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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., April 5 (Reuters) – Space shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, riding atop a pillar of flames that briefly illuminated the pre-dawn sky.
Discovery and its seven astronauts blasted off with a thundering roar at 6:21 a.m. EDT (1021 GMT) on one of NASA’s final cargo runs to the International Space Station before the shuttle fleet is retired later this year. (Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Tom Brown and Chris Wilson)
Iran says China to attend Tehran nuclear meet
TEHRAN: Iran said on Sunday China would take part in a nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran later this month, to be held just days after Chinese President Hu Jintao is due to attend a nuclear security summit in Washington. The Chinese have welcomed Iran’s initiative and the idea of calling on the world to disarm, chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was quoted as saying by IRNA news agency.
Discovery to be launched today
CAPE CANAVERAL: NASA has cleared space shuttle Discovery for a Monday morning launch to the International Space Station. Mission managers met on Sunday and gave the “go” to proceed toward liftoff. The unanimous decision came after engineers determined there were no booster rocket safety concerns.
China: New rules for disposing foetuses
BEIJING: The government in China’s Jining city on Sunday announced new regulations to pay for the disposal of bodies of babies after 21 infants were found abandoned by their parents. If hospitals cannot find a dead baby’s guardian or if the guardian cannot afford the transportation and cremation, the government will pay the fees so that inappropriate disposal of the corpse can be prevented.
Observation deck of Burj Khalifa reopens
DUBAI: The observation deck of the world’s tallest skyscraper reopened on Sunday in Dubai, two months after an elevator malfunction left visitors trapped more than 120 stories above the ground and forced it to close. Tourists lined up on Sunday for tickets to take an elevator to the 124th floor of the half-mile-high Burj Khalifa, where the tower’s observation deck is located.
Dev Patel plays Elvis Presley in photo shoot
LONDON: From playing a street urchin in Slumdog Millionaire to impersonating the The King for a high-end fashion shoot, Dev Patel has surely come a long way. After proving his acting chops with the Oscar winning film, the Indian-origin actor proved he can cut it on the dance floor too, as he did an Elvis jig in the streets of London for a photo-shoot.
Lady Gaga hates casually dressed stars
LONDON: Pop star Lady Gaga, who is famed for her eccentric fashion sense, believes stars should make an effort when they appear at red carpet events as she thinks it’s something the fans deserve. “I think you should look nice all the time. When I meet celebrities and they’re in casual clothes, I’m always like, ‘Whaaat?’ I don’t mean to be judgmental, but it would do them better to be who they really are, all the time,” Gaga told OK! magazine.
Blood test for breast cancer
london: In a major breakthrough, scientists have developed a simple blood test to detect breast cancer in women. Normal breast screening checks detect a tumour only once it is three or four times bigger. But, the Diagenic BCtect test can pick up a cancer the size of a small seed before a woman has developed any symptoms, company Diagenic ASA claims.
Melbourne, Sep 16 (ANI): The trail of light that sparkled through the American sky on Wednesday night was not a unique celestial show, but was actually astronaut piss.
While skygazers marvelled at the beauty of the glowing trail, astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery were merely dumping water and urine out into space in preparation for a landing attempt on Thursday.
Although the astronauts had to postpone their landing due to poor weather, but the Discovery safely landed in California on Friday, reports the Courier Mail.
NASA spokeswoman Kylie Clem said that the light show was due to an unusually large amount of water (about 150 pounds) being dumped all at once.
Discovery had just undocked from the International Space Station the day before, and had not been able to unload wastewater during the 10-day visit. (ANI)
Washington, Sept 2 (ANI): NASA’s Orion spacecraft has passed a significant design milestone by completing the Orion Project’s preliminary design review (PDR), and thus taking a major step toward building the next crew exploration vehicle.
Orion is being designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and other destinations.
The preliminary design review is one of a series of checkpoints that occurs in the design life cycle of a complex engineering project before hardware manufacturing can begin.
As the review process progresses, details of the vehicle’s design are assessed to ensure the overall system is safe and reliable for flight and meets all NASA mission requirements.
The Orion features a capsule-shaped crew module designed for maximum crew operability and safety, a service module housing utility systems and propulsion components and a launch abort system for improved astronaut safety.
The preliminary design review evaluated the vehicle’s capability, as currently designed, to support three types of missions: flights to the International Space Station (ISS), weeklong missions to the moon and missions to the moon for up to 210 days.
“This is the successful culmination of all of the design trade studies and activities to date,” said Mark Geyer, manager of the Orion Project Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“As a project, a program and an agency, we are reviewing the design maturity, strategy and plans for NASA’s next human spacecraft and agreeing that this is the architecture we are going to build,” he added.
Teams representing each subsystem of Orion conducted focused reviews from February to July before proceeding to the overall vehicle-level review.
The preliminary design review lasted about two months and included reviewers from all 10 NASA field centers to evaluate the hundreds of design products delivered by the Lockheed Martin-led industry partnership.
According to Cleon Lacefield, vice president and Orion project manager at Lockheed Martin in Denver, “To date, we have completed more than 300 technical reviews, 100 peer reviews and 18 subsystem design reviews.”
The PDR process culminated with a review board that concluded on August 31 and established the basis for proceeding to the critical design phase of Orion.
NASA will continue the review process with an independent agency-level evaluation to validate the PDR results and gain formal approval to transition the project into the next life cycle phase. (ANI)
Washington, July 16 (ANI): Space shuttle Endeavour and its seven-member crew have set off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 15, to deliver the final segment to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory and a new crew member to the International Space Station (ISS).
Endeavour’s 16-day mission includes five spacewalks and the installation of two platforms outside the Japanese module.
One platform is permanent and will allow experiments to be directly exposed to space. The other is an experiment storage pallet that will be detached and returned with the shuttle.
During the mission, Kibo’s robotic arm will transfer three experiments from the pallet to the exposed platform.
Future experiments also can be moved to the platform from the inside of the station using the laboratory’s airlock.
Shortly before liftoff, Commander Mark Polansky thanked the teams that helped make the launch possible.
“Endeavour has patiently waited for this,” said Polansky. “We’re ready to go, and we’re going to take all of you with us on a great mission,” he added.
Polansky is joined on STS-127 by Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Christopher Cassidy, Tom Marshburn, Dave Wolf, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette and Tim Kopra.
Kopra will replace space station crew member Koichi Wakata, who has been aboard the station for more than three months.
Kopra will return to Earth during the next station shuttle mission, STS-128, targeted to launch in August 2009.
Endeavour’s first landing opportunity at Kennedy is scheduled for Friday, July 31 at 10:45 a.m. STS-127 is the 127th space shuttle flight, the 29th to the station, the 23rd for Endeavour and the third in 2009. (ANI)
London, July 4 (ANI): The NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin has said that humans should create a settlement on Mars to provide much-needed objectives to the younger generation.
Aldrin, the second man to set his foot on the Moon, has claimed that setting up habitation on the surface of the red planet is a “wonderful objective” for humanity.
The 79-year-old astronaut said that setting up a space station on Mars would inspire kids as much as his 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing with Neil Armstrong.
“I think we need to look quite a way down into the future to inspire our young people with that greatness,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.
He added: “America helped to take the world to the moon 40 years ago and America certainly can help lead the world in the direction of Mars.”
However, Aldrin said that he was sceptical of climate change theories.
“I think the climate has been changing for billions of years,” he said.
“If it’s warming now, it may cool off later. I’m not in favour of just taking short-term isolated situations and depleting our resources to keep our climate just the way it is today.
“I’m not necessarily of the school that we are causing it all, I think the world is causing it,” he added.
Aldrin was in London to promote the publication of his memoirs Magnificent Desolation. (ANI)
Sydney, June 29 (ANI): An Australian experiment with native plant seeds has raised hopes for self-sustaining human colonies in space, with the seeds, taken into space last year, showing no signs of “fatigue” or damage after surviving more than 28,000 orbits of the earth.
According to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald, the seedlings of the golden wattle, waratah, flannel flower and wollemi pine accompanied NASA astronaut Dr Gregory Chamitoff on his six-month space odyssey.
At the request of NSW’s (New South Wales’) Botanic Gardens Trust, Dr Chamitoff took the seeds on the Space Shuttle Discovery mission to the International Space Station in May 2008.
While tests are still being conducted on the seedlings, which returned to earth in November last year, conservationists are encouraged by preliminary findings.
The seeds are being germinated and “fast-track” aged at the Trust’s NSW Seedbank at Mount Annan Botanic Garden in Sydney’s southwest.
“With habitats under increasing threat, seedbanking on earth, and perhaps in space, will be part of an integrated conservation program for species threatened by extinction due to global warming or other sudden changes to their habitat,” said Trust executive director Dr Tim Entwisle.
“As a species (humans) have an impact upon the other species of the world and we have the possibility of damaging the environment where we lose the biodiversity because of our actions,” said Entwisle.
“We also are a species that understands these things and, therefore, I think we have a moral imperative to do these kinds of things and protect the environment.” he added.
For NASA, the findings also present the opportunity to plan for possible space colonies.
“As soon as we get back to the moon and even before we reach Mars, we’re going to have to figure out how to recycle as much as we can and provide as much food sources as we can in space,” Dr Chamitoff said.
“From NASA’s perspective, we are interested in seeds that might be hardy enough to survive long duration exposure to the space environment and then germinate in greenhouses in Space or on other planets,” he added.
“Ultimately, this will be essential to support self-sustaining outposts or colonies in Space with food and oxygen,” he explained.
The NSW Seedbank tests on the seedlings will monitor their growth, vigour and life span compared to control seeds. (ANI)
Washington, June 27 (ANI): Scientists have identified a naturally occurring enzyme in the brain, which helps in the destruction of the mutated protein that is the most common cause of inherited Parkinson’s disease.
Led by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center, the study used human cells and offered a focus for further research into halting the action of the mutated protein.
One of the most famous carriers of the mutation is Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who wrote about it on his blog in 2008.
Dr. Matthew Goldberg, assistant professor of Neurology and Psychiatry and senior author of the paper said: “There are currently enormous efforts to identify potential therapies based on inhibiting this mutated protein.”
He added: “Our paper is a major advance because we identify a protein that binds to the mutated protein and promotes its breakdown.”
The particular mutation examined in the study affects a protein whose function is not well understood, but in its normal form, it appears to have multiple sites where other molecules can attach themselves, like a space station with many docking areas.
Named LRRK2, the protein is vulnerable to several mutations, some of which can cause Parkinson’s disease.
For the study, the researchers used cultured human kidney cells and found that LRRK2 and a protein called CHIP “robustly” associated with each other.
On further testing, it was found that CHIP and LRRK2 could bind to each other in two different ways, either directly or indirectly by a third molecule that acted as a bridge.
The researchers observed that when CHIP bound to either the normal or mutant form of LRRK2, levels of LRRK2 in the cell decreased. This occurred because the cells increased the rate at which they destroyed LRRK2.
“CHIP may be a useful therapeutic target for treatments to break down LRRK2 in people with Parkinson’s,” said Goldberg.
He added: “Our next step is to identify cellular mechanisms that signal LRRK2 to be degraded by CHIP or by other mechanisms. Because LRRK2 mutations are believed to cause Parkinsonism by increasing the activity of LRRK2, enhancing the normal mechanisms that target LRRK2 for degradation by CHIP may be therapeutically beneficial.”
The study has been published in the journal Public Library of Science. (ANI)
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)
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)
A team of NASA scientists, along with their Indian and Nepalese aides, is set to leave for the Everest base camp on Monday to carry out experiments on “sleeping and waking movements” for future space programmes.
The team of 25 scientists from NASA, who arrived in Kathmandu on Saturday in a research mission, includes doctors, pilots and scientists.
Besides the American and European scientists there also six Indian and 11 Nepalese aides in the team.
“Quality sleep is crucial to daytime alertness and performance on critical tasks, and can also impact long-term health. Lack of sleep could even affect safety,” Steve Vander Ark, Section Manager, Behavioural Health NASA said.
Chris J Johnson, who is the NASA Orion Landing System Integration Manager, is the leader of the expedition. They wanted to do some serious research to help the astronauts.
Equipped with the Actiwatch and Lab-On-a-Chip Application Development Portable Test System, the team members would record the sleeping and waking movements and light exposure of the subjects.
“Actiwatch resembles a wristwatch and records the wearer’s sleeping and waking movements. It also measures light exposure. Several members of our group will be wearing an Actiwatch during the hike. In general, these devices will show how well the hikers sleep during the trip,” Ark said.
Vander Ark is taking a device up Mount Everest to monitor what happens with the sleep/wake cycle when the human body is subjected to long periods in challenging environments.
The Lab-On-a-Chip, which can detect bacteria and fungi on surfaces inside the International Space Station, will be used to look for snow algae, he added. Former NASA astronaut Scot Parazynski has already left for Everest as a member of an expedition towards the summit.
“We expect to meet Scott at the base camp,” Chris said. If his attempt is successful, he’ll become the first person ever to have gazed up at space from the pinnacle of Earth’s tallest mountain, and gazed down on that same pinnacle from the black vacuum of space, he said.
Steve said trekking to the base camp will be comparable in some ways to what astronauts face while engaging in a long spacewalk or an excursion on the surface of the moon or Mars adding Mt Everest provides a good space analog.
The team’s research would benefit future space travellers, they claim. The outcomes of the research would aid future research projects of the NASA, he said. The research could help scientists develop efficient procedures for future field studies on moon and Mars.
The team also collected more than $1500 to support the Prisoners Assistance Nepal. The team plans to leave for Lukla, gateway to the Everest on Monday and is scheduled to return to Kathmandu on May 2.
Melbourne, Apr 16 (ANI): Analysing a batch of bacteria brought back by the shuttle Discovery crew last month, scientists could soon develop a vaccine against food poisoning from salmonella bacteria.
The researchers conducted a series of experiments aboard the International Space Station, and are now working to develop compounds for a salmonella vaccine
While previous studies showed that salmonella could become more virulent in weightlessness, further research proved that its virulence could be controlled, toggled on and off like a switch.
Station program scientist Dr. Julie Robinson has revealed that studies in this regard began only because NASA feared that its astronauts could be more susceptible to food poisoning in space due to their weakened immune systems, resulting from microgravity.
Later, the researchers found that microgravity changes salmonella itself, which could provide insight into a new way to possibly control the bacteria on earth.
“Given that salmonella is among the leading causes of food-borne pathogens, one of the disappointments of the 21st century is that we don’t have a vaccine,” ABC Science quoted Arizona State University’s Dr Cheryl Nickerson as saying.
Nickerson heads one of the research teams investigating salmonella in space, which identified genetic changes in space-borne salmonella that made the bacteria more virulent than identical samples on earth.
And as the environment inside the intestines is similar to weightlessness, the researchers believe that the study could give rise to a vaccine and other treatments for food poisoning.
Last year, a second series of salmonella investigations flew aboard the space station.
Led by Professor Timothy Hammond at the Durham Veterans Administration Medical Center in North Carolina, the research is aimed at developing a vaccine based on the genetic changes seen in the space-borne bacteria. (ANI)
Moscow – Russia on Sunday re-opned its cosmonauts museum after three years of renovation and expansion work. The Moscow museum, opened on the annual Cosmonauts Day, is four times as large as the previous faciltiy.
Moscow mayor Yuri Luskhov said at the opening ceremonies that Russia now had a museum where people could grasp the “magnificence of space.” There was nothing comparable to it anywhere else in the world.
April 12 is celebrated every year as Cosmonauts Day, marking the April 12, 1961 first-ever successful flight in space by a human, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth.
The 8,000-square-metre Russian space museum features some 3,500 exhibits focuses on Soviet and Russian space exploration and research. Among others, there is a full scale model of the Soviet-era space station Mir which visitors can walk through.
The museum also includes a cinema and classrooms for visits by schoolchildren, as well as a shop selling space food items. (dpa)
Washington, April 8 (ANI): NASA has chosen the material for a heat shield that will protect a new generation of space explorers when they return from the moon.
After extensive study, NASA has selected the Avcoat ablator system for the Orion crew module.
Orion is part of the Constellation Program that is developing the next-generation spacecraft system for human exploration of the moon and further destinations in the solar system.
The Orion crew module, which will launch atop an Ares I rocket, is targeted to begin carrying astronauts to the International Space Station in 2015 and to the moon in 2020.
Orion will face extreme conditions during its voyage to the moon and on the journey home. On the blistering return through Earth’s atmosphere, the module will encounter temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heating rates may be up to five times more extreme than rates for missions returning from the International Space Station.
Orion’s heat shield, the dish-shaped thermal protection system at the base of the spacecraft, will endure the most heat and will erode, or “ablate,” in a controlled fashion, transporting heat away from the crew module during its descent through the atmosphere.
To protect the spacecraft and its crew from such severe conditions, the Orion Project Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston identified a team to develop the thermal protection system, or TPS, heat shield.
For more than three years, NASA’s Orion Thermal Protection System Advanced Development Project considered eight different candidate materials, including the two final candidates, Avcoat and Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator, or PICA, both of which have proven successful in previous space missions.
Avcoat was used for the Apollo capsule heat shield and on select regions of the space shuttle orbiter in its earliest flights. It was put back into production for the study.
It is made of silica fibers with an epoxy-novalic resin filled in a fiberglass-phenolic honeycomb and is manufactured directly onto the heat shield substructure and attached as a unit to the crew module during spacecraft assembly.
NASA, working with Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin, recommended Avcoat as the more robust, reliable and mature system.
“The biggest challenge with Avcoat has been reviving the technology to manufacture the material such that its performance is similar to what was demonstrated during the Apollo missions,” said John Kowal, Orion’s thermal protection system manager at Johnson.
“Once that had been accomplished, the system evaluations clearly indicated that Avcoat was the preferred system,” he added. (ANI)
Washington, April 3 (ANI): A new study has suggested that astronauts need to modify their workouts to avoid extensive muscle loss during missions onboard the International Space Station (ISS).
The research, sponsored by NASA, was conducted at Ball State University’s Human Performance Laboratory (HPL), US.
It suggests that changes are needed to optimize the inflight exercise regimen for astronauts to improve their muscle performance while in space for extended stays.
Average stays on the ISS run about six months, and preservation of crewmember health in zero-gravity environments is paramount for safety and mission success.
Since exercise is the primary course of action to protect the cardiovascular system, bone, and skeletal muscles, astronauts need to find the optimal exercises to stay fit.
The findings of the Ball State study were based in part on muscle biopsies taken from the astronauts, the first time this procedure has been allowed on crewmembers who have completed long-flight missions, according to Scott Trappe, HPL director.
Working with NASA, Marquette University’s biological sciences department, Wyle Integrated Science and Engineering Group in Houston, and the Medical College of Wisconsin, Trappe found that even while the crewmembers exercised, they still lost an average of 15 percent muscle mass and 20 to 30 percent loss of muscle performance.
“By clinical standards, this is a massive loss. This approaches what we see in aging populations in comparisons of a 20-year-old versus an 80-year-old,” Trappe said.
“This poses risks to the crewmembers and could have a dramatic impact on locomotion and overall health, which would impact a variety of crewmembers’ activities including future goals of planetary exploration,” he added.
Trappe and the HPL team have also been conducting NASA-funded, ground-based bed rest studies of long duration – between 60 and 90 days – parallel to their ISS research.
According to Trappe, “From our bed rest studies, we found that when high-intensity resistance and aerobic exercise are balanced correctly, this is an effective prescription that is quite therapeutic in protecting skeletal muscles in a simulated microgravity environment.”
“The next step is to apply what we have learned from the ISS experience and implement the next generation of exercise prescription programs into the space environment,” he added. (ANI)
Washington, Mar 21 (ANI): Researchers from University of Washington have found a novel way to prevent bone loss during spaceflight.
Studies have shown that the absence of gravity is causing astronauts on the International Space Station to lose up to 10 times more bone mass in key regions of the body each month than most post-menopausal women do in the same period of time back here on Earth.
While using bedrest as an analog of spaceflight, scientists could able to prevent bone loss in a specific region of the hip.
They are at the mid-point of a study in which 22 volunteers remain in bed, in a six-degree, head-down tilt position for 84 days.
The head-down tilt mimics many of the physiologic adaptations astronauts experience during spaceflight, such as bodily fluid shifts toward the head.
The bedrest confinement mimics the complete “unloading” of the musculoskeletal system that astronauts feel as they float through space due to the lack of gravity, which accelerates bone loss.
During the study, half of the participants are randomized to perform individually prescribed intermittent treadmill exercise similar to workouts by astronauts in space — but with one important difference. They were pulled towards the treadmill surface by a harness applying greater force than what was previously measured during walking and running.
With the help of treadmill exercise countermeasure, the research team was able to prevent bone loss in important skeletal regions.
“We have found that we can, on average, prevent bone loss in an important region of the hip with this intervention,” said Dr. Peter Cavanagh, UW professor of orthopaedics and sports medicine, and principal investigator of the study.
“No bedrest study ever before has accomplished this,
“This study takes us another step closer to learning how to maintain bone health during and after these space missions,” he added. (ANI)
Washington – The space shuttle Discovery was nearing the International Space Station for a planned docking later Tuesday.
The Discovery is to deliver the fourth and final solar panel to the International Space Station on a construction mission that will enable it to double the size of its crew to six astronauts. Three spacewalks are planned to install the solar panels and conduct other construction projects.
The mission will also deliver Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who is slated to join the permanent crew on the orbiting space station.
In recognition of the Japanese crew member, the first permanent ISS resident from that country, Discovery astronauts awoke on Tuesday morning to Radio Exercise, a song used by Japanese schoolchildren to exercise, and performed by the Tokyo Broadcast Children’s Choir.
Discovery was approaching the ISS at a rate of 965 kilometres per 90-minute orbit for the planned 5:12 pm (2113 GMT) docking.
The shuttle launched Sunday after weeks of delays caused by concerns about hydrogen fuel valves and a later leak in a fuel vent. (dpa)
Washington, March 12 (ANI): An aerospace engineer has suggested the use of rocket-powered water gun to blow away space junk, which includes about thousands of pieces of useless equipment circling Earth.
According to a report by Fox News, the aerospace engineer in question is Jim Hollopeter, who, in the 1980s, helped design rockets that shot into orbit.
Today, some of those launchers are still cluttering up space, and Hollopeter wants to wash them away with a rocket-powered water gun.
Bits of spent rocket boosters, old exploded satellites and tools dropped by space-walking astronauts are just some of the trash racing along in the near-vacuum of space.
The volume of man-made space debris has grown so large that scientists say garbage now poses a bigger safety threat to the U.S. space shuttle than an accident on liftoff or landing.
The International Space Station (ISS) occasionally fires thrusters to dodge junk.
The problem hit home on February 10, when a defunct Russian military satellite smashed into an American one used for commercial communications, spewing shards across thousands of cubic miles.
The crash prompted Hollopeter to refine designs for a concept he had long toyed with: Using aging rockets loaded with water to spray orbiting junk.
His idea is that the extraterrestrial shower would gradually knock refuse down toward the atmosphere, where it would burn up, as would the launcher.
The water would turn to steam.
According to Heiner Klinkrad, who runs the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany, “We need to treat space like a national park – carry out what you carry in.” (ANI)