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.

Five Things About NASA's Valentine's Day Comet

Here are five facts you should know about NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft as it prepares for a Valentine's "date" with comet Tempel 1. Feel free to sing along!

1. "The Way You Look Tonight" - The spacecraft is on a course to fly by comet Tempel 1 on Feb. 14 at about 8:37 p.m. PST (11:37 p.m. EST) -- Valentine's Day. Time of closest approach to Tempel 1 is significant because of the comet's rotation. We won't know until images are returned which face the comet has shown to the camera.

2. "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" - In 2004, Stardust became the first mission to collect particles directly from a comet, Wild 2, as well as samples of interstellar dust. The samples were returned in 2006 via a capsule that detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to the ground at a targeted area in Utah. Mission controllers then placed the still-viable Stardust spacecraft on a flight path that could reuse the flight system, if a target of opportunity presented itself. Tempel 1 became that target of opportunity.

3. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" - The Stardust-NExT mission will allow scientists for the first time to look for changes on a comet's surface that occurred after one orbit around the sun. Tempel 1 was observed in 2005 by NASA's Deep Impact mission, which put an impactor on a collision course with the comet. Stardust-NExT might get a glimpse of the crater left behind, but if not, the comet would provide scientists with previously unseen areas for study. In addition, the Stardust-NExT encounter might reveal changes to Tempel 1 between Deep Impact and Stardust-Next, since the comet has completed an orbit around the sun.

4. "The Wind Beneath My Wings" - This Tempel 1 flyby will write the final chapter of the spacecraft's success story. The aging spacecraft approached 12 years of space travel on Feb. 7, logging almost 6 billion kilometers (3.5 billion miles) since launch. The spacecraft is nearly out of fuel. The Tempel 1 flyby and return of images are expected to consume the remaining fuel.

5. "Love is Now the Stardust of Yesterday" - Although the spacecraft itself will no longer be active after the flyby, the data collected by the Stardust-NExT mission will provide comet scientists with years of data to study how comets formed and evolved.

Bonus points for naming all the artists who sing these catchy tunes.

Dave Lindahl Scam

Space Spectrum allocation using S Band

PM forms commission to probe ISRO agreement

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has formed a high-level commission to look into allegations of revenue losses in the allocation of space spectrum using S-band - high value and scarce radio waves - between the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) commercial arm and a private company.

The commission will submit its report in a month's time, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said Thursday.

The two-member commission comprises Planning Commission member B.K. Chaturvedi and Space Commission member and aerospace expert Roddam Narasimha.

Reports have alleged loss of government revenue in a contract entered into by Antrix Corporation -- the commercial arm of ISRO -- and Devas Multimedia Pvt Ltd due to lease of space segment capacity which would use S-Band spectrum.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has indicated that the alleged deal between Antrix and Devas has caused the nation an estimated loss of Rs.2 lakh crore.

The government Tuesday denied that the nation suffered revenue losses in the allocation of space spectrum using S-band but admitted that the agreement between Antrix and Devas had not explicitly mentioned the end-use terms. Further, it said the agreement was being cancelled.

Dave Lindahl Scam

How Technology Saves Lives

Technology can save lives. But the report out of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] shows in stark, dramatic fashion just how crucial technology is to protecting you and your families from harm or even death.

NOAA says that last year, its “satellites were critical in the rescues of 295 people from life-threatening situations throughout the United States and its surrounding waters.”

That’s a huge deal. How did the satellites help?

“The satellites picked up distress signals from emergency beacons carried by downed pilots, shipwrecked boaters and stranded hikers, and relayed the information about their location to first responders on the ground,” NOAA says.

And NOAA says “of the 295 saves last year, 180 people were rescued from the water, 43 from aviation incidents, and 72 in land situations where they used their handheld personal locator beacons."

What are these satellites exactly? Well, NOAA says they are “polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites” which work along with Russia’s COSPAS spacecraft as part of the international Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking system, called COSPAS-SARSAT.

NOAA says “This system uses a network of satellites to quickly detect and locate distress signals from emergency beacons onboard aircraft and boats, and from smaller, handheld personal locator beacons called PLBs.”

This is how I like my taxpayer money spent. Bravo to NOAA.

Which states saw the most NOOA rescues? Alaska had the most people rescued last year with 77, NOAA says, followed by Florida with 37, and West Virginia with 17, the latter involving those aboard a downed Army Reserve helicopter.

“With each rescue, the COSPAS-SARSAT system performs the way it was intended — as a real, life-saving network,” said Chris O’Connors, program manager for NOAA SARSAT, in a statement.

And it gets even cooler. NOAA says that when a NOAA satellite ferrets out the exact “location of a distress signal within the United States or its surrounding waters, the information is relayed to the SARSAT Mission Control Center based at NOAA’s Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Md.” From there, that information is quickly bounced over to a Rescue Coordination Center, operated by either the U.S. Air Force, for land rescues, or the U.S. Coast Guard, for water rescues.

This is the 29th year of this fine collaboration, COSPAS-SARSAT, which has already been recognized with supporting more than 28,000 rescues worldwide, according to NOAA, including more than 6,500 in the United States and its surrounding waters.

Dave Lindahl Scam

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>>

NASA's Space Taxis

NASA aims to ease doubts over private space taxis.

NASA is reassuring commercial space firms that it will be a supportive customer for privately built space taxis even as it cautions that Congress could stymie efforts to foster development of such vehicles.

During an Aug. 19 industry event at NASA headquarters here, agency officials said 35 companies had responded to a May 21 NASA solicitation seeking input on the fledgling commercial crew initiative that U.S. President Barack Obama has proposed for a $5.8 billion investment over the next five years.

"We believe that we can fund up to four providers with that $5.8 billion," Phil McAlister, NASA's commercial crew planning lead, told an audience of mostly space industry executives and advocates attending the forum. "This is going to be a challenging program for both NASA and the private sector, and if somebody stumbles along the way we would like to have other providers that hopefully we can rely on." [ 6 Companies That Could Launch Humans Into Space]

Commercial space advocates — including the companies aiming to build the private space taxis and launchers NASA says it needs — remain upbeat despite a series of legislative setbacks in the U.S. House and Senate, which pared back Obama's commercial crew request in draft legislation moving through Congress and revived elements of the Moon-bound Constellation program Obama seeks to abandon.

"Of course, there is a lot of discussion here in D.C. and throughout the nation on what this program is going to be going forward," McAlister said. "We are going to adjust if necessary, but this is sort of the baseline program that we are putting together today."

McAlister said if NASA is directed to invest less money in commercial crew than the nearly $6 billion it has requested, it will have to re-evaluate its plans.

"However, competition is a fundamental aspect of the strategy," he said. "I don't want to say exactly what we would do, but we would have to trade schedule for the potential for competition, and I would say competition is a very strong driver."

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.

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.