Planet with two suns 'discovered'

Astronomers claim to have discovered a planet which orbits two suns, like the fictional planet Tatooine in the " Star Wars" sci-fi film.

An international team, which made the finding through NASA's Kepler spacecraft, says the planet, called Kepler-16b, is about 200 light years from Earth and is believed to be a frozen world of rock and gas, about the size of Saturn.

It orbits two stars that are also circling each other, one about two-thirds the size of our sun, the other about a fifth the size of our sun. Each orbit takes 229 days; the stars eclipse each other every three weeks or so.

Alan Boss, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC and a member of the team, was quoted by the media as saying, "You would never get constant daylight because the two stars are so close together.

"They would come together in an eclipse every 20.5 days and then move apart again. As their separation increased, they would go down at different times, and that could make cocktail hour hard."

In fact, the team, led by Laurance Doyle at the Carl Sagan Centre for the Study of Life in the Universe at the Seti Institute in California, spotted the planet after noticing unusual signals in data collected by the Kepler spacecraft.

Images captured by Kepler's camera showed two stars orbiting each other and producing eclipses as they moved in front of one another. Both stars were small in comparison with our own sun, at about 69 and 20 per cent of the sun's mass.

On closer inspection, the footage revealed further eclipses that could not be explained by the movement of the two stars, or an additional third star. Instead, a subtle drop in light from the stars, which amounted to a dimming of only 1.7 per cent, was attributed to an orbiting planet.

The astronomers turned next to a ground-based telescope, the Whipple Observatory in Arizona. With this, they monitored the shifting velocity of the heaviest star as it moved around in its orbit.

Those observations gave Doyle's team the details they needed to reconstruct the orbits of the stars and its planet.

They showed that the two suns orbit each other every 41 days at a distance of about 21 million miles. The planet completes a circular orbit around both stars every 229 days at a distance of 65 million miles, according to the findings published in the 'Science' journal.

Josh Carter, another team member, added: "Kepler-16b is the first confirmed, unambiguous example of a circumbinary planet - a planet orbiting not one, but two stars. Once again, we're finding that our solar system is only one example of the variety of planetary systems nature can create."

NASA preps shuttle Endeavour for final flight

Space shuttle set to liftoff on its last mission Monday morning.

After repairing problems that derailed space shuttle Endeavour's first launch attempt, NASA is prepping for a Monday morning lift-off.

The shuttle is set for an 8:56 a.m. ET launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This will be Endeavour's final space flight before it is retired. After this mission, only one more shuttle flight is scheduled before the entire shuttle fleet is retired.

Endeavour's initial launch date was scrubbed just three and a half hours before its scheduled liftoff late last month. The liftoff was cancelled because of problems with two heaters associated with the shuttle's Auxiliary Power Unit. The unit provides hydraulic power during the shuttle's ascent and entry.

With that problem now fixed, NASA worked overnight between Sunday and Monday to get the shuttle ready to go. A little before midnight, technicians were fueling the shuttle's external fuel tank with more than 500,000 gallons of super cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

Endeavour is headed for a 16-day mission to bring equipment, spare parts and experiments to the International Space Station. The mission originally was scheduled for 14 days -- the extra two days were added just last week.

The shuttle is carrying aloft a piece of equipment that will search space for some of the biggest mysteries of physics -- antimatter and dark matter. The AMS (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) particle detector will be installed and operated on the International Space Station.

Endeavour also is carrying a six-man crew, including a computer programmer who built software for spacecraft before becoming an astronaut.

Greg Chamitoff will serve as a mission specialist on Endeavour's final space flight. Chamitoff was an engineer and a software developer, working for companies like Atari Computer and IBM before joining NASA, where he developed software applications for three years before training to go into space.

NASA spacecraft unravels comet mystery

A NASA spacecraft's flyby with a comet showed erosion on the Tempel 1's surface since it skimmed by the Sun in 2005, and revealed the first clear pictures of the crater made by a Deep Impact probe.

But the Valentine's night encounter was not easy for the US space agency's Stardust-NExT mission spacecraft, which had to fight an onslaught of debris from the comet in order to snap dozens of revealing pictures.

"Comets, unlike any other body in the solar system, are unique when they are in the inner part of the solar system where the Earth is," said Don Brownlee, Stardust-NExT co-investigator.

"They are literally coming apart and sending tons and tons of gas and rocks and dust out in space," he said.

"They don't just spew off things in a uniform way. They send off clods of dirt and ice and rock that come apart," Brownlee said, playing audio of the impact sustained by the spacecraft. The sound was like rapid firecracker bursts.

"A good analogy is thinking of a B-17 in World War II flying through flak -- sometimes a large number of impacts in less than a tenth of a second -- so it is a very dramatic environment."

The pictures that Stardust snapped showed some erosion over the past five years, and for the first time allowed scientists to see the crater made by a NASA probe, an impact which was obscured by a huge dust cloud the first time around.

"We never saw the crater as we went by, it was there somewhere that created a lot of mystery, it also helped to create this mission," said co-investigator Pete Schultz of Brown University.

Tempel 1 was last glimpsed in 2005 by NASA's Deep Impact mission as the comet was shooting toward the Sun on its five-year orbit between Mars and Jupiter.

Dave Lindahl Scam

India launches South Pole Mission

India launches scientific expedition to South Pole.

Science and Technology News Updates! India is to begin its first scientific expedition to the South Pole.

The head of India's National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research, Rasik Ravindra, will lead a team of eight scientists on the journey, departing next week from an Indian research base.

The trip to the pole and back is expected to last around 40 days.

It is hoped their mission will shed light on how environmental conditions have changed in Antarctica over the past 1,000 years.

Mr Ravindra says the scientists will fly via South Africa to India's Maitri research base, situated in an ice-free area known as the Schirmacher Oasis.

From there they will travel to the pole - a journey of more than 2,000km - in specially designed vehicles, carrying out a range of experiments on the way.

"We will conduct meteorological experiments, [and] record humidity, temperatures, wind speed and atmospheric pressures during the 20-day trip to the South Pole, and other experiments will be conducted on our way back," Mr Ravindra said.

"Everything is now linked to global warming," he added.

Other experiments will look at the movement of tectonic plates and how the Antarctic landmass has evolved over millions of years.

Correspondents say India is keen to draw international attention to its scientific presence in the region, and is building its third Antarctic research station. The first was abandoned in 1990.

'Balloon head' dolphin discovered

A new type of dolphin with a short, spoon-shaped nose and high, bulbous forehead has been identified from a fossil found in the North Sea.

The Platalearostrum hoekmani was named after Albert Hoekman, the Dutch fisherman who in 2008 trawled up a bone from the creature's skull.

Up to six metres in length, the dolphin lived two to three million years ago.

The so-called rostrum bone and a model of the dolphin are on display at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam.

As museum researchers Klaas Post and Erwin Kompanje write in the museum's journal Deinsea, the North Sea has been a rich source of fossils in recent decades as bottom-trawling has become more prevalent.

The practice has yielded tens of thousands of pieces of the fossil record - many of which defy classification.

What is clear from the singular bone found by Mr Hoekman is that the animal from which it came fits neatly in the family of marine mammals known as Delphinids - the ocean-going dolphins that actually includes both killer and pilot whales.

More specific classification within this family is somewhat speculative.

The bone shows an unusually large tip region containing six teeth known as the premaxilla. This feature suggests the broad, blunt nature of the creature's snout.

Based on analyses of similar fossils and modern relatives within the family, the researchers are convinced they have found a new species whose closest living relative is the pilot whale.

Massive blast 'created Mars moon'

Nasa News Updates! Scientists say they have uncovered firm evidence that Mars's biggest moon, Phobos, is made from rocks blasted off the Martian surface in a catastrophic event.

The origin of Mars's satellites Phobos and Deimos is a long-standing puzzle.

It has been suggested that both moons could be asteroids that formed in the main asteroid belt and were then "captured" by Mars's gravity.

The latest evidence has been presented at a major conference in Rome.

The new work supports other scenarios. Material blasted off Mars's surface by a colliding space rock could have clumped together to form the Phobos moon.

Alternatively, Phobos could have been formed from the remnants of an earlier moon destroyed by Mars's gravitational forces. However, this moon might itself have originated from material thrown into orbit from the Martian surface.

Previous observations of Phobos at visible and near-infrared wavelengths have been interpreted to suggest the possible presence of carbonaceous chondrites, found in meteorites that have crashed to Earth.

This carbon-rich, rocky material, left over from the formation of the Solar System, is thought to originate in asteroids from the so-called "main belt" between Mars and Jupiter.

But, now, data from the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft appear to make the asteroid capture scenario look less likely.

Recent observations as thermal infrared wavelengths using the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) instrument on Mars Express show a poor match between the rocks on Phobos and any class of chondritic meteorite known from Earth.

These would seem to support the "re-accretion" models for the formation of Phobos, in which rocks from the surface of the Red Planet are blasted into Martian orbit to later clump and form Phobos.

"We detected for the first time a type of mineral called phyllosilicates on the surface of Phobos, particularly in the areas northeast of Stickney, its largest impact crater," said co-author Dr Marco Giuranna, from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome.

These phyllosilicate rocks are thought to form in the presence of water, and have been found previously on Mars.

Read more>>

Double strike 'killed dinosaurs'

Double space strike 'caused dinosaur extinction'

The dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago by at least two space impacts, rather than a single strike, a new study suggests.

Previously, scientists had identified a huge impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico as the event that spelled doom for the dinosaurs.

Now evidence for a second impact in Ukraine has been uncovered.

This raises the possibility that the Earth may have been bombarded by a whole shower of space rocks.

The new findings are published in the journal Geology by a team lead by Professor David Jolley of Aberdeen University, UK.

When first proposed in 1980, the idea that an asteroid or comet impact had killed off the dinosaurs proved hugely controversial. Later, the discovery of the Chicxulub Crater in the Gulf of Mexico was hailed as "the smoking gun" that confirmed the theory.

The discovery of a second impact crater suggests that the dinosaurs were driven to extinction by a "double whammy" rather than a single strike.

The Boltysh Crater in Ukraine was first reported in 2002. However, until now it was uncertain exactly how the timing of this event related to the Chicxulub impact.

In the current study, scientists examined the "pollen and spores" of fossil plants in the layers of mud that infilled the crater. They found that immediately after the impact, ferns quickly colonised the devastated landscape.

Ferns have an amazing ability to bounce back after catastrophe. Layers full of fern spores - dubbed "fern spikes" - are considered to be a good "markers" of past impact events.

However, there was an unexpected discovery in store for the scientists.

They located a second "fern spike" in a layer one metre above the first, suggesting another later impact event.

Professor Simon Kelley of the Open University, UK, who was co-author on the study, said: "We interpret this second layer as the aftermath of the Chicxulub impact."

Microsoft to launch IE9

Microsoft to launch IE9 beta on Sept. 15.

Microsoft plans to launch the beta of the Internet Explorer browser on Sept. 15, according to a blog post on Thursday.

The software maker has scheduled an event in San Francisco to mark the arrival of the beta, billing the event (and the browser) as highlighting "the beauty of the Web." Microsoft also sent packages to reporters containing a variety of art supplies, such as crayons and fingerpaints, inside a box with an IE logo.

That Microsoft is holding a launch event reflects the resurgent importance of the browser and the degree to which Redmond is counting on IE9 to get it back in to serious technical competition with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

As noted in a story earlier Thursday, the beta needs either Windows Vista or Windows 7 (no XP) and will also require users to swap out their current installation of Internet Explorer. Among the key features of IE9 is its support for HTML5, an improved JavaScript engine, and the ability to tap a computer's graphics chip to accelerate text and image rendering.

Microsoft hasn't said much about the design of IE9, but the company's Ryan Gavin told CNET that the goal of the browser is not to block the view.

"The browser is the theater," Gavin said. "We're not the play."

Gavin said that Microsoft is hoping to see wide adoption of the beta. "The beta is not for everyone, clearly," he said, "but if you are comfortable downloading and installing software, I know I am going to want you to try IE9."

For those who don't want to, or can't, install the beta, Microsoft plans to continue to offer and update its technical preview of the browser engine, which runs side-by-side with earlier versions of IE. The fourth such preview was released last week.

Microsoft's chief operating officer, Kevin Turner, told financial analysts last month that the beta of IE 9 would come in September.

Google's Gmail Updates

Google finally pulls Gmail contacts tool into line.

Search giant Google has revamped its email service Gmail. The company has overhauled the contact management tool found inside Gmail.

In a blog post Benjamin Grol, Gmail product manager said "An improved Contacts interface has been the number one requested feature from user feedback."

While the core Gmail experience has been changed significantly since its 2004 launch, the Contacts interface has not seen too many changes. The new version of Gmail's contact manager, which Google says is already in the process of going out to users, brings with it a number of changes and addons.

* Mail, Contacts, and Tasks links have moved to the top left of Gmail.

* Compose mail is now a button rather than a link.

* A smaller header area puts the first message in users' inbox.

* The Select All, None, Read, Unread, and Starred links that used to be above your messages are now options in a drop-down menu, next to the Archive button.

* Keyboard shortcuts now work in Contacts too, and Google has made selecting and grouping contacts more like selecting and labeling email.

* Users can now sort contacts by last name. Look under More actions for this option.

* Use custom labels for phone numbers and other fields.

* Now, when users have the option to undo their recent changes.

* Automatic saving: This means users no longer need to worry about 'edit' mode or `view' mode — just edit away and Gmail will save your changes.

* Structured name fields: Users can now set name components (i.e. Title, First, Middle, Last and Suffix) explicitly or continue to use the name field as a free form area if they prefer a less structured approach.

* Manual and bulk contact merge: Users can now merge contacts from the More actions menu. All they need to do is select the contacts they would like to merge and select Merge contacts from under the More actions menu.

Solar tsunami from Sun may hit Earth

Solar tsunami from Sun may hit Earth on Tuesday.

The Earth is in the path to be hit by a wave of violent space weather as early as Tuesday after a massive explosion of the sun, scientists have warned.

Astronomers witnessed the huge flare above a giant sunspot the size of the Earth, the explosion aimed directly towards Earth.

It sent a "solar tsunami" racing 93 million miles across space, which is likely to hit the planet on Tuesday.

The wave of supercharged gas is likely to spark spectacular displays of the aurora or northern and southern lights.

However, a really big solar eruption could shut down global communication grids and destroy satellites, if it reaches today.

A recent warning by NASA said that Britain could be at the receiving end of widespread power blackouts for a long time after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm".

"It looks like the first eruption was so large that it changed the magnetic fields throughout half the Sun's visible atmosphere and provided the right conditions for the second eruption," said Dr Lucie Green, of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Surrey.

"This means we have a very good chance of seeing major and prolonged effects, such as the northern lights at low latitudes," she added.

Fault hits in International Space Station

Cooling system fault hits International Space Station.

The crew of the International Space Station have been forced to reduce power after half the cooling system suddenly shut down over the weekend.

Nasa officials insisted the three Americans and three Russians aboard were not in danger.

Urgent spacewalk repairs are being discussed for this week.

Without thermal controls, temperatures on the ISS's Sun-facing side can soar to 121C (250F), plunging to minus 157C (-250F) on the dark side, Nasa says.

"There might be a comfortable spot somewhere in the middle of the station, but searching for it wouldn't be much fun," a statement on its website adds.

The station is now operating on a single string, the Associated Press reports, and has no safeguard in case of further cooling system failures.
Alarms sound

Trouble arose on Saturday night when one of the two ammonia-fed cooling loops shut down, triggering alarms throughout the ISS

The two ammonia lines ensure that all the station's electronic equipment does not overheat.

Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson set in motion equipment shutdown procedures and, with crewmate Douglas Wheelock, installed a jumper cable to keep all the rooms cool.

The Global Positioning System circuit, several power converters and a set of devices that route commands to various pieces of equipment were switched off.

Two of the four gyroscopes - part of the space station's pointing and navigating system - were initially shut down but the crew installed a jumper cable to bring up a third gyroscope, leaving the station in a much more stable position, AP says.

Flight controllers tried to restart the disabled ammonia pump early on Sunday but the circuit breaker tripped again.

Any repairs later this week almost certainly will involve replacing the faulty ammonia pump, a difficult job that would require two spacewalks, AP adds.

"It's pretty clear that we're going to want to have a course of action to take as quickly as possible," Nasa spokesman Rob Navias said at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

"This is not something we want to linger over."

Two spare pumps are stored on the outside of the station. Two of the Americans on board are already scheduled to conduct a spacewalk on Thursday for routine maintenance.

No space shuttle visits to the ISS are planned before November.

Importance of Sex in Life

Sex Boosts Brain Growth, Study Suggests.

Sex apparently can help the brain grow, according to new findings in rats. Sexually active rodents also seemed less anxious than virgins, Princeton scientists discovered.

Past findings had shown that stressful, unpleasant events could stifle brain cell growth in adults. To see if pleasant albeit stressful experiences could have the opposite effect, researchers studied the effects of sex in rats.

Scientists played matchmaker by giving adult male rats access to sexually receptive females either once daily for two weeks or just once in two weeks. They also measured blood levels of stress hormones known as glucocorticoids, which researchers suspected might lie behind the detrimental effects that unpleasant experiences have on the brain.

When compared with male virgins, both groups of sexually active rats had cell proliferation, or an increase in the number of neurons, in the hippocampus, a part of the brain linked with memory whose cells are especially sensitive to unpleasant experiences. The rats that had more sex also had adult brain cells grow, as well as a rise in the number of connections between brain cells.

However, the rodents that only saw females once in two weeks had elevated levels of stress hormones, while the rats that had regular access showed no increase in the hormones. Sexually experienced rodents also proved less anxious than virgins, in that they were quicker to chomp down on food in unfamiliar environs.

These findings suggest that while stress hormones can be detrimental to the brain, these effects can be overridden if whatever experiences triggered them were pleasant.

The scientists detailed their findings online July 14 in the journal PLoS ONE.

NASA Discovered New Planets like Earth

NASA's Kepler Telescope Detects 150 Earth-Sized Worlds.

Just outside of our solar system, NASA has discovered more than 100 new Earth-like planets, sparkling new hopes for those interested in extraterrestrial life.

The agency said that its Kepler spacecraft has gathered six weeks of data on more than 156,000 stars in search for signs of planets orbiting them.

The data revealed five new solar systems within the Milky Way as well as 700 bodies that could be new planets, among which 140 are considered to be similar to our planet, meaning that their composition could support the development of simple life forms.

Prior to NASA’s report, about 450 planets had been found outside the solar system over the last 15 years. Yet most would be inhospitable for known forms of life and have very high surface temperatures.

The Kepler probe was launched in April 200,9 and in June reached its position for monitoring space outside the solar system. The spacecraft is on a four-year mission to examine the structure and diversity of planetary systems in the Milky Way using a 95-megapixel camera.

“While an exhaustive study remains to be done, the implication is that many planetary systems have multiple planets,” William Borucki, the mission's principle investigator, told Mail Online.

Cheapest Labtab (tablet for $35) ever in world

India unveils prototype for $35 touch-screen computer.

The Indian government has unveiled the prototype of an iPad-like touch-screen laptop, with a price tag of $35 (£23), which it hopes to roll out next year.

Aimed at students, the tablet supports web browsing, video conferencing and word processing, say developers.

Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said a manufacturer was being sought for the gadget, which was developed by India's top IT colleges.

An earlier cheap laptop plan by the same ministry came to nothing.

The device unveiled on Thursday has no hard disk, using a memory card instead, like a mobile phone, and can run on solar power, according to reports.
'Manufacturer interest'

It would cost a fraction of the price of California-based technology giant Apple's hugely popular iPad, which retails from $499.

Mr Sibal said the Indian tablet, said to run the Linux operating system, was expected to be introduced to higher education institutions next year.

The plan was to drop the price eventually to $20 and ultimately to $10, he added.

Unveiling the gadget, the human resource development minister told the Economic Times newspaper it was India's answer to the "$100 laptops" developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.

"The solutions for tomorrow will emerge from India," Mr Sibal said, reports news agency AFP.

Last year, one of the ministry's officials announced it was about to unveil a $10 laptop, triggering worldwide media interest.

But there was disappointment after the "Sakshat" turned out to be a prototype of a handheld device, with an unspecified price tag, that never materialised.

To develop its latest gadget, the ministry said it had turned to the elite Indian Institute of Technology, and the Indian Institute of Science, after a lacklustre response from the private sector.

Mamta Varma, a ministry spokeswoman, said the device was feasible because of falling hardware costs.

Several global manufacturers, including at least one from Taiwan, had expressed interest in making the device, she said, although no deals had been agreed, and she declined to name any of the companies.

The project is part of a government initiative which also aims to extend broadband to all of India's 25,000 colleges and 500 universities.

In 2005, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) unveiled the prototype of a $100 laptop for children in the developing world, although it ended up costing about double that price.

In May, Nicholas Negroponte - of the MIT's Media Lab - announced plans to develop a basic tablet computer for $99 through his non-profit association, One Laptop per Child.

Monster Star

Astronomers detect 'monster star'
They are among the true monsters of space - colossal stars whose size and brightness go well beyond what many scientists thought was even possible.

One of the objects, known simply as R136a1, is the most massive ever found.

The star is seen to have a mass about 265 times that of our own Sun; but the latest modelling work suggests at birth it could have been bigger, still.

Perhaps as much as 320 times that of the Sun, says Professor Paul Crowther from Sheffield University, UK.

"If it replaced the Sun in our Solar System, it would outshine [it] by as much as the Sun currently outshines the full Moon," the astronomer told BBC News.

The stars were identified by Crowther's team using a combination of new observations on the Very Large Telescope facility in Chile and data gathered previously with the Hubble Space Telescope.

The group studied the NGC 3603 and RMC 136a clusters - regions of space where thick clouds of gas and dust are collapsing into even denser clumps.

In these places, huge stars ignite to burn brief but brilliant lives before exploding as supernovas to seed the Universe with heavy elements.

NGC 3603 is relatively close in cosmic terms - just 22,000 light-years distant. RMC 136a (more often nicknamed R136) is slightly further away, and is sited within one of our neighbouring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, some 165,000 light-years away.

The team found several stars with surface temperatures over 40,000 degrees - more than seven times hotter than our Sun.

The research shows these young stellar objects to be unbelievably bright, truly massive and also extremely wide - perhaps 30 times the radius of our Sun in the case of R136a1.
How big is big? Star comparisons
Cluster of huge stars (Eso)

This artist's impression (left) shows the relative sizes of young stars, from low mass "yellow dwarfs" such as our Sun, through "blue dwarf" stars that are eight times more massive than the Sun, to a 300 solar-mass star like R136a1 (right)

Up close the stars would look a mess, however. Unlike our Sun which appears as a defined disc on the sky, the giants identified by Professor Crowther and colleagues would be losing so much material through powerful winds from their puffed up atmospheres that they would have a fuzzy look about them.

One thing seems for sure - no planets would exist in orbit about them.

"Planets take longer to form than these stars take to live and die. Even if there were planets, there would be no astronomers on them because the night sky would be almost as bright as the day in these clusters," Professor Crowther joked.

"Some of these big stars are relatively close to each other, so even at 'night' you'd have another very bright star shining on you."

Previously observed giants had been seen to get as big as 150 times the mass of our Sun. The latest findings raise interesting questions about what the upper limits on size might be.

Ordinarily, there should come a point where the pressure from all the radiation emitted by a stellar behemoth pushes back against any further infall of gas and dust. In other words, there ought to be a physical barrier to excessive star growth.

But Professor Crowther adds a second factor - that of resource. There may not exist in today's Universe places that have sufficient supplies of gas and dust to feed ever more massive stars.

However, the new observations do give a tantalising glimpse of what the very early Universe might have been like. Many objects in the very first population of stars to shine shortly after the Big Bang are thought to have been monsters like R136a1.

When these objects blew apart, their cataclysmic demise was so violent they may not have left behind a remnant core of material as is often the case following a supernova; or even a black hole which is another common consequence, too.

Instead, these giants may simply have dumped all their contents back into space, dispersing heavy elements like iron equivalent to the mass of 10 of our Suns.

"The bigger picture to this research is that it gives us confidence that there were probably more of these really massive stars in much greater numbers early on in the Universe," Professor Crowther told BBC News.

The new results appear in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

NASA Balloon Crashes in Australian Outback

Huge NASA Science Balloon Crashes in Australian Outback.

A huge NASA balloon loaded with a telescope painstakingly built to scan the sky at wavelengths invisible to the human eye crashed in the Australian outback Thursday, destroying the $2 million astronomy experiment and just missing nearby onlookers, according to Australian media reports.

In dramatic video released by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the giant 400-foot (121-meter) balloon is seen just beginning to lift its payload, then the telescope gondola appears to unexpectedly come loose from its carriage. The telescope crashes through a fence and overturns a nearby parked sport utility vehicle before finally stopping.

"No one was injured. A mishap investigation board is being convened," NASA officials said in a statement released late Thursday.

The attempted balloon telescope launch took place at the Alice Springs Balloon Launching Centre, near the town of Alice Springs, in the northern territory of Australia.

The wayward balloon overturned one car, but missed another parked nearby with local Alice Springs couple Stan and Betty Davies, who had come to watch the launch, still inside.

"We were sitting in our car and preparing to move it out of the way and we were actually about a foot of being wiped out," ABC quoted Davies as saying.

The balloon was carrying the Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT), a gamma-ray telescope built by astronomer Steven Boggs and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, California to study astrophysical sources in space. The telescope was dragged about 450 feet (137 meters) before finally coming to a stop, NASA officials said.

"Today was a terrible day for a lot of people," wrote Eric Bellm, a graduate astronomy student at the UC Berkeley, in a blog chronicling the science mission. "For the NCT team, we've poured our hearts into this instrument for years. It was an almost unfathomable shock to find ourselves cleaning up the wreckage of our gondola rather than watching it lift off towards space."

The unmanned research balloon was built by NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas and expected to haul its two-telescope payload up to an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,576 meters). That's about 23 miles (37 km), though smaller home-built balloons have been built to reach high altitudes as well.

In his account of the crash, Bellm said an investigation into the balloon's launch failure will be performed, though a first glance found that at least some of the components for the Nuclear Compton Telescope appear to have survived relatively intact. The science team has cleaned up the wreckage and returned it to a staging hangar, he added.

"Damage to the NCT payload, project assets and area surroundings are currently being assessed," NASA officials added in their statement.

Ravi Sood, director of the Alice Springs Balloon Launching Centre and a professor at Australia's University of New South Wales, confirmed that no one was hurt in the incident, but added that sometimes balloon launches can go awry.

"Ballooning, that's the way it happens on occasions but it is very, very disappointing. Gut-wrenching actually," he told ABC.

The failed balloon launch in Australia marked NASA's second balloon science campaign this month at the remote site. On April 15, NASA's balloon science program launched Tracking and Imaging Gamma Ray Experiment (TIGRE), a gamma-ray telescope, to search the galactic center of the sky for emissions from radioactive materials, NASA officials said.

That launch, which sent the telescope and its balloon to an altitude of 127,000 feet (38,709 meters), went according to plan, the space agency said.

The balloon's next payload to fly, an X-ray telescope called HERO aimed at mapping the galactic center for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, was targeted for May, Australian officials added.

Nasa found Pac-Man on the Saturn Moon

Nasa spacecraft takes amazing thermal image of Saturn moon

Scientists operating the Cassini spacecraft in its orbit around Saturn have discovered that one of the planet's moons looks remarkably like the hungry 1980s video game icon Pac-Man.

Cassini took this thermal image of the surface of Mimas and produced a map which looks just like the video game character.

The probe measures temperature differences across the object's surface and scientists believe the variations are probably related to the diversity of textures in surface materials.

Lighter areas of the moon which appear in the image may retain the heat better than others, scientists explain.

Mimas is only around 250 miles across. It has a distinctive scar called the Herschel Crater, which has led to many comparisons with the 'Death Star' from the Star Wars movies.

The Cassini team says the creation of the crater itself may have played a key role in the changing conditions across vast swathes of the moon's surface.

The project is a joint venture between the Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Its mission was recently extended until 2017.

Saturn has 62 moons with confirmed orbits. The largest is Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury.

India launches Brahmos cruise missile

India successfully launches Supersonic Cruise Missile - Brahmos

India on Sunday became the first country to have a manoeuvrable supersonic cruise missile in its inventory, when it successfully test fired the vertical-launch version of Brahmos supersonic cruise missile, jointly developed with Russia.

Launched from a state of the art vertical launcher, fitted in a moving warship INS Ranvir off the Orissa coast, the missile hit the target ship in the Bay of Bengal.

The missile, which has a range of 290 km and flies at a speed of 2.8 Mach, can take on a target lying anywhere in the 360-degree range of the ship. It is capable of carrying conventional warheads up to 200 -300 kg.

CEO and MD of BrahMos Aerospace A Sivathanu Pillai was quoted by agencies as saying that the launch met all mission requirements and was 100 per cent successful. “It was a perfect hit and a perfect mission,” Mr Pillai said.

He said the test proved it was possible to change the direction of the missile at supersonic speeds before hitting the target. The missile performed supersonic maneuvering following the exact flight path and homed on to the decommissioned target ship INS Meen.

President Pratibha Patil and defence minister A K Antony congratulated the scientists and naval officers for the successful launch of the missile.

The Brahmos missiles are being jointly designed and developed by the DRDO and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyenia. The Universal Vertical Launcher, from which the missile was test fired, has been designed and developed by the BrahMos Aerospace and patented.

The launcher is to be fitted under the warship’s deck to protect it from atmospheric conditions and impart stealth to the weapon system. It also allows the missile to be turned to cover 360degre. Brahmos can be launched from both vertical and inclined configurations from naval platforms.

The standard version of the missile has been tested several times before.

Water on the Moon - CHANDRAYAAN-1’s discoveries

CHANDRAYAAN-1 discovers Millions of tonnes of ice on the moon.

CHANDRAYAAN-1’s momentous discoveries of water on the moon in different forms do not seem to end. In its latest discovery, the third so far, the spacecraft’s radar called Miniature-Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) has found more than 40 craters in the moon with ice deposits.

The craters vary from two kilometres to 15 km in diameter. They are situated in the North Pole, in the permanently shadowed regions of the moon. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) estimated that there could be at least 600 million tonnes of water ice in these craters.

The Mini-SAR is a NASA instrument that flew on board Chandrayaan-1, which lifted off from the spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on October 22, 2008. The spacecraft carried 11 scientific instruments from different countries, including India. This is the second NASA instrument on board Chandrayaan-1 to discover water on the moon.

Earlier, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) detected water molecules in extremely minute quantities on the moon’s surface soil and rocks. An Indian instrument called Chandra’s Altitudinal Composition Explorer (ChACE), which is a mass spectrometer and was housed in the Moon Impact Probe (MIP), also obtained “very clear signatures of H{-2}0 (18 atomic mass unit, or amu) intensifying” in the thin atmosphere of the moon. The MIP crashed on the lunar surface on November 14, 2008 (Frontline, October 23, 2009).

Prof. Paul Spudis, Principal Investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, United States, said: “The new discoveries by Chandrayaan-1 and other lunar missions show that the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought.”

J.N. Goswami, Principal Scientist, Chandrayaan-1, called the latest discovery “an interesting and new result”. He was confident that whatever signals the scientists were getting about the presence of ice deposits in the craters were correct. “It is quite interesting from our perspective. We thought it would be there and it is there,” he said.

Prof. Goswami, who is also Director, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, pointed out that the M3 had earlier found water molecules on the moon’s surface soil and rocks. “We are now finding it in solid form. So this is very important. Water is an important resource if people want to go to the moon,” he said.

The latest discovery presaged a “positive direction for future explorations with respect to lunar resources and pursuit of pure science”, said Mylswami Annadurai, Project Director, Chandrayaan-1 and 2. “Earlier, we had seen the physical phenomenon of water getting formed in one region of the moon. We are now seeing water getting retained in another region as ice deposits. This is called volatile transportation,” he added.

Spudis said, “The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon.” The new findings have added to the growing scientific understanding of the multiple forms of water on the moon.

Annadurai is happy that the three important discoveries were made by Chandrayaan-1’s instruments. “These discoveries indicate that we had a good combination of instruments on board Chandrayaan-1. They could not have been made by optical instruments, which need sunlight to see what is there,” explained Annadurai.

For instance, the Mini-SAR mapped the moon’s permanently shadowed polar craters, which are not visible from the earth. The radar uses the polarisation properties of reflected radio waves to characterise surface properties. Results from the mapping showed deposits having radar characteristics similar to ice.

In the estimate of S. Satish, the spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the discovery had significant implications for undertaking future missions to the moon and for interplanetary travel.

The amount of ice estimated to be present in the craters held promise for establishing colonies on the moon, he said. He also said, “The ice can be used for production of oxygen for sustaining the astronauts’ stay in the moon and to provide water to their habitat.” He predicted that future missions would concentrate on landing rovers near the craters so that an accurate estimate of the amount of ice available in them could be had.

However, a scientist of the Space Physics Laboratory (SPL), Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, cautioned that it would be extremely difficult to set up human colonies in these permanently shadowed regions of the moon’s North Pole. While lunar explorations with more orbiters, landers and rovers would get a boost with these discoveries, it was premature to talk of establishing human colonies, he said.

Space shuttle Endeavour arrived

Space shuttle Endeavour arrived at international space station.

February 10 2010 : Shuttle Endeavour arrived to a warm welcome at the International Space Station early Wednesday, delivering a new room and observation deck that will come close to completing construction 200 miles above Earth.

The midnight rendezvous occurred as the two spacecraft sailed over the Atlantic, just west of Portugal. It took longer than normal to lock the shuttle and station together because of the relative motion between the two. The space station's five residents filled the time, before their guests came aboard, by trying out camera angles and interviewing one another.

What are you expecting from the shuttle?

Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi asked Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev. "My cucumbers," Suraev replied, getting a big laugh.

The two crews shook hands and embraced when the hatches finally opened, greeting each other with "good to see you" and "how goes it" while floating inside the space station.

Space station commander Jeffrey Williams said he was happy to see his friends - "really happy because we haven't seen many people other than the crew for a long time."

The shuttle's six astronauts were impressed with what they saw.

"We couldn't believe how spectacular and shiny the space station was," said Endeavour's commander, George Zamka.

Back at Mission Control, NASA said that standard checks hadn't revealed any launch damage so far. All the pictures and information collected during the first two days of the flight indicate Endeavour suffered no serious damage during Monday's liftoff. But the analysis is continuing, and a few hundred photos taken from the space station during Endeavour's final approach will yield additional data, said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team.

Endeavour's crew will spend more than a week at the space station, installing the compartments - worth about $400 million - and helping with space station maintenance.

This represents the last major construction work at the orbiting outpost. Once the room, named Tranquility, and the observation deck are in place, the station will be 98 percent complete.

Before docking, Zamka guided Endeavour through a 360-degree back flip so two of the space station crew could photograph the shuttle's belly with zoom lenses. The photos were transmitted immediately to Mission Control so experts can scour the images for any scrapes or holes.

A few pieces of foam insulation came off the external fuel tank during the launch, but none appeared to strike Endeavour.

The only oddity in the pictures from orbit was a protruding seal on the top of the left wing. The seal is part of a door for an access panel; about 4 inches of the 2- to 3-foot seal is sticking out.

Cain said the flapping seal poses no concern, but engineers will look into the matter to find out how it happened. Mission Control asked the station crew to take pictures of the seal, as the shuttle performed its somersault.

As for the rest of the wings and nose - the most vulnerable parts of the shuttle during re-entry - the laser inspection conducted earlier in the day by the astronauts was coming up empty. "Nothing that threw any unusual flags for us," Cain told reporters late Tuesday afternoon.

The rigorous checks were put in place following the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Three spacewalks are planned to hook up the 23-foot Tranquility named after the Apollo 11 moon landing site and the seven-windowed dome. The first will get under way Thursday night.

Both compartments were built in Italy for the European Space Agency. Tranquility cost $380 million and the lookout $27 million.