New NASA spacecraft to investigate moon mystery

An artist's concept of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft seen orbiting near the surface of the moon.

Credit: Reuters/NASA Ames/Dana Berry/Handout

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Wed Sep 4, 2013 5:54pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - More than 40 years after the last Apollo astronauts left the moon, NASA is preparing to launch a small robotic spacecraft to investigate one of their most bizarre discoveries.

Crews reported seeing an odd glow on the lunar horizon just before sunrise. The phenomenon, which prompted a notebook sketch by Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan, was unexpected because the airless moon lacked atmosphere for reflecting sunlight.

Scientists began to suspect that dust from the lunar surface was being electrically charged and somehow lofted off the ground, a theory that will be tested by the U.S. space agency's upcoming Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Experiment.

The spacecraft, known as LADEE, is scheduled to be launched at 11:27 p.m. EDT on Friday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

"Terrestrial dust is like talcum powder. On the moon, it's very rough. It's kind of evil. It follows electric field lines, it works its way in equipment. ... It's a very difficult environment to deal with," said LADEE project manager Butler Hine of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

In addition to studying fly-away lunar dust, LADEE will probe the tenuous envelope of gases that surrounds the moon, a veneer so thin it stretches the meaning of the word "atmosphere."

Instead, scientists refer to these environments as exospheres and hope that understanding the moon's gaseous shell will shed light on similar pockets around Mercury, asteroids and other airless bodies.

"LADEE is part of a much broader scientific exploration of the solar system," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science.

The $280 million mission also includes an experimental laser optical communications system that NASA hopes to incorporate into future planetary probes, including a Mars rover scheduled for launch in 2020.

The prototype is based on technology used in terrestrial fiber-optic communications systems, such as Verizon's FiOS. NASA says the system should be at least six times faster than conventional radio communications. Also, its transmitters and receivers weigh half as much as similar radio communications equipment and use 25 percent less power.

"On the Earth, we've been using laser communication and fiber optics to power our Internet and everything else for the last couple of decades," Grunsfeld said. "NASA has really been wanting to make that same technological leap and put it into space. This is our chance to do that."

LADEE's optical communications system, which includes three ground stations in addition to LADEE, will be tested before the probe drops into a low lunar orbit to begin its science mission about 60 days after launch.

Just getting to the moon will take LADEE 30 days - 10 times longer than the Apollo missions due to the probe's relatively low-powered Minotaur 5 launcher.

The rocket is comprised of three refurbished intercontinental ballistic missile motors and two commercially provided boosters. The Minotaur 5 configuration will be flying for the first time with LADEE.

The use of decommissioned missile components drove the decision to fly from NASA's Wallops Island facility, one of only a few launch sites permitted to fly refurbished ICBMs under U.S.-Russian arms control agreements.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Stacey Joyce)

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Voyager left solar system last year, new research shows

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Thu Aug 15, 2013 8:28pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's long-lived Voyager probe crossed into interstellar space last year, becoming the first man-made object to leave the solar system, new research shows.

Scientists have been waiting for Voyager to detect a magnetic field that flows in a different direction than the solar system's magnetic field. But the new research shows that scenario is not accurate.

"We think that the magnetic field within the solar system and in the interstellar are aligned enough that you can actually pass through without seeing a huge change in direction," University of Maryland physicist Marc Swisdak said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday.

That would mean that Voyager actually reached interstellar space last summer when it detected a sudden drop in the number of particles coming from the sun and a corresponding rise in the number of galactic cosmic rays coming from interstellar space.

Not everyone is convinced, however.

Voyager lead scientist Edward Stone, now retired from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said Swisdak's research is interesting but different computer models are portraying different scenarios to explain the Voyager data.

"We know where Voyager is in terms of distance and we know what it is observing. The challenge is relating that to these complex models of the interaction between the interstellar medium and the heliosphere," Stone said, referring to the bubble of space that falls under the sun's influence.

Stone and other scientists believe Voyager is in a previously unknown region, dubbed a "magnetic highway," that exists between the heliosphere and interstellar space.

Voyager 1 and a sister probe, Voyager 2, were launched in 1977 to study the outer planets. Voyager 1 is now about 120 times farther away from the sun than Earth. Voyager 2 is heading out of the solar system in a different direction.

The probes are powered by the slow decay of radioactive plutonium. Voyager 1 will begin running out of energy for its science instruments in 2020. By 2025, it will be completely out of power.

If Swisdak and colleagues are correct, Voyager 1's magnetic field readings will stay pretty much the same throughout the remainder of its mission.

"If they see a strong shift in the magnetic field, a big jump, then that means that what we've outlined can't be correct," Swisdak said.

"I'm perfectly willing to be proven wrong here and if I were, that would be kind of cool. But it agrees with all the data that we have so far," he added.

More evidence may come when Voyager 2 crosses the solar system's boundary as well.

The research appears in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Bill Trott)

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China to land first probe on moon this year

China's Shenzhou 10 spacecraft and its carrier Long March 2-F rocket are seen being transferred to its launching site at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, Gansu province June 3, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

BEIJING | Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:07am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will land its first probe on the moon at the end of this year, state media reported on Wednesday, the next step in an ambitious space program which includes eventually building a space station.

In 2007, China launched its first moon orbiter, the Chang'e One orbiter, named after a lunar goddess, which took images of the surface and analyzed the distribution of elements.

That launch marked the first step in China's three-stage moon mission, to be followed by an unmanned moon mission and then the retrieval of lunar soil and stone samples around 2017.

The official Xinhua news agency said that the Chang'e Three was on track for a landing towards the end of the year.

"Chang'e Three has officially entered its launch implementation stage following its research and construction period," it cited a government statement as saying.

"The mission will see a Chinese orbiter soft-land, or land on the moon after using a technique to slow its speed, on a celestial body for the first time," Xinhua added, without providing further details.

Chinese scientists have talked of the possibility of sending a man to the moon after 2020.

China successfully completed its latest manned space mission in June, when three astronauts spent 15 days in orbit and docked with an experimental space laboratory critical in Beijing's quest to build a working space station by 2020.

China is still far from catching up with the established space superpowers, the United States and Russia, which decades ago learned the docking techniques China is only now mastering.

Beijing insists its space program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities and said Beijing is pursuing a variety of activities aimed at preventing its adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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Cosmonauts prepare for new lab in record Russian spacewalk

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Fri Aug 16, 2013 6:36pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two Russian cosmonauts floated outside the International Space Station on Friday to set up power and ethernet cables for a new research laboratory scheduled to arrive in December.

Flight engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin opened the hatch on the station's Pirs airlock at 10:36 a.m. EDT (1436 GMT) to kick off a 7-hour, 29-minute spacewalk, the longest ever by Russian cosmonauts.

The spacewalk eclipsed by 13 minutes the Russians' previous record set in July 2000 outside the Mir space station. The longest spacewalk overall was an 8-hour, 56-minute outing in 2001 by two NASA astronauts working outside the International Space Station.

Yurchikhin, who was making his seventh spacewalk, and Misurkin, on his second, spent most of their time routing two power cables and an ethernet line for a new Russian multipurpose laboratory called Nauka.

"There's a lot of intricate and delicate stringing (of the cables) through handrails and hook points," NASA mission commentator Rob Navias said during a televised broadcast of the spacewalk.

The outing is the third of six spacewalks Russia plans to conduct this year.

NASA meanwhile is still investigating the cause of a spacesuit helmet leak that forced two other crew members at the space station to abort a spacewalk on July 16.

Russia's Orlan spacesuits are different from NASA's but "due diligence was paid in preparation for this spacewalk," Navias said.

"Everything was in good shape," he added.

In addition to rigging cables between the Russian Zarya and Poisk modules, Yurchikhin and Misurkin attached a panel of experiments on a handrail on Poisk that will remain outside to expose sample materials to the space environment.

The cosmonauts are scheduled for another spacewalk on August 22 to install a swiveling platform for a telescope.

Russia's Nauka module, which will serve as research lab, docking port and airlock, will replace the Pirs docking compartment, which will be detached from the space station and flown into the atmosphere, where it will be incinerated.

The station, a $100 billion project of 15 nations, flies about 250 miles above Earth. It has been permanently staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since November 2000.

(Editing by Jane Sutton and Eric Walsh)

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Japan's newest rocket fails to lift off

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO | Tue Aug 27, 2013 9:25am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's first new rocket in 12 years failed to lift off on Tuesday, dealing a potential blow to hopes that Japan may be able to take a larger share of the growing, multi-billion dollar satellite launch industry.

It was the second setback for the Epsilon rocket this month.

An earlier launch was postponed because of a computer glitch. No word was immediately available on the cause of the problem on Tuesday or when the launch might be tried again.

The countdown at Japan's Uchinoura launch centre was broadcast live over the Internet, with commentary in English as well as Japanese. But nothing happened at the end of the countdown.

JAXA, Japan's space agency, later said the launch was halted with 19 seconds to go. Japanese media said an "irregularity" had been detected.

A three-stage rocket, the Epsilon - named for the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet - is 24.4 meters (80 feet) high, about half the size of Japan's workhorse H2A rocket. It weighs 91 tons and has been touted as a new, low-cost alternative.

The rocket was scheduled to carry a telescope into space for observation of the solar system.

Analysts said it was not immediately clear how much of an impact the failure would have on Japan's ambitions to cash in on the international satellite launch industry.

"This was the first flight and it was already postponed once and now will be postponed again," said Yukihiro Kumagai, an analyst at Jefferies & Co securities in Tokyo.

"Inevitably, this will raise some questions, but overall it is unlikely to have much influence," he added, noting that the Epsilon is not scheduled for another flight until 2015.

The rocket's smaller size and a computer system that allows it to perform its own system checks means it can be assembled quickly, which is expected to cut both personnel and equipment costs.

Launch control can be carried out using conventional desktop computers, greatly reducing costs and making the launches more mobile since they could take place at more sites.

U.S. companies had a monopoly on the commercial launch business 30 years ago, but its hold has steadily declined, with most of the business going to the France-based Arianespace, a public-private European partnership that in 2012 reported revenue of 1.3 billion euros.

The market has been shaken up by the recent entry of the California-based Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX.

Russia also markets a variety of rockets for space launches. Its workhorse Soyuz spaceships have been the only vehicles delivering crews to the ISS since the U.S. Space Shuttle fleet was retired from service in 2011.

India and China also provide launch services to some extent.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Robert Birsel and Ron Popeski)

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U.S. scientist operates colleague's brain from across campus

By Sharon Begley

NEW YORK | Tue Aug 27, 2013 5:26pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Scientists said Tuesday they have achieved the first human-to-human mind meld, with one researcher sending a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motion of a colleague sitting across the Seattle campus of the University of Washington.

The feat is less a conceptual advance than another step in the years-long progress that researchers have made toward brain-computer interfaces, in which electrical signals generated from one brain are translated by a computer into commands that can move a mechanical arm or a computer cursor - or, in more and more studies, can affect another brain.

Much of the research has been aimed at helping paralyzed patients regain some power of movement, but bioethicists have raised concerns about more controversial uses.

In February, for instance, scientists led by Duke University Medical Center's Miguel Nicolelis used electronic sensors to capture the thoughts of a rat in a lab in Brazil and sent via Internet to the brain of a rat in the United States. The second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior. And electrical activity in the brain of a monkey at Duke, in North Carolina, was recently sent via the Internet, controlling a robot arm in Japan.

That raised dystopian visions of battalions of animal soldiers - or even human ones - whose brains are remotely controlled by others. Some of Duke's brain-computer research, though not this study, received funding from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA.

FINGERING A KEYBOARD

For the new study, funded by the U.S. Army Research Office and other non-military federal agencies, UW professor of computer science and engineering Rajesh Rao, who has studied brain-computer interfaces for more than a decade, sat in his lab on August 12 wearing a cap with electrodes hooked up to an electroencephalography machine, which reads electrical activity in the brain.

He looked at a computer screen and played a simple video game but only mentally. At one point, he imagined moving his right hand to fire a cannon, making sure not to actually move his hand.

The EEG electrodes picked up the brain signals of the "fire cannon!" thought and transmitted them to the other side of the UW campus.

There, Andrea Stocco of UW's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences was wearing a purple swim cap with a device, called a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) coil, placed directly over his left motor cortex, which controls the right hand's movement.

When the move-right-hand signal arrived from Rao, Stocco involuntarily moved his right index finger to push the space bar on the keyboard in front of him, as if firing the cannon. He said the feeling of his hand moving involuntarily was like that of a nervous tic.

"It was both exciting and eerie to watch an imagined action from my brain get translated into actual action by another brain," Rao said.

Other experts suggested the feat was not particularly impressive. It's possible to capture one of the few easy-to-recognize EEG signals and send "a simple shock ... into the other investigator's head," said Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh, who was not part of the research.

Rao agreed that what his colleague jokingly called a "Vulcan mind meld" reads only simple brain signals, not thoughts, and cannot be used on anyone unknowingly. But it might one day be harnessed to allow an airline pilot on the ground help someone land a plane whose own pilot is incapacitated.

The research has not been published in a scientific journal, something university spokeswoman Doree Armstrong admits is "a bit unusual." But she said the team knew other researchers are working on this same thing and they felt "time was of the essence."

Besides, she said, they have a video of the experiment which "they felt it could stand on its own." The video is here

The absence of a scientific publication that other researchers could scrutinize did not sit well with some of the nation's leading brain-computer-interface experts. All four of those reached by Reuters praised UW's Rao, but some were uneasy with the announcement and one called it "mostly a publicity stunt." The experiment was not independently verified.

(The story corrects funding source in fifth paragraph and eliminates reference to Skype in eighth)

(Reporting by Sharon Begley; editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Cynthia Osterman)

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Bigger and healthier: European men grow 11cm in a century

Workers cross London Bridge, with Tower Bridge seen behind, during the morning rush hour in London September 30, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Paul Hackett

By Kate Kelland

LONDON | Sun Sep 1, 2013 7:22pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - The average height of European men grew by a surprising 11 centimeters from the early 1870s to 1980, reflecting significant improvements in health across the region, according to new research published on Monday.

Contrary to expectations, the study also found that average height accelerated in the period spanning the two World Wars and the Great Depression, when poverty, food rationing and hardship of war might have been expected to limit people's growth.

The swift advance may have been due to people deciding to have fewer children in this period, the researchers said, and smaller family size has previously been found to be linked to increasing average height.

"Increases in human stature are a key indicator of improvements in the average health of populations," said Timothy Hatton, a professor economics at Britain's University of Essex who led the study.

He said the evidence - which shows the average height of a European male growing from 167 cm to 178 cm in a little over a 100 years - suggests an environment of improving health and decreasing disease "is the single most important factor driving the increase in height".

The study, published online in the journal Oxford Economic Papers, analyzed data on average men's height at around the age of 21 from the 1870s up to around 1980 in 15 European countries.

The study only looked at men, the researchers said, because extensive historical data on women's heights is hard to come by.

For the most recent decades, the data on men were mainly taken from height-by-age surveys, while for the earlier years the analysis used data for the heights of military conscripts and recruits.

On average, men's height had grown by 11 centimeters (cm) in just over a century, the researchers found, but there were differences from country to country.

In Spain, for example, average male height rose by around 12 cm from just under 163 cm in 1871-1875 to just under 175 cm in 1971-5, while in Sweden, men's average height increased by 10 cm from just over 170 cm to almost 180 cm in the same period.

The researchers found that in many European countries - including Britain and Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Germany - there was a "distinct quickening" in the pace of advance in the period spanning the two World Wars and the Great Depression.

"This is striking because the period largely predates the wide implementation of major breakthroughs in modern medicine and national health services," they wrote.

Hatton said one possible reason, alongside the decline in infant mortality, for the rapid growth of average male height in this period was that there was a strong downward trend in fertility at the time - and smaller family sizes have previously been found to be linked to increasing height.

Other height-boosting factors included higher per capita incomes, more sanitary housing and living conditions, better education about health and nutrition and better social services and health systems.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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