Rendezvous Sensor Technology Launches on Next Space Shuttle Flight

HAMPTON, Va., (NASA) — NASA engineers and contractors have worked together for the past two years on a technology that would make it easier for future space vehicles to dock to the International Space Station.

Developed by the Orion Project Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Vision Navigation Sensor, or VNS, as well as a docking camera, have the ability to advance the capability necessary for automated rendezvous and docking. The system, which will be tested on STS-134, scheduled for this July, is a part of the Sensor Test for Orion Relative Navigation Risk Mitigation (STORRM) Development Test Objective.

Opportunity Reaches New Drive Record on Mars

Astronomers announce today that the NASA rover Opportunity managed to break new records on March 24. More than 74 months after arriving on the Red Planet, the machine finally exceeded the 20-kilometer (12.43-mile) mark, meaning that it traveled further away than any other robotic explorer on Mars. Only a Soviet-built lunar rover traveled more, but that was a lot closer to home, and there are several advantages to a shorter distance. Experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who manage the mission, are understandably ecstatic about this achievement.

Opportunity, just like its twin MER component Spirit, was originally planned to endure for only three months on the Martian surface. After exceeding that duration more than 24 times over, it's safe to say that those who were in charge of building it did a fantastic job. Drivers and mission planners are to be praised for this achievement as well. Also worthy of mention is the fact that the robot has not been driving non-stop since it landed. It has had numerous pit stops along the way, as every time it found an interesting rock it stopped to take a closer look.

It only recently concluded a six-week stay on the rim of Concepción Crater, where it investigated a peculiar layer of material covering the otherwise-uniform rocks that it has been driving over for the past 6 years. The drive that made it achieve the new record took place on the 2,191st Martian day, or sol, of its mission, as the rover was heading southwards, towards the Endeavor Crater, its long-term mission. During the last trek, Opportunity covered some 67 meter, or 220 feet, its managers say. But its target is still a spectacular distance away. The robot needs to go an additional 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) farther to reach Endeavor.

There is currently no reason to believe that the rover won't make it to that location. Its primary systems are looking fine, and its wheels and driving train are in good shape. Naturally, all components are showing signs of aging, given the amount of time it endured on Mars. But, unlike its twin Spirit, the robot doesn't need to stop and shut down its systems for winter, which means that it can be operated around the year. Either way, if Opportunity is to reach Endeavor before old age and technical issues get to it, managers need to hasten the drive maneuvers, while at the same time remaining vigilant to the dangers ahead.

Third ESA ATV Named After Edoardo Amaldi

Image comment: Artist's rendition of the ATV in Earth's orbit

Image credits: ESA / D.Ducros

Once the first flight of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Jules Verne completed flawlessly, theEuropean Space Agency (ESA) decided to ramp up production on these unmanned spacecrafts. Their primary goal is to deliver cargo, safe and sound, to the International Space Station. They are a part of the international service fleet that does this, which included the Russian Soyuz and Progress capsules, and the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV). Now, with the second ATV, Johannes Kepler, scheduled for launch later this year, ESA announces the naming of the third cargo capsule.

Officials at the agency decided to name it Edoardo Amaldi, in honor of the famed Italian physicist and space pioneer. “Italy is a key European country in our participation in the ISS partnership. By naming ATV-3 after Edoardo Amaldi, we celebrate a great Italian, but also a committed European who understood the importance of pooling resources and minds together to achieve important results,” said recently in a press conference the ESA Director for Human Spaceflight, Simonetta Di Pippo. Italian Minister of Education, University and Research Sottosegretario Pizza, and the president of the ASI space agency, Enrico Saggese, also participated at the meeting with the media.

“We are paying tribute to a visionary mind, to a great scientist but also to an idea of cooperation that is embodied in the ISS partnership. The ATV is the first recurring production of an exploration spacecraft and places Europe a step closer to our partners. I am glad that Italy is taking so much pride in their participation in the ISS, which is a recognition of their human and industrial capabilities,” the ESA official added, saying that the ATV is currently an indispensable part of the ISS logistics and resupply effort. Over the coming years, as the American space shuttles are retired, its importance will grow even more, as will that of all other unmanned cargo spacecrafts.

“Amaldi was one of the few that in the post-war years prompted into action starting a process leading to the founding of ESRO, and in following of ESA. It is widely acknowledged that since the 1950s the inception of the visionary concept aiming to a unified European capability to explore outer space is largely due to a bunch of prominent European scientists, and Edoardo Amaldi was a leading name among them,” Saggese says.

New X-Ray Telescope for Dark Energy Hunt in the Works

Image comment: The proposed diagram of the new telescope aimed at detecting dark energy

Image credits: Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics

German experts from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics announce that one of their newest instruments, an X-ray detector that could be used for tracking down dark energy, will launch in 2012. The new mission will be a collaboration of the European Space Agency (ESA), the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos), the Max Planck Institute, and the University of Leicester Space Research Center, in the UK. The new spacecraft, which has yet to be designed, will need to have very sensitive instruments, capable of making out extremely weak X-ray signals coming from far away.

This wouldn't be too difficult of a task on its own, but the detectors need to function undisturbed by the vast amount of infrared, visible and ultraviolet light coming in from the hundreds of billions of stars in the surrounding Universe. According to the German team, their instrument, the eROSITA (extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array) will need to function in the wavelength range of 1 to 50 nanometers. The trick is that the instrument needs to be made blind to several hundreds of nanometers in the adjacent range, so as to prevent “cross-contamination.” For the very first time ever, physicists at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) managed to characterize the needed spectral sensitivity of these instruments.

The accomplishment, coming from the same team that now controls four of the primary atomic clocks that contribute to setting up the UTC time, was made possible because the science group there has access to two advanced electron storage rings. This ensures that the facility can produce all required spectral ranges at optimum quality for research. Using the Metrology Light Source, the PTB group was capable of determining how to best shield the detectors from perturbing UV and visible light. At a separate facility, the team also analyzed the sensitivity of the detector in the soft X-ray range.

“The mission will conduct the first all-sky survey with an imaging telescope in the 2-12 keV band to discover the hidden population of several hundred thousand obscured supermassive black holes and the first all-sky imaging X-ray time variability survey. In addition to the all-sky surveys it is foreseen to observe dedicated sky regions with high sensitivity to detect ten thousands of clusters of galaxies and thereafter to do follow-up pointed observations of selected sources, in order to investigate the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The proposed orbit provides an order of magnitude lower particle background than those of Chandra and XMM-Newton, which will allow the detailed study of low-surface-brightness diffuse objects,” the mission statement reads.

New Hubble treasury project to survey first third of cosmic time

The images above of galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field show the power of the new WFC3 camera (top row) versus the older ACS camera (bottom row, longer exposures). The historic HUDF image below, released in 2004, combines data from the ACS and NICMOS cameras. Image credits: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and HUDF Team.

Astronomers will peer deep into the universe in five directions to document the early history of star formation and galaxy evolution in an ambitious new project requiring an unprecedented amount of time on the Hubble Space Telescope.

By imaging more than 250,000 distant galaxies, the project will provide the first comprehensive view of the structure and assembly of galaxies over the first third of cosmic time. It will also yield crucial data on the earliest stages in the formation of supermassive black holes and find distant supernovae important for understanding dark energy and the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Project leader Sandra Faber of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the effort relies on Hubble's powerful new infrared camera, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), as well as the telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The proposal, which brings together a large international team of collaborators, was awarded a record 902 orbits of observing time as one of three large-scale projects chosen for the Hubble Multi-Cycle Treasury Program. The observing time, totaling about three and a half months, will be spread out over the next two to three years.

"This is an effort to make the best use of Hubble while it is at the apex of its capabilities, providing major legacy data sets for the ages," said Faber, a University Professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC.

The committee that reviewed proposals for the Hubble Multi-Cycle Treasury Program asked Faber to combine her initial proposal with a similar one led by Henry Ferguson, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which operates the Hubble telescope. Faber and Ferguson will work together to manage the project, which involves more than 100 investigators from dozens of institutions around the world.

A powerful telescope like Hubble allows astronomers to see back in time as it gathers light that has traveled for billions of years across the universe. The new survey is designed to observe galaxies at distances that correspond to "look-back times" from nearly 13 billion years ago (about 600,000 years after the Big Bang) up to about 9 billion years ago. Astronomers express these distances in terms of redshift ("z"), a measure of how the expansion of the universe shifts the light from an object to longer wavelengths. The redshift increases with distance, and this study will look at objects at distances from about z=1.5 to z=8.

"We want to look very deep, very far back in time, and see what galaxies and black holes were doing back then," Faber said. "It's important to observe in different regions, because the universe is very clumpy, and to have a large enough sample to count things, so we can see how many of one kind of object versus another kind there were at different times."

One of Faber's colleagues at UCSC, Garth Illingworth, recently demonstrated the power of Hubble's new camera when his team described the most distant galaxies ever detected (see earlier story). Illingworth's team focused on one small patch of sky known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Faber's team will look both "deep" and "wide" to collect observations of a large number of distant objects in different regions of the sky.

The new data will be used to answer many key questions about galaxy evolution and cosmology. By studying how galaxy masses, morphologies, and star formation rates changed over time, researchers can test theories of galaxy formation and evolution.

"The earliest galaxies we see are truly infant galaxies. We want to know when massive galaxies first appeared, and when they started to look like the beautiful spiral galaxies we see today," Faber said. "This study will allow us to chart for the first time the maturation process of galaxies."

Of all the stars that have formed in the universe, only about 1 percent had formed by the time of the most distant epoch included in the survey. "When you combine our data with closer Hubble surveys, the telescope now covers 99 percent of all star formation in the universe," Faber said. "All but the very first moments of galaxy evolution will be revealed."

The study focuses on several patches of sky where deep observations with other instruments are providing data in multiple wavelengths of light, including x-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. X-ray emissions reveal the presence of a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy powering an "active galactic nucleus." Understanding the role of black holes in the evolution of galaxies is an important aspect of this project, Faber said.

"We don't know if the black holes form later or are a central feature of these galaxies from the very beginning. We hope to observe the earliest stages of black hole growth," she said.

Another important component of the project is the search for distant examples of a particular type of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova. Astronomers have used the uniform brightness of these supernovae to measure cosmic distances, leading to the conclusion that a mysterious force called dark energy is accelerating the expansion of the universe. Observations of distant Type Ia supernovae will enable researchers to verify that their brightnesses are indeed uniform and to measure more accurately how the rate of expansion of the universe has changed over time.

Faber and her fellow astronomers expect the first data from their observations to be available by the end of the year. Data from this project will be made available to the entire astronomy community with no proprietary period for Faber's team to conduct their own analysis. The likely result will be a race among teams of scientists to publish the first results from this new treasure trove of data. But Faber said the project will yield such rich data it will keep astronomers busy for years to come.

"We're very excited, not only about the 900 orbits, but also about what this new camera can do. It's just amazing what it sees," Faber said. "This project is the biggest event in my career, the culmination of three decades of work using big telescopes to study galaxy evolution."

Additional information about the project is available on the Cosmology Survey Multi-Cycle Treasury Program web site.

Details of Blue Origin's Rocket Design Surface

Everyone in the space industry knows that the private company Blue Origin is working on a new vertical liftoff and landing rocket, called New Shepard. However, official details of the space vehicle are being kept under wraps as work is progressing. But unofficial sources have published several of the functions and capabilities that the new spacecraft will possess. The project is being financed by Amazon.com Founder Jeff Bezos, so it stands to reason that Blue Origin has no financial troubles. In recent weeks, however, officials at the company have begun to share some of their work with the general public, and with other actors in the business, who are eager to see the design at work, Space reports.

The space vehicle is apparently designed to fly at suborbital altitudes, the Crew Cabin Development Manager and engineer at the company, Gary Lai, says. The rocket will be able to carry three or four astronauts to the edge of space, and the safety of the passengers is the top priority. “If we're famous for anything […] it's for being quiet. One of the reasons is [that] it certainly keeps our marketing and public relations staff small,” the official told the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference. Some 250 suborbital rocket vehicle providers and scientists gathered at the meeting, which took place in Boulder, Colorado, this month.

Lai added that Blue Origin was keen on sharing data with the public, or other companies, only when significant milestones were achieved. He explained that, most likely, the first time the general public would see the new design was when it would be fully operational and ready to fly. In addition to working on their own design, engineers here have also been recently awarded a $3.7-million NASA grant, to develop an all-composite space capsule, and to prepare it for ground-based structural testing. The experts also needed to construct an astronaut escape system, Blue Origin revealed earlier this month.

Under the new White House budget proposal for 2011, NASA's five-year-running Project Constellation would be canceled, and emphasis would be placed on supporting the private space-exploration industry. Under this approach, the space agency would receive some $6 billion to distribute among private companies such as Blue Origin, Orbital Science Corporation and Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX. Therefore, these preliminary funds need to be put to good use, if these companies want to ensure a steady – and also very large – supply of federal money. They will be in charge of transporting US astronauts to the International Space Station beyond September, 2010, when the US retires its aging space-shuttle fleet.

New Instrument Could Detect Water Underground on Mars

Boulder, Colo. -- With the whoosh of compressed gas and the whir of unspooling wire, a team of Boulder scientists and engineers tested a new instrument prototype that might be used to detect groundwater deep inside Mars.

The Mars Time Domain Electromagnetic Sounder (MTDEM) uses induction to generate electrical currents in the ground, whose secondary magnetic fields are in turn detected at the planetary surface. In this way, the electrical conductivity of the subsurface can be reconstructed.

"Groundwater that has been out of atmospheric circulation for eons will be very salty," says the project's principal investigator Dr. Robert Grimm, a director in the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute. "It is a near-ideal exploration target for inductive systems."

The inductive principle of the MTDEM is distinct from the wavelike, surface-penetrating radars MARSIS and SHARAD presently orbiting Mars. "The radars have been very useful in imaging through ice and through very dry, low-density rock," says Grimm, "but they have not lived up to expectations to look through solid rock and find water."

The time-domain inductive method uses a large, flat-lying loop of wire on the ground to generate and receive electromagnetic signals. In order to do this robotically, the team developed a launch system that shoots two projectiles, each paying out spooled wire as they fly.

"The main challenge was getting the spooling right," says Robert Warden, a mechanical engineer at Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., which built the deployment system. "The spools had to be compact yet allow rapid payout of a thin wire at more than 30 meters per second (70 miles per hour)."

Data taken during the test launches allowed Warden and Grimm to scale the system for a flight mission. The MTDEM prototype deployed to a distance of more than 70 meters. For Mars, a system deploying a 200-meter loop would be less than 6 kilograms mass and could detect groundwater at depths up to 5 kilometers (3 miles). Most of the instrument's mass would be in the loop and deployment system. Barry Berdanier, the Ball electrical engineer who built the MTDEM electronics, estimates that the flight electronics would comprise just a few hundred grams.

"Electromagnetic induction methods are widely used in groundwater exploration," says James Pfieffer of Zapata Incorporated, a geophysical firm that provided field support. "We have been mapping groundwater in Hawaii for many years." The main field test of the MTDEM was on Maui, where known performance could be used to calibrate the new prototype.

Grimm adds, "Subsurface, liquid water on Mars could be a habitable zone for microbes. We know that huge volumes of discharged groundwater have shaped Mars' ancient surface. Is that water still locked inside?"


A video and images of the MTDEM loop-deployment test are available at http://www.swri.org/press/2009/mtdem.htm

Orion Propulsion Completes Qualification Testing for Innovative "Green" Propulsion System

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--Orion Propulsion, Inc. today announced completion of a qualification test program for the Forward Propulsion System (FPS) of Bigelow Aerospace's Sundancer Project, the world's first commercial space habitat. The innovative Orion Propulsion thruster system uses hydrogen and oxygen that are produced from Bigelow's proprietary Environmental Control Life Support System (ECLSS) as propellants for the spacecraft's attitude control system. This truly "people-powered" space craft, which burns hydrogen and oxygen generated from water, sweat, and urine, eliminates the need for more toxic propellants such as hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide that are more costly to use and harmful to the environment - on Earth and in space.

Tim Pickens, CEO of Orion Propulsion, said, "We are excited to complete this critical demonstration that will move Bigelow Aerospace one step closer to creating a self-sufficient commercial human habitat that is safer and more environmentally friendly than any other system in use. I am proud of our team for delivering a best-in-class solution for this landmark project. We look forward to completing production and flying critical flight hardware on the world's first commercial space habitat."

"Orion Propulsion has been an excellent partner and has met every delivery date and performance milestone," said Bigelow Aerospace Program Manager, Eric Haakonstad. "Their team worked with our very specific and demanding requirements to put together an elegant and "green" propulsion system that is safe, cost efficient, powerful and reliable - these are critical elements that will enable Sundancer's success over its 15 year life cycle in space."

The test program was a thorough evaluation of the propulsion system and included thermal cycle vacuum testing, electro-magnetic interference testing, acoustic and vibration testing. In addition, an accelerated life test program was conducted simulating space environments including vacuum, and temperature swings. The culmination of the qualification period was a Design Certification Review held with Bigelow Aerospace May 27-28, 2009. The review presented the results of the qualification test program and documented the requirement verification process for the FPS. The review was passed and authority has been given to proceed with assembly of the flight hardware. The assembly of flight hardware began June 1, 2009 and will continue through the summer. The first flight ship-set should be completed in August of this year.

The Orion Propulsion "green propulsion" system provides environmental benefits through eliminating the need to launch into the atmosphere other highly toxic propellants such as hydrazine or nitrogen tetroxide, thus reducing weight and launch costs. It also creates a safer, cleaner work environment for humans on Earth and in space. In addition, it can be adapted for other uses including "roll control" for small launch vehicles and propulsion or attitude control on other space craft.

About Bigelow Aerospace

Bigelow Aerospace is dedicated to developing next-generation crewed space complexes to revolutionize space commerce and open up the final frontier to all of humanity. At Bigelow Aerospace, we're building the future today! For more information, visit www.bigelowaerospace.com.

About Orion Propulsion, Inc.

Orion Propulsion is a leading provider of reliable, affordable rocket propulsion systems and test infrastructure solutions to commercial and government organizations. Founded in 2004 by CEO Tim Pickens, Orion Propulsion specializes in rocket propulsion design and fabrication, engine testing services, ground support equipment, and launch operations support. Orion Propulsion is a woman-owned business, headquartered in Huntsville, AL. For more information, visit www.orionpropulsion.com.

Visitors will gravitate to Black Holes exhibit

On Sunday, June 21, a new exhibit developed by educators and scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) will open at the Boston Museum of Science.

Called “Black Holes: Space Warps & Time Twists,” the traveling exhibition pulls visitors into the modern search for real black holes – the most mysterious and powerful objects in the universe.

Black holes are regions in space with gravity so powerful that nothing can escape, and where time and space are warped beyond our understanding. The exhibition will guide visitors on a journey to the edge of these strange objects to discover how the latest research is turning science fiction into fact, challenging our notions of space and time in the process.

"In this exhibition, we wanted to use the inherent fascination of black holes as a compelling vehicle to engage museum visitors in the larger story of how scientific discovery works - and how science is connected to human curiosity, imagination, and culture," said project director Mary Dussault of the CfA.

CfA personnel spent two and a half years planning, designing and constructing the 2,500-square-foot exhibition. Its interactive stations address a number of questions, such as:

• What is a black hole?

• Where are black holes?

• How do we find black holes if they are really black?

• What would happen if you fell into a black hole?

One feature sure to be popular: a station where visitors can experience their own black hole adventure. Using one of three "excursion pods," they will embark on a fantasy "adventure vacation" to the black hole at the center of our galaxy. As they make their way toward this "deep space dive," visitors explore the phenomena around the black hole, including warped space, the slowing of time, and the dangerous magnetic fields and radiation that could leave them stranded on their cosmic adventure.

As they travel through the exhibit, visitors carry their own bar-coded Explorer's Card, which they can use to collect discoveries and to generate a personalized Website that only they can access. Once visitors return home, their journal becomes a personal portal to further black hole exploration and a platform for sharing their “Black Holes” exhibit experience with friends and family.

“Black Holes” was made possible by a generous grant from the National Science Foundation, with additional major support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The exhibition will be on display at the Museum of Science through Sept. 7, 2009, and is included with regular admission.

Physicists create 'black hole for sound'

By accelerating atoms across the dark gap at the centre of this image, researchers think they might be able to create an acoustic black hole capable of producing the first detectable Hawking radiation (Image: O. Lahav et al.)

An artificial black hole that traps sound instead of light has been created in an attempt to detect theoretical Hawking radiation. The radiation, proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking more than 30 years ago, causes black holes to evaporate over time.

Astrophysical black holes are created when matter becomes so dense that it collapses to a point called a singularity. The black hole's gravity is so great that nothing – not even light – can escape from a boundary around it called an event horizon.

But physicists have also been developing 'black holes' for sound. They do this by coaxing a material to move faster than the speed of sound in that medium, so that sound waves travelling within it cannot keep up, like fish swimming in a fast-moving stream. The sound is effectively trapped in the stream-like event horizon.

Quantum state

The materials physicists are focusing on are called Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), a quantum state of matter where a clump of atoms behaves like a single atom.

Condensates have been made that move supersonically before, so physicists have likely created acoustic black holes in the process of working with BECs, says Eric Cornell of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who shared a 2001 Nobel Prize for the development of Bose-Einstein condensates.

But he says a new study by Jeff Steinhauer of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and colleagues is the first documented experiment directly aimed at producing Hawking radiation in a BEC.

Supersonic flow

The team cooled 100,000 or so charged rubidium atoms to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero and trapped them with a magnetic field. Using a laser, the researchers then created a well of electric potential that attracted the atoms and caused them to zip across the well faster than the speed of sound in the material.

This setup created a supersonic flow that lasted for some 8 milliseconds, fleetingly forming an acoustic black hole capable of trapping sound.

The implications of such work could be profound, as it could lead to the first detection of Hawking radiation.

Quantum mechanics says that pairs of particles can spontaneously appear out of empty space. These pairs, which consist of a particle and its antiparticle, should exist for a fleeting moment before they annihilate each other and disappear.

But in the 1970s, Hawking proposed that if the pair was created near the edge of a black hole, one particle might fall in before it is destroyed, leaving its partner stranded outside the event horizon. To observers, this particle would appear as radiation. In acoustic black holes, Hawking radiation would take the form of particle-like packets of vibrational energy called phonons.

Big boon

Finding Hawking radiation would be a big boon for physics, says cosmologist Sean Carroll of Caltech. "For one thing, Stephen Hawking would win the Nobel Prize," Carroll told New Scientist. "But it would more just show us that we're on the right track."

That's because Hawking's theory makes some fundamental propositions about how quantum mechanics works in space that is curved by gravity. The underlying math is used to calculate how the universe behaved during a period called inflation, when space rapidly expanded soon after the big bang.

Detecting Hawking radiation through astronomical observations, however, is difficult, because the evaporation of typical black holes is obscured by higher-energy sources of radiation, including the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang.

'First step'

And researchers still have a way to go before they can detect Hawking radiation in acoustic black holes. Steinhauer's team, for example, estimates that the boost in velocity that atoms get in their setup must be about 10 times bigger in order to create detectable Hawking radiation in the form of phonons.

"Actually detecting the sound waves produced by the hole is really tough. But this is an exciting first step," says Bill Unruh of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who first proposed the idea of using quantum fluids to create artificial event horizons.

Cornell agrees, adding that the team needs to make the BEC flow much more smoothly in order to measure the subtle sign of Hawking radiation. "What they've done is kind of the easy part," he told New Scientist. "The hard part is to do that in such a quiet way that you can see all the tiny fluctuations on top of all the violent things you've done to the condensate [to make it go supersonic]."

Cornell and his colleagues are building their own experimental setup to produce acoustic event horizons.

Laser pulses

And others hope to produce detectable Hawking radiation in the lab using light. In 2008, a team created an artificial event horizon in an optical fibre, exploiting the fact that different wavelengths of light move at different speeds in the fibre.

They did this by sending a relatively slow-moving pulse down the fibre. This distorted the fibre's optical properties, so that when a second, faster pulse caught up with the first one, it was slowed down and effectively became trapped behind the event-horizon-like leading edge of the first pulse.

An astrophysical detection of Hawking radiation may still be possible. The smaller a black hole is, the higher the energy its Hawking radiation is. So the evaporation of microscopic black holes that some researchers suspect were created almost immediately after the big bang might be detectable using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which launched in 2008.

Source:- NewScientist

Three Balloon Missions Simultaneously Afloat Above Two Continents

There are currently three scientific balloons aloft aroudn the world - AESOP, Sunrise, and 597N FIREBall. Below is a short summary (courtesy of NASA GSFC) of each mission.

-- AESOP – Dr. John Clem – University of Delaware. AESOP Payload was launched from Esrange/Sweden on June 7, 2009.

The AntiElectron SubOrbitial Payload (AESOP) mission will determine the extent to which the large-scale structure of the heliospheric magnetic field is important in the transmission of galactic cosmic rays through the heliosphere.

-- Sunrise - Dr. Sami Solanki - Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. Sunrise was launched from Esrange/Sweden on June 7, 2009.

A balloon-borne 1m solar telescope to provide near diffraction-limited images of the photosphere and chromosphere with an unprecedented resolution down to 35 km on the solar surface. The SUNRISE science requirements demand precision fine pointing and has a sensitivity of better than 0.003 arcsec and allows improving the fine pointing from 7.5 arc –seconds provided by the gondola to about 0.05 arc-seconds at the science instruments.

-- 597N FIREBall - Dr. Chris Martin, California Tech. FIREBall Payload was launched from New Mexico on June 8, 2009.

Faint Intergalactic medium Red-shifted Emission Balloon (FIREBall) is a cooperative effort between Columbia University, California Institute of Technology, France’s Laboratorie Astronomie Marseille (LAM) and CNES. FIREBall seeks to discover and map faint emission from the Inter Galactic Medium (IGM). The FIREBall gondola is able to point the instrument anywhere on the sky between 20 degrees elevation and 80 degrees elevation. The field of view is 2 arc minutes and the pointing is better than 10 arc seconds.

Keep current at CSBF Operations Website at http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/

Clearest Images Of Starburst Galaxies Reveal New Picture Of Early Universe

The BLAST telescope produced these images of Star formation toward the constellation Vela. (Credit: BLAST collaboration)

People have always wondered where we, our Earth, our galaxy, come from. A group of scientist has now driven that quest one step further and taken a peak at how the stars that gave rise to most of the material found on our universe formed over cosmic history.

University of Miami professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, Joshua Gundersen is part of an international research team that built an innovative new telescope called BLAST (Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope) and launched it to the edge of the atmosphere, where it discovered previously unidentified dust-obscured, star-forming galaxies that could help illuminate the origins of the universe.

"BLAST has given us a unique picture into the development of other galaxies and the earliest stages of star formation of our own Milky Way," Gundersen explains. "The light we're getting from these submillimeter galaxies is from a time when they were first forming. In a sense, it's like getting a baby picture."

The data analyzed over the past two years reveals close to a thousand of these "starburst" galaxies that lie five to ten billion light years from Earth, produce stars at an incredible rate, and hide about half of the starlight in the cosmos. The findings were recently published in the journal Nature.

Until BLAST came along, most of the galaxies in the universe have been detected at optical wavelengths visible to the naked eye. The "starburst" galaxies identified by Gundersen and his colleagues however are a new class of galaxies, enshrouded by dust that absorbs most of their starlight and then re-emits it at far-infrared wavelengths.

During an 11-day flight in 2006, the telescope, while tethered to a balloon 120,000 feet above Antarctica, took measurements in three different submillimeter wavelengths that are nearly impossible to observe from the ground. "By going to balloon altitudes, we got a nice, crystal-clear picture of these things," Gundersen said. "It is these far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths that we're able to detect with BLAST," Gundersen explains.

Graduate student Nick Thomas spent seven weeks at the McMurdo scientific research station in Antarctica, where he helped assemble the device and worked on some of its electronic systems.

"Having worked in a project of this magnitude and in the company of a superb group of scientists has been one of the highlights of my career thus far," said Thomas. "Collaborating on this project has been an incredible learning experience both at the personal and the professional level."

The data from BLAST is being combined with information from other NASA observatories like the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, helping astronomers and cosmologists to better understand the evolutionary history of these "starburst" galaxies and how they may be associated with larger-scale structures in the universe.

The work on BLAST has helped pave the wave for one of the European Space Agency's most ambitious missions to study the cosmos: The Herschel telescope, which launched into orbit earlier this month from a space center in French Guiana. Herschel will peer into the dustiest and earliest stages of planet, star, and galaxy growth, using the same detector system that flew aboard BLAST.

"The idea with BLAST was that we could test a new detector system on a much cheaper, faster platform, namely a balloon payload," Gundersen says. "Herschel has an identical detector system to BLAST, along with other important instruments. "It will do a lot more than BLAST did, but we achieved some of the important goals first."

Giant Balloon to Launch Sun-Watching Telescope

Set to launch sometime in June, the Sunrise telescope will fix its lens on the sun for about a week as it floats under a balloon from Sweden to Canada. Credit: Sweden Space Corp.

A telescope lashed to a giant balloon is poised to lift off from Sweden as early as Monday to study the surface of the sun.

Dubbed Sunrise, the balloon observatory should stay aloft for nearly a week as it travels from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden over the arctic to a safe touchdown in Canada. The mission is part of a NASA experiment for balloon launches and is slated to fly up to six days to snap high-resolution photographs of the sun's surface.

The telescope and its gondola of scientific instruments are a 2-ton payload that will be borne under a balloon that is larger than a sports arena, filled with nearly 34 million cubic feet of helium. It should cross the arctic at an altitude of nearly 23 miles (37 km). To track the sun while it floats above Earth, the gondola has a pointing system that allows it to rotate horizontally.

Through Sunrise, scientists seek to demystify some of the fascinating and destructive phenomena caused by magnetic fields on the sun's surface. Those fields can be associated with sunspots and explosive coronal mass ejections which lead to space weather events that can affect the climate here on Earth. Space weather, like energetic solar flares and solar winds, can damage satellites in Earth's orbit, endanger astronauts and even disrupt power grids on the ground.

Sunrise project managers plan to launch the solar telescope on June 1, but could try throughout early July to await pristine weather conditions.

Sunrise is part of a NASA experiment with balloon-launched research projects, this one in conjunction with scientists and agencies from Germany, Spain and the United States. Using balloons, NASA seeks to cut the cost of launching orbital satellites. While Sunrise is estimated to cost $60 million to $80 million, the cost of launching a similar-sized telescope into orbit might run as high as $500 million, Michael Knolker, director of National Center for Atmospheric Research's High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colo., told SPACE.com last year.

This is the gondola's second launch after a successful test-run over the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. in 2007. In that test, the balloon launched without the telescope.

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