PASADENA, Calif. — NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.
Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million miles from Earth.

“This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet,” said Adrian Hooke, team lead and manager of space-networking architecture, technology and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

NASA and Vint Cerf, a vice president at Google Inc., in Mountain View, Calif., partnered 10 years ago to develop this software protocol. The DTN sends information using a method that differs from the normal Internet’s Transmission-Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, communication suite, which Cerf co-designed.

The Interplanetary Internet must be robust to withstand delays, disruptions and disconnections in space. Glitches can happen when a spacecraft moves behind a planet, or when solar storms and long communication delays occur. The delay in sending or receiving data from Mars takes between three-and-a-half to 20 minutes at the speed of light.

Unlike TCP/IP on Earth, the DTN does not assume a continuous end-to-end connection. In its design, if a destination path cannot be found, the data packets are not discarded. Instead, each network node keeps the information as long as necessary until it can communicate safely with another node. This store-and-forward method, similar to basketball players safely passing the ball to the player nearest the basket means information does not get lost when no immediate path to the destination exists. Eventually, the information is delivered to the end user.

“In space today, an operations team must manually schedule each link and generate all the commands to specify which data to send, when to send it, and where to send it,” said Leigh Torgerson, manager of the DTN Experiment Operations Center at JPL. “With standardized DTN, this can all be done automatically.”

Engineers began a month-long series of DTN demonstrations in October. Data were transmitted using NASA’s Deep Space Network in demonstrations occurring twice a week. Engineers use NASA’s Epoxi spacecraft as a Mars data-relay orbiter. Epoxi is on a mission to encounter Comet Hartley 2 in two years. There are 10 nodes on this early interplanetary network. One is the Epoxi spacecraft itself and the other nine, which are on the ground at JPL, simulate Mars landers, orbiters and ground mission-operations centers.

This month-long experiment is the first in a series of planned demonstrations to qualify the technology for use on a variety of upcoming space missions. In the next round of testing, a NASA-wide demonstration using new DTN software loaded on board the International Space Station is scheduled to begin next summer.

In the next few years, the Interplanetary Internet could enable many new types of space missions. Complex missions involving multiple landed, mobile and orbiting spacecraft will be far easier to support through the use of the Interplanetary Internet. It also could ensure reliable communications for astronauts on the surface of the moon.

The Deep Impact Networking Experiment is sponsored by the Space Communications and Navigation Office in NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and Discovery Program in Washington provided experimental access to the Epoxi spacecraft. The Epoxi mission team provided critical support throughout development and operations.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-298_Deep_space_internet.html

The studing of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena from space should be a legitimate university subject, an American professor, Philip Haseley, has claimed.

By Andrew Hough

Last year there were almost 400 reported sightings to the Ministry of Defence of UFOs throughout Britain Photo: GETTY IMAGES

The New York anthropology professor said the subject should be part of the mainstream as a serious “area of study”.

The Niagara County Community College, a state university in New York, lecturer said due to the high amount of sightings every year, it should follow that students should be able to investigate phenomenon.

“(A sighting) happens to millions of people (around the world),” he said.

“It’s about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study.

“It’s important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated.”

Prof Haseley, who is also head of the Western New York Mutual UFO Network, an organisation that is focused on UFO research, said there were up to 50 UFO sightings are reported every month across region.

He said the group investigated the sightings in a “scientific manner” using field investigation, radar, astronomy and meteorology.

“To say we are UFO believers basically implies we are taking this on faith, and that’s not the case. There’s plenty of evidence,” he said.

He dismissed the inevitable suggestions from skeptics that such study would be waste of time.

“We have to deal with skeptics like any other UFO organisation, and we are perfectly willing to be critiqued,” he told the Buffalo News in New York.

“We know people who think this is a nonsense subject. And we’ll refer you to voluminous literature and facts about UFOs.”

Last year there were almost 400 reported sightings to the Ministry of Defence of UFOs throughout Britain – a figure that had tripled from the previous year.

The so-called “X Files” reported to the MoD’s UFO desk was the “busiest” year on record.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/7584331/UFO-studies-should-be-legitimate-university-subject-claims-American-professor.html

By Doreen Walton
Science reporter, BBC News

It is 1,500 light-years from Earth but CoRoT-9b is the first temperate planet found known to be similar to those within our own Solar System.

The presence of CoRoT-9b was detected by a space mission designed to find planets we cannot see from the ground.

“It is the size of Jupiter and has an orbit similar to Mercury,” said lead researcher Dr Hans Deeg.

In the journal Nature, the scientists say it is the first planet of its type which can yield detailed information.

Eccentric orbits

More than 400 exoplanets, or planets outside the Solar System, have been discovered so far but Dr Deeg, who works at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in the Canary Islands, explained that the others have all been “exotic”.

“They are either extremely hot, being very close to the central star on short orbits, or they are on eccentric orbits, taking them close to and far from the central star, giving them extreme temperatures.”

CoRoT-9b has a temperate climate. “This is the first planet where it makes sense to apply the models developed for planets within our solar system,” said Dr Deeg.

The surface temperature is estimated to be between about -20 and 160 degrees Celsius.

Dr Deeg explained that although some of the exoplanets previously discovered were thought likely to be temperate it was not possible to confirm that or to find out much information about them.

The planet was discovered by an international team of 60 astronomers and identified using the “transit” method.

During its orbit of 95 days it passes in front of its central star, or transits, for about eight hours. “The transit method enables us to obtain much more information about it,” explained Dr Deeg.

“We expect this to be a reference object for the next decade.

“We can derive its temperature as we know the distance to the central star and the type of central star it is.”

A blue planet?

CoRoT-9b was spotted by the CoRoT satellite, which is a mission led by the French space agency, Centre National d’Études Spatiales. Its presence was then confirmed by observations from several telescopes from the European Southern Observatory, in Tenerife and at other sites.

“An analysis of the data from the satellite gives us the size and the data from the ground gives us the mass,” explained Dr Deeg.

“We don’t know the colour. It’s likely that it has high atmosphere water clouds which might make it blue but that depends on the mixture of gases which we really do not know,” he added.

The scientists say the discovery of the planet shows that the development history of our Solar System has been repeated around other stars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8572760.stm

Mini-SAR map of the Circular Polarization Ratio (CPR) of the north pole of the Moon. Fresh, “normal” craters (red circles) show high values of CPR inside and outside their rims. This is consistent with the distribution of rocks and ejected blocks around fresh impact features, indicating that the high CPR here is surface scattering. The “anomalous” craters (green circles) have high CPR within, but not outside their rims. Their interiors are also in permanent sun shadow. These relations are consistent with the high CPR in this case being caused by water ice, which is only stable in the polar dark cold traps. We estimate over 600 million cubic meters (1 cubic meter = 1 metric ton) of water in these features.

Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits near the moon’s north pole. NASA’s Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to15 km) in diameter. Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it’s estimated there could be at least 1.3 trillion pounds (600 million metric tons) of water ice.

The Mini-SAR has imaged many of the permanently shadowed regions that exist at both poles of the Moons. These dark areas are extremely cold and it has been hypothesized that volatile material, including water ice, could be present in quantity here.  The main science object of the Mini-SAR experiment is to map and characterize any deposits that exist.

Mini-SAR is a lightweight (less than 10 kg) imaging radar.  It uses the polarization properties of reflected radio waves to characterize surface properties.  Mini-SAR sends pulses of radar that are left-circular polarized.  Typical planetary surfaces reverse the polarization during the reflection of radio waves, so that normal echoes from Mini-SAR are right circular polarized.  The ratio of received power in the same sense transmitted (left circular) to the opposite sense (right circular) is called the circular polarization ratio (CPR).  Most of the Moon has low CPR, meaning that the reversal of polarization is the norm, but some targets have high CPR.  These include very rough, fresh surfaces (such as a young, fresh crater) and ice, which is transparent to radio energy and multiply scatters the pulses, leading to an enhancement in same sense reflections and hence, high CPR.  CPR is not uniquely diagnostic of either roughness or ice; the science team must take into account the environment of the occurrences of high CPR signal to interpret its cause.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/multimedia/feature_ice_like_deposits.html

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 February 2010 23.39 GMT

An infrared image released by the US department of defense shows the Missile Defense Agency’s airborne laser destroying its target. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The US this week achieved a goal that has eluded it since Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program by knocking out a ballistic missile using a high-powered laser beam mounted on a plane.

The successful test was carried out yesterday in California, the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said, making real what had previously been confined to the realms of science fiction.

The plane uses a combination of lasers to lock on to the missile and track its trajectory, and then bring it down with a ­single shot fired from the nose turret, all in less than 12 seconds.

According to analysts, the breakthrough could have an impact on the North Korean and Iranian missile programs, forcing them to develop faster missiles and adopt measures to counter the laser beams.

The MDA said today: “The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies.”

Work on the laser weapons system has been under way in earnest for at least a decade, at a cost of more than $1bn. In the past, laser beams have been used successfully against stationary targets from stationary platforms, but in this test the beam was directed from a plane against a moving target, a much more challenging feat.

However, some scientists and military analysts expressed skepticism about its long-term viability, saying that other such projects that had been hailed as revolutionary did not work when confronted by all the problems thrown up by war.

Michael Elleman, a senior fellow for missile research in the Washington office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, traced a direct line from the controversial program set out by Reagan three decades ago that was dubbed Star Wars, which envisaged lasers based in outer space intercepting missiles. “Reagan had a grand vision but did not know what the architecture would look like. They were looking more at space-based laser technology. The laser [in the latest test] is not necessarily what Reagan envisaged but it fits inside the grander scheme of what he wanted to achieve.”

Elleman said the laser could force North Korea, whose Unha missile is slow, to look at accelerated missiles and that Iran was already doing this.

The MDA said the test was carried out at Point Mugu’s Naval Air Warfare Center near Ventura.

“The Missile Defense Agency demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Test-bed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile,” the agency said.

The system is being developed by ­Boeing, which uses the airframe of a modified 747 jumbo, and the MDA. Aerospace and defense contractor Northrop Grumman supplies the higher-energy laser, while Lockheed Martin is developing the beam and fire control systems.

“This was the first directed energy lethal intercept demonstration against a liquid-fuel boosting ballistic missile target from an airborne platform,” the agency added.

The system successfully intercepted a missile in August last year but did not bring it down.

Last year the defense secretary, Robert Gates, decided that the program should be scaled back, keeping research to a single plane, because of skepticism about how practical it would be.

John Pike, a defense analyst and founder of Virginia-based Global Security, said he doubted the test would change Gates’s view. “Gates seemed to believe that there was no prospect of the plane engaging targets at ranges of several hundred kilometers, and that engagements at ranges of less than 100 kilometers were not militarily interesting,” he said.

The MDA statement did not specify what the range was during the test.

Ivan Oelrich, a physicist and vice-president for strategic security programs at the Federation of American Scientists, said: “What would be interesting would be how far away it [the missile] is.” He said that to be useful, the laser would have to be able to shoot down missiles from at least 100 miles. It would also be expensive to keep one or more planes on stations waiting for a missile.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/feb/12/star-wars-laser-ballistic-missile

BY STEPHEN CLARK

NASA says they heard no signals from the Phoenix lander this week during 30 communications passes over the probe’s icy landing site, an expected outcome because the craft was never designed to survive the dark and cold Martian winter.

The HiRISE high-resolution camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this enhanced color image of the Phoenix landing site on Jan. 6, 2010. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The Odyssey orbiter circling Mars listened for potential radio signals from Phoenix 30 times over three days this week. NASA announced late Thursday that Odyssey did not detect any communications from Phoenix.

“After all their tries so far, they haven’t recovered it yet,” said Peter Smith, the Phoenix mission’s principal investigator at the University of Arizona.

Officials cautioned the odds of hearing anything from Phoenix were very slim because the lander was not designed to weather the bone-chilling temperatures and months of darkness during winter on Mars’ northern polar plains.

NASA last communicated with Phoenix in November 2008, when the lander’s solar panels stopped producing enough electricity to power communications and scientific equipment.

Images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show Phoenix encased in a dry ice field. The ice is now retreating as spring arrives at the landing site.

“That picture shows the reason we’re not seeing it yet,” Smith said in an interview on Thursday.

Artist’s concept of Phoenix on the Martian surface. Credit: University of Arizona

Odyssey’s antenna will again turn toward Phoenix in February and March for more communications attempts. The sun will be higher in the sky by then, increasing the odds the lost spacecraft could receive enough sunlight for electricity.

“We think the odds are very low that Phoenix has survived the winter environment,” said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for Mars prorgrams at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “But if it has, the available energy to it will be increasing over the next few months.”

Phoenix will be in constant sunlight by April, but NASA says the lander will still be unlikely to wake up then.

If Phoenix is alive, it would transmit UHF radio signals on two antennas for two hours each day, according to Edwards.

The probe landed on Mars in May 2008 and operated on the ground for about five months, two months longer than originally planned. Phoenix verified the existence water ice just below the surface at the landing site.

Smith said the Phoenix science team is no longer receiving funding, but researchers are seeking money from NASA research programs and government grants to restart data analysis.

“We went through it as much as we were able to do before we lost funding, Smith said.

Phoenix also returned more than 25,000 pictures from the Red Planet, ranging from panoramic stereo images to snapshots with a microscopic camera.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1001/21phoenix/

By Ian O’Neill

Norway often has strange lights dancing around the night sky, but early this morning it wasn’t the aurora that captivated many eyewitnesses in the north of the country. A giant spiral had appeared, and so far there’s little explanation as to what might have caused the phenomenon.

“It consisted initially of a green beam of light similar in color to the aurora with a mysterious rotating spiral at one end,” said Nick Banbury of Harstad, Norway. “This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down to the earth.

“According to the press, this could be seen all over northern Norway and must therefore have been very high up in the atmosphere to be seen hundreds of km apart.”

The near-perfect spiral appeared at 7:50 a.m. and already the conspiracy theories are out in full-force. Is it some kind of energy weapon? Or was it the Large Hadron Collider (which, coincidentally, has just broken the world record for the most powerful particle collision of all time)?

One thing’s for sure, when I spent five months living in the Arctic Circle (on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard), I never saw anything quite like this in the sky — no matter how much øl I’d consumed.

Conspiracies to one side, there’s actually a potentially mundane answer to the whole thing, althought it’s still pretty interesting.

From Dec. 7-10, there was an alert that the Russian Navy was going to carry out missile tests from the White Sea. However, the Northern Fleet denies any knowledge of the incident.

Could it be some kind of missile test? Yes, says Doug Ellison who created the following animation (posted on The Universe Today) of a spent rocket stage spilling fuel into the atmosphere. The rising sun then did the rest, illuminating the spiral.

http://news.discovery.com/space/mystery-spiral-appears-over-norway.html

By Todd Halvorson, Florida Today — The Atlantis astronauts plan a high-flying arrival at the International Space Station today after a two-day trip from Kennedy Space Center.

With mission commander Charlie Hobaugh at the controls, Atlantis is scheduled to dock at the outpost just before noon and then join six researchers aboard the lab two hours later.

“Congratulations on a beautiful, flawless launch, Atlantis,” Mission Control told the crew in a message Tuesday. “Now, the fun begins.”

FLAME TRENCH BLOG: The latest shuttle updates from Florida Today.

Atlantis and six astronauts blasted off at 2:28 p.m. Monday in a launch precisely timed to put the shuttle on course for a link-up at the station at 11:53 a.m. today.

On its final approach, Atlantis will fly a 360-degree, nose-over-tail back flip — an eight-minute maneuver aimed at pointing the belly of the shuttle at the station.

Astronauts on the station will take high-resolution photos of the fragile thermal tiles that line the underside of the orbiter.

The idea is to spot any damage that might endanger the spaceship during atmospheric re-entry.

The maneuver has been standard operating procedure since NASA returned the shuttle fleet to service after the 2003 Columbia accident. Wing damage that went undetected led to that catastrophe.

The astronauts completed another post-Columbia safety measure Tuesday: inspecting the Atlantis wing panels and nose cap with a sensor-laden boom. No obvious damage was spotted.

The high-resolution photos, inspection data and launch imagery all will be examined by engineers on the ground before Atlantis is cleared to return to Earth.

Atlantis is delivering 27,000 pounds of large spare parts to the station.

Another special delivery: The wife of Atlantis astronaut Randy Bresnik, Rebecca, will give birth to the couple’s second child — a daughter — on Friday. A space-to-ground video link-up will serve as the next best thing to being there.

Bresnik and his crewmates are due back at Kennedy Space Center Nov. 27.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2009-11-18-space-shuttle_N.htm

Space shuttle set to deliver critical spare parts to International Space Station

Computerworld – NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis is loaded and ready for takeoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this afternoon.

The six-man crew is set to launch at 2:28 p.m. EST today. They’re scheduled to deliver equipment, including two gyroscopes, to the International Space Station. NASA is focused on building up a reserve of spare parts on the space station in anticipation of the retirement of the space shuttle fleet.

“You’ll see this theme in some of the flights that are going to come after ours as well,” said Brian Smith, the lead space station flight director for the mission, in a statement. “This flight is all about spares. Basically, we’re getting them up there while we still can.”

The equipment is considered highly critical to the operation of the space station, according to NASA. At this point, there are only six flights left for the space shuttles before they’re scheduled to be retired. The equipment that needs to go up is being delivered in order of highest priority. Since this is the first mission to deliver what scientists hope will turn into a trove of spare parts, they’re taking up the most important pieces.

The astronauts are expected to make three space walks during the 11-day mission.

The astronauts will work with the robotic arms onboard the shuttle and the space station to move two platforms loaded with spare parts out of the shuttle’s cargo bay to where they’ll be attached on either side of the station’s truss or backbone.

The equipment being delivered includes two pump modules, two gyroscopes, two nitrogen tank assemblies, an ammonia tank assembly and a high-pressure gas tank. Parts going up for the robotic systems onboard the station include a latching end effector for the station’s robotic arm and a trailing umbilical system reel assembly for the railroad cart that allows the arm to move along the station’s truss system.

NASA reports there are 27,250 pounds worth of parts being delivered in this mission.

As of 10:30 a.m., a NASA inspection team was studying the exterior of Atlantis, its solid rocket boosters and the external tank for ice or other debris.

Space agency crews also have loaded the shuttle’s external tank with about 535,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which will power the shuttle’s three main engines during launch.

NASA forecasts a 70% chance of weather good enough for a launch this afternoon.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140938/NASA_Shuttle_i_Atlantis_i_loaded_and_ready_for_launch_today

By Robert Roy Britt

One of the best annual meteor showers will peak in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, and for some skywatchers the show could be quite impressive.

The best seats are in Asia, but North American observers should be treated to an above average performance of the Leonid meteor shower, weather permitting. The trick for all observers is to head outside in the wee hours of the morning – between 1 a.m. and dawn – regardless where you live.

The 1999 Leonid-meteor Shower Show!! – http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/Spring02/ast1002/section2/TheNightSky.htm

The Leonids put on a solid show every year, if skies are clear and moonlight does not interfere. This year the moon is near its new phase, and not a factor. For anyone in the Northern Hemisphere with dark skies, away from urban and suburban lighting, the show should be worth getting up early to see.

“We’re predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia,” said Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. Other astronomers who work in the nascent field of meteor shower prediction have put out similar forecasts.

Urban dwellers and suburbanites will see far fewer, as the fainter meteors will be drowned out by local lights.

Behind the Leonids

The Leonids are created by the comet Swift-Tuttle, which passes through the inner solar system every 33 years on its orbit around the sun. Each time by, it leaves a new river of debris, mostly bits of ice and rock no bigger than a sand grain but a few the size of a pea or marble.

Over time, these cosmic streams spread out, so predicting exactly what will happen is difficult.

“We can predict when Earth will cross a debris stream with pretty good accuracy,” Cooke said. “The intensity of the display is less certain, though, because we don’t know how much debris is in each stream.”

When Earth plows into the debris, the bits hit the atmosphere and vaporize, creating sometimes dramatic streaks of light and the occasional fireball with a smoky-looking trail that can remain visible for several minutes.

The Leonid stream is moving in the opposite direction of Earth, producing impact speeds of 160,000 mph (72 kilometers per second) – higher than many other meteors.

“Such speeds tend to produce meteors with hues of white, blue, aquamarine and even green,” says Joe Rao, SPACE.com’s skywatching columnist.

How to watch

The best viewing will be in rural areas. Get out of town if you can. If you have local lights, scout a location in advance where the lights are blocked by a building, tree or hill.

Dress warmly, and take a blanket or lounge chair so you can lie back and scan as much of the sky as possible. “At this time of year, meteor watching can be a long, cold business,” Rao reminds people.

Leonids can appear anywhere, but if you trace them back, they all point to a hub, or radiant, in the constellation Leo – hence the name.

Give your eyes 15 minutes to adjust to the darkness. Then give the show at least a half-hour. The hourly rates stated above typically come in bursts, with lulls that may test your patience. No special equipment is needed. Telescopes and binoculars are of no use because meteors move too quickly.

When to watch

Earth will pass through one of the denser debris streams at around 4 a.m. EST (1 a.m. PST) Tuesday. If you have only an hour or less to watch, center it around this time. Leo will be high in the sky for East Coast skywatchers, putting more meteors into view. In the West, Leo will be low in the eastern sky at this time, so fewer shooting stars will be above the horizon, and therefore Western skywatchers should also try to stick it out until daybreak.

Across Europe, the best bet is to watch anytime between 1 a.m. and daybreak local time.

The planet will pass through an even denser stream later, just before dawn Wednesday in Indonesia and China, but that show won’t be visible from North America because it will be daytime here.

One truth about the Leonids: They always produce, and they sometimes produce spectacular, unforgettable fireballs.