|  Satellite likely incinerated after re-entering Earth's atmosphere: officials By Irene Klotz ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A large science satellite that mapped Earth's gravity likely re-entered the atmosphere where most of it incinerated on Sunday, about three weeks after running out of fuel and beginning to lose altitude, officials said. Ground tracking stations' last contact with Europe's Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer, or GOCE, was at 5:42 p.m. (2242 GMT) as it passed 75 miles above Antarctica, Heiner Klinkrad, head of the European Space Agency's space debris office, wrote in a status report posted on the European Space Agency's website. The official designation of space is the Karman line, 62 miles above Earth. About 25 percent of the car-sized satellite was expected to have survived re-entry, with debris most likely falling into the ocean, European Space Agency officials said. Read More » International space crew returns Olympic torch to Earth  | A Soyuz capsule carried an International Space Station crew of three back to Earth on Monday along with an Olympic torch that was displayed in open space as part of Russia's preparations for the Sochi 2014 Winter Games. Slowed by parachutes and braking rockets fired to soften the impact, the Soyuz TMA-09M hit the Kazakh steppe on schedule at about 8:49 a.m. (0249 GMT) after a more than three-hour descent from the space station, live footage on Russian and NASA TV showed. "The Olympic torch is home after a four-day journey," an announcer on NASA TV said after what he called a flawless descent. Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky had taken an unlit silver-and-grey torch, inspired by the Firebird of Russian folklore, on a spacewalk on Saturday, the first time an Olympic torch has been in open space.
| Read More » Soyuz Spacecraft Carrying Olympic Torch, Crew of 3 Returns to Earth  | A Russian Soyuz space capsule landed safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan Sunday (Nov. 10), returning cosmonauts and two astronauts to Earth along with a one other precious item: the Olympic torch. The Soyuz spacecraft landed at 9:49 p.m. EST (0249 Nov. 11 GMT) under a clear blue sky in central Kazakhstan, where the local time was Monday morning. Frigid temperatures greeted the returning space travelers — cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano — after five and a half months in space. "The initial reports indicate a bull's eye landing for the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft and its crew," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said during the agency's televised landing commentary.[See more landing day photos for Soyuz crew]
| Read More » 1-ton European Satellite Falls to Earth in Fiery Death Dive  | A European satellite met its fiery doom in Earth's atmosphere late Sunday (Nov. 10), succumbing to the same gravitational pull of the planet that it spent the last four years mapping like never before. The European Space Agency's GOCE satellite fell from space Sunday at 7 p.m. EST (0000 Nov. 11 GMT) while flying on a path that would take it over Siberia, the Western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica, ESA officials said.
| Read More » Incredible Technology: How to Launch Superfast Trips to Mars  | New propulsion technologies may blast astronauts through space at breakneck speeds in the coming decades, making manned Mars missions much faster and safer. Souped-up electric propulsion systems and rockets driven by nuclear fusion or fission could end up shortening travel times to the Red Planet dramatically, proponents say, potentially opening up a new era in manned space exploration. "Using existing rocket fuels, it's nearly impossible for humans to explore much beyond Earth," John Slough of the University of Washington, leader of a team developing a fusion-driven rocket, said in a statement earlier this year. Putting boots on the Red Planet is a chief ambition of NASA, which aims to send astronauts to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.
| Read More » From Space Cooking to Disaster Plans: Astronaut Chris Hadfield Reveals Cosmic Life Lessons (Video)  | NEW YORK — You'd be hard-pressed to catch astronaut Chris Hadfield unprepared. Years earlier, during his grueling jet training to become a fighter pilot for the Canadian military, Hadfield would drive the desolate roads of Saskatchewan to familiarize himself with the landscape that he'd be flying over during critical tests — tests he knew might make or break his shot at becoming an astronaut, even though Canada didn't have a space program at the time.
| Read More » Best Age for Woman's First Child? 25, Poll Finds Most Americans think the best time for a woman to have her first child is at age 25 or younger, whereas most think first-time dads should be 26 or older, according to a new Gallup poll. The timing of life milestones such as marriage and parenthood has shifted over the years. There are biological reasons to have children earlier rather than later. Women are most fertile in their late teens and early 20s, and older dads confer increased risks for schizophrenia, autism and other mental health disorders onto their children, according to a 2011 study in the journal Translational Psychiatry. Read More » Veterans Bring the Whig Party Back Though you may remember it from high-school history class, the Whig Party gave America some of the most utterly forgettable presidents of the 1800s. (If the names Millard Fillmore, Zachary Taylor and John Tyler fail to inspire much patriotic fervor in you, you're not alone.) Nonetheless, a new Whig Party — calling itself the Modern Whig Party, or MWP — has risen from the ashes of history and is poised for a comeback. Robert "Heshy" Bucholz, a card-carrying MWP member, was elected last week as an election judge in Philadelphia, making him the first Whig to win any elected office in the city since 1854, according to Philly.com. Read More » Smuggled Chinese Artifacts Lead to Charges A Florida art dealer is facing heavy fines and possible prison time in connection with an ancient artifact smuggling case. Francois B. Lorin, 74, of Winter Park, was hit with obstruction of justice charges after he forged documents in an attempt to legitimize an illegal shipment of ancient Chinese objects, federal authorizes allege. U.S. Customs and Border Protection discovered the artifacts in Miami, Fla., in June 2011. They detained the shipment from Hong Kong "due to inconsistencies between the shipping documentation and physical examination," said a spokesperson with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Read More » Snakes Control Blood Flow to Boost Vision  | At least for one snake species, when the slitherer feels threatened, it controls the blood flow to its eyes to ensure that its sight is unobstructed, a new study found. The research focused on the coachwhip snake (Masticophis flagellum), a thin, nonvenomous species that is found across the United States and Mexico and can range in color from brown to pink. While examining the eye of a coachwhip snake, study researcher Kevin van Doorn, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, said he noticed a network of blood vessels in this see-through layer of skin. He found that the blood vessels constricted and expanded in a consistent cycle while the snakes were resting so that blood cells wouldn't pool up in front of the animals' eyes and obscure their already limited vision.
| Read More » By the Numbers: 5 Cultural Facts About Veterans  | Today, Veterans Day, men and women in uniform are being honored for the service to the country. As the Civil War was winding down, President Abraham Lincoln called on Americans in his second inaugural address "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan." While returning and fallen servicemembers have long been revered in the United States, Veterans Day was only established as a national holiday in 1919, though at the time it was called Armistice Day, celebrating the anniversary of the end of World War I. The Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center aims to collect, preserve and make accessible veterans' personal stories from as far back as World War I to more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 1.6 million female veterans in the nation in 2012.
| Read More » Babies Named After Dads: Which States Have More (And Why) Dale Earnhardt Jr., was one. So was Martin Luther King Jr. And who could forget Harry Connick Jr.? In the United States, southern and western states are strongly influenced by honor culture ethics, thanks to immigration by the Scotch-Irish, scientists say. "Sometimes culture plays a hidden or subtle role in the kinds of names we're attracted to," said study researcher Ryan Brown, a psychologist at the University of Oklahoma. Read More » Electron Appears Spherical, Squashing Hopes for New Physics Theories Electron Appears Spherical, Squashing Hopes for New Physics Theories Read More » Job Interview Advice for Veterans: Practice A new study from Military Benefit Association revealed that half of the veterans recently separated from the U.S. military and are currently unemployed have not had a full- or part-time job since leaving the military. Roy Gibson, a retired U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sgt. and president of the Military Benefit Association, said one critical aspect to landing new work for veterans is ensuring they are well-prepared for the job search process, including any interviews they may go on. When going on an interview, it is important that veterans can accurately describe their skills and what they can bring to the table. Gibson said research shows that more than 70 percent of hiring managers find it difficult to ascertain recent veterans' skill sets based on their resume alone. Read More » Cosmonauts Wore Special Space Patch for Olympic Torch Spacewalk  | The two cosmonauts who took an Olympic torch on a spacewalk outside of the International Space Station Saturday (Nov. 9) carried out the symbolic relay wearing a surprise space mission patch depicting the icon of the 2014 Winter Games. Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy with Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos each donned Orlan spacesuits adorned with the previously unseen embroidered emblem, which, like the Olympic Games, came as the result of an international effort. "The patch is done in bold colors and in a bit of a 'comic book' style," wrote Dutch artist Luc van den Abeelen, who designed the patch together with space patch enthusiast Jacques van Oene, in an e-mail to collectSPACE.com. "It shows a cosmonaut on a spacewalk in heavy perspective, with the Olympic torch prominently sticking out toward the viewer." [Photos: See the 2014 Winter Olympic Torch in Space]
| Read More » Catholic Education No Better Than Public Schooling, Study Suggests Catholic schools don't provide a better education than public schools, at least when it comes to basics like math and reading, new research suggests. Children at Catholic schools don't improve their math or reading scores on standardized tests across elementary school and don't show better behavioral outcomes than public school children, according to the study, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Urban Economics. "Across many outcomes, both academic and behavioral, we don't find anything that seems to point to a real benefit of Catholic schools over public schools," study co-author Todd Elder, an economist at Michigan State University, said in a statement. Many an adult remembers sitting through classes taught by Catholic priests and nuns, and more than 2 million children are currently enrolled in one of 6,700 Catholic schools across the country, according to the National Catholic Educational Association. Read More » US to Destroy 6 Tons of Ivory This Week  | In a first, U.S. officials are going to destroy their massive stockpile of illegal ivory this week, hoping to send a zero-tolerance message to elephant poachers. On Thursday (Nov. 14), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will pulverize nearly 6 tons (5.4 tonnes) of illegal ivory items, from whole tusks to tiny trinkets, which have been seized over the past 25 years as a result of smuggling busts and criminal investigations. The ivory crush will take place at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in Commerce City, Colo., just outside of Denver. After that, the objects can be used to educate the public and train law enforcement officials.
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