NASA Wants to Send Plant Life to Mars in 2020

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In less than a decade, there might be life on Mars. No not because the aliens have been hiding all this time, but because NASA might just put it there. The brightest minds at the Ames Research Center recently proposed sending plant life along with the next Mars rover. It's actually a pretty good idea.

Plainly named the Mars Plant Experiment (MPX), the plan aims to see how Earth life handles the red planet's lower gravity and higher radiation levels. But NASA scientists don't expect to dig holes and plant seeds in Martian soil. Rather, they intend to convert a clear CubeSat box into a greenhouse of sorts that will be filled with Earth air and about 200 seeds for the Arabidopsis plant, a cousin to mustard. The box will then live on top of the rover which will keep it watered. The bonsai tree pictured above is a (poor) rendering of what plants on Mars could look like, but the actual NASA rendition isn't much better. The neon green box in the middle is supposed to be the MPX box.

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The experiment isn't just to see if it's possible to keep plants alive. It's actually an important step towards figuring out if Mars colonization will ever be possible. "In order to do a long-term, sustainable base on Mars, you would want to be able to establish that plants can at least grow on Mars," said Heather Smith, the deputy principal investigator for MPX. "We would go from this simple experiment to the greenhouses on Mars for a sustainable base." She addedalthough possibly incorrectly, as far as we knowthat the plant "also would be the first multicellular organism to grow, live and die on another planet."

This specific proposal is still just a proposal. At the end of the day, there's only so much space for so many instruments on the next Mars rover which is scheduled to depart for the red planet in 2020 and land in 2021. At present, NASA's considering proposals for a total of 58 different instruments, and since the Curiosity rover's only carrying about 10 instruments, it seems very unlikely they'll all make the cut. All else fails, we can always just shoot plants at the moon. [Space.com]

Images via NASA / Gizmodo

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NASA Wants to Send Plant Life to Mars in 2020

NATO in Eastern Europe: US and Canadian forces hold military drills in Poland amid Russia threat – Video

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NATO in Eastern Europe: US and Canadian forces hold military drills in Poland amid Russia threat
U.S. and Canadian troops have carried out military drills along with their counterparts in a desert in south Poland, as part of efforts to reassure NATO allies in eastern Europe worried about...

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News In Two Minutes – Weapons Charges – NATO Denies Russian Pullback – Chinese Terror – MERS – Video

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News In Two Minutes - Weapons Charges - NATO Denies Russian Pullback - Chinese Terror - MERS
News In Two Minutes - Weapons Charges - Boko Haram - MERS In Hong Kong - Terror. Please thumbs up and Subscribe. In today #39;s News In Two Minutes we cover a wide range of events happening in...

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News In Two Minutes - Weapons Charges - NATO Denies Russian Pullback - Chinese Terror - MERS - Video

NATO: Pictures, Videos, Breaking News – The Huffington Post

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Ukraine is at nearly war. The war began in Kyiv on the Maidan in February, when Yanukovych's pro-Russian snipers cut down as many as 100 protesters. Then Crimea, which Putin 'won' but will eventually regret winning. The cost will be long-term and high.

The reemerging cold war between Washington and Moscow centers on the fundamental disagreements over Ukraine. But it would be a mistake to pin all the responsibility for the downturn in relations on the Euromaidan protests.

As Obama accomplished something quite real in the Asia-Pacific his administration and the European Union pursued something unreal, announcing new sanctions against individual Russians for their involvement in Russia's strategy to foment discord in Ukraine and keep that nation, which is only a few hundred miles from Moscow, out of NATO.

The U.S. should tone down the rhetoric and concentrate on the core issues for worldwide peace and accept the Crimean reality. The solution will evolve slowly, if we let it.

Blake Fleetwood

Former reporter for the New York Times and Daily News; taught Political Science at NYU

Global demands and realities weaken the ineffective U.S. sanctions against Russia while Washington needs Moscow's cooperation on Afghanistan.

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NATO: Pictures, Videos, Breaking News - The Huffington Post

NATO Is Ready for Russia Tactics, Estonia Minister Says

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NATO is prepared to counter non-conventional warfare used by Russia to annex Crimea, Estonian Defense Minister Sven Mikser said.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organizations 1949 founding treaty can be effectively used to counter new threats and doesnt need to be revised, Mikser said in an interview yesterday in the Estonian capital, Tallinn. The former Soviet republic, which shares a border with Russia and has a Russian-speaking minority, has full confidence in the accords article that commits members to collective defense.

There was an element of surprise that these little green men surfaced in Crimea, said Mikser, 40, referring to unidentified gunmen wearing military uniforms who seized key installations on the Black Sea peninsula before Russia annexed it from Ukraine. I think this kind of surprise can be effectively used only once. We, or anyone, will be prepared to respond to a scenario like this.

The U.S. and its allies accuse Russia of fomenting unrest in Ukraines easternmost regions. While President Vladimir Putin has refrained from direct military intervention, he has vowed to defend Russian speakers. NATO members with such minorities may not be prepared to counter new military threats from Russia based on events in Ukraine, according to Janis Berzins, head of the Center for Security and Strategic Research of the National Defence Academy of Latvia.

In the run-up to the March referendum that paved the way for Crimea switching hands, the Kremlin denied military involvement beyond its naval base on the peninsula. Even so, Putin last month said Russian troops had ensured the safety of the vote. NATO estimates that the country has 40,000 soldiers stationed near the Ukrainian border.

Estonias government is considering a package of measures to boost defense and security expenditures, Prime Minister Taavi Roivas said in parliament today. The country now spends about 2 percent of gross domestic product on its military.

The countrys military may lack rapid-reaction capabilities and needs to adjust to new threats based on evidence from the events in Crimea, Martin Hurt, deputy director of the International Center for Defense Studies in Tallinn, wrote in a report Apr. 17.

Russia has the ability to incite revolts and unrest on foreign soil while rapidly deploying military forces to aggravate and exploit the resultant political turmoil, Hurt wrote. This creates confusion in determining what countermeasures to resort to, leaving the country being attacked with minimal time to implement them.

Such new-generation warfare shows the need for a more comprehensive national-security strategy, Berzins of the Latvian defense academy wrote in a paper last month.

Estonia has already made such preparations, Riho Terras, the chief of the countrys armed forces, said at a conference in Tallinn on Apr. 26.

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NATO Is Ready for Russia Tactics, Estonia Minister Says

NATO secretary general: Russia perpetuating 'obscure clichs of the Cold War'

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WARSAW, Poland, May 7 (UPI) -- NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen chastised Russia for its continued aggression toward Ukraine, labeling Russian rhetoric as drawing from Cold War "clichs."

Speaking in Warsaw, where Rasmussen was meeting with Polish officials regarding the upcoming NATO Summit in September, the secretary general defended his call to arms in the name of collective defense, stating that "NATO's greatest responsibility is to protect and defend our populations and territory."

NATO defensive actions in response to the crisis in Ukraine are intended, he said, to send "an unmistakable message to Russia: your behaviour does not belong in the 21st century and your rhetoric draws on obscure clichs of the Cold War."

In April, Rasmussen announced NATO was undertaking enhanced collective defense measures in response to Russian aggression. The measures included increased Air Policing in the Baltic States and the deployment of Airborne Early Warning and Control Aircraft surveillance flights over Poland and Romania.

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NATO secretary general: Russia perpetuating 'obscure clichs of the Cold War'

NATO troops in Eastern Europe could be permanent, U.S. general says

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OTTAWA , May 7 (UPI) -- NATO will consider permanently stationing troops in Eastern Europe as a result of the crises in Crimea and Ukraine, its top military commander said.

Speaking in Ottawa, Canada, Tuesday, Gen. Philip Breedlove, a U.S. Army general and NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, said the issue would be discussed at a NATO summit in September.

Commanders, defense ministers and foreign ministers must consider if the 28-member military alliance has the correct footprint in Europe, Breedlove said, noting Russias annexations of Crimea changes that dynamic. The paradigm has changed in the current situation. Russia is not acting as a partner.

After Russias intervention in Ukraine, a number of short-term military rotations have been arranged in Eastern Europe, but they are scheduled to conclude by the end of 2014.

Breedlove stressed that NATOs recent steps have thus far supported eastern members of the alliance, and are "easily discerned as being defensive in nature. This is about assuring our allies, not provoking Russia.

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NATO troops in Eastern Europe could be permanent, U.S. general says

NSA Spies "Pretending to be Veterans with PTSD" Threaten Patriot John Adams – Video

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NSA Spies "Pretending to be Veterans with PTSD" Threaten Patriot John Adams
http://www.TrillionDollarMedia.com Supposed veteran with PTSD; claims to live in Lynchburg, VA, yet has a GPS signature of New Jersey.. Who types in English like a Chinese guy, claims to have...

By: Patriot John Adams

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NSA Spies "Pretending to be Veterans with PTSD" Threaten Patriot John Adams - Video

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Former NSA Chief Defends Stockpiling Software Flaws for Spying

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Former National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP

The NSA has never said much about the open secret that it collects and sometimes even pays for information about hackable flaws in commonly used software. But in a rare statement following his retirement last month, former NSA chief Keith Alexander acknowledged and defended that practice. In doing so, he admitted the deeply contradictory responsibilities of an agency tasked with defending Americans security and simultaneously hoarding bugs in software they use every day.

I would love to have all the terrorists just use that one little sandbox over there so that we could focus on them. But they dont.

When the government asks NSA to collect intelligence on terrorist X, and he uses publicly available tools to encode his messages, it is not acceptable for a foreign intelligence agency like NSA to respond, Sorry we cannot understand what he is saying, Alexander told the Australian Financial Review, which he inexplicably granted a 16,000-word interview. To ask NSA not to look for weaknesses in the technology that we use, and to not seek to break the codes our adversaries employ to encrypt their messages is, I think, misguided. I would love to have all the terrorists just use that one little sandbox over there so that we could focus on them. But they dont.

The NSA has been widely criticized for using its knowledge of security flaws for spying, rather than working to patch those flaws and make internet users more secure.Alexanders defense of the practice boils down to the notion that separating friend and foe when seeking to break codes has become a nearly impossible task.

The interesting change has been the diffusion of encryption technologies into everyday life, he told AFR. It used to be that only, say, German forces used a crypto-device like Enigma to encipher their messages. But in todays environment encryption technology is embedded into all our communications.

At other points in his statement, Alexander argued that the NSA does disclose some of the vulnerabilities it finds in software to those who can patch the flaws, insisting that it focuses its bug-hunting primarily on defense, rather than using vulnerabilities for offensive purposes. He also went further, stating that the NSA categorically [does] not erode the defenses of U.S. communications, or water down security guidance in order to sustain access for foreign intelligence.

The latter claim contradicts numerous reports that the NSA is seeking to weaken encryption to give itself a backdoor into encrypted communications.

Last December, a group of advisers to the White House issued a report to President Obamacalling on him to rein-in the intelligence communitys use of so-called zero-day vulnerabilitiesnewly discovered hackable software bugs for which there exist no patch. The group went on to propose that zero-days only be used sparingly for high priority intelligence collection, and that those uses must be approved by a senior-level, interagency approval process.

In almost all instances, for widely used code, it is in the national interest to eliminate software vulnerabilities rather than to use them for US intelligence collection, the report reads. Eliminating the vulnerabilitiespatching themstrengthens the security of U.S. Government, critical infrastructure, andother computer systems.

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Former NSA Chief Defends Stockpiling Software Flaws for Spying

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The NSA's mysterious coded tweet

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By Brandon Griggs, CNN

No, the NSA was not drunk when they sent this garbled tweet earlier this week.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- When the National Security Agency sent a tweet Monday filled with garbled nonwords like "tpfccdlfdtte," the Internet was confused, and intrigued.

Was the NSA drunk? Had a cat skittered across someone's keyboard?

Or maybe the spy agency, under fire for eavesdropping on Americans, had accidentally blurted a secret of its own -- a coded, classified message not meant for public eyes.

The truth proved to be less scandalous. Internet sleuths, armed with cryptogram-solving Web tools, solved the mystery in minutes. Turns out the nonsensical tweet was a coded recruiting pitch by the NSA, which is seeking code breakers to help decipher encrypted messages from potential terrorists.

The tweet was a basic "substitution cipher," a code in which each letter of the alphabet is replaced by another.

Translated, it read (SPOILER ALERT for all you wannabe codebreakers): "Want to know what it takes to work at NSA? Check back each Monday in May as we explore careers essential to protecting our nation."

When contacted by CNN, NSA spokeswoman Marci Green Miller said the Twitter account is run by the NSA recruitment office, which will post coded tweets each Monday for the rest of the month.

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The NSA's mysterious coded tweet

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NSA data collection overhaul advances

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Construction trailers sit in front of the new National Security Agency (NSA) data center June 10, 2013 in Bluffdale, Utah.

Privacy groups said they were delighted with the support for the bill. "This is a historic turn of events in our government's approach to counterterrorism policies," Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislation Office, said in a statement.

The legislation still faces several hurdles before becoming law, including winning the approval of a majority in the full House, as well as backing in the U.S. Senate. It is similar to NSA reforms proposed by President Barack Obama.

The House Intelligence Committee will debate and vote on its somewhat less restrictive version of the package on Thursday, which could set up a standoff on the House floor.

Read MoreEdward Snowden speaks via Skype at SXSW

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, applauded the House committee's action, although he said he wished it had gone further, such as including a strong special advocate in the secret court that oversees NSA surveillance programs.

Signaling that the fight over the surveillance programs is not over, Leahy said in a statement that he would push for those reforms when his committee considers the legislation, known as the USA Freedom Act, this summer.

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NSA data collection overhaul advances

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