Surfing an alien atmosphere

Venus Express has completed an 'aerodrag' campaign that used its solar wings as sails to catch faint wisps of the planet’s atmosphere. The test used the orbiter as an exquisitely accurate sensor to measure atmospheric density barely 180 km above the hot planet.

During five aerodrag measurements last week, Venus Express' solar arrays and control systems were operated as one big flying sensor, with the solar arrays rotated at various angles to the direction of flight.

The special configuration exposed the wings to the vanishingly faint wisps of atmosphere that reach to the boundary of space around Venus, generating a tiny but measurable aerodynamic torque, or rotation, on the satellite.

This torque can be measured very accurately based on the amount of correction that must be applied by reaction wheels, which counter-rotate inside the spacecraft to maintain its orientation in space.

Mimicking the vanes of a windmill

Starting on Monday, the solar panels rotated through five daily-changing sets of orientations. While one panel remained perpendicular to the direction of flight, the other rotated in steps, gradually increasing the torque to be counter-balanced by the reaction wheels.

On the last day, 16 April, the solar arrays were rotated at plus and minus 45° to the atmospheric flow, mimicking the vanes of a windmill, in order to gather additional information on the behaviour of the molecules of the atmosphere bouncing off the solar wings.

A very capable satellite

"The aerodrag campaign went without problem, and conclusively demonstrated that Venus Express can be securely and accurately used to sense the density of the planet's atmosphere. Venus Express has shown once again that it is a very capable satellite," said Spacecraft Operations Manager Octavio Camino.

Camino explained that the mission operations team will study last week’s results to develop an optimised configuration for aerodrag campaigns in October and in 2011. Aerodrag testing was also conducted in 2008, 2009 and February 2010.


Continued positive results may enable Venus Express to conduct more sophisticated investigations deeper in the atmosphere, which would be of immense interest to planetary scientists.

The solar array on Venus Express comprise two symmetrical wings supporting gallium-arsenide solar cells. Their combined 5.7 sq m can generate up to 1400 W of power in Venus orbit.

Source:- ESA

X-37B robotic space plane aims for Thursday launch

LOS ANGELES – The military is poised to launch an unmanned winged spacecraft resembling a miniature space shuttle Thursday and it probably won't be a one-time shot.

Gary Payton, Air Force deputy under secretary for space programs, said Tuesday the Air Force has contracted for a second space plane depending on the success of the prototype's maiden flight.

"Currently, we're looking at a 2011 launch for that second tail number. That assumes everything goes properly as predicted on this first flight," Payton told reporters.

After a decade of development, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle is slated to launch from Florida and spend up to nine months in orbit. It will re-enter Earth on autopilot and land like an airplane at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

The spacecraft will conduct classified experiments while in orbit. Payton said the Air Force's main interest is to test the craft's automated flight control system and learn about the cost of turning it around for launch again.

Built by Boeing's Phantom Works division, the X-37 program was originally headed by NASA. It was later turned over to the Pentagon's research and development arm and then to a secretive Air Force unit.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on the project, but the current total has not been released.

"After a tumultuous history of sponsorship, it's great to see the X37 finally get to the launch pad and get into space," Payton said.

First Data from CryoSat-2 Successfully Received

Image comment: The CryoSat mission is dedicated to monitoring of the changes in the thickness of marine ice floating in the polar oceans and thickness variations on the ice sheets that overlay Greenland and Antarctica.

Image credits: ESA / AOES Medialab

Experts at the European Space Agency (ESA) announce that one of their control centers has already begun receiving the first datasets from the newly-launched CryoSat-2 satellite. The instrument took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, on April 8, and its managers say that it has performed beautifully during the critical stage of the mission. In most satellite launches, the first few days of operations are absolutely critical. Just hours after mission experts turned on the sophisticated radars aboard the spacecraft, they began receiving back telemetry, the ESA team says.

Only a few minutes after being launched last Thursday, the satellite was inserted by its Dnepr delivery system into a polar orbit above Earth. For the next three days, researchers working from the European Space Operations Center (ESOC), in Germany, monitored the payload and health status of the satellite around the clock. The goal was to ensure that everything was fairing along nicely and that no damage had come to either the satellite or its cargo during the harsh conditions of lift-off.

“The satellite is in excellent condition and the mission operations team quickly resolved the few problems that came up. It's been a very smooth entry into orbit, precisely as planned,” said on April 11 Pier Paolo Emanuelli, the Flight Director of ESA. He also announced at the time that the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) of the mission had concluded successfully. The main instrument on CryoSat-2, called the Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radar Altimeter (SIRAL), was turned on late Sunday, and it immediately began picking up echo data from the ground.

The ESA Kiruna ground station picked up on the spacecraft's telemetry shortly afterwards. The first data were collected and processed on-site, before being shipped out to ESA. “We switched SIRAL on and it worked beautifully from the very start. Our first data were taken over the Antarctic's Ross Ice Shelf, and clearly show the ice cover and reflections from underlying layers. These are excellent results at such an early stage and are a tribute to the hard work of the entire CryoSat community,” said the lead investigator of the CryoSat-2 mission, professor Duncan Wingham.

“The combined ground teams proved the value of months of extensive training and preparation and the satellite has shown to be a high-quality machine with very few problems. The launch and orbit injection have been almost flawless and we are looking forward to an extremely productive mission,” concluded the ESA project manager for the mission, Richard Francis.

Jupiter-Bound Juno Spacecraft Taking Shape

Image comment: The Juno spacecraft is beginning to take shape at a Lockheed Martin facility, in Denver

Image credits: NASA / JPL / Lockheed Martin

In August 2011, NASA plans to launch a new space exploration mission, this time aimed at Jupiter. Dubbed Juno, the spacecraft will travel the distance from Earth to the gas giant within an estimated five years, and is scheduled to reach its destination in 2016. Officials at the American space agency are now proud to announce that the final version of the probe is beginning to take shape at the Denver, Colorado-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

According to experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, the mission is destined to help astronomers, astrobiologists and planetary scientists gain more insight into how the planet appeared, developed and evolved. The main objectives of the flight can be compared to the ones Cassini has in exploring Saturn, also a gas giant. The principal investigator of the Juno mission will be scientist Scott Bolton, who holds an appointment at the San Antonio, Texas-based Southwest Research Institute (SwRI).

“We're excited the puzzle pieces are coming together. We're one important step closer to getting to Jupiter,” reveals Bolton. He explains that the assembly, testing and launch operations phase of Juno began recently, on April 1, inside a high-bay clean room at the Lockheed Martin facility. What this means is that, over the next few months, an army of engineers and technicians will be in charge of outfitting scientific, navigation and propulsion instruments on Juno.

“We plan to be doing a lot of testing in the next few months. We want to make sure the spacecraft is ready for the long journey to Jupiter and the harsh environment it will encounter there,” adds JPL Juno project manager, Jan Chodas. The team hopes that, by peering through the thick layer of clouds surrounding Jupiter, they will be able to gain additional insight into the processes that governed our solar system a short time after it first formed.

Cassini to Take a Closer Look at Saturn's Rings

Since 1610, when Galileo first spotted the rings around Saturn using a primitive telescope, astronomers have been fascinated with these remarkable features of the gas giant. In the ensuing 400 years, much data has been collected about a wide array of traits governing them, and significant progress has been made. With the addition of the Cassini spacecraft in the planet's orbit, even more data were collected. However, two of the most important questions about the rings have yet to be answered, Space reports.

What researchers are really interested in knowing is how much the rings weigh, and how old they really are. Thus far, data pertaining to these queries has only been determined hypothetically. Some of the other crucial features about the rings, such as what they are made of, and what forces act on them, influencing their behavior, have already been identified. Still, these two important questions have been left unanswered, Space indicates. Now, new investigations from the Cassini spacecraft are about to cast some light on these mysteries, experts announce.

In charge of the new studies will be interdisciplinary scientist for rings and dust Jeff Cuzzi, who handles this portion of Cassini's mission. The expert, who holds an appointment at the Moffett Field, California-based NASA Ames Research Center, says that the rings around Saturn could not possibly have developed when the solar system first formed, some 4.6 billion years ago, as originally thought. Cuzzi adds that new data would seem to indicate the rings are only one tenth of the age of the solar system, which means they are only hundreds of millions of years old.

The Voyager spacecraft showed for the first time that the rings might not be as old as the Sun, highlighting the fact that processes going on inside them were evolving very fast. But Cassini demonstrated that this speed was in fact even faster. It's now the probe's job to take advantage of the upcoming alignments of the Saturnine system to ensure it collects sufficient data to allow investigators to create a clearer picture of what is going on inside the rings.

Third and Final Phoenix Listening Campaign Begins

In late 2008, mission managers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, lost contact with the Phoenix Mars Lander. This is the science platform that managed to establish for a fact that water-ice exists at high northern latitudes on Mars. The machine remained operational for longer than it was meant to, and now experts are hopeful that, as the winter of the Red Planet is replaced by spring, the robot will come back to life.

As such, the Mars Odyssey orbiter is currently conducting a new listening campaign, in which it will try to make out potential radio signals sent by the awoken lander. Two other campaigns of this nature have been conducted over the past couple of months, but thus far they have yielded no palpable result. Experts hope that, as time passes, the amount of sunlight bathing the robot will be enough to make it get out of the “Lazarus mode” they hope it is in at this point. This is a special feature that has been built into the machine for this very purpose, but no one is sure whether it would actually work.

As the Martian winter set in at the high latitudes Phoenix landed in, it battered the machine with extremely cold temperatures, at the same time preventing sunlight from reaching it. If, however, sufficient energy remained in its batteries, it will awaken, and start to transmit messages, in an attempt to contact available orbiters around Mars. Still, NASA officials cannot afford to detour Odyssey – in orbit around the Red Planet since 2001 – from its regular science duties for a long time.

Throughout next week, Odyssey will conduct about 60 flights above Phoenix's location, which is currently bathed in sunlight throughout the day. NASA experts say that, if the solar panels endured the winter without suffering irreparable damage, then they should have enough power by now to allow for the lander to communicate telemetry data about itself. They add that the January and February campaigns were somewhat of a long shot, given that the amount of sunlight, which reached Phoenix at the time was clearly insufficient to allow for its revival. However, they add that, even now, the probability of the lander waking up is still remote, Space reports.

Shuttle glitch as Discovery antenna packs up

A crucial antenna on the space shuttle Discovery failed to operate Monday when it reached orbit, complicating docking procedures with the International Space Station, NASA said.

The US space agency said the loss of the Ku-band communications antenna was no cause for alarm as the shuttle had other methods of communicating with the ground and multiple back-up systems for the radar system used for docking.

"The dish-shaped antenna is used for high data rate communications with the ground, including television, and for the shuttle's radar system that is used during rendezvous with the International Space Station," the statement said.

"Discovery can safely rendezvous and dock with the station and successfully complete all of its planned mission objectives without use of the Ku-Band antenna, if needed."

The shuttle also has S-band and UHF antennae that can transmit voice and data information on different wavelengths to NASA officials at mission control in Houston, Texas.

The International Space Station has its own Ku-band system for transmitting television images to the ground and that can be used to transmit views of the shuttle after it has docked, NASA said.

"Flight controllers are continuing to troubleshoot the problem with Discovery's Ku-band antenna while also formulating plans to conduct the mission without use of the shuttle Ku system if necessary," the statement said.

NASA said the Ku antenna is also normally used for inspections on the second day of missions to determine if there has been any damage to the shuttle reaching orbit.

"If the Ku still is not working tomorrow, the crew will record all of the inspection video and play it back after docking with the station, using the station's Ku antenna," the space agency said.

"The crew will monitor the video in real time tomorrow and will note the time stamps of any areas of concern."

Discovery blasted off Monday toward the International Space Station, for a historic mission that put more women in orbit than ever before and two Japanese astronauts in space simultaneously for the first time.

NASA had earlier described Monday's dawn launch as nearly "picture perfect" with officials expressing satisfaction about the relative absence of debris that might have risked damaging the shuttle.

Discovery's arrival at the International Space Station is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday and will be one of the final missions for the shuttle program, which will be shuttered later this year.

The Manual Pages That Saved Apollo 13

On April 13, 1970—321,860 kilometers into its Moon trip—an oxygen tank exploded in the Odyssey's Service Module. James Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise had a really big problem. These pages saved their lives.

These pages described how to power down the electric systems in the spacecraft, to save energy that was going to be needed during the final approach to Earth. After oxygen tank number two exploded and oxygen tank got damaged, they lost their ability to produce electricity using the service module fuel cells. which combined that oxygen and hydrogen to generate power.

It worked. The crew was able to power up their ship again with the limited power stored in Odyssey's batteries, and despite the fact that water condensation was everywhere after they turned the heaters off as part of their power saving measures. In April 17, 1970—18:07:41 UTC—the Apollo 13 crew splashed safely in the Pacific Ocean.

The pages—with notes from Lovell—will be up for auction April 13 at Bonhams in New York. [Bonhams and Wikipedia]

Discovery blasts off for International Space Station

Space shuttle Discovery’s engines ignited at 6:21 a.m. EDT Monday, April 5, for liftoff of the STS-131 mission from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The seven-member crew will deliver the multi-purpose logistics module Leonardo, filled with supplies, a new crew sleeping quarters and science racks that will be transferred to the International Space Station’s laboratories.
The crew also will switch out a gyroscope on the station’s truss, install a spare ammonia storage tank and retrieve a Japanese experiment from the station’s exterior. STS-131 is the 33rd shuttle mission to the station and the 131st shuttle mission.

Russian spacecraft docks at orbiting station

A Russian space official says a Soyuz craft carrying an American and two Russian astronauts has docked successfully at the International Space Station.

Russia's Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin says the spacecraft hooked up with the orbiting station using an automatic docking system at 9:26 a.m. Moscow time (0526 GMT) Sunday.

The Soyuz was launched Friday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

California native Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko are joining the station's three current inhabitants.

Within three days, a seven-person crew aboard the Shuttle Discovery will dock at the station for a 13-day mission. During this period, four women will be in space at the same time, which is a first in history.

New Crew Members En Route to Station

(NASA) – Three new Expedition 23 flight engineers launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft at 12:04 a.m. EDT Friday to join their colleagues aboard the International Space Station.

The Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a two-day journey to the orbiting complex

Expedition 23 Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineers T.J. Creamer and Soichi Noguchi are currently the sole residents on the station, having arrived Dec. 22 aboard their Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft.

Caldwell Dyson, Skvortsov and Kornienko will complete the Expedition 23 crew when they dock to the station shortly before 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

Kotov, Creamer and Noguchi wrapped up a busy week Friday as they prepared their orbital home for its new residents and geared up for joint operations set to begin when space shuttle Discovery arrives on April 7. Discovery and the STS-131 crew are scheduled to launch April 5 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to deliver new science racks and ammonia tanks.

Kotov conducted a survey of the Russian segment of the station, estimating the stowage space available for additional equipment. Afterward he set up hardware for a Russian science experiment that remotely measures methane and carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.

Creamer spent some time in the Kibo module working with botanical experiments studying the formation of wood cells and demonstrating non-destructive techniques for collecting genetic information. The facilities aboard the station provide a unique platform for scientists on Earth to remotely study the growth of whole plants in a controlled, weightless environment.

Later, Creamer changed out the recycle filter tank assembly of the water recovery system. He also performed a fill of the wastewater storage tank assembly of the urine processor assembly, which is now running normally.

In preparation for the Soyuz docking, Creamer and Kotov configured video equipment in the Russian and U.S. segments of the station to downlink streaming video of Sunday’s activities.

Meanwhile, Noguchi conducted a monthly inspection of fire detectors and emergency provisions and gathered up additional hardware for return to Earth aboard the shuttle.

NASA Sends Cells Into Space to Understand Growth and Infection

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif., (NASA) – NASA scientists are sending three fundamental life science experiments onboard space shuttle Discovery in hopes of better understanding exactly how spaceflight affects cell growth and how cells fight off infections. Future astronauts on long-term space missions need to understand how wounds heal and cells become infected in space to prevent illnesses during space travel.

When space shuttle Discovery hurtles into orbit after its April 5 scheduled launch, in addition to the multi-purpose logistics module filled with science racks for the laboratories aboard the station it will carry seven astronauts, two Space Tissue Loss experiments and 16 mice as it rendezvous with the International Space Station.

ESA Looking at Lunar Lander Mission

Recent investigations by NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) satellite have revealed in late 2009 that massive amounts of water-ice can be found at the lunar south pole. Though the area experiences extremely cold temperatures, and the craters there are among the coolest places in the solar system, researchers and astronomers at the European Space Agency (ESA) are already planning a mission to the location. The flight is scheduled to be unmanned, and the agency plans to put a lander on the surface of the planet's natural satellite in the not-too-distant future, Space Fellowship reports.

More than 40 years ago, Apollo astronauts set foot on the Moon, but at the time they landed in relatively smooth terrain, where there was a lot of room to maneuver. But the future ESA mission will not be so easy to plan and execute. The lunar south pole is an extremely rugged place, with high ridges marking the boundaries of very deep craters, where sunlight hasn't reached the bottom for millions of years. It is in this desolate landscape that ESA officials want to set down a lander, so that it could benefit from the advantages that the presence of ice brings.

At this point, ESA is launching a submissions campaign for proposals on how the Lunar Lander mission should take place. Representatives of the industry are expected to submit their proposals for the vehicles that would take scientific equipment there, as well as for how the entire flight would be set up and organized. There is a vast array of technical problems to consider as well, and the trip is no less dangerous now than it was when the United States sent its manned missions to the Moon. The case of the Apollo 13 mission is still vivid in the mind of many, and experts know that it was only luck, dedication and hard work under extreme stress conditions that saw the three astronauts returning home alive.

According to officials at the agency, there are two goals that proposal submitters need to keep in mind. The first is that the delivery vehicle and the spacecraft itself need to be extremely precise in their navigation instruments, so that they can be landed with extreme accuracy in this difficult terrain. The heavily-cratered terrain is the direct target of the mission. The second objective is for the lander to image the land below as it descends and recognize hazardous terrain using onboard artificial intelligence. Additionally, the spacecraft will need to be able to analyze its location with a large array of scientific instruments.

NASA Sets Discovery's Launch Date for April 5

A few days ago, as engineers at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Cape Canaveral, Florida, were conducting tests on space shuttle Discovery, they noticed some problems with a number of valves, which appeared unable to close when commanded to do so. Manual overrides did the job, and so the team set out to investigate the cause of the malfunction. But mission managers had no way of knowing how long this was going to take, and so the orbiter's launch date was doubtful. A meeting that took place yesterday cleared the last remaining concerns, Space reports.

According to officials at NASA, the space shuttle is fit to fly on its originally-planned date of April 5, after engineers gave the go-ahead. The new flight, STS-131, will be the first of the final series of space flights the aging shuttle fleet is scheduled to perform. Only five missions to the International Space Station (ISS) were scheduled for 2010, and Endeavor already completed one earlier this year, when it delivered the Tranquility module and the seven-windowed Cupola observations dome to the facility.

“After looking at all the testing on it, we're very confident that the system will work as designed,” told reporters on Friday John Shannon, who is the shuttle program manager at NASA. The glitch that threatened Discovery's launch date was discovered in one of the shuttle's helium valves. The device is located at the back of the spacecraft, and it plays a crucial role in pressurizing the aft-mounted thrusters. The valve remained opened at all times, despite shutdown commands sent to it from the KSC control center. After inspecting the lines closely, engineers say they are confident that Discovery will be ready for its flight in time.

The orbiter is scheduled to begin its penultimate flight at 6:21 am EDT (10:21 GMT) on April 5. Once docked to the orbital facility, it will deliver new supplies and equipment, as well as the last Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM), Leonardo. Three extra-vehicular activities (EVA) will be performed during this mission, in which astronauts will use the Station's robotic arm (SSRMS) to maneuver a new ammonia tank assembly (ATA) into its position on the ISS. At the same time, they will collect the old tank, and place it into their shuttle's cargo bay, for a safe trip back home.

Opportunity Finished Investigating Concepcion Crater

Image comment: Photo from Martian orbit, showing Opportunity (1 o'clock position - a darker spot) on the rim of Concepción Crater, on Mars
Image credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona

MER mission managers from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, announce that the rover Opportunity has just finished a six-week-long analysis of an odd, young crater. Called Concepción, the formation is no larger than ten meters (or 33 feet) in diameter, but it proved to be very interesting from a geological perspective. As the rover was investigating it, the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft snapped a photo of the two from the Red Planet's orbit.

Though the explorations robot accumulated impressive amounts of data on the crater during its six-week stay, preliminary analysis results have left geologists and planetary scientists just as puzzled as they were before beginning the investigation. Rock layers next to the small crater revealed a weird-looking coating, whose composition is still a mystery to researchers. In addition, the structure is surrounded by dark rays, as seen from above, which means that it is relatively very young. This recommended it as a certain target for investigations by Opportunity.

Since the rover landed on the Red Planet, in 2004, it has always navigated above the same type of ground – soft, sulfate-rich sandstone. These lands feature harder, peppercorn-size, dark spheres, which geologists say resemble berries in a muffin. They are also very rich in iron deposits, experts say, and they are generally referred to as “blueberries.”

“It was clear from the images that Opportunity took on the approach to Concepción that there was strange stuff on lots of the rocks near the crater. There's dark, grayish material coating faces of the rocks and filling fractures in them. At least part of it is composed of blueberries jammed together as close as you could pack them. We've never seen anything like this before,” the principal investigator for the MER mission, Steve Squyres, says. The expert holds an appointment at the Ithaca, New York-based Cornell University. He is the person in charge with analyzing the data that Opportunity and Spirit send back from Mars.

“One consideration that jumps out is that we've been driving around this part of Mars for six years and never seen this stuff before, then we get to this young crater and it's coating rocks all around the crater. Sure looks like there's a connection, but it could just be a coincidence,” Matt Golombek, who is a member of the science team managing the two rovers, says.

An Overview of Cassini's Accomplishments

Researchers managing the NASA/ESA Cassini mission to Saturn have published two new scientific papers, showing the progress that has been achieved in the nearly 6 years since the orbiter has been observing the gas giant. The amount of data that this particular spacecraft is without equal in terms of quantity and quality, the experts say, and its observations have helped shape our understanding of how Saturn's rings, atmosphere, surface, interior and moons work, Space reports.

The gas giant's rings are without doubt its most interesting feature. They are the most intricate structures in the solar system, and they also appear to be changing as they are being watched. Experts say that, since Cassini arrived at Saturn, in June 2004, our knowledge of the rings has increased exponentially. The features revealed new moons, as well as a large number of dynamic forces that continuously act to determine their shape. Overall, thanks to data from the orbiter, the rings moved from being plain structures to being represented in 3D. This allowed experts to infer even more about their structure, how they appeared, and what are the forces sustaining them.

While they do extend for tens of thousands of kilometers in space, the rings are oftentimes as little as 3 meters in thickness. This means that when Saturn is at equinox – sunlight falling perpendicularly to the Equator – the rings are invisible to us. The telescopes we have today are still too imprecise to allow us to resolve such thin structures. But Cassini, orbiting Saturn closer than any other spacecraft, is uniquely equipped to survey the formations in these conditions. The last equinox took place last year, and the orbiter was in position to snap photos. The next such event will take place in about 15 years.

Cassini also managed to gather impressive amounts of data on two of the most interesting moons in the solar system, Enceladus and Titan. Each of them captured the interest of astronomers for different reasons. Enceladus appears to be spewing out jets of water and ice from cracks at its South Pole, which means that its interior may be housing an ocean of liquid water, suitable for the development of early life. Conversely, Titan features lakes of liquid hydrocarbons on its surface, which will most likely constitute the target for future space exploration missions.

Spitzer unearths primitive black-holes

These two data plots from Spitzer show a primitive supermassive black hole (top) compared to a typical one. As the data show, the typical supermassive black hole, called J0842+1218, exhibits the signs of a surrounding ring of dust, a feature that appears at longer wavelengths of infrared light. The primitive object, called J0005-0006, lacks a dusty torus.

These Spitzer data, along with other observations not shown here, led to the discovery of the two most primitive supermassive black holes known, J0005-0006 and J0303-0019. Both objects are about 13 billion light-years away.

Usually, a supermassive black hole is surrounded by an accretion disk, which itself is surrounded by a dark doughnut-like dusty structure called a dust torus. But for the primitive black holes, the dust tori are missing and only gas disks are observed. This is because the early universe was clean as a whistle. Enough time had not passed for molecules to clump together into dust particles. Some black holes forming during this era thus started out lacking dust. As they grew, gobbling up more and more mass, they are thought to have accumulated dusty rings.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Astronomers have come across what appear to be two of the earliest and most primitive supermassive black holes known.

The discovery, based largely on observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, will provide a better understanding of the roots of our universe, and how the very first black holes, galaxies and stars came to be.

"We have found what are likely first-generation quasars, born in a dust-free medium and at the earliest stages of evolution," said Linhua Jiang of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Jiang is the lead author of a paper announcing the findings in the March 18 issue of Nature.

Black holes are beastly distortions of space and time. The most massive and active ones lurk at the cores of galaxies, and are usually surrounded by doughnut-shaped structures of dust and gas that feed and sustain the growing black holes. These hungry, supermassive black holes are called quasars.

As grimy and unkempt as our present-day universe is today, scientists believe the very early universe didn't have any dust -- which tells them that the most primitive quasars should also be dust-free. But nobody had seen such immaculate quasars -- until now. Spitzer has identified two -- the smallest on record -- about 13 billion light-years away from Earth.

The quasars, called J0005-0006 and J0303-0019, were first unveiled in visible light using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. That discovery team, which included Jiang, was led by Xiaohui Fan, a coauthor of the recent paper at the University of Arizona. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory had also observed X-rays from one of the objects. X-rays, ultraviolet and optical light stream out from quasars as the gas surrounding them is swallowed.

"Quasars emit an enormous amount of light, making them detectable literally at the edge of the observable universe," said Fan.

When Jiang and his colleagues set out to observe J0005-0006 and J0303-0019 with Spitzer between 2006 and 2009, their targets didn't stand out much from the usual quasar bunch. Spitzer measured infrared light from the objects along with 19 others, all belonging to a class of the most distant quasars known. Each quasar is anchored by a supermassive black hole weighing more than 100 million suns.

Of the 21 quasars, J0005-0006 and J0303-0019 lacked characteristic signatures of hot dust, the Spitzer data showed. Spitzer's infrared sight makes the space telescope ideally suited to detect the warm glow of dust that has been heated by feeding black holes.

"We think these early black holes are forming around the time when the dust was first forming in the universe, less than one billion years after the Big Bang," said Fan. "The primordial universe did not contain any molecules that could coagulate to form dust. The elements necessary for this process were produced and pumped into the universe later by stars."

The astronomers also observed that the amount of hot dust in a quasar goes up with the mass of its black hole. As a black hole grows, dust has more time to materialize around it. The black holes at the cores of J0005-0006 and J0303-0019 have the smallest measured masses known in the early universe, indicating they are particularly young, and at a stage when dust has not yet formed around them.

Other authors include W.N. Brandt of Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Chris L. Carilli of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, N.M.; Eiichi Egami of the University of Arizona; Dean C. Hines of the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.; Jaron D. Kurk of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany; Gordon T. Richards of Drexel University, Philadephia, Pa.; Yue Shen of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.; Michael A. Strauss of Princeton, N.J.; Marianne Vestergaard of the University of Arizona and Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark; and Fabian Walter of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany. Fan and Kurk were based in part at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy when this research was conducted.

The Spitzer observations were made before the telescope ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009, beginning its "warm" mission.

JAXA Gets Ready to Launch Venus Probe

Officials at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announce that they have entered the final stages of preparing the organization's new space probe for flight. The Akatsuki spacecraft will fly to our neighboring planet Venus, where it will conduct science for Japan. This is the first such mission that the Asian country sets up. American and Russian crafts have reached Venus on several occasions, and have mapped and analyzed it extensively, but now JAXA wants to have a go at it too, Nature News reports. The main goal of the mission is to determine exactly why the Venus, which has so much in common with Earth, is so inhospitable to life.

For more than ten years, this planet has fallen in scientific neglect, in the sense that new missions to investigate it have been placed on hold. But JAXA is about to break the cycle with the May 18 launch of its Venus Climate Orbiter spacecraft, which is being shipped this week to the Tanegashima Space Center. According to mission scientists for Akatsuki, one of the primary objectives for the new mission is to determine precisely what drives the atmosphere of our scorching-hot neighbor to rotate around Venus at speeds of up to 60 times higher than that of the planet's rotation.

There aren't many space experts that can answer the question as to why studying Venus was placed on hold. Evidence collected throughout its mission by the Venus Express spacecraft, built and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), suggests that the planet may have once been covered in oceans. It would also appear that its density is very similar to Earth's, and also that the cores of the two planets are very similar in composition. Given these data, why does our neighbor look and feel so inhospitable to life. Discovering the changes that led to this transformation is among the top objectives for the Venus Climate Orbiter spacecraft.

Venus is known to rotate at a speed of roughly 6.5 kilometers per hour. Experts have determined as well that the atmosphere moves around the planet at about 400 kilometers per hour. In addition, the body is enveloped in sulphuric acid clouds and is battered by temperatures on the range of 460 degrees Celsius. This is largely caused by global warming effects, set forth by an atmosphere made of 95 percent carbon dioxide. The magnetic field around it is also too weak to defend emergent life forms against very strong solar winds.

New Lunar Images and Data Available to the Public

The public can follow along with NASA on its journey of lunar discovery. On March 15, the publicly accessible Planetary Data System will release data sets from the seven instruments on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

"The Planetary Data System is a NASA funded program to archive data from past and present planetary missions as well as astronomical observations and laboratory data," said Dr. John Keller, LRO Deputy Project Scientist from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The purpose of the Planetary Data System is to make available to the public the fruits of NASA funded research and to allow advanced research on solar system science."

Each of the seven instruments is unique and will provide data in different formats to the Planetary Data System. Much of the data will be in a relatively low level form, not highly processed, which allows researchers to maximize flexibility in working with the data. The instrument teams will also provide higher level data products in the form of maps and calibrated images for the general public. Many of the images can be accessed using a computer with an internet browser.

Prior to the formal release of LRO data, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team released several hundred images from the pair of Narrow Angle Cameras on-board the spacecraft. These images were released to give researchers a head start on using the data before the tidal wave of data was unleashed.

"We're able to take advantage of the close proximity of the Moon, compared to other objects in the solar system, to transmit data from LRO back to Earth at a very high rate," said Keller. "The first data release is 55 terabytes. The one year exploration mission will deliver 130 terabytes of data, enabling a more detailed study our nearest celestial neighbor. We expect LRO to provide more data than all of the previous planetary missions combined."

LRO was mandated to release data to the Planetary Data System beginning six months after initial operation. Some of the higher level data products require the full year of measurements and won't be released until after the end of the exploration mission. LRO will move into its science phase in September, when the program management responsibility moves from the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate to the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

LRO is scheduled for a one year exploration mission in a polar orbit about 31 miles above the lunar surface. During this time, LRO will produce a comprehensive map of the lunar surface in unprecedented detail, search for resources and potential safe landing sites for a potential future return to the moon and measure lunar temperatures and radiation levels.

The lunar bound spacecraft launched from Kennedy Space Center, Fla. on June 18, 2009. Since that time the spacecraft has completed calibration and commissioning. LRO formally began its detailed survey of the moon in September 2009. First results from the mission included - new looks at the Apollo landing sites; indications that permanently shadowed and nearby regions may harbor water and hydrogen; observations that large areas in the permanently shadowed regions are colder than Pluto; and detailed information on lunar terrain. LRO also supported the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite impact, first by helping to select a promising site and second by observing both the expanding plume that arose after the impact and the evolving temperature at the impact site.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center built and manages the mission for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Institute for Space Research, Moscow, provides the neutron detector aboard the spacecraft.

To access the Planetary Data System, go to: http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/

More information can be found about LRO at: http://www.nasa.gov/lro

Secret Space Plane Prepares for Launch

The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) is at this point the home of two very important space vehicles, each of which still needs to prove its worth in a first test flight. If the missions are successful, then one of the spacecraft would ensure that uninterrupted access of American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), whereas the other would provide a highly-mobile space platform to the US Air Force (USAF), for a wide variety of applications. The latter mission is the secretive X37B prototype, which is also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle. It arrived at the CCAFS sometime in February, and is currently undergoing final preparations for its launch.

Scheduled for April 19, this would be the first instance in which such a machine is launched from Florida. The spacecraft has relatively small dimensions (29-foot-long, 15-foot-wide), but it is capable of great things in orbit, its manufacturers say. The space plane itself has been developed and built at the Boeing Phantom Works facility, which is located in Southern California, Space reports. The overall design resembles that of a small space shuttle, and the new instrument even has a cargo bay. But the main difference is that the X37B is an unmanned craft and that it would be used primarily for attack and defense purposes (presumably).

According to officials in the USAF, the new space plane, weighing some 11,000 pounds, will be delivered to orbit aboard an Atlas 5 deliver system. “It is now undergoing spacecraft processing including checkout, fueling, and encapsulating in the 5-meter fairing of the Atlas 5 [rocket],” a USAF spokesperson said in a statement. Occasionally, people involved in this project release updates on how the spacecraft is doing, even though other details about it are classified. The entire program is managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, Space reports.

This project was initially developed by NASA, and was only later on handed to the Pentagon. In the version of the spacecraft proposed by the American space agency, the orbiter would be endowed with a 7-foot-long payload bay, which would be capable of deploying a number of small scientific payloads. Once in the hands of the Pentagon, the X-37B received a lot of attention from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as well, which tested it throughout 2007.