Written on 9:37 AM by Admin
Tags : Water on the moon, Water Moon, Water found on the moon,
(Space.com) By Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer
posted: 23 September 2009
06:17 pm ET
This story was updated at 10:49 p.m. EDT.
Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.
The new findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, come in the wake of further evidence of lunar polar water ice by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and just weeks before the planned lunar impact of NASA's LCROSS satellite, which will hit one of the permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole in hope of churning up evidence of water ice deposits in the debris field.
The moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, but the water is said to exist on the moon in very small quantities. One ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water, researchers said.
"If the water molecules are as mobile as we think they are — even a fraction of them — they provide a mechanism for getting water to those permanently shadowed craters," said planetary geologist Carle Pieters of Brown University in Rhode Island, who led one of the three studies in Science on the lunar find, in a statement. "This opens a whole new avenue [of lunar research], but we have to understand the physics of it to utilize it."
Finding water on the moon would be a boon to possible future lunar bases, acting as a potential source of drinking water and fuel.
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Written on 10:34 AM by Admin
scientology, xenu, scientology beliefs, scientology xenu,
A Paris court fined the Church of Scientology more than $900,000 for organized fraud, but rejected prosecutors' bid to ban the group from France, The Associated Press reported.
Eric Roux, a spokesman for the organization's Celebrity Center in Los Angeles, said the group would appeal Tuesday's verdict.
After a three-week trial, a panel of the Correctional Court convicted the Church of Scientology's French office, its library and six of its leaders of organized fraud. Investigators said the organization's "obsession" with financial gain drove some of the questionable practices it uses to keep members in a "state of subjection," the AP reported.
The underlying complaint was filed more than a decade ago by a woman who said she took out loans and spent more than $30,000 on Scientology materials after she was recruited in 1998. She claimed the group refused to reimburse her or let her leave. Her case was eventually consolidated with two others.
Founded in 1954 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology claims 10 million members worldwide, including celebrity followers Tom Cruise and John Travolta. It has 45,000 members in France.
Scientologists believe that man is an immortal, spiritual being who can better himself through technology. The organization has come under fire for its denouncement of psychiatry and its alleged harassment of critics, labeled "SPs" or "Suppressive Persons."
Scientologists often ask new recruits to volunteer for a reading with an electropsychometer, or "E-meter," a lie-detector-like device that purportedly measures their spiritual well-being. The church uses the results to identify "areas of spiritual duress or travail," according to its Web site, and urges members to buy books, vitamins and coursework to correct the issues.
The plaintiffs said this amounted to fraud.
Roux called the verdict a "modern Inquisition" and told CNN that it was "really dangerous for the freedom of religion in our country."
Olivier Morice, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the case was "historic," because it marked the first time that the Church of Scientology has been convicted of organized fraud in France, the AP reported.
The U.S. Justice Department has criticized Belgium, Germany and other European countries for labeling Scientology a cult or sect and passing restrictive laws against it, according to the AP
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Written on 9:30 AM by Admin
cape canaveral, shuttle launch, nasa tv, kennedy space center launch schedule, ares rocket launch
NASA’s Ares 1-X rocket is waiting for its two minutes of flame. It’s set for launch at 8 a.m. this morning, Eastern Daylight Time.
Weather remains a concern. But once it’s OK to launch, this rocket’s rise will have a significantly different look and feel than the shuttle launches people have become accustomed to seeing.
That’s the word from Jeff Spaulding, test director at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Ah the joys of a simpler, if experimental, system.
To begin with, the countdown is far shorter, Mr. Spaulding explains. For a shuttle, countdown begins 43 hours before the scheduled launch time. For Ares 1-X, it’s seven hours.
When it comes time to light the fires, the shuttle’s ignition and lift-off are pikers compared with the Ares 1-X.
The shuttle’s main engines ignite a couple of seconds before lift-off, which happens once the two solid-fuel motors explode to life.
Explode? If you can’t attend a launch, go see the IMAX film, “The Dream Is Alive” if it comes around again. When the main engines light, it’s a loud rumble that quickly gets louder. When the solids light up, the sound arrives with impact — like a gentle punch to the stomach.
With Ares 1-X, look for that single punch.
Once the lighter, nimble Ares 1-X lifts off, it will scoot — no slow rise to the skies here. The whole mission — from launch to separation of the reusable first stage from the dummy upper stage — takes about 2 minutes.
Once off the pad, it will head east over the ocean and splashdown roughly 300 seconds later.
And if something goes wrong during launch? The range-safety offices detonates a “shaped charge” of explosives runs the length of the motor. It’s designed to focus its explosive energy in a way that splits open the motor casing from one end to another. This allows the remaining solid fuel to burn randomly as the casing falls back to Earth. In NASA-speak, that’s called “thrust termination.”
During the Ares 1-X’s flight, some 700 sensors will be recording all kinds of information about the rocket’s behavior and the environment the rocket encounters.
The goal is to design a launch vehicle for humans that NASA can launch under as broad a range of weather and wind conditions a possible. That means knowing what kind of sound waves the motor generates and how those waves rattle the rest of the rocket, for instance. Or how the 327-foot-tall stack bends as it encounters changes in wind speed or direction with altitude.
The rocket’s sensors will be making measurements many times each second and will radio the data back throughout the flight. The data also will be stored on board the recoverable solid-fuel motor.
Once NASA recovers the motor, engineers will remove the sensors, and compare the quality of stored data for each sensor with the quality of the data radioed back to Earth from that same sensor. The best data set from each will be used to analyze how the rocket performed. The data then will be used to provide a reality check on the computer models engineers are using to design the full-up Ares 1.
As for the dummy upper stage, it reaches an altitude of about 150,000 feet, then falls back into the ocean roughly 147 miles from the Florida coast. It becomes another piece of space-age debris on the ocean bottom. Or perhaps the starting point for another Dirk Pitt undersea adventure
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Written on 9:26 AM by Admin
triboelectrification rule, dicc, dictation, dicti, fein
What is the triboelectrification rule anyway?
The 'triboelectrification rule' has been a headache all day here at Kennedy Space Center... so what is it?
Here's a great explaination from nasa.gov
The skies look clear except for some high clouds, there’s no rain in the immediate forecast, so why might a rocket not launch? The answer is something called triboelectrification.
While this isn’t a word you encounter every day, you might experience it if you walk across a dry carpet or brush up against a cat and then touch a metal surface: it’s static.
In the case of Ares I-X, flying through high-level clouds can generate “P-static” (P for precipitation), which can create a corona of static around the rocket that interferes with radio signals sent by or to the rocket. This would create problems when the rocket tries to transmit data down to the ground or if the Range Safety Officer at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station needed to send a signal to the flight termination system. Until the 45th Space Wing and observer aircraft indicate that the skies are clear, Ares I-X will wait them out.
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Written on 9:14 AM by Admin
ares 1 x rocket, ares 1 x launch, ares rocket launch, ares launch, aries rocket, nasa rocket launch
NASA postpones Ares rocket test flight
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA on Tuesday delayed the test flight of an unmanned prototype moon rocket due to poor weather.
The attempt to launch the 327-foot (100-meter) Ares 1-X rocket was reset for 8 a.m. EDT on Wednesday.
The flight is the centerpiece of a $445 million NASA technology demonstration program aimed at replacing the space shuttles. The shuttles, which began flying in 1981, are due to be retired next year after six more flights to complete construction of the International Space Station.
NASA planned to launch the demo rocket on Tuesday but was stymied by cloudy skies over the Kennedy Space Center and by a boat that wandered into the launch danger zone. Pilots and mariners who violate restricted zones can face jail terms and fines of up to $250,000.
Ares 1-X, currently the world's tallest rocket, is a modified space shuttle booster outfitted with a faux second stage and a simulated Orion crew capsule. It is the first new rocket developed by NASA since the 1970s-era space shuttle. The test flight is intended to verify computer models used to design rockets.
Ares 1-X's motor was made by Alliant Techsystems Inc as part of a $1.8 billion Ares development contract for NASA.
NASA hopes to develop two Ares rockets to return U.S. astronauts to the moon sometime in the 2020s. The program, however, is under review.
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Written on 12:05 PM by Admin
the coast of utopia, volstead act, coast of utopia, barolar birliği, 18th amendment
Barophile an organism at high pressure!!
Barophile is an organism which thrives at high pressures, such as deep sea bacteria .The deep-sea environment is characterized by high pressure and low temperature but in the vicinity of hydrothermal vents regions of extremely high temperature exist. Deep-sea microorganisms have specially adapted features that enable them to live and grow in this extreme environment.
As one delves deeper into a body of water, the pressure experienced increases. The opposite happens when one climbs a tall mountain, at higher altitudes the atmospheric pressure is less than at lower elevations. Therefore, the air is “thinner” the higher you go. For humans, it is difficult to survive at extreme elevations or in the depths of the ocean without advanced technology.
An increase in pressure causes cellular membranes to become much less fluid, a sever problem for living organisms. Extremely high pressures can also cause damage to nucleic acids and proteins, both essential molecules for living organisms. Finally, many chemical reactions in the cell result in an increase in volume. An increase of pressure generally results in a decrease in volume. Therefore, at high pressures volume will be restricted, thereby restricting life’s chemical reactions from occurring efficiently.
.Recent research on the physiology and molecular biology of deep-sea barophilic bacteria has identified pressure-regulated operons and shown that microbial growth is influenced by the relationship between temperature and pressure in the deep-sea environment.
At this point in time, scientists don’t know all the mechanisms by which barophiles cope with high pressures. However, many microorganisms have adapted to combat loss of membrane fluidity due to high pressures
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Written on 12:31 PM by Admin
Going Green
Falcarius utahensis is the living image of a vicious meat eater trying to go vegetarian. Scientists aren't sure if the bird-like relative of Velociraptor had fully kicked its taste for flesh, but its meat-cutting teeth had shrunk to leaf-cutting size and its gut had expanded sufficiently to ferment plants.
Falcarius walked on two legs and stood about 4.5 feet tall. Head to tail, it was about 13 feet long and wielded sharp, curved, four-inch long claws – perhaps to grab a bite when it fell off the wagon? The dinosaur lived during the Early Cretaceous, about 125 million years ago, in what is today Utah.
No plants were safe from Gryposaurus monumentensis, a big boned, duck-billed dinosaur that could have eaten any vegetation it stumbled across. Its massive skull packed more than 300 teeth for slicing up fibrous greens. Hundreds more replacement teeth rested in its jawbone for the call-up to action.
The dinosaur lived in the Late Cretaceous, about 75 million years ago on the western side of a giant, shallow ocean that split North America at that time. The plant-munching beast may have reached 30 feet long as an adult and had a 3-foot-long head.
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Written on 11:33 AM by Admin
Vicious Rocker The toothy Masiakasaurus knopfleri likely speared prey with its forward projecting front teeth and then sliced and tore the captives into chewy chunks with its blade-like rears. This type of tooth arrangement is otherwise unknown in predatory dinosaurs.
Scientists believe the German Shepherd sized beast feasted on fish, lizards, and other critters on the southern supercontinent Gondwana in the Late Cretaceous period, about 65 to 70 million years ago.
The first part of this dinosaur's name means "vicious lizard" and the second part is derived from the Dire Straits singer and guitarist Mark Knopfler, whose music inspired the discoverers as they toiled on the African island nation of Madagascar.
At about 40 feet long and weighing an estimated 6 tons, Mapusaurus roseae was one of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs to ever stalk the Earth. Bones of several individuals were discovered in one place, suggesting the giants may have hunted in packs that could have toppled perhaps the largest dinosaur that ever lived – a 100-foot-long plant eater called Argentinosaurus.
Mapusaurus lived about 100 million years ago and was bigger than well known Tyrannosaurs rex and possibly larger than its older cousin, Gigantosaurus. Its teeth were narrow and blade like, made for slicing its prey. The bones were discovered in the Patagonia region of Argentina.
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Written on 11:13 AM by Admin
From a bone crusher to a family diner, dinos were bloodthirsty beasts: 
Copyright 1985 Mark Hallett, "Awakening of Hunger" (image rights)
Bone Crusher
Yeah, it's cliché to say Tyrannosaurus rex was deadly. But the tyrant king was likely true to the billing. Its bone-crushing jaws could splinter prey like toothpicks, after all. And the beast was big, up to 40 feet long, 20 feet tall, and may have topped the scales at nearly 16,000 pounds.
The king walked on two legs over a vast territory in western North America at the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago. Scientists wonder whether T. rex was more a lumbering scavenger or a quick and agile predator, but dead or alive, its meals were big, meaty and bloody.
T. rex wasn't the only deadly dino, however. The globe was filled vicious killers. Click the arrows above to see more.
Demetrios M. Vital (image rights)
Family Diner
Family meals for Majungasaurus crenatissimus were often bloody affairs of the grimmest sort: Kin were the main course. The evidence of its cannibalistic ways comes from tell-tale tooth marks on Majungasaurus bones that match up perfectly with the size and spacing of teeth in its jaws.
The 20-foot-long dinosaur stalked the plains of Madagascar about 70 million years ago. At that time, the crime-scene investigators said, pickings were often slim. Their data indicate Majungasaurus fed on dried out "dino jerky" from its plant-eating compatriots as well as members of its own species. Cannibalism was likely just as common among dinosaurs as it is among living animals, but the evidence is rare.
Todd Marshall (image rights)
Brow Beater
Eocarcharia dinops' brow was swollen into a massive band of bone. The menacing head piece may have been used as a battering ram against rivals and to attract potential mates. Its blade-shape teeth were reserved for disabling live prey and severing their body parts.
The 110-million-year-old beast and its snout-nosed, gut-and-carcass-scavenging relative Kryptops palaios were discovered in Africa's Sahara Desert. The approximately 7-foot-tall and 25-foot-long duo likely teamed up with a third carnivore and feasted on the long-necked plant-eater Nigersaururs.
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Written on 10:27 AM by Admin
Discovery fills gap between primitive and more advanced pterodactyl types.
By Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
updated 10:53 a.m. ET Oct. 14, 2009
An international team of researchers has just identified a new dinosaur-eating pterosaur that soared through the Jurassic skies 160 million years ago, according to a study released this week.
Christened Darwinopterus modularis, meaning "Darwin's wing composed of interchangeable units," the new flying reptile honors the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth by providing evidence for an unusual and controversial type of evolution.
Modular evolution theory holds that entire modules, or groups of body features, evolve together within a relatively short period of time.
Lead author Junchang Lu told Discovery News that the pterosaur fills a gap between primitive basal forms of this animal and more advanced pterodactyl types.
Older forms had "small heads, short necks, short wrists, a long tail and a long fifth toe on the foot," he said. In later, more derived types, "the skull, neck and wrist became relatively long, but the tail became short and the fifth toe dwindled to a small nub or was lost altogether."
Lu added: "Darwinopterus captures a moment in that evolution from primitive to advanced forms. But contrary to what we expected, it has the head and neck of an advanced pterodactyloid while the rest of the skeleton is like that of the primitive rhamphorhynchoids (flying reptiles)."
He and colleagues David Unwin, Xingsheng Jin, Yongqing Liu and Qiang Ji studied more than 20 fossil skeletons — some complete — of Darwinopterus, according to a study in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The bones were unearthed in northeast China earlier this year.
Based on the fossils, the researchers determined the crow-sized flying reptile was about 1.6 feet long with a 2.3-foot wingspan.
Unwin, a University of Leicester paleobiologist, informed Discovery News that several groups of flying animals lived at the time of Darwinopterus. These included other pterosaurs, a gliding mammal and several small, feathered dinosaurs, all of which Darwinopterus likely ate.
The toothy reptile "presumably caught its prey in its jaws either in mid-air, or possibly by picking them off branches or fronds as it swept past, much as bats glean insects from trees and bushes today," he explained.
It's possible that the body changes seen in the winged reptile evolved to support this method of flight and hunting, since larger jaws would have made it easier to seize prey midair. The shorter tail probably allowed for greater airborne maneuvering.
Mark Witton, who is an expert on pterosaurs and is a University of Portsmouth paleobiologist, told Discovery News that he agrees with the findings and was very surprised when he first heard about the new species.
"While we could predict that intermediate forms between basal pterosaurs and pterodactyloids had to exist at one stage, the 'cut-n-shut' mechanism of this new critter is pretty amazing," Witton said, adding that he wonders why these animals evolved in such a manner.
"What selection pressures made the head and neck change without affecting the rest of the skeleton?" he asked. "Was it something to do with feeding, locomotion or any number of other things? At the moment, I don't think we really know, but it should be pretty interesting to find out."
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Written on 11:20 AM by Admin
Long ago, a galaxy far away smashed into another galaxy - creating a beautiful, terrible knot of cosmic chaos. The view of that galactic collision, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, serves as a preview of what might well happen when the Andromeda Galaxy slams into our Milky Way galaxy billions of years from now.
The picture from Hubble, released today, shows the mighty crash of two galaxies similar to the Milky Way, but 250 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer. The weird-looking, two-tailed result is known as NGC 2623 or Arp 243.
Scientists say NGC 2623 appears to be in the late stages of a galactic merger. The supermassive black holes at the center of the two original galaxies have combined to form a super-energetic nucleus. The energy released by the clash has sparked the formation of large star clusters much brighter than the brightest clusters we see in our own celestial neighborhood.
The stars shine particularly brightly in the long tidal tails that were thrown off during the collision. Each of those tails is roughly 65,000 to 80,000 light-years long, which comes close to rivaling the width of the Milky Way's main disk.
Aaron Evans, an astronomer at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville who led the observational team, said NGC 2623's burst of starbirth has been going on for a long time. "If we assume the oldest star clusters that are extremely bright were formed at the beginning of the interaction, the age would be around 100 million years," he told me.
The star clusters, which show up as sparks of blue in the Hubble image, were likely shocked into existence as a result of the galactic collision. "The stars themselves don't actually touch, but what does happen is that the gas in the galaxies is affected gravitationally by the interaction," Evans explained.
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Written on 10:47 AM by Admin
BepiColombo will be only the third spacecraft to visit Mercury in the history of space exploration. Mercury's harsh environment makes it a particularly challenging mission. The spacecraft will have to endure intense sunlight and temperatures up to 350°C while gathering data.
This joint venture between Europe and Japan is an ESA 'Cornerstone' mission. It will help our understanding of the formation of the Solar System and its inner rocky planets, including Earth.
The mission will build on the experience gained in using electric propulsion on the SMART-1 mission. BepiColombo's journey will also be helped by the gravity of the Moon, Earth and Venus during fly-bys to help it on its way to Mercury. It is due to arrive at the planet in 2019.
Mission facts :
•Mercury is the second smallest planet in the Solar System, larger only than Pluto (if you count Pluto as a planet) and not much bigger than our own Moon.
•The surface is pock-marked with enormous craters caused by meteorites smashing into the planet's surface in the early stages of the Solar System's evolution some four billion years ago.
•Although Mercury is only a third the size of Earth, it is almost as dense.
•Scientists believe Mercury's high density can be put down to the planet having a massive iron core.
•The first mission to Mercury was NASA's Mariner 10 in 1974.
•NASA's Mercury Messenger is currently on its way to Mercury and will arrive in 2011.
•BepiColombo is named after Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo (1920-1984), a scientist who studied Mercury's orbital motion in detail as well as orbits and interplanetary travel in general.
•It will take the BepiColombo spacecraft six years to reach its destination.
•Although the temperature on Mercury can go as high as 462°C, the side of the planet facing away from the Sun is always very cold.
•One of the key objectives for BepiColombo is to find out whether there is ice on the cold side of the planet.
Technology :
BepiColombo will consist of three sections: a Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) - designed to get the spacecraft to the planet - and two orbiters: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).
Astrium Limited in the UK is responsible for the entire structure of the spacecraft.
ESA is responsible for the larger MPO. Its 11 scientific instruments will study Mercury from a low-polar-orbit.
UK space scientists, led by the University of Leicester, will develop one of the key instruments on board BepiColombo: MIXS (Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer). MIXS will be used to help determine the composition of the planet's surface.
MIXS will measure fluorescent X-rays that originate from the Sun and are reflected off the planet's surface. Fluorescent X-ray measurements can be used to identify chemical elements while measurements at infrared wavelengths can be used to determine mineral composition.
Japan is developing the MMO. This will have five science instruments on board designed to examine Mercury's magnetic field and magnetosphere - the magnetic 'bubble' surrounding a planet. Mercury intrigues scientists because it is hard to understand why such a small planet can have a magnetic field at all.
Once clear of Earth, BepiColombo will make its way to Mercury with an ion engine. This employs solar panels to generate electricity which is used to produce charged particles from xenon gas. A beam of these charged particles, or ions, is then expelled from the spacecraft. The engine will be used to slow the spacecraft down so that it can eventually be captured by the gravity of Mercury.
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Written on 12:11 PM by Admin
Wed Oct 7, 6:21 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – NASA on Wednesday sharply downgraded the threat that a massive asteroid could slam into Earth in 2036.
Apophis, which captured widespread attention when it was discovered in 2004 and it was learned that it might pose a threat to Earth, is two and a half times the size of a football field.
There is now a one-in-250,000 chance of a collision with Earth in 2036 -- sharply down from an earlier estimate of a one-in-45,000-chance, according to new calculations by Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, based on new techniques and data.
They will present their results at the conference of the American Astronomical Society in Puerto Rico on October 8.
"The refined orbital determination further reinforces that Apophis is an asteroid we can look to as an opportunity for exciting science and not something that should be feared," Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL, said in a statement.
At first, astronomers worried the 885-foot (270-meter) asteroid had a 2.7 percent chance of colliding with Earth in 2029. Later calculations ruled out a collision in that year.
Apophis is slated to sail no closer than 18,300 miles (29,450 kilometers) above Earth's surface on April 13, 2029.
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Written on 7:09 AM by Admin
An "exceptional" collection of the biggest dinosaur footprints ever recorded has been found by two amateur enthusiasts on an expedition near France's Jura mountains, palaeontologists said today.
Imprints measuring up to 2 metres (6ft 6in) in diameter and stretching over a vast area of land have been uncovered near the village of Plagne, 30 miles west of Geneva, according to the National Centre of Scientific Research.
In a statement, the centre said the significance of the prints could not be overestimated. "According to the researchers' initial work, these tracks are the biggest ever seen," it said.
Pierre Hantzpergue, a palaeontologist at the University of Lyon who verified the prints with a colleague at the research centre, said the perfectly preserved tracks could make Plagne one of the most significant dinosaur locations in the world.
"What is remarkable about this site … is firstly the sheer size of the footprints. They are really enormous," he said. "This is new. Some very big footprints have been found in the US but I don't think they are as big as these."
The site's other, equally important, attraction, Hantzpergue added, was the geographical spread. The research centre said they were formed "over dozens if not hundreds of metres".
"These are very large distances," said Hantzpergue. "We've seen tracks of maybe 50 metres in France, around 100 metres in Switzerland, and the world record is in Portugal … with about 150 metres. Now, we still have many hectares to search but we will undoubtedly have more than 150 metres at Plagne."
The imprints are believed to have been those of sauropod dinosaurs, the gentle herbivorous giants which roamed the region about 150m years ago. They appear to have been well preserved by a thick layer of limestone sediment dating from the late Jurassic period – the geological era named after the Jura mountains which lie just to the north of where the tracks were discovered.
Despite the region's well-known reputation for such discoveries – in 2004, thousands of footprints were revealed on the Swiss side of the border – this latest, and probably most spectacular, find was left to amateurs from the local town of Oyonnax, near Geneva, to stumble upon.
Marié-Hèlene Marcaud, a teacher, and Patrice Landry, a geologist, uncovered the tracks on 5 April during one of their regular expeditions with the Naturalists' Society of Oyonnax. Amazed by their find, they then contacted Hantzpergue and Jean-Michel Mazin at the National Centre of Scientific Research to confirm the authenticity.
The Franco-Swiss border is no stranger to palaeontological treasures, and its ancient landscape has allowed scientists to piece together the history of biodiversity over the past 200 million years.
A recent motorway project on the Swiss side of the Jura has led to the discovery of not only dinosaur tracks but fossils of creatures including marine crocodiles and mammoths. On the French side sauropod tracks were found at Coisia, about 25 miles from Plagne, in 2004 and on the floor of the Loulle quarry in 2006.
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Written on 6:52 AM by Admin
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan - A Canadian circus tycoon, an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off in a spacecraft from the Kazakh steppe Wednesday on a journey to the International Space Station.
Minutes after lifting off from the Baikonur launch facility, the Soyuz capsule shed its rocket stages and entered orbit. On board were Cirque du Soleil founder and space tourist Guy Laliberte along with crew members Jeffrey Williams and Maxim Surayev.
Friends and family on the ground cheered and hugged one another when an announcement that the ship was in orbit came over the loudspeaker. They chanted "Guy! Guy!" and broke out singing Elton John's "Rocket Man."
Laliberte, dubbed the first clown in space, had donned a bulbous red nose and blew kisses to supporters before the launch. He has paid $35 million for the trip he plans to use to publicize the world's growing shortage of clean water.
"I'm very happy for him. It's amazing," said Laliberte's partner, former model Claudia Barilla, tears streaming down her face as she cradled her young son in her arms. "Now we know he's up there."
She wore a yellow clown nose as she watched the launch. Laliberte brought several clown noses for crew mates aboard the station and has impishly warned he would tickle them while they slept.
Footage of the capsule showed crew members Williams and Surayev strapped in, operating the controls and occasionally waving for the camera.
A mission control official communicating with the astronauts said they were in excellent spirits, and a NASA TV announcer said they were "safely in orbit."
"We were worried, because this has been a tough road - 12 years of hard training," first-time space traveller Surayev's wife, Anya, said at Baikonur. "But we are pleased, happy and proud that the liftoff went off without a hitch."
The Soyuz TMA-16 craft is scheduled to arrive Friday at the International Space Station, orbiting 220 miles (355 kilometres) above Earth.
Laliberte - who rose from being a street performer to founding the circus arts and theatre company Cirque Du Soleil 25 years ago - is to return to Earth after 12 days. The 50-year-old is worth an estimated $2.5 billion and holds a 95 per cent stake in the circus company.
Laliberte's enthusiasm seemed to infect others ahead of the launch preparations. As the crew members climbed up the ladder into the capsule, Surayev began singing the pop song "Mammy Blue," and Laliberte and Williams joined him.
Among the spectators was Quebec singer Garou, a friend of Laliberte.
"I feel a lot more mesmerized than I ever thought I would be," Garou said after the launch. "Having your friend rising up that fast and that impressively is beyond what I expected."
Surayev, 37, and Williams, 51, plan to stay in orbit for 169 days. Williams is on his third space mission and recently became a grandfather.
"I'm glad he's up there - that's what he wanted to do," said the astronaut's wife, Anna-Marie. "Now all the training is behind us and he will just go up and do the mission."
Surayev hung a plush toy lion in front of him at the control panel to signal the beginning of weightlessness. He said his preteen daughters had kept the toy under their pillows to "make sure that the lion smells of home for the next six months."
The Soyuz team is scheduled to help continue construction of the space station, where in-orbit work began in 1998. Recent missions have expanded the station's capacity to allow six inhabitants, though Surayev and Williams will be alone for about three weeks at year's end after the station's current occupants leave.
Six shuttle flights remain to wrap up construction on the station - now Earth's largest artificial satellite, weighing more than 710,000 pounds (322,000 kilograms).
The station has cost more than $100 billion, paid by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and the 18-nation European Space Agency.
Laliberte is the seventh paying space tourist to travel to the station and may be one of its last private visitors for several years as NASA retires its shuttle program and turns to the Russian space agency to ferry U.S. astronauts to the lab.
Space Adventures, which organized the private visits, will nevertheless aim to make sure more tourists get to visit the space station in the coming years, company CEO Eric Anderson said, suggesting the number of Russian Soyuz missions could be increased.
"I keep hearing that space tourism is ending and it never seems to be true," Anderson told The Associated Press.
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Written on 4:36 AM by Admin
October 11, 2009
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KOROLYOV, Russia (Reuters) – Russia expects to extend the life of the International Space Station beyond 2015, although Moscow must bear the brunt of flights after the United States retires its shuttles, officials said on Sunday.
Space agency heads will meet in March 2010, probably in Japan, to discuss the future of the International Space Station (ISS), Alexei Krasnov, head of manned programs at Russian space agency Roscosmos, told a news conference.
"The main question to be raised is whether to extend the life of the ISS beyond 2015. I believe the issue will be approved," Krasnov said at Mission Control outside of Moscow.
He was speaking after a Russian-American crew returned to Earth after a space odyssey lasting more than half a year. They were accompanied by Canadian circus billionaire Guy Laliberte, who spent about two weeks in space.
Russia's partners in the ISS are U.S. space agency NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japanese and Canadian space agencies.
NASA plans six more missions by its fleet of aging space shuttles after the construction of the $100 billion ISS is completed. Afterwards, the shuttles will be retired, next year or early in 2011.
Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov was quoted by RIA news agency on September 25 as saying it had learned NASA could extend the deadline to retire the shuttles.
Should it proceed, however, the retirement of U.S. shuttles would increase the burden on Russia for manning the ISS, now in orbit 360 km (225 miles) above Earth, said Vitaly Lopota, general director of Russian spacecraft builder RKK Energia.
Lopota told the news conference Russia had doubled the number of manned space flights to four this year and planned to send six cargo ships per year to the space station, also more than usual.
"We work economically, we live economically and we maintain the station in an economical way," Lopota said.
NASA's future strategy is under review [ID:nN08291139] with a focus on possible flights to Mars. It is also encouraging a private space taxi project to the ISS. [ID:nN23400481]
A new rocket and capsule to transport astronauts to the ISS is also being developed but will not be operational until about 2015. Until then, NASA will rely on Roscosmos and must pay $50 million per seat for flights to the ISS by Soyuz capsules.
(Writing by Robin Paxton in Moscow; Editing by Michael Roddy)
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Written on 4:29 AM by Admin
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WASHINGTON (AFP) – NASA sent two spacecrafts on Friday to crash into the lunar service in a dramatic bid to find water, an experiment that could be a stepping stone to building a permanent lunar base.
At 1131 GMT a rocket slammed into the Cabeus crater, near the lunar southern pole, at around 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) per hour. It was followed four minutes later by a spacecraft equipped with cameras to record the impact.
"Everything really worked very well, the spacecraft flew perfect, the instruments performed better than expected in some cases. We got interesting results," read a NASA statement.
Cameras mounted on the 1,965-pound (891-kilogram) shepherding spacecraft failed to beam live footage of the initial impact as the craft flew behind the impacter, though NASA insisted the experiment went well.
During the experiment, grainy thermal images carried on the US space agency's television station showed colder blue sites and warmer red sites on the moon's surface.
There was no picture of a huge plume of dust that scientists had expected to see after the impact.
The crash may not have tossed up as much material as expected, or perhaps it hit the slopes of the deep crater, said Anthony Colaprete, project scientist and principal investigator for the 79-million-dollar LCROSS mission.
"We don't anticipate anything about presence or absence of water immediately. It's going to take us some time," said Colaprete.
Colaprete downplayed the importance of having no pictures of the plume, because he said light spectrum measurements will show if there is water in the lunar soil that was tossed up. The instruments that took those measurements worked perfectly, he said.
Colaprete said it would take days for analysts to evaluate the data and several weeks to determine whether and how much hydrogen-bearing compounds were found.
"This is a great day for science and exploration," said Doug Cooke, NASA associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission.
The mission data "should prove to be an impressive addition to the tremendous leaps in knowledge about the moon that have been achieved in recent weeks," he said.
The LCROSS mission was launched in June aboard the Atlas V orbiter with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a probe tasked with producing a detailed map of the moon.
Scientists hope the desolate lunar pole will be a fertile hunting ground in their search for water.
"We're hunting for how water ice was stored and trapped in these permanently shadowed areas over billions of years and we want to find out how much there is," explained Peter Schultz, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University, who helped design the mission.
The mission comes just two weeks after India hailed the discovery of water on the moon with its Chandrayaan-1 satellite mission, in partnership with NASA.
Scientists had previously theorized that, except for the possibility of ice at the bottom of craters, the moon was totally dry.
Finding water on Earth's natural satellite would be a major breakthrough in space exploration.
"This could be the place that we could go to mine water for a permanent lunar base," said Schultz.
"It tells us something about how water was delivered to the moon and other planets in a sort of cosmic rain, meaning impacts from comets over eons."
"If we had it there, we could actually make exploration be a bit more sustainable," NASA's Friedensen said. "We could make fuel on the moon."
NASA's future missions to the moon however remain uncertain, as a key review panel appointed by President Barack Obama said existing budgets are not large enough to fund a return mission before 2020.
The last manned mission to the moon was Apollo 17 in 1972.
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