NASA's hybrid computer enables Raven's autonomous rendezvous capability

NASA's hybrid computer enables Raven's autonomous rendezvous capability Greenbelt MD (SPX) Mar 23, 2017 - A hybrid computing system developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the enabling technology behind an ambitious experiment testing a relative navigation and autonomous docking capability known as Raven. Developed by the Satellite Servicing Projects Division, or SSPD, the carry-on luggage-sized module was launched February 19 aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraf ... more

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China denies plans to build on disputed shoal

China denies plans to build on disputed shoal Beijing (AFP) March 22, 2017 - China Wednesday denied plans to build an environmental monitoring station on a disputed shoal near the Philippines' coastline, after a local official last week announced the plan. "As we have learned from relevant authorities, the report on establishing an environmental monitoring station is false. This is not true at all," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters at a regula ... more

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'Super sponge' promises effective toxic clean-up of lakes and more

'Super sponge' promises effective toxic clean-up of lakes and more Minneapolis, MN (SPX) Mar 23, 2017 - Mercury is very toxic and can cause long-term health damage, but removing it from water is challenging. To address this growing problem, University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Sciences (CFANS) Professor Abdennour Abbas and his lab team created a sponge that can absorb mercury from a polluted water source within seconds. Thanks to the application of nanotechnology ... more

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Scientists evade the Heisenberg uncertainty principle

Scientists evade the Heisenberg uncertainty principle Madrid, Spain (SPX) Mar 23, 2017 - State-of-the-art sensors, such as MRIs and atomic clocks, are capable of making measurements with exquisite precision. MRI is used to image tissues deep within the human body and tells us whether we might suffer from an illness, while atomic clocks are extremely precise timekeepers used for GPS, internet synchronization, and long baseline interferometry in radio-astronomy. One might think these ... more

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Riding an asteroid: China's next space goal

Riding an asteroid: China's next space goal Beijing (XNA) Mar 07, 2017 - After sending a probe to Mars in 2020, China plans to explore three asteroids and land on one of them to conduct scientific research, according to a Chinese asteroid research expert. The "China's Space Activities in 2016" white paper, issued by the Information Office of the State Council recently, also mentioned asteroid exploration in outlining the major tasks of the country's space indus ... more

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Indicators show potatoes can grow on Mars

Indicators show potatoes can grow on Mars Lima, Peru (SPX) Mar 09, 2017 - The International Potato Center (CIP) launched a series of experiments to discover if potatoes can grow under Mars atmospheric conditions and thereby prove they are also able to grow in extreme climates on Earth. This Phase Two effort of CIP's proof of concept experiment to grow potatoes in simulated Martian conditions began on February 14, 2016 when a tuber was planted in a specially cons ... more

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Paleolake deposits on Mars might look like sediments in Indonesia

Paleolake deposits on Mars might look like sediments in Indonesia Boulder CO (SPX) Mar 07, 2017 - In their GSA Bulletin article published online last week, Timothy A. Goudge and colleagues detail the clay mineralogy of sediment from Lake Towuti, Indonesia, using a technique called visible to near-infrared (VNIR) spectroscopy. VNIR measures the signature of reflected light from a sample across a larger wavelength range than just visible light. At Lake Towuti, the spectral record shows distinc ... more

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Paleolake deposits on Mars might look like sediments in Indonesia

Paleolake deposits on Mars might look like sediments in Indonesia Boulder CO (SPX) Mar 07, 2017 - In their GSA Bulletin article published online last week, Timothy A. Goudge and colleagues detail the clay mineralogy of sediment from Lake Towuti, Indonesia, using a technique called visible to near-infrared (VNIR) spectroscopy. VNIR measures the signature of reflected light from a sample across a larger wavelength range than just visible light. At Lake Towuti, the spectral record shows distinc ... more

Indicators show potatoes can grow on Mars Lima, Peru (SPX) Mar 09, 2017 - The International Potato Center (CIP) launched a series of experiments to discover if potatoes can grow under Mars atmospheric conditions and thereby prove they are also able to grow in extreme climates on Earth. This Phase Two effort of CIP's proof of concept experiment to grow potatoes in simulated Martian conditions began on February 14, 2016 when a tuber was planted in a specially cons ... more

Riding an asteroid: China's next space goal Beijing (XNA) Mar 07, 2017 - After sending a probe to Mars in 2020, China plans to explore three asteroids and land on one of them to conduct scientific research, according to a Chinese asteroid research expert. The "China's Space Activities in 2016" white paper, issued by the Information Office of the State Council recently, also mentioned asteroid exploration in outlining the major tasks of the country's space indus ... more

China Plans to Launch 1st Probe to Mars in Summer 2020 Beijing (Sputnik) Mar 09, 2017 - China is expected to launch its first probe satellite to Mars in July or in August 2020, local media reported Tuesday. The People's Daily newspaper reported citing Wan Weixing, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, responsible for Beijing's Mars exploration program would arrive to Mars after seven months of flight and would start sending information back in 2021. The med ... more

New evidence for a water-rich history on Mars Berkeley CA (SPX) Mar 07, 2017 - Mars may have been a wetter place than previously thought, according to research on simulated Martian meteorites conducted, in part, at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers found evidence that a mineral found in Martian meteorites - which had been considered as proof of an anc ... more

Opportunity Driving South to Gully

Opportunity Driving South to Gully Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 13, 2017 - Opportunity is located just outside the rim of Endeavour Crater, less than half a mile (700 meters) away from the next big science objective, a gully. The rover completed the last in-situ science measurements inside Endeavour Crater on Sol 4657 (Feb. 28, 2017). Because of constrained data volume, Sol 4658 (March 1, 2017), was a dedicated 'atmospheres' day, a sol of just low-data volu ... more

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NASA Mars Orbiter Tracks Back-to-Back Regional Storms

NASA Mars Orbiter Tracks Back-to-Back Regional Storms Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 13, 2017 - A regional dust storm currently swelling on Mars follows unusually closely on one that blossomed less than two weeks earlier and is now dissipating, as seen in daily global weather monitoring by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Images from the orbiter's wide-angle Mars Color Imager (MARCI) show each storm growing in the Acidalia area of northern Mars, then blowing southward and explodin ... more

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Mars Rover Tests Driving, Drilling and Detecting Life in Chile's High Desert

Mars Rover Tests Driving, Drilling and Detecting Life in Chile's High Desert Moffett Field Ca (SPX) Mar 15, 2017 - Due to its extreme dryness, the Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the most important environments on Earth for researchers who need to approximate the conditions of Mars. Working in 90-plus-degree heat in arguably the driest place on Earth, the team behind NASA's Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies, or ARADS, project just completed its second season of tests. The project aims to sh ... more

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ExoMars: science checkout completed and aerobraking begins

ExoMars: science checkout completed and aerobraking begins Paris (ESA) Mar 17, 2017 - The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has completed another set of important science calibration tests before a year of aerobraking gets underway. The mission was launched a year ago this week, and has been orbiting the Red Planet since 19 October. During two dedicated orbits in late November, the science instruments made their first calibration measurements since arriving at Mars. The latest test ... more

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Does Mars Have Rings? Not Right Now, But Maybe One Day

Does Mars Have Rings? Not Right Now, But Maybe One Day Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 21, 2017 - As children, we learned about our solar system's planets by certain characteristics - Jupiter is the largest, Saturn has rings, Mercury is closest to the sun. Mars is red, but it's possible that one of our closest neighbors also had rings at one point and may have them again someday. That's the theory put forth by NASA-funded scientists at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, whose findi ... more

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Mars Volcano, Earth's Dinosaurs Went Extinct About the Same Time

Mars Volcano, Earth's Dinosaurs Went Extinct About the Same Time Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 21, 2017 - New NASA research reveals that the giant Martian volcano Arsia Mons produced one new lava flow at its summit every 1 to 3 million years during the final peak of activity. The last volcanic activity there ceased about 50 million years ago - around the time of Earth's Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, when large numbers of our planet's plant and animal species (including dinosaurs) went extinct. ... more

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NASA selects CubeSat, SmallSat mission concept studies

NASA selects CubeSat, SmallSat mission concept studies Washington DC (SPX) Mar 23, 2017 - NASA has selected ten studies under the Planetary Science Deep Space SmallSat Studies (PSDS3) program, to develop mission concepts using small satellites to investigate Venus, Earth's moon, asteroids, Mars and the outer planets. For these studies, small satellites are defined as less than 180 kilograms in mass (about 400 pounds). CubeSats are built to standard specifications of 1 unit (U), ... more

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Trump, NASA and a rare consensus: mission to Mars

Trump, NASA and a rare consensus: mission to Mars Washington (AFP) March 21, 2017 - President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a law that said manned missions to deep space, including to Mars, would be the US space agency's main goal in the decades to come. According to the text - adopted by a rare unanimous vote in the Senate and House of Representatives - NASA will work toward the goal of "a crewed mission to Mars in the 2030s." The law also highlights the importance ... more

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Ultrafast measurements explain quantum dot voltage drop

Ultrafast measurements explain quantum dot voltage drop Los Alamos NM (SPX) Mar 23, 2017 - Solar cells and photodetectors could soon be made from new types of materials based on semiconductor quantum dots, thanks to new insights based on ultrafast measurements capturing real-time photoconversion processes. "Our latest ultrafast electro-optical spectroscopy studies provide unprecedented insights into the photophysics of quantum dots," said lead researcher Victor Klimov, a physici ... more

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Visualizing nuclear radiation

Visualizing nuclear radiation Kyoto, Japan (SPX) Mar 23, 2017 - Extraordinary decontamination efforts are underway in areas affected by the 2011 nuclear accidents in Japan. The creation of total radioactivity maps is essential for thorough cleanup, but the most common methods, according to Kyoto University's Toru Tanimori, do not 'see' enough ground-level radiation. "The best methods we have currently are labor intensive, and to measure surface radiati ... more

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SES is enabling disaster response and connecting affected communities

SES is enabling disaster response and connecting affected communities Luxembourg (SPX) Mar 23, 2017 - SES offers a broad range of solutions to support humanitarian and disaster relief efforts across the globe. Some of them were showcased during the Humanitarian ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Forum organised by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC), and held on the 21 and 22 March in Mountain V ... more

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Rare-earths become water-repellent only as they age

Rare-earths become water-repellent only as they age Basel, Switzerland (SPX) Mar 23, 2017 - Surfaces that have been coated with rare earth oxides develop water-repelling properties only after contact with air. Even at room temperature, chemical reactions begin with hydrocarbons in the air. In the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from the University of Basel, the Swiss Nanoscience Institute and the Paul Scherrer Institute report that it is these reactions that are responsible for ... more

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Tracing Aromatic Molecules in the Early Universe

Tracing Aromatic Molecules in the Early Universe Riverside CA (SPX) Mar 23, 2017 - A UC Riverside-led team of astronomers have taken us a step closer to better understand the formation and destruction mechanisms of dust molecules in the distant universe. A molecule found in car engine exhaust fumes that is thought to have contributed to the origin of life on Earth has made astronomers heavily underestimate the amount of stars that were forming in the early Universe, a Universi ... more

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