Submarine Vehicle Probes Beneath an Ice Sheet

In the spirit of exploration—both of this planet and of others—researchers sent a probe under the Antarctic ice in January 2013. For nearly a decade, scientists and engineers have been crafting various tools and methods to see what lurks below the thick ice sheets of Antarctica, Greenland, and other ice-covered landscapes. Can life survive and thrive in these extreme, light-less environments? What does the terrain look like, and how does it affect the motion of the ice above? And what do these environments teach us about potential life on other planets?

The latest attempt to see what lies beneath is the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project. A research team from eight universities and two international institutions trekked several hundred kilometers over the Ross Ice Shelf, drilled a hole through it, and lowered a tethered, robotic vehicle into the sub-glacial Lake Whillans. Buried under hundreds of meters of ice, the 50-square-kilometer (20-square-mile) lake does not receive sunlight and has a water temperature of -0.5°Celsius (31°Fahrenheit.
The top image above is a still captured from a video camera on baseball bat-sized submersible as it was being lowered through 800 meters (2,600 feet) of ice. The borehole was roughly 50 centimeters (20 inches) wide. The second image is the first captured by that mini-submarine as it reached the bottom of Lake Whillans. It shows sediment at the bottom of the lake.

The Micro-Submersible Lake Exploration Device—the instrumented, submarine vehicle developed by Alberto Behar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and students at Arizona State University—surveyed the lake with an imager and chemical sensors. It transmitted real-time imagery, as well as salinity, temperature and depth measurements, to the ice surface via fiber-optic cables. According to Behar, it was the first instrument to explore a sub-glacial lake beyond the edge of a borehole.

The data enabled the team to verify that the rest of the project's instruments could be safely deployed into the lake. The WISSARD team then collected lake water samples in order to search for microbial life. Preliminary analysis shows that the lake water did contain living bacteria.

To learn more about the expedition, watch this short video
narrated by Behar. Funding for development of the sub and support for the expedition was provided by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the U.S. National Science Foundation through the U.S. Antarctic Program.

Photographs courtesy of Alberto Behar, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and California Institute of Technology. Caption by Mike Carlowicz, based on a story by Alan Buis, JPL.

Instrument: 

Photograph

Beyond 2012: Why the World Won't End

A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Suomi NPP satellite. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012. Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know, however, it will be another winter solstice.

Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the claims behind the end of the world quickly unravel when pinned down to the 2012 timeline.

Below, NASA Scientists answer questions on the following 2012 topics:

• End of the World
• 'Prediction' Origins
• Mayan Calendar
• Total Blackout
• Planetary Alignment
• Nibiru/Planet X/Eris
• Polar Shift
• Meteor Strike
• NASA Science
• Solar Storms

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.

Answer (A):The world will not end in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.


Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?

A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.


Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?

A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.


Q: Is NASA predicting a "total blackout" of Earth on Dec. 23 to Dec. 25?

A: Absolutely not. Neither NASA nor any other scientific organization is predicting such a blackout. The false reports on this issue claim that some sort of "alignment of the Universe" will cause a blackout. There is no such alignment (see next question). Some versions of this rumor cite an emergency preparedness message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. This is simply a message encouraging people to be prepared for emergencies, recorded as part of a wider government preparedness campaign. It never mentions a blackout.

Q: Could planets align in a way that impacts Earth?

A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. One major alignment occurred in 1962, for example, and two others happened during 1982 and 2000. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.


Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?

A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.


Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the Earth's crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?

A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-switch to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. Scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia.


Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?

A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.


Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of the world ending in 2012?

A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.


Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012?

A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.

Additional information concerning 2012 is available on the Web, at:

• Andy Fraknoi: "Resources for Responding to Doomsday 2012: An Annotated Guide"
• National Public Radio: "Ask A NASA Astrobiologist About Dec. 21 'Doomsday'"
• NASA Astrobiology Institute: "Nibiru and Doomsday 2012"
• Bad Astronomy: "The Planet X Saga: The Scientific Arguments in a Nutshell"
• Sky and Telescope Magazine: "2012: The Great Scare"
• Phys.org: "Mayan People Demand End to Doomsday Myth"
• Houston Museum of Natural Science: "Maya 2012: Prophecy Becomes History"

- NASA

Why the World Didn't End Yesterday

NASA is so sure the world won't come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, they have already released this news item for the day after.

Dec. 22, 2012: If you're reading this story, it means one thing: The World Didn't End Yesterday.

According to media reports of an ancient Maya prophecy, the world was supposed to be destroyed on Dec. 21, 2012.

Apparently not.

"The whole thing was a misconception from the very beginning," says Dr. John Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy. "The Maya calendar did not end on Dec. 21, 2012, and there were no Maya prophecies foretelling the end of the world on that date."

The truth, says Carlson, is more interesting than fiction.

A new ScienceCast video explores what the Maya really thought about Dec. 21, 2012. Play it

Carlson is a hard-nosed scientist--a radio astronomer who earned his degree studying distant galaxies. He became interested in the 2012 phenomenon in the early 70s when he attended a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and learned about the lost civilization of the Maya.

Where the rain forests of Mesoamerica now stand, a great civilization once flourished. The people of Maya society built vast cities, ornate temples, and towering pyramids. At its peak around 800 A.D., the population numbered more than 2,000 people per square mile in the cities -- comparable to modern Los Angeles County. The Maya mastered astronomy, developed an elaborate written language, and left behind exquisite artifacts.

Most compelling to Carlson was the Maya's expansive sense of time. "The times Mayas used dwarf any time scales currently used by modern astronomers," he explains. "According to our science, the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago.

There are dates and time references in Mayan ruins that stretch back a billion billion times farther than that."

The Maya Long Count Calendar was designed to keep track of such long intervals. "It is the most complex calendar system ever developed by people anywhere."

Written using modern typography, the Long Count Calendar resembles the odometer in a car. It's a modified base-20 system in which rotating digits represent powers of 20 days. Because the digits rotate, the calendar can "roll over" and repeat itself; this repetition is key to the 2012 phenomenon.

According to Maya theology, the world was created 5125 years ago, on a date modern people would write "August 11, 3114 BC." At the time, the Maya calendar looked like this: 13.0.0.0.0

On Dec. 21, 2012, it is exactly the same: 13.0.0.0.0

In the language of Maya scholars, 13 Bak'tuns or 13 times 144,000 days elapsed between the two dates. This was a significant interval in Maya theology, but, stresses Carlson, not a destructive one. None of the thousands of ruins, tablets, and standing stones that archeologists have examined foretell an end of the world.

Modern science agrees. NASA experts recently gathered in a Google hangout to review their own findings with the public.

Don Yeomans, head of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, stated that no known asteroids or comets are on a collision course with Earth.

Neither is a rogue planet coming to destroy us. "If there were anything out there like a planet headed for Earth," said NASA astrobiologist David Morrison, "it would already be [one of the] brightest objects in the sky. Everybody on Earth could see it. You don't need to ask the government, just go out and look. It’s not there.”

Lika Guhathakurta, head of NASA's Living with a Star Program, says the sun is not a threat, either. "The sun has been flaring for billions of years--long before the Maya even existed--and it has never once destroyed the world."

"Right now the sun is approaching the maximum of its 11-year activity cycle," she added, "but this is the wimpiest solar cycle of the past 50 years. Reports to the contrary are exaggerated."

What would an ancient Maya think about all this hoopla? Carlson believes he knows the answer.

"If we could time warp a Maya to the present day, they would say that Dec. 21, 2012, is a very important date. Many Maya believed that their gods who created the world 5125 years ago would return. One of them in particular, an enigmatic deity named Bolon Yokte' K'uh, would conduct old rites of passage, to set space and time in order, and to regenerate the cosmos." The world would be refreshed, not destroyed.

"I have been waiting to experience this day for more than 30 years," he says.

For him, "experiencing Dec. 21, 2012" means visiting the Maya homeland in the Yucatan, and thinking back to the height of Maya civilization, when ancient humans contemplated expanses of time orders of magnitude beyond modern horizons.

And, of course, appreciating the fact that The World Didn't End Yesterday.

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips| Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

SKA science building SA skills

Professor Justin Jonas has said that South Africa is building local capacity to tackle its share of the massive Square Kilometre Array project in the Northern Cape province. (Duncan Alfreds, News24)

Cape Town - South Africa is building local capacity to tackle its share of the massive Square Kilometre Array project in the Northern Cape province.

The project aims to build over 3 000 radio telescopes that that will enable astronomers to look 12 billion years back in time and examine the infant universe.

To prepare to host the project, SA built the KAT 7 (Karoo Array Telescope) outside Carnarvon as a test bed for the MeerKAT, which will consist of 64 antennas.

"What we did in the early stages of the project was we hired the very best people, and put them in contact with the most experienced people in the world," Professor Justin Jonas, associate director of Science and Engineering, SKA South Africa, told News24.

The South African team also secured international co-operation, and research chairs at local universities have been established to accelerate development of the technology expected to drive the project.

Skills

"So we now found ourselves in the situation, certainly on the engineering front and technical side, that we're as experienced and skilled up as anybody in the world.

"Through our human capital programme at the universities, we're spreading that in the universities and the people coming through," said Jonas.

A number of researchers have come to SA to ensure that students will have the correct skills to participate in the programme.

Professor Roy Maartens joined UWC, Prof Claude Carignan joined UCT, and Prof David Davidson joined Stellebosch in the Western Cape. In Gauteng, Prof Sergio Colafrancesco joined Wits and Prof Oleg Smirnov is at Rhodes University.

"On the science side, we've managed to attract a large number of top international scientists, either into permanent positions in South Africa, or joint positions in South Africa, or at least where they can still supervise our students," said Jonas.

The longer term goal is to produce local experts who could expand the project, slated for completion in 2024.

"We do import people, but our prime undertaking is to produce local Africans and South Africans in particular who will be skilled up to do the work that we need to do.

"The value that we have is that even now, we excite young people enough to do the hard work; to do science, even in challenging circumstances," Jonas said.

Education

SA has challenges in the education of maths and science at high school and the number of graduates in those subjects has been in decline for four years.

In 2008, 300 008 wrote mathematics and only 89 788 scored above 40%. This declined to 224 635 writing in 2011, with 67 541 scoring above 40%, according to the department of basic education.

In physical science, 217 300 wrote in 2008, with 62 530 mustering more than 40%, and last year, 61 109 hit the same level out of 180 585 who wrote.

Jonas insisted that the situation was not as bad as the numbers suggested, and there were pockets in the country where students were doing well.

"The very best black students coming into Rhodes University are coming from rural Limpopo. So with enough motivation - I think projects like this provide that motivation.

He cautioned against dooming the progress made so far because of the lack in scientific skills in the country.

"We do need people who are skilled in science and mathematics, but at the same time, I'm hoping that we are contributing to the solution of that problem as well."


- News24

Hurricane Sandy Super Rapid Scan, October 26, 2012

Published on Oct 26, 2012 by NASAEarthObservatory

This time-lapse animation shows Hurricane Sandy from the vantage point of geostationary orbit—35,800 km (22,300 miles) above the Earth. The image above shows Sandy on October 26, 2012, at 5:00 p.m. EDT, when light from the setting sun highlighted the structure of the clouds. At the time, maximum sustained winds were 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers per hour) according to the National Hurricane Center. The images were collected by NOAA's GOES-14 satellite. The "super rapid scan" images—one every minute from 7:15 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. EDT—reveal details of the storm's motion.

NASA animation by Robert Simmon, using images from NOAA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.

Download the HD file from http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=79541&src=you...

Trial dissemination of Metop-B satellite data

EUMETSAT has begun trial dissemination of data from instruments on board the Metop-B polar-orbiting satellite to partners, including the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Met Office (UK), Deutscher Wetterdienst and Météo-France.

The excellent data quality is in line with that achieved by Metop-A. This shows that Metop-B, launched on 17 September, is performing well and is on its way to replacing the ageing Metop-A as EUMETSAT’s prime operational satellite in polar orbit at the end of April 2013.

This trial dissemination now includes data from the following instruments:

Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A (AMSU-A): 28 September
Global Navigation Satellite System Receiver for Atmospheric Sounding (GRAS): 1 October
Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS): 2 October
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR/3): 4 October for VIS channels, 16 October for infrared channels
Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT): 23 October
High-Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS/4): 26 October

Trial dissemination of data from the GOME-2 and IASI instruments is planned to start in December-January as they require more calibration efforts.

The Metop-B instruments deliver measurements of the atmosphere, including temperature and humidity profiles, cloud properties, and greenhouse and trace gases such as ozone, carbon monoxide, and sulphur dioxide. The instruments also observe the ocean and continental surfaces, providing measurements of wind at the ocean surface, ice, snow and soil moisture.

Temperature and humidity profiles, wind at the ocean surface, and soil moisture are essential inputs to Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models, the basis of modern weather forecasting. The all-weather wind measurements provided by ASCAT are used worldwide to track mid-latitude storms and tropical cyclones.

About Metop

The Metop satellites are Europe’s first operational meteorological satellites in polar orbit. They constitute the space segment of the EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS) delivering data for numerical weather prediction (NWP) – the basis of modern weather forecasting – and climate and environmental monitoring.

Flying at an altitude of 817 km, each Metop satellite carries the same sophisticated suite of instruments providing fine-scale global data, which can only be gathered in the low Earth orbit, such as vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature and moisture, wind speed and direction at the ocean surface, and some atmospheric trace gases.

Observations from Metop-A have significantly improved weather forecasts up to 10 days ahead. These forecasts are essential to protect life and limit damage to property, but they also benefit the weather-sensitive sectors of the European economy, especially energy, transportation, construction, agriculture and tourism.

The three Metop satellites, launched sequentially, will provide continuous data until 2020. The first satellite, Metop-A, was launched in 2006, and the third and final satellite, Metop-C, is scheduled for launch at the end of 2017.

ESA is responsible for the development of the three Metop satellites, fulfilling user and system requirements defined by EUMETSAT. ESA also carries out operations for the Launch and Early Orbit Phase to place the satellites in polar orbit, before handing them over to EUMETSAT for commissioning and exploitation. EUMETSAT develops all ground systems required to deliver products and services to users and to respond to their evolving needs, procures launch services and operates the full system for the benefit of users.

The EPS programme is Europe’s contribution to the Initial Joint Polar System (IJPS), with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

About EUMETSAT

The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites is an intergovernmental organisation based in Darmstadt, Germany, currently with 26 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom) and five Cooperating States (Bulgaria, Estonia, Iceland, Lithuania, and Serbia).

EUMETSAT operates the geostationary satellites Meteosat-8 and -9 over Europe and Africa, and Meteosat-7 over the Indian Ocean. The third Meteosat Second Generation satellite, MSG-3, was launched on 5 July 2012 and will be renamed Meteosat-10 after commissioning is complete.

Metop-A, the first European polar-orbiting meteorological satellite, was launched in October 2006 and has been delivering operational data since 15 May 2007. It will be replaced by Metop-B, which was launched on 17 September 2012.

The Jason-2 ocean altimetry satellite, launched on 20 June 2008, added monitoring of sea state, ocean currents and sea level change to the missions EUMETSAT conducts.

The data and products from EUMETSAT’s satellites are vital to weather forecasting and make a significant contribution to the monitoring of environment and the global climate.

- Eumetsat

Skydiver daredevil 'born to fly'

Los Angeles - "Fearless Felix" Baumgartner, the Austrian daredevil who stunned fans around the world by breaking the sound barrier in a hair-raising dive from the fringe of space, was "born to fly".

That's according to a tattoo the 43-year-old sports, a motto that took on a whole new meaning after his nail-biting feat, the fastest freefall ever by leaping from a capsule more than 39km above the Earth and reaching a top speed of 1 342km/h.

The dramatic jump - which could have ended in disaster by causing his blood to boil - propelled the extreme adventure-seeker into the record books.

It also made a childhood dream come true.

"I always had the desire to be in the air," Austria's Kurier newspaper quoted Baumgartner as saying. "I climbed trees, I wanted to see the world from above."

Austrian military


He certainly did that on Sunday - and then some.

Baumgartner, who was born in the Austrian city of Salzburg on 20 April 1969, has come a long way from his younger years working as a car mechanic as he searched for ways to soar from the sky.

He took his first skydive at the age of 16, and improved his skills after joining the Austrian military.

Over time, the athlete - who says "the air is where I am at home" - built up an impressive portfolio of stunts.

One of his first records was in 1999 for the lowest Base jump ever from the hand of Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, which is 29m above the ground.

Base is an acronym for the four things that are jumped from: Buildings, antennas, spans and earth.

As a licensed gas balloon and helicopter pilot, he twice also set world records for the highest Base jump from a building.

The first was from the 450m Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1999, and five years later from the even taller Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan.

Dangers

In 2003, he completed the first winged "freefall crossing" of the English Channel, leaping out of an aircraft and flying the rest of the way to Calais in northern France with a pair of carbon wings.

Other feats include parachuting into a 190m deep cave in Croatia, leaping off the highest bridge in the world, the 340m Millau Viaduct in France.

He had been training for the Red Bull Stratos jump from far above the Earth for seven years, and previously leaped from 21 800m and 29 600m.

According to his mother Eva, Baumgartner's latest achievement was "his biggest dream".

"I'm very happy he gets to do this because he's worked toward it all these years," she told Kurier ahead of the event, which was twice delayed due to weather. "Now it's really his big day."

Despite the dangers, the telegenic Baumgartner never seemed to fear having to pay the ultimate price for his passion - stressing it was all about doing your homework.

"I hate it if someone calls me a thrill-seeker or an adrenaline junkie because I am not. I like the whole planning," Baumgartner said ahead of the stunt.

Safe

But there was no denying he was glad to be back on the ground safe and sound.

"When you're standing there on top of the world, you become so humble... The only thing is you want to come back alive," he told reporters.

Shortly before leaping, in footage beamed live around the world on a crackly radio link recalling Neil Armstrong's first words on the Moon, Baumgartner had said: "Sometimes you have [to go] up really high to [understand] how small you are."

It remains to be seen what Baumgartner, who divides his time between Switzerland and the US, will do next.

If his website is to be believed, there could be much more to come: "Everyone has limits - not everyone accepts them!!!" it says.

- SAPA

Spacedive will help imperilled astronauts

Paris - Daredevil Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking jump raises hopes that pilots and even astronauts can be saved from accidents in the stratosphere, experts said on Monday.

Michel Viso, an expert in exobiology at France's National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS), said Baumgartner's leap from 39 045m "has operational potential" for manned flight at extreme heights.

"In the event of a problem, people can eject at very great altitudes, provided they have a pressurised suit and self-contained breathing system and a parachute and provided they have the appropriate training," Viso told AFP.

Bernard Comet of France's Institute of Space Medicine and Physiology (MEDES) said: "It proves at the very least that one can eject at extreme altitude, although this is something that hasn't been done before."

Both Viso and Comet stressed that the technical and training challenges were major.

In contrast with Baumgartner, who leapt from a balloon, a pilot who ejected would be exposed to an extreme shock from acceleration, said Comet. As in Baumgartner's descent, there would be the challenge of preventing a spin, which could cause a blackout.

"It increases the window of opportunity for saving astronauts," Viso said.

It could in theory be used in the classic rocket-and-capsule system if a problem occurs at high altitude during the launch phase, he said.

But ejecting upon re-entry, when a spacecraft is flying at supersonic speed and battling atmospheric friction, would be impossible, Viso said.

Burn up

"If you re-enter at seven kilometres per second in a pressure suit, you will burn up, and so will your suit," he said.

In the early years of human spaceflight, the Soviet Union's Vostok system had an ejector seat, designed for launch abort on the ground and for recovery of the one-man crew at the end of the mission.

On his descent, the astronaut ejected at a height of around 6 000m.

The US Gemini system also had an ejection system in the event of a launchpad accident.

Other rocket-and-capsule systems, such as the Russian-Soviet Soyuz, the former Apollo moon missions, China's Shenzhou and Nasa's planned Orion, have an abort mechanism, comprising solid rocket boosters mounted on top of the crew capsule.

They are designed to haul the capsule to a safe parachute height while the rocket is on the ground or in early launch phase. It separates and falls to earth, to save weight, when the air thins.

Baumgartner's medical director, Jonathan Clark, lost his wife, Laurel, in the US space shuttle Columbia, which tore apart on 1 February 2003 as it re-entered the atmosphere.

The US space shuttle was fitted with a crew evacuation system after the 1986 Challenger disaster.

It could be used during return phase but not during launch phase. Even so, it could not have helped the Columbia crew.

Astronauts could bail out from a side hatch after donning parachutes, but only provided the shuttle was on a stable glide at a height of 6 150m or less.

- AFP/News24

The one thing Fearless Felix was afraid of

Daredevil jumps from edge of space - Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking jump from 39km inside the stratosphere, broke the sound barrier as he tumbled out of the sky before landing safely in New Mexico.

He's known as Fearless Felix, but the first man to break the sound barrier had to overcome his own mental demons before he leapt into the history books.

Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner today made the highest and fastest jump in history after ascending by a helium balloon to an altitude of 39 kilometres.

As millions around the world experienced the vertiginous view from his capsule's camera, which showed a round blue world surrounded by the black of space, he stepped off into the void and plummeted for more than four minutes, reaching a maximum speed measured at 1342km/h, or Mach 1.24.

Baumgartner was backed by a NASA-style mission control operation at an airfield in Roswell that involved 300 people, including more than 70 engineers, scientists and physicians who have been working for five years on the project, called Red Bull Stratos, after the drink company that has financed it.
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Besides aiming at records, the engineers and scientists on the Red Bull Stratos team have been gathering and publishing reams of data intended to help future pilots, astronauts and perhaps space tourists survive if they have to bail out.

"We're testing new spacesuits, escape concepts and treatment protocols for pressure loss at extreme altitudes," said the Red Bull Stratos medical director, Dr Jonathan Clark, who formerly oversaw the health of space shuttle crews at NASA. "There are so many things that could go wrong here that we're pushing the technical envelope."

While building the customised suit and capsule, the team of aerospace veterans had to contend with one crucial uncertainty: What happens to the human body when it breaks the sound barrier?

 Leap of faith ... Felix Baumgartner. Photo: Reuters

There was also one major unexpected problem for Baumgartner.

Although he had no trouble jumping off buildings and bridges, and soaring across the English Channel in a carbon-fibre wing, he found himself suffering panic attacks when forced to spend hours inside the pressurised suit and helmet.

At one point in 2010, rather than take an endurance test in it, he went to an airport and fled the United States. With the help of a sports psychologist and other specialists, he learned techniques for dealing with the claustrophobia.

One of the techniques Baumgartner developed was to stay busy throughout the ascent. He conversed steadily with Joe Kittinger, whose record he broke. The deep voice of Kittinger, a former fighter pilot, clearly exuded the right stuff as he confidently went through a 40-item checklist rehearsing every move that Baumgartner would make when it came time to leave the capsule — tasks like sliding his seat forward, checking his parachutes and carefully opening the hatch.

When the actual moment came, Kittinger said to him, "All right, step up on the exterior step. Start the cameras. And our guardian angel will take care of you now."

Baumgartner stepped outside, saluted and made the jump right after delivering a message that was mostly garbled by radio static. Afterward, he repeated it: "I know the whole world is watching, and I wish the whole world could see what I see. Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are."

In his leap, he broke altitude and speed records set half a century ago by Kittinger, now 84, a retired Air Force colonel whose reassuring voice from mission control guided Baumgartner through tense moments.

Engineers considered aborting the mission when Baumgartner's faceplate began fogging during the ascent, but he insisted on proceeding and made plans for doing the jump blind.

That proved unnecessary, but a new crisis occurred early in the jump when he began spinning out of control in the thin air of the stratosphere — the same problem that had nearly killed Kittinger a half-century earlier. But as the atmosphere thickened, Baumgartner managed to stop the spin and fall smoothly until he opened his parachute about a mile above the ground and landed smoothly in the New Mexico desert.

Kittinger praised Baumgartner's courage for proceeding with the mission and said that he had more than broken a record.

"He demonstrated that a man could survive in an extremely high altitude escape situation," Kittinger said. "Future astronauts will wear the spacesuit that Felix test-jumped today."

When Baumgartner lost control of his body during the early part of the jump, he feared going into a flat spin that would send blood away from the center of his body.

"At a certain RPM," he said afterward, "there's only one way for blood to leave your body, and that's through your eyeballs. That means you're dead. That was what we feared most."

Because of the limited sensations he felt inside his stiff pressurised suit, he said recovering from a spin was much more difficult than during an ordinary sky dive.

"As a sky-diver, you can feel the air on your right shoulder and you immediately know what to do," he said. "Here you don't feel the air, so you have to wait until the air pushes you around. Then you think, 'Oh, it pushed me around clockwise — that means I have to do this."'

Job done ... Felix Baumgartner celebrates afterlanding in the desert. Photo: AFP

Brian Utley of the FAI, the international federation that certifies aerospace records, calculated the height and speed of the jump by independently analysing data gathered on microchips in Baumgartner's suit. After a thorough analysis of the data is made over the next several weeks, Utley said, the precise official figures might be slightly different, but he had no doubt that Baumgartner had set a supersonic speed record.

The mission required the largest balloon ever used for a manned flight. Made of 40 acres of ultrathin plastic, it had been described as an inflated dry-cleaning bag that would fill the Los Angeles Coliseum. Baumgartner rode in a capsule attached by cables, below it.

An earlier attempt to inflate the balloon and carry out the mission had to be abandoned last week because of weather. As the balloon rose in the sky, viewers from around the world went to YouTube to watch a live video stream from the capsule and mission control. By the time Baumgartner made his leap into space, the audience grew to a peak of 8 million watching at the same time, which appeared to be a record; YouTube's previous record for concurrent viewership was around half a million, set during the Summer Olympics earlier this year.

- New York Times

Daredevil jumps into record books from 24 miles above Earth

Felix Baumgartner is the first free-falling human to break the sound barrier, leaping from the stratosphere above New Mexico from a balloon-lifted capsule.

With a short salute and a small step forward, Felix Baumgartner leapt from a capsule perched more than 24 miles above a barren New Mexico desert and landed safely, setting a world record for the highest sky dive.

"Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are," Baumgartner said before stepping off a small ledge on the outside of a capsule lifted into the stratosphere by a helium-filled balloon. "I'm going home now."

Baumgartner, 43, hit speeds of nearly 834 mph, becoming the first free-falling human to crack the sound barrier. He also set a record for the highest altitude manned balloon flight at 128,097 feet above the Earth — about a mile higher than expected.

The event also scored a record for social media.

The mission had more than two-dozen cameras, including a helmet cam, to catch the action on the way up and the jump itself. It was webcast live on the event website and on YouTube. More than 8 million computers and other digital devices were tuned in to the live stream on YouTube alone, making the jump the most-watched live event ever on the site.

There were a couple of dicey moments.

While Baumgartner was ascending, he told mission control about a "serious" issue with the heat in his visor faceplate. He couldn't feel warmth on his face, and the visor was fogging up. But officials gave Baumgartner the go-ahead for the jump.

He popped open the capsule door and sunlight streamed in. It was a sight that Baumgartner had not seen in the 21/2 half hours he spent alone climbing toward aerospace history.

Not long after he stepped into the stratosphere, Baumgartner began wildly spinning as he descended at high speeds. Officials had feared a so-called "flat spin" — a horizontal spin that can lead to a loss of consciousness.

The spinning was apparent even in a live video shot taken by a long-range camera. But Baumgartner righted himself.

"We were glad he was able to get it under control," said Art Thompson, technical project director for the mission. "He went into a tumble."

Before the feat, there had been concerns about how a human body might respond to supersonic speeds without benefit of aircraft. But at a post-event news conference, Baumgartner said he didn't know when he sped through the sound barrier. "I didn't feel it at all," he said.

After free falling 119,846 feet, Baumgartner pulled the rip cord and sent his red and white parachute streaming into the sky. Slowly, he floated to the ground about 35 miles east of where the balloon first launched. In all, the decent lasted 9 minutes, 3 seconds.

Upon landing, he fell to his knees and raised his fists before being enveloped by personnel involved in the mission.

Congratulations came in via Twitter from a wide range of onlookers, including the Air Force, NASA and other aerospace entities.

The jump was an endeavor, five years in the making, to break a free-fall world record of 102,800 feet, or 19 miles, set by Air Force test pilot Joe Kittinger in 1960. Kittinger, now 84, was part of the new mission and relayed messages between the control room and Baumgartner.

"A better champion cannot be found than Felix Baumgartner," Kittinger said at the news conference.

There was one record Baumgartner didn't break. His free fall was 4 minutes, 19 seconds, but Kittinger's lasted 4 minutes, 36 seconds.

Baumgartner's supersonic jump came 65 years to the day after test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier when he flew the Bell X-1 above Edwards Air Force Base on Oct. 14, 1947.

The jump, twice delayed last week by wind gusts, was designed to test the threshold of his equipment and to explore the limits and capabilities of a human body bailing out from an aircraft at extremely high altitudes above the Earth.

It was funded by energy drink company Red Bull, which paid millions of dollars to Southern California aerospace companies to pull off the stunt, but wouldn't say how much. The event was named Red Bull Stratos.

Most of the equipment involved was built by Sage Cheshire Inc., a small aerospace firm in Lancaster.

The pressurized capsule, weighing 2,900 pounds — a little more than a Volkswagen Beetle — was carried by the largest balloon ever used in a manned flight to altitude — 55 stories tall. Temperatures outside the capsule fell lower than minus 80 degrees.

Baumgartner, an Austrian national who lives in Switzerland, is an accomplished jumper who has parachuted from a variety of structures, including the Jesus statue in Rio de Janeiro and one of the world's tallest buildings, Taipei 101 Tower in Taipei, Taiwan. He said the Stratos mission was taxing.

"There's a reason that nobody was able to break Joe Kittinger's record for 52 years," Baumgartner said. "It's a difficult task."

- Los Angeles Times

Skydiver Felix Baumgartner lands highest ever jump

Baumgartner stood for several seconds before leaping into the stratosphere

Austrian Felix Baumgartner has broken the record for the highest ever skydive by jumping out of a balloon 128,000ft (39km) above New Mexico.

The 43-year-old was hoping also to break the sound barrier during his descent - although that mark awaits confirmation.

Video cameras relayed the moment Baumgartner stepped from his balloon capsule to begin his fall to Earth.

It took 10 minutes for him to reach the desert surface below.

Only the last few thousand feet were negotiated by parachute.

Helicopter recovery teams have gone to the Austrian's landing site to return him to the mission control centre set up at Roswell airport.

Baumgartner's efforts have finally toppled records that have stood for more than 50 years.
Stratosphere

The previous highest, farthest, and longest freefall was made by retired US Air Force Col Joe Kittinger, who leapt from a helium envelope in 1960. His altitude was 102,800ft (31.3km).

Mr Kittinger, now an octogenarian, was on hand to witness the dramatic jump from the stratosphere. Indeed, he acted as "Capcom" - capsule communicator - throughout the ascent and descent, maintaining voice contact with the much younger man.

None of the new marks set by Baumgartner can be classed as "official" until approved by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI).

Its representative in Roswell will analyse GPS data recorded on to a microcard in the Austrian's chest pack. This information will form the basis for any height and speed claims Baumgartner intends to lodge with the FAI.

The adventurer - perhaps best known for leaping off skyscrapers - first discussed the possibility of beating Mr Kittinger's records in 2005.

Since then, he has had to battle technical and budgetary challenges to make it happen.

Deadly feat

What he was proposing was extremely dangerous, even for a man used to those skyscraper stunts.

At an altitude of 120,000ft (36.5km), the air pressure is less than 2% of what it is at sea level, and it is impossible to breathe without an oxygen supply.

Others who have tried to break the records for the highest, fastest and longest freefalls have lost their lives in the process.

Baumgartner's team built him a special pressurised capsule to protect him on the way up, and for his descent he wore a next generation, full pressure suit made by the same company that prepares the flight suits of astronauts.

Although the jump had the appearance of another Baumgartner stunt, his team stressed its high scientific relevance.

The researchers on the Red Bull Stratos project say it has already provided invaluable data for the development of high-performance, high-altitude parachute systems, and that the lessons learned will inform the development of new ideas for emergency evacuation from vehicles, such as spacecraft, passing through the stratosphere.

Nasa and its spacecraft manufacturers have asked to be kept informed.

Jon Clark is the medical director on the team. The former shuttle flight surgeon lost his wife in the Columbia accident in 2003.

He said Baumgartner's experience could help save the lives of future astronauts who get into trouble.

A BBC/National Geographic documentary is being made about the project and will probably be aired in November.

- BBC

SKA site a boost for Karoo: Zuma

Carnavon, Northern Cape - The Square Kilometre Array's (SKA) location in the Northern Cape will be a boost for the Karoo region, President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday.

“The location of the SKA site augurs well for government's plan to build the first university in the Northern Cape province,” Zuma said in a speech prepared for delivery.

“In its pursuance for excellence in the continent and worldwide, its location in the Karoo also augurs well for tourism in the region.”

Zuma was talking during his visit to the SKA site in the Karoo town of Carnarvon.

He said government, through the department of science and technology, had identified investments in research, development, education and skills.

“The SKA project presents an opportunity to intensively recruit and train young South Africans to pursue careers in the field of science and technology.

“Since its inception in 2005, the South African SKA project's human capacity development programme has spent nearly R42 million on capacity development in radio astronomy and the disciplines of engineering relevant to radio astronomy,” said Zuma.

Government had also launched the SA Young Academy of Science last year to enhance the participation of young scientists in mainstream research and development and other key areas.

There were also plans to set up 26 science centres across the country, he said.

“The centres are vital to the development of human capital and in inculcating the culture of excellence within the field of science and technology.

“In this way we can build a promising future underpinned by a solid foundation of excellent science and technological innovation,” said Zuma.

The president said he hoped the SKA project would open more opportunities and future development not only in the Northern Cape but in the country as a whole.

- Sapa

Twinkle, twinkle little cubesat: Tiny orbiter will shine like a star to transmit Morse Code messages from the sky

apanese scientists have launched a tiny satellite that will twinkle like an artificial star to write messages across the sky that can be visible from Earth.

The 4in-square FITSAT-1 - nicknamed Niwaka - was one of a group of unassuming cubesats recently put into orbit by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

The tiny orbiter's mission is to broadcast the message 'Hi this is Niwaka Japan' in Morse Code, using bursts of intense light to draw the dots and dashes across the heavens.

Tiny: The 4in-square, 3lb FITSAT-1 seen from the top, left, and bottom, right. It will broadcast the message 'Hi this is Niwaka Japan' spelled out in Morse Code across the heavens using high-powered LEDs

Message from the heavens: This artist's impression shows the message that FITSAT-1 will write across the night sky

Using high-power LEDs driven by pulses of energy as high as 200W FITSAT-1 will produce flashes of light so bright its makers hope it will be observable with the naked eye or with small binoculars.

FITSAT-1 was one of three cubesats launched from the ISS last Thursday and the team behind it say all initial indications show that it is working normally.

It was originally planned to appear only over Japan, but a flurry of interest means that it will now be touring the entire globe.

There is 'no practical aim' to the morse code beacons, according to its creator, Professor Takushi Tanaka of the Fukuoka Institute of Technology, except to test the possibility of optical communication from space.

The FITSAT-1 team say it will try to fulfil all requests for appearances.

However, despite the brightness of its LEDs it cannot be seen through heavy cloud cover, so skywatchers should hope for a clear night if they hope to see it passing above their part of the world.

The 3lb satellite's main mission is to test a high-speed data transmitter which will beam VGA images taken by an onboard camera back to Earth.

Scientists believe their transmitter can send a 480x640 jpeg within 6 seconds.

FITSAT-1 will orbit the earth between 51.6 degrees south latitude and 51.6 degrees north latitude and it will carry a mounted neodymium magnet to force it to always point to magnetic north like a compass.

More information on the FITSAT-1 can be found on its information page on the Fukuoka Institute of Technology's website.

- Mail Online

Edge of space jump aborted

Pilot Felix Baumgartner of Austria sits in his capsule prior to the final manned flight of Red Bull Stratos in Roswell, New Mexico, in this October 9, 2012 handout photo. Baumgartner's attempt to skydive from a height of 23 miles (37 km) was aborted due to high winds at the launch site. REUTERS/Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool/Handout

New Mexico - An Austrian daredevil called off his death-defying skydive from a balloon 23 miles (37 km) over the New Mexico desert on Tuesday because of winds at the launch site.

Felix Baumgartner, a 43-year-old helicopter pilot, hot-air balloonist and professional skydiver, had been preparing to break a longstanding altitude record.

But his team announced the launch had been aborted moments after Baumgartner's balloon was set to carry him aloft over Roswell, New Mexico.

“Mission aborted due to gusty winds,” a statement on the website of sponsor Red Bull said.

Team spokeswoman Sarah Anderson later said no new launch attempt would be made before Thursday. She said Wednesday had been ruled out due to weather concerns and to give Baumgartner's support crew a day off.

Winds were about 17 mph (27 kph) when the balloon launch was called off at 1:43 p.m. EDT (1743 GMT).

The 30-million-cubic-foot (850,000-cubic-meter) plastic balloon, which is about one-tenth the thickness of a Ziploc bag, cannot handle winds greater than 6 miles per hour (9.7 km per hour).

If successful, Baumgartner would be the first parachutist to break the sound barrier but not the first person to fall faster than the speed of sound. On Jan. 25, 1966, Bill Weaver, a test pilot aboard an SR-71 Blackbird aircraft, was ejected over the United States from his damaged plane at Mach 3.18 - more than three times faster than the speed of sound - and survived.

Before Tuesday's launch was scrapped it had already been delayed by nearly five hours because of winds above the launch site.

After the winds subsided Baumgartner, wearing a pressurized spacesuit, climbed into the specially made capsule designed to carry him into the stratosphere. But the gusts then picked up again.

If the launch had proceeded, it would have taken about 2.5 to 3 hours for the 55-story tall balloon to reach 120,000 feet.

Baumgartner's goal is to break the record of 102 800 feet (31,333 meters) for the highest-altitude freefall, a milestone set in 1960 by U.S. Air Force Colonel Joe Kittinger.

As he falls from 120 000 feet (36 576 meters) Baumgartner would also break the sound barrier. With virtually no air to resist his fall, he was expected to reach the speed of sound, which is 690 mph (1 110 kph) at that altitude, after about 35 seconds of freefall.

He would stay supersonic for nearly a minute and should freefall for a total of 5 minutes and 35 seconds.

When Baumgartner jumps from the capsule, the position of his body will be crucial, since there is no air for him to move around in. If he falls in a way that puts him into a rapid spin, Baumgartner could pass out and risk damaging his eyes, brain and cardiovascular system

Baumgartner's safety gear includes his custom spacesuit that will protect him from low pressure and the extreme cold. Temperatures are expected to be as low as about minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 57 degrees Celsius.)

The near-vacuum puts him at risk of ebullism, a potentially lethal condition in which fluids in the body turn to gas and the blood literally boils. Severe lung damage could occur within minutes.

Helicopters equipped with newly developed instruments to treat lung damage would be standing by during Baumgartner's skydive.

- Reuters/IOL

Satellite to beam Morse code to Earth

Paris - A palm-sized Japanese satellite in orbit around Earth will flash a Morse code message that will be visible around the world from next month, the mission commander said on Friday.

Researchers hope the satellite, measuring 10 centimetres cubed and launched from the International Space Station on Friday, will become the first orbiter to transmit an LED message across the night sky.

The message was originally intended to be seen just in Japan, but people around the world have asked for the satellite to communicate when it overflies them, said Takushi Tanaka, professor at The Fukuoka Institute of Technology.

“Requests came from far more people than I expected - a man in Silicon Valley wanted to see it while another man wanted us to flash it over Central Park in New York,” Tanaka told AFP by telephone.

He said he has also received requests from residents of cities in Italy, Germany, Brazil, Britain and Hungary.

“There is no practical aim to this, but it is a fun experiment that everybody can join,” he said.

Observers, ideally with binoculars, will be able to see flashes of light - green in the northern hemisphere, where people will see the “front” of the satellite, and red in the southern hemisphere, where the “back” will be visible.

Morse code uses a series of dots and dashes to represent letters of the alphabet and is commonly understood across the world as a way of transmitting pieces of text.

“A man in Slovakia who has laser beam said he would flash back if he sees the message from space. He wants the satellite to take pictures of his beam and send them to Earth,” Tanaka said.

The professor said his team would try their best to accommodate requests but warned being able to see the Morse code message would be largely dependent on the weather.

The message it will send is “Hi this is Niwaka Japan”. Niwaka is the satellite's nickname and reflects a play on words in the local dialect of southwestern Japan.

Besides transmitting its LED message, the camera-equipped satellite will also take images of Earth and send them to a base station in an experiment on high-speed data transmissions.

The solar-powered device was released from the International Space Station 390 kilometres above Earth and is now in a regular orbit.

Specific timings and locations will be announced later on the institute's website - http://www.fit.ac.jp/kenkyu/fitsat1/ - in Japanese and English.

- AFP

Nasa's Curiosity Mars rover to scoop sand sample

"Rocknest": A patch of sand just downhill from a cluster of dark rocks is the site for the first scoop

The Curiosity rover is preparing to scoop its first sample of Martian soil.

The vehicle, which landed on the Red Planet in August, has driven up to a pile of sandy material that mission scientists have dubbed "Rocknest".

This weekend, the robot will dig into the ground with its clamshell-shaped trowel, with the aim first of cleaning the mechanism of earthly contamination.

Later, it will repeat the task and deliver an aspirin-sized measure of sand to onboard labs for analysis.

Nasa engineers have cautioned that the whole process will be long and drawn out. The machinery involved is complex and the team says it needs time to learn how best to operate it.

Curiosity, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), will very likely be stationary at Rocknest for a couple of weeks while the scoop tests are carried out.

And, as with some of the earlier science experiments conducted by the rover, the scoop results - when they come - are expected to be fairly mundane. The sand is very probably just the product of weathered basalt, the ubiquitous volcanic rock on Mars' surface.

The team is more concerned about getting its sample handling procedures right than making significant new discoveries.

A key objective of the first excavations will be to thoroughly clean the internal mechanisms of the robotic arm tool that does the digging.

It is called Chimra, or Collection and Handling for Interior Martian Rock Analysis.

Although assembled in ultra-sterile conditions at Nasa, this tool will still have acquired an oily film deposit in Earth air that would contaminate the rover's lab analysis results if left in place. By running several scoops through the handling system, Curiosity can scrub the film from Chimra.

"We effectively use it to rinse our mouth three times and then spit out," explained Daniel Limonadi, the Curiosity surface sampling phase lead at the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

"We will take a scoop bite, we will vibrate that sand on all the different surfaces inside Chimra to effectively sand blast those surfaces, and then we dump all that material out; and we rinse and repeat three times to finish cleaning everything out."

Once this procedure is complete, a tiny sample will be delivered to the onboard labs, Sam and CheMin, to run chemical and mineralogical analyses.

The sand will be severely shaken and sieved to make sure only fine-grained material, less than the width of a human hair in diameter, reaches the instruments.

The team will be mindful of the extreme difficulty a previous Mars mission, the Phoenix probe of 2008, had in getting material to go through its sample handling system.

"Phoenix had a relatively uncontrolled drop off capability; they had just the one scoop and that scoop had to do everything," Mr Limonadi told BBC News.

"We use gravity and vibration to get things into little parts of Chimra that make very controlled volumes of portions for us to drop off."

The rover has now driven at total of 484m (of about 1,590ft) since its 6 August landing on the floor of Gale Crater, a huge depression on Mars' equator.

It still has about 176m to travel to get to a location dubbed Glenelg, a place satellite images have indicated is a junction between three different geological terrains.

It is at Glenelg where Curiosity will really get down to the business of investigating past environments in Gale.

Last week, scientists announced the robot had taken pictures of rocks that were clearly deposited in fast running water. The theory is that the rover is sitting at the head of an ancient alluvial fan where a network of streams cut across the crater floor billions of years ago.

- BBC

NASA's Global Hawk mission begins with flight to Hurricane Leslie

This image shows the flight path (red line) of a Global Hawk that departed from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in Calif. and flew around Hurricane Leslie on Sept. 7, 2012 before landing at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va. Credit: NASA

NASA has begun its latest hurricane science field campaign by flying an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean during a day-long flight from California to Virginia. With the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission, NASA for the first time will be flying Global Hawks from the U.S. East Coast.

The Global Hawk took off from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Thursday and landed at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., today at 11:37 a.m. EDT after spending 10 hours collecting data on Hurricane Leslie. The month-long HS3 mission will help researchers and forecasters uncover information about how hurricanes and tropical storms form and intensify.

NASA will fly two Global Hawks from Wallops during the HS3 mission. The planes, which can stay in the air for as long as 28 hours and fly over hurricanes at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet, will be operated by pilots in ground control stations at Wallops and Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The mission targets the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change. The aircraft help scientists decipher the relative roles of the large-scale environment and internal storm processes that shape these systems. Studying hurricanes is a challenge for a field campaign like HS3 because of the small sample of storms available for study and the great variety of scenarios under which they form and evolve. HS3 flights will continue into early October of this year and be repeated from Wallops during the 2013 and 2014 hurricane seasons.

The first Global Hawk arrived Sept. 7 at Wallops carrying a payload of three instruments that will sample the environment around hurricanes. A second Global Hawk, scheduled to arrive in two weeks, will look inside hurricanes and developing storms with a different set of instruments. The pair will measure winds, temperature, water vapor, precipitation and aerosols from the surface to the lower stratosphere.

"The primary objective of the environmental Global Hawk is to describe the interaction of tropical disturbances and cyclones with the hot, dry and dusty air that moves westward off the Saharan desert and appears to affect the ability of storms to form and intensify," said Scott Braun, HS3 mission principal investigator and research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

This Global Hawk will carry a laser system called the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL), the Scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS), and the Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS).

The CPL will measure cloud structure and aerosols such as dust, sea salt and smoke particles. The S-HIS can remotely sense the temperature and water vapor vertical profile along with the sea surface temperature and cloud properties. The AVAPS dropsonde system will eject small sensors tied to parachutes that drift down through the storm, measuring winds, temperature and humidity.

"Instruments on the 'over-storm' Global Hawk will examine the role of deep thunderstorm systems in hurricane intensity change, particularly to detect changes in low-level wind fields in the vicinity of these thunderstorms," said Braun.

These instruments will measure eyewall and rainband winds and precipitation using a Doppler radar and other microwave sensors called the High-altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (HIWRAP), High-Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR) and Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD).

HIWRAP measures cloud structure and winds, providing a three-dimensional view of these conditions. HAMSR uses microwave wavelengths to measure temperature, water vapor, and precipitation from the top of the storm to the surface. HIRAD measures surface wind speeds and rain rates.

The HS3 mission is supported by several NASA centers including Wallops; Goddard; Dryden; Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.; Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.; and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. HS3 also has collaborations with partners from government agencies and academia.

HS3 is an Earth Venture mission funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Earth Venture missions are managed by NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder Program at the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The HS3 mission is managed by the Earth Science Project Office at NASA's Ames Research Center.

For more information about NASA's Airborne Science Program, visit:
http://airbornescience.nasa.gov



- NASA

Cutting-edge technology makes NASA's hurricane mission a reality

The High Altitude Monolithic Microwave integrated Circuit (MMIC) Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR) is a microwave atmospheric sounder developed by JPL under the NASA Instrument Incubator Program. Credit: NASA JPL

Cutting-edge NASA technology has made this year's NASA Hurricane mission a reality. NASA and other scientists are currently flying a suite of state-of-the-art, autonomously operated instruments that are gathering difficult-to-obtain measurements of wind speeds, precipitation, and cloud structures in and around tropical storms.

"Making these measurements possible is the platform on which the instruments are flying," said Paul Newman, the deputy principal investigator of NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3), managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. HS3 will use NASA's unmanned Global Hawks, which are capable of flying at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet with flight durations of up to 28 hours — capabilities that increase the amount of data scientists can collect. "It's a brand-new way to do science," Newman said.

The month-long HS3 mission, which began in early September, is actually a more robust follow-on to NASA's Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment that scientists executed in 2010. Often referred to as "GRIP on steroids," HS3 is currently deploying one instrument-laden Global Hawk from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore to look at the environment of tropical storms. In 2013 and 2014, a second Global Hawk will be added that will focus on getting detailed measurements of the inner core of hurricanes.

Without this new aircraft, developed originally for the U.S. Air Force to gather intelligence and surveillance data, the team says the mission wouldn't be possible.

The Global Hawk's ability to fly for a much longer period of time than manned aircraft will allow it to obtain previously difficult-to-get data. Scientists hope to use that data to gain new insights into how tropical storms form, and more importantly, how they intensify into major Atlantic hurricanes — information that forecasters need to make better storm predictions, save lives, and ultimately prevent costly coastal evacuations if a storm doesn't warrant them.

"Because you can get to Africa from Wallops, we'll be able to study developing systems way out into the Atlantic," Newman explained. "Normal planes, which can fly for no more than about 10 hours, often miss the points where storms intensify," added Gerry Heymsfield, a Goddard scientist who used NASA Research and Development funding to create one of the mission's six instruments, the High-altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (HIWRAP). "With the Global Hawks, we have a much higher chance of capturing these events. Furthermore, we can sit on targets for a long time."

Just as important as the aircraft are the new or enhanced instruments designed to gather critical wind, temperature, humidity, and aerosol measurements in the environment surrounding the storm and the rain and wind patterns occurring inside their inner cores, they added. "The instruments bring it all together," Newman said. "We didn't have these instruments 10 years ago."

The Global Hawk currently on deployment at Wallops is known as the "environmental" aircraft because it samples the environment in which hurricanes are embedded. It carries three instruments.

A Goddard-provided laser system called the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) is located in the nose. CPL measures cloud structures and aerosols, such as dust, sea salt particles, and smoke particles, by bouncing laser light off these elements. An infrared instrument called the Scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS), provided by the University of Wisconsin in Madison, sits in the belly of the aircraft. It measures the vertical profile of temperature and water vapor.

At the tail end is a dropsonde system provided by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This system consists of 88 paper-towel-roll-sized tubes that are ejected much like a soda can in a vending machine. As the sensor drops, a parachute slows its descent, allowing the sensor to drift down through the storm while measuring winds, temperature, pressure, and humidity.

In 2013 and 2014, working in tandem with its environmental counterpart, will be a second Global Hawk, known as the "over-storm" aircraft. It will sample the internal structure of hurricanes. It, too, will carry three instruments.

Heymsfield's HIWRAP, for example, will be situated in the belly of the Global Hawk and will be responsible for sampling the cores of hurricanes. Similar to a ground radar system, but pointed downward, HIWRAP measures rain structure and winds, providing a three-dimensional view of these conditions.

Also onboard this craft will be a microwave system called the High-Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR), created by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Located in the aircraft's nose, this instrument uses microwave wavelengths to measure temperature, water vapor, and precipitation from the top of the storm to the surface.

At the other end of the aircraft in the tail section will be the Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) provided by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. This microwave instrument measures surface wind speeds and rain rates in an unusual way. It collects this data by measuring the amount of "foaminess" in ocean waters. According to Newman, the amount of foaminess is proportional to wind speeds at the surface.

Although all six instruments measure different conditions, they share one important characteristic: all operate autonomously and deliver data to scientists in real-time — another scientific advance. In the past, aircraft instruments, which often required the presence of a scientist to operate them, would record captured data. Only after the aircraft landed could scientists begin evaluating what they had collected.

With the Global Hawk, however, the data are transmitted to the ground in real-time. Should conditions warrant, the science team can direct the pilot, who flies the aircraft from a computer console on the ground, to change course or tweak the pre-programmed flight path in some way to maximize or improve the data they are gathering. "With the Global Hawk and these instruments, we can make better decisions," Heymsfield added.

The five-year mission will continue through 2014, at which time the team hopes to have dramatically improved their understanding of how storms intensify. "The insights we get will benefit forecasters," Newman said. "What we hope to do is take this technique and make it part of the operational forecast infrastructure."

The HS3 mission is supported by several NASA facilities including Wallops, Goddard, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.; Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.; and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. In addition, the mission also involves collaborations with various partners from government agencies and academia.

HS3 is an Earth Venture mission funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Earth Venture missions are managed by NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder Program at NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va. The HS3 Project itself is managed by the Earth Science Project Office at NASA's Ames Research Center.

For more information about the NASA GRIP mission, visit:
www.nasa.gov/grip

- NASA

A clock that will last forever

Berkeley lab researchers propose a way to build the first space-time crystal.

Image Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Imagine a clock that will keep perfect time forever, even after the heat-death of the universe. This is the “wow” factor behind a device known as a “space-time crystal,” a four-dimensional crystal that has periodic structure in time as well as space. However, there are also practical and important scientific reasons for constructing a space-time crystal. With such a 4D crystal, scientists would have a new and more effective means by which to study how complex physical properties and behaviors emerge from the collective interactions of large numbers of individual particles, the so-called many-body problem of physics. A space-time crystal could also be used to study phenomena in the quantum world, such as entanglement, in which an action on one particle impacts another particle even if the two particles are separated by vast distances.

A space-time crystal, however, has only existed as a concept in the minds of theoretical scientists with no serious idea as to how to actually build one – until now. An international team of scientists led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has proposed the experimental design of a space-time crystal based on an electric-field ion trap and the Coulomb repulsion of particles that carry the same electrical charge.

“The electric field of the ion trap holds charged particles in place and Coulomb repulsion causes them to spontaneously form a spatial ring crystal,” says Xiang Zhang, a faculty scientist with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division who led this research. “Under the application of a weak static magnetic field, this ring-shaped ion crystal will begin a rotation that will never stop. The persistent rotation of trapped ions produces temporal order, leading to the formation of a space-time crystal at the lowest quantum energy state.”

Because the space-time crystal is already at its lowest quantum energy state, its temporal order – or timekeeping – will theoretically persist even after the rest of our universe reaches entropy, thermodynamic equilibrium or “heat-death.”

Zhang, who holds the Ernest S. Kuh Endowed Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California (UC) Berkeley, where he also directs the Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center, is the corresponding author of a paper describing this work in Physical Review Letters (PRL). The paper is titled “Space-time crystals of trapped ions.” Co-authoring this paper were Tongcang Li, Zhe-Xuan Gong, Zhang-Qi Yin, Haitao Quan, Xiaobo Yin, Peng Zhang and Luming Duan.

The concept of a crystal that has discrete order in time was proposed earlier this year by Frank Wilczek, the Nobel-prize winning physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While Wilczek mathematically proved that a time crystal can exist, how to physically realize such a time crystal was unclear. Zhang and his group, who have been working on issues with temporal order in a different system since September 2011, have come up with an experimental design to build a crystal that is discrete both in space and time – a space-time crystal. Papers on both of these proposals appear in the same issue of PRL (September 24, 2012).

Traditional crystals are 3D solid structures made up of atoms or molecules bonded together in an orderly and repeating pattern. Common examples are ice, salt and snowflakes. Crystallization takes place when heat is removed from a molecular system until it reaches its lower energy state. At a certain point of lower energy, continuous spatial symmetry breaks down and the crystal assumes discrete symmetry, meaning that instead of the structure being the same in all directions, it is the same in only a few directions.

“Great progress has been made over the last few decades in exploring the exciting physics of low-dimensional crystalline materials such as two-dimensional graphene, one-dimensional nanotubes, and zero-dimensional buckyballs,” says Tongcang Li, lead author of the PRL paper and a post-doc in Zhang’s research group. “The idea of creating a crystal with dimensions higher than that of conventional 3D crystals is an important conceptual breakthrough in physics and it is very exciting for us to be the first to devise a way to realize a space-time crystal.”

This proposed space-time crystal shows (a) periodic structures in both space and time with (b) ultracold ions rotating in one direction even at the lowest energy state. Image Credit: Xiang Zhang group.

Just as a 3D crystal is configured at the lowest quantum energy state when continuous spatial symmetry is broken into discrete symmetry, so too is symmetry breaking expected to configure the temporal component of the space-time crystal. Under the scheme devised by Zhang and Li and their colleagues, a spatial ring of trapped ions in persistent rotation will periodically reproduce itself in time, forming a temporal analog of an ordinary spatial crystal. With a periodic structure in both space and time, the result is a space-time crystal.

“While a space-time crystal looks like a perpetual motion machine and may seem implausible at first glance,” Li says, “keep in mind that a superconductor or even a normal metal ring can support persistent electron currents in its quantum ground state under the right conditions. Of course, electrons in a metal lack spatial order and therefore can’t be used to make a space-time crystal.”

Li is quick to point out that their proposed space-time crystal is not a perpetual motion machine because being at the lowest quantum energy state, there is no energy output. However, there are a great many scientific studies for which a space-time crystal would be invaluable.

“The space-time crystal would be a many-body system in and of itself,” Li says. “As such, it could provide us with a new way to explore classic many-body questions physics question. For example, how does a space-time crystal emerge? How does time translation symmetry break? What are the quasi-particles in space-time crystals? What are the effects of defects on space-time crystals? Studying such questions will significantly advance our understanding of nature.”

Peng Zhang, another co-author and member of Zhang’s research group, notes that a space-time crystal might also be used to store and transfer quantum information across different rotational states in both space and time. Space-time crystals may also find analogues in other physical systems beyond trapped ions.

“These analogs could open doors to fundamentally new technologies and devices for variety of applications,” he says.

Xiang Zhang believes that it might even be possible now to make a space-time crystal using their scheme and state of the art ion traps. He and his group are actively seeking collaborators with the proper ion-trapping facilities and expertise.

“The main challenge will be to cool an ion ring to its ground state,” Xiang Zhang says. “This can be overcome in the near future with the development of ion trap technologies. As there has never been a space-time crystal before, most of its properties will be unknown and we will have to study them. Such studies should deepen our understandings of phase transitions and symmetry breaking.”

Via Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory