NASA unplugs last space shuttle, Endeavour

11 May, 2012 in General by msnbc.com: Space

NASA pulled the plug on its last powered space shuttle Friday, 20 years after it flew its first mission.

Space shuttle technicians working inside Orbiter Processing Facility-2 (OPF-2) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida powered down Endeavour, the youngest of the retired fleet’s orbiters, at 9:58 a.m. EDT as they moved forward with preparations for the winged spacecraft’s museum display.

This September, NASA will mount Endeavour on top of a modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft and ferry it to Los Angeles for its exhibit at the California Science Center.

1. SpaceX, Bigelow tout private space stations
  
  Science editor Alan Boyle’s blog: SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace plan to meet with Japanese officials soon to kick off an international marketing effort for private-sector space stations.
2. Huge asteroid Vesta is actually a protoplanet
3. Hidden alien planet revealed by its own gravity
4. Why Russia and US should shoot for Mars

NASA’s youngest shuttle

Built after the loss of the Challenger orbiter in 1986, the shuttle Endeavour was largely assembled from spare parts pre-fabricated during the development of its sister ships Discovery and Atlantis. Endeavour’s first mission, STS-49, lifted off in May 1992.

NASA retired its shuttle fleet in July 2011, and the remaining orbiters are all headed to museums. While the agency is currently using Russian spacecraft to transport its astronauts to low-Earth orbit, U.S. commercial vehicles are planned to take over this taxi service by 2017. [ NASA's Shuttle Program in Pictures ]

“The whole thing shutting down is a shame,” Dan Brandenstein, Endeavour’s first commander, told collectSPACE.com just a few hours after he visited his former spaceship last Saturday. “It is good that they are saving them as museum artifacts, but you have three vehicles that are still good flying machines going on a post or in a display case.”

Endeavour was the last of NASA’s retired shuttle fleet to go permanently dark. Discovery, which was delivered to the Smithsonian in April, was powered down for a final time on Dec. 16, 2011. Atlantis, which is destined for display just down the road from its processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, was shut down the following week on Dec. 22.

Endeavour flew its 25th and final mission, STS-134, a year ago this month. The 16-day mission to the International Space Station launched on May 16, 2011.

One last look

Since then, shuttle workers have removed from Endeavour hazardous materials and components that might be used for future spacecraft. This week, technicians removed fuel lines that led to Endeavour’s engines for possible reuse with NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket now under development.

Astronaut Kevin Chilton, who began his own astronaut career flying as the pilot of Endeavour’s maiden mission, was also there this past weekend to see Endeavour “alive” one last time.

“There’s an emotional attachment, almost human-like, to that hardware,” Chilton told collectSPACE. “I remember after my first flight on Endeavour, and it was her first flight too, starting to walk toward the bus, stopping and turning around to look back at her, sitting there on the ramp.”

“I said [to the shuttle], ‘Thanks, thanks for bringing me home,’” Chilton recalled. “The hardware itself really takes on a life of its own to your life, particularly when it brings you home.”

NASA recently invited collectSPACE.com aboard Endeavour for one last look at the space shuttle’s flight deck fully lit before it was shut down on Friday.

Visit shuttles.collectspace.com for continuing coverage of the delivery and display of NASA’s retired space shuttles.

NASA’s Space Shuttle Museum Flights: Complete Coverage

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NASA rover contest gets set for showdown

11 May, 2012 in General by msnbc.com: Space

NASA / JPL-Caltech

An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Curiosity rover zapping a rock during a sampling operation on Mars. Laser-zapping is not a requirement for the robots entered in a NASA-backed $1.5 million contest.

Mark June 16 on your calendar, interplanetary robot fans: That’s when autonomous rovers will face off in NASA’s $1.5 million Sample Return Robot Challenge at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

The challenge, one of several that NASA is sponsoring, was announced back in July 2010 — but a purpose-built autonomous robot isn’t a simple thing to create, so it has taken nearly two years to collect and vet the entrants.

The challenge, in brief, is to create a compact (1.5 cubic meters, 175 pounds) robot that can navigate varied terrain, find and collect certain items, and return them safely to the base. But it must do this without the use of GPS or any “Earth-based” systems, such as a compass or Internet connection, which naturally would not be available on celestial bodies other than our own. Furthermore, the robot can’t use air cooling, ultrasonic rangefinders or a number of other techniques that wouldn’t be workable in an airless environment.

There are both private and public teams: Groups from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Waterloo have both made the final 11, and the rest are start-up companies such as SpacePRIDE from South Carolina and True Vision Robotics from Atascadero, Calif. Six of the teams are based in California, while the rest are scattered around the US and Canada.

The teams’ robots will be unmanned and on their own once deployed, but they won’t be going in completely blind. As would likely be the case on a real planetary mission, NASA is providing satellite imagery of the area, compete with topographic information and points of interest:

NASA / WPI

Topographic map of the competition’s terrain

The first phase of the challenge is a qualifying round, in which robots must retrieve a single sample within a quarter of an hour. Teams that succeed will be admitted to the second phase, the real challenge. There will be 10 samples in the vicinity, and a robot will have just two hours to collect as many as it can and return to a designated point. The prize money will be divvied up based on how the rovers perform this second task.

A powerful and reliable sample-return robot will be a critical part of future robotic planetary missions. NASA has also set up competitions for other important parts of such endeavors, such as wireless power systems and digging mechanisms. Such research is readily adaptable to terrestrial applications such as disaster response and automated industry.

WPI will be hosting the event on their campus in Massachusetts on June 14-18, with the competition beginning in earnest on June 16. NASA’s deputy administrator, Lori Garver, and chief technologist Mason Peck will be on hand for the awards ceremony.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Darkness vs. light in The World at Night

11 May, 2012 in General by msnbc.com: Space

Christoph Otawa / The World at Night

Experience the wonders of the night sky in a slideshow that features the winners of the 2012 “Earth & Sky” contest, presented by The World at Night.

Launch slideshow

Light pollution never looked so good: The World at Night’s annual photography contest highlights the beauties of the night sky, but it also highlights the challenges posed by humanity’s efforts to light up the night.

This year’s winners reveal how artificial lighting can add another dimension to the natural wonders of the stars and planets — or spoil the view forever. Hundreds of pictures were sent in from about 50 countries, including exotic locales such as the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, the national parks of Reunion Island and the savannas of South Africa, said Babak Tafreshi, the founder and leader of The World at Night. “We received a lot of submissions from Asian countries this year, especially China, India, Iran and Indonesia,” the Iranian-born astrophotographer said in an email exchange.

He said the message of The World at Night is definitely getting out: “In general, it looks as if TWAN’s aim of reclaiming the natural beauty of the night sky and promoting nightscape photography is reaching a growing audience worldwide, while the activities by amateur and professional astronomers and environmentalists to increase awareness on the light pollution issue is truly getting a lot of public attention.”

This year’s contest is limited to images taken since the beginning of 2011, but that leaves a lot to choose from — including pictures of Comet Lovejoy, the spectacular “Christmas Comet” that wowed skywatchers in the southern hemisphere, as well as the stunning auroral images that have cropped up over the past few months. Both those phenomena are represented in today’s top-10 roundup from TWAN.

Tafreshi drew attention to two potential perils facing astrophotographers nowadays: light pollution and photo fakery. He noted that the increasing glare of city lights was “not just an astronomer’s problem,” but also “a major waste of energy, and like any other form of pollution, it disrupts ecosystems and has adverse health effects.”

“Today, most city skies are virtually empty of stars,” he said in his email. “About two-thirds of the human population today lives under light-polluted skies, not dark enough to see the Milky Way. Seeing a real dark sky is a must-see experience in the life of each of us, moments that you will not forget in your entire life.”

Tafreshi also said there’s a fast-rising concern about images that may not be telling the truth about the earth and sky.

“Unfortunately, a majority of photographers who are interested in nightscape photography are less familiar with astronomy, and the natural look and color of the night sky,” he said. “So many landscape astrophotos today are intensely saturated, unnaturally contrasted, and sometimes with totally wrong colors of the sky. We had stunning compositions and amazing landscapes at night, some made by famous photographers, which were ruled out of the contest simply because they were ‘overcooked’ in processing.”

You can rely on TWAN’s prize-winning pictures to show the true glories of the night sky, along with the glow of the world below. Check out our slideshow, and read more of Tafreshi’s observations in the comment space below.

More astronomy slideshows:

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com’s science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by “liking” the log’s Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out “The Case for Pluto,” my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Massive sunspot fires off powerful solar flares

11 May, 2012 in General by msnbc.com: Space

A huge sunspot that dwarfs the Earth is unleashing a series of powerful solar flares as it moves across the surface of the sun, NASA scientists say.

The sunspot AR 1476 was detected by space telescopes on May 5. The huge sunspot is 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) across, so large that when it was first seen in views from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft, mission scientists dubbed it a “ monster sunspot.”

Earlier this week, space weather scientists predicted the sunspot would erupt with powerful solar flares, and those predictions have since come true. So far, the sunspot has fired off several flares, including a strong solar storm early Thursday.

“Solar activity has been at high levels for the past 24 hours with multiple M-class solar flares observed,” stated an update Thursday from the Space Weather Prediction Center, a joint service of NOAA and the National Weather Service. Sunspot region AR 1476 was responsible for nearly all of the sun’s storm activity, center officials said. [ Worst Solar Storms in History ]

On Thursday, sunspot AR 1476 unleashed a powerful flare at 12:18 a.m. EDT that registered as a class M5.7 eruption. M-class solar flares are medium-strength sun storms that can still unleash powerful blasts of radiation and magnetic solar plasma. So far, the sunspot has not triggered huge explosions from the sun, which scientists call coronal mass ejections.

On the scale of solar flares, X-class storms are the most powerful and can interfere with satellites and infrastructure on Earth when aimed at our planet. M-class storms are the second-most-powerful flares and can set off geomagnetic storms that create dazzling northern lights displays when the eruptions reach Earth. C-class flares, the weakest category, have little effect on Earth.

NASA officials said the Thursday solar storm is just one of many to erupt from the massive sunspot.

“The sunspot, dubbed Active Region 1476, has so far produced seven M-class flares and numerous C-class flares, including two M-class flares on May 9, 2012 that peaked at 8:32 EDT and 10:08 EDT,” the space agency wrote in a Thursday space weather update.

“These flares were all short-lived and there were no associated coronal mass ejections, so we do not expect any geomagnetic storms at Earth,” NASA officials added. That means a supercharged northern lights display from the recent solar storms is currently unlikely.

Another NASA account stated that the sunspot has unleashed as many as 32 solar flares so far.

It will take sunspot AR 1476 about two weeks to complete its trip across the face of the sun, as seen from Earth, NASA officials said.

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  Science editor Alan Boyle’s blog: SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace plan to meet with Japanese officials soon to kick off an international marketing effort for private-sector space stations.
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3. Hidden alien planet revealed by its own gravity
4. Why Russia and US should shoot for Mars

The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle. The current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, will peak in 2013.

You can follow Space.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Photos: Sunspots on Earth’s Closest Star

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Faintest star cluster yet known is discovered

11 May, 2012 in General by msnbc.com: Space

Astronomers have discovered the faintest star cluster known, a “ridiculously dim” tiny glob of stars on the outskirts of our Milky Way.

The globular cluster is so faint, it is pushing the boundaries of how small and dim scientists think such objects can be.

“We know of about 150 clusters around the Milky Way,” said the new cluster’s discoverer, Ricardo Munoz of the University of Chile. “This is the faintest and most distant one, which means there are probably a lot of them we haven’t found. It seems like there could be an order of magnitude more clusters than we thought there were.”

The new cluster, called Munoz 1, may contain around 500 stars, a piddling total compared to average clusters that hold roughly 100,000 stars. Scientists suspect it may have started out larger, but gradually lost stars, perhaps by passing through the Milky Way. [Stunning Photos of Our Milky Way Galaxy]

“It’s ridiculously dim,” Yale astronomer Marla Geha, who collaborated on the project, said in a statement. “There are individual stars that would far outshine this entire globular cluster.”

Munoz spotted the minute object in observations of a mini galaxy orbiting the Milky Way called Ursa Minor. The photos were taken by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea peak.

“I was looking at an old friend so to speak, the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal,” Munoz told Space.com. “The first paper I wrote was on Ursa Minor so I’ve always liked that object. Now we have deeper data. While I was playing around with the data, I noticed this tiny little thing sort of southwest of Ursa Minor, but still very close. When I looked in more detail, it looked like a very tiny cluster of stars.”

Follow-up observations with the huge Keck II telescope, also on Mauna Kea, confirmed the find. Keck spectroscopic measurements, which separate light into its constituent wavelengths and allow astronomers to calculate how fast stars are moving, showed that the globular cluster’s stars were moving at different velocities than those in Ursa Minor, suggesting the two entities were separate.

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2. Huge asteroid Vesta is actually a protoplanet
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And very preliminary measurements of the object’s mass indicate that it is likely a globular cluster, rather than the other possibility, an especially small dwarf galaxy, which weighs more than a cluster on average.

However, the boundary between these two categories is not well understood, and scientists hope the new discovery can help probe the distinction.

“Right now, there’s no clear difference between star clusters and galaxies at the faint end, and that’s something we want to understand,” Munoz said. “Finding this object doesn’t solve the problem, it seems to add to it.”

The main factor that separates dwarf galaxies and globular clusters is their mass, particularly their ration of dark matter, the invisible stuff that seems to make up the majority of matter in the universe. Dwarf galaxies are dominated by dark matter, while globular clusters appear to have basically none.

Such a discrepancy suggests different formation methods: Dwarf galaxies are thought to form inside clouds of dark matter, while globular clusters seem to arise from gas and normal matter alone.

But with very small galaxies and clusters, the distinction between them can be blurred.

The new find is described in a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

You can follow Space.com Assistant Managing Editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Shuttle replica to launch, by water, for last trek

11 May, 2012 in General by msnbc.com: Space

HOUSTON — A space shuttle will launch later this month from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but instead of soaring into the sky, it will set sail on the water.

The full-scale, high-fidelity space shuttle mockup, which was formerly known as “Explorer” for the 18 years it was displayed at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, will be loaded on a barge and leave the spaceport on May 20. Ten days later, it will arrive in Clear Lake near NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, starting a three-day festival welcoming the winged display to Texas.

Beginning June 1, “ Shuttlebration Weekend ” will celebrate the past and future of NASA’s crewed space exploration programs, culminating in a parade to deliver the replica to Space Center Houston, the official visitor center for JSC.

“NASA’s space shuttle changed the way we all think about space, making it more accessible, understandable and useful,” Richard Allen, Space Center Houston’s president, said in a statement issued Tuesday to announce the Shuttlebration. “It is our intent to continue that legacy with this exciting new attraction, which will offer a one-of-a-kind visitor experience that will engage, educate and inspire the next generation of explorers.” [ Photo Tribute to NASA's Shuttle Program ]

Shuttlebration schedule

Shuttlebration Weekend begins on the afternoon of June 1, when the replica will arrive at the Johnson Space Center NASA Road 1 dock on Clear Lake near the Nassau Bay Hilton hotel.

At 122.7 feet (37.4 meters) long and 54 feet (16.5 meters) tall, the shuttle mockup will be the largest item to arrive at the dock since a Saturn V rocket’s three stages arrived for display in 1977.

The public is invited to a free street party between the dock and the hotel to witness the replica space shuttle’s arrival. The party will include NASA exhibits and static displays of vehicles and technologies being developed for the future, as well as local marching bands, food and entertainment.

The next day, June 2, the shuttle mockup will be loaded onto a mobile transfer vehicle for its trip to Space Center Houston. The lakeside load-out will take a full day to complete.

Early on June 3, the replica will make the three-hour trek down NASA Road 1 from the Hilton to its permanent home at Space Center Houston. Although logistics are still being worked out, it is likely that some trees and power fixtures will need to be temporary moved or hedged to allow the shuttle to pass.

Along the route, the shuttle will be escorted by prototype planetary rovers being built at JSC for future solar system exploration.

Upon the replica’s arrival, Space Center Houston, along with Johnson Space Center, will host a free celebration in its parking lot from 9 a.m. to noon CDT. The family-friendly event will include more chances to see the shuttle attraction up close, and to get a look at NASA’s latest developments in space exploration.

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“The arrival of the space shuttle attraction is the result of a great community-wide effort,” Michael Coats, a former space shuttle astronaut and director of the Johnson Space Center, said. “Once open, the attraction will carry on the spirit of the space shuttle program by inspiring tomorrow’s space pioneers.”

Shuttle experience

Following “Shuttlebration Weekend,” the replica will remain in Space Center Houston’s parking lot while its permanent display venue is being completed.

The center’s long-term plan is to build an education facility around the orbiter that will provide both historical context and a hands-on educational experience.

Space Center Houston also plans to upgrade the replica itself. The mockup already allows visitors to go inside and tour the crew compartment — both its mid- and flight-deck levels — as well as have a look down the length of the 60 foot payload bay.

“We’re going to replace the cockpit with an all new cockpit like was flying on Atlantis on (the space shuttle program’s) last flight,” Allen said at a meeting held Tuesday, referring to the “glass cockpit” upgrade that Atlantis and the other orbiters received in the early 2000s.

The mockup, which was built by Florida-based aerospace replica manufacturer Guard-Lee, Inc., is considered to be the highest fidelity model of the shuttle ever created. Built using schematics, blueprints and archived documents lent by NASA and its shuttle contractors, some of the replica’s core parts, including the tires used on its landing gear, are authentic to the shuttle program.

The replica was removed from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in December 2011 to make way for the Florida visitor attraction to exhibit space shuttle Atlantis. It has since been parked near Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building awaiting its barge to Houston.

Visit shuttles.collectspace.com for continuing coverage of the delivery and display of NASA’s retired space shuttles.

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SpaceX, Bigelow tout private space stations

11 May, 2012 in General by msnbc.com: Space

Bigelow Aerospace

Bigelow Aerospace’s Genesis 2 inflatable space module rushes into an orbital sunrise.

SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace plan to meet with officials in Japan soon after this month’s scheduled launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, to kick off an international marketing effort for private-sector space stations.

The plan, laid out today in a jointly issued news release, calls for clients to go into orbit inside the Dragon and link up with Bigelow’s BA 330 inflatable space habitat.

“Together we will provide unique opportunities to entities — whether nations or corporations — wishing to have crewed access to the space environment for extended periods,” said SpaceX’s president, Gwynne Shotwell. “I’m looking forward to working with Bigelow Aerospace and engaging with international customers.”

Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder and president of Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, said he was eager to join up with California-based SpaceX and tell international clients about “the substantial benefits that BA 330 leasing can offer in combination with SpaceX transportation capabilities.”

SpaceX is planning to launch an unmanned Dragon cargo capsule into orbit as early as May 19 for a potential test linkup with the International Space Station, and is already working with NASA to modify the Dragon for carrying astronauts as well. Just this week, NASA announced that SpaceX reached a milestone in that development effort by showing that seven astronauts could maneuver effectively inside the Dragon space taxi, even under emergency scenarios.

SpaceX

Astronauts and experts check out the crew accommodations in SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. On top, from left, are NASA Crew Survival Engineering Team Lead Dustin Gohmert, NASA astronauts Tony Antonelli and Lee Archambault, and SpaceX Mission Operations Engineer Laura Crabtree. On bottom, from left, are SpaceX Thermal Engineer Brenda Hernandez and NASA astronauts Rex Walheim and Tim Kopra.

Bigelow’s BA 330 space module would be designed to provide 330 cubic meters of usable volume, which is about the size of a two-bedroom apartment. The BA 330 could accommodate up to six astronauts, depending on how cozy they plan to get. Two or more BA 330 modules could be connected together in orbit for lease by national space agencies, companies or universities, according to Bigelow Aerospace.

Bigelow made his fortune in the hotel industry, which led some to suppose that he was getting into the space-hotel business — but the first users are likely to be researchers or governments aiming to pursue their own space programs on a leased orbital platform. The company has launched two prototype inflatable modules on Russian rockets — Genesis 1 in 2006 and Genesis 2 in 2007 — and both of those unmanned spacecraft are still in orbit.

Mike Gold, who serves as Bigelow Aerospace’s director of Washington operations and business growth, told me that the company was ready to move forward with the BA 330 as well as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, an upscale version of the Genesis module that could be attached to the International Space Station. Future progress on both those projects is dependent on decisions made by NASA, however. NASA has not yet made a commitment to using the BEAM, and it has not yet announced how it will proceed with the next phase of its effort to support the development of commercial space taxis such as SpaceX’s Dragon.

“We’ll be ready to proceed when commercial crew is,” Gold told me.

In addition to its marketing arrangement with SpaceX, Bigelow has partnered with the Boeing Co. on a project to create a space taxi called the CST-100 to ferry NASA astronauts. That scenario could see a successor to the CST-100 launched toward a Bigelow-built space station atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket.

Bigelow Aerospace

An artist’s conception shows a Boeing spacecraft pulling up to a Bigelow space station.

Gold said the commercial crew vehicle development program was the “long pole in the tent” for Bigelow Aerospace’s plans. Even if Bigelow Aerospace built its BA 330, it would have to rely upon an affordable, reliable, safe system for orbital transport — and that system probably would have to be developed and tested with NASA’s help.

Four companies, including Boeing and SpaceX as well as Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corp., have been receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from NASA, but it’s not yet clear how much money Congress will approve for the next phase of the program. If the funding matches NASA’s projected levels, space agency officials have said commercial space taxis could be flying astronauts by 2017. “We hope it could be even earlier,” Gold said.

However, it’s highly questionable whether NASA will get as much money for commercial crew development as it has requested. The request for fiscal year 2013 was almost $830 million, but a Senate subcommittee cut that figure to $525 million. Today the House passed a bill specifying an even lower funding level, $500 million. The White House has threatened a presidential veto of that bill, in part because of its concerns about the cutback in commercial crew support.

More about SpaceX and Bigelow:

Hidden alien planet revealed by its own gravity

10 May, 2012 in General by msnbc.com: Space

Detective astronomers have discovered at least one unseen alien planet, and possibly another, around a distant star by observing the odd behavior of a planet already known to orbit the same star.

The newfound planet has about the mass of Saturn and orbits its host star once every 57 days. It was revealed by its gravitational effects on the previously known planet around the parent star KOI-872. The find is an apparent validation of what scientists call the transit timing variation method of finding extrasolar planets.

The idea of looking for oddities in a main planet’s transit of its star to search for other planets was suggested in 2005, but “this is the first occasion where there is great confidence that the method works,” said astronomer David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., who led the new study.

In fact, when the researchers looked in more detail at the system, they found signs of yet another planet, one only a bit larger than our own world. This “ super-Earth ” is likely circling very close to the star with an orbital period of 6.8 days.

Here’s how the alien planet detective story played out:

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  Science editor Alan Boyle’s blog: SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace plan to meet with Japanese officials soon to kick off an international marketing effort for private-sector space stations.
2. Huge asteroid Vesta is actually a protoplanet
3. Hidden alien planet revealed by its own gravity
4. Why Russia and US should shoot for Mars

The first look at data from NASA’s planet-hunting telescope Kepler had identified only one planet around the star KOI-872. But a closer inspection by scientists outside the Kepler team revealed telltale signs of an extra planet.

As part of its systematic search for alien planets, Kepler looks for stars whose brightness dims periodically — a signal that something, presumably a planet, is passing in front of it and blocking its light. The Kepler team identified a light dip in KOI-872 (KOI stands for “Kepler Object of Interest”) and attributed it to a planet that orbited the star every 34 days. However, that timing appeared to vary by a few hours.

“The planet should show transits equally spaced, which is not the case,” Nesvorny said. “Sometimes the transit is two hours late, sometimes two hours early.”

Using a computer model, Nesvorny and his colleagues concluded that the most likely explanation for the timing variations was the presence of another planet in the system, the Saturn-mass world. Their calculations suggested a likelihood greater than 99 percent that this mystery planet exists. [ Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets ]

Nesvorny and his team are now combing through the wealth of Kepler data for signs of exomoons — moons orbiting alien planets. So far none has been found.

“It mainly depends on if you can have really large moons, because if the moon is small, it wouldn’t change transits too much,” Nesvorny said. “At some point the first exomoon will be discovered. My guess is it will happen within a few years from now.”

After the Kepler team runs its main analysis of data, it releases the data publicly to any scientists who want to study it.

“This is an enormous amount of data, so there’s no way the Kepler team would have time to look at everything,” Nesvorny said. “I think there are many more additional gems waiting to be discovered in the data set, either by the Kepler team or by scientists not related to Kepler.”

The new discovery will be detailed in a paper published in the Friday issue of the journal Science.

You can follow Space.com Assistant Managing Editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.

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Huge asteroid Vesta is actually a protoplanet

10 May, 2012 in General by msnbc.com: Space

New observations from a NASA spacecraft show that the huge asteroid Vesta is a battered protoplanet left over from the solar system’s early days, with a unique mix of characteristics unknown from any other space rock.

Scientists had thought that Vesta, the second-largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, probably started down a planet-forming path shortly after the solar system’s birth. Data gathered by NASA’s Dawn probe have now confirmed that suspicion, researchers announced in a raft of studies that came out Thursday in the journal Science.

“Those studying meteorites that have fallen to Earth, many from Vesta, had produced a theory on the evolution of the solar system and what Vesta should be made of,” said Dawn principal investigator Chris Russell of UCLA, lead author of one of the six new Science papers.

“They were very, very right,” Russell told Space.com via email. “This is good, because we can now use that model to understand more about the solar system.” [ Photos: Asteroid Vesta by Dawn Probe ]

But Dawn has also delivered some surprising new results. The gigantic Rheasilvia basin at Vesta’s south pole, for example, apparently was created by a massive impact just 1 billion years ago or so — long after the solar system’s collision-filled “shooting gallery” stage is thought to have ended.

“An age of about 1 billion years for Rheasilvia is unexpectedly young,” Simone Marchi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., lead author of another of the new papers, said in a statement. “This result has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of Vesta, its asteroid family and the inner main asteroid belt in general.”

“We have just started exploring Vesta’s secrets, and I’m sure other intriguing results will come along shortly,” Marchi added.

The protoplanet Vesta

With a diameter of about 330 miles (530 kilometers), Vesta is roughly as wide as the U.S. state of Arizona. In the main asteroid belt, only the dwarf planet Ceres is bigger.

The $466 million Dawn spacecraft arrived at the huge asteroid in July 2011 to help unlock its many secrets. One of the probe’s main missions, researchers said, is to determine if Vesta is indeed a long-surviving protoplanet — a body left over from the solar system’s first few million years, many of which later coalesced to form rocky planets such as Earth and Mars.

Scientists got this idea mainly by examining fallen howardite-eucrite-diogenite (or HED) meteorites, which are thought to come from Vesta. The new Dawn results strongly support the protoplanet notion — by confirming that Vesta is indeed the HED meteorites’ parent body, for starters.

Moreover, the huge asteroid isn’t just some chunk of uniform rock. Rather, it’s now known to be a differentiated object with an iron core about 137 miles (220 km) wide. That’s big enough, perhaps, to have once sustained a dynamo like the one that generates Earth’s magnetic field, researchers said.

The team figured out the dimensions of Vesta’s core in part by carefully tracking Dawn’s movements through space, then using this information to calculate Vesta’s mass, density and gravitational pull with unprecedented precision. [ Video: Vesta Flyover in 3D ]

Other Dawn data also back Vesta’s protoplanet status. For instance, its surface composition implies a complex geological history that’s more similar to that of terrestrial planets than other asteroids, researchers said. And Vesta boasts color variations unlike anything seen on an asteroid before, further suggesting that the massive object is something special.

“We now know that Vesta is large enough to have had its own internal geologic evolution and is not just a battered lump of rock,” said Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, lead author of another of the new studies.

Two gigantic (and recent) impacts

Vesta’s surface is pocked with craters from countless collisions over the eons. Dawn’s observations have allowed scientists to reconstruct the protoplanet’s impact history by counting these craters, and noting how many impact features overlie others.

Researchers found a huge difference between Vesta’s northern and southern halves. The northern part retains a record of some of the asteroid’s earliest impacts, while the south was “reset” by two enormous collisions far more recently.

One of these smashups occurred about 2 billion years ago, creating a 249-mile-wide (400-km) basin called Veneneia. But Veneneia was mostly obliterated about 1 billion years ago by another impact, which created the 314-mile (505-km) Rheasilvia crater.

“This basin erased at least half the surface and messed up a lot of the rest of it,” Schenk told SPACE.com via email.

The Rheasilvia impact also created strange circular troughs around Vesta’s equator and raised a central peak more than twice as high as Mount Everest, Russell said.

Both giant craters were likely caused by asteroids between 25 and 36 miles (40 to 60 km) wide, Schenk said. And both impacts seem to have occurred surprisingly late, several billion years after the presumed end of the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment that blasted many craters into Earth’s moon and other solar system bodies.

More discoveries to come

The new results are based on data that Dawn gathered during the early stages of its stay at Vesta. The spacecraft will continue studying the protoplanet until Aug. 26, so we should expect more discoveries from the mission, researchers said.

“We have not yet reported on the high-resolution measurements made at low altitudes,” Russell said. “We will be searching for water, just like there have been water searches on the moon.”

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Further, Vesta’s far northern reaches have been in shadow thus far, so Dawn has been unable to study large chunks of the protoplanet. But that will change before too long.

“Sunlight is moving northward on Vesta, and we will soon see the north pole regions,” Russell said. “What could be there to complement what we see in the south?”

When Dawn finishes up at Vesta, it will start the long trek to the dwarf planet Ceres, which is roughly as wide as Texas. The probe is scheduled to reach the “queen of the asteroid belt” in February 2015 and embark upon a whole new round of discoveries.

“We expect that Ceres is a much wetter world” than Vesta, Russell said. But, he added, “we have no meteorites to help us here. Everything will be a surprise.”

You can follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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