80beats » Space

An Ambitious Frontier for Flying Drones: Saturn’s Earth-Like Moon, Titan

Sarah Zhang — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:27:36 +0000

Artist’s rendering of AVIATR flying on Titan.

Saturn’s moon Titan is a lot like Earth: it has rain, seasons, volcanoes, and maybe even life. Well, it’s not exactly like Earth: the rain is liquid methane, the volcanoes spew ice, and any life would be based on methane. But still, it’s an interesting and relatively Earth-like place, considering the other planets and moons in our solar system. And University of Idaho physicist Jason Barnes says he has a perfect way to explore this moon: with a flying drone.

Why use a flying machine rather than the rovers that worked so well on Mars? With 1/7 the gravity but 4 times the atmospheric density of Earth, flying through Titan is 28 times easier than on our own planet. In fact, it’s the easiest place to fly in our entire solar system. Drones on Titan can be heavier while requiring less fuel. With these facts in hand, University of Idaho physicist Jason Barnes has proposed AVIATR, otherwise known as the Aerial Vehicle for In-situ and Airborne Titan Reconnaissance.

As proposed, AVIATR would fly through Titan for a year on its radioactive power source plutonium-238, previously used on ...

In the Milky Way, There Are As Many Planets As Stars

Veronique Greenwood — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:49:48 +0000

There are at least as many planets in the galaxy as there are stars. And even that is probably a vast underestimate.

That’s the latest bombshell from astronomers looking for planets beyond our solar system. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy will have a post on this soon, but for now, here’s a little quote salad for you:

“Planets are like bunnies; you don’t just get one, you get a bunch,” said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute who was not involved in this research. “So really, the number of planets in the Milky Way is probably like five or 10 times the number of stars. That’s something like a trillion planets.” (via PopSci)

“We think about one-sixth of stars should have a Jupiter-like planet, half have a Neptune-sized planet, and two-thirds should have an Earth,” said Kailash Sahu, an author of the Nature paper in which this observation was published. (via Wired)

“Kepler [a space telescope devoted to the search for planets] has already been finding that small planets are actually quite ubiquitous around stars,” says Scott Gaudi of Ohio State University, who did not contribute to the new research. “That bodes ...

Preserving the Moon Landings for Posterity

Valerie Ross — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:13:11 +0000

Archaeologists, historians, and governments take great care to preserve human history across the globe, protecting monuments of our civilizations and traces of our origins. Even what may seem, at first, like the detritus of existence—footprints left millions of years ago, the contents of well-preserved wastebins—can serve as tangible, informative links to the past.

Now, scientists and officials are working preserve some of humanity’s best-known footprints, left by a giant leap for mankind, by extending those same sorts of historical protections to the Apollo missions’ lunar landing sites. The tricky part is, many such protections require that a site be on the territory of a state or nation—and the US government can’t claim sovereignty over any part of the moon, and doesn’t want to appear as though it’s trying to. But NASA and the New Mexico and California state governments have gotten onboard with the effort to safeguard the sites, spearheaded by New Mexico State University anthropologist Beth O’Leary. A NASA panel recently issued recommendations for protecting the sites that suggest future explorers give a wide berth to the astronautical artifacts left behind, Kenneth Chang reports at the ...

How Stephen Hawking Has Survived to Age 70

Veronique Greenwood — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:04:36 +0000

Party hats out, everyone! Stephen Hawking turned 70 years old yesterday, 49 years after being told he had fewer than four left to live.

The Cambridge professor suffers from a motor neuron disease related to Lou Gehrig’s disease that has gradually taken from him his ability to move, feed himself, and speak, except through a synthesizer that he operates using a cheek muscle (unfortunately, his control of that muscle is also fading). But despite these handicaps, he has survived to an incredible ripe old age—the average for an Englishman is currently 77.2—and has continued his work as a cosmologist and physicist throughout. How has he managed to live so much longer than expected? Katherine Harmon at Scientific American asked neurologist Leo McClusky, who specializes in such diseases:

One thing that is highlighted by this man’s course is that this is an incredibly variable disorder in many ways. On average people live two to three years after diagnosis. But that means that half the people live longer, and there are people who live for a long, long time.

Life expectancy turns on two things: the motor neurons running the diaphragm—the breathing muscles. So the common ...

Bacteria Survive in Cold, Dry, Mars-like Conditions By Living Off Iron

Valerie Ross — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:09:06 +0000

An image of the Martian surface from NASA’s Viking 2

To eke out even the barest subsistence on Mars, a living thing would have to adapt to a formidable set of environmental challenges: an arid, often extremely cold landscape with miniscule amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere and no organic matter to eat. During a recent foray into a similarly inhospitable part of our own planet, scientists have discovered several species of bacteria that hint at what life on Mars, if it exists, might look like. These microbes survive on minerals in the surrounding rocks—minerals also found in the Martian surface.

The bacteria were living beneath a thin layer of ice coating a lava tube, a subterranean tunnel lava once flowed through, high in the Cascade Mountains. These frigid, dry conditions—an environment similar to Mars, albeit less extreme—are devoid of typical food sources, and the layer of ice blocks out much of the oxygen from the atmosphere. Rather than breaking down sugars and other nutrients, the bacteria have evolved to get by on what’s available: lots and lots of rock. They glean energy from a simple chemical reaction with the iron ...

NASA to Develop Dust-Grabbing Tractor Beams for Future Missions

Veronique Greenwood — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:04:37 +0000

Put ‘er here, R2.

Fans of intergalactic exploration both real and fictional, rejoice: Future NASA missions may incorporate tractor beams, lasers that can pick up objects at a distance. “We’re caught in a tractor beam and it’s pulling us in!” is a long way off, but NASA has just awarded a team of scientists $100,000 to explore three different methods of trapping objects with laser light and reeling them in.

Dust, rather than Corellian light freighters, are the objects in question: the hope is to use tractor beam tech to collect atmospheric particles or grab dust from a planet’s surface without resorting to using a drill, as the Mars rovers have. And indeed, one of the three methods—optical tweezers—has been used by biologists for decades to hold microscopic particles, including viruses and bacteria, in place for experiments.

The challenge will be developing techniques that will work in all the different environments that an exploratory craft might explore. Optical tweezers won’t work in the vacuum of space, for example, but could be useful on a planet with an atmosphere. The other techniques, which use solenoid beams and Bessel beams, could work ...

China Launches the First Module of Its Space Station Program

Veronique Greenwood — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:46:21 +0000

Artist’s rendering of the Tiangog-1 docking
with another craft.

Today, with much fanfare, China launched its Tiangong-1 space craft into orbit from a site in the Gobi Desert. The unmanned craft is set to dock with later Chinese ships, allowing engineers to practice and experiment with the techniques they’ll need to assemble the space station China plans to build by 2020. Reports from earlier this year suggested that the Tiangong-1 will be converted to taikonaut living quarters in the station, but more recent news indicates that it will be primarily a testing device. For more details about China’s space station dreams, including scientific goals, questions about the military’s intentions, and more, check out our coverage here.

Image courtesy of Xinhua News Agency

Exoplanet’s Surprising Detour Reignites Astronomical Debate

Veronique Greenwood — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:09:58 +0000

When Fomalhaut b was announced in 2008, images showed it following a clear orbit around its star.

What’s the News: Even if you don’t know an exoplanet from an exoskeleton, you probably saw the gorgeous images of Fomalhaut, aka “Sauron’s Eye,” making their way around the web in 2008. A tiny, bright dot in the star’s surrounding dust cloud had moved, showing itself to be a planet—the first planet beyond our solar system to actually be seen, rather than detected with nonoptical instruments. Cue the champagne!

But new pictures show something odd: Fomalhaut b, as the planet was named, is veering off in an unexpected direction. Does this mean it’s not a planet after all, or is there another explanation?

What’s the Context:

Fomalhaut b showed up in two different images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004 and 2006. In the intervening years, the object had moved, appearing to sweep out an orbit through the star’s dust cloud. But Fomalhaut b is kind of weird, as exoplanets go. It’s very bright, way brighter than astronomers would expect from a planet that size, and it’s also not visible in the infrared spectrum in pictures ...

Watch This: The Most Realistic Simulation of Spiral Galaxy Formation to Date

Joseph Castro — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:29:08 +0000

For the first time, astrophysicists have created a computer simulation of the formation of a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way (above). Researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Zurich modeled their galaxy, Eris, using a software platform called Gasoline, which allowed them to track the motion of 60 million particles of gas and dark matter for over 13 billion simulated years. Overall, the simulation required 9 months of number crunching on NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer, with supporting simulations on supercomputers at UCSC and the Swiss National Supercomputing Center.

Previous efforts to model spiral galaxies have failed, ending in disfigured galaxies with central bulges much too large for their disks, according to the researchers. But Eris’ bulge-to-disk ratio, stellar content, and other features fall in line with observations of the Milky Way. The researchers point to a realistic model of star formation as a key to Eris’ success—their high-resolution simulation allowed stars to form only in regions with a high density of particles, resulting in a more accurate distribution of stars. More than just a nice movie, the work supports the cold dark matter theory, which says that ...

Former Sun-like Star Is Now a Diamond Planet

Joseph Castro — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 20:52:22 +0000

Artist’s concept of the pulsar and its planet. The system could fit into our Sun, represented by the yellow surface.

What’s the News: An international team of astronomers has found an exotic planet possibly made of diamond, located about 4,000 light-years away from Earth. The researchers believe that the unusual planet was once a sun-like star, transformed into its current state by its hungry stellar companion, a millisecond pulsar.

How the Heck:

When a massive star dies in a supernova, it sometimes collapses into a pulsar, a highly compacted stellar corpse that emits periodic beams of electromagnetic radiation from its poles. If a pulsar is part of a binary system, it can feed on its nearby stellar friend and speed up its spin to hundreds of rotations per second, effectively becoming a millisecond pulsar. (About 30% of millisecond pulsars found are solitary—astronomers don’t know how they formed.) Astronomers detected the pulsar, known as PSR J1719-1438, during a large ...

3 Billion-Year-Old Sulfur-Eating Microbes May Be the Oldest Fossils Ever Found

Valerie Ross — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:21:13 +0000

A cluster of 3.4 billion-year-old fossilized cells

What’s the News: Geologists have found fossils of microorganisms from 3.4 billion years ago, which may be the oldest fossils ever uncovered. Since these microbes date from a time when Earth’s atmosphere was still oxygen-free, astrobiologists could look for similarly structured microbes when searching for extraterrestrial life.

How the Heck:

These microfossils, as such single-celled fossils are called, were found in a sandstone deposit in Western Australia—an area that was likely a beach on one of Earth’s earliest islands—nestled between ancient grains of quartz sand. The researchers dated the rock formation to 3.4 billion years old. Back then, the atmosphere was thick with methane, not oxygen, and Earth’s oceans were far warmer than they are today, likely about 110˚F. With microfossils so tiny and so old, the big challenge for scientists is proving that what they’ve found really are fossils, rather than non-biological aberrations or patterns in the rock. Using a variety of methods, the research team gathered several types of evidence suggesting—albeit circumstantially—that they’ve found bacterial fossils. Examining samples of the rock, the research time saw tiny rounded and elongated structures that had many of ...

Exoplanet Reflects Practically No Light—and Scientists Have No Idea Why

Joseph Castro — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:16:50 +0000

What’s the News: Using data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, astronomers from Princeton University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered the darkest known planet. The exoplanet, called TrES-2b, is located about 750 light-years away from Earth and reflects less than 1 percent of the incident light from its parent star, making it blacker than the blackest piece of coal. The discovery was published recently in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (pdf).

What’s the Context:

For astronomers, albedo—the percentage of light that is reflected off an object’s surface—is a very useful concept that allows them to infer much about an object’s properties. For example, by comparing the albedo of an asteroid with the albedos of known materials here on Earth, astronomers can figure out how much of the body’s surface is covered with ice, dust, or metallic compounds. Albedo can also help pinpoint the temperature of a solar body. For ...

Astronomers Finally Detect Oxygen Molecules in Space

Joseph Castro — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:05:52 +0000

What’s the News: For the first time, astronomers have found molecular oxygen, which makes up about 20 percent of our air on Earth, in space. Using the large telescope aboard the Herschel Space Observatory, a team of researchers from the European Space Agency and NASA detected the simple molecule in a star-forming region of the Orion Nebula, located about 1,500 light-years from Earth. This takes astronomers one step closer to discovering where all of the oxygen in space is hiding.

What’s the Context:

Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe, right behind hydrogen and helium. Astronomers see individual atoms of oxygen in space all the time, particularly around massive stars, and believe that molecular oxygen (O2) should be common, too. Scientists expect to see one molecule of O2 for every 100,000 molecules of H2, according to the European Space Agency. Astronomers hope that knowing the amount of O2 in molecular clouds will let them determine what role the molecule plays ...

Powerful Magnetic Waves Help Make Sun’s Atmosphere Hotter Than Sun Itself

Joseph Castro — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:34:18 +0000

What’s the News: An international team of researchers, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has learned that large magnetic waves are partly to blame for the Sun’s immensely hot corona. The study, published in the journal Nature, also suggests that the waves could be the driving force behind the solar wind.

What’s the Context:

The corona is the outer atmosphere of the Sun, which is only visible by the naked eye during a solar eclipse. It has fascinated solar physicists for decades because it’s over 20 times hotter than the surface of the sun—you’d expect that the further away you get from a heat source, the cooler it gets. One possible explanation for the corona’s extreme temperature has been Alfvén waves, first proposed by Nobel Prize-winner Hannes Alfvén. Alfvén waves are high-speed magnetic oscillations thought to travel along the Sun’s magnetic field lines, transporting large amounts of energy (in the ...

Crater with Mysterious Mountain Will Be the Landing Site for Next Mars Rover

Veronique Greenwood — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:04:24 +0000

What’s the News: On Friday, after five years of deliberation over 100 candidates, NASA announced its choice of landing site for Curiosity, the next Mars rover: Gale crater, a massive pit with a three-mile-high mound in its center. The mission’s primary goal is to assess whether conditions suitable for microbial life ever existed on the Red Planet; Gale was selected over the three other finalists in part because its mountain promises access to layered sediments extending deep into the Martian past.

Why Gale Crater:

In choosing the landing site, scientists had to balance many factors. As ancient water bodies seem to be Mars‘ best bet of having harbored life, one of their primary criteria for a site was evidence of water, like deltas, possible lakeshores, and other structures, glimpsed in satellite images. Gale has some promising features, though the evidence for water isn’t quite as clear as at Eberswalde crater, a competing site. With Eberswalde, there was the additional benefit that scientists understand better how the crater formed, which would make interpreting the chemical clues the rover will pick up easier. But Gale also has the mountain, whose origins are still unclear and whose layers scientists are eager to ...

Watch the Space Shuttle Atlantis Blast Off in a Few Minutes

Veronique Greenwood — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:16:52 +0000

Today, weather permitting, the last space shuttle will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Watch the launch live here at NASA TV.

For live tweets, follow @NASAKennedy and the journalists on the ground: Alan Boyle (@b0yle), Dave Mosher (@DaveMosher), and Xeni Jardin (@xenijardin) are a good start, and for from-a-distance commentary, follow Phil Plait at @badastronomer.

Why the Space Shuttle, aka the “Flying Brickyard,” Deserves to be Retired

Veronique Greenwood — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:13:41 +0000

What’s the News: With NASA’s last shuttle launch slated for July 8, the news is filled with retrospectives on the shuttle program. And a few of them make this shrewd point: even though the US has no replacement program, even though the vehicles allowed the construction of the International Space Station…good riddance.

What’s the Context:

The shuttle program was launched in 1972 by Richard Nixon, with the goal of a new system of affordable space travel. Over the last four decades, shuttles carried astronauts into low orbit, allowing them to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, ferry parts to build the International Space Station, and perform experiments in the ISS’s labs. For more on the costs and benefits of spaceflight, check out the Bad Astronomer’s recent article on the shuttle and his handy spaceflight linkfest. For a great visual look at the program’s history, including the tragedies of the Challenger in 1986, when the shuttle disintegrated after launch, and the Columbia in 2003, when it fell apart upon re-entry, see Scientific American’s infographic.

Why the Shuttle was Flawed:

The goal of the shuttle program was to make space travel easy, standardized, and affordable. ...

SpaceShipTwo Shows Off New, Clever Way to Descend: Wobbling Like a Shuttlecock

Veronique Greenwood — Fri, 20 May 2011 16:46:31 +0000

What’s the News: Virgin Galactic’s plans for taking tourists into space have inched closer to fulfillment: earlier this month, the company’s SpaceShipTwo successfully demonstrated the technique, called “feathering,” that will allow the ship to reenter Earth’s atmosphere. In this video, you can watch the ship, designed to behave like a badminton shuttlecock, tip and roll as the pilot flips the craft’s tail to a 65 degree angle, which will brake SpaceShipTwo while it’s still high in the atmosphere. This means the ship will descend slowly enough to keep from igniting as it reenters.

How the Heck:

Velocity is the major reason objects burn up when they enter the Earth’s atmosphere—the friction between a speeding meteor and the gasses in the atmosphere, as well as the heat generated by the compression of the gasses as the object bores Earthwards, is so great that the meteor ignites . The Space Shuttle is covered with heat shields that absorb the heat generated by friction, but there are more elegant solutions for flights that don’t need to go into orbit, including feathering, which was first described in 1958. With this technique, part of the craft’s tail flips up to increase drag early in the ...

Is Space a Bad Influence on Good Bacteria?

Patrick Morgan — Wed, 18 May 2011 12:50:48 +0000

What’s the News: Scientists have known for a while that if you put harmful bacteria into outer space, they tend to get even more harmful. Since that discovery, researchers have been itching to know if the zero gravity and radiation of space will have similar effects on beneficial bacteria. With Monday’s launch of Endeavor, scientists can finally try to answer that question: alongside the astronauts, NASA launched the first ever space-faring cephalopod, along with the bioluminescent microbe with which it has a symbiotic relationship, to see if their relationship can stand the stresses of space travel. “This is the first [study] to look at beneficial bacteria” in space, lead researcher Jamie Foster told New Scientist.

The Squid and the Microbe:

Soon after baby bobtail squids (Euprymna scolopes) hatch, a glowing microbe known as Vibrio fischeri starts living inside their light organs. Squids use these glowing hitchhikers to shine light underneath them when they’re hunting, hiding their shadow so they can more easily sneak up on prey. Taking advantage of this symbiotic relationship, NASA ...

Magnetic Waves Bouncing off of Io Helps Measure the Magma Inside

Patrick Morgan — Sat, 14 May 2011 21:36:14 +0000

What’s the News: Jupiter’s moon Io is more volcanically active than any other object in our solar system, releasing 30 times more heat than Earth through volcanism. It’s thought that Jupiter’s gravity pulls so hard on the moon and causes so much friction that the resulting thermal energy melts a huge amount of underground rock, feeding Io’s 400 active volcanoes.

For years, astronomers have debated whether Io’s spewing lava comes from isolated pockets of magma or a layer that spans the entire moon. Astronomers have now peered into Io’s interior for the first time, discovering that it has a global sea of magma roughly 30 miles thick. “It turns out Io was continually giving off a ‘sounding signal’ in Jupiter’s … magnetic field that matched what would be expected from molten or partially molten rocks deep beneath the surface,” lead researcher Krishan Khurana told Wired.

How the Heck:

As NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew by Jupiter nearly a decade ago, it detected distortions in the planet’s magnetic field. “Just like the waves beamed from an airport metal detector bounce off ...

NASA’s Proposed Space-Faring Boat Would Cruise and Study Titan’s Oceans

Patrick Morgan — Tue, 10 May 2011 19:35:53 +0000

What’s the News: NASA’s considering launching a boat from Earth, hurling it 746 million miles through space, and plopping it onto one of the minus-290 degrees Fahrenheit methane oceans of Titan. This mission to Saturn’s largest moon would the first of its kind to probe an alien ocean and—depending on the weather conditions—could be the first spacecraft to witness extraterrestrial rain. If the proposed mission beats out two other finalists, it could launch within the next five years. “Titan is an endpoint [in] exploring … the limits to life in our solar system,” project leader Ellen Stofan told New Scientist. “We’re going to be looking for patterns in abundances of compounds to look for evidence for more complex or interesting reactions.”

The Mission:

If the mission, dubbed the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME), lifts off in 2016, it should reach Titan by 2023 and then parachute onto one of its large lakes, such as Ligeia Mare or Kraken Mare. These lakes are prime destinations because, unlike most of Titan’s lakes, they ...

An Ocean of Water May Lie Deep Beneath Titan’s Lakes of Methane

Patrick Morgan — Mon, 09 May 2011 18:26:25 +0000

What’s the News: Astronomers have known for many years that Saturn’s moon Titan sports lakes of liquid methane. And in the past couple years, scientists have suggested that it also has an underground ocean composed of water and ammonia. Now, based on past observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, astronomers are saying that Titan’s rotation indeed points to an underground sea—and where there’s water, there may also be life. “Our analysis strengthens the possibility that Titan has a subsurface ocean, but it does not prove it undoubtedly,” researcher Rose-Marie Baland told Astrobiology Magazine. “So there is still work to do.”

How the Heck:

The researchers started out with two measurements made by the Cassini spacecraft: Titan’s moment of inertia (the moon’s resistance to changes in its rotation), and its obliquity (the angle between the axis of rotation and the axis perpendicular to the orbital plane). Titan’s obliquity, for example is 0.3 degrees, whereas Earth’s is 23 degrees. These two measurements are useful because the Cassini State Model describes a reliable correlation between a moon’s obliquity to its moment of inertia. As Baland told me via email, the model predicted an obliquity of 0.12 degrees, which ...

Postage-Stamp Satellites Hitch a Ride on the Space Station

Veronique Greenwood — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 09:15:36 +0000

The chip at the core of the Sprite
microsatellite is smaller than a dime.

What’s the News: Imagine a cloud of tiny satellites, each no larger than a postage stamp, sailing like dust on solar winds through a planet’s atmosphere and sending radio signals home, with no need for fuel. When a small patch of real estate opened up on an International Space Station experiment, researchers jumped at the chance to test the durability of such tiny “satellites on a chip,” which they hope to eventually deploy in atmospheres like Saturn’s, and three of the miniature objects are being delivered to the Space Station by Endeavor on its final flight (which was just scrubbed for today). They will allow researchers to see how well such microsatellites hold up to radiation and other rigors of space.

How the Heck:

The mini-satellites, developed by Cornell University and Sandia National Laboratories and called “Sprites,” are intended to take data about chemistry, radiation, and other properties—they could even be used to detect whether a planet’s atmosphere has any chemical signatures of possible life, such as nitrogen. Instead of using fuel, the tiny printed squares of silicon would rely on physical ...

Tycho’s Supernova Went Boom After Slurping Up Some of Its Neighbor

Patrick Morgan — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:36:23 +0000

What’s the News: Astronomers have known for a while that white dwarfs can sometimes ignite in massive explosions known as Type Ia supernovae, but they haven’t been sure what pulls the trigger. One theory says that the explosion occurs when two white dwarfs merge into each other, while an opposing theory says that it happens when a single white dwarf pulls material from a Sun-like companion star. Using the Chandra X-ray telescope, astronomers have discovered an arc-shaped material emitting X-rays in the Tycho supernova that gives hints about the supernova’s origin. “This stripped stellar material was the missing piece of the puzzle for arguing that Tycho’s supernova was triggered in a binary with a normal stellar companion,” says Fangjun Lu. “We now seem to have found this piece.”

How It Happened:

A white dwarf and Sun-like companion star orbited each other so closely that the white dwarf stripped material off its companion, triggering a Type Ia supernova. The supernova blew some material off from the companion star, and the resulting highly energetic, X-ray-emitting material can now be seen in the shape of ...

China Announces It Will Build Its Own Space Station Within 10 Years

Valerie Ross — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:46:27 +0000

The International Space Station

What’s the News: On Monday, China unveiled its plan to build a manned space station in the next decade. This announcement comes from a space program whose development has been, well, skyrocketing; China launched its first astronaut into Earth orbit in 2003 and completed its first spacewalk in 2008. If things go as planned, the station would be the third ever multi-module space station, after Russia’s Mir and the International Space Station.

What’s the Plan:

The space station is currently dubbed Tiangong, meaning “heavenly palace,” but that moniker may not be permanent; China’s space agency is taking suggestions for new names via email. Designed for a three-person crew, the space station will consist of one core module and two lab units for conducting experiments in astronomy, biology (particularly as it pertains to space radiation), and microgravity. Weighing in at 60 tons, Tiangong is significantly smaller than its predecessors (the ISS weighs 419 tons; Mir weighed 137). Each module will have a maximum diameter of about 14 feet; the core module will be nearly 60 feet long, and the two lab modules will be around 47 feet. The space station’s core module will

Bacteria Survive & Reproduce in Gravity 400,000X Stronger Than Earth’s

Valerie Ross — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:49:03 +0000

E. coli

What’s the News: Some bacteria can live in extreme “hypergravity,” found a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, surviving and reproducing in forces 400,000 times greater than what’s felt on Earth. These findings fit with the idea that microbes carried on meteorites or other debris—a ride that would have subjected them to hypergravity-strength forces—may be the ancestors of life on Earth.

How the Heck:

While measuring the density of the common intestinal bacteria Escherichia coli, the researchers noticed that the bacteria seemed undeterred by spinning around at the equivalent of 7,500 G’s—so they decided to see how much pressure these microbes could handle. The researchers spun samples of E. coli and three other types of bacteria in an ultracentrifuge, to generate hypergravity conditions. E. coli and one other bacteria, Paracoccus denitrificans, could not only survive but continue to reproduce at 403,627 G’s, the scientists found, though its proliferation was stunted compared to what it is at Earth-level gravity. The other two species couldn’t endure such extreme gravitational forces, but all four could reproduce at least somewhat at 20,000 G’s.

What’s the Context:

Extremophile microbes have been observed going ...

Massive Martian Dry-Ice Deposit May Explain How Planet Used to Have Watery Surface

Patrick Morgan — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:33:51 +0000

What’s the News: If you were to bring a glass of water to Mars, the liquid would instantly boil because the Red Planet’s carbon dioxide atmosphere is so thin: The vapor pressure of the water easily surpasses the weak atmospheric pressure, sending water molecules flying off quickly into the atmosphere. However, ancient shorelines and river-like features indicate that Mars had a watery past, leading researchers to wonder what happened to Mars’ once-thicker atmosphere. Now, data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has uncovered a massive deposit of solid CO2 at the south pole that could double the planet’s atmospheric pressure if it were released as gas. “If you double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it’s quite possible that you could have liquid water,” planetary scientist Philip James of the Space Science Institute in Boulder told Scientific American. “People have suggested that this could happen, and now it looks like it could be possible.”

How the Heck:

As the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flies past Mars’s south polar cap, it sent radar waves at the planet, which reflect off surfaces within the ice and travel back to the orbiter. These reflected ...

Another Reason Not to Get Sick in Space: the Drugs Don’t Work as Well

Patrick Morgan — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:06:49 +0000

What’s the News: In long space flights, such as a mission to Mars, astronauts will have more time during which they could get injured or sick. And the same apparently goes for the medicine aboard spaceships: According to a NASA-funded study, medicines degrade faster in space than they do on Earth. As the researchers conclude in their paper, “this information can facilitate research for the development of space-hardy pharmaceuticals and packaging technologies.”

How the Heck:

The researchers studied outer space’s effect on 35 different medications such as the infection-fighters amoxicillin and mupirocin ointment that are commonly used by astronauts by comparing boxes of drugs flown on the International Space Station with identical boxes kept in controlled conditions (same temperature and humidity) at the Johnson Space Center in Texas. One of the ISS boxes was flown in space for only 13 days and another for 28 months. Once back on Earth, the scientists tested the drugs in several ways. Using the standard methods of assessing pharmaceutical stability, they measured the physical variables—including weight, color, odor, and others—of the solid medicines. They also used liquid chromatography to ...

Astronomers Say: Spew 20 Tons of Dust Into Orbit to Clear the Junk

Patrick Morgan — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:12:29 +0000

What’s the News: The many bits of space junk orbiting Earth, from foil scraps to lens caps to chunks of frozen urine, can damage satellites and spacecraft, which is why researchers have long sought methods to remove debris from orbit. Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have proposed a new way of taking out the trash (in two senses): They want to pump 20 tons of tungsten dust into Earth’s orbit; this dust would exert drag on the junk’s orbit, slowing it down and gradually lowering it until Earth’s atmosphere can burn it up. This bid to protect Earth’s 900 active satellites is controversial because the dust could potentially harm solar panels on satellites and obstruct astronomical measurements, but it’s a handy fix because it doesn’t require ambitious new technology.

How the Heck:

The scientists say that their “dust snow plow” was inspired by the natural drag exerted by the Earth’s atmosphere starting at around 900 kilometers: The atmosphere gradually slows down the orbit of junk at this range, pulling debris out of orbit after ...

What Would a Government Shutdown Mean for Science, Medicine, & Engineering?

Valerie Ross — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:50:12 +0000

What’s the News: With Congress yet to pass a budget, the country is facing a government shutdown unless lawmakers reach an agreement by midnight tonight. In addition to shuttering many government offices, the shutdown would likely cause present serious difficulties for federal government-funded research.

Difficulties Such As…

A wide range of government-backed research—from biologists studying stem cell lines to oceanographers gleaning climate information from maritime sensors—wouldn’t be funded during the shutdown. The delay will ruin some experiments, and leave others with large gaps in their data. One stem cell researcher estimated the shutdown would cost his lab $10,000 per person, and told NatureNews, “One day is tolerable, three days is a killer.” Scientists working on NASA’s IceBridge project—a study using special aircraft to survey ice in Greenland—would get on their planes and (dejectedly, one assumes) head back to the States. Clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health would be stopped or, at best, slowed. The NIH Clinical Center has an estimated 640 trials, 285 of which are for people suffering from cancer—but those studies would stop taking all new patients, including one child flown to the NIH Sunday on a Miles ...

A History of Comet Collisions Inscribed in Saturn & Jupiter’s Rings

Patrick Morgan — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:39:22 +0000

What’s the News: Looking at images of odd undulations in the rings of Saturn and Jupiter, astronomers have discovered that comets are to blame. The finding means that a planet’s rings act as a historical record of passing comets, possibly leading to a better understanding of comet populations. “We now know that collisions into the rings are very common—a few times per decade for Jupiter and a few times per century for Saturn,” Mark Showalter, from the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, told the Daily Mail. “Now scientists know that the rings record these impacts like grooves in a vinyl record, and we can play back their history later.”

How the Heck:

When a comet passes by the rings of a planet, its high-speed debris impacts the ring material and “changes the inclination of the particles’ orbits,” Bad Astronomer Phil Plait told me. “It’s like a cosmic shotgun blast.” With the ring particles knocked out of alignment, they bob up and down as they orbit the planets—a phenomenon that looks in telescope images (see animation above) like ripples in a pond or corrugated metal. The particles undulate up and down as they slowly gradually come back ...

From White Dwarfs to Dark Matter Clouds, the Universe May Have Many Homes for Habitable Planets

Patrick Morgan — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:06:20 +0000

What’s the News: While the Kepler spacecraft is busy finding solar system-loads of new planets, other astronomers are expanding our idea where planets could potentially be found. One astronomer wants to look for habitable planets around white dwarfs, arguing that any water-bearing exoplanets orbiting these tiny, dim stars would be much easier to find than those around main-sequence stars like our Sun. Another team dispenses with stars altogether and speculates that dark matter explosions inside a planet could hypothetically make it warm enough to be habitable, even without a star. “This is a fascinating, and highly original idea,” MIT exoplanet expert Sara Seager told Wired, referring to the dark matter hypothesis. “Original ideas are becoming more and more rare in exoplanet theory.”

How the Heck:

Because white dwarfs are much smaller than our Sun, an Earth-sized planet that crossed in front of it would block more of its light, which should make these planets easier to spot. So astronomer Eric Agol suggests survey the 20,000 white dwarfs closest to Earth with ...

Astronomers Say Milky Way Has Around 2 Billion “Earth Analog” Planets (That’s the Bad News)

Patrick Morgan — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:35:24 +0000

What’s the News: Based on early Kepler data, astronomers say that the Milky Way galaxy may house at least two billion Earth-like planets—one for every several dozen sun-like stars. As NASA researcher Joseph Catanzarite told Space.com, “With that large a number, there’s a good chance life and maybe even intelligent life might exist on some of those planets. And that’s just our galaxy alone — there are 50 billion other galaxies.” But while 2 billion sounds like a lot, it’s actually far below many scientists’ expectation; Catanzarite says his teams’ findings actually show that Earth-like planets are “relatively scarce.”

How the Heck:

Using mathematical models to plot the size and orbital distance for all the potential planets spotted during four months’ worth of Kepler data, astronomers extrapolated the data and calculated that 1.4 to 2.7% of the Milky Way’s sun-like stars may have an Earth analog. Two percent of the Milky Way’s roughly one hundred billion sun-like stars means that “you have two billion Earth analog planets in the galaxy,” Catanzarite told National Geographic.

What’s the Context:

The Kepler team recently announced a mother lode ...

Weather Report From Titan: It’s Raining Methane (Hallelujah)

Patrick Morgan — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:28:58 +0000

What’s the News: Images sent back from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft depict storm clouds and methane rain puddles, the first solid evidence of modern rainfall on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. “We’re pretty confident that it has just rained on Titan,” lead author Elizabeth Turtle, from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told Wired. Astronomers have previous evidence of sulfuric-acid precipitation on Venus, but it doesn’t count as rainfall because it never reaches the surface.

What’s the Olds:

Launched in 1997, Cassini arrived at Saturn’s orbit in 2004, where it started studying several of the planet’s moons. As covered in 80beats, this wasn’t the first time scientists have thought about whether it rains on Titan. 80beats covered the 2008 discovery of the “ingredients of life” on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. And the spacecraft has also caught the changing seasons on Titan’s surface. Images reveal that these seasonal changes are so drastic that they affect the methane levels on Titan’s lakes.

Not So Fast: Don’t read too much into these showers: Methane rain doesn’t mean life. The search continues.

Reference: “Rapid and Extensive Surface Changes Near Titan’s ...

Success! NASA’s MESSENGER Becomes First Craft to Orbit Mercury

Patrick Morgan — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:49:28 +0000

What’s the News: After firing its thrusters for about 15 minutes on Thursday, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft lost enough speed to be pulled in by Mercury’s gravitational field, making it the first probe to orbit the Swift Planet. “Mercury’s secrets, and the implications they hold for the formation and evolution of Earth-like planets, are about to be revealed,” MESSENGER principal investigator Sean Solomon told Slate.

What’s the Olds:

Launched on 3 August 2004, MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging spacecraft) has clocked 4.9 billion miles since day one—a trek that includes three Mercury fly-bys as it eased its way into orbit. 80beats published an image gallery of the stunning photos already sent back during the fly-bys and has covered such findings as ancient magma oceans and magnetic volcanoes. In 2008, MESSENGER imaged most of the never-before-seen swaths of Mercury’s surface. As Phil Plait points out, it’s not just Mercury that MESSENGER has photographed: It’s also sent long shots of Earth.

Not So Fast: Don’t expect any stunning images by this weekend: MESSENGER’s first pictures in orbit are slated to arrive toward the end of the month.

The Future ...

Cooler-Than-Steam Brown Dwarf Blurs The Line Between Star & Planet

Patrick Morgan — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:20:06 +0000

Planetar. Substar. Failed star. Sub-stellar object. Astronomers have pinned each of these monikers on brown dwarfs, a category that has always perplexed scientists because it raises questions about what it means to be a star or a planet. And if that wasn’t enough, now they’ve discovered the coldest brown dwarf yet, blurring the line between planet and star even further.

It’s name is CFBDSIR J1458+1013B, and may be cooler than the boiling point of water (at the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere). This strange body is about 75 light-years from us, where it orbits its binary partner, another brown dwarf. Using the infrared capabilities of the 10-meter Keck II Telescope on Mauna Kea, University of Hawaii researcher Michael Liu and his team estimated the brown dwarf’s temperature, and have a ballpark range for its mass: between 6 and 15 times the mass of Jupiter.

It’s special because it may be a class Y dwarf (temperature less than 225 degrees Celsius (440 F)), a type of object whose existence astronomers had predicted but never actually found. Before this candidate arose, the coolest known brown dwarf was in the T spectral class; while ...

Exclusive: “Most Earth-Like” Exoplanet Gets Major Demotion—It Isn’t Habitable

Andrew Grant — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:13:41 +0000

Last month, when astronomers with the Kepler space telescope released a list of 1,235 possible planets orbiting other stars, one particular candidate, KOI 326.01, especially stood out. Scientists, journalists, and the general public couldn’t help it: In a population of planetary candidates dominated by sizzling, Jupiter-sized gas giants—which are much easier to spot—here was the closest thing yet to our very own planet. It was just about the size of Earth, even a little smaller, and had a temperature around 138 degrees—rather warm for human tastes, but still a place where liquid water could rain down from clouds into oceans, and where life as we know it could possibly exist. A clever but perhaps overambitious monetary calculation valued the planet at exactly $223,099.93.

Alas, KOI 326.01’s 15 minutes of fame must now end. Additional analysis of the planet’s star now suggests that the planet is a lot larger, and most likely a lot hotter, than previously thought. “The details of the planet need to be hammered out, but this certainly means that this is not an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone,” where liquid water could exist, says Natalie Batalha, a Kepler team member.

Chernobyl Plants & Temperate Caves Could Help Humans Colonize New Worlds

Andrew Moseman — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:14:30 +0000

Humankind’s experience visiting worlds beyond our own begins and ends with the dozen Apollo astronauts who skipped about on tiny swaths of the moon. But that doesn’t mean we can’t experiment with how and where we might visit (or live) on the extreme surfaces of other worlds. A few studies out recently are doing just that.

Radiation? Big deal

Our planet provides a protective shield from the most damaging radiation produced by the sun—a shield not available on the moon or Mars. It’s a hazard for any human leaving the planet, and it’s a hazard for plants, too.

However, a new study of the Chernobyl area in the Ukraine, site of the famous nuclear accident, is actually raising hopes for space farming.

Even 25 years after the catastrophic nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the area around the site harbors radioactive soil. But researchers working there have found that oil-rich flax plants can adapt and flourish in that fouled environment with few problems. Exactly how the flax adapted remains unclear, but what is clear is that two generations of flax plants have taken root and thrived there, and ...

News Roundup: Why the Sun Lost Its Spots

Andrew Moseman — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:27:45 +0000

While modeling plasma flows deep inside the sun, scientists may have found an explanation for why some sunspots cycles (like the most recent one) are weaker than others. “It’s the flow speed during the cycle before that seems to dictate the number of sunspots. Having a fast flow from the poles while a cycle is ramping up, followed by a slow flow during its decline, results in a very deep minimum.” Risky business: In defending President Obama’s vision for space exploration that relies upon commercial space companies, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says the country must “become unafraid of exploration. We need to become unafraid of risks.” Bad timing: Just as Apple unveils its new iPad—and Steve Jobs uses the opportunity to gloat about his company’s superiority in apps compared to Google’s Android system—Google had to take 21 apps off the Android Market because they were infected with malware. The journals of Harvey Cushing, the father of neurosurgery, include admirable documentation of his own mistakes—giving medical historians a window into the birth of modern surgery around the turn of the 20th ...

Study: Ammonia-Packed Meteorites Could Have Provided Nitrogen for Early Life

Andrew Moseman — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:57:54 +0000

One nitrogen atom, three hydrogen atoms. That’s all it takes to make the basic ammonia molecule. This simple compound was one of the most important building blocks for the origin of life, scientists believe, providing the nitrogen that is crucial to many organic compounds. They just don’t know for sure how so much of it could form under the conditions of the early Earth.

In a new study this week, Sandra Pizzarello and colleagues tie the ammonia surplus to one of the more fascinating theories about the rise of life—that some of its basic components seeded the Earth from space on board meteorites that pounded the planet’s surface.

Pizzarello’s team analyzed a particular meteorite found in Antarctica. Its name is Graves Nunataks (GRA) 95229, and it was discovered in 1995. But its important characteristic is that the it belongs to a class of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites that are full of organic materials. In the lab, the researchers tried to simulate how those materials in GRA 95299 might have reacted when they reached the younger Earth.

Pizzarello and her co-authors ...