NASA Considering Space Station for Mars Dry Run

By Marcia Dunn

Cape Canaveral - The International Space Station may provide the setting for a 500-day pretend trip to Mars in another few years.

NASA said Tuesday that consideration is under way to use the space station as a dry run for a simulated trip to and from Mars.

It would be patterned after Russia's mock flight to Mars that lasted 520 days at a Moscow research center. Six men were involved in that study, which ended late last year. They were locked in a steel capsule.

NASA's space station program manager Mike Suffredini said before astronauts can fly beyond low-Earth orbit, they'll have to spend more than six months aloft at a time. That's the typical stint for space station crews. Five hundred days is more than 16 months.

The human endurance record of 14 months was set by a Russian cosmonaut aboard the Mir space station in the mid-1990s. Only two others — both Russians — have spent as long as a full year in space.

No NASA astronaut has spent more than seven months in space on a single mission.

Suffredini doesn't expect any such Mars simulation aboard the space station to occur any sooner than two to three years. Physical as well as psychological questions will have to be addressed before anything of that sort is attempted, he said.

Steps are under way, however, for such an effort, and scientists and flight surgeons already are working on it. The goal would be to have all the data in hand so the space station can be used as a Mars test bed before its projected demise in 2020 or thereafter.

Suffredini said he expects the consensus ultimately will be to simulate "at least the first leg of a trip to a distant planet."

NASA's future for manned exploration is up in the air as the debate drags on as to where astronauts should head in the decades ahead: the moon, asteroids and/or Mars. The cost promises to be a major factor, along with the development of rocketships big enough to travel so far.

Scientists See Rise in Tornado-creating Conditions

By Sharon Begley

Worldwide - When at least 80 tornadoes rampaged across the United States, from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, last Friday, it was more than is typically observed during the entire month of March, tracking firm AccuWeather.com reported on Monday.

According to some climate scientists, such earlier-than-normal outbreaks of tornadoes, which typically peak in the spring, will become the norm as the planet warms.

"As spring moves up a week or two, tornado season will start in February instead of waiting for April," said climatologist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Whether climate change will also affect the frequency or severity of tornadoes, however, remains very much an open question, and one that has received surprisingly little study.

"There are only a handful of papers, even to this day," said atmospheric scientist Robert Trapp of Purdue University, who led a pioneering 2007 study of tornadoes and climate change.

"Some of us think we should be paying more attention to it," said atmospheric physicist Anthony Del Genio of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, part of NASA.

The scientific challenge is this: the two conditions necessary to spawn a twister are expected to be affected in opposite ways. A warmer climate will likely boost the intensity of thunderstorms but could dampen wind shear, the increase of wind speed at higher altitudes, researchers say.

Tomorrow's thunderstorms will pack a bigger wallop, but may strike less frequently than they have historically, explained Del Genio.

"As we go to a warmer atmosphere, storms - which transfer energy from one region to another - somehow figure out how to do that more efficiently," he said. As a result, thunderstorms transfer more energy per outbreak, and so have to make such transfers less often.

In a 2011 paper, Del Genio calculated that, "especially in the central and eastern United States, we can expect a few more days per month with conditions favorable to severe thunderstorm occurrence" by the latter part of this century if the global climate grows warmer.

Indeed, the world has been experiencing more violent storms since 1970, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in its most recent assessment.

EXTENDING TORNADOES' PATH

Purdue's Trapp and colleagues got a similar result in their 2007 study, which they confirmed in research published in 2009 and 2011. "The number of days when conditions exist to form tornadoes is expected to increase" as the world warms, he said.

In addition, they found, regions near the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts not normally associated with tornadoes will experience tornado-making weather more frequently. They projected a doubling in the number of days with such conditions in Atlanta and New York City, for instance.

More powerful thunderstorms would be expected to produce more tornadoes, but wind shear could prove a mitigating factor.

Because climate change is not uniform, Del Genio wrote in the 2011 paper, "in the lower troposphere, the temperature difference between low and high latitudes decreases as the planet warms, creating less wind shear."

Other scientists are not so sure, and they see a surge in tornadoes last year as ominous. April 2011 was the most active tornado month on record, with 753, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), compared to the previous record of 267 in April 1974.

"I have no doubt that there will be many times when wind shear is plenty strong to create a tornado," said Trenberth.

That is what Trapp's team concluded in their 2007 study. "Over most of the United States," they wrote, the increase in the power of thunderstorms will "more than compensate for the relative decreases in shear."
As a result, "the environment would still be considered favorable for severe convection" of the kind that creates tornadoes.

From March to May the projected increase in severe storms is "largest over a 'tornado-alley'-like region extending northward from Texas," Trapp found. From June through August, the eastern half of the country is projected to experience such an increase.

If there are more days in the future when wind shear is too weak to produce a tornado from a thunderstorm, said Trenberth, then "the frequency of tornadoes may decrease but the average intensity might increase. You could have a doozy of an outbreak, and then they could go away for a while."

On average, about 800 tornados are reported annually in the United States. About 70 percent are "weak," finds NOAA, with winds less than 110 mph. Just under 29 percent are "strong," with winds between 110 and 205 mph. Only 2 percent of all tornadoes are what NOAA characterizes as "violent," with winds in excess of 205 mph, but they account for 70 percent of all twister deaths.

First Handshake in Space Takes Place

Cape Canaveral, Florida - The first robot - human handshake in space occurred Wednesday.

Daniel Burbank, the commander of the International Space Station, shook hands with Robonaut.

Robonaut is a NASA robot that went into space last February on the Discovery shuttle. Its intended aim is to see how it can help astronauts perform space duties.

Using computer software, ground controllers made Robonaut extend his right hand. Burbank did the same with his and shook it up-and-down. Robonaut even slightly tightened his grip, which Burbank said was “a firm handshake.”

Robonaut said, on a Twitter account, “The handshake was definitely one of the highlights of the day, but I'm not done yet”

A future model could possibly go outside for spacewalks as well.

Mysterious Ball Drops From Space

Nambia - NASA and European space agencies are being contacted after what appears to be a metal ball fell out of the sky and into a patch of grassland near a village

The ball is said to be hollow, a diameter of 14 inches and a circumference of 43 inches.  Its surface, made of a metal alloy, is rough and looks like its two halves were wielded together.  It weighs 13 pounds.

In the days before the mysterious ball appeared, the locals say they heard several small explosions.  This isn't the only time these types of balls were found.  In the last 20 years several others appeared in southern Africa, Australia, and Latin America.  Despite all the testing done, including this one when it first appeared in November, nothing explains them.

“It is not an explosive device, but rather hollow, but we had to investigate all this first,” said police deputy inspector general Vilho Hifindaka.

Kepler Telescope Finds Two Earth-sized Planets

New York – Two Earth-sized planets were discovered by scientists orbiting a star 950 light-years outside our solar system.

The news brings many things to light. One is planets from such a distance away are able to be detected by the Kepler spacecraft, NASA's telescope which currently found several dozens of Earth-sized planets. Another is the possibility of life being present on the planet. Third is the features of the planet. So far the planets, named Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, possess a radius .87 times and 1.03 times our planet respectively. Both seem to be rocky and are the smallest of such planets orbiting a sun like ours found so far. Kepler-20e has a six Earth-day orbit, Kepler-20f orbits its star with a 20-day orbit. Nature magazine states neither of them are in what's called “the habitable zone,” nor do they spin on their axes. The scientists have yet to work out the planets' densities, which will be done with instruments like the HARPS-North radial-velocity spectrometer in the Canary Islands. It will be revealed around April of 2012

Despite this news however, presently humans would not be able to survive on either planet even if we were able to travel there in a relatively short period of time due to their temperatures. Kepler-20e is estimated to be 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit and 20f reaches 800.

This news comes on the heels of another planet found with a surface more friendly to us, roughly about 72 degrees Fahrenheit, but too large to suggest life exists on its surface. That planet is estimated to be 2.4 times the size of Earth and possibly more like Neptune than Earth.

“Kepler can do things that no other telescope can do,” says Jonathan Fortney, astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He states the fact the two planets are sandwiched between three larger planets spanning a size spectrum from “super-Earths” to “mini-Neptunes” makes them strange finds. David Charbonneau, a Harvard-Smithsonian Center astronomer and co-author of the paper, stated “Different-sized planets do not mingle in [our] solar system, but apparently in this system they do.”

Update: Astronomers believe the planets were once gas giants that were stripped down after being swallowed by their swollen, aging parent.  They also say they "are sure there is no life on these planets."

Canada Not Pleased With Pipeline Delay

Canada – Despite President Barack Obama's delay on the Keystone XL pipeline until the end of the Presidential election, Canada has announced it's going to continue to promote the use of its tar sands as a source of energy.

Canada's government is currently under its Conservative majority, which is supported by Western Canda and funded by the gas and oil industry. This limits the country's options, as does another proposal that sends tar sands oil to Asia's markets. President Obama's decision to put off his approval for the pipeline is likely to kill the project altogether. Initially set to make a decision before the end of the year, President Obama faced a huge amount of protesters both in front of the White House and during his campaign tour that claimed tar sands oil is extremely hard to extract. Jim Hansen of NASA, and one of the world's top climate scientist said if the pipeline was to go through, it would "essentially be game over for the climate."

Prime Minister of Canda Stephen Harper said the United States approving the pipeline is a “no-brainer”.