Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight (Mars & Beyond) News

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: December 4, 2012 7:05:48 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight (Mars & Beyond) News - December 4, 2012 and JSC Today

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            This Week at Starport
2.            Learn More About CFC -- Attend Our WebEx on Thursday, Dec. 6
3.            May the Force Be With You, Early Career Professionals
4.            FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, Dec. 5
5.            2013 Black History Month Committee Volunteers Needed
6.            All about Fair Use, Copyright Training - Part 2
7.            Don't Let Your Holidays Go Up in Smoke
8.            Call for JSC Exceptional Software Awards -- Deadline Dec. 14
9.            High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) Deadline Extended to Dec. 16
10.          Does Science Make You Smile? Take the UHCL Physics Program Survey Today
11.          Control Team/Crew Resource Management: Jan. 29 to 31
________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY
" Put a grain of boldness into everything you do."

-- Baltasar Gracián
________________________________________
1.            This Week at Starport
Looking for something different to give this holiday season? Starport holiday gift certificates make great stocking stuffers! Purchase sessions for massage therapy and personal training and memberships to the Inner Space Yoga and Pilates Studio as a gift for friends, family members or other loved ones. Anyone can redeem these gift certificates -- you don't have to be a Starport member or work at JSC. Purchase at the Gilruth Center information desk.
Plus, check out our creative holiday gift packages on sale in the Starport Gifts Shops and the Gilruth Center. With options starting at just $7 and many themes to choose from, you are sure to find something for everyone on your shopping list!
Visit the JSC Federal Credit Union booth in the Starport Cafés tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to chat with representatives regarding you checking, savings and other account needs.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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2.            Learn More About CFC -- Attend Our WebEx on Thursday, Dec. 6
Are you interested in giving to or learning more about the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC)? Your JSC CFC team will be hosting a WebEx on Thursday, Dec. 6, from 11 to 11:30 a.m. on just that! Learn about the history of the CFC, the charities it supports and the lives that it has changed. We'll also talk about how you can donate. Email Philip Harris for all the details. Remember to make your CFC pledge by Dec. 15.
Philip Harris x40699

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3.            May the Force Be With You, Early Career Professionals
NASA's Joint Leadership Team (JLT) is offering powerful tools to help early career professionals navigate their path to success. Registration is now open for the JLT Early Career Informal Mentoring Workshop!
Attend this amazing workshop for a unique chance to have a one-on-one conversation with mentors from around JSC and the contractor community. The freestyle mentoring sessions offered during the workshop will give you a chance to ask division-level managers advice on how to excel in the NASA environment.
Also offered during the workshop are sessions on:
o             Project Management
o             Understanding Communication Styles
o             Career Express - Accelerating to the Top!
o             Branding Yourself
o             Women in Leadership
Attendance is limited, so register today here.
Event Details:
o             Thursday, Dec. 13, from 4 to 6:30 p.m.
o             Building 12
o             Refreshments will be provided
More information on this exciting informal mentoring workshop can be found here.
Andrea Hanson x48693 https://secure.inquisiteasp.com/cgi-bin/qwebcorporate.dll?idx=B5E7ZY

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4.            FedTraveler Live Lab Tomorrow, Dec. 5
Do you need some hands-on, personal help with FedTraveler.com? Join the Business Systems and Process Improvement Office for a FedTraveler Live Lab tomorrow, Dec. 5, any time between 9 a.m. and noon in Building 12, Room 142. Our help desk representatives will be available to help you work through travel processes and learn more about using FedTraveler during this informal workshop. Bring your current travel documents or specific questions that you have about the system and join us for some hands-on, in-person help with the FedTraveler. If you'd like to sign up for this FedTraveler Live Lab, please log into SATERN and register. For additional information, please contact Judy Seier at x32771.
Gina Clenney x39851

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5.            2013 Black History Month Committee Volunteers Needed
The African-American Employee Resource Group (AAERG) is making preparations in recognition of the 2013 Black History Month Observance. We are seeking civil servant and contractor volunteers to serve either as a committee chairperson or committee member for upcoming special-emphasis events. The volunteer committee meeting will be held tomorrow, Dec. 5, from 11 a.m. to noon in Building 1, Room 220.
Carla Burnett x41044

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6.            All about Fair Use, Copyright Training - Part 2
Please join the Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Center and special guest via WebEx, Chris Weston from the U.S. General Counsel's Office, on Thursday, Dec. 6, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. CST. Part 2 is geared toward researchers and STI Center and other JSC organization records and documents management employees, but is open to the whole JSC and White Sands Test Facility community. Weston will provide information on Fair Use and Section 108 of the Copyright Law. He will also discuss the public domain. This session will be held in Building 45, Room 251, and also online via WebEx.
To register click on the "Classroom/WebEx" schedule.
Provided by the Information Resources Directorate.
Ebony Fondren x32490 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov

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7.            Don't Let Your Holidays Go Up in Smoke
Sure, the family may have you steaming this holiday season, but above all else -- don't let it be the décor that gets the holidays roasting. Read a timely holiday safety piece in JSC Features pertaining to one usual suspect: the Christmas tree. Whether your tree is real or fake or you're trying to have a Griswold-type decorating extravaganza at your house, be sure you're doing it in the safest way possible.
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x33317

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8.            Call for JSC Exceptional Software Awards -- Deadline Dec. 14
This is the 2013 call for software award nominations at JSC. Nominees will be considered for the following awards:
o             JSC Exceptional Software Award: $8,000 total award
o             JSC nominee for NASA Software of the Year Award: Up to $100,000 total award possible
o             JSC software nominees for Space Act Awards: Variable amount up to $100,000
o             NASA Exceptional Technology Achievement Medals
The JSC Exceptional Software Award is designed to recognize software that has demonstrated outstanding value to accomplishing the JSC mission.
Apply online using the Web nomination form and to find out other information.
Directorates and individuals must provide their nominations by close of business Dec. 14 via the form link listed. Questions can be sent to Lynn Vernon or Tondra Allen.
Lynn R. Vernon x36917 http://jscexceptionalsoftware.jsc.nasa.gov/SOY_nominate/

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9.            High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) Deadline Extended to Dec. 16
This is an excellent NASA opportunity for high school juniors to chart a course for Mars, interact with scientists and engineers and earn a high school science elective credit.
HAS is an interactive, online experience culminating in a one-week residential experience at JSC. Offered at no cost to the student, HAS consists of eight online modules and a final project from January 2013 through May 2013 under the guidance of Texas-certified educators. Students who successfully participate in the online lessons and attend the summer experience are eligible to ask their high school for science elective credit. The deadline to apply is Dec. 16.
Katherine Crouse x36220 http://www.has.aerospacescholars.org

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10.          Does Science Make You Smile? Take the UHCL Physics Program Survey Today
Plasma physics! Astrodynamics! Planetary science!
If these subjects get your blood flowing, then you are in luck. The University of Houston - Clear Lake (UHCL) Physics Department is preparing to offer a joint Ph.D. in conjunction with the University of Houston. UHCL is seeking feedback from prospective, current and former students. Your input is crucial to proposal development, so please take five minutes and complete this survey by Dec. 30.
Holly Vavrin x42335 http://www.uhcl.edu/physics

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11.          Control Team/Crew Resource Management: Jan. 29 to 31
Two-and-a-half days. This training directly addresses human factors issues that most often cause problems in team and crew interaction. No one working on a team or a crew, especially in high-stress activities, is immune to these effects. The Control Team/Crew Resource Management course deals with interpersonal relations, but doesn't advocate democratic rule or hugging fellow team members to improve personal relations. Rather, this course provides awareness of human factors problems that too often result in mishaps and offers recommendations and procedures for eliminating these problems. It emphasizes safety risk assessment, crew/team coordination and decision-making in crisis situations. This course is applicable both to those in aircrew-type operations and also to personnel operating consoles for hazardous testing or on-orbit mission operations, or any operation involving teamwork and critical communication. It is preferable that "teams" experience course as a group, if possible. SATERN Registration Required. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Polly Caison x41279

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________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.

NASA TV: 9 am Central (10 EST) – NASA Social with Astronaut Joe Acaba

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...

Next-Generation Space Ambitions Keep Rolling
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=156223101

As space shuttle Atlantis rolled to its new home at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex earlier this month, NASA and its commercial crew partners reflected on the Space Shuttle Program's tremendous accomplishments and vowed to continue America's leadership in space.

Human Spaceflight News
Tuesday – December 4, 2012

Super Typhoon Pablo (Bopha) from ISS Sunday

HEADLINES AND LEADS

NASA's Deep-Space Station Idea Lacks White House Approval

Mike Wall - Space.com

Despite speculation to the contrary, NASA's ambitious plans for a manned space station beyond the moon have not yet been cleared by the White House, a senior administration official told SPACE.com. Word about the potential outpost has begun leaking out in press reports and from space exploration officials over the last several months, leading some experts to suspect that the White House may already be on board — and that an official announcement could be coming soon, especially since President Barack Obama won re-election on Nov. 6. NASA has not cleared the EM-L2 outpost with the White House, and the space agency has not requested funding for it in the current fiscal year or the subsequent one, the official told SPACE.com. "So it's kind of just one of those one-off projects that [NASA hopes if it goes] to the press, or to [Capitol] Hill, that it'll get funded," the official added. "But I don't think that's going to be the case."

Typhoon Bopha stirs awe from space

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

The awesome power of Typhoon Bopha was in full view of the International Space Station over the weekend, and since then the Pacific storm has strengthened to super typhoon status with sustained winds greater than 150 mph (240 kilometers per hour). The storm was headed for the Philippines, where memories of last year's killer storm are still fresh. "The potential destruction of this typhoon is no joke," Reuters quoted Philippine President Benigno Aquino as saying in a nationally broadcast address. Thousands of residents of coastal and mountain regions were evacuated in advance of the storm. Bopha is expected to make landfall on the southern island of Mindanao within hours. The same region was hit last year by Tropical Storm Washi, which killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than 60,000. This time around, the storm's winds are more than twice as strong, qualifying Bopha as the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center said waves reached heights of up to 52 feet at sea near the storm, and the width of the storm system was estimated at 370 miles (600 kilometers). Keep an eye on The Weather Channel's Hurricane Central as the storm proceeds. And for more imagery from NASA, keep an eye on the agency's Hurricane Resource Page as well as Goddard Space Flight Center's Flickr photostream. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

Space spider landed at Smithsonian after journey on space station

Brian Vastag - Washington Post

After a space voyage of almost 42 million miles, Nefertiti the "Jumping Johnson" spider landed at the Smithsonian's Insect Zoo at the National Museum of Natural History last week. Unfortunately, whether it was her long flight or the short natural life span of a spider, "Neffi" was found lifeless Monday morning, after only four days on public view. "Yes, it's unfortunate. She seemed well-adjusted to earth and was in good spirits. But 10 months is a good run for a little jumping spider," said museum spokesman Randall Kremer.

Space-flown spider dies in Smithsonian

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

The Smithsonian's exhibition of the first jumping spider to survive the trip to space has turned out to be short lived: the arachnid astronaut died just days after going on display. "It is with sadness that we announce the death of Nefertiti, the "Spidernaut," the staff at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. wrote on Facebook Monday. The "Johnson Jumper" ("Phidippus johnsoni") spider was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in July as the subject of a student-initiated science experiment. Part of YouTube Space Lab, an online video contest, the spider's spaceflight was the idea submitted by 18-year old Amr Mohamed from Alexandria, Egypt.

3D Printer Could Transform Moon Dirt Into Lunar Base

Megan Gannon - Space.com

For space scientists dreaming up a manned base on the moon, 3D printing with lunar dust looms as an attractive possibility. Such on-demand fabrication would allow astronauts to repair broken parts, manufacture spare ones and maybe even build structures, all out of the dirt scooped from under their boots. In a new study involving artificial moon dust, engineers have shown that the technology is close to becoming reality.

Get involved: Sunita Williams to Indians

The Hindu

"Get involved, try to be a part of it" is the message of record-breaking Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams to millions of Indians students and space enthusiasts. Stressing that India has a great resource of people and talent, Williams, who is just back from her 127 days mission to the International Space Mission, said she can't imagine India taking a backseat in space programmes. "You know, I hope so. I sort of had my head down for last mission for the last couple of years. So I haven't really been in the know about all the Indian space program and what it has been doing, but gosh we really hope so," Williams, 47, said when asked if India stands a chance in front of US and Russia to emerge as a leader in space research.

Richard Branson: US has best regulatory landscape for private space travel

Olivia Solon - Wired.com (UK edition)

The UK needs to create a regulatory landscape that is more attractive to private space travel companies such as Virgin Galactic, according to Richard Branson, founder and chairman of Virgin Group. He explained to the audience at the European Space Solutions summit that the US Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, which makes it easier for private space companies to take flight, is a "terrific piece of legislation which makes it possible for a company like Virgin Galactic to operate".

Spacesuits: The final frontier
Forget the classic three-piece. For $50,000 a Brooklyn duo will design a bespoke outfit that will take you out of this world

Tim Donnelly - New York Post

One day, not long from now, everybody will need a spacesuit, whether it's for a quick suborbital flight to Australia or a weeks-long jaunt to the newly discovered mineral baths on Mercury. When that time comes, two dudes from Brooklyn will be ready. One of them, Ted Southern, designs Broadway costumes and angel wings for Victoria's Secret models. The other, Nikolay Moiseev, is a Russian-born engineer. Together from the Final Frontier Design studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they are reinventing astronaut wear for a new era of space travel. The two met by chance at a NASA contest five years ago and realized their mix of artistry and engineering skills was strong enough to build a company.

MEANWHILE ON MARS...

Mars rover soil samples may contain simple organics; results not definitive

William Harwood - CBS News

Despite widespread speculation about a potentially significant discovery on Mars, the Curiosity rover's first detailed look at a martian soil sample with an instrument capable of detecting organic compounds has not found any "definitive" signs of materials that play key roles in biological processes on Earth, scientists said Monday. While the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument detected signs of an oxygen-chlorine compound -- perchlorate -- and trace amounts of chlorinated methane compounds, which contain carbon, researchers say more tests are needed to make sure the carbon originated with the sample and was not brought to Mars aboard Curiosity.

Mars rover Curiosity: No surprise in 1st soil test

Alicia Chang - Associated Press

NASA's Curiosity rover has indeed found something in the Martian dirt. But so far, there's no definitive sign of the chemical ingredients necessary to support life. A scoop of sandy soil analyzed by Curiosity's sophisticated chemistry laboratory contained water and a mix of chemicals, but not complex carbon-based molecules considered essential for life. That the soil was not more hospitable did not surprise mission scientist Paul Mahaffy since radiation from space can destroy any carbon evidence.

Curiosity rover finds organic compounds, but are they from Mars?

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

Although NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't yet confirmed the detection of organic compounds on Mars, it's already seeing that the Red Planet's soil contains water and more complex chemicals — including signs of an intriguing compound called perchlorate. The first soil sample analysis from Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars lab, or SAM, was the leadoff topic today at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco. The findings were eagerly awaited because of rumors that the Curiosity team was on the verge of announcing major findings — and although NASA tamped down expectations, the scientists said they were overjoyed with the first round of analysis.

Rover Finds Whiff of Possible Organics on Mars

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has turned up tantalizing clues of the planet's complicated chemical evolution, a story that includes carbon, the first detailed analysis of the planet's soil shows. Scientists found traces of carbon in several compounds detected by the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument. They do not yet know if the carbon, which is a key building block for life, is contamination from Earth, was delivered to Mars by organics-rich comets or asteroids, or arose on Mars. If indigenous, the carbon could be an indicator of geologic or biological activity.

…AND IF MARS IS TOO CLOSE…

Voyager 1, departing solar system, flies into new region near boundary of interstellar space

William Harwood – CBS News

NASA's aging Voyager 1 probe, 35 years and 11 billion miles outbound from Earth, has crossed into an unexpected, exceedingly remote region of the solar system that may represent the spacecraft's final step before leaving the sun's influence and moving into the vast realm of interstellar space. The region is believed to be a sort of "magnetic highway" allowing high-energy charged particles from ancient supernova explosions to move into the sun's sphere of influence and for lower-energy particles to move out into deep space.

Voyager discovers 'magnetic highway' at edge of solar system

Mira Oberman – Agence France-Presse

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a "magnetic highway" at the edge of the solar system, a surprising discovery 35 years after its launch, the experts behind the pioneering craft said. Earlier this year a surge in a key indicator fueled hopes that the craft was nearing the so-called heliopause, which marks the boundary between our solar system and outer space. But instead of slipping away from the bubble of charged particles the Sun blows around itself, Voyager encountered something completely unexpected.

Voyager 1 cruising along magnetic highway

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

The Voyager 1 spacecraft, sailing through the unexplored frontier of the solar system, has detected a new region of space at the enigmatic boundary between the sun's sphere of influence and the interstellar medium, scientists said Monday. More than 35 years since launching from Earth, the plutonium-powered Voyager 1 probe has flown past Jupiter and Saturn and is now pioneering science at the edge of the heliosphere, a teardrop-shaped bubble blown out by the solar wind. Beyond the heliosphere lies a vacuous expanse known as interstellar space, where the solar wind stops and material expelled from exploding stars hold reign. Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object, is the first spacecraft to explore the boundary region.
__________

COMPLETE STORIES

NASA's Deep-Space Station Idea Lacks White House Approval

Mike Wall - Space.com

Despite speculation to the contrary, NASA's ambitious plans for a manned space station beyond the moon have not yet been cleared by the White House, a senior administration official told SPACE.com.

Over the past year or so, NASA has been drawing up plans for a manned outpost beyond the moon's far side, at a gravitationally stable location known as the Earth-moon Lagrange point 2 (EM-L2). The station would establish a human presence in deep space, serve as a staging ground for lunar operations and help build momentum for exploring more far-flung destinations, such as asteroids and Mars.

Word about the potential outpost has begun leaking out in press reports and from space exploration officials over the last several months, leading some experts to suspect that the White House may already be on board — and that an official announcement could be coming soon, especially since President Barack Obama won re-election on Nov. 6.

NASA has not cleared the EM-L2 outpost with the White House, and the space agency has not requested funding for it in the current fiscal year or the subsequent one, the official told SPACE.com.

"So it's kind of just one of those one-off projects that [NASA hopes if it goes] to the press, or to [Capitol] Hill, that it'll get funded," the official added. "But I don't think that's going to be the case."

NASA would rely on its Orion crew capsule and huge Space Launch System rocket — both of which are under development — to build and staff the outpost at EM-L2. The agency wants the capsule-rocket combo to be ready to carry astronauts by 2021.

An EM-L2 space station could serve as a stepping stone to near-Earth asteroids and Mars, two destinations that are officially on NASA's docket. In 2010, Obama directed the space agency to get astronauts to a space rock by 2025, then on to the vicinity of the Red Planet by the mid-2030s.

The new directive marked a change of course for NASA's human spaceflight efforts, which had been geared toward going back to the moon under the Constellation program.

Constellation began in 2004 under President George W. Bush. Obama cancelled Constellation in 2010 after a review panel known as the Augustine Committee deemed it significantly behind schedule and over budget.

Space spider landed at Smithsonian after journey on space station

Brian Vastag - Washington Post

After a space voyage of almost 42 million miles, Nefertiti the "Jumping Johnson" spider landed at the Smithsonian's Insect Zoo at the National Museum of Natural History last week. Unfortunately, whether it was her long flight or the short natural life span of a spider, "Neffi" was found lifeless Monday morning, after only four days on public view.

"Yes, it's unfortunate. She seemed well-adjusted to earth and was in good spirits. But 10 months is a good run for a little jumping spider," said museum spokesman Randall Kremer.

The thumbnail-size brown spidernaut was sent to the international space station as a student project in June and later splashed down in the Pacific aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

During her 100-day mission, the spider adapted to weightlessness and learned to snag fruit flies with an unorthodox method. Instead of leaping onto her quarry, as jumping spiders do on Earth, Neffi "sidled up to the fruit flies," said Dan Babbit, manager of the O. Orkin Insect Zoo.

Amr Mohamed, an 18-year-old from Alexandria, Egypt, proposed sending two jumping spiders to space for a YouTube-sponsored contest. His experiment was one of two chosen by a panel of all-star scientists, including astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.

In Mohamed's video proposal, he said he thought that jumping spiders would founder in space. "I suggest it will jump toward prey but not get it," he said. On Earth, jumping spiders capture prey with a gravity-limited leap. In the microgravity of orbit, such a trajectory would send the spiders soaring past their dinner.

Once aboard the station in a shoebox-size habitat, Nefertiti awaited a meal. NASA astronaut and station commander Sunita Williams released fruit flies into the spider chamber.

"My gosh, I saw her stalking a fruit fly," Williams said during a September broadcast from 200 miles above the Earth. "She was going real close. All of a sudden, she jumped right on her. It was amazing. I think the spider has absolutely adapted to space."

Back in the grip of Earth's gravity, though, Neffi initially had trouble catching food. "She overshot when trying to leap," said Babbit. Humans, too, need to readapt to life on Earth after months in space. Bones weaken, eyes lose focus, muscles shrink.

After splashing down and being transferred to a laboratory in Colorado, Nefertiti needed one last ride. The company that built her habitat, BioServe Space Technologies, chose the Smithsonian's Insect Zoo as her retirement home.

It just so happened that the museum's new director, Kirk Johnson, was passing through Colorado. Johnson stowed Neffi inside a small plastic box, stashed her in his pocket and flew to Washington, delivering Neffi on Nov. 21.

Johnson called the responsibility stressful: "This spider has traveled 41.5 million miles. Splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Flew to Japan, flew from California. This [was] a special spider."

Neffi's spacefaring companion, Cleopatra, did not even survive the journey. Poisoning is not suspected.

Space-flown spider dies in Smithsonian

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

The Smithsonian's exhibition of the first jumping spider to survive the trip to space has turned out to be short lived: the arachnid astronaut died just days after going on display.

"It is with sadness that we announce the death of Nefertiti, the "Spidernaut," the staff at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. wrote on Facebook Monday.

The "Johnson Jumper" ("Phidippus johnsoni") spider was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in July as the subject of a student-initiated science experiment. Part of YouTube Space Lab, an online video contest, the spider's spaceflight was the idea submitted by 18-year old Amr Mohamed from Alexandria, Egypt.

Living aboard the orbiting laboratory for 100 days, Nefertiti, named in honor of Egypt's ancient history, demonstrated that that its species was able to adapt its feeding behavior to account for the effects of weightlessness and still catch its prey. It then successfully readjusted to gravity, after its return to Earth in October.

Its space mission over, Nefertiti was moved to the Natural History Museum late last month. It was introduced to the museum's visitors on Nov. 29 inside the "Insect Zoo," an exhibit gallery where other live arachnids and insects are regularly available to observe.

"This morning [Dec. 3], before museum hours, a member of the Insect Zoo staff discovered Neffi had died of natural causes," the museum wrote Monday evening. "Neffi lived for 10 months. The lifespan of the species... can typically reach up to one year."

The spider's spaceflight and subsequent brief exhibit drew wide interest by the press and the public. NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who commanded the space station while Nefertiti was onboard, provided updates about the spider's status through a blog on NASA's website.

The Smithsonian said that the loss of Nefertiti, "a special animal that inspired so many imaginations," would be felt throughout the museum community.

Though Nefertiti's exhibition at the Insect Zoo has ended, it will continue to live on at the Smithsonian. Its body will be added to the museum's specimen collection.

"[Nefertiti] will continue to contribute to the understanding of spiders," the museum report.

Other space-flown spiders have met similar fates, entering the Smithsonian's collection posthumously. "Arabella" and "Anita," the first spiders to spin webs in space, both died while on the United States' first space station, Skylab, in 1973. A year later, after they were returned to Earth, they were donated by NASA to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum for display.

3D Printer Could Transform Moon Dirt Into Lunar Base

Megan Gannon - Space.com

For space scientists dreaming up a manned base on the moon, 3D printing with lunar dust looms as an attractive possibility. Such on-demand fabrication would allow astronauts to repair broken parts, manufacture spare ones and maybe even build structures, all out of the dirt scooped from under their boots.

In a new study involving artificial moon dust, engineers have shown that the technology is close to becoming reality.

With 10 pounds of simulated lunar dirt (or regolith) in hand, NASA officials approached researchers at Washington State University and challenged them to melt and resolidify the fake moon rock using 3D laser printing technology, which produces objects layer by layer based on a computer model.

The simulant is an expensive combination of silicon, aluminum, calcium, iron and magnesium oxides. Meant to mimic the properties of the regolith found on the moon, the powdery material had a particle structure resembling that of ceramics.

Because of their tendency to crack, ceramics can be tough to manipulate using 3D printers. But the WSU researchers, including husband-and-wife team Amit Bandyopadhyay and Susmita Bose, had previously demonstrated that ceramic-like material can be re-formed with an on-demand fabricator to create custom-made bone scaffolding.

For the new study, the researchers fed the raw simulant powder into a 3D printer, heating the material to high temperatures and printing it out in smooth half-millimeter (0.02 inches) layers to form small cylindrical shapes with no visible cracks. The structures that came out of the printer were about as hard as typical soda lime glass, the researchers explain in a study detailing the recent experiments in the Rapid Prototyping Journal.

"It doesn't look fantastic, but you can make something out of it," Bandyopadhyay said in a statement.

Bandyopadhyay said additives to the moon dust, such as titanium, could produce stronger objects. But he emphasized in a phone interview with SPACE.com that this technology is still in its first-generation phase and that the study was aimed at showing that the concept works with moon dust alone.

While building a lunar habitat out of moon regolith might be a distant possibility, Bandyopadhyay indicated that repairing broken tools seems like the most feasible use for the technology in the nearer future. In addition to producing free-standing 3D objects, the team showed that the fake moon rock could be used to make a "superglue" to join together broken parts, Bandyopadhyay said.

3D printers that process lunar regolith could save on resupply costs for a manned base on the moon, which NASA reportedly been considering as a possible gateway to destinations farther out in space.

"It is an exciting science fiction story, but maybe we'll hear about it in the next few years," Bandyopadhyay said. "As long as you can have additive manufacturing set up, you may be able to scoop up and print whatever you want. It's not that far-fetched."

And beyond moon dust, the technology could be adapted to Martian soil, for manned missions to the Red Planet. Bandyopadhyay, however, said he hasn't been able to get his hands on any artificial Mars dirt yet.

Get involved: Sunita Williams to Indians

The Hindu

"Get involved, try to be a part of it" is the message of record-breaking Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams to millions of Indians students and space enthusiasts.

Stressing that India has a great resource of people and talent, Williams, who is just back from her 127 days mission to the International Space Mission, said she can't imagine India taking a backseat in space programmes.

"You know, I hope so. I sort of had my head down for last mission for the last couple of years. So I haven't really been in the know about all the Indian space program and what it has been doing, but gosh we really hope so," Williams, 47, said when asked if India stands a chance in front of US and Russia to emerge as a leader in space research.

"India has a great resource of people and talent out there that I can't imagine Indians taking a back seat. So, I am really hoping they will jump out there and be part of the space programme and be flying people in space before too long," Williams told PTI in an interview.

Asked what would her message to fans in India be, she said, "I think the message that I would like to give to folks in India about the International Space Station is get involved".

She added, "We have experiments up there from all over the world, not only the international partners that participated in building the space station, but all over the world...universities, schools, we talk to kids all over the place."

"Get involved, try to be part of it, open up new doors and new opportunities".

Williams has spent a total of 322 days in space during her two long-duration missions.

That makes her the second most experienced female astronaut in history, behind NASA's Peggy Whitson (who spent 377 days in space during two station flights).

Williams now also holds the record for spacewalking time for female astronauts.

Williams said she is hoping to visit India "may be this spring and may be next fall".

"India is a little bit hot in the summer time...just like in Houston. So I would love to come possibly this spring or this fall," she said.

Asked how India looked from space, Williams said she took some wonderful pictures.

"I was not getting any good picture when I was first up there and I was little bit bummed out because last time I was there in the winter time and I took some great pictures of India. But luckily we stayed up long enough and I got some really wonderful pictures coming up the coast of (where my dad is in Gujarat) Saurashtra, Mumbai, coming across the mountains, the Himalayas, the Punjab area, New Delhi and all to the west, Kolkata, some of the great rivers, Brahmaputra and the Ganges as they were creating sandbars. So I took a bunch of pictures, as I said, I was really happy to be there little bit later, when some of the summer haze burned off and you can really see the beauty of India. So that was very lucky".

Asked about her future plans, Williams said she would like to stay involved in the space programme.

"I had a great opportunity. And we have young astronauts getting ready to get out there and go to the international space station...I would like to help them as much as I can, while I have the recent knowledge and then after that I would see. Eventually when I grow up I would love to be a school teacher. We will see what happens," she said.

Richard Branson: US has best regulatory landscape for private space travel

Olivia Solon - Wired.com (UK edition)

The UK needs to create a regulatory landscape that is more attractive to private space travel companies such as Virgin Galactic, according to Richard Branson, founder and chairman of Virgin Group.

He explained to the audience at the European Space Solutions summit that the US Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, which makes it easier for private space companies to take flight, is a "terrific piece of legislation which makes it possible for a company like Virgin Galactic to operate". The act lays out definitions of suborbital space passenger vehicles, solidifies the process for licensing such vehicles and allows paying passengers to fly into space at their own risk. He added that it presented a "liability and licensing structure commensurate with an industry taking its first steps".

On the other hand, Virgin Galactic faces challenges in expanding beyond the US since all space vehicles are placed on the US Munitions List under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR). Any organisation wanting to export a technology on the munitions list to anyone outside of the United States has to first gain the approval of the State Department -- a lengthy process. Failure to do to can result in fines and prison sentences.

Even so, there is a "considerable advantage to the US" for space travel businesses. "Their philosophy is reflected in legislation and has given the country an early lead in the new race to space."

Branson added that even if Virgin Galactic were to be granted an export license, the first likely non-US base will be Abu Dhabi, followed by several places in Europe, one of which could be Sweden (so passengers could see aurora borealis from a different angle) and another could be the UK.

"Tapping into space on a difficulty scale of 1-10 is a 12," he said. "It's like rocket science but harder! We need to get hundreds of normal people into space and back safely in a commercially viable framework. It took 14 years for that moment to arrive. Sometimes you just have to be patient."

Branson was talking over VOIP from the British Virgin Islands, where he is currently hosting more than 500 people who have paid $200,000 to become the first Virgin Galactic astronauts.

Spacesuits: The final frontier
Forget the classic three-piece. For $50,000 a Brooklyn duo will design a bespoke outfit that will take you out of this world

Tim Donnelly - New York Post

One day, not long from now, everybody will need a spacesuit, whether it's for a quick suborbital flight to Australia or a weeks-long jaunt to the newly discovered mineral baths on Mercury. When that time comes, two dudes from Brooklyn will be ready.

One of them, Ted Southern, designs Broadway costumes and angel wings for Victoria's Secret models. The other, Nikolay Moiseev, is a Russian-born engineer. Together from the Final Frontier Design studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they are reinventing astronaut wear for a new era of space travel.

The two met by chance at a NASA contest five years ago and realized their mix of artistry and engineering skills was strong enough to build a company. But this is Brooklyn, where everything is handmade and local, so they've started teaching aspiring cosmonauts the basics of DIY spacesuit building, too.

For $550 (equipment included), students at the 3rd Ward design workshop have learned casting and molding, taking small steps (for a man) toward making their own suits. They don't walk out ready to board the International Space Station — Southern says it would be "preposterous" to actually make a whole suit in a six-class session — but they do craft a finger and part of the helmet, while learning how the rest of the process works.

The studio houses a vacuum-chamber box Southern designed to test the integrity of gloves. To try out other garments, they inflate them with an air compressor and adjust regulators on the suit. Most of the fabric they use is commercially available heat-seal coated nylon; the same stuff used in river rafts and blimps.

Real would-be moonwalkers shell out about $50,000 for a full Final Frontier suit, which is still a steal compared to the $250,000 outfit NASA uses now.

And that's the point of Final Frontier: to address pesky astronaut pet peeves, by making gloves more flexible, equipment more affordable and spacesuits easier to put on. It takes more than two months to produce one suit from scratch, but they plan to make about one suit a week if they get enough orders to scale up.

"There's a whole slew of private space companies coming online that want to send humans into space," Southern says. "That sector needs spacesuits. They're not served by current providers. That's who we see as our customers."

There is a small catch, though.

"It's really early in the private space industry now. No one has sent up people yet," Southern says. "We're kind of banking on an industry that doesn't exist yet."

Still, once daredevil Felix Baumgartner made his record-breaking sub-orbital jump Oct. 14, their phone started ringing. Other companies suddenly decided they wanted to outfit their own space jumpers.

One of those customers is the Spanish company zero2infinity, which expects to be selling sub-orbital rides in its giant balloons, similar to the ones Baumgartner used, by 2015. A ride in the balloon will cost about $140,000 and involve a two-hour ascent to 36 kilometers, where passengers will cruise for two hours. The company ordered one suit from Final Frontier for its test runs, and might order more if all goes well. So far, it's Final Frontier's only order.

"We think they're doing a great job," says Annelie Schoenmaker, zero2infinity's external relations manager and legal officer. "It fits our purpose because their suits will be more flexible, more convenient than current spacesuits like the one that Felix wore, which was horrible to wear."

(Baumgartner felt so claustrophobic in his suit that he nearly scratched his record breaking leap.)

With 20 years' experience working for Russia's space agency, Moiseev, 49, is the scientist of the operation. He grew passionate about space reading science fiction stories in high school. He even wrote an essay about plans to explore Mars one day, and got as close as anyone ever has to that dream when he walked 20 miles in a simulation of Mars' atmosphere.

Like Southern's work for clients such as Victoria's Secret and Cirque du Soleil, Moiseev has side projects, too. One is a tsunami escape pod, an egg-shaped vehicle you could use to safely ride out a tidal wave.

Southern, 35, studied French horn at the University of Puget Sound. He always thought space was cool, but was more interested in the mechanics of design.

He's a thin, tall guy who looks the part of casual artist more than a space engineer, wearing Adidas sneakers, khakis and a Quiksilver T-shirt as he bikes to work. But his appearance belies his serious intent; he recently had to register as an arms manufacturer to meet government regulations.

In 2009, the duo's award-winning glove design outperformed current NASA standards, scoring them a $100,000 prize and a spot on NASA's contractors list. The next year, in a Gowanus space shared with woodworkers, they built their first suit, a bright-yellow get-up that the Michelin man might wear if he were headed for the moon. It's an intra-vehicular activity suit meant to be worn inside a spacecraft.

The next suit was built last December, in preparation for a visit from SpaceX, the California-based company that sent supplies to the ISS on its Dragon capsule in May, marking the first time a non-government ship had docked with the station.

That visit inspired them to move from Gowanus to the Navy Yard, which offered four times the room. "We'd have NASA personnel and astronauts come in. It was a little bit embarrassing," Southern says.

For its third-generation suit, Final Frontier raised $27,000 via Kickstarter. Anyone who pitched in $550 got a pair of zero-gravity pants as a perk; one person who pitched in $10,000 got his own spacesuit.

So what does Moiseev think about working in a Brooklyn studio like a common art student? "I enjoy," he says. "Working in big companies requires a lot of paperwork."

For Southern, building space gear has boosted his credibility as a designer. "If you can build a spacesuit," he says, "you can build these wings for Victoria's Secret."

MEANWHILE ON MARS...

Mars rover soil samples may contain simple organics; results not definitive

William Harwood - CBS News

Despite widespread speculation about a potentially significant discovery on Mars, the Curiosity rover's first detailed look at a martian soil sample with an instrument capable of detecting organic compounds has not found any "definitive" signs of materials that play key roles in biological processes on Earth, scientists said Monday.

While the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument detected signs of an oxygen-chlorine compound -- perchlorate -- and trace amounts of chlorinated methane compounds, which contain carbon, researchers say more tests are needed to make sure the carbon originated with the sample and was not brought to Mars aboard Curiosity.

"Even though (SAM) detected organic compounds, first of all we have to demonstrate that they're indigenous to Mars," said Project Scientist John Grotzinger. "Then after that we can engage in the question about whether they represent the background fall of cosmic materials that are organic in composition that fall on the surface of every terrestrial planet."

Only then, he said, can scientists "begin to get into the more complex questions of whether or not this might be some type of a biological material. But that's well down the road for us."

Grotzinger made the comments during a news briefing at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.

Widespread speculation that Curiosity had made a major discovery began in the wake of SAM's first soil sample analysis and a National Public Radio interview with Grotzinger, who was reluctant to discuss the rover's findings before the AGU presentation.

Asked about lessons learned from the apparent conflict between public expectation and scientific reality, Grotzinger said "I think certainly what I've learned from this is that you have to be careful about what you say and even more careful about how you say it. We're doing science at the speed of science. We live in a world that's sort of at the pace of Instagrams.

"The enthusiasm that we had, that I had, that our whole team has about what's going on here, I think was just misunderstood. There's not much more to say than that."

Curiosity was lowered to the surface of Gale Crater by a rocket-powered backpack on Aug. 6, kicking off a planned two-year mission to look for organic compounds and to find out whether the red planet has, or ever had, a habitable environment.

The first four months of the mission have been devoted to activating, testing and calibrating its scientific instruments before the rover begins making its way to its ultimate target, the base of a central 3.5-mile-high mound of layered terrain in the center of Gale Crater that is known as Mount Sharp.

Most recently, Curiosity's robot arm has been put through its paces scooping up sandy soil samples from a low dune and depositing them into a pair of on-board mini laboratories, SAM and another known as CheMin, for Chemistry and Mineralogy.

Scientists deliberately picked an average looking dune made up of presumably commonplace, fine-grained soil. Several scoops were processed through the sample acquisition system and then discarded in an attempt to scrub away any traces of Earth's environment. Portions of a third and fourth samples were processed by the CheMin instrument and the fifth by SAM.

"The instrument, SAM, is working perfectly well," Grotzinger said. "It has made this detection of simple organic compounds. We just simply don't know if they're indigenous to Mars or not. It's going to take us some time to work through that. I know there's a lot of interest in that. But the point is, Curiosity's middle name is 'patience' and we all have to have a healthy dose of that."

Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator for SAM at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, agreed, saying "we have to be very careful to make sure both the carbon and the chlorine are coming from Mars. ... There's more work to do."

And even then, he cautioned, the tentative results must be taken in context.

"If we take microbes that are living in some extreme environments on Earth that aren't very abundant and we do this same type of experiment, we see a whole suite of organic structures produced," he said.

"What we're seeing here (on Mars) are some very simple compounds and it's entirley possible they're coming from the very reactive chlorine that's released and picking up carbon from somewhere. We have to try to understand where that carbon is coming from. But the informative thing in really understanding a source of carbon, what we would have to have is a whole variety of compounds."

After completing its initial sample analysis runs at a sand drift in an area known as Rocknest, Curiosity moved to a new area, known as Point Lake, while the team looks for suitable rocks to serve as test subjects for a powerful drill mounted on Curiosity's robot arm. The drill, intended to provide pristine samples from the interior of targeted rocks, is the final major component of the science package to be tested.

The nuclear-powered rover was not designed to look for signs of past or present life. Rather, its instruments were built to look for the chemical traces of past or present habitability.

"At this point, basically, our car is ready to go," Grotzinger said. "This is a car that comes with a 10,000-page user manual that we also have to write as we read it. That's where the patience comes in."

Engineers hope to complete the drill tests before the Christmas holidays. After that, Curiosity will head for Mount Sharp.

"So we're going to load up the car with the science team," Grotzinger said. "We've gassed it up, checked the oil, we're going to kick the tires around a little bit but then we're ready for our trip and that's when our science mission of exploration really gets into full gear."

Mars rover Curiosity: No surprise in 1st soil test

Alicia Chang - Associated Press

NASA's Curiosity rover has indeed found something in the Martian dirt. But so far, there's no definitive sign of the chemical ingredients necessary to support life.

A scoop of sandy soil analyzed by Curiosity's sophisticated chemistry laboratory contained water and a mix of chemicals, but not complex carbon-based molecules considered essential for life.

That the soil was not more hospitable did not surprise mission scientist Paul Mahaffy since radiation from space can destroy any carbon evidence.

"It's not unexpected necessarily," said Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who is in charge of the chemistry experiments. "It's been exposed to the harsh Martian environment."

The latest findings were presented Monday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The mission managed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is trying to determine whether conditions on Mars could have been favorable for microbes when the red planet was warmer and wetter.

Hopes for a "Mars-shaking" discovery peaked two weeks ago after mission chief scientist John Grotzinger told National Public Radio: "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good."

The Internet lit up with excitement. NASA later clarified that Grotzinger was referring generally to the mission and not a specific result. Days before the science gathering, the space agency sought to contain expectations and issued a statement insisting there'd be no big news.

So what did Curiosity find after baking the soil and analyzing the resulting gases?

Water, sulfur and perchlorate, a highly oxidizing salt that was also detected by one of NASA's previous spacecraft, the Phoenix lander, in the northern Martian latitudes.

"This is typical, ordinary Martian soil," said mission scientist Ralf Gellert of the University of Guelph in Canada.

The rover did detect hints of a simple carbon compound, but scientists don't yet know if it's native to the planet, came from space or hitchhiked from Earth.

Scientists think the best chance of finding complex carbon is at Mount Sharp, a mountain rising three miles from the center of Gale Crater near the Martian equator. Curiosity won't trek there until early next year. Images from space reveal intriguing layers at the base and many think it's the ideal place to search for carbon.

"The real new science may have to wait until the rover gets to the ancient layered terrain at the base," said University of Arizona senior research scientist Peter Smith, who is not involved in the latest Mars mission.

The Curiosity team has been under pressure to announce a blockbuster find ever since the car-size Curiosity made its dramatic landing in early August using a never-before-tried technique that involved gently being lowered to the ground by cables.

The first month of a two-year mission was dominated by health checkups - a requirement for every interplanetary spacecraft. Since then, it has been on the move, scooping up soil and hunting for its first rock to drill into.

While Curiosity has beamed back stunning panoramas of its surroundings, its major discovery so far is uncovering the remnants of an ancient streambed. Michael Meyer of NASA headquarters called Curiosity a "CSI laboratory on wheels" that has already revealed a lot about its surroundings.

At $2.5 billion, the Curiosity mission is the most expensive yet to Mars, which has been studied by various, less capable rovers and landers. Curiosity totes around high-tech tools designed to explore the Martian surface in unprecedented detail.

Curiosity rover finds organic compounds, but are they from Mars?

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

Although NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't yet confirmed the detection of organic compounds on Mars, it's already seeing that the Red Planet's soil contains water and more complex chemicals — including signs of an intriguing compound called perchlorate.

The first soil sample analysis from Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars lab, or SAM, was the leadoff topic today at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco. The findings were eagerly awaited because of rumors that the Curiosity team was on the verge of announcing major findings — and although NASA tamped down expectations, the scientists said they were overjoyed with the first round of analysis.

"We really consider this a terrific milestone," Paul Mahaffy, a NASA researcher who is SAM's lead scientist, said at the AGU briefing.

Mahaffy said in a statement issued by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that "we have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater."

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on Aug. 5, and since then it's been studying Martian rocks, soil and atmosphere with a suite of 10 scientific instruments. Its two-year, $2.5 billion primary mission is aimed at determining whether conditions in the crater were ever conducive for microbial life.

SAM is a key tool for that mission, because it can cook Martian samples in a mini-oven and then analyze the gases that are given off to identify the compounds contained in the sample. Other instruments — including the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument, or CheMin — were used as well to study the initial soil samples, collected over the past several weeks from a drift of windblown sand and dust called Rocknest.

NASA said CheMin found that the composition of the Rocknest samples was similar to that of soil analyzed by other Mars rovers such as Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity — about half common volcanic minerals, and half non-crystalline minerals such as glass. SAM identified other ingredients in much lower concentrations, including water molecules that were apparently bound to the grains of sand and dust. Although the water wouldn't be enough to support any sort of life, the concentration was higher than expected.

SAM also identified a type of perchlorate, a compound that includes oxygen and chlorine. Perchlorate, which was also found by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008, is considered a toxic substance and used as an ingredient in rocket fuel on Earth. But scientists say the compound could conceivably serve as an energy source for hardy microbes on Mars. Mahaffy said the particular type of compound detected by Curiosity appeared to be calcium perchlorate, but "we have to study that further."

Reactions with other chemicals in SAM's oven formed chlorinated methane compounds, which geologists consider organic chemicals because they contain carbon. Mahaffy said it was most likely that the chlorine came from a perchlorate-like compound in the soil. However, he said it wasn't yet clear whether the tiny amount of carbon in the compounds came from the Martian soil or was actually brought to Mars from Earth by Curiosity itself.

"We have to be very careful to make sure both the carbon and the chlorine are coming from Mars," he told reporters.

Caltech's John Grotzinger, the project scientist for Curiosity's mission, seconded that view. "We just simply don't know if they're indigenous to Mars or not," he said.

Grotzinger said the team would first have to confirm that the constituents of the organic compounds seen by SAM truly came from Mars. If the presence of organics is confirmed, then the scientists would have to look into whether they are merely part of the "background fall of cosmic material" onto the planet, or arose through chemical processes on Mars itself, he said.

It would take a step-by-step process to confirm the presence of truly Martian organic compounds, and reconstruct how those compounds were formed. "Then you have ... to decide whether or not those formation pathways are abiotic, or maybe in the end biologic," Grotzinger said. "So you see there's a complicated decision pathway there, and we have to explore each one systematically."

Grotzinger cautioned that there would be no "hallelujah moment" in the search for organic chemicals on Mars.

A couple of weeks ago, he was quoted as saying that the data set from Curiosity would be "one for the history books." That led to speculation that an earth-shaking discovery could be revealed at the AGU meeting. NASA later said Grotzinger was referring to the two-year mission as a whole, rather than any specific findings to be announced in the near term.

Today, Grotzinger said his original comments were misunderstood.

"What I've learned from this is that you have to be careful about what you say, and even more careful about how you say it." he told reporters. "We're doing science at the speed of science [but] we live in a world that's sort of at the pace of Instagrams. The enthusiasm that we had, that I had, that our whole team has about what's going on here ... I think it was just misunderstood."

Rover Finds Whiff of Possible Organics on Mars

Irene Klotz - Discovery News

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has turned up tantalizing clues of the planet's complicated chemical evolution, a story that includes carbon, the first detailed analysis of the planet's soil shows.

Scientists found traces of carbon in several compounds detected by the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument. They do not yet know if the carbon, which is a key building block for life, is contamination from Earth, was delivered to Mars by organics-rich comets or asteroids, or arose on Mars.

If indigenous, the carbon could be an indicator of geologic or biological activity.

"We're not really sure of where it comes from right now," the mission's lead scientist John Grotzinger told reporters during the opening day of the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco on Monday.

"Just finding carbon somewhere doesn't mean that it has anything to do with life, or the finding of a habitable environment," he said.

Life as we know it needs three basic ingredients to evolve -- water, a energy source and carbon. Other building blocks include sulfur, oxygen, phosphorous and nitrogen.

Curiosity, which is four months into a planned two-year mission on Mars, already has turned up evidence that its landing spot on the floor Gale Crater, was once covered in water. Minerals in the soil analysis also show a history of chemical interaction with water.

Unlike previous rovers and landers dispatched to Mars, Curiosity contains an onboard chemistry laboratory in an attempt to find the ingredients for microbial life, the environments that could have supported it and places where life could have been preserved.

In a trio of runs, SAM detected signs of an oxygen-chlorine compound, possibly perchlorate, and traces of carbon-containing chlorinated methane compounds.

Scientists specifically chose dry, fine-grained sand believed to be typical to the Martian surface for Curiosity's first soil analysis.

"It's not unexpected that this sand pile would not be rich in organics. It's been exposed to the harsh Martian environment," said lead SAM scientist Paul Mahaffy, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"What we're seeing here are some very simple compounds, and it's entirely possible they're coming from the very reactive chlorine that's released and picking up carbon from somewhere. We have to try to understand where that carbon is coming from," he said.

The rover's prime target is a stack of layered deposits rising from the center of the crater.

"It's a really going to be an exciting hunt over the course of this mission to find early environments that might be protected from this surface Mars environment and see what we can add to the carbon story," Mahaffy said.

"We're starting to find the spices that make a stew tasty," Grotzinger told Discovery News. "There are the basic ingredients that you expect to be there, but it's how you combine them and the minor ingredients that really turn out to be interesting."

…AND IF MARS IS TOO CLOSE…

Voyager 1, departing solar system, flies into new region near boundary of interstellar space

William Harwood – CBS News

NASA's aging Voyager 1 probe, 35 years and 11 billion miles outbound from Earth, has crossed into an unexpected, exceedingly remote region of the solar system that may represent the spacecraft's final step before leaving the sun's influence and moving into the vast realm of interstellar space.

The region is believed to be a sort of "magnetic highway" allowing high-energy charged particles from ancient supernova explosions to move into the sun's sphere of influence and for lower-energy particles to move out into deep space.

"This is really another exciting step in the Voyager journey of exploration," Project Scientist Ed Stone told reporters Monday. "Voyager's discovered a new region of the heliosphere that we had not realized was there. It's a magnetic highway where the magnetic field of the sun -- we're still inside apparently -- but the magnetic field is connected to the outside. So it's like a highway, letting particles in and out."

The sun's magnetic field and the outward flow of electrically charged particles blasted away from the star -- the solar wind -- define a gigantic region in space known as the heliosphere. It is shaped somewhat like a teardrop because of the sun's motion, due to the rotation of the Milky Way, combined with the effects of the sun's passage through a cloud of interstellar debris produced by ancient supernova explosions. The tail of the teardrop stretches away in the opposite direction of travel.

The outward flow of the solar wind and the shepherding magnetic field act as a shield of sorts for the inner solar system, affecting the passage of high-energy cosmic rays from deep space.

In recent years, Voyager 1 and its sister ship, Voyager 2, have been moving through a region known as the heliosheath, plowing through a realm where the outward velocity of the solar wind has dropped to near zero.

Just in front of the heliosheath is the heliopause, the boundary between the heliosphere and the interstellar wind the sun and its solar system are moving through. Just in front of the heliopause is yet another zone, the so-called bow shock, where the interstellar wind crashes into the heliosphere.

Now, it appears there is yet another layer in the complex boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space.

"We believe, from the magnetic field data, that the layer we're in actually came from the southern hemisphere of the sun," Stone said. Even though Voyager 1 is heading outward on a trajectory tilted 35 degrees above the plane of the solar system, "the pressure on the outside of the heliosphere from the outside magnetic field has forced some of the southern solar wind to flow northward and it creates a layer just on the inside of the heliopause."

"That, we believe, is the highway we're on now," Stone said. "We don't know exactly how long it will take (to cross it and move out of the solar system). It may take several more months, it may take several more years. But we do believe this may be the very last layer between us and interstellar space."

He said three lines of evidence should let scientists know when that long-awaited milestone has occurred.

Once outside the heliosphere, low-energy cosmic rays should be detected that were unable to make it into the solar system due to the shielding effect of the sun's magnetic field and solar wind. At the same time, slower particles from inside the heliosphere should drop off to extremely low levels. Finally, Voyager's magnetometer should detect a north-south field instead of the east-west orientation of the sun's field.

In recent months, Voyager 1's particle observations have seemed consistent with flying through interstellar space.

"If we had only looked at the particle data alone, we would have said well, we're out, goodbye solar system," said Stamatios Krimigis, principal investigator for Voyager's low-energy charged particle instrument. "But nature is very imaginative, and Lucy pulled out the football again."

That's because the magnetic field direction has not yet changed to the expected north-south orientation of interstellar space.

"We're quite confident that there's really no reason to believe we're outside the heliosphere," said Leonard Burlaga, a magnetometer team scientist the Goddard Space Flight Center. "There's no evidence that we have entered the interstellar magnetic field."

Not yet, maybe. But soon.

Voyager 2 was launched on Aug. 20, 1977, followed 16 days later by Voyager 1 on Sept. 5, 1977. Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter on March 5, 1979 and then made a dramatic flyby of Saturn on Nov. 12, 1980. After beaming back spectacular views of Saturn and its enigmatic moon, Titan, the spacecraft headed out of the solar system on a trajectory above the plane of the planets.

Voyager 2 flew past Jupiter on July 9, 1979, and then past Saturn on Aug. 25, 1981. The spacecraft then continued on to Uranus for a Jan. 24, 1986, flyby and then Neptune and one of its moons, Triton, on Aug. 25, 1989. The Neptune flyby put Voyager 2 on a trajectory at a steep angle below the plane of the planets.

The Voyagers have been beaming back a steady stream of data ever since their planetary flybys, measuring the fields and particles present in the far reaches of the solar system as they moved toward the limits of the sun's influence.

As of this writing, Voyager 1 is about 11.3 billion miles from Earth and Voyager 2 is roughly 9.2 billion miles out. At those distances, it takes more than 16 hours for 20-watt radio signals, moving at 186,000 miles per second, to cross the vast gulf between the spacecraft and the giant antennas on Earth that are needed to collect the data.

On its current trajectory, Voyager 1 will pass within about 1.6 lightyears of a star in the constellation Camelopardalis in about 40,000 years. It will take even longer for Voyager 2 to pass within several light years of another star.

As a NASA mission overview concludes, "the Voyagers are destined -- perhaps eternally -- to wander the Milky Way."

Voyager discovers 'magnetic highway' at edge of solar system

Mira Oberman – Agence France-Presse

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a "magnetic highway" at the edge of the solar system, a surprising discovery 35 years after its launch, the experts behind the pioneering craft said.

Earlier this year a surge in a key indicator fueled hopes that the craft was nearing the so-called heliopause, which marks the boundary between our solar system and outer space.

But instead of slipping away from the bubble of charged particles the Sun blows around itself, Voyager encountered something completely unexpected.

Interstellar magnetic fields: a magnetic highway

The craft's daily radio reports sent back evidence that the Sun's magnetic field lines was connected to interstellar magnetic fields. Lower-energy charged particles were zooming out and higher-energy particles from outside were streaming in.

They called it a magnetic highway because charged particles outside this region bounced around in all directions, as if trapped on local roads inside the bubble, or heliosphere.

"Although Voyager 1 still is inside the Sun's environment, we now can taste what it's like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway," said Edward Stone, a Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

"The new region isn't what we expected

"We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space. Our best guess is it's likely just a few months to a couple years away. The new region isn't what we expected, but we've come to expect the unexpected from Voyager."

Voyager is now 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from the Sun, which is 122 times the distances from the Earth to the Sun. Yet it takes only 17 hours for its radio signal to reach us.

Scientists began to think it was reaching the edge of our Solar System two years ago when the solar winds died down and particles settled in space the way they would in a swamp.

Still trying to escape the Solar System

An increase in the number of cosmic rays in May also led them to believe Voyager had approached interstellar space.

In July the reading changed again, and by August 25 Voyager was on the magnetic highway. The number of particles from the outside jumped sharply and the number of particles from the inside fell by a factor of 1,000.

"It is as if someone opened the floodgates and they were all moved down the river, also some boaters powered up stream with close to the speed of light have been able to get in at last," said Stamatios Krimigis, Voyager's principal investigator of low-energy charged particles.

While the magnetic field is exciting, Krimigis sounded somewhat disappointed that Voyager had not yet escaped the Solar System.

Past the biggest planets and into the void

"Nature is very imaginative and Lucy pulled up the football again," he said, making reference to the classic comic strip Peanuts in a conference call with reporters.

The twin Voyager craft - Voyager 2 was actually launched first, on August 20, 1977, followed by Voyager 1 on September 5 - were designed primarily to study the biggest planets in our Solar System, Jupiter and Saturn.

Taking advantage of a planetary alignment, they fulfilled that mission before pushing on to Uranus and Neptune, beaming back stunning images of the first two in 1979 and 1980, and the latter pair in 1986 and 1989.

But with those jobs complete and both craft still functioning perfectly, project managers decided to keep mining information as the devices fly further into the void.

NASA has described Voyager 1 and its companion Voyager 2 as "the two most distant active representatives of humanity and its desire to explore."

The scientists controlling Voyager 1 - whose 1970s technology gives it just a 100,000th of the computer memory of an eight-gigabyte iPod Nano - decided to turn off its cameras after it passed Neptune in 1989 to preserve power.

Assuming the craft continues to function normally, they will have to start turning off other on-board instruments from 2020, and it is expected to run out of power completely in 2025.

Voyager 1 cruising along magnetic highway

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

The Voyager 1 spacecraft, sailing through the unexplored frontier of the solar system, has detected a new region of space at the enigmatic boundary between the sun's sphere of influence and the interstellar medium, scientists said Monday.

More than 35 years since launching from Earth, the plutonium-powered Voyager 1 probe has flown past Jupiter and Saturn and is now pioneering science at the edge of the heliosphere, a teardrop-shaped bubble blown out by the solar wind.

Beyond the heliosphere lies a vacuous expanse known as interstellar space, where the solar wind stops and material expelled from exploding stars hold reign.

Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object, is the first spacecraft to explore the boundary region.

In July and August, scientists noticed intriguing data coming from Voyager 1's particle counters as the craft flew more than 11 billion miles from Earth.

"Voyager has discovered a new region of the heliosphere that we had not realized was there," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The instruments registered dramatic, temporary changes in the levels of cosmic rays and low-energy particles two times in late July and mid-August.

On Aug. 25, Voyager 1 detector sensed a permanent rise in high-energy cosmic rays, just as the probe's telescopes a sharp drop in low-energy particles coming from inside the heliosphere.

Scientists believed cosmic rays, which originate from outside the solar system, would not penetrate the heliopause, the border where the heliosphere and interstellar space meet. And researchers thought low-energy particles from the solar system would be constrained inside the heliosphere.

"If we had only looked at particle data alone, we would have said we're out. Goodbye, solar system," said Stamatios Krimigis, principal investigator of the low-energy charged particle instrument, based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

But scientists instituted a third test to check whether Voyager 1 had crossed the heliopause and left the solar system.

Inside the heliosphere, the magnetic field is oriented in an east-west direction due to the spinning of the sun. Outside, scientists say, evidence points to the magnetic field being in a north-south direction.

So far, Voyager 1 has not recorded a change in magnetic field direction, according to Leonard Burlaga, a Voyager magnetometer team member based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

But Burlaga said Voyager 1's magnetometer indicates the craft is in a much more intense magnetic environment than before the summer.

"We are in a magnetic region unlike any we've been in before - about 10 times more intense than before the termination shock - but the magnetic field data show no indication we're in interstellar space," Burlaga said. "The magnetic field data turned out to be the key to pinpointing when we crossed the termination shock. And we expect these data will tell us when we first reach interstellar space."

Voyager 1 passed the termination shock in December 2004, entering a region called the heliosheath, in which the million-mile-per-hour solar wind slowed and became turbulent. From December 2004 until the summer of 2012, the environment around Voyager 1 was consistent.

Researchers say Voyager 1 is now in a region where the sun's magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines. The connection creates an avenue between the solar system and the space outside, allowing low-energy particles from inside the heliosphere to stream out and allows cosmic rays from interstellar space to pass inside.

Scientists call the connection a magnetic highway because the magnetic field lines allow particles to freely flow in and out of the heliosphere.

Stone said it is impossible to predict exactly when Voyager 1 will leave the solar system.

"It could take several more months or take several more years, but we believe this may be the very last layer between us and interstellar space," Stone said.

Voyager 1, along with a twin craft named Voyager 2, launched in 1977 to tour the solar system's outer planets. Both probes are now on trajectories leaving the solar system.

Voyager 2, flying in a different direction than its sister craft, is now about 9 billion miles away and will reach interstellar space several years after Voyager 1.

"In 1977, no one knew how large the heliosphere was, and no one knew how long the spacecraft would last," Stone said. "We're very lucky that there seems to be a compatibility between our mission lifetime and the size of the heliosphere."

Suzanne Dodd, Voyager's project manager, said about 12 engineers and support personnel work on the mission full-time at JPL. Another dozen researchers are on the Voyager science team.

The Voyager probes are powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238. A power generator converts heat from the plutonium's decay into electricity.

The power source will be sufficient to operate all of spacecraft's science instruments until around 2020, then controllers will begin to switch off the sensors one-by-one. By 2025, there be no electricity for any of Voyager's instruments, according to Stone, who has been with the project since launch.

But scientists are confident the Voyager probes will last long enough to leave the heliosphere and taste interstellar space.

"We could well be quite surprised once we get outside the bubble," Stone said.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

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