Mars rover's destination decided

After years of deliberation, NASA says it will announce the destination for its next Mars rover on Friday at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

Earlier this month, the choice was whittled down to two: NASA said the Curiosity rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, would be launched either to Eberswalde Crater or Gale Crater. Today's announcement signals that a decision has been made.

Curiosity is already at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, undergoing final preparations for launch as early as Nov. 25, the day after Thanksgiving. The car-sized rover is scheduled to arrive at Mars in August 2012 to begin a primary scientific mission scheduled to last at least one Martian year, or roughly two Earth years.

Among the questions the $2.5 billion mission could answer: Were there areas on the Red Planet that could have been favorable for supporting microbial life? Could "molecular fossils" preserve the evidence of such life? Past missions have turned up evidence that ancient Mars was warmer and wetter than it is today, but how long did those life-friendly conditions last?

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Vesta Astroid : US Spacecraft Orbits Vesta Astroid

NASA’s Spacecraft Dawn has officially entered the orbit of one of Vesta.

“Today, we celebrate an incredible exploration milestone as a spacecraft enters orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt for the first time,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said on NASA.gov.

Dawn became the first probe ever to enter the orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to NASA.

Vesta is one of the largest asteroids in the solar system and Dawn will orbit it and rely information back to scientists. Observations will provide data to help scientists understand the solar system better.

“Dawn’s study of the asteroid Vesta marks a major scientific accomplishment and also points the way to the future destinations where people will travel in the coming years,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said on NASA.gov.

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Stealing moon rocks from NASA

RETURNING from vacation in the summer of 2002, NASA geochemist Dr Everett Gibson learned that a 275-kilogram safe had vanished from his lab. Situated in one of the most secure buildings on the planet, the lab was an implausible target for even the world's greatest crime syndicates - despite the fact that the Apollo lunar samples were stored there and the street price of moon rocks was estimated at about $5 million per gram.

The theft of the safe, which contained 101.5 grams of material, including samples from every lunar landing, was in fact stranger and more pedestrian than anyone could have imagined. Late one night, three NASA interns wheeled the safe into a borrowed Jeep, planning to hawk the material to a Belgian buyer they had found online. Within days they were caught, turned in by the Belgian and arrested in an FBI sting.

After serving a six-year prison sentence, Thad Roberts - the "mastermind" of this unmasterly crime - called Ben Mezrich, bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires, seeking to reveal his side of the story. Trumped up by Mezrich as "one of the biggest heists in US history", Sex on the Moon is the entertaining yet unsatisfying result of that collaboration.

Mezrich relates Roberts's life as a thriller. Cast out by his Mormon family for premarital sex, Roberts finds direction by resolving to become an astronaut. He studies hard and lands a coveted internship at NASA's Johnson Space Center, where he impresses fellow interns with pranks such as sneaking into the space shuttle simulator. In his third semester, he falls in love with a new intern. "I want to give you the moon," he tells her.

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SpaceX chief sets his sights on Mars

Don't expect to hear any nostalgia about the soon-to-end space shuttle era from Elon Musk, the millionaire founder of Space Exploration Technologies. Musk isn't prone to look to the past, but rather to the future — to a "new era of spaceflight" that eventually leads to Mars.

SpaceX may be on the Red Planet sooner than you think: When I talked with him in advance of the shuttle Atlantis' last liftoff, the 40-year-old engineer-entrepreneur told me the company's Dragon capsule could take on a robotic mission to Mars as early as 2016. And he's already said it'd be theoretically possible to send humans to Mars in the next 10 to 20 years — bettering NASA's target timeframe of the mid-2030s.

You can't always take Musk's timelines at face value. This is rocket science, after all, and Musk himself acknowledges that his company's projects don't always finish on time. But if he commits himself to a task, he tends to see it through. "It may take more time than I expected, but I'll always come through," he told me a year ago.

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Iapetus gets dusted

Imagine a powdered sugar doughnut hole plowing through a cloud of dark-chocolate dust. The resulting two-colored treat would resemble one of Saturn’s weirder moons, Iapetus — an icy world with a coal-black face and a bright white backside.

For centuries astronomers have puzzled over the source of this yin-yang color pattern. Now a team led by graduate student Daniel Tamayo of Cornell offers an explanation: Dust flung from another one of Saturn’s moons is coating one side of Iapetus. Because Iapetus doesn’t rotate, the same face continually catches the dark moon flakes.

“Iapetus is probably one of the most striking bodies in the solar system, and one of the longest-standing problems in planetary science,” Tamayo says. In a study posted online July 7 in Icarus, Tamayo mathematically describes the movement of dust particles in the outer Saturnian system. He focuses on dust coming from Phoebe, a dark and distant, irregularly shaped moon that circles Saturn in the opposite direction as Iapetus. Phoebe’s retrograde motion puts it at odds with a number of other far-flung moons.

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China want to explore the Moon, Venus and Mars

In light of last week's final NASA space shuttle launch, Beijing is stepping up to the plate with aspirations of exploring the Moon, Venus and Mars.

China plans to send a rover to the moon by 2013 and an astronaut by 2020. As the U.S. slows its space initiatives, many are worried that the Chinese may become the leader in space exploration, knocking the U.S. from its long-held top spot.

"Space leadership is highly symbolic of national capabilities and international influence, and a decline in space leadership will be seen as symbolic of a relative decline in U.S. power and influence," said Scott Pace, an associate NASA administrator in the George W. Bush administration and proponent for sending American astronauts back to the moon.

Some American officials are worried Beijing may try to militarize space because the space initiatives are run by the army. Just four years ago, the Chinese fired a missile at a dead satellite in space, something which sent up a red flag for many officials.

Refuting the idea that the Chinese hope to militarize space, Li Longchen, former editor of Space Probe Magazine said, "Space technology can be applied for both civilian and military use, but China doesn't stress the military purpose. It has been always hard for humankind to march into space and China must learn the lessons from the U.S."

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Mars, Asteroids, The Moon on NASA's To-Do List

Space shuttles will soon be a thing of the past, museum relics put on display around the country. But, NASA will remain, and they're determined to take the next steps in space exploration - without the shuttle taking them there.

Surrounded by the blackness of deep space, 117 million miles from Earth, is the asteroid "Vesta". In the not too distant future, U.S. astronauts could be looking out their window and preparing to set foot on an asteroid.

Astronaut Mike Gernhardt and his team are working on the kinds of equipment and techniques they'll need for human exploration of an asteroid as early as the year 2025 - before missions to either the Moon or Mars.

"What we're doing is building a simulated asteroid underwater." said Gernhardt. Not at some high tech lab, but right on the water in Key Largo, Florida. At the undersea habitat called "Aquarius", the group has created an asteroid proving ground in the near weightless environment of water. "We work there, we live there.....We can put anchors......We built a rock wall like a climbing wall. But we can climb up that wall in zero gravity."

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Saturn: Bring an Umbrella

The disturbances on Saturn shown here depict the largest, most intense storm observed on Saturn by NASA’s Voyager or Cassini spacecraft. The storm, currently active, encircles the giant planet, encompassing an area eight times the surface area of earth. Inside the planet’s atmosphere, lightning is generated in the water clouds where rain and hail make electricity, creating significant radio noise. Scientists are mystified as to why Saturn stores energy for decades and releases it all at once. This behavior is unlike that at Jupiter and Earth, which have numerous storms going on at all times. Carolyn Porco, the Cassini Imaging Team Leader, writes in her Captain’s Log on July 6th, 2011:

“One might think that after years in orbit around Saturn, we are now accustomed to great big happenings and fantastic spectacles. But far from it. It is the shock of the unexpected, the intense mind-grabbing, eye-popping, soul-stirring thrill of seeing the unseen that gets us every time. That is what this glorious, history-making exploration of Saturn and its magnificent realm is all about.”

This picture, captured on Feb. 25, 2011, was taken about three months after the storm began. By this time the clouds had already formed a tail that wrapped around the planet. This tail, which show as blue-tinged clouds south and west (left) of the storm head, can be seen encountering the storm head in this view. To see ravishing close-up images of the storm, click here.

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Mars, Asteroids, The Moon on NASA's To-Do List

Space shuttles will soon be a thing of the past, museum relics put on display around the country. But, NASA will remain, and they're determined to take the next steps in space exploration - without the shuttle taking them there.

Surrounded by the blackness of deep space, 117 million miles from Earth, is the asteroid "Vesta". In the not too distant future, U.S. astronauts could be looking out their window and preparing to set foot on an asteroid.

Astronaut Mike Gernhardt and his team are working on the kinds of equipment and techniques they'll need for human exploration of an asteroid as early as the year 2025 - before missions to either the Moon or Mars.

"What we're doing is building a simulated asteroid underwater." said Gernhardt. Not at some high tech lab, but right on the water in Key Largo, Florida. At the undersea habitat called "Aquarius", the group has created an asteroid proving ground in the near weightless environment of water. "We work there, we live there.....We can put anchors......We built a rock wall like a climbing wall. But we can climb up that wall in zero gravity."

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NASA Introduces Mars Rover "Curiosity," Debates Its Martian Landing Site

Curiosity is expected to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on November 25, 2011, and will land on Mars in August 2012. The decision regarding its landing site is expected to be made this month

After recently retiring Mars rover Spirit, NASA is introducing a new Mars probe called Curiosity. While the rover is expected to launch later this year, one critical question remains unanswered: where will it land?

NASA rover Curiosity is a $2.5 billion, nuclear-powered machine that is the size of a Mini Cooper, and is four times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity. Curiosity contains a laser that can vaporize rocks at seven meters, a percussive drill, a large robot arm and a weather station. In addition, it has 4.8kg of plutonium-238.

Curiosity's main mission on Mars is to find organic compounds as a "telltale sign" that life have existed on Mars. The problem is that scientist's must decide on a landing area that will most likely contain such evidence.

So far, scientist's have narrowed the choices down to four options: Eberswalde Crater, Mawrth Vallis, Gale Crater and Holden Crater

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Alabama Space Camp shifts its focus to the moon, Mars and asteroids

NASA may be shutting down its space shuttle program, but that won’t stop a group of young astronauts from heading to the moon this summer, and Mars the next.

In simulation, at least.
For 29 years, Space Camp and its attendees have followed in NASA’s footsteps. This summer, the camp is taking the next giant leap for mankind largely on its own. The U.S. government may not want to fund space travel right now, but many children and adults have the money to pretend.

Space Camp was started in 1982, just a year after the first space shuttle launch, and is run by the nonprofit U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., which is funded by the state of Alabama and serves as the official visitor center for NASA’s nearby Marshall Space Flight Center.

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NASA Targets Manned Mission To Mars

The end of the space shuttle program does not mean the end of NASA, or even of NASA sending humans into space. NASA has a robust program of exploration, technology development and scientific research that will last for years to come. Here is what’s next for NASA:

Exploration

NASA is designing and building the capabilities to send humans to explore the solar system, working toward a goal of landing humans on Mars. We will build the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, based on the design for the Orion capsule, with a capacity to take four astronauts on 21-day missions.

NASA says it will soon announce the design for the heavy-lift Space Launch System that will carry them out of low Earth orbit. It is developing the technologies it will need for human exploration of the solar system, including solar electric propulsion, refueling depots in orbit, radiation protection and high-reliability life support systems.

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Is Settling Mars Inevitable, Or An Impossibility?

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're not going to the planet Mars anytime soon. President Obama suggested something like the mid-2030s as a target date, but for various reasons - the dangers of space travel, the price tag, more pressing problems on this planet - that trip to the Red Planet has been put on indefinite hold.

My next guest says that's a mistake. We can and should be able to make the trip by 2020, and he says that technology - technologically speaking, we're already closer to being able to send astronauts to Mars than we were to sending men to the moon back in 1961, when President Kennedy made his pronouncement.

But what about all the obstacles: radiation, length of the trip, the lack of gravity during the voyage and all the potential hazards to the astronauts? Robert Zubrin has solutions to every one of these problems, and he's not just thinking about exploratory scientific field trips, he envisions human colonies growing crops in Martian soil, making energy from the atmosphere, even evolving new cultures and dialects.

So what do you think? Would you volunteer as a colonist from Mars? Or are you happy to let NASA's Rovers, the robots, explore the Red Planet? Give us a call. Our number is 1-800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. You can tweet us @scifri, @-S-C-I-F-R-I. Or you can go to our Facebook page or our website. Our home page is sciencefriday.com.

Robert Zubrin is the author of "The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must." He's also president of the Mars Society based in Golden, Colorado. He joins us from the studios of Colorado Public Radio. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Zubrin.

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For Visits to Asteroid & Mars, NASA Needs New Ways to Do Everything

With NASA at a crossroads as the space shuttles retire, the space agency is facing the steep challenge of developing a slew of new technologies for a new phase in exploration: trips to an asteroid and Mars.

For 30 years, NASA astronauts have worked in low-Earth orbit, flying on the space shuttlesand building the International Space Station. Now that the station is complete and the shuttle program is winding down, the United States is focusing on sending astronauts farther out in the solar system than ever before.

NASA's next big goals for human spaceflight, as articulated by President Barack Obama, are visiting an asteroid by the year 2025 and landing on Marsin the 2030s.

"We're not going to get to an asteroid in 2025 without some of the key building blocks that NASA wants to start on today," NASA's chief technologist Bobby Braun told reporters during a June 27 teleconference.

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The Case For Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must

Fifteen years ago, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin published The Case for Mars, and issued a clarion call to his fellow scientists, and the people of Earth. We need to plan our Mars colony, and we need to do it now.

Today Zubrin has released an updated and revised version of his classic book, outlining the most realistic way to get ourselves to Mars and start setting up a human society there. Smart, idealistic, and pragmatic, this book is more important than ever. And we've got an excerpt from it.

A lot has happened in the 15 years since The Case for Mars was first published. A string of robotic mission were launched to the Red Planet, including Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor in late 1996, Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999, Mars Odyssey in 2001, Spirit, Opportunity, and Mars Express in 2003, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005, and Phoenix in 2007. With the exception of the 1999 flights, all of these missions have been brilliantly successful. As a result, our knowledge of the planet has greatly increased.

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Small asteroid swings harmlessly past Earth

An asteroid the size of a tour bus streaked harmlessly past Earth on Monday, passing within 7,600 miles (12,230 kilometers).

Discovered only last week, the relatively small space rock made a hairpin turn around the planet at about 10 a.m. PDT (1800 GMT), sailing high over the southern Atlantic Ocean.

In truth, there was never any doubt it would miss. But given the vastness of the universe, 7,600 miles (12,230 kilometers) is practically a stone’s throw away, at about three times the distance between New York and Los Angeles.

The asteroid, dubbed 2011 MD, was initially mistaken by astronomers for a piece of space junk because it was so small, at up to 60 feet (18 meters) wide. Later observations confirmed it was an asteroid that had no chance of hitting Earth.

Asteroids of this size typically brush by Earth every six years. In fact, earlier this year, a smaller one came even closer to our planet, passing within 3,500 miles (5,630 kilometers).

Even if the latest one had aimed straight for us, it would have burned up in the atmosphere and not caused any damage on the ground.

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Missing Apollo 11 moon dust is returned to NASA

The few specks of dust stuck to a small swatch weren't much to look at, but federal prosecutors said Thursday they came from the moon via Apollo 11 and have been sent back to NASA, where they belong.

U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan in St. Louis said the dust is believed to be at least part of what was smuggled out of Johnson Space Center by a NASA worker years ago. It was discovered in St. Louis last month, just before it was to be auctioned.

It is illegal for individuals to own moon material, but Callahan's office said the auction consignor was a woman who didn't know how the dust had come to her late husband. She was not charged.

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Scientists: Saturn moon could support life

Where there's salt, there's water and rock, it seems. And where there's water and rock, there could be life.

NASA's Saturn-exploring Cassini spacecraft has gathered new evidence that conditions on Enceladus, one of Saturn's 53 named moons, could support life, said Dr. Carolyn Porco, director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

"On Enceladus we have conditions under the surface that we know could be enjoyed by organisms similar to types of organisms we find right here on Earth," she said Friday.

Several years ago, Cassini, launched in 1997, spotted jet sprays shooting out of fissures called tiger stripes in Enceladus' southern polar region. Lighter particles from those jets provide most of the material for Saturn's outermost ring, called the E ring. But heavier particles fall back to the moon's surface, Porco explained. Cassini took measurements of the spray during three passes and found a greater concentration of sodium and potassium grains (that is, salt) nearer Enceladus' surface than farther out, according to a paper published in this week's edition of the journal Nature.

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NASA Moves Closer to Manned Missions to Mars

NASA has moved one step closer to sending astronauts into deep space with the announced development of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV).

The MPCV replaces the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, commissioned under President Bush and nixed under President Obama due to budgetary constraints. Funds used in the development of the Orion ship had exceeded five billion dollars at the time of the project’s cancellation.

President Obama has instead set goals of a manned mission to a near-earth asteroid in the next twenty years, and a possible manned mission to Mars in the next thirty. NASA hopes the MPCV will help meet these goals. Unlike the Orion, which had been developed with the moon as its only destination, the MPCV will be used as the primary vehicle in the manned exploration of entirely new frontiers, such as asteroids or the Martian moons.

The development of the MPCV was brought about by the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, which shifted NASA’s focus away from the moon and towards a “permanent human presence beyond low Earth orbit.” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke on the Authorization Act and development of the MPCV in a statement released Tuesday.

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Saturn's 'ice queen' captured

NASA's Cassini orbiter has captured another close-up view of the Saturnian moon Helene, clearing the way for a global map of the 20-mile-wide "ice queen."

The spacecraft got its latest look at the icy moon on Saturday from a distance of 4,330 miles (6,968 kilometers), more than a year after its closest-ever Helene flyby in March 2010. This time, the pictures provided sunlit views of the moon's Saturn-facing side, improving on last year's imagery. Taken together, these pictures will enable astronomers to finish a global map that could shed additional light on the grooved, pockmarked moon's impact history, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in today's image advisory.

Helene sticks out among Saturn's more than 60 moons for a couple of reasons: First of all, it is gravitationally bound in the same orbit as another, much larger icy moon called Dione. This makes it one of four "Trojan moons" in the Saturnian system, along with Polydeuces (which is also bound to Dione) and Telesto and Calypso (both bound to Tethys).

Helene's surface also reveals a network of gully-like features that may have been created by landslides (or, in this case, dustslides or iceslides). Working up a detailed map of the moon should help astronomers get a better grip on the gullies' genesis.

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An Austrian Scientists Use LASER & iPhone To Detect Microbes On Mars Space Suit

Finding out life on other planets has always been a human endeavor. Many missions have been planned and sent to outer space in search of some alien life. However the possibility that microorganisms clinging to the space suit of astronauts who are out on the mission to find aliens cannot be neglected. It may lead to confusion whether the organisms are from earth or other planets. Well it may be a tricky aspect but it has been solved by scientists for astronauts going to mars.
he program of developing foolproof techniques for detection of microbes on space suit is a part of Austrian Space Forum’s PolAres mission. Austrian scientists are taking use of the laser-induced-fluorescence emission (L.I.F.E) technique which was also earlier used in detection of microbes in Antarctica. The technique may sound difficult one but it is actually simple. It requires only a LASER pointer and an iPhone. The LASER pointer is directed towards the space suit and if it contains any microbe, it emits a fluorescent glow. The glow is then processed with digital photography and laptops. If the microbe is any known one, it takes only a few seconds. The scientists want to be sure for the samples being brought from Mars to be genuine. The technique is designed for both forward and reverse contamination. While returning to earth, there may be contamination from microbes, if present on mars.

The development of new techniques is not only limited to detection alone. Austrian scientists are also developing techniques to shake away the organisms. The team of scientists led by Gernot Groemer, president of the Austrian Space Forum has designed an electromagnetic method for the same. For that all the astronauts have to do is that to attach the space suit to high voltage electric charge which would make the dust particle and micro organisms to levitate away from the space suit. The dust particles can then be blown away with the help of a stream of air. Earlier, vibration techniques were used for the purpose; however they are not as effective as this one. As per the simulations conducted by scientists, it is found that around 60 to 405 bacteria can cling within minutes of cleaning the suit.

The techniques developed are expected to be the part of The ExoMars rover to be launched in 2018. The current research and studies are conducted in the desert of San Rafael, Utah. The technology developed would increase the credibility of samples from mars. It will be a step ahead in human search for Alien life.

Mars moon spotted eclipsing Jupiter

A European satellite circling Mars has captured an interesting astronomical intersection -- the tiny moon, Phobos, passing in front of Jupiter.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite positioned itself in orbit to capture the alignment of the 11.4-mile-wide moon passing in front of Jupiter, as seen from Mars.

By knowing the exact moment when Jupiter passed behind Phobos, the observation will help to verify and even improve our knowledge of the orbital position of the martian moon, says the ESA statement released Friday.

The spacecraft was 7,077 miles from the moon when it snapped the passage and 328 million miles from Jupiter.

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Mars exhibit opens with NASA scientist’s talk

Ever wonder what it would be like to walk on Mars?

Beginning today, Helena residents have the opportunity to experience the sensation of just one-third of the Earth’s gravity at a new ExplorationWorks exhibit, and it kicks off with a presentation by NASA scientist Dr. Darlene Lim.

Her presentation, “A Deep Dive Toward the Moon and Mars: How underwater science is informing exploration concepts of the future,” is said to appeal to anybody who is curious, because curiosity drives science.

Lim is a research scientist with interests that span both the Earth and outer space sciences. She is the principal investigator of the Pavilion Lake Research Project at a remote lake in British Columbia. The project brings together scientists, engineers, astronauts and artists to conduct science and exploration in an underwater setting. The team’s exploration research is focused on developing operational strategies and technologies to prepare humans for exploration of the solar system.

Lim says the presentation is a human story of exploration.

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Lunar Eclipse Images from Around the World; June 15, 2011

It was an event that hasn’t happened in 11 years and won’t happen again until 2018. The total lunar eclipse of June 15, 2011 didn’t disappoint. Take a look at some of the amazing images taken by astrophotographers from around the world — well, the “eastern” side of the world anyway, as the eclipse wasn’t visible in North America. Our lead image is a fantastic mosaic taken by Marko Posavec in Koprivnica, Croatia. We have another image by Posavic below, but you can see more of his images via his Twitter account.

A the redness of the Moon during the eclipse was perhaps enhanced by the major volcanic eruption in Chile which has polluted the stratosphere with a haze, making the eclipse appear dark red. This image was taken by Leonard Mercer in Malta. You can see more of his images at his website.

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The giant bubbles at the solar system's edge

A pair of NASA spacecraft on a decades-long journey in deep space have found a "big surprise": Giant magnetic bubbles churning near the outer edges of our solar system. (See an image below.) Here, a guide to the findings:

What exactly has NASA found?
Unexpected magnetic bubbles, "shaped like sausages, more than 100 million miles across," says William Harwood at CNET. Scientists had believed the structure of the magnetic field at the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space "was relatively smooth." But the data NASA has gotten from its two Voyager spacecraft suggest otherwise. "It's very bubbly as far as we can tell," says Jim Drake, a University of Maryland physicist, as quoted by National Geographic. "This entire thing is like the most bubbly part of your Jacuzzi."

Why are these bubbles there?

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The irreplaceable Space Shuttle

On June 1 the shuttle Endeavour glided to its final landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If all goes according to NASA’s current plans, the final shuttle mission, the flight of Atlantis on STS-135, will launch on July 8.

When Atlantis lands, it will mark the end of the operational life of a remarkable spacecraft. It will also mark the end of all American manned spaceflight, at least for the next few years. Leaving aside the bitter arguments over future NASA policy, it is worthwhile to look back to see why the shuttle was developed and what lessons we can draw from the program.

Many in the space industry consider the Space Shuttle to have been a major failure. Many experts see the whole program as a waste of time, money, and worst of all, of fourteen precious lives in two major accidents in 1986 and 2003. The shuttle certainly never lived up to the 1970s-era hype that promised that it would become the DC-3 of space. In the 1930s, the DC-3 made commercial airline travel safe and economically viable. The shuttle was supposed to do the same for spaceflight. It would fly as often as once a week and radically reduce the cost of getting into orbit. By this standard it failed miserably.

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NASA Robot Moon Lander Test Sparks Grass Fire

NASA engineers are forging ahead with a project to test a futuristic moon lander, despite a grass fire that broke out during a Wednesday (June 1) test.

The fire started around 2:30 p.m. local time (1530 GMT), during a tethered test of the Morpheus robot lander at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Morpheus project is designed to test an amalgam of cutting-edge technologies NASA is developing to take humans to the moon, Mars or beyond.

When the lander lifted off its concrete launch pad, it kicked up some of the concrete, which set off the fire in the dry field around it.

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Is there life on Mars?

Forty years ago, space engineers launched a probe that would play a pivotal role in changing our understanding of our place in the cosmos. On May 30, 1971, Mariner 9 was dispatched to Mars on an Atlas Centaur rocket and in November that year slipped into orbit around the Red Planet.

In doing so, the American robot spaceship became the first man made object to be placed in orbit around another planet. Humans had added an artificial satellite to another world.

A few days later, two other spacecraft, Mars 2 and Mars 3, both built by the Soviet Union, followed suit and achieved Martian orbit. In three weeks, the Red Planet had become a scientific hotspot.

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Is NASA's $2.5 billion Mars rover doomed?

NASA's next Mars rover, a nuclear-powered marvel nicknamed Curiosity, is supposed to blast off for the Red Planet later this year. But an audit issued this week by the space agency's inspector general finds a host of unresolved issues that could put the mission in jeopardy. Here, a brief guide to the mess:

What makes this rover so special?
It's "the most ambitious Mars project NASA has ever mounted," says Michelle Norris at NPR. Officially, the rover is called Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), but it's more commonly known as Curiosity

A nuclear-powered, car-sized vehicle, Curiosity is "the product of almost 10 years of work by 1,000 people," says Eryn Brown in the Los Angeles Times. Weighing four times as much as previous models (Spirit and Opportunity), it can drive long distances over rough terrain, and uses an unprecedented array of instruments to hunt for Martian life, says Lisa Grossman at Wired.

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Mars Science Lab Needs $44 Million More For It to Launch This Year, NASA Says

NASA’s newest Mars rover faces further hurdles and could require another $44 million in funds before it is ready for launch this fall, according to an agency audit announced today.

The Mars Science Laboratory is supposed to launch in a window between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the alignment between Earth and Mars is the most favorable for an interplanetary trip. But as it stands now, the MSL team won’t finish all their work before launch unless they get more money, according to an internal audit prepared by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin.

“The project may have insufficient funds to complete all currently identified tasks prior to launch and may therefore be forced to reduce capabilities, delay the launch for 2 years, or cancel the mission,” he wrote.

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Biotechnology Instruments Being Used to Detect Alien Life

In 1998, NASA established its virtual Astrobiology Institute (NAI) to develop the field and provide a scientific framework for flight missions. Astrobiology encompasses the search for habitable environments in “our Solar System and on planets around other stars; the search for evidence of prebiotic chemistry or life on Solar System bodies such as Mars, Jupiter’s moon Europa, and Saturn’s moon Titan; and research into the origin, early evolution, and diversity of life on Earth,” according to NASA.

European countries have also combined scientific and financial resources to form the 18-nation European Space Agency (ESA), which has some collaborative initiatives with NASA focused on astrobiology. For example, in 2016, they expect to launch the NASA/ESA ExoMars/Trace Gas Orbiter (EMTGO) mission, part of the ExoMars Rover Project.

The primary objective is to characterize the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere, particularly trace species that may be signatures of extant biological and/or geological processes and its variability in space and time. These measurements, along with a good understanding of the contemporaneous atmospheric state, may allow localization of the surface source(s) of “exotic” trace gases.

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For Mars rovers, a friendly rivalry

NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, will be deployed to the planet to study rocks that may shed light on whether life existed there. But its cousin Opportunity, which is already there, may steal its thunder.

NASA's newest Mars rover — or a replica of it, anyway — sat expectantly at the bottom of a hill. After years in design and construction, the grandly named Mars Science Laboratory was ready to test its wheels on a 20-degree flagstone slope in the "Mars Yard" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

Engineers crowded around to see whether the rover's aluminum wheels and titanium suspension were ready for Martian terrain, which varies from bedrock to rocky soil to soft sand. The first wheel slowly pivoted into position. Then another. Then a third, fourth, fifth and sixth — all making a crinkly sound as they slid through the soil. Once in position, the craft crept up the flagstone slope at about 8 feet per minute.

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NASA’s Spirit sits silent on Mars

The Mars rover showed more pluck than even NASA thought possible, exploring the planet more extensively and for far longer than expected. Somehow, the rover’s advanced technology gave it something like gusto; even after it got hopelessly stuck two years ago, Spirit sent back data of interest from the dust and rocks where it sat.

Gusev Crater, where the rover landed Jan. 4, 2004 — and roamed for five years among features with names like McCool Hill, Low Ridge Haven and Goddard — is Spirit’s gravesite now. NASA, in a sense, pulled the plug several days ago. It hadn’t been heard from since March 2010, so engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California sent a last command, and gave up.

It’s a fond farewell. Spirit proved its mettle on Mars time and again, earning gratitude and admiration back home. Geological evidence, gathered via a robotic arm and other gizmos, spoke to scientists of a planet that seems to have had water and might once have supported life. And the rover sent back images nothing short of stunning: of the Gusev Crater’s rubble-strewn volcanic plain, and also the distant Earth, the sun setting low on a Martian horizon.

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NASA Study Finds Even More Water on the Moon (100 Times More!)

It wasn't long ago that scientists were saying the Earth's moon may have more water than the Great Lakes. Now comes another study, also funded like the one last, by NASA, that says the moon may have 100 times as much water as previously thought. Moon water?! It's contained in ... wait for it ... lunar magma.

NASA officials say the latest data comes from newly discovered lunar melt inclusions found in high-titanium "orange glass soil" of volcanic origin collected during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. What took so long?

The long-time-coming results were achievable due to a state-of-the-art ion microprobe instrument, the space agency says. Specifically, the NanoSIMS 50L ion microprobe. And speaking of long, the inclusions were formed during moon eruptions about 3.7 billion (with a b) years ago.

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Mars Rover is dead but not gone

NASA will no longer be sending commands to the Spirit rover on Mars, which has been sending satellite signals back to Earth since Jan. 2004. Prior to its loss of consciousness, Spirit’s mission was to search for signs of past water activity on Mars, according to SPACE.

Spirit found a great deal of evidence, which indicated that Mars was once a much wetter, warmer place, according to SPACE. However due to extreme cold temperatures, the cause of the robot’s fatality is most likely due to hypothermia, which has caused damaged to the rover’s electronics.

According to SPACE after Spirit lost power during the Martian winter in 2009-2010, the robot went into hibernation.

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NASA Moves Closer to Manned Missions to Mars

NASA has moved one step closer to sending astronauts into deep space with the announced development of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV).

The MPCV replaces the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, commissioned under President Bush and nixed under President Obama due to budgetary constraints. Funds used in the development of the Orion ship had exceeded five billion dollars at the time of the project’s cancellation.

President Obama has instead set goals of a manned mission to a near-earth asteroid in the next twenty years, and a possible manned mission to Mars in the next thirty. NASA hopes the MPCV will help meet these goals. Unlike the Orion, which had been developed with the moon as its only destination, the MPCV will be used as the primary vehicle in the manned exploration of entirely new frontiers, such as asteroids or the Martian moons.

The development of the MPCV was brought about by the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, which shifted NASA’s focus away from the moon and towards a “permanent human presence beyond low Earth orbit.” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke on the Authorization Act and development of the MPCV in a statement released Tuesday.

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Moon men: U.S. space leadership slipping

While America pauses to remember President Kennedy’s moon challenge 50 years ago, three famous astronauts think we have “strayed widely from President Kennedy’s vision and the will of the American people.”

Neil Armstong and Eugene Cernan, the first and last men to walk on the moon, joined Jim Lovell, whose ill-fated Apollo 13 mission cut short his journey to the lunar surface, have written a column in USA Today, suggesting that President Obama advisors, “in searching for a new and different NASA strategy with which the president could be favorably identified, have ignored NASA’s operational mandate.”

After tracing America’s awesome achievements of the past five decades, the retired astronauts note how the Constellation program NASA was developing to venture back to the moon and on to Mars enjoyed near unanimous support in Congress and the Bush administration but fell behind schedule and was deemed “not viable” by a review panel, due to inadequate funding.
SHOCK WAVES

When the president failed to include funds for Constellation in his 2010 budget, “it sent shock waves throughout NASA, the Congress and the American people. Nearly $10 billion had been invested in design and development of the program,” they said.

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Four planets align near moon on holiday weekend

The unusual month-long convergence of four planets in the pre-dawn sky is nearing an end, as the planets begin separating from each other and going their separate ways. But one final series of meetings is on tap for this Memorial Day weekend.

Between Sunday and Tuesday, the planets Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Mercury will appear in a grouping with a bonus visitor: the moon. Weather permitting, skywatchers can look low to the east-northeast horizon about a half hour before sunrise and see the four planets arrayed in a line.

The sky map of the four planets here shows how they will appear from mid-northern latitudes in North America on Monday (May 30).

Your clenched fist held at arm’s length measures roughly 10 degrees of the sky, and the planetary alignment will stretch across 20 degrees.

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Moon rocks yield watery secrets

Scientists shocked lunar moisture skeptics in 2009 when NASA announced that it had found water. Now, new research out of Brown University in Providence, R.I., suggests that the moon could be soaked.

After testing tiny bits of molten rock from volcanic glass deposits sampled during NASA’s Apollo missions, the Brown researchers found traces of water in lunar magma that dwarfed prior samples. Their report, published in Thursday’s issue of Science Express, corroborates a theory team member and Brown geologist Alberto Saal published in the journal Nature in 2008. Saal hypothesized that the moon’s magma would contain quantities of water comparable to those found in magma on Earth.

“We had predicted 20-100 times more [water than was previously seen],” team member and geochemist James Van Orman said. “That was a controversial thing.”

Van Orman’s group tested the samples, referred to as “lunar melt inclusions,” with a NanoSIMS 50L ion microprobe, a sensor using an accelerated particle beam to measure water.

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50 Years After Kennedy's Speech, Mars Mission Still Distant

Today, May 25th, marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's famous speech challenging the U.S. to shoot for the moon, saying,"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."

On May 25th, 1961, Kennedy's delivered the address on "Urgent National Needs" to Congress a mere six weeks after the Soviet Union sent Yuri Gagarin on the first human spaceflight on April 12 and twenty days after Alan Shepard's first American flight on May 5th.

The result of Kennedy's challenge was the Apollo program, which sent America and mankind on a journey that's still soaring to new heights.

Kennedy's goal was fulfilled on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11's lunar module Eagle touched down in the Sea of Tranquility, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard. Before the Apollo program ended in 1972, six missions landed on the moon and a dozen men set foot on its pale, mysterious crust.

Fifty years after Kennedy urged America to take one giant leap for mankind, we've accomplished unimaginable achievements, launching space shuttles, landing robotic rovers, traveling all the way to Jupiter, and building space stations.

After all of our exploration, we are still fascinated by the moon though. NASA continues to study it with satellites images, and in October of last year, NASA discovered large amounts of water and ice on the moon.

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Spirit's Mars mission comes to a close

It's been a year since the rover sent a signal. After Tuesday, NASA scientists will stop trying to send it commands. Its twin, Opportunity, continues to work 7 years into what was to be a 3-month mission.

After a year of fruitlessly trying to communicate with Spirit, one of two rovers on the surface of Mars, NASA scientists have finally decided to let it rest in peace. They plan to send their last commands to the rover a little after midnight Wednesday.

Spirit, which landed on Mars in January 2004, has been stuck in Martian sand for two years and has been silent for more than a year, despite regular attempts by NASA scientists to contact it.

Along with its twin rover Opportunity, which landed on the opposite side of the planet, it was sent to explore the Martian landscape for about three months. Yet although they were not built to survive the planet's harsh winters, the two have far outlived their life expectancies and their mission has proven wildly successful, sending back strong evidence, for example, that water once shaped Mars' surface.

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Race to Space, Through the Lens of Time

It was the spring of 1961. President John F. Kennedy, speaking of new frontiers and projecting the vigor of youth, had been in office barely four months, and April had been the cruelest.

On the 12th, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth — one more space triumph for the Soviet Union. Though the flight was not unexpected, it was nonetheless deflating; it would be more than a month before Alan Shepard became the first American in space, and that was on a 15-minute suborbital flight. On the 17th, a force of anti-Castro exiles, trained by the C.I.A., invaded communist Cuba at the Bay of Pigs — a fiasco within 36 hours. Mr. Kennedy’s close aide Theodore Sorensen described him on the 19th as “anguished and fatigued” and “in the most emotional, self-critical state I had ever seen him.”

At one meeting, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney general, “turned on everybody,” it was reported, saying: “All you bright fellows. You got the president into this.

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NASA Plans Test of New Moon Lander Morpheus

A squat, insectlike contraption is set to fly untethered for the first time soon in a NASA test of technologies designed to take humans to the moon, Mars or beyond.

The unmanned Morpheus lander, named after the Greek god of dreams, was built at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston using cutting-edge technologies that the agency hopes will one day enable manned missions to another planet or even an asteroid. The vehicle, about the size of an SUV, could carry about 1,100 pounds (500 kg) of cargo to the moon.

Not only are the technologies onboard innovative, but NASA's process of building the lander is, too.

"Part of what this project set out to do was to question the way we've done things," Project Morpheus manager Matt Ondler told SPACE.com. "We purposefully set out to see if we could do things faster and cheaper, leveraging off the work that was already done."

So far, the project has cost NASA about $4 million over the last 18 months, not counting the NASA work force, which is accounted for under NASA's general overhead.

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Sky spy: Watch the ongoing predawn show

The moon rises at 2:14 p.m. this afternoon and sets at 2:29 Friday morning. It is a gibbous (more than half lit) moon that is waxing (growing larger) toward full moon next Tuesday.

It is a good time to look at the moon with binoculars or a small telescope. The large dark areas on the moon are called maria (mare singular) which means sea in Latin.

The early telescopic observers of the moon in the 1600s thought the dark areas were large bodies of water. We now know they are cooled lava beds leftover from vast volcanic eruptions on the moon 3 to 4 billion years ago.

In contrast to the maria are white or gray regions, which are highlands containing mountains, plains, and valleys. Craters are scattered all over the moon, and the southern portion of the moon, the southern highlands, is heavily covered with crater- speckled mountains and hills.

Don't forget about the ongoing planetary show in the predawn morning sky. Sometimes the best sky shows happen at the most inconvenient times.

Sunrise is at 5:27 Friday morning. A good way to start off Friday the 13th is to rise early and look at the eastern sky starting at 4:50 a.m. Get a low, unobstructed horizon. Brilliant Venus will catch your eye. Just above Venus will be Jupiter and just below Venus will be Mercury. A little off to the left (north) will be Mars.

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Dawn Planetary Delights

During the month of May, four bright Planets will grace the morning sky just before dawn.

The planets Venus, Jupiter, Mercury and Mars will be involved in a series of conjunctions (close together) and will finally be joined by the thin crescent moon at the end of the month.

Twice during May some of the planets will converge to form a trio, where 3 planets will fit in an imaginary circle roughly 5 degrees across.

On the 11th Mercury, Venus and Jupiter will be within 2.5 degrees of each other, forming a very tight trio and on the 21st another trio will be formed by Mercury, Venus and Mars.

On the 29th, 30th, and 31st, the waning crescent moon will arrive, moving past Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury stretched out in a line across the eastern sky.

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NASA considers Mars and Titan probes

NASA said Friday it will choose its next mission from among studies of the inside of Mars, a sea on a moon of Saturn or a comet's nucleus.

Teams will get $3 million apiece to sketch out each mission, and one will be chosen for a 2016 launch, the space agency said.

The winning project is to cost no more than $425 million, not counting the cost of the launch vehicle.

One option, the Geophysical Monitoring Station, would study the structure and composition of the martian interior.

The Titan Mare Explorer would carry out the first direct exploration of an extraterrestrial ocean by landing in and floating on a methane-ethane sea on that moon of Saturn.

The Comet Hopper probe would study comet evolution by landing on a comet repeatedly and observing its changes during its course around the sun.

Meanwhile, the European Space Agency said Friday images from its Mars Express show a system of deep fractures in the crust around the Isidis impact basin. Some of the cracks are 1,600 feet deep

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WVU Students Builds Robot for the Moon

A group of WVU students is building a robot that can work on the moon.

A lunabotics team of 15 engineering students is competing in NASA's second annual Lunabotics Mining Competition. They're designing a remote controlled excavation robot capable of collecting and depositing simulated moon soil.

The students say technology like this will make sustainable human settlement on the moon and Mars a possibility.

"The idea being that we are going to put robot's in place of astronauts, and so we wanna create the first wave of that lunar colonization for their exploration. It's just a really neat thing," said lunabotics team member Ben Knabenshue.

The WVU/NASA space grant consortium is sponsoring the project.

Former astronaut and WVU alum Jon McBride is advising the team.

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Is our space vision still shortsighted?

Two years ago, retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine headed up a commission that led the White House to scrap NASA's "unexecutable" back-to-the-moon program and focus instead on a step-by-step path to send humans beyond Earth orbit, to an asteroid by 2025, and to the environs of Mars by the 2030s.

Now NASA is nearing the end of the shuttle program, gearing up to mark Thursday's 50th anniversary of U.S. human spaceflight ... and dealing with an uncertain future for human spaceflight. Augustine says NASA is mostly following the short-term prescription he and his colleagues have laid out, but he worries that NASA's long-term future could be a case of deja vu all over again.

In an interview, Augustine told me that NASA could once again face a situation where its budget doesn't match the task it's been given. The current year's $18.45 billion budget is a bit less than last year's, and includes $3 billion for work on a heavy-lift rocket and a spaceship that could eventually go beyond Earth orbit.

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Students illustrate their ideas of space travel

Space exploration may include a base on the moon or large airplane-like transporters, according to the artistic creations of Orangeville Christian School students.

A group of seven students — the gifted class — recently learned all three of their entries in a competition held by the International Academy of Astronautics finished high in the rankings. As such, their works were put on display for space travelers, scientists and others during the Humans in Space Symposium in Houston, Texas April 11 to 15.

“I’m super excited for them,” teacher Vicki Marcus said. “I’m very proud of them.”

Under the guidance of Marcus and Laurie Smith, owner of Z’Arts Studio in Hockley Valley, the students researched and drafted their ideas on computers last fall. They then printed them on canvas and finished them with acrylic paints.

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Dry ice hints at 'Dust Bowl' on Mars

Think Mars today is a hostile place? It was worse 600,000 years ago, according to new research that suggests the planet had a dustier, stormier atmosphere.

"It was an unpleasant place to hang out," said lead researcher Roger Phillips of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas. He said Mars' climate was probably something like the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s - but a lot worse.

The evidence comes from the discovery of a huge underground reservoir of dry ice, or frozen carbon dioxide, at its south pole - much more than scientists realized. They suspect some of that store of carbon dioxide was once in Mars' atmosphere, making it denser.

In the recent geologic past, when Mars' axis tilted, sunlight reached the southern polar cap and melted some of the frozen carbon dioxide. This release would have made the atmosphere thicker and caused more dust to loft into the air, creating severe storms. Other times, carbon dioxide cycled back into the ground as part of a seasonal cycle.

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