JAXA shows off second-generation asteroid explorer 'Hayabusa 2'

Japan's space agency showed off a space probe to be launched next month that it hopes will answer questions about how life seeded Earth.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) intends to land Hayabusa 2 on an asteroid orbiting between Earth and Mars. It is set to be launched by an H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center here on Nov. 30.

Its predecessor, launched in 2003, returned to Earth after a seven-year mission, during which it landed on an asteroid and collected sample material, an unprecedented achievement.

JAXA showed off the near complete body of its second-generation asteroid explorer to reporters on Oct. 27.

Hayabusa 2 will embark on a six-year journey to collect samples from an asteroid called 1999 JU3. Scientists expect the mission to shed light on the origins of the solar system and life on Earth.

The spherical asteroid is about 900 meters diameter and is thought to contain organic compounds and water, the key to life. It was first observed in 1999.

Hayabusa 2 arrived at Tanegashima island, south of Kagoshima, on Sept. 22. The capsule, impactor and other parts were then assembled.

A JAXA official said Hayabusa 2 will be attached to the rocket after fueling operations are complete and the exterior of the explorer has been inspected for flaws.

Hayabusa 2 is slated to reach the asteroid between June and July in 2018, and spend 18 months on the celestial body before returning to Earth between November and December in 2020.

The explorer will release the impactor to smash a crater and collect mineral samples that have not been exposed to and affected by the heat of the sun.

Russian Cargo Ship Lifts Off For Space Station

An unmanned Russian cargo ship successfully lifted off for the International Space Station (ISS) on October 29.

The Progress 57 craft was launched atop a Soyuz rocket at 8:09 a.m. Prague time from the Russian-leased Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan.

"Everything looks good on the Soyuz booster and the Progress resupply ship," an announcer on the U.S. space agency's NASA TV said.

The launch came nine hours after a privately operated rocket exploded seconds after liftoff in the United States, causing the loss of cargo ship that was also bound for the ISS.

The explosion of the Antares was the first such accident since NASA turned to private operators to deliver cargo to the station, breaking a Russian monopoly that followed the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011.

The Progress is delivering nearly three metric tons of propellant, oxygen, water, and other supplies to the station.

EXPLOSION OF NASA'S UNMANNED ROCKET ANTARES

An unmanned Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff from a commercial launch pad in Virginia on Tuesday, marking the first accident since NASA turned to private operators to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, but officials said no one was hurt.

The 14-story rocket, built and launched by Orbital Sciences Corp, blasted off its seaside launch pad at the Wallops Flight Facility at 6:22 p.m. EDT carrying a Cygnus cargo ship for the space station. It exploded in a huge fireball moments later.

Orbital Sciences stock was down 12.74 percent after hours, or down $3.87 at $26.50.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known, said NASA mission commentator Dan Huot.

Huot said there were no reports of any personnel in the vicinity of the explosion. An Accomack County Sheriff's spokeswoman added, "As far as we know, all personnel are accounted for and everyone's OK."

Orbital Sciences said in a statement: "We've confirmed that all personnel have been accounted for. We have no injuries in the operation today."

NASA launch control said damage appeared to be limited to the launch facility and rocket. The Antares rocket has been launched successfully on four previous missions.

"This has been a lot of hard work to get to this point," Orbital Sciences Executive Vice President Frank Culbertson told the launch team just before liftoff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSJ2kcDirEo

Launch had been delayed one day after a boat sailed into a restricted safety zone beneath the rocket's intended flight path.

Virginia-based Orbital Sciences is one of two companies hired by NASA to fly cargo to the station after the space shuttles were retired. Tuesday's planned flight was to be the third of eight under the company's $1.9 billion contract with NASA.

The second U.S. supply line to the station is run by privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which is preparing for its fourth flight under a separate $1.6 billion NASA contract.

Outfitted with a new, more powerful upper-stage engine, the Antares rocket launched on Tuesday carried a Cygnus spacecraft packed with 5,055 pounds (2,293 kg) of supplies, science experiments and equipment, a 15 percent increase over previous missions.

Cygnus was to loiter in orbit until Nov. 2, then fly itself to the station so astronauts can use a robotic crane to snare the capsule and attach it to a berthing port. The station, a $100 billion research laboratory owned and operated by 15 nations, flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth.

In addition to food, supplies and equipment, the Cygnus spacecraft was loaded with more than 1,600 pounds (725 kg) of science experiments, including an investigation to chemically analyze meteors as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The Cygnus also carried a prototype satellite owned by Redmond, Washington-based startup Planetary Resources Inc., which is developing technology to mine asteroids. The satellite, designated A3, was to be released into space by a commercially owned small spacecraft launcher aboard the station.

Source : Reuters

High-Altitude Methane Ice Cloud Discovered Floating Above Titan's Pole

NASA scientists have uncovered a starting new find on Saturn's moon, Titan. They've found an unexpected high-altitude methane ice cloud, similar to exotic clouds formed high above Earth's own poles. This cloud in the stratosphere over Titan’s north pole (left) is similar to Earth’s polar stratospheric clouds (right). NASA scientists found that Titan’s cloud contains methane ice, which was not previously thought to form in that part of the atmosphere. Cassini first spotted the cloud in 2006. (Photo : L. NASA/JPL/U. of Ariz./LPGNantes; R. NASA/GSFC/M. Schoeberl)

NASA scientists have uncovered a starting new find on Saturn's moon, Titan. They've found an unexpected high-altitude methane ice cloud, similar to exotic clouds formed high above Earth's own poles.

The researchers first spotted the cloud with the help of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. It was part of the winter cap of condensation over Titan's north pole. Now, scientists have teased apart the data and found that the cloud contained methane ice, which produces a much denser cloud than the previously identified ethane ice.

"The idea that methane clouds could form this high on Titan is completely new," said Carrie Anderson, lead author of the new study, in a news release. "Nobody considered that possible before."

The temperatures in Titan's lower stratosphere are not the same at all latitudes. In fact, the high-altitude temperature near the north pole is far colder than just south of the equator. This temperature difference-as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit-is enough to yield methane ice.

So how do these clouds form? The mechanisms for forming these high-altitude clouds are different from what happens in the troposphere. Titan has a global circulation pattern; warm air in the summer hemisphere wells up from the surface and enters the stratosphere, slowly making its way to the winter pole. There, the air sinks back down and cools as it descends. This forms the methane clouds.

Currently, the scientists are gathering more information about Saturn's moon in order to better understand the natural processes that occur on the alien world. This could shed light on the processes that occur on exoplanets and allow scientists to apply their findings to processes that also occur on Earth.

"Titan continues to amaze with natural processes similar to those on Earth, yet involving materials different from our familiar water," said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist. "As we approach southern winter solstice on Titan, we will further explore how these cloud formation processes might vary with season."

Popular Physicist Says , "We are alone in the universe"

The process which led to the creation of humankind on earth was a fluke - and it is highly unlikely it has been repeated anywhere else in the universe.

That is the view of English physicist Professor Brian Cox, who made the assertion in an episode of BBC's Human Universe.

Professor Cox thwarted suggestions alien life was a possibility and said he believed humans were the only form of life in the universe, despite the astronomical number of other planets in the galaxy.

The presenter and scientist, who also appeared on the ABC's Q&A program last week, blamed a series of "evolutionary bottlenecks" as the main reason no extraterrestrial life has been discovered.

"There is only one advanced technological civilisation in this galaxy and there has only ever been one - and that's us," Professor Cox said. "We are unique.

"It's a dizzying thought. There are billions of planets out there, surely there must have been a second genesis?
"But we must be careful because the story of life on this planet shows that the transition from single-celled life to complex life may not have been inevitable."

Professor Cox went on to say that the extinction of dinosaurs, believed by scientists to have been caused by a meteor impact, allowed mammals and ultimately humans to dominate the planet.

"We still struggle to understand how this happened," he said. "It's incredibly unusual.

"We're confident this only happened once in the oceans of the primordial earth. Life here did squeeze through."

Professor Cox's views are in stark contrast to those of astrophysicists Dr Timothy Brandt and Dr David Spiege of Princeton University, who last month made the claim that our best chance of finding aliens, if they exist at all, lies in the examination of plant life on planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.

They said if alien life existed on exoplanets, it might be possible to detect traces of water, oxygen and chlorophyll.

Meanwhile, NASA has offered a more widely accepted prediction; that one hundred million worlds in our galaxy are capable and fit to host alien life.

Spacecraft Spots Ice at Mercury's North Pole

NASA 's MESSENGER spacecraft has sent back its first visible-light images of water ice on Mercury, the tiny charbroiled planet that orbits closest to the sun.

The findings, described in the journal Geology, reveal that the ice deposits look surprisingly "fresh" -- and hint that water could have been very recently delivered to rocky little Mercury.

Even though Mercury sits less than 36 million miles from the sun -- which is less than two-fifths of the Earth's comfortable 93 million miles from sun -- some ice still manages to cling to the planet's surface. That's because the ice lies at the poles, in permanently shadowed regions inside craters that are eternally shielded from sunlight and remain very, very cold.

More than two decades ago, ground-based radar observations picked up signs of this polar ice, and the MESSENGER spacecraft later lent support to the idea with its own suite of instruments. But it's tough to actually see these permanently shadowed regions with the spacecraft's visible-light camera because, well, it's dark there. But recently, the team was able to refine the images of the ice-deposit surfaces with the help of what little light was reflecting off the crater walls.

The scientists examined Prokofiev, which at roughly 69.6 miles in diameter is the largest crater at Mercury's north pole thought to have water-ice deposits. There, the surface ice had a "cratered" texture -- showing that it was placed there more recently than the smaller underlying craters.

And in other spots, such as Berlioz crater, the researchers found that the water ice was "covered by a thin layer of dark, organic-rich volatile material." The boundaries of those icy regions were surprisingly sharp -- they hadn't been in place long enough to get smoothed out.

"The sharp boundaries indicate that the volatile deposits at Mercury's poles are geologically young, relative to the time scale for lateral mixing by impacts," the study authors wrote, "and either are restored at the surface through an ongoing process or were delivered to the planet recently."

To put that idea in perspective, estimates indicate that there could be roughly enough water-ice on Mercury to fill Lake Ontario. And if at least some of that water is indeed being delivered to the planet, it sheds new light on dynamics in the inner solar system, the scientists said.

"If Mercury's currently substantial polar volatile inventory is the product of the most recent portion of a longer process," the study authors wrote, "then a considerable mass of volatiles may have been delivered to the inner Solar System throughout its history."

European Scientists Conclude That Distant Comet Smells Terrible

Kathrin Altwegg, a lead scientist on the Rosetta space probe project, explains:

"The perfume of 67P/C-G is quite strong, with the odour of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulphide), horse stable (ammonia), and the pungent, suffocating odour of formaldehyde. This is mixed with the faint, bitter, almond-like aroma of hydrogen cyanide. Add some whiff of alcohol (methanol) to this mixture, paired with the vinegar-like aroma of sulphur dioxide and a hint of the sweet aromatic scent of carbon disulphide, and you arrive at the 'perfume' of our comet."

Since August, Rosetta's two mass spectrometers have been sniffing out what 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko smells of. Scientifically speaking, that means detecting the most volatile molecules released via sublimation. But really, that means working out what it smells like. So far, Rosetta has sniffed out the following

• Water (H2O)


• Carbon monoxide (CO)


• Carbon dioxide (CO2)


• Ammonia (NH3)


• Methane (CH4)


• Methanol (CH3OH)


• Formaldehyde (CH2O)


• Hydrogen sulphide (H2S)


• Hydrogen cyanide (HCN)


• Sulphur dioxide (SO2)


• Carbon disulphide (CS2)

Mars One Mission Could be end up with Big Failure

Mars One is the ambitious, privately-funded plan to develop a colony on the Red Planet by 2025. But a new study led by a researcher at MIT found the current roadmap could be a deadly one.

Sydney Do, a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), released a feasibility study that found the first humans on Mars would suffocate within 68 days of landing.

At the International Astronomical Union conference in Toronto, Do and his team presented their results: excess oxygen from crops produced in the artificial habitat would require ventilation and eventually cause asphyxiation.



According to CBC News, Do’s team ran a 26-month simulation to monitor conditions on the planned Mars One habitat; Twenty-six months is the time it would take backup spaceships to arrive from Earth according to the current Mars One plan.

Do told CBC News that a machine capable of solving the oxygen dilemma would be “so large that we couldn’t land it in one of the landers.” He said he actually contacted Mars One with his research, but has not heard back.

The Mars One team, which formed in 2011, is now two steps into its projected roadmap. According to the project’s website, the team produced a complete feasibility study during its first year with the help of experts from “space agencies and private corporations around the world.”

Mars One has already been collecting candidates for its 2024 launch. Candidates chosen by Mars One will begin training in 2015, and even when faced with the news that the mission could be deadly, several candidates remain undeterred.

Claude Gauthier, a 61-year-old Canadian mathematics professor, told CBC news that the problems laid out by Do and his team would be solved by food transports from Earth.

Fellow candidates and Canadians Paige Hunter and Tyler Reyno also told CBC News they weren’t worried by the study’s findings.

"Obviously, keeping humans alive on Mars is extremely difficult," Reyno said. "You just have to understand there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of unknowns and those who are passionate and inspired will understand that and do it anyway."

Hubble captures stunning image of a comet's brush past Mars

NASA has just released this image of comet Siding Spring's close brush past Mars, and it is thrilling.

The image you see above -- a fuzzy white comet hovering above a glowing rust-colored planet -- is actually a composite of several images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on Saturday and Sunday.

NASA's Hi Res camera aboard a Mars orbiter captured the first images of the nucleus of a comet
There are a few reasons that Hubble could not take a picture like this in a single shot. For one, Mars is 10,000 times brighter than its cometary visitor, making it impossible to see details of Siding Spring and Mars in one exposure.

Also, the two objects were racing past each other during their near-rendezvous on Sunday. At least one of the objects would have been blurry if Hubble tried to take an image of them simultaneously.

The starfield that the two bodies are set against was provided by the Palomar Digital Sky Survey.

Despite being a bit of a cut and paste job, NASA officials say the image accurately illustrates the distance between Siding Spring and Mars at the time of the comet's closest approach.

It also accurately represents the relative sizes of the two bodies.

New Horizons to Explore Pluto

In January 2006, New Horizons was launched for its long journey to explore Pluto and its five known moons. This will be NASA’s first opportunity to explore the distant planet of which little is known since its 1930 discovery.

Pluto is the most famous resident of the Kuiper Belt, an area of space beyond Neptune that is filled with innumerable objects that are believed to be remnants of the formation of the solar system. A Dutch astronomer, Jan Oort, theorized that comets might originate from this distant region. Gerard Kuiper first envisioned the existence of icy objects beyond Neptune in 1951.

The Kuiper Belt is about 3 billion miles from Earth and is similar to the asteroids that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter.   The asteroid belt is filled with rocky objects whereas the Kuiper Belt’s objects are icy. Several dwarf planets, of which Pluto is one, exist in these far reaches of space. Dwarf planets are not only smaller than regular planets, but their lack of size does not give them the ability to clear space around them.

Currently in a hibernation state, New Horizons will awake and begin preparing for its encounter with Pluto on Dec. 6. The actual flyby will begin in January with the spacecraft’s closest encounter occurring on July 15, 2015. A scheduled trajectory adjustment burn was not deemed necessary and has left the craft with additional fuel.

The additional fuel has NASA officials searching for additional Kuiper Belt objects for New Horizons to explore. To identify potential targets, officials used the Hubble telescope to locate objects of interest. These targets had to be in line with Pluto so that additional use of fuel would not be required. The Hubble data identified three additional objects that will be tracked to ascertain their orbital path.

New Horizons crossed Neptune’s orbital path on Aug. 25. On Sept. 12 NASA, using the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, began its initial preparatory testing of the approaching Pluto system. Hydra, a small moon of Pluto, was detected. It was not anticipated to view the moon until early in 2015. Locating Hydra this early in the process bodes well for the team’s ability to locate potential unknown moons or planetary rings.

New Horizons took 48 images, each lasting 10 seconds, of Pluto on two separate occurrences in July. While these images revealed Hydra, officials were unable to see Nix, another of Pluto’s moons. New Horizons was still 267 million miles from Pluto when these images were taken. Those images also revealed its largest moon, Charon. Some astronomers consider Pluto-Charon as a binary planet.

NASA has completed its detailed engineering review of the mission and has begun the process of planning for the approach science. By next month sequences for planetary approach will be developed. Each sequence serves as a two-week flight plan for the spacecraft and takes about eight weeks to develop, test and certify.

New Horizon’s exploration of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is NASA’s first extensive look at this distant part of the solar system. Pluto was still classified as a planet when the mission initially launched. It has since been downgraded to a dwarf planet.

ISRO: India's Mars Orbiter Mission to Launch on 28 October 2013

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has announced that the country's most ambitious space project - Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) - is scheduled for launch on 28 October.

Last week, ISRO scientists gave a detailed presentation about the Mars mission before a national committee of experts. After reviewing the status of MOM, the panel of experts, including former ISRO chairman UR Rao, space expert Roddam Narasimha and professors from Indian Institute of Science, gave approval to launch the mission on 28 October.

Earlier, ISRO officials allotted a launch window of 21 October to 14 November, but now the launch date has been fixed for 28 October though the final date of the launch window remains the same (19 November).