Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Saturday, July 28, 2018
MeerKAT radio telescope inaugurated as precursor to larger SKA project
MeerKAT radio telescope inaugurated as precursor to larger SKA project: After a decade in design and construction, the MeerKAT radio telescope, which is located about 90km from Carnarvon in the Northern Cape, was inaugurated earlier this month. Simone Liedtke tells us a bit more about this step towards building an international enterprise.
Chris Carberry Testifies Before Senator Ted Cruz On Manned Mars Missions
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/acd5ddb5-542e-474b-a78c-20565ddee853/2928178B732DF6458D7115B695FD508A.mr.-chris-carberry-testimony.pdf
Friday, July 27, 2018
Thursday, July 26, 2018
JPL's 'Martians' Are Coming to Griffith Observatory
JPL's 'Martians' Are Coming to Griffith Observatory: On July 30, when Mars and Earth are closer than they've been since 2003, JPL scientists and engineers will be at a free public event at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Delving Into The Desert To Determine If Mars Is too Dry For Life
Delving into the desert to determine if Mars is too dry for life
Researchers collect samples from the surface of the Atacama Desert in Chile, going a few centimeters into the ground
Is Mars too dry support life? To find out, NASA sent a team from the Ames Research Center to the Atacama Desert in Chile. Infamous for being the driest place on Earth, the purpose of the Atacama study was sent to identify the limit is that divides the point where microorganisms can live, and where the best they can hope for is very temporary survival, and where Mars lands on this scale.
Water is one of, if not the, most important factors for life to exist. All life as we know it is dependent on water to support even the most basic of biological functions, and if there is no water, there is no life. It's for this reason that astrobiologists look for water before considering any other factor in determining if some place is habitable. That's because you can have a world with the perfect temperature, an Earth-like atmosphere, low radiation, and all the other elements needed for life, but if there isn't any water, none of that matters.
Such is the case in the Atacama Desert on the west coast of South America. It has a beautifully Earth-like environment, since it's on Earth, but it lacks one thing – water. In fact, it's about as close to Mars as you can get on Earth, with rainfall measured in millimeters per decade. Some areas are so dry that not even bacteria can survive. The nitrates fall from the sky that bacteria would normally gobble up, but these remain uneaten. In addition, the 10 million-year-old desert is surprisingly cool with a Mediterranean climate, but that only means there's less energy available for growth and reproduction.
The question is, where's the dividing line? When does it become too dry for life? According to NASA, the Atacama is a very good place to find out because this 1,000 km-long (620-mi) strip of land isn't uniformly dry, but is less dry at the southern edge and drier in the northern region. The idea is that by looking at variations in the extreme environment, it should be possible to find out when the water level drops below the biological minimum.
The important point is to determine when a collection of microbes are living or just surviving. That is, are the organisms feeding, growing, and reproducing, or are they just carrying out very basic biological functions to stay alive. If the former, then the colony will continue and change with each succeeding generation. If the latter, then the microbes will fade out in one generation and even sporulation (when nearly dormant forms of bacteria are formed) will be unable to keep them from eventually dying.
One way of seeing the difference is to look for signs of stress. Microbes that are just hanging on show no signs of stress, but ones that are growing and reproducing in a very harsh environment will be stressed. This will show in changes in the structure of the cells, like in the lipid molecules that form the outer surface of the cell membrane, which become more rigid. If this rigidity is missing from a very dry sample, then the microbes are not stressed and are, therefore, just surviving.
Another thing the team looked at was protein racemization. This is a standard dating technique used in archaeology and other fields that looks at how amino acids change after an organism dies.
Proteins and the amino acids that make up cells are complex, asymmetric molecules. In plain English, they come in left-hand and right-hand versions like gloves or shoes. In all terrestrial life, these molecules are left-handed. However, after an organism dies, this slowly changes as amino acids reform to become right-handed. This happens at a predictable rate until the left-handed molecules turning right-handed and the right-handed turning left-handed even out to achieve a 50/50 ratio.
What the team found was that in the driest regions, the ratio indicates that these have been dead for at least 10,000 years with remnants of life extremely rare.
What this says for Mars isn't very encouraging. The driest parts of the Atacama are almost entirely lifeless, with what little is there probably imports blown on the wind, but it's a paradise compared to Mars. NASA says the surface of the Red Planet is 1,000 times drier than the worst that the Atacama has to offer. This means that the chances of finding life on the Martian surface are very close to nil. But it may be possible to find remnants of life that once existed during the wetter epochs on ancient Mars.
"Before we go to Mars, we can use the Atacama like a natural laboratory and, based on our results, adjust our expectations for what we might find when we get there," says Wilhelm. "Knowing the surface of Mars today might be too dry for life to grow, but that traces of microbes can last for thousands of years helps us design better instruments to not only search for life on and under the planet's surface, but to try and unlock the secrets of its distant past."
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Jupiter Moons-Anything Goes
Anything Goes
Scientists recently discovered that the solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter, has 12 more moons, bringing the total to 79 natural satellites circling the fifth planet.
The odd part of this discovery is that one of the newly found moons is on a crash course with others circling the gas giant, the Guardian reported.
Scientists discovered the dozen satellites while searching for a mysterious ninth planet believed to hide beyond Neptune’s orbit, the farthest planet of the solar system.
Interestingly, nine of the newly discovered moons circle in a direction opposite to the planet’s spin – known as a retrograde orbit. Two others circle in the same direction as Jupiter’s spin – prograde – and are located closer to the planet.
The twelfth new moon – and odd one out – circles in a prograde fashion, but its orbit is located near the moons that follow a retrograde movement. A collision is likely, the researchers said.
Named Valetudo, after the Roman goddess of health and hygiene, the moon is only less than half a mile wide.
“Valetudo is … driving down the highway on the wrong side of the road,” said Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, who led the effort that discovered the moons.
The British newspaper quipped that the name choice might be ironic, since “vale tudo” – meaning “anything goes” in Portuguese – is a form of mixed martial arts originating in Brazil.
Saturday, July 21, 2018
Two Mystery Customers Are Paying $150 Million each To Take A Ride Around The Moon
http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-moon-mission-falcon-heavy-rocket-experience-2018-1?amp%3Butm_medium=referral
Friday, July 20, 2018
'Storm Chasers' on Mars Searching for Dusty Secrets
'Storm Chasers' on Mars Searching for Dusty Secrets: Scientists with NASA's Mars orbiters have been waiting years for an event like the current Mars global dust storm.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Israel To Launch Its First Spacecraft Toward The Moon
Israel to launch its first spacecraft to the moon
SpaceIL and the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries plan to launch their unmanned craft in December hoping to become the first non-governmental entity to land a spacecraft on the moon. (Eliran Avital)
Israel announced Tuesday that it will launch its first lunar mission in December 2018, hoping to become the fourth country to land on the moon, following the U.S., Russia and China.
SpaceIL and the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries presented the new spacecraft, which took eight years of collaborative efforts, and $95 million to build the smallest aircraft to date.
Don’t miss a gooooallll
Get DIRECTV NOW and stream the games live OR record them with our True Cloud DVR BETA, 20 hours free in all packages. No satellite needed.
It is measured to be four-feet high, and 6 ½-feet in diameter, and it will be able to reach a maximum speed of 22,370 miles per hour.
South African-Israeli billionaire Morris Kahn, president of SpaceIL, who has donated $27 million to the enterprise, was extremely excited: “The launch of the first Israeli spacecraft will fill Israel, in its 70th year, with pride. It is a national accomplishment that will put us on the world’s space map.”
The project began when young engineers — Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Winetraub — decided to build a spacecraft and take part in the Lunar Xprize competition sponsored by Google, which originally included a $20 million prize for the first group of contestants to land an unmanned spacecraft on the moon.
Its first task will be to plant an Israeli flag on the moon, organizers said.
Only then it will embark on its scientific mission, and will begin to take photos and videos of the landing site, and measure the moon’s magnetic field.
The research, conducted in cooperation with scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, will use a magnetometer on the spacecraft to attempt to understand how the rocks on the moon received their magnetism.
Josef Weiss, IAI CEO said, “As one who has personally brought the collaboration with SpaceIL to IAI, I regard the launch of the first Israeli spacecraft to the moon as an example of the amazing capabilities one can reach in civilian-space activity. The State of Israel, which is already firmly planted in the realm of space in its military activity, must harness resources for the benefit of civilian space, which is an engine of innovation, technology, education and groundbreaking around the world.”
It will be launched via a rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX firm this December, and it’s expected to land on the moon on February 13, 2019.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Friday, July 6, 2018
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Two Very Interesting Exo-Planets
https://www.salon.com/2018/07/03/new-research-suggests-two-exoplanets-might-be-more-like-earth-than-we-realized/
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)