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There are two high-profile NASA probes in the big black, and one of them has just made an important stop. Having successfully entered the orbit of the second largest asteroid in our solar system, the Dawn Probe is settling in to begin mapping the asteroid and answering some questions about one of the largest “breeders” of Earth-bound meteorites of which we know. As reported on TIME.com, settling any space vessel into a planetary object’s orbit is a tricky maneuver and anything but guaranteed. When the Dawn Probe completed it’s entrance and settled into the asteroid’s gravity field, scientists celebrated, and then got down to the business of making discoveries.
     Vesta, an enormous body floating toward the outside of the solar system’s asteroid belt, is an oblate spheroid and represents nearly 1/10th of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. It’s roughly the size of Arizona at 350 miles across. Asteroids in our belt are considered to be one of two kinds, either pieces of planet or other asteroids that broke off in collisions, or detritus that was never absorbed into a planetary body when our solar system initially congealed billions of years ago. Which kind Vesta is will be one of the findings to which scientists home to come. Initial pictures from Dawn show two parallel grooves flanking Vesta’s equator, which are evidence, claims Chris Russell of UCLA, Dawn’s chief investigator, of a massive object having slammed into the asteroid’s south pole eons ago. “A nearly body-shattering event,” Russell elaborates. This also explains the proliferation meteorites that are believed to have originated from Vesta, about 5% of all meteorites that fall to Earth.
     After a mapping run of Vesta next week, Dawn will move on to Ceres, the closest dwarf planet to Earth. New Horizons, meanwhile, will continue on to the solar system’s newest dwarf planet, Pluto. In 2006, when both probes were launched, Pluto was still classified as a full-blown planet. When the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to dwarf-planet status, Ceres was upgraded as well, from asteroid to dwarf planet. Ceres, resting as it does in the asteroid belt, was labeled an asteroid because of its “guilt by association”. When the body was initially discovered in 1801, astronomers were attempting to find planets in the mysterious gap between mars and Jupiter. They called Ceres a planet at that point, but soon found dozens of other bodies as big as Ceres. Worried that they were filling the solar system with too many planets, they applied a blanket downgrade to all bodies in the band with the label “asteroid”.
     Dawn will arrive at Ceres in 2014, where scientists believe there is a good chance they may find frozen water. Finding water throughout our solar system is important for several reason, not the least of which is future exploration. As we continue to work toward manned exploration to these far off landmarks, it’s necessary to find that basic life-giving compound along the way; like desert explorers moving from oasis to oasis. In 2015 New Horizons is scheduled to arrive at Pluto, and the mapping of the largest bodies of our solar system will conceivably be complete.

    

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With the controversial shut-down of NASA’s 30-year old space shuttle program it is undoubtedly the end of an era. Some call it indicative of the U.S. “brain-drain”; a process of slowly losing our capacity for technological innovation and a sign that we will be passed by as leaders of progress. Others call it necessary to open the door to more intensified and entrepreneurial innovation by private industry. Whatever your take, there’s no doubt the the closing of the space shuttle program will be a hard transition for many that grew up, like myself, watching those magnificent shuttles taking off and talking about the heritage of pioneering that is our national legacy, both in space and on terra firma.
     The biggest losers in the decision to close the program are Texas, whose space control center in Houston will lose up to 4,000 jobs upon Atlantis’ return, Florida, where the famous Kennedy Space Center will lose an estimated 5,400 jobs, and Louisiana, where the shuttle assembly plant will lose around 900 jobs. Of course, one of the unremarked losses will come in the absence of “space tech” that has filtered, over the decades, into our own commercial economy. Many of these we take for granted, but they were first developed for our astronauts and shuttles. This according to Popular Science.
1) Nutritionally-fortified supplement in baby formula – found in almost all baby formula, this algae-based supplement contains nutrients previously only found in breast-milk that are necessary for development of fatty tissues in the eyes and brain. Developed to fight atrophy in astronauts, it’s nonetheless become commonplace for baby formula.
2) Goodyear Tires – Having collaborated several times with NASA, Goodyear has made a few innovations commercially accessible. A new fibrous material that makes their tires life extended up to 10,000 miles beyond that of a traditional radial tire was developed with NASA. The most recent collaboration was on a “spring-loaded” tire that keeps it’s shape temporarily upon a puncture or other deflation, allowing consumers to get to an auto shop rather than wrenching an elbow on the side of the interstate.
3) Jaws of Life – This extraction equipment for emergency responders in removing passengers from structurally compromised vehicles in an accident was actually developed from NASA. It requires no power-source, cumbersome hoses, or tubes and is, according to the article, 70% cheaper than competing equipment. It was developed from the apparatus that is used in the shuttle to separate it from the spent solid fuel tanks once it reaches orbit.
4) Insulation – Aerogel was originally used by NASA in their space shuttles to keep the frigid cold of the vacuum of space from seeping through the shuttle’s hull, maintaining a comfortable temperature within for the astronauts. Aerogel has been available for a few years commercially as home insulation, and is many times more efficient at trapping heat than traditional fiberglass insulation. In addition, the thermal shielding insulation in the shuttle to protect astronauts from the intense heat of the rockets is used in NASCAR to protect drivers from the heat of their massive engines.
5) Artificial Heart Pump – Dr. Michael DeBakey developed a tiny pump for the shuttle’s fuel injection system that was less than 1-inch in diameter, contained only one moving part, had no shaft seals, and required very little energy to operate. This made it ideal for both use in a space shuttle and use in the human body. With minor alterations, the pump has been adapted for use in humans, and to date has saved over 200 lives.
     Read more of the NASA shuttle program’s contributions to regular Americans lives here.
     It remains to be seen what the impact of the end of this era of space exploration will bring. What is certain is that NASA will continue to pioneer in space technology, including unmanned spacecraft. It is already developing, in conjunction with SpaceX, a new rover to be sent to Mars for further exploration. In addition the shuttle budget will be reallocated to increase funding for other NASA departments. These areas include: climate science research, exploration tech, planetary science, space tech, and robotic missions. However, until other private industry or private/public collaborations can begin to develop the serious tech, funding, and interest it needs; we will be beholden to other nations to provide our astronauts with shuttles to reach beyond low-orbit. Until that time comes; look forward to a few more commercial hand-me-downs, and a lot of pictures of Mars crust.

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What’s creepier than a microscopic bug with a nozzle for a face? A hose-faced nano-caterpillar in space. The tardigrade, or water bear, recently became the first known animal to survive the hazards of outer space. These little, awkward-looking dudes are so compact and efficiently built that you can launch them into a vacuum and they just won’t care. They apparently can take the cold emptiness of the final frontier for months at a time without dying. An Italian space research group called Project Biokis is currently at work determining which tiny critters can survive without an atmosphere. They’re looking at the molecules of microscopic animals as they deprive them of earthly pleasures like air and water. The goal is to study how animal cells react to extreme dehydration and cosmic radiation. The project scientists will also be on the lookout for any changes to the organisms’ genetic code that might be caused by extreme stress. Tardigrades manage to survive environments that would kill most reasonable creatures by shutting down their essential biological processes. They essentially contain cryogenic equipment within their microscopic bodies, putting themselves into a state of extreme hibernation when the going gets rough. The hibernation state is called cryptobiosis. When in cryptobiosis, tardigrades can counteract freezing and dessication by releasing a series of sugars, antioxidants, and proteins that protect their cells. Because they’re not made of a whole lot of cells, the organisms can effectively secrete a sort of chemical armor to keep themselves intact. It’s a pretty neat little system. Project Biokis scientists are currently testing how it holds up under increasing levels of space radiation. While dryness and cold may be hazards that the water bears have evolved to survive, radiation may be a different story. The animal’s natural bioprotectants might not be enough to stave off damage to genetic code. Whether the tardigrade is invulnerable to radiation or just the vacuum of space, the project hopefully will provide insight as to how to protect more complex organisms–like, say, people–from outer space’s deathly emptiness. I kind of dig the idea of chemical spacesuits and extreme hibernation in case we need to jettison off this rock anytime soon. Who knew we could learn so much from something so funny-looking?

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     On February 1st, 2010, President Obama announced that the space travel program will privatize, providing contracts to private companies to continue with space exploration and to shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station. In nearly every case where I hear privatization in politics, I consider it a bad word. I associate it with procurement scandals, coziness with lobbyists, and corruption of the democratic process. Although privatization may leap-frog technology and our ability for inexpensive manned space-flight, it also has the potential to become a travesty of our initial ideals in exploring space in the first place.     In the previous ten years, NASA’s spaceflight program had lost much of its public support. In fact, one of Obama’s early initiatives as president was creating the “Augustine Committee” whose mission was to investigate the validity of agency’s manned spaceflight program. The conclusion was that the program, although fully funded, had lost its mission and lacked a administrative mandate. In response, the administration decided to fold the program, shifting the priority of low-orbit flight and research and development to private companies. Though there is still no definitive plans for exploration further afield, the previous administration’s plans for a second moon flight and eventual human exploration of Mars are still on the table.     Though there’s very little question about the viability of commercial space flight, many NASA professionals and experts in the space community are critical of the decision to eliminate the government’s capability. Former NASA moon mission chief director Mike Griffin called it “outsourcing”, saying of the administration’s decision, “You’re basically burning the bridge behind you.” He was heavily critical of the decision to remove all space capability from public control, though low-orbit endeavors are a governmental affair. “There no market there for comemrcial enterprise, other than tourism.”     There was further criticism that, although the manned space flight program will be cut, NASA budget actually increased by several billion dollars. However, this extra funding is largely for allocation of corporate grants to develop better rocket technology and provide grants for public-private joint ventures in space flight. In April of this year, NASA awarded $269.3 million to four companies; Space Technologies Corps. and Boeing, which uses Whitney & Pratt rocket development systems. The other two companies were Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corps.     With this shift in NASA priority funding comes the dangers inherent in our federal procurement system. Earlier this week I wrote about the military-industrial complex, and how the three-ring circus composed of Capitol Hill, the armed forces, and defense contracts to corporations often yield mismanagement, corruption, fraud, and manipulation. As the new space race for public funds evolves, there’s a very real chance that the procurement system for the various technologies necessary for space flight could lose integrity in the same way. Another issue that officials at NASA have pointed out is that private corporations will gain much more influence in low-orbit technology; anything from satellite tech to communications and global imaging. However, there are no viable markets for space beyond low-orbit, which could significantly stall another lunar landing, to say nothing of a manned trip to Mars.     My nightmares are filled with visions of LED advertisements dotting the night sky from the equivalent of sattelite billboards. I can only imagine the breadth of mismanagement and exploitation an unrestricted access to unregulated, multinational low-orbit space may breed. On the other hand, if the nations come together to carefully regulate the progression of commercial space travel and expansion, and pursue exploration by partnering public and private organizations, space travel and the incaculable potential it holds may arrive faster, more affordably, but with the ideals and integrity that began the space program intact. news.cnet.comwww.thespacereview.comPhoto from www.airports-worldwide.com

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As a writer, I can’t get enough of science stories that both fascinate intellectually and stir the creative imagination. When I learned there were diamond oceans with solid diamond icebergs on Neptune and Uranus, my brain went crazy at trying to imagine them. It seems the universe is filled to the brim with scenes whose beauty we can only imagine. The scientific study of planets other than our own not only helps us understand the physical universe, it brings new and strange ideas to the collective human imagination. Space engineers are now working on the first ever robot boat. It would be shipped off to sail the seas of Titan, the biggest of Saturn’s moons. The potentially NASA-funded Titan Mare Explorer project has scientists from Open University and Proxemy Research on board. The goal of the project is to build a probe and then jettison it to Titan on a billion-mile journey. Once landed on the surface, the probe would collect data on one of Titan’s methane and ethane seas. The scientists on the TiME team seek to discover the exact chemical composition of the Ligeia Mare sea that the robot boat would explore. The probe will wield a mass spectrometer to figure out what the lake is made from. It will also record the depth of the sea, the size of its waves, and other variables. Scientists believe there may be life forms hidden deep within Titan. Surface organic chemicals may trickle down into underground oceans to form living organisms. As Saturn and its moons lie so far away from earth, we have little knowledge so far of what may lurk inside Titan. The project could provide valuable insight as to how worlds with different chemical compositions from our own function. The project’s proposed scenario sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. A robotic ship sails the chemical seas in search of alien life. TiME may still be in its early stages of development, but it could yield fascinating results as to the secrets of our solar system. While we’re probably the most intelligent beings in discernable proximity, we may not be the only form of life hiding out in our eight-planet system. The heads of the project are considerably excited that it is making headway in securing funding. These scientists sound like cool dudes, experts devoted to the discovery of the universe around us while not taking everything quite so seriously. The Guardian got the following sound bite from Professor John Zarnecki of Open University: “Waves on Titan’s seas will be far larger, but much slower, than on earthly oceans, according to our calculations. That suggests Titan is the best spot in the solar system for surfing. The only trouble is that the temperature there is -180C.” Maybe his next mission will be launching an insulated surfing capsule. I love the way scientists talk about projects like this one. You get the sense that in certain ways they’re still little kids gazing up at the night sky and dreaming about aliens and spaceships. Becoming a top researcher in space engineering may be a serious endeavor, but that doesn’t mean you have to lose your sense of humor about it. Besides, when facing the prospect of discovering new life on alien worlds, what reasons are there not to be excited?

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Scientists say that 180 million years ago, a naturally occurring nuclear blast may have hit Mars, rendering it the lifeless planet that it is today. They claim that this blast would have left the planet with nothing but dry, red sand—which sounds like it could be plausible. Evidence that supports the theory includes the presence of radioactive materials, such as uranium and thorium, on the planet’s surface, that appear to stem from a hot spot. That said, the same thing may have occurred on Earth—and it could happen again. Scientists say that we shouldn’t worry about it, and that if it does happen again, it will probably be in a billion years or so, which doesn’t seem like a very scientific estimate to me, but the not worrying plan is a good idea—not necessarily because the threat is so far away, but because worrying isn’t going to help us in the event of a nuke, manmade or not. With these theories, however, we can probably expect a few more cries of panic from the Armageddon is Upon Us community pretty soon. Instead of the Earth—or God—sending tornadoes, earthquakes, and forest fires to “punish us” for whatever it is they think we shouldn’t be doing, It/He will be nuking us instead.

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Kobaïan? Good question. It’s a language created by Magma drummer Christian Vander and assigned to the fictitious story he constructed over his band’s first few albums. There’s a bit about escaping from Earth only to return and be chased off again. But that’s all nonsensical framing. And since we can’t understand the lyrics without a sheet of proper translation, it’s utterly moot. We can hear music, though. It was the band’s first disc, a self titled effort, sometimes called Kobaïa the introduced Vander’s ensemble to the world. Over the next few discs, the band’s sound would slowly move away from a Canterbury conception of jazz related on not just this album, but it’s follow-up – that’s the one where everyone returns to earth. But it’s these first two discs that also dispense Magma’s most engaging music. Yeah, it’s still pretty fusiony, but not problematic as it would become on 1973’s Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh.

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Often an ethereal satisfaction arises from the inexplicable. Kahn and Selesnick, the team of artists behind the surrealist landscapes of Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea, reinterpret much of the visual language of vintage science fiction to entertain their own questions about life on earth and beyond it. The purported setting for these still, wordless dramas is the planet Mars. Abandoned technology litters the landscape that latex-coated humanoids explore. Stone listening and teleportation devices appear to be carved out of the planet itself, while other contraptions seem to be built from the same stuff as the faceless female figures. This Mars is a lonely planet, detached from a suggested future or alternate cosmology. But it does harbor a semblance of life, of survival. The figures struggle–to communicate, to discover, to give birth, to avoid death. Their monochrome coatings meld into each other in a simulation of biological symbiosis. They mate with squidlike beings only to produce mutant stillbirths. They find the corpses of astronauts preserved on the sand. Kahn and Selesnick created the images through combining their own desert photography with shots of Mars itself, borrowed from NASA. Many of the photographs correspond to actual locations on Mars, reacting to the way we as strangers have mapped and named a foreign world. The seamless photomanipulation engenders a palpable reality within the frames. A sadness permeates the imagery that provokes latent strands of the subconscious. This duo was not the first to render the passage of time as an alien landscape–the surrealists began to do so nearly a century ago–but they reinterpret the symbol so gracefully that it feels novel. We can understand ourselves as these figures stranded on a dead world, helpless under the hunger of time. The vaguely Bradburian imagery provides a fertile playing ground for fears of loss, abandonment and irrelevance. Kahn and Selesnick make the strong choice to build their Mars out of a future conceived in the 20th century, rather than the 21st. The simultaneous wonder and paranoia of incipient science fiction are expertly recultivated here into a poignant loneliness, a grasping against the speed of time. Kahn and Selesnick’s elegantly wrought props and costumes deliver the aesthetic perfectly. Throughout the photographs I never once doubt their Mars, oxygenated as it may be. The duo is currently holding exhibitions of the various objects used in the photographs, but detached from their scenery the shapes do less. They are inextricably part of a new Mars, an alternate world where the dramas of the worlds inside us quietly play out. Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea may be purchased online as a 12″ x 12″ hardcover through Blurb.com. Kahn and Selesnick are currently seeking an official publisher for the work. A full preview of the book may be viewed via Blurb, and many of its images are available in high resolutions on Kahn and Selesnick’s blog. 

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The question has been asked by many millions of people spanning recorded time, but we are no closer to the answer today than we were hundreds or even thousands of years ago. We need to finally get a handle on this and start exploring!

If NASA’s plans to build an aerospace park in Loveland pull through, it will mean approximately 10,000 new jobs in the area—not to mention a key tourist attract, which will also bring the area some income. Since the endeavor is in its final stages of negotiation, residents will likely know soon whether or not the jobs will available. That said, the state budget of the state of Colorado altogether is nearly half the budget of the space command in the state—and as the budget will be experiencing some heavy belt tightening soon, many jobs are expected to be cut as well. Creating satellites that are smaller and cheaper to operate is one proposed solution to the problem; but even so, jobs are likely to get cut in the process. Then again, the Department of Defense is asking for even more money—Air Force Commander General William Shelton in particular says that “You can’t always get what you want”—after they received a huge amount at the expense of cuts to public programs that directly affect people, too, from health to education to environmental programs. I suppose operating a rocket or a bomber or a space shuttle would be hard on a few million less—but probably not as hard as it is to feed a family of four under the poverty line. You can’t always get what you want, indeed.