000 miles per second, would slowly drift downward into the upper atmosphere and gradually be wiped out by interactions with air molecules. But the impenetrable barrier seen by the twin Van Allen belt spacecraft stops the electrons before they get that far, said Baker.

The group looked at a number of scenarios that could create and maintain such a barrier. The team wondered if it might have to do with Earth's magnetic field lines, which trap and control protons and electrons, bouncing them between Earth's poles like beads on a string.

The also looked at whether radio signals from human transmitters on Earth could be scattering the charged electrons at the barrier, preventing their downward motion. Neither explanation held scientific water, Baker said.

"Nature abhors strong gradients and generally finds ways to smooth them out, so we would expect some of the relativistic electrons to move inward and some outward," said Baker.

"It's not obvious how the slow, gradual processes that should be involved in motion of these particles can conspire to create such a sharp, persistent boundary at this location in space."

Another scenario is that the giant cloud of cold, electrically charged gas called the plasmasphere, which begins about 600 miles above Earth and stretches thousands of miles into the outer Van Allen belt, is scattering the electrons at the boundary with low frequency, electromagnetic waves that create a plasmapheric "hiss," said Baker. The hiss sounds like white noise when played over a speaker, he said.

While Baker said plasmaspheric hiss may play a role in the puzzling space barrier, he believes there is more to the story.

"I think the key here is to keep observing the region in exquisite detail, which we can do because of the powerful instruments on the Van Allen probes. If the sun really blasts the Earth's magnetosphere with a coronal mass ejection (CME), I suspect it will breach the shield for a period of time," said Baker, also a faculty member in the astrophysical and planetary sciences department.

"It's like looking at the phenomenon with new eyes, with a new set of instrumentation, which give us the detail to say, 'Yes, there is this hard, fast boundary,'" said John Foster, associate director of MIT's Haystack Observatory and a study co-author.

Source: Space Mart.
Link: http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Star_Trek_like_invisible_shield_found_thousands_of_miles_above_Earth_999.html.

Hot, Super-Earths Help Track Water-Rich Atmospheres

by Nola Taylor Redd for Astrobiology Magazines
Moffett Field CA (SPX)
Nov 26, 2014

As the discovery of planets beyond the Solar System becomes more common, scientists have begun the in-depth study of the atmospheres of these bodies.

In a new paper, a pair of astronomers investigated the detectability of water in the atmospheres of far-away planets and found that hot, bright super-Earths are more easily identifiable with today's instruments than cooler ones.

Super-Earths are rocky bodies up to 10 times as massive as Earth, but not quite in the gas giant range. The compositions of these planets can range from solid rock to water-worlds atop a rocky crust.

Focusing on the hot version of super-Earths, which maintain water in vapor form rather than as a liquid on the surface, can provide insights into how much water could exist on cooler super-Earths.

Some of the cooler super-Earths have the potential to be habitable but their atmospheres are much more challenging to observe.

"We are interested in knowing how much water there is on super-Earths regardless of the phase - liquid or vapor," lead author Nikku Madhusudhan, of the University of Cambridge, told Astrobiology Magazine by email.

The research was published in a special exoplanet edition of the journal, The International Journal of Astrobiology.

Hotter planets, brighter futures

Madhusudhan and co-author Seth Redfield of Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, studied how qualities of an exoplanet that astronomers can observe, such as mass and radius, can help scientists narrow down what kind of atmosphere a planet could potentially have.

"Super-Earths are a mysterious class of planets because they seem to have a range of compositions, and also because we don't have any examples in the Solar System," planetary scientist Jacob Bean, of the University of Chicago, told Astrobiology Magazine.

Bean, who was not involved in the research, probes the atmospheres of super-Earths.

The mass and radius of planets beyond the Solar System can be used to place some starting constraints on their atmospheres. If an observed planet has a larger radius than expected for a water-rich body, it would indicate that the planet has an atmosphere with a molecular composition lighter than water vapor, and might therefore be made up of elements such as hydrogen or helium, Madhusudhan said.

Atmospheres represent a challenge to scientists, who struggle to observe the translucent outer layers of a planet. The passing starlight changes as it interacts with molecules in the atmosphere. By studying this light, known as spectra, scientists can identify the atmospheric composition. However, changes in the spectra are small compared to the overall light from the star, and require precision to study.

While the study of the atmospheres of larger gas giants, such as hot Jupiters, is in full swing, the smaller size of super-Earths makes their study more challenging. The smaller planets produce a smaller signal for scientists to study and identify.

The temperature of a planet, which primarily depends on how closely it orbits its star, also plays a role in our ability to detect its atmospheric composition. Scientists have a harder time detecting the atmosphere of a cooler planet than its warmer counterpart.

Characterizing the atmosphere of a super-Earth orbiting a star in its habitable zone (the region where liquid water could exist on the surface) is outside the abilities of today's instruments.

Future tools on upcoming telescopes, such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Thirty-Meter Telescope, which is expected to be the second-largest ground-based telescope when it sees first light around 2022, may be able to detect signatures in a few select cases, Madhusudhan said, but doing so will remain difficult.

As a result, the team focused on hot super-Earths with orbits on the order of days, particularly those traveling around hot, bright stars.

Only two hot super-Earths known today have good potential for atmospheric observations. 55 Cancri e boasts a temperature of over 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Celsius) as it circles its star every 18 hours. Meanwhile, HD 97658 b travels around its star once every 9.5 days, reaching temperatures of about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (630 degrees C).

When it comes to detecting atmospheres, "clearly, 55 Cancri e is the ideal candidate at the moment," Madhusudhan said.

Many upcoming planet-finding surveys undertaken from space, such as TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), CHEOPS (CHarcterising ExOPlanet Satellite), and PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars), as well as several ground-based surveys, are expected to find hundreds of such planets.

Cloudy skies

One reason close-orbiting super-Earths such as 55 Cancri e make better candidates to study is because their hot temperatures affect cloud formation. Although on Earth, clouds are made predominantly of water, at higher temperatures, clouds would form from heavier materials, such as iron and silicates. The cloud cover would settle lower to the ground, allowing more of the spectra of the atmosphere to pass through for scientists to identify.

Clouds lack the unique fingerprints that molecules present when scientists study their spectra, hindering the study of the atmosphere. For instance, GJ 1214b is a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star. Previous research suggested that this planet hosted a water-rich atmosphere, but Jacob Bean was part of a team that in 2013 detected clouds above the planet.

Another benefit of studying near-orbiting super-Earths is that they pass frequently between their star and our sun, allowing astronomers to gather more data over the same time scale than can be done with their cooler counterparts.

Studying hot super-Earths can help scientists understand more about super-Earths that lie in the habitable zone, even though the atmospheres of the cooler planets continue to elude detection.

Knowing how much water the hotter atmospheres contain can help constrain the amount of water on cooler planets, which should have formed from similar starting conditions that would have changed based on the planetary orbits.

"These calculations have helped sharpen our view of what information we can get from the spectra of super-Earths, and which individual objects are the best ones to focus our attention on," Bean said.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Hot_Super_Earths_Help_Track_Water_Rich_Atmospheres_999.html.

Young Volcanoes on the Moon

Huntsville AL (SPX)
Nov 26, 2014

Back in 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts orbiting the Moon photographed something very odd. Researchers called it "Ina," and it looked like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. There's nothing odd about volcanoes on the Moon, per se. Much of the Moon's ancient surface is covered with hardened lava.

The main features of the "Man in the Moon," in fact, are old basaltic flows deposited billions of years ago when the Moon was wracked by violent eruptions. The strange thing about Ina was its age.

Planetary scientists have long thought that lunar volcanism came to an end about a billion years ago, and little has changed since. Yet Ina looked remarkably fresh. For more than 30 years Ina remained a mystery, a "one-off oddity" that no one could explain.

Turns out, the mystery is bigger than anyone imagined. Using NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a team of researchers led by Sarah Braden of Arizona State University has found 70 landscapes similar to Ina. They call them "Irregular Mare Patches" or IMPs for short.

"Discovering new features on the lunar surface was thrilling!" says Braden. "We looked at hundreds of high-resolution images, and when I found a new IMP it was always the highlight of my day."

"The irregular mare patches look so different than more common lunar features like impact craters, impact melt, and highlands material," she says. "They really jump out at you."

On the Moon, it is possible to estimate the age of a landscape by counting its craters. The Moon is pelted by a slow drizzle of meteoroids that pepper its surface with impact scars. The older a landscape, the more craters it contains.

Some of the IMPs they found are very lightly cratered, suggesting that they are no more than 100 million years old. A hundred million years may sound like a long time, but in geological terms it's just a blink of an eye. The volcanic craters LRO found may have been erupting during the Cretaceous period on Earth--the heyday of dinosaurs. Some of the volcanic features may be even younger, 50 million years old, a time when mammals were replacing dinosaurs as dominant lifeforms.

"This finding is the kind of science that is literally going to make geologists rewrite the textbooks about the Moon," says John Keller, LRO project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

IMPs are too small to be seen from Earth, averaging less than a third of a mile (500 meters) across in their largest dimension. That's why, other than Ina, they haven't been found before. Nevertheless, they appear to be widespread around the nearside of the Moon.

"Not only are the IMPs striking landscapes, but also they tell us something very important about the thermal evolution of the Moon," says Mark Robinson of Arizona State University, the principal investigator for LRO's high resolution camera. "The interior of the Moon is perhaps hotter than previously thought."

"We know so little of the Moon!" he continues. "The Moon is a large mysterious world in its own right, and its only three days away! I would love to land on an IMP and take the Moon's temperature first-hand using a heat probe."

Some people think the Moon looks dead, "but I never thought so," says Robinson, who won't rule out the possibility of future eruptions. "To me, it has always been an inviting place of magnificent beauty, a giant magnet in our sky drawing me towards it."

Young volcanoes have only turned up the heat on the Moon's allure. Says Robinson..."let's go!"

Source: Moon Daily.
Link: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/Young_Volcanoes_on_the_Moon_999.html.

Asteroid Mining Could Make For Boom Times

Moscow, Russia (Sputnik)
Nov 25, 2014

NASA has concluded contracts with two private-sector enterprises, intending to develop practical approaches to asteroid mining, encouraged by the successful comet landing earlier this month, as such model of space exploration may prove commercially viable, possibly attracting investment capital and other market instruments into the traditionally government dominated aerospace industry.

Deep Space Industries (DSI) and Planetary Resources Asteroid Mining Company are the companies that received NASA contracts to explore, pursue and execute missions to extract valuable mineral resources from cosmic bodies, asteroids in particular. These enterprises have already laid out careful plans to mine asteroids for resources that can be used to sustain various kinds of human activity in space, as opposed to the current method of extracting them from Earth.

The cost is projected to be roughly $5,000 to $25,000 per kg. Some near-Earth asteroids bear iced water, silicate and carbonaceous minerals and metals, among other matters, in their chemical composition.

The concept of asteroid mining has developed during the last decade. While it is extremely expensive to send an object into space from the Earth, asteroids have almost no gravity, making them easy to pick up and move around.

Asteroids can be brought to a processing station hovering over Earth at a high orbit, where useful resources can be extracted prepared for further use. Such operations would demand very little fuel as harvesting spacecraft will not need to takeoff from Earth each time it starts a new mission.

"Right now it costs $17 million per ton to get anything up to geosynchronous orbit," David Gump, vice chairman for DSI said as quoted by the Boston Globe. "If we can beat whatever that price is in 2022, we'll have a big market."

What DSI intends to do is to launch small reconnaissance spacecraft called FireFlies to explore near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) for any valuable resources. At the beginning, the resources of primary interest will be those able to be used to refuel satellites, build space infrastructure and provide astronauts with water and air.

As the project advances, some of the most precious resources like the platinum-group metals, will be transported down to Earth. Spacecraft dubbed DragonFlies will take samples of asteroid terrain to Earth for analysis.

The following stages are the actual 'harvesting' of asteroids with robotic harvester spacecraft, the processing stage, where metals will be extracted and refined in a geostationary orbit, and then the manufacturing stage, akin to the Earth-based aerospace industrial production, but in the outer space.

Planetary Resources, on their part, are more concerned with the financial part of the business as they are intended to actually bring the asteroid resources down to Earth.

"An asteroid 30 or 40 meters wide has more platinum on it than five years of platinum trading on earth," says Eric Anderson, head of Planetary Resources as quoted by the Boston Globe.

"We could bring platinum back at cost of $300 per ounce and that could go way down over time." Now platinum costs $1,226 per ounce, according to Bloomberg data.

The company intends to operate several satellite telescopes in order to identify asteroids containing precious resources. Sometime later, Planetary Resources will launch an unmanned orbital station that will host robotic spacecraft able to conduct asteroid mining and deliver the commercially viable resources to Earth.

At present, NASA seems to favour the Planetary Resources project as it presents more of a simple, straightforward commercial approach to a risky incentive which space mining is.

However, the DSI work potentially will provide greater benefits for broader-scale space exploration, when the work of multiple missions from Earth will need to be sustained.

However, the first attempt at an asteroid landing for a purpose of collecting information and, possibly, matter samples, will be undertaken by NASA in September 2016, when an OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft will land on the surface of a near earth object known as 'Bennu'.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Asteroid_Mining_to_Make_Aerospace_Profitable_as_NASA_Outsources_Contracts_999.html.

Russia Preparing Joint Moon Exploration Agreement With EU

Moscow, Russia (Sputnik)
Nov 25, 2014

Scientists from Russia and the European Union are preparing an agreement on joint exploration of the Moon, Lev Zelyony, director of the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Wednesday.

"There is a governmental agreement on the ExoMars program and now we are preparing an agreement on the participation of the European Space Agency in the exploration of the Moon," Zelyony said at the press center of news agency Rossiya Segodnya.

According to the scientist, the leaders of the European Space Agency and Russian Space Agency Roscosmos have affirmed their readiness to fulfill existing agreements and to sign new ones.

"A big, huge number of contacts with European scholars over the years, dating back to the Soviet era, have never stopped. Generations pass, but the friendship remains. Many Russian scientists conduct experiments on western devices, all of this comes under the agreements," Zelyony added.

The exploration of the Moon and Mars is a priority for the Russian space program.

A landing on the Moon is planned in 2030 with the subsequent deployment of a manned base, where test sites for the accumulation and transfer of energy over large distances and new engines tests will be gradually deployed. Another heavy launch vehicle carrying up to 80 tons is being developed for the implementation of plans to fly to the Moon.

In spring 2012, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos agreed on the development of the so-called ExoMars program.

The research program includes the launch of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in 2016, with the goal of collecting data on atmospheric gases present in low concentrations. The project also involves the exploration of ice found in the soil on Mars, as well as landing the ExoMars Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM).

The Mars rover is expected to land in 2018 and perform geological analyses of the planet's soil and search for traces of life.

In August Daniil Rodionov, a Russian scientific supervisor on the project, said that Russia will create a landing deck and provide a range of unique scientific equipment for the Russian-European mission to Mars.

Source: Moon Daily.
Link: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/Russia_Preparing_Joint_Moon_Exploration_Agreement_With_EU_999.html.

Putin foe Navalny says he has cut off house-arrest bracelet

January 05, 2015

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, the leading foe of President Vladimir Putin, says he has cut off the electronic bracelet that was monitoring his house arrest.

Navalny was convicted last week of fraud and given a suspended sentence of 3 ½ years. However, he was kept under house arrest pending appeal of the conviction. Navalny claims it is illegal to keep him under house arrest after the conviction. On Monday, he said on his website that he had cut off the monitoring bracelet with a kitchen knife, but said he did not plan to go anywhere.

Navalny's brother Oleg was also convicted in the case, but was sent to prison for 3 ½ years. Alexei Navalny denounced that as a Kremlin strategy to silence opponents by afflicting their relatives.