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Mars Base

Venerable Voyager 2 Spacecraft Gets a Tune-up 14 billion Kilometers From Earth - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-billion-kilometers-from-earth

scibyte23

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • engineers at JPL sent commands across 14 billion kilometers (9 billion miles) out to Voyager 2
  • enabling it to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft
  • This will reduce the amount of power that the 34-year-old probe needs to operate,
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  • hopefully — the power to operate for at least another decade
  • The move was a little risky
  • backup roll thrusters were previously unused
  • been idle and out in the harsh environment of space for 32 years
  • Voyager 2 will save about 11.8 watts of electric power by turning off the heater that kept the hydrazine fuel to the primary thrusters warm
  • Voyager 1 and 2 are each equipped with six sets, or pairs, of thrusters to control the pitch, yaw and roll motions of the spacecraft. With this latest command, both spacecraft are now using all three sets of their backup thrusters
  • The primary roll thrusters now turned off fired more than 318,000 times. Voyager 1 changed to the backup for this same component after 353,000 pulses in 2004
  • energy generated by Voyager 2′s Plutonium 238 nuclear power source continues to decline, and is now down to about 270 watts from the 470 watts being produced when the spacecraft launched in 1977
  • at the rate of decay, the Voyager spacecraft won’t have sufficient electric power to its instruments sometime by the mid-2020′s.
  • Using solar power for a spacecraft traveling beyond Jupiter is impractical
  • This latest tune-up will hopefully get Voyager 2 a little farther while she’s still able to communicate with Earth
Mars Base

Jupiter Moon's Buried Lakes Evoke Antarctica | Jupiter Moon Europa | Subsurface Lakes P... - 0 views

www.space.com/arth-antarctica-analogues.html

scibyte22 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Patches of broken ice unique to the moon have puzzled scientists for over a decade
  • Some have argued they are signs of a subterranean ocean breaking through, while others believe that the crust is too thick for the water to pierce
  • studies of ice formations in Antarctica and Iceland have provided clues to the creation of these puzzling features
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  • , a combination of these elements could very well be at work on Jupiter's moon
  • "It looks like crushed ice,
  • In Iceland, volcanoes lay beneath the ice. Their heat melts the base of glaciers and ice sheets, causing the surface to buckle in on itself and allowing stress fractures to form
  • there's no evidence for volcanoes on Europa, and the makeup of the ice is likely different from Earth'
  • irregular areas contain domes and iceberglike blocks that no theoretical models have been able to replicate
  • "On Earth, it is the volcano [melting the ice]," Schmidt said. "On Europa, it is the warm ice plume coming up from below."
  • estimated that it contained as much water as all of the North America's Great Lakes combined, about 1.5 miles (3 kilometers) beneath the surface.
  • One such lake
  • several liquid lakes are likely to exist near the surface today
  • The material cycled into the ocean via these lakes may make Europa's ocean even more habitable than previously imagined
  • The lakes may even be habitats themselves
Mars Base

Pristine reptile fossil holds new information about aquatic adaptations - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ne-reptile-fossil-aquatic.html

scibyte22

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Extinct animals hide their secrets well, but an exceptionally well-preserved fossil of an aquatic reptile, with traces of soft tissue present, is providing scientists a new window into the behavior of these ancient swimmers
  • from the mosasaur family, a group of reptiles that lived between 65 and 98 million years ago
  • found in Western Kansas, and was submerged under a shallow sea at the time of the mosasaur's existence.
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  • analysis of mosasaur locomotion had been limited by a lack of soft tissue fossils, which was crucial for the scientists to truly understand the degree of aquatic adaptation that the creature had achieved
  • new findings, which include scales and skin impressions, suggest that the mosasaur was able to minimize its frictional drag in the water.
  • features suggest that it held the front of its body somewhat rigid during swimming, leading it to depend on the rear of its body and tail for propulsion
Mars Base

Ultrathin flexible brain implant offers unique look at seizures - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ible-brain-implant-unique.html

scibyte21

shared by Mars Base on 14 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have developed a flexible brain implant that could one day be used to treat epileptic seizures
  • a type of electrode array that conforms to the brain's surface – to take an unprecedented look at the brain activity underlying seizures
  • Someday, these flexible arrays could be used to pinpoint where seizures start in the brain and perhaps to shut them down
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  • These flexible electrode arrays could significantly expand surgical options for patients with drug-resistant epilepsy
  • In an animal model, the researchers saw spiral waves of brain activity not previously observed during a seizure
  • Similar waves are known to ripple through cardiac muscle during a type of life-threatening heart rhythm called ventricular fibrillation.
  • A stimulating electrode array might one day be designed to suppress seizure activity, working like a pacemaker for the brain
  • The brain contains billions of interconnected neurons that normally transmit electrical pulses
  • During a seizure, these pulses occur in abnormal, synchronized, rapid-fire bursts that can cause convulsions, loss of consciousness and other symptoms
  • is made of a pliable material that is only about one quarter the thickness of a human hair
  • It contains 720 silicon nanomembrane transistors in a multiplexed 360-channel array, which allow for minimal wiring and dense packing of the electrodes
  • The flexibility of the array allows it to conform to the brain's complex shape, even reaching into grooves that are inaccessible to conventional arrays
  • the array could be rolled into a tube and delivered into the brain through a small hole rather than by opening the skull
  • The researchers tested the flexible array on cats. Although mice and rats are used for most neuroscience research, cats have larger brains that are anatomically more like the human brain, with simplified folds and grooves
Mars Base

Exceptional Memory Linked To Bulked-up Parts Of Brain - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...ed_to_bulked-up_parts_of_brain

scibyte21

shared by Mars Base on 14 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • some real-life people can remember every day of their lives in detail
  • Those superrememberers have more bulk in certain parts of their brains, possibly explaining the remarkable ability to recall minutiae from decades ago
  • brain region involved in such incredible recall has been implicated in obsessive-compulsive disorder
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  • OCD and superior memory might have a common architecture in the brain
  • Scientists have long studied people with memory deficits, but there haven’t been many studies on people with exceptional memories
  • 11 people who scored off the charts for autobiographical memory. These people could effortlessly remember, for instance, what they were doing on November 2, 1989, and could also tell you that it was a Thursday
  • Using brain scans, researchers found that people with supermemories had larger brain regions associated with memory
  • a brain structure called the lentiform nucleus, a cone-shaped mass in the core of the brain, was bigger in people with exceptional memories
  • This brain area has been linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder
  • The subjects haven’t been clinically evaluated for OCD, but LePort says that there are some similarities
  • The ability to organize their memories by dates seems to relieve anxiety
  • These people could encode information more effectively, or have a better system of retrieving it, or both
  • Though no genetic tests have been performed, some of the volunteers have reported that family members share extraordinary powers of recall
  • The volunteers are now keeping detailed diaries, so that the scientists can test whether particular kinds of memories are better suited to recollection. People might be better at remembering emotional memories, for instance
Mars Base

Glooko app offers diabetics easier self-checks - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...betics-easier-self-checks.html

scibyte21

shared by Mars Base on 11 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Glooko helps diabetics check their blood sugar daily. Glooko is a Palo Alto startup that presents its core product as two items: a free-to-download logbook available at iTunes and a fee-charged cable, sold separately, at $39.95 from Amazon
  • MeterSync cable device. You plug it into the meter and the phone, and that is all.
  • the record-keeping features are able to carry information beyond meter readings. The user can generate a more informative record of the condition, by noting down varied factors that affect blood glucose.
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  • Information from the logbook can then be emailed or faxed as a 14-day summary to the doctor
  • The patient can mark off notes about whether the reading was done before or after a meal, the number of carbs consumed, or can click on a predefined list of lifestyle factors
  • nearly 26 million adults and children in the United States -- or 8.3 percent of the population -- have diabetes.
Mars Base

Battered Asteroid Lutetia a Rare Relic of Earth's Birth | Asteroids & Comets | Earth Fo... - 0 views

www.space.com/eroid-lutetia-earth-birth.html

scibyte21 Lutetia

shared by Mars Base on 11 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The oddball asteroid Lutetia is a rocky remnant of the material that formed Earth, Venus and Mercury about 4.5 billion years ago, a new study suggests
  • Its composition suggests it likely formed close to the sun in the same cloud of material that eventually coalesced into the inner solar system's rocky planets.
  • then it was booted out to its current location in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, most likely after a run-in with a young planet
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  • Lutetia, which is about 62 miles (100 kilometers) across
  • Lutetia's spectrum matched that of one particular class of meteorite called enstatite chondrites, which are known to date from the early solar system
  • Enstatite chondrites are thought to have formed close to the sun and to have served as building blocks for the rocky planets, especially Earth, Venus and Mercury, researchers said.
  • The implication is that Lutetia also originated close to the sun, not out in the main asteroid belt where it currently sits
  • Lutetia's birthplace makes the space rock pretty special. Astronomers have estimated that just 2 percent of the bodies that formed where it likely did ended up in the main asteroid belt.
Mars Base

Outlook Grim for Stranded Russian Mars Moon Probe | Russia Phobos-Grunt Mars Moon Missi... - 0 views

www.space.com/n-mars-moon-probe-outlook.html

scibyte21 Phobos-Grunt

shared by Mars Base on 11 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Attempts to contact the beleaguered Phobos-Grunt spacecraft overnight Thursday (Nov. 10) have failed
  • the spacecraft could fall back to Earth around Dec. 3
  • translated from its original Russian, suggested that if Phobos-Grunt does fall back to Earth, it would likely not fall over Russia
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  • spacecraft's orbit carries it between the latitudes of 51.4 degrees north and south of the equator, a region that includes the United States, China, Africa, Japan, Ukraine and parts of southwestern Europe
Mars Base

Swift Satellite Captures Asteroid 2005 YU55′s Tumbling Flyby - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...roid-2005-yu55s-tumbling-flyby

scibyte21 YU55

shared by Mars Base on 11 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The Swift Telescope – better known for its study of high-energy outbursts and cosmic explosions – was able to observe the flyby of 2005 YU55
  • Swift’s ultraviolet and X-ray capability gives scientists a unique perspective on comets and asteroids
  • This isn’t the first time Swift has made observations of passing comets and asteroids
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  • the spacecraft has observed ten asteroids, including Vesta
  • The challenge with 2005 YU55 was its rapid motion across the sky, which was much too fast for Swift to track
  • the team trained the spacecraft’s optics at two locations along the asteroid’s predicted path and let it streak through the field
  • The 27-minute-long image was effectively sliced into short 10-second-long exposures, which then were combined into a movie
  • The result is a movie of 2005 YU55 at ultraviolet wavelengths unobtainable from ground-based telescopes
  • this movie is a treasure trove of data that will help them better understand how this asteroid is put together, information that may help make predictions of its motion more secure for centuries to come
Mars Base

Russia Races to Save Mars Moon Probe from Space Junk Fate | Russia Phobos-Grunt Mars Mo... - 0 views

www.space.com/ars-moon-probe-space-junk.html

Phobos-Grunt scibyte21

shared by Mars Base on 11 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • "I think we have lost the Phobos-Grunt," Vladimir Uvarov, a former space official at the Russian Defense Ministry, told the Russian daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta today (Nov. 10), according to ABC News. "It looks like a serious flaw. The past experience shows that efforts to make the engines work will likely fail."
  • There have been conflicting news reports as to how long the Russians have before the spacecraft's batteries run out, ranging from two days to two weeks
  • The ambitious flight marks Russia's first attempt at an interplanetary mission since 1996.
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  • Phobos-Grunt is in a safe, so-called parking orbit, and there is little danger of it colliding with other spacecraft or satellites
  • The space station is above that orbit, and the space station is one of the lowest spacecraft in orbit
  • The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is tracking without difficulty both the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft and its associated Zenit 2 second stage
  • This information is also available to Russian experts. NASA hopes that control of the spacecraft can still be achieved and that it can be sent on its proper path to Mars
  • a rough estimate, the lifetime is measured at several weeks to a few months at that altitude, but probably not much more than that
  • even though the spacecraft is still full of fuel. If the probe cannot be saved, Russian flight controllers have the option of venting out the onboard fuel into space.
  • even if it's full of fuel and it re-enters — it will break up in atmospheric re-entry, which does not really pose a hazard.
Mars Base

Prehistoric Horses Came In Leopard Print - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...c_horses_came_in_leopard_print

scibyte21

shared by Mars Base on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • A new analysis of DNA from the remains of 31 horses found in Europe and Siberia suggests that prehistoric horses came in bay, black and leopard-spotted at least 16,000 years ago
  • Previous genetic studies had suggested that horses were either bay or black before domestication, and more elaborate patterns emerged as a result of breeding selection imposed by humans
  • In new study published
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  • show that some prehistoric horses really did sport spots
  • 31 horses studied, 18 were bay, seven were black and six carried genetic variants that produce a leopard spotting pattern
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