Apr 30

NASA Refutes Claims of Life on Mars

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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NASA is strongly refuting claims circulating in the intertubes that it has just discovered life on Mars.
On Wednesday, the U.K.’s “The Sun” newspaper ran an article entitled, “NASA: Evidence of Life on Mars,” saying that the agency had discovered “compelling evidence” for organisms, Space.com reports.
NASA officials and veteran Mars scientists alike are all saying that it’s not true. “This headline is extremely misleading,” said Dwayne Brown, a NASA spokesperson, in the report. “This makes it sound like we announced that we found life on Mars, and that is absolutely, positively false.”
The piece reported that the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity discovered pond scum, which the paper said contains “the building blocks of life as we know it.” But Steve Squyres, the mission’s principal investigator, disputed the claim. “I can only assume that the Sun reporter misunderstood,” Squyres said in the report. “What Spirit and Opportunity have found is sulfate minerals… not organic materials, not pond scum, and not the building blocks of life as we know it.”
Back in 1996, NASA did announce that they found evidence of life on Mars on a Martian rock, but over the course of the following decade, many scientists found non-living explanations for the rock’s various markings, as the report points out. (Image credit: NASA)
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Apr 29

NASA to Amp Up Search for Extraterrestrial Life

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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Alien life is making news lately, and now NASA looks to lead the charge.
The agency announced eight possible missions Wednesday that would closely examine tiny microorganisms and minerals, according to CNN.
“Astrobiology and the search for life is central to many of the most important missions that we are studying,” Steve Squyres, the Cornell astronomer leading the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, said on a conference call with reporters.
The missions include robotic soil sample-and-return missions to Mars, and looking for life in water on distant moons, the report said. Specifically, they include sending landers to Mercury, analyzing methane on Mars, probing Europa’s oceans, searching for organic materials on Titan, and more closely examining comets.
None of the missions have been approved, according to the report. Separately, Squyres announced Wednesday that in an effort to maximize newly limited budgets, NASA is considering a plan to stretch out missions to return samples from Mars into three parts, Reuters reports. (Image credit: NASA/Terrestrial Planet Finder concept)
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Apr 29

Frosty Asteroid Points to Origin of Earths Oceans

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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It’s well known that comets are made primarily of ice. But the recent discovery of frost on an asteroid–the first ever–has scientists looking for clues that icy rocks could have been the source of the Earth’s oceans, Scientific American reports.
Two studies in the journal Nature detail how scientists have used an infrared telescope to spectroscopically examine asteroid 24 Themis’s surface, the report said. The resulting chemical signature looked like a match for water ice.
Previously, asteroids were thought to be free of ice. 24 Themis first attracted attention because all of its neighbors are icy comets.
The asteroid is one of the largest in the belt just outside Mars, with a diameter of 129 miles. Let’s hope that one stays away from Earth. (Artist concept credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle)

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Apr 28

Scientists: Some Moon Craters May Be Electrified

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili

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New NASA calculations show that the moon’s north and south poles may be a little more interesting than previously thought–and perhaps even dangerous.
Solar winds streaming over the craggy lunar surface may be strong enough to electrically charge polar crater on the moon, Space.com reports. That’s despite the presence of water ice; scientists believe it’s because of the moon’s orientation to the sun, which keeps the craters shielded and brings temperatures down to minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit, the report said. 
That’s enough to store water for billions of years, but the addition of solar winds presents additional problems for astronauts, said NASA lead author William Farrell in the article.
“Our research suggests that, in addition to the wicked cold, explorers and robots at the bottoms of polar lunar craters may have to contend with a complex electrical environment as well, which can affect surface chemistry, static discharge, and dust cling,” Farrell said.
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Apr 28

NASA Broadens Space Station Lab Research

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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NASA announced that it is seeking research ideas from private entities that may want to perform experiments on board the International Space Station, according to NetworkWorld.
The agency wants to expand the ISS’s role in technology development, basic and applied research, and industrial processing for commercial firms, non-profits, and academia, the report said.
Specifically, NASA listed two areas of expansion: Payload Integration and Operations Support Services, and Support Equipment and Instrumentation. The goal is to aid development of applications in biotechnology, energy, engineering, and remote sensing, according to the article.
The subtext here is that NASA is looking to give the ISS more to do. So far, during the course of nine years of ISS-based research, about 550 experiments have either already been completed or are still underway.
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Apr 27

ESO Chooses Location for Extremely Large Telescope

Posted in: science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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The European Southern Observatory organization has chosen Cerro Armazones, a nearly 10,000-foot mountain in Chile’s Atacama Desert, for its next-generation observatory, BBC News reports, a location that should be good for 320 days of clear observing per year.
The E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope) will feature a primary mirror that’s 187 feet (not inches) in diameter. Each of its 984 hexagonal segments will be 57 inches wide; all will combine with four smaller mirrors to generate each final image.
The resulting telescope will be five times the width of today’s best optical telescopes, and can gather 15 times more light. It’s expected to take images that are 15 times sharper than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, according to the article.
The $1 billion euro E-ELT will also feature improved optics techniques that correct for atmospheric distortions, the report said; construction could start as early as 2011, with the telescope going online sometime in 2018.
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Apr 26

Hawking: Avoid Contact With Alien Life

Posted in: science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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Fabled astrophysicist Stephen Hawking warned in a new Discovery Network series last night that humans shouldn’t try and make contact with alien lifeforms.
Like many astronomers before him, Hawking believes there is indeed extraterrestrial life out there somewhere. But given the way humans tend to behave, he said it wouldn’t be a good idea to communicate with them, especially since a given species could be millions of years more advanced than our own society.
For example, Hawking said aliens may have figured out how to capture the energy from a star like our Sun–which we need in tip-top working condition, the last time I checked.
“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out so well for the Native Americans,” Hawkings said in the debut episode, which aired at 9 PM EST on the Discovery Channel. (Image credit: Discovery Network)
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Apr 23

Researchers: Exoplanet Contains Unusual Atmosphere

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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As technology improves, scientists are beginning to pick up clues of Earth-like exoplanets, or planets orbiting other stars.
One possible stepping stone to finding those is a Neptune-sized exoplanet near a star about 33 light years away. The exoplanet’s surface could be as hot as 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But its atmospheric composition has turned out to be much different than expected.
“GJ 436b is the smallest exoplanet whose direct light we’ve been able to measure,” said Kevin Stevenson, the University of Central Florida‘s first planetary sciences doctoral student and lead author of the study, which will be published Thursday, April 22, in Nature.
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Apr 22

NASA Unveils First Solar Dynamics Observatory Images

Posted in: NASA, science, solar, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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NASA has unveiled the first series of images from the agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which had launched back in February.
The photos are striking images of looping flares and massive explosions on the sun’s surface. As Popular Science reports, the goal of the mission is to help scientists gain a better understanding of how various processes on the sun affect our lives on Earth.
In particular, SDO will provide a “wealth of solar data” to help researchers improve solar weather forecasts. The observatory carries four telescopes, views the sun with a resolution an order of magnitude higher than what is possible with an HD video camera, and also contains instruments for measuring magnetic motions and ultraviolet energy output, the report said.
Click here for NASA’s complete SDO photo gallery.
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Apr 19

Astronomers Discover Mysterious Object in Space

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
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Scientists have discovered a mysterious new object, located within the galaxy M82, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope–and it’s not like anything we’ve seen before.
The new object is a micro-quasar, a sort of miniature version of the brightest objects in the night sky, and could be the brightest one ever discovered, according to Space.com.
What’s strange is that, unlike other micro-quasars, it began shooting out radio waves last year very rapidly–within a few days–and hasn’t died down, unlike other supernovae. In fact, it has even become a bit brighter, the report said.
“We think a massive black hole must be involved, but we don’t really understand how it’s getting fueled,” said researcher Tom Muxlow, a radio astronomer at the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory in England, in the report. (Image credit: NASA/Spitzer)
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