Q: What will it take for the U.S. to make another "giant leap" in space technology? (It seems that there is a lot of industry inertia in using proven technology based on a lot of risk aversion.) Bill Tandy, Boulder, Colorado
Franklin Chang-Díaz: It does take leadership and vision from the very top. However, the private sector is becoming an increasingly important element in the equation, driven by entrepreneurship and new business opportunities. It may very well be that the new driver for space exploration does not come from the traditional government sector but rather from a more agile and dynamic private sector.
Q: How would you control a plasma rocket since it is traveling at such high speeds? Joanne, Albany, New York
Chang-Díaz: The trajectories of space vehicles, regardless of their speed (so long as we don't get too close to the speed of light-unlikely anytime soon) are fortunately determined by laws of physics that we understand well today. Controlling the speed of a spacecraft is done by pointing its rocket engines in particular directions at particular times during the flight. In the case of VASIMR, we would accelerate continuously half way to Mars and then turn the ship around to fire the rocket backwards so we begin gradually slowing down as we reach the planet. Eventually, the planet's own gravity pulls us in, and we finish the breaking maneuver by diving a little into the planet's atmosphere. The friction of the air on the ship slows it down to an acceptable final speed so that conventional chemical rockets can take over and do the landing. We have produced a video that shows this that you might like to see athttp://www.adastrarocket.com/plasmarocket.mpg
Q: If you manage to create a rocket that will be able to heat argon up to millions of degrees F, what will you construct the rocket out of in order to withstand such extreme temperatures? Would being in space cool the rocket's body to a point where the parts of the rocket would not melt? Would the fact that the plasma is shooting out the back of the rocket save the body from melting? Lynette BW - Hampstead Middle School teacher 8th grade, Hampstead, New Hampshire
Chang-Díaz: The plasma is so hot that no known material would be capable of "holding" it, so we do not use "materials" to do so. Fortunately, plasma is also an electrical conductor and, as such, it responds very well to magnetic and electric forces. We use a magnetic force field to contain the plasma and electromagnetic waves to heat it (so nothing really touches it). The magnetic field acts as an invisible "duct," which of course, being a force field, does not melt. We call this "duct" a magnetic nozzle and it is one of the key components on the VASIMR engine. You can find a good explanation of this at http://www.adastrarocket.com/VASIMR.html
Q: Dr. Chang-Díaz,
With the idea of your plasma drive, do you believe that the idea of a "warp" drive can be developed in time? And I do believe that your plasma drive is just the first step. What is the temperature range of your plasma drive? David Elliott, Jackson, Michigan
Chang-Díaz: Warp drive requires a major upgrade in our understanding of the laws of physics. I am, however, an eternal optimist and I believe that someday this knowledge will come to us. Until then however, VASIMR provides a stepping-stone to much faster space travel than is possible today, and its development will open the entire solar system to us for exploration. This will keep us busy for a long time and make humanity a true space-faring species. VASIMR is also a precursor to fusion rockets, which will give us extremely powerful engines, capable of accelerating continuously at nearly 1g. This will provide us with an "artificial gravity," and the astronauts will not just travel fast but also will not be debilitated by long exposure to weightlessness. Ultimately though, the "Holy Grail" in space propulsion is Warp drive—hopefully some day that will be possible.
Q: I understand the basics of a plasma rocket, but what are you using to heat the gas? To get something to a million degrees, it seems like that would take a lot of energy, which would take a lot of fuel. Pat Bradford, Huntsville, Alabama
Chang-Díaz: We heat the plasma with electromagnetic waves, not unlike the way one heats food today in microwave ovens. We use radio waves of lower frequency than microwaves, because the hardware that produces them is a bit more efficient and lightweight, suitable for space, but the principle is basically the same. The plasma will reach extremely high temperatures as long as we contain it properly and not let its heat escape too quickly. This containment is done with very strong magnetic forces to which the plasma responds. You can have a look at http://www.adastrarocket.com/VASIMR.html
Q: How would you protect the rocket from small debris tearing through it traveling that fast? Very cool idea by the way!! Thanks, Nick Nick Palassis
Chang-Díaz: Space debris is a real problem even in today's rockets. We have been developing special material shields that are used in spacecraft now. The problem with space debris is concentrated near Earth due to all the derelict satellites we have put in orbit and are no longer usable. In the open interplanetary void however, the collision with debris is less likely—though still a matter of concern. We will have to build our ship with sufficient "redundancy" so that it can tolerate some of these impacts and not be completely crippled. By the way, in a side note, our "space ship" Earth has no such redundancy should a wayward asteroid decide to cross our path, something to think about...
Q: Is it possible to produce the high temperatures needed by static sparks? (For instance, can you make and contain a huge bolt of lightning using nuclear fuel? Thanks and good luck. Chuck Charles P. Richardson, Elkhart, Indiana
Chang-Díaz: Hmm!! That would be hard to do. Capturing large quantities of energy delivered in a short time is always very hard. It is akin to capturing the energy of a bomb. There is actually a project that approaches this though. It is called the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. They use gigantic lasers that all concentrate their light onto a small central point where a tiny piece of deuterium-tritium ice is heated to hundreds of millions of degrees in a billionth of a second. The hoped for result is a miniature Sun that explodes like a tiny hydrogen bomb and releases fusion energy. The hope is to capture this energy as useful electricity.
Q: I've been hearing about plasma engines for sometime. The story was, a favorite book review once said, 'Detailed sketches and sketchy details'. What makes your plasma generator practical?
Chang-Díaz: A lot of sweat and hard work, the transition from physics feasibility to engineering practicality is what we are witnessing now in our laboratory today. But there is still a lot of work ahead. It does remind me of a similar transition in the evolution of the automobile engine, an extremely complex system that, over time, has become extremely practical. Most people have no idea when they turn their ignition key in the morning when they go to work what it has taken to bring such a complex system to such a high level of practicality.
Q: Why is xenon used more often to create plasma than other gases? Anonymous
Chang-Díaz: The short answer is: because it is easy to ionize and heavy enough to provide a good kick.
Xenon, however, may not be suitable to feed a robust space propulsion infrastructure, as the world's supply of the gas is quite limited. It costs about $5000/kg to buy laboratory-grade xenon, so scientists are investigating other alternatives, such as argon ($40/kg) and, for deep space missions, the choice may be hydrogen, the most abundant element in the known universe.
Q: What is the difference between plasmas in very hot places like the Sun and plasmas created with lasers, microwaves, electric fields etc? Harrison Becker
Chang-Díaz: There is really no difference. One of the goals of controlled thermonuclear research on Earth is precisely to create a small Sun in the laboratory, so we can learn to harness the power of thermonuclear fusion to provide us with abundant energy.
Q: Can you apply your technology to reduce the fuel consumption of airplanes? This may be quite a challenge; however, if the technology were developed it may greatly reduce the greenhouse gases that airplanes produce. Anonymous
Chang-Díaz: Plasma technology in general has many more uses beyond rocket propulsion. There are techniques to improve the combustion efficiency of gasoline and other fossil fuels in our conventional engines with small plasma discharges that stimulate the chemical reactions that control combustion. There are many others. I would suggest you have a look at this document http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309109434
Q: Dear Mr. Chang-Díaz,
While in space, what was your favorite food? According to the Travel Channel, tortillas were introduced to space as an alternative for bread. Did you, on any of your many missions, experience any zero-G tortillas? Mark Martinez, Portland, Oregon
Chang-Díaz: Yes, in all of my missions. Tortillas are very practical in space.
Q: What's so special about argon and xenon that makes them so widely used in plasma engines? Perry High School 9th grade, Gilbert, Arizona
Chang-Díaz: The short answer is: Both are easy to ionize and heavy enough to provide a good kick.
Xenon however may not be suitable to feed a robust space propulsion infrastructure, as the world's supply of the gas is quite limited. It costs about $5000/kg to buy laboratory grade xenon, so scientists are investigating other alternatives, such as argon ($40/kg) and, for deep space missions, the choice may be hydrogen, the most abundant element in the known universe.
Q: I watched the NOVA episode where you explain the methods that will be used in the future to propel man into the farthest reaches of space, to start, Mars. Your company is developing a rocket based on your thesis. Perhaps I did not hear you mention the type of element that will be used to create the plasma. I thought that one of the most abundant elements present on Earth is probably the best to use, and that is sulfur. It is almost free and accessible from any place where there is a volcanic vent.
Could your method utilize sulfur? Mind you that if other planets are also made in the similar manner as Earth, the feasibility of harvesting sulfur in places other than Earth makes traveling into other solar systems or planets at so called "warp speeds" or at the speed of light an attainable feat.
I hope that you can make this a reality for the future of mankind.
Best regards, Nelly Nelly Villacreses, Takoma Park, Maryland
Chang-Díaz: We have been working with argon as the main feedstock gas to make the plasma; however, VASIMR can work with a variety of gases, such as hydrogen, deuterium, nitrogen, as well as mixtures such as ammonia. We have not experimented with sulfur. We do have to be careful with the elements we use, as these could combine chemically with components near the rocket and create unfavorable conditions.
Q: Is there any way that plasma thrusters can be used to launch an object from Earth?
Thank you! Harrison Becker, Gilbert, Arizona
Chang-Díaz: Plasma rockets are better suited for in-space propulsion and not to lift off from Earth because they tend to like to work in a vacuum. The venerable chemical rocket will probably continue to get us off the planet and allow us to land nicely and efficiently, but plasma propulsion will provide the "long haul" and high speed capability to travel far and fast once in space.
Q: I am a high school student from Michigan who has always been interested in the cosmos and wanted to be an astronaut. As a high school student I am aware that the decisions that I make right now will affect me the rest of my life. I would greatly appreciate it if you could advise me on what I should focus on (what I should do) to achieve my dreams to become an astronaut.
Thank you Anonymous
Chang-Díaz: There are not only extraordinary opportunities for young people today to fly in space, but to also do extremely productive things there. Space will be a place of exploration, of business, of commerce, and lots of people will live and work there in your lifetime. So, being an astronaut takes on a much larger meaning. It needs to be connected with something else you dream about. In my case. it has always been science and exploration. I wanted to not just ride the rockets, but to also design them and build them. You need to find that special thread that guides your personal path to space. There is no set "recipe" and yours may be different than that of others. The traditional image of the astronaut as the military pilot has been expanded to include that of the scientist, the explorer, the entrepreneur. As such, you have a very bright future and a very high probability of achieving your dream if you apply yourself and work really hard. Follow your star...and be sure to enjoy the road to success, as you will spend the best years of your life getting to where you want to go.
Q: How does someone who believes in what you are trying to do contribute other than money today? With a 39-day trip to Mars, exploration is almost certain because of the manageable timeline this creates! It is so exciting, for a while I thought NASA would surely kill manned exploration beyond the moon due to the muscle loss and health problems associated with long-term space travel. This rocket is truly a game changer, in my estimation. My only engineering question is how to ensure the safety of anything that has temperatures in the millions architecturally. I'm sure the materials are exotic, but will they be safe for a 39-day burn? I'm sure it is proprietary, but nevertheless I am very intrigued. Perhaps some cross-pollination with the cold-fusion folks could net some reliable clean-power sources. If the materials science works in both genres, would there be applicable technology transfer in the future?
Science has the Answers to our problems, and inspires our dreams to go as far as we can go! Roy Koons, Davidsonville, Maryland
Chang-Díaz: I agree completely. It is amazing what science and technology can achieve for the betterment of humanity. The VASIMR engine has many new technologies without which it would not be possible to think of such propulsion system. These technologies have already begun having a positive effect in our lives on Earth. For example, plasma technology is used today to improve the efficiency of electric lamps and light sources. It is used in the manufacture of computer chips with plasma etching devices that reduce the need for toxic chemicals to process these materials. It is also used to dissociate highly toxic wastes, eliminating them and converting them into a source of clean electrical power. Superconducting magnets, needed to control and guide the plasma in the VASIMR, are the basis for MRI machines in modern hospitals and could lead to breakthroughs in high-speed rail transportation and power transmission. I could go on. I suggest you review the following document http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309109434
Q: How long do you think it will take to develop the 40-day mission to Mars plasma drive? How soon do you think it will be ready for flight test? How long until you think it will be operational? Ron, Kew Gardens, New York
Chang-Díaz: The 40-day mission to Mars would require the development of a nuclear reactor to generate about 200 MW of electrical power for the engines, something similar to the reactors in use today in nuclear submarines (about 1/10 the power of a conventional nuclear power plant). Such reactors have not yet been developed for space, and they need to be if we are truly serious about humans exploring space. This may be pursued by the U.S. or any other country that has a mature nuclear power industry. We will have to see. As for the VASIMR engine itself, our company plans to develop the plasma propulsion technology in a stepwise fashion, focusing first on engines that will be used near Earth and the Moon and powered by solar electricity. Eventually, we will build more powerful engines, at tens of megawatts, suitable for a 40-day mission to Mars. These engines cannot be tested on Earth or on the International Space Station. We plan to test these engines on the surface of the Moon, using solar electric power to drive them.
Q: I was curious about the effects of the extreme temperatures of the plasma rocket. How would these very high temperatures affect the atmosphere and the ozone layer? I have heard that every rocket takeoff now causes a hole in the ozone, but I am not sure of the fact or effects. I must commend you on encouraging your children to live their dreams and be such a strong example. Our continent needs to encourage a work ethic more. Thank you, JJ Crouch JJ Crouch, Winchester, Kentucky
Chang-Díaz: Thank you for your comment. The plasma engine will not be used in the atmosphere but even if it were, the exhaust is a harmless noble gas (argon), which has no chemical reactions with the environment. However, the engine will be used exclusively in space. There, the plasma exhaust will not be much different from the plasma from the solar wind. Another important point to note is that, while the plasma is very hot, its density is very low, and so the "heat" content in the plasma jet is lower than the heat content in the exhaust of a conventional chemical rocket. Think of the difference between heat and temperature. A lit match has a high temperature but very little heat (some tough guys can put it out with their fingers). In contrast, a bathtub full of hot water has a lot of heat but the temperature is low enough to take a bath in it.
Q: I remember reading some years ago about a "Project Daedalus" that was attempting to develop a "continuous pulsed-fusion" rocket that supposedly could achieve 10% of light speed. Are you familiar with this project, and does it have anything in common with the rocket you are working on? Lyle Gentry, Wichita, Kansas
Chang-Díaz: There are several of these ideas I remember from my early university years. One of them would "scoop" hydrogen plasma from the interplanetary medium and compress it in a magnetic trap to produce fusion. I believe it was called the "fusion ramjet." In another concept, the ship would explode thermonuclear bombs in a magnetic nozzle to create a rather bumpy plasma pusher that would propel the ship. These all do have something in common with VASIMR in that they rely on plasma as the ultimate propulsion fluid and use strong magnetic fields to control it and guide it in the right direction. A variant of this was project VISTA in which I did collaborate in the early 1980s. In such a concept, a powerful laser array would trigger thermonuclear ignition in small pellets of deuterium and tritium. The explosions would result in hot and dense plasma that would also be expelled out of the ship in a magnetic nozzle to provide thrust.
Q: I watched NOVA last night and was impressed with the Plasma Rocket you invented. I would like to know if you currently reside in the State of Florida? We would like to know more about your work and share that with our readers. Our publication is a bilingual magazine that reaches both Hispanics and Non-Hispanics. Readership 150,000 print / online over 200,000 viewers a month.
Publisher, Susan Pagan
Ahora Orlando Susan Pagan, Orlando, Florida
Chang-Díaz: I do not live in the State of Florida, though our company is thinking of establishing a presence there. Our main operation is in Houston, just a couple of miles from the NASA Johnson Space Center. We also have a research facility in northwestern Costa Rica and a small representation in Frankfurt, Germany. However, we are keen to reach all interested people and would be happy to collaborate with your magazine.
Q: When you get into space, do you have free time to play around, browse Earth, contemplate space, or is the astronaut's schedule too tight? Do you play pranks onto other astronauts during the missions (any one you can share)? Vladimir Sanchez, San Francisco, California
Chang-Díaz: We do have time for all of that and enjoy our time together as a crew. There is a lot of sharing and a strong sense of kinship that comes from being in a space mission. There are some pranks that we do play on others, but we have to be very careful with pranks in space, as they can be misconstrued. The most frequent one is to hide food, as crewmembers are sometimes highly attached to their food stuff. Nothing too serious, though.
Q: NASA is planning a manned mission to Mars around the year 2030. Do you think the VASIMR rocket will be incorporated in the mission? Zachary Neubauer, Wasilla Alaska
Chang-Díaz: We are certainly working hard to make it so. A lot of things can happen in 20 years.


The atmosphere of the hottest known exoplanet is boiling away, and its escaping gases are being captured by its parent star, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
A hot Jupiter, or gas giant planet orbiting very close to its star, KELT-9b was discovered last year by a team of scientists using the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) at Winer Observatory in southeastern Arizona.
KELT uses the transit method to search for exoplanets, looking for periodic drops in a star’s brightness caused by a planet transiting or passing in front of its parent star.
The extremely hot star, KELT-9, is both hotter and larger than the Sun, with temperatures of 17,540 degrees Fahrenheit (9,726 degrees Celsius). Because the planet is in such a close orbit, circling KELT-9 once every 1.5 days, it is tidally locked to the star, with one hemisphere always facing the star and the other always facing away from it.
Temperatures on KELT-9b’s dayside are hotter than those of most stars and can reach 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit (4,300 degrees Celsius). The planet is about twice the diameter of Jupiter and has nearly three times its mass.
In spite of being in such a close orbit, KELT-9b will not fall into its star, as some hot Jupiters do.
“This planet reminds me of the mythical Icarus, who came close to the Sun and crashed. Our planet will not crash, but it certainly will lose an essential part of itself, namely its atmosphere,” said Thomas Henning of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in a public statement.
When the researchers viewed the planet with the CARMENES instrument on the 3.5-meter telescope at Calar Alto Observatory in Spain, they found it to have an extended hydrogen atmosphere, a discovery that indicated the star’s gravity is not just heating the planet’s atmosphere, but sucking in its hydrogen.
“The large size (of the atmosphere) suggests the planet is losing hydrogen gas at a significant rate of more than 100,000 tons of hydrogen per second. The star is ‘boiling off’ the planet’s atmosphere, and pulling the gas onto itself, in a blatant case of interplanetary theft,” the researchers note in their statement.


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MAJOR FLAW FOUND IN SPACE STATION PLANNED BY NASA
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: March 19, 1990
Federal experts have belatedly found that the $30 billion space station Freedom, the planned centerpiece of the nation's program for the manned exploration of the solar system, cannot be built as designed because its vast array of parts would start to break down before the station was completed.
The trouble could force a redesigning of the 500-foot-long, 290-ton station, officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said last week, adding that the agency had only preliminary ideas of how it might be fixed.
The setback was uncovered by a team of NASA investigators early this year. They found that the construction, expected to take five years, would be only 60 to 70 percent complete before space-walking astronauts would have to turn from assembly to an elaborate program of preventive maintenance, inspections and repairs.
Outpost for Astronauts
The station is envisioned as an orbiting outpost from which astronauts would conduct a variety of scientific studies and venture into the solar system.
This year's budget for the station is $1.8 billion, and the Bush Administration has requested $2.5 billion for next year. So far $3.9 billion has been spent on design studies and the building of prototype parts.
If built as now conceived, the station would require about 2,200 hours of maintenance each year by space-suited astronauts, NASA experts said. They characterized the figure as alarmingly high.
In the 30-year history of the American space program, astronauts have logged 400 hours in ''space walks,'' which are considered dangerous because of radiation risks and possible injury or death from speeding debris and micrometeorites. The last time an American walked in space was more than four years ago.
''It's pretty serious,'' said Charles R. Price, a NASA engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston who is co-leader of the investigation team. He said the study was scheduled to be finished in June and would include a set of recommendations on how to address the problem. Most of the recommendations have yet to be determined.
Carolyn S. Griner, director of space station operations and utilization at NASA headquarters in Washington, said the station could be redesigned to incorporate solutions. ''It's the beginning of a process, not the end,'' she said. ''It's a recognition of a potential problem out there, and that's very positive.'' She said the remedies might include building parts with longer lifetimes, a move she conceded could greatly increase the station's cost.
Living and Working in Space
David M. Walker, an astronaut who is manager for space station assembly at the Johnson center, said the station as conceived probably could not be built. But he quickly added that design changes could reduce the hours of upkeep. ''We're just going to have to become better at living and working in space,'' he said. ''We can solve these problems.''
John E. Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, a private group based in Washington, said the finding was a serious blow to the station program.
''The general lesson on this is the same as with the shuttle,'' he said. ''These things are easier to design and build than to operate.''
But he added: ''Politically, it's not a death blow. The station is too big to cancel. They'll muddle through. There's no other choice.'' #31 Shuttle Trips Are Planned Planning for the station got under way in 1984 after President Ronald Reagan called on the nation to build its first permanently manned space outpost ''within a decade.'' The schedule was repeatedly pushed back as the station's cost and complexity increased.
Today a total of 31 space shuttle flights are planned to carry trusses, solar power panels, other equipment and supplies and nine pressurized modules in which astronauts would live and work. The first part is to be launched in early 1995, with assembly to be completed in late 1999. The station would orbit about 250 miles above the earth and house as many as eight crew members. It is meant to last 30 years. It is by far the most complex spacecraft that NASA or anyone else has ever tried to build.
Last year, on the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, President Bush said the station was ''a new bridge between worlds,'' proposing it as a stepping stone to manned bases on the moon and Mars.
Signs of a Problem
Hints of the upkeep problem were seen in the mid-1980's as NASA officials began to sketch firm plans for the station. ''We had concerns,'' said Dr. Anthony England, a former astronaut and program scientist for the station who now teaches at the University of Michigan. ''There were too many maintenance EVA's,'' he said, referring to extravehicular activity, or space walks.
To allay the problem, a NASA panel recommended in September 1986 that much of the electronics equipment on the station's rigid external framework of beams and girders be moved inside pressurized modules, where astronauts could service it without having to go outside.
Even so, the problem grew. By last year, contractors had achieved much detail in their designs for the station's electrical power, data management, guidance, navigation and communications. At NASA's space station office in Reston, Va., a team headed by Dr. D. Bryant Cramer, an engineering official, again went over the maintenance issue, and was surprised to find that about 1,700 hours of space walking would be needed each year for upkeep.
In January, the head of NASA's station program, Richard H. Kohrs, told a gathering of station contractors in Dallas that the figure was absurd.
''This program has too much EVA,'' he was quoted by Space Station News, an industry newsletter, as saying. ''If you believe the project estimates, and I don't, they're talking about 1,700 man-hours of EVA a year just for maintenance. That's about two and a half EVA's a week. If that is true, we don't have the right design.'' He said it would be acceptable to have one assignment a month outside the station.
Repair Job in 1985
As Mr. Kohrs spoke, a NASA team was re-examining the issue at his behest. Its director was Dr. William F. Fisher, an astronaut who is a doctor, Dr. Fisher and another astronaut fixed a malfunctioning communication satellite in a September 1985 shuttle mission. It took two days instead of the one day planned, with the two astronauts laboring a total of 12 hours outside the winged spaceship.
Joining Dr. Fisher to direct the inquiry was Mr. Price, a 26-year NASA veteran. At the Johnson center, he heads development of ''teleoperated'' systems, or robots linked by wires or radio to human operators.
Team members began by determining the number of parts outside the station's inhabited modules that could be replaced if they failed, finding 5,578 of them. These included solar power panels, structural elements and a bevy of electronic devices. The team then calculated the likelihood of failure and required time for replacement. To that they added preventive maintenance and inspections meant to fend off serious failures.
Unexpectedly, the new calculations increased the prospective work load by ''about 30 percent,'' Mr. Price said, sending it from 1,700 hours to about 2,200. He added that the study assumed replacement parts would be on hand in space. ''That's a huge assumption,'' he said. ''It might not be that rosy.''
Asked why such an assessment was being done now, nearly six years after the start of station-design work, he replied: ''Part of the answer is that the hardware was not ready. But frankly, somebody should have done some of these things earlier.''
Some Possible Solutions
The team is starting to consider a number of solutions, Mr. Price said. One would be to standardize parts, easing their replacement. He said substantially increasing the lifetime of parts was ''not realistic'' because of the cost.
Some maintenance could eventually be done by remotely operated robots, Mr. Price said. But their predicted powers are rather feeble. At best, he said, they could probably do only 25 percent of the chores. He also noted that such systems were so new that years of experimentation would be needed before robots play a useful role in station maintenance.
Complicating the astronauts' job is a spacesuit shortage. In a cost-cutting move, NASA recently dropped development work on a station suit that would have been easier to wear, operate and maintain than the ones on the space shuttle. The current plan is for space walks to be done exclusively in shuttle suits, and then only when the winged spaceship is docked to the station.
The maintenance findings have prompted discussions within NASA on whether the station is unbuildable, Mr. Price said. He said his own attitude was to forge ahead with the study, ''to lay out the numbers'' and let high NASA officials decide how extensively the station might need to be redesigned.
A radical solution would be to send the station into space more quickly, with the aid of an unmanned, cargo-carrying version of the shuttle that could carry heavier loads. The plan would allow rapid assembly of the station before the need arises for extensive repairs.
No Panacea for the Problem
NASA is considering the plan. But developing the new vehicle would be expensive. And it could force a major redesign of the station to fit the new craft, delaying the start of construction. Even then, said Mr. Walker, the NASA astronaut, the new vehicle ''would not be a panacea for maintenance'' after assembly.
Mr. Kohrs, the head of the space station project, said in an interview that the NASA inquiry was still in its early stages. ''I think as we work it harder and harder, we'll drive those numbers down,'' he said. ''I'm optimistic we'll work this out.''
NASA and private experts note that upkeep problems are not merely theoretical. Four years ago, the Soviet Union lofted the core module for its Mir space station. Today construction is two years behind schedule, hampered by planning lapses, equipment failures and close brushes with death. The troubles have often forced Soviet astronauts to lay aside scientific experiments to concentrate on repairing the 100-foot, 80-ton flying laboratory.
Diagram: The proposed NASA Space Station (NYT) (pg. B8)


Space exploration is a field which has always consistently amazed mankind, and Mars has always been the object of curiosity for researchers and conspiracy theorists alike. By far a lot of objects have been spotted on the surface of Mars by those fascinated with stories of alien life, be it a woman, spider or lizard.
But this time there is news from a far more reliable source revealing a giant 13 feet thick slab of ice, spread over an area same as Texas and California combined, right under the surface of Mars. It is believed that the reason for the formation of such a gargantuan glacier buried under the surface, is a snowfall that occurred tens of millions of years ago.
The discovery came after the rare phenomenon of terraced craters, as opposed to the more common bowl shaped craters, were noticed. The research was carried out by the shallow radar or SHARAD equipment on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, following 3D images generated by a HiRISE camera.


Apollo 8's crew took NASA's first deep-space photo of Earth in 1968.
NASA wants you to wave at Saturn on July 19.
The space agency plans to take an interplanetary photo and wants you looking attentive when its photographer snaps the image from 898 million miles away.
Between 5:27 p.m. and 5:42 p.m. July 19, NASA plans to train the Cassini spacecraft's highest-resolution camera toward Earth. Cassini, which launched from Cape Canaveral in 1997, is currently exploring Saturn. ...


Russia sets new date for Mir mission
- Russia sets new date for Mir mission
March 3, 2000
Web posted at: 12:29 PM EST (1729 GMT)
MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia will launch a new mission to the aging Mir space
station on April 3, three days later than originally planned, a spokeswoman
for Mission Control said Friday.
The spokeswoman said the delay was for technical reasons and the original
March 31 date was only a rough guideline that allowed for schedule changes
for Soyuz spacecraft launch.
Earlier Friday, Itar-Tass news agency quoted a spokesman at a space training
center outside Moscow known as Star City as saying the launch had been
postponed due to technical reasons. He gave no further details.
Mir was due to be scuttled this year but got a new lease on life when
foreign investors agreed to pay $20 million to fund further missions on the
craft, which currently is unmanned.
Russia's Western space partners have been worried that plans to prolong the
life of Mir could divert Russia's scarce funds from a $60 billion project to
build an International Space Station.
Acting President Vladimir Putin urged the government Thursday to find funds
to preserve Mir without sacrificing Russia's role in the International Space
Russian-built living quarters for the International Space Station, grouping
the United States, the European Union and Japan, are due to take off from
Russia's cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan later this year.


Europa is one of Jupiter’s moons, one of the few worlds in the solar system that could support conditions suitable for life
09 October 2023 – 11:33
NASA’s James Webb Telescope continues to surprise the world with its discoveries. This time, he discovered signals that could confirm the possibility of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
According to jwst.nasa.govThe space observatory had found a source of carbon on the surface of the moon in question.
It was also highlighted that Europa – one of the largest moons in the solar system, discovered by Galileo in 1610 – “is one of the few worlds in our solar system that could harbor conditions suitable for life.”
NASA explains that, thanks to previous research, it has been proven that “underneath its icy water crust there is a salty ocean of liquid water with a rocky sea floor. However, planetary scientists have not confirmed whether this ocean contains the chemicals necessary for life, especially carbon.” .
The astronomers behind Webb have likely found traces of carbon in Europa’s chaotic terrain known as Tara Reggio and Powys Reggio.
“The surface ice in these regions has been altered, and there may have been a relatively recent exchange of materials between the subsurface ocean and the icy surface. Carbon, a universal component of life as we know it, likely originated in Europa’s ocean.” This discovery indicates the existence of a habitable environment in the salty ocean beneath the surface of this moon.
Thehill.com explains that this moon of Jupiter has already been closely examined in recent years, especially by the Galileo probe, which orbited Jupiter between 1995 and 2003.
“This discovery has important implications for the habitability of Europa’s vicinity. The Moon appears mostly blue because it is brightest at shorter infrared wavelengths,” NASA’s website highlights this new discovery.
The presence of carbon dioxide is further evidence that the underground ocean of this moon could become a home for life. Carbon is the basis of all life on Earth, as NASA indicates on the aforementioned site.
According to the article on thehill.com, the European Space Agency launched the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) last April, and it is expected to enter Jupiter’s space in July 2031.
NASA, for its part, plans to launch Europa Clipper in October 2024, with a planned arrival at Jupiter in April 2030.
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The petrology record on the Moon suggests that a cataclysmic spike in the cratering rate occurred ∼700 million years after the planets formed1; this event is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB). Planetary formation theories cannot naturally account for an intense period of planetesimal bombardment so late in Solar System history2. Several models have been proposed to explain a late impact spike3,4,5,6, but none of them has been set within a self-consistent framework of Solar System evolution. Here we propose that the LHB was triggered by the rapid migration of the giant planets, which occurred after a long quiescent period. During this burst of migration, the planetesimal disk outside the orbits of the planets was destabilized, causing a sudden massive delivery of planetesimals to the inner Solar System. The asteroid belt was also strongly perturbed, with these objects supplying a significant fraction of the LHB impactors in accordance with recent geochemical evidence7,8. Our model not only naturally explains the LHB, but also reproduces the observational constraints of the outer Solar System9.
Previous work9 explains the current orbital architecture of the planetary system by invoking an initially compact configuration in which Saturn's orbital period was less than twice that of Jupiter. After the dissipation of the gaseous circumsolar nebula, Jupiter's and Saturn's orbits diverged as a result of their interaction with a massive disk of planetesimals, and thus the ratio of their orbital periods, PS/PJ, increased. When the two planets crossed their mutual 1:2 mean motion resonance (1:2 MMR, that is, PS/PJ = 2) their orbits became eccentric. This abrupt transition temporarily destabilized the giant planets, leading to a short phase of close encounters among Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. As a result of these encounters, and of the interactions of the ice giants with the disk, Uranus and Neptune reached their current heliocentric distances and Jupiter and Saturn evolved to their current orbital eccentricities9. The main idea of this Letter is that the same planetary evolution could explain the LHB, provided that Jupiter and Saturn crossed the 1:2 MMR roughly 700 Myr after they formed. Thus, our goal is to determine if there is a generic mechanism that could delay the migration process.
In previous studies9,10,11,12, planet migration started immediately because planetesimals were placed close enough to the planets to be violently unstable. Although this type of initial condition was reasonable for the goals of those studies, it is unlikely. Planetesimal-driven migration is probably not important for planet dynamics as long as the gaseous massive solar nebula exists. The initial conditions for the migration simulations should represent the system that existed at the time the nebula dissipated. Thus, the planetesimal disk should contain only those particles that had dynamical lifetimes longer than the lifetime of the solar nebula. In planetary systems like those we adopt from ref. 9, we find that they had to be beyond ∼15.3 au (Fig. 1), leading to the initial conditions illustrated in Fig. 2a.
In this configuration, the initial speed of migration would be dependent on the rate at which disk particles evolve onto planet-crossing orbits. The time at which Jupiter and Saturn cross their 1:2 MMR depends on: (1) their initial distance from the location of the resonance, (2) the surface density of the disk near its inner edge, and (3) the relative location of the inner edge of the disk and the outer ice giant. On the basis of the above arguments, we initially performed a series of eight simulations where the location of the inner edge of the disk was set as the unique free parameter (Fig. 1). As expected, we found a strong correlation between the location of the inner edge and the time of the 1:2 MMR crossing. For disks with inner edges near 15.3 au (see above), we find crossing times between 192 Myr and 880 Myr (since the beginning of the simulation).
We also performed eight simulations where we varied the initial location of the ice giants by ∼1 au, Saturn's location by ∼0.1 au, the total mass of the disk by 5 Earth masses (5ME), and its initial dynamical state by pushing the particles' eccentricities up to 0.1 and inclinations up to 3.5°. We found that we can delay the resonant crossing to 1.1 Gyr since the beginning of the simulation, although longer times are clearly possible for more extreme initial conditions. Therefore, we can conclude that the global instability caused by the 1:2 MMR crossing of Jupiter and Saturn could be responsible for the LHB, because the estimated date of the LHB falls in the range of the times that we found.
Figures 2 and 3 show the evolution of one of our runs from the first series of eight. Initially, the giant planets migrated slowly owing to leakage of particles from the disk (Fig. 3a). This phase lasted 880 Myr, at which point Jupiter and Saturn crossed the 1:2 MMR. After the resonance crossing event, the orbits of the ice giants became unstable and they were scattered into the disk by Saturn. They disrupted the disk and scattered objects all over the Solar System, including the inner regions. The solid curve in Fig. 3b shows the amount of material that struck the Moon as a function of time. A total of 9 × 1021 g struck the Moon after resonance crossing—roughly 50% of this material arrived in the first 3.7 Myr and 90% arrived before 29 Myr. The total mass is consistent with the estimate4 of 6 × 1021 g, which was determined from the number and size distribution of lunar basins that formed around the time of the LHB epoch1. Such an influx spike happened in all our runs. The amount of cometary material delivered to the Earth is ∼1.8 × 1023 g, which is about 6% of the current ocean mass. This is consistent with upper bounds on the cometary contribution to the Earth's water budget, based on D/H ratio measurement13. The average amount of material accreted by the Moon during this spike was (8.4 ± 0.3) × 1021 g.
The above mass delivery estimate corresponds only to the cometary contribution to the LHB, as the projectiles originated from the external massive, presumably icy, disk. However, our scheme probably also produced an in flux of material from the asteroid belt. As Jupiter and Saturn moved from 1:2 MMR towards their current positions, secular resonances (which occur when the orbit of an asteroid processes at the same rate as a planet) swept across the entire belt14. These resonances can drive asteroids onto orbit with eccentricities and inclinations large enough to allow them to evolve into the inner Solar System and hit the Moon4.
We investigated the role of asteroid impactors in our LHB model by the following numerical integrations. The orbits of an asteroid belt, composed of 1,000 massless particles with semimajor axes between 2.0 and 3.5 au, were integrated under the gravitational influence of the Sun, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Because formation models15,16 predict that the asteroid belt was partially depleted and dynamically excited well before the LHB, we set the particles' eccentricities between 0 and 0.3 and inclinations between 0° and 30°, but kept the perihelion distances, q, >1.8 au and aphelion distances, Q, <4 au. Jupiter and Saturn were forced to migrate at rates that varied from run to run (adopted from ref. 9) by adding a suitably chosen drag-force term to their equations of motion.
We find that objects that reach Earth-crossing orbits follow one of two general paths. Some, referred to as class 1 particles, get trapped in the periapse secular resonance with Saturn (which affects eccentricities) and are driven directly onto Earth-crossing orbits. Other particles, referred to as class 2, stay in the asteroid belt, but are dynamically excited by resonant sweeping onto unstable orbits. These objects slowly leak out of the asteroid belt and can evolve into the inner Solar System. The two classes produce impact spikes with different temporal behaviours. Roughly 50% of class 1 particles arrive in the first 10 Myr, while 90% arrive within ∼30 Myr. Conversely, the median arrival time for class 2 particles is ∼50 Myr and 90% arrive within ∼150 Myr. Class 2 particles dominated in our runs (Fig. 3). However, a preliminary investigation into this issue shows that this result is probably sensitive to the exact evolution of the giant planets and the dynamical state of the asteroid belt. Thus, the best we can conclude is that the impact spike due to asteroids is between these two extremes.
We find that (3–8) × 1021 g of asteroids hit the Moon during our simulations (Fig. 3). This amount is comparable to the amount of comets. So, our model predicts that the LHB impactors should have been a mixture of comets and asteroids. Unfortunately, we cannot say with any certainty the exact ratio of comets to asteroids in our model because, although the amount of cometary material is fairly well constrained (probably better than a factor of 2), the amount of asteroidal material is not well known (and could be outside the range reported above), because we do not have good estimates of the mass distribution in the asteroid belt before the LHB. It should also be noted that this ratio is probably a function of impactor size, because comets and asteroids probably have different size distributions. This ratio probably also varied with time. Within the first ∼30 Myr comets dominated according to these simulations, but the last impactors were asteroidal. This is consistent with recent cosmochemical findings suggesting that some of the Moon's basins were formed by asteroids7,8.
Our results support a cataclysmic model for the lunar LHB. Although many aspects of the LHB are not well known1, our simulations reproduce two of the main characteristics attributed to this episode: (1) the 700 Myr delay between the LHB and terrestrial planet formation, and (2) the overall intensity of lunar impacts. Our model predicts a sharp increase in the impact rate at the beginning of the LHB. Unfortunately, the available lunar data are not yet capable of addressing this prediction.
Our model also has the advantage of supplying impactors that are a mixture of comets and asteroids. Our model predicts that the asteroid belt was depleted by a factor of ∼10 during the LHB. This depletion does not contradict collisional evolution models17,18. On the contrary, the late secular resonance sweeping could explain why we do not see a large number of asteroid families that were produced during the LHB18. Our model predicts that the LHB lasted from between ∼10 Myr and ∼150 Myr. Correspondingly, the drop-off in impact rates could be quite fast (with 50% of the impacts occurring in the first 3.7 Myr and 90% in 29 Myr) or moderately slow (with 50% of the impacts occurring in the first 50 Myr and 90% in 150 Myr) We are unable to pinpoint more exact values because the duration and the drop-off of the LHB depends on the relative contributions of class 1 asteroids, class 2 asteroids, and comets, which in turn are very sensitive to the pre-LHB orbital structure of the asteroid belt.
Most importantly, our scheme for the LHB is the result of a generic migration-delaying mechanism, followed by an instability, which is itself induced by a deterministic mechanism of orbital excitation of the planets9.This revised planetary migration scheme naturally accounts for the currently observed planetary orbits9, the LHB, the present orbital distribution of the main-belt asteroids and the origin of Jupiter's Trojans19.
R.G. thanks Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico for support for his sabbatical year in the OCA observatory in Nice. K.T. was supported by an EC Marie Curie Individual Fellowship. A.M. and H.F.L. thank the CNRS and the NSF for funding collaboration between the OCA and the SWRI groups. H.F.L. was supported by NASA's Origins and PG&G programmes.


Ionospheric D region: VLF‐measured Electron Densities compared with Rocket‐Based FIRI‐2018 Model
Ground-based very low frequency (VLF) radio propagation in the Earth-ionosphere waveguide has enabled extensive electron number densities in the D region of the Earth’s ionosphere to be determined, by day typically below heights of 70-80 km and by night in the height range ∼75-90 km. Many rocket-based electron density measurements have also been reported in the literature from ∼60 km upwards using current probes, and radio propagation at a few MHz between the rocket and ground. Recently these rocket measurements have been summarized, and supplemented with D region production-loss modeling, giving rise to a near global model named FIRI-2018 (Faraday-International Reference Ionosphere) which provides electron number densities as functions of height, latitude (<60°), solar zenith angle and F10.7 cm solar flux. These rocket-based electron density values are here compared with corresponding values from VLF measurements, by day at a low-latitude (∼20°) and a high mid-latitude (∼55°), and by night mainly at mid-latitudes. At night the average agreement (over 75-90 km) is remarkably good. By day, at low latitude the agreement is also fairly good (in the common height range ∼60-75 km), with the changes with solar zenith angle being moderately comparable. For daytime high mid-latitudes, the agreement is less satisfactory, particularly at the lowest common altitudes, with the VLF measurements showing the expected effects of cosmic rays much more than the rocket-based values. Overall, we find that the D region description in the FIRI-2018 model is a significant advance on the earlier International Reference
Authors: Thomson, Neil R., Clilverd, Mark A. ORCID record for Mark A. Clilverd, Rodger, Craig J.


2023 March Monthly Horoscope Predictions by KT Astrologer
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2023 March Monthly Horoscope. Sun is transiting from Kumba Rasi to Meena Rasi on March 15, 2023. Mars will be moving from rishaba rasi to Midhuna rasi after its retrograde cycle on March 13, 2023.
Venus will be moving from Meena Rasi to Mesha Rasi on March 12, 2023. Mercury will be moving from Kumba Rasi to Meena Rasi on March 16, 2023.
Mars transit to Midhuna Rasi is a big change because Mars has stayed in Rishaba Rasi for about 7 months instead of its regular transit cycle of about 7 weeks. The impact of Mars will be felt more after March 12, 2023.
Saturn will be moving from Avittam Star to Sadhayam Star on March 14, 2023. The impact of the upcoming Jupiter transit can also be felt as soon as March 15, 2023. There are significant events in the galaxy that change the fortunes starting around March 15, 2023. Rahu will be in Aswini Star in Mesha Rasi and Ketu will be in Swati Nakshatra in Thula Rasi for the entire month.
Jupiter will also deliver its transit effects aggressively as it is getting ready to move into Mesha Rasi on April 22, 2023.
Click your moon sign to read how it will impact you during this month.
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What if they threw a miracle but no one came? We sat outsdie eating icecream cones on a beautiful summer day. I looked up and noticed something looking down at me.
Click here to view my sky buddy. We live in a world full of mystery…Be open to primary knowledge. See what you see…
I used the youtube online editing features of ‘autofix’ which enhanced the color contrasting, however it is much more dramatic in the night sky, even though I have zoomed in close up on this iphone video. It is brighter than a star, and has a wierd phase of flicker that just sticks out like a sore thumb in the night sky. Let me reiterate that I zoomed in to show it close up in the video. It wasn’t huge in the night sky as the video may imply. I also slowed it down 2x slow motion so it
flicker’s half as fast. And, the youtube ‘autofix’ feature enhanced the contrast color of my sky buddy.
What caught my attention, was that when I took this video, the night sky was full of stars. But the chinzy iphone video eye caught only the anomaly. What’s more, I took several videos, but only this one caught it. I got other still photos but almost none show it. I found I had to have the right attitude for it to show up. You have to be friendly, otherwise if takes on its appearance of just another star in the night sky….
Everything matters…or nothing matters. It’s either all good, or every breath, every moment, every instant is important. Only matter doesn’t really matter and what isn’t matter, matters. Ofcourse, matter matters too. Everything matters. Relativism is a useful myth of the epoch and the sand upon which our realm is built. They are trying to convince you that a moment doesn’t matter, and that is why it can be frittered away, wasted. We have all the time in the world. The trouble is our time is almost up.
The emptiness of a coffee afternoon; to try to remember what it was like to observe the day pass with the comings and goings of people, waiting for the next thought like waiting for that blind date. Will it work out?+
Keep looking up. If you look down deep enough and long enough, you’re actually looking up.


Forensic scientists collecting evidence from the spot after a fireball fell from sky at Karumaloor in Kochi on Saturday.
Thiruvananthapuram: Different parts of Kerala witnessed mysterious fireballs in the sky alongside sonic booms on Friday night, fuelling multiple theories about the reasons behind the phenomenon.
Early indications pointed to the likelihood it could even have been normal meteors brightening up the night sky. The phenomenon occurred on Friday around 10.30pm local time in the state. In some places in Ernakulam district, a few residents even alerted the police and fire and rescue personnel.
Social media, too, got into the act, with people posting their experiences of witnessing the aerial spectacle accompanied by a booming sound. Some of those who experienced it even mistook it for an earthquake. One person tweeted that a ball of fire had fallen over Kochi.
Some people in the state's commercial capital, Kochi said they felt mild tremors after witnessing a luminous object falling from the sky. Interestingly, the phenomenon seemed to be visible right to the southern end of the state. Sightings of the light in the sky were also reported from the northern districts of Malappuram, Palakkad and Kozhikode.
Some have speculated that the pieces that fell from the sky could be rocket debris that re-entered the earth's atmosphere. However, no special activity appears to have been spotted by the radars. Ernakulam district collector M.G. Rajamanickam said no clues had been received for any apparent earthquake.


How often do you look at the sky? Have you ever wondered why the sky is blue? To find the answer, here are the explanations given by NASA.
4 Facts about NASA, The World's Leading Space Institution
TheIndonesia.id - NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an aviation and space agency whose job is to conduct space research and exploration, as well as provide reports on everything related to earth and outer space.
This space agency is one of the best and most prestigious space agencies in the world.
Here are four facts about NASA that you might not know.
NASA was founded 62 years ago on July 26, 1958. At first, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik I on October 4, 1957, followed by Sputnik II the following month. The launch of this satellite greatly surprised America and made the country anxious that the Soviets sent missiles into American territory.
With all its ambitions, the United States does not want to bear the shame on the world stage. As reported on the History page, in 1958 a congress was formed in the United States which aimed to form a special agency dealing with extraterrestrial events. This agency was later named NASA, which is currently the best space agency owned by the United States.
2. NASA's first mission
As written on the NASA page, in 1959 NASA carried out its first mission called the Mercury Project. This mission was carried out for several years and succeeded in flying humans into space, competing with the Soviet Union at that time.
After the success of Mercury, NASA re-published a new mission called Gemini. The Gemini mission is the foundation of the Apollo mission which successfully landed humans on the moon for the first time.
3. Success in sending humans to the moon
After experiencing several failures, finally on July 20, 1969, NASA successfully landed the first humans on the moon via Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong was the first astronaut to set foot on the moon, followed 19 minutes later by Buzz Aldrin.
As reported on the NASA website, there were three crew members on the Apollo 11 mission, but only Neil Armstrong and Adwin E. Aldrin Jr (Buzz Aldrin) stepped onto the lunar surface, while Michael Collins was in charge of driving the main plane around the moon while waiting. Both counterparts are on the surface of the moon.
4. Currently, NASA is focusing on exploring Mars
NASA is currently busy with an exploration mission to Mars. As reported by Space, NASA has the ambition to send the first humans to Mars. It is a very big and risky ambition considering that landing on Mars will be much more difficult than landing on the moon.
Currently, NASA has sent advanced equipment to the red planet several times, including reconnaissance robots. This 2-ton robot will become a data collection tool that NASA scientists need.


So, as it was the first clear(ish) night for a while I thought i'd give it half an hour and check out my new scope.
I had to set up low down in my decked area so that I could best avoid street light glare and also someone's security light! (Turn the damn thing off when you're at home!).
The scope is a 102mm (4in) Mak. I stuck to a low power - 52x, so to maintain a wide field.
Well I am soooooo impressed by the new scope. Checked out Jupiter - only Northern band visible still and the Red Spot not in transit.
All four Galilean moons were clearly visible. Then I swung east to the Andromeda Galaxy M31. This never ceases to amaze me. The central "bulge" clearly visible.
I then went on a hunt for Comet Hartley, but couldn't find it. What I did observe was the Double Cluster just South-South East of Cassiopeia - a lovely sight.


Home > Lifestyle > Features
Saturday March 22, 2014 MYT 5:30:00 PM
Saturday March 22, 2014 MYT 9:11:33 AM
by laila kearney
This image, captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows the M5.3 class solar flare that peaked on July 4, 2012, at 5:55 AM EDT. REUTERS/NASA/SDO/AIA/Helioviewer.
Fierce solar blasts that could have badly damaged electrical grids and disabled satellites in space narrowly missed Earth in 2012.
The bursts would have wreaked havoc on the Earth’s magnetic field, matching the severity of the 1859 Carrington event, the largest solar magnetic storm ever reported on the planet.
The 1859 blast knocked out the telegraph system across the United States, according to University of California, Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann.
“Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have been tremendous,” Luhmann said in a statement.
A 2013 study estimated that a solar storm like the Carrington Event could take a US$2.6tril (RM8.6tril) bite out of the current global economy.
Massive bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields, shot into space on July 23, 2012, would have been aimed directly at Earth if they had happened nine days earlier, Luhmann said.
The bursts from the sun, called coronal mass ejections, carried southward magnetic fields and would have clashed with Earth’s northward field, causing a shift in electrical currents that could have caused electrical transformers to burst into flames, Luhmann said. The fields also would have interfered with global positioning system satellites.
The event, detected by Nasa's STEREO A spacecraft, is the focus of a paper that was released in the journal Nature Communications on March 18 by Luhmann, China’s State Key Laboratory of Space Weather professor Ying Liu and their colleagues.
Although coronal mass ejections can happen several times a day during the sun’s most active 11-year cycle, the blasts are usually small or weak compared to the 2012 and 1859 events, she said.
Luhmann said that by studying images captured by the sun-observing spacecraft, scientists can better understand coronal mass ejections and predict solar magnetic storms in the future.
“We have the opportunity to really look closely at one of these events in all of its glory and look at why in this instance was so extreme,” Luhmann said. – Reuters
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Star People's Food Award: Cast your vote now for your favourite nasi kandar eatery
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Congratulations to the Mojave resident that won Hyperbola’s $100 Virgin Galactic video bounty. That will be with you shortly via electronic banking
Virgin Galactic bounty won
Seradata produce the renowned SpaceTrak Launch & Satellite Database. Trusted by 100 of the world’s leading Space organisations, SpaceTrak is a fully queryable database used for market analysis, failure/risk assessment, spectrum analysis and space situational awareness (SSA).
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by Michael Mommert
Department of Physics and Astronomy
We could study an asteroid up close by sending astronauts to one somewhere out in space—or we could simply bring one to the astronauts.
That’s basically the idea behind NASA’s announced Asteroid Robotic Retrieval Mission, which aims to catch a near-Earth asteroid and redirect it in an orbit around the moon. There, the asteroid could be visited and scrutinized by astronauts.
Surprisingly, the biggest problem with this idea is not its technical feasibility but finding a suitable target asteroid. The perfect candidate should have an orbit that closely resembles that of the Earth in order to minimize the amount of fuel needed to change its orbit. For the same reason, it cannot be too big and heavy.
The perfect size for this mission is from 20 to 30 feet in diameter. Despite the fact that presumably millions of asteroids of this size exist, only a few of them are on Earth-like orbits and even fewer have been found.
One promising candidate asteroid, named 2009 BD, was observed in October last year by an international team led by myself and NAU associate professor David Trilling using the Spitzer Space Telescope. Although we did not detect the asteroid, a combination of models allowed us to determine its size and other physical properties.
Unfortunately for NASA, we found that 2009 BD has a diameter of approximately 12 feet—too small for the planned mission.
Scientifically, however, 2009 BD provides unique information on the properties of such small asteroids. Our observations point toward two possible scenarios for the nature of 2009 BD: The object is either made from pure rock that is covered by a thin layer of snow-white dust, or it is a collection of bare rock slabs that are somehow held together.
Either scenario is significantly different from what has been observed in larger asteroids.
So the search for a candidate target asteroid for the Retrieval Mission goes on. The next candidate on the list, 2011 MD, will be observed by our team using Spitzer in a few weeks. Let’s hope for NASA that this object better fits its needs. From a scientist’s point of view, we are looking forward to see what surprises 2011 MD can offer us.


Jupiter will be key to unlocking new information on biology and beings from beyond the stars according to Dr Michelle Thaller, a research scientist at the space agency.
Dr Thaller seems certain of alien activity on the second planet from the sun, a place where conditions are less than ideal for those on planet earth.
But it could house "bacteria" which is far from human, and could even be reproducing due to the atmosphere found on the planet.
The NASA representative said: "I never expected Venus. Venus is now one where we see something in the atmosphere that looks very much like it could be produced by bacteria.
"I think it’s only a matter of time until we have proof that it’s in the Solar System."
Proof could be closer than possible, with NASA in possession of potential evidence to point toward the existence of life forms beyond our planet, LADBible reported.
The space organisation is yet to sign off on the details of the document as they are not yet 100% sure of existence on Venus, and according to Dr Thaller, they do not want to get into "trouble" should they find nothing on the rocky sphere.
She added: "But that’s the thing, we’re waiting until there’s nothing else it could possibly be because can you imagine the kind of trouble we’d get in.
"We don’t have absolute proof yet. Do I think there’s life out there? Absolutely."
Her claim of life on the planet which inspired a popular Bananarama song comes as "five detections" of life beyond the stars were made by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University.
She said: "We’re getting a clue here that there is some steady source, which is the point of legacy surveys—to show whether that’s true or not."
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A NASA space telescope has snapped a stunning photo of a huge, flower-shaped cloud of dustand gas about 5,000 light-years from Earth.
TheWide-field Infrared SurveyExplorer (WISE) capturedthe new cosmic photo of the star-forming Rosette nebula, which is in theconstellation Monoceros (or Unicorn) in our Milky Way galaxy. [New photo of theRosette nebula.]
The nebula,also known as NGC 2237, has a cluster of young stars at its heart. The mostmassive of these stars produce huge amounts of ultraviolet radiation, and theyblow strong winds that erode away the nearby gas and dust. This creates thelarge central hole seen in the image.
The streakat lower left is the trail of a satellite around Earth that crossed WISE's field of view as it snapped themultiple frames that make up the new image.
Although the Rosette nebula is too faint to see with the nakedeye, it is visible through a small telescope or a good pair of binoculars. TheEnglish astronomer John Flamsteed discovered the Rosette nebula's central star clusterwith a telescope around 1690, but the nebula itself was not identified until astronomerJohn Herschel observed it almost 150 years later.
The image is a four-color composite created by all four of WISE's infrareddetectors. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light atwavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars.Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light fromwarm dust.
Scanningthe infrared sky
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The newimage is just one tiny piece of the massive sky atlas WISEtelescope isassembling. The satellite, launched in December 2009, is scanning the entiresky in infrared light during its 10-month mission. Astronomers hope WISE willuncover objects never seen before, including the coolest stars and some of thedarkest near-Earth asteroids and comets.
WISEcompleted its main mission, a full scan of the entire sky, in July. So far, thetelescope has captured more than 1.5 million images, uncovering hundreds ofmillions of objects, including asteroids, stars and galaxies. It has observed morethan 29,000 previouslyunknown asteroids to date, more than 100 near-Earth objects and 15 comets.
WISE isstill scanning, but it has encountered some age-related hiccups. A few weeksago, NASA reported that the telescope's secondary coolant tank is depleted,causing the telescope to heat up slightly. WISE relies on super-cold liquidhydrogen coolant to chill its infrared detectors, but it does not have anunlimited supply of the stuff.
One ofWISE's infrared detectors stopped producing useful data once the telescopewarmed from 12 Kelvin (minus 438 degrees Fahrenheit) to 31 Kelvin (minus 404 degrees F).
But theprimary tank still has plenty of coolant, NASA officials said. In May, a NASApanel rejected a proposal to extend WISE's mission for an extra three months.
- Gallery: WISE Up: Space Telescope's Stunning First Photos
- Spectacular Nebulas in Deep Space
- Video: Getting WISE to Brown Dwarfs
Space.com is the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier. Originally founded in 1999, Space.com is, and always has been, the passion of writers and editors who are space fans and also trained journalists. Our current news team consists of Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik; Editor Hanneke Weitering, Senior Space Writer Mike Wall; Senior Writer Meghan Bartels; Senior Writer Chelsea Gohd, Senior Writer Tereza Pultarova and Staff Writer Alexander Cox, focusing on e-commerce. Senior Producer Steve Spaleta oversees our space videos, with Diana Whitcroft as our Social Media Editor.


Since its launch in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos. With its high-resolution images, this telescope has played a crucial role in numerous groundbreaking discoveries. In this article, we will explore several advantages that images taken by the Hubble Telescope have brought to astronomy, astrophysics, and our overall comprehension of the universe.
A Sharper View of the Cosmos
The Hubble Space Telescope orbits Earth at an altitude of approximately 570 kilometers (350 miles), far above our planet’s atmosphere. This advantageous position allows it to capture images with unprecedented clarity. The absence of atmospheric distortion gives Hubble a much sharper and more detailed view of celestial objects than ground-based telescopes can provide.
Thanks to its high spatial resolution, Hubble has been able to resolve details on the surfaces of planets and moons within our solar system, as well as distant galaxies and nebulae. As Dr. Robert O’Dell, an astronomer who worked on the Hubble project, said: “Hubble is like having a microscope that can also be used as a telescope.” It is this unrivaled ability to see both near and far objects clearly that makes Hubble such a powerful tool for astronomers.
Expanding Our Understanding of Galaxies
One area where Hubble’s images have had a particularly significant impact is in the study of galaxies. Beyond merely capturing their beauty, these high-resolution pictures have provided vital information about galaxy morphology, interactions, and evolution over time. For example, researchers using Hubble data discovered that most galaxies in the early universe were small and irregularly shaped, a finding that has helped refine theories on galaxy formation.
Hubble has also been instrumental in determining the age of the universe. By observing variable stars and supernovae in distant galaxies, scientists have been able to calculate a more accurate estimate of the universe’s expansion rate. This groundbreaking discovery was made possible by Hubble’s ability to capture images of objects billions of light-years away with unprecedented clarity.
Revealing the Secrets of Star Formation
Another area where Hubble’s images have proven invaluable is in the study of star formation. Nebulae – vast clouds of gas and dust – are the birthplaces of stars, and Hubble’s detailed images have allowed astronomers to study these complex processes more closely than ever before. Hubble has observed stellar nurseries in our own Milky Way galaxy, as well as those in nearby galaxies such as the Large Magellanic Cloud.
By observing these star-forming regions over time, researchers have been able to gain a better understanding of how stars form and evolve. This knowledge is crucial for understanding the lifecycle of stars, including our own Sun, and how their evolution affects their host galaxies.
Unraveling the Mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy
The Hubble Space Telescope has also played a significant role in our understanding of two mysterious phenomena: dark matter and dark energy. Although these invisible substances make up about 95% of the total mass-energy content of the universe, their nature remains largely unknown.
One way that Hubble has contributed to research on dark matter is through its observations of gravitational lensing – a phenomenon where light from distant galaxies is bent by massive objects (such as clusters containing dark matter) along its path. These observations have helped scientists map the distribution of dark matter in the universe and provided further evidence for its existence.
Similarly, Hubble’s images have been essential in studying dark energy – a mysterious force responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. By observing distant supernovae, researchers have been able to measure the rate of this expansion over time, leading to the discovery of dark energy and its puzzling properties.
A Lasting Legacy
Throughout its three decades of operation, the Hubble Space Telescope has transformed our understanding of the cosmos. Its stunning images have not only captivated the public but also provided invaluable data for researchers across various fields of astronomy and astrophysics. As Hubble nears the end of its mission, it leaves behind a legacy that will continue to inspire and inform future generations of scientists.
The advantages offered by Hubble’s images are vast and varied, from refining our knowledge of galaxy formation and evolution to shedding light on the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. As we look forward to new telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2021, it is worth remembering the incredible contributions made by Hubble – a true icon in the field of space exploration.


If you look up into the sky tonight you could be treated to the wonderful sight of the annual Draconid meteor shower.
Visible around the world this year between 6 and 10 October, the meteor shower peaked yesterday but there's still more to be seen if you look up at the night's sky in a north-westerly direction tonight.
What you get to see can be a bit hit-and-miss depending on a number of other factors and with a full moon out tonight it could be trickier than usual to treat your eyes to the sight of a meteor shower.
The bright moonlight will make tonight's sky less dark, making it harder to pick out the meteors.
Some years the Draconid meteor shower can have hundreds or even thousands of visible meteors each hour depending on your location.
This year you could see up to 10 meteors per hour if you set yourself up for viewing at the right time, and just after nightfall is tipped as the best time to set up if you want to see something.
Meteor showers are caused when the Earth passes through a cloud of comet debris, with the Draconid meteor shower coming from comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner which orbits the sun.
Meteors are caused by these chunks of debris entering the Earth's atmosphere at great speed, what we see is them burning up as they head towards us.
Visible to the naked eye, there will still need to be some preparation if you want to see the meteor shower for yourself.
Your best bet for watching the shower is to get somewhere dark where you can lie back and look up at the night sky.
It's bad news for people living in cities as you'll want to be somewhere away from all the light pollution that might block your view.
Getting to your preferred spot early is also important as it'll take your eyes a bit of time to adjust to the darkness and some of the meteors are very faint.
Depending how much stock you put in the words of people on TikTok claiming to be time travellers from the far future, you might not want to try and have a look at the meteor shower.
Someone claiming to be from the year 2236 has said this year's Draconids will result in a 'deadly' meteor shower over Europe on 12 October and kill lots of people.
Then again, they also said humanity would make first contact with an alien species called the Azarx on 7 July, and as far as we can tell that didn't happen.
Also, this year's Draconids are supposed to come to an end after 10 October, so a deadly meteor of them hitting Europe two days later sounds unlikely.


A brilliant orange Full Hunter’s Moon casting its spectacular glow across the October sky is an icon of the Halloween season, and this weekend is your chance to see the phenomenon for real.
The Hunter’s Moon is the name given to October’s full moon, which is also the first full moon after the Harvest Moon—the one closest to the autumn equinox in the Northern Hemisphere.
Thanks to the “moon illusion," the Full Hunter’s Moon appears huge and bright while it hangs low in the sky close to the horizon, and thanks to its hourly proximity to sunset, it should reflect the sun’s orange color around that time.
This year, the moon will reach peak fullness on Sunday, October 13 at 5:07 p.m., EDT, but it won’t rise above the horizon until twilight settles in, after 6:30 p.m.
If the skies are clear, sky-gazers should be in for a big orange treat, and to that end, here’s a look at the cloud cover forecast around that time in Upstate NY. Temperatures are expected to be in the 40s across Upstate NY on Sunday night, so if you’re going out, bring a coat.
- In Buffalo, partly cloudy skies with a 20% chance of precipitation
- In Rochester, mainly clear skies with a 10% chance of precipitation
- In Syracuse, mostly clear skies with a few clouds
- In Albany, mostly clear skies with a 10% chance of precipitation
- In the mid-Hudson Valley, partly cloudy skies with a 20% chance of precipitation
So why the name Hunter’s Moon? According to Time and Date, Anglo-Saxons named it to reference the time of year when hunted game is fattened. It was a sign that the time had come to hunt, slaughter and preserve meats for the coming winter months.
It is sometimes also called the “blood moon," for similar reasons, but this shouldn’t be confused with the name also used to refer to lunar eclipses.


Week 45 – A Dark Night Sky
I’m so thirsty for a really dark night sky. I live in a tiny city where light pollution makes it absolutely impossible to view the band of the milky way with my own eyes. I have a strong wish to see it. Two years ago, I went to Lijiang hoping to get a chance to see the milky way at night, but it ended up realizing that the place where I had spent the night was not dark enough to see it. I still enjoyed the trip, even though the wish of stargazing was not fulfilled.
I’ve seen so many pictures of the milky way in the internet, and most of the pictures I’ve seen were taken in remoted area located so far away from where my home is located. I don’t know what I’m going to do to realize my wish.
Travel 10,192 kms (6333 miles) for viewing stars or just burry the wish silently in my heart. How do you think about that?
Here is one of the most interesting video I found on youtube that I would like to share with you. The milky way, clusters, shooting star and southern lights all can be seen at once in one single location: at Lake Tekapo! 😀


MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-463, 25 August 2003
This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) picture shows a mesa in the Avernus Colles region of Mars, near 3.9°S, 190.8°W. The mesa and the very large blocks that have been shed from its slopes are all that remain of a once much more extensive suite of layered rock that used to cover the entire area shown here. This full-resolution (1.5 meters--5 feet--per pixel) image covers an area 3 km (1.9 mi) across. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the left.


August 26, 2015: Roque Ruiz-Carmona (Ph.D. candidate, Institute of Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands) has requested AAVSO assistance with his campaign to observe (a new set of) 17 cataclysmic variables (CVs) with the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) next week.
August 20, 2015: Prof. Simon Jeffery (Armagh Observatory; Trinity College Dublin) has requested photometric monitoring of the pulsating helium and zirconium-rich hot subdwarf LS IV -14 116 in support of upcoming HST and VLT/UVES spectroscopy. AAVSO observations will supplement photometry due to be obtained with the SAAO 1.0-m and IAC 0.8-m telescopes from 18 August to 2 September 2015. Photometry is requested beginning immediately through 2 September.
August 7, 2015: Further to AAVSO Alert Notice 525, we are entering the critical period of observations for KIC 02856960. Time series observations are urgently requested for this eclipsing binary beginning immediately (2015 August 07, JD 2457242) and continuing for the next five days, through the end of 2015 August 12.
August 4, 2015: Dr. Gregory Sivakoff (U. of Alberta) has requested optical monitoring of the galactic microquasar V4641 Sgr beginning immediately, and continuing for the next 120 days, or until it is no longer observable from your location.
July 31, 2015: The AAVSO requests time-series observations of the eclipsing binary system KIC 02856960 beginning immediately, with intensive coverage urgently requested during the window of 2015 August 8.0 through August 12.0. Observations are requested on behalf of an international campaign coordinated by Dr.


Saturday, September 18, 2021
Published: August 02, 2021
Chinas space-tracking ship Yuanwang-3 returned to its homeport in east Chinas Jiangsu Province Sunday after completing a new round of maritime monitoring missions.
Published: June 18, 2021
As Chinas Shenzhou-12 manned spaceship successfully docked with the Tianhe space station core module on Thursday, experts and media worldwide applauded the landmark progress in Chinas manned space expeditions.
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On the average, the side of the Moon facing us remains constant because of its synchronous rotation (that is, the time it takes to rotate once on its axis is the same as the time it takes to orbit the Earth). As a result, save for changes in the portion that is lit (the cycle of phases during a lunation), we see essentially the same features at all times. Careful examination of the animation shows that as first daylight then darkness (night) sweeps from right to left (from west to east) across the face of the Moon, the features visible from day to day remain nearly the same. However, there are subtle differences in the appearance of the Moon during each 29 1/2 day cycle of phases:
(1) The Moon appears to move toward us, then away from us, as a result of the fact that its image gets bigger for half the cycle, then smaller for the other half. This is a real effect, caused by the fact that the Moon really does get closer to us as it moves from apogee to perigee, then further from us as it moves from perigee to apogee. The change in distance is about 6% either way, relative to its average distance, or almost 12% in the difference in distance from perigee to apogee (or vice-versa). As it gets closer to perigee it looks close to 12% larger in diameter and 25% larger in surface area than at apogee, and as it gets closer to apogee it looks close to 12% smaller in diameter and 25% smaller in surface area than at perigee. The average brightness per square degree of apparent size remains the same throughout this process, so the perigee moon also looks about 25% brighter than the apogee moon (see Pictures of the Moon
for a comparison of the apparent sizes near perigee and apogee). Although in this animation, which simply repeats the same cycle of phases over and over, the part of the cycle of phases that represents perigee or apogee is the same
, the fact that the Moon's cycle of phases is two days longer than its rotation rate (see Rotation Period and Day Length
for a discussion of this sort of thing) means that the time when the Moon is closest or furthest from us gradually moves through the cycle of phases. Sometimes it is closest to us at new moon, sometimes at quarter moon, and sometimes at full moon. When perigee occurs near full moon the media run rampant with stories about a "super Moon"; but the Moon is actually just about the same distance from us at every perigee, no matter when it occurs in the cycle of phases.
(2) Although the Moon always shows nearly the same side to us, there are small changes in what part of the Moon we can see due to librations in latitude and longitude
(libration comes from the same root as the constellation Libra, the scales, and refers to the tendency of balance scales to bob up and down for a while, before settling into a steady position). The libration in latitude (north and south changes) is caused by the fact that the Moon's orbit around the Earth is tilted by about 5 degrees relative to our orbit around the Sun. This means that sometimes the North side of the Moon (on the top in this animation) tilts toward us (when the Moon is near the bottom of its orbit, and we can look "over its top", and sometimes the South side of the Moon (on the bottom in this animation) tilts toward us (when the Moon is near the top of its orbit, and we can look "under its bottom". Just as in the case of phases, the time when we can see "over the top" or "under the bottom" of the Moon changes from one cycle of phases to the next. Most of the change in when this occurs is due to the 2 day difference between the cycle of phases and the rotation period, but there is also a slow (once every 18 years) change in the orientation of the orbit of the Moon, so that at one time during the cycle we can see over the Northern edge of the Moon in January and the Southern edge in July, but 9 years later that is reversed, and another 9 years later things are back to where they were at the start of the 18 year period. This 18 year change in the orientation of the lunar orbit's tilt is also related to a change in the timing of solar and lunar eclipses, which over that 18 year period tend to gradually occur earlier and earlier in the year, averaging about 3 weeks earlier each year, compared to the year before. This leads to a predictable cycle of eclipses known as the saros
, first noticed in Hellenic (ancient Greek) times.
(3) The previous paragraph dealt primarily with the libration in latitude caused by the tilt of the Moon's orbit relative to ours. However, there is another libration (in longitude) caused by the fact that the rotation rate of the Moon is constant, but its orbital motion is not. As the Moon moves toward us (looking larger and larger as it moves from apogee to perigee) it moves around us faster and faster (as described by Kepler's Second Law of Planetary Motion, the Law of Areas
). Since keeping the same side of the Moon toward us requires the orbital motion of the Moon to (on the average) be the same as its rotational motion, if the Moon is moving around us faster than usual the rotation can't keep up, and we get to see a little around the trailing (western) side of the Moon, which is shown on the right in the animation. (There can be some confusion here involving directions because the Moon is rotating around its axis from west to east, just like the Earth rotates on its axis, and orbiting us from west to east, just like the Earth orbits the Sun. For someone on the Moon
east is to the right in this animation, just as it would be on a globe of the Earth. But since we are looking at the Moon in the opposite direction from the direction that someone on the Moon looks at the Earth, the eastern side of the Moon for a lunar inhabitant is on the western side of the Moon in our sky. As a result, old maps of the Moon label the right-hand side of the Moon as the western side, just as we see it in our sky; but modern maps, based on the idea that eventually we may once again have people working on the Moon (though since it has been over 40 years since the last man left the Moon I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the next one), show the right-hand side of the Moon as the eastern side, the way that astronauts or whatever the next men on the Moon (lunatics?) happen to be called.) In any event, no matter what you call the right-hand side of the Moon (the western side as seen from the Earth or the eastern side for currently nonexistent lunar inhabitants), that is the side we get to look "around" when the Moon is moving faster than usual. As a result you can see (though with a little difficulty because even though I have considerably slowed this animation compared to the original, to give you more time to examine the changes) small changes in how far features on the western side are from the "limb" (or for us, the "western edge") of the Moon. In particular, Mare Crisium in the upper right part of the image gradually moves away from the limb as the lunar orbital motion speeds up (namely, as it moves toward us), then back toward the limb as the lunar motion slows down (namely, as it moves away from us). You cannot see all of this change because sometimes that part of the Moon is lit, and sometimes it is not lit, according to the current phase. Similarly, features near the (as we see it) eastern (or left-hand) "edge" of the Moon gradually move away from that limb as the Moon's orbital motion slows down (as it moves away from us) and we can look a little "around" that side of the Moon, then move back toward the limb as the Moon's orbital motions speeds up (as it moves toward us again).
(4) The changes in the part of the Moon that we can see due to libration in longitude and latitude led fairly early on to the best maps of the Moon being printed as two nearly but not quite overlapping circles (as shown in a 1647 map by Hevelius, from his Selenographia
). Where the circles overlap represents those parts of the Moon that we can always see (at least when they are lit up), and where they do not overlap represents those parts of the Moon only visible at the extremes of libration in longitude and/or latitude. The result is that we can always see (fairly well) 41% of the lunar surface, and at various times see (not as well, due to foreshortening near the limb) another 18% of the surface, leaving only 41% of the Moon's surface always on the "back" side and never visible from Earth.
Below, Hevelius' map of the Moon, published in 1647 but according to a scroll held by cherubs in the upper left corner of the original plate, based on observations made in 1645. Note that West and East are shown here as seen from the Earth, and as labeled on (almost?) all maps of the Moon prior to the space age; post-space-age maps often reverse those directions so that they correspond to the view of someone living on the Moon. Also, to fit the image on this page I have cropped out the aforementioned cherubs and anything else outside the map of the Moon itself.


The space shuttle Discovery embarked on its 39th and final mission Thursday afternoon. Since its maiden trip in 1984, Discovery has logged 352 days in orbit, circling the Earth 5,628 times and traveling 143 million miles. The ship will be retired after this flight, as NASA winds down the 30-year-old shuttle program. (The agency plans only two more space shuttle missions, one each for Endeavour and Atlantis.) Here, a look at some of Discovery's milestones through the years:
August 27, 1979
Construction begins on Discovery, the third space shuttle in NASA's fleet. It would take four years to complete. Inside the space agency, Discovery is also known as Orbiter Vehicle-103, or OV-103.
August 30, 1984
Discovery blasts off for the first time. Astronauts deploy three satellites during a six-day mission.
September 29, 1988
Discovery undertakes the first shuttle mission since the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986, in which seven crew members were killed.
April 24, 1990
The shuttle carries the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.
February 3, 1995
Eileen Collins becomes the first female to pilot a space shuttle, taking Discovery on NASA's first mission to rendezvous with the Russian space station Mir.
October 29, 1998
At age 77, John Glenn returns to space aboard Discovery, becoming the oldest person to travel in space.
July 26, 2005
Discovery is again used for a NASA "Return to Flight" mission following a tragedy — in this case, the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003, in which seven astronauts were killed.
February 24, 2011
Discovery blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., for its 39th flight. It carries a crew of six astronauts on an 11-day mission to deliver supplies and a human-like robot to the International Space Station.
Sources: Digital Trends, NASA, Voice of America, Washington Post
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NASA has awarded two universities prototypes of its R5 humanoid robot for advanced research and development work, the space agency announced today.
“Advances in robotics, including human-robotic collaboration, are critical to developing the capabilities required for our journey to Mars,” said Steve Jurczyk, the associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “We are excited to engage these university research groups to help NASA with this next big step in robotics technology development.”
NASA’s R5 is a bipedal humanoid robot. Its white body has trimmings of orange throughout. The NASA emblem is situated at the center of its chest plate. According to NASA, “Robots, like NASA’s R5, could be used in future NASA missions either as precursor robots performing mission tasks before humans arrive or as human-assistive robots actively collaborating with the human crew.”
“R5 initially was designed to complete disaster-relief maneuvers, however, its main goal is to prove itself worthy of even trickier terrain—deep space exploration,” the agency continued.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Northeastern Univ. were selected for NASA’s award. MIT’s group is led by principal investigator Russ Tedrake and Northeastern Univ.’s group is led by principal investigator Taskin Padir. The two groups were selected from a pool entered in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge. The groups will receive as much as $250,000 a year for two years and have access to onsite and virtual technical support from NASA.
The two robots upgraded will be instruments in NASA’s upcoming Space Robotics Challenge, which aims to create software that gives robots autonomy during space missions.