Category: space.com

A global view of Mars created using images taken by NASA’s Viking mission. Credit: NASA/JPL

New strategies are required to make sure hitchhiking Earth microbes don’t contanimate Mars and other alien worlds, researchers say.

Today’s spacecraft feature sensitive gear that may not be able to withstand the treatment that sterilized previous Mars explorers such as NASA’s Viking landers, said Penelope Boston, co-founder of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute in New Mexico.

“Things have changed,” Boston said at the Astrobiology Science Conference in Chicago in June. “Now we have materials and electronics not meant to be cleaned in the way we need for planetary protection.” [‪The Search for Life on Mars: A Photo Timeline]

Boston called for new technology, including more planetary protection-compatible materials and electronics.

“There’s a lot in the engineering world that has not made the transition to the aerospace environment,” she said.

The Viking way

In 1976, NASA included an experiment on board its Viking landersthat hunted for signs of metabolic activity in the Martian soil. But the findings were ambiguous, and the debate has continued over the past four decades as to whether or not the experiment detected evidence of Mars life.

One thing that people seem to agree on, however, is that the Viking experiment was not tainted by Earth organisms that the spacecraft might have introduced.

“It has not been alleged to my knowledge that this is a problem with biological containment from Earth,” John Rummel, of East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, said at the conference. Rummel served for nearly a decade as NASA’s planetary protection officer. “People were very confident that what they were doing was sampling Mars and not sampling Earth contamination.”

The Viking spacecraft underwent extensive testing, including extreme heating of its interior surfaces.

“It was a smart design by people who weren’t afraid of thermal testing,” Rummel said.

Finding inspiration in other fields

People are more afraid of thermal testing today, because today’s instruments are more sensitive to heat. But the oil industry operates sensitive equipment at high temperatures, suggesting that heat can still be used to clean spacecraft effectively, Rummel said.

Field exploration in extreme environments here on Earth could also provide inspiration, said Boston, who serves with Rummel on NASA’s Planetary Protection Subcommittee.

For example, Boston studies organismsthat live in caves and must take great pains to ensure that her samples aren’t contaminated by material from the surface.

And in some cases, keeping samples free of contamination isn’t just good science; it’s a matter of life and death for the humans involved as well. Underground pockets are sometimes filled with poisonous gas, Boston said, forcing scientists to wear suits that are completely sealed off from the environment.

Some of the practices involved in organism containment here on Earth overlap with ideas for keeping samples from other worlds clean. But more needs to be done, Boston said.

“We need to make that overlap much bigger,” she said. “We have to learn to combine these, and we have to do that very soon.”

Reducing the risk of contamination as much as possible should be a big priority for the people planning NASA’s sample-collecting Mars 2020 rover and other future missions, Boston and Rummel stressed.

“It’s expensive to implement planetary-protection measures,” Rummel said. “But not as expensive as going to Mars and wading around in your old microbes.”

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

The planets of the solar system as depicted by a NASA computer illustration. Orbits and sizes are not shown to scale. Credit: NASA

A gas giant is a large planet composed mostly of gases, such as hydrogen and helium, with a relatively small rocky core. The gas giants of our solar system are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These four large planets, also called jovian planets after Jupiter, reside in the outer part of the solar system past the orbits of Mars and the asteroid belt. Jupiter and Saturn are substantially larger than Uranus and Neptune, revealing that the pairs of planets have a somewhat different composition.

Although there are only four large planets in our own solar system, astronomers have discovered thousands outside of it, particularly using NASA’s Kepler space telescope. These exoplanets (as they are called) are being examined to learn more about how our solar system came to be.

Basic facts

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. It has a radius almost 11 times the size of Earth. It has 50 known moons and 17 waiting to be confirmed, according to NASA. The planet is mostly made of hydrogen and helium surrounding a dense core of rocks and ice, with most of its bulk likely made up of liquid metallic hydrogen, which creates a huge magnetic field. Jupiter is visible with the naked eye and was known by the ancients. Its atmosphere consists mostly of hydrogen, helium, ammonia, and methane. [Related: Planet Jupiter: Facts About Its Size, Moons and Red Spot]

Saturn is about nine times Earth’s radius and is characterized by large rings; their formation circumstances are unknown. It has 53 known moons and nine more awaiting confirmation, according to NASA. Like Jupiter, it is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium that surround a dense core and was also tracked by ancient cultures. Its atmosphere is similar to Jupiter’s. [Related: Planet Saturn: Facts About Saturn’s Rings, Moons & Size]

Uranus has a radius about four times that of Earth’s. It is the only planet tilted on its side, and it also rotates backward relative to every planet but Venus, implying a huge collision disrupted it long ago. The planet has 27 moons, and its atmosphere is made up of hydrogen, helium and methane, according to NASA. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1781. [Related: Planet Uranus: Facts About Its Name, Moons & Orbit]

Neptune also has a radius about four times that of Earth’s. Like Uranus, its atmosphere is mostly made up of hydrogen, helium and methane. It has 13 confirmed moons and an additional one awaiting confirmation, according to NASA. It was discovered by several people in 1846. [Related: Planet Neptune: Facts About Its Orbit, Moons & Rings]

Formation and similarities

It is believed that the giants first formed as rocky and icy planets similar to terrestrial planets. However, the size of the cores allowed these planets (particularly Jupiter and Saturn) to grab hydrogen and helium out of the gas cloud from which the sun was condensing, before the sun formed and blew most of the gas away. 

Since Uranus and Neptune are smaller and have bigger orbits, it was harder for them to collect hydrogen and helium as efficiently as Jupiter and Saturn. This likely explains why they are smaller than those two planets. On a percentage basis, their atmospheres are more “polluted” with heavier elements such as methane and ammonia because they are so much smaller.

Scientists have discovered thousands of exoplanets. Many of these happen to be “hot Jupiters,” or massive gas giants that are extremely close to their parent stars. For this reason, scientists speculate that the planets may have moved back and forth in their orbits before settling into their current configuration. But how much they moved is still a subject of debate.

There are dozens of moons around the giant planets. Many formed at the same time as their parent planets, which is implied if the planets rotate in the same direction as the planet close to the equator (such as the huge Jovian moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.) But there are exceptions. 

One moon of Neptune, Triton, orbits the planet opposite to the direction Neptune spins — implying that Triton was captured, perhaps by Neptune’s once larger atmosphere, as it passed by. And there are many tiny moons in the solar system that rotate far from the equator, of their planets, implying that they were also snagged by the immense gravitational pull.

Current research

Each of these planets also have complex atmospheres and in many cases, giant storms. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter, for example, has been known for 400 years and is shrinking for reasons that are poorly understood. According to Mark Marley, an astrophysicist at the NASA Ames Research Institute, we need more long-term monitoring programs of gas giant atmospheres to better understand the nature of these storms.

While the Cassini mission is active at Saturn right now, NASA is also preparing for the 2016 arrival of Juno — a Jupiter-bound spacecraft that will measure the planet’s interior in detail for the first time by measuring the planet’s gravity field. Astronomers are also looking for “seismic waves,” similar to what propagates through the Earth during earthquakes. “It would be really great if we could detect those for the giant planets, measure these waves that travel through the inside of the planet. It would give us a picture of the cross section,” Marley told Space.com.

Super-Earths

In the past five years or so, scientists have found a multitude of “super-Earths” (planets between the size of Earth and Neptune) in other solar systems. Because this class of planets doesn’t exist in our own solar system, there are many questions as to whether they are more like small giant planets or big terrestrial planets.

More exoplanet discoveries will be attempted in the coming years with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to launch in 2017, the James Webb Space Telescope (set to launch in 2018) and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which could launch no earlier than 2024 if approved.

Additional resources

Astronauts Gordon Cooper (left) and Charles Conrad are seen in the Gemini 5 spacecraft just before launching on their “8 Days or Bust” mission in 1965. The crew was the first to design and wear a mission patch, as shown. Credit: NASA/Museum of Flight/collectSPACE.com

Fifty years ago on Monday (Aug. 24), two NASA astronauts were more than one-third of the way through what was destined to be the world’s longest space mission at the time.

Gordon Cooper and Charles “Pete” Conrad, seated snugly in the U.S. space agency’s third-manned Gemini capsule, had launched atop a Titan II rocket from Cape Canaveral on Aug. 21, 1965. Cooper, who two years earlier had flown on the longest of NASA’s one-man Mercury missions, was now the first person to fly into orbit twice.

Half a century ago Monday at 1:39 a.m. EDT (0639 GMT), Cooper set a new American record for the most time spent in space, surpassing the 97 hours and 56 minutes logged by the all-rookie Gemini 4 crew two months earlier. And he still had more than 125 hours to go before he and Conrad were slated to return to Earth. [Project Gemini: How NASA’s 2-Man Missions Worked]

The “space twins,” as the press had dubbed the two-man Gemini 5 crew at the time, had a slew of experiments and engineering tests to conduct, including the first flight of a power-providing fuel cell onboard a crewed spacecraft and conducting the first precision maneuvers to evaluate new rendezvous technology and techniques.

The Gemini 5 mission’s planned length was more than just an attempt at a record but a test itself, designed to show that astronauts could survive the time needed for a trip to the moon and back.

Cooper and Conrad chose to underline that particular goal while setting yet another American first in space. 

Astronauts Gordon Cooper (foreground) and Charles Conrad are pictured in the Gemini 5 spacecraft moments before the hatches were closed for launch on Aug. 21, 1965.
Credit: NASA

“8 Days or Bust”

Sewn to the right chest of each of their spacesuits was a cloth emblem depicting a Conestoga wagon. Embroidered in red lettering was their mission designation (“Gemini 5”) and their names. And hidden under a thin piece of hastily-added cloth was the inscription, “8 Days or Bust.”

Cooper and Conrad were sporting the first-ever astronaut-designed space mission patch.

Two years earlier, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, the first woman to launch into space also wore a cloth patch. But cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s embroidered doverepresenting her Vostok 6 mission had been designed and sewn to her inner suit without her prior knowledge.

That the Gemini 5 crew had a mission patch was their own doing.

On his Mercury flight, Cooper had been permitted to name his spacecraft, choosing to christen it “Faith 7.” But by his next assignment, NASA had decided to do away with the names. Cooper though, still wanted to find some means of putting a personal touch on his and Conrad’s mission, so he took inspiration from his experience in the Air Force.

“Several months before mission, I mentioned to Pete that I’d never been in a military organization that didn’t have its own patch,” Cooper recounted in “Leap of Faith,” his 2000 memoirs. “We decided right then and there that we were at least going to have a patch for our flight.”

And so they set about designing the first “Cooper patch,” as a NASA memo nicknamed it and all the future mission patches to come. Cooper and Conrad picked the covered wagon to represent the pioneering nature of the flight, and came up with the slogan to inscribe across it.

And that is where the patch almost ran into trouble. What would happen if they had to come home early?

“If you don’t make [it to] eight days, I don’t want the press having a field day about the mission being a bust,” Cooper recalled NASA Administrator James Webb responding just a day before the scheduled launch of Gemini 5.

So Cooper’s and Conrad’s patches quickly had a piece of canvas hand sewn over the slogan, in essence making it a real covered wagon.

Not a bust

Despite intermittent problems with the fuel cell and having to cancel performing some of the experiments, Gemini 5 was a success, setting a new mission duration record of 7 days, 22 hours and 55 minutes. It was the first time that the U.S. surpassed its space race rival, the Soviet Union for the longest spaceflight.

Gemini 5 was Cooper’s last launch, but Conrad went on to fly another Gemini flight before becoming the third man to walk on the moon in November 1969.

Apollo 12 lasted more than 10 days, but perhaps as a nod to the path set by his first flight, Conrad flew a Gemini 5 patch to the moon. That patch, with its “8 Days or Bust” slogan exposed, is now newly on public display in Seattle as part of The Museum of Flight’s new exhibit dedicated to Gemini 5.

The month-long exhibition located in the museum’s lobby, also includes a Gemini spacesuit outer layer (or oversuit), a pair of Gemini gloves and a one-fourth cutaway model of the two-man space capsule.

As for other artifacts from the 1965 record-setting mission, the spacecraft itself is displayed at Space Center Houston in Texas and both spacesuits are preserved in storage at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.

Cooper and Conrad retained the “8 Days or Bust” patches off their suits. Although both men have since passed, their legacy lives on with every mission patch that launches to space.

See the note astronaut Charles Conrad wrote on the back of the Gemini 5 patch he flew to the moon at collectSPACE.com.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2015 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of an M5.6 solar flare (visible in the lower-center region of the sun) on Aug. 24, 2015. Credit: NASA/SDO

The sun fired off a midlevel solar flare early this morning (Aug. 24) while a NASA satellite watched.

The space agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an image of the flare, which erupted at 3:33 a.m. EDT (0733 GMT) this morning from an Earth-facing sunspot known as Active Region 2403.

Space-weather researchers classify strong flares into three categories — C, M or X. X flares are 10 times more powerful than M flares, which in turn are 10 times more intense than C eruptions. This morning’s outburst registered as an M5.6, NASA scientists said. (An M5 flare is five times more powerful than an M1.) [The Biggest Solar Storms of 2015 in Photos]

Solar flares are bursts of high-energy radiation that cannot get through Earth’s atmosphere to affect people on the ground. However, extremely powerful flares can have impacts higher up, triggering temporary radio blackouts and radiation storms that could endanger orbiting astronauts.

Flares are often accompanied by explosions of superheated solar plasma called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Potent CMEs that hit Earth can spawn geomagnetic storms powerful enough to disrupt radio signals, GPS communications and power grids. CMEs also often supercharge the beautiful auroral displays known as the northern and southern lights.

It’s unclear at the moment if this morning’s eruption produced a CME, said researchers with the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), which is run by the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

SWPC scientists said they’ll know more after they analyze data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a sun-studying spacecraft operated jointly by NASA and the European Space Agency.

Solar Quiz: How Well Do You Know Our Sun?

Many of us take the sun for granted, giving it little thought until it scorches our skin or gets in our eyes. But our star is a fascinating and complex object, a gigantic fusion reactor that gives us life. How much do you know about the sun?

0 of 10 questions complete

Solar Quiz: How Well Do You Know Our Sun?

Many of us take the sun for granted, giving it little thought until it scorches our skin or gets in our eyes. But our star is a fascinating and complex object, a gigantic fusion reactor that gives us life. How much do you know about the sun?

0 of questions complete

“Although this flare is bigger than we have seen in some time, it was very impulsive and lacked typical radio signatures that are often associated with CMEs,” SWPC researchers wrote in an update today. “We will update as additional data becomes available.”

Skywatchers were treated to enhanced auroras over the weekend, thanks to a stream of solar particles, and more sky shows could be in the offiing. Two small CMEs that erupted several days ago could hit the planet today, SWPC scientists said.

Editor’s note: If you capture a photo of stunning auroras in the night sky from recent solar activity and would like to share them with Space.com, send images and comments in to managing editor Tariq Malik at: spacephotos@space.com. 

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

The Japanese cargo ship HTV-5 arrived at the International Space Station on Aug. 24, 2015. Astronaut Kimiya Yui of Japan posted this photo of the spacecraft after capturing it by robotic arm. Credit: Kimiya Yui / Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency via Twitter

A robotic Japanese cargo ship made a special delivery to the International Space Station on Sunday (Aug. 24), ending a four-day trek to ferry tons of food, supplies — and even some mice and (experimental) liquor — to the orbiting lab.

The H-II Transfer Vehicle, called HTV-5, arrived at the space station at 6:55 a.m. EDT (1055 GMT), when it was captured via a robotic arm by astronauts inside the space station. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the HTV-5 cargo ship on Wednesday (Aug. 19).

“HTV-5 capture was successful!” wrote space station astronaut Kimiya Yui of Japan, who piloted the robotic arm along with NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, on Twitter after grappling the spacecraft. “Thank you all for your support and hard work.”  [Japan’s HTV Spaceship Fleet in Pictures]

After Yui and Lindgren’s capture of the HTV-5 spacecraft, flight controllers at NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston were expected to use the station’s robotic arm to remotely park the cargo ship at an available docking port. 

JAXA’s HTV spacecraft are known in Japan as Kounotori, which is Japanese for “White Stork.” The HTV-5 spacecraft is carrying about 9,500 lbs. (4,309 kilograms) of supplies and science gear for the space station crew.

That cargo haul includes:

• A small cache of whiskey, tequila and Midori, which are being sent to see how microgravity affects the “mellowness” of their tastes after one or two years in space. The experiment was developed by the Tokyo-based Suntory Global Innovation Center.
• A tiny crew of 12 mice, which are part of an experiment studying the effects of weightlessness during long space missions. The mice are housed in compartments that can switch between microgravity and Earth gravity as part of that study.
• Equipment for NASA’s twins study, which is tracking Scott Kelly on the space station and his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, on Earth. Scott is currently spending a full year on the International Space Station, while Mark, as the control subject, remains on Earth. Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko is also spending a year on the station with Scott as part of that extreme-duration flight.
• A new CALorimetric Electron Telescope delivered by HTV-5 will seek dark matter and examine cosmic rays from the space station, away from the distorting effect of Earth’s atmosphere. With the telescope’s high-resolution data, researchers will learn more about the makeup of the galaxy and the risks cosmic rays pose to astronauts.
• A variety of small satellites, including 14 Earth-watching Dove cubesat satellites, which will be used for Earth observation. Other cubesats include a trio built to test communications systems for global aircraft tracking and the student-built AAUSAT5, designed to test ship beacon signal technology.  
• A new NanoRacks External Platform(NREP) to be attached on the porchlike external facility of the Japanese Kibo module. The NREP is designed to serve as a sort of base for future experiments sent to the station.

Like its name suggests, HTV-5 is the fifth Japanese HTV spacecraft to ferry supplies to the space station. These spacecraft are cylindrical vehicles that measure 33 feet (10 meters) long and 13 feet (4 m) wide. HTV spacecraft are also disposable: Once the HTV-5 mission is complete, the vehicle will be detached from the station and travel to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Japan’s HVT spacecraft are part of an international fleet of robotic cargo ships serving the astronauts on the International Space Station. Russia launches unmanned Progress cargo ships to the space station, with NASA contracting resupply services to the private companies SpaceX and Orbital ATK. The European Space Agency has also provided five cargo missions using its huge Automated Transfer Vehicle.

The space station is currently home to six astronauts, representing the United States, Russia and Japan.

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

A middle-aged clutch of stars shines in many colors in a new view of deep space by a telescope in Chile. The stars in the image are from an open star cluster…Read More » called IC 4651, which lies in the Milky Way about 3,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers used the La Silla Observatory in Chile, part of the European Southern Observatory, to capture the sparkly view. [Read the full story.]    Less «

A lightning storm illuminated the Arizona sky in this stunning skywatcher image of the Milky Way.

Photographer Stephen Ippolito took this image from Bell Rock in Sedona, Arizona on Aug. 9. “I received a lot of help from mother nature for this image,” he told Space.com in an email. “As you can see, Bell Rock is illuminated. It is illuminated because there was a massive lightning storm many miles behind me that was illuminating the entire sky, and when the lightning struck, the entire Bell Rock area would be illuminated.”

Ippolito lit in the foreground of the image with a color corrected LED light. [See More Stunning Photos of the Milky Way]

The Milky Way galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy with roughly 400 billion stars, including our sun. The stars, along with gas and dust, appear like a band of light in the sky from Earth. The galaxy stretches between 100,000 to 120,000 light-years in diameter. At the center of our galaxy lies a gigantic black hole billions of times the size of the sun.  

To see more amazing night sky photos submitted by SPACE.com readers, visit our astrophotography archive.

Editor’s note: If you have an amazing night sky photo you’d like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact SPACE.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook and Google+.

Aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Scott Kelly talks to journalist Katie Couric on Aug. 19, 2015. Credit: Yahoo News Video

What’s it like to live in space? It’s a question that never seems to get old, as demonstrated in a series of interviews this week with astronaut Scott Kelly, who is spending a year aboard the International Space Station.

TV interviewers Larry King, host of the show “Larry King Now,” and Katie Couric, a global news anchor for Yahoo, both spoke with Kelly this week, and both wanted to know the same thing: What’s a normal day like in space? For people on the ground, there seems to be a persistent fascination with the mundane details of space life, such as how astronauts wash their clothes (they don’t), what they do for fun (watch TV and read books), and how well they get along with the other crewmembers (very well). The full interviews can be seen in the video above.

Kelly is one of two participants in NASA’s One-Year Mission, the first instance of American astronauts spending almost an entire calendar year in orbit. The mission, which is nearing its midpoint, is meant to test the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body — information that will prove crucial if humanity ever wants to make the journey to Mars. [The Human Body in Space: 6 Weird Facts]

“What do you do all day long, Scott? Can you give us sort of the typical ‘Day in the Life’ on the International Space Station?” Couric asked Kelly when they spoke via satellite yesterday (Aug. 19).

“All the days are different, which makes it pretty interesting,” Kelly replied. Some days are entirely dedicated to science experiments, he said. During his time on the orbiting laboratory, he and his crewmates will conduct more than 400 science experiments.

“Sometimes you’re fixing things,” Kelly said. “The carbon-dioxide removal system was a piece of hardware we had worked on a few months ago that was pretty extensive. On Monday, we have a Japanese cargo ship coming, so we’ll be grabbing that.  So it’s a combination of science, maintenance and general housekeeping. And then occasionally robotics activities or a spacewalk you might get to do.”

Both Couric and King asked Kelly about how he unwinds from all that work. Kelly said he and the other five crewmembers typically get together and watch a movie on the weekends. Meanwhile, Kelly said he and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren are re-watching the TV series “Breaking Bad,” and have introduced Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui to the show as well.

Couric also mentioned that the actress, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, tweeted at Kelly and asked if he was watching her show, “Veep,” on HBO. Kelly said he liked the show very much, but was not watching it on the station. However, the station is apparently carrying every season of “Seinfeld,” (in which Dreyfus was a main character), which Kelly said he has watched.

And what about even more mundane activities, like doing laundry?

“So, we don’t do laundry because that requires a lot of water and water’s at a premium up here. Plus, it’d be pretty complicated, I think, to make a space washer, although I guess you could do it,” Kelly replied. “So we generally throw our clothes out. I think I’ve been wearing this pair of pants for about two months. I won’t tell you how long I’ve been wearing the other things,” he joked, to which Couric laughed and replied, “Thank you.”

Astronaut Scott Kelly enjoys fresh fruit on Day 100 of his one-year trip aboard the International Space Station. This week Kelly talked with reporters about what life is like in orbit.
Credit: NASA

Kelly also told Couric that he seems to dream more while he’s in orbit. He’d been asked about space dreaming while on previous missions, and at the beginning of the current mission he started writing his dreams down, but stopped because it took too much time, he said.

“It seems like in the beginning of my flight the space dreams were rare. And now, almost 150 days into it, the Earth dreams are more of the rare ones,” he said.

Astronauts have embarked on incredible adventures, like walking on the moon or repairing the Hubble Space Telescope, but even the mundane details of life in space prove captivating  to people on the ground, who can only dream about what it’s like up there.  

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

For the first time, the International Space Station (ISS) will house a Chinese experiment. The research is to be on board the ISS next year. Credit: NASA

A Chinese experiment is being readied for launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) in what could be the forerunner of a larger space-cooperation agenda between the United States and China.

NanoRacks, a Houston-based company that helps commercial companies make use of the space station, has signed a historic agreement with the Beijing Institute of Technology to fly Chinese DNA research to the orbiting outpost next year. No commercial Chinese payload has ever flown to the orbiting lab before.

Space-policy experts said they viewed the agreement as a significant step in shaping possible future joint work by the two spacefaring nations. [Latest News About China’s Space Program]

Cooperation prohibited

Over the past few years, the law has prohibited NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) from cooperating with China on space activities.

That prohibition was originally signed into NASA-funding appropriations bills by Republican Congressman Frank Wolf (Virginia), who chaired the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee before retiring last year.

The final law that Wolf put in place — P.L. 113-235, the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, which is in effect today — states that no funds may be spent by NASA or OSTP to “develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement or execute a bilateral policy, program, order or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company unless such activities are specifically authorized by law after the date of enactment of this act.”

However, the new NanoRacks deal is a commercial arrangement, and experts consider it legal.

Obeying the rules

Jeffrey Manber, NanoRacks’ managing director, told Space.comthat he’s delighted to be working with China on getting the nation’s experiment on board the ISS.

“We’re excited to have a world-class organization that is contributing to our collective knowledge about what happens long term with the immune system during space travel,” Manber said, adding that a recent visit to the Beijing Institute of Technology’s School of Life Science left him extremely impressed.

“They are not a lab that dabbles in space. … This is a life sciences research group focused on what we can learn from microgravity,” Manber said. [‪The Human Body in Space: 6 Weird Facts]

Manber said NanoRacks worked very hard to obey the rules of the Wolf amendment.

“The White House has informed us that the agreement conforms to the Wolf amendment,” Manber said.

DNA mismatching

The Chinese experiment headed for the ISS investigates how the space environment affects DNA, which serves as the genetic material for life as we know it. (Some viruses rely on a molecule called RNA, but scientists argue about whether or not viruses are truly “alive.”)

Chinese researchers are readying a payload to be taken to the International Space Station next year. The experiment is designed to determine if space radiation and microgravity cause gene mutation.
Credit: Beijing Institute of Technology

Making use of a 7-lb. (3 kilograms) device to be housed on the ISS, the Chinese research seeks to determine if space radiation and microgravity cause mutations. The research will focus on mutations to genes encoding antibodies, parts of the immune system that identify foreign objects.

A prior experiment flew aboard China’s uncrewed Shenzhou 8 spacecraft, which launched in October 2011. Shenzhou 8 docked autonomously with China’s Tiangong 1 space module, then returned safely to Earth in mid-November 2011. [‪Gallery: Tiangong 1, China’s First Space Laboratory]

The Beijing Institute of Technology’s School of Life Science often publishes its results in Western scientific journals and interacts with the European research community and multiple U.S. universities.

Prudent discussions

“This [ISS] project underwent a succession of prudent discussions and careful deliberations before we reached the agreement,” said Deng Yulin, dean of the School of Life Science.

 “The results will answer some very important questions on life sciences,” Deng said, according to an Aug. 8 story in China’s state-run newspaper China Daily.

“There has been no official cooperation in the space field between China and the U.S. for a long time, so I hope this project enables us to explore cooperation methods between the two space powers,” Deng added.

The NanoRacks contract, valued at $200,000, includes delivery of the Chinese experiment to the U.S. side of the ISS via a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. The experiment will then be placed within the Japanese Kibo module for a planned 15 days.

Deng told China Daily that NanoRacks offered his institute “very favorable terms,” including the payment schedule.

The project is a commercial one that serves only scientific purposes, he added. “My university is an educational entity, and the project is a business activity, so I don’t think it will violate the U.S. law,” Deng said.

Rational action

The NanoRacks agreement with the Chinese spurred reactions from several space-policy experts, such as Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

“Past U.S. policy of trying to isolate Chinese space activities, toward [the goal of] influencing, or pushing, China to change its policies — in areas from human rights to the development of anti-satellite capabilities — hasn’t worked and in some cases has been overtly counterproductive to U.S. interests,” Johnson-Freese said.

As a result, Johnson-Freese told Space.com, “changing our approach in ways that do not involve technology transfer seems a rational action.”

It is in U.S. interests to better understand how China’s decision-making process works, to have China act as a responsible player in space and to have a group within China advocate for nonaggressive policy toward the United States in space, Johnson-Freese said.

Lone holdout

“Given that the rest of the world is working with China in space, being the lone holdout has not worked in our favor in any of those areas,” Johnson-Freese said. “Hopefully, this experiment on the ISS will be a positive step forward toward all of those goals.”

She noted that her views do not necessarily represent those of the Naval War College, the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.

“I see this [China/NanoRacks agreement] as a commercial arrangement that has potential scientific benefits and [that] complies with existing laws and regulations,” said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

“Whether it’s a precedent for future activities remains to be seen,” Pace told Space.com.

Space-cooperation dialogue

Statements by U.S. politicians show that there may be an interesting “chess playing” factor in America’s dealings with China.

Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang at the conclusion of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue/Consultation on People-to-People Exchange at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC., on June 24, 2015.
Credit: U.S. State Department

Some U.S. lawmakers have said they don’t want the Russians to have a clear, open field with the Chinese. Better to have the U.S. engaged in working space deals with China, they say — but how best to evolve and work with China within the Wolf amendment?

As for future U.S.-China space relations, the first “U.S.-China Civil Space Cooperation Dialogue” is slated to take place in China before the end of October.

Last June, the United States and China decided to establish regular bilateral, government-to-government consultations on civil space cooperation.

That agreement came out of the seventh round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, held June 22-24 in Washington, D.C, with Secretary of State John Kerry taking active part in the discussions. The two sides held in-depth talks on major bilateral, regional and global issues.

More than 70 important outcomes resulted from the dialogue, including a number of space items.

Aside from putting in place a “Civil Space Cooperation Dialogue,” the two sides also decided to have exchanges on other space matters, including satellite-collision avoidance, weather monitoring and climate research.

The agreement signed by Kerry reflects State Department activities with China, which are not prohibited by law.

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin’s 2013 book “Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration” published by National Geographic with a new updated paperback version released in May 2015. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

A new device can cloak a magnetic field so that it invisible from the outside. Here, a picture of how the wormhole would work. Credit: Jordi Prat-Camps and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel, physicists have crafted a wormhole that tunnels a magnetic field through space.

“This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible,” said study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. “From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension.” 

The idea of a wormhole comes from Albert Einstein’s theories. In 1935, Einstein and colleague Nathan Rosen realized that the general theory of relativity allowed for the existence of bridges that could link two different points in space-time. Theoretically these Einstein-Rosen bridges, or wormholes, could allow something to tunnel instantly between great distances (though the tunnels in this theory are extremely tiny, so ordinarily wouldn’t fit a space traveler). So far, no one has found evidence that space-time wormholes actually exist. [Science Fact or Fiction? The Plausibility of 10 Sci-Fi Concepts]

The new wormhole isn’t a space-time wormhole per se, but is instead a realization of a futuristic “invisibility cloak” first proposed in 2007 in the journal Physical Review Letters. This type of wormhole would hide electromagnetic waves from view from the outside. The trouble was, to make the method work for light required materials that are extremely impractical and difficult to work with, Prat said.

Magnetic wormhole

But it turned out the materials to make a magnetic wormhole already exist and are much simpler to come by. In particular, superconductors, which can carry high levels of current, or charged particles, expel magnetic field lines from their interiors, essentially bending or distorting these lines. This essentially allows the magnetic field to do something different from its surrounding 3D environment, which is the first step in concealing the disturbance in a magnetic field.

So the team designed a three-layer object, consisting of two concentric spheres with an interior spiral-cylinder. The interior layer essentially transmitted a magnetic field from one end to the other, while the other two layers acted to conceal the field’s existence.

The inner cylinder was made of a ferromagnetic mu-metal. Ferromagnetic materials exhibit the strongest form of magnetism, while mu-metals are highly permeable and are often used for shielding electronic devices.

A thin shell made up of a high-temperature superconducting material called yttrium barium copper oxide lined the inner cylinder, bending the magnetic field that traveled through the interior.

A new device has created a magnetic wormhole, in which a magnetic field enters one end and seems to pop out of nowhere on the other side.
Credit: Jordi Prat-Camps and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The final shell was made of another mu-metal, but composed of 150 pieces cut and placed to perfectly cancel out the bending of the magnetic field by the superconducting shell. The whole device was placed in a liquid-nitrogen bath (high-temperature superconductors require the low temperatures of liquid nitrogen to work).

Normally, magnetic field lines radiate out from a certain location and decay over time, but the presence of the magnetic field should be detectable from points all around it. However, the new magnetic wormhole funnels the magnetic field from one side of the cylinder to another so that it is “invisible” while in transit, seeming to pop out of nowhere on the exit side of the tube, the researchers report today (Aug. 20) in the journal Scientific Reports.

“From a magnetic point of view, you have the magnetic field from the magnet disappearing at one end of the wormhole and appearing again at the other end of the wormhole,” Prat told Live Science.

Broader applications

There’s no way to know if similar magnetic wormholes lurk in space, but the technology could have applications on Earth, Prat said. For instance, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines use a giant magnet and require people to be in a tightly enclosed central tube for diagnostic imaging.

But if a device could funnel a magnetic field from one spot to the other, it would be possible to take pictures of the body with the strong magnet placed far away, freeing people from the claustrophobic environment of an MRI machine, Prat said.

To do that, the researchers would need to modify the shape of their magnetic wormhole device. A sphere is the simplest shape to model, but a cylindrical outer shell would be the most useful, Prat said.

“If you want to apply this to medical techniques or medical equipment, for sure you will be interested in directing toward any given direction,” Prat said. “A spherical shape is not the most practical geometry.”

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

There’s no reason to fear a devastating asteroid strike next month, NASA experts say.

For the last few months, rumors have circulated on the Internet that a big asteroid will slam into Earth near Puerto Rico between Sept. 15 and Sept. 28, wreaking widespread destruction throughout coastal regions of the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and northern South America.

Don’t believe the hype.

“There is no scientific basis — not one shred of evidence — that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates,” Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. “If there were any object large enough to do that type of destruction in September, we would have seen something of it by now.”

Astronomers based at the Near-Earth Object office and other institutions around the world use a variety of telescopes to hunt for potentially hazardous asteroids and comets, and they haven’t observed anything that poses a serious threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, NASA officials said.

“Again, there is no existing evidence that an asteroid or any other celestial object is on a trajectory that will impact Earth,” Chodas stressed. “In fact, not a single one of the known objects has any credible chance of hitting our planet over the next century.”

Experts such as Chodas must increasingly wade into the Internet’s murky waters to debunk the myths swirling there.

In 2011, for example, rumors grew that the harmless comet Elenin was a “doomsday” object that would inflict severe damage upon the Earth. And some conspiracy theorists claimed that a cosmic impact would wipe out humanity on Dec. 21, 2012, the day that one cycle of the Mayan long-count calendar came to an end.

Asteroid Basics: A Space Rock Quiz

Asteroids are fascinating for lots of reasons. They contain a variety of valuable resources and slam into our planet on a regular basis, occasionally snuffing out most of Earth’s lifeforms. How much do you know about space rocks?

0 of 10 questions complete

Asteroid Basics: A Space Rock Quiz

Asteroids are fascinating for lots of reasons. They contain a variety of valuable resources and slam into our planet on a regular basis, occasionally snuffing out most of Earth’s lifeforms. How much do you know about space rocks?

0 of questions complete

Just this year, fears were raised about the near-Earth asteroids 2004 BL86 and 2014 YB35, which flew harmlessly past the planet in January and March, respectively — just as NASA scientists had predicted the asteroids would.

All of this is not to claim that Earth won’t get hit by a cosmic object next month. The planet is pelted by dust and chunks of space rock all the time, but almost all of this material is so small that it burns up harmlessly in Earth’s atmosphere.

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

An epic new trailer for the movie “The Martian” looks even more intense than the last one, and it raises some intriguing questions about the value of human life in space exploration.

Set to the howling Jimi Hendrix song “All Along the Watchtower,” the new trailer for “The Martian,” directed by Ridley Scott, features some thrilling (and stressful) clips of astronauts braving Martian storms, rocket launches and other near-death experiences. The film focuses on astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon), who is mistakenly presumed dead by his fellow Mars explorers and is left behind on the Red Planet.

When NASA officials discover that Watney is alive, they must decide whether to rescue him and, in doing so, risk the lives of the other six crewmembers. At one point in the trailer, the director of NASA (played by Jeff Daniels) grapples with the decision, stating, “It’s bigger than one person,” to which another character replies, “No. It’s not.” The film raises the question: If a person willingly embraces the risks of space exploration, should he or she be rescued at all costs? [Photos from ‘The Martian’]

In an earlier trailer, Watney makes clear that he understands the risks of space exploration, saying, “It’s space. It doesn’t cooperate. I guarantee you that at some point, everything’s going to go south on you. And you’re going to say, ‘This is it. This is how I end.’”

In the new trailer, we hear the end of that quote, in which Watney goes on to say, “Now, you can either accept that, or you can get to work.”

Stranded on Mars with only enough food and water to last 50 days, Watney must wait four years for a rescue mission to arrive. As a result, he’s forced to find a way to grow food on a lifeless planet, and produce water. Other threats to his life and his safety arise, and he proclaims at the end, “No matter what happens, tell the world, tell my family, that I never stopped fighting to make it home.”

Meanwhile, NASA and Watney’s crewmates must decide whether to rescue “the Martian.” By sending the crew back to the Red Planet, the agency would be risking six lives to save one, and thus rejects the proposal. The crewmembers must then decide whether they will not only risk their lives, but declare mutiny by going against NASA’s orders.

In the new movie “The Martian,” a group of astronauts must decide if they should rescue their stranded crewmate from the surface of Mars.
Credit: 20th Century Fox/The Martian

The plot of the film is a thought experiment: If a person understands the risks of space exploration, should the rest of humanity make every possible effort to save that person if (or when) things go wrong? Is NASA’s responsibility different from the individual responsibilities of its astronauts? 

These are questions that humanity will have to seriously consider if a program like Mars One gets off the ground: If a private company sends people to space and something goes wrong, how much money and effort should the rest of the world spend to save them? Is it directly comparable to instances where hikers become lost or stranded, setting off costly and risky rescue missions? What do we lose if we reduce the value of one human life compared to multiple lives, and what do we lose if we don’t? 

We’re excited to see how the movie tackles this question, and how closely it will follow the book by Andy Weir on which the movie is based. The film is set to be released Oct. 2 and, in addition to Damon and Daniels, stars Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Michael Peña, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Donald Glover.

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

Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, the record-holder for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman, joined on as a cast member in the fan project “Star Trek: Axanar.” In April, she tweeted this photo posing in the International Space Station in a “Star Trek: Voyager”-style uniform. Credit: ESA/NASA

After spending 199 days on the International Space Station, a European astronaut is readying for her next big mission: joining an independent “Star Trek” production.

Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian astronaut for the European Space Agency, will join the fan-produced film “Star Trek: Axanar” in an as-yet-undisclosed role, film officials said in a blog post. Cristoforetti was the first Italian woman in space during the space station’s Expeditions 42 and 43, which wrapped up in June.

The news comes as the production wrapped up a crowdfunding campaign  that raised $487,076, nearly double the original goal of $250,000. Filming will begin in early 2016.

“Star Trek: Axanar” follows the story of Garth of Izar, a character who was introduced in the “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode “Whom Gods Destroy.” Garth’s story takes place about 21 years before the events of the first “Star Trek” episode, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

The new, full-length film will follow from a 20-minute crowdfunded prelude that was released last year. Stars in the feature-length film include Richard Hatch, Kate Vernon (both of “Battlestar: Galactica”), Gary Graham (“Star Trek: Enterprise”) and Tony Todd (“Candyman”, “Chuck”, “24”). It is led by Executive Producer Alec Peters.

After a crowdfunding campaign last year on Kickstarter that raised more than $600,000, the filmmakers have decided to break the feature-length film into four episodes costing at least $250,000 each.

The base goal for the work is $1 million, but the filmmakers need at least $1.32 million in total to cover costs from using the crowdfunding site Indiegogo, which takes a cut of projects funded on its site, as well as “ongoing studio costs” and “payment processing,” according to the Indiegogo page.

Cristoforetti wouldn’t be the first astronaut to appear on Star Trek. In 1993, NASA astronaut Mae Jemison played a small role on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

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