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On the evening of Sept. 27, the moon will once again become immersed in the Earth’s shadow, resulting in a total lunar eclipse — the fourth such event in the last 17 months,

As with all lunar eclipses, the region of visibility for Sunday’s blood-moon lunar eclipse will encompass more than half of our planet. Nearly 1 billion people in the Western Hemisphere, nearly 1.5 billion throughout much of Europe and Africa and perhaps another 500 million in western Asia will be able to watch as the Harvest Full Moon becomes a shadow of its former self and morphs into a glowing coppery ball. 

The lunar eclipse will also feature the “biggest” full moon (in apparent size) of 2015, since the moon will also be at perigee on the very same day ─ its closest point to the Earth ─ 221,753 miles (356,877 km) away. [Supermoon Lunar Eclipse: Complete Blood Moon Coverage]

The Sept. 27 event is therefore being called a “supermoon eclipse.” The last such eclipse happened in 1982, and the next won’t occur until 2033. 

This graphic shows the areas of the Earth where viewers will see the lunar eclipse of Sept. 28, 2015, including much of North America, South America, Africa and Europe.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Visibility zone

Almost everyone in the Americas and Western Europe will have a beautiful view of this eclipse. The moon will be high in a dark evening sky as viewed from most of the United States and Canada while most people are still awake.

The only problematic area will be in the Western United States and West-Central Canada, where the first partial stage of the eclipse will already be underway when the moonrises and the sun sets on that final Sunday in September. But if you have an open view low to the east, even this situation will only add to the drama, for as twilight fades, these far-Westerners will see the shadow-bitten moon coming into stark view low above the landscape. And by late twilight, observers will have a fine view of the totally eclipsed lunar disk glowing red and dim low in the eastern sky.

The reason the moon can be seen at all when totally eclipsed is that sunlight is scattered and refracted around the edge of the Earth by the planet’s atmosphere. To an astronaut standing on the moon during totality, the sun would be hidden behind a dark Earth outlined by a brilliant red ring of all of the world’s sunrises and sunsets. [‪How Lunar Eclipses Work (Infographic)]

Alaskans will also see the moon rise during the eclipse; much of eastern Alaska will see the moon rise while immersed in the Earth’s shadow.  For Hawaiians, moonrise unfortunately comes after the end of totality, with the moon gradually ascending in the sky and its gradual emergence from the shadow readily visible. Western Europe and Africa also will get a good view of the eclipse, but at a less convenient time: before dawn on Monday morning (Sept. 28). 

Eclipse schedule

The eclipse will actually begin when the moon enters the faint outer portion, or penumbra, of the Earth’s shadow. The penumbra, however, is all but invisible to the eye until the moon becomes deeply immersed in it. Sharp-eyed viewers may get their first glimpse of the penumbra as a delicate shading on the left part of the moon’s disk about 15 minutes before the start of the partial eclipse (when the round edge of the central shadow, or umbra, first touches the moon’s left edge). During the partial eclipse, the penumbra should be readily visible as a dusky border to the dark umbral shadow.

The moon will enter Earth’s much darker umbral shadow at 1:07 a.m. on Sept. 28 by Greenwich, or Universal time, which is 9:07 p.m. on Sept. 27 in the Eastern time zone, 8:07 p.m. Central time, 7:07 p.m. Mountain time and 6:07 p.m. Pacific time (before moonrise). Sixty-four minutes later, the moon is entirely within the shadow, and sails on within it for 72 minutes until it begins to find its way out at the lower left (southeastern) edge. 

The moon will be free of the umbra by 9:27 p.m. Pacific time or 12:27 a.m. (Sept. 28) Eastern time. The vaguer shading of the inner penumbra can continue to be readily detected for perhaps another 15 minutes or so after the end of umbral eclipse. Thus, the whole experience ends toward 1 a.m. for the East (with the re-brightened moon now sloping down along the arc it describes across the sky) or during the mid-evening hours for the West.  

For Europe and Africa, the midpoint of this eclipse occurs roughly between midnight and dawn on Sept. 28, and the moon will therefore still be well placed in the western sky. At the moment of mid-totality (2:48 a.m. GMT), the moon will be directly overhead from a point in the Atlantic Ocean a couple of hundred miles to the north of Belém, Brazil.

Below we present a timetable of the key phases of the eclipse. Times in p.m. are for the calendar date of Sept. 27; those in a.m. are for Sept. 28.

This timetable for the supermoon total lunar eclipse of 2015 lists the times of major events for the Sept. 27-28 lunar eclipse by time zone. You can use this guide to know when the eclipse will start in your city.
Credit: Joe Rao/Space.com

In Europe, most countries currently observe “summer time,” in which clocks are either one hour ahead of Greenwich time (London, Lisbon) or two hours ahead (Paris, Rome).

For the Canadian Maritime provinces, clocks run one hour ahead of Eastern time, except in Newfoundland, where it’s one and a half hours ahead.

Notable cities in the Eastern time zone include New York, Jacksonville, Florida and Atlanta; in the Central time zone, Chicago, Memphis, Tennessee, and Houston; for Mountain time, Salt Lake City, Denver and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in the Pacific Time Zone, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.  

In the United States, Daylight Saving Time is not observed in Arizona.  Clocks there read similar to Pacific time. For most of Alaska, clocks run one hour behind Pacific time; in Hawaii two hours.

Editor’s note: If you capture an amazing view of the supermoon lunar eclipse or any other night sky view that you would like to share with Space.com for a possible story or gallery, send images and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer’s Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Astronauts Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency, left, and Terry Virts of NASA speak about their time aboard the International Space Station at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) town hall on Thursday, September 17, 2015 in Washington, DC. Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

The benefits of spaceflight extend far beyond the borders of countries capable of launching satellites, NASA officials say.

On Thursday (Sept. 17), officials with NASA and the U.S. Agency For International Development (USAID) showcased the ways space science connects to developing countries as well.

The two organizations hosted a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. called “Connecting Space to Village: Observing Earth from Space and How This Supports USAID Development Goals,” which involved astronauts, USAID officials and scientists. A big topic was the use of space-based imaging technology and the ways that it is used in a NASA-USAID partnership called SERVIR (an acronym that means “to serve” in Spanish). [‪Photos: Amazing Images of Earth from Space]

For example, the International Space Station (ISS) passes over some 90 percent of the inhabited area of the Earth, and does so in 90 minutes. Astronauts can take pictures of the surface of the Earth, tracking land use or wildfires, using the ISS SERVIR Environmental Research and Visualization System (ISERV), which is basically a small telescope attached to a digital camera that looks out a window.

If something happens — perhaps a small-scale disaster like a local flood, fire or volcanic eruption — and local authorities need a picture quickly, ISERV can provide it. This happens in conjunction with a wealth of satellite images that NASA gathers every day.

“We’ve improved warning time about floods in Bangladesh, provided tea industry growers in Kenya a tool that predicts frost before it damages their valuable crops and helped Central America reduce the health impact of harmful algal blooms,” said USAID associate administrator Eric Postel. This information comes from satellite data, which, he added, is free and available to the public.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that, while many people think of NASA in terms of deep-space missions, Earth observation is a big part of what the agency does.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden speaks about the partnership between NASA and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at the USAID town hall on Thursday, September 17, 2015 in Washington, DC.
Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

“NASA is deeply committed to Earth science,” Bolden said, citing the recently launched Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite as an example. “SMAP supports responses to fire, floods, and dust storms.”

During the discussion, Jennifer Frankel-Reed, senior climate change specialist at USAID, said satellite mapping data has benefitted flood-prone areas in Southeast Asia.

“In Bangladesh, the floodwater that comes each monsoon season comes from countries outside the border,” Frankel-Reed said. “It depends on getting a read on river flow hundreds of miles outside their border.” [Natural Disasters: Top 10 U.S. Threats]

Using river-height data, a NASA scientist was able to provide more warning for floods. “We’ve gone from five days’ warning up to eight days’ lead-time warning,” Frankel-Reed said. She noted that a recent flood might have taken thousands of lives, but the advance warning meant that only 17 people died. 

Another program monitors “red tides” — algal blooms in coastal waters that can generate high levels of toxins — in Central America. This work allows local governments to direct fishermen to areas where there is no red tide, or to stop fishing altogether until the problem clears.

Helping people on the ground in this way often involves linking university students in both the United States and the developing world. Carrie Stokes, geospatial information technology advisor at USAID, described a program called Mapping for Resilience. The two groups of students work together to map parts of the world that haven’t been covered yet, using NASA data, Stokes said.

It’s not just robotic spacecraft that can offer beneficial orbital perspective. Two astronauts, Terry Virts of NASA and Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency, opened up the discussion with stories of their time on the ISS.

“When you look down on Earth from space, you usually don’t see borders,” Virts said. “In Europe, it’s kind of a continuous stream of the continent … Same thing across Africa.”

But some places aren’t like that. He spoke of the difference between India and Pakistan, or North and South Korea.

“By far the most visible from space is the North Korea-South Korea border… You really see it at night,” Virts said. “You just think what a total disaster that is.”

The night side of Earth, he said, shows the stark differences between nations. “What you see is not population centers; you see wealth.” There are many places where it’s still dark at night despite the presence of millions of people, Virts noted.

The ISS itself, Cristoforetti said, “is a testament to what we as human beings can do if we’re able to care about something, if we have something big we want to achieve.”

One thing that being on the ISS brought home, she added, is that crewmembers have to take care of each other.

“It’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure everyone else is doing well,” Cristoforetti said, adding that the same lesson applies to Earth.

“Earth is really a spaceship,” she said. “It’s bigger, and it’s been there a long time, but it’s a spaceship… and we have to take care of each other.”

Beyond the perspective from orbit, though, the goal is to make good use of data. “The ultimate goal is to turn data into decisions,” said Frankel-Reed.

Dan Irwin, director of NASA’s SERVIR Coordination Office, said history shows why tools from space are important.

“I did a lot of work on Maya archeology. Around 800 AD, their civilization collapsed, and a lot of people think it was climate change,” Irwin said. “Had the Maya had the tools — had they had the ability to look from space — could they have done something?”

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Hexagon observations made by Cassini in 2012, taken in wavelengths ranging from UV to IR. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton University

The huge, mysterious hexagon at Saturn’s north pole may finally have an explanation.

The bizarre hexagonal cloud pattern was first discovered in 1988 by scientists reviewing data from NASA’s Voyager flybys of Saturn in 1980 and 1981, but its existence was not confirmed until NASA’s Cassini spacecraft observed the ringed planet up-close years later.

Nothing like the hexagon has ever been seen on any other world. The structure, which contains a churning storm at its center, is about 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) wide, and thermal images show that it reaches roughly 60 miles (100 km) down into Saturn’s atmosphere. [Photos: Saturn’s Weird Hexagonal Vortex]

Scientists have bandied about a number of explanations for the hexagon’s origin. For instance, water swirling inside a bucket can generate whirlpools possessing holes with geometric shapes. However, there is of course no giant bucket on Saturn holding this gargantuan hexagon.

Voyager and Cassini did identify many features of this strange hexagon that could help explain how it formed. For example, the points of the hexagon rotate around its center at almost exactly the same rate Saturn rotates on its axis. Moreover, a jet stream air current, much like the ones seen on Earth, flows eastward at up to about 220 mph (360 km/h) on Saturn, on a path that appears to follow the hexagon’s outline.

Now researchers have developed a model they suggest matches the hexagon’s features better than previous attempts.

“With a very simple model, we have been able to match many of the observed properties of the hexagon,” study lead author Raúl Morales-Juberías, a planetary scientist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, told Space.com.

The scientists ran computer simulations of an eastward jet flowing in a curving path near Saturn’s north pole. Small perturbations in the jet — the kind one might expect from jostling with other air currents — made it meander into a hexagonal shape. Moreover, this simulated hexagon spun around its center at speeds close to that of the real one.

The scenario that best fits Saturn’s hexagon involves shallow jets at the cloud level, study team members said. Winds below the cloud level apparently help keep the shape of the hexagon sharp and control the rate at which the hexagon drifts.

Different models, such as ones that involve deeper winds or do not take winds lower down into account, do not match Saturn’s hexagon well. For instance, they might result in a six-pointed star, or shapes with more or less than six points, or six pairs of storms arranged in a hexagonal pattern.

Morales-Juberías would now like to compare this new research with models from other research teams to see how these findings hold up. He and his colleagues detailed their findings in June in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

An early production painting of “Discovery” closely matches the description of the ship in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Credit: Copyright © 2014 Turner Entertainment Co. 2001: A Space Odyssey and all related characters and elements  are trademarks of and © Turner Entertainment Co. (s14)

Piers Bizony is a science writer and author specializing in the history of space exploration. His newest book “The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’“(Taschen, 2015) is an inside look at the making of the iconic film. Bizony contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

In 1968, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and his screenwriting colleague, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, presented “2001: A Space Odyssey,” an almost documentary vision of how engineers and scientists of the time envisioned the future of spaceflight, the prospects for artificial intelligence and the likelihood of contact with extraterrestrial life.

The movie’s famous opening scene shows prehistoric ape-men struggling for survival, until a mysterious, monolithic, black slab implants in one of them the transformational idea of bone tools and weapons. The film then skips 4 million years in a single frame, and we’re on our way to the moon, where another, buried monolith awaits its discoverers. 

A publicity photo from “2001: A Space Odyssey” shows lead actor Keir Dullea as astronaut Dave Bowman (at left) conferring with co-star Gary Lockwood (Frank Poole) inside an EVA pod.
Credit: Copyright © 2014 Turner Entertainment Co. 2001: A Space Odyssey and all related characters and elements  are trademarks of and © Turner Entertainment Co. (s14)

So what did we just watch?

Audiences were thrilled by the enormity of these ideas, conveyed in images of stunning artistic and technical quality. 

Not long after the initial release, I nagged my mom and dad until we went to see it at the local movie theater. I was thrilled — blown away — by everything I saw. I was also confused as heck, but the worst moment came when we piled out onto the street, and my parents asked me, “What was all that about? Did you understand it?”

Somewhat taken aback by their question, and also not sure I had quite figured out the meaning of what we’d seen, I blurted out, “You’re not supposed to understand it. You’re just supposed to watch it!” Now, nearly five decades later, I still agree with my 10-year-old self. 

Almost immediately, “2001” was a huge global commercial success, and was rated not just as a landmark piece of science fiction by the rest of the world beyond New York, but as one of the most impressive films of all time, in any genre. (A popular myth has it that a grouchy bunch of naysaying New York movie critics almost killed “2001” on its first release. I’ve seen the box office reports from the crucial first few days and weeks of the film’s run, and that story just isn’t true.)

“2001” wasn’t just the story of a journey to Jupiter. It was an unprecedented virtual-reality experience of spaceflight that allowed us to share the ride. Kubrick’s large-format production, shot on a special new version of Cinerama, was a forerunner of today’s IMAX shows.

Actors and crew from “2001: A Space Odyssey” relax after completing photography in a set representing a huge lunar pit where a strange black monolith has been excavated.
Credit: Copyright © 2014 Turner Entertainment Co. 2001: A Space Odyssey and all related characters and elements  are trademarks of and © Turner Entertainment Co. (s14)

2001: Sharing the story

Even as a kid, I knew I wanted to make a book about how “2001” was created. It took a while, but a slender paperback of mine, “2001: Filming the Future” (Aurum Press, 2000), was published about 20 years ago. Kubrick looked at early proofs, sent to him by Arthur C. Clarke, whom I had gotten to know quite well by that point, because I was helping to archive that portion of his papers and manuscripts that were held in the U.K. rather than his home base of Sri Lanka. I was terrified that Kubrick would refuse permissions or, worse still, just give no response at all, but Arthur kept pushing on my behalf, and eventually, I got a call from Anthony Frewin, one of Kubrick’s trusted aides. “Stanley really likes the fonts,” I was told. “We look forward to seeing the finished book.”

At that time, the studio ownership of “2001” was a tricky matter. I did hear from a studio lawyer that my book might be in danger of infringing copyrights. I phoned Frewin, pleading for help. He said, “Right-oh,” or some other cool English phrase, and I never heard from the lawyer again. When Kubrick died in 1999, I was distraught. His tacit approval for “Filming the Future” kicked off my long career in books. 

Jump cut to fall 2012, when I approached the Kubrick family once more. I asked if there was any way I could have access to Stanley’s archives and turn “Filming the Future” into something more substantial. By now, Hollywood behemoth Warner Bros. was securely in charge of Kubrick’s cinematic legacy (with one or two exceptions). There was no dodging the lawyers this time, but Kubrick’s wife Christiane, and her brother Jan Harlan, were supportive, and offered to help clear the way. 

Eventually, I had a contract from Warner Bros. enabling a new book. A lot more contractual paperwork piled up, from the Kubrick family and from the University of the Arts London, which manages and preserves the actual physical archive. Finally, there was a deal with Taschen, the premium book publisher based in Cologne, Germany, chosen because of its previous close relationship with the Kubricks.

All that administration took up the first six months of my three-year personal odyssey. Then came archive trawling, image scanning, careful digital retouching and color-balance repairs to half-century-old images. 

Oh, then there was writing the book, expanding my old 30,000-word text into something more than three times longer. Then came the collaboration with Taschen’s chosen graphic designers, the M/M Company in Paris. One of the designers went off to Mexico for a spell, so I was soon fielding phone calls in three different time zones.

When M/M told me it wanted the book to be in the shape of a monolith, I was very worried. No book can be that shape! Of course, breaking all the rules turned out to be an excellent reason to go ahead and do it. Just like the movie “2001” itself, some people love the format, while others hate it. We had to go with the courage of our ideas, and take our chances. 

This 8-foot diameter model was used for the rotating space station sequences in “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Sadly, the model no longer exists.
Credit: Copyright © 2014 Turner Entertainment Co. 2001: A Space Odyssey and all related characters and elements  are trademarks of and © Turner Entertainment Co. (s14)

Machines are the stars

So what is it about “2001” that makes it worth yet another book? Basically, this movie never seems to get stale. The obsessively detailed hardware on screen still amazes audiences today. 

Douglas Trumbull was just one of dozens of young effects artists recruited for the production, which took four years to complete. When I asked him about the sense of realism conveyed by the film, his reply was enthusiastic. “You walked onto those spacecraft sets, and everything was as real as it could be,” he said. “No one had ever done anything so convincing up to that time. Special effects now are dependent on computer graphics. I think a lot of depth and impact has been lost in the process.” 

For the interior of the film’s Jupiter-bound spaceship Discovery, Kubrick represented artificial gravity using a spectacular “centrifuge,” a spinning drum 38 feet (12 meters) in diameter, weighing 30 tons, and fitted with control consoles, space food dispensers and astronaut couches. All of these details were built at full scale for the actors to interact with, essentially by working inside the drum like hamsters in a giant wheel. Clarke’s brother, Fred Clarke (a central-heating engineer whose math-laden book on the subject became a standard trade reference), thought that the centrifuge construction was so good, “you could almost imagine they were building a prototype for the real thing.”

As Trumbull explained to me, “You had sets that were completely 360-degree enclosed. Architecturally, the lighting was built into the structures in a naturalistic way. The actors and the production team felt they were in a genuine environment.” 

This recollection was echoed by the movie’s lead actor, Keir Dullea, who played astronaut Dave Bowman. A few years ago, while I was making a documentary about “2001” for British TV, Dullea told me, “There were certain shots when we would lean forward and turn on the camera ourselves, because there was nowhere safe for the cameraman to go, or he’d be in the frame. Then, we’d get into position, and they would start up the centrifuge wheel, and you’d have an everlasting tracking shot. You would just walk, or jog, and the wheel would revolve around you.”

Perhaps for the first time in a major fiction film, Kubrick introduced the idea of futuristic props and sets as principal performers in the drama, in some ways more important than his human actors. “There’s a deep emotional relationship between man and his machines, which are his children,” Kubrick said at the time. “We have always worshipped beauty, and I think there’s a new kind of technological beauty in the world.”

A detail of the Jupiter spaceship Discovery interior, from where the EVA pods are despatched into space. The sets from the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” were built half a century ago, but still seem fresh and modern today.
Credit: Copyright © 2014 Turner Entertainment Co. 2001: A Space Odyssey and all related characters and elements  are trademarks of and © Turner Entertainment Co. (s14)

What did they get wrong? What did they get right?

Kubrick’s exploration of humanity’s place in the universe was informed by the best industrial expertise of the time. His technical adviser, Frederick Ordway, had worked with aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun and the Future Projects Office at NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center before being lured to the more glamorous world of film. Ordway soon discovered that “Stanley was a maniac for detail. Everything on screen had to be justified scientifically.” Ordway and his colleague, production designer Harry Lange, visited countless British and American aerospace and computer companies in search of realistic hardware ideas. Most of their research still holds up amazingly well today.

Where “2001” made technical errors, it did so in ways that turned out to be flawed rather than plain wrong. For instance, while the giant Discovery spacecraft is incredibly convincing, the lack of airtight docking ports seems odd today. But we have to remember that when “2001” first went into production in the early 1960s, space docking had not yet been tried, let alone perfected. On the other hand, spaceship Discovery’s three single-seater “EVA pods” look so superbly designed, it seems a crying shame they do not exist in real life. 

One of the most iconic scenes in “2001” demonstrates the rotation of an enormous wheel-shaped space station. Rocket pioneers in the 1930s — such as Robert Goddard in the United States, or Hermann Oberth and Willy Ley in Germany — understood the potential of such a design. The first detailed engineering proposal was conceived by Hermann Noordung in 1928. Historians know little about Noordung, except that he was an Austro-Hungarian army officer and that he died young of ill health. Fortunately, his station proposal survives. He described a “Living Wheel” whose gentle rotation provides its crew with artificial gravity. [If We’re Serious About Going to Mars, We Need Artificial Gravity (Op-Ed)]

Noordung predicted that weightlessness would play havoc with the human balance system. His design influenced a generation of astronautics engineers, including von Braun, whose wheel-shaped station designs were an obvious influence on “2001.” 

The primary purpose of a space station would be to serve as comfortable accommodation for humans in orbit. Artificial gravity must surely be required to keep them healthy, everyone once thought. Today, we have different priorities. The International Space Station exploits, rather than counteracts, weightlessness in order to conduct experiments that are impossible on Earth. The station in “2001: A Space Odyssey” is “wrong,” therefore, but for an interesting reason. Maybe one day it will be matched by a similarly grand real-life equivalent. 

The major problems with the film’s predictions are social and political, rather than technical. When “2001” was released, NASA was about to send astronauts to the moon, and it looked as if space was set to become what the Internet is for us today: the “happening thing.” Unfortunately, NASA’s consumption of tax funding could not be sustained. Americans are a long way from building the lunar settlement depicted in “2001,” let alone swinging past Jupiter in a giant nuclear-powered spaceship equipped with artificial gravity. 

Keir Dullea, as astronaut Dave Bowman, explores the eerie hotel room in the finale of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, in a scene deleted from the final film.
Credit: Copyright © 2014 Turner Entertainment Co. 2001: A Space Odyssey and all related characters and elements  are trademarks of and © Turner Entertainment Co. (s14)

Beyond 2001, and into 2015

Short of wormholing toward an alien encounter, we probably could accomplish most of what we see in “2001” if we really wanted to. So why haven’t we?

“2001” can be thought of as a nostalgic monument to the dreams of a previous generation, but it still serves as a powerful manifesto for contemporary space activists. Perhaps entrepreneurs driving the nascent private rocket business have itchy feet precisely because of what they saw on screen as youngsters. If Kubrick and his team could deliver such a compelling vision of astronautical progress all those years ago, how come we are still struggling to turn so much of it into reality, what with all the smart technologies available to us now? 

In November 2011, Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, told The Huffington Post that “2001” had been hugely influential, “But, as time progressed, the dream began to disappear,” he said. “We saw a string of horrendous accidents, including the 1986 Challenger explosion.”

Despite such setbacks, including with Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, rocket planes could become the basis for a new industry. Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson is just one of many space innovators who acknowledge Kubrick’s film as a call to arms. In January 2010, Branson told Postmedia News reporter Alex Strachan, “‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ was magnificent, and I hope that one day Virgin Galactic will be going a lot further than just suborbital flights, and will reflect that film.”

Kubrick and Clarke knew perfectly well that private corporations would have to play just as great a role as government space agencies in getting people into orbit. A large section of the giant rotating space station in “2001” was occupied by a familiar hotel company, Hilton. A winged Pan Am space shuttle delivered the guests, and Honeywell and IBM built the control consoles. The fact that one or two of those companies have faded over the intervening years doesn’t in any way diminish the key point. The orbital realm will evolve into a corporate space, because the money for all those toys has to come from somewhere.

Box cover art for Taschen by Wayne Haag, based on elements from “2001: A Space Odyssey” elements.
Credit: Copyright © 2014 Turner Entertainment Co. 2001: A Space Odyssey and all related characters and elements  are trademarks of and © Turner Entertainment Co. (s14)

Unanswered questions

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If you’re a topical expert — researcher, business leader, author or innovator — and would like to contribute an op-ed piece, email us here.
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Hardware enthusiasts love to argue the merits of the film’s finer details, but there’s no doubt that it sets up a series of huge challenges that don’t yet have any answers. Can we send humans across the solar system, or will deep space elude our dreams of colonization forever? Right now, it’s hard to be sure. Where is HAL 9000? Is he impossible to build, or will he and his kind yet supplant us as the dominant species? We don’t know yet. And where, oh where, are the extraterrestrial intelligences that so many scientists insist must be out there, but from which we have yet to hear a single bleep? Again, we don’t know.

Just as in 1968, we may be teetering on the brink of discoveries that can answer some, or perhaps even all, of those questions. For now, we continue to wait with baited breath. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his generous foreword to my first book, “Historians in some far distant future will, no doubt, regard the current half-century delay in our plans as nothing more than temporary, a brief hiccup in the greater span of events.”

In the meantime, so long as we continue to wonder about our place in the cosmos, and our relationship with emerging technologies, the questions posed by Kubrick and Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” will stay as fresh and timely as ever.

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.

Does spaceflight affect the human body all the way down to the genetic level? And if so, can a study of those changes help protect or even select future astronauts? Scientists working on NASA’s one-year mission are taking the first steps toward answering those questions.

Astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are living on the International Space Station for just shy of one Earth year. While they aren’t the first people to live in space for that long, they are under far more scientific scrutiny than any of those to come before them. NASA has emphasized that the goal of the mission is to prepare humans for the long journey to Mars. 

Kelly is offering genetic scientists a particularly interesting variable to study: He has an identical twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, living on the ground and undergoing the same swath of tests. With Mark as a comparison, scientists collecting data on Scott say they will be able to better understand how spaceflight affects human genes. [NASA’s One-Year Mission: Full Coverage]

Space twins

For a long time, the best way to tell Mark and Scott Kelly apart was by their facial hair: Mark sported a mustache, while Scott remained clean-shaven. But on the day that Scott was scheduled to take off for a nearly year-long stay on the International Space Station, Mark showed up bare-faced. A picture of them wearing matching blue NASA coveralls and sunglasses requires a few seconds of close scrutiny to figure out who is who.

The 51-year-old brothers from West Orange, New Jersey, have also led what most people would consider remarkably similar lives, having both joined the elite club of people who have flown into space. But physiologically, the brothers are probably quite different: They’ve had different experiences, different diets, different injuries and illnesses, all of which have shaped their bodies in unique ways. In addition, even though they were each given an identical genetic code, environmental factors will have activated different pieces of that code throughout their lives (the study of these environmentally activated genes is known as epigenetics).

“When you’re born, genes are the sheet music you get. How you play that music is the epigenetics part — it’s the environment acting on the sheet music,” said Michael Snyder, a genetic scientist conducting an experiment on the twins as part of the one-year mission, in an interview with Space.com. “There are changes in your DNA as you go through life, so there are differences [between them], but they’re pretty minor. They still started out with the same sheet music.”

The goal of NASA’s One-Year Mission is to give scientists the opportunity to conduct a series of physical and mental experiments on Scott Kelly and Kornienko, the second participant in the one-year mission. The pair will also undergo tests for Russian and Japanese scientists. Scott and Mark Kelly are also participating in a series of tests that have been grouped under the name “The Twin Study.”

Aging in space

Would You Sign Up for a Years-Long Space Mission?

It has never been difficult to see that spaceflight takes a toll on the human body: Muscles atrophy in the absence of gravity and astronauts come home barely able to walk; eye damage is well documented in astronauts, as is bone loss. In many cases, the root causes of these effects aren’t understood, and there’s a chance the answers could be found at the genetic level.

Susan M. Bailey is a professor of radiological health sciences at Colorado State University and has spent years studying the health effects of space radiation on astronauts. When the one-year mission was announced, Bailey proposed an experiment to study the Kelly twins’ telomeres — a bit of material at the end of each strand of DNA that protects the chromosome.

It’s been understood for years that telomeres shorten as people age, and may contribute to many common signs of aging, like sagging skin and graying hair, as well as an increased risk of certain diseases. The shortening of the telomeres eventually causes the cells to stop dividing and doing the job they were designed to do.

Physical and emotional stress can also cause telomeres to shorten. So, for example, a study showed that mothers caring for critically ill displayed shortened telomeres in a matter of months, compared with mothers caring for healthy children, according to Bailey.

Astronauts experience plenty of stress, starting with the physical and mental stress of taking a ride on a glorified bomb, then living in an enclosed environment with no gravity and high exposure to space radiation. Could all that stress mean that astronauts are aging faster than everyone on the ground? Or does the stress of spaceflight compare to the stress of, say, losing a loved one? Bailey said she and her colleague suspect that Scott Kelly’s telomeres will shorten more rapidly than his twin brother’s back on Earth. But the test is entirely blinded, so the group won’t see any results until after Scott touches back down on Earth. [For Manned Deep-Space Missions, Radiation Is Biggest Hurdle]

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Millions of measurements

Part of the goal of these types of experiments is to find ways to protect astronauts from harm, or find solutions to the ailments that affect them. But genetic studies in particular may also explain why some people just seem better at spaceflight than others.

Snyder is one of the scientists conducting the most comprehensive genetic study ever conducted on a human in space. The director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University, he and his colleagues are world leaders in “omics tech,” which refers to a study of a person’s physiology at a molecular level. This includes study of a person’s genes (genomics), proteins (proteomics), molecules in involved in cellular metabolism (metabonomics) and a handful of other categories that end in “omics.” When Snyder and his team run a total –omics analysis on someone, it adds up to “many millions of measurements,” he said. Scientists like Snyder must also know how to interpret the results of all those measurements, and how to use that information to better understand the health of the human that these molecules form.

“We want to try to interpret what’s going on with [these astronauts] biologically as they go into spaceflight, which is extremely taxing,” Snyder said in an interview. “We want to see what kinds of changes occur at a level that’s never been done [in astronauts] before.”

When a subject signs on for the full analysis by Snyder and his team, “It’s like getting an IMAX movie of your biochemical changes.” That might be compared to the tests a physician typically runs during a standard physical checkup, which he says would be like “fuzzy AM radio.”

On the ground, Snyder and colleagues are doing a study on 100 test subjects to see if they can find genetic indicators that would explain why some people are predisposed to develop Type II diabetes, while others are not. Snyder himself developed Type II after suffering from a specific kind of viral infection. This has been known to happen in other people who, like Snyder, are genetically predisposed to develop Type II.

Similarly selective ailments have been seen in people who go to space, Snyder said. So-called “space headaches” can evolve during spaceflight or, according to Snyder, following a return to Earth. A genetics study might help illuminate the cause of these headaches, Snyder said, but it might also simply identify those people who are likely to develop them. Looking even further into the future, it’s possible that genes could even reveal the likelihood that someone has the psychological fortitude to fare well on a long-duration space mission, or how likely a person is to develop cancer after being exposed to the high levels of radiation in space.

In other words, a genetic test may one day play a large role in selecting who goes to space. This idea has been presented as speculation, but the one-year mission may mark the start of it becoming a reality.

The Kelly twins, Scott (left) and Mark, are participating in an unprecedented study of how spaceflight influences human physiology.
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

An ideal control group

Any tests currently being done on Scott Kelly while he is in space were also done before he left and will be done after he returns. Those results serve as the experimental control — they tell scientists what Scott’s body (or his genome) look like under “normal” conditions. Without those results, there is no way to say if changes in his body (or his genome) are due to spaceflight or some other factor.

But even Scott Kelly is not a perfect control for himself, because human bodies, and even human genomes, can change under “normal” circumstances. Even if Kelly stayed on Earth, after the passing of a year, he would not be a perfect replica of the person he’d been 12 months before, perhaps even on a genetic and molecular level.

“We have some idea how much people drift or change [genetically] over time, but we’re still learning that. It’s conceivable that people naturally drift over a year, especially those in space who are exposed to more radiation,” Snyder said. To some degree, Mark Kelly will serve as a control for the kind of change that Scott Kelly might experience naturally if he had stayed on the ground.

“Some of [Scott’s] changes may fall within the normal variation expected for a human, while some changes could be pretty dramatic, and those could be due to the effects of space,” Snyder said.

(According to Bailey, the idea had been presented to have Mark Kelly eat the same astronaut food as his brother, because in some tests it would be beneficial to rule out diet as a variable. But astronaut food is not necessarily what most people would eat if they had a choice, and Bailey said the idea was dropped to spare Mark Kelly that culinary torture. “I guess there’s only so much you can ask a person to do,” she added.)

Mark and Scott Kelly are not perfectly identical, but they are “much more similar than any two astronauts we’ve flown before,” said John B. Charles, associate manager for international collaborations of NASA’s human research program.

The one-year mission, he said, is an introduction between the field of genetic science and spaceflight — a merger he says was largely made because of the twin brothers.

“We have essentially tapped into a whole segment of the scientific research population that has not considered doing spaceflight before, because they didn’t think it was relevant to their business,” he said. “But [with the twins study], they now realize that they have techniques that are beneficial to our questions, and we have an environment that may help them understand their questions in a different way, which is exactly what scientists are always looking for.”

It remains to be seen just how much the Twins Study will reveal about spaceflight, or about human genetics. But Charles says it’s only the beginning of what he hopes will be a long relationship between genomic science and spaceflight.

“[The twins study] is not a solution, this is a demonstration,” Charles said. “We’re not going to get conclusive answers, but we’re looking for those areas where the answers are unexpected — to give us a direction to go on future research.”

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

Scott Kelly, shown aboard the International Space Station, answered questions from space via Twitter, on Saturday, Sept. 19. Credit: Scott Kelly/NASA

Scott Kelly just started the second half of the longest consecutive space mission a NASA astronaut has ever completed. To celebrate, he took to Twitter to answer questions from curious space enthusiasts on Earth.

“Entering the unknown on the 2nd half of my #YearInSpace,” he wrote in a tweet on Thursday (Sept. 17). “Got Qs for me? Let’s chat!”

Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, March 27. Kelly’s year in space marks the longest time an American has spent in orbit. (Several Russian cosmonauts spent more than a year in space in the 1980s and 1990s.) On Monday, Sept. 14, Kelly and Kornienko had spent 171 days in space — halfway through their mission, which is actually a little shy of a full year, at 342 days. [Most Extreme Human Spaceflight Records of All Time]

Kelly began answering questions at 1:45 p.m. EST (1745 GMT) on Saturday (Sept. 19). For the most part, questions revolved around an astronaut’s typical day aboard the International Space Station.

@Mc_Steezy asked, “How many backflips can you do in a row in space?”

I don’t know. A lot. The longer I am here, the better I am though. https://t.co/J5B1yD99aT

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

@CodyMJohns asked, “What’s the hardest thing to do in space we take for granted with gravity or on Earth?”

Use the toilet. https://t.co/nYthFpjzBm

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

The questioners also asked Kelly what his mission means for the future of space exploration and NASA’s plans for a mission to Mars. We’ve rounded up a few of our favorites:

Water in space

Water was a common theme during Kelly’s tweet chat, with questions particularly focused on personal hygiene. Since water is heavy and rockets launched to space have to be as light as possible, most water that astronauts use for drinking, bathing and making food is recycled. http://www.space.com/20867-astronauts-drink-urine-and-other-waste-water-video.html

I probably drink about a liter 1/2, and I get about a liter in our food. And it comes mostly from our urine. https://t.co/9cWlh71vCf

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

We don’t do laundry. We throw our clothes away after they are used. https://t.co/hKlqJH8fEq

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

Sponge bath. https://t.co/1HvAx8mMo4

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

Staying strong

Floating in microgravity for a year might seem fun, but it has its downsides. Even six months in space can lead to muscle and bone loss, because a body that doesn’t have to fight against gravitational forces weakens from underuse. A question about exercise aboard the ISS reveals more about how astronauts stay fit.

You have to be held down by bungees. And it’s hard to run at your real weight by bungees. https://t.co/XteyOzcE0a

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

The big blue marble

Scott Kelly has dedicated his life to furthering space exploration. By the end of this mission, he will have spent a total of about a year and a half in orbit. But questions about Kelly’s experience aboard the ISS reveal that he actually prefers it when his feet are planted on the ground.

@JakeNonnemaker asked, “Would you go to Mars if given the opportunity?”

Yes. As long as I could come back. https://t.co/KEyQVKgMa1

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

@kyleiop asked, “Which one do you like? Living in Earth or in space?”

Earth. Earth is better. Although, it is a privilege to be here. https://t.co/IUjX0UuFZK

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

@GretelRot asked, “In what way did a #YearInSpace change your perception of life/time/anything else, or what DID change for you?”

Being in a place you can’t leave, makes you value your freedom more. https://t.co/2Jg1RmxTWb

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

Sweet dreams

In addition to how they keep themselves clean, astronauts’ sleeping habits were of key interest to questioners.

I sleep in a sleeping bag that has one strap at the top, so my head doesn’t float forward and hit the computer. https://t.co/CfZlprN1YG

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

It’s a little. You get used to it. I miss the weight of the blanket. https://t.co/043OCFMa71

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

@Rijul_Reji asked, “What kinda dreams do you see these days?”

Mostly dreams that I’m on the @space_station. Some dreams on #Earth, but those are rare. https://t.co/zzp04mLdBJ

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

Journey to Mars

NASA scientists hope Kelly’s time in space will tell them about the physical and changes a person experiences in microgravity. He is undergoing a series of experiments testing things like how shifts in bodily fluids can increase brain pressure and change the shape of astronauts’ eyes, and how space radiation affects the body. But Kelly won’t be the only one monitored: Many of the experiments will also be conducted on his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, a retired NASA astronaut on the ground. Understanding how space affects a human body will help NASA prepare for future missions to Mars. [The Human Body in Space: 6 Weird Facts]

@jccozzi asked, “After half a year in space, do u think humans are mentally well-suited to be able to travel 2 Mars? Would we miss 2 much?”

Yes, and hopefully we’ll learn things on this #YearInSpace that will better position us for our #JourneytoMars. https://t.co/E4P8FGU9wB

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

@GrahamTeacher asked, “What advice would you give to the next person spending a year in space?”

Pace yourself. Get enough rest. And understand a year is a long time. https://t.co/2Tj3r1rj3N

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

@katie11074 asked, “How do you get the food that you eat?”

We get special deliveries from Earth. But we grew and ate lettuce for veggie study to help w/our #JourneytoMars. https://t.co/Sutap8GfVY

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 19, 2015

Follow Kasandra Brabaw on Twitter @KassieBrabaw. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

A new video takes armchair explorers on a flyover tour of Pluto’s stunning and varied landscapes.

The new Pluto tour animation stitches together photos captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its historic flyby on July 14, which returned the first-ever up-close looks at the faraway dwarf planet.

During the close encounter, New Horizons discovered, among other things, 2-mile-high (3.2 kilometers) ice mountains, a vast plain of ice dubbed Sputnik Planum and a dark area called Cthulhu Regio. All those features are highlighted in the new video, which was created by Stuart Robbins, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. [See more Pluto photos by New Horizons]

“I primarily use these images to map craters across the surfaces of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, to understand the population of impactors from the Kuiper Belt striking Pluto and Charon,” Robbins wrote in a blog post Friday (Sept. 18). (The Kuiper Belt is the ring of icy bodies, including Pluto, that lies beyond Neptune’s orbit.)

“While this is my research focus, another interest of mine is figuring out how to make visualizations that convey some of the sheer beauty and power of the features New Horizons is revealing,” Robbins added. “With that in mind, I’ve created a new animation/flyover of Pluto using images returned this month by New Horizons.”

The video tour features resolutions ranging from 1,300 feet (400 meters) per pixel to 1.3 miles (2.1 km) per pixel.

View of Pluto captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015.
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The animation takes viewers as close to Pluto’s surface as 120 miles (200 km) and zooms out to an altitude of more than 1,500 miles (2,500 km), Robbins wrote. This apparent proximity is provided by New Horizons’ telescopic camera, for the probe itself did not actually get so close; New Horizons zoomed past the dwarf planet at a minimum distance of 7,800 miles (12,550 km) on July 14.

Earlier this month, New Horizons began beaming home the vast majority of the images and data collected during the close encounter. Mission team members said they expect this relay work will take about a year to complete. So space enthusiasts can look forward to seeing many more great new images, and videos, of Pluto in the future.

“The concept of this animation arose from a desire to showcase the most recent imagery received from the spacecraft and the huge variety of terrain types that we see on Pluto,” Robbins wrote. “I can hardly wait until we get even better imagery — up to seven times better pixel scale — that’s still to come of select areas of the surface and to see what new surprises Pluto has in store.”

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

Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko spoke to TIME mMagazine along with NASA aAstronaut Scott Kelly Thursday (Sept. 15), where they discussed their year-long mission in space. Credit: NASA

Space travelers don’t have to dream of flying, but Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, up on the International Space Station, revealed his own bad dream of missing the flight back to space in a recent televised interview.

Kornienko and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly are halfway through their one-year mission living on the space station, and they took the time to talk remotely with TIME magazine Thursday (Sept. 17), discussing life on the station and what they miss about home.

In response to a question about wishing he were back on Earth, the mostly silent Kornienko opened up: “Of course I’d like to go to Earth. Sometimes I see [in] the dream I have a vacation on Earth, and each time I forget — [I’m] too late to next shuttle to the space station,” he said in the interview. [One Year in Space: Epic Space Station Mission in Photos]

“But it’s a dream,” he added. “I’d like to go to Earth, but exactly in scheduled time.”

Kornienko also fielded a question about his sleeping arrangements — he’s staying in the U.S. section of the station, as he did on his last stay five years ago. He still spends most of his time working in the Russian segment, he said, but there are only two sleeping areas there; the two other cosmonauts stay on that side, while he rooms within the U.S. section.

The International Space Station currently has six crewmembers aboard, which is exactly how many individual rooms there are for sleeping. Back when there were nine people aboard, from Sept. 4 to Sept. 12, the three newly arrived spacefarers brought sleeping bags into their own, smaller modules.

Two of those three new arrivals headed back to Earth after just over a week, as did one of the cosmonauts who arrived in March with Kornienko and Kelly. But the interviewing duo are in it for the long haul.

“For me, time on the station is like rubber,” Kornienko said. “It’s much, much longer than in Earth. But I am glad I am here with Scott, my friend — and a very good crewmember — and I’m sure all the tasks will be performed OK and we will do our mission very well.”

This year-long mission is Kornienko’s second career spaceflight; in 2010 he worked on the International Space Station for almost six months.

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

Credit: NASA

With the huge supermoon lunar eclipse just one week away, it’s time to dust off your small telescopes and binoculars, track down an observatory event or webcast, or draft your invitations for a moon-cake party. Don’t wait too long — if you miss it, the next one isn’t until 2033.

The supermoon lunar eclipse of 2015 will occur Sunday, Sept. 27, and is a confluence of three events: a full moon; a lunar eclipse, in which the Earth blocks the sun’s light from hitting the moon; and lunar perigee, when the moon is in the closest part of its orbit to Earth. The last time such a confluence happened was in 1982; there were just five instances of it in the 20th century. This time around, viewers looking from the Americas, Europe, Africa, western Asia and the eastern Pacific Ocean will have a chance to see the show. [Video: Rare Super ‘Blood Moon’ Lunar Eclipse Coming, Last Until 2033]

During lunar perigee, the moon appears larger and brighter in the sky, which is why a full moon coinciding with perigee is known as a “supermoon.” (A “minimoon” is when the full moon is at its farthest point from the Earth.) This large moon will present the perfect canvas to watch the Earth’s shadow slide over and block the moon’s light.

As if that weren’t spectacular enough, there’s the origin of the eclipse’s other name, “blood moon.” The moon doesn’t simply disappear into Earth’s shadow during a lunar eclipse; instead, it’s illuminated by an eerie, reddish glow of the light refracting through the edges of Earth’s atmosphere.

<img src=”http://i.space.com/images/i/000/050/312/i01/SMLEbanner1.jpg?1442584960″ alt=”Checkout our super moon deals for the rare Supermoon Lunar Eclipse of 2015.”/>

The moon will be shrouded in shadow Sunday night or early Monday morning (depending on the time zone). It will enter the dark part of the Earth’s shadow at 9:07 EDT Sunday (0107 GMT), and it will enter a total eclipse by 10:11 p.m. EDT (0211 GMT Monday) beforebegin to emerge from shadow 12 minutes later. Areas that cannot see the full eclipse, because sunset comes too late or sunrise too early, may still be able to see part of the moon obscured.

Several webcasts are planned to stream live views of the eclipse online. The Slooh Community Observatory, a skywatching website that provides users access to remotely operated telescopes, will offer a flagship webcast of the lunar eclipse that can be accessed at the Slooh website, where visitors can also find Slooh’s archive of past webcasts.

In Los Angeles, California, the famed Griffith Observatory, will host a live webcast of its public viewing event, where the observatory will provide binoculars and telescopes for people to watch the eclipse. Astronomy buffs can listen to the LA Philharmonic and Steinway & Sons play moon-themed music as the eclipse takes place, and webcast viewers can follow along as well. And the University of Arizona’s SkyCenter observatory atop Mount Lemmon will also stream live telescope views in an updating image at its SkyCenter website here.

Of course, in addition to the telescope, binoculars and webcast viewing methods, the eclipse can be seen with the old-fashioned naked eye — so be sure to look up!

Editor’s note: If you capture an amazing view of the supermoon lunar eclipse or any other night sky view that you would like to share with Space.com for a possible story or gallery, send images and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

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

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this view of Saturn’s moon Enceladus on March 10, 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

In the not-too-distant future, a spacecraft could deliver samples from an alien ocean to Earth, where scientists would scrutinize the material for signs of life.

Scientists are developing a mission concept that would send a probe flying through the plume created by the 100-odd geysers erupting from the south polar region of Saturn’s ice-covered moon Enceladus.

These geysers blast water, salts and organic compounds from the satellite’s subsurface ocean far out into space. The mission, known as Life Investigation for Enceladus (LIFE), would collect samples of this stuff, then send it winging back to Earth in a return capsule. [Inside Enceladus, Icy Moon of Saturn (Infographic)]

“Getting a sample from Enceladus would be phenomenal,” said LIFE leader Peter Tsou, of Sample Exploration Systems in La Canada, California. “This ‘are we alone’ question — potentially we can shed tremendous light on it in a single mission.”

LIFE is not on NASA’s books; it remains a concept at the moment. Tsou estimates the sample-return effort could be mounted for $700 million or so — about 30 percent the cost of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity mission.

More than 100 geysers blast water ice, organic molecules and other material into space from the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI

A potentially habitable moon

Many astrobiologists regard the 310-mile-wide (500 kilometers) Enceladus and the much larger Jupiter moon Europa as the solar system’s best bets to host life beyond Earth.

Enceladus and Europa appear to possess subsurface oceans of liquid water that are in contact with their rocky mantles, making possible many complex chemical reactions. And recent studies suggest that, while both moons’ oceans are beyond the reach of sunlight, they may still harbor energy sources sufficient to sustain microbial life.

NASA is already working on a flyby mission to Europa, which the agency hopes to launch in the early to mid-2020s. But many scientists are also pushing for a dedicated Enceladus effort, in large part because of the satellite’s dramatic geysers, which NASA’s Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft discovered in 2005.

These powerful jets, which emanate from fractures near Enceladus’ south pole, merge to form a plume — a frigid cloud of ocean particles that extends many miles into space, just waiting to be snagged and studied. [See Enceladus’ Geysers in Action (Video)]

“It’s free samples,” Jonathan Lunine, of Cornell University, told Space.com. “We don’t need to land, drill, melt or do anything like that.”

Cassini has flown through the plume on multiple occasions, finding evidence of carbon-containing organic compounds with its mass spectrometer instrument. But Cassini is not equipped to look for signs of life.

The argument for sample return

Lunine is principal investigator of another mission concept called Enceladus Life Finder (ELF), which aims to search for signs of life in plume particles. But the ELF probe would do all this work onboard in the Saturn system, rather than send the samples back to Earth for analysis.

Tsou thinks sample-return is a better way to go, saying that it may be tough for a robotic spacecraft millions of miles from its handlers to make a definitive detection of alien life.

“Right now, no biologist or astrobiologist has a generally agreed-upon definition of life,” Tsou said. “So, in order for us to determine that there’s life on Enceladus, it’s not going to be a simple, binary, 1-or-0 answer,” Tsou said. “You’ll have to do many, many studies.”

As an example, Tsou and his team cite the protracted analysis of pieces of Comet Wild 2, which were delivered to Earth by NASA’s Stardust mission in 2006. (Tsou served as Stardust’s deputy principal investigator.)

“Final confirmation of the cometary origin of the amino acid glycine from Comet Wild 2 was obtained over 3 years after the samples were returned to Earth,” the LIFE team wrote in a paper presented at the 45th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which was held last year in The Woodlands, Texas.

“Significant advancement in assessing the biological potential of Enceladus can be made on returned samples in terrestrial laboratories, where the full power of state-of-the-art laboratory instrumentation and procedures can be utilized, without serious limits on power, mass or cost,” they added. “Terrestrial laboratories provide the ultimate in analytical capability, adaptability, reproducibility, reliability and synergy amongst scientists.” [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life]

How it would work

The LIFE probe would launch to Saturn orbit, which it could reach after 5 years if orbital dynamics allowed a speed-boosting flyby of Jupiter, Tsou said. The journey would take 7 or 8 years without such a gravity-assist maneuver, he added. (The trip would be much shorter, however, if NASA’s in-development Space Launch System megarocket were used.)

Once in orbit, LIFE would perform multiple plume-sampling flybys of Enceladus, collecting material in a cushioning aerogel similar to that employed by the Stardust mission. LIFE would also carry a return capsule, a camera, a mass spectrometer (which would allow some in situ analysis) and a dust counter, which would let mission scientists know that the probe had indeed flown through the plume.

After collection was complete, LIFE would send the samples speeding back toward Earth in the return capsule. The plume material would have to be handled extremely carefully once it got here, because of the possibility that it could harbor alien lifeforms (which could theoretically harm or alter Earth life and ecosystems).

Enceladus samples would therefore likely be lodged and studied in a facility capable of “biosafety level 4” (BSL-4) containment, the most secure classification, Tsou said. Researchers studying extremely contagious and dangerous infectious agents, such as the Ebola virus, do their work at BSL-4.

The United States does not have a BSL-4 facility outfitted to handle material from space, and previous studies have estimated the cost of constructing a custom-made one at $500 million or more, Tsou said. But LIFE would not necessarily have to incur that cost.

The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMESTEC) is planning to build a BSL-4 facility onboard its oceangoing research vessel Chikyu, Tsou said. And JAMESTEC officials have responded favorably to the possibility of storing and studying Enceladus samples on Chikyu, he added.

“They will have the staff; they will have the experience,” Tsou said. “To recover [samples] from another [world’s] ocean — they were very excited.”

LIFE’s collaboration with Japan could be extensive, if the mission ends up going ahead: Tsou said there’s a good chance that Japan would supply LIFE’s sample-return capsule. (The nation has some expertise in this area; the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, successfully returned pieces of the asteroid Itokawa to Earth in 2010, and launched another asteroid sample-return mission last year.)

There are no firm commitments at this point, but Tsou said he has had productive meetings with officials from JAXA and the nation’s Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science.

Indeed, Tsou expressed optimism that Japan might be able to pick up about $200 million of the potential mission’s price tag, leaving NASA to pay the remaining $500 million or so. LIFE therefore might someday be able to fly as part of NASA’s Discovery Program, which launches focused, relatively low-cost missions.

Future in doubt

The space agency is currently considering about two dozen proposals for a Discovery mission that will launch by the end of 2021, with a cost cap of $450 million (not including post-launch operations). NASA is expected to select a handful of finalists this month, then make its choice in September 2016.

ELF is in the running for that mission, but Tsou and his colleagues did not submit LIFE as a possibility. The current Discovery call prohibited the use of nuclear power sources — such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which convert the heat created by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 into electricity — apparently in an effort to conserve NASA’s dwindling stockpile of plutonium.

Tsou thinks nuclear fuel is crucial for probes flying all the way to Saturn, which lies 9.5 times farther from the sun than Earth does and thus receives much less solar energy. (Lunine, on the other hand, is confident that ELF can succeed using solar power.)

So the future of LIFE is up in the air. Tsou said he would like to propose the concept as a Discovery mission down the road, though he could foresee submitting LIFE via NASA’s medium-class exploration program, known as New Frontiers, if the next Discovery call is nuclear-free as well. (The $720 million New Horizons mission, which performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto in July, is a New Frontiers project.)

“We’re still pushing ahead without any funding, doing the best we can,” Tsou said.

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

Jeff Bezos announced on Sept. 15, 2015 that his spaceflight company Blue Origin would have a launch facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Credit: Calla Cofield/Space.com

This week, Jeff Bezos announced that Blue Origin would make a home on Florida’s “Space Coast,”; scientists confirmed that an ocean lies beneath the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus; and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly reflected on reaching the mid-point of his one-year stay aboard the International Space Station. This is our roundup of the best space stories of the week, for Sept. 18, 2015.

Blue Origin makes a home in Florida

Billionaire and CEO of Amazon.com Jeff Bezos announced this week that his private spaceflight company Blue Origin will manufacture, test and launch its orbital rockets from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

[Full Story: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Will Launch Rockets and Spaceships from Florida]

Six months to go in one-year mission

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko are in the middle of the longest consecutive stretch spent on the International Space Station. How are they holding up with six more months of spaceflight to go?

[Full Story: Halfway Home: One-Year Space Crew Rallies for 6 More Months Off Earth]

Buildings on Mars could be self-building

When humans finally set foot on Mars, they could settle down in homes that build themselves. The Self-deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments (SHEE) project is working on autonomously deployable space and terrestrial habitats.

[Full Story: Future Mars Explorers Could Live in Habitats That Build Themselves]

Who is in the billionaire’s space club?

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Paul Allen have all used their fortunes to start companies that want to make spaceflight more like commercial air travel. Here’s some background on each of these men, and what each of their companies offers potential customers.

[Full Story: How Jeff Bezos and Other Billionaires Are Transforming Space Travel]

NASA may push back its next-gen vehicle launch

NASA may delay the launch of its Orion spacecraft, a next-generation crewed vehicle intended to take humans to distant locations like Mars. The launch was initially targeted for August 2021, but after reviewing the status of the program, agency officials said the Orion launch could be delayed, although no later than April 2023.

[Full Story: NASA’s 1st Manned Flight of Orion Space Capsule May Slip to 2023]

Robots may run spacecraft-repair shops

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, is developing a robotic arm that could be useful for repairing, refueling and building spacecraft in orbit around Earth. The agency said space-based pit stops will be necessary if space-based traffic is to increase, similar to the way port cities arose with the increase in sea travel.

[Full Story: US Military Foresees Robot-Run ‘Transportation Hub’ in Space]

Spacecraft finds its 3,000th comet

Launched in 1995, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), built to study the solar wind, has identified 3,000 new comets in its 20-year lifetime. Many of the comet discoveries were made by citizen scientists sifting through the observatory’s publicly available data.

[Full Story: Whoa! Sun-Watching Spacecraft Finds 3,000th Comet]

Middle-school engineer sets Twitter abuzz

Social media exploded after news that Texas middle-school student Ahmed Mohamed was arrested after teachers mistook his homemade clock for a bomb. NASA, former astronauts Chris Hadfield and Daniel Tani, and “Mohawk guy” Bobak Ferdowsi were just a few of the people who voiced their support for Ahmed.

[Full Story: Arrested in NASA Shirt, Ahmed Sets Internet Abuzz with #IStandWithAhmed]

To get water in space, bake asteroids

Asteroid mining could make water and other valuable materials available for space colonies and space-based industry. A new idea called “optical mining” would use mirrors to heat the asteroid and an inflatable bag to collect the water.

[Full Story: Asteroid-Mining Plan Would Bake Water Out of Bagged-Up Space Rocks]

A sunset on Pluto

NASA’s New Horizons mission continues to send back breathtaking images of the dwarf planet Pluto. It’s most recent gem: a snapshot of a Plutonian sunset. The light makes the thin, hazy atmosphere clearly visible, while towering ice mountains cast long shadows.

[Full Story: Sunset on Pluto: Breathtaking NASA Photo Shows Mountains, Wispy Atmosphere]

An ocean swirls under the surface of Saturn’s moon

Despite observing water geysers erupting from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, scientists had been unable to confirm if the icy moon held an ocean beneath its crust, or just an isolated lake. Now, researchers say the slight wobble of the planet is likely caused by an entire ocean sloshing down below.

[Full Story: An Ocean Flows Under Saturn’s Icy Moon Enceladus]

Building the solar system to scale

Two filmmakers made an actual scale model of the solar system. With Earth the size of a marble, the model — built in a flat, empty section of desert — was 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide.

[Full Story: Solar System Built to Scale in Nevada Desert (Video)]

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