Blogs / 80beats

A starlit sky may look serene, but those stars are actually quivering and quaking; now, researchers have recorded the stellar vibrations of distant stars for the first time. The pulsations reflect changes in temperature caused when roiling heat makes the outer surface of the star vibrate. Portions of the surface expand and cool, while others contract and get warmer [New Scientist].

The initial discovery of oscillations in our Sun in the late 1970’s led to the creation of “solar seismology,” which has since been used to measure the movement and transport of heat around the Sun. Solar seismology led to rapid progress in understanding the Sun’s internal structure, but eventually researchers hit a wall [COSMOS]. For accurate measurements, researchers need a long stretch of uninterrupted observations, which is impossible from ground-based telescopes.

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In a setback to Europe’s space program, the European Space Agency’s flagship mission to Mars will be delayed three years while the space agency tries to cobble together funding for the ambitious rover, the ExoMars. The mission had already been postponed once and was most recently scheduled to launch in 2013, but cost overruns are forcing the space agency to push back to a launch date in 2016.

Approved by space ministers in 2005, the rover was supposed to be a fairly small venture costing no more than 650m euros. But as the project developed, it was decided the endeavour should be upgraded, to provide a bigger, more capable vehicle; and one that could carry a much broader range of science instruments [BBC News]. The ExoMars is slated to include a drill that can bore down two meters into the icy soil, and is expected to search for evidence of Martian life, past or present. However, the rover’s scientific ambition pushed costs up to the current estimate of 1.2 billion euros, and Italy, the mission’s lead financier, has refused to meet those costs. Thus far, no other nation has stepped forward to pick up the tab.

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This week, an international group of astronauts and legal experts met to consider a dire but hypothetical threat to life on earth: another massive asteroid impact, like the one that researchers believe ended the reign of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The group, the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), concluded their meeting by asking the United Nations to prepare an international response for when a dangerous object is detected heading towards our planet. Says astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who flew into orbit with the Apollo 9 mission: “Until we have a response in place, we’re as vulnerable as the dinosaurs” [The Register].

In the report, titled Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response, the team reminds the public of the asteroid Apophis, which gave humanity a brief scare in 2004 when researchers calculated that it had a 1 in 37 chance of hitting the earth in the year 2029. That calamitous prediction was soon refuted by further data on Apophis’ trajectory, but the new report notes that the asteroid, also known as a “near earth object” or NEO, has a 1-in-45,000 chance of striking Earth in 2036. Currently, NASA is watching 209 NEOs, none of which is considered to be dangerous. But a threat is likely to be detected within the next 15 years, according to the ASE. “New telescopes coming online will increase these discoveries by a factor of 100,” said Ed Lu, astronaut on space shuttle Atlantis [New Scientist].

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The solar wind, a steady stream of charged subatomic particles that stream out from the sun at a speed of one million miles per hour, has dwindled to its weakest state since recording began, researchers say. While researchers already knew that solar winds fluctuate in 11-year cycles, the current doldrums trump the declines seen over the past 50 years. “We know that the sun has been this cool before, this inactive before,” said [physicist] Nancy Crooker…. “But that was prior to the Space Age, so we didn’t have actual physical measurements until now” [SPACE.com].

The data was collected by the first solar explorer, the Ulysses probe, which was launched in 1990 as a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency. The 17-year-old space probe, which circles the sun from a distance of about 337 million miles, has been studying the environment above and below the poles of the sun. It is just months away from shutting down because of freezing fuel [AP].

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The European Space Agency (ESA) is considering a space mission called Marco Polo, in which a spacecraft would land on a small asteroid, drill into its surface to collect samples of rock and dust, and then fly back to Earth where it would drop its sample capsule down to the surface. Two satellite manufacturing companies are currently conducting a feasibility study; if ESA signs off on the proposal, Marco Polo could sail off into space in 2017.

Asteroids are chunks of debris left over from the chaotic mass that spun around the young Sun during the formation of the Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago. The rest of the material coalesced into planets [The Daily Mail]. Researchers say that studying the composition of an asteroid could give them insight into how the solar system formed. The roughly $430 million mission would also serve as a warm-up for a hypothetical round-trip journey to Mars, as it would enable the development of technology needed for getting up and down from a large planetary body with a much bigger gravitational pull [Telegraph].

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Tiny invertebrates known as water bears are in one sense far tougher than humans who can crush hundreds of them underfoot: A new study has shown that the water bears can survive the vacuum and radiation of space. The water bears, who are more properly known as tardigrades, were launched into orbit aboard a European Space Agency satellite, where they were exposed for 10 days to the cold, low pressure, and intense radiation of space before being brought back down to Earth to study.

Researchers already knew that water bears were unusually tough critters. [T]hey prefer to spend their days in water, perhaps on a beach or a dewy patch of moss. But when the water dries up, the millimetre-long ‘bears’ can contract into a dried-out state and survive like that for years. They are also one of the few animals that survive year-round on continental Antarctica, and are among the most radiation-resistant animals known [Nature News].

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In between Mars and Jupiter, the spacecraft Rosetta buzzed by an asteroid on Friday and snapped photos of the chunk of rock as it hurtled through space. The European Space Agency’s spacecraft flew to within 500 miles of the Steins asteroid, getting a close-up view of the diamond-shaped Steins asteroid, a gray, 3-mile (5-km) wide rock that appears in images as a pock-marked [rock] with multiple craters that ultimately will help determine its age [SPACE.com].

Researchers hope that the Rosetta’s observations of the asteroid will shed light on the processes that shaped our solar system. The rocks are often referred to as “space rubble” because they represent the leftovers that were never incorporated into planets when the Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago. As with comets, they may contain very primitive materials that have not undergone the constant recycling experienced by, for example, Earth rocks. Rosetta data should therefore help researchers understand better how our local space environment has evolved over time [BBC News].

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Exploring Mars looks like so much fun, everyone want to get in on the act. Following the path blazed by the NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity and the NASA lander Phoenix, which are all currently active on the Red Planet, the European Space Agency (ESA) has designed a rover that is expected to take off for Mars in 2013 and land on the surface in 2015. The ESA’s ExoMars mission is designed to examine the planet’s geology and to search for signs of past life.

ESA officials boast that the two prototypes, nicknamed Brandon and Bruno, are more maneuverable and more independent than previous robots that have made the journey to Mars, and say that these advantages will allow their rover to see more of the planet. Says engineer Chris Draper: “Obviously, the American MER rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) that were put up by Nasa enjoyed an extreme amount of success. They were able to travel large distances, well beyond their planned lifetimes. But we’re hoping that with our baby, we’ll be able to go places that are actually much further” [BBC News].

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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has discovered a liquid lake the size of Earth’s Lake Ontario on the south pole of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Researchers say that Cassini’s instruments reveal that the chilly reservoir … Titan, is composed of a key component of crude oil — liquid ethane [Science News].

The new find supports the common belief that Titan is a promising place to look for extraterrestrial life. Some astrobiologists have speculated that life could develop in the moon’s hydrocarbon lakes, although it would have to be substantially different from known life on Earth, which requires liquid water [Wired News].

The Cassini orbiter has racked up a number of accomplishments since it began investigating Saturn and its moons in 2004, but its most exciting missions have focused on Titan, where the thick nitrogen and methane atmosphere resembles the atmosphere that existed on primordial Earth.

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Yesterday, lunar enthusiasts and space buffs gathered to mark the 39th anniversary of the first human steps on the moon. At NASA’s new Lunar Science Institute, the assembled crowd was also preparing for a three-day conference devoted to planning the next phase of lunar exploration. NASA hopes to return humans to the moon by 2020, but they may have some competition in this space race do-over; both entrepreneurs and other space agencies are also stepping up their activities.

At the gathering at Ames, NASA researchers made clear that the goals for the next lunar expedition are ambitious. The United States, they said, needs to focus on creating a permanent presence on the moon, using it as a training platform for missions to Mars and beyond. “We’re going back, and this time we’re going to stay,” S. Pete Worden, director of NASA/Ames, said in remarks opening the lunar science conference. “This is the first step in settling the solar system” [San Jose Mercury News].

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It is considered by many engineers and scientists as the “Holy Grail” of robotic red planet exploration: a Mars Return Sample mission [SPACE.com]. Now, an international group of researchers from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have produced a report explaining how they could get a robotic explorer to scoop up rocks from the Martian surface, and then bring them back to Earth to let humans touch a piece of Mars.

Scientists say it would cost between $4.5 billion and $8 billion and would require the cooperation of several space agencies, but they also say there’s no reason not to do it.

The Soviet Union successfully returned rocks to Earth from the Moon during robotic missions in the 1970s. But since then, such complex sample-return missions have been regarded as prohibitively complicated and expensive [ABC News]. Now, space agencies say that bringing rocks back from Mars would serve as an intermediary step on the path to sending a manned expedition to our neighbor planet. Says researcher Monica Grady: “If you can’t bring a rock back you are not going to be able to bring people back” [The Guardian]. NASA and the ESA are expected to decide whether to pursue the mission in November.

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