Further evidence that Mars once had oceans emerges

The European Space Agency (ESA) has provided more evidence that suggests the surface of Mars was once home to an ocean. Featuring ground-penetrating radar capabilities, the MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) radar aboard the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft has detected sediments like that seen on an ocean floor.

In 1877, with the aid of a 22 cm (8.6 in) telescope, Italian astronomerGiovanni Sciaparelli produced the first detailed map of Mars, which featured what he called canali. Although canali actually means "channels" in English, it was popularly mistranslated as "canals," which, along with books by Percival Lowell, helped foster the popular notion of water and life - including Martians - on the Red Planet's surface. Although these "canals" were later proven to be an optical illusion, these myths weren't dispelled until NASA's Mariner missions in the 1960's.

Yet more recent mapping efforts still point to there being liquid water on the planet's surface at some point in its history. It is within the boundaries of features tentatively identified in images from various spacecraft as shorelines that MARSIS detected sedimentary deposits reminiscent of an ocean floor.

"MARSIS penetrates deep into the ground, revealing the first 60 - 80 meters (197 - 262 ft) of the planet's subsurface," says Wlodek Kofman, leader of the radar team at the Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG). "Throughout all of this depth, we see the evidence for sedimentary material and ice."

The sediments detected by MARSIS are areas of low radar reflectivity, which typically indicates low-density granular materials that have been eroded away by water and carried to their final resting place.

"We interpret these as sedimentary deposits, maybe ice-rich. It is a strong new indication that there was once an ocean here," says Jérémie Mouginot, from IPAG and the University of California, Irvine.

Two oceans at different times in Mars' history have been proposed - one 4 billion years ago when warmer conditions prevailed, and one 3 billion years ago when geothermal activity may have caused subsurface ice to melt and flow into areas of low elevation.

Dr Mouginot estimates that this latter ocean would have lasted only a million years or less, with the water either being frozen in place underground again, or turned into vapor and released into the atmosphere.

"I don't think it could have stayed as an ocean long enough for life to form," he says, suggesting astrobiologists would have to look further back into Mars' history when liquid water existed for much longer periods.

But the ESA says the MARSIS findings provide some of the best evidence yet that large bodies of water once existed on the surface of Mars and that liquid water played a role in martian geological history.

"Previous Mars Express results about water on Mars came from the study of images and mineralogical data, as well as atmospheric measurements. Now we have the view from the subsurface radar," says Olivier Witasse, ESA's Mars Express Project Scientist. "This adds new pieces of information to the puzzle but the question remains: where did all the water go?"

The ESA says the Mars Express spacecraft, which was launched in 2003 and has been granted five mission extensions - the latest until 2014 - will continue its investigations with the hope of providing an answer.

Source: ESA

Earth-like planet discovered by Kepler mission

The ongoing search for Earth-like worlds has taken another promising step. On December 5, NASA announced the discovery of the planet most likely so far to sustain life outside of the Solar System. The exoplanet, given the undramatic name of Kepler 22b, was found by NASA's Kepler spacecraft as part of its mission to seek out Earth-type planets in our galaxy. Though Kepler 22b is not the first such planet to be detected in recent years, it is the first one orbiting a star similar to our Sun and at a distance where it is capable of possessing liquid water, which most scientists regard as essential for life to exist. Though this is a significant milestone, the question remains, how good a candidate for a second Earth is Kepler 22b? Could there be life there or is it a planetary blind alley?

In the zone

Kepler 22b is not exactly around the corner. It's located about 600 light years from Earth, orbiting the star Kepler 22, which is located between the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra. (For astronomy enthusiasts, the exact coordinates are Right Ascension 19h 16m 52.2sec and Declination +47deg 53min 4.2sec.)

With a magnitude of only a little less than 12, its star isn't even visible to the naked eye. However, this distant, dim little star is important because it's orbited by Kepler 22b - the first discovered exoplanet that matches the three major factors for sustaining life as we know it. First, it is roughly Earth-sized, as opposed to the super-Jupiter planets that dwarf even the largest planet in our Solar System and make up most of the discovered exoplanets, as those found outside our system are called. Second, it circles a star that is in the same major category as our Sun, which means that the star isn't too hot or too cold, hasn't too short an existence for life to evolve, and remains relatively stable without the sort of huge changes in energy output found in many variable stars. And third, the planet's orbit is similar to Earth's - there's only one star, so the orbit is stable, and it lies in what is called the habitable zone, a range of distances where the temperatures aren't too hot or too cold.

A giant camera

The discovery of Kepler 22b was part of NASA's US$600 million Kepler mission. Named after the German Astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who discovered the laws of planetary motion, the Kepler spacecraft was built by primary contractor Ball Aerospace & Technologies and launched from Cape Canaveral on March 7, 2009 aboard a Delta II rocket. Weighing 2,290 lbs (1,039 kg), Kepler was placed in a heliocentric orbit that trails behind the Earth with an orbital period of 372 days. The reason for this was to keep the spacecraft away from the Earth's light and gravity. That way Kepler's sensors could be made much more sensitive and the position of the craft much more stable, so it can keep pointing at one fixed spot in the sky.

Kepler is basically a giant camera. It has a 37.4 inch (0.97 m) aperture servicing a 55 inch (1.4 m) mirror and it has the largest resolution of any space camera with 95 mega-pixels and routinely downloads 100 gigabytes of data a month. But its purpose is not to take photographs. It doesn't send back beautiful images of the sort we associate with the Hubble space telescope. What it does is act as a photometer. In other words, it measures the brightness of stars and that is how it finds planets.

The idea is very simple. The stars that Kepler studies don't change in brightness very much, if at all. Think of them as being like a bare light bulb sitting on a stand in a darkened room. Now imagine that someone passes a small ball in front of the bulb. The ball isn't large enough to eclipse the bulb as the Moon does the Sun, but it does block part of the light. Even if you can't see the ball, you can detect the bulb looking slightly dimmer. If you have a photometer, a device for measuring brightness, you can measure exactly how much the bulb has dimmed and from that, you can calculate how large the ball is.

That's what Kepler does. Its photometer looks at stars, measures their brightness, and if a planet happens to pass in front of the star, it can measure how much the star's brightness dims and how fast it dims and returns to normal. With this information, scientists can then calculate how large the planet is and how far it orbits from its star.

How to find a living planet

Kepler's search for planets isn't random. In fact, it's very precise and well thought out. It continually points at one spot in the sky, scanning the constellations of Cygnus, Lyra and Draco. These were chosen for two reasons. First, they lie along the line of the Solar System's orbit around the center of the galaxy and second, this points Kepler at the "Goldilocks Zone" of our galaxy.

The Goldilocks Zone is a galactic version of the criteria used to determine if a planet can sustain life - only in this case, it applies to stars and is a little more complicated. It's based on the Rare Earth hypothesis, which states that the conditions for producing life on Earth fall inside of such a narrow range that any chance of finding other life-bearing planets can only hope to succeed if astronomers look for planets that fall inside of that range. Whether the Rare Earth hypothesis is true or not is, of course, open to debate, but NASA felt that using the hypothesis as a starting point would improve its chances.

In this case, the hypothesis says that there is only a narrow band of space inside the galaxy where planets like Earth can exist and sustain life. That 21 to 27 thousand light-year wide band is the one in which the Solar System orbits. Too close to the galactic center, and there is too much radiation, stars are too close together and there are too many heavy elements. Too far away, and there aren't enough heavy elements to form a planet like Earth. For a star to have an Earth-type planet, it must travel in a circular orbit within that band.

Using this hypothesis, the Kepler spacecraft therefore points at a nearby part of the galaxy where such stars are most likely to be found and the results so far have been good. Kepler has detected over 2,300 possible planets and 200 possible Earth-type planets with over 20 planets confirmed. However, only Kepler 22b has come the closest to being a candidate for having life.

Unfortunately, a candidate is all Kepler 22b is at the moment and there are still questions on how likely it is to be a second Earth. Some critics are outspoken in this regard with Don Pollacco, from Queen's University, Northern Ireland telling the BBC that he believes the announcement is merely a publicity stunt made as part of an effort to drum up additional funding as Kepler reaches the end of its three and a half year mission.

Is there life on Kepler 22b?

But is there life on Kepler 22b? The best answer is, perhaps, but save your money if you you're thinking about booking passage on the first colony ship. The reason is that sometimes one little number can change things completely. In this case, that number is 2.4.

True, Kepler 22b does orbit a star similar to our Sun and yes, it is at a comparable distance and it is indeed within the category of what astronomers class as "Earth type". However, this Earth-type planet has a radius 2.4 times that of the original. The Earth has a diameter of about 8,000 miles (13,000 km), that makes Kepler 22b a whopping 19,000 miles (31,000 km) in diameter. This makes it closer in size to the planet Neptune than Earth. That means that Kepler 22b is either a rocky planet with a gravity two and a half times greater than Earth (not impossible, but that raises all sorts of problems if true) or, as is more likely, the planet is probably a gas giant like Neptune with a methane atmosphere and an ocean of water, ammonia and methane ice covering a small, rocky core.

Still, that hasn't completely quashed mission optimism about the planet as Kepler team member Natalie Batalha speculates that, "it's not beyond the realm of possibility that life could exist in such an ocean." However, life on a gas giant remains as much in the realm of speculation as life hiding in a crater of the Moon.

Another problem with life on Kepler 22b is that, even if it was exactly the same size as Earth, the criteria used to evaluate it still doesn't allow astronomers to regard the planet as a candidate for life except in the broadest of terms. For example, its star, Kepler 22 is only broadly similar to the Sun, which is a G2 star where Kepler 22 is a G5. It's a quarter smaller than the Sun and a quarter colder. Kepler 22b is a quarter closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun, so this compensates somewhat, but the difference in the makeup of the two stars may be significant.

Then there is the question of the orbit of the planet. How eccentric is it? Is it circular like the Earth's or is it more elliptical, which may cause radical climactic variations with winters where it snows carbon dioxide and summers where water boils. Does the planet have a moon? How many? How big? How strong are its tides, if any? What about water? How much? How saline is it? Does the planet rotate? How fast? Does it have a magnetic field to guard against radiation? What about an atmosphere? How active is the planet? Is it a dead lump like the Moon or is it a volcanic nightmare like Jupiter's satellite Io?

Even being in the habitable zone only goes so far. True, the Earth sits comfortably inside the Solar System's zone, but so do Venus and Mars. The former is a hell of temperatures hot enough to melt lead, sulfuric acid rains and an atmosphere like the bottom of the ocean. Meanwhile, Mars is a dead, frozen world with hardly any atmosphere, almost completely dry, seared with ultraviolet radiation on a daily basis and host to sand storms of unbelievable savagery.

This isn't even to mention what else might be in the Kepler 22 system that might be wreaking havoc. The planet could be bombarded by comets or it may be in its orbit only temporarily thanks to the gravitational pull of another giant planet that threw it there a few hundred thousand years ago and may toss it out again a few millennia in the future.

None of this takes away from the importance of what the Kepler mission has uncovered. The data from the Kepler spacecraft has vastly increased our understanding of planet formation and the nature of planetary systems - not to mention finally giving astronomers hard numbers that they can use in estimating the chances of life elsewhere after centuries of having nothing but guesses. Even if Kepler 22b proves to be another Neptune, it has brought us a step closer to finding another Earth.

Mars Curiosity Rover successfully launched

On Saturday at 10:02 a.m. EST an Atlas V rocket carrying its precious cargo, the Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover, took off successfully from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral. A statement from NASA Project Manager Peter Theisinger confirmed that all had gone according to plan. "The spacecraft is in communication, thermally stable and power positive," he said. "We're on our way to Mars".

Through Friday and into Saturday morning meteorologists had predicated a 70 percent chance of suitable launch conditions, before a one-hour 43-minute launch window was finalized.

A series of updates from the Curiosity rover's official twitter feeddocumented the build-up to the launch, followed by take off and first stages of its 352-million-mile trip to the red planet that will take more than eight months. "It's a new dawn, it's a new day, and I'm feeeeelin' good" was the message (paraphrasing Nina Simone) as MSL reported a clean bill of health back to NASA after communications had been established six minutes into the mission.

But it wasn't all plain sailing during the mission's first hour, with the Register reporting intermittent interruptions in the reception of MSL telemetry, though the problem seemed to be resolved promptly and with no mission-critical systems affected.

The launch technology that saw Curiosity on its way is an expendable system with two distinct stages. The first, to achieve Earth orbit, utilizes the kerosene and liquid oxygen RD-180 engine of the Atlas V rocket delivering 850,000 pounds of thrust, supplemented by four solid rocket boosters each delivering an additional thrust of 306,000 pounds. After separation from the main rocket, the Centaur-3 upper stage carries the payload out of Earth orbit with the assistance of its liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen RL-10 engine providing another 22,3000 pounds of thrust. Centaur then sets its cargo on course, in this case Gale Crater, Mars, before leaving the payload to its interplanetary cruise.

The Atlas and Centaur systems have been in use, albeit with countless iterative improvements, since the 1950s and 60s and there's something almost poignant that such reliant, tried and tested technology should carry the bleeding edge Curiosity - "the world's most advanced scientific laboratory" according to NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden - into space.

We've discussed the MSL mission in some detail here at Gizmag, but to recap, the purpose of the $2.5 billion mission is, in the words of Project Scientist John Grotzinger at a post-launch briefing, to look for "ancient habitable environments." After a sky-crane enabled touchdown (MSL is too heavy to rely on airbags), Curiosity will begin its two-Earth-year/one-Mars-year mission of drilling and gathering Martian rocks and soils, and analysing them with its suite of ten instruments. Its goal is to seek evidence of life-favoring conditions in the distant past.

All being well, the Curiosity rover will touch down on August 6, 2012. "I think this mission will be a great one", said Grotzinger, "it is an important next step in NASA's overall goal to address the issue of life in the universe." Keep an eye on the Gizmag Mars tag for updates on the Curiosity rover and subsequent Mars missions such as MAVEN in the coming months. Perhaps it won't be too long now before you're reading concrete plans for a manned mission to Mars.

Source: NASA Science News.

Initiative challenges young minds to design Space Station science experiment

YouTube and Lenovo have joined forces to launch a global initiative that challenges youngsters to design a science experiment which can be performed in space. Two winning entries chosen by a panel of scientists, astronauts and educators - including A Brief History of Time author professor Stephen Hawking - will have their experiments conducted by astronauts aboard the International Space Station and live streamed on YouTube for the world to see.

The YouTube Space Lab competition is now open to 14 to 18 year-old students around the globe, who are being asked to submit a two minute YouTube video outlining their experimental proposal to the Space Labvideo channel. Each video presentation must include the scientific question that the entrant wants answered, an educated guess at what that answer might be, an outline of the method used to conduct the experiment and the expected results. Entries can be individual or team efforts, but the latter are restricted to groups of three.

Three years of planning

The idea for the challenge came from a Google brainstorming session three years ago. To help make it a reality, YouTube and Lenovo have partnered with private space exploration company Space Adventures, and space agencies including NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Students have until December 7, 2011 to get their proposals uploaded, after which the judges will deliberate before announcing six regional finalists. These lucky youngsters will gather in Washington, D.C. next March, where they will be treated to a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop, experience aZero-G flight and awarded other prizes. One winner from the 14-16 age group and another from ages 17-18 will then get the chance to have their experiments undertaken 250 miles above the Earth.

Global winners will also get to choose a once-in-a-lifetime space experience as a prize. The lucky students can either take a tour of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency facilities and then watch their experiment blast off from Tanegashima Island, Japan, in a rocket bound for the International Space Station some time during the northern summer of 2012, or receive astronaut training (upon reaching the age of 18) at the training center for Russian cosmonauts in Star City, Russia.

PSLV-C18 Successfully Launched Megha-Tropiques

An Indo-French satellite Megha-Tropiques was today successfully placed in orbit by PSLV-C18 rocket in a perfect launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre as part of a key mission that will help understand global tropical weather.

Along with Megha-Tropiques, Indian Space Research Organisation's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch vehicle (PSLV) also shot into space three nano satellites--VesselSat - 1 from Luxembourg, SRMSat from SRM University, Chennai, and Jugnu from IIT, Kanpur.

The four satellites were injected into orbit one after another in clockwork precision about 26 minutes after PSLV lifted off in a plume of smoke at 11 AM, in a mission described as a "grand success" by ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan."PSLV-C18 has been a grand success. Very precisely, four satellites were injected in space orbit and the difference between what we planned and what we achieved is just two km over an altitude of 867 km," he told scientists after the launch.

The rocket first injected the 1000-kg Megha-Tropiques satellite into an orbit of 867 km altitude at an inclination of 20 degrees with respect to the equator. Megha-Tropiques carries three payloads - two by French space agency CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) and one jointly by ISRO and CNES - and a complementary scientific instrument.

ISRO has built the satellite at a cost of Rs 80 crore with "equal contribution" from CNES. Megha-Tropiques (Megha meaning cloud in Sanskrit and Tropiques denoting tropics in French) will investigate the contribution of water cycle in the tropical atmosphere to climate dynamics.

Information beamed by Megha-Tropiques is expected to benefit not only India, but also all countries in the Indian Ocean region and other parts of the world.

Jugnu, a three-kg satellite, has a camera system to take pictures of the Earth to monitor vegetation, reservoirs, lakes and ponds. Data received from it will be studied with a tracking system installed at IIT-Kanpur, and pictures and information received will be used for research.

'Jugnu' will also help gather information on floods, drought and disaster management. SRMSat, developed by SRM University and ISRO, weighs 10.9 kg and aims to monitor carbon dioxide and water vapour using a grating spectrometer.

Luxembourg's Luxspace developed and built VesselSat-1 weighs 28.7 kg and carries receivers to detect signals automatically transmitted by vessels at sea in the region covered by the satellite footprint. Today's mission is ISRO's third successful one this year from India, besides another from French Guyana. This is the Indian space agency's 20th successful venture using PSLV.

The simultaneous 50-hour countdown commenced On October 10, with the Launch Authorisation Board clearing the launch.

April 12, 1961: A remarkable date in human history

A remarkable milestone in human history took place exactly 50 years ago today when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. During the flight of Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, Gagarin, then 27, completed a single orbit of Earth in approximately 108 minutes. His flight begun at Baikonur cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan and ended with his safe arrival by parachute in the Saratov region of central Russia, where he was famously welcomed back to our planet with a hospitable offer of bread and milk by Anna Takhtarova and her four-year-old granddaughter Margarita.

The era was one of fierce competition between the US and the USSR, with the link between space exploration technology and military technology being all too clear – the Vostok rocket that took Gagarin on his pioneering journey for example, was adopted from a Soviet Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the R-7 Semyorka.

The USSR had earlier placed the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit on 4 October 1957, effectively starting the "space race" which culminated in the Apollo 11 moon landing of 20 July 1969.

Less than a month after Gagarin's 1961 flight, the U.S. put astronaut Alan Shephard into space aboard a Redstone rocket, which was also adapted from a ballistic missile. Later flights would show a spirit of increased co-operation between these superpowers as humankind set out to explore the cosmos.

The son of a carpenter, Yuri Gagarin was born on 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino near, Gzhatsk; which would be renamed Gagarin in the cosmonaut's honor in 1968, the year of his tragic death in a flying accident in a Soviet Air Force MiG-15.

His flight of 50 years ago stands out as a truly significant moment in humankind's efforts to explore our Universe, and a truly significant technological achievement by the former USSR.

Robonaut 2- the first humanoid robot to space

Robonaut 2 will become the first humanoid robot to head into space next month when the space shuttle Discovery blasts-off. R2 has been waiting for this trip for a while, but will have to wait a little longer to get its “space-legs” since only its torso, head and arms are making the initial journey. Because R2’s legs are still being tested, they’ll be sent up on a later launch, as will a few other upgrades that are designed to ultimately allow the robot to help astronauts with extra-vehicular activities (EVAs).

Even without its legs, R2 will be kept busy getting up to speed on various tasks. Initially the legless R2 will be attached to a fixed pedestal and learn to use a task board, which contains various switches, knobs and connectors like the ones astronauts operate. To familiarize itself with the task board, the astronauts will mock up various chores for R2 to master.

But it’s when R2 is fitted with its legs that it will really start pulling its weight. They will allow the robot to move around inside the space station to perform mundane tasks such as wiping handrails and vacuuming air filters, freeing the astronauts up for more important tasks.

As R2’s hands need to be free to carry cleaning supplies and tools, its legs have special toes that plug into the space station walls so it can learn to climb without using its hands. It is also important for R2 to master its hands-free climbing skills before it graduates to performing EVAs.

"R2 will practice indoors first because if it falls off inside an astronaut can pick it back up for another try. With a misstep outside, R2 could end up dangling helplessly out in space on a tether," says Rob Ambrose of NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Once R2 gets its climbing badge, it will “level up” as it were, with a new computer and software enhancements to be sent to the station and exchanged for the one currently in the robot's chest. Currently R2 has to be plugged in to receive its power, but the ground crew is also working on a battery to give R2 more freedom.

Once R2 receives all these upgrades it will be used to set up EVA worksites before the crew heads out. Much like a nurse prepping the operating theater for a surgeon, R2 can identify what needs to be done and lay out the tools needed by the astronauts so they can get the job done more quickly.

NASA says R2 can also act as a first responder in the case of an emergency. If a problem arises outside, the astronauts must suit up and depressurize in the airlock for hours before heading out. R2 will be able to head out immediately and the astronauts can use its eyes – two video cameras that give it three-dimensional vision – to view the problem and determine the steps and tools needed to address it.

The beauty of R2 is that, even once it has received all its currently planned upgrades, it can still “evolve.”

"There are so many possibilities for the future," says Ambrose. "For instance, we could add wheels so R2 could scout a potential landing site on a planet or an asteroid or set up a workstation or habitat there. Someday R2 may even get a jetpack! But we have to crawl before we can fly."

NASA is targeting a February 24 launch for the space shuttle Discovery that will see it carrying, in addition to R2, six astronauts and new tools and spare supplies to the International Space Station. It will be the final mission for Discovery and the third-to-last space shuttle mission planned before NASA retires the three current space shuttles

NASA’s Solar Shield to mitigate damage to power grid from severe solar storms

The solar storms that cause the stunning aurora borealis and aurora australis (or northern and southern polar lights) also have the potential to knock out telecommunications equipment and navigational systems and cause blackouts of electrical grids. With the frequency of the sun’s flares following an 11-year cycle of solar activity and the next solar maximum expected around 2013, scientists are bracing for an overdue, once-in-100 year event that could cause widespread power blackouts and cripple electricity grids around the world. It sounds like an insurmountable problem but a new NASA project called “Solar Shield” is working to develop a forecasting system that can mitigate the impacts of such events and keep the electrons flowing.

In 1859 the most powerful solar storm in recorded history, known as the Solar Superstorm, or the Carrington Event, caused telegraph systems all over Europe and North America to fail. Today, the effects of severe solar storms are much more noticeable with the total length of high-voltage power lines crisscrossing North America increasing nearly tenfold since the 1950s. This has turned power grids into giant antennas for the geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) – the ground level manifestation of space weather that can overload circuits, trip breakers, and in extreme cases melt the windings of heavy-duty transformers, causing permanent damage.

Just such an event occurred in Quebec on March 13, 1989, when a geomagnetic storm much less severs than the Carrington Event knocked out power across the entire province for more than nine hours. In addition to Quebec, the storm damaged transformers in New Jersey and Great Britain and caused more than 200 power anomalies across the continental U.S.

Although many utility companies have taken steps to reinforce their grids, with demand for power growing faster than the grids themselves modern networks are stressed to the limit and vulnerable to the effects of a severe geomagnetic storms. With the possibility of long-lasting large scale blackouts a real possibility due to widespread transformer damage the Solar Shield project leader Antti Pulkkinen believes the project can “zero in on specific transformers and predict which of them are going to be hit hardest by a severe space weather event.”
How it works

When a massive burst of solar wind, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), is detected rising from the sun’s surface and headed for Earth, images from SOHO and NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft would allow a 3D model of the CME to be created and predict when it will arrive. While the CME is making its way to Earth – a trip that usually takes 24 to 48 hours (although the Carrington Event CME took just 18 hours as an earlier CME had cleared the way) – the Solar Shield team would prepare to calculate ground currents.

About 30 minutes before impact the CME would sweep past ACE, a spacecraft stationed 1.5 million km upstream from Earth. Sensors aboard ACE would make in situ measurements of the CME’s speed, density and magnetic field and transmit this data to the Solar Shield team at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

"We quickly feed the data into CCMC computers," says Pulkkinen. "Our models predict fields and currents in Earth's upper atmosphere and propagate these currents down to the ground." With less than 30 minutes to go, Solar Shield can issue an alert to utilities with detailed information about GICs.

Solar Shield is still only experimental and hasn’t yet been field-tested during a severe geomagnetic storm. A few utility companies have installed current monitors at key locations in the power grid to help the team check their predictions but, with more data allowing the team to more quickly test and improve the system, they are hoping more power companies join the effort. A few good solar storms would help too with the sun being mostly quiet during the past year – something like the calm before the storm.

Space tourism takes another leap forward with plans for commercial space station/hotel

Out of financial necessity, Russia was one of the innovators when it came to the burgeoning field of space tourism, with American businessman and former JPL scientist Dennis Tito becoming the first space tourist in mid-2001 when he spent nearly eight days in orbit on the Russian Soyuz TM-32, the International Space Station (ISS), and Soyuz TM-31. Following Russia’s halting of orbital space tourism earlier this year due to an increase in the ISS crew size, private Russian company, Orbital Technologies, has now announced plans to build, launch and operate what could be the world’s first commercial space station (CSS). It envisions the station will be used by professional crews and corporate researchers to conduct scientific experiments, as well as private citizens looking for an out of this world holiday destination.


To be built by Russian spacecraft manufacturer RSC Energia, the CSS would be man-tended, with a crew capability of up to seven people, with the capability to expand the crew size over time. It would be serviced by the Russian Soyez and Progress spacecraft, as well as other human and cargo spacecraft that are expected to be in operation in the next decade. Orbital Technologies says such adaptability will be possible through the station’s unified docking system that will be compatible with any commercial crew and cargo capability developed in the U.S., Europe and China.

The CSS will be placed within 100 km (62 miles) of the ISS in order to minimize the energy required to transfer crew and cargo between the two stations and maximize the opportunities for commerce and cooperation. Its proximity will also allow the CSS to serve as an emergency refuge for the ISS crew if necessary.
"There is a possibility for the ISS crew to leave their station for several days. For example, if a required maintenance procedure or a real emergency were to occur, without the return of the ISS crew to Earth, habitants could use the CSS as a safe haven,” said Alexey Krasnov, Head of Manned Spaceflight Department, Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation.
The first module of the CSS will measure just 20 cubic meters (706 cubic feet) and will comprise four cabins. Despite the tight fit, the planned module will offer more comforts than the ISS and will feature large portholes providing a view of Earth that would be hard to beat.

Aside from being aimed at well-to-do individuals and people working for private companies wanting to conduct research in space, the CSS is also designed to serve as a staging outpost for human space flight missions beyond low earth orbit.
Orbital Technologies isn’t the first company to announce plans for a commercial space station designed to serve as a hotel. In 2007, Galactic Suite Design announced its plans to develop an “orbital hotel chain” starting with a luxury space resort that was due for completion in 2012. Although the company has already taken bookings, no hardware has yet been built or tested and critics have voiced skepticism about the veracity of the project.
Although the CSS is still at the design and development stage, Orbital Technologies has already signed cooperation agreements with RSC Energia and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) for the project. It also claims that funding for the development and deployment of the CSS is already in place and is therefore proceding “on an expeditious schedule for the initiation of station operations” and plans to launch the first module of the CSS in 2015-2016. It hasn’t announced any potential pricing but if you’re interested in booking a room you might want to start saving those millions now.