Total lunar eclipse is coming

Total lunar eclipse is coming at 4:40pm this evening in Japan. If you are in the northern part of Japan, you have the higher chance to catch the lunar eclipse If clear sky, the total eclipse can be seen throughout Japan as the moon rises from east sky.
The last time that Japan had lunar eclipse was 3 years 4 months ago. This is once-in-a-while experience if you are lucky.
According to the report from WeatherNews Japan, because of unstable weather condition on the west side of Japan, the Norhern Japan has better chance to witness the total lunar eclipse.
The characteristics of lunar eclipse are that the moon turns to red.

Interior of Subsurface Cave Imaged on the Moon

The sun angle, camera angle and lighting conditions were just right for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter camera to look all the way down to the floor of the pit. And this is no small hole in the ground — the LRO team says this pit is about 65 meters in diameter! This latest image confirms this object is actually a subsurface cave; a lava tube close to the surface where part of it has collapsed. These lava tubes could be great locations for lunar bases that could protect human explorers from dangers such as cosmic rays, meteorite impacts, and the extreme temperature differences between the lunar day and night.

This is the fourth time that this particular lunar pit has been imaged. Since LRO is constantly orbiting the Moon and it completes a full cycle of lunar imaging each month, the team can do follow up observations of previous discoveries and re-image targets under different lighting conditions.
Previous images had revealed the dark, cave-like entrance, and another showed part of the pit wall.
For this fourth imaging run, the spacecraft slewed 43° to the east and the solar incidence angle was 34° from vertical. This was just the right angle so that if there actually was an open lava tube extending horizontally its floor would be illuminated.
With LRO’s Narrow Angle Camera, the team was able to image a few meters under the overhang to show the interior of this sublunarean void. With this oblique angle, they were also able to capture the layered nature of the mare bedrock in the pit walls. These exposed layers give scientists important clues as to how the vast mare were deposited.
The collection of images now verifies this is actually a cavernous subsurface cave. These pits had been predicted to exist, based on the understanding of the geomorphology of mare deposits and lava flow behavior on Earth, but never directly imaged before.

Color Panorama of 'Santa Maria' Crater for Opportunity's Anniversary

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending the seventh anniversary of its landing on Mars investigating a crater called "Santa Maria," which has a diameter about the length of a football field.

This scene looks eastward across the crater. Portions of the rim of a much larger crater, Endurance, appear on the horizon. The panorama spans 125 compass degrees, from north-northwest on the left to south-southwest on the right. It has been assembled from multiple frames taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on Opportunity during the 2,453rd and 2,454th Martian days, or sols, of the rover's work on Mars (Dec. 18 and 19, 2010).

Opportunity landed in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars on Jan. 24, 2004, Universal Time (Jan. 25, Pacific Time) for a mission originally planned to last for three months. Since that prime mission, the rover has continued to work in bonus-time extended missions. Both Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life.

By mid-January 2011, Opportunity reached a location at the southeastern edge of Santa Maria crater. The rover team developed plans for Opportunity to spend a few weeks investigating rocks at that site during solar conjunction, a period when communications between Earth and Mars are curtailed because the sun is almost directly between the two planets.

After completion of its work at Santa Maria, the rover will resume a long-term trek toward Endeavour.

This view combines images taken through three different Pancam filters admitting light with wavelengths centered at 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). This "natural color" is the rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if we were there and able to see it with our own eyes. Seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see.

LRO Could Have Given Apollo 14 Crew Another Majestic View

Although the Apollo 14 mission to the moon was filled with incredible sights and was completely successful it met all its science goals the crew experienced a bit of a disappointment at missing the spectacular view from the rim of a 1,000-foot-wide crater. They might have gazed into its depths if they had the high-resolution maps now available from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft.

Pressure was on the Apollo 14 mission, launched January 31, 1971, from the start. The Apollo 13 landing had to be aborted because an oxygen tank explosion crippled the spacecraft as it was on its way to the moon. It was a heroic effort just to return the crew safely to Earth, but the Apollo 14 team knew a second failure would probably result in cancellation of the remaining Apollo missions.

Seasonal Changes in Northern Mars Dune Field

Three images of the same location taken at different times on Mars show seasonal activity causing sand avalanches and ripple changes on a Martian dune. Time sequence of the images progresses from top to bottom. Each image covers an area 285 meters (312 yards) by 140 meters (153 yards). The crest of a dune curves across the upper and left portions of the image.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took these images. The site is at 84 degrees north latitude, 233 degrees east longitude, in a vast region of dunes at the edge of Mars' north polar ice cap. The area is covered by carbon-dioxide ice in winter but is ice-free in summer. The top and bottom images show part of one dune about one Mars year apart, at a time of year when all the seasonal ice has disappeared: in late spring of one year (top) and early summer of the following year (bottom). The middle image is from the second year's mid-spring, when the region was still covered by seasonal carbon-dioxide ice.

Spring evaporation of the seasonal layer of ice is manifested as dark streaks of fine particles carried to the top of the ice layer by escaping gas. The bottom of the ice layer, in contact with the dark ground, warms faster than the top of the ice does in the spring. Carbon-dioxide gas produced by the thawing of the bottom ice is temporarily trapped under the top ice. As the ice evaporates from the bottom, flow of gas under the ice destabilizes the sand on the dune and causes the sand to avalanche down the dune slipface. A before-and-after comparison of the dune shows new alcoves and extension of the debris apron on the slipface of the dune caused by descending grains of sand. New wind ripples appear on the debris apron.

Challenger Astronauts Memorialized on the Moon

Apollo is a 524 km-diameter impact basin located within the center of the the giant South Pole-Aitken basin. Apollo is also a Constellation Project Region of Interest, identified by NASA as a notional area for future human lunar exploration. The Constellation Region of Interest is located in the southwest corner of the mare deposit that fills this basin-within-a-basin. After the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger, seven craters on the eastern rim of this basin were named after the crew: Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee, Michael Smith. Go to the WAC mosaic of the entire Apollo basin and surroundings.
NASA has learned hard lessons from each of our tragedies, and they are lessons that we will continue to keep at the forefront of our work as we continuously strive for a culture of safety that will help us avoid our past mistakes and heed warnings while corrective measures are possible. In memory of our colleagues, I ask the NASA Family once again to always make its opinions known and to be unafraid to speak up to those in authority, so that safety can always be our guiding principle and the sacrifices of our friends and colleagues will not be in vain.

On this Day of Remembrance, as we honor our fallen heroes with tributes and public ceremonies, I will take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Across the country, flags at NASA Headquarters and the NASA centers will be flown at half-mast in memory of our colleagues lost in the cause of exploration.

Cassini Provides Stunning New Looks at Several Moons

The Cassini spacecraft recently had a mini ‘grand tour’ of several of Saturn’s moons and just sent back some great images of Helene, Mimas, Enceladus and Dione. Above is an amazing view of the Trojan moon Helene, which is only 32 kilometers (20 miles across) and shares an orbit with Dione. Cassini came withing 28,000 km (17,398 miles) of Helene. Thanks to Stu Atkinson for an enhanced version of this raw Cassini image.
Cassini captured several images of the plumes spewing from Enceladus, and other closeup views of the moon’s terrain.
No images available yet from Cassini’s extremely close flyby of Titan over the weekend where it buzzed the hazy moon at an altitude of just 880 kilometers (547 miles) above the surface.
That is 70 kilometers (43 miles) lower than it has ever been at Titan before. The reason for attempting such a close pass is to try and establish if Titan has a magnetic field of its own. But the Cassini team went through hours and hours of calculations for this close flyby, as Titan’s atmosphere applies torque to objects flying through it, much the same way the flow of air would wiggle your hand around if you stuck it outside a moving car window.

Phobos, Mars' Large and Incredibly Close Moon

Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons, is a fascinating place. The moon, discovered back in 1877, is small -- only about 17 miles long -- and orbits incredibly close to the surface of its host planet. Phobos, in fact, is so close to Mars that it moves around the planet faster than the planet itself rotates. If you were standing on the surface of Mars, you would see Phobos rise in the west and move across the sky in only a little more than four hours before disappearing to the east. And it's speeding up. As the orbital radius decreases, Phobos moves closer to the planet's surface and will one day either smash into Mars or break up into a planetary ring.
"[Its] origins are still something of a mystery, and the surface featured on Phobos are not totally understood either," Phil Plait wrote at Discover last week after these new photographs were taken. "Specifically, all those parallel grooves are pretty weird! The current thinking is that they were actually caused by impacts on Mars! It works like this: some giant rock hits Mars and blasts vast quantities of material up and out, some of which reaches up into space. Phobos plows into this material, and the direct impacts with big chunks can form craters."
These new images were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe after it passed within 66 miles of Mars' surface.

Saturnian moon's ocean full of gas

New data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft indicates the Saturnian moon Enceladus may have a fizzy ocean capable of harbouring life.
The findings could explain the vast icy plumes of water that spray into space through fissures - known as tiger stripes - on the moon's frozen surface.
Lead Cassini planetary scientist Dr Dennis Matson from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California, says "geophysicists expected Enceladus to be a lump of ice, cold, dead and uninteresting".
Instead scientists have recently discovered the moon is covered with geysers shooting plumes of water vapour, icy particles and organic compounds.
Matson says many researchers viewed the icy jets as proof of a large subterranean body of water.
Pockets of liquid water with temperatures around 0°C near the surface could explain the watery plumes.
Cassini's instruments detected have carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and various hydrocarbons in the plumes gas.
In 2009, the spacecraft's cosmic dust analyser found sodium and potassium salts together with carbonates locked in the plumes' icy particles, strengthening the underground ocean hypothesis.

Chinese Mars 500 volunteer to be on 'Mars' for Spring Festival

Wang Yue, Chinese volunteer for the Mars 500 simulation of a manned spaceflight, will step out of the cabin of the experiment's "spaceship" and walk on a simulation of the Martian surface just in time for Chinese New Year, according to the website of China Manned Space Engineering.

The experimental cabin will land on the Mars on Feb. 1. At the end of Jan. 23, the Mars 500 experiment, which simulates a round-trip voyage to the red planet, had completed its 234th day.

As planned, the crew members will participate in a 30-day simulated landing on the surface of Mars.

It is reported that the Chinese participant, Wang Yue, has displayed a strong sense of teamwork and perseverance while conducting his research.

Li Yinghui, the Chinese team's deputy chief designer under the Mars-500 project, said considering the current carrying capacity, the Mars 500 project is a three-stage experiment, including a 250-day virtual flight to Mars, a 30-day stay on the planet and a 240-day journey back to earth

High tides mean it must be a full moon

High tides at the weekend left their mark on the South Canterbury coast.

On Brown's Beach, east of Temuka, driftwood and other debris were carried to the top of the beach at high tide early on Saturday morning, with some deposited on the stopbank separating the beach from farm paddocks beyond it.
The debris left a pool between the high point of the beach and the stopbank.
Environment Canterbury's duty flood controller, Graham Sullivan, said the tides over the past few days were higher than normal because it was a spring or perigean tide, which meant it coincided with the full moon.
He said the tide was below swell warning level and usually lasted about four days, with today being the last day.
The MetService website showed yesterday's high tide was 2.5 metres at 6.37am, followed by 2.4m at 7.02pm.
Today's high tides are expected to be at 7.32am and 8.01pm – 2.5m and 2.4m respectively.
From tomorrow tides should begin to ease, but are expected to rise to 2.5m again on February 18, which will be a full moon, and peak at 2.6m in the two days that follow.

Multiple Asteroid Strikes May Have Killed Mars’s Magnetic Field

Once upon a time, Mars had a magnetic field, just like Earth. Four billion years ago, it vanished, taking with it the planet’s chances of evolving life as we know it. Now scientists have proposed a new explanation for its disappearance.

A model of asteroids striking the red planet suggests that, while no single impact would have short-circuited the dynamo that powered its magnetism, a quick succession of 20 asteroid strikes could have done the job.
“Each one crippled a little bit,” said geophysicist Jafar Arkani-Hamed of the University of Toronto, author of the new study. “We believe those were enough to cripple, cripple, cripple, cripple until it killed all of the dynamo forever.”
Rocky planets like Earth, Mars, Mercury and even the moon get their magnetic fields from the movement of molten iron inside their cores, a process called convection. Packets of molten iron rise, cool and sink within the core, and generate an electric current. The planet’s spinning turns that current into a magnetic field in a system known as a dynamo.
Magnetic fields can shield a planet from the constant rain of high-energy particles carried in the solar wind by deflecting charged particles away from the surface. Some studies have suggested that Earth’s magnetic field could have protected early life forms from the sun’s most harmful radiation, allowing more complex life to develop. But traces of magnetism in the Martian surface reveal that the red planet lost its magnetic field some four billion years ago, leaving its atmosphere to be dessicated by the harsh solar wind.

Lunar Mining Sparks Race to the Moon

Lunar geologists and space entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly intrigued by the concept of lunar mining now that researchers have discovered an abundance of water on the moon. But others are suggesting that many obstacles need to be overcome before such a project can be executed.
The discovery of lunar water has raised questions as to whether other resources such as helium 2 and rare Earth elements could be found on the moon as well. Now, certain countries are looking to race to the moon.
Paul Spudis, Ph.D., a lunar geologist and Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, has expressed interest in lunar mining and has even devised a plan for returning to the moon despite the fact that the Obama administration has no plans to return to the moon at all due to its cancellation of the Constellation program. Spudis' plan involves "robotic resource extraction and the deployment of space-based fuel depots" using water from the moon before any humans return to its surface.
On the other hand, Mike Wall, editor of SPACE.com, believes lunar mining should not be attempted before ironing out a few technical and legal issues. For instance, an international agreement consisting of property rights, a salvage law and a mining law would be needed in order to decide who owns the resources once they are extracted. The Outer Space Treaty does not allow nation states to claim territories on the moon, but it does not mention anything regarding resource mining, and laws need to be set before any mining on the moon begins.

Phoenix Mars Mission: Onto The Ice

Join Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith and the Phoenix Lander Team in Phoenix Mars Mission: Onto the Ice, a behind-the-scenes look at the first successful landing on the Mars polar region and the beginning of a new era in the search for signs of life on our neighboring planets.
A continuation of the enthralling story of last year's attempted NASA Mars exploration, Phoenix Mars Mission: Onto the Ice documents the difficult journey towards a successful Mars landing, behind the scenes and through the eyes of the people responsible for the mission’s success.
Phoenix Mars Mission: Onto the Ice follows the Phoenix Mars Lander's 422-million mile journey through space. The final destination is a carefully selected landing site in the northern Martian plains. But before the Lander can begin touching, tasting and sniffing Martian soil in search for signs of life, it first must land on the planet safely. From practice landings with simulated devastating malfunctions, through the heart-pounding "seven minutes of terror," decent onto the Red Planet, Phoenix Mars Mission: Onto the Ice follows the international team of talented and dedicated scientists, engineers and researchers as they work to successfully land on Mars and search for signs of life.
The solar powered Phoenix Lander was initially scheduled for a 90 day run on the surface of Mars. The Phoenix team must make every day and every experiment count in the battle with the ever sinking sun. The teams must race to extract every bit of data before the Martian winter plunges temperatures to minus 100 degrees Celsius. And when the lander can no longer phone home and the end of the lander phase of the mission is declared, what will the Phoenix Mars Mission have discovered? And, once the Mars winter is over, will the team be able to resurrect the Mars lander yet again?

China to launch 1st Mars probe in 2013

Qi Faren, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chief designer of Shenzhou spaceships, indicated on Jan. 16 that China is expected to launch the first Mars probe in 2013.

The probe, Yinghuo-1(YH-1), was due to blast off in October 2009 with Russia's "Phobos Explorer" from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, but the launch was postponed.

Qi Faren disclosed that China and Russia will launch the first Mars probe this year. By 2013, there will be a minimum distance between the Mars and the Earth, which will be a good time to launch the Mars probe. If this opportunity is missed, China will have to wait several years to launch another. Therefore, China will consider launching its first Mars probe independently.

Qi said that this is only a consideration of the aerospace industry and not the Chinese government's formal decision-making at present. However, China's space industry is fully capable of successfully launching the Mars probe.

China's space industry plans important developments in the coming years, which will culminate in the construction of a space station by 2020, Qi said.
　　
He explained that China will build the space station to solve four stages of difficult problems in research and development. China successfully and independently put a man into space in the first stage.

In the second stage, China will launch Tiangong-1, an unmanned space module, in the first half of 2011 and the Shenzhou-8 spacecraft in the second half of the year to carry out the nation's first-ever space docking.

NASA Prods Hibernating Mars Rover

Contrary to its name, the Sprint Mars rover remains decidedly stuck, and after nine months of waiting incommunicado NASA is fighting to restart communication with the antisocial android before winter turns the Red Planet blue. If scientists cannot reestablish communication before the end of Martian spring—mid-March—the rover may not survive winter.
Spring is the time to revive the rover. "The amount of solar energy available for Spirit is still increasing every day for the next few months," explains John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager. "As long as that's the case, we will do all we can to increase the chances of hearing from the rover again."
The extraterrestrial's troubles began when its wheels cracked through the planet's crusty surface and sunk in the sand below. Despite numerous efforts to dislodge the vehicle, scientists declared it stuck last January. Since last spring, the rover has rested in low-power hibernation to conserve energy.
Sprint needs enough solar energy to thaw itself through winter. While NASA engineers have tried to position the robot's solar array towards the sun, if debris blows onto the panels, it won't absorb enough energy to wake.
Sprint and its sibling Opportunity have roamed the surface of the Red Planet for the past five years, considerably exceeding their expected mission of three months. Despite Sprint's recent troubles, Opportunity has stayed true to its name: the rover to continues exploring and sending back data. Last winter NASA even upgraded its firmware, enabling the robot to stop and analyze rocks as it roves the Martian surface. Now if only we could get software updates for five-year old hardware back home.

Mars' Water - Too Salty To Support Life

"Liquid water is required by all species on Earth and we've assumed that water is the very least that would be necessary for life on Mars," says Nicholas J. Tosca, a postdoctoral researcher in Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. "However, to really assess Mars' habitability we need to consider the properties of its water. Not all of Earth's waters are able to support life, and the limits of terrestrial life are sharply defined by water's temperature, acidity, and salinity."

Together with co-authors Andrew H. Knoll and Scott M. McLennan, Tosca analyzed salt deposits in four-billion-year-old Martian rock explored by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, and by orbiting spacecraft. It was the Mars Rover whose reports back to Earth stoked excitement over water on the ancient surface of the Red Planet.

The new analysis suggests that even billions of years ago, when there was unquestionably some water on Mars, its salinity commonly exceeded the levels in which terrestrial life can arise, survive, or thrive.

"Our sense has been that while Mars is a lousy environment for supporting life today, long ago it might have more closely resembled Earth," says Knoll, Fisher Professor of Natural Sciences and professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard. "But this result suggests quite strongly that even as long as four billion years ago, the surface of Mars would have been challenging for life. No matter how far back we peer into Mars' history, we may never see a point at which the planet really looked like Earth."

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A Few Facts About Lunar Tides

The gravitational force of the moon is one ten-millionth that of earth, but when you combine other forces such as the earth's centrifugal force created by its spin, you get tides.

The sun's gravitational force on the earth is only 46 percent that of the moon. Making the moon the single most important factor for the creation of tides.

The sun's gravity also produces tides. But since the forces are smaller, as compared to the moon, the effects are greatly decreased.

Tides are not caused by the direct pull of the moon's gravity. The moon is pulling upwards on the water while the earth is pulling downward. Slight advantage to the moon and thus we have tides.

Whenever the Moon, Earth and Sun are aligned, the gravitational pull of the sun adds to that of the moon causing maximum tides.

Spring tides happen when the sun and moon are on the same side of the earth (New Moon) or when the sun and moon are on opposite sides of the earth (Full Moon).

When the Moon is at first quarter or last quarter phase (meaning that it is located at right angles to the Earth-Sun line), the Sun and Moon interfere with each other in producing tidal bulges and tides are generally weaker; these are called neap tides.

Spring tides and neap tide levels are about 20% higher or lower than average.
Offshore, in the deep ocean, the difference in tides is usually less than 1.6 feet

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Life On the Moon

Scientists are looking for life in space. So far, they haven't found any life beyond Earth itself. We seem to be getting closer to discovering life somewhere else in our own solar system
, with Mars, and some moons of Jupiter and Saturn being considered likely hiding spots for microbes.
Could there be life closer to our home planet? Probably not, but it's worth considering what could be lurking on the Moon.
We've discovered evidence that the polar regions of the Moon are the coldest natural places in the solar system. It's not the sort of environment that's friendly to life. Anything that tried to survive there would certainly freeze. But what could these conditions preserve? Could the Moon be a storehouse of chemicals and structures that have disappeared from other regions of the solar system?
Part of the reason why we explore space is not only to discover life, but to find the precursors to life. Outer space holds the records of what conditions were like when the Earth was young, and life could have been getting started on our planet.
If certain regions on the Moon have been frozen for eons, the Moon could be one of our most promising areas for biotic chemistry research.

NASA Research Team Reveals Moon Has Earth-Like Core

State-of-the-art seismological techniques applied to Apollo-era data suggest our moon has a core similar to Earth's.

Uncovering details about the lunar core is critical for developing accurate models of the moon's formation. The data sheds light on the evolution of a lunar dynamo -- a natural process by which our moon may have generated and maintained its own strong magnetic field.

The team's findings suggest the moon possesses a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles. Where it differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles. The research indicates the core contains a small percentage of light elements such as sulfur, echoing new seismology research on Earth that suggests the presence of light elements -- such as sulfur and oxygen -- in a layer around our own core.

The researchers used extensive data gathered during the Apollo-era moon missions. The Apollo Passive Seismic Experiment consisted of four seismometers deployed between 1969 and 1972, which recorded continuous lunar seismic activity until late-1977.