rare discovery of a species of animal

Leicester UK (SPX) Dec 14, 2012

This shows the ventral view of the fossil Pauline avibella. Credit: David J. Siveter, Derek E. G. Briggs, Derek J. Siveter, Mark D. Sutton and Sarah C. Joomun.

'It is exciting to discover that a common group of fossils that we thought we knew a lot about may well have been hood-winking us as to their true identity, which we now realise because we have their beautifully fossilised soft-parts. A case of a 'wolf in sheep's clothing''- Professor David Siveter, University of Leicester
An international team of researchers have made an extremely rare discovery of a species of animal - related to crabs, lobsters and shrimps - that is new to science.
Scientists from the universities of Leicester, Oxford, Imperial and Yale have announced their discovery of a new and scientifically important fossil species of ostracod in the journal, Proceedings of The Royal Society B. The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Discovery_of_tiny_fossil_new_to_science_999.html

Secretive X-37B space plane ready for next flight

It's round three for the mysterious X-37B space plane.
An Atlas V rocket carrying the unmanned craft, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, has gotten clearance for a planned liftoff tomorrow at just after 10 a.m. PT from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. [Update, December 11 at 10:21 a.m. PT: The Associated Press reports that the rocket carrying the X-37B has launched.]
If the previous two trips into space are any indication, don't expect the X-37B to come home anytime soon -- or for the U.S. Air Force to say … Read more

Locata wants to fill holes in GPS location, navigation

It's a common affliction: you're using your smartphone to navigate in a city with a bunch of big buildings and your phone misplaces your location.
Often the problem often is that the GPS location system just doesn't work well where the satellite radio signals can be blocked or reflected. A company called Locata says it's got an answer.
Locata does what the GPS system does, but it replaces satellites in orbit with radio transmitters on the ground. The result is location services with high precision, better reliability, and indoor coverage, said Paul Benshoof, global business development … Read more

Charitum Montes: a cratered winter wonderland

The high-resolution stereo camera on ESA’s Mars Express imaged the Charitum Montes region of the Red Planet on 18 June, near to Gale crater and the Argyre basin featured in our October and November image releases. The brighter features, giving the image an ethereal winter-like feel in the colour images, are surfaces covered with seasonal carbon dioxide frost.

Charitum Montes are a large group of rugged mountains extending over almost 1000 km and bounding the southernmost rim of the Argyre impact basin. They can be seen from Earth through larger telescope and were named by Eugène Michel Antoniadi (1870–1944) in his 1929 work La Planète Mars. 

Annotated image

The images in this release all show the region’s old and highly-sculpted terrain, pockmarked with many large craters, all of which have been substantially filled in. The whole region is dusted with brighter carbon dioxide frost. 

Perspective view

Numerous smaller ‘pedestal craters’ can also be seen in the 3D and 2D images. These are impact craters where the ejecta have formed a higher relief above the surroundings. One striking example is visible on the smooth plain to the lower right in the annotated image (Box A). 

Topographic view

The ejecta surrounding pedestal craters form erosion-resistant layers, meaning that the immediate vicinity around the crater erodes more slowly than the surrounding terrain. The resistant ejecta layer is largely untouched, forming the pedestal. 

Perspective view

Another well-preserved example of a pedestal feature surrounding an impact crater can be seen within the large, old and heavily-degraded crater on the lower-left side of the annotated image (Box B). In the centre of the 2D images and dominating the perspective images is a crater some 50 km wide filled with thick sedimentary deposits.

These deposits appear to have been introduced through one of several breaches in the northern crater rim (Box C in the annotated image). Dendritic channels appear to emanate from a completely filled-in crater in this region (Box D), at the periphery of the large crater’s northern edge.

Within the large crater, near to where the breach (C) in the crater wall occurred, though unconnected to this event, we can also see a small dune field (Box E). A region of significant interest to scientists lies within the large crater towards the top left of the first image (Box F). This crater shows a diverse range of filling material, with layers of varying colour and texture. 

Charitum Montes in context  

The uppermost layer appears to be bright and smooth, taking on the appearance of a relatively thin blanket with some impact craters. This layer interfaces with the underlying darker layer via some very sharply defined edges, possibly as a result of erosion. The underlying darker material has a much rougher and mottled appearance, and planetary geologists are still studying possible causes. To the left of the crater interior, another layer of sediments clearly sets itself apart from the underlying strata, partly forming flat-topped structures (Box G). 

3D view

The complexity and diversity of some areas in this winter wonderland would doubtless give Father Christmas a hard time in finding somewhere safe to land, but images like these are giving planetary geologists yet another fascinating region of the Red Planet to study.

For further information visit: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMH7W2ABAH_index_2.html

Third Galileo satellite begins transmitting navigation signal

Europe’s third Galileo satellite has transmitted its first test navigation signals back to Earth. The two Galileo satellites launched last October have reached their final orbital position and are in the midst of testing. The third Galileo Flight Model, known as FM3, transmitted its first test navigation signal in the E1 band on 1 December, the band being used for Galileo’s freely available Open Service interoperable with GPS.

Then, on the morning of 4 December, the satellite broadcast signals across all three Galileo bands – E1, E5 and E6. Galileo is designed to provide highly accurate timing and navigation services to users around the world. So the testing is being carried out in addition to the standard satellite commissioning to confirm that the critical navigation payloads have not been degraded by the violence of launch.   

Galileo satellites

While the satellites are run from Galileo’s Oberpfaffenhofen Control Centre near Munich in Germany and their navigation payloads are overseen from Galileo’s Mission Control Centre in Fucino, Italy, a separate site is used for the in-orbit testing.

Located in the heart of Belgium’s Ardennes forest, Redu is specially equipped for Galileo testing, with a 15 m-diameter S-band antenna to upload commands and receive telemetry from the satellite, and a 20 m-diameter L-band dish to monitor the shape and quality of navigation signals at high resolution. “This marked the very first time that a Galileo payload was activated directly from ESA’s Redu centre in Belgium,” explained Marco Falcone, overseeing the campaign effort as Galileo’s System Manager. 

First FM3 test navigation signal  

“We have now established an end-to-end setup in Redu that allows us to upload commands generated from Fucino’s Galileo Control Centre to the satellite payload whenever the satellite passes over the station, while at the same time directly receiving the resulting navigation signal through its main L-band antenna.

“The result is our operations are much more effective, shortening the time needed for payload in orbit testing.” Operating at an altitude of 23 222 km, the Galileo satellites take about 14 hours to orbit our planet, typically coming into view of Redu for between three to nine hours each day.   

FM3's test team

The fourth Galileo flight model, FM4, was launched together with FM3 on 12 October. The two satellites shared the same Soyuz launcher from French Guiana. Both have now been manoeuvred into their operational orbits: at the same altitude but in a different orbital plane to the first two Galileos, launched in 2011, in order to maximise the global coverage.

Now that FM3’s payload has been activated, FM4 is set to begin transmitting test navigation signals later this month. The first two satellites have already passed their in-orbit testing.

For further information visit: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM2R5F16AH_index_2.html

Where is NASA going? Expert panel says space agency isn’t quite sure, needs clear goals

 WASHINGTON — NASA, the agency that epitomized the “Right Stuff,” looks lost in space and doesn’t have a clear sense of where it is going, an independent panel of science and engineering experts said in a stinging report Wednesday.

The report by a panel of the distinguished National Academy of Sciences doesn’t blame the space agency; it faults the president, Congress and the nation for not giving NASA better direction. At the same time, it said NASA is doing little to further the White House’s goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid. In one withering passage, the panel said NASA’s mission and vision statements are so vague and “generic” that they “could apply to almost any government research and development agency, omitting even the words ‘aeronautics’ or ‘space.’”

The space shuttles were retired in 2011 and are now museum pieces. Few people are paying attention to the International Space Station, and American astronauts have to rely on Russian spaceships to get there and back. Meanwhile, rocket-building is being outsourced to private companies, and a commercial venture plans to send people to the moon by the end of the decade.

Academy panel member Bob Crippen, a retired NASA manager and astronaut who piloted the first space shuttle mission, said he has never seen the space agency so adrift. He said that includes the decade between the end of the Apollo moon landings in the early 1970s and the beginning of the shuttle program. “I think people (at NASA) want to be focused a little more and know where they are going,” Crippen told The Associated Press.

NASA spokesman David Weaver defended the agency, saying in an emailed statement that it has clear and challenging goals. He listed several projects, including continued use of the International Space Station and efforts to develop a heavy-duty rocket and crew capsule capable of taking astronauts into deep space. John Logsdon, a space policy expert who advised the Obama campaign in 2008, said the panel’s report, which is more strongly worded than usual for the academy, “rather fairly points its fingers at the White House.”

 “There’s a general sense of disappointment that the administration has not been more bold and visionary in setting out a path for the program,” said Logsdon, who was not on the panel.

For further information visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/where-is-nasa-going-expert-panel-says-space-agency-isnt-quite-sure-needs-clear-goals/2012/12/05/a30b125a-3f21-11e2-8a5c-473797be602c_story.html

Year in space challenging but doable, astronaut says

Spending a full year in the cramped confines of the International Space Station poses psychological and physical challenges, but two crewmen set for launch in 2015 are ready to go. When astronaut Scott Kelly told his 9-year-old daughter he was going to spend a full year aboard the International Space Station, she exclaimed "awesome!"

When cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko told his wife the same thing, "she started crying."But both men said Wednesday they were looking forward to blasting off in March 2015 and spending a full year in orbit, serving as medical guinea pigs to help scientists learn more about the long-term physical and psychological impacts of extended, confined flights in the weightless environment of space.

Astronaut Scott Kelly, floating in the multiwindow cupola during a previous long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station. Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko plan to spend a full year aboard the outpost in 2015-16.

 (Credit: NASA)

"I personally think our ultimate destination, at least for a long time in our planet's future, is getting to Mars," Kelly told CBS News. "And I look at this as a step towards that." Alexey Krasnov, director of manned space operations for Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, agreed, saying through a translator "I hope this one-year duration expedition will help us achieve these tasks."A flight to Mars, possibly in the 2030s, is expected to take seven to 10 months, followed by a lengthy stay in the reduced gravity of the Red Planet and then an equally long trip back to Earth.

Space station astronauts and cosmonauts typically spend up to six months aboard the international lab complex, and researchers are eager to find out how the adaptation process might change -- and what might need to be done about it -- for longer-duration missions.

The spaceflight duration record holder is cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who spent 438 days aboard the Russian Mir space station in 1994 and 1995. The U.S. record for the longest single spaceflight is held by astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who spent 215 days in space aboard the International Space Station in 2006-07.

But the upcoming flight with Kelly and Kornienko will set a new record for NASA and it will be the first to employ the full range of modern medical protocols and research procedures over a 12-month period.

Igor Ushakov, a senior medical researcher with the Russian space program, said astronauts and cosmonauts already run a 7 percent risk of having a problem that requires medical care after a six-month flight."So the risk will double, so for at least one of the two it will be 14 percent for the yearlong expedition," he said. "I would like to knock on wood that it won't happen, the worst scenario. But the risk is increased, that's for sure."

Even so, he reassured reporters, "the cosmonauts who were in space for a year or more, they all are alive and well today."

For further information visit: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57557327-76/year-in-space-challenging-but-doable-astronaut-says/