• Scientists respond to planet hunter's plight with pointers – and poetry

    NASA

    An artist's conception shows NASA's Kepler space telescope observing a planetary transit.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    NASA is getting plenty of advice — and sympathy — as it assesses whether its Kepler planet-hunting telescope can be revived after the failure of its reaction-control system. The reactions from scientists and engineers range from repair tips to an Audenesque elegy. Here's a sampling:

    How to fix Kepler
    The reason why the $600 million Kepler spacecraft can no longer search for planetary transits is that two of its four gyroscopic reaction wheels can no longer spin. Mission managers say Kepler needs at least three of those wheels in working order to hold its position still enough to stare at alien stars.

    The most recent part to fail is known as reaction wheel 4. The mission's deputy project manager, Charlie Sobeck, told reporters that the Kepler team could try putting some reverse torque on that wheel in hopes of freeing it up.

    Two other possibilities were raised by Scott Hubbard, who headed NASA's Ames Research Center during the development of the Kepler mission and is now a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University.

    One option would be to try turning on reaction wheel 2, which failed last July. "It was putting metal on metal, and the friction was interfering with its operation, so you could see if the lubricant that is in there, having sat quietly, has redistributed itself, and maybe it will work," Hubbard said in a Stanford Q&A.

    "The other scheme, and this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability," he said. The mission's principal investigator, Ames' Bill Borucki, said on Wednesday the thrusters couldn't hold the spacecraft stable enough for planet-hunting. Nevertheless, it might be one of the options under consideration.

    For the time being, Kepler has been put into a holding pattern that should minimize its thruster fuel consumption and give the Kepler team several months to weigh all the options, the costs and the potential scientific benefits.

    The problems facing the Kepler planet-hunting probe are reviewed in NASA's weekly video roundup.

    Going beyond Kepler
    Even if the Kepler spacecraft can't be revived, Borucki says that only half of the data collected so far have been fully analyzed. He estimates it'll take another two years or so to complete the analysis.

    Meanwhile, NASA has just given the go-ahead its next planet-hunting satellite: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. That $200 million project would put a telescope array in space in 2017 to perform an all-sky survey, looking for exoplanets in orbit around the nearest and brightest stars. That strategy is markedly different from the one used by Kepler, which stared at a relatively small patch of sky straddling the constellations Cygnus and Vega.

    This October, the European Space Agency plans to launch a space probe called Gaia to conduct a census of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way. Gaia could detect thousands of distant planetary systems, and measure their orbits and masses using a technique known as astrometry.

    ESA is working on another planet hunter called the Characterizing Exoplanets Satellite, or CHEOPS, which is due for launch in 2017. CHEOPS would conduct high-resolution transit observations of stars that have already been found to host planets. 

    The $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which NASA bills as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, could conceivably analyze the atmospheres of alien planets. It's currently due for launch in 2018.

    Paying tribute to Kepler
    NASA's associate administrator for science, John Grunsfeld, said it's too early to consider Kepler "down and out." But many astronomers fear that Kepler's planet-hunting days are finished.

    "I think 'The mission is not over' means 'the mission is over,'" Caltech's Mike Brown said in a Twitter update on Wednesday. "Might be other things it can do. But, kids, I think the mission is over."

    Alan Boss, an astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science who's part of the Kepler team, was similarly downbeat. In an email sent to AAAS MemberCentral, he called this week's setback a "disaster":

    "I am afraid that the loss of this second reaction wheel effectively means the partial loss of Kepler's main science goal: determining the frequency of Earth-sized planets orbiting their stars at distances such that liquid water could occur on the planets' surfaces. Kepler has taken an outstandingly impressive four years of data, but we still need another three or so years of outstandingly impressive data to be certain of the frequency of Earth-size planets. Right now we have enough data to make an intelligent extrapolation about what that number is, but that is not the same as actually determining that number. Kepler was planned to do that for us. There is no other mission in sight that can reproduce for us what Kepler was in the process of doing. The upcoming (2017) NASA TESS Mission will help to push the exoplanet field forward, but it is not designed to find Earthlike planets around sunlike stars, like Kepler was."

    "This is one of the saddest days in my life. A crippled Kepler may be able to do other things, but it cannot do the one thing it was designed to do."

    Another Kepler team member, Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley, told KQED that he felt dizzy and teary-eyed over the spacecraft's situation. "It’s a loss for our species," he said. "That sounds dramatic, but we pride ourselves as a species of exploration, seeking answers beyond the horizon, answers about our place in the universe. And Kepler was answering those questions."

    Marcy went so far as to tweak W.H. Auden's poem "Funeral Blues" to pay tribute to Kepler. Here's the astronomer's elegy to a spacecraft:

    Stop all the clocks, cut off the Internet,
    Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
    Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
    Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

    Let jet airplanes circle at night overhead
    Sky-writing over Cygnus: Kepler is dead.
    Put crepe bows round the white necks of doves,
    Let the traffic officers wear black cotton gloves.

    Kepler was my North, my South, my East and West,
    My working week, no weekend rest,
    My noon, my midnight, my talks, my song;
    I thought Kepler would last forever: I was wrong.

    The stars are still wanted now; let's honor every one,
    Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
    Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
    For nothing will ever be this good.

    With thanks to W.H.Auden.

    For a video rendition of "Funeral Blues," check out this clip from "Four Weddings and a Funeral."

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Opportunity rover breaks 40-year-old NASA record for off-world driving

    NASA / JPL-Caltech

    On May 15, the 3,309th Martian day of its Red Planet mission, NASA's Opportunity rover drove 263 feet (80 meters) southward along the western rim of Endeavour Crater.

    By Mike Wall, Space.com

    NASA's long-lived Opportunity Mars rover is the new American champion of off-planet driving, breaking a distance record set more than 40 years ago by an Apollo moon buggy.

    The six-wheeled Opportunity rover drove 263 feet (80 meters) on Wednesday, bringing its total odometry on the Red Planet to 22.220 miles (35.760 kilometers), NASA officials said. The previous mark had been held by the Apollo 17 moon rover, which astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt drove for 22.210 miles (35.744 km) across the lunar surface in December 1972.

    "The record we established with a roving vehicle was made to be broken, and I'm excited and proud to be able to pass the torch to Opportunity," Cernan said a few days ago in a conversation with Opportunity team member Jim Rice, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Cernan's quote was contained in a NASA announcement about the agency's new distance record.

    Opportunity still trails another robot for the international distance record. The Soviet Union's remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the moon in 1973.

    The golf-cart-size Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on Mars in January 2004 for what were supposed to be three-month missions to search for signs of past water on the Red Planet. They found plenty of such evidence, then kept on roving.

    Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later. But Opportunity is still going strong, exploring the rim of Mars' Endeavour Crater.

    Opportunity had been working at a section of the rim dubbed "Cape York" since the middle of 2011. This week, it began trekking toward an area called Solander Point, which lies 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) away, NASA officials said.

    So the rover could soon put Lunokhod 2 in its rear-view mirror, claiming the overall off-planet driving mark as well. Opportunity's handlers have said they'd like to add this milestone to the rover's resume, though science remains the mission's top priority.

    "I want to beat that record," John Callas, Opportunity's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Space.com last year, when the rover's odometer read 21.35 miles (34.4 kilometers).

    Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • How Orbital's falling satellite sparked a UFO mystery in South America

    Eyewitness video shows bright points of light moving across the skies over Temuco, Chile.

    By James Oberg, NBC News Space Analyst

    When Orbital Sciences' test spacecraft fell from orbit last week, the company saw the fiery blaze as a cause for celebration — but it was also the cause of a UFO mystery, at least for a little while.

    The spacecraft was a dummy payload, which was launched into orbit on April 21 aboard Orbital's newly developed Antares booster during its maiden flight. The satellite's primary purpose was to simulate the mass of the company's Cygnus cargo capsule, which will eventually be launched by the Antares to resupply the International Space Station.

    Orbital never intended the Cygnus Mass Simulator to stay in space. Its orbit gradually decayed over the course of more than two weeks, and on the night of May 9-10 it finally made its descent through the atmosphere. As it fell, aerodynamic forces heated it up, and tore it apart. It broke into several dozen flaming fireballs, streaking together from horizon to horizon across the evening skies of Chile and Argentina.

    Just by luck, the spectacle unfolded over a populated region. It was widely seen, and widely recorded. Within hours, a dozen videos of the sky show were posted on YouTube.

    The videos thrilled the Antares team. "It was a spectacular ending to a great beginning,” said Barry Beneski, the company's publicity director. Operators in their flight dynamics lab, who had designed the mission, were more down to Earth: "Way cool!" was their first comment.

    But for many of the eyewitnesses, the aerial blaze was a real mystery, since no advance word of the spacecraft's destruction had been issued. Was it a comet or a meteor shower? A blimp or fleet of Chinese lanterns? Theories raced around the Internet.

    The leading theory, as might be expected, was that the object was a descending spaceship. The scattered dazzlers assembled themselves in the perceptions of many witnesses as outlining a large structure with mounted lights. It was widely seen as an awesome military secret, or even an interplanetary visitor.

    It was an honest misperception.

    Was the Pentagon in the dark?

    It didn't help that the U.S. Strategic Command apparently misidentified the object in orbit. In advance of re-entry, the Pentagon's space catalog listed it as a tiny test satellite that should have burned up without a trace.

    Orbital Sciences

    This map of South America shows segments of the Cygnus Mass Simulator's final orbits, ending with re-entry over Argentina. The final track matches up well with UFO sightings on the night of May 9-10.

    Within hours of the satellite's re-entry, Canadian amateur satellite tracker Ted Molczan matched up the UFO reports with the satellite catalog entry. "The time and location of the sighting correlates with the re-entry of 'object Bell,'" he reported on the SeeSat discussion board.

    Molczan added that the Strategic Command had issued a "prediction" several hours after the actual re-entry, saying that the satellite would hit the atmosphere soon after midnight GMT on May 10. The trajectory had the minisatellite coming down over the area of South America where the UFO sightings were reported.

    The problem was, the Bell minisatellite described by the Strategic Command and NORAD was only 4 inches (10 centimeters) wide, about the size of a tissue box. When Molczan rechecked the records, he determined that the minisatellite should have fallen from orbit just days after its launch. The Antares booster stage was destroyed during re-entry on May 1. That left only one other sizable object associated with the Antares launch: the 8,377-pound (3,800-kilogram) Cygnus Mass Simulator.

    The Strategic Command's public affairs office has not yet confirmed the correct identity of the object that was seen falling out of orbit, despite repeated inquiries from NBC News.

    Other secrets
    Orbital Sciences, the spacecraft's owner, would have been legally responsible for any damage caused by falling debris. For that reason, the company took great pains to reduce the potential debris hazard.

    Orbital Sciences

    A schematic shows the latticework structure inside Orbital's Cygnus Mass Simulator.

    The mass simulator payload was built using an open lattice structure, designed to tear apart quickly during re-entry. Each of the separate pieces was meant to burn up completely, providing observers with a view of fiery streaks flashing across the sky. And that's exactly what happened.

    No advance warning was given, because no threat was expected. Orbital's Beneski said  the company merely planned to post a note on the project's Facebook page, at some point after re-entry. The inquiries from NBC News caught Orbital's officials by surprise — but they then responded fully and quickly.

    UFO buffs shouldn't be disappointed. The event demonstrated that large satellite re-entries can really look like giant spaceships with mounted lights. Such reports fill the files that have been kept by UFO researchers over the past half-century — and many of those reports could well be unrecognized satellite re-entries as well.

    More about UFOs:

    NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA's Johnson Space Center as a Mission Control operator and an orbital designer.

  • How mighty winds of Neptune, Uranus blow

    NASA, ESA, and M. Showalt

    This image of Uranus was obtained in 2005 by the Hubble Space Telescope. Rings, southern collar and a bright cloud in the northern hemisphere are visible.

    By Charles Q. Choi
    LiveScience

    The powerful winds of Uranus and Neptune are apparently confined to tight layers in both planets, researchers have determined.

    These findings could shed light on how those immensely strong winds are born, and how giant planets form and evolve over time, scientists added.

    Giant planets in the outer solar system, like Uranus and Neptune, are dominated by winds that can reach supersonic speeds and jet streams 10 to 15 times stronger than those found on Earth, judging by images of how clouds race by on those worlds. However, just how deep those winds reached was unknown until now, hidden as those lower depths are beneath those dense layers of clouds. [Photos of Uranus from near and far]

    "This has been an open question for the last 25 years," study lead author Yohai Kaspi, a planetary scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, told Space.com.

    Yohai Kaspi, Weizmann Institute of Science / NASA

    This image shows schematic of the jet streams on the planet Neptune. Scientist have found that the atmosphere's circulation is characterized by westward flow near the equator with velocities reaching 750 mph (1200 km/hr), and an eastward flow at higher latitudes in both the northern and southern hemispheres with velocities reaching 560 mph (900 km/hr). The wind velocities decay toward the planet's dense fluid interior.

    Kaspi and his colleagues focused on Uranus and Neptune, which are both "ice giants" — massive planets with icy atmospheres. The winds of Uranus can blow clouds up to 560 miles per hour (900 kilometers per hour), while Neptune's winds can reach up to 1,500 miles per hour (2,400 kilometers per hour), the fastest planetary winds detected yet in the solar system.

    The researchers investigated the gravity fields of those worlds using data gathered by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft and ground-based telescopes. The strength of a planet's gravity field depends on its amount of mass, and this strength can vary over the surface of a planet depending on the amount of mass lying under it. By analyzing the gravity fields of these worlds, the investigators could deduce how their atmospheres circulated.

    The scientists discovered the winds blow in relatively thin weather layers no more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) deep on both planets. For comparison, Neptune is about 30,600 miles (49,250 km) in diameter, while Uranus is about 31,500 miles (50,700 km) wide.

    These findings help reveal how these winds originate, researchers said.

    NASA

    This image of Neptune was captured by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft during August 1989. Neptune's Great Dark Spot dominates the center along with bright, white. To the south is the bright feature nicknamed "Scooter." Still farther south is the "Dark Spot 2," which has a bright core. Each feature moves eastward at a different velocity, so it is only occasionally that they appear close to each other as shown here.

    Past studies have suggested the winds on Uranus and Neptune might arise one of two ways — either shallow processes in their outer atmospheres, or deeper atmospheric mechanisms extending into their interiors. The researchers found the windy layers of Uranus and Neptune occupy the outermost 0.15 and 0.2 percent of their masses, respectively, suggesting that shallow processes drive those winds, such as swirling caused by moisture condensing and evaporating in the atmosphere.

    The new study has implications for how scientists understand how planets form.

    "When it comes to thinking about the effects of dynamics on planetary formation, we're saying the bottom 90 percent of giant planets is static," Kaspi said.

    In the future, the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn and NASA's Juno probe that is scheduled to reach Jupiter can analyze the gravity fields of those giant planets and help better explain their winds as well.

    "The four giant planets have more than 99 percent of the mass of the solar system outside the sun, and within the next few years, we're going to be learning about the dynamics of all of their atmospheres," Kaspi said. Saturn and Jupiter should be more complicated to analyze than Uranus and Neptune because the former two planets have more jet streams than the latter pair, Kaspi said.

    The scientists will detail their findings in Saturday's issue of the journal Nature.

    Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

     

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • 'Pumpkin' moonship passes key review

    Northrop Grumman

    This preliminary sketch shows Northrop Grumman's proposed manned moon lander design for the Golden Spike Co., which includes a descent stage, surface habitat and minimalist ascent pod dubbed "Pumpkin."

    By Mike Wall
    Space.com

    A private space exploration company's plans to build a novel moonship to return human explorers to the lunar surface has moved one step closer to reality.

    Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman has completed a lunar lander feasiblity study for the Golden Spike Co., which aims to begin ferrying paying customers to the moon and back by 2020.

    The study came up with a new design that consists of a descent stage with a surface habitat and a lightweight ascent vehicle dubbed "Pumpkin," all of which would fit inside a 16.5-foot-wide (5 meters) rocket fairing for launch. [Golden Spike's Manned Moon Plans (Photos)]

    "This concept has significant operability advantages for surface exploration since the surface habitat can be segmented to isolate lunar dust and provides more space for living and for selecting the most valuable lunar return samples," Northrop Grumman study lead Martin McLaughlin said in a statement.

    "We affectionately call the minimalist ascent pod 'Pumpkin' because of its spherical shape and because it returns the crew to orbit after the surface exploration party," he added.

    Golden Spike, which was named after the final spike pounded into the United States' First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, aims to send two-person crews to the moon and back by the end of the decade. The company originally pegged ticket prices at $750 million per seat, but revenue from media rights and merchandising could end up cutting that by perhaps 30 percent, officials have said.

    The company thinks its services will be attractive to a variety of research institutions, corporations and countries, particularly nations that lack big-time space programs.

    Golden Spike officials were pleased with the results of the recently completed lander study, but the company is not locked into building Pumpkin or any of the other components at this point.

    "It's revolutionary. We've got the approximate capability of an Apollo lander in roughly half the mass — a huge advantage in terms of the total mass of the system," Golden Spike President and Chief Executive Officer Alan Stern, a former NASA science chief, told Space.com.

    "We have equal or more habitable volume and have likely solved the problem with too much dust in the cabin going up to orbit," Stern added. "Pumpkin may not be what we ultimately end up with, but it is a huge forward step. No one's really looked at a lander like this. We are pretty excited about it."

    Northrop Grumman and its legacy companies — Grumman Aerospace and TRW — built the very first manned moon landers back in the 1960s, for NASA's Apollo program.

    Space.com Assistant Managing Editor Clara Moskowitz (@ClaraMoskowitz) contributed to this story. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Latest big solar flare could give Earth a glancing blow

    NASA / SDO

    A huge X1.2-class solar flare erupted from the sun late Tuesday, the fourth major flare in two days from a busy sunspot on the surface of the sun. NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory captured this view of the event.

    By Tariq Malik
    Space.com

    An overachieving sunspot on the surface of the sun unleashed its fourth major solar flare in two days late Tuesday, a solar storm that may deal Earth a glancing blow, space weather experts say.

    The active sunspot AR1748 roared to life Tuesday night releasing an X-class solar flare — the strongest type the sun can experience — that peaked at 9:48 p.m. EDT, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo. The flare came after a relative lull in activity from sunspot AR1748, which fired off three monster X-class solar flares within a 24-hour period between Sunday and Monday.

    In a morning update, NOAA space weather officials said they are studying this latest solar flare from AR1748 to see if it coincided with an eruption of super-hot solar plasma known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. Such explosions can unleash huge waves of charged solar material streaking out into space at millions of miles per hour.  [Sun Unleashes Biggest Flares of 2013 (Photos)]

    "Too early to know if a CME occurred. If one did, it may just glance the Earth's magnetic field, given its off-center location still," SWPC officials said. "Forecasters are pondering that one."

     Public outreach officials with NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory released a photo of Tuesday night's X-class flare via the mission's Camilla mascot Twitter page, and suggested a CME event did occur.

    Sunspot AR1748 is about twice the size of Earth and is currently located on the sun's extreme left side, so it is not directly facing our planet.

    The solar storm Tuesday night registered as an X1.2 solar flare, making it the weakest in the four-flare series from sunspot AR1748. The stormy activity began late Sunday when the sun fired off an X1.7 flare. Two more flares followed on Monday, an X2.8 flare at midday and an even stronger X3.2 that night.

    According to solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the sunspot will likely be facing Earth by this weekend.

    "In a couple of days, it will be far enough onto the disk that any CMEs that we got would probably have some impact on Earth," Young told Space.com Tuesday.
    When aimed directly at Earth, X-class solar flares can pose a risk to astronauts and satellites in orbit, as well as interfere with radio, GPS and other communications signals. X-class flares and more moderate, but still intense, M-class sun storms can also supercharge Earth's auroras to create spectacular northern lights displays.

    The sun is currently in an active period of its 11-year solar weather cycle and is expected to reach its peak activity later this year. The current sun weather cycle, called Solar Cycle 24, began in 2008.

    Scientists have been tracking the sun's solar flares and other space weather events since they were first discovered in 1843. Today, a fleet of international spacecraft keep constant watch on the sun's activity.

     Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

     

  • Spectacular 'fiery ribbon' captured in Orion nebula

    A spectacular image appears to show a flaming ribbon in the Orion constellation located more than 1350 light-years from Earth. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    By Miriam Kramer
    Space.com

    A telescope in Chile has captured stunning new photos of a cosmic ribbon shimmering in the Orion nebula more than 1,000 light-years from Earth.

    The new images — released by the European Southern Observatory Wednesday — show what scientists described as a "fiery ribbon" of red gas and dust shining in the constellation Orion's belt. The ribbon is a small part of a huge star-forming region of the universe.

    ESO scientists used a telescope in Chile to craft a video tour of the clouds of dust that combine to create new stars. [See more jaw-dropping photos of the Orion Nebula]

    "The large bright cloud in the upper right of the image is the well-known Orion Nebula, also called Messier 42," ESO officials wrote in a news release. "It is readily visible to the naked eye as the slightly fuzzy middle 'star' in the sword of Orion. The Orion Nebula is the brightest part of a huge stellar nursery where new stars are being born, and is the closest site of massive star formation to Earth."

    Although the clouds of dust and gas in the red-tinted image might look as if they're burning hot, they are actually freezing cold. ESO's APEX telescope in Chile took the photo in wavelengths invisible to the human eye. In this image, the hottest object glow blue while the coolest have an orange tint.

    ESO / Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

    Clouds of gas and dust obscure a star-forming region in the constellation Orion.

    The second, more neutrally colored photo shows the same part of the sky in the visible spectrum of light. In that image, the fiery band disappears from view because chilled particles of dust block light from shimmering through.

    "At submillimeter wavelengths, rather than blocking light, the dust grains shine due to their temperatures of a few tens of degrees above absolute zero," ESO officials wrote.

    The dust clouds are manipulated by stellar winds and gravitational collapse that create the "beautiful filaments, sheets and bubbles" that appear in the photos, ESO officials said. Gas blown out from the atmospheres of stars actually forms the wind that gives the clouds their shape, ESO officials added.

    These photos have also helped astronomers seek out unusual objects in this region of the universe. Using this and other data, scientists think they may have found 15 protostars — an early phase in star formation— that pop out more brightly in submillimeter wavelengths.

    "These newly discovered rare objects are probably among the youngest protostars ever found, bringing astronomers closer to witnessing the moment when a star begins to form," ESO officials said.

    The European Southern Observatory project is considered the most productive ground-based astronomical observatory in the world, officials have said. Fifteen countries make up ESO.

    Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter and Google+. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Spacecom, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • 'The World at Night' can be brightly beautiful – but there's a dark side, too

    Slideshow: The World at Night 2013

    Andreas Max Baeckle

    The winners of the 2013 "Earth and Sky" photo contest show off the beauties of the night sky and demonstrate the effects of light pollution.

    Launch slideshow

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    Are the images featured in The World at Night's annual "Earth and Sky" photography contest meant to celebrate the wonders of the night sky, or draw attention to the worries about the night sky? They're meant to do both, says astrophotographer Babak Tafreshi.

    For example, consider "Stars Over Salzburg," one of this year's top-rated images. Your first impulse is to marvel at the golden glow of the Austrian city, as seen from an Alpine vantage point high above.

    "But then you realize the photographer has moved away from the city to the mountaintops in order to separate himself from the light pollution," Tafreshi, founder of The World at Night, told NBC News in an email. "Inside the yellow light cast by the city, people are no longer able to see this beauty."

    That's the tragedy of the modern world, right? Studies suggest that as much as 80 percent of the world's population can no longer see the Milky Way, due to the lights that illuminate our cities and roadways. But it doesn't have to be that way, and the picture of Salzburg proves it. Tafreshi pointed out that the direct, unshielded glow of city lights can be seen even from a mountaintop.

    "That shows that the lights are shining upward," he said. "Light pollution is not the lights we need for our modern world. It's the unnecessary, wrong-directed and excessive light that scatters to the sky instead of illuminating the ground. It isn't just an astronomer's problem. It's a major waste of energy, it disrupts ecosystems and has adverse health effects."

    The International Dark-Sky Association estimates that $1 billion is spent in the United States every year to generate artificial light that goes to waste. And as other countries become more urbanized, the stars disappear from wider swaths of the world.

    "Our images try to show how the night sky is an essential part of our environment, and not just an astronomer's laboratory," Tafreshi said. "They display how the night sky is becoming a forgotten part of nature for many people in urban, light-polluted areas. A major goal for us in TWAN imaging is to reclaim the beauties of the night sky and make people aware of this."

    The World at Night isn't just about the dark side of the disappearing sky. The winning photos include views that reveal cosmic glories in all their purity. "A good example in this year's contest is 'Crossed Destiny' by Luc Perrot, from Reunion Island near Madagascar," Tafreshi said. "The stunning view of the Milky Way above the Indian Ocean has no touch of our modern world. The galactic band is merged with the horizon of our planet."

    Click through our slideshow of images from this year's "Earth and Sky" contest, and check out The World at Night's website for still more cosmic glories and cautionary tales.

    Earth and Sky Photo Contest 2013 from Babak Tafreshi on Vimeo Watch it in full-screen HD.

    More beauties of the world at night:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Astronauts to get sneak peek at new 'Star Trek' film

    Paramount

    This is an IMAX poster for the new "Star Trek Into Darkness" being released this week.

    By Miriam Kramer
    Space.com

    The three astronauts on board the International Space Station are getting a sneak peek at the latest "Star Trek" film just before people around the world get a chance to see it in theaters themselves.

    "Star Trek Into Darkness" — the newest movie in the long-lasting science fiction franchise — is set for release in the United States on Thursday, but NASA is beaming up the movie to the space station before its official release date, officials with the space agency confirmed.

    This movie screening is particularly significant for one of the members of the crew. NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy is set to participate in a Google+ Hangout with director J.J. Abrams and some of the cast members from the new movie on Thursday at 12 p.m. EDT. [See Photos from "Star Trek Into Darkness"]

    "Cassidy will provide insights about life aboard the station," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Crews conduct a variety of science experiments and perform station maintenance during their six-month stay on the outpost. Their life in weightlessness requires different approaches to everyday activities such as eating, sleeping and exercising."

    Cast members taking part in the event include Chris Pine (Captain Kirk), Alice Eve (Dr. Carol Marcus) and John Cho (Sulu).

    You can watch the Google+ Hangout live on Space.com and you can take part in the event by submitting questions on YouTube, Google, Twitter and Facebook using the #askNASA hashtag.

    "The deadline to submit video questions is 3 a.m. Wednesday, May 15," NASA officials wrote. "To be considered, video clips must be no longer than 30 seconds and uploaded to YouTube and tagged with #askNASA. Submitters should introduce themselves and mention their location before asking their question."

    This isn't the first time a new movie has been sent into space.

    The first "Star Trek" film in the most recent iteration of the series was sent up to the orbiting laboratory when it was released in 2009. In 2005, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was sent up to entertain the space station crew members.

    Astronauts have long been inspired by "Star Trek." The crew that launched aboard the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour re-created the poster from the 2009 "Star Trek" reboot for their mission poster.

    It's a busy week for the residents of the International Space Station, but they should get a little time to sit back and enjoy the movie before Cassidy's webcast on Thursday. Three crew members just returned to Earth after a five month stay, leaving Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin to man the station until three new astronauts fly up a the end of the month.

    The $100 billion space station was built by five space agencies that represent a total of 15 countries. Construction began in 1998 and the station has been occupied by crews of cosmonauts and astronauts continuously since 2000.

    Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter and Google+. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Hubble telescope discovers 'polluted' dead stars

    NASA, ESA, STScI, and G. Bacon (STScI)

    This is an artist's impression of the thin, rocky debris disc discovered around the two Hyades white dwarfs.

    By Megan Gannon
    Space.com

    Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered two dead stars 150 light-years from Earth that are "polluted" with the raw material for strange, new worlds, scientists say.

    "We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets," researcher Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge said in a statement Thursday. "When these stars were born, they built planets, and there's a good chance that they currently retain some of them. The signs of rocky debris we are seeing are evidence of this — it is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our solar system."

    The discovery came after the researchers used the Hubble telescope to study two dead white dwarf stars in the Hyades star cluster. Most stars, including our own sun, will end their lives as dense and dim stellar cores called white dwarfs. Farihi and his team sought out signs of planet formation in these types of retired stars in the Hyades cluster, a 625-million-year-old grouping of stars in the constellation of Taurus. [See how the white dwarf stars collect planet debris (Video)]

    White dwarf atmospheres are typically quite "clean," with heavier elements clumping in the core, as Ben Zuckerman, a physics and astronomy professor at UCLA, told scientists at the American Astronomical Society meeting earlier this year.

    NASA, ESA, STScI, and Z. Levay (STScI)

    This image shows the region around the Hyades star cluster, the nearest open cluster to us. The Hyades cluster is very well-studied due to its location, but previous searches for planets have produced only one.

    But using Hubble's spectroscopic observations, Farihi and his fellow researchers saw that silicon — a major ingredient in the rocky material that formed Earth — was dirtying up the atmospheres of two white dwarfs. The researchers also identified low levels of carbon with Hubble's powerful Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. (Carbon levels are expected to be very low in rocky, terrestrial material.)

    "The one thing the white dwarf pollution technique gives us that we won't get with any other planet detection technique is the chemistry of solid planets," Farihi said in a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA). "Based on the silicon-to-carbon ratio in our study, for example, we can actually say that this material is basically Earth-like."

    The material is thought to be leftover from terrestrial planets that formed when these stars were first born. After the stars collapsed into white dwarfs, relics from their asteroid belts may have been knocked into dangerous, star-grazing orbits. Torn apart by the white dwarfs' gravity, debris from these asteroid-like objects was sent swirling around the dead stars in a ring that then funneled the material inwards, the researchers say.

    Star clusters were thought to be unlikely hosts for alien planets. Of the 800 exoplanets known today, just four of them circle stars in these crowded stellar neighborhoods, including one in the Hyades cluster, researchers say. The new findings suggest planet formation in star clusters may be more common than previously believed.

    The research is detailed in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The science team hopes to detect more material around white dwarfs that could tell them about their parent bodies.

    The Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990 and is overseen by NASA and the European Space Agency.

    Follow Space.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original story on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Warp speed, Scotty? It may actually be possible...

    Paramount Pictures

    "Star Trek's" warp drive isn't really physically possible -- or is it? Scientists at NASA are right now working on the first practical field test toward proving the possibility of warp drives and faster-than-light travel.

    By Jillian Scharr
    TechNewsDaily

    In the "Star Trek" TV shows and films, the U.S.S. Enterprise's warp engine allows the ship to move faster than light, an ability that is, as Spock would say, "highly illogical."

    However, there's a loophole in Einstein's general theory of relativity that could allow a ship to traverse vast distances in less time than it would take light. The trick? It's not the starship that's moving — it's the space around it.

    In fact, scientists at NASA are right now working on the first practical field test toward proving the possibility of warp drives and faster-than-light travel. Maybe the warp drive on "Star Trek" is possible after all. [See also: Warp Drive: Can It Be Done? (Video)]

    According to Einstein's theory, an object with mass cannot go as fast or faster than the speed of light. The original "Star Trek" series ignored this "universal speed limit" in favor of a ship that could zip around the galaxy in a matter of days instead of decades. They tried to explain the ship's faster-than-light capabilities by powering the warp engine with a "matter-antimatter" engine. Antimatter was a popular field of study in the 1960s, when creator Gene Roddenberry was first writing the series. When matter and antimatter collide, their mass is converted to kinetic energy in keeping with Einstein's mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc2.

    In other words, matter-antimatter collision is a potentially powerful source of energy and fuel, but even that wouldn't be enough to propel a starship to faster-than-light speeds.

    Nevertheless, it's thanks to "Star Trek" that the word "warp" is now practically synonymous with faster-than-light travel.

    Is warp drive possible?
    Decades after the original "Star Trek" show had gone off the air, pioneering physicist and avowed Trek fan Miguel Alcubierre argued that maybe a warp drive is possible after all. It just wouldn't work quite the way "Star Trek" thought it did.

    Things with mass can't move faster than the speed of light. But what if, instead of the ship moving through space, the space was moving around the ship?

    Space doesn't have mass. And we know that it's flexible: space has been expanding at a measurable rate ever since the Big Bang. We know this from observing the light of distant stars — over time, the wavelength of the stars' light as it reaches Earth is lengthened in a process called "redshifting." According to the Doppler effect, this means that the source of the wavelength is moving farther away from the observer — i.e. Earth.

    So we know from observing redshifted light that the fabric of space is movable. [See also: What to Wear on a 100-Year Starship Voyage]

    Alcubierre used this knowledge to exploit a loophole in the "universal speed limit." In his theory, the ship never goes faster than the speed of light — instead, space in front of the ship is contracted while space behind it is expanded, allowing the ship to travel distances in less time than light would take. The ship itself remains in what Alcubierre termed a "warp bubble" and, within that bubble, never goes faster than the speed of light.

    Since Alcubierre published his paper "The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast travel within general relativity" in 1994, many physicists and science fiction writers have played with his theory —including "Star Trek" itself. [See also: Top 10 Star Trek Technologies]

    Alcubierre's warp drive theory was retroactively incorporated into the "Star Trek" mythos by the 1990s TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

    In a way, then, "Star Trek" created its own little grandfather paradox: Though ultimately its theory of faster-than-light travel was heavily flawed, the series established a vocabulary of light-speed travel that Alcubierre eventually formalized in his own warp drive theories.

    The Alcubierre warp drive is still theoretical for now. "The truth is that the best ideas sound crazy at first. And then there comes a time when we can't imagine a world without them." That's a statement from the 100 Year Starship organization, a think tank devoted to making Earth what "Star Trek" would call a "warp-capable civilization" within a century.

    The first step toward a functional warp drive is to prove that a "warp bubble" is even possible, and that it can be artificially created.

    That's exactly what physicist Harold "Sonny" White and a team of researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas are doing right now.

    NASA's warp drive project
    According to Alcubierre's theory, one could create a warp bubble by applying negative energy, or energy created in a vacuum. This process relies on the Casimir effect, which states that a vacuum is not actually a void; instead, a vacuum is actually full of fluctuating electromagnetic waves. Distorting these waves creates negative energy, which possibly distorts space-time, creating a warp bubble.

    To see if space-time distortion has occurred in a lab experiment, the researchers shine two highly targeted lasers: one through the site of the vacuum and one through regular space. The researchers will then compare the two beams, and if the wavelength of the one going through the vacuum is lengthened, i.e. redshifted, in any way, they'll know that it passed through a warp bubble. [See also: How Video Games Help Fuel Space Exploration]

    White and his team have been at work for a few months now, but they have yet to get a satisfactory reading. The problem is that the field of negative energy is so small, the laser so precise, that even the smallest seismic motion of the Earth can throw off the results.

    When we talked to White, he was in the process of moving the test equipment to a building on the Johnson Space Center campus that was originally built for the Apollo space program. "The lab is seismically isolated, so the whole floor can be floated," White told TechNewsDaily. "But the system hadn't been (activated) for a while so part of the process was, we had the system inspected and tested."

    White is now working on recalibrating the laser for the new location. He wouldn't speculate on when his team could expect conclusive data, nor how long until fully actuated warp travel might be possible, but he remains convinced that it's only a matter of time.

    "The bottom line is, nature can do it," said White. "So the salient question is, 'can we?'"

    Copyright 2013 TechNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Astronauts reflect on Skylab, 'life off Earth' legacy

    NASA TV

    International Space Station Expedition 34 commander Kevin Ford (right) presents Skylab astronauts Owen Garriott (left) and Gerald Carr with space-flown flags to mark the 40th anniversary of their missions on board America's first space station on Monday at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C..

    By Robert Z. Pearlman
    Space.com

    Before the International Space Station existed, before U.S. astronauts shared space on Russia's space station Mir, America's first home in Earth orbit was Skylab. 

    The converted upper stage of a massive Saturn V moon rocket, Skylab was launched 40 years ago Tuesday. The orbital workshop gave NASA its first experience at establishing a long-duration human presence in space, laying the foundation for American astronauts to take up continuous residency almost three decades later on board the International Space Station (ISS). 

    On Monday, NASA commemorated four decades of "life off Earth" and the 40th anniversary of Skylab's launch during a roundtable discussion held at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The event featured Skylab and ISS astronauts, as well as agency managers who are helping to plan the United States' future outposts in space. [Skylab: The First U.S. Space Station (Photos)] 

    "When these guys went to the final frontier to stay for a long time, they did it as the first ones, the ones who were entering the unknown and to see what it was going to be like and set the stage for us," said astronaut Kevin Ford, who returned from space in March after commanding the International Space Station's Expedition 34. "It is a pleasure for me to be here on the 40th anniversary." 

    NASA

    Skylab astronauts took this photograph as they approached the orbiting laboratory on the third and final mission in November 1973.

    America's first space station 
    Three crews of three astronauts each launched to the Skylab space station between May and November 1973. Each mission set a record for the amount of time that crew members spent in space — Skylab 1 for 28 days, Skylab 2 for 59 days and Skylab 3 for 84 days. 

    "It verified the fact that people could live, work (and) do productive things for long duration, and also took the first steps toward doing the science that we wanted to have aboard," said Owen Garriott, who served as the science pilot for Skylab's second crew. 

    That astronauts were even able to spend one day aboard Skylab was a testament to the value of having humans in space. 

    Excessive vibrations during the station's Saturn V liftoff resulted in a critical meteoroid shield being ripped off in flight, which in turn took out one of the orbital workshop's two power-providing solar arrays. Flight controllers moved Skylab's secondary solar panels to face the sun to provide as much electricity as possible, but because of the loss of the debris shield this caused the station's interior to heat up to over 125 degrees Fahrenheit (52 degrees Celsius). 

    NASA / JSC

    Astronaut Gerald P. Carr, commander for the Skylab 4 mission, jokingly demonstrates weight training in zero-gravity as he balances astronaut William R. Pogue, pilot, upside down on his finger.

    The effort to "save Skylab" fell to its first crew, who had to quickly prepare for a series of unexpected spacewalks in the short time they had between the station's launch and their own. Despite the very tight schedule, the astronauts successfully deployed a parasol (later augmented by a solar shield) to lower the temperature inside the station and freed a snagged second solar array. 

    Once the workshop was a stable living platform, the three Skylab crews logged about 2,000 hours in total performing scientific and medical experiments. They also took more than 46,000 photos of the Earth and 127,000 photos of the sun, capturing eight solar flares on film. 

    The astronauts also devised methods for maximizing their productivity, a lesson with far-reaching applications. 

    "We dealt with problems having to do with scheduling and productivity," said Gerald "Jerry" Carr, who commanded the final Skylab crew. "We came to some solutions that worked very well. It took a while to get there ... but those solutions that we came across were used on subsequent missions to some degree." 

    "We tried to make sure that got into the planning for the operations aboard the International Space Station and on the (space) shuttle," Carr added.

    "I think we're still working that issue," replied Ford. "We've gotten a much better feeling, I think, now that we are up there to do work that the ground can't necessarily figure out how long it is going to take you to do everything." 

    The end of Skylab
    Upon the end of its crewed missions, Skylab was moved into a stable attitude where it was expected to remain for eight to 10 years. It was hoped that one of the early space shuttle missions could be used to reboost Skylab's orbit to save the station for future use. 

    In late 1977, however, four years before the shuttle would first fly, it was discovered that greater-than-predicted solar activity had heated the outer layers of Earth's atmosphere, increasing the drag on Skylab. On July 11, 1979, Skylab re-entered the atmosphere and broke apart over the Indian Ocean. Much of the station burned up or dropped into sea, but its debris field stretched over Australia, where many pieces were later found. [See photos of Skylab's remains in Australia]

    Despite its relatively short life span, the use of Skylab's unique environment and vantage point represented a major step in the United States' spaceflight efforts, serving as a bridge between the Apollo missions to the moon and the long-duration expeditions on board the International Space Station, the roundtable said.

    "The (International) Space Station was built around what we learned on Skylab," Ford said. "What they put up there for us, the way the modules were sized and the way they were constructed in space ... that all came out of what we learned from Skylab."

    "We may have done it first, but these guys are doing it better," added Carr, referencing Ford and the current ISS crews. "People need to continue to do it better and better because we learn more and more as we do this. We just took the first step, and the rest of the steps are having had been taken and are being taken right now." 

    Follow collectSpace.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSpace. Copyright 2013 collectSpace.com. All rights reserved.

      

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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