Flights rerouted as enormoussolar tempesslam Earth

9:39 PM Gabriella Brianna , Posted in , 0 Comments


Radiation storm are not damaging to humans, on soil at least, according to the US room agency. They can, however, have an effect on satellite operation and small wave radio.

Solar radiation from a huge sun storm - the main in nearly a decade - collide with the Earth's atmosphere on Tuesday, prompt an airline to redirect flights and sky watchers to seek out stunning light displays.US carrier Delta Air Lines said it had attuned flight routes for transpolar journeys between Asia and the United States to keep away from problems cause by the radiation storm.

NASA long-established the coronal mass ejection (CME) began collide with Earth's attractive field around 10:00 AM (1500 GMT) on Tuesday, addition that the storm was now being careful the largest since October 2003.Radiation storm are not harmful to humans, on Earth at smallest amount, according to the US space agency. They can, though, affect satellite operation and short wave radio.



The storm's radiation, likely to carry on bombarding Earth's atmosphere from side to side Wednesday, and its possible disturbance to satellite communications in the Polar Regions encouraged the flight rerouting, airline officials said. Atlanta-based Delta, the world's next largest airline, said "a handful" of routes had their journey attuned "based on potential impact" of the solar storm on infrastructure equipment, spokesman Anthony Black told AFP.

Routes from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul took a more southerly route after the solar flare erupted on Sunday. The airline said it would carry on monitoring solar activity before go back flights to their normal routes.

Due to the strange intensity of the photons raining on Earth, the spectacular aurora borealis - the stunning "Northern Lights" show - which is often seen closer to the Arctic pole at this time of year, has been seen as far south as Scotland and northern England, and at lower latitude in the United States.

The event started late Sunday with a moderate-sized solar flare that erupt right near the centre of the Sun, said Doug Biesecker, a physicist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center."The flare itself was nothing spectacular, but it sent off a very fast coronal mass ejection itinerant four million miles per hour (6.4 million kilometers per hour)," he told AFP.Space weather watchers said the best aurora sightings are usually around midnight local time. Rob Stammes, who run the Lofoten Polar Light Centre in Lofoten, Norway said the CME's arrival Tuesday had shaped a surge in ground current inside his laboratory.

Re-thinking an Alien World

11:00 PM Gabriella Brianna , Posted in , , 0 Comments


Forty light years as of Earth, a rocky world name "55 Cancri e" circles dangerously close to a stellar inferno.  Implementation one orbit in only 18 hours, the alien planet is 26 times closer to its close relative star than Mercury is to the Sun. If soil were in the same position, the soil beneath our feet would heat up to about 3200 F.  Researchers have extended thought that 55 Cancri e must be a wasteland of dry rock.

Now they’re thoughts again.  New comments by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that 55 Cancri e may be wetter and weirder than anyone imagined.



Spitzer recently deliberates the extremely small amount of light 55 Cancri e blocks when it crosses in front of its star. These transits occur every 18 hours, giving researchers repeated opportunity to gather the data they need to approximation the width, quantity and density of the planet.

According to the new observations, 55 Cancri e has a mass 7.8 times and a radius just over twice that of Earth. Those property place 55 Cancri e in the "super-Earth" class of exoplanets, a few dozen of which have been found. Only a handful of known super-Earths, on the other hand, cross the face of their stars as view from our vantage point in the cosmos, so 55 Cancri e is better understood than most.

When 55 Cancri e was discovered in 2004, initial estimate of its size and mass were consistent with a dense planet of solid rock.  Spitzer data suggest otherwise: About a fifth of the planet's mass must be made of light rudiments and compounds--including water. Given the intense heat and high pressure these materials likely experience, researchers think the compounds likely exist in a "supercritical" fluid state.

A supercritical fluid is a high-pressure, high-temperature state of matter best describe as a liquid-like gas, and a marvelous in the black. Water become supercritical in some steam turbines--and it tends to melt the tips of the turbine blades. Supercritical carbon dioxide is used to remove caffeine from coffee beans, and sometimes to dry-clean clothes. Liquid-fueled rocket propellant is also supercritical when it emerges from the tail of a spacecraft.

On 55 Cancri e, this material may be literally oozing--or is it sweltering?--out of the rocks.

With supercritical solvents rising from the planet’s surface, a star of terrifying proportions filling much of the daytime sky, and whole years rushing past in a matter of hours, 55 Cancri e teaches a valuable lesson: Just because a planet is similar in size to Earth does not mean the planet is like Earth.

Planck Space Telescope warm Up as intended

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"The High Frequency Instrument has reached the end of its observe life, but the Low Frequency Instrument will carry on observing for another year, and psychoanalysis of data from both instruments is still in the early phase," said Charles Lawrence, the U.S. Planck project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The scientific payoff as of the High Frequency instrument brilliantly winning operation is motionless to come."

NASA plays a significant role in the Planck mission, which is lead by the European Space Agency. In addition to serving with the analysis of the data, NASA contributes several key components to the mission itself. JPL built the state-of-the-art detectors that allowable the High Frequency Instrument to detect icy temperature down to nearly absolute zero, the coldest temperature hypothetically within reach.



Less than half a million years after the cosmos was created 13.7 billion years ago, the initial fireball cooled to temperatures of about 4,000 degrees Celsius (about 7,200 degrees Fahrenheit), releasing bright, visible light. As the cosmos has expanded, it has cooled radically, and its early light has faded and shifted to microwave wavelengths.

By studying pattern stamped in that light today, scientists hope to appreciate the Big Bang and the very early universe, as it appear long before galaxies and stars first shaped.Planck has been measure these patterns by survey the whole sky with its High Frequency Instrument and its Low Frequency Instrument. Mutual, they give Planck supreme wavelength coverage and the ability to resolve faint particulars.

Launched in May 2009, the smallest amount obligation for success was for the spacecraft to complete two whole surveys of the sky. In the end, Planck worked completely in completing not two, but five whole-sky surveys with both instrument. The Low Frequency Instrument will go on surveying the sky for a large part of 2012, as long as data to improve the excellence of the final results. The first results on the Big Bang and very early universe will not approach for a different year.

NASA Discovers New Double-Star Planet Systems

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While long anticipated in both science and science fiction, the existence of a circumbinary planet -- a planet orbiting two stars – like "Tatooine" portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, was not definitively established until the discovery of Kepler-16b, announced in September 2011.

Today, using data from NASA’s Kepler mission, astronomers announced the discovery of two new double-star planet systems – Kepler-34 and Kepler-35 – at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, Jan. 8-12, 2012.

"This work further establishes that such 'two sun' planets are not rare exceptions, but may in fact be common, with many millions existing in our galaxy," said William Welsh of San Diego State University and Kepler participating scientist who led the study. "This discovery broadens the hunting ground for systems that could support life."

The Kepler space telescope detects planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets crossing in front, or transiting, their stars. The Kepler science team requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet.

The two new planets, named Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b, are both gaseous Saturn-size planets. Kepler-34b orbits its two sun-like stars every 289 days, and the stars orbit one another every 28 days. Kepler-35b orbits its smaller and cooler host stars every 131 days, and the stellar pair orbit each other every 21 days. The planets reside too close to their parent stars to be in the "habitable zone"- the region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.

At 4,900 and 5,400 light-years from Earth, located in the constellation Cygnus, Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b are among the most distant planets discovered. The findings are described in a new study published Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012 in the journal Nature.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., managed the Kepler mission's development.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-34-35.html

NASA Helps Kick Off 2012 FIRST Robotics Competition

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An international robotics competition aimed at developing a new generation of technology leaders kicks off at 10:30 a.m. EST Saturday, Jan. 7. NASA, the largest sponsor of the FIRST Robotics Competition, and its centers across the nation will join local technology firms to launch the event. The main competition kickoff will take place at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester and will air live on NASA Television.

For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology -- is a long-standing challenge to inspire curiosity and create interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) among high school students. Encouraging students to pursue STEM studies and careers is the focus of NASA's education programs.




"NASA's Science Mission Directorate is proud to have sponsored this technology revolution for the past 19 years," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "This program has given tens of thousands of students a crucial mentoring experience if they choose to be a part of future exploration endeavors in space. FIRST Robotics is fun and exciting and will sustain an unprecedented positive educational impact on our nation's youth."

The FIRST Robotics Competition gives students the opportunity to design, build and test a robot that can perform specific functions. The competition also gives students the opportunity to be mentored by NASA professionals, who help them to explore potential solutions to robotics problems and understand the real-world challenges faced by engineers and researchers.


"FIRST Robotics has had a tremendous impact on students' interest in robotics and invention since its inception," said Leland Melvin, NASA's associate administrator for Education. "In fact, it was a mutual interest in FIRST Robotics that led the agency to a recently announced collaboration with entertainer will.i.am. We are excited to work together to help inspire the next generation to pursue STEM and robotics studies."

During the live broadcast of this year's competition kickoff, inventor and FIRST founder Dean Kamen and designers of the annual challenge will reveal this year's competition scenario. This kicks off a six-week design and building frenzy for students and their engineering mentors.

Each year, participating FIRST teams are presented with a new robotics competition scenario with twists and nuances to challenge both rookie and veteran teams. Each team receives a kit of parts and has six weeks to design and build a robot based on the team's interpretation of the game scenario. Other than dimension and weight restrictions, the look and function of the robots is up to each team.

NASA plays a significant role by providing public access to robotics programs to encourage young people to investigate careers in the sciences and engineering. Through the NASA Robotics Alliance Project, the agency provides grants to teams and sponsors four regional student competitions. NASA engineers and scientists participate with many of these teams as technical participants and mentors to the students. Through these mentoring activities, NASA engineers are able to directly share their expertise and experiences with the nation's next generation of technical leaders.

This year, there will be regional competitions across the country, as well as four additional international competitions in March and April. The FIRST Championship competition will be held April 25-28 in St. Louis.

The program was founded in 1989 by Kamen to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people, their schools and communities. Based in Manchester, N.H., FIRST is a non-profit organization that designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge and life skills while motivating young people to pursue academic opportunities.

2012: Fear No Supernova

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Given the incredible amounts of energy in a supernova explosion – as much as the sun creates during its entire lifetime – another erroneous doomsday theory is that such an explosion could happen in 2012 and harm life on Earth. However, given the vastness of space and the long times between supernovae, astronomers can say with certainty that there is no threatening star close enough to hurt Earth.

Astronomers estimate that, on average, about one or two supernovae explode each century in our galaxy. But for Earth's ozone layer to experience damage from a supernova, the blast must occur less than 50 light-years away. All of the nearby stars capable of going supernova are much farther than this.

Any planet with life on it near a star that goes supernova would indeed experience problems. X- and gamma-ray radiation from the supernova could damage the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet light in the sun's rays. The less ozone there is, the more UV light reaches the surface. At some wavelengths, just a 10 percent increase in ground-level UV can be lethal to some organisms, including phytoplankton near the ocean surface. Because these organisms form the basis of oxygen production on Earth and the marine food chain, any significant disruption to them could cascade into a planet-wide problem.

Another explosive event, called a gamma-ray burst (GRB), is often associated with supernovae. When a massive star collapses on itself -- or, less frequently, when two compact neutron stars collide -- the result is the birth of a black hole. As matter falls toward a nascent black hole, some of it becomes accelerated into a particle jet so powerful that it can drill its way completely through the star before the star's outermost layers even have begun to collapse. If one of the jets happens to be directed toward Earth, orbiting satellites detect a burst of highly energetic gamma rays somewhere in the sky. These bursts occur almost daily and are so powerful that they can be seen across billions of light-years.

A gamma-ray burst could affect Earth in much the same way as a supernova -- and at much greater distance -- but only if its jet is directly pointed our way. Astronomers estimate that a gamma-ray burst could affect Earth from up to 10,000 light-years away with each separated by about 15 million years, on average. So far, the closest burst on record, known as GRB 031203, was 1.3 billion light-years away.

As with impacts, our planet likely has already experienced such events over its long history, but there's no reason to expect a gamma-ray burst in our galaxy to occur in the near future, much less in December 2012.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-supernova.html

The new trend of beach wedding dress

3:49 AM Gabriella Brianna , 0 Comments

In recent days a new trend of beach wedding accepted between many people. Dissimilar from the customary formal church wedding, the beach wedding distinguish more enjoyment and Joy. In adding up the white sand, gentle breeze and awesome sea will all make the wedding more idealistic.

As like as choosing the evening gowns for special evening occasion, the beach wedding dresses should be choose. In common, the beach wedding dresses are especially planned for the beach wedding. So, they may be dissimilar from other dresses. This dress appears very simple and makes the wedding more pleasure. The dress with high decorations may make the bride to feel hot during summer.


Apart from the easy line cut, the cloth is also a significant issue. There are many clothes can be useful to the bridal gown, however for the beach weddings, the light fabrics are very much appreciated. In the meantime, the cloth should be air porous.

Find your Perfect wedding Shoes.

JEFF ADAMS - ADVANTAGES OF INVESTING IN REAL ESTATE

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•    All investment has its own advantage and disadvantages. In the case of property, it responds slower than stock markets.

•    There are options to influence. The best thing about investing in real estate according to Jeff Adams is that there are many preferences that are available to real estate investor allowing them to borrow funds whenever they want to purchase new property. It is valuable to investors who don’t have upfront cash. This type of options are not available in the case of shares in which the trade allowed is limited, while in property investments, you don’t need to stick to any restrictions.

•    Investors can also buy properties that are lower than market value such as foreclosed properties that are intense in the real estate market today. They are sold at very low prices and one can select from a group of properties in order for you to find the most lucrative property that can bring you profits in the future.

•    Many bonuses are offered to real estate investors such as tax remuneration. In addition to this, investors can go well with the reduction choice. Investors are given support by the government to let their property to have a useful life.

•    Investors are given authority to quote price for their property. This is another advantage of real estate investing over stock investments. Real estate investors can add value to the property by making adding enhancements such as modernizing their property by constructing swimming pool, garage and extra rooms. By doing this, the property is added with substantial value and investors are given full control in quoting the price of the property.

These are the important instructions newbie investors must educate themselves before getting into the real estate market. Jeff Adams scam may sound disheartening to most people, but there is no evidence that Jeff Adams would only want money from you. In fact, these tips are proposed to assist you make money in your investing career.

Dawn Obtains First Low Altitude Images of Vesta

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NASA's Dawn spacecraft has sent back the first images of the giant asteroid Vesta from its low-altitude mapping orbit. The images, obtained by the framing camera, show the stippled and lumpy surface in detail never seen before, piquing the curiosity of scientists who are studying Vesta for clues about the solar system's early history.

At this detailed resolution, the surface shows abundant small craters, and textures such as small grooves and lineaments that are reminiscent of the structures seen in low-resolution data from the higher-altitude orbits. Also, this fine scale highlights small outcrops of bright and dark material.

A gallery of images can be found online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/gallery-index.html .

The images were returned to Earth on Dec. 13. Dawn scientists plan to acquire data in the low-altitude mapping orbit for at least 10 weeks. The primary science objectives in this orbit are to learn about the elemental composition of Vesta's surface with the gamma ray and neutron detector and to probe the interior structure of the asteroid by measuring the gravity field.

The Dawn mission to the asteroids Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn Framing Cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA/JPL.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20111221.html

Satellite Data Shows that Kirtland’s Warblers Prefer Forests After Fire

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Kirtland’s warblers are an endangered species of lightweight little birds with bright yellow-bellies that summer in North America and winter in the Bahamas. But be it their winter or their summer home, a new study using data from NASA-built Landsat satellites shows that these warblers like to live in young forests and often forests that have been on fire.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed Kirtland’s warblers as endangered in 1967 after a startling decline of over 50 percent in less than ten years. The little birds prefer to nest on the ground amidst large areas of relatively young jack pine trees, and these trees need fire to reproduce. When fires were dramatically suppressed in the 1960s across northern Michigan, Wisconsin and southern Ontario, the warbler’s habitat became scarce.

After an intensive recovery program that focused both on combating invasive cowbirds and managing controlled forest burns, and thus creating warbler-friendly jack pine habitat, the Kirtland’s warbler made an impressive comeback. By 1995 their numbers had tripled.

But those extensive efforts only occurred at the Kirtland’s summer home, so a team of researchers reviewed the conditions of many a warbler’s winter home – the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. They did this by painstakingly putting together Landsat data to create cloud-free images of the isle’s forest cover.

Tropical islands typically have cloud cover, so the team compiled many Landsat images with scenes where the clouds were in different places into one image of clear forest, said Eileen Helmer. She’s a member of the Landsat Science Team for the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) and works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry.

The researchers did this not just once, but ten times, obtaining a record that spans a 30-year time period. According to Helmer, this allows them to tell how long it had been since the forest was last disturbed by fire, crops or grazing.

What the scientists discovered was that, like in their summer homes, Kirtland’s warblers are found in young forests. On Eleuthera, these forests only occur after a disturbance of some sort – like fire, clearing for agriculture, or grazing. And grazing turns out to be a disturbance the warbler can live with just fine. Old forest whose underbrush has been munched on by goats provides the most suitable habitat for warblers, said Helmer.

The results, published in this month's issue of Biotropica, suggest that goat grazing stunts the forest regrowth, so that the tree height doesn’t exceed the height beyond which important fruit-bearing forage tree species are shaded out by taller woody species. Helmer said that understanding how and where the warbler's winter habitat occurs will help conservation efforts in the Bahamas.

Helmer said that a unique feature of warbler’s winter habitat is that the age of this forest correlates very strongly with its height. By tracking the age of the forest after a disturbance, she and her team determined forest height at different times. Helmer said they used image time-series data from Landsat and the Advance Land Imager (ALI) sensor aboard the Earth-Observing 1 (EO-1) satellite to essentially ‘stack’ many images over time. This project is the first time that forest height profiles have been successfully mapped by satellite imagery at a medium resolution that shows a broad area but still resolves human impacts on the land. As in the warbler case, understanding how a forest is put together in three dimensions is important for ecological studies. Helmer adds that this tool may be applied elsewhere around the world due to Landsat’s global coverage and policy of free access to data. Helmer will discuss mapping forest height at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco on Friday, Dec. 9.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warblers.html

Expedition 29 Welcomes New Crewmates

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The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin docked to the International Space Station’s Poisk mini-research module at 12:24 a.m. EST Wednesday. The trio launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:14 p.m. EST Sunday (10:14 a.m. Monday, Kazakhstan time).


After the hatches between Soyuz and station were opened at 2:39 a.m., Expedition 29 Commander Mike Fossum of NASA and Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov welcomed the new flight engineers aboard for their four-month stay on the orbiting complex.

The six station crew members will have a little less than a week together as the Expedition 29 crew before Fossum, Furukawa and Volkov head home Monday aboard the Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft that brought them to the station June 9. Their departure will mark the beginning of Expedition 30, under the command of Burbank. A formal change-of-command ceremony is planned for Sunday.

Three additional Expedition 30 flight engineers -- NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers -- are scheduled to launch to the station Dec. 21.

Burbank is making his third visit to the station. His previous two visits were both aboard space shuttle Atlantis. During the STS-106 mission in September 2000, he helped prepare the station for its first permanent crew. During STS-115 in September 2006, he conducted a 7-hour, 11-minute spacewalk that completed truss installation, activated the solar alpha rotary joint and enabled the solar arrays to be deployed.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition29/exp29_dock.html

Maintaining Crew Health One Step at a Time

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While many of us may not like to exercise, imagine having to do it two hours every day. Astronauts on the International Space Station must exercise at least that much to stay fit. A new space station experiment is studying the difference between exercising on a treadmill in space and on Earth.


Biomechanical Analysis of Treadmill Exercise on the International Space Station, or Treadmill Kinematics, is the first rigorous investigation to determine the most beneficial treadmill exercise conditions to maintain or improve crew health during long-duration spaceflight.

"Exercise activities are developed under the assumption that walking and running in microgravity have the same training effects as under normal gravity," said John De Witt, principal investigator for the experiment with Wyle Integrated Science and Engineering Group in Houston. "However, if there is a difference, we will learn more about the effects, allowing us to develop appropriate exercise prescriptions to increase benefits to crew health and well-being."

Researchers are gathering video and data on the force the body exerts when the foot hits the ground while crew members run and walk on a treadmill at varying weights and speeds. This will determine joint motions and muscle functions that occur during normal exercise. Researchers also are comparing in-flight running styles with running styles on Earth.

"On the space station, locomotion -- running and walking movement -- occurs on a treadmill that isolates vibrations, which increases the potential for training differences in space," said De Witt. "The overall goal of the advanced exercise regimes for the crew members is to increase weight at the joints to provide a greater stimulus for bone and muscle health."

An earlier study on the space station titled Foot Reaction Forces During Space Flight, or Foot, measured foot forces on the previous version of the treadmill. "They weren’t enough to maintain bone," said Julie Robinson, International Space Station Program scientist at Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Now we have a better treadmill, a better harness and improved protocols. They will help us determine how to arrive at future exploration destinations strong and ready to explore the surface."

While results of the Treadmill Kinematics analysis will be used to determine the best treadmill conditions for maintaining health during spaceflight, the data gathered may provide researchers with a better understanding of how exercise speed and external loads affect forces experienced by the joints and muscles on Earth.

Fore more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/Treadmill_Kinematics.html

Technology Innovation Magazine Highlights the International Space Station

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The International Space Station didn't just make the cover story of the latest publication of NASA's Technology Innovation magazine, the entire issue was devoted to this amazing feat of collaboration and technology.

With assembly complete, the station can now fulfill its purpose as a testbed for research, innovation and technology development in microgravity, according to Joseph Parrish, NASA's deputy chief technologist. In the "Upfront with…" introduction to the magazine, Parrish shared the importance investment plays in moving forward as a global leader in aerospace technology.

"America is the nation we are today because of the technological investments made in the 1960s, because of the engineers and scientists of that generation and those policy makers who had the wisdom and foresight to make the investments required for our country to emerge as a global technological leader," said Parrish.

This sense of excitement as the investment in the space station turns to utilization echoes in the various articles from the issue. Contributors, such as Mark Uhran, NASA's International Space Station assistant associate administrator, shared their perspective on the space station's past and future, including opportunities available for research, technology and partnership.

In a piece titled "An Era of Opportunity, the International Space Station Begins its Next Stage of Partnership and Innovation," Uhran looked back at the developmental timeline that ultimately led to the station's creation. "While the design, assembly, and operations of the station to date are remarkable human achievements in their own right, the opening of the utilization era over the next decade presents unprecedented opportunities for partnerships to advance the research and development of space resources," said Uhran.

Other articles in the publication delve into the areas of scientific focus for research on the orbiting laboratory. These include biology and biotechnology, Earth and space science, physical science, human research, technology and educational opportunities. The space station environment, which includes microgravity, extreme temperatures and radiation, provides a unique testing area with tremendous potential for discovery.

The feature titled "Biology in Orbit, How Research Partnerships Growing Plants, Cells, and Animals, and Testing New Drugs on the ISS Pays Off on Earth," spotlights how investigations in space can lead to real changes in everyday lives on the ground. From vaccine development to cell therapy, studies like Space Tissue Loss hold potential that is just starting to be tapped.

"This research helps us better understand adult stem cell biology and how to optimize our regenerative cell population," said Tom Cannon, vice president and co-founder of Tissue Genesis Inc. "This same cell population recovered from adipose tissue (fat) is currently in FDA clinical trials as we begin to translate its tremendous therapeutic potential into the clinic."

The space station's technological developments also can pay off with partnership dividends via industry products for Earth. For instance, a chemical sensor technology originally developed for aerospace fuel delivery safety found a second life as a "Lick and Stick" leak detection system. This technology is a core part of the Advanced Life Support System on the station, and on the ground is used to monitor hydrogen-powered concept cars, measure emissions and detect fires. You can read more in the related article "Innovative Research, 'Lick and Stick' Sensor Systems Enhance Safety and Performance."

Developments such as this sensor generate a ripple effect in related industries, according to Benjamin Ward, Ph.D., with Makel Engineering. "Our partnership with NASA in the development of the lick-and-stick technology has resulted in a wide range of sensor and smart systems products, which have generated a large percentage of company revenues and supported multiple engineering jobs," said Ward.

Inspiration, however, is not limited to corporate developments from station research. In fact, some of the greatest inventions and discoveries may result not from direct innovations, but from the inspirations generated from the educational efforts of the space station crew and their ground counterparts. Learning opportunities take center stage in the feature "Pen Caps and Nanoparticles, Inspiring, Engaging, and Educating the Next Generation through ISS Research."

"As you read about the wonders taking place now on [the] world's orbiting laboratory -- the International Space Station -- dare to dream about where these opportunities will take us over the next 10 or 25 years," said Parrish. "The possibilities are limitless!"

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/Innovation_Magazine.html

New Tool for Touring Mars Using Detailed Images

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An improved tool debuts today for viewing channels, dunes, boulders and other features revealed in the huge image files from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The new tool, HiView, offers the best way to take a personal, virtual hike through any of thousands of square miles of Mars observed by HiRISE, seeing details as small as a desk. To watch the tutorial video and download the free HiView application, go to: http://www.uahirise.org/hiview/ .

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been studying Mars with an advanced set of instruments since 2006. It has returned more data about the planet than all other spacecraft combined. For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ .

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft.

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For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20111207.html

Save your time and money by booking your ticket in online

2:25 AM Gabriella Brianna , Posted in , 0 Comments

People who ready to go for journey will give most preference to travel in bus and nowadays, they also started booking a ticket through online and cyberspace for saving their time and money. Booking a ticket through online or cyberspace will take more than a few seconds. In this fast moving world, online booking is good technique which will be like by every passenger. Online bus tickets can be booked through the internet and you can do at any time of day. The website is open for maximum hours and you can be sure that you do when you have time.

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NASA's Hubble Confirms That Galaxies Are the Ultimate Recyclers

11:14 PM Gabriella Brianna , Posted in , 0 Comments


New observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are expanding astronomers' understanding of the ways in which galaxies continuously recycle immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements. This process allows galaxies to build successive generations of stars stretching over billions of years.

This ongoing recycling keeps some galaxies from emptying their "fuel tanks" and stretches their star-forming epoch to over 10 billion years.

This conclusion is based on a series of Hubble Space Telescope observations that flexed the special capabilities of its Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) to detect gas in the halo of our Milky Way and more than 40 other galaxies. Data from large ground-based telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona and Chile also contributed to the studies by measuring the properties of the galaxies.

Astronomers believe that the color and shape of a galaxy is largely controlled by gas flowing through an extended halo around it. The three studies investigated different aspects of the gas-recycling phenomenon.

The results are being published in three papers in the November 18 issue of Science magazine. The leaders of the three studies are Nicolas Lehner of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.; Jason Tumlinson of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.; and Todd Tripp of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The COS observations of distant stars demonstrate that a large mass of clouds is falling through the giant halo of our Milky Way, fueling its ongoing star formation. These clouds of hot hydrogen reside within 20,000 light-years of the Milky Way disk and contain enough material to make 100 million suns. Some of this gas is recycled material that is continually being replenished by star formation and the explosive energy of novae and supernovae, which kicks chemically enriched gas back into the halo.

The COS observations also show halos of hot gas surrounding vigorous star-forming galaxies. These halos, rich in heavy elements, extend as much as 450,000 light-years beyond the visible portions of their galactic disks. The amount of heavy-element mass discovered far outside a galaxy came as a surprise. COS measured 10 million solar masses of oxygen in a galaxy's halo, which corresponds to about one billion solar masses of gas -- as much as in the entire space between stars in a galaxy’s disk.

Researchers also found that this gas is nearly absent from galaxies that have stopped forming stars. In these galaxies, the “recycling” process ignites a rapid firestorm of star birth which can blow away the remaining fuel, essentially turning off further star-birth activity.

This is evidence that gas pushed out of a galaxy, rather than pulled in from intergalactic space, determine a galaxy's fate."

The Hubble observations demonstrate that those galaxies forming stars at a very rapid rate, perhaps a hundred solar masses per year, can drive two-million-degree gas very far out into intergalactic space at speeds of up to two million miles per hour. That's fast enough for the gas to escape forever and never refuel the parent galaxy.

While hot gas "winds" from galaxies have been known for some time, the new COS observations reveal that hot outflows extend to much greater distances than previously thought and can carry a tremendous amount of mass out of a galaxy. Some of the hot gas is moving more slowly and could eventually be recycled. The observations show how gas-rich star-forming spiral galaxies can evolve to elliptical galaxies that no longer have star formation.

The light emitted by this hot plasma is invisible, so the researchers used COS to detect the presence of the gas by the way it absorbs certain colors of light from background quasars. Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe and are the brilliant cores of active galaxies that contain active central black holes. The quasars serve as distant lighthouse beacons that shine through the gas-rich "fog" of hot plasma encircling galaxies. At ultraviolet wavelengths, COS is sensitive to the presence of heavy elements, such as nitrogen, oxygen, and neon. COS's high sensitivity allows many galaxies to be studied that happen to lie in front of the much more distant quasars. The ionized heavy elements are markers for estimating how much mass is in a galaxy's halo.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/recyclers.html

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