Chandrayaan to help Nasa pick lunar base

This could be the Indian space programme's finest moment. India's moon craft Chandrayaan-I will guide Nasa scientists to the best spot on the moon to set up an international human station in 2020.

The Indian obiter has beamed home exhaustive data on the polar regions of the earth's nearest astral neighbour. Mini-SAR (mini-synthetic aperture radar), one of the instruments designed and built by American scientists, has provided a first-of-its-kind insight into the darkest, coldest regions of the moon's poles, contributing to a better grasp of the lunar environment. These details will be used as critical inputs to handpick the best place for the station and future landing missions.

"If we discover water ice, and it is close to the poles, it will be another reason for landing in that region," said Dr Ben Bussey, deputy principal investigator, MiniSAR.

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Scientists learn what makes Northern Lights flare

The multicolored aurora borealis and aurora australis -- the Northern Lights and Southern Lights -- represent some of Earth's most dazzling natural displays.

Now scientists using data from five NASA satellites have learned what causes frequent auroral flare-ups that make this green, red and purple light show that shimmers above Earth's northernmost and southernmost regions even more spectacular.

Writing in the journal Science, the scientists said on Thursday that explosions of magnetic energy occurring a third of the way between Earth and the moon drive the sudden brightening of the Northern Lights and Southern Lights.

There had been debate among scientists dating back decades about what triggers these auroral flare-ups.

The findings from the THEMIS satellites and a network of 20 ground observatories in Canada and Alaska confirmed that it is due to a process called "magnetic reconnection." THEMIS stands for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission.

Auroral displays are associated with the solar wind -- electrically charged particles continuously spewing outward from the sun. Earth's magnetic field lines reach far out into space as they store energy from the solar wind.

The researchers said that as two magnetic field lines come close together due to the storage of energy from the sun, a critical limit is reached and the lines reconnect, causing magnetic energy to be turned into kinetic energy and heat. The release of this energy sparks the auroral flare-ups.

"We showed that the process begins far from Earth first and propagates Earthward later," said Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California at Los Angeles, who led the research.

The moon is located about 240,000 miles from Earth, and this process is occurring roughly 80,000 miles from Earth.

The same mechanism causing the auroral brightening also can cause problems for satellites, power grids and communications systems on Earth and could endanger astronauts in space, the researchers said.

U.S. spacecraft lands safely at Mars north pole

A small science probe blazed through the salmon-colored skies of Mars on Sunday, touching down on a frozen desert at the planet's north pole to search for water and assess conditions for sustaining life, NASA officials said.

The spacecraft, known as Phoenix, landed at 4:53 p.m. PDT after a do-or-die plunge through the planet's thin atmosphere and thruster-jet landing to the Mars surface. It marked the first time that a spacecraft had successfully landed at one of the planet's polar regions.

"It was a hell of a lot scarier than the two Mars rovers," NASA's space sciences chief Ed Weiler said, referring to the cushioned landings of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. "I kept thinking, 'I wish I had airbags.'

" Pulled by Mars' gravity, Phoenix was tearing along at 12,700 mph before it entered the atmosphere, which slowed the craft so it could pop out a parachute and fire thruster rockets to gently float to the ground.

"It's down, baby, it's down!," yelled a NASA flight controller, looking at signals from Mars showing that Phoenix had landed.

Flight controllers and scientists battled nerves as Phoenix wrapped up its 10-month, 423 million-mile journey. In 14 minutes, the probe transformed from an interplanetary cruiser to a free-standing science station.

"People got really uncomfortable," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which oversees the mission.

Scientists found in 2002 that Mars' polar regions have vast reservoirs of water frozen beneath a shallow layer of soil. Phoenix was launched August 4, 2007, to sample the water and determine if the right ingredients for life are present.

NASA attempted a landing on Mars' south pole in 1999, but a problem during the final minutes of descent ended the mission.

The U.S. space agency canceled its next Mars lander but successfully dispatched Spirit and Opportunity to the planet's equatorial region to search for signs of past surface water.

Phoenix was created out of spare parts from the failed Polar Lander mission and the mothballed probe. Unlike the rovers, Phoenix did not bounce to the planet's surface in airbags, which are not suitable for larger spacecraft.

Instead, like the 1970s-era Viking probes and the failed Polar Lander mission, it used a jet pack to lower itself to the ground and fold-out legs to land on. "We haven't landed successfully on legs and propulsive rockets in 32 years," Weiler said. "When we send humans there, women and men, they're going to be landing on rockets and legs, so it's important to show that we still know how to do this."

U.S. spacecraft lands safely at Mars north pole

A small science probe blazed through the salmon-colored skies of Mars on Sunday, touching down on a frozen desert at the planet's north pole to search for water and assess conditions for sustaining life, NASA officials said.

The spacecraft, known as Phoenix, landed at 4:53 p.m. PDT after a do-or-die plunge through the planet's thin atmosphere and thruster-jet landing to the Mars surface. It marked the first time that a spacecraft had successfully landed at one of the planet's polar regions.

"It was a hell of a lot scarier than the two Mars rovers," NASA's space sciences chief Ed Weiler said, referring to the cushioned landings of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. "I kept thinking, 'I wish I had airbags.'"

Pulled by Mars' gravity, Phoenix was tearing along at 12,700 mph before it entered the atmosphere, which slowed the craft so it could pop out a parachute and fire thruster rockets to gently float to the ground.

"It's down, baby, it's down!," yelled a NASA flight controller, looking at signals from Mars showing that Phoenix had landed.

Flight controllers and scientists battled nerves as Phoenix wrapped up its 10-month, 423 million-mile journey. In 14 minutes, the probe transformed from an interplanetary cruiser to a free-standing science station.

"People got really uncomfortable," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which oversees the mission.

Scientists found in 2002 that Mars' polar regions have vast reservoirs of water frozen beneath a shallow layer of soil. Phoenix was launched August 4, 2007, to sample the water and determine if the right ingredients for life are present.

NASA attempted a landing on Mars' south pole in 1999, but a problem during the final minutes of descent ended the mission.

The U.S. space agency canceled its next Mars lander but successfully dispatched Spirit and Opportunity to the planet's equatorial region to search for signs of past surface water.

Phoenix was created out of spare parts from the failed Polar Lander mission and the mothballed probe. Unlike the rovers, Phoenix did not bounce to the planet's surface in airbags, which are not suitable for larger spacecraft.

Instead, like the 1970s-era Viking probes and the failed Polar Lander mission, it used a jet pack to lower itself to the ground and fold-out legs to land on.

"We haven't landed successfully on legs and propulsive rockets in 32 years," Weiler said. "When we send humans there, women and men, they're going to be landing on rockets and legs, so it's important to show that we still know how to do this."

Australian farmer finds mystery space junk

A cattle farmer in Australia's remote northern outback on Friday said he had found a giant ball of twisted metal, which he believes is space junk from a rocket used to launch communications satellites.

Farmer James Stirton found the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane.

But Stirton only started inquiring into what the ball of metal really was, and where it had come from, in the past week.

"I was riding out to check some cattle, and I came around the corner and there it was in a paddock," Stirton told Reuters on Friday.

"I know a lot of about sheep and cattle but I don't know much about satellites. But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket."

He said the object was hollow, and covered in a carbon-fiber material. He has contacted some U.S.-based aerospace companies to try to find out what the object really is.

Sydney's Powerhouse Museum said it was not uncommon for people to find space junk in remote areas of Australia.

In 1979, large parts of the Skylab space station fell to earth near a tiny outback town in Australia's west. A local council sent NASA a ticket for littering and then the United States President Jimmy Carter rang a local motel to apologize.

What on Mars is that?

Life on Mars? Well, bizarre images have emerged showing a mystery female figure walking down a hill on the arid planet.

The photo of what looks like a naked woman with her arm outstretched was among several taken on the red planet and sent back to earth by Nasa's Mars explorer "Spirit," Britain's Daily Mail reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed website.

Though no official confirmation has come from Nasa on whether the figure is an alien or an optical illusion caused by the landscape on Mars, it has set the Internet abuzz about the possibility of life on Mars.

As one enthusiast put it on the website: "These pictures are amazing. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw what appears to be a naked alien running around on Mars."

The news of the mystery woman on Mars came just days after a team of French scientists claimed to have discovered proof that the red planet possesses...

Simple Solutions

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to the writing surface).

To solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C.

And what did the Russians do…??

They used a pencil.

Source: School Archives