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The final findings of the NASA Twins Study, which compared 50-year-old astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year aboard the International Space Station in 2015, and his identical twin brother, who stayed on Earth, were published in Science. Gizmodo reports: NASA found that Scott Kelly was about as mentally, physically, and genetically healthy as his brother during his trip to space, and that the vast majority of small changes spotted in Scott (relative to himself before the mission) went back to normal within six months time. But the differences seen in Scott while up in space and after his return home could provide NASA important leads on how to keep astronauts safe during longer missions to Mars and beyond.

Preliminary results from the study were released in 2017. But it was the second round of findings, released in January 2018, that really caught the attention of media outlets, some of which misrepresented what was found. In particular, outlets like Newsweek reported that a whopping "seven percent of [Scott Kelly's] genes did not return to normal after he landed." Others implied that Scott Kelly had become a different person from his twin brother. But the researchers were never talking about a seven percent difference between the twins' genes. They were saying that some of Scott Kelly's genes had changed in their expression -- the carrying out of instructions in a cell's genome -- during his time up in space. And that roughly 7 percent of this overall change in gene expression could still be seen six months after he returned home. The remaining change in gene expression six months out was actually closer to 10 percent, but NASA clarified that this was still a relatively tiny change in his epigenetics. "Given that the majority of the biological and human health variables remained stable, or returned to baseline, these data suggest that human health can be mostly sustained over this duration of spaceflight," said NASA in a statement.

The final findings of the NASA Twins Study, which compared 50-year-old astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year aboard the International Space Station in 2015, and his identical twin brother, who stayed on Earth, were published in Science. Gizmodo reports: NASA found that Scott Kelly was about as mentally, physically, and genetically healthy as his brother during his trip to space, and that the vast majority of small changes spotted in Scott (relative to himself before the mission) went back to normal within six months time. But the differences seen in Scott while up in space and after his return home could provide NASA important leads on how to keep astronauts safe during longer missions to Mars and beyond.

Preliminary results from the study were released in 2017. But it was the second round of findings, released in January 2018, that really caught the attention of media outlets, some of which misrepresented what was found. In particular, outlets like Newsweek reported that a whopping "seven percent of [Scott Kelly's] genes did not return to normal after he landed." Others implied that Scott Kelly had become a different person from his twin brother. But the researchers were never talking about a seven percent difference between the twins' genes. They were saying that some of Scott Kelly's genes had changed in their expression -- the carrying out of instructions in a cell's genome -- during his time up in space. And that roughly 7 percent of this overall change in gene expression could still be seen six months after he returned home. The remaining change in gene expression six months out was actually closer to 10 percent, but NASA clarified that this was still a relatively tiny change in his epigenetics. "Given that the majority of the biological and human health variables remained stable, or returned to baseline, these data suggest that human health can be mostly sustained over this duration of spaceflight," said NASA in a statement.

The first all-female spacewalk scheduled for Friday has been cancelled by NASA (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) because they don't have two spacesuits that fit the female astronauts. According to The New York Times, Anne C. McClain and Christina H. Koch both need to wear a medium-size torso component, but only one is readily available at the International Space Station. From the report: The mission itself is unchanged. On Friday, two astronauts will venture outside of the space station on a six-hour mission to install massive lithium-ion batteries that will help to power the research laboratory. Ms. Koch is still scheduled to participate, along with her fellow astronaut Nick Hague; Ms. McClain did her first spacewalk last week. But the first women-only venture outside of the confines of the space station will have to happen on another day. "After consulting with McClain and Hague following the first spacewalk, mission managers decided to adjust the assignments, due in part to spacesuit availability on the station," NASA said in a statement.

Stephanie Schierholz, a spokeswoman for NASA, said in an interview on Monday that there were already two medium-size hard upper torsos -- "essentially the shirt of the spacesuit," according to NASA -- at the space station. But there were a couple of issues. One was that Ms. McClain had thought she would be able to work in a large-size torso, but after her spacewalk last Friday, she wore a medium-size torso and learned that it fit her better. Ms. Koch also uses the same size. And of the two medium-size torsos available, one has yet to be properly configured for a spacewalk. It would take hours of crew labor -- not to mention some additional risk -- to fix that in time for Friday. Instead of doing that, NASA decided to simply switch out the astronauts. In the end, both women will have done a spacewalk -- just not together.

kenh shares a report from NBC News: A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds. The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and thinning nearly 130 feet (almost 40 meters) annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday's Nature Geoscience. Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.

A natural cyclical cooling of North Atlantic waters likely caused the glacier to reverse course, said study lead author Ala Khazendar, a NASA glaciologist on the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project. Khazendar and colleagues say this coincides with a flip of the North Atlantic Oscillation -- a natural and temporary cooling and warming of parts of the ocean that is like a distant cousin to El Nino in the Pacific. The water in Disko Bay, where Jakobshavn hits the ocean, is about 3.6 degrees cooler than a few years ago, study authors said. While this is "good news" on a temporary basis, this is bad news on the long term because it tells scientists that ocean temperature is a bigger player in glacier retreats and advances than previously thought, said NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, a study co-author. Over the decades the water has been and will be warming from man-made climate change, he said, noting that about 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from public news station KNPR about how close weare flying taxi services: The dream of flying cars is as at least as old as the automobile itself. Bell, which makes attack helicopters for the U.S. Navy, is working on this new project with another high-profile partner, Uber. The prototype, the Bell Nexus, was unveiled earlier this year. Boeing and Airbus also have prototypes of these flying cars in the works. Uber has become the face of the aerial mobility movement as it has the most public campaign touting its work so far. Elon Musk says he'll get us to Mars. Uber says it'll get a millennial from San Francisco to San Jose in 15 minutes flat (instead of the two-hour slog in morning traffic). And its timeline for this flying taxi that does not yet exist is 2023...

NASA is another Uber partner. While Jaiwon Shin, NASA's associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, thinks Uber is being a little bullish -- he'd put the timeline further out, to the mid-2020s -- Shin says it's close. "Convergence of many different technologies are maturing to the level that now aviation can benefit to put these things together," he said. The batteries that power electric cars can evolve further, to power flight. Companies can stockpile and pool data, and build artificial intelligence to take over air traffic control, managing the thousands of drones and taxis in the air.

And Uber, his partner, is really well-connected. While fighting the legacy taxi industry, Uber made so many government and lobbyist contacts, that that Rolodex can help grease the wheels -- or wings.
"While no flying taxi exists yet, Uber has dared to estimate the 'near-term' cost of that San Francisco to San Jose trip: $43," the article reports -- suggesting that could create a new division in society.

"With flying cars, the haves can escape to the air and leave the have-nots forgotten in their potholes."

As NASA looks into developing planes that can fly faster than sound without creating "sonic booms," the space agency has captured unprecedented photos of the interaction of shockwaves from two supersonic aircraft. Phys.Org reports: When an aircraft crosses that threshold -- around 1,225 kilometers (760 miles) per hour at sea level -- it produces waves from the pressure it puts on the air around it, which merge to cause the ear-splitting sound. In an intricate maneuver by "rock star" pilots at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, two supersonic T-38 jets flew just 30 feet (nine meters) apart below another plane waiting to photograph them with an advanced, high-speed camera, the agency said. The rendezvous -- at an altitude of around 30,000 feet -- yielded mesmerizing images of the shockwaves emanating from both planes. You can view all of the photos via NASA.

For more than 14 years, the Opportunity rover crawled up and down craters, snapped pictures of a strange landscape and revealed surprising glimpses into the distant past of Mars. On Wednesday, NASA announced that Opportunity, the longest-lived robot ever sent from Earth to the surface of another planet, is dead. The New York Times: "It is therefore that I am standing here with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission is complete," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science. That ends a mission of unexpected endurance: it was designed to last only three months. Opportunity provided scientists a close-up view of Mars that they had never seen: finely layered rocks that preserved ripples of flowing water several billion years ago, a prerequisite for life.

The steady stream of photographs and data from Opportunity -- as well as its twin, Spirit, which survived until 2010 -- also brought Mars closer to people on Earth. Because the rovers continued so much longer than expected, NASA has now had a continuous robotic presence on Mars for more than 15 years. That streak seems likely to continue for many more years. A larger, more capable rover, Curiosity, arrived in 2012, and NASA is planning to launch another in 2020. Live telecast here.

hackingbear writes: The world is literally a greener place than it was twenty years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage. A new study shows that China and India -- the world's most populous countries -- are leading the increase in greening on land. The effect comes mostly from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries. Ranga Myneni of Boston University and colleagues first detected the greening phenomenon in satellite data from the mid-1990s, but they did not know whether human activity was a chief cause. The research team found that global green leaf area has increased by 5 percent since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25 percent of that gain came in China. "China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9 percent of the planet's land area covered in vegetation," said lead author Chi Chen of Boston University. "That is a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation." China's outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part from its programs to conserve and expand forests (about 42 percent of the greening contribution). These programs were developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution, and climate change.

schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: The weirdly clustered orbits of some far-flung bodies in our solar system can be explained without invoking a big, undiscovered "Planet Nine," a new study suggests. The shepherding gravitational pull could come from many fellow trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) rather than a single massive world, according to the research. "If you remove Planet Nine from the model, and instead allow for lots of small objects scattered across a wide area, collective attractions between those objects could just as easily account for the eccentric orbits we see in some TNOs," study lead author Antranik Sefilian, a doctoral student in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University in England, said in a statement.

The duo's modeling work suggests that the strength-in-numbers explanation does indeed work -- if the mass of the Kuiper Belt, the ring of bodies beyond Neptune, is a few to 10 times that of Earth. This is a pretty big "if," given that most estimates peg the Kuiper Belt's mass at less than 10 percent that of Earth (and one recent study put the figure at 0.02 Earth masses). But other solar systems are known to harbor massive disks of material in their outer reaches, Sefilian and Touma noted. And our failure to spot one around our own sun doesn't mean it doesn't exist, they stressed. The new study has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

NASA's asteroid-chasing Osiris-Rex spacecraft has been placed in an orbit around Bennu, an asteroid that drifts through the solar system's asteroid belt between Earth and Mars. "By inserting itself into orbit around Bennu, Osiris-Rex will survey the asteroid from a distance of only about 1 mile (1.75 kilometers) from its center," reports CNET. "Bennu's small size creates an incredibly tiny gravitational force, so maintaining that orbit will require lots of little adjustments, made by NASA and its collaborating organizations." From the report: "The gravity of Bennu is so small, forces like solar radiation and thermal pressure from Bennu's surface become much more relevant and can push the spacecraft around in its orbit much more than if it were orbiting around Earth or Mars, where gravity is by far the most dominant force," said Dan Wibben, maneuver and trajectory design lead. NASA also released a GIF of the various surveys Osiris-Rex carried out after arriving at Bennu in early December The series of images, captured between Nov. 30 and Dec. 31, helped the team more accurately determine Bennu's mass, which ensured that the orbital insertion would proceed smoothly.

The orbital period, lasting until mid-February, is expected to provide additional details about Bennu's gravity, orientation and spin, along with a better understanding of its mass. All those observations should lead to completing one of the chief objectives for Osiris-Rex: retrieve a sample from Bennu's surface and fly it back to Earth. In 2020, the spacecraft will extend a specially designed arm, called Tagsam, for a brief high-five with the asteroid. The arm will blow nitrogen gas onto the surface of Bennu, kicking up handfuls of dirt, which the spacecraft will fly back to Earth in 2023.

Russell Lewis, writing for NPR: When Nancy Grace Roman was a child, her favorite object to draw was the moon. Her mother used to take her on walks under the nighttime sky and show her constellations, or point out the colorful swirls of the aurora. Roman loved to look up at the stars and imagine. Eventually, her passion for stargazing blossomed into a career as a renowned astronomer. Roman was one of the first female executives at NASA, where she served as the agency's first chief of astronomy. Known as the "Mother of Hubble," for her role in making the Hubble Space Telescope a reality, Roman worked at NASA for nearly two decades. She died on Dec. 25 at the age of 93.

Roman fought to earn her place in a field dominated by men, paving the path for future female scientists. She was born in Nashville, Tenn. in 1925 and organized an astronomy club in fifth grade. She attended high school in Baltimore, where she requested to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin. When she made the appeal, she recounted in a 2017 interview with NPR that the guidance counselor wasn't supportive of her dream to become a scientist.

Her efforts helped lead to the creation of the Hubble Space Telescope. In her role at NASA, Roman developed and planned the Hubble Space Telescope, which is famous for its stunning images of space. Because of the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have been able to collect data and gain insight into even the most remote galaxies of the universe. The success of the project led to future space telescopes. Roman's work, however, reached far beyond just the Hubble Space Telescope. In an interview with NASA, Roman once stated that one of the highlights of her career was when she discovered the first indication that common stars were not all the same age.

On Sunday night, a comet that orbits between Jupiter and the sun will make its closest approach to Earth in centuries. According to Tony Farnham, a research scientist in the astronomy department at the University of Maryland, the comet will appear as a bright, fuzzy ball with a greenish-gray tint. "You've got a one-kilometer solid nuclear in the middle, and gas is going out hundreds of thousands of miles," says Tony. The comet glows green because the gases emit light in green wavelengths. The New York Times reports: The ball of gas and dust, sometimes referred to as the "Christmas comet," was named 46P/Wirtanen, after the astronomer Carl Wirtanen, who discovered it in 1948. It orbits the sun once every 5.4 years, passing by Earth approximately every 11 years, but its distance varies and it is rarely this close. As the comet passes by, it will be 30 times farther from Earth than the moon, NASA said. The proximity of 46P/Wirtanen provides an opportunity to research the tail of the comet and see farther into the nucleus.

The comet is visible now but it will shine even brighter on Sunday as it reaches its closest approach, 7.1 million miles from Earth. That may sound really far, but it is among the 10 closest approaches by a comet in 70 years, NASA said. Only a few of those could be seen with the naked eye. Don't worry if you miss the comet on Sunday. It should be just as visible for a week or two because its appearance will change gradually. After it moves on, it won't be this close to Earth again for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Online charts can help pinpoint its location.

Researchers at the University of Geneva Switzerland have used NASA's Hubble telescope to find an exoplanet that's evaporating. The exoplanet, GJ 3470b, shows signs of losing hydrogen in its atmosphere, causing it to shrink. USA Today reports: The study is part of exploration into "hot Neptunes," planets that are the size of Neptune, sit very close to their star, and have atmospheres as hot at 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, says NASA. Finding a "hot Neptune" is rare because they sit so close to their star and tend to evaporate more quickly. In the case of GJ 3470b, scientists classify it as a "warmer" Neptune because it sits farther away from its star. The exoplanet discovered by astronauts is losing its atmosphere at a rate 100 times faster than a previous "warmer" Neptune planet discovered a few years before, according to a study published Thursday in the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics." The planet sits 3.7 million miles from its star. For comparison, Earth is 92.9 million miles from the sun. Researchers say these "hot Neptune" planets shrink in size and morph into "Super Earths," versions of our planet that are massive and more rocky.

Five years and sixty potential locations later, NASA has chosen the Jezero Crater as the landing site for its Mars 2020 rover mission. "Slated to launch in July the Mars 2020 rover mission will touch down at the Jezero Crater as NASA's exploration of the Red Planet enters its next phase," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The rover will be looking for signs of habitable conditions -- and past microbial life -- while also collecting rock and soil samples that will be stored in a cache on the Martian surface. "The landing site in Jezero Crater offers geologically rich terrain, with landforms reaching as far back as 3.6 billion years old, that could potentially answer important questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in a statement. "Getting samples from this unique area will revolutionize how we think about Mars and its ability to harbor life."

The crater is located on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator, with some of the oldest and most scientifically interesting landscapes Mars has to offer, according to NASA scientists. Mission scientists believe the 28-mile-wide crater once held an ancient river delta, and could have collected and preserved organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life from the water and sediments that flowed into the crater. NASA thinks it can collect up to five different kinds of Martian rock, including clays and carbonates that may preserve indicators of past life. There's also the hope that minerals have been swept into the crater over the last billion years which Rover could also collect.

Long-time Slashdot reader PuddleBoy quotes NasaSpaceflight.com: Northrop Grumman Innovation System's Antares rocket has launched the NG-10 Cygnus, named the S.S. John Young, on its way to the International Space Station on Saturday morning from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia... With its second and final flight of 2018 upon it, Antares lofted the S.S. John Young Cygnus up to the International Space Station with 3,268 kg (7,205 lb) of pressurized cargo and 82 kg (181 lb) of unpressurized cargo....

Cygnus is undertaking a two phase to the International Space Station, aligning for close approach to the orbital lab for grapple on Monday morning, 19 November -- just over 48 hours after launch. Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Serena Aunon-Chancellor will grapple Cygnus with the Station robotic arm, known as the SSRMS or the Space Station Remote Manipulator System).
John Young was a pioneering astronaut who died in January at the age of 87 -- 36 years after he became the ninth person to walk on the moon, driving the Lunar Roving Vehicle. He was also the commander on the very first Space Shuttle flight in 1981.

"We're really proud to name it after John Young," said one executive at Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, "and we'll work hard to do him proud."

Late last month, NASA announced that it would be retiring the Kepler space telescope after nearly ten years of service -- double its initial mission life. Now, as Space.com reports, the planet-hunting telescope has been officially decommissioned, "beaming 'goodnight' commands to the sun-orbiting observatory." From the report: "Kepler's team disabled the safety modes that could inadvertently turn systems back on, and severed communications by shutting down the transmitters," NASA officials wrote in a statement today (Nov. 16). "Because the spacecraft is slowly spinning, the Kepler team had to carefully time the commands so that instructions would reach the spacecraft during periods of viable communication."

The final commands were sent from Kepler's operations center at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, NASA officials said. The commands got to the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network, the system of big radio dishes the space agency uses to keep in touch with its far-flung probes.

NASA and the European Space Agency have released the first 8K ultra high definition video filmed in space. It was shot with a RED Helium 8K camera and provides a glimpse of what the astronauts are working on aboard the International Space Station. Engadget reports: The camera was delivered to the ISS in April by a SpaceX cargo resupply mission, and the new video shows astronauts living aboard the ISS as they work and conduct experiments. Some of the experiments included in the video are the BEST investigation, which uses DNA sequencing to identify microbes in the space station; an experiment that compares plants grown in space to those grown on Earth; and the BCAT-CS study, which investigates the dynamic forces that exist between sediment particles. "We're excited to embrace new technology that improves our ability to engage our audiences in space station research," David Brady, assistant program scientist for the ISS Program Science Office at Johnson, said in a statement. "Each improvement in imagery fidelity brings that person on Earth closer to the in-space experience, allowing them to see what human spaceflight is doing to improve their life, as well as enable humanity to explore the universe."

NASA and the European Space Agency have released the first 8K ultra high definition video filmed in space. It was shot with a RED Helium 8K camera and provides a glimpse of what the astronauts are working on aboard the International Space Station. Engadget reports: The camera was delivered to the ISS in April by a SpaceX cargo resupply mission, and the new video shows astronauts living aboard the ISS as they work and conduct experiments. Some of the experiments included in the video are the BEST investigation, which uses DNA sequencing to identify microbes in the space station; an experiment that compares plants grown in space to those grown on Earth; and the BCAT-CS study, which investigates the dynamic forces that exist between sediment particles. "We're excited to embrace new technology that improves our ability to engage our audiences in space station research," David Brady, assistant program scientist for the ISS Program Science Office at Johnson, said in a statement. "Each improvement in imagery fidelity brings that person on Earth closer to the in-space experience, allowing them to see what human spaceflight is doing to improve their life, as well as enable humanity to explore the universe."

NASA and the European Space Agency have released the first 8K ultra high definition video filmed in space. It was shot with a RED Helium 8K camera and provides a glimpse of what the astronauts are working on aboard the International Space Station. Engadget reports: The camera was delivered to the ISS in April by a SpaceX cargo resupply mission, and the new video shows astronauts living aboard the ISS as they work and conduct experiments. Some of the experiments included in the video are the BEST investigation, which uses DNA sequencing to identify microbes in the space station; an experiment that compares plants grown in space to those grown on Earth; and the BCAT-CS study, which investigates the dynamic forces that exist between sediment particles. "We're excited to embrace new technology that improves our ability to engage our audiences in space station research," David Brady, assistant program scientist for the ISS Program Science Office at Johnson, said in a statement. "Each improvement in imagery fidelity brings that person on Earth closer to the in-space experience, allowing them to see what human spaceflight is doing to improve their life, as well as enable humanity to explore the universe."

NASA and the European Space Agency have released the first 8K ultra high definition video filmed in space. It was shot with a RED Helium 8K camera and provides a glimpse of what the astronauts are working on aboard the International Space Station. Engadget reports: The camera was delivered to the ISS in April by a SpaceX cargo resupply mission, and the new video shows astronauts living aboard the ISS as they work and conduct experiments. Some of the experiments included in the video are the BEST investigation, which uses DNA sequencing to identify microbes in the space station; an experiment that compares plants grown in space to those grown on Earth; and the BCAT-CS study, which investigates the dynamic forces that exist between sediment particles. "We're excited to embrace new technology that improves our ability to engage our audiences in space station research," David Brady, assistant program scientist for the ISS Program Science Office at Johnson, said in a statement. "Each improvement in imagery fidelity brings that person on Earth closer to the in-space experience, allowing them to see what human spaceflight is doing to improve their life, as well as enable humanity to explore the universe."

ewhac writes: NASA today announced that it is retiring the Kepler telescope after nearly ten years of service -- double its initial mission life. In that time, Kepler discovered over 2,600 exoplanets, most of which are between the size of Earth and Neptune, sparking an entirely new field of astronomical research, and revealing for the first time just how common exo-planetary systems are. With its fuel supply exhausted, Kepler is no longer able to maneuver or reorient itself to make observations. NASA has elected to decommission the spacecraft and leave it in its current, safe orbit away from Earth.

"NASA's Hubble Space Telescope returned to normal operations late Friday, Oct. 26, and completed its first science observations on Saturday, Oct. 27 at 2:10 AM EDT," NASA reports. The observations were of the distant, star-forming galaxy DSF2237B-1-IR and were taken in infrared wavelengths with the Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. The return to conducting science comes after successfully recovering a backup gyroscope, or gyro, that had replaced a failed gyro three weeks earlier. A gyro is a device that measures the speed at which the spacecraft is turning, which is necessary to help Hubble turn and lock on to new targets. One of Hubble's gyros failed on Oct. 5, and the spacecraft's operations team activated a backup gyro the next day. However, the backup incorrectly returned rotation rates that were far in excess of the actual rates.

Last week the operations team commanded Hubble to perform numerous maneuvers, or turns, and switched the gyro between different operational modes, which successfully cleared what was believed to be blockage between components inside the gyro that produced the excessively high rate values. Next, the team monitored and tested the gyro with additional maneuvers to make sure that the gyro was stable. The team then installed additional safeguards on the spacecraft in case the excessive rate values return, although this is not anticipated...

Hubble is now back in its normal science operations mode with three fully functional gyros. Originally required to last 15 years, Hubble has now been at the forefront of scientific discovery for more than 28 years. The team expects the telescope will continue to yield amazing discoveries well into the next decade, enabling it to work alongside the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA recently developed a program for manned missions to explore Venus -- even though the planet's surface is 860 degrees, which NASA explains is "hot enough to melt lead." Long-time Slashdot reader Zorro shares this week's article from Newsweek: As surprising as it may seem, the upper atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like location in the solar system. Between altitudes of 30 miles and 40 miles, the pressure and temperature can be compared to regions of the Earth's lower atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure in the Venusian atmosphere at 34 miles is about half that of the pressure at sea level on Earth. In fact you would be fine without a pressure suit, as this is roughly equivalent to the air pressure you would encounter at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Nor would you need to insulate yourself as the temperature here ranges between 68 degrees Fahrenheit and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The atmosphere above this altitude is also dense enough to protect astronauts from ionising radiation from space. The closer proximity of the sun provides an even greater abundance of available solar radiation than on Earth, which can be used to generate power (approximately 1.4 times greater).... [C]onceivably you could go for a walk on a platform outside the airship, carrying only your air supply and wearing a chemical hazard suit.
Venus is 8 million miles closer to Earth than Mars (though it's 100 times further away than the moon). But the atmosphere around Venus contains traces of sulphuric acid (responsible for its dense clouds), so the vessel would need to be corrosion-resistant material like teflon. (One NASA paper explored the possibility of airbone microbes living in Venus's atmosphere.) There's a slick video from NASA's Langley Research Center titled "A way to explore Venus" showcasing HAVOC -- "High Altitude Venus Operational Concept."

"A recent internal NASA study...led to the development of an evolutionary program for the exploration of Venus," explains the project's page at NASA.gov, "with focus on the mission architecture and vehicle concept for a 30 day crewed mission into Venus's atmosphere." NASA describes the project as "no longer active," though adding that manned missions to the atmosphere of Venus are possible "with advances in technology and further refinement of the concept."

NASA recently developed a program for manned missions to explore Venus -- even though the planet's surface is 860 degrees, which NASA explains is "hot enough to melt lead." Long-time Slashdot reader Zorro shares this week's article from Newsweek: As surprising as it may seem, the upper atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like location in the solar system. Between altitudes of 30 miles and 40 miles, the pressure and temperature can be compared to regions of the Earth's lower atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure in the Venusian atmosphere at 34 miles is about half that of the pressure at sea level on Earth. In fact you would be fine without a pressure suit, as this is roughly equivalent to the air pressure you would encounter at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Nor would you need to insulate yourself as the temperature here ranges between 68 degrees Fahrenheit and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The atmosphere above this altitude is also dense enough to protect astronauts from ionising radiation from space. The closer proximity of the sun provides an even greater abundance of available solar radiation than on Earth, which can be used to generate power (approximately 1.4 times greater).... [C]onceivably you could go for a walk on a platform outside the airship, carrying only your air supply and wearing a chemical hazard suit.
Venus is 8 million miles closer to Earth than Mars (though it's 100 times further away than the moon). But the atmosphere around Venus contains traces of sulphuric acid (responsible for its dense clouds), so the vessel would need to be corrosion-resistant material like teflon. (One NASA paper explored the possibility of airbone microbes living in Venus's atmosphere.) There's a slick video from NASA's Langley Research Center titled "A way to explore Venus" showcasing HAVOC -- "High Altitude Venus Operational Concept."

"A recent internal NASA study...led to the development of an evolutionary program for the exploration of Venus," explains the project's page at NASA.gov, "with focus on the mission architecture and vehicle concept for a 30 day crewed mission into Venus's atmosphere." NASA describes the project as "no longer active," though adding that manned missions to the atmosphere of Venus are possible "with advances in technology and further refinement of the concept."

NASA has switched its Curiosity rover over to its backup computer system after the main system started experiencing errors last month. "Many NASA spacecraft and surface missions have redundant systems built-in," reports ExtremeTech. "Once they've launched from Earth, there's no way to repair damage to critical systems, so it makes sense to double-up on the vital components. That includes Curiosity's computers, which were designed specifically for the harsh environment on Mars." From the report: The rover has a pair of identical brains running a 5-watt RAD750 CPU. This chip is part of the PowerPC 750 family, but it has been custom designed to survive high-radiation environments as you'd find on Mars or in deep space. These radiation-hardened CPUs cost $200,000 each, and NASA equipped the rover with two of them. Each computer also has 256 kB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory. They run identical VxWorks real-time operating systems. When Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012, it used the "Side-A" computer. However, just a year later in 2013 (Sol 200), the computer failed due to corrupted memory. The rover got stuck in a bootloop, which prevented it from processing commands and drained the batteries. NASA executed a swap to Side-B so engineers could perform remote diagnostics on Side-A. In the following months, NASA confirmed that part of Side-A's memory was unusable and quarantined it. They kept Curiosity on Side-B, though. With Side-B experiencing problems preventing the rover from storing key science and engineering data, NASA switched Curiosity back to Side-A while it investigates the problem, which it can only do when the other computer is active. "NASA hasn't said how much of Side-A's RAM is bad, and it only had 256MB to start, but the team does intend to move Curiosity operations back to Side-B if possible," the report adds. "For now, the mission is functioning normally on Side-A."

Iwastheone shares a report from BGR: When looking at the Earth from afar it appears to be a perfect sphere, but that actually isn't the case. Because Earth isn't uniform on all sides due to land masses that shift and change over time, our planet actually wobbles a bit when it spins. Now, a new study by researchers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and several universities and science centers has pinpointed the causes of Earth's imperfect spin, called "polar motion," and they found that humans are contributing to it. The researchers used a wealth of data gathered over 100 years to build mathematical models to trace the causes of the wobble and found that three factors are at play, and mankind is responsible for one of them. Two of the three factors identified by the scientists are glacial rebound and mantle convection. Glacial rebound happens when thick ice sheets physically push down on land masses, compressing them, but then release that pressure upon melting. The land then balloons back up over time, causing Earth's spin to wobble as if slightly off-axis. The effects of the last ice age, which would have compressed a huge amount of land across many continents, is still being felt today in the form of glacial rebound.

Mantle convection, the other uncontrollable factor in Earth's wobble, relates to our planet's inner workings. The plates on Earth's surface are in constant flux due to the movement of liquid rock far beneath our feet. The researchers believe these currents also contribute to the planet's imperfect spin. The third and final factor identified by the scientists is the massive loss of ice on Greenland and other areas, which is the direct result of global warming thanks to human activities. The researchers estimate that Greenland has lost roughly 7,500 gigatons, or 7,500,000,000,000 metric tons of ice due to global warming. All that ice loss has happened in the 20th century, and greenhouse gas production has been cited as the primary culprit. Losing all that mass has caused a significant shift on the planet and has contributed to the wobble as well.

NASA is challenging people in the United States to come up with an efficient method to convert carbon dioxide into glucose, a simple sugar. The atmosphere of Mars consists predominantly of CO2 (95%), and glucose is a great fuel for microbe-milking "bioreactors" that could manufacture a variety of items for future settlers of the Red Planet, NASA officials said. Space.com reports: The new competition consists of two phases. During Phase 1, applicants submit a detailed description of their CO2-to-glucose conversion system. Interested parties must register by Jan. 24, 2019 and submit their proposals by Feb. 28, 2019. In April, NASA will announce the selection of up to five finalists from this initial crop, each of whom will receive $50,000. Phase 2 will involve the construction and demonstration of a conversion system. Winning this round is worth $750,000, bringing the competition's total purse to $1 million (assuming five finalists are indeed selected from Phase 1). You don't have to win, or even participate in, Phase 1 to compete in Phase 2. The challenge is open to citizens and permanent residents of the United States; foreign nationals can compete if they're part of a U.S.-based team. To register or learn more, go to the CO2 Conversion Challenge website.

Vice President Mike Pence spoke at NASA's Johnson Space Center on Thursday about the agency's plans to send humans back to the moon for the first time in almost half a century and eventually on to Mars. He said: The next Americans who set foot on the Moon will start their journey by stepping through the NASA's Orion hatch. And this extraordinary spacecraft will one day bridge the gap between our planet and the next.

The International Space Station has been an unqualified success. Soon and very soon American astronauts will return to space on American rockets launched from American soil. America will not ever abandon the critical domain of space, we will open the way for innovators and development and we will lead once again in human exploration. Our administration is working tirelessly to put an American crew aboard the lunar orbital platform before the end of 2024. In a prepared statement, Pence added, "We're renewing our national commitment to discovery and exploration and write the next great chapter of our nation's journey into space. It's now the official policy of the US that we'll return to the Moon, put Americans on Mars and once again explore the farthest depths of outer space."

Two months have passed since NASA's Opportunity Mars rover last phoned home. The last time we reported on the rover was on June 12th, when it was trying to survive an intensifying dust storm that was deemed "much worse than a 2007 storm that Opportunity weathered," according to NASA. "The previous storm had an opacity level, or tau, somewhere above 5.5; this new storm had an estimated tau of 10.8." Space.com reports on Opportunity's current status: Opportunity hasn't made a peep since June 10, when dust in the Red Planet's air got so thick that the solar-powered rover couldn't recharge its batteries. Opportunity's handlers think the six-wheeled robot has put itself into a sort of hibernation, and they still hope to get a ping once the dust storm has petered out. And there are good reasons for this optimism, NASA officials said. "Because the batteries were in relatively good health before the storm, there's not likely to be too much degradation," NASA officials wrote in an Opportunity update Thursday (Aug. 16). "And because dust storms tend to warm the environment -- and the 2018 storm happened as Opportunity's location on Mars entered summer -- the rover should have stayed warm enough to survive."

Engineers are trying to communicate with Opportunity several times a week using NASA's Deep Space Network, a system of big radio dishes around the globe. They hail the robot during scheduled "wake-up times" and then listen for a response. And team members are casting a wider net, too: Every day, they sift through all radio signals received from Mars, listening for any chirp from Opportunity, NASA officials said. Even if Opportunity does eventually wake up and re-establish contact, its long ordeal may end up taking a toll on the rover. "The rover's batteries could have discharged so much power -- and stayed inactive so long -- that their capacity is reduced," NASA officials wrote in the update. "If those batteries can't hold as much charge, it could affect the rover's continued operations. It could also mean that energy-draining behavior, like running its heaters during winter, could cause the batteries to brown out."

In the early hours of Saturday morning, NASA is scheduled to launch the Parker Solar Probe for a seven-year mission to study the sun and its atmosphere. The spacecraft will take off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, traveling up to 430,000 miles per hour towards the star -- that will make it the fastest spacecraft ever. Assuming you're reading this story around the time it's published, you still have time to watch the launch via NASA's livestream. The launch window for the Parker Solar Probe opens at 3:33 a.m. ET Saturday, but the exact launch time is unknown.

The New York Times has published a story about Eugene N. Parker, the professor that the spacecraft was named after. It is the first time that NASA has named a mission for a living person. Here's an excerpt from the report: In a foundational paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, Dr. Parker described how charged particles streamed continuously from the sun, like the flow of water spreading outward from a circular fountain. Almost no one believed him. [...] Four years later, Dr. Parker was vindicated when Mariner 2, a NASA spacecraft en route to Venus, measured energetic particles streaming through interplanetary space -- exactly what Dr. Parker had predicted. Scientists now call that stream of particles the solar wind. UPDATE: After several delays, the Sun-chasing probe successfully launched on August 12th at 3:31AM.

This week NASA's Dawn space probe swooped within 22 miles of the surface of Ceres, the dwarf planet that's the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA's JPL reports: In more than three years of orbiting Ceres, Dawn's lowest altitude before this month was 240 miles (385 kilometers), so the data from this current orbit bring the dwarf planet into much sharper focus... "[T]he results are better than we had ever hoped," said Dawn's chief engineer and project manager, Marc Rayman, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Dawn is like a master artist, adding rich details to the otherworldly beauty in its intimate portrait of Ceres."
EarthSky reports NASA captured an up-close glimpse of those tantalizing bright spots on Ceres: The spots, evaporate deposits composed of sodium carbonate, are thought to be left over from when water came up to the surface from deeper below and then evaporated in the extremely tenuous and sporadic water vapor "atmosphere." That water could be either from a shallow sub-surface reservoir or from a deeper reservoir of salty brines percolating upward through fractures. The deposits in Occator Crater are the largest and brightest of these deposits. As with many discoveries in planetary science, they were completely unexpected, and show that Ceres is not just an inert ball of rock and ice.
Slashdot reader thegameiam adds: Ceres may have more fresh water than exists on Earth. Perhaps this would make colonization of the asteroid belt more of a possibility?

This week NASA's Dawn space probe swooped within 22 miles of the surface of Ceres, the dwarf planet that's the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA's JPL reports: In more than three years of orbiting Ceres, Dawn's lowest altitude before this month was 240 miles (385 kilometers), so the data from this current orbit bring the dwarf planet into much sharper focus... "[T]he results are better than we had ever hoped," said Dawn's chief engineer and project manager, Marc Rayman, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Dawn is like a master artist, adding rich details to the otherworldly beauty in its intimate portrait of Ceres."
EarthSky reports NASA captured an up-close glimpse of those tantalizing bright spots on Ceres: The spots, evaporate deposits composed of sodium carbonate, are thought to be left over from when water came up to the surface from deeper below and then evaporated in the extremely tenuous and sporadic water vapor "atmosphere." That water could be either from a shallow sub-surface reservoir or from a deeper reservoir of salty brines percolating upward through fractures. The deposits in Occator Crater are the largest and brightest of these deposits. As with many discoveries in planetary science, they were completely unexpected, and show that Ceres is not just an inert ball of rock and ice.
Slashdot reader thegameiam adds: Ceres may have more fresh water than exists on Earth. Perhaps this would make colonization of the asteroid belt more of a possibility?

NASA announced it will publicly demonstrate a quiet supersonic aircraft near the coastal resort city of Galveston, Texas, to ensure that its prototype really will be barely audible when it crosses the sound barrier. CNN reports: If NASA's experimental project -- formerly known as the X-plane or "Low-Flight Flight Demonstrator" but recently renamed X-59 QueSST -- works, it should help make supersonic flight more economical. From November, NASA will use supersonic F/A-18 Hornet jets over Galveston to mimic the sonic profile of the X-59 while a group of around 500 residents document the noise levels -- if there are any. By performing dives at the speed of sound, the jets will produce two types of sonic boom in order to truly determine the sound they produce on the ground.

According to NASA, Galveston was chosen as the testing area as it's located near the Gulf of Mexico, allowing the fighter jets keep louder sonic booms out to sea, while hurling quieter sonic "thumps" into the city. The secret to the plane's noise-reducing ability is its uniquely shaped structure, designed so that supersonic shockwaves don't build up into powerful sonic booms.

In the last decade, we have discovered thousands of planets outside our solar system and have learned that rocky, temperate worlds are numerous in our galaxy. The next step will involve asking even bigger questions. Could some of these planets host life? And if so, asks NASA, will we be able to recognize life elsewhere if we see it? From a blog post on NASA's website: A group of leading researchers in astronomy, biology and geology has come together under NASA's Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, or NExSS, to take stock of our knowledge in the search for life on distant planets and to lay the groundwork for moving the related sciences forward.

"We're moving from theorizing about life elsewhere in our galaxy to a robust science that will eventually give us the answer we seek to that profound question: Are we alone?" said Martin Still, an exoplanet scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington. In a set of five review papers published last week in the scientific journal Astrobiology, NExSS scientists took an inventory of the most promising signs of life, called biosignatures. The paper authors include four scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. They considered how to interpret the presence of biosignatures, should we detect them on distant worlds. A primary concern is ensuring the science is strong enough to distinguish a living world from a barren planet masquerading as one.

According to NASA, the Mars Opportunity rover is currently trying to survive an intensifying dust storm on the red planet. "The storm's atmospheric opacity -- the veil of dust blowing around, which can blot out sunlight -- is now much worse than a 2007 storm that Opportunity weathered," reports NASA. "The previous storm had an opacity level, or tau, somewhere above 5.5; this new storm had an estimated tau of 10.8 as of Sunday morning." Engadget reports: The storm was first detected on Friday June 1st by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at which point the rover's team was notified because of the weather event's proximity to Opportunity. The rover uses solar panels, so a dust storm could have an extremely negative impact on Opportunity's power levels and its batteries. By Wednesday June 6th, Opportunity was in minimal operations mode because of sharply decreasing power levels. The brave little rover is continuing to weather the storm; it sent a transmission back to Earth Sunday morning, which is a good sign. It means there's still enough charge left in the batteries to communicate with home, despite the fact that the storm is continuing to worsen.

The longest continuous daily satellite observation record of Earth ever compiled is now available for all of us to peruse. Tom Yulsman, writing for Discover Magazine: Multiple instruments aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, launched in 1999 and 2002, respectively, have kept close watch on the virtually the entire planet for nearly 20 years. Now, for the first time, the entire treasure trove of imagery and scientific information is available for exploration in Worldview, an engaging, interactive web-based application. I've been using Worldview regularly to find imagery for use here at ImaGeo since I launched the blog in 2013. But until now, there was a significant limitation: The data available went back only to 2012. Now, after more than five years of work, NASA has extended what's available on Worldview back to the year 2000, when the Terra satellite first became operational. Terra was lofted into polar orbit with a suite of five remote sensors. The most comprehensive is an instrument called the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS.

An anonymous reader quotes NASA.gov: Social media users are invited to register to attend the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon spacecraft from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. This launch, currently targeted for late June, will be the next commercial cargo resupply services mission to the International Space Station... A maximum of 40 social media users will be selected to attend this two-day event, and will be given access similar to news media.
Besides viewing and photographing the launch, the 40 selected participants will also:

• Tour NASA facilities at Kennedy Space Center

• Speak with representatives from NASA and SpaceX

• Speak with researchers about investigations heading to the orbiting microgravity laboratory

• Meet fellow space enthusiasts who are active on social media

Applications must be received by Wednesday at noon EDT.

SpaceX launched a total of seven satellites for Iridium and NASA, reusing part of a previously flown rocket for its 10th mission of 2018. "Five Iridium NEXT satellites were launched as part of the company's campaign to replace the world's largest commercial satellite network," reports Bloomberg. "SpaceX's mission also includes launching twin satellites for the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO)," which will "measure the distribution of the Earth's mass" and "monitor changes in ice sheets, glaciers and sea level." From the report: The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's central coast about 12:47 p.m. local time. The GRACE-FO satellites deployed roughly 11 minutes after launch, while the Iridium satellites are due to be released roughly an hour after the launch. SpaceX won't attempt to recover the first stage of the rocket, which flew in January during the Zuma mission, according to a SpaceX press kit. CBS News has some additional details about the GRACE-FO satellites. They were reportedly "designed to fly in tandem 137 miles apart in a 305-mile orbit around Earth's poles," reports CBS News. "Using a microwave tracking system, the distance between the two 1,300-pound satellites can be measured to within the diameter of a red blood cell. By precisely measuring the distance between the satellites, scientists can determine how much mass is below the flight path and then calculate the contribution of water, creating global maps every 30 days."

UPDATE: SpaceX has confirmed that all five Iridium satellites have been successfully deployed.

NASA is sending a small, autonomous rotorcraft to Mars via the agency's Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020. NASA says the goal of the mission is to "demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet." BBC reports: Its design team spent more than four years shrinking a working helicopter to "the size of a softball" and cutting its weight to 1.8kg (4lbs). It is specifically designed to fly in the atmosphere of Mars, which is 100 times thinner than Earth's. NASA describes the helicopter as a "heavier-than-air" aircraft because the other type -- sometimes called an aerostat -- refers to aircraft like balloons and blimps. The helicopter's two blades will spin at close to 3,000 revolutions a minute, which NASA says is about 10 times faster than a standard helicopter on Earth.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy say they have successfully tested a new type of nuclear reactor that could one day provide juice to colonies on other worlds. The reactor can power several homes and appears able to operate in harsh environments. The new reactor uses more-conventional uranium fuel. Using a "core" about the size of a paper towel roll, the reactor can turn pistons that can run a generator. The generator can put out about 10 kilowatts of electrical power -- enough to run a few small homes. Scientists believe it could run continuously for a decade or so, making deep space travel a lot simpler. They also gave it a catchy acronym: KRUSTY, which stands for Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY.

To see if it actually worked, scientists tested KRUSTY out in the Nevada desert on America's old nuclear test range. They put KRUSTY through its paces, culminating in a 28-hour test at full power. The team also simulated failures in KRUSTY's reactor components to show it wouldn't result in a meltdown on Mars. KRUSTY may find its way onto future space probes. Researchers say they might use an ensemble of four or five of the reactors to power colonies on the moon (which has 14-day nights, when the sun isn't available) or Mars.

A new report from NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, finds that NASA will pay significantly more for commercial cargo delivery to the ISS in the 2020s rather than enjoying cost savings from maturing systems. "NASA will likely pay $400 million more for its second round of delivery contracts from 2020 to 2024 even though the agency will be moving six fewer tons of cargo," reports Ars Technica. "On a cost per kilogram basis, this represents a 14-percent increase." From the report: One of the main reasons for this increase, the report says, is a 50-percent increase in prices from SpaceX, which has thus far flown the bulk of missions for NASA's commercial cargo program with its Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket. This is somewhat surprising because, during the first round of supply missions, which began in 2012, SpaceX had substantially lower costs than NASA's other partner, Orbital ATK. SpaceX and Orbital ATK are expected to fly 31 supply missions between 2012 and 2020, the first phase of the supply contract. Of those, the new report states, SpaceX is scheduled to complete 20 flights at an average cost of $152.1 million per mission. Orbital ATK is scheduled to complete 11 missions at an average cost of $262.6 million per mission.

But that cost differential will largely evaporate in the second round of cargo supply contracts. For flights from 2020 to 2024, SpaceX will increase its price while Orbital ATK cuts its own by 15 percent. The new report provides unprecedented public detail about the second phase of commercial resupply contracts, known as CRS-2, which NASA awarded in a competitively bid process in 2016. SpaceX and Orbital ATK again won contracts (for a minimum of six flights), along with a new provider, Sierra Nevada Corp. and its Dream Chaser vehicle. Bids by Boeing and Lockheed Martin were not accepted.

SpaceX launched NASA's TESS spacecraft Wednesday evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship following takeoff. This marks 24 successful landings for SpaceX now, notes The Verge. We will update this post once TESS is deployed into orbit. From the report: TESS is NASA's newest exoplanet hunter. The probe is tasked with staring at stars tens to hundreds of light-years from Earth, watching to see if they blink. When a planet passes in front of a distant star, it dims the star's light ever so slightly. TESS will measure these twinkles from a 13.7-day orbit that extends as far out as the distance of the Moon. The satellite won't get to its final orbit on this launch. Instead, the Falcon 9 will put TESS into a highly elliptical path around Earth first. From there, TESS will slowly adjust its orbit over the next couple of months by igniting its onboard engine multiple times. The spacecraft will even do a flyby of the Moon next month, getting a gravitational boost that will help get the vehicle to its final path around Earth. Overall, it will take about 60 days after launch for TESS to get to its intended orbit; science observations are scheduled to begin in June.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: NASA may make some big changes to the first couple flights of its future deep-space rocket, the Space Launch System, after getting a recent funding boost from Congress to build a new launch platform. When humans fly on the rocket for the first time in the 2020s, they might ride on a less powerful version of the vehicle than NASA had expected. If the changes move forward, it could scale down the first crewed mission into deep space in more than 45 years. The SLS has been in development for the last decade, and when complete, it will be NASA's main rocket for taking astronauts to the Moon and Mars. NASA has long planned to debut the SLS with two crucial test missions. The first flight, called EM-1, will be uncrewed, and it will send the smallest planned version of the rocket on a three-week long trip around the Moon. Three years later, NASA plans to launch a bigger, more powerful version of the rocket around the Moon with a two-person crew -- a mission called EM-2.

But now, NASA may delay that rocket upgrade and fly the same small version of the SLS for the crewed flight instead. If that happens, NASA would need to come up with a different type of mission for the crew to do since they won't be riding on the more powerful version of the vehicle. "If EM-2 flies that way, we would have to change the mission profile because we can't do what we could do if we had the [larger SLS]," Robert Lightfoot, NASA's acting administrator, said during a Congressional hearing yesterday. NASA clarified that astronauts would still fly around the Moon on the second flight. However, the rocket would not be able to carry extra science payloads as NASA had originally planned. "The primary objective for EM-2 is to demonstrate critical functions with crew aboard, including mission planning, system performance, crew interfaces, and navigation and guidance in deep space, which can be accomplished on a Block 1 SLS," a NASA spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge.

Space.com reports of the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery of a light-bending "Einstein Ring" in space: The perfect circle surrounding a galaxy cluster in a new Hubble Space Telescope image is a visual indicator of the huge masses that are bending time and space in that region. The galaxy cluster, called SDSS J0146-0929, features hundreds of individual galaxies all bound together by gravity. There's so much mass in this region that the cluster is distorting light from objects behind it. This phenomenon is called an Einstein ring. The ring is created as the light that comes from distant objects, like galaxies, passes by "an extremely large mass, like this galaxy cluster," NASA said in a statement. "In this image, the light from a background galaxy is diverted and distorted around the massive intervening cluster and forced to travel along many different light paths toward Earth, making it seem as though the galaxy is in several places at once." The ring is named after Albert Einstein, who wrote his theory of general relativity in the early 1900s. In it, he suggested that a massive object would warp space and time. This process is known today as a gravitational lens. When the most massive galaxies and galaxy clusters get in line with a more distant object, they produce an Einstein ring -- a type of gravitational lens.

Longtime Slashdot reader lalleglad writes: SpaceX today launched a Falcon 9 with its 14th Resupply Services mission. I saw it went well, and I hope it will also attach to the International Space Station (ISS) in good order. Incidentally, it carries the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), which is an European Space Agency (ESA) project to investigate Earth-to-space lighting and thunder. Let's hope that it will enable better weather movement understanding, and for us plain people, better weather forecasts! "The Falcon 9 rocket, whose first stage launched ISS supplies last August, fired nine Merlin main engines again to roar from Launch Complex 40 at 4:30 p.m.," reports Florida Today. "Ten minutes later, the unmanned Dragon capsule, which launched to the ISS two years earlier, floated free of the rocket's upper stage to start a two-day journey back to the orbiting research complex. It was the second time a recycled Falcon 9 and Dragon had launched together, and the 11th time in just over a year that SpaceX had re-launched a used -- or what the company prefers to call 'flight proven' -- rocket." CNBC notes that the CRS-14 launch was the company's seventh successful mission this year. You can watch the recorded livestream of the launch here.

schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica, offering an up-close look at the Parker Solar Probe: This summer, NASA will launch the Parker Solar Probe, an impressively heat-resistant spacecraft destined to glide closer to the surface of the Sun than any spacecraft before it. It will fly within about 6 million kilometers of the searing surface, more than seven times closer than earlier craft. If all goes to plan, the craft will be hurtling at 724,205 km per hour and have its one-of-a-kind heat shield perfectly facing the surface as it makes those closest approaches. In about seven years, it will complete 24 orbits around the Sun and pass by Venus seven times. All the while, the Parker probe will collect a constellation of data to help answer scientists' burning questions -- and solve some sizzling mysteries -- about the orb of hot plasma that lights up our Solar System. Namely, it will try to help us finally understand why the Sun's atmosphere is 300 times hotter than its surface, which itself is a balmy 5,727C. This fact defies basic physics and to this day is unexplained. One of the leading hypotheses to account for the heat shift comes from famed physicist Eugene Parker, after whom the probe is named. In the mid-1950s, Parker theorized that the Sun's super-heated corona could be explained by a complex system of plasma, magnetic fields, and energetic particles that spark solar explosions called "nanoflares." Scientists are thirsty for close-up data on those potential explosions as well as the cascade of energy called solar wind. With that data, they can put their hypotheses to the test. And in addition to helping us understand coronal heat, data on these sunny phenomena could help clear up poorly understood space weather, which can wreak havoc on satellites and power lines here on Earth.

schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica, offering an up-close look at the Parker Solar Probe: This summer, NASA will launch the Parker Solar Probe, an impressively heat-resistant spacecraft destined to glide closer to the surface of the Sun than any spacecraft before it. It will fly within about 6 million kilometers of the searing surface, more than seven times closer than earlier craft. If all goes to plan, the craft will be hurtling at 724,205 km per hour and have its one-of-a-kind heat shield perfectly facing the surface as it makes those closest approaches. In about seven years, it will complete 24 orbits around the Sun and pass by Venus seven times. All the while, the Parker probe will collect a constellation of data to help answer scientists' burning questions -- and solve some sizzling mysteries -- about the orb of hot plasma that lights up our Solar System. Namely, it will try to help us finally understand why the Sun's atmosphere is 300 times hotter than its surface, which itself is a balmy 5,727C. This fact defies basic physics and to this day is unexplained. One of the leading hypotheses to account for the heat shift comes from famed physicist Eugene Parker, after whom the probe is named. In the mid-1950s, Parker theorized that the Sun's super-heated corona could be explained by a complex system of plasma, magnetic fields, and energetic particles that spark solar explosions called "nanoflares." Scientists are thirsty for close-up data on those potential explosions as well as the cascade of energy called solar wind. With that data, they can put their hypotheses to the test. And in addition to helping us understand coronal heat, data on these sunny phenomena could help clear up poorly understood space weather, which can wreak havoc on satellites and power lines here on Earth.

Charlie Sobeck, the system engineer for the Kepler space telescope mission, said in a NASA statement that Kepler is running low on gas. According to Sobekc, it only has "several months" before it reaches the end of the its life. Mashable reports: NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been peering deep into the Milky Way galaxy for nearly a decade. It has spotted over 2,500 confirmed planets orbiting distant stars, and over 2,500 more possible worlds are waiting to be confirmed. Thirty of these confirmed planets live inside their host stars' habitable zones, places where liquid water could exist like it does on Earth. NASA placed the Kepler telescope 94 million miles away from Earth, in an orbit around the sun. This way, Earth's gravity and reflected light don't interfere with Kepler's precise measurements of distant planets. Out there, in the void, it's extremely unlikely that Kepler will become a threatening piece of space junk that could pose collision hazards to other satellites. Although Kepler will soon be spent and left to its long, lonely orbit in space, the spacecraft will soon be replaced by another exoplanet-hunting space telescope, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS is set to launch into space on April 16.

A survey of satellite data published in the journal Cryosphere confirms what scientists have suspected for a while now: ice loss from the critical region of Antarctica is happening at an increasingly fast pace. Quartz reports: In total, researchers found that Antarctica lost roughly 1,929 gigatons of ice in 2015, which amounts to an increase of roughly 36 gigatons per year every year since 2008. (A gigaton is one billion tons.) Nearly 90% of that increase in loss occurred in West Antarctica, "probably in response to ocean warming," according to NASA. The new data analysis mostly confirms other recent research, but does so with a higher degree of precision by using a new technique that can process a larger amount of satellite data than was possible before.

West Antarctica has been losing a lot of ice in recent years, and at an ever-growing pace, while East Antarctica is losing ice more steadily. The West Antarctic ice sheet is of particular concern because, like a building that stands on an uneven foundation, it is inherently unstable, making it especially vulnerable to the warming climate. If the entire ice sheet were destabilized and melted into the sea, researchers estimate it would lead to 3 meters (9 feet) of sea level rise globally. Models suggest that under a low-emissions scenario, where the world commits to "peaking" and then steadily reducing emissions in the near future, complete destabilization of the West Antarctic ice sheet is possible to avoid. But under medium- or high-emissions scenarios, the loss of the ice sheet becomes inevitable.

schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: This isn't your average timekeeper. The so-called Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) is far smaller than Earth-bound atomic clocks, far more precise than the handful of other space-bound atomic clocks, and more resilient against the stresses of space travel than any clock ever made. According to a NASA statement, it's expected to lose no more than 2 nanoseconds (2 billionths of a second) over the course of a day. That comes to about 7 millionths of a second over the course of a decade. n an email to Live Science, Andrew Good, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory representative, said the first DSAC will hitch a ride on the second Falcon Heavy launch, scheduled for June.

Every deep-space mission that makes course corrections needs to send signals to ground stations on Earth. Those ground stations rely on atomic clocks to measure just how long those signals took to arrive, which allows them to locate the spacecrafts position down to the meter in the vast vacuum. They then send signals back, telling the craft where they are and where to go next. Thats a cumbersome process, and it means any given ground station can support only one spacecraft at a time. The goal of DSAC, according to a NASA fact sheet, is to allow spacecraft to make precise timing measurements onboard a spacecraft, without waiting for information from Earth. A DSAC-equipped spacecraft, according to NASAs statement, could calculate time without waiting for measurements from Earth -- allowing it to make course adjustments or perform precision science experiments without pausing to turn its antennas earthward and waiting for a reply.