NASA wants to send humans to Venus – here’s why that’s a brilliant idea

Popular science fiction of the early 20th century depicted Venus as some kind of wonderland of pleasantly warm temperatures, forests, swamps and even dinosaurs. In 1950, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Natural History Museum were soliciting reservations for the first space tourism mission, well before the modern era of Blue Origins, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. All you had to do was supply your address and tick the box for your preferred destination, which included Venus.

Today, Venus is unlikely to be a dream destination for aspiring space tourists. As revealed by numerous missions in the last few decades, rather than being a paradise, the planet is a hellish world of infernal temperatures, a corrosive toxic atmosphere and crushing pressures at the surface. Despite this, NASA is currently working on a conceptual manned mission to Venus, named the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept – (HAVOC).

But how is such a mission even possible? Temperatures on the planet’s surface (about 460°C) are in fact hotter than Mercury, even though Venus is roughly double the distance from the sun. This is higher than the melting point of many metals including bismuth and lead, which may even fall as “snow” onto the higher mountain peaks. The surface is a barren rocky landscape consisting of vast plains of basaltic rock dotted with volcanic features, and several continent-scale mountainous regions.

It is also geologically young, having undergone catastrophic resurfacing events. Such extreme events are caused by the build up of heat below the surface, eventually causing it to melt, release heat and re-solidify. Certainly a scary prospect for any visitors.

Hovering in the atmosphere Luckily, the idea behind

NASA’s new mission is not to land people on the inhospitable surface, but to use the dense atmosphere as a base for exploration. No actual date for a HAVOC type mission has been publicly announced yet. This mission is a long term plan and will rely on small test missions to be successful first. Such a mission is actually possible, right now, with current technology. The plan is to use airships which can stay aloft in the upper atmosphere for extended periods of time.

As surprising as it may seem, the upper atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like location in the solar system. Between altitudes of 50km and 60km, the pressure and temperature can be compared to regions of the Earth’s lower atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure in the Venusian atmosphere at 55km is about half that of the pressure at sea level on Earth. In fact you would be fine without a pressure suit, as this is roughly equivalent to the air pressure you would encounter at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Nor would you need to insulate yourself as the temperature here ranges between 20°C and 30°C.

The atmosphere above this altitude is also dense enough to protect astronauts from ionising radiation from space. The closer proximity of the sun provides an even greater abundance of available solar radiation than on Earth, which can be used to generate power (approximately 1.4 times greater).

The conceptual airship would float around the planet, being blown by the wind. It could, usefully, be filled with a breathable gas mixture such as oxygen and nitrogen, providing buoyancy. This is possible because breathable air is less dense than the Venusian atmosphere and, as result, would be a lifting gas.

The Venusian atmosphere is comprised of 97% carbon dioxide, about 3% nitrogen and trace amounts of other gases. It famously contains a sprinkling of sulphuric acid which forms dense clouds and is a major contributor to its visible brightness when viewed from Earth. In fact the planet reflects some 75% of the light that falls onto it from the sun. This highly reflective cloud layer exists between 45km and 65km, with a haze of sulphuric acid droplets underneath down to about 30km. As such, an airship design would need to be resistant to the corrosive effect of this acid.

Luckily we already have the technology required to overcome the problem of acidity. Several commercially available materials, including teflon and a number of plastics, have a high acidic resistance and could be used for the outer envelope of the airship. Considering all these factors, conceivably you could go for a walk on a platform outside the airship, carrying only your air supply and wearing a chemical hazard suit.

Life on Venus?

The surface of Venus has been mapped from orbit by radar on the US Magellan mission. However, only a few locations on the surface have ever been visited, by the series of Venera missions of Soviet probes in the late 1970s. These probes returned the first – and so far only – images of the Venusian surface. Certainly surface conditions seem utterly inhospitable to any kind of life.

The upper atmosphere is a different story however. Certain kinds of extremophile organisms already exist on Earth which could withstand the conditions in the atmosphere at the altitude at which HAVOC would fly. Species such as Acidianus infernus can be found in highly acidic volcanic lakes in Iceland and Italy. Airborne microbes have also been found to exist in Earth’s clouds. None of this proves that life exists in the Venusian atmosphere, but it is a possibility that could be investigated by a mission like HAVOC.

The current climatic conditions and composition of the atmosphere are the result of a runaway greenhouse effect (an extreme greenhouse effect that cannot be reversed), which transformed the planet from a hospitable Earth-like “twin” world in its early history. While we do not currently expect Earth to undergo a similarly extreme scenario, it does demonstrate that dramatic changes to a planetary climate can happen when certain physical conditions arise.

By testing our current climate models using the extremes seen on Venus we can more accurately determine how various climate forcing effects can lead to dramatic changes. Venus therefore provides us with a means to test the extremes of our current climate modelling, with all the inherent implications for the ecological health of our own planet.

We still know relatively little about Venus, despite it being our nearest planetary neighbour. Ultimately, learning how two very similar planets can have such different pasts will help us understand the evolution of the solar system and perhaps even that of other star systems.

Attribution:The Conversation

{https://www.etupdates.com/ }

10-02-2019 om 20:42 geschreven door peter  

Chinese satellite snaps rare photo of moon's far side with Earth in the background

Eye-popping image evokes other iconic space photos, including the famous "Earthrise" portrait taken during the Apollo 8 mission.

China's LongJiang-2 satellite captured this rare view of the moon's far side, with Earth appearing tiny in the background.

CAMRAS/MingChuan Wei (HIT), CAMRAS, DK5LA

{ https://www.nbcnews.com/mach }

10-02-2019 om 20:24 geschreven door peter  

“Ditmaal gaan we om te blijven”: NASA wil terug naar maan en er permanente aanwezigheid uitbouwen - HLN.be

Bron: OZY

Bridenstine maakte de ambitieuze plannen bekend in een opiniestuk op nieuwssite OZY. Hij zegt daarin dat hij van president Donald Trump en het Amerikaanse Congres een mandaat kreeg, en roept “de beste en slimste koppen van de Amerikaanse industrie” op om te helpen bij het ontwerpen en ontwikkelen van maanlanders”.

“Als een levenslange fan van NASA ben ik verheugd opnieuw te mogen praten over de landing van mensen op de maan”, aldus Bridenstine. “Dat betekent niet dat we hetzelfde gaan doen als wat we 50 jaar geleden al deden. We gaan naar de maan met innovatieve technologieën en systemen, om meer locaties op het oppervlak te onderzoeken dan we ooit voor mogelijk hielden”, legt de NASA-baas uit.

“Meer dan twee derde van de Amerikanen waren nog niet geboren toen de zes succesvolle maanlandingen plaatsvonden, inclusief mezelf. Velen moesten erover lezen in geschiedenisboeken of verhalen horen van oudere familieleden. In tegenstelling tot de Apollo-missies gaan we ditmaal om te blijven”, aldus Bridenstine nog.

Volgens Bridenstine kan de uitbouw van de plannen volgende week al van start gaan, wanneer partners uit de industrie worden uitgenodigd op het hoofdkwartier van NASA. Bridenstine zegt ook dat de NASA al contracten heeft met negen verschillende bedrijven om vracht naar de maan te brengen.

Laatste landing in 1972

Na Neil Armstrong en Buzz Aldrin, die op 20 juli 1969 landden, zetten nog tien mensen voet op de maan. De laatste maanlanding dateert al van 1972. Op 7 december van dat jaar steeg de bemanning van Apollo 17 op voor een vlucht van 12 dagen. Astronauten Harrison Schmitt en Eugene Cernan verbleven toen drie dagen op de maan.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

10-02-2019 om 19:47 geschreven door peter  

WIJ LEVEN IN EEN BUITENAARDSE COMPUTERSIMULATIE

Het universum waarin wij leven wordt gekenmerkt door entropie, alles verliest steeds meer energie en alles gaat richting wanorde en naar een einde. 

Als we “dood” gaan komen we via een tunnel van licht terecht in een tweelingdimensie, waar alles precies omgekeerd is en alles steeds meer energie krijgt en “jonger” wordt.

Eigenlijk heeft de doorsnee mens geen flauw benul in wat voor wereld wij eigenlijk leven. 

Velen denken dat er een God is die deze wereld heeft geschapen, al dan niet in zeven dagen, en dat wij daar verder ons hoofd niet over hoeven breken, omdat dit het terrein is van hogere machten. 

Maar, natuurlijk zijn er altijd mensen die daar juist wel heel diep over nadenken en dan komen er hele verrassende zaken tevoorschijn. Wetenschappers raken er steeds meer van overtuigd dat ons universum echt niet het enige is en dat er vele parallelle universa zijn. 

Zijn deze universa dan geschapen door God of Goden of zijn het misschien buitenaardsen die ze hebben gecreëerd als een soort experiment? Een experiment waar wij, gevangen in ons 3D lichaam, deel van uit maken? 

Er zijn talloze aanwijzing dat dit inderdaad het geval is en ben je nieuwsgierig hoe zoiets dan zou werken, dan raden wij je aan om de onderstaande video te kijken, waarin Linda Moulton Howe een fascinerend verhaal vertelt over de verschillende mogelijkheden voor het type universum waarin wij leven. 

In de video komen naast verschillende theorieën ook een aantal “real life” ervaringen aan bod, zoals een man die vertelt hoe hij via een deur ergens in Peru, in een andere dimensie terechtkwam. 

Het is het verhaal van Jerry Wills en een plaats in Peru die ze deur van Arama Muru noemen. De lokale bevolking noemt het “de deur naar het land van de Goden en onsterfelijk leven” en via die deur kun je inderdaad in een andere dimensie terechtkomen. 

In de video het verhaal horen van Jerry Wills die er via onderstaande deur in slaagde om niet alleen in een andere dimensie terecht te komen, maar ook om weer terug te keren en met antwoorden.

Ook komt in de video het fascinerende verhaal van Paul aan bod. Een jongeman van begin 30 die in de buurt van New York woont en een succesvol eigen bedrijf heeft. Na het vieren van 32e verjaardag met zijn ouders en zuster met haar man, rijdt het gezelschap ’s avonds net buiten New York als ze een aantal vreemde lichten aan de hemel ontdekken. 

Paul voelt op een gegeven hoe hij uit zijn lichaam treedt en als het ware wordt geteleporteerd naar het ruimteschip wat daar hangt, terwijl zijn fysieke lichaam op de stoel in de auto blijft. 

Alhoewel doodsbang, krijgt Paul daar een aantal fascinerende feiten te horen van de Gray Aliens die hem hebben ontvoerd. Te horen is eigenlijk niet het goede woord, want alle berichten worden telepathisch doorgegeven. 

Een Gray Alien laat hem een 3D scherm zien en wijst hem op een groep van 10 universa, gekoppeld in vijf paren van twee en vertelt hem dat hij, Paul, afkomstig is uit één van die 10 universa. 

Ons universum is gekoppeld aan een ander universum, eentje waar alles precies omgekeerd is ten opzichte van bij ons. Wanneer wij biologisch/fysiek doodgaan, komen we via een tunnel in dat andere universum terecht (redactie: is de deur in Peru een van die tunnels?). De Grays lieten Paul via dat 3D scherm zien hoe het eruit zag in dat universum dat is gekoppeld aan het onze en waar we allemaal ooit naartoe zullen gaan. 

Hij zag een witte hemel met zwarte sterren en andere hemellichamen en kleuren die hij niet kende, maar die er fantastisch mooi uit zagen. 

Waar in ons universum de energie steeds minder wordt en uiteindelijk alles kapotgaat, breekt en waar alles chaos wordt, zo is het daar precies andersom. In plaats van steeds minder krijg je steeds meer energie, in plaats van ouder wordt je steeds jonger en er gaat nooit iets kapot. Dit gaat door tot het moment dat je weer klaar bent om weer geboren te worden in dit universum en dan begint alles weer af te lopen. (redactie: in die zin leven we dus, zoals sommigen het noemen, inderdaad in een matrix gevangenis)

Wie nu de grote architect(en) is/zijn zijn achter dit alles is niet duidelijk. Eerder hebben wij al een artikel geschreven over hoe God misschien een IT specialist was die zijn eigen wereld heeft geprogrammeerd waar wij in rond lopen. De entiteit die wij God noemen lijkt in ieder geval degene te zijn die dit allemaal geprogrammeerd heeft. Op z'n minst knap te noemen en sadistisch ook (vinden wij).

Kijk en luister naar Linda Moulton Howe die je meeneemt op een fascinerende reis. Het is een video waar je je aandacht goed bij moet houden om het te kunnen volgen.

{ http://niburu.co/ }

10-02-2019 om 19:09 geschreven door peter  

One of the most beloved yet puzzling books everyone reads in high school English class is The Little Prince by French writer, poet and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The little prince with the golden hair came from the house-sized asteroid “B 612” where he tended to plants and three tiny volcanoes. While English teachers focus on the puzzling ending and force students to write endless essays on whether the Little Prince survived or died, science and astronomy teachers should have borrowed the book on the day they discussed gravity and asked their students to determine what would really have happened to the Little Prince on his little asteroid – would he have lived or floated off into space. Researchers planning to mine asteroids for the expected treasure troves of rare and precious minerals it’s believed they hold (the plot for thriller movies rather than English class novels) have the answer, which is why (spoiler alert) they’re planning to build a space station INSIDE an asteroid.

“In this study we present how to estimate the necessary spin rate assuming a cylindrical space station inside a mined asteroid and discuss the implications arising from substantial material stress given the required rotation rate. We estimate the required material strength using two relatively simple analytical models and apply them to fictitious, yet realistic rocky near-Earth asteroids.”

Thomas Maindl, an astronomer at the University of Vienna, led the study which was published but not yet peer-reviewed in arXiv. The need for an internal rather than surface asteroid station stems from the ideas that asteroids have insufficient gravity to hold a mining station and even if one did, the lack of an atmosphere and magnetic field would expose workers to deadly radiation. The math behind the proposal certainly makes it feasible – Maindl estimates that a solid stone asteroid at least a few hundred meters in diameter rotating at a very fast rate of one to three times per minute would create sufficient sub-surface gravity to allow miners and mining tools to safely hammer out minerals in a gravity similar to Mars or about one-third that of Earth. The asteroid would need to be larger than the Little Prince’s house-sixed B 612 to keep it together as the space for the station was drilled out and the severe hammering caused asteroid-quakes far stronger than B 612’s little volcanic eruptions.

The proposal makes sense but, as David Letterman liked to ask, will it float?

“The border between science and science fiction here is sort of blurry.”

That’s not exactly a vote of confidence, Dr Maindl. Spacecrafts that have landed on asteroids to date are often tiny rovers designed for bouncing in extremely low gravity. That’s how Osiris-Rex is expected to pick up rocks and dust on Bennu later this year before returning to Earth. But that’s not the kind of mining the greedy minds of industry have in mind as they learn more about the mineral riches many asteroids hold. While Maindl estimates that it could be decades before a mission to build a space mining operation inside an asteroid takes place. Big business will no doubt push for much sooner. Who needs space hotels when there’s gold and diamonds to be dug up?

What would the Little Prince say?

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

10-02-2019 om 18:11 geschreven door peter  

Numerous eyewitnesses in Flintshire county, Wales reported seeing a strange blue flash on the morning of Thursday, February 7. Welsh social media channels were inundated with posts and pictures of the event taken from dash cameras and cellphones along with a wide range of speculation about what could have caused the event. While industrial causes are suspected, some Flintshire residents aren’t so sure.

The flash occurred around 6:30 am and momentarily lit up a large portion of the early morning sky with a mysterious blue glow. A police officer based in Hawarden, Flintshire caught the glow on his cash cam, posting it to Twitter. As speculation began to veer into the “ALIENS!” direction, a spokesperson for the Hawarden Police helicopter team suggested the anomalous flash could have been the result of ball lightning.

Ball lightning is one of the most mysterious natural phenomena reported throughout history.

WHAT CAUSES BALL LIGHTNING? 

Researchers from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, have proposed that the bright glow of lightning balls is created when microwaves become trapped inside a plasma bubble.

'At the tip of a lightning stroke reaching the ground, a relativistic electron bunch can be produced, which in turn excites intense microwave radiation,' the scientists said in a research paper published in Scientific Reports.

'The latter ionizes the local air and the radiation pressure evacuates the resulting plasma, forming a spherical plasma bubble that stably traps the radiation.'

Microwaves trapped inside the continue to generate plasma for a moments to maintain the bright flashes seen during ball lightning, they added.

The fireball eventually fades away as the radiation held within the bubble starts to dissipate - and when microwaves leak out, the lightning balls can dramatically explode.

Ball lightning is a little understood atmospheric electrical phenomenon often cited as an explanation for UFO or ghost sightings. There have been hundreds of eyewitness accounts and anecdotal reports over the centuries of fast-moving, luminous balls of electricity travelling along electrical conduits, down the sails of ships, running along the ground, in submarines or airplane cockpits, or even flying straight through people’s houses with no explanation. Ball lightning has even been reported to explode and leave behind a sulfur smell. Ball lightning is suspected to be behind the reports of “foo fighters” pilots witnessed during World War II.

“Sacré bleu! Un globe de feu!”

While the blue flash in Wales very well could have been caused by ball lightning, it would have had to have been a very large occurrence in order to light up such a large area of the early morning sky. According to local news reports, a high-voltage power line was severed by a fallen tree not far from where most of the reports of the blue flash came in. There are many accounts of ball lightning occurring in the vicinity of electrical infrastructure, so it may be that the two events are related. Unfortunately, most instances of ball lightning only last for a few seconds and rarely leave behind any physical evidence. Was this blue flash merely an electrical explosion due to a fallen line, or could it have indeed been one of the rarest natural phenomena on Earth? This one will likely remain a mystery.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

10-02-2019 om 18:04 geschreven door peter  

Late in 2018, a series of anomalies appeared on weather radar systems over the US states of Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Florida, and Indiana. The anomalies were eventually blamed on a new experimental type of chaff, an aircraft countermeasure designed to mask aircraft activity over a given area and generally confuse enemy radar systems.

While that explanation may have been sufficient for that week’s news cycle, many aviation experts noted that chaff usually doesn’t linger in place as these mysterious clouds seemed to. Were these anomalies indeed the product of chaff testing, or was military activity merely a convenient scapegoat as has been alleged in many other anomalies aerial phenomena?

A pair of B-1B Lancers deploy chaff and flares during a military exercise.

The mystery deepened this week as similar radar anomalies were reported in Australia and again blamed on chaff. Many Sydney residents were startled when they saw weather radar displaying what appeared to be ominous rain clouds heading their way when a glance outside revealed crystal blue skies. Australian Broadcasting Corporation meteorologist Graham Creed quickly explained the radar anomaly on social media, stating that like in the American radar anomalies, this was the product of chaff:

It’s the Williamtown RAAF base and they’re putting what’s known as chaff in the atmosphere. The idea of it is that it hides what they’re doing underneath it. They’re doing manoeuvres with their aircraft. They drop this chaff and it spreads out and then it creates an echo so you can’t see individual movements.

The Williamtown RAAF base and Australian Department of Defence were contacted by the ABC but did not comment on the anomaly. What was the RAAF hiding, and from whom?

Chaff canisters

Like in the case of last year’s radar anomalies in America, I’m left to wonder why experimental aircraft technology would be tested near densely populated areas where weather radar systems are so common. If you wanted to hide experimental aircraft tests, why not do it somewhere more secretive? Or was that the point: to determine how well civilian radar systems can be fooled? To what end?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

10-02-2019 om 17:53 geschreven door peter  

Long Dark UFO Seen Over California Hills Two Day Ago, Feb 8, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Feb 8, 2019
Location of sighting: Lampoc, California, USA
Source: MUFON

This cigar shaped UFO was seen a few days ago over Lampoc, California hills. The UFO is very close to Vandanburg Air Force Base, so this could be a military craft or even a blimp. From this distance its really hard to tell, but if we use what we see...the details...then it tells us what its not. You see, the object is flying over the hill top and as you see there is a tall power line pole, not the usual pole, but the giant size all steel type...and this flying object is below the electical wire level and would have been insane for any blimp pilot to fly into those wires. So...its not a blimp. UFOs however are often seen above mountain ridges like this and also often seen along electrical and phone power lines...like this. So, I would conclude it really is a UFO...an unidentified flying object. But we need close up video of this craft from a different angle to be 100% sure. 
Scott C. Waring

Eyewitness states: 

Witness large object hovering and then moving along the horizon above a mountain or hill.

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

10-02-2019 om 17:30 geschreven door peter  

Ancient Jar Found On Earth Moon At The Feet Of Buzz Aldrin In NASA Photo, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Feb 10, 2019

Location of discovery: Earths moon, Apollo 11 mission.

Source photo: 

• https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5964HR.jpg

 I was checking out the NASA Apollo 11 archives when I noticed a jar shaped object in a few photos. Four or five photos contained this object. The artefact is an ancient jar of unknown origins at the feet of Buzz Aldrin. The ancient jar is very similar to the ancient Aztec jar in the photo next to it.  The shape and the size would be almost equal, but the age of the jar on the moon seems to be in the tens of thousands of years. The astronaut even stepped on it, but the tread marks on his boots made no impression on it due to the jars hardness. 

 

I believe we are opening up an entirely new era of archeology. An era of scientists that will search for, discover and record ancient alien artefacts off world, on moons and planets in our own solar system.

Scott C. Waring

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

10-02-2019 om 17:21 geschreven door peter  

{ https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

10-02-2019 om 01:17 geschreven door peter  

The Milky Way showing off.

Paul Stewart

Sometimes it might seem like life on Earth has taken a few bizarre twists and turns in the last few years, but if it helps you feel better, it’s not just us. In reality, the entire galaxy is bent out of shape—literally. Astronomers have created a new 3D map of the Milky Way galaxy, and in a new paper published in Nature Astronomy, illustrate that the galaxy as a whole has a warped structure, progressively twisting out into a spiral.

This isn’t exactly the biggest surprise. For decades, astronomers have observed a twisting pattern of hydrogen gas out in the far reaches of the galaxy. But since that gas layer extends so far out, it was never really clear whether individual stellar bodies in the galaxy were exhibiting the same kind of warping, and whether there was a consistent warp throughout the Milky Way.

This new 3D map wasn’t even intended to trace the galaxy’s warp. “Most science is serendipitous,” says Richard de Grijs, an astronomer based at Macquarie University in Sydney, and a coauthor of the new study. It was his former graduate student, lead author Xiaodian Chen, now at the National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences, who had previously compiled a large collection of observations of over 50,000 stars in the galaxy, particularly in infrared. Chen decided to use observations of the Cepheids—a class of young, bright, pulsating stars—to attempt to outline the shape of the Milky Way.

The Cepheids are particularly useful for any astronomical investigation requiring you to trace distance through outer space. They show period changes in brightness over time, and measuring the cycles in those brightness can basically tell you the distance between two points down to an incredibly accurate scale. And since dust and gas doesn’t absorb much of the light on longer wavelengths, astronomers use infrared to look at those cycles.

Ultimately, the team ended up with 1,339 Cepheid observations made with NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, covering most of the Milky Way. “We knew their positions in the sky, and their distances—that means you have a three-dimensional distribution,” says de Grijs. “By simply plotting that with respect to the distance of the sun, we could see the shape of the Milky Way as constrained by the Cepheids.”

Because we don’t have a telescope sitting outside of the Milky Way, we have to figure out its shape from inside of itself; de Grijs and team analogizes this method as being akin to trying to figure out the shape of Australia from a garden in Sydney, or the shape of China from a park in Beijing. It’s much easier to determine the shape of almost anything if you can look at it from the outside.

Typically, the warped shape of a galaxy is caused by instabilities on the disk’s edge, where the galaxy’s gravitational forces are weaker and objects are more prone to bending and twisting. It’s a common phenomenon for spiral galaxies.

And while the warping of the galaxy isn’t a new revelation, Elena D’Onghia, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved with the study, thinks it’s interesting how the team took advantage of the Cepheids in creating the new galactic map that can characterize the warp at a rather high accuracy.

D’Onghia does note, however, that the origin of the warp still needs a more detailed explanation, especially since the hydrogen gas still seems to twist more rigorously then the stars do. “It could be due to torques exerted by a large satellite galaxy like the Large Magellanic Cloud, or the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy that impacted the Milky Way disk not long ago,” she says. “It could be by torques exerted by the inner disk, as the authors claim. [They] do not really explore the different ways to generate the warp as compared to the data.”

Still, there are some larger astronomical questions the findings ought to help resolve, especially when it comes to dark matter. About 85 percent of the universe is thought to be made of dark matter. We can’t directly observe it, but its presence is implied because it gravitationally affects the movements of other celestial structures whirring around through outer space. “We know we need it to explain the motions of the stars in the Milky Way,” says de Grijs. Understanding the shape of the Milky Way means we can get a better handle on where that dark matter is located in the galaxy.

The findings also ought to help the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which is tasked with making observations of approximately one billion astronomical objects (about one percent of the Milky Way galaxy). The new map could give the Gaia project a benchmark with which to compare measurements as they come in.

And let’s not forget that Chen’s catalog of 50,000 is ripe for more thorough analysis to unveil more mysteries of the Milky Way. “There’s a lot more we can do with this and continue to explore what’s in the data,” says de Grijs.

{ https://www.popsci.com/ }

10-02-2019 om 01:05 geschreven door peter  

The truth is out there! Scientist who investigated UFOs for 20 years for the government coined the phrase Close Encounters of the Third Kind - and had a cameo in Spielberg’s hit film - turned from skeptic to believer, inspiring a new TV show

• In the late 1940s, reports of 'flying saucers' flooded in from throughout the U.S.
• In 1948, the air force was tasked with looking into the reports to calm the public
• They brought on accomplished astronomer Dr J. Allen Hynek, who for nearly 20 years looked into the UFO reports and called for them to be scientifically studied
• Hynek initially thought the sightings were a fad but eventually changed his mind 
• He coined the phrase ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' had a cameo in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 hit movie, and later said he saw UFOs on two occasions 
• A new scripted TV show, 'Project Blue Book,' takes a fictionalized look at his life 

By DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Forty-five years before the catchphrase, The Truth is Out There, was on the tip of many tongues, a man searched for scientific explanations for the inexplicable lights and objects that streaked and whizzed and zoomed across the night sky.

Dr J. Allen Hynek was no Fox Mulder but rather the real deal: an accomplished astronomer the United States government tasked to help figure out what was happening in the skies after World War II.

Dr J. Allen Hyenk, pictured, was an accomplished astronomer who consulted for years on the U.S. Air Force's project to investigate UFO reports. In the late 1940s, reports flooded in from around the country

In the late 1940s, ‘flying saucer’ reports flooded in from across the country and the air force had no idea what to do with them. Hynek, a professor, was asked to consult for the air force’s Project Sign, which was to investigate them.

Initially, the man of science pegged the sightings as a fad, a manifestation of a country suffering from the aftereffects of the war and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But as the unidentified flying object reports continued unabated, Hynek went from labeling them ‘sheer nonsense’ to calling for the phenomenon to be scientifically studied to declaring that he saw UFOs twice. In the process, he satisfied neither side of the UFO debate.

An encouraging father of five children, Hynek would become a celebrity of sorts, found the Center for UFO Studies, write several books, and coin the phrase ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ complete with a cameo in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 hit movie of the same name.

‘He was this very straight-laced, by-the-book scientist and astronomer who, you know, only believed what he could see,’ Mark O’Connell, author of ‘The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs,’ told DailyMail.com.

A new scripted TV series, ‘Project Blue Book,’ on HISTORY takes a fictionalized look at Hynek, his life, his investigations into UFOs during the early 1950s, a time period gripped by the Cold War and nuclear war fears, and the question that we are still wrestling with today: are we alone in the universe.

When Dr J. Allen Hynek, pictured, first heard about 'flying saucers' in 1948, he said he thought 'they were sheer nonsense, as any scientist would have.’ That year, the U.S. Air Force started Project Sign, which was to investigate the unidentified flying object reports that were coming in from around the country, according to Mark O’Connell's book ‘The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs.' Above, Hynek is at a press conference in 1966 where he said the flying saucer looked more like a 'chicken feeder'

At first, Dr J. Allen Hynek thought the sightings, which started pouring in during the late 1940s, were a fad. He thought they were a nervous public reaction to Pearl Harbor coupled with what was then a current worry about Soviet bombers attacking the United States, Mark O’Connell, author of ‘The Close Encounters Man,' told DailyMail.com. But Hynek started to change his mind after the reports continued unabated. Above, a newspaper clipping from 1947 about a 'mysterious object' that crashed near Roswell, New Mexico that the U.S. Air Force said was a weather balloon

Hynek, a professor, looked through unidentified flying object reports for the U.S. Air Force in 1948 and 1949, and then went back to teaching and ‘and kind of forgot about it,’ author O’Connell told DailyMail.com. But around two years later, the air force approached him again to consult on their UFO investigative project. ‘So he’s very surprised after a couple of years that the craze hasn’t faded away,’ O’Connell said. Above, a shot of an unidentified flying object taken in 1966

Born May 1, 1910 in Chicago, Hynek was just five days old when Halley’s Comet passed by the Earth – a celestial moment that would be repeated toward the end of his life when he died at aged 75 on April 27, 1986.

As a young boy, he battled a bout of scarlet fever, was restricted to bed for several weeks, and spent his time reading everything he could, including ‘Elements of Astronomy,’ according to O’Connell’s 2017 book.

The die was cast, and a telescope given to him at aged 10 sealed his pursuit of astronomy. In 1932, Hynek graduated with a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and married his first wife, Martha Alexander. After getting his PhD in astrophysics, he started teaching at Ohio State University in Columbus three years later.

Strange sky sightings seeped into the public consciousness during World War II when pilots described seeing unusual lights and objects on missions – dubbing them ‘foo fighters’ – around 1944. (There were other stories and tales before then, of course.) But the dam broke after a private pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold recounted that he saw nine ‘bright saucer-like objects’ race by at 1,200 miles per hour in June 1947, according to news reports at the time.

For almost 20 years, Dr J. Allen Hynek consulted for the U.S. Air Force's project to investigate UFO sightings. Afterwards, Hynek found the Center for UFO Studies and wrote several books. In his 1972 book, ‘The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry,’ Hynek detailed what he termed ‘close encounters:’ the first was a person seeing a UFO but from a distance; the second was UFOs ‘physical effect on the environment,’ such as crop circles; and the third was a person interacting ‘with beings that appear with the UFOs.’ Above, Hynek in his cameo during Steven Spielberg’s smash hit ‘Close Encounters of Third Kind,’ released in late 1977

A movie poster for ‘Close Encounters of Third Kind.' Hynek wrote director Steven Spielberg after he had heard the upcoming film and its title. Spielberg wrote the astronomer back, paid Hynek $1,000 to use his phrase and hired him as a technical advisor for the film at $500 a day, according to Mark O’Connell's book ‘The Close Encounters Man.' Hynek would have a cameo in the hit 1977 film

‘All summer long reports kept coming from every corner of the country… The trouble was there was not a soul on earth who knew what to do with them,’ O’Connell wrote.

‘”Confusion” was the watchword for the flying saucer phenomenon in those early days.’

In 1948, the government set up Project Sign, which would later be called Grudge and then Blue Book, to investigate the reports. It was headquartered at an air force base near Dayton, Ohio, which is not so far from Columbus, and O’Connell wrote that the air force ‘needed a professional astronomer to validate’ its conclusions. Enter Hynek.

By then, Hynek’s first marriage to Martha Alexander had ended in 1939 in divorce. He married Mimi Curtis in 1942, and they would stay together until his death in 1986, and have five children together – Scott, Roxane, Joel, Paul and Ross.

In his 1972 book, ‘The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry,’ Dr J. Allen Hynek detailed what he termed ‘close encounters:’ the first was a person seeing a UFO but from a distance; the second was UFOs ‘physical effect on the environment,’ such as crop circles; and the third was a person interacting ‘with beings that appear with the UFOs.’ When Hynek heard about Steven Spielberg's upcoming film and its title, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' he wrote the director, according Mark O’Connell's book ‘The Close Encounters Man.' Hynek worked as a technical advisor on the movie, which was released in late 1977, and he is seen above in front of his trailer on the set

‘Our dad is known in some circles especially now for his work with UFOs, but first and foremost he was a scientist and an astronomer. One of the things that I think that he inculcated in us was just this love of science and learning about the world,’ Paul Hynek, who worked as a consultant on the TV show with his brother Joel, told DailyMail.com.

‘Our dinner table if it was not interrupted by phone calls from people reporting UFOs and whatnot, it was about ideas.’  

Joel Hynek added: ‘One of the things my father instilled in all of us was this love of science and the idea that everyone should keep an open mind to whatever’s out there.’

Initially, Hynek buttressed the government’s findings and conclusions.

‘In 1948, when I first heard of the (flying saucers), I thought they were sheer nonsense, as any scientist would have,’ Hynek wrote, according to O’Connell’s book.

‘Most of the early reports were quite vague: “I went into the bathroom for a drink of water and looked out of the window and saw a bright light in the sky. It was moving up and down and sideways. When I looked again, it was gone.” ‘ 

Strange sky sightings seeped into the public consciousness during World War II when pilots described seeing unusual lights and objects on missions – dubbing them ‘foo fighters’ – around 1944. (There were other stories and tales before then, of course.) But the dam broke after a private pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold recounted that he saw nine ‘bright saucer-like objects’ race by at 1,200 miles per hour in June 1947, according to news reports at the time. Above, Kenneth Arnold, center, looks at a photo of an unidentified flying object in 1947. To his left is E.J. Smith, and Ralph E. Stevens is to Arnold's right

In 1947, there was a sighting near Roswell, New Mexico - an event that lingered in the public's mind. The U.S. Air Force said that what was seen was a weather balloon that crashed. The next year, the air force started Project Sign, which was to investigate the sightings, and brought on Dr J. Allen Hynek to consult. Above, the air force's Brig. General Roger M. Ramey, left, and Col. Thomas J. Dubose, right, look at the metallic fragments found by a farmer near Roswell, New Mexico

After initially dismissing the UFO sightings as 'sheer nonsense,' Dr J. Allen Hyenk, center, would change his mind about the reports. The first time Hynek consulted for the air force in 1948, author Mark O’Connell said: ‘They just plopped a pile of case reports on a desk in front of him and said please go through all of these and tell us which ones are just misidentifications of astronomical objects.’ Hynek was able to explain away 80 percent of the reports, but not the other 20 percent, but he thought that with 'enough time and resources they could probably explain away those 20 percent also,’ O’Connell said. Above, Hynek, center, in 1956

After World War II, people saw things in the sky that they couldn't explain. Dr J. Allen Hynek, who investigated the sightings with the U.S. Air Force for years, was often a source of information for the public, and took part in press conferences, such as the one above in 1966. The photograph he is holding was reportedly taken in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Hynek said the sighting was swamp gas - an explanation that did not satisfy many at the time

Hynek thought the sightings were a nervous public reaction to Pearl Harbor coupled with what was then a current worry about Soviet bombers attacking the United States, O’Connell explained.

‘So of course they’re looking up in the sky and seeing things and getting nervous about what they see if it’s something that they can’t identify and they can’t explain,’ he told DailyMail.com.

The first time Hynek consulted for the air force in 1948, O’Connell said: ‘They just plopped a pile of case reports on a desk in front of him and said please go through all of these and tell us which ones are just misidentifications of astronomical objects.’

‘And Hynek thought, okay, easy work, he went through them all. He was able to explain away about 80 percent of them and the other 20 percent didn’t really bother him. He thought with enough time and resources they could probably explain away those 20 percent also.’

In 1932, Hynek graduated with a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and married his first wife, Martha Alexander. After getting his PhD in astrophysics, he started teaching at Ohio State University in Columbus three years later. By 1948, Hynek’s first marriage to Martha Alexander had ended in 1939 in divorce. He married Mimi Curtis in 1942, and they would stay together until his death in 1986, and have five children together – Scott, Roxane, Joel, Paul and Ross. Above, a photo of the family taken at the Hynek home in Evanston, Illinois in 1960. From left, Roxane, Mimi, Joel, Dr J. Allen Hynek, who is holding the cup, and Scott

Hynek and his wife, Mimi, had five children, shown above from left, Ross, Paul, Joel, Roxane, and Scott. The photo was taken at the Hynek family cabin in Ontario, Canada in 1973. Two of Hynek's children - Paul and Joel Hynek - worked as consultants for a new scripted TV show, 'Project Blue Book,' on HISTORY, that fictionalizes their father's life in the early 1950s. Paul Hynek told DailyMail.com: ‘Our dad is known in some circles especially now for his work with UFOs, but first and foremost he was a scientist and an astronomer. One of the things that I think that he inculcated in us was just this love of science and learning about the world’

After UFO sightings persisted, Dr J. Allen Hynek, pictured, started to call for the phenomenon to be scientifically studied. His son, Joel Hynek told DailyMail.com: ‘One of the things my father instilled in all of us was this love of science and the idea that everyone should keep an open mind to whatever’s out there.’ Hynek, above, is on the set of Steven Spielberg's hit film, 'Close Encounters of The Third Kind,' which was released in late 1977

Dr J. Allen Hynek started to change his mind about unidentified flying object reports after they continued unabated. ‘For several years I was saying there was nothing to it… I thought the whole thing was a fad, a craze – and would pass from the scene as fads invariably do. Back in 1948, when I first started, I would have taken just about any bet that by 1952 the whole matter would be forgotten. It was the persistence of the phenomenon, not in the United States, but over the world, that finally grabbed my attention,’ Hynek said, according Mark O’Connell's book ‘The Close Encounters Man.' Above, two photos showing possible UFO sightings

David O'Leary, the show’s creator, said that the real Project Blue Book looked at over 12,000 UFO reports and roughly 700 of those remain unexplained. Since childhood, he has had a fascination with the question of whether humans are alone in the universe.

‘I personally don’t think that you can look at that the question honestly without examining the UFO phenomenon,’ O'Leary, who conceived of the TV show as the ‘real life X-Files set in the time of Mad Men,’ told DailyMail.com.

‘I also became fascinated with, you know, America’s very strange and mysterious history with this phenomenon and, of course one of the big big pieces of that is the fact that we really did openly investigate unidentified flying objects in our skies officially though the U.S. Air Force.’

‘The show is a piece of entertainment but my goal always was for it to also spark curiosity, towards educating people about these real life cases and about this era.’

In the show, which airs on Tuesdays at 10pm Eastern time, Hynek and Quinn crisscross the country – from Fargo, North Dakota to Flatwoods, West Virginia to Lubbock, Texas – to investigate. Each episode is based on a real case or a collection of real incidents. In the series’ second episode, the pair looks into the Flatwoods monster, where a mother and her two young children insist they saw a spaceship and an alien creature. To quell panic in the town, Hynek puts the sighting down to an owl.

It took the real Hynek longer to come around. O’Connell said that after working for the air force in 1948 and 1949, he went back to teaching ‘and kind of forgot about it.’

But around two years later, the air force approached Hynek to consult again.

‘So he’s very surprised after a couple of years that the craze hasn’t faded away,’ O’Connell said.

‘He starts looking through this new batch of UFO reports and, surprise, there are still 20 percent that he can’t explain. So for him that 20 percent consistency that was a trend, that was something that piqued his interest and he wanted to find out more. And that was when he started to change his mind about UFOs.’

Hynek started to push for UFOs to be handled scientifically.

‘For several years I was saying there was nothing to it… I thought the whole thing was a fad, a craze – and would pass from the scene as fads invariably do. Back in 1948, when I first started, I would have taken just about any bet that by 1952 the whole matter would be forgotten. It was the persistence of the phenomenon, not in the United States, but over the world, that finally grabbed my attention,’ Hynek said, according to the book.

‘… It appears, indeed, that the flying saucer along with the automobile is here to stay.’

Hynek's sons, Paul, left, and Joel, right, worked as consultants on a new scripted TV show, 'Project Blue Book,' on HISTORY, and are seen above at its premiere in January. Both told DailyMail.com that their father instilled in them a love of science and keeping an open mind. Joel said that their father was in an awkward position when it came to UFOs and ‘he tried to be several things to different groups:’ the air force wanted him to find an explanation for what people saw in the sky while those that believed in UFOs and extraterrestrials wanted Hynek to come out and support that hypothesis

Above, the cast of 'Project Blue Book,' a new scripted TV series that takes a fictionalized look at Dr J. Allen Hynek, his life, his investigations into UFOs during the early 1950s, a time period gripped by the Cold War and nuclear war fears, and the question that we are still wrestling with today: are we alone in the universe. From left, Laura Mennell as Mimi Hynek, Aidan Gillen as Dr J. Allen Hynek, Neal McDonough as General James Harding, Michael Harney as General Hugh Valentine, Michael Malarkey as Captain Michael Quinn, and Ksenia Solo as Susie Miller

David O'Leary, the show’s creator, said that the real Project Blue Book looked at over 12,000 UFO reports and roughly 700 of those remain unexplained. Since childhood, he has had a fascination with the question of whether humans are alone in the universe. ‘I personally don’t think that you can look at that the question honestly without examining the UFO phenomenon,’ O'Leary, who conceived of the TV show as the ‘real life X-Files set in the time of Mad Men,’ told DailyMail.com. Above, Aidan Gillen portraying Dr J. Allen Hynek in Episode 104: Operation Paperclip

The new series, which premiered in January, has ten episodes and David O'Leary, the show’s creator, said that he looks at the show like a ten-hour movie. O'Leary told DailyMail.com: ‘The show is a piece of entertainment but my goal always was for it to also spark curiosity, towards educating people about these real life cases and about this era.’ Above, Laura Mennell as Mimi Hynek and Aidan Gillen as Dr J. Allen Hynek. The real couple married in 1942, and they would stay together until Hynek's death in 1986, and have five children together – Scott, Roxane, Joel, Paul and Ross

After the government shut down Project Blue Book in 1969, Hynek, who was then teaching at Northwestern University, launched the Center for UFO Studies in 1973 and penned books. In his 1972 book, ‘The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry,’ Hynek detailed what he termed ‘close encounters:’ the first was a person seeing a UFO but from a distance; the second was UFOs ‘physical effect on the environment,’ such as crop circles; and the third was a person interacting ‘with beings that appear with the UFOs.’

It was the last gradation that inspired director Steven Spielberg’s smash hit ‘Close Encounters of Third Kind,’ released in late 1977. By then, Hynek was a popular author who also had cachet within the scientific community.

O’Connell pointed out in his book that Hynek wrote Spielberg after he had heard about the director’s upcoming film and its title. Spielberg wrote the astronomer back, paid Hynek $1,000 to use his phrase and hired him as a technical advisor for the film at $500 a day, according to the book.

‘While on set, Hynek got to talking with Spielberg about making a “Hitchcok-type” cameo in the movie,’ O’Connell wrote, ‘and Spielberg loved the idea so much that he filmed a whole sequence with Hynek interacting with the childlike aliens who have emerged from the “mothership.” ‘

Paul and Joel Hynek fondly recalled their father’s brush with celebrity after the film came out.

‘All of my friends thought it was extra cool to have dad in the big Hollywood movie,’ Paul said.

Paul Hynek noted that while his father did think there was something to UFOs, he was not completely sold on the idea of extraterrestrials, and had other theories about them, ‘more likely something like interdimensional travel or something even perhaps more exotic.’

‘I think one of the biggest misconceptions of my father is that he went from a, you know, confirmed skeptic of the bunkum of flying saucers to a dedicated believer in extraterrestrials having visited us,’ he said.

Their father, Joel noted, was in an awkward position when it came to UFOs and ‘he tried to be several things to different groups:’ the air force wanted him to find an explanation for what people saw in the sky while those that believed in UFOs and extraterrestrials wanted Hynek to come out and support that hypothesis.

‘He walked a fine line there to keep the whole alive, if you will,’ Joel said.

By 1981, the man who had dismissed UFOs as ‘sheer nonsense,’ said in a radio interview that he had seen them twice.

‘I have seen, on two occasions, two things which satisfy the definition of UFO,’ Hynek said, according to the book. ‘It was obviously an object, it was flying, and has remained unidentified to this day. But I’ve never had a close encounter, that is never anything really close-by that I could say, ‘My gosh, this is really something!’

‘…I feel somewhat left out.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

10-02-2019 om 00:45 geschreven door peter  

Japan Will Land a Spacecraft on Asteroid Ryugu This Month to Snag a Sample

A Japanese asteroid probe will snag samples of its target space rock later this month, if all goes according to plan.

The Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which has been studying the 3,000-foot-wide (900 meters) near-Earth asteroid Ryugu up close since last June, will make its first sample-grabbing dive just two weeks from now.

"The touchdown operation to collect a sample from Ryugu will be between February 20th-22nd. Hayabusa2 is scheduled to begin the descent from February 21 and touch down on the surface of Ryugu around 8 a.m. on February 22 (JST). It is the pinnacle of the mission!" Hayabusa2 team members said via Twitter Wednesday (Feb. 6). [Japan's Hayabusa2 Asteroid Mission in Pictures]

Japan Standard Time is 14 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Standard Time, so the touchdown will take place on the night of Feb. 21 for folks in North and South America (and around midnight for people throughout Europe).

This month's operation was originally scheduled to take place in October, but mission team members delayed the activity to give themselves more time to take stock of Ryugu's unexpectedly complex and rugged surface.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

09-02-2019 om 23:51 geschreven door peter  

The hottest 5 years on record: 2016, 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2014

BY MIHAI ANDREI

Officially, 2018 has been the 4th hottest year on record, fulfilling a dreadful pattern: the past five years have been the hottest since mankind started recording global temperatures in 1880. This is no coincidence — it’s a clear exemplification of the warming trend our planet is experiencing, and that we are causing.

Global average annual temperature anomalies from NASA’s global Land-Ocean Temperature Index data set (1951-1980 base period).

Graph and highlight credits: Logic of Science.

“The key message is that the planet is warming,” Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, told reporters at a news conference. “And our understanding of why those trends are occurring is also very robust. It’s because of the greenhouse gases that we[‘ve] put into the atmosphere over the last 100 years.

Both NOAA and NASA have confirmed that 2018 was the 4th hottest year on record. They also double-checked their data with other external and independent groups, further confirming the results: last year, global land- and ocean-surface temperatures were 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit (0.79 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average.

The warming wasn’t uniform, however. In North America, temperatures were closer to the century average, but the difference was more than made up for in other parts of the world.

Yet even without elevated temperatures, the effects of climate change were visible in the US. It was the third wettest year on record — yet at the same time, drought ravaged parts of the country. There were also much more extreme weather events than normal, something which is increasingly attributed to climate change.

Researchers also warned that the climate change and the damage will pale in comparison to what we will experience in the future, especially if we continue to spew carbon at the rate we currently are.

The data in case is extremely reliable, and climate scientists have gone to great lengths to avoid any potential uncertainties. For instances, they factored in how different methodologies for data acquisition and processing may have changed over the years and factored in the “urban heat island” effect” in which cities are warmer than the surrounding environment. Nowadays, agencies collect most of the data from rural areas — which is also controlled for.

Overall, you could hardly imagine more convincing data to show that climate change is happening. So one can only wonder — for those people who don’t “believe” in climate change (although believing in a scientific reality doesn’t really mean anything), what would it take to convince them? Would that even be possible? Or is it a “hoax” or a “liberal conspiracy” no matter what the evidence says?

Now is a really good time to remember that science is non-partisan, and the science says we’re causing a lot of trouble for ourselves and the rest of the planet. It’s time to reduce emissions and start cleaning up after ourselves.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

09-02-2019 om 23:26 geschreven door peter  

Europe’s Mars rover named “Rosalind Franklin” in honor of DNA pioneer

 BY MIHAI ANDREI

Artistic depiction of the ExoMars rover.

Image credits: ESA.

In July 2018, the UK space agency announced a competition to name the rover, which is scheduled to launch in 2020 as part of the ongoing ExoMars mission. Over 36,000 people from all over the European Union sent their proposals and suggestions. Apparently, the ESA learned from the previous “Boaty McBoatFace” experience and instead of choosing the most popular suggestion, they had a team of experts select from the proposals.

The ESA has a long tradition of naming its missions after famous researchers, and this was no exception. British astronaut Tim Peake announced the decision: the rover will be named Rosalind Franklin.

Rosalind was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer who contributed to unraveling the double helix structure of our DNA. However, her contribution was ignored and even denied in subsequent years. This is a well-deserved recognition of her contribution.

“This name reminds us that it is in the human genes to explore. Science is in our DNA, and in everything we do at ESA. Rosalind the rover captures this spirit and carries us all to the forefront of space exploration,” says ESA Director General Jan Woerner.

Rosalind herself was much enamored with space exploration, although unfortunately, she did not get to witness to much of it.

“In the last year of Rosalind’s life, I remember visiting her in hospital on the day when she was excited by the news of the [Soviet Sputnik satellite] – the very beginning of space exploration,” Franklin’s sister, Jenifer Glynn, said according to the BBC. ”She could never have imagined that over 60 years later there would be a rover sent to Mars bearing her name, but somehow that makes this project even more special.”

The new ExoMars rover will be the first of its kind, being able to combine the capability to roam around Mars and to study its subsurface. The mission is being run by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia’s Roscosmos. ExoMars was originally supposed to have three parts: an orbiter, this rover, and a lander, named Schiaparelli after an Italian astronomer. However, Schiaparelli crashed into Mars, a disaster that was likely caused by a software bug.

If everything goes according to plan, the mission will launch in 2020, and Rosalind Franklin will land on Mars in 2021, offering us a new understanding of the geological processes on the Red Planet.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

09-02-2019 om 23:12 geschreven door peter  

Found! Fastest-Orbiting Asteroid Zips Around Sun in Just 165 Days

09-02-2019 om 22:40 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX, Boeing (and NASA) Push Back 1st Test Launches of Private Spaceships

SpaceX's new astronaut taxi won't make its inaugural trip to the International Space Station (ISS) this month after all.

SpaceX and Boeing are developing commercial space capsules — called Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner, respectively — to carry NASA astronauts to and from the orbiting lab.

SpaceX had been targeting Feb. 23 for Crew Dragon's shakeout cruise to the ISS, an uncrewed flight called Demo-1. Starliner was scheduled to perform a similar mission in March. But launch dates for both flights have just been pushed to the right, NASA announced today (Feb. 6). [Crew Dragon and Starliner: A Look at the Upcoming Astronaut Taxis]

"The agency now is targeting March 2 for launch of SpaceX's Crew Dragon on its uncrewed Demo-1 test flight. Boeing's uncrewed Orbital Flight Test is targeted for launch no earlier than April," NASA officials wrote in the status update.

"These adjustments allow for completion of necessary hardware testing, data verification, remaining NASA and provider reviews, as well as training of flight controllers and mission managers," they added.

The next big box to check after these demonstration flights will be tests of the private vehicles' emergency escape systems, which would get the capsules away from danger if a problem arose during launch. Boeing plans to run this test in May, and SpaceX will perform its version in June.

Then will come huge milestones — crewed test flights to the ISS. Astronauts haven't launched to orbit from American soil since July 2011, when NASA retired its space shuttle fleet. Since then, the space agency has been dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets and spacecraft to perform this taxi service.

Crew Dragon's crew-carrying demonstration is currently scheduled for July, and Starliner's for no earlier than August, according to the new NASA update. Operational flights will begin sometime thereafter, assuming everything goes well.

The latest delay is far from the first for the commercial-crew program. When NASA inked its big multibillion-dollar deals with SpaceX and Boeing in 2014, for example, agency officials said they expected Crew Dragon and Starliner to be in operation by 2017.

"There still are many critical steps to complete before launch, and, while we eagerly are anticipating these launches, we will step through our test flight preparations and readiness reviews," Kathy Lueders, NASA's commercial crew program manager, said in today's update. "We are excited about seeing the hardware we have followed through development, integration, and ground testing move into flight."

• Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published in November 2018 by Grand Central Publishing.
• Follow him on Twitter@michaeldwall.
• Follow us @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
• Originally published on Space.com.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

09-02-2019 om 22:22 geschreven door peter  

NASA Probe Spots China's Chang'e 4 Lander on Far Side of the Moon (Photo)

"Because LRO was 330 kilometers (205 miles) to the east of the landing site, the Chang'e 4 lander is only about two pixels across (bright spot between the two arrows), and the small rover is not detectable," LRO team members wrote in a description of the image, which was released today (Feb. 6).  

"The massive mountain range in the background is the west wall of Von Kármán Crater, rising more than 3,000 meters (9,850 feet) above the floor," they added.

The Chang'e 4 lander-rover duo carry a variety of scientific instruments, which they're using to characterize the surface and near-subsurface of Von Kármán Crater. (Yutu 2 rolled down twin ramps from atop the lander a few days after touchdown.)

The mission could help scientists understand why the moon's near and far sides are so different from each other, Chinese officials have said. For example, dark volcanic plains known as maria cover most of the near side but are rare on the far side.

The Chang'e 4 lander also totes a biological experiment, which contains fruit-fly eggs and seeds of a few plants, including cotton. The cotton seeds sprouted, becoming the first non-human organisms ever to live on the lunar surface (not counting the microbes that hitched a ride with NASA’s Apollo astronauts). The little plants froze to death soon thereafter, however.

And in case you were wondering: The moon has a far side and a near side because it's "tidally locked" to Earth, meaning it always shows the same face to our planet. (That would be the near side.)

LRO has been circling the moon since 2009. The spacecraft's high-resolution imagery assists a wide variety of scientific studies and also aids planning for future robotic and human missions to Earth's nearest neighbor, NASA officials have said.

• Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published in November 2018 by Grand Central Publishing.
• Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.
• Follow us @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
• Originally published on Space.com.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

09-02-2019 om 22:08 geschreven door peter  

NASA wants to deflect a tiny asteroid’s orbit: humanity’s first planetary defense test

BY TIBI PUIU

With our busy lives and fairly stable day-to-day environment, it’s easy to forget that we’re actually sitting on a huge rock hurtling through space. Only a thin atmospheric and magnetic cushion is what separates us from total annihilation. This cushion is fairly good at keeping some cosmic intruders at bay, such as small asteroids, but larger objects could wreak havoc if they were to collide with Earth. Throughout our planet’s history, this has happened countless times, the dinosaur extinction being a prime example.

For some time, NASA has been working on an asteroid-deflection strategy and will soon launch a test mission to asteroid 65803 Didymos — a pair made of a smaller object called Didymoon that orbits around the larger 780-meter Didymos asteroid. The Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) project involves slamming a small probe into Didymoon, which measures only 160 meters in diameter, about the size of the Great Pyramid in Giza. The impact would slightly veer Didymoon away from its normal orbit around Didymos, informing NASA what kind of punch would be needed to deflect a real threat to Earth.

Didymoon will be by far the smallest asteroid ever explored by us — but even at its seemingly puny size, it would be enough to cause a continental-scale catastrophy if it slammed into Earth. The plan is to launch DART in 2021, with the goal of ramming into Didymoon in 2022 in order to change the course of the tiny world. In 2022 the double asteroid system will be only 11 million km (about 7 million miles) from Earth, which is why NASA is in quite a hurry.

Illustration of Hera at smallest asteroid ever visited.

Credit: ESA.

If all goes well, the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch a follow-up mission called HERA in order to examine the impact.

“Such a binary asteroid system is the perfect testbed for a planetary defense experiment but is also an entirely new environment for asteroid investigations. Although binaries make up 15 percent of all known asteroids, they have never been explored before, and we anticipate many surprises,” Ian Carnelli, Hera project manager, told Earth Sky.

Using a small fleet of CubeSats, the HERA mission will measure the masses of the two asteroids, their surface properties, their new orbits, and the impact site itself. ESA hopes to launch the mission by 2026.

“This will give us a good estimate of the impact’s momentum transfer, and hence its efficiency as a deflection technique,” explains ESA’s Hera project scientist, Michael Küppers. “These are fundamental parameters to enable the validation of numerical impact models necessary to design future deflection missions. We will better understand whether this technique can be used even for larger asteroids, giving us certainty we could protect our home planet if needed.”

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09-02-2019 om 21:40 geschreven door peter  

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