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‘UFO’ pictured above Sydney

March 24, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Melbourne, March 24 (ANI): Another UFO sighting has been reported from Sydney where a mum of two captured the mysterious object in a photograph.

Fiona Hartigan is convinced what she saw was a UFO and she says the snaps she took are proof enough.

According to Hartigan, the incident took place on Sunday evening when she was about to click a few sunset photos.

“As I was about to take the picture this black object appeared and then it started to move,” News.com.au quoted her, as saying.

She went on: “It started off about 800m away but it came closer – to about 400m – and then two other little round things appeared from this bright orange light above.

“There was no noise. It was calm and peaceful but it was very weird.”

Hartigan claims the main UFO then flew away above Governor Macquarie Drive at Chipping Norton, with the smaller ones whizzed in the opposite direction.

She said: “I don”t know how to explain it – I”m still totally bewildered.”

Talking about the sighting and the photos UFO Research NSW spokesman Doug Moffett said: “It could be some electrical anomaly that no one has ever seen, it could be an extra-terrestrial craft, it could be something else.

“There does appear to be a blur around the image, which could just be the way it”s shaped, or – and this is pure speculation – it could be due to its propulsion system.”

He added: “Whatever the case, it”s an opportunity to learn something new.”

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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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Cold, wet Mars may have been just as hospitable to life as a warm one

May 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 21 (ANI): A new study has suggested that a cold, wet Mars may have been just as hospitable to life as a warm one.

According to a report in New Scientist, the study investigated what would happen to various mineral solutions on Mars.

Researchers found that solutions containing certain combinations of sulphur, silicon and other ions stay liquid even down to -28 degree Celsius – a much more plausible temperature for early Mars than one above 0 degrees C.

“The results were a happy surprise,” said Ricardo Amils of the Astrobiology Centre in Madrid, Spain. “The concentrations you need are not much higher than seawater,” he added.

In the study, Alberto Fairen of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, used models to determine what would happened to water loaded up with generous helpings of calcium, sodium, silicon, iron and sulphur ions, among others.

The relative concentrations of the ingredients matched mineral compositions sampled by four Mars probes: the Landers Viking 1 and Mars Pathfinder, and the rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

In many cases, the water not only remained liquid at extremely low temperatures, but precipitated minerals as it got colder, including jarosite, haematite and gypsum, which are all present on Mars today.

The study may resolve a conundrum about water on Mars.

Despite much evidence that suggests water was once present on the surface, it has proven virtually impossible to come up with a Martian climate model in which liquid water remains stable for long.

In addition, different carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in Fairen’s models make little difference to the results, which suggests that only modest amounts of greenhouse gases may have been required to maintain standing water on ancient Mars.

Significantly, the solutions modeled by Fairen ranged in concentration between 5 and 6 per cent; Earth’s seawater, for comparison, has a concentration of 3.5 per cent.

Such concentrations are well within the comfort zone of numerous families of microbes on Earth, which suggests a cold, wet Mars may have been just as hospitable to life as a warm one.

The results could explain the water droplets apparently clinging to and even rolling down the landing struts of the Mars Phoenix Lander in images from the spacecraft.
he water is assumed to have come from ice melted by Phoenix’s thrusters at the landing site, but it was thought it could only remain liquid on Mars if it contained extremely high concentrations of salt.

“They may not need a lot of salt,” said Amils. (ANI)

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NASA releases interactive 3-D views of International Space Station, new mars rover

May 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 8 (ANI): NASA has released an interactive, 3-D photographic collection of internal and external views of the International Space Station (ISS) and a model of the next Mars rover.

NASA and Microsoft’s Virtual Earth team developed the online experience with hundreds of photographs and Microsoft’s photo imaging technology called Photosynth.

Using a click-and-drag interface, viewers can zoom in to see details of the space station’s modules and solar arrays or zoom out for a more global view of the complex.

“Photosynth brings the public closer to our spaceflight equipment and hardware,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“The space station pictures are not simulations or graphic representations but actual images taken recently by astronauts while in orbit. Although you’re not flying 220 miles above the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, it allows you to navigate and view amazing details of the real station as though you were there,” he added.

The software uses photographs from standard digital cameras to construct a 3-D view that can be navigated and explored online.

“This stunning collection of photographs using Microsoft’s Photosynth interactive 3-D imaging technology provides people around the world with an exciting new way to explore the space station and learn about NASA’s upcoming Mars Science Laboratory mission,” said S. Pete Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

“This collaboration with Microsoft offers the public the opportunity to participate in future exploration using this innovative technology,” he added.

The Mars rover imagery gives viewers an opportunity to preview the hardware of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, currently being assembled for launch to the Red Planet in 2011.

According to Fuk Li, manager of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, “We are making this enhanced viewing experience available from the Mars Science Laboratory project because we’re eager for the public to share in the excitement that’s building for this mission.” (ANI)

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NASA ‘nano satellite’ to study how effectively drugs work in space

May 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 29 (ANI): NASA is preparing to fly a nano satellite about the size of a loaf of bread that could help scientists better understand how effectively drugs work in space.

The nanosatellite, known as PharmaSat, is a secondary payload aboard a U.S. Air Force four-stage Minotaur 1 rocket planned for launch the evening of May 5.

PharmaSat weighs approximately 10 pounds.

It contains a controlled environment micro-laboratory packed with sensors and optical systems that can detect the growth, density and health of yeast cells and transmit that data to scientists for analysis on Earth.

PharmaSat also will monitor the levels of pressure, temperature and acceleration the yeast and the satellite experience while circling Earth at 17,000 miles per hour.

Scientists will study how the yeast responds during and after an antifungal treatment is administered at three distinct dosage levels to learn more about drug action in space, the satellite’s primary goal.

“Secondary payload nanosatellites expand the number of opportunities available to conduct research in microgravity by providing an alternative to the International Space Station or space shuttle conducted investigations,” said Elwood Agasid, PharmaSat project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

“The PharmaSat spacecraft builds upon the GeneSat-1 legacy with enhanced monitoring and measurement capabilities, which will enable more extensive scientific investigation,” he added.

After PharmaSat separates from the Minotaur 1 rocket and successfully enters low Earth orbit at approximately 285 miles above Earth, it will activate and begin transmitting radio signals to two ground control stations.

When NASA spaceflight engineers make contact with PharmaSat, which could happen as soon as one hour after launch, the satellite will receive a command to initiate its experiment, which will last 96 hours.

Once the experiment begins, PharmaSat will relay data in near real-time to mission managers, engineers and project scientists for further analysis.

The nanosatellite could transmit data for as long as six months.

“PharmaSat is an important experiment that will yield new information about the susceptibility of microbes to antibiotics in the space environment,” said David Niesel, PharmaSat’s co-investigator from the University of Texas Medical Branch Department of Pathology and Microbiology and Immunology in Galveston.

“It also will prove that biological experiments can be conducted on sophisticated autonomous nanosatellites,” he added. (ANI)

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NASA’s Kepler mission begins hunt for planets like Earth

April 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 17 (ANI): NASA’s Kepler mission has taken its first images of the star-rich sky where it will soon begin hunting for planets like Earth.

The new images show the mission’s target patch of sky, a vast starry field in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy.

One image shows millions of stars in Kepler’s full field of view, while two others zoom in on portions of the larger region.

“Kepler’s first glimpse of the sky is awe-inspiring,” said Lia LaPiana, Kepler’s program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “To be able to see millions of stars in a single snapshot is simply breathtaking,” she added.

One new image from Kepler shows its entire field of view – a 100-square-degree portion of the sky, equivalent to two side-by-side dips of the Big Dipper.

The regions contain an estimated 14 millions stars, more than 100,000 of which were selected as ideal candidates for planet hunting.

Two other views focus on just one-thousandth of the full field of view.

In one image, a cluster of stars located about 13,000 light-years from Earth, called NGC 6791, can be seen in the lower left corner.

The other image zooms in on a region containing a star, called Tres-2, with a known Jupiter-like planet orbiting every 2.5 days.

“It’s thrilling to see this treasure trove of stars,” said William Borucki, science principal investigator for Kepler at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.

“We expect to find hundreds of planets circling those stars, and for the first time, we can look for Earth-size planets in the habitable zones around other stars like the sun,” he added.

Kepler will spend the next three-and-a-half years searching more than 100,000 pre-selected stars for signs of planets.

It is expected to find a variety of worlds, from large, gaseous ones, to rocky ones as small as Earth.

The mission is the first with the ability to find planets like ours – small, rocky planets orbiting sun-like stars in the habitable zone, where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans of water.

“Everything about Kepler has been optimized to find Earth-size planets,” said James Fanson, Kepler’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“Our images are road maps that will allow us, in a few years, to point to a star and say a world like ours is there,” he added. (ANI)

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NASA and Microsoft to make planetary images and data available to public via Internet

March 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 25 (ANI): NASA and Microsoft Corporation have announced plans to make planetary images and data available to the public via the Internet under a Space Act Agreement.

Through this project, NASA and Microsoft jointly will develop the technology and infrastructure necessary to make the most interesting NASA content, including high-resolution scientific images and data from Mars and the moon, explorable on WorldWide Telescope, Microsoft’s online virtual telescope for exploring the universe.

The WorldWide Telescope is a Web 2.0 visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from ground- and space-based telescopes for a seamless, rich media guided exploration of the universe.

“Making NASA’s scientific and astronomical data more accessible to the public is a high priority for NASA, especially given the new administration’s recent emphasis on open government and transparency,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Under the joint agreement, NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, will process and host more than 100 terabytes of data, enough to fill 20,000 DVDs.

WorldWide Telescope will incorporate the data later in 2009 and feature imagery from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, known as MRO.

Launched in August 2005, MRO has been examining Mars with a high-resolution camera and five other instruments since 2006 and has returned more data than all other Mars missions combined.

“This collaboration between Microsoft and NASA will enable people around the world to explore new images of the moon and Mars in a rich, interactive environment through the WorldWide Telescope,” said Tony Hey, corporate vice president of Microsoft External Research in Redmond, Washington.

“WorldWide Telescope serves as a powerful tool for computer science researchers, educators and students to explore space and experience the excitement of computer science,” he added.

Also available will be images from a camera aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, when publicly released starting this fall.

Scheduled to launch this May, LRO will spend at least a year in a low, polar orbit approximately 30 miles above the lunar surface collecting detailed information about the lunar environment.

“NASA is excited to collaborate with Microsoft to share its portfolio of planetary images with students and lifelong learners,” said S. Pete Worden, director of Ames.
“This is a compelling astronomical resource and will help inspire our next generation of astronomers,” he added. (ANI)

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NASA’s Kepler mission blasts off in search of Earth-like planets

March 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 7 (ANI): NASA’s Kepler mission, which would search other Earth-like planets, has been successfully launched into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, US, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II.

Kepler is designed to find the first Earth-size planets orbiting stars at distances where water could pool on the planet’s surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

“It was a stunning launch,” said Kepler Project Manager James Fanson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“Our team is thrilled to be a part of something so meaningful to the human race – Kepler will help us understand if our Earth is unique or if others like it are out there,” he added.

Engineers acquired a signal from Kepler at 12:11 a.m. on March 7th, after it separated from its spent third-stage rocket and entered its final sun-centered orbit, trailing 950 miles behind Earth.

The spacecraft is generating its own power from its solar panels.

“Kepler now has the perfect place to watch more than 100,000 stars for signs of planets,” said William Borucki, the mission’s science principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.

“Everyone is very excited as our dream becomes a reality. We are on the verge of learning if other Earths are ubiquitous in the galaxy,” he added.

Engineers have begun to check Kepler to ensure it is working properly, a process called “commissioning” that will take about 60 days.

In about a month or less, NASA will send up commands for Kepler to eject its dust cover and make its first measurements.

After another month of calibrating Kepler’s single instrument, a wide-field charge-couple device camera, the telescope will begin to search for planets.

The first planets to roll out on the Kepler “assembly line” are expected to be the portly “hot Jupiters” – gas giants that circle close and fast around their stars.

Neptune-size planets will most likely be found next, followed by rocky ones as small as Earth.

The true Earth analogs – Earth-sized planets orbiting stars like our sun at distances where surface water, and possibly life, could exist – would take at least three years to discover and confirm.

Ground-based telescopes also will contribute to the mission by verifying some of the finds.

In the end, Kepler will give us our first look at the frequency of Earth-size planets in our Milky Way galaxy, as well as the frequency of Earth-size planets that could theoretically be habitable. (ANI)

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NASA’s Kepler mission to search for Earth-sized planets

March 5, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, March 4 (ANI): NASA’s Kepler mission, which is all set to launch on March 6, will take a long look at the stars in the constellation Cygnus, searching for an Earth-sized planet elsewhere in the Galaxy.

According to a report in Nature News, the Kepler space telescope, which is the single instrument on board Kepler, will hunt for Earth-like ‘exoplanets’ – planets beyond the Solar System.

Project scientists expect to find hundreds of such worlds, including perhaps the first exact Earth analogue.

Kepler will detect exoplanets by watching them passing, or ‘transiting’, in front of their star, dimming the starlight temporarily.

It needs to do this at least three times to confirm a planet. If an exoplanet is in an Earth-like orbit, that will take three years.

Of the 342 exoplanets spotted to date, most have been found through the radial velocity method, which picks up slight wobbles in a star’s position caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet.

This method is most likely to find large planets close to their stars, however.

Transits are better suited to finding something more like Earth in size and orbit. So far, 58 transiting planets have been found.

The COROT satellite, launched by the French space agency CNES in 2006, has found seven of those transiting planets, and is in many ways a forerunner to Kepler.

Kepler, however, will orbit the Sun rather than Earth, as COROT does, which means it can spend more time looking at the stars.

Kepler also has a bigger telescope: its mirror is 1.4 metres across, compared with COROT’s 30 centimetres.

Kepler will stare at 100,000 preselected Sun-like stars 180-920 parsecs away, sending data back to Earth every 30 days.

Scientists will scan those data for planets that might be habitable: not too close to their parent star, nor too far away that liquid water won’t exist.

“We all hope this mission will deliver what is promised,” said Giovanna Tinetti, a senior research fellow at University College London.

“If Kepler comes up with empty hands, that will be truly astonishing,” said Alan Boss, an exoplanet theorist from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC.

According to William Borucki, the project’s principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, even if Kepler doesn’t identify any Earth-like planets, that would mean our Solar System really is unique. (ANI)

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NASA spacecraft all set to search for Earth-like worlds

February 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 20 (ANI): NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is all set to be moved to the launch pad and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life.

Kepler is scheduled to blast into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, aboard a Delta II rocket on March 5.

It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth – rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface.

Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

“Kepler is a critical component in NASA’s broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present,” said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars,” he added.

The mission will spend three-and-a-half years surveying more than 100,000 sun-like stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy.

It is expected to find hundreds of planets the size of Earth and larger at various distances from their stars.

If Earth-size planets are common in the habitable zone, Kepler could find dozens; if those planets are rare, Kepler might find none.

In the end, the mission will be humanity’s first step toward answering a question posed by the ancient Greeks: are there other worlds like ours or are we alone?

“Finding that most stars have Earths implies that the conditions that support the development of life could be common throughout our galaxy,” said William Borucki, Kepler’s science principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, alifornia.

“Finding few or no Earths indicates that we might be alone,” he added.

The Kepler telescope is specially designed to detect the periodic dimming of stars that planets cause as they pass by. Some star systems are oriented in such a way that their planets cross in front of their stars, as seen from our Earthly point of view.

As the planets pass by, they cause their stars’ light to slightly dim, or wink.

The telescope can detect even the faintest of these winks, registering changes in brightness of only 20 parts per million.

To achieve this resolution, Kepler will use the largest camera ever launched into space, a 95-megapixel array of charged couple devices, known as CCDs. (ANI)

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