NASA #39;s Solar Dynamics Observatory Captures an Impressive Solar Flare
Presidio parts are working well in NASA #39;s Solar Dynamics ObservatoryFrom:tribble91Views:1 0ratingsTime:00:33More inScience Technology
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NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Captures an Impressive Solar Flare - Video
CTVNews.ca Staff Published Monday, Dec. 3, 2012 10:47AM EST Last Updated Monday, Dec. 3, 2012 2:35PM EST
The Mars Curiosity rover has analyzed samples of Martian soil for the first time and found compounds of water, sulfur and chlorine-containing substances, NASA said Monday, providing a more grounded update of the planets exploration after weeks of speculation and rumours.
The team stressed that while the rovers tools had detected organic compounds, it had not yet determined if the compounds were of Martian origin.
We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said team member Paul Mahaffy.
Members of the space agencys Curiosity team made the announcement during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
The samples were collected from the Rocknest region by Curiositys arm and brought inside the rover to an analytical laboratory.
After the samples were collected, they were heated in a tiny oven. As gases were released, the Sample Analysis at Mars suite analyzed the substances and checked for organic compounds carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients of life.
The rovers detection of the compounds is a sign that the rover and all its tools are working well, said John Grotzinger, the lead scientist on the team.
The instrument SAM is working perfectly well it has made this detection of organic compounds, simple organic compounds; we just simply dont know if theyre indigenous to Mars or not, he said. Its going to take some time to work through that.
What weve got is a globally representative material on Mars that turns out to be a rich repository of environmental process and history.
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Washington, Dec 4:
NASAs Mars rover Curiosity has found tantalising clues that life may have once existed on the Red planet, but scientists said it was too early to make much of the first soil analyses.
Scientists found traces of carbon in several compounds detected by the rovers Sample Analysis at Mars instrument.
They, however, do not yet know if the carbon a key building block for life is contamination from Earth, was delivered to Mars by organicsrich asteroids, or arose on Mars itself.
The carbon, if indigenous, could be an indicator of geologic or biological activity, the Discovery News reported.
Were not really sure of where it comes from right now, the missions lead scientist John Grotzinger said during the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.
Just finding carbon somewhere doesnt mean that it has anything to do with life, or the finding of a habitable environment, he said.
Life, as we know, needs three basic ingredients to evolve water, a energy source and carbon. Other building blocks include sulphur, oxygen, phosphorous and nitrogen.
Curiosity, which is four months into a planned two-year mission on Mars, already has turned up evidence that its landing spot on the floor Gale Crater, was once covered in water, the report said.
Minerals in the soil analysis also show a history of chemical interaction with water. Curiosity contains an on-board chemistry laboratory to find possible ingredients for microbial life, the environments that could have supported it and places where life could have been preserved.
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NASA’s Curiosity rover finds whiff of possible life on Mars
NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has used its full array of instruments to analyze Martian soil for the first time, and found a complex chemistry within the Martian soil. Water and sulfur and chlorine-containing substances, among other ingredients, showed up in samples Curiosity's arm delivered to an analytical laboratory inside the rover.
Detection of the substances during this early phase of the mission demonstrates the laboratory's capability to analyze diverse soil and rock samples over the next two years. Scientists also have been verifying the capabilities of the rover's instruments.
Curiosity is the first Mars rover able to scoop soil into analytical instruments. The specific soil sample came from a drift of windblown dust and sand called "Rocknest." The site lies in a relatively flat part of Gale Crater still miles away from the rover's main destination on the slope of a mountain called Mount Sharp. The rover's laboratory includes the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite and the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. SAM used three methods to analyze gases given off from the dusty sand when it was heated in a tiny oven. One class of substances SAM checks for is organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients for life.
"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Curiosity's APXS instrument and the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover's arm confirmed Rocknest has chemical-element composition and textural appearance similar to sites visited by earlier NASA Mars rovers Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity.
Curiosity's team selected Rocknest as the first scooping site because it has fine sand particles suited for scrubbing interior surfaces of the arm's sample-handling chambers. Sand was vibrated inside the chambers to remove residue from Earth. MAHLI close-up images of Rocknest show a dust-coated crust one or two sand grains thick, covering dark, finer sand.
"Active drifts on Mars look darker on the surface," said MAHLI Principal Investigator Ken Edgett, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego."This is an older drift that has had time to be inactive, letting the crust form and dust accumulate on it."
CheMin's examination of Rocknest samples found the composition is about half common volcanic minerals and half non-crystalline materials such as glass. SAM added information about ingredients present in much lower concentrations and about ratios of isotopes. Isotopes are different forms of the same element and can provide clues about environmental changes. The water seen by SAM does not mean the drift was wet. Water molecules bound to grains of sand or dust are not unusual, but the quantity seen was higher than anticipated.
SAM tentatively identified the oxygen and chlorine compound perchlorate. This is a reactive chemical previously found in arctic Martian soil by NASA's Phoenix Lander. Reactions with other chemicals heated in SAM formed chlorinated methane compounds -- one-carbon organics that were detected by the instrument. The chlorine is of Martian origin, but it is possible the carbon may be of Earth origin, carried by Curiosity and detected by SAM's high sensitivity design.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2012) NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space.
Scientists refer to this new region as a magnetic highway for charged particles because our sun's magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines. This connection allows lower-energy charged particles that originate from inside our heliosphere -- or the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself -- to zoom out and allows higher-energy particles from outside to stream in. Before entering this region, the charged particles bounced around in all directions, as if trapped on local roads inside the heliosphere.
The Voyager team infers this region is still inside our solar bubble because the direction of the magnetic field lines has not changed. The direction of these magnetic field lines is predicted to change when Voyager breaks through to interstellar space. The new results were described at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on Monday.
"Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun's environment, we now can taste what it's like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space. Our best guess is it's likely just a few months to a couple years away. The new region isn't what we expected, but we've come to expect the unexpected from Voyager."
Since December 2004, when Voyager 1 crossed a point in space called the termination shock, the spacecraft has been exploring the heliosphere's outer layer, called the heliosheath. In this region, the stream of charged particles from the sun, known as the solar wind, abruptly slowed down from supersonic speeds and became turbulent. Voyager 1's environment was consistent for about five and a half years. The spacecraft then detected that the outward speed of the solar wind slowed to zero.
The intensity of the magnetic field also began to increase at that time.
Voyager data from two onboard instruments that measure charged particles showed the spacecraft first entered this magnetic highway region on July 28, 2012. The region ebbed away and flowed toward Voyager 1 several times. The spacecraft entered the region again Aug. 25 and the environment has been stable since.
"If we were judging by the charged particle data alone, I would have thought we were outside the heliosphere," said Stamatios Krimigis, principal investigator of the low-energy charged particle instrument, based at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. "But we need to look at what all the instruments are telling us and only time will tell whether our interpretations about this frontier are correct."
Spacecraft data revealed the magnetic field became stronger each time Voyager entered the highway region; however, the direction of the magnetic field lines did not change.
"We are in a magnetic region unlike any we've been in before -- about 10 times more intense than before the termination shock -- but the magnetic field data show no indication we're in interstellar space," said Leonard Burlaga, a Voyager magnetometer team member based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The magnetic field data turned out to be the key to pinpointing when we crossed the termination shock. And we expect these data will tell us when we first reach interstellar space."
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This photo, taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, shows Mars' Gale Crater, where the rover has taken samples for chemical analysis. Scientists believe that at some point in the very distant past, there was a riverbed here.
This photo, taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, shows Mars' Gale Crater, where the rover has taken samples for chemical analysis. Scientists believe that at some point in the very distant past, there was a riverbed here.
NASA is finally receiving data on Martian soil samples from Curiosity, its rover currently traversing the red planet. The results from the soil samples hint at something exciting, but rover scientists are making very sure not to raise expectations.
NASA had always planned to present early results from the mission this week at a press conference. But expectations for the press conference soared after one of the instruments onboard the rover appeared to detect organic molecules.
Having already found signs of water on Mars, finding signs of organic material would be another piece of evidence that there might might, might have once been life on Mars.
Paul Mahaffy, the lead scientist on Curiosity's main analysis instrument, known as the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, device, says no news yet.
"SAM has no definitive detection to report of organic compounds with these first set of experiments," he told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Monday.
Mahaffy says SAM definitely saw simple organic compounds compounds made of carbon when it analyzed its first soil sample last month. It also saw compounds made with chlorine.
"The reason we're saying we have no definitive detection of Martian organics," Mahaffy says, "is that we have to be very careful to make sure both the carbon and the chlorine are coming from Mars."
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NASA says December 21 this year is just the winter solstice not the end of the world.
According to believers, the world will undergo a major transformation later this month, as the ancient Mayan Long Count calender comes to the end of its 13th cycle. Some say it will be the end of the world, perhaps via a collision with another planet or a black hole, while others claim there will be some kind of spiritual awakening, the effects of which depend on who you ask.
But according to NASA, there is nothing special about December 21, 2012, and there's definitely nothing to worry about.
In a post on their website, NASA says the planet has been "getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012".
"Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then - just as your calendar begins again on January 1 - another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar."
NASA says claims that a planet named 'Nibiru' or 'Planet X' will hit the Earth, like in the Lars von Trier film Melancholia, are an "internet hoax".
"If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye."
Another planet mentioned in conspiracy circles is Eris, which although real, never comes closer than 6 billion kilometres away.
Some say Earth's rotation will reverse, but NASA says this is impossible.
"There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles."
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Scientists at NASA say the unmanned Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached the edges of the solar system. They estimate in a few months to a year Voyager 1 will become the first manmade object to leave the solar system and enter interstellar space.
NASA's long-livedVoyager1 spacecraft, which is heading out of the solar system, has reached a "magnetic highway" leading to interstellar space, scientists said on Monday.
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The probe, launched 35 years ago to study the outer planets, is now about 11 billion miles from Earth. At that distance, it takes radio signals traveling at the speed of light 17 hours to reach Earth. Light moves at 186,000 miles per second.
Voyager1 will be the first manmade object to leave the solar system.
Scientists believeVoyager1 is in an area where the magnetic field lines from the sun are connecting with magnetic field lines from interstellar space. The phenomenon is causing highly energetic particles from distant supernova explosions and other cosmic events to zoom inside the solar system, while less-energetic solar particles exit.
"It's like a highway, letting particles in and out," leadVoyagerscientistEd Stonetold reporters at an American Geophysical Union conference inSan Francisco.
Scientists don't know how long it will take for the probe to cross the so-called "magnetic highway," but they believe it is the last layer of a complex boundary between the region of space under the sun's influence and interstellar space.
"Our best guess is it's likely just a few months to a couple years away," Stone said.
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NASA's Voyager 1 hits a 'magnetic highway' out of the solar system
NASA will discuss the latest Red Planet activities of its Mars rover Curiosity on Monday (Dec. 3), but space geeks shouldn't get their hopes up for a bombshell announcement.
Despite rampant rumors to the contrary, Monday's press conference held at 12:00 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco won't present any earth-shaking results that force humanity to rethink its place in the universe, NASA officials said.
"Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect," officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which manages Curiosity's mission, wrote in an update Thursday (Nov. 29). "The news conference will be an update about first use of the rover's full array of analytical instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil."
Rumors of a big Curiosity discovery began swirling two weeks ago, after an NPR story quoted mission chief scientist John Grotzinger as saying that the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, had recently gathered data "for the history books." [Latest Photos from Curiosity Rover]
Because SAM can identify organic compounds the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it many people speculated that the car-size robot had discovered complex organics in a Martian soil sample.
But that's not the case, JPL officials say.
"At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics," they wrote in Thursday's update.
NASA's attempts to rein in such rumors and set reasonable expectations for Monday's press conference began with some thoughts from Curiosity itself on Nov. 21 (via the rover's JPL-run Twitter account, @MarsCuriosity).
"What did I discover on Mars? That rumors spread fast online. My team considers this whole mission 'one for the history books,'" Curiosity wrote in a Twitter post that day.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed Aug. 5 inside the Red Planet's huge Gale Crater, kicking off a two-year prime mission to determine if Mars has ever been able to support microbial life.
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, dispatched to look for the chemical ingredients and environments for microbial life, has found hints of carbon, though whether this building block for life on Earth has played a similar role on Mars is unknown, scientists said on Monday.
"Just finding carbon somewhere doesn't mean that it has anything to do with life, or the finding of a habitable environment," lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology, told reporters at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.
"If you have organic carbon and you don't have any water, you don't have a habitable environment," he said.
Even with carbon and water, life needs other chemicals, such as sulfur, oxygen, phosphorous and nitrogen, to form and evolve.
"It's not unexpected that this sand pile would not be rich in organics. It's been exposed to the harsh Martian environment," added planetary scientist Paul Mahaffy, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"It's really going to be an exciting hunt over the course of this mission to find early environments that might be protected from this surface Mars environment and see what we can add to the carbon story," Mahaffy said.
The rover, which in August touched down on the floor of a 93-mile wide (150-km) impact crater near the Martian equator, has already turned up evidence that its landing site was once covered in water.
Scientists do not know if the carbon compounds in the soil are contamination from Earth, arrived on the surface of Mars via comets or asteroids, or, if they are indigenous, whether they came from geological or biological activities on Mars.
"It tells us that we have a lead into a measurement of one of the important ingredients that adds to a habitable environment," Grotzinger said. "We still have a lot of work to do to qualify and characterize what it is."
The rover is expected to reach a richer slice of Martian history next year when it begins examining layers of sediment in a mountain rising from the floor of the crater.
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NASA's Mars rover finds traces of carbon - one essential for life
LGBT Fed Strategic Planning and Diversity Workshop
DOD FED GLOBE is a 501C3 nonprofit. That advocates for and educates about all LGBT employees past and present and service members, civil servants, and aligned corporations to the Department of Defense. Participants speak based on their own opine and it is not their intent to reflect the views of their employeer the Federal government and or commercial entities. On the second day of the Out and Equal Summit federal employees again got together for strategic planning and how to educate within their organization about diversity. DOD FED GLOBE Executive Director Lisa Kove taught the equality strategic planning workshop on the fly. The people that were supposed to teach the workshop were unable to make the summit due to the hurricane Sandy that hit the east coast that week. To join DOD FED GLOBE in educating the public about the need for LGBT equality associated with the DOD go to http://www.dodfedglobe.ning.com and sign on. Equality strategic planning in federal government will look at goals in educating the organization and the internal equality activists. Implementation of pro equality policies and laws. Having pro equality laws and policies that are not taught and or implemented do not provide direct benefit. Also a non federal employee but long time equality activist Elizabeth Birch spoke about her role in the DADT Repeal process. NASA #39;s speaker also emphasized the challenges for those organizations that are away from Washington DC and explained how they started marching in ...From:DODFEDGLOBEViews:5 0ratingsTime:51:22More inNonprofits Activism
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Popular Science Lecture by Capt Jon A Mc Bride
Popular Science Lecture on Exciting Journey in Space Science by Capt Jon A Mc Bride (Former NASA Astronaut)From:Ravi SaxenaViews:0 0ratingsTime:07:41More inScience Technology
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A Multi-Wavelength View of Radio Galaxy Hercules-A
Spectacular jets powered by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy Hercules A illustrate the combined imaging power of two of astronomy #39;s cutting-edge tools, the Hubble Space Telescope #39;s Wide Field Camera 3, and the recently upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Baum and C. O #39;Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)From:SpaceReportsViews:0 0ratingsTime:00:42More inScience Technology
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MESSENGER Laser Altimeter
MESSENGER Laser Altimeter MESSENGER #39;s Mercury Laser Altimeter sends out laser pulses that hit the ground and return to the instrument. The amount of light that returns for each pulse gives the reflectance at that point on the surface. The amount of time it takes the pulse to make its trip indicates how far away that point on the surface is, allowing the topography to be mapped. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight CenterFrom:SpaceReportsViews:0 0ratingsTime:00:11More inScience Technology
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Moonwalking On Mountains
9/18/12: That breakbeat, those now famous ad-libs, I don #39;t even think the band Mountain themselves would have guess that their 1969 live rendition of "Long Red" at Woodstock would become a staple in a totally different genre of music. It #39;s up there with James Brown #39;s "Funky Drummer," Skull Snaps #39; "It #39;s A New Day," and Melvin Bliss #39; "Synthetic Substitution," as the most used break in Hip-Hop. Everybody... and I mean EVERYBODY has used it at some point. Pete Rock, DJ Premier J. Dilla, Kanye West, Madlib, 9th Wonder, Large Professor... list goes on and on. Of course what can be said already that hasn #39;t been said about Track 7 on Thriller. Human Nature is hands down one of my favorite records from the King of Pop. I don #39;t know what is about those opening synths, but it gives me this feeling of flying, absolute elevation, like Jordan from the free throw line or NASA from the launch pad. Then, of course during the mid 90s, the song was re-introduced to another generation thanks to SWV ("Right Here") and Nasty Nas ("It Ain #39;t Hard To Tell"). When these two are put together (See "It Ain #39;t Hard To Tell" as mentioned above) it #39;s a perfect marriage like Peanut Butter Jelly, Burgers French Fries, Chicken Waffles... well you get the point. And once again, as I was getting use to use Maschine, I decided to re-flip these two classics. Then, in the middle of a session about a month ago, I played the beat for the rest of the fellas, 3 hours later, you have what you are hearing now ...From:HonorFlowProductionsViews:3 0ratingsTime:04:20More inMusic
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2012/10/19 04:00-24 hours AIA 304 24 fps
October 19, 2012, AIA 304. Six hour observation, 12 second cadence (1800 frames @ 30 fps). Thanks to the NASA/SDO team and VSO for the data. Processed by Larry Manley, Butte, Montana.From:Larry ManleyViews:0 0ratingsTime:05:00More inScience Technology
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Despite searing daytime temperatures, Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, has ice and frozen organic materials inside permanently shadowed craters in its north pole, NASA scientists said on Thursday.
Earth-based telescopes have been compiling evidence for ice on Mercury for 20 years, but the finding of organics was a surprise, say researchers with NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, the first probe to orbit Mercury.
Both ice and organic materials, which are similar to tar or coal, were believed to have been delivered millions of years ago by comets and asteroids crashing into the planet.
"It's not something we expected to see, but then of course you realize it kind of makes sense because we see this in other places," such as icy bodies in the outer solar system and in the nuclei of comets, planetary scientist David Paige, with the University of California, Los Angeles, told Reuters.
Unlike NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, which will be sampling rocks and soils to look for organic materials directly, the MESSENGER probe bounces laser beams, counts particles, measures gamma rays and collects other data remotely from orbit.
The discoveries of ice and organics, painstakingly pieced together for more than a year, are based on computer models, laboratory experiments and deduction, not direct analysis.
"The explanation that seems to fit all the data is that it's organic material," said lead MESSENGER scientist Sean Solomon, with Columbia University in New York.
Added Paige, "It's not just a crazy hypothesis. No one has got anything else that seems to fit all the observations better."
Scientists believe the organic material, which is about twice as dark as most of Mercury's surface, was mixed in with comet- or asteroid-delivered ice eons ago.
The ice vaporized, then re-solidified where it was colder, leaving dark deposits on the surface. Radar imagery shows the dark patches subside at the coldest parts of the crater, where ice can exist on the surface.
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DECATUR, Ala., Nov. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden today discussed the state of the nation's space agency, including science and human exploration, during his visit to the United Launch Alliance (ULA) production facility in Decatur, Ala., where ULA manufactures both Atlas and Delta launch vehicles.
Joined by ULA President and CEO Michael Gass, Bolden viewed hardware being prepared for future NASA missions and hosted a town hall meeting with ULA's Alabama employees where he thanked them for their efforts in building the highly reliable Atlas and Delta rockets. ULA launches critical space capabilities for the Department of Defense, NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office and other commercial customers.
Bolden submitted this blog post about his visit to ULA. Read the Administrator's blog post here: http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/bolden/posts/post_1354126709864.html.
Last year was a busy year for the NASA science community, and ULA was a critical team player enabling the agency to meet an aggressive launch campaign, including the Aquarius, Juno, Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) and NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) missions. The year was capped with the launch of the tremendously successful Mars Science Laboratory.
The Atlas and Delta heritage launch vehicles have supported NASA's presence in space for more than 50 years, including the manned Mercury flights and America's early interplanetary missions. ULA's partnership with NASA continues to bear fruit, including the launch of the twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) earlier this year. RBSP was the 17th NASA mission launched on a ULA rocket. ULA will launch NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS)-K satellite relay system,Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) imagery satellite, and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) missions in 2013.
"The capabilities NASA builds are precision scientific instruments that would take several years to re-create if a launch failed. ULA has successfully delivered each and every time," ULA's Gass said.
ULA supports the space launch needs for many of NASA's top priorities, including flight test of the Orion spacecraft, development of the upper stage for the Space Launch System (SLS), launch services support of two Commercial Crew Program teams (Boeing and Sierra Nevada) and launch of several science exploration missions. Bolden today was able to see rocket hardware for three upcoming NASA science missions, including TDRS-L, MAVEN and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2 carbon-counting science mission.
Bolden also viewed the beginnings of the Exploration Flight Test (EFT) rocket, which will serve as the test launch vehicle for the Orion crew capsule. The EFT launch will provide an opportunity to gain real flight experience with the Orion spacecraft.
"We know the future is promising for the NASA and ULA partnership with many important missions on the horizon, including our Commercial Crew Program," said Gass. "ULA's support of NASA's human exploration efforts will ensure that the United States has safe, reliable means of delivering crew to the space station."
ULA's support of SLS also is promising. Working with The Boeing Company, ULA is providing the second stage for SLS, which is targeting 2017 to send humans beyond Earth orbit for the first time since 1972.
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NASA wants us all to know that it feels very confident in predicting that the world won't end in 2012, despite what we may have read on the Internet.
The space agency recently saw fit to take its debunking hammer to persistent online tales of a fictional dwarf planet that is supposedly on a collision course with Earth, popular prophecies associated with the Mayan calendar, and other doomsday scenarios that fall apart under minimal scrutiny.
"Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, Dec. 21, 2012 won't be the end of the world as we know it. However, it will be another winter solstice," NASA associates behind a new website called Beyond 2012 wrote Wednesday in a Google+ post.
Some of the more popular apocalyptic theories revolve around a rogue planet called Nibiru supposedly discovered thousands of years ago by the ancient Sumerians, which some believe is going to collide with our planet next month. Variations on this theme call the doomsday rock Planet X or peg the real dwarf planet Eris as the harbinger of death from the skies, while a recent strain of this myth tries to tie the whole thing in with the supposed end of the Mayan calendar on Dec. 21, 2012.
Beyond 2012 is dedicated to debunking such pseudo-science. There is no Nibiru or Planet X that's been observed by astronomers and if they really were on a path to hit the Earth in a couple weeks, they'd be visible to the naked eye by now. Eris "is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles," the site explains.
The supposedly abrupt end of the Mayan calendar at the upcoming winter solstice? It's not "evidence" that ancient Mesoamerican chronometrists had some mystic knowledge of when the world would endit's actually just the end of one of the cycles they used in devising their calendar.
Other doomsday hokum countered on the Beyond 2012 site includes a supposedly imminent reversal in the Earth's rotation, the onset of giant solar storms, and a fanciful array of disastrous events somehow set in motion by a rare alignment of the planets.
As NASA notes, concern in some quarters over such far-fetched scenarios has been helped along by a spate of recent books and movies depicting the end of the world.
The Beyond 2012 social page also links to video of a recent Google+ hangout (see it below) in which a panel of scientists takes on specific 2012 doomsday claims and explains why they're so much bunk.
Panelists included: Mitzi Adams, a solar/archaeoastronomer from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center; Andrew Fraknoi, a science educator from Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, Calif.; Lika Guhathakurta, a heliophysicist from NASA Headquarters; Paul Hertz, an astrophysicist from NASA Headquarters; David Morrison, an astrobiologist from NASA's Ames Research Center; and Don Yeomans, an asteroid scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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New evidence suggests Mercury's north polar region contains large deposits of ice. (NASA/Johns Hopkins UniversNASA's Messenger spacecraft has discovered evidence that the planet Mercury has enough ice on its surface to encase Washington, D.C., in a block two and a half miles deep.
"For more than 20 years the jury has been deliberating on whether the planet closest to the Sun hosts abundant water ice in its permanently shadowed polar regions," writes Sean Solomon of the Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the principal investigator of the Messenger mission. The spacecraft "has now supplied a unanimous affirmative verdict."
"These reflectance anomalies are concentrated on poleward-facing slopes and are spatially collocated with areas of high radar backscatter postulated to be the result of near-surface water ice," Gregory Neumann of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center writes in the paper. "Correlation of observed reflectance with modeled temperatures indicates that the optically bright regions are consistent with surface water ice."
The study results were published on Wednesday in Science magazine, which explains in its summary, "The buried layer must be nearly pure water ice. The upper layer contains less than 25 wt.% water-equivalent hydrogen. The total mass of water at Mercury's poles is inferred to be 2 1016 to 1018 g and is consistent with delivery by comets or volatile-rich asteroids."
Radar imaging of Mercury has long suggested that there could be large deposits on the planet's surface, with reports dating to 1991. But today's report presents harder evidence supporting that theory.
Messenger has fired more than 10 million laser imaging pulses at Mercury's surface since arriving in its orbit in 2011. Feedback from those pulses have helped NASA in its quest to verify whether ice is present in Mercury's poles, which are largely shielded from exposure to the sun's rays.
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NASA: There’s enough ice on Mercury to encase Washington, D.C.