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Space Tech
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Thursday March 18, 2010
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It's not quite Earth-like. But scientists have discovered a "normal" exoplanet, dubbed CoRoT-9b, that resembles other planets in our Solar System.
The planet appears to be orbiting its star about as close as our own Mercury, and yet is the approximate size of Jupiter, Space.com reports. Still, it's a lot further away than other "hot Jupiter" exoplanets, and likely has a much more temperate climate, the report said.
CoRoT-9b is likely made of hydrogen and helium, just like Jupiter and Saturn. The planet is named after the French space agency CNES's CoRoT satellite, which first picked up the light signature of the planet passing in front of its star.
To date, astronomers have discovered over 430 exoplanets, or extrasolar planets, orbiting other stars--with the expectation that there are many, many more out there. (Image credit: ESO/L. Calcada)
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Monday March 15, 2010
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"Don't panic!" So said the cover of a certain famous book. Even so, you might want to have a
look at a Popular Science report, which says a prominent astronomer is
predicting an "86 percent chance" that a certain neighboring star
named Gilese 710 will smash into stray rocks orbiting the outer solar
system in the next 1.5 million years.
Or maybe it won't.
But that collision, if it occurs, would take place in the Oort Cloud
beyond Pluto, upon which it could send comets heading straight for
Earth.
In addition, the same astronomer--a real cheery fellow, it seems--has
found a high probability of nine other stars that have already swung
near the sun, or that might do so again in the future, the report
said. If we emerge unscathed--whoever "we" is at the time--then so
much the better, as we'll have plenty of time to get back to planning
for the Andromeda galaxy's eventual collision in 4.5 billion years.
Image credit: NASA/Gilese 710
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Friday March 12, 2010
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 It's the stuff of science fiction, and yet it could soon become reality--at least down the road, if not today.
NPR reports that a new computer program analyzing brain activity figured out which of three short films 10 volunteers were thinking about--with perfect accuracy.
Here how it works: the program analyzes the hippocampus, a part of the brain that appears to index memories of events, and searches it for traces of these events in brain scans. The volunteers watched the three short films over and over--word is they weren't just cat videos--and then were asked to recall the movies when hooked up to the scanner.
Not only did the program get every single case correct, but scientists also discovered that the pattern for each movie was similar across all 10 brains, the report said. Yikes. The study originally appeared in the journal Current Biology. (Image credit: Barco Coronis medical LCD)
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Friday March 12, 2010
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The Large Hadron Collider will close down at the end of next year for up to 12 months for modifications to the design, according to BBC News.
Everything is still on track to power up the LHC to begin smashing together particles at 7 trillion electron volts (7 TeV) later this month. But after a year and a half of that, LHC director Dr. Steve Myers said in the report that the faults prevent the machine from hitting its full potential of 14 TeV for two years.
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Thursday March 11, 2010
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Enter at your own risk--or so should read a sign on the door of every passenger spaceship in the future.
Space tourism operators like Virgin Galactic have won a legal reprieve against potential litigation by surviving family members in the event of passenger injuries or death during flight, according to Space.com.
"This helps give us a really solid insurance foundation" for the business, Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn said in the report regarding the new legislation, which was signed into law on February 27 by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. "It includes the principle of informed consent. Participants will be required to sign a waiver before flight."
The possibility of lawsuits with staggering sums attached is only higher in the space tourism industry's early years, thanks to the high costs that will invariably draw enthusiasts with very high net worth statements. The law won't hold in the event that the space tourism operator is found guilty of gross negligence or willful misconduct, according to the report.
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Wednesday March 10, 2010
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 Astronaut Andrew Feustel spacewalks to perform repairs on the Hubble; click to enlarge.Take a number of the Hubble Space Telescope's most stunning images, give them a 3D look, and display them on an IMAX screen--what's not to love? Yet Hubble 3D, an IMAX and Warner Brothers film made in cooperation with NASA, manages to go far beyond that. Much of the film focuses on last May's mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) to repair the Hubble. The astronauts brought an IMAX 3D camera with which they were able to capture spectacular sequences of the grueling and dangerous spacewalks the crew undertook to conduct the repairs. Coupled with stunning views of Earth, this section of Hubble 3D provides an immersive experience that astronauts who have seen the video have termed the closest thing yet to actually being in orbit. Hubble 3D will open in selected IMAX theaters March 19, but we were fortunate enough to get a preview this week. The movie, narrated by Leonardo Dicaprio, opens with the STS-125 crew suiting up and talking about the importance of the mission and their growing excitement about it in the hours before liftoff. Among them is Mike Massimino ( @Astro_Mike), who on that mission became the first astronaut to tweet from space. The film cuts away to a history of Hubble and a tour of its images (some of which you'll find after the jump) but always returns to the saga of the repair mission.
Posted By:
Tony Hoffman
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Wednesday March 10, 2010
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 Near the top of the list of "unfulfilled science fiction concepts," you'll find the jetpack, a staple of future transportation that somehow hasn't arrived yet. (Well, we did get the Segway.)
Nonetheless, Martin Aircraft Company wants to change that with the Martin Jetpack, a $90,000 carbon fiber model that can generate 600 pounds of thrust. Wired reports that the jetpack is self-righting; you can let go of the controls and just hover.
The Martin Jetpack runs on gasoline, and burns through its five-gallon tank in about half an hour. It's classified as an ultralight aircraft, so you don't need a pilot's license, although the company enforces its own training program.
Anyone who wants one faces a 12-month wait; to get on the list, you'll need to put 10 percent down ($9,000).
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Tuesday March 9, 2010
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Astronomers and physicists have said for years that we only know and understand five percent of the universe--but that may soon change.
CERN research center head Rolf-Dieter Heuer (pictured) said that the Large Hadron Collider may soon unveil dark matter, which makes up 25 percent of the remainder; the remaining 70 percent is dark energy, which we also know little about, as Reuters reports.
"Our Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could be the first machine to give us insight into the dark universe," Heuer said in the article. "We are opening the door to New Physics, to a discovery period."
What's new now is that the LHC is on schedule to collide particles at 7 tera-electron volts (7 TeV) by the end of the month. That will be the highest energy level ever achieved by mankind. Each collision will produce "mini-Big Bangs" that will yield priceless data for scientists to analyze--and possibly the Higgs boson, the theoretical particle that gave mass to matter and enabled the formation of stars, planets, and life as we know it, the report said. (Image credit: CERN)
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Monday March 8, 2010
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Last year, a group of physicists figured out that achieving warp speed had the potential--depending on how we did it, at least--to create a black hole that would suck up Earth and destroy us all.
Putting aside that cheery bit of news for a moment, another physicist recently said that even if that particular scenario didn't come to pass, the simple matter of traveling warp speed could kill you--all because of some stray hydrogen atoms.
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Friday March 5, 2010
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The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has now transmitted 100 terabits of information back to Earth, as it completes its fourth year circling the Red Planet next week, according to ScienceDaily.
Here's another way of looking at it: 100 terabits, or 100 trillion bits, is equivalent to three times the amount of data from every other deep-space mission past the moon combined, the report said. It's also equivalent to about 35 hours of uncompressed, high-definition video--not bad for a planet that's anywhere from 36 million to 250 million miles away from Earth.
The orbiter's 10-foot dish antenna can transmit data at 6 megabits per second. The craft contains three main cameras, a radar instrument that can see through the surface, an atmosphere sounder, and a spectrometer for identifying minerals, according to the article.
To date, the orbiter has discovered evidence that water moved across the planet's surface for hundreds of millions of years. It has also detailed acidic and alkaline watery environments, either of which could indicate past life on the planet (if it ever existed).
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Thursday March 4, 2010
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I was very pleased to find, among the winners of the Shorty Awards given to exceptional or groundbreaking Twitter users, that Jen Scheer, aka @flyingjenny, had won the Shorty in the Science category. She's a Space Shuttle technician and artist who founded the Space Tweep Society, a space advocacy group for Twitter users.
Although it exists thanks to Twitter, the Space Tweep Society is anchored in its Web site, which encourages member participation and networking. Each person has his or her own blog space, and their posts appear on the site's main blog as well. There are also forums, chat, a photo gallery, and more. Naturally, Space Tweep Society members gather on Twitter, marking relevant posts with the hashtag #spacetweeps. Members use both the site and Twitter to organize mini-tweetups and other local events.
Posted By:
Tony Hoffman
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Wednesday March 3, 2010
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 The European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter will soon pass within about 30 miles above Phobos--one of Mars' two moons made famous in id Software's Doom franchise, among other places.
Discovery reports that scientists hope to learn more about the potato-shaped rock: where it came from, how its gravity works, and whether or not the interior is actually hollow--a theory scientists have been tossing about for decades.
To figure this all out, scientists plan to track minute changes in the probe's flight path via a radio signal, in an attempt to indirectly correlate Phobos' gravitational tugs with its internal structure. No word yet on when we'll finally learn about all those creepy "scientific" experiments. (Image credit: ESA/NASA/HiRISE)
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Tuesday March 2, 2010
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 It turns out the LCROSS spacecraft's discovery of water ice at the moon's south pole wasn't the whole story.
Scientists now have detected massive amounts of ice deposits near the moon's north pole as well, using data from a NASA radar aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft--and this time, it's much more ice.
NASA said in a statement that the Mini-SAR instrument, which is a lightweight, synthetic "aperture radar," discovered over 40 craters filled with water ice between one and 9 miles in diameter.
The agency estimates that there could be 1.3 trillion pounds (600 million metric tons) of water ice in those craters. Along with other recent water ice discoveries on the moon, the latest one has implications for future manned moon missions (assuming they ever happen again), or even extended moon colonizations.
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Monday March 1, 2010
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The European Southern Observatory said in a statement that all of its employees are safe and unharmed following the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck central Chile on February 27, 2010, and that none of its telescopes were damaged.
The only effect seen was a power outage that cut observations for one night at La Silla, according to Universe Today. Paranal Observatory, the APEX telescope, and the ALMA Operations Support Facility and Array Operations Site were all unaffected, according to the report. That includes VISTA, plus the ' Very Large Telescope' we've covered on numerous occasions, which includes four separate optical telescopes in an array (pictured).
The Gemini South Observatory also said that their employees were fine, and that the main 27-foot optical/infrared hybrid telescope located there suffered no damage, according to the same report. (Image credit: ESO/2009)
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Friday February 26, 2010
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Remember that new ion propulsion rocket that could slash the time it takes to travel from Earth to Mars to just 39 days? According to AFP, NASA plans to center its future strategy around MIT scientist Franklin Chang-Diaz's design, called the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), according to AFP.
We've also got some more specifics on how the rocket works. VASIMR uses electricity to transform fuels like hyrodgen, helium, or deuterium into plasma gas, which is then heated to 51.8 million degrees Fanrenheit and sent into tailpipes via magnetic fields, the report said. The rocket will be capable of reaching speeds of 35 miles per second (126,000 miles per hour).
NASA worked on the design along with Ad Astra and Canadian firm Nautel. NASA plans to contract with more private firms as it reels in costs following the Obama Administration's c uts to its Constellation program, which would have returned humans to the moon by the end of the decade. Chang-Diaz is planning for an orbital deployment by the end of 2013, according to the report, and is already working with private space firms SpaceX and Orbital Science Corporation. (Image credit: Ad Astra)
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