SPACE PROPULSION BREAKTHROUGH: HERE IS THE NEXT-GENERATION PLASMA ENGINE

Japanese scientists make a breakthrough in the development of next generation space engines.

Plasma engines are considered to be something of a holy grail in the next stage of space exploration. Plasma thrusters are theoretically capable of producing a large enough thrust to propel rockets and satellites into outer space without the vast amount of fuel that current space engines require.  

However, the process towards creating viable plasma engines has been beset with difficulties as the science is incredibly complex. As of yet, no designers have managed to produce a plasma engine which is capable of reaching outer space. However thanks to new research from Tohoku University, the world may have been brought one small step closer to this elusive goal.

Plasma is comprised of specially charged particles, which means that it can be directed and manipulated through the use of magnetic fields. Scientists and engineers working on the construction of plasma engines have experimented with magnetic nozzles to manipulate the plasma, but they have run into some problems when it comes to using this method.

The magnetic nozzle is designed to compress the plasma so that it will reach a higher state of energy and therefore a higher state of velocity when it is expelled from the engine. However, they have found that the magnetic field produced by the nozzle is formed in such a way that the plasma does not expel itself as required but instead curves back into the engine resulting in a net thrust of zero.

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, two scientists named Kazunori Takahashi and Akira Ando have outlined how this problem may be fixable. The scientists suggested that it was possible to stretch the magnetic field lines to allow the plasma particles to escape into space in a very specific direction.

Instead of using the magnetic nozzle to achieve this, the scientists came up with the ingenious solution of allowing the plasma to direct itself. When charged particles are in motion, they will generate a magnetic field. This means that plasma itself can create the conditions to allow itself to escape and cause propulsion.

Despite the fact that their lab experiments were only slightly more successful than those carried out using a magnetic nozzle, their research has been hailed as highly significant as it has brought additional information into the pool of human knowledge about the nature of plasma itself. Scientists are aware that the vast majority of matter in space is comprised of plasma, but it is very rare on planet Earth. Therefore, any additional information about the nature of plasma is considered to be highly valuable when it comes to understanding the wider universe as well as bringing humans closer to developing viable plasma engines in the future.

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 { http://www.disclose.tv/ }

07-07-2017 om 19:42 geschreven door peter  

NASA RECORDED THE BIGGEST EXPLOSION ON THE MOON EVER AND WARNS 'WE COULD BE NEXT'

And terrifyingly the 56,000 mph collision – captured by NASA scientists highlighting the catastrophic danger planet earth faces from similar meteors – was caused by a space rock weighing no more than 88 lbs (40 kilos).

Despite the meteor’s tiny proportions – about the size of a small boulder and the weight of an average 10-year-old boy – the impact damage was colossal and the explosion shone with the brightness of a magnitude 4 star.  

A similar strike against a city on earth would create a crater 65feet (20m) deep and create a devastating kill zone equivalent to TEN Tomahawk cruise missile striking in exactly the same place.

Experts fear the death toll would run into thousands.

Fortunately, because of the speed and angle of entry the rock exploded while still in the air but 7,200 buildings were damaged and 1,500 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical treatment.

A spokesman for respected science website Science.com said: “For the past eight years NASA has been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteors.

THEY’VE SEEN THE BIGGEST EXPLOSION IN THE HISTORY OF THE PROGRAM  

“It exploded in a flash 10 times as bright as anything we’ve seen before. Anyone looking at the Moon at the moment of impact could have seen the explosion – no telescope required.”

The Chelyabinsk meteor is the largest known natural object to have entered Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska meteor, which destroyed a wide, remote, forested, and very sparsely populated area of Siberia.

NASA is so concerned about the possibility of an asteroid strike ending all life on earth it has started the first design phase of a spacecraft known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) which will be used to redirect an asteroid’s path.

Lindley Johnson, planetary defence officer at Nasa Headquarters in Washington, said: “DART would be NASA’s first mission to demonstrate what’s known as the kinetic impactor technique – striking the asteroid to shift its orbit – to defend against a potential future asteroid impact.  

RELATED ARTICLES

• Tunguska EXPLOSION: Theories involving a 'megaton' explosion in Russia still baffles researchers
• Anonymous Warns: The Fukushima Nuclear Leak Is The Biggest Threat To Humankind   

 { http://www.disclose.tv/ }

07-07-2017 om 19:35 geschreven door peter  

MYSTERIOUS "SPACE BALLS" KEEP LANDING IN A VILLAGE IN SPAIN - WHAT ON EARTH ARE THEY?

Residents from villages in Murcia have been left perplexed and in fear as objects are mysteriously dropping from the skies onto their fields. It all started when one object fell from the sky, found by two shepherds in Calasparra.

A second object was then found in Villavieja. The third object was then found in Elda. This has left villages in southern Spain in fear for what more is to come.  

It has been reported that objects are about one meter in diameter and weigh about 20 kilograms each. What instilled fear was because of how the first object was handled: The civil guard came in wearing hazmat suits and initiated a CBRN protocol(chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear). Once the objects have been examined, they were cleared of hazards. However, they were still taken away, and more research had to be carried out.

The people are wary. Calasparra mayor, Jose Velez, has released a statement to Olive Press, stating: “I think it is a more serious issue than it seems. Citizens have real concerns about what is happening and deserve an explanation."

In lieu of the space debris that has hit the Indian Ocean, many are theorizing that the cause of these flying space litter is due to space debris falling to Earth at a terminal velocity, as what science tells us. While the weight of these objects might not cause craters, they are sure large enough to cause fatal damage or even death to an innocent passerby walking just about anyway in Southern Spain.

Let's just hope the investigation comes to an end, and that the barrage of weird objects stops.  

RELATED ARTICLES

• Solar Systems Encased in extraordinary 'Space Glass' Balls
• The Mysterious Stone Balls Of Siberia

 { http://www.disclose.tv/ }

07-07-2017 om 19:26 geschreven door peter  

What is this mysterious array of light in front of an aircraft flying over Slovakia

Something very strange is going on in the atmosphere of our planet. People all around the world witness and take images of strange sky phenomena.

What to think about the strange array of light in the sky filmed by Martin Mikuaš from Slovakia on June 12, 2017 whereby an aircraft clearly follows the trajectory of the beam.

Is this plane, whether it is a chemplane or not, involved in a technology of controlling the phase of light waves (PAO) transmitted or reflected from an unknown location?

Is this footage proof that they, besides already controlling the weather, now also can create, shape and manipulate visible light or this array of light is something what cannot be explained?

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.be/ }

07-07-2017 om 19:17 geschreven door peter  

Dr. Steven Greer reveals different types of Aliens known to the Government

Today, in modern society we will find that there is a worldwide debate going on about extraterrestrial life.To summarize it, there are people who believe that we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings, and there are those who firmly disagree, suggesting that we are the only intelligent species in the universe.

Given the fact that the universe is SOO big, it’s hard to even imagine that life only came into existence –miraculously— on Earth.

To put the possibility of alien life existing elsewhere into perspective, there are approximately 10 billion galaxies in the observable universe. The number of stars in each galaxy may differ, but assuming there is an average of around 100 billion stars per galaxy, it would mean that there are around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – lots of zeroes yup, and that’s 1 billion trillion— stars in the observable universe.

This of course, isn’t the entire number but just one segment of the entire picture since we can only observe parts of the universe that are within 13.7 billion light-years of earth.

As noted on SCSB, this is due to the fact that the big bang occurred about 13.7 billion years ago. Thus, w make observations about distant stars by measuring the light that reaches earth and satellites that we have in space.

Light from stars farther than 13.7 billion light-years away has not had time to reach us yet. The universe must be much bigger than the universe that we can observe at this time, therefore there may be many more stars out there.

After realizing how big the universe really is, we turn to the Alien question.

In the past, numerous scientists, military officials, and whistleblowers have come forward speaking about UFOs and alien visitations to Earth.

The debate about Alien life isn’t something new to modern times, as a matter of a fact, since recorded history, people have asked what if somewhere out there is life similar to that on Earth. “To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow.” – Metrodorus, Greek philosopher of the fourth century B.C.

One of the most interesting comments regarding extraterrestrial life comes from former Canadian defense minister, Paul Hellyer.

Mr. Hellyer has said that here are more than 82 known alien species who have visited Earth. It is claimed that a wealth of information about these extraterrestrial species is contained in highly-classified documents used as training manuals or guides for military and intelligence personnel. The documents reveal that many of the known species, such as the Alpha-Draconians or Reptilians, have been living on Earth long before the human race.

Comments made by Mr. Heller are backed up by many other scientists, military officials, and whistleblowers.

Franklin Story Musgrave, an American Physician, retired NASA astronaut who worked on the design and development of the Skylab Program and the only astronaut to have flown missions on all five Space Shuttles had very interesting things to say about life elsewhere in the cosmos:

“Statistically it’s a certainty there are hugely advanced civilizations, intelligences, life forms out there. I believe they’re so advanced that they’re even doing interstellar travel. I believe it’s possible that they even came here. It’s logical to presume the universe must have other life in it and by virtue of association that we could be visited at some point.”

One of our favorite quotes comes from Dr Brian O’Leary, a former NASA Astronaut and Princeton Physics Professor:

“There is abundant evidence that we are being contacted, that civilizations have been monitoring us for a very long time. That their appearance is bizarre from any type of traditional materialistic western point of view. That these visitors use the technologies of consciousness, they use toroids, they use co-rotating magnetic disks for their propulsion systems, which seems to be a common denominator of the UFO phenomenon.”

In addition to the above, a very interesting video about alien life and alien visitations is the one posted below, where Steven Macon Greer –a retired medical doctor and ufologist, founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and The Disclosure Project— speaks of the various types of aliens. The interview was made in 2010.

source: ancient-code

{http://www.wisdom-path.net/ }

07-07-2017 om 01:03 geschreven door peter  

DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE X-RAYS COMING FROM PLUTO? THAT’S STRANGE, WHAT’S CAUSING IT?

 

by Matt Williams

Once held to be the outermost planet of the Solar System, Pluto‘s designation was changed by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, owing to the discovery of many new Kuiper Belt Objects that were comparable in size. In spite of this, Pluto remains a source of fascination and a focal point of much scientific interest. And even after the historic flyby conducted by the New Horizons probe in July of 2015, many mysteries remain.

What’s more, ongoing analysis of the NH data has revealed new mysteries. For instance, a recent study by a team of astronomers indicated that a survey by the Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed the presence of some rather strong x-rays emissions coming from Pluto. This was unexpected, and is causing scientists to rethink what they thought they knew about Pluto’s atmosphere and its interaction with solar wind.

In the past, many Solar bodies have been observed emitting x-rays, which were the result of interaction between solar wind and neutral gases (like argon and nitrogen). Such emissions have been detected from planets like Venus and Mars (due to the presence of argon and/or nitrogen in their atmospheres), but also with smaller bodies like comets – which acquire halos due to outgassing.

Artist’s impression of New Horizons’ close encounter with the Pluto–Charon system.

Credit: NASA/JHU APL/SwRI/Steve Gribben

Ever since the NH probe conducted its flyby of Pluto in 2015, astronomers have been aware that Pluto has an atmosphere which changes size and density with the seasons. Basically, as the planet reaches perihelion during its 248 year orbital period – a distance of 4,436,820,000 km, 2,756,912,133 mi from the Sun – the atmosphere thickens due to the sublimation of frozen nitrogen and methane on the surface.

The last time Pluto was at perihelion was on September 5th, 1989, which means that it was still experiencing summer when NH made its flyby. While studying Pluto, the probe detected an atmosphere that was primarily composed of nitrogen gas (N²) along with methane (CH⁴) and carbon dioxide (CO²). Astronomers therefore decided to look for signs of x-ray emissions coming from Pluto’s atmosphere using the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Prior to the NH mission’s flyby, most models of Pluto’s atmosphere expected it to be quite extended. However, the probe found that the atmosphere was less extended and that its rate of loss was hundreds of times lower than what these models predicted. Therefore, as the team indicated in their study, they expected to find x-ray emissions that were consistent with what the NH flyby observed:

“Given that most pre-encounter models of Pluto’s atmosphere had predicted it to be much more extended, with an estimated loss rate to space of ~10²⁷ to 10²⁸ mol/sec of N² and CH⁴… we attempted to detect X-ray emission created by [solar wind] neutral gas charge exchange interactions in the low density neutral gas surrounding Pluto,” they wrote.

Images sent by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show possible clouds floating over the frozen landscape including the streaky patch at right.

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwR

However, after consulting data from the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) aboard Chandra, they found that x-ray emissions coming from Pluto were greater than what this would allow for.  In some cases, strong x-ray emissions have been noted coming from other smaller objects in the Solar System, which is due to the scattering of solar x-rays by small dust grains composed of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.

But the energy distribution they noted with Pluto’s x-rays were not consistent with this explanation. Another possibility that the team offered is that they could be due to some process (or processes) that focus the solar wind near Pluto, which would enhance the effect of its modest atmosphere.

As they indicate in their conclusions:

“The observed emission from Pluto is not aurorally driven. If due to scattering, it would have to be sourced by a unique population of nanoscale haze grains composed of C, N, and O atoms in Pluto’s atmosphere resonantly fluorescing under the Sun’s insolation. If driven by charge exchange between [solar wind] minor ions and neutral gas species (mainly CH⁴) escaping from Pluto, then density enhancement and adjustment of the [solar wind] minor ion relative abundance in the interaction region near Pluto is required versus naïve models.”

For the time being, the true cause of these x-ray emissions is likely to remain a mystery. They also highlight the need for more research when it comes to this distant and most massive of Kuiper Belt Objects. Luckily, the data provided by the NH mission is likely to be poured over for decades, revealing new and interesting things about Pluto, the outer Solar System, and how the most distant worlds from our Sun behave.

The study – which was accepted for publication in the journal Icarus – was conducted by astronomers from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Southwest Research Institute (SwI), the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSCC), and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ames Research Center.

Further Reading: CfA, arXiv

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

07-07-2017 om 00:53 geschreven door peter  

HERE’S OUR BEST LOOK YET AT SATURN’S ‘UFO’ MOON

Adorned with a thin band of icy ring particles, the small moon Pan inspires comparisons to alien spacecraft, walnuts, and even ravioli.

There’s a tiny “flying saucer” orbiting deep within Saturn’s rings, and a NASA probe has just gotten its most impressive look yet at the strange object.

The saucer is actually a little moon called Pan, and NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured its distinctive shape on March 7 in a stunningly detailed series of images.

When she first saw the new pictures of Pan, Cassini scientist Carolyn Porco thought they might be an artist’s representation.

“They are real! Science is better than fiction,” she later commented.

Named for the flute-playing Greek god of wild places, 21-mile-wide Pan is what’s called a shepherd moon. It lives within a gap in Saturn’s A ring, which is the farthest loop of icy particles from the planet. As it zips around Saturn, Pan continually clears debris from the gap by vacuuming up some ring particles and punting others away, like a little Roomba with a force field.

Another raw image from Cassini showcases Pan’s equatorial band.

PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

In fact, it’s this absence of ring junk that led scientists to predict Pan’s existence as early as the mid-1980s. But the small moon wasn’t officially discovered until 1990, when Mark Showalter and his colleagues took a good look at images returned by the Voyager 2 spacecraft and found the moon that is responsible for the gap’s existence.

Now, with the Cassini spacecraft zooming through the Saturnian system, scientists have gotten the chance to see Pan up close. Early images revealed its walnut shape, which Porco and her colleagues attributed to debris from the rings.

These more recent images show in detail that the moon is swaddled in what’s called an equatorial accretion disk, or a smooth, thin layer of ring particles that have been glued on to Pan’s waistline by the moon’s meager gravity.

“This is such a far cry from the nondescript ‘dots’ that I was tracking way back in 1990 in the Voyager images! It’s very gratifying finally to see Pan’s closeup, “says Showalter, now at the SETI Institute in California.

In a 2007 study published in Science, Porco suggested the thin disk formed long ago, before the moon had completely vacuumed out material from the gap.

“The shape, as others have also pointed out, is probably because it is always sweeping up fine dust from the rings,” Showalter explains. “The rings are very thin compared to the size of Pan, so the dust accumulates around its equator.”

Pan isn’t alone in its bizarre appearance: Another small moon, Atlas, bears a similar shape for similar reasons.

Header Image: One of Cassini’s new views of Saturn’s moon Pan. PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

Source www.nationalgeographic.com.au

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

07-07-2017 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

NASA looks into sending astronauts on a trip beyond the moon as early as 2019

NASA and its commercial partners say they’re studying the possibility of sending astronauts beyond the moon years earlier than planned, by putting a crew on the first flight of the space agency’s heavy-lift Space Launch System.

The NASA study, sparked in part by a desire for the Trump administration to do something dramatic in space during its first term, would consider whether such a flight could occur in 2019 or 2020.

The current plan calls for an uncrewed test flight of the SLS and NASA’s Orion capsule in late 2018, known as Exploration Mission-1 or EM-1. That mission would followed by a crewed test flight called EM-2 in the 2021-2023 time frame.

In a statement, NASA said acting administrator Robert Lightfoot asked Bill Gerstenmaier, the agency’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, to assess whether the first crew could ride on EM-1 instead of EM-2.

“The study will examine the opportunities it could present to accelerate the effort of the first crewed flight and what it would take to accomplish that first step of pushing humans farther into space,” NASA said.

Gerstenmaier discussed the study with NASA’s commercial Orion/SLS partners at a conference today in Washington, D.C. NASA representatives declined to specify how long the study would take, but some of the reports that emerged after Gerstenmaier’s talk suggested a 30-day time frame.

Boeing, Lockheed Martin on board

EM-1’s current mission plan calls for sending the Orion capsule on a trajectory beyond the moon, most likely into lunar orbit, and then back to Earth. No lunar landing would be attempted. The trip would be similar to Apollo 8’s “Earthrise” mission in 1968. The current plan calls for EM-2 to go beyond the moon as well.

The revised plan would force NASA and its partners to ensure that EM-1 had all the safety and life support features required for human spaceflight. That’s why EM-1 would have to fly somewhat later that currently planned.

The crewed Orion/SLS flight would mark the first trip for humans beyond Earth orbit since NASA’s last Apollo moon mission in 1972. There’s another historical angle if the round-the-moon flight were to take place in 2019, in that it would come during the golden anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin, NASA’s two main commercial partners in the multibillion-dollar Orion/SLS program, both said they’d look into accelerating their schedules. Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS rocket, while Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the Orion crew capsule.

“The possibility of NASA accelerating the timeline to put humans into the vicinity of the moon and onto Mars is exciting,” Boeing spokeswoman Kelly Kaplan said in an email. “Safety of the crew is most important, so of course there will be many factors we will consider as we assess the feasibility of adding crew to EM-1. We applaud NASA’s bold path forward in this transition time, and we’re proud to be a part of the journey to Mars.”

Lockheed Martin is also on board with the study, said Allison Miller, a spokeswoman for the company’s Orion program. “We’ll look at accelerating remaining crew system designs, as well as potential technical and schedule challenges and how to mitigate them,” she said in an email.

Trump’s space strategy

Word of the potential schedule shift comes after weeks of speculation over how President Donald Trump and his advisers might change the focus of the nation’s space program.

Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, had initially set NASA’s sights on sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid in the mid-2020s, followed by trips to Mars and its moons in the 2030s.

Those plans have morphed over the years, and at the same time, billionaire-backed commercial ventures such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have upped the ante. Last fall, Musk unveiled plans to send settlers to Mars in the 2020s, and Blue Origin executives said their long-term vision for spaceflight included trips to the moon and Mars as well.

Some of Trump’s advisers reportedly pressed for an accelerated campaign to send astronauts on trips around the moon, and put commercial robotic landers on the moon’s surface, by 2020. One scenario even called for an “internal competition” between NASA’s traditional industrial partners and more recent market entrants such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.

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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who advised Trump during the presidential campaign, told Politico last week that “a good part of the Trump administration would like a lot more aggressive, risk-taking, competitive entrepreneurial approach to space.”

NASA’s Lightfoot addressed the debate in a memo he sent to the space agency’s employees today.

“There has been a lot of speculation in the public discourse about NASA being pulled in two directions – what has come before and what we want to do now,” he said in the memo, as reported by NASA Watch. “At NASA, this is an ‘and’ proposition, not an ‘or.’ … We must work with everyone to secure our leadership in space – and we will.”

Trump hasn’t yet nominated an administrator for NASA. Lightfoot is serving in a caretaker role – but he is regarded as one of the prospects for the official appointment, along with U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla.

Speeding up the schedule for sending astronauts beyond Earth orbit carries significant risks. It would be highly unusual for humans to get on board for the first test launch of a new type of rocket. Contractors would have to shorten their time frame for testing the hardware needed for crewed flight, ranging from launch abort systems to life support systems.

Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee who now runs the independent NASA Watch website, said in a posting that the schedule speed-up looked like a “Hail Mary pass” for the expensive SLS program.

“To move this rather important milestone up now in the midst of dueling and ever-shifting policy directions – for no clearly articulated reason other than politics – starts to smell like launch fever to me,” he wrote.

Source www.geekwire.com

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

07-07-2017 om 00:37 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX to send two people around the moon who paid for a 2018 private mission

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, revealed on Monday that two people have paid for a private mission around the moon, tentatively set for launch in 2018 with the private company’s yet untested Falcon Heavy rocket.

In a conference call with reporters, Musk declined to name the people or what they had paid, though he said the individuals know each other and are “very serious” about the flight. The “private citizens” approached the company late last year and will receive training and take health and fitness tests as early as this year.

Musk said the circumlunar journey would take about a week, nearing the moon’s surface without landing on it before its return to Earth. The total flight would go about 300,000 to 400,000 miles into space, he said, meaning the flight could take humans farther from Earth than ever before.

If SpaceX accomplishes the trip before Nasa or another space agency can send astronauts to the moon, it would be the first lunar mission with humans in 45 years, on a course that would extend past the record 249,000 miles traveled by the Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.

SpaceX said in a statement that the would-be passengers “have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission”, and Musk called the cost “comparable” to that of sending astronauts to the International Space Station. Nasa currently pays Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, about $70m a person to fly astronauts to the ISS.

“Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest and we expect more to follow,” the company statement read. “Additional information will be released about the flight teams, contingent upon their approval and confirmation of the health and fitness test results.”

The flight would rely on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, the massive engine that the company hopes to test for the first time this summer, and a Dragon 2 capsule. Musk said that the capsule had a “quite high” success rate for missions so far.

The passengers were “nobody from Hollywood”, Musk said.

He acknowledged that the flight would be dangerous but said the customers have “their eyes open” about what could happen. “We’re doing everything we can to minimize that risk, but it’s not zero,” Musk said.

“We would expect to do more than one mission of this nature,” he added.

While Nasa has contracted SpaceX to launch crewed missions to the International Space Station, the company has not yet flown any missions with humans. Musk said the space agency would receive priority if it decided to do another lunar mission first, and that the private trip would need a license from the Federal Aviation Administration. Nasa’s acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, has said that the agency is reviewing a possible return to the moon or a flight into deep space beyond it.

The company will test its Crew Dragon spacecraft without humans on board later this mission and is scheduled to fly a crewed mission to the space station in 2018.

In its 15-year history, SpaceX and its founder have accrued a steady record of ambitious goals and blown deadlines. In 2011, Musk said that SpaceX would “be ready to fly its first manned mission in 2014”. That same year, he told the Wall Street Journal that he hoped to take humans to Mars by 2021 in a “best case” scenario, an estimate that he pushed back to 2024 last year. And though SpaceX has launched and landed eight reusable rockets, it has also suffered setbacks of failed landings and last year’s launchpad explosion that destroyed the expensive rocket and its satellite payload.

Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office warned of safety concerns in a review of SpaceX’s rockets and plans, suggesting that there are more delays ahead. The report noted that both SpaceX and another private contractor, United Launch Alliance, have consistently failed to meet deadlines.

Musk remained optimistic on the call, saying, “Next year is going to be the big year for carrying people.”

In a statement, Nasa said it “commends its industry partners for reaching higher”.

“We will work closely with SpaceX to ensure it safely meets the contractual obligations to return the launch of astronauts to US soil and continue to successfully deliver supplies to the International Space Station,” the agency said.

The company currently flies cargo missions to the ISS in a Dragon capsule, and successfully launched and landed its eighth reusable Falcon 9 rocket, part of a fleet that Musk hopes will help usher in an era of easier, relatively cheap space travel.

In its statement, SpaceX said that Nasa has encouraged privately crewed missions, saying that through them “long-term costs to the government decline and more flight reliability history is gained, benefiting both government and private missions”.

Only after crewed missions have begun for Nasa, SpaceX said, will the company launch its mission around the moon, from the Cape Canaveral launchpad used by the Apollo program. “This presents an opportunity for humans to return to deep space for the first time in 45 years and they will travel faster and further into the Solar System than any before them,” the company said.

Rival spaceflight company Blue Origins, headed by the Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, has also announced plans to eventually take people and cargo to low Earth orbit with its own reusable rockets. In 2001, billionaire Dennis Tito became the world’s first space tourist for an estimated $20m, booking a trip on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station, and about half a dozen others followed him into orbit.

Source www.theguardian.com

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

07-07-2017 om 00:29 geschreven door peter  

UFO shot down by Military before they were attacked and killed by the surviving aliens!!

{ http://www.awdnews.com/ }

07-07-2017 om 00:13 geschreven door peter  

Mars More Toxic to Life Than Previously Thought

Mount Sharp on Mars, as imaged by the Curiosity rover. 

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Life on Mars … does it exist? Depending on when you last checked in with news about the Red Planet, you could probably be convinced either way. As we discover more and more about the composition and planetary dynamics of Mars, there has been cause for both elation and disappointment regarding the likelihood that organic life could manage to eke out a living on the planet.

The pendulum swung back toward the “no” side today with the release of a study examining how a special kind of salt on Mars interacts with ultraviolet radiation there. Martian soil is laced with perchlorates, an ion composed of one chlorine and four oxygen atoms, and which binds to a number of different elements to form various compounds. It’s classified as a salt, and was initially cause for celebration among extraterrestrial hopefuls because it drastically lowers the freezing point of water, meaning that liquid H20 might conceivably exist on the surface. It can also be used to produce rocket fuel and oxygen, another plus for future settlers.

Salt of the Mars

It turns out that these perchlorates are actually highly toxic to life when bathed in UV radiation that pummels Mars. Researchers from the United Kingdom Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh exposed a strain of bacteria commonly found on spacecraft to levels of perchlorates and UV light found on the Red Planet and found that nearly all of them were dead within a minute. They tried this with several different kinds of perchlorate, and found similar results every time. Adding in additional environmental factors found on Mars like low temperatures, additional minerals found on Mars and a lack of oxygen also failed to keep the bacteria alive.

This was a bit surprising for the researchers because the strain of bacteria used, Bacillus subtilis, belongs to a genus that actually does fine in the presence of perchlorates, as studies of the microbes in terrestrial environments have confirmed. These findings were initially good news for researchers looking for extraterrestrial life, as they suggested that some forms of life could survive in Martian analogue conditions.

It Takes More Than Salt

There’s more to Mars than just the soil though, and when the Edinburgh researchers added in a few more Mars-like factors — UV specifically — the bacteria died in short order. They think this happens because the UV light breaks apart the perchlorate molecules into more reactive ions that wreak havoc on living cells. This hypothesis was backed up by the observation that low temperatures, which slow down chemical reactions, extended the lifespan of the bacteria in the perchlorates but still resulted in them dying. If they can’t survive there, it significantly lowers our chances of finding life on Mars — life that looks similar to organisms on Earth at least. The researchers published their findings Thursday in Nature Scientific Reports.

While it’s a blow to the possibility of finding life on Mars, there is at least one upside to the news: NASA regularly worries about the possibility of contaminating other planets with Earthly bacteria, even going so far as to crash probes into Saturn so that they don’t hit the planet’s moons. If Mars is so hostile to bacteria that they can’t even make it a minute on the surface, our fears of contamination could be pretty much resolved.

{http://discovermagazine.com/ }

06-07-2017 om 23:59 geschreven door peter  

What was this UFO above Gloucester?

What on Earth is it?

BY TOM GIBBON, BEN FALCONER

Just what on Earth - or perhaps Mars or Jupiter - is this?

This apparently intergalactic lightshow was filmed above Gloucester.

The mysterious orb was first spotted by Rob Wheatman in Elmbridge in March and he had a powerful enough camera to zoom right in on it.

Rob said: "I saw it as a sparkling 'star' from the garden in Elmbridge, due south. What alerted me was an orange light that came from it and travelled at speed north east.

"I grabbed my video and luckily it has a 40x zoom and that's when I got the images of the bizarre light you saw."

Another video was taken showing a 'UFO' in the skies above Gloucestershire at around the same time.

It was taken by Ryan Gribbon in Hucclecote.

It is the second video showing strange lights in the sky above the city.

We don't know what the lights are, but we are sure you, our readers, have a lot of suggestions.

You can let us know at citizen.news@glosmedia.co.uk

{ http://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/ }

06-07-2017 om 23:54 geschreven door peter  

Second UFO sighting reported over the Sooke Basin

Sooke resident Ethan Dunn spots a shiny flying object in the sky

Another UFO sighting has been reported in Sooke.

Ethan Dunn, 10, spotted the unfamiliar object from his house floating high in the sky over the Sooke Basin while he was eating dinner last week.

Taken on the morning of June 4 by a resident in Hope of a “strange blurry object.” (ufosnw.com)

“It almost looked like a dinner plate,” Dunn said. “It was shiny and silver and flying much higher than a plane would go.”

Two weeks ago Sooke resident Ann Talbot reported a similar object near the same location.

“I didn’t know what it could be, it was interesting. I didn’t think it was a meteorite, because it would have had a trail. I couldn’t hear a thing, no buzzing, no whooshing sound, nothing,” Talbot said.

Talbot also described the UFO to be bright and perfectly round. Both Sooke residents said the object floated higher than a drone would be able to, and moved faster than a plane could cross the sky.

“I saw it and wondered if it correlates to what other people had seen,” Dunn said. “It looked much larger than a drone so I don’t think it could have been that.”

He described the UFO to be “fairly large” but found it hard to compare to anything because it was too far away.

Dunn said the object stayed in sight for around 10 seconds before he lost sight of it.

“It was like it vanished into thin air,” he said. “One second it was there and the next it had disappeared.”

One thing’s certain, whatever the objects may have been, they weren’t military, said Greg Menzies, a media spokesperson at CFB Esquimalt.

“We have no drones flying around, and we don’t participate in exercises in the Sooke Basin.”

{ http://www.sookenewsmirror.com/ }

06-07-2017 om 23:44 geschreven door peter  

15,000 UFO ENTHUSIASTS SPACE OUT HARD IN ROSWELL

ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO, is a fine city that boasts a small museum, a picturesque state park, a gorgeous wildlife refuge, and all kinds of shopping. Not that it mattered to the 15,000 or so people who visited last weekend. All they cared about were aliens.

It's been that way since 1947, when a rancher named William Brazel stumbled upon some strange debris in the desert 30 miles north of town. The US Army Air Force declared it the wreckage of a flying saucer, but upon closer inspection said, no, wait, it's a weather balloon.

Too late. The legend was born. For 70 years now, people have believed ET landed in this corner of southeastern New Mexico. That's prompted no end of conspiracy theories and outlandish stories, not to mention a thriving business in UFO-themed gift shops, museums, and restaurants.

And, of course, the four-day UFO festival. True believers came from as far away as Vermont for last weekend's 22nd annual extraterrestrial extravaganza, and WIRED sent Angie Smith to take it all in. “Everywhere you looked you saw neon green,” she says.

Alien aficionados roamed Main Street, gobbling delectable desserts called Martian turds, buying kitschy alien eggs and other mementoes, and generally getting more than a little out there. A woman decked out in glittery blue paint with pipe cleaner "antennae" in her hair told Smith she attended the festival to “lift everyone’s vibrations.”

The truly inquisitive listened to experts hold forth during panels addressing topics like “Are Aliens Demons? Evidences That Suggest ‘Yes’” and "Why Defending UFOs with the Bible is a Bad Idea.” Afterward they lined up for pictures with UFOlogists like Travis Walton, who claims he spent five days with aliens in 1975, an experience that inspired the 1993 film Fire in the Sky (call him weird, but more than half of all Americans believe in aliens).

You don't have to believe in aliens to appreciate the playful, bizarre spirit of the event captured in Smith’s photos. “It’s fun and fascinating," she says, "whether or not you believe in it." Should aliens ever truly land in Roswell, they'll have a lot to live up to.

Tourists snap a selfie in front os a UFO sculpture just outside Roswell, New Mexico  

Angie Smith for WIRED

An attendee poses for a portret with Travis Walton, who claims to be abducted bybAliens in 1975. 

Angie Smith for WIRED

{ https://www.wired.com/ }

06-07-2017 om 23:38 geschreven door peter  

5 Intriguing Documentaries about Aliens

James Fox is back, and this time he brought an army (or air force). The maker of Out of the Blue, who incorporated some of that documentary into this one, organized a 2007 forum at the National Press Club, bringing in government and military officials from several countries to offer personal testimony supporting the theory of alien life and high-level coverups. Their accounts, which form the bulk of this film, are left to stand on their own merits—or, more accurately, on the merits of the speakers’ credibility. That said, some are pretty far out, but they’re worth a listen for entertainment value alone. —Allison Gorman

4. The Day Before Disclosure (2010)

The Day Before Disclosure puts forth the idea that decades of flying saucer sightings by pilots, military personnel and ordinary citizens, plus supposed evidence of alien life on Earth going back thousands of years or more, are finally coming to a head. Through video footage of UFOs and interviews with eyewitnesses, including some who claim to have been abducted by aliens, Norwegian filmmaker Terje Toftenes asserts that the U.S. and other governments have been suppressing what they know about extraterrestrials—but with much of that information now publically available, their secret won’t be safe for long. —Allison Gorman

5. Mirage Men (2013)

A British documentary based on Mark Pilkington’s book by the same name, Mirage Men takes the standard conspiracy theory about extraterrestrials and doubles it back on itself. Rather than asserting that the government has been trying to cover up evidence of alien life, it sets out to prove that the U.S. Air force and intelligence services have been pushing ET/UFO mythology—“weapons of mass deception”—to make believers look crazy, and to deflect attention from its own high-tech doings. Maybe it’s all hooey, but in our new world of alternative facts, this four-year-old film suddenly seems rather timely. —Allison Gorman

{https://www.pastemagazine.com/ }

06-07-2017 om 21:41 geschreven door peter  

5 Movie Aliens That Probably Inspired Prey's Monsters

Prey and the Pantheon of Sci-Fi Monsters

06-07-2017 om 21:25 geschreven door peter  

The "Niagara Falls Of Mars" Were Made Of Lava Not Water

Those long streaks are actually "frozen waterfalls of lava streaming into a crater.

NASA

Hawaii’s Kilauea is the most active volcano in the world. Erupting continuously since 1983, it has created a cornucopia of beautiful alien features, from overflowing lava lakes and waterfalls to anastomosing rivers of lava at the surface and the dragon-like lava tubes snaking through the ground beneath them.

Once upon a time, Mars was a lot like Kilauea – a volcanic landscape with a grand mosaic of strange hellish features. Now, thanks to a new series of NASA images, scientists think that they’ve spotted some ancient lava waterfalls draped across the surface of the Red Planet.

Unlike Kilauea, Mars is no longer volcanically active, so these waterfalls aren’t fresh ones. Rather, they’re frozen monuments to an age of fire long past – and they’re huge.

Snapped by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), these lava drapes are spread out across the rims of a volcanic crater 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) across. So how did they form?

This crater, found in the once highly active Tharsis region, initially looks like it could have contained a lava lake similar to the one at the heart of Kilauea: a bubbling mass of molten rock that is continually churning, listing, rising, and falling.

When the hotspot beneath lava lakes manages to melt more of the upper crust than usual, the lava lake sometimes rises up to such a height that it overflows and cascades down the crater rim. This can be seen on a semi-regular basis on Hawaii, and perhaps the same phenomenon happened on Mars.

However, in this case, the lava is doing something weird. It’s actually coming from outside the crater and surrounding it. At some point, the lava flow was so extensive that it ran up the crater slopes and cascaded down into it.

As the lava breached the crater rim, it encountered a series of rocky “steps” created by previous periodic eruptive episodes. This meant that the lava flow you can see here essentially moved down a volcanic staircase, a bit like pouring fresh glaze over a multi-tiered cake. Its extent has earned this aesthetically pleasing feature a new moniker by NASA – the “Niagara Falls of Mars”.

Although active for billions of years, the heat sources at the heart of Mars – its primordial heat left over from its formation and the heat released by radioactive elements – were extinguished, and these huge lava flows were no more. It’s a shame, really, because Mars once had some seriously cool volcanoes.

Its lack of plate tectonics meant that its gigantic hotspots produced the most massive volcanoes in the Solar System, and there was once an eruption so extensive that it caused the planet to tip over on its axis by 20°.

{ http://www.iflscience.com/ }

06-07-2017 om 20:48 geschreven door peter  

Strange 'dome' and 'pyramid' spotted on Mars, say alien hunters

The 'dome' and 'pyramid' features on the surface of Mars (Google Earth/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, G. Neukum)

{ http://www.foxnews.com/index.html }

06-07-2017 om 20:32 geschreven door peter  

Have alien-hunters discovered an ancient pyramid on Mars? Anomalies spotted on red planet

A YouTube user known as ArtAlienTV posted a video online showing what he called "anomalies" on NASA satellite images of the surface of the planet.

BY RACHEL O'DONOGHUE

Alien-hunters claim they have found what appears to be a pyramid and bizarre dome structure on Mars.

A YouTube user known as ArtAlienTV posted a video online showing what he called "anomalies" on NASA satellite images of the surface of the planet.

Explaining the dome, the conspiracist claims they look "artificial" and says he has not enhanced the images in an way.

"We have a clear 50 foot dome or sphere in a Mars Crater with large pipes coming out of it on the left. Also, a triangular pyramid shaped structure about 500 feet away from it that is 120 ft wide," he wrote.

According to ArtAlienTV, the find was made by fellow alien-hunter William Benton.

He added: "These features look artificial in nature and are clearly visible on Google Mars with no enhancements.

"The structures are between the Mawrth Vallis region and Oyama Crater in an area that was short listed for a Mars Rover to explore for possible signs of life before Gale Crater was eventually chosen.

"It is not hard to find."

But claims by so-called "truth-seekers" searching for evidence of extraterrestrials on Mars is nothing new.

In March, netizens scouring pictures from NASA's Curiosity rover uncovered what they claimed were "alien bones".

The rover is currently exploring the rocky surface of the distant planet and makes all its images free to view in the public domain.

A pair of shots caught the interest of the alien-hunting community after appearing to show decaying bones lying in Mars' red dust.

Although NASA has growing ambitions to visit the red planet in the near future, it is certain there is no longer any intelligent life left on the planet.

{ http://www.mirror.co.uk/ }

06-07-2017 om 20:25 geschreven door peter  

RED ALERT! High-speed alien fugitives are invading our Milky Way

Turbo-charged solar runaways escape home galaxies, scream through our cosmic backwater

By Katyanna Quach 

Artist's impression of runaway stars

(Image credit: Amanda Smith, Institute of Astronomy)

Rare hypervelocity stars tearing through the Milky Way galaxy are runaway suns that have escaped neighbouring galaxies, according to research presented at this year’s National Astronomy Meeting in Hull, England.

Hypervelocity stars are travelling between 300 and 700 kilometers (186 and 435 miles) per second faster than our galaxy’s escape velocity. Only 20 cases have been confirmed so far, most of them late B‑type stars that are larger than our sun.

There has been some debate around the origin of these breakaway stars. Scientists believed a portion of them might have been lobbed from the Milky Way’s central rotational center.

But a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in March makes the argument that all the hypervelocity stars are actually foreign objects. The research was presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Hull on Wednesday.

The idea is that these ultra-fast stars were part of a binary system and escaped their original home – the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – a neighbouring satellite galaxy. A supernova explosion made the orbit between both stars unstable, and the schism caused the smaller one to be booted far away like a ball in a slingshot.

A group of researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK dug into data taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to build computer simulations of runaway stars escaping from the LMC to the Milky Way.

They started by modelling the stellar evolution of the birth and death of stars in the LMC over the past two billion years, and focused on every runaway star. The gravitational interactions between these stars were also simulated so that they could reproduce and track the trajectory of the stars. They predict that there are 10,000 runaway stars spread across the sky.

There should also be about a million runaway neutron stars or black holes, since some of the massive blue stars reach the end of their lives on their way out of the LMC. They should collapse to neutron stars or black holes that continue zipping through the Milky Way.

Only half of the simulated stars that escape the LMC are fast enough to escape the gravity of the Milky Way, making them hypervelocity stars. If the confirmed hypervelocity stars are runaways, it would also explain their position in the sky.

'Hypervelocity stars did not satisfy me'

“Earlier explanations for the origin of hypervelocity stars did not satisfy me,” said Douglas Boubert, lead author of the paper and a PhD student at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.

“The hypervelocity stars are mostly found in the Leo and Sextans constellations – we wondered why that is the case.”

The closer stars in a binary system are, the faster they orbit one another, and they’re more likely to reach speeds fast enough to become hypervelocity stars. Runaway stars starting out in the Milky Way are too slow to become hypervelocity stars because the blue B‑type stars can’t orbit close enough to their companion star in the binary system without merging, the researchers argue.

But fast-moving galaxies like the LMC could give rise to these swift stars. The LMC also has 10 per cent of the mass of the Milky Way, so the fastest runaways can easily escape the galaxy’s pull.

Like a bullet fired from a moving train, the speed of these escaping stars would be the velocity they were booted at plus the velocity of the LMC. This boost increases the likelihood that these stars become hypervelocity ones when they stream through the Milky Way.

“These stars have just jumped from an express train – no wonder they’re fast,” said Rob Izzard, co‑author of the paper and a Rutherford fellow at the Institute of Astronomy. “This also explains their position in the sky, because the fastest runaways are ejected along the orbit of the LMC towards the constellations of Leo and Sextans.”

“We’ll know soon enough whether we’re right,” said Boubert. “The European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite will report data on billions of stars next year, and there should be a trail of hypervelocity stars across the sky between the Leo and Sextans constellations in the North and the LMC in the South.”

Another independent group of researchers are also hoping to study hypervelocity stars by trying to find more specimens through data with the help of artificial neural networks. ®

{ https://www.theregister.co.uk/ }

06-07-2017 om 20:13 geschreven door peter