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What is the Order of Ethereum? – The Merkle

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

For all of the groups that have popped up in cryptocurrency communities,very few of themhave anything to do with religion. The Order of Ethereum, on the other hand, is trying to do things differently. Although it is very likely this is a mere joke, the concept is rather troubling.

The Order of Ethereums webpageshows that the team behind this project has a plan in mind. What that plan is remains to be clearat this time. They are somehow trying to mix a religious angle with blockchain technology and Ethereum. While that may sound like a good idea to some, otherswill see it as a cult.

Claiming how all people need forgiveness is a very common religious theme. While other religions require users to pray or attend services, The Order of Ethereum allows users to free themselves of the weight of their cryptocurrency. In fact, they can do so to secure their spot in the afterlife. This is another clear sign of cultish behavior. After all, every cult wants your earthly belongings which need to be sacrificed for the greater good. It is also reminiscent of selling indulgences in 16th century Catholicism.

Stating how users can buy themselves out of guilt will create backlash. Those who make larger contributions will achieve a bigger status in The order of Ethereum. One can even become a saynt, prophyt, or savyor, depending on how much money you are willing to throw away. This shares some similarities with other recent ICOs we have seen without a real purpose.

Achieving this elevated status will not come cheap. Becoming a saynt requires at least 10 Ether, whereas prophyts need to cough up 100 ETH. Becoming a savyor is the most expensive of all, of course, as it requires a 100 KETH contribution. That is equal to 1,000 Ether. It is also possible to buy off one Syn for the price of 0.01 ETH. A very elaborate structure, but it is far more concerned with financial gain than any spiritual enlightenment.

This is another example of how people are trying to capitalize on the cryptocurrency ICO hype right now. Anyone in the world can create their own crowdsale and hope to raise a lot of money from doing so. Launching something which closely resembles a cult is one way of doing so. However, it may also offend quite a few religious peoplein the process. The order of Ethereum should not be taken seriously under any circumstance, nor should anyone send them any money.

There are some people making small contributions to the crowdsale address already. Several people are trying to atone for their syns by sending by 0.01 ETH. Although projects such as The Order of Ethereum are clearly a joke, they will give cryptocurrency ICOs an even worse name by the look of things. It will be interesting to see how much money this project raised at the end. The website is designed quite nicely indicating the person responsible for it has put in some effort.

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What is the Order of Ethereum? - The Merkle

Cancer-Killing Treatment Tested on International Space Station – Space.com

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

Microgravity research on the International Space Station may give new insights into fighting cancer, NASA said.

A new investigation in space is trying build a drug to to help the immune system kill cancer cells , which would prevent a given type of cancer from happening again in a patient. Investigators hope to make this possible using a new drug and antibody combination that could decrease the nasty side effects (such as nausea and hair loss) that are common with patients using chemotherapy, NASA officials said in a statement.

While chemotherapy is effective in treating cancer, the treatment unfortunately kills healthy cells along with the unhealthy ones. The new approach targets only cancer cells by combining an antibody with azonafide, a cancer-killing drug. Investigators said they are hopeful that the new combination will cause less severe issues than those associated with chemotherapy, though the treatment will still have side effects. [Benefits of Cancer Research on Space Station Explained (Video)]

New drugs in development on the International Space Station would target cancer cells and cause fewer side effects than chemotherapy. This six-well BioCell will culture the cancer cells.

"One of the reasons cancer cells grow in certain individuals is their defense mechanism fails to recognize" the cancer cells, co-investigator Dhaval Shah, an assistant pharmaceutical sciences professor at SUNY Buffalo in New York state, said in the statement.

"This [new] molecule also has the ability to wake up, or release the brake on existing immune cells within the cancer," Shah added. "In any given tumor, when these molecules are released [from the cancer cell], they 'wake up' the surrounding immune cells and stimulate the body's own immune system, making it recognize and kill the cancer cells itself."

Doing cancer research on the International Space Station provides other benefits as well, he said. The microgravity environment better simulates the human body, because you can grow large, spherical cancer tumors, Zea said.

Also, future explorers heading to Mars are at an increased risk of cancer due to radiation. This research could provide insights into how effective these drug combinations are in microgravity, which would be helpful if the illness happens to occur in astronauts en route to Mars or returning home, NASA stated.

"We don't know if the cells will be metabolizing the drug at the same rate as they do on Earth," said Shah. "In the long term, we need to be sure what drugs are going to work."

The investigation is called "Efficacy and Metabolism of Azonafide Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) in Microgravity." More information about microgravity investigations can be found @ISS_Research.

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Cancer-Killing Treatment Tested on International Space Station - Space.com

4 Chinese Students to Survive in ‘Space Station’ in Beijing For 200 … – NextShark

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

Four willing students in China have signed up to stay within a self-sustaining ecosystem inside two bunkers that simulate life inside a space station for 200 days.

Sealed from the outside world, the participating students from the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics will be involved in a lot of recycling and reusing items ranging from plant cuttings to urine.

The participants entered the Lunar Palace-1 on Sunday and will be living self-sufficiently throughout the duration of the program.According to Reuters, the simulation is aimed to help the students find out more about the conditions of living in a space station on another planet.

The program is part of a bigger project that will be creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that may, in the near future, provide humans the necessities to survive.

The students explained that they happily accepted the challenge as it somehow gets them closer to becoming real astronauts.

Ill get so much out of this, Liu Guanghui, a PhD student, was quoted as saying. Its truly a different life experience.

According to Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics professor and project head Liu Hong, they have carefully calculated every necessary component for human survival.

Weve designed it so the oxygen (produced by plants at the station) is exactly enough to satisfy the humans, the animals, and the organisms that break down the waste materials, she said.

She pointed out that aside from the physical needs, the experiment is also keen on studying the mental impact of being confined in such a limited space for a certain duration of time.

They can become a bit depressed, Liu said. If you spend a long time in this type of environment it can create some psychological problems.

Liu Hui, a student, and participant from the programs initial 60-day experiment at Lunar Palace-1,has reported that she sometimes felt a bit low after working for a day.

As an adjustment, the projects research team designed a specific set of daily tasks for the students to avoid stressing them out.

Part of the new experiment will also test the group how their bodies will react to living a for 200 days without exposure to sunlight.

We did this experiment with animals so we want to see how much impact it will have on people, the professor said.

The Chinese space program, which has been expanding in recent years, is set to probe to the dark side of the moon by next year, with the plan of putting astronauts on the moon by 2036.

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4 Chinese Students to Survive in 'Space Station' in Beijing For 200 ... - NextShark

Students take plunge to build space station | Local News … – Bloomington Pantagraph

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

NORMAL Maybe elementary and junior high school students can't take a ride on the vomit comet to experience zero gravity. But they can get a taste of how astronauts train for working in micro-gravity in a swimming pool.

That's what 16 students entering sixth- through eighth-grade have been doing this week at Normal Community West High School in the Challenger Learning Center's International Space Station Underwater Adventure. It's part of Heartland Community College's Youth Enrichment Program.

Like the astronauts, the students learn they have to move slowly and carefully as they work to assemble modules that simulate the International Space Station.

It's harder than you think, said 11-year-old Josie Melrose of Bloomington, who will be a sixth-grader at Evans Junior High School this fall. It takes some time to get used to it.

Laura Pulley, 12, of Downs, has wanted to take the class for a couple of years but it wasn't offered last year and she was too young the year before.

I love to explore and learn especially about space, said Laura, who will be a seventh-grader at Tri-Valley. She did a Challenger center mission on a school field trip and said, ever since then, I've wanted to be an astronaut.

The students are using snorkeling equipment and a device similar to scuba equipment called a sea breathe. The sea breathe floats on the surface of the pool and two students at a time wear masks connected to it with hoses, breathing as they would with scuba gear.

Using the sea breathe and learning about scuba techniques, although it is not a scuba class, is the favorite part of the course for Rylan Nelson of Normal. But the 12-year-old, who will be in seventh-grade at Metcalf School, said he also likes learning about space and the International Space Station.

I like how they show us all of the science around it, he said.

But the students are learning more than science and snorkeling.

We will work on teamwork every day, said Shrewsbury.

That happens both in and out of the pool.

For example, they had a group activity where everyone was standing on a space blanket to protect them from the toxic surface of the planet they were on actually a classroom. They had to figure out how to reverse the blanket without losing any of their fellow astronauts.

About a third of the class wound up stepping off the blanket the first day, Shrewsbury said. But, by the second day, their communication and strategy skills improved and no one touched the toxic ground.

Another lesson is the importance of practice and training.

By Day 5, the students will be able to assemble the space station underwater in about an hour but the final task will be preceded by six or seven of practice, explained Shrewsbury.

That's about what it is for astronauts, she said at least six or seven hours of practice for an hourlong spacewalk.

They'll understand it's not just about being an astronaut, but in life it takes time and it takes practice and you have to work as a team, said Shrewsbury.

Josie was confident she and her fellow students would be ready when their parents came to watch.

I think by Friday we'll totally have it mastered, she said.

Mike Burt, a chemistry teacher at Normal West, who also teaches earth and space science, is helping with the class. He said it's a good opportunity to learn more about the Challenger center.

Even though they're just down the street, I had no idea they had all these resources, he said.

Follow Lenore Sobota on Twitter @Pg_Sobota

Students take plunge to build space station | Local News ... - Bloomington Pantagraph

Bellefonte Area students could get chance to communicate with astronauts in space – Centre Daily Times

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

Bellefonte Area students could get chance to communicate with astronauts in space
Centre Daily Times
The school is one of 13 in the country to be approved for the second phase of a selection process to host the Earthbound part of amateur radio contact with the International Space Station crew. Representatives from the International Space Station are ...

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Bellefonte Area students could get chance to communicate with astronauts in space - Centre Daily Times

Watch live: Soyuz rocket with 73 satellites readied for launch – Spaceflight Now

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

A Soyuz rocket lifts off Friday with 73 satellites. Credit: TsENKI TV

A Russian Soyuz booster lifted off Friday from Kazakhstan on a complex mission to deploy 73 satellites into three different orbits, including a Russian spacecraft to locate forest fires, 48 CubeSats for Planets global Earth observation fleet, and eight nanosatellites for Spire Globals commercial weather network.

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket fired into space at 0636:49 GMT (2:36:49 a.m. EDT; 12:36:49 p.m. Kazakh time) from Launch Pad No. 31 at the Baikonur Cosmodome in Kazakhstan.

Heading north from the Central Asia space base, the Soyuz shed its four strap-on rocket engines less than two minutes after liftoff, followed by the release of the rockets core stage and bulbous nose fairing.

The Soyuz third stages RD-0110 engine shut down just before the nine-minute point of the mission, according to updates provided by a live webcast of the launch. A Fregat upper stage was expected to ignite for the first of seven main engine firings to send the launchers 73 satellite passengers into three distinct orbits several hundred miles above Earth.

A live video stream of the flight provided by the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos ended around 10 minutes after liftoff.

The Fregat engine was programmed to fire seven times, climbing into orbit to release a Russian Earth observation satellite about one hour after liftoff, then moving to a higher altitude for separation of 24 more spacecraft. Then the Fregat will descend for deployment of 48 Earth-imaging satellites owned by Planet, a San Francisco-based company.

The final Fregat engine firing will steer the stage back through Earths atmosphere, where it will burn up over the Indian Ocean.

Here is a timeline of the mission released by Roscosmos:

Fridays launch will deploy modified CubeSats from five California-based companies, two student-built German satellites, two Norwegian maritime tracking and communications satellites, a commercial Japanese microsatellite to map Arctic sea ice, two Earth-imaging CubeSats for Roscosmos, and three nanosatellites developed by Russian students.

The largest payload launched Friday is named Kanopus-V-IK, a Russian government satellite equipped with Earth-viewing cameras to map the planet in color to aid emergency responders, crop managers and environmental scientists. The Kanopus-V-IK satellite, which weighs more than a half-ton (approximately 500 kilograms) and is owned by Roscosmos, also carries an infrared sensor to detect and localize the source of wildfires.

The other 72 satellites stowed aboard the Soyuz rocket ranged from shoebox- and briefcase-sized CubeSats up to 265 pounds (120 kilograms).

Planet, owner of more than 100 Dove CubeSats currently looking down on Earth, will add 48 more spacecraft to its fleet with Fridays launch to help the company collect imagery to produce daily global maps.

Eight Lemur CubeSats from Spire Global, another San Francisco company, blasted off in support of weather forecasters, deriving humidity and temperature profiles by measuring GPS navigation signals that pass through Earths atmosphere.

With Fridays launch, Spire has sent 49 CubeSats into orbit, but not all of them remain operational.

A competitor of Spire, GeoOptics of Pasadena, California, launched three more of its CICERO CubeSats for commercial weather forecasting, using the same GPS radio occultation technique as the Lemur satellites. GeoOptics launched its first spacecraft last month on an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

Two Landmapper-BC CubeSats manufactured and owned by Astro Digital, formerly Aquila Space, on Fridays Soyuz flight are the first members of another commercial Earth-imaging constellation. The Landmapper-BC spacecraft, also known as Corvus-BC1 and Corvus-BC2, each weigh around 22 pounds (10 kilograms) and have color and infrared cameras for wide-area imaging.

The other U.S. company with a payload on Fridays flight was Tyvak, a launch services broker and small satellite-builder in Southern California. Tyvaks experimental 11-pound (5-kilogram) NanoACE CubeSat will test an attitude control system, command and data handling system, guidance, navigation and control software and actuators, and visible and infrared cameras.

German university students built two satellites for Fridays launch, including the 265-pound (120-kilogram) Flying Laptop spacecraft from the University of Stuttgarts Institute of Space Systems.

The Flying Laptop satellite will give students experience in mission operations, take pictures of Earth and look for near-Earth asteroids, validate the performance of a reconfigurable on-board computer, and demonstrate a high-speed optical infrared communications link with a German ground station during its planned two-year mission.

In addition to the innovative OBC (on-board computer) concept, which is used as the payload on-board computer, several other new technologies are part of the system and will be verified for the first time under space conditions, and in addition, the mission carries out scientific Earth observation objectives using a multispectral camera and receives ship signals with an AIS receiver, said Sabine Klinkner, project director for the Flying Laptop mission at the University of Stuttgart.

She said the Flying Laptop project was funded by the universitys small satellite program, the German state of Baden-Wrttemberg, and with support from the regional space industry. The German Aerospace Center, DLR, paid for the satellites launch with federal government funds, Klinkner wrote in an email to Spaceflight Now.

TechnoSat from the Technical University of Berlin will test new nanosatellite components, including a camera, a new reaction wheel system, a star tracker, a transmitter, a fluid dynamic actuator, and commercial laser retro-reflectors. Shaped like an octagonal drum, the TechnoSat satellite weighs around 40 pounds (nearly 20 kilograms) at launch and is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

An experiment sponsored by DLR aboard TechnoSat will detect strikes of tiny space debris particles on the satellites solar panels to help scientists better understand the density of space junk in low Earth orbit too small to be tracked by existing radars.

Two Norwegian-owned, Canadian-built microsatellites headed into orbit to track maritime ship traffic.

The briefcase-sized Norsat 1 spacecraft, billed as Norways first scientific satellite, also carries an instrument developed by the Physical Meteorological Observatory in Switzerland to measure fluctuations in solar radiation arriving at Earth, a key input into Earths climate that will help scientists better sort human contributions to climate change. A Langmuir probe on Norsat 1 will study the plasma environment in low Earth orbit during the satellites planned three-year mission.

The Norwegian Space Center owner of the Norsat satellites rescheduled the launch of Norsat 1 after a faulty attachment bracket kept the craft off a Soyuz rocket flight in April 2016. Norsat 1 was already at the Soyuz launch base in French Guiana when engineers decided it would be unsafe to add the spacecraft to the mission, which took off without Norsat 1 with a large European environmental satellite.

In addition to its vessel detection receiver, Norsat 2 has a VHF data exchange radio to help extend the range of ship-to-shore communications.

Both Norsats were built by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory.

The 95-pound (43-kilogram) WNISAT 1R satellite developed by two Japanese companies Weathernews and Axelspace is kicking off a campaign to observe sea ice in the Arctic, typhoons and volcanic ash plumes.

Five Russian CubeSats also lifted off Friday.

Two of the Russian secondary passengers will take off on Earth-observing missions for Roscosmos, and three others come from Russian universities, including a joint project with Ecuadors Universidad Tecnolgica Equinoccial.

The designers of one of the Russian CubeSats, called Mayak, say it could become one of the brightest objects in the night sky. The crowd-funded satellite, developed at the Moscow Polytechnic University, will unfurl a 65-square-foot (6-square-meter) pyramid-shaped solar reflector covered in an air-thin metallic film. If the experiment works, the tiny satellite might be the brighter than the International Space Station or Venus as it sails overhead.

Mayaks team says the CubeSat will test out a new aerodynamic braking device that could help clear space debris from orbit.

Fridays rideshare mission was arranged by Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Roscosmos.

The Dutch company Innovative Solutions in Space accommodated most of the CubeSat payloads inside QuadPack deployers. Seattle-based Spaceflight Services booked space for some of the U.S.-owned CubeSats.

Glavkosmos aims to sell more commercial Soyuz medium-lift missions from Russian-operated launch sites. The company lists a launch price of $20 million to $22 million on its website, a cost that could be shared by multiple customers with payloads flying on the same launcher.

Arianespace works with Glavkosmos on commercial Soyuz launches from the Guiana Space Center in South America. Glavkosmos says it acts as a prime contract integrator for all Russian companies involved in Soyuz missions launched from the tropical spaceport in French Guiana.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Watch live: Soyuz rocket with 73 satellites readied for launch - Spaceflight Now

Soyuz rolled out for launch of multinational satellite cluster – Spaceflight Now

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

A Soyuz rocket arrived at a launch pad Tuesday in Kazakhstan for liftoff later this week with a satellite to monitor natural disasters and track forest fires from orbit and 72 secondary payloads from Russia, the United States, Germany, Norway and Japan.

The Russian launchers blastoff is timed for 0636:49 GMT (2:36:49 a.m. EDT; 12:36:49 p.m. Kazakh time) Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Fregat upper stage fastened on top of the three-stage Soyuz-2.1a booster will ignite its main engine seven times to deliver the launchers 73 satellite passengers to three distinct orbits several hundred miles up, then steer the Fregat toward a destructive re-entry over the Indian Ocean more than eight hours after liftoff.

Fridays launch will deploy modified CubeSats from five California-based companies, two student-built German satellites, two Norwegian maritime tracking and communications satellites, a commercial Japanese microsatellite to map Arctic sea ice, two Earth-imaging CubeSats for the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos and three nanosatellites developed by Russian students.

The main payload launching Friday is named Kanopus-V-IK, a Russian government satellite equipped with Earth-viewing cameras to map the planet in color to aid emergency responders, crop managers and environmental scientists. The Kanopus-V-IK satellite, which weighs more than a half-ton (approximately 500 kilograms) and is owned by Roscosmos, also carries an infrared sensor to detect and localize the source of wildfires.

The other 72 satellites stowed aboard the Soyuz rocket range from shoebox- and briefcase-sized CubeSats up to 265 pounds (120 kilograms).

San Francisco-based Planet, owner of more than 100 Dove CubeSats currently looking down on Earth, will add 48 more spacecraft to its fleet with Fridays launch to help the company collect imagery to produce daily global maps.

Eight Lemur CubeSats from Spire Global, another San Francisco company, will blast off in support of weather forecasters, deriving humidity and temperature profiles by measuring GPS navigation signals that pass through Earths atmosphere.

With Fridays launch, Spire will have sent 49 CubeSats into orbit, but not all of them remain operational.

A competitor of Spire, GeoOptics of Pasadena, California, is launching three more of its CICERO CubeSats for commercial weather forecasting, using the same GPS radio occultation technique as the Lemur satellites. GeoOptics launched its first spacecraft last month on an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

The other U.S. company with a payload awaiting liftoff from Baikonur is Tyvak, a launch services broker and small satellite-builder in Southern California. Tyvaks experimental 11-pound (5-kilogram) NanoACE CubeSat will test an attitude control system, command and data handling system, guidance, navigation and control software and actuators, and visible and infrared cameras.

German university students built two satellites launching Friday, including the 265-pound (120-kilogram) Flying Laptop spacecraft from the University of Stuttgarts Institute of Space Systems.

Two Norwegian-owned, Canadian-built microsatellites are heading into orbit to track maritime ship traffic.

In addition to its vessel detection receiver, Norsat 2 has a VHF data exchange radio to help extend the range of ship-to-shore communications.

Both Norsats were built by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory.

The 95-pound (43-kilogram) WNISAT 1R satellite developed by two Japanese companies Weathernews and Axelspace is ready to kick off a campaign to observe sea ice in the Arctic, typhoons and volcanic ash plumes.

Five Russian CubeSats are also counting down to liftoff Friday.

Fridays rideshare mission was arranged by Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Roscosmos.

The Dutch company Innovative Solutions in Space accommodated most of the CubeSat payloads inside QuadPack deployers.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Soyuz rolled out for launch of multinational satellite cluster - Spaceflight Now

Chinese TV broadcasting satellite reaches operational orbit after off … – Spaceflight Now

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

Chinasat 9A pictured with members of the satellites manufacturing and test team. Credit: China Academy of Space Technology

The Chinasat 9A communications satellite has arrived at its operational perch more than 22,000 miles over the equator after a Long March rocket deployed the craft in a lower-than-planned orbit last month due to a roll control error in the launchers third stage, according to Chinas top state-owned aerospace contractor.

The television broadcasting satellite fired its main engine 10 times to recover from an off-target launch aboard a Long March 3B rocket June 18, which placed Chinasat 9A into an orbit stretching less than halfway to the satellites intended altitude, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. said in a statement.

Chinasat 9As on-board thruster raised the crafts orbit to a circular perch nearly 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers) over the equator, recovering from a launch shortfall that delivered the satellite into an unintended oval orbit ranging between 120 miles (193 kilometers) and 10,165 miles (16,360 kilometers) in altitude.

The Long March 3B rocket aimed to place Chinasat 9A into an elliptical transfer orbit that peaked at the satellites planned operating altitude more than 22,000 miles up, but an error on the launchers third stage led to the inaccurate orbit.

In a statement last week, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. said investigators traced the problem to an anomaly in the third stages roll control thruster, part of the rockets pointing system, during a coast phase between two burns of the upper stages main engine.

The third stages dual-nozzle YF-75 engine, consuming a mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants, ended its first burn around 10 minutes after liftoff June 18. A second third stage engine firing was supposed to propel the Chinasat 9A satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit before the spacecraft separated from the rocket about a half-hour into the mission.

Chinasat 9A maneuvered into a circular geostationary orbit over the equator with its own fuel supply, arriving at a parking slot at 101.4 degrees east longitude July 5. The satellite is working normally, Chinese officials said, and Chinasat 9As 24 Ku-band transponders have been switched on for testing.

Based on the DFH-4 satellite design built by the China Academy of Space Technology, Chinasat 9A is Chinas first domestically-made communications satellite for direct-to-home television broadcasting, according to China Satcom, the crafts owner and operator.

Chinasat 9A is designed toprovide television broadcasts and other media services to China Satcom customers in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the company said.

Chinese officials have not said how much extra fuel the satellite needed for its unplanned orbit-raising burns, but Chinasat 9A had to tap into some of its propellant reserve, likely shortening its expected 15-year mission.

Engineers continue investigating the failure of Chinas larger heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket during a July 2 launch, which destroyed an experimental Chinese communications satellite before it could reach orbit.

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Chinese TV broadcasting satellite reaches operational orbit after off ... - Spaceflight Now

Photos: NASA’s TDRS-M satellite being readied for upcoming launch – Spaceflight Now

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

CAPE CANAVERAL With the Atlas 5 rocket that will boost it into space now assembled and waiting, a $408 million NASA communications satellite is in final preparations for its science data relay mission.

The Tracking and Data Relay satellite-M, or TDRS-M, will be carried aloft by United Launch Alliance on Aug. 3 from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. A 40-minute morning launch window opens at 9:02 a.m. EDT (1302 GMT).

Built by Boeing, the geosynchronous spacecraft will act like a relay station 22,300 miles above Earth to receive telemetry, voice, video and scientific data from lower orbiting platforms like the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope and beam the signals to a central ground hub.

The satellite will become the 12th TDRS placed in space since 1983 and extend the constellation well into the 2020s, providing near continuous connectivity to spacecraft that would otherwise be in range of ground stations 15 percent of each orbit.

TDRS-M, standing 27 feet tall, currently resides at the Astrotech satellite processing facility in Titusville, Florida, having been fueled to its launch mass of 7,610 pounds.

It was shown to the news media today.

The craft arrived in Florida on June 23. Functional testing of the satellite bus, payload and propulsion system was completed by July 6 and propellant loading wrapped up on Tuesday, July 11.

We are right on schedule, said Paul Buchanan, TDRS deputy project manager.

The next step will occur next week when the craft is encapsulated in the Atlas 5 rockets 14-foot-diameter, 42-foot-tall aluminum payload shroud that will protect the delicate satellite for the trek out of the atmosphere.

Then, the payload will be hauled through Kennedy Space Center to the Vertical Integration Facility at Complex 41 for lifting and mating to the launch vehicle on July 25.

The rocket arrived by sea on June 26, sailing into Port Canaveral from the manufacturing plant in Decatur, Alabama, aboard the Delta Mariner cargo ship.

On Wednesday, July 12, United Launch Alliance workers began stacking the two-stage Atlas 5 rocket, designated AV-074, by erecting the first stage aboard the mobile launch platform parked inside the VIF.

The combined interstage, Centaur upper stage and boattail of the fairing, all pre-integrated together off-site, was hoisted atop the first stage earlier today.

With the basic buildup complete, initial power-on testing begins tomorrow.

The 191-foot-tall rocket will be wheeled to the pad on Aug. 1 at 9 a.m.

Photos by William Harwood

Juno completes historic flyby over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot – SpaceFlight Insider

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

Laurel Kornfeld

July 12th, 2017

Juno completes historic flyby over Jupiters Great Red Spot. Image Credit: NASA

NASAs Juno spacecraft successfully completed the first-ever close flyby of the mysterious storm on Jupiter known as the Great Red Spot, and early images of the phenomenon are already being returned to Earth.

At 9:55 p.m.EDT (6:55 p.m.PDT) on Monday, July 10, only 11 minutes and 33 seconds after reaching perijove, the closest point to Jupiter in its current orbit, the spacecraft flew directly above the 10,000-mile- (16,000-km-) storm at an altitude of 5,600 miles (9,000 km), traveling at approximately 130,000 miles per hour.

All nine of Junos science instruments, including the JunoCam camera, operated successfully during the flyby.

Jupiters Great Red Spot has been observed for at least 350 years, with some sightings reported as early as the 1600s. It is the most powerful storm in the solar system, an anti-cyclone with winds up to 400 miles per hour (644 km/h).

Other missions to Jupiter, including NASAs two Voyager spacecraft in 1979, the Galileo orbiter in the 1990s, and even Cassini on its way to Saturn approached the Great Red Spot and photographed it, but none from a vantage point as close as Junos.

Enhanced-color image of Jupiters Great Red Spot as seen by the probe which was launched on August 5, 2011. This image was produced by Jason Major, a citizen scientist who used data from the JunoCam instrument on the spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Jason Major

This marks the first time a spacecraft has actually flown into the Great Red Spots cloud tops.

Juno entered orbit around Jupiter in July 2016. The recent flyby occurred during its sixth science orbit around the giant planet. Each polar orbit takes 53 days.

For hundreds of years scientists have been observing, wondering and theorizing about Jupiters Great Red Spot, said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Now we have the best pictures ever of this iconic storm. It will take us some time to analyze all the data from not only JunoCam, but [also from] Junos eight science instruments, to shed some new light on the past, present and future of the Great Red Spot.

Juno was launched in August 2011 with the goals of looking beneath Jupiters cloud tops and imaging its auroras to collect data that will shed light on the planets formation, evolution, structure, magnetosphere, and atmosphere.

Data sent back by the spacecraft has already revealed the giant planet to be a turbulent world with polar auroras, a complex interior structure, and huge polar storms.

Scientists hope the flyover of the Great Red Spot will show the storm in unprecedented detail and help them answer questions that have puzzled many for decades and even centuries.

Candy Hansen of NASAs Planetary Science Institute noted that three images, each from a different perspective, were taken during the flyby. One image captured the storms northern edge; a second was taken directly above its center, and a third, conducted with a methane filter, observed it from the south.

NASA initially reported that the earliest images from the flyby would not be available until Thursday, July 13, or Friday, July 14; however, the first raw, unprocessed images were put on JunoCams website on Wednesday, July 12. The photos will need more processing for details to become visible.

Many questions remain regarding the Great Red Spot, which scientists hope the images and other data collected by Juno will answer. However, citizen scientists have already begun working on some of the imagery that the spacecraft has produced.

I have been following the Juno mission since it launched, said Jason Major, a JunoCam citizen scientist and a graphic designer from Warwick, Rhode Island. It is always exciting to see these new raw images of Jupiter as they arrive. But it is even more thrilling to take the raw images and turn them into something that people can appreciate. That is what I live for.

Capable of detecting radiation emanating from six different levels of clouds, Junos microwave radiometer should inform scientists about activity occurring up to 340 miles (547 kilometers) beneath the cloud tops.

Even after observing it with both ground-based telescopes and space probes, researchers still do not know the source of the storms power, how deeply it extends beyond the planets cloud tops, what makes it red, and how long it has been active.

They also do not understand why the Great Red Spot, which has a diameter larger than that of Earth, has been shrinking in recent decades and changing shape from round to oval.

Photos taken at various distances from the Great Red Spot will be returned before closeups. Juno has already confirmed activity is taking place as deep as 31 miles (50 kilometers) below Jupiters cloud tops, where no sunlight penetrates.

These highly anticipated images of Jupiters Great Red Spot are the perfect storm of art and science. With data from [the two] Voyager [probes], Galileo, New Horizons, Hubble and now Juno, we have a better understanding of the composition and evolution of this iconic feature, said Jim Green, NASAs director of planetary science. We are pleased to share the beauty and excitement of space science with everyone.

In upcoming flybys, Juno will map out the Great Red Spots gravitational field; search for possible mass below the cloud tops that could be influencing the storm, and look for signs of water clouds, ammonia ice, and lightning beneath the cloud tops.

Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin Gill

Tagged: Great Red Spot Juno Lead Stories NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory perijove

Laurel Kornfeld is an amateur astronomer and freelance writer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science from Swinburne Universitys Astronomy Online program. Her writings have been published online in The Atlantic, Astronomy magazines guest blog section, the UK Space Conference, the 2009 IAU General Assembly newspaper, The Space Reporter, and newsletters of various astronomy clubs. She is a member of the Cranford, NJ-based Amateur Astronomers, Inc. Especially interested in the outer solar system, Laurel gave a brief presentation at the 2008 Great Planet Debate held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD.

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Juno completes historic flyby over Jupiter's Great Red Spot - SpaceFlight Insider

Soyuz-2.1a to launch assortment of satellite cargo – SpaceFlight Insider

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

Jerome Strach

July 13th, 2017

Installation of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket with Kanopus-V-IK on the launcher system, July 11, 2017. Photo Credit: Roscosmos

A Russian-built Soyuz-2.1a rocket will launch from Russias Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, July 14, 2017, at 09:36 MSK time (06:36 GMT / 2:36 a.m. EDT). Its primary mission will be an orbiting spacecraft, known as Kanopus-V-IK, with built-in remote sensing and imaging, along with a cluster of 72 miniature satellites referred to as CubeSats. This secondary cargo will be provided by numerous nations that include Germany, Norway, theUnited States, and Japan.

The rocket is composed of an upper stage named Fregat and two core stages with four boosters strapped to the first stage. The Fregat is designed to have a long life of up to 2 days and is intended to operate autonomously without interference from Earth due to an advanced satellite navigation system. The assortment of cargo requires various orbits achieved by numerous main engine ignitions, timed perfectly to deploy the different satellites several hundred miles above Earth. Upon the release of the multiple satellites, the Fregat will orient itself for an Indian Ocean re-entry that should occur several hours after launch for a safe splashdown.

The Kanopus-V-IK satellite is a Russian government built spacecraft that comes in at 1,043 pounds (473 kilograms) is designed to monitor man-made and natural disasters including severe weather events. Furthermore, it can be used to monitor forest fires with a focus area of 25 m2, along with larger emissions of pollutants discharged into the environment. Thecapability of monitoring land use is an additional benefit allowing some benefit to the agricultural industry, and finally, topographical observations allow for the improved mapping of terrain.

Kanopus-V-IK with its solar arrays extended. Photo Credit: Roscosmos

The hardware consists of various imaging tools that allow for this observational functionality. Acomplex of target equipment (CCA) for the Kanopus-V-IK includes the following:

The secondary cargo consists of various designs and sizes provided by numerous entities from all over the world. Planet Labs(formerly Cosmogia, Inc.) is located in San Francisco,California, and they will have 48 additional Dove CubeSats on board this flight. Another San Francisco company, Spire Global, will also be putting aboard several of their Lemur satellites designed for weather observation.

LEFT: Soyuz-2.1a payload stack prior to Kanopus-V-IK being mounted on top. RIGHT: Kanopus-V-IK being mounted on the payload stack. Photos Credit: Roscosmos

Various students attending University in Germany will also be watching the launch that holds two satellites of theirs, one a rather heavy 265-pound (120 kg) Flying Laptop spacecraft from Stuttgarts Institute of Space Systems.

TechnoSat will be launching technology that helps to investigate and detect strikes of tiny space debris that often occurs where spacecraft are most vulnerable their solar panels. From theTechnical University of Berlin, this experiment will be funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Additionally, there will be five Russian CubeSats as part of the secondary cargo, all of which will be deployed from a Dutch companys QuadPack deploying system designed by Innovative Solutions in Space.

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with Kanopus-V-IK being transported to the launch pad, July 11, 2017. Photo Credit: Roscosmos

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with Kanopus-V-IK being transported to the launch pad, July 11, 2017. Photo Credit: Roscosmos.

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with Kanopus-V-IK being transported to the launch pad, July 11, 2017. Photo Credit: Roscosmos

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with Kanopus-V-IK being transported to the launch pad, July 11, 2017. Photo Credit: Roscosmos.

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with Kanopus-V-IK being erected onto the launch pad, July 11, 2017. Photo Credit: Roscosmos

Underside view of installation of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket with Kanopus-V-IK on the launcher system, July 11, 2017. Photo Credit: Roscosmos.

Installation of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket with Kanopus-V-IK on the launcher system, July 11, 2017. Photo Credit: Roscosmos

Tagged: Baikonur Cosmodrome CubeSats Kanopus-V-IK Lead Stories Roscosmos Soyuz-2-1a

Jerome Strach has worked within the Silicon Valley community for 20 years including software entertainment and film. Along with experience in software engineering, quality assurance, and middle management, he has long been a fan of aerospace and entities within that industry. A voracious reader, a model builder, and student of photography and flight training, most of his spare time can be found focused on launch events and technology advancements including custom mobile app development. Best memory as a child is building and flying Estes rockets with my father. @Romn8tr

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Soyuz-2.1a to launch assortment of satellite cargo - SpaceFlight Insider

First images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot reach Earth – Spaceflight Now

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

STORY WRITTEN FORCBS NEWS& USED WITH PERMISSION

Two days after NASAs Juno spacecraft streaked over Jupiters Great Red Spot, pictures of the solar systems largest, most powerful storm, have been transmitted to Earth, giving eager scientist close-up views of the 10,000-mile-wide anticyclone where 400-mph winds have been howling for at least 187 years and possibly much longer.

The solar-powered Juno reached the low point of its 53-day orbit around Jupiter, at 9:55 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Monday, passing within about 2,200 miles of the planets cloud tops. Eleven-and-a-half minutes later, it made its first pass directly over the Great Red Spot at an altitude of about 5,600 miles and a velocity of some 130,000 mph.

The spacecrafts camera JunoCam and its eight other science instruments were all operating at close approach and the first raw, unprocessed pictures were posted on the camera website early Wednesday.

Additional processing is expected to bring out much more detail in the images that, when coupled with data from Junos other instruments, will shed more light on the nature of the storm and presumably help answer questions that have baffled scientists for nearly two centuries if not longer.

Despite long-term observations by ground-based telescopes and a variety of spacecraft, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Voyager probes and the Galileo orbiter, scientists still do not understand what powers the storm, how deep it extends below Jupiters cloud tops, how long it has swirled or even the source of its reddish hue.

Likewise, no one knows why the Great Red Spot has shrunk over the past several decades, becoming more circular than oval, whether the reduction is a transient phenomenon or an indicator that the storm may be dissipating.

Not a lot is known, Scott Bolton, principal investigator with NASAs Juno probe, told CBS News in an interview Monday. Heres the largest and most fierce storm in the entire solar system and its lasted hundreds of years, so thats a lot different than anything else weve ever studied.

The question is, how can it last that long? Whats powering it, hows it really working inside?

With any luck, the Juno spacecraft might may provide at least some of the answers to Boltons questions.

While NASAs Voyager spacecraft captured spectacular zoomed-in images of the Great Red Spot during flybys in 1979, as did the Galileo orbiter in the 1990s and the Cassini probe during its voyage to Saturn, they were not nearly as close to Jupiter as Juno is at the low point of its orbit.

JunoCam is a relatively wide-angle camera intended to provide context for Junos other instruments and it was added to the mission primarily to engage the public. Because Juno is spinning, the cameras images show thin strips of the cloudscape below that can be stitched together later to form a full picture.

Juno will make repeated passes over the Great Red Spot and were so close, I think were going to blow their stuff away, Bolton said of earlier missions. Well see when we see it. Eventually, well be able to make a bit of a movie, Im hoping, that you wont have been able to see before. Well definitely get an up-close-and-personal view, and hopefully be able to provide something that lets the viewer feel like theyre riding along.

Launched Aug. 5, 2011, the solar-powered Juno picked up a gravitational boost during a close flyby of Earth in October 2013, putting the craft on a trajectory to intersect Jupiter. Six years later, on July 4, 2016, Junos main engine fired to put the craft into an initial 53-day polar orbit.

Mission managers originally planned to maneuver Juno into a 14-day science orbit, but they opted not to use the main engine again because of a potential problem with the propellant pressurization system. That will stretch out the time needed to complete the missions planned observations, but it has no impact on the quality of the data.

The unprocessed JunoCam images of the Great Red Spot will be enhanced to bring out subtle details and other data. Scientists are especially eager to learn how far down into the atmosphere the huge storm might extend. Junos microwave radiometer can detect radiation coming from six cloud levels, allowing scientists to get an indirect view of whats going on as deep as 340 miles below the visible cloud tops.

Earlier Juno observations of other regions show there are motions going on deep in Jupiter that we did not expect, Bolton said.

Even 50 kilometers down it doesnt seem to be behaving the way we thought, he said. Most scientists believed that as soon as you drop below the sunlit clouds and you got into where the sunlight didnt reach that everything would kind of be uniform and boring. And thats not the case. We see quite a bit of variability.

As for how deep the Great Red Spot might extend, nobody knows, Bolton said.

Junos equipped to see below the cloud tops, he said. We will compare how Jupiter looks underneath its cloud tops at different latitudes with the part where you go right over the Great Red Spot and see if it looks any different. Well look several hundred kilometers down in this first pass.

During future passes over the Great Red Spot, Bolton said Juno will map out the gravitational field below and around the storm to find out if there might be a blob of mass far below the cloud tops that could play a role in the storms persistence.

We will not look at that on this flyby but some future one, Bolton said. The first (pass) is just look remotely, well see down a few hundred kilometers. Well sort of just investigate how does the veneer of Jupiter match with whats underneath.

Well also see the dynamics and the sheer beauty of the Great Red Spot for the first time, he added. Well search for lightning, signals of maybe water clouds or ammonia ice coming up through this region, we just dont know what to expect. And one of the things Ive learned from Juno already, even if I thought I knew what to expect, dont believe it too much.

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First images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot reach Earth - Spaceflight Now

Redheads, a NSW town called Orange wants you | The Border Mail – The Border Mail

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

11 Jul 2017, 8:30 p.m.

Ginger pride to rule as redheads rally for record.

GINGER CHEER: Orange will be seeking to achieve all the fun of this Ginger Pride event in Melbourne when it hosts a Guinness World Record Attempt for the most redheads.

Hundreds of redheads might have gathered at ginger pride rallies and record attempts in other cities but where else is more appropriate thanOrange?

Rachael Brookingis planning to start big with a Guinness World Records attempt on getting the most redheads in one place.

Thered-letter day is September 30 when a four-hour festival of all things red will be celebrated at Wade Park culminating in the attempt to better the current record which stands at1672.

FOR MUM: Record attempt and fund raising organiser Rachael Brooking with a photo of her mum and fellow redhead, Frances Kelly.

Mrs Brooking said it would raise money for research into Huntingtons disease which claimed her mother Frances Kelly, also a redhead.

She said she had just launched the festival and was still working on getting famous redheads and sponsors to attend.

Ive had a really good response so far, she said.

GINGER MEGGS: There will be plenty of character on Orange's red-letter day.

Central Western Daily

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Redheads, a NSW town called Orange wants you | The Border Mail - The Border Mail

There’s a Strange Reason Why ‘Gen-X’ Author Douglas Coupland Put a Giant van Gogh Head in a Vineyard – artnet News

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

Following a worldwide search for a Vincent van Gogh doppelgnger, Canadian author-turned-artist Douglas Coupland has unveiled a giant bust of the Dutch artist that he created with the help of 3D scanning at a Canadian vineyard.

Coupland was commissioned by Anthony von Mandl, owner of Martins Lane Vineyard in Kelowna, to create the work, the first in a series titled Redheads that apparently looks to connect thefact that both Pinot Noir grapes and red hair are the results of genetic mutations. To wit, the grapes are the result of natural mutations in Burgundys vineyards over centuries, whilered hair is a fluke in human genetics. Both represent only2 percent of their respective populations, according to Coupland.

This genetic magic in both redheads and Pinot Noir grapes is a microcosm of the way in which all life on earth evolves with time, writes Coupland.

The likeness of van Gogh furtherif somewhat gruesomelyextends to the fact that the bronze bust is sans one ear, though a statement from the winery says the sideways positioning of the sculpture suggests listening to the ground to hear the grapes growing. A quizzical viewer might note that while van Goghs red hair is the ostensible heartof the overall concept, the sculpture is in fact entirely grey.

Douglas Coupland with vineyard owner Anthony van Mandl. Courtesy Martins Lane Winery

Couplandismost famous for his 1991 debut novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, which sparked the monikernow cemented forever in popular culture. He began making art in 2000 and has had numerous public artworks on display around the globe.

This past fall, Daniel Baker, an actor from Dorset, England, won Couplands van Gogh lookalike competition. At the time, Coupland wrote on the competitions website: Id spent months looking at van Gogh lookalikes on a computer screen, and then suddenly there was this man, this Vincent van Gogh, hopping out of a Vancouver taxi, looking like hed just stepped out of the year 1889.

Baker was selected out of1,250 entries from 37 countries, following a popular vote open to the public that drew 500,000 submissions. The prize included a5,000 award.

Bakers head was 3D-scanned usinghundreds of cameras to generate multidimensional facial data. The data was then used to create a likeness of van Goghs head.

Though this is the first commissioned work in a planned series, there is no word yet on what other artists the winery plans to work with. Asked why the winery started with van Gogh, a spokesman told artnet News: Simply put, Vincent van Gogh is probably the most famous redhead that ever lived.

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There's a Strange Reason Why 'Gen-X' Author Douglas Coupland Put a Giant van Gogh Head in a Vineyard - artnet News

New research uses satellites to predict end of volcanic eruptions – UH System Current News

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

Erupting Piton de la Fournaise volcano. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey.

Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Mnoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) recently discovered that infrared satellite data could be used to predict when lava flow-forming eruptions will end.

Mt. Etna from space. Credit: NASA and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team.

Using NASA satellite data, Estelle Bonny, a graduate student in the SOEST Department of Geology and Geophysics, and her mentor, Hawaii Institute for Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) researcher Robert Wright, tested a hypothesis first published in 1981 that detailed how lava flow rate changes during a typical effusive volcanic eruption. The model predicted that once a lava flow-forming eruption begins, the rate at which lava exits the vent quickly rises to a peak and then reduces to zero over a much longer period of timewhen the rate reaches zero, the eruption has ended.

HIGP faculty developed a system that uses infrared measurements made by NASAs MODIS sensors to detect and measure the heat emissions from erupting volcanoesheat is used to retrieve the rate of lava flow.

The system has been monitoring every square kilometer of Earths surface up to four times per day, every day, since 2000, said Bonny. During that time, we have detected eruptions at more than 100 different volcanoes around the globe. The database for this project contains 104 lava flow-forming eruptions from 34 volcanoes with which we could test this hypothesis.

Once peak flow was reached, the researchers determined where the volcano was along the predicted curve of decreasing flow and therefore predict when the eruption will end. While the model has been around for decades, this is the first time satellite data was used with it to test how useful this approach is for predicting the end of an effusive eruption. The test was successful.

Being able to predict the end of a lava flow-forming eruption is really important because it will greatly reduce the disturbance caused to those affected by the eruption, for example, those who live close to the volcano and have been evacuated.

This study is potentially relevant for the Hawaii Island and its active volcanoes, said Wright. A future eruption of Mauna Loa may be expected to display the kind of pattern of lava discharge rate that would allow us to use this method to try to predict the end of eruption from space.

In the future, the researchers plan to use this approach during an ongoing eruption as a near-real time predictive tool.

Map of 34 volcanoes used to test hypothesis. Modified from Google Maps.

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New research uses satellites to predict end of volcanic eruptions - UH System Current News

NASA Images Show Gradual Separation of Massive New Antarctic Iceberg – Space.com

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

An image from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite shows a crack in a the Larsen C ice shelf on July 12, 2017.

Multiple NASA satellites have captured images of the dramatic and long-awaited birth of one of the largest icebergs ever recorded, which broke off an Antarctic ice shelf this week.

The enormous iceberg contains more than 1.1 trillion tons (1 trillion metric tons) of water and is about the size of Delaware. Its separation from Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf occurred sometime between July 10 and today (July 12), and was first reported by scientists with the U.K.-based Project Midas, an Antarctic research group. The calving was confirmed by satellite images from the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. [How Satellites Watched the New Iceberg's Birth Over Time]

This animation shows the growth of the crack in the Larsen C ice shelf, from 2006 to 2017, as recorded by NASA/USGS Landsat satellites.

Now, images from NASA satellites show the iceberg's gradual separation from the ice shelf. The crack in the ice shelf that formed the iceberg was first observed in the early 1960s, but remained dormant for decades, according to a statement from NASA. The animation above includes images going back to 2006, collected by NASA and the United States Geologic Survey's Landsat satellites.

The location of the new iceberg and the Larsen C ice shelf.

The rift in the ice shelf began to spread northward at a significant rate in 2014, and its progress accelerated in 2016, leading scientists to assume it would eventually create a separate iceberg. Between June 24 and 27, the speed of rift tripled, according to scientists with the Midas Project.

In November 2016, the rift was estimated to be about 300 feet (91 m) wide and 70 miles (112 km) long. Measurements from this summer put the rift at 124 miles (200 km) long.

The MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite use thermal data to show temperature differences in the ice and seawater. In a false-color image taken today (July 12), the crack that created the iceberg is visible as a thin, pink line down the mostly purple ice sheet. The warmer temperature of the crack indicates that ocean water lies not far below the surface.

The Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) on the Landsat 8 satellite also captured temperature data on June 17. The false-color image shows the slightly warmer crack (light blue) running through the very cold ice shelf (mostly white). The image shows warmer areas in orange, including regions of very thin sea ice. [Landsat: Four Decades of Images and Data]

TheThermal Infrared Sensor(TIRS) onLandsat 8captured a false-color image of the crack in the Larsen C ice shelf.

The Larsen C ice shelf is a floating ice shelf, which means the separation of the iceberg will not cause ocean levels to rise, unlike icebergs that calf from land-based ice shelves. Scientists with the Midas Project said they have not found evidence that the iceberg's formation was directly caused by climate change. However, the scientists said in a statement that this is the farthest back that the ice front has been in recorded history, and they are "going to be watching very carefully for signs that the rest of the shelf is becoming unstable."

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

NASA Images Show Gradual Separation of Massive New Antarctic Iceberg - Space.com

Watch a Giant Sunspot Whirl Across the Sun in Incredible NASA Video – Space.com

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has captured a stunning view of a sunspot cascading from tail to core across the sun's surface.

As the sun moves into a several-year period of low solar activity, known as the solar minimum, there are fewer of these black blemishes. The word "sunspot" may suggest that the feature is diminutive, and the sun's massive size does dwarf the seemingly floating feature by comparison. But don't let the name mislead you: Sunspots are actually larger than Earth. [In Photos: Amazing Sunspots on Earth's Star]

This sunspot appeared after two days of a spot-free solar surface.

The new video, shared by NASA yesterday (July 12), offers a model to grasp how distance can distort our comprehension of scale.

Sunspots are abundant when solar activity is high, and these spots will not become plentiful again until at least 2020, NASA officialssaid in a video caption. Because of the drop in solar activity, the sun was speckle-free for two days before this swirling sunspot appeared. The video was captured last week between about July 4 and July 11, according to NASA.

This image of a massive sunspot on the sun shows the full size of the feature as compared to the Earth (inset). This image is a still from a NASA video captured between July 4 and 11 by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Follow Doris Elin Salazar on Twitter @salazar_elin.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

NASA shows us Jupiter as we’ve never seen it before – New York Post

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

These photos are out of this world!

NASA just released new photos of Jupiter that show the closest look weve ever had of the planets Great Red Spot.

The snaps, taken from the space agencys Juno space probe and released Wednesday, captured the gas giants planet-sized storm from 5,600 miles away, CNN reports.

Jupiters mysterious Great Red Spot is probably the best-known feature of Jupiter, said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, ahead of the probes deep dive.

This monumental storm has raged on the solar systems biggest planet for centuries. Now, Juno and her cloud-penetrating science instruments will dive in to see how deep the roots of this storm go, and help us understand how this giant storm works and what makes it so special.

Juno blasted off from Earth in 2011 and has been orbiting the far-off planet for one Jupiter year, racking up 71 million miles in the process, according to NASA.

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NASA shows us Jupiter as we've never seen it before - New York Post

House spending bill increases NASA planetary science, cuts NOAA weather satellite program – SpaceNews

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

The House bill includes funding for a Europa lander mission, which was not funded in the administration's request. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

WASHINGTON A fiscal year 2018 spending bill that will be marked up by the House Appropriations Committee July 13 includes record funding levels for NASAs planetary science program, but severely cuts a NOAA weather satellite program.

The committee released July 12 the report accompanying the commerce, justice and science (CJS) appropriations bill, which its CJS subcommittee approved on a voice vote June 29. At that time, the committee had released only a draft of the bill, with limited details about how the nearly $19.9 billion provided to NASA would be allocated.

In NASAs science account, planetary science emerges as a big winner, with the report allocating $2.12 billion, a record level. That amount is $191 million above the White House request and $275 million above what Congress provided in 2017.

Some of that additional funding will go to missions to Jupiters icy moon Europa, thought to have a subsurface ocean of liquid water that could sustain life. It provides $495 million for both the Europa Clipper orbiter mission and a follow-on Europa Lander, to be launched by 2022 and 2024, respectively. The administrations budget request sought $425 million, devoted solely to Europa Clipper.

The report also provides additional funding for Mars exploration, including $62 million for a proposed 2022 orbiter mission. NASA sought just $2.9 million for studies of future Mars missions, raising worries among scientists that NASA would not be able to get an orbiter, with telecommunications and reconnaissance capabilities, ready in time for the 2022 launch opportunity.

Another Mars mission concept, a small helicopter that would fly with the Mars 2020 rover mission, would get $12 million in the House bill. That technology demonstration concept has been studied for some time as a possible complement to the rover, but NASA has not made a formal decision about including it on the mission.

The report includes broad support for other planetary programs, including $60 million for near Earth asteroid searches and development of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft. That spacecraft would collide with the moon of one such asteroid to measure the ability to deflect potentially hazardous objects.

The report also directs NASA to work with industry on a report on the utilization of asteroid-based natural resources to support U.S. government and commercial space exploration missions and timeframes for when such resource extraction could possibly occur.

While the report provides additional funding, and direction, for planetary science, it cuts funding for NASAs Earth science program. It gives that program a little more than $1.7 billion, $50 million below the request and more than $200 million below what it received in 2017.

The report does not address plans by the administration, in its 2018 budget request, to terminate five planned or ongoing Earth science missions. It does support full funding of the Landsat-9 spacecraft under development as well as a joint mission with the Indian space agency ISRO to fly a synthetic aperture radar spacecraft.

NASAs astrophysics program received $822 million in the report, $5.3 million above the administrations request and $72 million above 2017 levels. That includes $126.6 million, as requested, for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission, but with language expressing concern about potential cost growth in this program.

Later in the report, the committee directs NASA to ensure WFIRST is compatible with a proposed future starshade that could allow the space telescope to directly image exoplanets. NASA officials said earlier this year they have yet to decide whether to incorporate that compatibility into WFIRST, and will likely defer that decision until at least late this year.

The James Webb Space Telescope would get $533.7 million in the bill, the same as requested, while NASAs heliophysics program would get $677.9 million, also in line with the administrations request.

The report also specifies funding for several space technology and exploration programs. Under space technology, nuclear propulsion work would receive $35 million, including a requirement for a report on budgets and milestones needed in order to conduct a nuclear thermal demonstration project by 2020. NASAs exploration program includes $150 million for its Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) in order to develop a habitat that can be tested in low Earth orbit in 2020.

The Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (CATALYST), which includes partnerships with industry to develop commercial lunar landers, would get $30 million. Among the companies involved in the Lunar CATALYST program is Moon Express, which released plans July 12 for a series of commercial lunar lander and sample return missions.

Weather satellite funding

Besides NASA, the CJS bill also funds NOAA and its weather satellite programs. The agencys two major current programs, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R (GOES-R) and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), would receive the requested amounts of $518.5 million and $775.8 million, respectively.

However, the report severely cuts funding for the Polar Follow-On program, which supports development of the third and fourth JPSS satellites. The program received $328.9 million in 2017 and was projected, from the 2017 request, to receive $586 million in 2018. However, the administration requested only $180 million for the program, citing plans to potentially stretch out the schedule for launching those missions.

The committee, in the report, was disappointed with the lack of details about those plans. The request proposes a dramatic and incipient re-plan of this program. Yet the request fails to assess the purported new mission designs impacts on constellation availability, or to provide an updated gap analysis, or new annual or lifecycle cost estimates, it states, providing just $50 million for Polar Follow-On.

The committee was more generous with the Solar Weather Follow-On mission, also known as Solar Weather Forward Observatory. The administration requested just $500,000 for the program, which received $5 million in 2017, stating that it wanted to study alternative approaches to replace existing space weather monitoring spacecraft in the early 2020s.

The report provides $8.5 million for the program in 2018, which is still far less than what NOAA projected spending in 2018 in last years budget request. The committee directed NOAA to refine the Space Weather Follow-On concept and develop mission requirements for a cost-effective capable space system.

The full House Appropriations Committee will mark up the bill, with the potential for amendments, July 13. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not started work on its version of a spending bill.

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House spending bill increases NASA planetary science, cuts NOAA weather satellite program - SpaceNews

Using nanotechnology to develop more targeted treatments for drug … – Outbreak News Today

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Danzig

Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem, especially among a type of bacteria that are classified as Gram-negative. These bacteria have two cell membranes, making it more difficult for drugs to penetrate and kill the cells.

Researchers from MIT and other institutions are hoping to use nanotechnology to develop more targeted treatments for these drug-resistant bugs. In a new study, they report that an antimicrobial peptide packaged in a silicon nanoparticle dramatically reduced the number of bacteria in the lungs of mice infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a disease causing Gram-negative bacterium that can lead to pneumonia.

This approach, which could also be adapted to target other difficult-to-treat bacterial infections such as tuberculosis, is modeled on a strategy that the researchers have previously used to deliver targeted cancer drugs.

There are a lot of similarities in the delivery challenges. In infection, as in cancer, the name of the game is selectively killing something, using a drug that has potential side effects, says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of MITs Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

Bhatia is the senior author of the study, which appears in the journalAdvanced Materials. The lead author is Ester Kwon, a research scientist at the Koch Institute. Other authors are Matthew Skalak, an MIT graduate and former Koch Institute research technician; Alessandro Bertucci, a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California at San Diego; Gary Braun, a postdoc at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute; Francesco Ricci, an associate professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata; Erkki Ruoslahti, a professor at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute; and Michael Sailor, a professor at UCSD.

Synergistic peptides

As bacteria grow increasingly resistant to traditional antibiotics, one alternative that some researchers are exploring is antimicrobial peptides naturally occurring defensive proteins that can kill many types of bacteria by disrupting cellular targets such as membranes and proteins or cellular processes such as protein synthesis.

A few years ago, Bhatia and her colleagues began investigating the possibility of delivering antimicrobial peptides in a targeted fashion using nanoparticles. They also decided to try combining an antimicrobial peptide with another peptide that would help the drug cross bacterial membranes. This concept was built on previous work suggesting that these tandem peptides could kill cancer cells effectively.

For the antimicrobial peptide, the researchers chose a synthetic bacterial toxin called KLAKAK. They attached this toxin to a variety of trafficking peptides, which interact with bacterial membranes. Of 25 tandem peptides tested, the best one turned out to be a combination of KLAKAK and a peptide called lactoferrin, which was 30 times more effective at killing Pseudomonas aeruginosa than the individual peptides were on their own. It also had minimal toxic effects on human cells.

To further minimize potential side effects, the researchers packaged the peptides into silicon nanoparticles, which prevent the peptides from being released too soon and damaging tissue while en route to their targets. For this study, the researchers delivered the particles directly into the trachea, but for human use, they plan to design a version that could be inhaled.

After the nanoparticles were delivered to mice with an aggressive bacterial infection, those mice had about one-millionth the number of bacteria in their lungs as untreated mice, and they survived longer. The researchers also found that the peptides could kill strains of drug-resistant Pseudomonas taken from patients and grown in the lab.

Adapting concepts

Infectious disease is a fairly new area of research for Bhatias lab, which has spent most of the past 17 years developing nanomaterials to treat cancer. A few years ago, she began working on a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop targeted treatments for infections of the brain, which led to the new lung infection project.

Weve adapted a lot of the same concepts from our cancer work, including boosting local concentration of the cargo and then making the cargo selectively interact with the target, which is now bacteria instead of a tumor, Bhatia says.

She is now working on incorporating another peptide that would help to target antimicrobial peptides to the correct location in the body. A related project involves using trafficking peptides to help existing antibiotics that kill Gram-positive bacteria to cross the double membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, enabling them to kill those bacteria as well.

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Using nanotechnology to develop more targeted treatments for drug ... - Outbreak News Today

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