Author: jappe

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is spending a year in space during his Expedition 44 mission to the International Space Station. Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are flying the yearlong space mission to study the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body. Credit: NASA

Two space travelers on the International Space Station are entering rarely tread territory as they pass the six-month mark in a yearlong stay in orbit. The mission will help scientists understand how humans might cope with a journey to Mars.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly on the International Space Station (via video at top) waves while talking with reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 14, 2015 during a discussion of his one-year space mission. Kelly’s identical twin brother Mark Kelly (a former NASA astronaut) sits at center, with National Press Club president John Hughs at left and astronaut Terry Virts at right.
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have been living on the space station for about six months and won’t be going home for another half-year. Their yearlong space mission is about twice as long as a typical extended stay on the station, so compared to typical astronauts, they’re spending twice the time away from friends and family, twice the time in weightlessness, and twice the time exposed to space radiation — and experiencing twice the dose of physical and mental stress.

“I expected this to not be easy. A year is a long time,” Kelly told reporters during an in-flight interview on Sept. 8. Kelly and Kornienko are undergoing a swarm of scientific studies that may shed light on the mental and physical changes the human body undergoes during long spaceflight missions. The long-term goal of the one-year mission is to help develop better ways to prepare and protect astronauts as they take the next big leap beyond Earth — possibly on a journey to the Red Planet. [NASA’s One-Year Space Mission in Pictures]

“I feel pretty good overall,” Kelly said Monday (Sept. 14) in an in-flight interview on NASA TV. “I definitely recognize that I’ve been up here a long time and have just as long ahead of me. But I feel positive about it.”

Kelly added that he has consciously paced himself more slowly on this mission than on his last trip into orbit, which put him on the orbiting laboratory for 159 days.

“I intentionally thought about ways for me to get to the end of this with as much energy as I had in the beginning,” Kelly said. “I intentionally don’t work at the same pace I did last time I was up here, when I felt like I could go at 100 percent speed for the full six months. I can’t do that. So I consciously try to throttle myself back at certain times and have a really good balance between work and rest. And that’s what I would encourage anyone who attempts to spend this amount of time in this type of environment, is you just have to pace yourself.”

If humans were to take a trip to Mars using near-future technology, the journey would likely take more than one year each way. While Kelly and Kornienko are not the first astronauts to surpass six months in space — five Russian cosmonauts have spent more than a year in orbit — relatively little scientific study has been done on those long-term space travelers. With the one-year mission, scientists will get their hands on a massive haul of data revealing the physical effects of long-duration spaceflight. Ultimately, this may help scientists understand how to assist and protect astronauts going to Mars or beyond.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (right) and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko on the International Space Station speak with members of the press via a video link on Monday, Sept. 14, 2015. Tuesday (Sept. 15) marks the halfway point of their one-year mission, which will keep them on the station until March 2016.
Credit: NASA TV

“Physically, I feel good […] but there are a lot of effects of this environment that we can’t see or feel, like bone loss, effects on our vision, effects on our genetics — DNA, RNA and proteins — and that’s why we’re studying myself and [Mikhail Kornienko] on this one-year flight,” Kelly said Monday. “I think right now the jury’s out on [what those effects are]. We’re going to have to get all the data and have the scientists analyze it […]. Hopefully, we’ll find out some great things about me and my colleagues spending a year in space.” [The Human Body In Space: 6 Weird Facts]

While the results of the scientific studies on Kelly and Kornienko will not be revealed until after the mission is over, Kelly said he has taken note of how his body has adjusted to life in microgravity. He said spending a long time aboard the station means that he continues to adapt.

“So far, I’ve found that it is a continuous thing,” Kelly said. “It gets less significant over time, but I do notice that I can do things now that I couldn’t do right when I first got up here, even though I had flown 180 days in space before. My ability to move around is really improved over time and continues to improve. And, you know, you just get more comfortable. Your clarity of thought is greater. Your ability to focus. Things like that. I have found that the adaptation has not stopped. And it’ll be interesting to see where I’m at six months from now.”

While a one-year mission on the International Space Station is no easy task, it is certainly very different from a trip to Mars. Space travelers on a journey to the Red Planet would travel through millions of miles of empty space, far from home and locked up with the same group of people for the entire trip. The astronauts on the orbiting station have it somewhat easier: They can see Earth. They have a relatively quick way to get home if the need arises, and their crewmates change from time to time.

But Kelly and Kornienko will experience some of the mental strain of a Mars mission while they are on the station, including not being able to go outside (except during spacewalks, which aren’t exactly a walk in the park).

“This is a very closed environment. We can never leave. The lighting’s always pretty much the same — the smells, the sounds, everything’s the same,” Kelly said yesterday. “I think even most prisoners can get outside occasionally in a week. But we can’t. And that’s what I miss, after people.”

A year in space means a year away from the supermarket. Here, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly poses with a delivery of fresh fruit on the International Space Station that arrived in late August on a Japanese cargo ship.
Credit: NASA

In the Sept. 8 interview, Kelly was asked what he thought might be the difference between his mindset at the halfway point of the one-year mission, and the mindset of some future crew reaching a halfway point on a journey to Mars.

“I think for the folks who go to Mars, especially the first time, that’s going to be such an incredible destination and event that they’re going to be really psyched up for getting there,” Kelly said. “And I’m not saying I’m not psyched up for the rest of this, but in some ways, almost being halfway through, a lot of what we’re going to be doing is going to be similar to what we’ve already done. And we have a person here […] who is getting ready to leave us — Gennady [Padalka]. And that obviously wouldn’t happen on [a journey to] Mars. That makes it a little bit different — people coming and going. So I think it’s hard to compare the two experiences, but man I’m excited for the folks who get to go to Mars someday.”

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

The slithering head of Hydra, marked in red, moves its way into the northern latitudes, seen here of the pristine lake of Llyn y Fan Fach in the Brecon Beacons Dark Sky Reserve in Wales, U.K. Credit: Copyright Huw James Media

Huw James is a science communicator, fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and guest lecturer at the University of South Wales. Follow James on Twitter @huwmjames and keep an eye on his website for more info on his upcoming “Constellation Series” book. James contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

In the summer months it’s hard to imagine the draining, bitter cold. In the mountains especially, the frost seeps past through your layers of clothes through your tingling skin and  penetrates your bones. On the shore of Llyn Y Fan Fawr in winter, the skies are enchanting but enduring temperatures of 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius) to get a good shot makes any photographer question his or her sanity. 

Llyn y Fan Fawr is Welsh for “lake of the big peak,” at the foothill of Fan Brycheiniog in Wales. Its sister lake Llyn y Fan Fach comes complete with a “Celtic goddess,” a ghostly figure that haunts the lake. From this Dark Sky Reserve in the U.K.’s Brecon Beacon National Park, many constellations leap out at you like the monsters they portray. The “water snake” named Hydra is a textbook example, slithering its way out from the underworld. 

Hydra is the largest of all the modern constellations and has a long history and star lore, which is complex and chaotic. It is now believed by Western cultures to represent a female water snake, with Hydrus in the Southern Hemisphere as its male counterpart. With Corvus and Crater upon its back, it sometimes shares stories with similarly reptilian constellations like Draco and Cetus, both long, serpentine creatures.

It is now largely agreed that the most well-known star lore for this constellation follows the many-headed monster slain by the mighty Hercules in his 12 labors. As the creature terrorized the town of Lerna, Hercules tried to stop the nine-headed monster by slicing off its heads. Famously, any severed head of Hydra sprouts two or three more. But by cauterizing the blood with flaming branches and slicing off the immortal golden head of the beast, Hercules slew the beast for good. 

Though technically a Southern Hemisphere constellation, the constellation can be seen as far north as 54 degrees north of the equator. Many Messier and NGC (catalogs of deep-sky objects) objects lie within the boundaries of this huge constellation, a few as star clusters but some as impressive spiral galaxies. 

From the Northern Hemisphere you’ll only really see M48, an open star cluster that can still be seen with the naked eye in clear, dark conditions. The other Messier Catalog objects in Hydra are farther south, named M68 and M83. The former is a stunning globular cluster that can easily be resolved through a medium-size telescope. The latter is a splendid barred galaxy (a spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure) that can be made out in fairly good detail with a large telescope but can be seen with a pair of good binoculars. 

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Other objects of note include the Ghost of Jupiter. A planetary nebula (NGC 3242) discovered by William Herschel that bears a resemblance to our solar system’s largest planet. Also, two meteor showers are linked with this constellation: in early December the active Sigma Hydrids and in January the minor Alpha Hydrids.

Hydra is a fulfilling constellation that almost spans the length of the night sky. It links people through history and geography and is worth looking out for. 

Those with a telescope and a bit of astronomy know-how can find Hydra’s deep-sky objects at:

M48 – RA 08h 13.7m D-05°45′ 

M68 – RA12h 39m 27.98s D-26°44’38.6″

M83 – RA13h 37m 00.9s D-29° 51′ 57″

Note: RA and D are Right Ascension and Declination, the latitude and longitude of the night sky.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.

Demonstrating one small step for rover operations, a European astronaut successfully maneuvered a machine on Earth in precision operations from his perch 248 miles (400 kilometers) high on the International Space Station.

Sept. 7, the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen helped demonstrate the first “force feedback” using a rover controlled from space. With the help of a system that let him feel forces pressing against the rover’s arm, Mogensen remotely inserted a small, round peg into a “task board” that offered just a fraction of a millimeter of clearance.

“Andreas managed two complete drive, approach, park and peg-in-hole insertions, demonstrating precision force-feedback from orbit for the very first time in the history of spaceflight,” experiment leader André Schiele of ESA’s Telerobotics and Haptics Laboratory said in a statement. [Video: Space-Borne Astronaut Runs Robot On Earth]

Andreas Mogensen, aboard the International Space Station, is visible here controlling the Interact rover as it prepared to place a metal peg into a hole.
Credit: ESA

“He had never operated the rover before, but its controls turned out to be very intuitive,” Schiele said in the statement. “Andreas took 45 minutes to reach the task board and then insert the pin on his first attempt, and less than 10 minutes on his follow-up attempt, showing a very steep learning curve.”

Clever engineering allowed the astronaut to “feel” his way around the hole despite there being a 1-second delay between his movements and what was happening on the ground. The team — which included members from the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) and graduate students from Delft University of Technology, both in the Netherlands — created software models to compensate for the lag.

The signal from the space station has to pass through several obstacles before reaching ESTEC and the waiting rover. After leaving the station, the signal goes to satellites in geosynchronous orbit roughly 22,300 miles (36,000 km) high, beams to a ground station in New Mexico (via NASA’s Johnson Space Center) and then travels to ESTEC via a transatlantic cable. 

By the time the signal gets back from the International Space Station, the round-trip is more than 89,000 miles (144,000 km), the equivalent of nearly halfway to the moon.

Besides placing a peg in a hole, Mogensen also evaluated the stiffness of different springs on the joystick to figure out the appropriate sensitivity for the device. 

The experiment, called Interact, is intended to pioneer remote-control operations from space. As astronauts expand exploration across the solar system, someday this technology could be used for lunar bases or exploring Mars, ESA officials added.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

ESA’s sun-watching satellite Proba-2 captured Sept. 13’s partial solar eclipse three times as it orbited the Earth; in each, its extreme ultraviolet SWAP imager caught the moon approaching and overshadowing part of the sun. Credit: ESA/Royal Observatory of Belgium

When the moon blocked the sun in a partial solar eclipse on Sunday (Sept. 13) a European satellite managed to catch the celestial event on camera not once but three different times. Meanwhile, back on Earth, viewers in South Africa saw it just once, but were still able to enjoy the view.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) satellite Proba-2, which focuses on the sun, captured three times as much eclipse as Earth did by dodging in and out of the moon’s shadow as it orbited the planet. In each pass through the moon’s shadow, the satellite caught the dark sphere of the moon covering part of the sun, acquiring a thick, fiery solar halo in the satellite’s extreme ultraviolet SWAP imager. At Space.com, we assembled Proba-2’s view of the solar eclipse in a gallery alongside other images by skywatchers on Earth. 

Skywatchers in South Africa, meanwhile, set up early and dodged hazy clouds to view and document the moon’s approach. The eclipse was also visible from the southern Indian Ocean and Antarctica. 

“I didn’t have much hope of observing the eclipse, since the previous evening was cloudy and more cloudy weather was predicted for this morning,” said K.J. Mulder, a blogger and space photographer based in Western Cape, South Africa. “I was pleased to find hazy, high level clouds in the sky when I woke up. While not ideal, it would at least allow me to observe the eclipse in some form,” Mulder said in an email to Space.com. [Solar Eclipses: An Observer’s Guide (Infographic)]

K.J. Mulder snapped a series of partial-solar-eclipse photos Sept. 13 from his home in South Africa, using a 3.5-inch Skywatcher refractor telescope equipped with a Baader solar filter. Hazy clouds occasionally blocked his view.
Credit: K.J. Mulder/Worlds in Ink

Mulder captured the eclipse with a 3.5-inch Skywatcher refractor telescope equipped with a Baader solar filter and, along with his sister, viewed the eclipse with eclipse glasses. “Without the eclipse glasses, you couldn’t really tell that the eclipse was happening, aside from a slight dimming to the normal light conditions,” he said. “Through the eclipse glasses, the eclipse was clearly visible to the naked eye, with the sun appearing distinctly Pac-Man-like.” Mulder was also able to glimpse two sunspots on the solar surface.

Zarina Ebrahim captured the partial solar eclipse Sept. 13 at the foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, using a Nikon D60 camera.
Credit: Zarina Ebrahim/@zarenya

Zarina Ebrahim, a graphic designer in Cape Town, South Africa, kept an eye on the eclipse from the foot of Cape Town’s Table Mountain. She used a Nikon D60 camera with a Mylar filter, Ebrahim told Space.com in an email.

Rudolph uses Mylar filter glasses to view the partial solar eclipse; the photography setup is visible as well. The Lions Head mountain nestles in the background.
Credit: Zarina Ebrahim/@zarenya

Her friend Rudolph used Mylar filter glasses to look at the eclipse as well; the camera setup is visible in the background of the photo. Prepared skywatchers in the right location could catch the eclipse in progress — if only once as compared to Proba-2’s three times.

The partial solar eclipse from Cape Town, South Africa, as taken by Zarina Ebrahim.
Credit: Zarina Ebrahim/@zarenya

Sunday, Sept. 27 will bring another spectacular sight: Observers throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, western Asia and the eastern Pacific Ocean region will be able to see a “supermoon” lunar eclipse, when an extra-bright and large full moon will be blotted out by the Earth’s shadow — the first such eclipse since 1982. A similar event will not occur again until 2033, so be sure to look up.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A partial solar eclipse occurred on Sept. 13, 2015. See photos from the event by skywatchers in South Africa and a satellite in space.

Jon Adams’ Web comic, “Chief O’Brien,” follows the exploits of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Chief O’Brien, responsible for beaming crewmembers on and off of the ship. A new graphic novel delves into O’Brien’s day-to-day life. Credit: Jon Adams

While fans of “Star Trek” love to talk about “away missions” to the surface, a new Kickstarter campaign asks you to consider the lonely crewmember left behind who must beam the crew to and from the planet.

Chief O’Brien, played by Colm Meaney in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (TNG) and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, was responsible for the crew’s Transporter needs, and he seemed to spend most of his time in the TV series standing on the TNG transporter room, waiting for instructions. After running a parody Web comic on the topic called “Chief O’Brien At Work” since 2014, author Jon Adams is creating a graphic novel based on the Chief’s workday in the “Star Trek” universe.

“If you’ve ever felt the existential angst of a worthless job, step aside, because someone else feels it even more so, and his name is Chief O’Brien,” the Kickstarter crowdfunding page reads. “Watch him stand alone for hours on end, hoping today will be the day he finally gets to transport someone somewhere.” [Star Trek: The Art of Juan Ortiz’ (Gallery)]

The Web comic has already garnered the attention of “Star Trek” stars Wil Wheaton (from “TNG”) and Jeri Ryan (“Star Trek: Voyager”), who each shared it with fans on Tumblr and Google+, respectively.

Meaney has also seen a copy of the comic at least once, according to a picture on the Kickstarter page. A fan printed out one of the strips for Meaney to sign at a comic convention.

With eight days to go in the crowdfunding campaign, the book has more than doubled its initial $15,000 goal (reaching $36,675 as of this post). The softcover book will be 128 pages long and will include brand-new comics — including “scenes outside of the transporter room,” the Kickstarter page promises.

Jon Adams’ Web comic, “Chief O’Brien,” follows the exploit of the titular Star Trek: The Next Generation character.
Credit: Jon Adams

Adams is also the author of a comic called “Truth Serum,” which was nominated for two Eisner awards given for achievement in American comic books. He has written cartoon shorts for MTV and designed several books, including “Cyborg 009” and “The Joyners in 3D.”

You can contribute to the Kickstarter campaign here: 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1439753165/chief-obrien-at-work-graphic-novel

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

This composite image of Jupiter’s moons Io (top right) and Europa shows three volcanic plumes on Io’s surface, the largest 190 miles (300 kilometers) high. Two smaller plumes are also visible on the edge of the disk and along the illuminated border. Credit: NASA/JHU Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Something strange is happening on Io: The Jupiter moon’s vigorous volcanoes are mysteriously offset from where scientists expected, and its underground magma oceans may be the cause.

A new model suggests that worlds caught in an intense push and pull of gravity, like the volcanic moon Io, are likely to have below-ground oceans of magma or water that stick around for a long time — in the water’s case, providing a potential hotspot for the development of life.

“This is the first time the amount and distribution of heat produced by fluid tides in a subterranean magma ocean on Io has been studied in detail,” Robert Tyler, the lead author of the new research from the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. “We found that the pattern of tidal heating predicted by our fluid-tide model is able to produce the surface heat patterns that are actually observed on Io.” [More Photos of Io: Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon]

Fiery Io

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Its hundreds of volcanoes are caused by heat coming from the gravitational push and pull between Jupiter and the nearby moon Europa. The coming and going of Europa as it orbits, and Jupiter’s steady influence, pulls Io into an oval orbit and flexes it, creating heat inside the moon due to friction.

Earlier models of the process envisioned a solid, claylike Io changing shape under the gravitational influence, but they had a strange flaw: the volcanoes were predicted to form over the spots with the greatest internal heating, but on the real Io the volcanoes form much farther east. When the discrepancy was published, in 2013, the researchers wrote that the moon might be rotating faster than expected or have a spongy magma ocean.

“It’s hard to explain the regular pattern we see in so many volcanoes, all shifting in the same direction, using just our classical solid-body tidal heating models,” Wade Henning, a co-author on the study and also from University of Maryland and NASA Goddard, said in the statement.

Half the story

This new model, published by a team including the lead author of the 2013 paper, considers the added effects of an ocean layer below the surface of the moon formed with a mixture of molten and solid rock. The molten rock would swirl and rub against the solid rock under gravity’s influence and generate additional heat, the researchers said.

The combination of these fluid effects, plus the flexing solid material, could explain the observed volcano patterns.

“The fluid tidal heating component of a hybrid model best explains the equatorial preference of volcanic activity and the eastward shift in volcano concentrations, while simultaneous solid-body tidal heating in the deep-mantle could explain the existence of volcanoes at high latitudes,” Henning said. “Both solid and fluid tidal activity generate conditions that favor each other’s existence, such that previous studies might have only been half the story for Io.”

Implications for life on moons

While an underground magma ocean is certainly inhospitable, other moons in the solar system have liquid water seas below the surface, like icy Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which are considered possible habitats for life. This new model suggests that liquid oceans might stick around for longer and also be more common beneath tidally stressed satellite surfaces. With energy sources and raw materials available, a long-lasting liquid water ocean could be a good place for life to develop.

Such oceans could begin to resonate with the push and pull of gravity, generating heat through tidal flow and lasting for a long time, said Christopher Hamilton, a co-author on the study from the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Therefore the mystery may be not how such subsurface oceans could survive, but how they could perish,” he said. “Consequently, subsurface oceans within Io and other satellites could be even more common than what we’ve been able to observe so far.”

The research was detailed in June in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Artist’s concept of a robot-run space transportation hub at geosynchronous orbit, about 22,370 miles (36,000 kilometers) from Earth. Credit: DARPA

The future of spaceflight involves building, refueling and repairing spacecraft in a depot far from Earth, all without the aid of human hands, officials with the United States military say.  

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a highly capable robotic arm that could make such a space “transportation hub” possible in the relatively near future, said former NASA astronaut Pam Melroy, deputy director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office.

“We think that these capabilities — space capabilities — are not just about a single monolithic satellite with a few capabilities, but instead about a vibrant, robust ecosystem that involves transportation, repair, refueling, upgrading, [and] in situ construction,” Melroy said Thursday (Sept. 10) at DARPA’s “Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum” in St. Louis. [Incredible Technology: Space Travel and Exploration]

“Look at the great seafaring port cities in the world for inspiration, and imagine a port of call at 36,000 kilometers,” she added.

Thirty-six thousand kilometers (22,370 miles) is the distance from Earth at which satellites fly in geosynchronous orbit, or “GEO” for short. Spacecraft at GEO — which include most operational telecommunications satellites — complete one lap in the same amount of time it takes Earth to rotate once on its axis, and therefore appear to “hover” over one spot on the planet all the time.

It makes much more sense to build a transformative transportation hub at GEO than at low-Earth orbit (LEO), which lies at an altitude between 186 miles and 373 miles (300 to 600 km), Melroy said.

For one thing, orbital velocity at GEO is lower, reducing the risk of serious collisions with space junk. GEO is also a much more stable orbit, because satellites located there are not nearly as affected by atmospheric drag. Whereas spacecraft at LEO (such as the International Space Station) will fall back to Earth within 25 years or so unless orbit-boosting maneuvers are performed, objects at GEO will stay put on their own for up to 1 million years, Melroy said.

“We think this sounds like a really interesting place to put infrastructure, because it’s such a stable place,” she said.

Radiation levels so far from Earth — GEO lies about 10 percent of the way from Earth to the moon — are too high for astronauts to tolerate safely over long durations, so this future facility would be run by robots, Melroy added.

The key to making all of this happen therefore lies in advanced space robotics — “robotic arms very much like the one that was used to build the International Space Station, but with greater levels of automation and safety,” Melroy said.

“DARPA is building just such a robotic arm,” she added. “We think this is a critical capability to building a transportation hub that allows transporation to and from the Earth’s surface, from low-Earth orbit to GEO, and even beyond Earth orbit.”

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.