The exact point in space that NASA is investigating is known as EML-2, which is near the lunar far side and being investigated as the leading option. NASA hopes that EML-2 could serve as a sort of gateway for exploring other destinations such as the moon, asteroids, and Mars. Some of the foundation elements according to NASA would be the planned heavy lift rocket called the Space Lunch System and the Orion crew capsule.

NASA plans for the station to be a international participation solution along the lines of the ISS. There’s no indication at this point of if NASA has the budget or the inclination to actually take on this project. NASA must have some sort of idea that the project would work at some point in the future to even be considering it. Interestingly, should the EML-2 station come to be it would be the longest distance from Earth humans have traveled.

[via Space.com]

That satellite is designed for high-accuracy laser measurements to test aspects of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The spacecraft is set to launch at 10:00 GMT from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. The Vega rocket is also packed with sensors to monitor all aspects of its first flight, though sensors are important if the first flight happens to fail. The data will be used to determine what caused the failure so it can be addressed.

The rocket will be used to launch satellites that way less than 2.5 tons each. The rocket has four stages with the first three burning solid fuel and the fourth stage using a liquid fuel allowing the rocket to be stopped and started repeatedly to achieve precise orbital insertions. BBC reports that the failure rate for maiden launches of new rocket systems is 58%. In exchange for taking this big risk with the satellite payloads, all the organizations that have satellites on the rocket for the maiden flight are getting the ride for free.

[via BBC]

This program started in the 1970′s where it currently still resides at Voxtok Station, it being a simple drilling mission until 1996 when these Russian specialists along with their British counterparts discovered the lake. With sonar and satellite imaging, it was discovered that this lake was directly under the drill site and that it could be one of the world’s largest freshwater reservoirs. This lake is right around the size of Lake Ontario and is under 3623 meters of ice. RIA Novosti (the Russian news network) reported the following:

“Yesterday our scientists at the Vostok polar station in the Antarctic completed drilling at depths of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the subglacial lake.” – RIA Novosti

Drilling started in the 1970′s and continued until 1998, just two years after it was discovered that the lake lie below. In 1998 it was feared that the lake would be contaminated by the process being used to drill. In 2003 a bit of technology that allowed the drilling continue was developed in St. Petersburg, and after testing the tech out, the drilling began again in 2005. It is the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute that predicts that the water will be:

“the only giant super-clean water system on the planet. …twice cleaner than double-distilled water.” – RAARI

Now the testing can commence and tiny samples of the water in the lake can be shown to contain all manner of wonderful things. There’s also the possibility that the lake contains absolutely nothing of interest: but we’re betting on the former option. What do you think they’ll find over 3500 meters under the ice and snow and who knows what else?

[via RT, Images via The Earth Institute Columbia University]

The Washington Post reports that the Soyuz spacecraft expected the ferry astronauts to the ISS in March and has ruptured at the welded seams during pressure testing. After the failure of the Soyuz capsule, the mission has been rescheduled to May 15th. The delay will prolong the mission of American astronaut Daniel Burbank and two Russian cosmonauts by 45 days.

The capsule split at the welded seams of the descent module. This is the second delay in six months in swapping out ISS crewmembers. I can’t be the only one that fears the next loss of life in space exploration will be due to faulty Russian equipment. At least, this problem was discovered before the mission started.

[via Washington Post]

The host star in this system is called GJ 667C and is an M-class dwarf star. Two more stars sit in the same system and are a pair of orange K dwarfs. This area was not expected to be the best place for a habitable planet to be out of all those being concentrated on in this larger Kepler mission, but turned out surprisingly to be just what those watching were looking for. Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC, noted:

“This was expected to be a rather unlikely star to host planets. Yet there they are, around a very nearby, metal-poor example of the most common type of star in our galaxy. The detection of this planet, this nearby and this soon, implies that our galaxy must be teeming with billions of potentially habitable rocky planets.”- Vogt

This new planet receives 90 percent of the light that our Earth receives, and because most of the incoming light is infrared, a higher percent of the incoming energy is absorbed by the planet – in other words, lets go move in now!

“This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it.” – Anglada-Escudé

Wouldn’t it be lovely to go live on a new planet? We won’t be getting there in our lifetimes, sadly enough – unless Zefram Cochrane hurries up and gets born so he can invite warp speed. Come on nerds, get to reproducin!

[via University of California Santa Cruz]

Further down, the clip approaches the lunar south pole, with the 93 mile wide Drygalski crater visible to the left, and identified by its star-shaped formation in the middle. According to NASA “the formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.”

Each of the GRAIL craft – named Ebb and Flow – is roughly the size of a washing machine, and entered into lunar orbit around the end of 2011. Unlike most NASA missions, GRAIL is being run for the large part by middle-school students; they’ll pick points on the surface of the moon that they want to see close up, and the satellites will beam back photos for use in schoolroom science classes.

However, there’s other information to be learned too, and scientists plan to use the data to explore how rocky planets including Earth originally formed. NASA promises more footage will be forthcoming soon.

It was reported that Russia had asked the US to participate in the investigation to determine if a radar station in Alaska could have interfered with the navigation system of the probe causing its failure, which the US declined to participate in. Russia has now come back and offered the official explanation what caused Phobos-grunt to crash. Russia’s Federal Space Agency head Vladimir Popovkin has now announced that space radiation caused a glitch in onboard computer systems of the probe, which led to its crash.

The Russian government commission that was investigating the failure has ruled out any external or foreign influence on the failure of the probe. The failure of Phobos-grunt marks the 17th failure of a Russian attempt to send probes to Mars.

“Two components of the onboard computer system were spontaneously rebooted and it switched into a standby mode,” Vladimir Popovkin said.

“The most likely reason [for the glitch] is the impact of heavy charged space particles,” he said.

[via Ria.ru]

IBEX has observed four separate types of interstellar atoms—hydrogen, oxygen, neon, and helium—which fill the space between stars. They blow across the galaxy as interstellar wind of flowing charged and neutral particles. Researchers discovered that this interstellar wind has much less oxygen atoms relative to neon atoms. The ratio is 74 oxygen atoms to every 20 neon atoms, whereas that ratio is 111 oxygen atoms to 20 neon atoms inside our solar system.

This could mean that our solar system developed in a part of the galaxy that was much more oxygen-rich than where it currently resides or that a lot of oxygen is trapped in interstellar dust grains and unable to move freely through space. Understanding this composition will help scientists understand how our solar system evolved. It’s believed that the big bang initially created hydrogen and helium, while supernova explosions spread heavier elements such as oxygen and neon.

The IBEX orbits at about 200,000 miles above Earth to study the edge of the solar system and to understand the boundary region called the heliosphere. The heliosphere protects our solar system and prevents dangerous cosmic radiation from entering.

[via MMD]

Early Sunday morning specialists at the Russian mission control center that handles the ISS decided to raise the orbit of the space station. The orbit was changed to avoid chunk of debris left over from a Chinese anti-satellite missile test conducted in 2007. The mission controllers felt the chunk of space debris was going to pass too close to the space station for comfort.

The orbit of the ISS was raised by 1.7 km, putting the station at an orbit 391.6 km above the surface of the earth. The orbit change was made using the Zvezda service module’s engines. It took the ISS 64 seconds to change the orbit. The chunk of debris was from the Chinese Fengyun-1C weather satellite the Chinese military targeted with an anti-satellite weapon leaving a massive amount of space debris that spacefaring nations will have to deal with for many, many years to come.

[via SpaceDaily]

The specific date in 2014 has not been confirmed, but we do know a few tidbits about the maiden flight of the Orion capsule. The maiden flight will be an unmanned mission with the rocket carrying the Orion taking off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Orion will make two orbits of the Earth on its first flight. After those two orbits, the Orion capsule will reenter the atmosphere and splash down in the Pacific Ocean where it will be retrieved.

The other tidbit we do know about the mission as of now, is that the Orion will orbit at a distance much higher than the orbit of the ISS. At its zenith, the Orion capsule will be nearly 3700 miles from the Earth’s surface, which is the farthest from Earth that a NASA spacecraft has gone since the early 1970s. Presumably, that high orbit is to keep the Orion capsule out of the way any space debris or important satellites. The test will be conducted to see how heat shields on the spacecraft perform, and whether the craft can survive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere ahead of any manned missions. NASA is still aiming at 2021 for the first human flight aboard the Orion capsule.

“The beauty about flying in 2014 is that we can learn early if there are problems, so if we find something we really got to fix, we’ve got time before we fly people,” said Mark Geyer, head of the Orion program at NASA.

[via Philly.com]

At times massive solar storms can cause problems on Earth with TV reception, mobile phone signals, and GPS satellites among other things. The upside is that you can get quite the light show. According to a team of experts at the University of Michigan, these massive solar flares from the sun and the corresponding aurora borealis on Earth may continue for the next year or two on a monthly basis. Scientists expect the peak of the sun’s solar flare activity to occur next year, which is part of a normal 11-year cycle for our sun.

The last solar storm peaked on January 24 and was responsible for some disrupted high-frequency radio signals over a two-day period according to scientist Philip Chamberlain, who works on the Solar Observatory Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. We are so far from the sun that each time one of these massive eruptions occurs, we will have at least a day’s notice before the radiation hits the Earth’s atmosphere.

“The solar cycle is increasing, and so we are going to get more storms,” says University of Michigan space weather expert Tamas Gombosi. “Once an eruption happens on the sun, even the biggest ones, we’ll have at least a day’s warning.”

[via USA Today]

It is Leonard David from Space that lets us in on the commission being formed here, telling the world that it’s NEOs, or near-Earth objects that they’re studying. Not in regards to collecting and saving them for their rock collection, but how they might be destroyed if any too large to be ignored come towards the planet. Alan Harris, senior scientist and NEOShield project leader at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof, Germany, has the following to say on the subject:

“The scientific side of this will include the analysis of observational data on NEOs and laboratory experiments in which projectiles are fired at asteroid surface analog materials with different compositions, densities, porosities and structures. We need to understand how the momentum transfer from a kinetic impactor to an asteroid depends on the physical characteristics of the asteroid.” – Harris

One of their first big investigatory missions is to check out an asteroid-deflection kinetic impactor project drawn up several years ago and titled Don Quijote. This mission would have a spacecraft head to the path of the asteroid and, without physically contacting it, drag it to an alternate path that does not collide with the planet.

“We’ll be looking in detail at the tricky technical issues associated with autonomous control of a spacecraft in the immediate vicinity of a large, rotating, potato-shaped asteroid, and ion thrusters that may have to function continuously and reliably over a period of 10 years or more.” – Harris

Another approach is much more explosive than using a tractor beam, a “blast deflection” method falling more in the “final desperation” category where no other options are available. This method works like so, according to Harris once again:

“For an asteroid with a diameter of more than half a mile or a warning time of less than five years, the ‘blast-deflection’ method may be the only feasible approach. Our Russian colleagues will be looking in detail at the physics of how an asteroid would respond to a nuclear explosion near, or on, its surface. … [But even then] we’re left with chunks of asteroid — or even a whole one — entering the Earth’s atmosphere and causing damage on the surface. … We do not advocate testing nuclear explosives in space and will not be studying nuclear weapons technology.” – Harris

We’re feeling a bit more safe now that we’re being watch over by asteroid specialists – do you?

This feat has brought fourth the attention of Lego themselves, who sent a congratulatory letter to the boys complimenting their ingenuity and thanking them for using Lego to do the deed. “We are always amazed by the creative ways in which Lego fans use our products, and humbled by how many unsuspecting places we appear, like attached to a helium balloon in … space,” said Lego’s brand relations director Michael McNally. At the moment just one video has been uploaded from the set of media the boys have collected, seen here:

The whole assembly consisted of a rip-stop nylon parachute that the boys tested by lobbing off their 40-story condominium unit, an $85 weather balloon, and $160 in helium from a party store. In addition there was a wide-angle video camera, a cell-phone with GPS (for locating the setup after it landed), and several more point-and-shoot cameras, all inside a styrofoam box which also held out the Lego man. The entire craft traveled to around 80,000 feed, that three times the average cruising altitude of a commercial aircraft, and fell to the earth payload intact.

We look forward to the rest of the photos and video from these two awesome scientists!

[via YouTube]

The Progress 46 ship lifted off atop a Soyuz rocket from the Central Asian Spaceport called Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early Tuesday morning local time. It was the first space mission of the year for Russia and the supply ship will arrive late today with a huge amount of cargo onboard. Progress 46 has a total of 2.9 tons of cargo for the 6-man crew of the ISS.

The ship holds 2,050 pounds of fuel, 110 pounds of oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water, and 2,778 pounds of spare parts and other gear. The Progress ships are disposable and burn up in the atmosphere on reentry.

[via MSNBC]

The most interesting of the planetary systems in the newly discovered group is called Kepler-33. This star is bigger and older than our sun. It has five planets and the cool part is that all five of the planets orbit the parent star at a distance closer to that of Mars to the Sun. The planets are all larger than Earth as well ranging from 1.5 times the Earth’s diameter to five times Earth diameter.

At this point, the scientists studying the planets don’t know if they are rocky planets like Earth and Mars or if they are gas giants like Saturn or Jupiter. There are 2,300 other planet candidates that the scientists still need to confirm. Nine of the other newly discovered planetary systems have two planets and one has three with all of those planets orbiting closer to the host planet than Venus to the sun.

[via Telegraph]

Russia has so far not accused the US outright of sabotaging Phobos-grunt, but the talk has been all around Russian media that the US could have caused the failure of the craft. Russia has officially asked the US to participate in an investigation to prove whether or not the US radar could have caused the failure.

Deputy head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Anatoly Shylov said Thursday that the US had refused to participate. Many still feel that the finger pointing at a US radar station is nothing but an attempt to hide the mistakes of other people on the mission program.

Shylov said, “Roscosmos filed an official request to the U.S. side to participate in the investigation, but they refused.”

[via Ria.ru]

According to Gingrich, the lunar base will be ideal for “science, tourism and manufacturing” – the Republican has gone on record on several occasions, suggesting the moon would be an ideal opportunity for mining - with a “robust industry” that would be modeled on 20th century airline development.

The ambitious plans may be at odds with NASA’s own budget for space exploration, never mind colonization. However, Gingrich has a few ideas for what, exactly, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should spend its money on: 10-percent in prize money for private companies willing to undertake interplanetary exploration.

“Americans are instinctively grandiose” Gingrich said of his proposals, apparently believing that would be sufficient explanation. No word on what the lunar base might be called, nor whether it might be built in the shape of the candidate’s own face.

[via Guardian]

The time for Discovery to head to the museum collection is coming very soon. Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough has announced that the Discovery will be flown on the back of a Boeing 747 in April to Dulles International Airport. According to Clough, the 747 with the piggybacking space shuttle will make a flyover of Washington on its way to the Smithsonian hanger in north Virginia.

The flyover is set for April 17 according to Clough, but another spokesperson for the museum said that detail has not been fully worked out at this time. The formal welcoming ceremony for the Discovery at the hanger is set for April 19. In the second half of 2012, the Endeavour will make its final voyage to the California Science Center in LA.

[via Washington Post]

The first video you’re going to see is a lovely black and cyan/teal view of the Sun as viewed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory on the 22nd of this month. SDO’s view of what’s called the M8.7 Solar Flare is shown in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength commonly used to view nothing less than solar flares on the regular. The flare itself, they note, began on the 22nd of January at 10:38 PM ET, peaked at 10:59 PM that same day, and ended at 11:34 PM.

The next video you may have seen still images of before as they’ve often accompanied stories surrounding the storm this week, it showing the recognizable orange Sun in all its glory. This video was also captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, this time in 304 angstrom. It was with this discovery that the world found that an Earth-directed CME, or Coronal Mass Ejection, was accompanying the flare.

Then from photographers appearing to mostly be in Norway we’ve got the Northern Lights flaring up like wacky waves of colorful fabulousness. Auroras galore from magnussveinsson, Runólfur Hauksson, Harpa Hrund, Sigurjón J. Sigurðsson, and Per Ivar Somby.

NASA also confirmed that there was and is no danger for the astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station as we speak. The CME arrived on Earth at 1500 UT (10 am EST) according to Space Weather, and they’re letting us all know that this could be “a happy day” for aurora watchers everywhere. The chart you’re looking at below is registered at Lofoton, Norway, and shows the CME’s arrival in ground currents outside the laboratory of scientist Rob Stammes.

With this and other Sun-related events, we’d like to assure you that though we’re in no clear and present danger of any kind of destruction of the Earth, it will come someday. For the Sun is not a Mass of Incandescent Gas, it is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma, and we invite you to take part in a learning exercise on the subject. To help us out, here’s They Might Be Giants with their smash hit: Why Does the Sun Really Shine? [This is an update to the original Why Does The Sun Shine? you might be familiar with if you were a fourth grader when their first Science album was released.]

The image at the head of this post comes from our same source, Space Weather, but was submitted by photographer Andy Keen and was taken at the very start of this storm on January 22nd, 2012, up in Northern Lapland, Finland.

[via Space Weather]

According to the scientist, the object is a giant scorpion-like organism that appears to change locations from one photo to the next. Ksanfomaliti describes the alleged bug as a scorpion shaped body, a disc, and a back flap that moves. However, others are disagreeing with Ksanfomaliti. It would seem that the stifling 464C heat on the surface of Venus and the gravity nine times that of the Earth would prohibit life.

Jonathon Hill is a mission planner and research tech working at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University. Hill is responsible for processing the images that are taken on Mars missions. He says that the object the Russian scientist thinks is a scorpion like creature is a mechanical component. Hill bases his assessment off higher-resolution images from Venera 13. He also notes that the same object is shown in photos taken by a different but identical probe that landed nearby called Venera 14.

[via Telegraph]

Some in Russia claim that a strong electromagnetic emission from the Alaskan radar installation could have caused parts of the probe to fail. While Russia has stopped short of officially accusing the US of sabotaging the probe, it has announced that it is investigating the possibility. The US has now came out and denied any link to the failed mission.

The US Department of State went so far as to point out that when asked the US helped Russia try to establish contact with the probe in hopes of salvaging the mission. Russian officials have pointed out that they are considering other causes for the failure, including issues in the engineering of the probe.

“We have seen speculation in the Russian media that foreign interference might have contributed to the failures of several recent Russian space missions,” Department of State spokesperson Jamie Mannina said. “We do not believe there is truth to these reports.”

[via Marsdaily]

What will be hitting the earth is a collection of charged particles that’ll be smashing in at right about 9AM EST, this according to the Space Weather Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA notes that this event will have polar flights here on Earth re-routed in plenty of time to avoid any mishaps. The worst that could happen and has happened in the past is satellite disruption (in orbit) and widespread communications interference. As officials at SpaceWeather.com noted in an alert:

There is little doubt that the cloud is heading in the general direction of Earth. A preliminary inspection of SOHO/STEREO imagery suggests that the CME will deliver a strong glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field on Jan. 24-25 as it sails mostly north of our planet.” – Space Weather

NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries also spoke directly to Space.com on the astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station:

“The flight surgeons have reviewed the space weather forecasts for the flare and determined that there are no expected adverse effects or actions required to protect the on-orbit crew.” – Humphries

Folks anywhere near a place they’ll be able to see the Northern Lights are asked to take some awesome photos and let the whole world see how cool the sun can be when it has the intergalactic equivalent of a bad bellyache.

[via Space.com]

This crowd-sourced bit of genius is available to watch both on Vimeo and on YouTube, both versions being dropped into this post here for your enjoyment and just incase one or the other is knocked out by the authorities that be. That said, it does appear that they’ve run into little to no trouble in creating and publishing this fan film, more than likely because there’s so much love in every bit of the process that no Empire could possibly resist. See if you can count how many times Legos are used in place of actors and droids:

This project, again, started in 2009 and was initiated to work with just the first Star Wars film: A New Hope. Contributors were asked to bring forth a 15 second clip assigned to them by the loosely tied leadership for the project, using whatever means necessary to bring the clip to life in a creative way. In 2010 this project won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media, and it’s well deserved! The version you’re watching now has been put together by Aaron Valdez and Bryan Pugh, they doing video editing and sound editing to make this product one that’s not only watchable, but entirely enjoyable to behold!

Now it’s time to start in on The Empire Strikes Back! Hooray!

[via StarWarsUncut]

NASA had originally blocked the short 8-minute film, which Garriott planned to air in independent theaters, on the vague grounds that it was beyond the scope of the agreement Garriott had with the space agency. Garriott was aboard the ISS as a paid civilian back in 2008. The short film had a screenplay written by Tracy Hickman, apparently Hickman co-created the Dragonlance shared universe.

Garriott had wanted to release Apogee of Fear along with a documentary he made about following in his father’s footsteps called Man on a Mission. His father was astronaut Owen Garriott. NASA is now working with Garriott on the film’s release. I wonder if all this blocking of films and auctions by NASA is just it looking to make money off the films and items sold? Could NASAs budget woes mean it needs all the loot it can get? What do you think?

NASA is working with Richard Garriott to facilitate the video’s release. While the project was not part of his original Space Act agreement with NASA, everyone involved had the best of intentions. We hope to resolve the remaining issues expeditiously, and we appreciate Richard’s cooperation and his ongoing efforts to get people excited about the future of space exploration.

[via Wired]

The footage in question appears to have a triangular-shaped craft moving towards us. Also in the footage are Venus and Earth with the triangular shape on the opposite side of the video. The conspiracy theories started to float around wildly when the website for the images and video from the spacecraft was updated with new shots leading to cries of a cover-up.

Generally, NASA scientists leave the conspiracy theorists alone, but this time they decided to debunk the rumors. According to the scientists, the triangular-shaped object is a phenomenon seen frequently. The triangle shape has to do with light reflecting back and forth off the lenses, and mirrors inside the telescope the probes use. Generally, the reflections manifest as triangles or circles of different shapes and sizes. In short, it’s not a UFO. The official explanation is below.

“The answer lies on the exact opposite side of the image,” the scientists wrote. “At the same time as this strange-looking feature starts being visible, the very bright planet Venus enters the [telescopic camera's] field-of-view from the lower left.

“[Venus and the triangle stay in step as they move] This is not a coincidence. The strange-looking geometrical ‘object’ is actually an internal reflection of the planet Venus within the telescope optics. This effect has been seen many times before.”

[via Cristian Science Monitor]

SpaceX says that the delay will allow it to run more engineering tests on the capsule. A new launch date has not yet been set. NASA, and SpaceX are working together to set a new date. SpaceX spokeswoman Kristin Grantham noted that the company thinks the Dragon will benefit from more tests on a “few areas.” The areas needing attention aren’t specified.

I would say this is a good thing. If the very first mission of the Dragon capsule fails, SpaceX would not be in a good position. When the Dragon does launch, it will be atop one of SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 rockets. The first mission for the Dragon capsule will be unmanned, but the craft is designed to carry people as well.

[via Fox News]

What we did know was that some pieces of the probe would survive reentry and posed some risk to several major cities around the country. With most of our planet covered in water, the chance was that the ocean would be where the probe chunks landed and that held true. The probe apparently broke up as expected in the atmosphere and hit the Pacific Ocean around 12:45 p.m. Easter time.

This was the second Mars probe to fail to make it to the planet that Russia has launched. Some in Russia have hinted that some sort of anti-satellite weapon may be the reason that Russia has had so many space failures recently. Western nations have denied that. Russia has not accused any nation of sabotage at this point.

[via NYT]

The failed launch left the craft in a degrading orbit that will have Phobos-Grunt falling back into the atmosphere and breaking up. The craft is being tracked by Russia and NASA with parts of the craft expected to survive re-entry and fall anywhere along a massive swath of Earth that includes major cities of London, New York, and Tokyo.

Originally Russian space agency director Vladimir Popovkin has speculated that an issue with the craft’s navigation computer could have been the source of the failure. However, he is now hinting that the failure of the probe could have been due to some sort of anti-satellite weapon. Popovkin didn’t come out and accuse anyone or any country of attacking the probe. The New York Times reports that a retired commander of a Russian missile warning system had previously speculated that strong radar signals from installations in Alaska could have damaged the spacecraft.

Popovkin said in an interview with a paper called Izvestia, “We don’t want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now. The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out.” He also said, “the frequent failure of our space launches, which occur at a time when they are flying over the part of Earth not visible from Russia, where we do not see the spacecraft and do not receive telemetric information, are not clear to us.”

[via NYTimes]

Kepler-16b was discovered last fall and a recent study by doctoral student Billy Quarles at the University of Texas at Arlington and colleagues have been working on simulated possibilities that would put an Earth-mass world in the Kepler-16 system. The team is assuming that the brighter of the two stars in the system would provide most of the light and heat for orbiting planets. That would put the main habitable zone for the system at 55 to 106 million kilometers from the stars.

Kepler-16b itself is a gas giant similar to Saturn and would be uninhabitable, but a moon in the gas giant’s orbit could possibly sustain life. The gas giant is on the outer edge of the system’s habitable zone. The researchers note that a habitable planet orbiting closer to the stars, still in the habitable zone could have been ejected by the gravitational forces of the two stars and arrived at the gas giant as a ready formed moon. If the moon exists and were habitable, could you imagine the sunset with twin stars and orbiting a gas giant. Whether such a moon exists is a big “if” for sure, but I move we call the habitable moon Endor.

[via National Geographic]

NASA has chosen a place unofficially called Greeley Haven after the late scientist Ronald Greeley that passed away in October 2011. This winter Opportunity will sit near the rim of the massive Endeavour crater. It has taken the rover three years to make its way to the rim of the crater. The reason Greeley Haven was chosen is that the 15-degree slope will allow the solar panels on the rover to absorb more light.

This is the first winter that Opportunity has spent on a slope angling its panels for more collection of sunlight. The reason the angled location was chosen is that the solar panels on the rover have an extra-heavy coating of dust. While parked, Opportunity will take the winter to study the rocks near Greeley Haven. The rover will continue studying the crater rim taking off again in June or July. This is the fifth Martian winter Opportunity has been on mars. The rover was originally expected to last only 90 days on Mars.

[via MSNBC]

When the celebration rolled around Hawking was too ill to make his traditional speech at Cambridge University. Hawking had been hospitalized with an infection. He was released in time for the celebration, yet was too ill to deliver the speech in person. Instead, the speech was recorded and played back.

The speech called for more efforts into interplanetary travel. Hawking said that he doesn’t think the human race will survive another 1,000 years without finding another planet. He also talked about the way the disease had pushed him to be a better student ultimately pushing him to be one of the most brilliant scientists in history. Hawking has recently been looking for someone to help maintain his complex wheelchair.

[via TG Daily]

The satellite was seen to be falling towards the Earth at a rapid rate, easy to imagine since this bulky monster weighs in at a cool 14-tons. The satellite is currently falling towards the Earth heavy-side down, as Legault describes in his statement to the press. This might lead one to believe that this was the reason for the failure of the hardware, its solar panels deployed but dead, the whole bulk on the wrong side, away from the sun. Bigtime bummer for Russia – and certainly for whoever’s house this satellite lands on.

The actual uncontrolled fall into the atmosphere is placed somehwere between the 15th and 16th of January, 2012, but it’s certainly on its way to a fiery doom right this moment. Holger Krag, deputy head of the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office, at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, had a bit to say about the situation, especially regarding the hit on land (or water.) In regards to reports popping up that the satellite might be hitting any place specifically at this moment:

“This is, of course, nonsense. It can come down at any place. [And because the Earth is 73 percent water covere,] there is a rather small chance that there would be a land impact. Relax. The likelihood of somebody being hit is enormously low. It is way smaller than to be struck by lightning. If you have a thunderstorm above your city you would also not worry too much.” – Krag

No worries!

[via Space.com]

The Spaceflight story presents no direct evidence of spying by the US. There is no clear explanation at this time for what exactly the X-37B is doing in orbit on its missions. The reason for the spying speculation is that the Chinese and US spacecraft are apparently on the same orbit.

Expert Brian Weeden told the BBC that a normal spy satellite orbit would be polar to get access to the entire Earth. The X-37B is apparently in an orbit that gives it access only to the Middle East and Afghanistan. What do you think?

[via NYDailyNews]

At the time we learned that the checklist had sold, I wondered if NASA would be coming back and laying claim to the property. NASA has laid claim to all moon rocks and has arrested people for selling the rocks. It made sense to me that the checklist would be considered NASA property as well. NASA is now blocking the sale of the checklist and asserting that Lovell had no right to sell the document.

Lovell signed an affidavit with Heritage claiming he had title to the document. However, NASA is claiming that there is no indication the document title was ever transferred to Lovell. NASA said in a statement to the AP, “Only NASA has the authority to clear NASA property for sale.” NASA is also questioning the sale of other space items that Heritage has auctioned off including a lunar module identification plate and a hand controller. Heritage has delayed the final sell of the checklist and is awaiting the outcome of the.

[via ABC News]

The photo you see here is of the ISS alongside the moon and was taken in the Houston area in the early evening of January 4. I happened to be outside when the ISS passed over and that night with the naked eye, it looked like a bright star and quickly moved across the horizon.

NASA says that the best time to lay eyes on the ISS tonight will start at 6:11pm CST. The ISS will be visible for about 6-minutes as the station travels form 10-degrees above west-northwest to 10 degrees above south-southeast. The maximum elevation will be 44 degrees.

Yeomans exact position was (and is) manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He knows his stuff, and his NASA badge is nothing to scoff at. The reason he gave the talk that Space.com reported was a simple one: after searching the web for “2012 disasters,” he said he got 35 million hits, noting “a lot of people are concerned about December 21, 2012.” Thusly he spoke in turn about the major theories (if you can call them major, that is,) that have been plaguing many over the past several years.

Planet X

There is a wild woman out there who claims to be in contact with aliens from outer space that have told her that a planet by the name of Nibiru or “Planet X” will crash into the Earth on December 21st, 2012. She also predicted this would happen in May of 2003, but changed her prediction to this new date when, lo and behold, life in this planet did not end in the third year of the 2000s. Nancy Leider, the woman in question here, spoke with aliens from the Zeta Reticuli star system, gaining this insight more than once, saying that this mystery planet is simply hiding behind the sun until it comes a’ crashing.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever that Nibiru exists. It can’t hide behind the sun forever, and we would’ve seen it years ago. [An in regards to any conspiracy,] there’s no way on Earth to keep astronomers quiet about anything,” Yeomans joked.

Mayan Calendar

Again, the Mayan Calendar supposedly ends on what we know as the 21st of December, 2012. Yeomans simply notes that this is as silly as saying that at the end of the day, the world ends as well.

“The short-count was 52 of our years, and the long-count was 5,125 years long. This long-count calendar is coming to an end on Dec. 21. Of course, a new calendar would start on Dec. 22. It would be like saying that our calendar ends Dec. 31, and that’s the end of time, the end of days, that’s it, no regard for how a new cycle would begin. The Maya never predicted the end of the world occurred at that time.” – Yeomans

Planets Align

Fears that the planets in our solar system will all line up in a row and crash because the gravity from each will cause a one gigantic attraction festival were slapped in the face by Yeomans. First of all, there is no planetary alignment on December 21st, 2012, he noted. That’s important. Then Yeomans reminded the audience that the only planetary bodies that have any kind of gravitational effect on the Earth are the Sun and our moon, these creating tides in our watery bodies. Nothing more.

Pole Flip

Another completely absurd claim is that the geographical and magnetic poles will flip on the 21st of December, 2012. First of all, the geographical poles cannot flip as the moon keeps our planet spinning stably – that’s quite simple. Then there’s the magnetic poles, which do indeed flip, but only once every 500,000 years, each time doing so over thousands of years.

“And there’s no evidence of a flip on Dec. 21, 2012. Even if it did flip, it would not cause any real problems, other than us having to change our compasses from north to south.” – Yeomans

Solar Storms

This is the only, and I repeat the only thing we should have any worries about, and it has nothing to do with the year 2012 specifically. What a solar storm entails is a torrent of energetic particles from the sun flying off and slamming into the Earth. These generally create auroras and can mess up power lines and satellites in space, but “nothing that causes lasting damage,” as Yeomans notes.

“There is no evidence that one will happen on Dec. 21 next year,” Yeomans said. It’s impossible to predict solar activity that far out, and even an extremely strong solar storm wouldn’t likely bring the apocalypse that some fear.” – Yeomans

Just such an “extremely strong” storm or “super storm” did occur, or at least there are some records of something very similar, here on Earth in the year 1859. Though records show that it did little damage back then, our whole world revolves around electronics these days – we’re talking Escape from LA business here, folks, fun!

In Summary

The world isn’t going to end inside 2012 barring an event completely unprecedented in science and physics in basically every way. It’s absurd to believe that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world because the Mayans never said nor indicated such a thing. Yeomans had a final note to ring out on, it sounding clear for all the citizens out there whose science isn’t exactly their strong suit:

Scientists really have their work cut out for them. We really have to do a better job educating people about science.” – Yeomans

[via Space.com]

Quasicrystals also have different physical and electrical properties when compared to normal crystals as well. In 2009, researchers from the University of Florence, Italy discovered quasicrystals in minerals sampled from the Koryak mountains in Russia. The mineral had a composition of aluminum, copper, and iron and proved quasicrystals could form and remain stable under natural conditions. However, it remained unclear how exactly the structure formed.

Scientists think they have an explanation for the formation of the mineral quasicrystal structure. Researchers now think that the mineral found in Russia formed in space and is of extra-terrestrial origin. Using a mass spectrometer the team found the pattern of oxygen isotopes showed the mineral was unlike known on Earth. The silica in the mineral only forms at high pressures according to the team of researchers. The finding hints that the mineral was either formed in the Earth’s mantle or created from a high-speed impact such as what occurs when a meteor hits the earth.

[via BBC]

The Grail spacecraft went into orbit around the moon over last weekend, and the arrival of the dual Grail crafts was timed for 24 hours apart. Grail-A inserted over the South Pole and entered orbit with Grail-B doing the same the next day. The new moon mission is to help learn more about the moon. According to scientists on the project, we know more about Mars than we know about the moon.

One of the big mysteries is why the moon is lopsided with one side that is hillier than the side that faces earth. The Grail crafts will help figure out how the moon formed by measuring the gravity field. The longer time to reach the moon was due to the small rocket used for money-saving measures.

[via AP]

Some are worried about the plans the Chinese have for space even though China maintains the missions are for peaceful purposes. One reason for the fear is that China has in the past fired a missile and blown up one of its own defective satellites. The issue there was more than the fact that they used a weapon against orbiting satellites. The destruction also created a huge amount of debris that has the potential to damage other satellites in orbit.

If China puts a man into space, they will be the third country to do so behind the US and Russia that put men in orbit decades ago. The Chinese would use a future moon mission to collect samples. So far, the Chinese have put the first section of its space station into orbit and had a successful docking of an unmanned craft with that module. It still has a very long way to go to carry out its manned moon landing.

[via CNN]