Nasa launching laser satellite in September to study Earth's changing ice

Nasa is launching a laser-armed satellite next month that will measure -- in unprecedented detail -- changes in the heights of Earth's polar ice to understand what is causing ice sheets to melt fast.

In recent years, contributions of melt from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica alone have raised global sea level by more than a millimeter a year, accounting for approximately one-third of observed sea level rise, and the rate is increasing.

Called the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), the mission is scheduled to be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on September 15, Nasa said in a statement late on Thursday.

ICESat-2 will measure the average annual elevation change of land ice covering Greenland and Antarctica to within the width of a pencil, capturing 60,000 measurements every second.

Here's why we should forget about Mars right now and return to the moon

Hopes of colonising Mars rest on the premise that we could terraform the red planet, making it habitable for humans with a breathable atmosphere and clement temperatures. However, a recent study cast doubt on the idea, concluding that terraforming is impossible with present technology.

With colonising Mars on hold, it’s a good time to reevaluate the relationship we have with our nearest cosmic neighbour, the moon. The first successful lander on the moon was the Russian spacecraft Luna 9 in 1966. This mission revealed the barren lunar landscape in fine detail for the first time.

Since the dawn of the space age, there have been over 60 successful missions to the moon, including eight that were manned. The most famous being Apollo 11 in July 1969 which resulted in the first human presence on the moon.

These space pioneers broadened our understanding of Earth and the universe. The Apollo 15 mission of 1971, for example, recovered the so-called “Genesis Rock”, one of the oldest rock samples ever found from a crater on the moon. Analysis of other surface samples supported the “giant impact hypothesis”, a now predominant view that the moon formed from a giant impact on the Earth some 4.5 billion years ago.

Musk's Mars plans: SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket soars in debut test launch

The world's most powerful rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, roared into space through clear blue skies in its debut test flight on Tuesday from a Florida launch site where moon missions once began, in another milestone for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's private rocket company.

The 23-story-tall jumbo rocket, carrying a cherry red Tesla Roadster automobile into space as a mock payload, thundered off its launchpad in billowing clouds of steam and rocket exhaust at 3:45 p.m (2045 GMT) at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

Boisterous cheering could be heard from SpaceX workers at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, where a livestream feed of the event originated. Several hundred spectators packed a campground near Cocoa Beach, 5 miles (8 km) from the space center, to watch the blastoff.

Using AI, Nasa discovers another solar system like ours; has 8 planets

A solar system with as many planets as our own has been discovered with the help of NASA's Kepler space telescope and artificial intelligence, the US space agency said.

"Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star," NASA said in a statement yesterday.

However, none of the planets are expected to be hospitable to life.

The eight-planet system -- the largest known outside of ours -- orbits a star called Kepler 90 some 2,545 light-years away.

"The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system," said Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin.

"You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer."

The newly identified planet, Kepler-90i, is a rocky planet like Earth, but orbits its star once every 14.4 days, meaning a full year there is the same as two weeks on Earth.

"Kepler-90i is not a place I'd like to go visit, though," said Vanderburg.

"Its surface is likely far too hot."

NASA calculated its average temperature at about 426 degree Celsius -- as hot as Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun.

Scientists found it by using machine learning from Google.
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In pics: Nasa captures the brightest solar flare in over a decade

Two high-intensity solar flares were emitted today, the second of which was the most intense recorded since the start of this sun cycle in December 2008, NASA said.

These radiation flares, which can disrupt communications satellites, GPS and power grids by reaching the upper Earth atmosphere, were detected and captured by the US Space Agency's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

According to the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), these so-called category X eruptions disrupted high-frequency radio communications for one hour on the Earth's side facing the sun and low-frequency communications used in navigation.

The two eruptions occurred in an active region of the sun where an eruption of average intensity occurred on September 4. The current cycle of the sun, which began in December 2008, saw the intensity of solar activity decline sharply, opening the way to the "solar minimum."
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SpaceX launches Air Force's super-secret mini-shuttle

SpaceX launched the Air Force's super-secret space shuttle on Thursday,  a technology tester capable of spending years in orbit.

The unmanned Falcon rocket blasted off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, as schools and businesses boarded up for Hurricane Irma.

It's the fifth flight for one of these crewless mini- shuttles, known as the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.

The two Air Force space planes have already logged a combined 5 years in orbit. But officials won't say what the spacecraft are doing up there. The last mission lasted almost two years and ended with a May touchdown at the runway formerly used by NASA's space shuttles. The first one launched in 2010.

As has become customary, SpaceX landed its leftover booster back at Cape Canaveral for eventual reuse.

This was the first time SpaceX has provided a lift for the experimental mini-shuttle. The previous missions relied on United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rockets. Air Force officials said they want to use a variety of rockets for the X-37B programme, to launch quickly if warranted.

The Boeing-built mini-shuttle is 29 feet long, with a 14 -foot wingspan. By comparison, NASA's retired space shuttles were 122 feet long, with a 78-foot wingspan.

SpaceX stopped providing details about the X-37B's climb to orbit, a few minutes after liftoff at the Air Force's request. The booster's return to SpaceX's landing zone at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, however, was broadcast live.
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures tiny Martian moon Phobos

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has beamed back images of the tiny Martian moon Phobos in its orbital trek around the red planet.

Over the course of 22 minutes, Hubble took 13 separate images, allowing astronomers to create a time-lapse video showing the diminutive moon's orbital path.

The Hubble observations were intended to photograph Mars, and the moon's cameo appearance was a bonus, scientists said.

A football-shaped object just 26x21x17 kilometres, Phobos is one of the smallest moons in the solar system.

The moon completes an orbit in just seven hours and 39 minutes, which is faster than Mars rotates.

Rising in the Martian west, it runs three laps around the Red Planet in the course of one Martian day, which is about 24 hours and 40 minutes.

It is the only natural satellite in the solar system that circles its planet in a time shorter than the parent planet's day.

About two weeks after the Apollo 11 manned lunar landing on July 20, 1969, NASA's Mariner 7 flew by the Red Planet and took the first crude close-up snapshot of Phobos.
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NASA uploads hundreds of early test flight videos on YouTube

If you are a space buff get ready to watch videos of rare historic test flight, launch and landing footages on YouTube, media reports said.

NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Centre in California was currently in the process of uploading hundreds of archival videos, including those of hypersonic jet takeoffs and shuttle landings, the Verge reported on Wednesday.

The project is part of the space agency's continued effort to better open access to its archives, as well as help inform the public about the types of research and record-setting milestones the agency achieves each year across various fields of aerospace engineering.

Out of a total 500 clips, nearly 300 have been uploaded to YouTube thus far, with some footage going back many decades, the report added.

The clips include everything from the assembly of the D-558 Skystreak aircraft back in 1947 to a 1991 takeoff of a Lockheed Martin SR-71 stealth jet to hypersonic test flights of the unmanned NASA X-43A in 2004.

Previously, the AFRC's video library was available only through the Dryden Aircraft Movie Collection on the website of the Dryden Flight Research Centre, which was the name of the Armstrong facility before a 2014 change.

Now that it's all on YouTube, it will be indexed by Google and more easily available through the company's search engine.
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SpaceX's successful Friday launch opens weekend doubleheader

The year’s not half over, and Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies is about to launch more missions than it completed in all of 2016.

SpaceX successfully fired up a Falcon 9 rocket for the eighth time this year on Friday, matching its flight total for all of last year. Its next launch is scheduled just two days later, with the ramped-up cadence putting the company on track to achieve the 20 to 24 total missions it’s targeting for the year.

The quickening pace of launches illustrates how SpaceX has bounced back after one of its rockets and a customer’s satellite blew up on a Florida launch pad in September. The company was grounded for four months in the midst of an investigation into the incident before returning to flight in January. By racking up more successful launches, the closely held company has positioned itself again as a driving force in the new-age space race.

The rocket that took off Friday carried BulgariaSat-1, a communications satellite destined for geostationary orbit. It launched from the historic 39A pad at NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Neil Armstrong left from before landing on the moon in 1969.

The launch used a “flight proven” Falcon 9 rocket booster, which means it’s flown to space previously and been returned and refurbished. SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Musk has championed reusability — once derided as a crazy idea — to drive down launch costs and win a growing roster of customers, including the US military. Friday marked the second time it’s used a pre-flown booster. “It’s starting to feel kinda normal to reuse rockets. Good. That’s how it is for cars and airplanes and how it should be for rockets,” Musk tweeted earlier this month.

SpaceX successfully recovered the booster from this mission on an unmanned drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, though it had been bracing for a less favourable outcome.
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Nasa-Isro $1.2-bn project: Suspense on joint satellite as Modi meets Trump

Space scientists in India and America are on tenterhooks as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald J Trump meet for the first bilateral in Washington on Monday.

At stake is the world's most expensive Earth-imaging satellite till date being jointly made by the Nasa and the Isro.

Climate change seems to be a red rag for the current American administration.

If there is one thing that divides India and America big-time today, it is climate change. In all likelihood, climate change would be a point that would figure in the Trump-Modi discussions.

Trump calls climate change a hoax created by China by adhering to his views that "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive".

On the other hand, Modi has penned a pictorial book — "Convenient Action: Continuity for Change" — that compiles his actions and beliefs on climate change.

Recently, the US walked out of the Paris Climate Change Treaty while India continues to honour its commitments.

Trump said, "India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries", while Modi said failing to act on climate change would be "a morally criminal act".
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A crack in an Antarctic ice shelf is creating an iceberg size of Delaware

A rapidly advancing crack in Antarctica’s fourth-largest ice shelf is getting close to a full break, according to scientists. It has accelerated this year in an area already threatened by warming temperatures, and is now only about eight miles from the edge of the ice shelf.

The crack in Larsen C is more than 120 miles long, and some parts of it are as wide as two miles. Once the crack reaches all the way across the ice shelf, it will create one of the largest icebergs ever recorded, according to Project Midas, a research team from Swansea University and Aberystwyth University that has been monitoring the rift since 2014.

Because of the amount of stress the crack is placing on the remaining eight miles of the shelf, the team expects the break to happen soon.

The glaciologist Eric J Rignot, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and a senior scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says the rift’s recent turn toward the shelf is a strong sign of when the full break could occur.

“In my experience, when the rift takes a 90 degree turn like this is, it will happen in the next few weeks, no more than that,” he said.

Ice shelves, which form through runoff from glaciers, float in water and provide structural support to the glaciers that rest on land. When an ice shelf collapses, the glaciers behind it can accelerate toward the ocean. Higher temperatures in the region are hastening the ice shelf’s retreat. If it breaks at the crack, Larsen C will be at its smallest size ever recorded.

The ice front would also be left much closer to the ice shelf’s compressive arch, a line that scientists say is critical for structural support. If the front retreats past that line, the northernmost part of the shelf could collapse within months. It could also significantly change the landscape of the Antarctic peninsula.

“At that point in time, the glaciers will react,” Rignot said. “If the ice shelf breaks apart, it will remove a buttressing force on the glaciers that flow into it. The glaciers will feel less resistance to flow, effectively removing a cork in front of them.”
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