Milky Way Galaxy’s Central Black Hole – A Poor Eater? | NASA Chandra Space Science HD – Video

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Milky Way Galaxy #39;s Central Black Hole - A Poor Eater? | NASA Chandra Space Science HD
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Milky Way Galaxy's Central Black Hole - A Poor Eater? | NASA Chandra Space Science HD - Video

NASA Curiosity Rover detects no methane on Mars

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Data from NASA's Curiosity rover has revealed the Martian environment lacks methane. This is a surprise to researchers because previous data reported by U.S. and international scientists indicated positive detections. The roving laboratory performed extensive tests to search for traces of Martian methane.

Whether the Martian atmosphere contains traces of the gas has been a question of high interest for years because methane could be a potential sign of life, although it also can be produced without biology.

"This important result will help direct our efforts to examine the possibility of life on Mars," said Michael Meyer, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration. "It reduces the probability of current methane-producing Martian microbes, but this addresses only one type of microbial metabolism. As we know, there are many types of terrestrial microbes that don't generate methane."

Curiosity analyzed samples of the Martian atmosphere for methane six times from October 2012 through June and detected none. Given the sensitivity of the instrument used, the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, and not detecting the gas, scientists calculate the amount of methane in the Martian atmosphere today must be no more than 1.3 parts per billion. That is about one-sixth as much as some earlier estimates. Details of the findings appear in the Thursday edition of Science Express.

"It would have been exciting to find methane, but we have high confidence in our measurements, and the progress in expanding knowledge is what's really important," said the report's lead author, Chris Webster of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We measured repeatedly from Martian spring to late summer, but with no detection of methane."

Webster is the lead scientist for spectrometer, which is part of Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory. It can be tuned specifically for detection of trace methane. The laboratory also can concentrate any methane to increase the gas' ability to be detected. The rover team will use this method to check for methane at concentrations well below 1 part per billion.

Methane, the most abundant hydrocarbon in our solar system, has one carbon atom bound to four hydrogen atoms in each molecule. Previous reports of localized methane concentrations up to 45 parts per billion on Mars, which sparked interest in the possibility of a biological source on Mars, were based on observations from Earth and from orbit around Mars. However, the measurements from Curiosity are not consistent with such concentrations, even if the methane had dispersed globally.

"There's no known way for methane to disappear quickly from the atmosphere," said one of the paper's co-authors, Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "Methane is persistent. It would last for hundreds of years in the Martian atmosphere. Without a way to take it out of the atmosphere quicker, our measurements indicate there cannot be much methane being put into the atmosphere by any mechanism, whether biology, geology, or by ultraviolet degradation of organics delivered by the fall of meteorites or interplanetary dust particles."

The highest concentration of methane that could be present without being detected by Curiosity's measurements so far would amount to no more than 10 to 20 tons per year of methane entering the Martian atmosphere, Atreya estimated. That is about 50 million times less than the rate of methane entering Earth's atmosphere.

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NASA Curiosity Rover detects no methane on Mars

NASA Seeks America's Best and Brightest for Space Technology Research Fellowships

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NASA is seeking applications from U.S. graduate students for the agency's Space Technology Research Fellowships. The research grants, worth as much as $68,000 per year, will coincide with the start of the 2014 fall term.

Applications will be accepted from students pursuing or planning to pursue master's or doctorate degrees in relevant space technology disciplines at accredited U.S. universities. The grants will sponsor U.S. graduate student researchers who show significant potential to contribute to NASA's strategic space technology objectives through their studies. To date, NASA has awarded grants to 193 student researchers from 68 universities located in 33 states and one U.S. territory.

"To maintain our global leadership in space technology we must continue our investments in university research where some of the best future advancements in space technology reside," said Michael Gazarik, NASA's associate administrator for space technology in Washington. "These investments will enable a new generation of our best and brightest graduate students to contribute meaningfully to the advancement of technology capabilities for future NASA missions, as well as the nations technology based economy."

Sponsored by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, the fellowships are improving Americas technological competitiveness by providing the nation with a pipeline of innovative space technologies.

The deadline for submitting applications is Nov. 13. For more information and instructions on how to submit applications, visit: http://tinyurl.com/NSTRF14

NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate is building, testing and flying the technologies needed for NASA's missions that are also of benefit to the nation. For more information about NASA's Space Technology Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech

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NASA Seeks America's Best and Brightest for Space Technology Research Fellowships

NASA's Global Hawks Mark 100th NASA Flight Milestone

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NASA Global Hawk 871 rolls out on the runway at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility after landing following a flight in the 2013 HS3 hurricane formation and intensification mission.Image Credit: NASA WFF.

NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft project celebrated a flight milestone on Sept. 17, 2013. The two Global Hawks reached a combined 100 NASA flights while deployed to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., to study hurricane formation and intensification in the Atlantic Ocean region.

NASA's Global Hawk 871 departed Sept. 17 from Wallops marking the 25th flight for this aircraft, the first of seven built by Northrop Grumman under the original Global Hawk Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator development program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. This aircraft first flew under NASA operation in May 2010.

The same day, NASA Global Hawk 872 returned to Wallops after making its 75th flight. This aircraft was the sixth built as a technology demonstrator and was first flown by NASA in October 2009.

The 100 flights are a combination of early evaluation flights, science instrument checkout flights, science missions and several technology development flights flown for the Northrop Grumman Corp. under a Space Act Agreement with NASA.

This graphic image shows the flight path (red lines) of NASA Global Hawk 872 over tropical storm Humberto during its flight on Sept. 16 and 17, overlaid on this NOAA GOES-East satellite image from Sept. 17.Image Credit: NASA GOES Project.

The two aircraft are currently supporting NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission, which is studying tropical storms and the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensification. The aircraft are equipped with instruments to survey the overall environment of the storms and peer into the inner core of hurricanes to study their structure and processes. Global Hawks are well suited for hurricane investigations because they can fly for as long as 28 hours and over-fly hurricanes at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet. The aircraft have a range of 11,000 nautical miles.

The Global Hawks were transferred to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., from the U.S. Air Force in 2007. In addition to a ground operations center at Dryden, a newer second operations center was developed at Wallops and is in use for the HS3 mission. The project also developed a portable operations center, giving the aircraft the additional capability of deploying to other U.S. and foreign locations.

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NASA's Global Hawks Mark 100th NASA Flight Milestone

NASA rover finds no methane on Mars in blow to search for life

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LOS ANGELES NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't discovered any signs of methane in the atmosphere of Mars, a finding that does not bode well for the possibility that microbes capable of producing the gas could be living below the planet's surface, scientists said Thursday.

Since landing in Gale Crater last year, the car-size rover has gulped Mars air and scanned it with a tiny laser in search of methane. On Earth, most of the gas is a byproduct of life, spewed when animals digest or plants decay.

Curiosity lacks the tools to directly hunt for simple life, past or present. But scientists had high hopes that the rover would inhale methane after orbiting spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes detected plumes of the gas several years ago.

During Curiosity's first eight months on the red planet, it sniffed the air during the day and at night as the season changed from spring to summer.

"Every time we looked, we never saw it," said Christopher Webster, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who led the research published online in the journal Science.

Webster said while the result was "disappointing in many ways," the hunt for the elusive gas continues.

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NASA rover finds no methane on Mars in blow to search for life

NASA looks to post-2020 International Space Station operations

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Barring a catastrophic malfunction or damaging impacts from space debris, NASA should be able to keep the International Space Station (ISS) in operation at least through 2020 and, with steady funding, careful planning and a bit of luck, through 2028 -- the 30th anniversary of the first module's launch -- officials say.

But reduced power from degraded solar arrays and other crippling consequences of decades spent in the extreme environment of space will slowly but surely take their toll and the cost-benefit ratio eventually will tilt in favor of abandonment and a fiery controlled re-entry.

The International Space Station.

While the engineering and management challenges associated with keeping the station operational are daunting, ISS program manager Michael Suffredini says they should be doable, as long as NASA has the resources to build spare parts, pay for cargo launches and provide transportation for U.S. astronauts, either aboard U.S. commercial spacecraft or Russian Soyuz capsules.

"We have a space station that is designed in a modular fashion meant for repair," Suffredini told CBS News. "So as long as you have spares for all the things that can break, you can last as long as the structure will let you last. Within reason.

"The structure, it turns out, most of it was originally designed for 30 years. So all that margin has made it relatively easy for us to get to 2020. 2028 will be a little bit more challenging. ... We may have to sharpen our pencils to get to 2028."

Boeing, NASA's space station prime contractor, is currently conducting a detailed engineering analysis to verify that the U.S. segment of the complex can safely operate through the end of the decade. Russian engineers are assessing their own hardware, as are the other international partners.

The Boeing analysis is not yet complete and additional work will be needed to to show the lab can be safely operated beyond 2020. But Suffredini said no major surprises have cropped up so far and he's optimistic the station eventually can be cleared to fly through 2028 -- in theory, at least.

"When we get to 2028, the solar arrays are going to be struggling, I'm probably going to have a handful of radiator lines that have been isolated," he said. "2028 might be possible, but it also might be very challenging because then you're talking about the cost of replacing big things that may be prohibitive.

"All our analysis kind of says we think we can get to 2028 and that's the path we're headed on. As we start getting beyond 2028, if it makes sense, and things aren't failing at a rate that makes it difficult for us to keep up, and the country thinks it's the right thing to do, then we can look at going beyond that.

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NASA looks to post-2020 International Space Station operations

PermaGloss™ – "self-healing" Ceramic Polymer Nanotechnology car paint protection – Video

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PermaGloss™ - "self-healing" Ceramic Polymer Nanotechnology car paint protection
PermaGloss™ - Ceramic Polymer Nanotechnology Paint Protection with self-healing Nanoparticles, the ultimate solution in protecting paint surfaces with "self-...

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PermaGloss™ - "self-healing" Ceramic Polymer Nanotechnology car paint protection - Video

Oil and gas industry research targets nanotechnology

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The statement "there is no more easy oil" is commonplace in the oil and gas industry. It is an interesting observation: what the industry now considers "easy" was anything but when the technologies were introduced that opened up what now are considered easy-to-produce fields. The technologies that have allowed heavy oil production, ultra-deepwater drilling, and floating production were essential to the growth of the industry.

Today, work continues on the next generation of research and development, which includes disciplines that have never before been associated with oil and gas operations. One of the most interesting and promising of these is nanotechnology.

R&D efforts are taking place on a number of fronts. Houston's Rice University, for example, is involved in developing "nanoreporters" that are designed to change their molecular makeup depending on the medium they encounter (water, petroleum, or hydrogen sulfide) and to report data, including the temperature and pressure readings. Tags attached to the nanoreporters allow the scientists tracking the devices to determine how long the nanoreporters have been deployed.

Saudi Aramco has invested heavily in similar research through its Exploration and Petroleum Engineering Center - Advanced Research Center (EXPEC ARC) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Researchers at EXPEC ARC are developing reservoir robots, or "resbots," designed for deployment in oil and gas reservoirs for the purpose of reporting data from the reservoir to the surface for improved reservoir management.

Additional industry research is focused on developing advanced coatings applications, including coatings for drill bits, lubricants and drilling mud, and pipelines.

Classification societies have embraced emerging technology, including nanotechnology, which has led to increased investment and greater cooperation with other stakeholders through pioneering joint development projects.

One example is work ABS has undertaken with George Washington University on nanosurface profiling technologies to develop and test ice-phobic coatings to mitigate ice accretion. By profiling the surface at the nano scale, researchers can modify the contact angle for water droplets such that they do not adhere, which means the droplets will not wet a treated surface. This technology could mitigate the risk of ice buildup in arctic conditions.

The aim of this project is to develop a testing standard to evaluate ice-phobic coating performance and will encompass an assessment not only of ice adhesion, but also of abrasion resistance, durability, and UV resistance. It is a trickier problem than it appears, in part because there are so many variables. For instance, the type and composition of ice accreted can be expected to differ between components and locations on the same vessel. This also is true for the same component installed on different vessels.

The potential application of ice-phobic surfaces is far reaching and includes the ability to liberate critical components such as lifeboat release mechanisms and navigation equipment from the debilitating effects of freezing sea spray and precipitation.

This ambitious project holds bold promise for improving safety in the Arctic developments that are anticipated in the next few years. Applying nanotechnology that will expand the operational window of Arctic operations has the potential to increase productivity considerably and to reduce operational interference due to inclement conditions.

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Oil and gas industry research targets nanotechnology

"Dixieland Delight" – Old Crow Medicine Show (from High Cotton : A Tribute to Alabama) – Video

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"Dixieland Delight" - Old Crow Medicine Show (from High Cotton : A Tribute to Alabama)
"Dixieland Delight" performed by Old Crow Medicine Show (from High Cotton: A Tribute to Alabama). The album is in stores 9/21. http://www.lightningrodrecords.com.

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"Dixieland Delight" - Old Crow Medicine Show (from High Cotton : A Tribute to Alabama) - Video

Can Foods Make Us Sick? Nutrition, Chronic Disease, Healthy Diet, Medicine, Natural Food Info – Video

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Can Foods Make Us Sick? Nutrition, Chronic Disease, Healthy Diet, Medicine, Natural Food Info
Friend us!! http://www.Facebook.com/psychetruth Can Foods Make Us Sick? Nutrition, Chronic Disease, Healthy Diet, Medicine, Natural Food Info Holistic Health...

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Can Foods Make Us Sick? Nutrition, Chronic Disease, Healthy Diet, Medicine, Natural Food Info - Video