Amazing Photos of the Sun

NASA's newest 3-D photos are the latest in a long line of spectacular images of the star at the center of our planetary system

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Atlantis Returns From Final Mission Of Space Shuttle Program

Atlantis Returns From Final Mission Of Space Shuttle Program

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - JULY 21: Space Shuttle Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center July 21, 2011 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Atlantis was the shuttle final mission for NASA, ending the 30 years of the shuttle program. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) 21/07/2011

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Final countdown: The space shuttle's last ever mission

Thirty years after the first blast-off, David Usborne reports from the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, on the end of an era

Friday, 8 July 2011

Getty

The first lift-off of Atlantis in 1985

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Dotted across the sprawling campus that is the John F. Kennedy Space Centre in Florida are blue and white signs designed to get the thousands of workers here pepped up. "1 Days to Launch", they declared yesterday above an image of the NASA shuttle. But they might have read "1 Days to Pack up your Bags".

It is 30 years since the first shuttle, Columbia, lifted off from its pad here at Cape Canaveral and opened a new chapter in an American space romance that began a decade earlier with the Apollo flights. The mission about to be undertaken by the shuttle will be number 135 and the last. For the first time in half a century, the US will have no means on its own to fire humans to the stars.

The shuttle swansong will begin, of course, only when Florida's thundery weather allows. The launch is scheduled for this morning, US time. But as hundreds of thousands of onlookers swarmed to Florida's Space Coast last night, rain fell in chain-mail curtains and the forecast was ominous. Bad conditions, officials said, presented a 70 per cent chance of delaying today's lift-off until Saturday or Sunday.

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Whenever it begins, the last flight of Atlantis will trigger bittersweet emotions here. Even for those tourists cramming the parks and shores to watch the white bird soar on its thick thread of smoke it will, as one NASA spokesman put it, be a "bucket-list" moment, never to be experienced again.

Already as the digital countdown directed from Mission Control in Houston ticked down, a sense of nostalgia was filling the press centre. Even reporters who have been covering launches for years weren't shy to have their pictures taken beside a vintage space suit brought into the filing centre for the occasion.

The Atlantis voyage – the cargo hold has been crammed with supplies to keep the International Space Station going for at least another year – marks the conclusion of a wind-down process started in 2004 when then President George Bush ordered the whole shuttle fleet retired. President Barack Obama inherited plans to replace it with the Constellation programme to return to the moon, but last year he ditched it.

For generations of Americans, NASA has been an acronym for national pride through frontier-breaking innovation and pre-eminence in the race to breach our planet's bounds. It was a race that was initially spurred by American competition with the Soviets in the depths of the Cold War. Some see irony – if not ignominy – in the reality that mothballing Atlantis will present. For the next several years, any American astronauts deployed to the Space Station will have to hitch a ride on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

"Right now, we are dependent upon Russia, and I do find that unseemly for the United States," Mike Griffin, a former NASA administrator, noted mournfully. "I find that unseemly in the extreme." And it is not just those "Days to" signs that will have to be taken away here at the Space Centre. Swathes of employees here – from engineers to welders and even to the guy who drives the huge crawler vehicle used to transport the shuttles from its towering hanger to the pad – will see their careers suddenly ended. A few months ago 17,000 people worked here; weeks after this mission only about 1,000 will remain.

NASA officials insist that America's space story is not over. The Obama blueprint for the agency envisages a future with deep-space exploration becoming the main focus, theoretically putting human footprints on Mars and asteroids, if not in this decade then hopefully by the mid-2020s (although getting to Mars may take 10 years longer). But to most Americans, this goal seems murky and undefined.

In the shorter term, NASA must adjust itself to getting help from private contractors to restore a direct link to the Space Station. A handful of companies, including SpaceX Boeing and Sierra Nevada, are developing space vehicles first to take cargo and then astronauts to the station on behalf of NASA, perhaps beginning as soon as 2015. NASA hopes some of their development work will happen here at Canaveral.

When Atlantis glides back to earth, NASA will celebrate a span of 30 years that saw tragedy with the explosion 73 seconds after lift-off of Challenger in January 1986 and the disintegration of Columbus upon re-entry in February 2003. The price tag for each NASA trip has averaged out at about $1.5 billion.

But the shuttles kept the thrill of space travel alive. It became commonplace to see astronauts weightlessly conducting experiments in the dark ink of space or chatting to school children from their living quarters via satellite. One astronaut played his saxophone for us. Senator John Glenn, one of the original Mercury astronauts, rode a shuttle back to space aged 77 in 1998. Perhaps most importantly, it was a shuttle that deployed the Hubble Telescope, giving us sparkling new glimpses into our solar system.

Yet when this mission is over, NASA will be like a spacecraft without proper instruments, fishtailing its way forward to a place not yet properly identified and with money that may never be available to it.

This astronaut photograph, taken from the vantage of the International Space Station (ISS), shows the the space shuttle Atlantis streaking across the atmosphere

Comet's Death by Sun Photographed for First Time

By Tariq Malik , SPACE.com Managing Editor Space.com | SPACE.com – 

The death of a comet that plunged into the sun was captured on camera this month for the first time in history, scientists say.

The comet met its fiery demise on July 6 when it zoomed in from behind the sun and melted into oblivion as it crashed into the star. It was NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a satellite orbiting Earth that studies the sun, which witnessed the comet's death-blow.

One of the SDO spacecraft's high-definition imagers "actually spotted a sun-grazing comet as it disintegrated over about a 15 minute period (July 6, 2011), something never observed before," SDO officials said. [See the observatory's image of the comet death]

Comets have been spotted near the sun before, but last week's object was the first to be observed in real-time as it disappeared.

"Given the intense heat and radiation, the comet simply evaporated away completely," SDO officials said.

The comet was a type known to astronomers as a sun-grazing comet because its path brought it extremely close to the sun.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint NASA-European Space Agency spacecraft, also spotted the comet's demise and recorded a video of the event.

"This is one of the brightest sun-grazers SOHO has recorded, similar to the Christmas comet of 1996," SOHO project scientist Bernhard Fleck said in a statement.

SOHO officials said that, because of the angle of the comet's orbit, it passed across the front half of the sun and appeared to brighten as it struck hotter particles above the solar surface.

Sun-grazing comets are relatively common and are also known as Kreutz comets, after the 19th century astronomer Heinrich Kreutz who first showed they were related.

Astronomers suspect that Kreutz comets all began as a single, giant comet that broke apart several centuries ago. 

You can follow SPACE.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Moon to turn blood red this evening as UK experiences total lunar eclipse

By Daily Mail Reporter   15th June 2011

Sky watchers in the UK will be hoping for a cloudless sky this evening so they can get the best view of the longest total lunar eclipse since 2000.

The dramatic event will turn the moon blood red for 100 minutes during the period of totality.

But Nasa warned Europeans will miss the early stages of the eclipse 'because they occur before moonrise.'

A total lunar eclipse in Japan, 2007: During totality light only reaches the moon through Earth's atmosphere, back-scattering blue light and making it appear red

The eclipse beings at 6.24pm (BST) and ends at midnight but sunset doesn't occur in the UK until 9.19pm.

People in the eastern half of Africa, the Middle East, central Asia and western Australia will be able to enjoy the entire event. However, those in the U.S will miss out as the eclipse will occur during daylight hours.

The moon is normally illuminated by the Sun. During a lunar eclipse the Earth, Sun and Moon are in line and the Earth’s shadow moves across the surface of the full moon.

Enlarge  

This graph shows when the total lunar eclipse will be visible on Earth

Sunlight that has passed through the Earth’s atmosphere makes the moon appear red, brown or black.

The moon travels to a similar position every month, but the tilt of the lunar orbit means that it normally passes above or below the terrestrial shadow. This means a full moon is seen but no eclipse takes place.

Scientists predict rare 'hibernation' of sunspots

WASHINGTON (AFP) – For years, scientists have been predicting the Sun would by around 2012 move into solar maximum, a period of intense flares and sunspot activity, but lately a curious calm has suggested quite the opposite.

According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.

The signs include a missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles, said experts from the National Solar Observatory and Air Force Research Laboratory.

"This is highly unusual and unexpected," said Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO's Solar Synoptic Network, as the findings of the three studies were presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

"But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation."

Solar activity tends to rise and fall every 11 years or so. The solar maximum and solar minimum each mark about half the interval of the magnetic pole reversal on the Sun, which happens every 22 years.

Hill said the current cycle, number 24, "may be the last normal one for some time and the next one, cycle 25, may not happen for some time.

"This is important because the solar cycle causes space weather which affects modern technology and may contribute to climate change," he told reporters.

Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as the "Little Ice Age."

"If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we'll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth's climate," said Hill.

Solar flares and eruptions can send highly charged particles hurtling toward Earth and interfere with satellite communications, GPS systems and even airline controls.

Geomagnetic forces have been known to occasionally garble the world's modern gadgetry, and warnings were issued as recently as last week when a moderate solar flare sent a coronal mass ejection in the Earth's direction.

The temperature change associated with any reduction in sunspot activity would likely be minimal and may not be enough to offset the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming, according to scientists who have published recent papers on the topic.

"Recent solar 11-year cycles are associated empirically with changes in global surface temperature of 0.1 Celsius," said Judith Lean, a solar physicist with the US Naval Research Laboratory.

If the cycle were to stop or slow down, the small fluctuation in temperature would do the same, eliminating the slightly cooler effect of a solar minimum compared to the warmer solar maximum. The phenomenon was witnessed during the descending phase of the last solar cycle.

This "cancelled part of the greenhouse gas warming of the period 2000-2008, causing the net global surface temperature to remain approximately flat -- and leading to the big debate of why the Earth hadn't (been) warming in the past decade," Lean, who was not involved in the three studies presented, said in an email to AFP.

A study in the March 2010 issue of Geophysical Research Letters explored what effect an extended solar minimum might have, and found no more than a 0.3 Celsius dip by 2100 compared to normal solar fluctuations.

"A new Maunder-type solar activity minimum cannot offset the global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions," wrote authors Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf, noting that forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have found a range of 3.7 Celsius to 4.5 Celsius rise by this century's end compared to the latter half of the 20th century.

"Moreover, any offset of global warming due to a grand minimum of solar activity would be merely a temporary effect, since the distinct solar minima during the last millennium typically lasted for only several decades or a century at most."

Five men, one woman, and a gold-faced robot with a passing resemblance to the Star Wars character C-3PO went through their final countdown last night, as the world's oldest and most-travelled space shuttle blasted into orbit round the Earth for one last time.

After 150 million miles and a combined total of almost 50 weeks of boldly going, the 26-year-old Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida at 4.50pm local time to begin its 39th and final mission.

The start of the 11-day trip to the International Space Station was accompanied by all the usual bells and whistles of a major Nasa launch, from a flag-waving crowd of 40,000 to endless press conferences from the organisation's senior boffins.

But amid the pageantry, there was a hint of sadness: Discovery's last hurrah doesn't just mark the retirement of a craft known to US astronauts as "the champion of the fleet", it also hastens the demise of the shuttle as a means of extra-terrestrial transportation.

The era-defining brand of spacecraft – which was given the go-ahead by Richard Nixon, entered space under Ronald Reagan and outlasted the Cold Wa – is scheduled to be shuffled off into retirement later this year, with the loss of 7,000 jobs.

It is the victim of swingeing budget cuts at Nasa, combined with doubts about safety which stretch back to the Challenger disaster of 1986, and became seriously pressing after 1 February 2003, when Columbia disintegrated during re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere.

Mike Leinbach, the launch director, admitted before lift-off yesterday that it will be "tough" to see Discovery go. "You'll see a lot of people on the runway who will probably choke up some," he said. "It's the end of a 30-year programme we've grown to love and appreciate and feel like we're doing something special for the country and, really, the world."

Once Discovery returns, Nasa will prepare for April's scheduled final journey of Endeavour, the shuttle which is due to include in its crew Mark Kelly, the 47-year-old husband of the wounded Tucson Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Then, Nasa will formally end the era of the space shuttle on 28 June, when Atlantis begins a 12-day mission to the International Space Station. After that, America will find itself in the embarrassing position of having to cadge lifts for astronauts in spacecraft owned by Russia. Nasa's long-term plans, such as they are, involve private companies providing orbital transport. Given such uncertainty, the demise of Discovery represents a particularly sad moment. It has always been the most loved and trusted of Nasa's fleet. It was chosen for Nasa's symbolically important first missions after the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

This week's final flight has been arranged to ferry 1.75 tons of supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station, most notably a humanoid robot named "Robonaut 2", which has a gold face and stands a little over 3ft tall.

The robot will work alongside human inhabitants of the station. At first, it will carry out mundane tasks, such as cleaning. But engineers hope it will eventually take over more dangerous and complex duties, including space walks.

In one of the more unlikely scientific experiments to be carried out during the trip, researchers from the University of Guelph in Canada will tickle the feet of Discovery's six crew members before take-off and immediately after landing to identify which skin receptors are most influenced by weightlessness.

The mission was originally scheduled to begin in September, but was delayed by problems with the fuel tank and the withdrawal of a crew member who crashed his bicycle.

Though originally conceived in the 1970s as an economical alternative to rockets (they could complete multiple missions, while each rocket could only fly once) they proved far less reliable, and more expensive than expected. When the shuttle programme was launched, its architects envisioned that American astronauts would fly a mission a week, launching satellites and defence systems, and building vast space stations.

In the event, Nasa never managed more than nine or 10 shuttle flights a year. Thousands of highly trained engineers were needed to maintain each craft in the fleet, at a huge expense. Then there were the two disasters, in which 14 people died.

Discovery's future probably now lies as a museum piece: negotiations are under way for it to be donated to the Smithsonian. "There is nothing better than a real artefact, and Discovery has been an icon of human space flight for 30 years," said Valerie Neal, curator of the institution's National Air & Space Museum, who spoke to The Independent from the launch site yesterday.

Up, up and away no more

August 1984 After four years in the making, Discovery is launched on its maiden voyage to deploy three communications satellites.

April 1990 The Hubble Space Telescope, one of the most important astronomical tools ever made, is carried and launched into orbit by Discovery.

February 1994 Discovery becomes the first American space shuttle to host a Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev.

February 1995 The shuttle becomes the first American spacecraft to dock with the Russian space station Mir. This mission also sees Eileen Collins become the first female space shuttle pilot.

February 2011 After performing 38 voyages, travelling 230 million kilometres and orbiting the earth 5,628 times, Discovery launches for the last time.