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New evidence points towards water on Moon

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 19 (ANI): Two separate lunar missions have found evidence which indicates that the polar regions of the moon are chock full of water-altered minerals.

According to a report in Nature News, early results from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched on June 18, are offering a wide array of watery signals.

The Moon, in fact, has water in all sorts of places: not just locked up in minerals, but scattered throughout the broken-up surface, and, potentially, in blocks or sheets of ice at depth.

“We are on the verge of a renaissance in our thinking about the poles of the Moon, including how water ice gets there,” said Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which on October 9, will slam into a polar crater with the intention of ploughing up a plume of water ice for many telescopic eyes to see.

The initial LRO results confirm what was long suspected as a way for ice to stay trapped on the Moon for billions of years.

A thermal mapping instrument showed that permanently shadowed regions within deep polar craters are as cold as 35o Kelvin (-238o Celsius).

Project scientist Richard Vondrak said that they are the coldest spots in the Solar System – even colder than the surface of Pluto.

Variations in the flux of neutrons suggests variability in water content among craters.

But, the surprise comes from a different instrument on LRO, which counts slow-moving neutrons as a way of measuring hydrogen abundance in the top metre or so of the surface.

This hydrogen is often interpreted as a proxy for water ice, although it could also be molecular hydrogen or hydrogen trapped in other molecules.

The LRO instrument has already found a significant excess of hydrogen at the poles.

But, with added resolution, it is seeing surprising variability within the polar regions. Some of the craters appear enriched in hydrogen. Others are not.

Stranger still, some areas outside the crater walls, which were thought to get too hot for water to linger, show an excess of hydrogen.

Vondrak said this shows that the water could have arrived more recently, or that it can persist if buried as impacts till the lunar soil.

If the LCROSS impact spews up ice, it will eliminate the last vestiges of doubt about water on the Moon.

It could also start a new hunt: to find a record of impact events, such as water-rich comet strikes, that put the ice there in the first place. (ANI)

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Muslims in Lucknow offer ‘Alvida Namaz’ before Eid

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Lucknow, Sep 18(ANI): Muslims gathered in huge numbers at several mosques of Lucknow on Friday to offer the ‘Alvida Namaz’ marking the last Friday prayers of the holy month of Ramadan.

“We prayed to the Lord to raise the financial status of Muslims and also eradicate all their problems. In India, Hindu and Muslims have been living together for several centuries and we want them to be like this in future,” said Moulvi Faizul Rehman, an Islamic cleric at a mosque in Lucknow.

Highlighting the significance of the ‘Alvida Namaz’, Mohammad Sayeed, a Namazi said that it is the reason why thousands of Muslim from across the city gather to offer prayers.

“During Ramadan if we participate in the ‘Alvida Namaz’ and offer our prayers, then we get a reward for it and it will usher prosperity to us,” Sayeed said.

Ramadan, the ninth month of the Hijri lunar calendar, commemorates the revelation of Quran, Islam’s holy book, and has traditionally been a time of religious fervour, settling old disputes and behaving charitably towards neighbours.

Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam. Considered auspicious for prayers, Muslims observe the month-long fasting named ‘Roza’.

They believe this secures them a place in heaven and also brings them face to face with Allah, the Almighty, on the day of ‘Kayamat’.

The end of Ramadan heralds the festival of Eid-ul-fitr. (ANI)

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Findings from India’s Chandrayaan to provide new understanding of lunar surface

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 18 (ANI): India’s Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) has gathered data for a total of 30 solar flares, giving the most accurate measurements to date of magnesium, aluminum, silicon, calcium, and iron in the lunar surface.

Although contact was lost with Chandrayaan-1 last month, the enhanced performance of the C1XS instrument, which exceeded its design specification, means that the science team will be able to determine the geochemistry of new areas of the lunar surface, adding some vital pieces to the jigsaw of the mineralogy of the lunar surface.

The miniature C1XS instrument investigated the lunar surface using an effect whereby X-ray illumination from the Sun causes rocks to fluoresce, emitting light at a different wavelength.

This re-emitted light contains spectral peaks that are characteristic of elements contained in the rock, revealing its composition.

Solar flares act like a flash bulb, giving added illumination and allowing C1XS to ‘see’ more elements.

During normal conditions, C1XS could detect magnesium, aluminum, and silicon and collected data on the levels of these elements, enabling detailed mapping of areas of the lunar surface during its operational period.

During the 30 solar flares, C1XS detected calcium and iron (and sometimes titanium, sodium, and potassium) in key areas in the southern hemisphere and on the far side of the Moon.

The spectral resolution of 50 km was much better than previous missions.

According to Professor Grande, “The C1XS team will be analyzing the data collected during the Chandrayaan-1 mission over the next few months, and the results will help us further our knowledge of the Moon and planetary formation.”

In addition, the design of the instrument has been proved very successful in that it withstood passage through the Earth’s radiation belts and went on to produce these wonderful high-resolution spectra. We were able to separate clear peaks for each of the target elements, allowing us not only to identify where they are present but give an accurate estimate for how much is there,” he said.

“The technology developed for C1XS opens up some exciting opportunities for future missions,” he added. (ANI)

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NASA concludes tests for prototype Moon rovers

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 16 (ANI): NASA has concluded two weeks of technology development tests on two of the agency’s prototype lunar rovers.

“These tests provide us with crucial information about how our cutting edge vehicles perform in field situations approximating the moon,” said Rob Ambrose, Human Robotic Systems project lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“We learn from them, then go back home to refine the technology and plan the next focus of our research,” he added.

The annual studies featured an intensive, simulated 14-day mission.

Two crew members, an astronaut and a geologist, lived for more than 300 hours inside NASA’s prototype Lunar Electric Rover.

The explorers scouted the area for features of geological interest, then donned spacesuits and conducted simulated moonwalks to collect samples.

The crew also docked to a simulated habitat, drove the rover across difficult terrain, performed a rescue mission and made a four-day traverse across the lava.

Throughout the test, the crew provided updates via Twitter and posted pictures and video online.

Prior to the test, NASA’s K10 scout robot identified areas of interest for the crew to explore.

NASA’s heavy-lift rover Tri-ATHLETE – or All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer – carried a habitat mockup to which the rover docked. (ANI)

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Tendong Lho Rum Faat festival celebrated by Lepchas of Sikkim

September 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Gangtok (Sikkim), Sep 9(ANI): Hundreds of people came together in Gangtok recently to celebrate Tendong Lho Rum Faat, which is a festival of the indigenous tribe of Sikkim “The Lepchas”.

During the festival, Lepchas offer prayers and worship Mount Tendong; the Kanchenjunga mountain range, that they believe saved them from destruction by floods.

“This festival is more than worshipping the mountain. It shows a strong connection and affinities of Lepchas with Nature. This is not something recent. They have been carrying on this, the worshipping of Nature since time immemorial,” said Sheba Sasm, a local.

To mark the day, quiz, debate and flute competitions were also organised.

Norzang Lepcha, the organiser, said that through the festivals they want to educate youngsters about to try and respect nature as well as to save it.

“Through these festivals and seminars what we are trying to inject in the minds of young generations is to save the nature and to plant more trees, so that the temperature can be maintained. We can come to the natural level of temperature,” Lepcha said.

The festival falls on the 3rd lunar month each year. By Tashi Pradhan(ANI)

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Ancient Egyptian temples followed astronomy to set their calendars

September 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 9 (ANI): A new study has indicated that ancient Egyptian temples were aligned so precisely with astronomical events that people could set their political, economic and religious calendars by them.

According to a report in New Scientist, the study was of 650 temples, some dating back to 3000 BC.

For example, New Year coincided with the moment that the winter-solstice sun hit the central sanctuary of the Karnak temple in present-day Luxor, according to archaeological astronomer Juan Belmonte of the Canaries Astrophysical Institute in Tenerife, Spain.

Hieroglyphs on temple walls have hinted at the use of astronomy in temple architecture, including depictions of the “stretching of the cord” ceremony in which the pharaoh marked out the alignment for the temple with string.

But there had been little evidence to support the drawings.

Belmonte and Mosalam Shaltout of the Helwan Observatory in Cairo found that the temples are all aligned according to an astronomically significant event, such as a solstice or equinox, or the rising of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.

“Somebody would have had to go to the prospective site during a solar, stellar or lunar event – as we did – to mark out the position that the temple axis should take,” Belmonte said.

“For the most important temples, this may well have been the pharaoh, as the temple drawings show,” he added. (ANI)

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Barrage of small meteorite impacts cause the moon to “hum”

September 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 9 (ANI): A new research has suggested that a steady barrage of small meteorite impacts cause the moon to “hum”.

But, no seismometers sent to the moon to date have been sensitive enough to hear the “hum”.

According to a report in New Scientist, Philippe Lognonne at the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris and colleagues decided to work out how loud the ring is.

The team estimated the meteorite population in the solar neighbourhood, and calculated the likely seismic signals that would be created by a range of meteorite sizes and velocities as they strike the moon.

To determine how the vibrations from these impacts would be seen by seismometers, the team used data taken by Apollo seismometers four decades ago.

These measured the vibrations created by the landings of lunar modules and spent rocket stages.

Since the precise locations and timing of these landings were known, they could be used to gauge how long it would take vibrations caused by meteorite impacts to travel through the moon, and how much the signals might dim.

Their calculations revealed space rocks with masses ranging from a gram to a kilogram do indeed create a hum, but it is subtle.

Earth’s hum, created by pounding waves, is more than 1000 times louder.

“This shows that all planets may hum, those with and those without atmosphere,” said Lognonne.

“The moon-hum’s quietness means future lunar seismometers should be able to peek deep within the moon without the hum creating problematic background noise, he added.

Instead, seismometers can focus on measuring waves created by moonquakes, tremors created by a variety of sources, including the tidal tug of the Earth.

Because seismic waves are sensitive to the type, arrangement and density of rocks they pass through, studying the quakes can reveal more about the moon’s interior.

The network of seismometers left by the Apollo missions has been shut down since 1977, so Lognonne hopes more sensitive instruments will be sent to the moon soon.

These could reach deeper than the Apollo network to measure the size of the moon’s core.

“I think the study is a great idea,” said Clive Neal of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who was not associated with the research.

“Estimating the actual background noise is critical for designing the next generation of seismometers to go to the moon,” he added. (ANI)

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Lunar clock to be built by River Thames by 2012

September 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, September 3 (ANI): Scientists and artists are planning to build a 40m-wide lunar clock by the River Thames by the year 2012.

According to a report by BBC News, the aim is to create a new London landmark close to the proposed Olympic stadium as a monument to a more natural way of marking time.

The proposed site is at East India Dock, six miles along the river from Westminster Palace. It is currently a bedraggled nature reserve.

The designers of the clock hope that the instrument will become as iconic as Big Ben, which has been marking time for 150 years.

Laura Williams, an East London artist, explained that the clock would be powered by the tides from the Thames.

“There are three giant concentric rings made from recycled glass. Light shines through from the glass in time with the Moon’s cycles so the largest ring shows the lunar phase,” she said.

“Gradually, the light waxes on all the way around the ring and connects full circle when it’s full Moon,” she added.

“The second ring is like the big hand of the clock. It’s a marker of light that tracks the Moon around the globe so that’s the lunar day cycle,” said Williams.

“The third ring – the smallest – is the small hand that tracks the tide as it goes from high tide to low,” she said.

The clock has been called Aluna. It is a word from the Kogi indigenous people of Colombia.

“It means memory, possibility. It’s also being in tune with the planet’s rhythms and living in harmony with our planet,” said Williams.

According to Dr Usama Hasan, an astronomer, in this age of iPods and atomic clocks, there is a greater need than ever for an older way of measuring time.

“Aluna is a project which tries to connect us back to the cosmic cycle, with nature. I think that’s very important especially in the very technological age we live in,” said Hasan. (ANI)

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ISRO to launch Mars mission by 2013

September 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, Aug 31 (ANI):Indian Space research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madavan Nair said on Monday that India would launch a mission to Mars by 2013.

The ISRO has begun the preparations for sending a spacecraft to Mars.

Earlier on Aug 13 the Union Government sanctioned seed money of Rs 10 crore for Mars project, to carry out various studies on experiments to be conducted, route of the mission and other related details necessary to scale the new frontier.

On Sunday ISRO called off the maiden Lunar mission after Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu near Bangalore lost control over the Chndrayaan -I spacecraft.

Though Chandrayaan- I was slated to be a two-year mission, Nair claimed that ISRO scientists have achieved nearly 95% of Chandrayaan’s scientific goals in less than a year. (ANI)

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ISRO formally calls off India’s first moon mission

September 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Panaji. Aug 31 (ANI): Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has formally called off Chandrayaan-1, India’s first moon mission, after it lost contact with the craft. ink with the Chandrayaan-1 craft broke down early on Saturday.

Talking to reporters here on Sunday, ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said, “The net result is that the lunar has lost radio contact with the craft and we are not receiving any signal. So we had to terminate the mission with this sequence…we made all attempts but our attempts were not succeed.”

Nair claimed that though the moon mission terminated much before its two-year lifetime it was a great success.

“About 95 percent of the objectives of the scientific experiments have been completed and we have more than 70,000 images of the moon, especially the most critical regions are in our custody,” he added.

The 79-million dollar mission was launched amid national euphoria last October, putting India in the Asian space race alongside China.

A probe vehicle landed on the moon a month later and sent back images of the lunar surface.

But a critical sensor in the main craft, orbiting the moon, malfunctioned in July, raising fears that the two-year mission might have to be curtailed.

One of the mission’s main aims was to look for Helium 3, an isotope which is very rare on earth but could be an energy source in the future in nuclear fusion.

ISRO has plans to send a manned mission to space in four years’ time and eventually on to Mars. (ANI)

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India’s first moon mission may be over, says project director

August 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Bangalore, Aug 29 (ANI):India’s ambitious moon mission — Chandrayaan-I — has probably ended after losing radio contact since Saturday noon, said its project director M. Annadurai, but Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair said scientists will evaluate the performance of the mission over the next two days before deciding whether or not to call it off.

Earlier, in the day the flamboyant spacecraft had lost the radio control at around 1.30 a.m. IST, increasing fears of a premature end of the spacecraft.

According to a press release by the ISRO, the deep Space Network at Byalalu near Bangalore has not received any signal form the spacecraft since midnight.

“Radio contact with Chandrayaan-I spacecraft was abruptly lost at 0130 Hrs (IST) on August 29, 2009. Deep Space Network at Byalalu near Bangalore received the data from Chandrayaan-I during the previous orbit upto 0025 Hrs (IST),”the press release states.he ISRO has ordered for a detailed review of the data received by the spacecraft, “Detailed review of the Telemetry data received from the spacecraft is in progress and health of the spacecraft subsystems is being analysed,” press release states.

Earlier, on July 17, the flamboyant moon mission Chandrayaan-I, had lost a major sensor. The scientific community then feared the premature end of the spacecraft.

The Chandrayaan-I, which was launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh in October 2008, has completed over 350 days in orbit making more than 3400 orbits around the Moon and providing large volume of data from sophisticated sensors.

The spacecraft was equipped with Terrain Mapping Camera, Hyper-spectral Imager, Moon Mineralogy Mapper etc.,

The ISRO scientists expressed confidence of attaining most of the scientific objectives of the mission.

Addressing the Ninth convocation of the International Institute of Information and Technology at Bangalore last month, Nair said the tracking and detection of several factors by Chandrayaan are important steps in mapping the mineralogical composition of moon’s surface, which in turn would enable further study in its origin and evolution.

“I think I am happy to say that Chandrayaan has been completely successful in collecting all the data what we wanted. First was the three dimensional of the lunar surface, also getting the mineral content of the surface and then trying to use the extra instruments,” said Nair.

“All this went on very well and we are more or less very happy that the mission is complete,” he added.

Nair also added that the second moon mission would be launched by 2012. (ANI)

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”Moon rock’ given to Holland by Armstrong, Aldrin just ‘petrified wood’

August 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Aug 29 (ANI): A piece of rock from the moon which Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin had gifted to Holland is claimed to be fake.

Curators at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum say that the “lunar rock”, valued at 308,000 pounds, is in fact just a petrified wood.

“It’s a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered. We can laugh about it,” the Telegraph quoted Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation as saying.

In fact, researchers at Amsterdam’s Free University knew it wasn’t moon rock at the first look. They say that their speculation was later confirmed by tests.

Frank Beunk, a geologist involved in the investigation: “It’s a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone.”

Now, the United States Embassy in The Hague is carrying out an investigation into the affair.

Armstrong, Michael Collins and Aldrin had given the rock to Willem Drees, a former Dutch leader, during a global tour after their landing in moon almost 50 years ago.

It is one of the moon rocks given to more than 100 countries following lunar missions in 1969 and the 1970s.

Former American ambassador to the Netherlands J. William Middendorf had presented it to Drees, which was donated to the Rijksmuseum after his death in 1988.

Middendorf said: “I do remember that Drees was very interested in the little piece of stone. But that it’s not real, I don’t know anything about that.” (ANI)

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Comets, not asteroids, scarred Moon’s face about 4 billion years ago

July 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, July 28 (ANI): A new study of ancient rocks in Greenland has suggested that icy comets – not rocky asteroids – launched a dramatic assault on the Earth and moon around 3.85 billion years ago, thus causing the lunar surface to become scarred.

“We can see craters on the moon’s surface with the naked eye, but nobody actually knew what caused them – was it rocks, was it iron, was it ice?” Uffe Grae Jorgensen, an astronomer at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, told New Scientist.

“It’s exciting to find signs that it was actually ice,” he said.

Evidence suggests that the Earth and moon had both formed around 4.5 billion years ago.

But, almost all the craters on the moon date to a later period, the “Late Heavy Bombardment” 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago, when around 100 million billion tonnes of rock or ice crashed onto the lunar surface.

To find out whether asteroids or comets were the main culprits for the bombardment, Jorgensen decided to measure levels of the element iridium in ancient terrestrial rocks.

Iridium is rare on the Earth’s surface because almost all of it bound to iron and sank into the Earth’s core soon after the planet had formed. But iridium is relatively common in comets and meteorites.

His team calculated the amount of iridium that asteroids would leave on the Earth and moon compared to comets.

Because comets have more volatile elements and higher impact speeds due to their more elongated orbits around the sun, they would create giant plumes on impact, allowing more iridium to escape into space than during asteroid impacts.

The team predicted that asteroid bombardment would leave iridium levels of 18,000 and 10,000 parts per trillion in rocks on the Earth and moon respectively, while the same figures for comet bombardment would be about 130 and 10.

Ancient moon rocks returned by NASA’s Apollo missions have already confirmed that the lunar iridium levels are 10 parts per trillion or less.

To find out the terrestrial value, Jorgensen’s team sampled some of the world’s oldest rocks from Greenland, aged 3.8 billion years, and asked a Japanese laboratory to assess their iridium levels more accurately than ever before.

They contained iridium levels of 150 parts per trillion, which strongly suggests comets, rather than asteroids, caused the violent bombardment. (ANI)

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N Sync’s Lance Bass, Adriana Lima, Miranda Kerr still game for space travel

July 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New York, July 15 (ANI): When it comes to travelling in space, N Sync star Lance Bass is still game for it, while supermodel Adriana Lima would not mind taking her family and unborn baby along.

Talking at the Louis Vuitton Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of the Lunar Landing event, Bass said that he would love to go to space because he has even trained for it.

“I’m a trained astronaut, and it’s my time to go,” the New York Daily News quoted him as saying.

Bass attended space camp as a kid, and actually tried to launch into orbit on a Russian rocket in 2002.

Even Miranda Kerr is game for making a space trip, and said that she couldn’t go herself, she would bestow the honour on her brother instead of rumoured fiance Orlando Bloom.

“He’s always wanted to go to the moon,” said that Victoria’s Secret supermodel.

Fellow Angel Adriana Lima, who is four months pregnant, would also make space travel a family affair.

“If I had to be there with someone, I’d take my mom. Actually, I would want my whole family: my grandparents, my baby, my husband, my friends. Everyone would come with me,” she said. (ANI)

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Amphibians like to mate under a full Moon

July 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, July 14 (ANI): Scientists have discovered that amphibians around the world synchronize their mating activity by the full Moon.

According to a report by BBC News, this global phenomenon has never been noticed before, but frogs, toads and newts all like to mate by moonlight.

The animals use the lunar cycle to co-ordinate their gatherings, ensuring that enough males and females come together at the same time.

In doing so the creatures maximize their spawning success and reduce their odds of being eaten.

Biologist Rachel Grant of the Open University, UK, was studying salamanders near a lake in central Italy for her PhD in 2005 when she noticed toads all over the road, under a full Moon.

“Although this might have been a coincidence, the following month I went along the same route every day at dusk and found that the numbers of toads on the road increased as the Moon waxed, to a peak at full Moon, and then declined again,” she said.

A review of the scientific literature found little mention of any similar records, so Grant returned to the same site in 2006 and 2007 to survey the amphibians in more detail.

She then collated her data with a 10-year analysis of the mating habits of frogs and toads at a pond near Oxford, UK, collected by her supervisor Tim Halliday, and with data on toads and newts living in Wales collected by colleague Elizabeth Chadwick from Cardiff University, UK.

“We analysed the data, and found a lunar effect at all three sites,” Grant said.

For example, the common toad (Bufo bufo) arrives at all its breeding sites, mates and spawns around the full Moon. The common frog (Rana temporaria) also spawns around the time of the full Moon.

“Newts also seem to be affected by the lunar cycle but the results are less clear,” said Grant.

Newt arrivals peak during both the full and new moons.

The researchers have also looked at historical data collected in Java on the Javanese toad and found that it too mates by the lunar cycle, with females ovulating on or near to the full Moon.

“We now have evidence of lunar cycles affecting amphibians in widespread locations. We definitely think that Moon phase has been an overlooked factor in most studies of amphibian reproductive timing,” said Grant.

“We think this may be a worldwide phenomenon. However, differences between species in ecology and reproductive strategy may mean that not all amphibians are affected in the same way. This is something we would like to investigate further,” she added. (ANI)

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ISRO chief satisfied with lunar data compiled by Chandrayaan

July 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Bangalore, July 12(ANI): G Madhavan Nair, Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), on Sunday expressed satisfaction with the successful collection of data about the moon by Chandrayaan, country’s maiden lunar mission.

Madhavan Nair stated this while addressing the 9th convocation of International Institute of Information and Technology at Bangalore on Sunday.

He mentioned that the tracking and detection of several factors by Chandrayaan are important steps in mapping the mineralogical composition of moon’s surface which in turn would enable further study in its origin and evolution.

“All this went on very well and we are more or less very happy that the mission is complete,” he added.

Chandrayaan-1 was launched on October 22 last year.

Madhavan Nair also added that the second moon mission would be launched by 2012. (ANI)

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Moonwalker Jackson gets Moon crater named after him

July 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, July 8 (ANI): Late King of Pop Michael Jackson, whose moonwalk was a dancing phenomenon in itself, has got the ultimate tribute, for a crater on the Moon has now been named after him.

In what could be called as a heavenly tribute, the Lunar Republic Society has said that the Moonwalker has made his mark on the moon.

The news came as the singer’s family, friends, and fans celebrated his life at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on July 7, reports the Daily Express.

The crater, previously named Posidonius J, is located in the Moon’s Lake of Dreams, and is close to a 1,200-acre parcel purchased by Michael Jackson.

The ‘Thriller’ hit-maker passed away last month, after suffering a cardiac arrest at his Los Angeles home. (ANI)

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NASA’s Moon mission successfully completes lunar maneuver

June 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 24 (ANI): NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, successfully completed its most significant early mission milestone on June 23 with a lunar swingby and calibration of its science instruments.

The satellite will search for water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole.

With the assist of the moon’s gravity, LCROSS and its attached Centaur booster rocket successfully entered into polar Earth orbit at 6:20 a.m. PDT on June 23.

The maneuver puts the spacecraft and Centaur on course for a pair of impacts near the moon’s south pole on October 9.

“The successful completion of the LCROSS swingby proves the science instruments are functioning as expected. It is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the entire team,” said Dan Andrews, LCROSS project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.

“We are elated at the results from the maneuver and eagerly anticipate the impacts in early October,” he added.

During its swing by the moon, the spacecraft’s instruments were turned on and calibrated by scanning three sites on the lunar surface.

These sites were the craters Mendeleev, Goddard C and Giordano Bruno. They were selected because they offer a variety of terrain types, compositions and illumination conditions.

The spacecraft also scanned the lunar horizon to confirm its instruments are aligned in preparation for observing the Centaur’s debris plume.

“Each instrument returned good data that the science team will spend the next few weeks analyzing,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist at Ames.

“These data will ensure we are as prepared as possible for monitoring and interpreting data we receive during impact,” he added.

LCROSS and its attached Centaur upper stage rocket are now in a long, looping polar orbit around Earth and the moon.

Each orbit will be roughly perpendicular to the moon’s orbit around Earth and take about 37 days to complete.

Before impact, the spacecraft and Centaur will make approximately three orbits.

LCROSS and the Centaur separately will collide with the moon at approximately 7:30 a.m. EDT on October 9, creating a pair of debris plumes that will be analyzed for the presence of water ice or water vapor, hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.

The spacecraft and Centaur are targeted to impact the moon’s south pole near the Cabeus region.

The exact target crater will be identified 30 days before impact, after considering information collected by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and observatories on Earth. (ANI)

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Ancient Mars lake may have held as much water as Lake Champlain in US

June 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 20 (ANI): Scientists have found evidence of the remnants of an ancient lake nestled in a valley near the Martian equator, which may have held as much water as Lake Champlain.

According to a report in Disocvery News, the evidence was found by Gaetano di Achille and a team of researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US, in the form of an ancient shoreline ringing Shalbatana Vallis, a gash in Mars’ surface just east of the massive volcanic province, Tharsis Rise.

Though dry and frigid now, the traces it left behind hint at a water body younger than any other on the planet, and its sediments are a prime target for finding fossilized alien life.

When Mars coalesced billions of years ago it was much warmer, and probably wet. Features that appear to be eroded river deltas more than 3.7 billion years old dot parts of the planet’s surface.

Researchers have speculated they are evidence of lakes – and primitive life may have once existed on the surface.

Now, Gaetano’s team of researchers estimated from powerful images obtained using the powerful High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), that the ancient lake was 450 meters (1,476 feet) deep and nearly identical in volume to Lake Champlain in Vermont.

Even more intriguingly, it dried up around 3.4 billion years ago – 300 million years after the Red Planet’s “warm and wet” phase is thought to have ended.

Its deltas appear rich in fine-grained sediments, a sign that they have been relatively untouched by erosion.

“Deltas are high priority targets for exploration because they imply copious and long-lived water,” team member Brian Hynek of the University of Colorado in Boulder told Discovery News. “And the sedimentation process is very effective at burying and preserving organic material,” he said.

The lake is a tempting place to look for fossilized alien life forms.

“Life wouldn’t have arisen in this lake, but lakes on Earth provide many habitats for countless organisms,” said Patrick McGovern of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

“This lake could have helped sustain and proliferate life on Mars, if it ever arose,” he added. (ANI)

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NASA spacecraft detects ultra fast hydrogen coming from Moon

June 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 19 (ANI): NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made the first observations of very fast hydrogen atoms coming from the Moon, following decades of speculation and searching for their existence.

During spacecraft commissioning, the IBEX team turned on the IBEX-Hi instrument, built primarily by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which measures atoms with speeds from about half a million to 2.5 million miles per hour.

Its companion sensor, IBEX-Lo, built by Lockheed Martin, the University of New Hampshire, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the University of Bern in Switzerland, measures atoms with speeds from about one hundred thousand to 1.5 million mph.

“Just after we got IBEX-Hi turned on, the Moon happened to pass right through its field of view, and there they were,” said Dr. David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division.

“The instrument lit up with a clear signal of the neutral atoms being detected as they backscattered from the Moon,” he added.

From its vantage point in space, IBEX sees about half of the Moon – one quarter of it is dark and faces the nightside (away from the Sun), while the other quarter faces the dayside (toward the Sun).

Solar wind particles impact only the dayside, where most of them are embedded in the lunar surface, while some scatter off in different directions.

The scattered ones mostly become neutral atoms in this reflection process by picking up electrons from the lunar surface.

The IBEX team estimates that only about 10 percent of the solar wind ions reflect off the sunward side of the Moon as neutral atoms, while the remaining 90 percent are embedded in the lunar surface.

Characteristics of the lunar surface, such as dust, craters and rocks, play a role in determining the percentage of particles that become embedded and the percentage of neutral particles, as well as their direction of travel, that scatter.

According to McComas, the results also shed light on the “recycling” process undertaken by particles throughout the solar system and beyond.

The solar wind and other charged particles impact dust and larger objects as they travel through space, where they backscatter and are reprocessed as neutral atoms.

These atoms can travel long distances before they are stripped of their electrons and become ions and the complicated process begins again.

The combined scattering and neutralization processes now observed at the Moon have implications for interactions with objects across the solar system, such as asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects and other Moons. (ANI)

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