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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: December 24, 2013 9:21:21 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News Dec. 24, 2013
Not sure if Pao is still working between now and New Years Day, so just in case not. - wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsTuesday – Dec. 24, 2013International Space Station:International Space Station Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio began their spacewalk at 6:53 a.m. EST today. It is planned to be a 6-hour, 30-minute excursion. Watch live at www.nasa.gov/ntv.Coverage of Saturday's spacewalk was shown on 1,700 television broadcasts over the weekend.HEADLINES AND LEADSNASA: Christmas Eve spacewalk could wrap up repairMarcia Dunn – Associated PressThe Christmas Eve spacewalk planned by NASA at the International Space Station should wrap up repair work on a faulty cooling line.Astronauts ready for second spacewalk to repair stationIrene Klotz - ReutersAstronauts aboard the International Space Station are planning a second and final spacewalk to fix the outpost's cooling system early on Tuesday, a NASA official said.Water in Ageing Spacesuit Caused Problems for AstronautLiz Fields -- ABCNASA's Mission Control has revealed the problem that prompted the early end of the latest spacewalk: Water in one of the astronaut's 35-year-old spacesuits.Spacesuit Issue Delays Next Spacewalk Until Christmas EveMike Wall – SPACE.comNASA has delayed the second of three planned holiday spacewalks by 24 hours, setting up a Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) excursion from the International Space Station for two astronauts.Former Apollo 8 astronaut to mark anniversary of 1968 Christmas Eve broadcast to EarthAssociated PressCHICAGO – An Apollo 8 astronaut who was among the first to orbit the moon is set to help re-enact the 1968 Christmastime broadcast from space.James Webb Space Telescope receives last mirror segmentsCollin Skocik – Spaceflight InsiderThe last of the key components of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has arrived at the Goddard Space Flight Center. The final three of eighteen hexagonal mirrors, shipped across eight states from Boulder, Colorado to Greenbelt, Maryland, will be integrated into the structure that will hold together the primary mirror. Put together, these mirrors will form the largest space telescope ever built. Once assembled, the beryllium mirrors will be adjusted by computer-controlled actuators to correct any errors.Reactivated asteroid hunter returns first imagesCharles Black -- SenNASA's NEOWISE spacecraft (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) has taken its first images since being reactivated after more than two and a half years of hibernation.Can Gravity attract attention to the orbital debris problem?Jeff Foust -- Space ReviewThe end of the year marks the beginning of the movie awards season, whose events will be getting a little more attention than usual from the space community thanks to movie Gravity. Earlier this month, the movie won several nominations for next month's Golden Globes Awards, including best picture, best actress for Sandra Bullock, and best director for Alfonso Cuarón. Those nominations could be harbingers for the Academy Awards to come.Another Step Toward SpaceBeijing ReviewOn December 14, China's lunar probe Chang'e-3 successfully landed on the moon. Later, the lunar rover Yutu, meaning jade rabbit, separated from the lander and set out on its adventure across the moon's surface. The monumental event makes China the third country to successfully soft land a probe on the moon after the United States and the former Soviet Union.First Exomoon Possibly GlimpsedAstronomers may have discovered a moon orbiting an alien planet, but the signal is far from definitiveClara Moskowitz - Scientific AmericanExoplanets are almost old hat to astronomers, who by now have found more than 1,000 such worlds beyond the solar system. The next frontier is exomoons—moons orbiting alien planets—which are much smaller, fainter and harder to find. Now astronomers say they may have found an oddball system of a planet and a moon floating free in the galaxy rather than orbiting a star.Incredible Technology: How to Mine Water on MarsTanya Lewis - SPACE.comThe bone-dry desert of present-day Mars may seem like the last place you would look for water, but the Red Planet actually contains a wealth of water locked up in ice.NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg took Pinterest where it's never gone beforeLisa Granshaw – The Daily DotNASA astronaut Karen Nyberg may be back on Earth, but her time on the International Space Station (ISS) will never be forgotten—partly thanks to the Pinterest account she kept while living in space.Holiday lights: New views of Saturn and its moonsAssociated PressA NASA spacecraft has sent holiday greetings from the outer solar space.COMPLETE STORIESNASA: Christmas Eve spacewalk could wrap up repairMarcia Dunn – Associated PressThe Christmas Eve spacewalk planned by NASA at the International Space Station should wrap up repair work on a faulty cooling line.Mission Control said Monday that unless something goes awry, two astronauts ought to finish installing a new ammonia pump Tuesday, during this second spacewalk. NASA originally thought three spacewalks might be needed.Astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins removed the faulty pump Saturday. Everything went so well, they jumped ahead in their effort to fix the external cooling line that shut down Dec. 11.A bad valve in the pump caused the breakdown, prompting the urgent series of spacewalk repairs.The second spacewalk should have been Monday, but was bumped a day so Mastracchio could swap suits. He inadvertently hit the water switch in the air lock following Saturday's spacewalk, and engineers suspect water entered his suit. The suit needs to dry out for at least a week before being used again, said flight director Judd Frieling.Saturday's water intrusion is unrelated to helmet leakage that almost drowned an Italian spacewalker in July.Two of the three Russians crew members, meanwhile, will conduct a Moscow-directed spacewalk on Friday to install cameras and fresh experiments. It was planned long before the U.S. cooling system ran into trouble.The sixth space station resident is Japanese and will assist from inside during Tuesday's U.S. spacewalk.NASA has conducted a Christmas Eve spacewalk only once before, during a Hubble Space Telescope repair mission in 1999.Mission Control said it expects no conflicts between the path of the space station and Santa's flight: "The skies are all clear," commentator Rob Navias observed from Houston.Astronauts ready for second spacewalk to repair stationIrene Klotz - ReutersAstronauts aboard the International Space Station are planning a second and final spacewalk to fix the outpost's cooling system early on Tuesday, a NASA official said.NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins are expected to leave the station's Quest airlock to install a new ammonia pump, space station flight director Judd Frieling said during an interview on NASA Television on Monday.During an initial spacewalk on Saturday, Mastracchio and Hopkins removed a failed pump, accomplishing about half the work planned for the second spacewalk. That prompted the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to drop plans for a third spacewalk, provided that no problems occur on Tuesday."It's apparent now that we'll be able to get most of our critical objectives done tomorrow (Tuesday)," Frieling said.One of two cooling systems on the U.S. side of the space station, a $100 billion project of 15 nations, shut down on December 11 due to a faulty valve. Engineers tried software patches to control the flow of ammonia, which is used to dissipate heat from equipment onboard the station and radiate it into space.With time running short before the position of the sun causes complications, NASA managers decided to have astronauts replace the pump with one of three spares stored outside the permanently staffed research complex which flies about 250 miles above Earth.The spacewalks were the first since July when a spacesuit problem caused the helmet worn by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano to fill with water, a condition that could have caused him to drown.Suspect components in the spacesuit were replaced. As a precaution, Mastracchio and Hopkins also outfitted their helmets with absorbent pads and makeshift snorkels that would allow them to draw air from the belly of their spacesuits if the helmet leaks reoccurred."The suits worked as expected," Frieling said.An unrelated suit problem, however, prompted NASA to delay the second spacewalk from Monday to Tuesday.Mastracchio, a veteran of seven spacewalks, apparently accidentally hit a switch once he and Hopkins were back in the airlock on Saturday that allowed water to get inside his suit's sublimator, a device that regulates the suit's cooling system.As a precaution, that spacesuit will be dried out for about a week, Frieling said.Mastracchio and Hopkins used the extra day to piece together a new spacesuit from spare components aboard the station.Also on Monday, station commander Oleg Kotov and flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy prepared for a Russian spacewalk slated for Friday. The cosmonauts plan to install two high-fidelity cameras on the Zvezda service module and replace several experiments mounted to the outside of the station.On Monday, Kotov and Ryazanskiy put on their Russian spacesuits and went into the Russian Pirs airlock as part of a practice run.Water in Ageing Spacesuit Caused Problems for AstronautLiz Fields -- ABCNASA's Mission Control has revealed the problem that prompted the early end of the latest spacewalk: Water in one of the astronaut's 35-year-old spacesuits.Expedition 38 Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio and fellow astronaut Michael Hopkins ran into trouble while they were conducting an urgent repair outside the International Space Station during a spacewalk that lasted five hours and 28 minutes.The spacewalk ended short of its anticipated six-and-a-half-hour time frame when Mastracchio, the lead spacewalker, began complaining about chilly temperatures in his space suit.The seven-time spacewalker said his feet were cold during at least part of the nearly five-and-a-half-hour walk and at times had to re-adjust temperature controls in his suit.Even before the emergency repair mission began, NASA acknowledged it was working with aging spacesuits, which were designed in the same era of the space shuttle."Because the suits are 35 years old we review the hazards every so often as a matter of course," NASA's ISS Program Manager, Mike Suffredini told ABC News Radio.The astronauts began working at 7:01 a.m. ET on Saturday to replace a degraded ammonia pump module associated with one of the station's two cooling loops that keep internal and external equipment cool, NASA said.The engineers raced to successfully remove, ahead of schedule, the cooling pump that has jeopardized operations aboard the ISS since it broke on Dec. 11.The 780-pound pump is about the size of a double-door refrigerator and difficult to handle, with plumbing full of toxic ammonia, The Associated Press reported. Flight controllers tried but failed to fix the bad valve through remote commanding.During the repairs, the astronauts communicated with Mission Control Houston about the procedure. NASA's website offered the public a live video feed showing the astronauts and Mission Control.At one point, when Mission Control asked Mastracchio to extend the spacewalk, he balked."My vote would be to call it for today, but it's up to you guys if you really want to go out there," Mastracchio said.The work of the two astronauts Saturday was part of a planned series of spacewalks to replace the ammonia pump module.While the astronauts successfully removed the pump on Saturday, plans to replace it two days later have been delayed. The pair will now spend Christmas Eve trying to finish the work, after NASA cancelled Monday's spacewalk to investigate what caused the latest malfunction.NASA says a third spacewalk would occur on Christmas Day if necessary to finalize the installation of the replacement pump module. It would be the first Christmas spacewalk for NASA.Mastracchio has conducted six previous spacewalks, and holds the record for the 14th longest total number of spacewalking hours. He wore extra safety gear to prevent a recurrence of helmet flooding that nearly drowned an Italian astronaut last summer. This was Hopkins' first spacewalk.The two astronauts received guidance on the spacewalk procedures from NASA astronauts Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, who replaced the pump at the same location during three spacewalks in August 2010, NASA said.Spacesuit Issue Delays Next Spacewalk Until Christmas EveMike Wall – SPACE.comNASA has delayed the second of three planned holiday spacewalks by 24 hours, setting up a Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) excursion from the International Space Station for two astronauts.The agency made the decision after noticing an issue with the spacesuit of Rick Mastracchio, who ventured outside the orbiting lab with fellow NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins Saturday (Dec. 21) to address a problem with the station's cooling system.Water may have entered part of Mastracchio's spacesuit in the orbiting outpost's airlock after Saturday's extravehicular activity (EVA), NASA officials said. So the flight control team at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston have directed Mastracchio to use a spare suit for the next spacewalk, which was originally planned for Monday (Dec. 23); the extra day will allow the station's crew to resize the suit for him.The spacesuit issue is apparently a minor one, and it's unrelated to the frightening leak that caused water to flood into European astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet during a July spacewalk, officials said. (Hopkins wore Parmitano's suit on Saturday and encountered no problems.)"Both Mastracchio and Hopkins reported dry conditions repeatedly throughout Saturday's activities and the two were never in danger," NASA officials wrote in a press release after the spacewalk.Mastracchio and Hopkins are tasked with replacing a faulty pump module that's part of the International Space Station's cooling system. A valve in the module malfunctioned on Dec. 11, requiring some systems aboard the orbiting lab to be shut down. The issue does not threaten the safety of the six crewmembers currently living and working on the station, officials say.Mastracchio and Hopkins made good progress during Saturday's spacewalk, meaning the third EVA may not be necessary. That last excursion was originally slated for Christmas Day (Dec. 25), but it will almost certainly be pushed back now, if it happens at all.The Christmas Eve EVA is scheduled to begin at 7:10 a.m. EST (1220 GMT). You can watch it live here on SPACE.com beginning at 6:15 a.m. EST, courtesy of NASA TV.The spacewalks have delayed the first contracted cargo mission of aerospace firm Orbital Sciences' unmanned Cygnus spacecraft, which was scheduled to launch toward the orbiting lab on Thursday (Dec. 19). That liftoff will now likely occur no earlier than mid-January, NASA officials have said.Former Apollo 8 astronaut to mark anniversary of 1968 Christmas Eve broadcast to EarthAssociated PressCHICAGO – An Apollo 8 astronaut who was among the first to orbit the moon is set to help re-enact the 1968 Christmastime broadcast from space.Millions tuned in on Dec. 24, 1968, when Commander Frank Borman, Bill Anders and James Lovell took turns reading from the Book of Genesis as the Apollo 8 orbited the moon.Lovell is expected to attend Monday's event at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, where the original Apollo 8 Command Module is.The crew circled the moon 10 times on Christmas Eve, according to NASA. The famous "Earthrise" photo was taken during the same mission.Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is expected to attend Monday's event marking the 45th anniversary of the broadcast."The world needed an uplifting message in 1968 and the heroic Apollo 8 astronauts delivered," Quinn said in a statement ahead of the event.Lovell took part in several missions, including as pilot in the Gemini 7 flight in 1965, a command module pilot on Apollo 8 and a commander of Apollo 13.The Apollo 8 mission happened the year before U.S. astronauts walked on the moon.James Webb Space Telescope receives last mirror segmentsCollin Skocik – Spaceflight InsiderThe last of the key components of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has arrived at the Goddard Space Flight Center. The final three of eighteen hexagonal mirrors, shipped across eight states from Boulder, Colorado to Greenbelt, Maryland, will be integrated into the structure that will hold together the primary mirror. Put together, these mirrors will form the largest space telescope ever built. Once assembled, the beryllium mirrors will be adjusted by computer-controlled actuators to correct any errors.The shipping of the individual mirrors began in September of 2012. Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits at a mere three hundred fifty-four miles altitude, the James Webb telescope will orbit at a staggering one million miles from Earth. The JWST will operate primarily in the infrared rather than in visible light. The mirrors were constructed by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado, a subcontractor to Northrop Grumman. The gold-coated mirrors were shipped in hermetically sealed containers designed to withstand the temperature and pressure changes that come with a trip from the high altitude of Boulder to the near sea level of Greenbelt, where they will be cryogenically tested and integrated into what acting telescope director Eric Smith calls "the structure that will hold them incredibly stable."The JWST will have 18 primary mirror segments when completely assembled. The last three were delivered to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on Dec. 16, 2013. Photo Credit: Chris Gunn / NASA GSFCBall designed not only the primary mirror, but also the tertiary mirror and the fine-steering mirror. At over twenty-one feet in diameter, the primary mirror will not only be the largest mirror ever flown in space, but the first to deploy in space. The telescope will be launched by an Ariane rocket in October of 2018. The telescope will be folded within the rocket, much as the Apollo lunar roving vehicle was stowed within the Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA) of the lunar module, and will unfold after deployment.Robert Strain, President of Ball Aerospace, said, "Ball's sophisticated mirror architecture will provide James Webb with the most advanced infrared vision of any space observatory ever launched by NASA. A huge amount of teamwork was needed to meet the exacting requirements for the telescope's optical design and we're eager to see the results."NASA will be hosting a social media event on January 22 in celebration of the arrival of all of the key components of the JWST at Goddard. Forty participants will have the opportunity to observe the cleanroom where the hardware is being stored, get a behind-the-scenes tour of the integration facilities as well as the test facilities that ensure that the telescope can endure the rigors of launch, interact with engineers and scientists who developed the JWST, including Nobel Laureate John Mather, and hear lectures from NASA scientists and engineers about Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission and the Global Precipitation Measurement Satellite.The James Webb telescope will be able to look through interstellar dust clouds in order to find stars forming new solar systems, provide imaging of extrasolar planets, provide scientists with a look at the first light in the universe after the Big Bang.Reactivated asteroid hunter returns first imagesCharles Black -- SenNASA's NEOWISE spacecraft (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) has taken its first images since being reactivated after more than two and a half years of hibernation.The probe's mission is to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs) and to help find candidates for NASA's proposed mission to capture an asteroid and relocate it to a lunar orbit.NEOWISE began life as the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) which launched in December 2009 with a primary mission to scan the sky in infrared light. During its primary mission WISE catalogued more than 747 million objects including galaxies, asteroids and comets. Its primary mission ended in February 2011 when the spacecraft was put into hibernation.The space probe was woken up in September this year and renamed NEOSWISE for its new mission which will focus on discovering and characterising space rocks orbiting within 28 million miles (45 million km) from Earth's orbit of the Sun."NEOWISE not only gives us a better understanding of the asteroids and comets we study directly, but it will help us refine our concepts and mission operation plans for future, space-based near-Earth object cataloging missions," said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.we expect to get back into the asteroid hunting business, and acquire our first previously undiscovered space rock"The spacecraft is in excellent health, and the new images look just as good as they were before hibernation. Over the next weeks and months we will be gearing up our ground-based data processing and expect to get back into the asteroid hunting business, and acquire our first previously undiscovered space rock, in the next few months."The main picture shows one of NEOWISE's first images since being reactivated. The dotted red line shows asteroid (872) Holda. With a diameter of 26 miles (42 kilometers), Holda orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt found between Mars and Jupiter.Asteroids do not emit visible light, though they do reflect light, so using optical telescopes can give misleading data about an asteroid's size. NEOWISE uses a 16-inch (40-centimeter) telescope and infrared cameras to characterize their size, reflectivity and thermal properties.NASA considers NEOWISE to be an important tool to find candidates for its asteroid capture and relocation initiative announced earlier this year. Once relocated to within the Moon's orbit NASA would use its Orion spacecraft to transport four astronauts to land on and explore the space rock. President Obama has set of goal of sending humans on an asteroid by 2025."It is important that we accumulate as much of this type of data as possible while the spacecraft remains a viable asset," said Lindley Johnson, NASA's NEOWISE program executive. "NEOWISE is an important element to enhance our ability to support the initiative."Can Gravity attract attention to the orbital debris problem?Jeff Foust -- Space ReviewThe end of the year marks the beginning of the movie awards season, whose events will be getting a little more attention than usual from the space community thanks to movie Gravity. Earlier this month, the movie won several nominations for next month's Golden Globes Awards, including best picture, best actress for Sandra Bullock, and best director for Alfonso Cuarón. Those nominations could be harbingers for the Academy Awards to come.The awards are likely to keep the spotlight on Gravity, nearly three months after its theatrical release, well into the new year. The movie has had something of a polarizing effect on space professionals: some have appreciated its ability to convey the spaceflight experience, albeit a dramatic one, while others, most famously astronomer and science communicator Neil DeGrasse Tyson, criticized it for its many inaccuracies (see "Gravity and reality," The Space Review, October 7, 2013.) Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, summed up that gap in movie perceptions when he described at a conference last month seeing the movie with someone outside of NASA: "My non-space colleague is crying, and I'm saying this violates the law of physics."One aspect of Gravity in particular that has attracted interest—and concern—in the space community is its depiction of orbital debris. A Russian ASAT test sets off a chain reaction of debris, precipitating the movie's drama. Orbital debris, including that created by ASAT activities like China's January 2007 test, is a real concern to governments and companies that operate satellites. But does the movie raise awareness of a real problem or unhelpfully exaggerate it?At a panel session titled "'Gravity' in Real Life: Legal and Political Implications of an Accident in Space," held by the Secure World Foundation in Washington earlier this month, participants argued that while orbital debris is a real concern, how it was portrayed in the movie, technically and otherwise, was highly exaggerated. "The good news is that the exact sequence of events portrayed in the movie has zero chance of ever happening," said Darren McKnight, technical director at Integrity Applications Inc. "The bad news is that space debris is a problem."The triggering event for the movie is that a single ASAT test instantly triggers a cascade of debris that takes out every satellite. It's based on a concept called the Kessler Syndrome, where the amount of orbital debris in an orbit reaches a critical density above which debris collisions cause runaway growth in the amount of debris, rendering that orbit unusable.However, the Kessler Syndrome is not something that would manifest itself in a matter of minutes, as it does in Gravity. "The Kessler Syndrome is a mathematical singularity. If you look at equations of the critical density, we've already passed it," McKnight said. "But it's going to take decades for it to manifest itself."A single ASAT test would not be as catastrophic as the one depicted in the movie, McKnight said, citing the evidence from China's 2007 test. That test broke up a 750-kilogram satellite, FY-1C, into 3,000 objects large enough to track. None of those pieces, McKnight said, have collided with other tracked objects to date. "The sky isn't falling quite yet," he said.During the panel session, McKnight walked through a model of the same collision at the same altitude as the International Space Station (the FY-1C collision took place at 750 kilometers, more than 300 kilometers higher than the ISS.) Over time, the debris cloud expands into a shell with a much lower density of debris than the original cloud. Initially, the odds of encountering the debris cloud immediately after collision are extremely low—4×10-11 just 10 seconds after the ASAT impact—although if you hit the cloud, he said, the odds of colliding with debris are very high.Over time, the odds of encountering the debris shell grow, but the debris is dispersed, and much of it has reentered. Six months after collision, McKnight calculates the probability of a piece of debris colliding with the ISS is at 4×10-6 per orbit. In other words, the probability of an impact is actually higher (but still very low) six months later than at the time of the impact—the reverse of what was implied by the movie—and the probabilities were for only a single impact, which he said was far more likely than multiple impacts, let alone the shotgun spray of debris that crippled and later destroyed the ISS in the movie.Another curious factor about Gravity is the fact that it is a Russian ASAT weapon that triggers the debris cascade. "The Russians, who have their own cosmonauts on the International Space Station, decide, just on the spur of the moment, to launch a direct ascent anti-satellite weapon," said Marcia Smith, founder and editor of SpacePolicyOnline.com. Russia and the former Soviet Union, she noted, never tested such an ASAT, although the Soviets tested other kinds of ASATs. "Why did the moviemakers pin this on Russia?" (Later discussion during the panel session suggested that blaming the test on China could have caused the Chinese government to ban the movie there; Hollywood filmmakers have in the past looked to avoid antagonizing Chinese censors in order to gain access to that country's lucrative market.)The movie, noted George Washington University professor Henry Hertzfeld, feeds on the belief held by many that orbital debris is a bigger problem than it actually is today. "The perception that we have from the media, from films like this, and a number of studies, is that space is crowded with debris. But in reality, it really isn't," he said. Commercial satellite operators, he said, deal with much bigger risks, such as launch failure and manufacturing defects. "We have not had a significant economic loss from an accident" caused by a collision with debris.Hertzfeld added, though, that despite this limited effect from debris collisions today, now is the time to put into place mechanisms to adjudicate disputes should a future collision take out an operational satellite. "We need before-the-fact binding agreements" regarding how to arbitrate such disputes, something that he said could be incorporated into the licensing process for commercial satellites. "If we don't plan today, we're not going to get there, because once something happens, there's too much at stake for one side or the other to come out with a balanced and logical approach."If Gravity has exaggerated the threat posed by orbital debris, can it still be a useful tool in raising awareness of the real dangers of orbital debris and, perhaps, help gain momentum for measures like binding agreements or improved efforts to track orbital debris, as Hertzfeld also suggested? Panelists were skeptical it would have much positive benefit."An awful lot of people have asked questions about whether this could happen, and that leads to a teachable moment," said Michael Simpson, executive director of the Secure World Foundation. "We're at that point where there's a teachable moment, but we haven't really designed the curriculum yet.""I do wonder whether it will do more good or harm," said Hertzfeld. "Is this the most pressing thing that we should be advocating for in space?" Smith said the movie could create latent interest in the topic that would re-emerge after a real collision, analogous to the effects movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon on concerns about asteroid impacts that reappeared after the Chelyabinsk meteor in February. "Maybe it's not doing anything today, but the next time there's an Iridium-Cosmos collision, or something like that, people will think about this movie and wonder if you could really have something as dramatic," she said, referring to the early 2009 collision between a defunct Russian Cosmos satellite and an operational Iridium satellite. "In that case, the movie probably did more harm than good, because it really could not have happened like that."McKnight said that he's seen a surge of media interest in the orbital debris issue since the movie's release, "but I don't think there's been any substantial difference on the politics of it." He also said that when Gravity is released on DVD (scheduled for late February), it will include a documentary on orbital debris that features interviews with him and Donald Kessler, who first proposed the orbital debris cascade scenario that bears his name.McKnight added that, while the movie's physics might be "average" at best, and its influence on raising awareness of real orbital debris concerns limited, it should not dissuade people from going to see it. "Go see Gravity, okay? It's awesome," he said. "But do not base any funding decisions on it. Do not think that you know debris now because you've seen the movie Gravity."Another Step Toward SpaceBeijing ReviewOn December 14, China's lunar probe Chang'e-3 successfully landed on the moon. Later, the lunar rover Yutu, meaning jade rabbit, separated from the lander and set out on its adventure across the moon's surface. The monumental event makes China the third country to successfully soft land a probe on the moon after the United States and the former Soviet Union.According to Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's lunar exploration program, the country has mapped out three phases for exploring the moon: unmanned exploration, a manned lunar landing, and eventually establishing a base on the moon. It will mainly focus on the unmanned exploration before 2020.In 2007, China launched Chang'e-1, the country's first lunar probe, which successfully surveyed the moon from orbit. In 2010, China's second lunar probe flew out to the moon and similarly preformed observations from orbit. Followed its predecessors, Chang'e-3 performs a series of new missions, soft landing on the moon, analyzing materials on the moon's surface and sending data back to Earth automatically.China has always conformed to the principle of a peaceful use of space when carrying out its space exploration program. The lunar exploration program is China's choice based on its scientific, technological and economic strength. The lunar exploration program will advance the country's development across various aspects, including aerospace technology, space science, communication technology as well as new materials and new energy. China's lunar exploration program is a new start for the country's aerospace industry.First Exomoon Possibly GlimpsedAstronomers may have discovered a moon orbiting an alien planet, but the signal is far from definitiveClara Moskowitz - Scientific AmericanExoplanets are almost old hat to astronomers, who by now have found more than 1,000 such worlds beyond the solar system. The next frontier is exomoons—moons orbiting alien planets—which are much smaller, fainter and harder to find. Now astronomers say they may have found an oddball system of a planet and a moon floating free in the galaxy rather than orbiting a star.The system showed up in a study using micro lensing, which looks for the bending of starlight due to the gravitational pull of an unseen object between a star and Earth. In this case the massive object might well be a planet and a moon. But the signal is not very clear, the researchers acknowledge, and could instead represent a dim star and a lightweight planet. "An alternate star-plus-planet model fits the data almost as well" as the planet-plus-moon explanation, the scientists reported in a paper that was posted this week on the preprint site arXiv. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed."I was excited by this paper," says astronomer Jean Schneider of the Paris Observatory, who was not involved in the research. Exomoons have "become fashionable these days," he adds, and are one of his personal "holy grails." Schneider wrote a paper in 1999 on how to detect exomoons using an alternative method, called transiting. (The transit technique looks for the dimming of a star's light caused when a planet or moon passes in front of the star from Earth's perspective).Now that astronomers know planets are common in the galaxy, exomoons, too, are likely to abound, scientists say. Yet they are exceedingly hard to find, due to their diminutive size and lack of brightness. The authors of the new paper, led by David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame, note that micro lensing is promising because it can detect moons beyond the close-in satellites that transit searches are best equipped to find. Regardless of whether the new system turns out to include a moon, "these results indicate the potential of micro lensing to detect exomoons," the authors wrote.Micro lensing is a type of gravitational lensing, an effect on light predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. According to Einstein's theory, massive objects warp the spacetime in their vicinity, so that anything, even light, will take a curved path around them. When light from a background star travels past a massive object on its way to our telescopes, it manifests in bright circles of warped light called Einstein rings. If the massive object consists of two bodies, such as a planet and its moon, the circle will appear broken and bulgy in places. Sometimes the ring is too small to resolve the details, but the overall micro lensing effect can be calculated by the way the star's overall brightness varies in time.Bennett and his colleagues have identified a two-body system, which they designate MOA-2011-BLG-262, from micro lensing data collected at the Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand and the Mount Canopus Observatory in Tasmania. But the researchers cannot be sure which two bodies caused the brightness fluctuations. The explanation that best fits the data is a giant planet, about four times the mass of Jupiter, orbited by a moon weighing less than Earth. If that interpretation is correct, the planet and its moon would be relatively nearby, between 1,000 and 2,000 light-years from Earth, and would be adrift in the Milky Way rather than part of a system circling one of the galaxy's stars. Scientists think such free-floating objects might be relatively common, because gravitational interactions between multiple planets in a system can eject one or more of the planets entirely, perhaps with a moon in tow.Another possibility is that the researchers have detected a more distant system comprising a small star, around one tenth the mass of the sun, and a planet roughly 18 times as massive as Earth. This system would need to be much farther away to explain the micro lensing pattern.Unfortunately, there is no chance for astronomers to take another peek at the object to confirm their suspicions, because it has moved out of alignment with the background star and now produces no lensing signal. This is "the most frustrating aspect" of the find, Schneider says, and is "common to all detections by micro lensing."On the bright side, he says, the discovery has brought numerous surprises. It has highlighted the potential of micro lensing at a time when most of the field is focusing on the transit method, and it has potentially revealed a free-floating system whereas astronomers have mainly been looking for moons orbiting planets around stars. "It forces us," Schneider says, "to be always open-minded."Incredible Technology: How to Mine Water on MarsTanya Lewis - SPACE.comThe bone-dry desert of present-day Mars may seem like the last place you would look for water, but the Red Planet actually contains a wealth of water locked up in ice.Evidence that Mars once supported liquid water has been mounting for years, and exploratory missions have found that water ice still exists on the planet's poles and just beneath its dusty surface. Accessing that water could require digging it up and baking it in an oven, or beaming microwaves at the soil and extracting the water vapor. Yet no mission has attempted to extract water on Mars or any celestial body beyond Earth in appreciable quantities.Now, the Netherlands-based organization Mars One, which wants to establish a permanent human settlement on the Red Planet, is planning to send an unmanned lander to Mars in 2018 that would carry an experiment to demonstrate that water extraction is possible. Mined water could be used for drinking, growing plants or creating fuel."Here on Earth, we've experimented with different technologies to extract moisture out of the atmosphere or soil," said Ed Sedivy, civil space chief engineer at the security and aerospace company Lockheed Martin and program manager for NASA's Phoenix lander flight system.The question is, Sedivy said, "At the concentration of water we're likely to encounter and the temperatures we're likely to encounter [on Mars], how do we validate those technologies are appropriate?"H2O on the Red PlanetNumerous studies have suggested that water exists on Mars, based on evidence from Mars orbiters and rovers such as outflow channels, ancient lakebeds, and surface rocks and minerals that could only have formed in the presence of liquid water.Today, Mars is too frigid, and its atmospheric pressure is too low, to support liquid water on its surface — except for very short spans of time at low altitudes — but frozen water can be found in the planet's ice caps and beneath the soil surface.NASA's Phoenix lander detected water ice at its landing site in 2008. The spacecraft dug up chunks of soil, and its onboard mass spectrometer found traces of water vapor when the sample was heated above freezing. More recently, NASA's Curiosity rover detected water molecules in soil samples analyzed by its SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) instruments, suggesting Martian soil contains about two pints of water per cubic foot of soil.Microwaving MarsThe most obvious method for extracting water would be to dig up the frozen soil and bake it in an oven until the water vaporizes. But there's another method that could be more efficient and require less digging."For mining water off Mars, you want to get a high quantity of water," said Edwin Ethridge, a senior ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization) scientist and retired NASA consultant. Ethridge and his colleagues have studied water extraction in simulated lunar and Martian environments using microwave beams.In the lunar experiment, Ethridge and William Kaukler of the University of Alabama in Huntsville used a conventional kitchen microwave oven to "cook" some simulated lunar regolith, the layer of loose soil and rocks found on the moon's surface. The heat vaporized the frozen water, which was then collected and condensed on a chilled plate.Water absorbs microwaves (short electromagnetic waves) very well, but ice does not, so the microwave beams actually heat up the rock, which heats the ice upon contact, Kaukler explained.The microwave technique would work pretty much the same way on Mars, Ethridge told SPACE.com. The main advantage over excavating methods is that it requires less digging — though, depending on how deep the water is, you might need to drill holes down and beam microwaves through them, he said. ]Drilling for moon waterOf course, Mars isn't the only place scientists hope to find and mine water; the moon and asteroids are also prime targets."Water enables so many things. If we're going to go out into the solar system, we're going to have to use the resources we find at the destination," Bill Larson, the NASA scientist who oversees the program to use substances found on other worlds, said in a statement.NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) sensed water on the moon remotely, and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) that impacted the moon in 2009 found direct evidence of water ice and vapor in a perpetually shadowed lunar crater.Mars Myths & Misconceptions: QuizNo planet is more steeped in myth and misconception than Mars. This quiz will reveal how much you really know about some of the goofiest claims about the red planet.Now, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency are developing a new lunar rover called Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction, or RESOLVE, which they hope to send to the moon this decade. RESOLVE, which was recently tested on lava beds in Hawaii, would be able to drill into the moon's surface and heat up the material to measure the amount of water vapor inside.NASA officials say that with a few small changes, RESOLVE could be deployed to search for water and other resources on Mars.NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg took Pinterest where it's never gone beforeLisa Granshaw – The Daily DotNASA astronaut Karen Nyberg may be back on Earth, but her time on the International Space Station (ISS) will never be forgotten—partly thanks to the Pinterest account she kept while living in space.When Nyberg was first asked in May about whether she'd follow in the footsteps of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield , who became well-known tweeting from space, she piqued the interests of many by mentioning her use of Pinterest. While Instagram, Twitter, and Google+ have all been popular among intergalactic travelers, Pinterest remained untouched—until Nyberg arrived and pinned plenty of updates revealing the daily life of an ISS astronaut."I was honestly hoping to draw in a group of people and share my excitement of space with people who maybe hadn't thought about it before," Nyberg tells the Daily Dot.She'd been a Pinterest user for a couple of years before her time on the space station put her profile in the spotlight. Like most pinners, Nyberg likes the collection visuals, the easy search function, and that oh-so-popular infinite scroll and the plethora of ideas it reveals—all of this making it an ideal way to show those of us stuck at the ground her amazing view of the world… literally."When in space I was mostly pinning my own pictures. It was neat to see the comments and see that people were noticing them and interested in them. It was definitely a good feeling to get that positive feedback from folks," she said.Some of Nyberg's photos received hundreds of re-pins from enthusiastic and excited followers. Her very last pin from space received 30 comments praising her efforts."Thank you for allowing me to experience a little space travel through your photos—You have no idea how much it means!" wrote Pinterest user Christa Crews.While giving us all plenty of universal landscapes to pine over, Nyberg also took the opportunity to continue pinning one of her (and the rest of Pinterest's) favorite hobbies: crafting. She shared a photo of herself sewing in space, as well as her projects. Case in point, the dinosaur she created for her son out of fabric from Russian food containers. She also created a Texas flag for her husband made of cut up T-shirt pieces stitched to a Russian food container liner.Nyberg's Pinterest use may have set her apart from the rest of her social astronauts comrades, but she also turned to Twitter and NASA's YouTube channels to share her crafting—and even details like how to take care of your hair while living in space. Clearly, Nyberg is on board the social media-ization of our world, and everything outside of it."Some [astronauts] don't enjoy it as much and so some might not be interested in doing it as much as others, but it's good to reach out and share. Share the view more than anything!" she said.NASA has been one of the most capable federal agencies to attack the social Web. The NASA Social team is a many-bodied, vast structure within the organization connecting ordinary citizens to its intense, amazing journeys. Its recent Twitter contest giving applicants to chance to connect with Internet-famous astronaut Rick Mastracchio, the flight engineer for the next space-station mission.But while it's easy for you and me to send a tweet, or post a status update, the logistics of doing that from space are more complicated. Nyberg said it's a multiple step process to pin or tweet from the space station; if she wanted to share an image, she first had to remove the camera card and go to a computer with a local area network on the space station to turn it into a jpeg. Then she'd email it from her NASA on-board email to a personal email account and go to another computer and log in remotely to an Earth computer for an Internet connection. From there she could open the email, get the picture, and put it on her social media accounts.Despite the challenge, Nyberg pinned and tweeted to keep her followers involved.Will Nyberg inspire more astronauts to pin their explorations? That remains to be seen—but for now, she says her board will return to the stuff we're all used to seeing circulate the network. You can expect to see some holiday decorating tips filling up her boards for a bit.Holiday lights: New views of Saturn and its moonsAssociated PressA NASA spacecraft has sent holiday greetings from the outer solar space.The space agency on Monday released dazzling new images of the ringed planet Saturn and its moons. The Cassini spacecraft took the pictures earlier this year.Saturn resembled an ornament in one image, with a jet stream swirling at its north pole along with a hurricane-like storm.Cassini also peered through the hazy atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, revealing hydrocarbon lakes. The icy Saturn moon Enceladus appears as a white snowball.Cassini, funded by NASA and the European and Italian space agencies, was launched in 1997. The spacecraft reached Saturn in 2004 and has been studying the planet and its many moons.ENDMore detailed space news can be found at:
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