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Back in April, UT published an article about using a device called a 'laser comb' to search for Earth-like planets. But astronomers also hope to use the device to search for dark energy in an ambitious project that would measure the velocities of distant galaxies and quasars over a 20-year period. This would let astronomers test Einstein's theory of general relativity and the nature of the mysterious dark energy. The device uses femto-second (one millionth of one billionth of a second) pulses of laser light coupled with an atomic clock to provide a precise standard for measuring wavelengths of light. Also known as an "astro-comb," these devices should give astronomers the ability to use the Doppler shift method with incredible precision to measure spectral lines of starlight up to 60 times greater than any current high-tech method. Astronomers have been testing the device, and hope to use one in conjunction with the new Extremely Large Telescope which is being designed by ESO, the European Southern Observatory.
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to  del.icio.us  digg
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 GOCE Satellite. Credit: ESA The launch of ESA's GOCE satellite (the 'sexy' spacecraft) will be delayed. During launch preparations yesterday (Sunday, Sept. 7) a problem was discovered with a guidance and navigation subsystems on the launch vehicle's upper stage. To fix the problem, guidance and navigation unit will have to be replace. The upper stage, which includes the GOCE satellite, will have to be de-mated from the rest of the Breeze KM rocket and brought in from the launch site to be repaired. The launch, which will take place at the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia, is now scheduled for October 5 at 16:21 CEST.
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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Previous studies of Mars indicated that while water was certainly present on the Red Planet in the ancient past, it may have only been on the surface for a short time, present in short catastrophic floods. However, a new study suggests that ancient features on Mars called valley networks were carved by recurrent floods during a long period when the Martian climate may have been much like that of some arid or semiarid regions on Earth. "Our results argue for liquid water being stable at the surface of Mars for prolonged periods in the past," said Charles Barnhart, a graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Precipitation on Mars lasted a long time–it wasn't a brief interval of massive deluges."
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 Alien Volcanoes Brilliant plumes of iridescent lava thrown skyward both awe and thrill us. Active volcanoes diminish our sense of importance as they shake the very ground and spread ash throughout the skies. But as Rosaly Lopes and Michael Carroll describe in their book " Alien Volcanoes", these forceful displays dominate the shape of the Earth. As well, they are the prime candidates for being responsible for shaping many other nearby planets and moons. (...)
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© Mark Mortimer for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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Using a new technique with a near-infrared spectrograph attached to ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have been able to study planet-forming discs around young Sun-like stars in unsurpassed detail, clearly revealing the motion and distribution of the gas in the inner parts of the disc. Astronomers used a technique known as 'spectro-astrometric imaging' to give them a window into the inner regions of the discs where Earth-like planets may be forming. They were able not only to measure distances as small as one-tenth the Earth-Sun distance, but also measure the velocity of the gas at the same time. "This is like going 4.6 billion years back in time to watch how the planets of our own Solar System formed," says Klaus Pontoppidan from Caltech, who led the research.
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 Opportunity self shadow portrait. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell The Mars Exploration Rovers are now tweeting on Twitter, and Opportunity recently shared what she's been doing since climbing out of Victoria crater via a shadow self portrait. After seeing a one-time electrical spike on Opportunity's left front wheel, mission managers decided to have the rover climb out of the crater and get back on level ground. Opportunity is now examining some fist sized rocks, or cobbles, that might be ejecta from far away craters. Spirit, over on the other side of the Red Planet is weathering out the end of the southern hemisphere Martian winter. Another Twitter report from the rovers said that Spirit's solar array energy is now up slightly from 235 to 245 watt hours. Power levels will have to rise a little more before Spirit can resume exploring actively.
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 Mosaic of images from Rosetta's fly by. Credit: ESA ESA's Rosetta spacecraft successfully flew by the asteroid 2867 Steins, coming within 800 km (500 miles) and gathering images and data on the irregularly shaped rock in space. "Steins looks like a diamond in the sky," said Uwe Keller, Principal Investigator for the OSIRIS imaging system on board the spacecraft. Watch a movie of the flyby here. Visible in the images are several small craters on the asteroid, and two huge ones. While the wide-angle camera worked perfectly during the flyby, the narrower and higher resolution camera switched itself off and into safe mode a few minutes before closest approach, but switched back on after a few hours. "The software switched off automatically," said Gerhard Schwehm, Rosetta mission manager. "The camera has some software limits and we'll analyze why this happened later."
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 The scene inside ESA mission control as the ATV backs away from the station (ESA) Europe's most advanced robotic spaceship, the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), has effectively ended its 6-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS). It successfully undocked today (Friday) at 21:29 GMT to begin its slow 3 week journey toward the Earth's atmosphere where it is set for re-entry on September 29th. This was the first ever ATV to be launched and was named after the 19th Century novelist, Jules Verne; another four ATVs are scheduled for construction. Jules Verne's re-entry is set for night time over an uninhabited region of the Pacific Ocean and NASA will use this opportunity to monitor the fireball so the characteristics of re-entering spacecraft can be studied… (...)
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© Ian O'Neill for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 22 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 It's getting crowded out there: active and inactive satellites are tracked (Google/Analytical Graphics) OK, I've just wasted an hour in simulated space, checking out some of the active and junked satellites orbiting our planet. Google Earth can be an addictive thing at the best of times, but when 13,000 of the satellites in Earth orbit can be viewed by a new plug-in for the program, you may find yourself hooked for longer than usual. The United States Strategic Command keeps very close tabs on what is orbiting our planet and where they are at any given time, and now with the help of Google Earth, you can explore the satellites, plot their orbital trajectories and see just how crowded space can be. Never before have geostationary communication satellites been so interesting! (...)
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© Ian O'Neill for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 Large Hadron Collider. Credit: NY Times We don't mean to beat a dead horse – both Fraser and Ian have already covered this topic quite thoroughly — but just in case anyone still has any fears about the Large Hadron Collider meaning the end of the world, a new report published today provides the most comprehensive evidence available to confirm that the LHC's switch-on, due on Wednesday next week, poses no threat to mankind. A copy of the report is available HERE. In a nutshell, it says nature's own cosmic rays regularly produce more powerful particle collisions than those planned within the LHC, and nothing bad has happened to Earth from those quite natural and frequent events. The LHC will be studying nature's laws in controlled experiments. So just relax and watch the LHC rap video.
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 17 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 GOCE: Spacecraft of the future is here! Credit: ESA This has to be the sexiest looking spacecraft ever built by humankind. No, it's not a starship or battle cruiser (although it does look a little like the Eagle spacecraft from the old television show Space: 1999). This sleek, slender, sexy, shiny and sophisticated spacecraft is an Earth-orbiting satellite that will investigate our planet's gravitational field and map the reference shape of our planet – the geoid - with unprecedented resolution and accuracy. GOCE, or the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer is scheduled to launch on Wed. September 10 at 16:21 CEST (14:21 UTC). Why such a sleek design? As GOCE Systems Manager Michael Fehringer says, "Form follows function not only in the world of fashion! To fly low and avoid air drag, the best shape for the satellite to be is long, slender and absolutely symmetrical along the direction of flight." (...)
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 Earthrise. Image credit: NASA This week, the Carnival of Space is over at Free Space, the blog of Irene Klotz, a correspondent with Discovery News. Click here to read the Carnival of Space #69 And if you're interested in looking back, here's an archive to all the past carnivals of space. If you've got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community - and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let me know if you can be a host, and I'll schedule you into the calendar. Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space. Help us get the word out.
© Fraser Cain for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has imaged a faint, partial ring orbiting with one small moon of Saturn, and has confirmed the presence of another partial ring orbiting with a second moon. This is further evidence that most of the planet's small, inner moons orbit within partial or complete rings. Recent Cassini images show material, called ring arcs, extending ahead of and behind the small moons Anthe and Methone in their orbits. The new findings indicate that the gravitational influence of nearby moons on ring particles might be the deciding factor in whether an arc or complete ring is formed.
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 Phoenix's thermal and electroconductivity probe. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/U of AZ NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has a fork-like conductivity probe on it's robotic arm, and results from the instrument are presenting a bit of a quandary for mission scientists. The thermal and electroconductivity probe has sensed humidity rising and falling in the air the near the lander, but when stuck into the ground, its measurements so far indicate soil that is thoroughly and perplexingly dry. "If you have water vapor in the air, every surface exposed to that air will have water molecules adhere to it that are somewhat mobile, even at temperatures well below freezing," said Aaron Zent, lead scientist for the probe. While Phoenix has other tools to find clues about whether water ice at the site has melted in the past, the conductivity probe is the main tool for checking for present-day soil moisture.
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 Space Shuttle Atlantis on the pad. Credit: NASA Thursday afternoon space shuttle Atlantis rolled out to Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, making it's slow 5.1 km (3.2 mile) journey along the crawlerway from the Vehicle Assembly Building. NASA mission managers cleared the shuttle's move after a weather briefing on the status of Tropical Storm Hanna which determined the storm would remain far enough off shore to not cause any problems for the shuttle exposed out on the pad. Atlantis' seven-member crew are set for an equipment test Friday at Kennedy in preparation for their mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope has already rewritten the books on astronomy and will remain operational for at least another five years following the upgrades. Atlantis is targeted to launch Oct. 8 on mission STS-125. However, another hurricane, Ike, lurks out in the waters of the Atlantic, and could cause problems. But NASA is betting it won't turn north and head for Florida.
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 One gigabyte per second? No problem. The LHC computing grid could revolutionize how we handle data over Internet (CERN) We already know that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the biggest, most expensive physics experiment ever carried out by mankind. Colliding relativistic particles at energies previously unimaginable (up to the 14 TeV mark by the end of the decade) will generate millions of particles (known and as yet to be discovered), that need to be tracked and characterized by huge particle detectors. This historic experiment will require a massive data collection and storage effort, re-writing the rules of data handling. Every five seconds, LHC collisions will generate the equivalent of a DVD-worth of data, that's a data production rate of one gigabyte per second. To put this into perspective, an average household computer with a very good connection may be able to download data at a rate of one or two megabytes per second (if you are very lucky! I get 500 kilobytes/second). So, LHC engineers have designed a new kind of data handling method that can store and distribute petabytes ( million-gigabytes) of data to LHC collaborators worldwide (without getting old and grey whilst waiting for a download). (...)
Read the rest of The LHC Will Revolutionize Physics. Can it Revolutionize the Internet Too? (732 words)
© Ian O'Neill for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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 A Soyuz approaches the ISS. Credit: NASA Because of stalled legislation that is needed to allow NASA to pay the Russian Space Agency to ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station on board the Soyuz spacecraft, the US section of the space station may have to go unmanned in at least part of 2012. In an interview with CBS's Bill Harwood, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said because of the of the three-year lead time needed to build Soyuz vehicles, contracts must be in place by early 2009. But because of Russia's invasion of Georgia, Congress is unlikely to extend an exemption that allows money to be paid to Russia for high technology goods. Griffin said the problem is very serious, and new legislation would have to be approved within the next few weeks to prevent an interruption in NASA astronauts being on board the ISS.
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 20 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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If an alien species wanted to communicate with Earthlings, or any other civilization that might be out there, how might they do it? Some have proposed microwaves, neutrinos or lasers, or even moving stars around into patterns. But why wouldn't aliens just use the internet? The Cepheid Galactic Internet, that is. A group of scientists has proposed that a sufficiently advanced civilization could use Cephied variable stars as beacons to transmit information throughout the galaxy and beyond. These stars can be seen from long distances and, the scientists say, any technologically advanced civilization would likely observe Cepheids as distance markers. The group of physicists and astronomers from Hawaii and California propose that Cepheids and any other regular variable stars should be searched for signs of phase modulation and patterns which could be indicative of intentional signaling.
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© Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today, 2008. | Permalink | 28 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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