#Squirting moons face off in race to find alien life Icebound seas just keep getting hotter at least as candidates for life beyond Earth.
Fresh discoveries have put two moons in our solar system neck and neck in the race.
In December astronomers announced hints of watery plumes spurting from Jupiter's large moon Europa potentially giving us a peek into a vast ocean likely to exist beneath its ice.
Saturn's moon Enceladus stole back the limelight last week when NASA reported firm evidence of an ocean linked to geysers at its south pole (see diagram below.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew through the geysers and detected water salts and carbon-based molecules.
Cassini scientist Luciano Iess at the Sapienza University of Rome Italy and colleagues have mapped now Enceladus's gravity
The constantly gushing geysers would let us easily sample those seas making Enceladus a prime target for a life-seeking mission says Cassini scientist Carolyn Porco.
and scoop up some of the plume for analysis avoiding a tricky landing on the moon's surface.
The habitable zone of Enceladus remains the most well studied well understood and accessible of all the destinations for finding life
Models suggest that the moon can host geothermal vents which would be hotspots for marine life
Data from NASA's Galileo probe which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003 show clay-like minerals on Europa's surface probably debris from meteor impacts
And Jupiter's strong magnetic field means that intense radiation surrounds the moon which makes it difficult for spacecraft to operate.
For now Europa is slightly ahead in terms of funding. NASA's budget for next year includes $15 million to design possible missions there
and the agency is inviting proposals for instruments a probe could carry. Could Cassini yet yield insights that would swing things in favour of Enceladus?
The craft is in its twilight years and will end its mission in 2017. But first it will fly by Enceladus one more time
and the team will be watching for any molecular hydrogen in the plumes. Hydrogen is very short-lived
Europa is sized a good moon but Enceladus is tiny. That thing should be frozen solid and dead as a doorbell says NASA program scientist Curt Niebur who heads the committee that will evaluate science instruments for a Europa mission.
Instead it's incredibly lively. That's amazing. They're both unbelievably good candidates which is the shocking thing:
that we have not just one but two candidates for seeking life beyond Earth h
#NASA's Russia boycott may revitalise US space leadership So NASA has been dragged into the fallout over Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.
An internal memo made public this week revealed the space agency has suspended contact with Russia except for that concerning International space station (ISS) operations.
The memo stated that the suspension includes NASA travel to Russia and visits by Russian government representatives to NASA facilities bilateral meetings email and teleconferences or videoconferences.
This was confirmed in an official statement from NASA yesterday. Will this action influence Vladimir Putin
and his apparent dream of geographically reassembling parts of the Soviet union as a new Russian empire?
That's highly unlikely. So why do it? Space has a long history of serving as a surrogate for demonstrating US displeasure about foreign or domestic policy actions in other countries.
Though examples date back to the cold war the most recent case relates to China. China has been banned for years from participating in the ISS
In addition NASA has been banned legislatively from having bilateral relations with China since 2011. While ostensibly that ban relates to concerns about technology transfer the underlying reason has as much or more to do with Chinese restrictions on religious freedom.
or its relative isolation from meeting with NASA officials nor is it likely to. In fact China has pushed ahead with its own robotic lunar programme
and human spaceflight programme and works with many other countries including Russia in space. When the Soviet union collapsed
and the cold war ended the US pragmatically merged its human spaceflight programme specifically the ISS programme with the Soviet Mir space station programme inherited by the new Russian state.
After all space technology is largely dual use of value to both military and civilian communities. The basics of rocket technology and missile technology are largely symbiotic.
It seemed a good idea at the time. Then after spending decades building the ISS the US cancelled the space shuttle the vehicle originally intended for transport to the ISS as part of its post-Apollo programme.
The first resident crew arrived at the ISS in 2000 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft
but shuttle missions soon followed. After the shuttle's last flight in 2011 though the US became dependent on Russia for transport to the ISS using Soyuz at a cost of nearly $71 million for each seat it requires.
NASA's suspension of working with the Russians will likely be received in Russia much the same way other sanctions over its actions in Ukraine have been:
or more specifically the keys to the rocket capable of getting crew to the ISS.
#Buried'Lake superior'seen on Saturn's moon Enceladus Saturn's icy moon Enceladus already known for spitting plumes of water into space just got even more interesting.
New gravity readings suggest it hosts a subsurface sea the size of Lake superior at its south pole
-and that this liquid water is in direct contact with the moon's core which is rich in nutrients.
The result comes hot on the heels of the discovery late last year that a second icy moon Europa
which orbits Jupiter also spews plumes of water. Both moons are now among the hottest prospects in the solar system for finding alien life
if only a suitable mission could be arranged NASA's Cassini orbiter first spotted spectacular plumes at Enceladus's south pole in 2005 shortly after arriving at Saturn.
The plumes shoot into space at supersonic speeds feeding one of Saturn's famous rings
and are known to contain both salts and organic compounds. They make an attractive target for exploration as a craft could potentially fly through them to take samples much simpler than landing on a moon.
Most astronomers thought that the plumes force their way out through cracks in an icy crust sitting over a sea of liquid water.
But until now no one knew how deep that sea went. Luciano Iess at the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy and his colleagues used radar On earth to track Cassini on three separate fly-bys of Enceladus
and watched how the spacecraft was accelerated by the moon's gravity. This allowed them to map the distribution of mass in the moon's interior.
They found that Enceladus has a rocky core and an icy crust. Before we knew almost nothing about the core beyond its likely existence.
Now we know roughly how big it is and also that it has a surprisingly low density says team member Francis Nimmo at the University of California Santa cruz. That might be due to open fractures
or low-density hydrated minerals like clays. Either answer suggests that the rock has been in substantial contact with water for instance allowing minerals to dissolve
Hosting an ocean in contact with rocks boosts the chances that Enceladus hosts life because the rocks could leach elements like potassium sulphur and phosphorus vital for life into the water.
because it wouldn't be in contact with the rock says team member Jonathan Lunine at Cornell University in Ithaca New york. This gravity map hinting at a much larger ocean is a more favourable model for having some sort of life in Enceladus's interior.
and there are no firm plans for future craft to return to Saturn. However Cassini team member Carolyn Porco at the Space science Institute in Boulder Colorado has written a paper (soon to appear in the journal Astrobiology) arguing for a mission to collect samples from Enceladus and return them to Earth.
She says the new results bode well for such an effort. The next mission there can immediately get down to the business of searching for signs of life or its precursor chemistry.
The subsurface-sea idea is just the simplest possible interpretation of the gravity data cautions William Mckinnon at Washington University in St louis who was involved not in the work.
As for the possibility of the sea freezing completely it is true that Enceladus is losing a lot of heat to space
but astronomers suspect that this is an unusual episode. We are looking at Enceladus at a wonderful special time where it's very active
and there's a lot of heat Mckinnon says. Could the plumes deplete the sea completely? Probably not.
Even if they continue at the current rate the moon would only have lost 30 per cent of its water by mass
when the sun becomes a red giant in 6 billion years. A lot of things can happen in 6 billion years
Some future extraterrestrials visiting our solar system will be able to look at the naked rocky core of
what was once an ice moon. Journal reference: Science DOI: 10.1126/science. 125055 5
#Mini robot space surgeon to climb inside astronauts It could one day answer the prayers of astronauts who need surgery in deep space.
The miniature surgeon slides into the body through an incision in the belly button. Once inside the abdominal cavity which has been filled with inert gas to make room for it to work the robot can remove an ailing appendix, cut pieces from a diseased colon or repair a perforated gastric ulcer.
The fist-sized robot, a product of Virtual Incision in Lincoln, Nebraska, will have its first zero gravity test in an aircraft flying in parabolic arcs in the next few months.
The hope is that such robots will accompany future astronauts on long deep-space missions, when the chances are higher that someone will experience physical trauma."
Medical emergency For now, the only humans in space venture no further than the International space station.
Astronauts are screened carefully for health issues before leaving Earth, and the ISS has an escape capsule standing by in case of emergencies,
But NASA has plans for human missions to an asteroid and eventually Mars and getting home quickly won't be an option.
Without gravity, it is easy for bodily fluids like blood to float free and contaminate the cabin.
And space capsules can only carry a certain amount of weight, so medical tools need to be relatively light but capable of handling many kinds of situations."
because the further away a spaceship gets, the greater the time delay in communications signals.
Virtual Incision hopes to avoid this problem by training astronauts to perform procedures on each other.
This article will appear in print under the headline"Surgery bot fits in astronaut's gut a
#Earth raises a plasma shield to battle solar storms Earth can raise shields to protect itself against solar storms.
For the first time satellites and ground-based detectors have watched as the planet sends out a tendril of plasma to fight off blasts of charged solar matter.
The discovery confirms a longstanding theory about Earth's magnetic surroundings and offers us a way to keep track of the planet's defences.
It's changed our thinking about how the system operates says Joe Borovsky at the Space science Institute in Boulder Colorado who was involved not in the research.
Earth doesn't just sit there and take whatever the solar wind gives it it can actually fight back.
Earth is surrounded always by a bubble of magnetism called the magnetosphere which protects us from the bulk of the solar wind a stream of high-energy particles constantly flowing from the sun
. But sometimes the sun's magnetic field lines can directly link up with Earth's in a process called magnetic reconnection which opens up cracks in the magnetosphere.
Charged particles can flow along these lines into Earth's atmosphere leading to dazzling auroras as well as geomagnetic storms that can wreak havoc on navigation systems and power grids.
Gas in Earth's upper atmosphere is ionised by ultraviolet light from the sun and the resulting plasma becomes trapped by magnetic fields in a doughnut-shaped ring around the planet.
Previous observations of this plasmasphere showed that plumes sometimes emerge from this region. Theory had suggested that an extra-strong electric field from the sun can rip plasma away from the plasmasphere during reconnection triggering a plume.
If this plume reaches the boundary between the earthly and solar magnetic fields it would create a buffer zone of dense material.
This would make it harder for magnetic field lines to meet up and spark further reconnection. But while ground-based measurements can see a plume forming their resolution isn't good enough to tell for sure
whether the material reaches the magnetic boundary. Brian Walsh at NASA'S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER in Greenbelt Maryland and his colleagues have clinched now it.
In January 2013 GPS sensors on the ground mapped electrons in the upper atmosphere and saw a tendril of increased electron density curling away from the north pole indicating that a plume of plasma was veering off towards the sun. At the same time three of NASA's THEMIS spacecraft
which are designed to study solar storms crossed through the magnetic boundary during the event. The craft saw a 100-fold increase in the number of electrons at the boundary
which would probably have been deposited by the plume. For the first time we were able to monitor the entire cycle of this plasma stretching from the atmosphere to the boundary between Earth's magnetic field
and the sun's says Walsh. It gets to that boundary and helps protect us keeps these solar storms from slamming into us.
Not every solar storm generates a plasma plume which means ground-based observations will continue to be vital for understanding the phenomenon.
To measure things with spacecraft we have to have them in just the right place
but the ground stations can measure this stuff almost constantly says Walsh. We want to know
when does the Earth decide to protect us? By validating this tool we're now able to figure that out t
#Interplanetary comms get easier with a nanotech boost E t. MANAGED to phone home. But what about our own future Mars colonies or space probes millions of kilometres away?
Spacecraft currently use radio waves to beam information back home. Laser signals carry more data but the light is almost undetectable
by the time it reaches Earth. Now a nanoscale light detector could make such deep-space missives easier to read.
So says Richard Mirin at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder Colorado who developed the detector with NASA.
Data must be encoded before it can be sent. The most reliable way of doing this is to vary the time interval between light pulses with a long interval representing a 0 say
Laser communication is one of the technologies we are considering says Bas Lansdorp CEO of the Mars One project which aims to place a human colony on Mars by 2025.
#Japan's huge magnetic net will trawl for space junk SOMEWHERE in Earth's orbit a satellite explodes into a terrifying cloud of debris. Moments later Sandra bullock
and George Clooney are left scrambling to dodge the deadly space junk. This problem isn't confined to the Oscar-nominated space thriller Gravity#scientists are struggling with it in real life.
Now a rather unusual solution is being tested: a really big net. Next month the Japanese space agency JAXA will pilot its electrodynamic tether for the first time.
It is one of many possible solutions that have been proposed to deal with space debris (see Catch'em drag'em blast'em.
Hundreds of thousands of pieces of spacecraft satellites and other equipment from human spaceflight zip around our planet some travelling faster than the speed of sound.
According to a report released by the US Congressional Research Service this month running into even a small piece of junk can be disastrous.
An object 10 centimetres across could catastrophically damage a typical satellite it says. One just 1 centimetre across could disable a spacecraft.
The worst-case scenario is the Kessler syndrome proposed by astrophysicist Donald Kessler in the 1970s.
Too much trash he warned and the pieces would collide with each other resulting in more and more debris. To build its debris-catching net JAXA brought in Nitto Seimo a company that specialises in fishing equipment Unlike a net you would use in the ocean this one is a 700-metre-long mesh of aluminium
and steel wires that hangs from an uncrewed spacecraft. The net is fitted with sensors that look for light reflecting from small pieces of debris
and automatically aligns itself so that it can attract the material. The tether changes its orbit thanks to an electrical current flowing through the wires
which creates an electromagnetic field that attracts the debris and pushes the net away from Earth's geomagnetic field.
Once the net has grabbed enough debris it is ordered to slow down and deorbit allowing the debris spacecraft
and net to burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere. JAXA thinks the net's main advantage is its simplicity#it's lightweight
and doesn't require any propellant to move. If next month's test launch goes well it plans to build a 10-kilometre-long version to capture satellites that have reached the end of their lives.
However the test will also explore some possible drawbacks. One concern is that the net will work very slowly taking several months or even a year to deorbit.
Then there is the risk that the net will run into operational satellites. The engineers also worry that the debris they are fighting could fight back.
There is a possibility of the tether being severed by impacts of small debris objects or micrometeoroids says a JAXA spokesperson.
Not everyone is convinced of the idea. A net isn't necessarily the best option to collect debris says Hugh Lewis an aerospace engineer at the University of Southampton UK.
He has reservations about the net's ability to deal with space junk. In particular he believes it could actually generate debris
if it collides with a large satellite. There is a growing trend for organisations to put forward a concept for a debris removal device without considering fully the potential risks involved in deploying
and operating the device says Lewis. I believe that these ideas should be subjected to international scrutiny before they are deployed.
This article will appear in print under the headline Gone junk fishin i
#China lands on moon kicks off next lunar space race Let the modern moon rush begin.
China has placed successfully a lander and rover on the lunar surface the first time any nation has touched down there in almost four decades.
China's first moon landing which took place on Saturday afternoon (GMT) marks the rekindling of humanity's love affair with our only natural satellite.
This flotilla of 21st-century moon explorers should arrive bristling with technologies that will help them map the moon's uncharted regions
and prospect for resources that could one day sustain lunar outposts and missions further afield (see a map of planned landing sites).
The crew of the final Apollo mission lifted off from the moon's Sea of Serenity on 14 december 1972.
After that three robotic Soviet spacecraft made it to the surface the final one in 1976.
For the next few decades the moon's only visitors were a dozen or so orbiters and deliberate crashes such as NASA's LCROSS mission in 2009
Hopefully the lander doesn't tilt said Bernard Foing director of the International Lunar Exploration Working group a forum sponsored by multiple space agencies before the landing.
and South korea are also in the running to send missions to the moon that would involve combinations of landers and rovers.
The moon is the nearest island in space out from the Earth says Igor Mitrofanov at Russia's Institute for Space Research in Moscow the project scientist for two planned Russian-led rover missions.
As countries develop their space programmes the moon is a natural first foray beyond Earth that allows remote-controlled robots to get their sea legs
while staying within a 10-second call of the planet's shores. But the moon is more than a test bed for space missions.
China's Yutu rover will venture a few kilometres away from its landing site to snap images take stock of minerals with onboard spectrometers and probe below the surface with radar.
and evolution of the moon is to know those of Earth says Tatsuaki Hashimoto of the Japan aerospace exploration agency the lead scientist for a proposed lunar rover called SELENE-2. The moon is thought to have coalesced from the debris of an impact between a Mars-sized world and Earth
It's a part of the Earth says Foing. I call it the eighth continent. Several of the proposed exploration missions are targeting the moon's poles
which have never been visited by a lander. But data from orbiters support the idea that the rocks
and any organic material it might hold in deep freeze could shed light on where Earth got its water
The damp moon could also be a useful resource for future robotic and human exploration says Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston Texas. Astronauts could drink moon water extracted from its rocks or use it as radiation shielding.
Water could also be split into hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel. Much of the weight of today's rockets comes from their own propellant so having a source of fuel already in space would pave the way for much more ambitious human missions.
If we're really interested in extending our reach to Mars and beyond we don't want to have to bring fuel with us says Anthony Colaprete of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field California.
He is the project scientist on a proposed robotic mission called Resource Prospector which could launch in 2018 to try to extract water from lunar rocks.
Private groups are also hoping to get in on the action. The Google Lunar X Prize is offering $20 million to the first private team that by the end of 2015 launches a lunar spacecraft that can land on the moon travel 500 metres
and send back video. Some of the teams vying for the prize also have their sights set on selling lunar-derived rocket fuel.
and teams of human miners to the moon to supply water for fuel depots that it would place in Earth orbit t
#Boxy Cubesats get a propulsion boost in new space race Tiny liquid volcanoes that spray beams of charged particles could make space history next year.
They are one of two technologies vying to be the first to let cheap, miniature satellites called Cubesats fly in formation,
switch orbits or voyage to other planets feats usually reserved for large, expensive craft. They could even provide us with a global Wi-fi system On earth.
Paulo Lozano leads a team working on Cubesat propulsion at the Massachusetts institute of technology. He has been given the go-ahead to launch two propelled Cubesats in 2014 one funded by the US Department of defense
the other by private donors. Meanwhile, Benjamin Longmier at the University of Michigan in Ann arbor, who leads a rival project, announced that his team also has private funding
and a slot to launch their Cubesat on a NASA rocket next year. The race is on.
Cubesats are made from off-the-shelf components. The initial aim was to make access to space easier and more affordable.
They are typically put into low Earth orbit by a rocket where they remain for around 6 months,
before spiralling in and burning up in Earth's atmosphere. Although they have made space accessible to groups who wouldn't otherwise have been able to afford it most recently a team of high-school students Cubesats haven't done much cutting-edge science."
"They were considered like toys, "says Lozano. Some Cubesats have basic steering, but getting them to change orbits,
let alone visit other planetary bodies, requires new technology. That's because even today's most efficient propulsion method, the ion engine, doesn't scale down to Cubesat size.
Instead, Lozano and his colleagues will propel their craft with an unusual substance called an ionic liquid,
made solely of positively or negatively charged ions. In the engine, a reservoir of ionic liquid soaks into a porous, metal chip and forms tiny pools in the pores of spikes on its surface.
The result is an array of between 500 and 5000 focussed ion beams that stream from each of the eight chips on the Cubesat when the electric field the strength
and calculate that just 8 grams of ionic liquid will propel a 2 kilogram Cubesat and change its orbit by 100 kilometres.
the aim is to send such a satellite to an asteroid to collect a scoop of dust.
Their Cubesat Ambipolar Thruster, or CAT, uses xenon, like traditional ion engines. The difference is that the CAT adds an intense
000 target, the appeal prompted a private donor to offer to pay for the technology and a launch next year aboard a NASA rocket.
They hope their propelled Cubesats will one day fly to Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa, both
A fleet of Cubesats with propulsion in orbit around a planet or moon can do a lot of things that big expensive satellites cannot, such as monitoring several locations in the atmosphere at once.
Propelled Cubesats could even be useful back here On earth. Creating a universal"satellite Wi-fi""like existing satellite phone coverage,
would require thousands of big satellites, which is prohibitively expensive. But you could dump a thousand Cubesats in one place then spread them out to the right points, for a fraction of the price.
Longmier's team has launched just a second Kickstarter campaign, which could fund some add-ons, including a camera.
and propel the Cubesat next year.""We might have a little space race on our hands,
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