Universe Today : Kaguya Releases Its Second Baby Satellite

Written by Fraser Cain

As we mentioned in past articles, the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft, now orbiting the Moon, is actually a collection of satellites. The largest satellite is Kaguya. It's the one equipped with all the cameras and the suite of scientific instruments.

But Kaguya was also carrying two baby satellites. The first Relay satellite, nicknamed Okina, was released on October 9th. Today Kaguya released its second sub-satellite: the tiny Very Long Baseline Interferometer (or VRAD). VRAD's job will be to help Kaguya carefully map out the Moon's gravity field.

Original Source: JAXA News Release

Universe Today : Expedition 16 Docks with the Station

Written by Fraser Cain

The International Space Station now has 6 crew members on board, after the Soyuz capsule carrying Expedition 16 docked earlier today. Commander Peggy Whitson, Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko and spaceflight participant Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor floated into the station when the hatches were opened at 12:22 p.m. EDT on Friday.

The station is going to be a busy place for the next week, with all 6 crew members aboard. And then three members will depart on October 21st. Shukor will return with Expedition 15 members Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov.

Whitson is the first female commander of the station. And if the shuttle mission STS-120 launches on schedule, it will bring shuttle commander Pam Melroy to the station. This will be the first time that two female mission commanders are in orbit at the same time.

Original Source: NASA News Release

Universe Today : Has Dark Energy Always Been Constant?

Written by Fraser Cain

Dark energy is that mysterious force that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. But the question is: has it always been pushing the Universe apart with the same force, or was it weaker or stronger in the past, and will it get stronger in the future? Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have a plan to study distant clumps of hydrogen, to get to the bottom of this question, once and for all.

Dark energy was first discovered nearly a decade ago, when astronomers noticed that distant supernovae were further away than their calculations were expecting. Some mysterious force appears to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe from every point in space. As space expands, more dark energy seems to appear. And although the amount of dark energy in any one point in space is tiny, across the vast reaches of space, it really adds up, accounting for more than 70% of the Universe.

If dark energy is increasing, however, you could imagine it eventually becoming so strong that it starts to tear galaxy clusters apart, and then galaxies themselves, and even star systems. Maybe it might even become so strong that it tears apart atoms and even the fabric of space itself. Astronomers call this theory the "Big Rip". Or maybe just the opposite is true, and dark energy will eventually become negligible to the expansion of the Universe.

In order to see if the strength of dark energy is changing over time, astronomers are planning to carefully plot the position of clouds of neutral hydrogen, shortly after they formed from the Big Bang. Although it's not possible now, future planned observatories should be able to trace this material all the way back to a time when the Universe was only 200 million years old.

In the early Universe, small fluctuations in energy density and pressure caused oscillations. Although tiny in the beginning, these ripples have been magnified by the expansion of the Universe so that they stretch 500 million light-years across today. The clouds of neutral hydrogen should follow the same ripple pattern, so astronomers will know they're looking at those first, primordial clouds, and not some closer ones.

And so, astronomers will be able to look back in time, and study the distance to the clouds at each epoch in our Universe's expansion. They should be able to trace how much dark energy was affecting space at each time, and get a sense if this energy has always remained constant, or if it's changing.

Their answers will shape our understanding of the Universe's evolution, and its future.

Original Source: CfA News Release

Universe Today : Titan has Drizzling Methane Rain

Written by Fraser Cain

If you're planning a visit to Saturn's moon Titan, make sure you bring an umbrella. You'll need it. Not to protect you from water raining down; on frigid Titan, where temperatures dip below 180-degrees Celsius, all the water is completely frozen. No, according to scientists, there's a steady drizzle of liquid methane coming down in the mornings.

New infrared images gathered by Hawaii's W.M. Keck Observatory and Chile's Very Large Telescope show that Titan's Xanadu region experiences a steady drizzle of methane during its lengthy morning. The concept of morning is a little misleading, since Titan takes about 16 Earth days to complete one rotation. So, the "morning" drizzle actually lasts around 3 Earth days, dissipating around 10:30 a.m. local time.

Astronomers aren't actually sure if this is a moon-wide phenomenon, or just localized around the Xanadu region of Titan. Even though large lakes and seas have been discovered around the moon's poles, no process had been discovered that fills them with liquid… until now.

Reporting their findings in the latest issue of the online journal Science Express, researchers from UC Berkeley note that, "widespread and persistent drizzle may be the dominant mechanism for returning methane to the surface from the atmosphere and closing the methane cycle."

The new Keck/VLT images show a widespread cloud cover of frozen methane at a height of 25 to 35 kilometres. And then there are liquid methane clouds below 20 kilometres, and finally rain falling at the lowest elevations.

The droplets of liquid methane in the rain clouds are 1,000 times larger than water vapour here on Earth, and this surprisingly makes them harder to detect. Since the droplets are larger, but still carry the same amount of moisture, they're much more spread out, making the clouds extremely diffuse, and nearly invisible.

How much liquid is trapped in the clouds? If you squeezed them all out and spread the liquid across the surface of Titan, it would coat the entire moon to a depth of about 1.5 cm. And that's actually the same amount as we'd get if you did the same thing with the Earth's clouds.

Original Source: UC Berkeley News Release

Space.com : Report Urges U.S. to Pursue Space-Based Solar Power

By Brian Berger Space News Staff Writer posted: 12 October 2007 ET

WASHINGTON – A Pentagon-chartered report urges the United States to take the lead in developing space platforms capable of capturing sunlight and beaming electrical power to Earth.

Space-based solar power, according to the report, has the potential to help the United States stave off climate change and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the Sun's power to provide an essentially inexhaustible supply of clean energy.

The report, "Space-Based Solar Power as an Opportunity for Strategic Security," was undertaken by the Pentagon's National Security Space Office this spring as a collaborative effort that relied heavily on Internet discussions by more than 170 scientific, legal, and business experts around the world. The Space Frontier Foundation, an activist organization normally critical of government-led space programs, hosted the website used to collect input for the report.

Speaking at a press conference held here Oct. 10 to unveil the report, U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Paul Damphousse of the National Space Security Space Office said the six-month study, while "done on the cheap," produced some very positive findings about the feasibility of space-based solar power and its potential to strengthen U.S. national security.

"One of the major findings was that space-based solar power does present strategic opportunity for us in the 21st century," Damphousse said. "It can advance our U.S. and partner security capability and freedom of action and merits significant additional study and demonstration on the part of the United States so we can help either the United State s develop this, or allow the commercial sector to step up."

Demonstrations needed

Specifically, the report calls for the U.S. government to underwrite the development of space-based solar power by funding a progressively bigger and more expensive technology demonstrations that would culminate with building a platform in geosynchronous orbit bigger than the international space station and capable of beaming 5-10 megawatts of power to a receiving station on the ground.

Nearer term, the U.S. government should fund in depth studies and some initial proof-of-concept demonstrations to show that space-based solar power is a technically and economically viable to solution to the world's growing energy needs.

Aside from its potential to defuse future energy wars and mitigate global warming, Damphousse said beaming power down from space could also enable the U.S. military to operate forward bases in far flung, hostile regions such as Iraq without relying on vulnerable convoys to truck in fossil fuels to run the electrical generators needed to keep the lights on.

As the report puts it, "beamed energy from space in quantities greater than 5 megawatts has the potential to be a disruptive game changer on the battlefield. [Space-based solar power] and its enabling wireless power transmission technology could facilitate extremely flexible 'energy on demand' for combat units and installations across and entire theater, while significantly reducing dependence on over-land fuel deliveries."

Although the U.S. military would reap tremendous benefits from space-based solar power, Damphousse said the Pentagon is unlikely to fund development and demonstration of the technology. That role, he said, would be more appropriate for NASA or the Department of Energy, both of which have studied space-based solar power in the past.

The Pentagon would, however, be a willing early adopter of the new technology, Damphousse said, and provide a potentially robust market for firms trying to build a business around space-based solar power.

"While challenges do remain and the business case does not necessarily close at this time from a financial sense, space-based solar power is closer than ever," he said. "We are the day after next from being able to actually do this."

Damphousse, however, cautioned that the private sector will not invest in space-based solar power until the United States buys down some of the risk through a technology development and demonstration effort at least on par with what the government spends on nuclear fusion research and perhaps as much as it is spending to construct and operate the international space station.

"Demonstrations are key here," he said. "If we can demonstrate this, the business case will close rapidly."

Charles Miller, one of the Space Frontier Foundation's directors, agreed public funding is vital to getting space-based solar power off the ground. Miller told reporters here that the space-based solar power industry could take off within 10 years if the White House and Congress embrace the report's recommendations by funding a robust demonstration program and provide the same kind of incentives it offers the nuclear power industry.

Military applications

The Pentagon's interest is another important factor. Military officials involved in the report calculate that the United States is paying $1 per kilowatt hour or more to supply power to its forward operating bases in Iraq.

"The biggest issue with previous studies is they were trying to get five or ten cents per kilowatt hour, so when you have a near term customer who's potentially willing to pay much more for power, it's much easier to close the business case," Miller said.

NASA first studied space-based solar power in the 1970s, concluding then that the concept was technically feasible but not economically viable. Cost estimates produced at the time estimated the United States would have to spend $300 billion to $1 trillion to deliver the first kilowatt hour of space-based power to the ground, said John Mankins, a former NASA technologist who led the agency's space-based solar power research and now consults and runs the Space Power Association.

Advances in computing, robotics, solar cell efficiency, and other technologies helped drive that estimate down by the time NASA took a fresh look at space-based solar power in the mid-1990s, Mankins said, but still not enough justify the upfront expense of such an undertaking at a time when oil was going for $15 a barrel.

With oil currently trading today as high as $80 a barrel and the U.S. military paying dearly to keep kerosene-powered generators humming in an oil-rich region like Iraq, the economics have change significantly since NASA pulled the plug on space-based solar power research in around 2002.

On the technical front, solar cell efficiency has improved faster than expected. Ten years ago, when solar cells were topping out around 15 percent efficiency, experts predicted that 25 percent efficiency would not be achieved until close to 2020, Mankins said, yet Sylmar, Calif.-based Spectrolab – a Boeing subsidiary – last year unveiled an advanced solar cell with a 40.7 percent conversion efficiency.

One critical area that has not made many advances since the 1990s or even the 1970s is the cost of launch. Mankins said commercially-viable space-based solar power platforms will only become feasible with the kind of dramatically cheaper launch costs promised by fully reusable launch vehicles flying dozens of times a year.

"If somebody tries to sell you stock in a space solar power company today saying we are going to start building immediately, you should probably call your broker and not take that at face value," Mankins said. "There's a lot of challenges that need to be overcome."

Mankins said the space station could be used to host some early technology validation demonstrations, from testing appropriate materials to tapping into the station's solar-powered electrical grid to transmit a low level of energy back to Earth. Worthwhile component tests could be accomplished for "a few million" dollars, Mankins estimated, while a space station-based power-beaming experiment would cost "tens of millions" of dollars.

Placing a free-flying space-based solar power demonstrator in low-Earth orbit, he said, would cost $500 million to $1 billion. A geosynchronous system capable of transmitting a sustained 5-10 megawatts of power down to the ground would cost around $10 billion, he said, and provide enough electricity for a military base. Commercial platforms, likewise, would be very expensive to build.

"These things are not going to be small or cheap," Mankins said. "It's not like buying a jetliner. It's going to be like buying the Hoover Dam."

While the upfront costs are steep, Mankins and others said space-based solar power's potential to meet the world's future energy needs is huge.

According to the report, "a single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today."

ESA : Cassini-Huygens - celebrating 10 years since launch

Titan IVB with Cassini-Huygens on board blasts off from Cape Canaveral

12 October 2007
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of its launch, the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, which has made amazing discoveries routine, is once again at the centre of scientific attention.

The mission’s latest discoveries are a leading topic of conversation among nearly 1500 scientists gathered this week at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences in Orlando, USA.

Cassini-Huygens rode into space on 15 October 1997, atop an american Titan IVB launcher. Its mission was to orbit and study the Saturnian system for four years and to deliver ESA’s Huygens probe that parachuted down to the frozen surface of Saturn's Earth-like moon, Titan.

Since entering orbit around Saturn, Cassini's scientific instruments, powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, have returned immense amounts of new information to the international team of scientists working on the mission.

Scientists aren't the only ones to benefit from this voyage of discovery. Since arriving at Saturn three-and-a-half years ago, Cassini-Huygens’ revelations have captured public imagination. Its spectacular views of Saturn and its realm have graced the covers of magazines around the world and millions have followed the mission's progress.

	Cassini-Huygens on its way

"With Cassini, amazing discoveries have almost become routine," says Cassini project scientist Dennis Matson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA, who manages the Cassini orbiter science activities.

"Orbiting Saturn, Cassini is in the middle of the greatest natural laboratory accessible to us in space," says Matson. "With its rings, dozens of moons and magnetic environment, Saturn is like a mini-solar system, with Saturn as a stand-in for the sun, and the moons and rings like planets in formation. Through Cassini and its instruments, we are making fundamental strides in understanding the physical processes that created and govern this and other solar systems."

The Huygens team are working hard, deciphering the millions of bits of information sent back by Huygens on 14 January 2005. Scientists in Europe and around the world are recreating conditions encountered by Huygens so that they can unveil Titan’s surface.

Launch of Cassini-Huygens

“For all of us so closely involved in discovering an Earth-like world, it was worth the long trip. We are now learning about terrestrial-processes that take place on another world – which is fascinating. Cassini-Huygens is truly a success story in international cooperation,” comments Jean-Pierre Lebreton, ESA Huygens Project Scientist.

Some of the discoveries include ice geysers shooting from Saturn's moon Enceladus and the finding that one of Saturn's rings is created from these ice particles. Recently, scientists found that material from Enceladus is also affecting the rotation of Saturn's magnetic field. And an onboard radar instrument, which sees through clouds, has been unveiling the fascinating world of Titan, the large moon with complex chemistry and lakes of hydrocarbons.

Notes for editors:

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project between NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. JPL designed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. ESA developed the Huygens Titan probe, while ASI managed the development of the high-gain antenna and the other instruments of its participation. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, USA.

ESA: EC unveils new EU maritime policy

Integrated maritime surveillance

12 October 2007
The European Commission has adopted an Integrated Maritime Policy for the European Union, which has the world’s largest maritime territory, marking the first time in its 50 years that it will have a strategic approach to decision-making in Maritime Affairs. The policy was unveiled at a press conference on 10 October in Brussels, Belgium.

European Commissioner in charge of Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Joe Borg said: "This is a crucial first step for Europe's oceans and sea – unlocking the potential and facing the challenges of a Maritime Europe will be our common goal. It will allow us to make the most of the geopolitical realities of our continent and will help Europe face some of the major challenges before it.

"At the European level, it is clear the transnational character of maritime affairs demands a European approach: shipping and traffic corridors cross the waters of our Member States, oil spills and pollution know no borders in Europe's waters and illegal activities … are transnational by nature, affecting all of Europe."

	Prestige oil spill

The European Commission (EC) said the new policy will build on Europe's strengths in marine research, technology and innovation and will be anchored in the European Union's (EU) overarching commitment to ensuring that economic development does not come at the price of environmental sustainability.

Under the European Space Policy, ESA is responsible for implementing space capabilities that respond to EU policy needs. The Integrated Maritime Policy will facilitate efficient exploitation of space systems in the maritime sector, which ESA has been actively involved in over the last 25 years.

ESA’s ERS satellites have been the main vehicles for testing and demonstrating the feasibility of using satellite Earth Observation (EO) data in different maritime policy areas. The ERS missions supported developments in oil slick detection, sea ice monitoring, wind and wave forecasting, regional ocean current forecasting, coastal bathymetry mapping and vessel detection.

Because both ERS-1 and ERS-2 significantly exceeded their original design lifetime of three years, it was possible to build an extended, continuous and homogeneous time series of oceanographic measurements, which were not previously possible.

Sea surface temperature map

In particular, accurate measurements of sea surface height variation by the radar altimeter instrument provided a unique capability to monitor variations in currents at the regional level while the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) series of instruments have delivered a highly accurate time series of sea surface temperature variations over a 16-year period.

In addition, satellite data from the radar altimeters onboard ESA’s ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat and NASA/CNES’ Topex-Poseidon detected a trend in sea level rise between 2.64 and 3.29 mm/year over the last 15 years.

In 2002, the newly launched Envisat acquired images of the Prestige oil spill in Spain with its Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument. Since this time, ESA has been working within the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Services Element to demonstrate and qualify the capacity for pan-European oil spill surveillance. Last year, an operational satellite-based oil slick detection service based on SAR data from Envisat and the Canadian Radarsat satellite was set up for all European waters under the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). The service, named CleanSeaNet, is the first operational pan-European satellite based surveillance service for European waters.

	CleanSeaNet service

Under this service, a notification of a pollution event can be provided within 20 to 30 minutes of the satellite overpass. By integrating the SAR oil slick information with vessel information, it becomes possible to identify potentially responsible vessels.

"This is a first, and significant, step in the process whereby EMSA assists Member States and the Commission in detecting illegal and accidental discharges at sea," Willem de Ruiter, Executive Director of EMSA said.

Intentional and accidental discharges threaten fragile coastal ecosystems, impact on tourism and generate significant clean-up costs. The European policy goal, as stated in the Marine Thematic Strategy of the 6th Environment Action Plan is a complete elimination of discharges into the marine environment by 2020. Effective surveillance such as CleanSeaNet is essential if this objective is to be met. However, oil spill detection is not the only area where satellite based SAR surveillance is being applied.

There is growing interest in the use of satellite SAR for fisheries and for maritime border control. In particular, the Integrated Surveillance System for Europe’s southern maritime borders as requested by the European Council is intending to integrate satellite based surveillance with conventional vessel tracking systems.

Chlorophyll-a concentrations in the Dutch coast

Routine monitoring of water quality in European coastal areas is important to effectively protect fragile coastal ecosystems. Within the MARCOAST Consortium under the GMES Services Element, most European coastal states are provided with key parameters, including chlorophyll-a concentration, transparency and suspended sediment load, for their region of interest several times per week.

Due to the extensive winter transport levels in the Baltic Sea, Europe hosts the largest volume of commercial shipping activity in ice-infested areas. The timely delivery of accurate, up-to-date sea ice information by national ice services is critical in maintaining the security and efficiency of this transportation. Many national ice services have routinely integrated Envisat and Radarsat SAR imagery into their operational sea ice charts for several years.

These capabilities are based on EO satellites that have already been operating for some time. ESA is working to ensure continuity of the key data streams underpinning these services within the framework of GMES. The Sentinel missions will ensure that SAR, ocean colour, radar altimeter and sea surface temperature observations will be continued beyond the lifetime of the current missions. In addition, ESA is working with the European scientific community to bring new observation techniques, the so called Earth Explorers, to support research in critical Earth science issues such as global change and biodiversity.

ESA welcomes the Integrated Maritime Policy and intends to work with the different actors involved in areas where it sees current or potential future demand for space-based capabilities in the maritime sector.

ESA : Malaysian astronaut to work on ESA experiments

Whitson, Malenchenko and Muszaphar during training at Star City

12 October 2007
The Expedition 16 crew is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station later today when the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft docks with the orbital outpost. Also on board is Malaysia’s first astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor who will be the test subject for four ESA experiments during his 9-day stay on the Station.

The Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft, which launched on 10 October 2007 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, is scheduled to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) at 16:52 CEST (14:52 GMT) today.

The Expedition 16 crewmembers, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, will spend the next six months in space, replacing the Expedition 15 crew as the permanent crew on the International Space Station. Once the crew exchange has been formalised, Whitson will become the first woman to command the ISS.

During his stay in space, amongst other activities, Muszaphar will participate in four ESA experiments in the area of human physiology. The ESA experiments include investigations into space motion sickness and the lower back pain astronauts often experience in weightlessness, as well as a test of a new technique to detect bone loss – the results of which are expected to contribute to the development of an early detection technique for osteoporosis on Earth.

Also on board the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft is a European incubator called Kubik which will be delivered to the ISS. Kubik is a small facility which provides a controlled thermal environment for performing biology experiments.

Muszaphar is scheduled to return to Earth on 21 October 2007 on board the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft, together with the outgoing Expedition 15 crew, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, who have lived on the International Space Station for just over six months.

NATGEO : "Rocket NASCAR," Moon Base Part of 50-Year Space Vision

Kevin Holden Platt
for National Geographic News

October 5, 2007

A half-century ago the Russian satellite Sputnik 1 launched the world into an international space race (see a photo of Sputnik).

Today a new era of competition to break through the planet's atmosphere has begun, sparking visions of what human space travel will look like 50 years in the future. (See photos of what space travel might look like over the next 50 years.)

The governments of the United States, India, China, and Japan have each announced high-profile plans to send humans back to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 landed there in 1972.

Some of these projects involve building permanent lunar settlements that will serve as science stations as well as testing grounds for technology to send pioneering astronauts to Mars.

And renewed interest in space travel has already laid the foundations for a multibillion-U.S.-dollar entertainment and tourism industry, said Peter Diamandis, chair and CEO of the X Prize Foundation.

Historians of the future might call it the second space race—although this time the competition will be among private entrepreneurs as well as government agencies.

The next generations of rockets and shuttles along with tourist-friendly spaceports across the globe could eventually make space vacations as routine as a trip to Disneyland.

NASCAR in Space

For example, Diamandis will soon wave the starting flag for his latest venture, the Rocket Racing League.

This NASCAR-like competition features rocket-powered jets that resemble the podracers in the Stars Wars prequel The Phantom Menace.

The racers will be piloted by real people flying along preset courses plotted by computers, and online spectators will also have the option to add virtual rockets to the event.

"Fans playing on the Internet will be able to compete [against the] real rockets," Diamandis said.

The league's co-founder, Granger Whitelaw, said the first generation of these so-called X Racers will hug the surface of the planet in rallies slated to start in 2008. Seven years later a new generation of racers will speed through suborbital arcs into space.

And by 2025, Whitelaw said, the futuristic race will circumnavigate the Earth.

Lifting off from a New Mexico spaceport, the space-racers will "rocket through the atmosphere into low Earth orbit, circle the Earth, [and] execute a high-speed re-entry to the applause and awe of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of spectators worldwide."

In addition to this literal space race, the X Prize Foundation is offering prizes to spark independent human exploration of the moon.

A new Google Lunar X Prize will award 30 million U.S. dollars for the first privately designed robotic rover to land on the moon and beam video and other data back to Earth.

"There will be a range of X Prizes over the next 50 years, each pushing us further and challenging greater human exploration and endeavors," Diamandis said.

"I can imagine X Prizes for humans on the moon, capturing and returning asteroids, and discovering life on distant worlds."

And by 2025, Whitelaw said, the futuristic race will circumnavigate the Earth.

Lifting off from a New Mexico spaceport, the space-racers will "rocket through the atmosphere into low Earth orbit, circle the Earth, [and] execute a high-speed re-entry to the applause and awe of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of spectators worldwide."

In addition to this literal space race, the X Prize Foundation is offering prizes to spark independent human exploration of the moon.

A new Google Lunar X Prize will award 30 million U.S. dollars for the first privately designed robotic rover to land on the moon and beam video and other data back to Earth.

"There will be a range of X Prizes over the next 50 years, each pushing us further and challenging greater human exploration and endeavors," Diamandis said.

"I can imagine X Prizes for humans on the moon, capturing and returning asteroids, and discovering life on distant worlds."

One of These Days, Alice …

At the same time, various government agencies are rocketing ahead with plans to create lunar outposts in the coming decades.

NASA is developing massive new Ares launchers and Orion spacecraft to ferry astronaut teams to what researchers hope will be the first construction site on the moon.

The settlement, to be situated on one of the moon's poles, should be permanently staffed by 2024.

Today the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's first lunar probe SELENE achieved orbit around the moon, a first step in that country's goal of building a moon base by 2030.

And at a global space exploration conference held in India last week, Chinese officials reiterated their intentions to use their Long March launchers and Shenzhou spacecraft to build a lunar outpost by 2020.

But Zhang Qingwei, president of the China Aerospace and Technology Corporation, said that such plans don't preclude China from joining forces with other nations on such a project.

"If given the option, China would choose to work jointly with the United States and the other space powers to build a global settlement on the moon," he said.

A cross-cultural moon base could help peacefully accommodate China's rise on the global stage, said John Pike, founder of the intelligence specialist group GlobalSecurity.org.

In fact, China's rapidly expanding space sector could find an American ally before construction of any moon base begins.

Eric Anderson, president of the space tourism outfit Space Adventures, said he has been impressed by China's strengthening technological capabilities.

As Chinese spacecraft pass a series of milestones, he said, Space Adventures could one day form a partnership with the China National Space Administration to shuttle tourists to orbiting space stations and beyond.

Space Adventures has already flown a series of tourists to the International Space Station in a partnership with the Russian space agency and has announced plans to build tourist-friendly spaceports in Singapore and Dubai akin to the planned Virgin Galactic spaceport in New Mexico.

The firm is now co-funding a new five-person tourist spacecraft being developed outside Moscow.

And the company is working with Russia on a lunar landing mission that might help a privately funded explorer become the first human to touch down on the moon in the 21st century, said company Vice President Stacey Tearne.

(Read "$100 Million Moon Trip: Space Tourism's Hot Ticket?" [August 10, 2005])

The Space Adventures-backed "lunar landing mission could happen as soon as 2015," Tearne said.

Remaking Mars

This unprecedented combination of public and private innovations in space travel could speed humanity toward visions of the future once held only in the realm of science fiction, many experts say.

Jim Burke is a retired NASA project manager who participated in some of the earliest U.S. moon missions.

Humanity's return to the moon, he said, could one day give birth to underground lunar cities and even new space-based cultures.

And Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and leading advocate for human colonization on Mars, said that the ultimate goal to ring in Sputnik's hundredth anniversary should be to transform the red planet into a new sanctuary for human civilization.

Zubrin's book The Case for Mars has influenced NASA designs for the Ares launchers and its tentative plans for human-led missions to Mars.

The first Martian colonies could be created by building pressurized geodesic domes to shelter humans and plants, he said.

Melting the carbon dioxide-rich south pole of Mars to thicken its atmosphere could then trigger a "greenhouse" chain reaction that would warm the planet.

Within a half-century of launching this plan to re-engineer Mars, "the planet might hold up to 10,000 people, including the first generation of humans to be born on Mars."

And like the race to the moon, a friendly, Olympics-style competition to transform Mars could drive high-speed progress, he noted.

"Several new branches of human civilization may take root on Mars, but I think they all will want to see the planet terraformed. So while they might be rivals in some things, they will cooperate on that," he said.

Remaking Mars in Earth's image, Zubrin said, could become the first stepping stone toward human migration throughout the Milky Way.

The X Prize Foundation's Diamandis is also hoping that today's space race will lead to human colonies on other worlds.

In the future, he said, an ongoing series of space prizes will be awarded for "helping humanity become a multiplanet civilization."

"We now have 10,000 years of human culture cradled here in one small nest," he said. "We have a moral obligation to transplant civilization beyond Earth's borders."

ESA : Earth from Space: Fall foliage

12 October 2007
This Envisat image highlights the orange autumn foliage of the forested areas in the basin of Lake Superior (image centre), one of the five Great Lakes located in the heart of eastern North America.

Covering a total area of 244 000 km² and containing about 23,000 km³ of water, the Great Lakes form the largest connected area of fresh, surface water on Earth – roughly 18 percent of the world supply. The only place where more fresh water is contained is in the polar ice caps.

The five Great Lakes are Superior, Michigan (visible on the left side of lower left corner), Huron (visible on right side of lower left corner), Erie and Ontario. Of these, Lake Michigan is the only one not to straddle the U.S.-Canada border, as it is located entirely within the U.S.. Lakes Michigan and Huron are hydrologically inseparable.

Lake Superior is the largest by volume. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Superior could contain all the other Great Lakes and three more Lake Eries. Lake Michigan is the second largest by volume followed by Lake Huron. Lake Ontario, although smaller in area than Erie, is the second smallest by volume. Lake Erie is the smallest by volume.

The sheer size of the lakes’ surface area makes them vulnerable to direct atmospheric pollutants that arrive on their surface via rain, snow or dust. Because the outflows from the lakes are less than 1 percent per year, pollutants that enter the waters are retained for long periods.

Because of its size, Superior has a retention time -- a measure based on the volume of water in the lake and the mean rate of outflow -- of 191 years, according to EPA. Lake Erie has the shortest retention time of the lakes – 2.6 years.

Some of the approximately 35,000 islands located within the Great Lakes are visible in the image. The islands are home to several species of plants endemic solely to Great Lakes islands.

This image was acquired by Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument on 23 September 2007, working in Full Resolution mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 metres.

UNiverse Today : The Best Alien Hunter is Open for Business

Written by Fraser Cain

The biggest and best tool ever developed to search for signs of extraterrestrial life is coming online in Northern California. No, it's not an interstellar bounty hunter, it's an array of radio dishes in Northern California. The Allen Array, located in an arid valley near the town of Hat Creek started gathering data with 42 radio dishes today. But that's just the beginning; eventually there'll be 350 dishes pointed to the heavens, listening for the faint communications from an extraterrestrial intelligence.

Partly funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the Allen Telescope Array released its first test images today. These included a radio map of the nearby Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Pinwheel Galaxy (M33).

Although the array was used to capture radio images of galaxies, one of its primary roles will be to search for communications from extraterrestrial civilizations. It works on the idea that many smaller radio telescopes working together are more powerful and cheaper than a single large dish.

Over the next couple of decades, the Allen Array will gather 1,000 times as much radio data from distant stars as has already been accumulated in the 45 years of the SETI program. Astronomer Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute made a bold prediction, "I think we will find signals from intelligent civilizations by 2025."

The total cost of the project to date is $50 million. The first phase of $25 million was funded by the Paul G Allen Family Foundation. Another group of donors contributed the additional $25 million. UC Berkeley and the SETI Institute are now working to raise the funding to complete the full 350-dish array.

The final 6-metre (20-foot) dish should be completed in approximately 3 years, bringing the full array online. The aliens won't be able to hide from us much longer.

Original Source: UC Berkeley News Release

Space.com : Taking the Pulse of Personal Spaceflight

By Leonard David Special Correspondent, SPACE.com posted: 11 October 2007 06:49 am ET

GOLDEN, Colorado – The prospect of public space travel has shot past the high-volume "giggle factor" of a few years ago. Companies around the globe are busy at work hammering out passenger-carrying spaceship designs, banking on a hoped-for lucrative suborbital travel market.

But adventure seekers lining up at a spaceport's departure gate is one thing ... yet another is how best private space firms can financially fuel their respective dream machines, as well as sort through a labyrinth of regulatory, insurance, and safety hoops.

To take the current pulse of the commercial spaceflight industry, you can put yourself at month's end on a trajectory that propels you to New Mexico and the Third International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight (ISPS-2007).

ISPS is being held October 24-25 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the opening event of this year's 2007 Wirefly X Prize Cup to be staged a few days later at neighboring Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo.

Closing the credibility gap

"ISPS-2007 is to create the community that grows the personal spaceflight business," explained Patricia Hynes, chair of the two-day event at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum. She's also Director of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium and the NASA Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) at New Mexico State University.

Hynes told SPACE.com that the symposium has a far more international flavor this year. "I think it's very important to keep closing the credibility gap about the entire commercial and personal spaceflight business case," she said, pointing to Arianespace Inc. (USA) as the title sponsor of the gathering.

Arianespace has an impressive spaceport track record in Kourou, French Guiana – the rocket-for-hire company that currently performs Ariane 5 liftoffs, making use of state-of-the-art facilities that will soon welcome Vega and Soyuz launch vehicles.

ISPS will provide a progress report on New Mexico's own spaceport.

In development is the state's inland Spaceport America, based on years of study. It is now a targeted 27 square-miles (70 square-kilometers) of state-owned land, 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Las Cruces. Backed by state governor and U.S. presidential hopeful, Bill Richardson, legislation and voter support to finance the spaceport is underway. Recruitment of maverick aerospace groups to set up shop in New Mexico has been ongoing, such as Sir Richard Branson's commitment to establish Virgin Galactic spaceliner headquarters in the state.

Safety: first concern

On the one hand, personal spaceflight has turned the corner in vehicle development and collaboration between regulatory agencies, Hynes noted. However, as for raising capital to financially fuel private space operations, "we're in the very beginning stages," she said, underscoring the fact that access to credit is undergoing a global belt-tightening.

Hynes said that a consistent message running through the upcoming ISPS, and in past symposia, is safety. For example, last July's accident and loss of life at the Scaled Composites site of SpaceShipTwo work accentuated that factor.

"Until we know what happened, speculation is a waste of time. We do know that it's a risky business ... we do know that there will be accidents," Hynes observed. As more and more of the public partake in suborbital and orbital trips, safety is paramount, she said, "and that is everybody's first concern."

Expectations versus reality

David Livingston, host of The Space Show, is leading a special symposium panel of prospective and already flown space travelers, including businesswoman Anousheh Ansari. She purchased a multi-million dollar travel ticket last year to the International Space Station via a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Livingston's panel is equally divided among space flyers and wannabes. The intent is to gauge expectations versus reality in space travel, as well as solicit advice for those training and planning a personal space trek.

"I want to explore realistic expectations and recommendations with those on the panel having been to space and those on the panel wanting to go to space," Livingston told SPACE.com. "Let's find out how willing the future space travelers are to follow the recommendations of those that have been in space. Are expectations for their trip realistic?"

In the larger picture, Livingston added, ISPS is a power-packed confab of leaders in finance, travel, entrepreneurism and marketing that can help push forward the personal spaceflight enterprise. Still, those looking for the true recipe to sell public space travel stand to benefit from symposium presentations from Coca Cola and the specialty pharmaceutical enterprise, the Celgene Corporation, briefings that share marketing know-how for new products in developing markets, he said.

Symposium tracks are varied in content, from progress in vehicle systems and the synergy between government and personal spaceflight to marketing the "New Space" business and building the spaceport network.

Business plans

The meeting is to be a gathering spot for such notables as Elon Musk, president of Space Exploration Technologies (Space X), Alex Tai, chief operating officer of Virgin Galactic, and Mark Sirangelo, chairman and chief executive officer of SpaceDev. Each will discuss their respective business plans for space commercialization. Also on the agenda are talks by representatives from Europe's EADS Astrium, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, as well as overviews by NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and senior U.S. Air Force speakers.

At this year's ISPS, a scan of the various exhibitors also gives an inkling of how the public space travel agenda is maturing. For example, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) will be on hand.

Established in 1997, the NSBRI is a nonprofit academic research consortium that operates under a cooperative agreement with NASA. NSBRI is delving into countermeasures to the physical and psychological challenges that individuals face on long-duration spaceflights. More to the point, many of the NSBRI projects also have applications to short-duration personal spaceflight.

Co-sponsors of ISPS are: The X Prize Foundation, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Association of Space Explorers, New Mexico State University and the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium, with SPACE.com sister publication – Space News – as exclusive media sponsor.

Hynes, the ISPS chair, concluded that the symposium is the place to be, to help sustain and push the personal spaceflight market forward. "It's like going to the Sundance Film Festival. Once you get there ... ain't nothing like it."

For detailed registration information on the 2007 International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight, visit: http://spacegrant.nmsu.edu/isps/

ESA : Cassini’s new view of land of lakes and seas

Titan's north polar region

11 October 2007
Newly assembled radar images from Cassini provide the best views of the hydrocarbon lakes and seas on Saturn's moon Titan. A new radar image reveals that Titan’s south polar region also has lakes.

The southern region images were beamed back after a flyby on 2 October in which a prime goal was the hunt for lakes at the south pole.

A new mosaic image comprised from seven Titan fly-bys over the last year and a half shows a north pole pitted with giant lakes and seas, at least one of them larger than Lake Superior in the USA.

Approximately 60% of Titan's north polar region, above 60° north, has been mapped by Cassini's radar instrument. About 14% of the mapped region is covered by what scientists interpret as liquid hydrocarbon lakes.

"This is our version of mapping Alaska, the northern parts of Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia and Northern Russia," said Rosaly Lopes, Cassini radar scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA. "It is like mapping these regions of Earth for the first time."

Cassini imaging Titan's north pole

Lakes and seas are very common at the high northern latitudes of Titan, which is in winter now. Scientists say it rains methane and ethane there, filling the lakes and seas. These liquids also carve meandering rivers and channels on the moon's surface. Now Cassini is moving into unknown territory, down to the south pole of Titan.

"We wanted to see if there are more lakes present there and, sure enough, there they are, three little lakes smiling back at us. Titan is indeed the land of lakes and seas," said Lopes. "It will be interesting to see the differences between the north and south polar regions."

It is summer at Titan's south pole. A season on Titan lasts nearly 7.5 years, one quarter of a Saturn year, which is 29.5 years long. Monitoring seasonal change helps scientists understand the processes at work there.

Lakes in Titan's southern hemisphere

Scientists are making progress in understanding how the lakes may have formed. On Earth, lakes fill low spots or are created when the local topography intersects a groundwater table. Lopes and her colleagues think that the depressions containing the lakes on Titan may have been formed by volcanism or by a type of erosion (called karstic) of the surface, leaving a depression where liquids can accumulate. This type of lake is common on Earth.

"The lakes we are observing on Titan appear to be in varying states of fullness, suggesting their involvement in a complex hydrologic system akin to Earth's water cycle. This makes Titan unique among the extra-terrestrial bodies in our solar system," said Alex Hayes, a graduate student who studies Cassini radar data at the California Institute of Technology in the USA.

"The lakes we have seen so far vary in size from the smallest observable, approximately 1 square km, to greater than 100 000 square km, which is slightly larger than the great lakes in midwestern USA," Hayes said. "Of the roughly 400 observed lakes, 70% of their area is taken up by large ‘seas’ greater than 26 000 square km."

Future radar flybys will image closer to the southern pole and are expected to show more lakes.

Notes for editors:

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project between NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. JPL designed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. ESA developed the Huygens Titan probe, while ASI managed the development of the high-gain antenna and the other instruments of its participation. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, USA.

NASA : Giant Atmospheric Waves Over Iowa

October 11, 2007: Pop quiz: define undular bore.

If your answer included words such as dull or tiresome, i.e., boring, think again. Or better yet, click on the image below to see an undular bore in action:

Above: Undular bore waves over Iowa, Oct. 3, 2007. Movies: 5 MB mov, 5 MB gif, 13 MB gif.

Those giant waves—"undular bore waves"—were photographed Oct. 3rd flowing across the skies of Des Moines, Iowa. (Credit: KCCI-TV Des Moines and Iowa Environmental Mesonet SchoolNet8 Webcam.)

"Wow, that was a good one!" says atmospheric scientist Tim Coleman of the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) in Huntsville, Alabama. Coleman is an expert in atmospheric wave phenomena and he believes bores are more common and more important than previously thought.

But first, Iowa: "These waves were created by a cluster of thunderstorms approaching Des Moines from the west," he explains. "At the time, a layer of cold, stable air was sitting on top of Des Moines. The approaching storms disturbed this air, creating a ripple akin to what we see when we toss a stone into a pond."

Undular bores are a type of "gravity wave"—so called because gravity acts as the restoring force essential to wave motion. Analogy: "We're all familiar with gravity waves caused by boats in water," points out Coleman. "When a boat goes tearing across a lake, water in front of the boat is pushed upward. Gravity pulls the water back down again and this sets up a wave."

Playing the role of boat, the thunderstorms tearing across Iowa on Oct. 3rd spawned a train of four waves. "They're beautifully shown in this NEXRAD radar image."

"Green denotes winds coming towards the radar while red means the winds are moving away," explains Coleman. People in Des Moines actually felt this back-and-forth breeze as the waves passed overhead. "Flags few one way during the crest of the wave and swung around 180^o to fly in the opposite direction during the trough."

What's so important about all this?

"Undular bores may play a surprising role in severe weather," says Coleman.

"For one thing, we believe undular bores can amplify tornadoes." He cites as an example an F5 tornado that struck the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama, in April 1998. "At first the tornado was doing relatively little damage. But our research shows that, just before the tornado reached Birmingham, it was hit by an undular bore." The wave spun up the twister, increasing its intensity and size; the tornado went on to wreck more than 1000 homes and business totaling $200 million in damage. Tornado-wave interactions are the subject of Coleman's PhD dissertation, which he is completing now under the direction of University of Alabama-Huntsville professor Kevin Knupp.

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"Furthermore," he says, "undular bores may be a source of thunderstorms." That's right, thunderstorms make undular bores and undular bores return the favor. "These waves churn up the atmosphere, causing instabilities that can initiate and sustain severe storms."

Although few people have witnessed undular bores with their own eyes, Coleman believes they're common. "An undular bore passes over any given point in the United States about once a month," he estimates. Often they occur at night when temperature inversions create a layer of cool stable air near the ground—much like the layer over Des Moines—ripe for rippling.

"Last year I saw a nighttime undular bore lit up by the nearly full Moon right outside my front door—that was cool," says Coleman.

Typical waves measure 5 miles from peak to peak and race across the sky at 10 to 50 mph. "Yes, you could chase them in your car—although I wouldn't recommend it." The waves don't always travel along established roadways.

But just in case they do want to chase one, Coleman's colleagues led by Kevin Knupp have a mobile weather station waiting in the parking lot of the NSSTC. The MIPS—short for Mobile Integrated Profiling System—is equipped with a radar, a laser, a microwave radiometer and other instruments which can measure wind, temperature, pressure, aerosols and water vapor content in vertical columns up to 10 km high.

"I can't wait until the next wave comes by," says Coleman, not bored at all.