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Saturday, March 28, 2015

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Cosmic Traditions: One-Year Space Crew Marks Flight with Russian Spaceflight Customs

Kelly and Kornienko, together with cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, are set to launch to the International Space Station on Friday (March 27) from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia. After a four-orbit, six-hour flight, they will take up residency on board the outpost, with Kelly and Kornienko beginning the space station's first yearlong mission. On March 6, prior to departing the training center at Star City, located just outside of Moscow, Kelly, Kornienko and Padalka visited the office of the first person to fly in space, the late Yuri Gagarin, which has been preserved as part of the center's cosmonaut memorial museum. There, they sat at Gagarin's desk and, following tradition, signed a guest book that has been autographed by the crews that have preceded them to space.

Liftoff! US, Russia Launch Historic One-Year Space Mission

An American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut launched into space Friday to attempt something their two countries have never done together before: a one-year mission on the International Space Station that could help one day send humans to Mars. The epic one-year space mission launched NASA's Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule at 3:42 p.m. EDT (1942 GMT) today (March 27) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it was early Saturday morning local time. "A year in space starts now," NASA spokesperson Dan Huot said at launch. You can check out a video of the history-making launch as well. It should take Padalka, Kelly and Kornienko about 6 hours to reach the space station.

U.S., Russian crew blasts off for year-long stay on space station

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, sending a U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts on their way to the International Space Station, a NASA Television broadcast showed. Two of the men, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, 51, and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, 54, will stay aboard the station for a year, twice as long as previous crews. Also aboard the Soyuz capsule was veteran cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, 56, who will return to Earth in September after racking up 878 days in space, more than any other person. Four Soviet-era cosmonauts lived on the now-defunct Mir space station for a year or longer, but the missions, which concluded in 1999, did not have the sophisticated medical equipment that will be used during International Space Station investigations, NASA said.

Environmental group seeks greater protection for USDA scientists

An environmental activist group has filed a legal petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeking new rules that would enhance job protection for government scientists whose research questions the safety of farm chemicals. The action filed on Thursday by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an advocacy group for local, state and federal researchers, came less than a week after a World Health Organization group found the active ingredient in Roundup, the world's best selling weed killer, is "probably carcinogenic to humans." Roundup is made by Monsanto Co. The petition to the USDA presses the agency to adopt policies to prevent "political suppression or alteration of studies and to lay out clear procedures for investigating allegations of scientific misconduct." According to the petition, some scientists working for the federal government are finding their research restricted or censored when it conflicts with agribusiness industry interests.

Primordial sea creature with spiky claws unearthed in Canada

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fossil site in the Canadian Rockies that provides a wondrous peek into life on Earth more than half a billion years ago has offered up the remains of an intriguing sea creature, a four-eyed arthropod predator that wielded a pair of spiky claws. Scientists said on Friday they unearthed nicely preserved fossils in British Columbia of the 508 million-year-old animal, named Yawunik kootenayi, that looked like a big shrimp with a bad attitude and was one of the largest predators of its time. The fossil beds in Kootenay National Park where it was found were in a previously unexplored area of the Burgess Shale rock formation that for more than a century has yielded exceptional remains from the Cambrian Period, when many of the major animal groups first appeared. Yawunik, whose name honors a mythical sea monster in the native Ktunaxa people's creation story, was a primitive arthropod, the highly successful group that includes shrimps, lobsters, crabs, insects, spiders, scorpions, centipedes and millipedes.

Environmental group seeks greater protection for USDA scientists

One-Year Crew Begins Epic Trip on International Space Station

Three new crewmembers just arrived at the International Space Station, and two of them won't be leaving for about one year. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are expected to spend about 342 days living and working on the International Space Station — marking the orbiting outpost's first yearlong space mission. Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka also joined Kornienko and Kelly on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that docked with the space station at 8:33 p.m. EDT (0033 GMT). Padalka will stay on the space station for about six months, the usual amount of time people live on the space laboratory.

U.S.-Russian crew reaches space station for year-long stay

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, sending a U.S.-Russia crew to the International Space Station for a year-long flight, a NASA Television broadcast showed. Four Soviet-era cosmonauts lived on the now-defunct Mir space station for a year or longer, but the missions, which concluded in 1999, did not have the sophisticated medical equipment that will be used during International Space Station investigations, NASA said.

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Friday, March 27, 2015

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U.S. Air Force overstepped bounds in SpaceX certification: report

By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force overstepped its bounds as it worked to certify privately held SpaceX to launch military satellites, undermining the benefit of working with a commercial provider, an independent review showed on Thursday. The report cited a "stark disconnect" between the Air Force and SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, about the purpose of the certification process and recommended changes. Air Force Secretary Deborah James ordered the review after the service missed a December deadline for certifying SpaceX to compete for some launches now carried out solely by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co. The Pentagon is eager to certify SpaceX as a second launch provider, given mounting concerns in Congress about ULA's use of a Russian-built engine to power its Atlas 5 rocket.

Meet the Leading Space Rock Target for NASA's Asteroid-Capture Mission

The big asteroid 2008 EV5 may end up giving a piece of itself in the name of science and exploration. NASA intends to pluck a boulder off a near-Earth asteroid and haul it into orbit around the moon, where astronauts could visit and study the rock beginning in 2025. NASA announced the boulder plan on Wednesday (March 25), and unveiled a new video of how astronauts would fly the asteroid mission. Agency officials haven't decided upon the target asteroid yet, but the leading contender at the moment is the 1,300-foot-wide (400 meters) 2008 EV5.

Proving Einstein Wrong with 'Spooky' Quantum Experiment

Quantum mechanics is one of the best-tested theories in science, and it's one of the few where physicists get to do experiments proving that Einstein was wrong. That's what a team at Griffith University and the University of Tokyo in Japan did this week, showing that a weird phenomenon — in which the measurement of a particle actually affects its location — is real. Back in the 1920s and 1930s, Albert Einstein said he couldn't support this idea, which he called "spooky action at a distance," in which a particle can be in two places at once and it's not until one measures the state of that particle that it takes a definite position, seemingly with no signal transmitted to it and at a speed faster than light. When the particle takes its definite position, physicists refer to this as its wave function collapsing.

Antarctica's Supersized Icebergs Shut Down Currents

Unleashed by fracturing glaciers, they interfere with the Antarctic Ocean's sea-ice factories, called polynyas, according to the study. The scientists studied the recent history of one of the Antarctic Bottom Current's most important polynyas, near East Antarctica's Mertz Glacier. Mertz Glacier stretches far out into the sea, and helps protect the polynya against surface currents with a long, floating tongue of ice. In the past 250 years, similar-size icebergs have launched from Mertz Glacier about every 70 years, the researchers discovered.

One-Year Space Station Mission Launches Today: Watch It Live

A three-person crew will blast off to the International Space Station today (March 27), and two of them won't be coming back to Earth for a full year. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka will fly to the station atop a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia. Kelly and Kornienko will participate in the yearlong mission aboard the orbiting outpost, while Padalka spends six months on the station before flying home. Watch the one-year space crew launch live on Space.com starting at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT) via NASA TV.

One Year in Space: A History of Ultra-Long Missions Off Planet Earth

An American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut are set to make history as the first crewmembers to spend a year onboard the International Space Station, but the two are not the first to log 12 months off the planet. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will lift off to the space station on Friday (March 27) to begin the yearlong expedition. Joining them on Russia's Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft for the 6-hour trip to the orbiting outpost is cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who will stay on the station for the more usual six months. Twenty-two other cosmonauts and four NASA astronauts have to date accumulated 365 days or more over the course of two or more space missions.

Deadly Oklahoma Twister Ends Slow Start to Tornado Season

A damaging tornado touched down outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, last night (March 25). A small twister was also reported in Moore, the Oklahoma City suburb that has been repeatedly ravaged by deadly twisters this decade. The two weak tornadoes ended a long dry streak for the 2015 tornado season. For only the second time since the 1950s — when good record keeping began — the first three weeks of March were tornado-free throughout the United States, according to the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

Valeo's self-driving car systems learn from Safran drones

By Laurence Frost and Gilles Guillaume PARIS (Reuters) - French auto parts maker Valeo plans to draw on drone software and other military technologies from partner Safran to offer self-driving vehicle platforms to carmakers by the end of the decade. While demonstrating an autonomous car and other prototype systems jointly developed with Safran, the French defense and aerospace group, Valeo said on Friday the first applications may reach carmaker clients within three years. "We realized very quickly that we had much more in common than we'd expected," Valeo innovation chief Guillaume Devauchelle told Reuters. "It turns out that an autonomous vehicle is really a terrestrial drone." Cars that complete whole journeys without human input are still many years away, but creeping automation is well underway, with models already on sale that can pilot themselves through slow traffic and hit the brakes when a pedestrian steps out.

Grants help level the playing field for young moms in science

By Randi Belisomo (Reuters Health) - Thanks to a generous benefactor, young mothers doing laboratory research at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston can receive major grants to keep them from falling behind while they raise their children. Since 1993, the Claflin Distinguished Scholar Awards at MGH have helped junior female faculty with young children keep pace with their male peers, who don't face the same challenges to research productivity that women do during their child-rearing years. Every year, five women are awarded $100,000 Claflin grants - named for benefactor Jane D. Claflin - to fund a research assistant for two years.

Kelly Astronaut Twins Meet on Eve of 1-Year Mission Launch (Photo)

NASA's Kelly astronaut twins met up for a photo Thursday (March 26), just a day before one of them was scheduled to launch toward the International Space Station on an epic and unprecedented yearlong mission. Scott Kelly is slated to launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome along with two Russian spaceflyers, Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka, today (March 27) at 3:42 p.m. EDT (1942 GMT).

Ancient 4-Eyed Predator Wielded Wicked Toothy Claws

It is the first new species reported from a stunning fossil find in Marble Canyon in British Columbia's Kootenay National Park. The Marble Canyon fossil beds, located in 2012, rival the iconic Burgess Shale for their diversity of soft-bodied fossils and exquisite preservation, scientists said. Yawunik is one of the most abundant species at the Marble Canyon site, and so, as a predator, likely held a key position in the food chain, said lead study author Cédric Aria, a graduate student in paleontology at the University of Toronto in Canada. The animal was named Yawunik kootenayi after the Ktunaxa people who have long inhabited the Kootenay area where the Marble Canyon locality was found.

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Thursday, March 26, 2015

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Delta rocket blasts off from Florida with improved GPS satellite

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - An unmanned Delta 4 rocket blasted off from Florida on Wednesday to deliver the ninth of 12 next-generation Global Positioning System satellites into orbit. The 207-foot (63 meter) booster, built and flown by United Launch Alliance, bolted off its seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 2:36 p.m. EDT, the third launch in 25 days from the nation's busiest spaceport. ULA is a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co. ...

For Asteroid-Capture Mission, NASA Picks 'Option B' for Boulder

NASA's bold asteroid-capture mission will pluck a boulder off a big space rock rather than grab an entire near-Earth object, agency officials announced today (March 25). NASA intends to drag the boulder to lunar orbit, where astronauts will visit it beginning in 2025. The space agency decided on the boulder snatch — "Option B," as opposed to the whole-asteroid "Option A" — Tuesday (March 24) during the mission concept review of the asteroid-redirect effort, NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot told reporters during a teleconference today. Option B will probably cost about $100 million more than Option A would have, but its advantages are worth the price-tag bump, Lightfoot said.

The Surprising Story Behind 1-Year-Mission Astronaut Scott Kelly's Space Patches

Scott Kelly's astronaut name tags were supposed to be aboard the International Space Station by now. In fact, the pair of name tags had been packed aboard a U.S. commercial cargo freighter that was on its way to the space station last October.

NASA picks an asteroid rock to pave the road to Mars

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A NASA robot ship will pluck a large boulder off an asteroid and sling it around the moon, becoming an ad hoc destination to prepare for future human missions to Mars, the U.S. space agency said on Wednesday. It would be followed five years later by a human expedition to the space rock, a modification of a plan proposed by President Barack Obama in 2010. NASA also considered bagging a smaller asteroid and relocating the entire body into a high orbit around the moon. After extensive studies, NASA opted to collect and move a boulder, a mission that will cost about $100 million more, but which better prepares the agency for the ultimate goal of landing astronauts on Mars.

Ebola Death Rates Vary Widely by Age Group

Young children who are infected with Ebola may be more likely to die from the virus than older children or adults who are infected, according to a new study. In the study, researchers examined Ebola cases in children younger than 16 during the current outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and compared them with adult cases. Among children older than 15 and adults, the mortality rate was 65 percent. "The very youngest of children — neonates —appear to have the worst outcomes from Ebola," study co-author Dr. Robert Fowler, an associate professor of critical-care medicine at the University of Toronto, said in a statement.

More Infidelity Uncovered in King Richard III's Family Tree

The remains of Richard III may be locked away in a coffin to be reburied this week, but the 15th-century king's genome is still offering scientists a chance to unravel royal mysteries. "Having worked in the world of genetic genealogy for years, this is not at all surprising to me," said Turi King, a geneticist at the University of Leicester. In the general population, false paternities occur in about 1 percent to 2 percent of births, King said. They found a match between Richard's mitochondrial DNA (which is passed down only through the mother) and the mitochondrial DNA from two living female-line descendants of Richard's sister Anne of York: Michael Ibsen and Wendy Duldig.

Snow Melting 16 Days Earlier in Wyoming Mountains

The spring snowmelt now comes more than two weeks earlier than it did in the 1970s in Wyoming's Wind River Range, a new study finds. Several independent studies have found the spring snowmelt starts up to 20 days earlier in the West than in the past because there's less snow falling each winter and warmer spring weather means the snow that does fall melts earlier. The double whammy is hurting water resources in states, such as Wyoming, that rely on snowmelt. "Earlier snowmelt impacts the water resources of most of the state of Wyoming, which has been undergoing a drought since 1999," Dorothy Hall, lead author of the study and a senior research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.

Gorgeous Satellite Image Reveals Galloping Antarctic Glacier

One of West Antarctica's largest glaciers surged a staggering 325 feet (about 100 meters) in less than two weeks this month, the European Space Agency reports.

How Real-Life AI Rivals 'Terminator': Robots Take the Shot

From the Turing-bashing "Ex Machina" to old friends R2-D2 and C-3PO, and new enemies like the Avengers' Ultron, sentient robots will demonstrate a number of human and superhuman traits on-screen. In this five-part series Live Science looks at these made-for-the-movies advances in machine intelligence. As he's so often promised, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be back, once again taking on his iconic killer-robot role in July's "Terminator Genisys." While no Skynet-like AI has sent red-eyed robots after humanity (thankfully), the prospect of weaponized AI has gotten much more likely in the years since the first "Terminator" film in 1984. Autonomous aerial vehicles, or drones, are now "an integral part of military operations," said drone historian Richard Whittle, as reported by CNET.

US Air Force Launches Advanced GPS Satellite into Orbit

The U.S. Air Force has launched an advanced new satellite to help upgrade the nation's Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation. The GPS IIF-9 satellite blasted off atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Wednesday (March 25) at 2:36 p.m. EDT (1836 GMT). "I'm elated with today's successful launch," Brig. Gen. Bill Cooley, director of the Global Positioning System Directorate at the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center, said in a statement. The IIF-9 spacecraft joins 30 other operational GPS satellites in Earth orbit.

Get Amazing Views of the First-Quarter Moon This Week

When you look at the moon with binoculars or a small telescope, the first thing you notice is that not all parts of the moon look the same. Without any optical aid at all, you can see the patterns formed by gray maria and white highlands, the familiar shapes known as "the man in the moon," but also seen as different shapes by different cultures.

5 Human Body Questions the 1-Year Space Station Mission May Answer

NASA has a lot of questions about what happens to people who live in space for long periods of time, and it's almost time to get some answers. When NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russia's Mikhail Kornienko fly up to the International Space Station Friday (March 27) for a yearlong stay on the orbiting outpost, space agency scientists will get to work on experiments that could help get people to Mars one day. Officials have a lot of information about what happens to a body in weightlessness for six months, but the 12-month space mission will mark the first time researchers can gather data about what happens to people in space for longer periods of time. It takes more than one year to get to Mars using currently understood propulsion methods, so learning more about the ways long spaceflight affects humans is key to one of NASA's main future goals: getting people to the Red Planet.

Are Smart Pills & Brain Zapping Risky? Bioethicists Weigh In

Now, bioethicists are weighing in, saying that while such cognitive enhancement is neither bad nor good, it deserves more research. In the past, "there have been many arguments that suggest one should take an ethical stance for or against cognitive enhancement" of healthy individuals, said Amy Gutmann, chairwoman of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which released the second part of a report today (March 26) on ethics in neuroscience research, commissioned by President Barack Obama as part of the BRAIN Initiative, a collaborative effort to develop tools to study the human brain. "We as a commission recommend there is no bright line to be drawn here," Gutmann told Live Science during a news conference yesterday. The new report focused on three main areas: cognitive enhancement, informed consent in mentally impaired individuals and the use of neuroscience in the legal system.

Jockey motion tracking reveals racing prowess

By Matthew Stock A research team from the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) is using motion tracking technology to try to establish the optimal riding position for jockeys, as well as enhance the performance of racehorses and reduce the risk of injury to both horse and jockey. The project, entitled "Apprentice to Journeyman: the influence of jockey technique on thoroughbred racehorse locomotion", is analyzing the riding style of more experienced jockeys compared with novice riders to try to determine if the technique differs significantly between the two skill levels. They wanted to see how more experienced jockeys' movement, stability and positioning differed from the novice. RVC researcher Dr Anna Walker explained that more experienced jockeys commented on how different the experience was on a simulator compared to a real horse.

Scientist defends WHO group report linking herbicide to cancer

A World Health Organization group's controversial finding that the world's most popular herbicide "probably is carcinogenic to humans" was based on a thorough scientific review and is a key marker in ongoing evaluations of the product, the scientist who led the study said Thursday. There was sufficient evidence in animals, limited evidence in humans and strong supporting evidence showing DNA mutations ... and damaged chromosomes," Aaron Blair, a scientist emeritus at the National Cancer Institute, said in an interview. Blair chaired the 17-member working group of the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which rocked the agricultural industry on March 20 by classifying glyphosate as "probably" cancer-causing. Monsanto Co , which has built a $15 billion company on sales of glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide and crops genetically engineered to tolerate being sprayed with Roundup, has demanded a retraction and explanation from WHO.

EU to resume Galileo satellite launch program

By Francesco Guarascio BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is set to send two navigation satellites into orbit on Friday aboard a Russian rocket, in its first launch since a botched deployment in August that cost several million euros to fix. The Galileo project to set up an EU alternative to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) is obliged to use the Russian Soyuz system until a development of Arianespace's European Ariane 5 rocket is ready around the end of the year, despite strained relations with Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine. An official at the European Commission, which oversees the program, said the EU executive was tendering for insurance cover for future satellites and had set up an insurance scheme for the launches. The two launched in August have since been nudged into viable orbits and are fit for use, a spokesman for the European Space Agency said.

Ebola 'Supervirus' Is Unlikely, Experts Say

The Ebola virus that is causing the current outbreak in West Africa is not mutating as quickly as earlier reports had suggested, a new study finds. In the study, published online today (March 26) in the journal Science, researchers compared virus samples from people in Africa who became infected with Ebola up to nine months apart. "We do not see any evidence that the virus is mutating any more rapidly than has been reported in previous outbreaks," said Thomas Hoenen, a postdoctoral fellow in virology at the National Institutes of Health and one of the researchers on the study. In a 2014 study published in the journal Science, researchers had suggested that the Ebola virus in the West African epidemic was mutating twice as fast as other Ebola virus strains.

Richard III Gets a Regal Tomb 530 Years After His Death

One of history's most infamous kings, Richard III, was reburied today (March 26) in a lavish ceremony in Leicester, England, 530 years after his violent death in battle. Capping a week of events and processions celebrating the medieval monarch, Richard's stark oak casket was lowered into a brick-lined vault near the altar at Leicester Cathedral in front of hundreds of people today. In 2012, archaeologists seeking Richard's lost grave amazingly found the king's battle-scarred bones under a parking lot in Leicester. When Richard's skeleton was discovered in the ruins of Grey Friars, it provided scientists a rare opportunity to intimately examine the body of a historical figure.

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