Space exploration key to mankind's survival

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Mankind's very survival depends on the future exploration of space, said NASA chiMichael Griffin in an interview with AFP marking the 50th anniversary of the US space agency.

This journey, said the veteran physicist and aerospace engineer, is full of unknowns and has only just begun.

"Does the survival of human kind depend upon it? I think so," he said.

Griffin compared the first walk on the Moon with Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas.

"He travelled for months and spent a few weeks in the Americas and returned home. He could hardly have said to have explored the New World."

"So we have just begun to touch other worlds," said Griffin.

"I think we must return to the Moon because it's the next step. It's a few days from home," he said, adding Mars was also "only a few months" from Earth.

But Griffin acknowledged that like the 15th century explorers who embarked on their adventures without knowing what they would find, a leap of faith is required for space travel.

"As we move out in our solar system, expanding human presence, we can't prove what we will find will be useful.

"It was understood in Columbus's time that if voyagers discovered new lands they would find valuable things. We can't prove today that we can exploit what we find to the benefit of humankind."

However, in the long run, Griffin believes "human populations must diversify if it wishes to survive."



Source; http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080925/sc_afp/usspacenasaanniversarygriffin

Something beyond visible universe detected?

Sci­en­tists have meas­ured an un­ex­pected mo­tion in dis­tant clus­ters of ga­lax­ies—pos­sibly caused, they say, by the gravita­t­ional pull of some­thing out­side the vis­i­ble uni­verse. “We nev­er ex­pected to find an­y­thing like this,” said lead re­search­er Al­ex­an­der Kash­lin­sky of NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter in Green­belt, Md.

We can see only those areas of the cos­mos close enough that their light could have reached us dur­ing our uni­verse’s ex­ist­ence. What lies past those lim­its, if an­y­thing, has been un­clear.

Kash­linksy and col­leagues sug­gest what­ev­er is pulling on the mys­te­ri­ously mov­ing gal­axy clus­ters might lie out­side the vis­i­ble uni­verse.

A re­port on the find­ings is to ap­pear this week in the elec­tron­ic edi­tion of As­t­ro­phys­i­cal Jour­nal Let­ters.

“The clus­ters show a small but meas­ur­a­ble ve­locity that is in­de­pend­ent of the uni­verse’s ex­pan­sion,” Kash­lin­sky said.

The re­sults are based on da­ta from a NASA sat­el­lite, the Wilkin­son Mi­cro­wave An­i­sot­ro­py Probe. The de­vice takes mea­sure­ments of a sub­tle glow of radia­t­ion per­vad­ing the uni­verse, the cos­mic mi­cro­wave back­ground. It’s be­lieved to be left­o­ver light from the Big Bang, a sort of ex­plo­sion that gave birth to our uni­verse.

Hot, ra­di­at­ing gas in a gal­axy clus­ter scat­ters this back­ground light, as­tro­no­mers say. The scat­ter­ing can be meas­ured to de­tect each clus­ter’s in­di­vid­ual mo­tion, al­though the sig­nal is very weak, mak­ing the meas­ure­ment hard to dis­en­tan­gle from oth­er ef­fects.


source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080923_wmap

Strange Clouds Spotted at the Edge of Space

A weirdly wonderful sight appeared to astronauts aboard the International Space Station this summer — thin blue clouds hovering at the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and the void.

The noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds are at an altitude of 47 to 53 miles (76 to 85 km), where meteors and bright aurora lights are not uncommon and the atmosphere gives way to the blackness of space. The clouds remain a scientifically baffling phenomenon more than 120 years after their discovery.



source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080901/sc_space/strangecloudsspottedattheedgeofspace

NASA: snow found in Martian skies

NASA’s Phoe­nix Mars Lan­der has de­tected snow fall­ing from Mar­tian clouds, sci­en­tists say, and space­craft soil tests have given ev­i­dence of past in­ter­ac­tion be­tween min­er­als and liq­uid wa­ter, pro­cesses seen on Earth.

A la­ser in­stru­ment de­signed to gath­er knowl­edge of how the at­mos­phere and sur­face in­ter­act on Mars has de­tected snow from clouds about 4 kilo­me­ters (2.5 miles) above the space­craft’s land­ing site, the re­search­ers re­ported. Da­ta show the snow va­por­iz­ing be­fore reach­ing the ground.

Phoe­nix ex­pe­ri­ments al­so yielded clues point­ing to cal­ci­um car­bon­ate, the main com­po­nent of chalk, and par­t­i­cles that could be clay, agen­cy sci­en­tists said. Most car­bon­ates and clays on Earth form only in the pres­ence of liq­uid wa­ter.


Source:http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080929_snow

Mars lander finds minerals suggesting past water

LOS ANGELES - NASA's Phoenix spacecraft has discovered evidence of past water at its Martian landing site and spotted falling snow for the first time, scientists reported Monday. Soil experiments revealed the presence of two minerals known to be formed in liquid water. Scientists identified the minerals as calcium carbonate, found in limestone and chalk, and sheet silicate.

But exactly how that happened remains a mystery.

"It's really kind of all up in the air," said William Boynton, a mission scientist at the University of Arizona at Tucson.

A laser aboard the Phoenix recently detected snow falling from clouds more than two miles above its home in the northern arctic plains. The snow disappeared before reaching the ground.

Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic plains in May on a three-month mission to study whether the environment could be friendly to microbial life. One of its biggest discoveries so far is confirming the presence of ice on the planet.

Scientists long suspected frozen water was buried in the northern plains based on measurements from an orbiting spacecraft. The lander also found that the soil was slightly alkaline and contained important nutrients and minerals.

Scientists think there could have been standing water at the site in the past or the ice could have melted and interacted with the minerals.

"Is this a habitable zone on Mars? I think we're approaching that hypothesis," said chief scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "We understand, though, that Mars has many surprises for us and we have not finished our investigation."


source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080930/ap_on_sc/phoenix_mars;_ylt=AqA0TW2lHa1phSWywya3QGtxieAA

On-and-off floods formed Mars valleys

Floods that created distinctive features of Mars were not of a catastrophic sort, scientists claim.

An­cient net­works of val­leys on Mars were carved by re­cur­rent floods over a long per­i­od when the cli­mate may have been much like that of some ar­id or semiar­id re­gions on Earth, a new study sug­gests.

The re­sults don’t sup­port an al­ter­na­tive the­o­ry that the val­leys were carved by cat­a­stroph­ic flood­ing over a shorter time, the re­search­ers said.

Of­ten cit­ed as ev­i­dence that Mars once had a warm en­vi­ron­ment with liq­uid wa­ter on the sur­face, val­ley net­works are dis­tinc­tive fea­tures of the Mar­tian land­scape. In the new stu­dy, sci­en­tists used com­put­er mod­els to sim­u­late the pro­cesses that formed these fea­tures.

“Our re­sults ar­gue for liq­uid wa­ter be­ing sta­ble at the sur­face of Mars for pro­longed per­i­ods,” said Charles Barn­hart, a grad­u­ate stu­dent in Earth and plan­e­tary sci­ences at the Uni­ver­s­ity of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz.

Barn­hart con­ducted the study as a Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Re­search Pro­gram schol­ar at NASA Ames Re­search Cen­ter, work­ing with plan­e­tary sci­ent­ist Jef­frey Moore at the agen­cy and Al­an How­ard of the Uni­ver­s­ity of Vir­gin­ia.

A pa­per de­scrib­ing their find­ings has been ac­cept­ed for pub­lica­t­ion in the Jour­nal of Geo­phys­i­cal Re­search—Planets.

“For sev­er­al dec­ades, sci­en­tists worked to de­ter­mine wheth­er or not there had ev­er been pre­cipita­t­ion on Mars. Only in the last 10 years has NASA ac­quired high-res­o­lu­tion top­o­graph­ic da­ta that cinched the case for mas­sive an­cient ero­sion from pre­cipita­t­ion and runof­f,” Moore said.



Source:http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080908_mars-valleys

Probe completes asteroid fly by

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Space Agency obtained on Saturday the first images of an asteroid 360 million km (224 million miles) from earth, part of a space mission which scientists hope will help them understand the origins of the planets.

The images were transmitted to the control team in Darmstadt, Germany, by Europe's Rosetta spacecraft which completed its flyby of the Steins asteroid, in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, late on Friday.

Steins was the first target for Rosetta in its more than eleven year mission to explore the nucleus of a far away comet.

Through the study of minor bodies, such as asteroids, Rosetta is opening up a new window onto the early history of the solar system, said the ESA in a statement.

"Steins looks like a diamond in the sky," said Uwe Keller, Principal Investigator for the Osiris imaging system from the Max Planck Institute for solar system research in Lindau, Germany.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080908/sc_nm/space_asteroid_dc

New collider promises to transform physics

Phys­ics is poised to en­ter un­known ter­ri­to­ry with the startup of a mas­sive new par­t­i­cle smash­er—the Large Had­ron Col­lid­er—in Eu­rope, sci­en­tists say. The first beam of pro­tons, fun­da­men­tal com­po­nents of atoms, is sched­uled to start speed­ing through the ma­chine Sept. 10.

A par­t­i­cle col­lider has a sim­ple bas­ic pur­pose: to smash to­geth­er atoms or their part­s—the so-called fun­da­men­tal par­t­i­cles of na­ture—to find out what’s in­side them.

The re­sults are of­ten sur­pris­ing and seem­ingly il­log­i­cal, but have re­vealed plen­ti­ful in­sights in­to na­ture over dec­ades. Phys­i­cists are hop­ing for more an­swers from larg­er, stronger col­liders.

The Large Had­ron Col­lider, or LHC, would test hotly de­bat­ed the­o­ries as it pro­duces moun­tains of da­ta.

Po­ten­tial break­throughs in­clude an ex­plana­t­ion of what cre­ates mass and what is the mys­te­ri­ous “dark mat­ter” that makes up most of the mass in the uni­ver­se, phys­i­cists say. More ex­ot­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties in­clude ev­i­dence for new forc­es of na­ture or hid­den ex­tra di­men­sions of space and time.


Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080821_collider