National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Scientists racing the clock have snapped a photo of a gamma-ray burst event one minute after the explosion, capturing for the first time a particularly fast-fading type of "dark" burst, which comprises about half of all gamma-ray bursts. A gamma-ray burst announces the birth of a new black hole; it is the most powerful type of explosion known, second only to the Big Bang in total energy release. This latest finding may double the number of gamma-ray bursts available for study and rattle a few theories as well, said scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, based on an X-ray image taken by the MIT-built High Energy Transient Explorer (HETE) satellite, the first satellite dedicated to spotting gamma-ray bursts.
Teams of astronomers at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley have discovered methane clouds near the south pole of Titan. Titan is Saturn's largest moon, larger than the planet Mercury, and is the only moon in our solar system with a thick atmosphere. Like Earth's atmosphere, the atmosphere on Titan is mostly nitrogen. Unlike Earth, Titan is inhospitable to life due to the lack of atmospheric oxygen and its extremely cold surface temperatures (-183 C; -297 F). Along with nitrogen, Titan's atmosphere contains a significant amount of methane. Earlier spectroscopic observations had hinted at the existence of clouds on Titan, but gave no clue as to their location.
Indian and British researchers say they have successfully isolated microorganisms living in the upper atmosphere, as high as 40 km up. Whether the organisms originate on Earth or are "seeding" the planet from passing comets is the subject of some debate. "Contamination is always a possibility in such studies but the 'internal logic' of the findings points strongly to the organisms being isolated in space, at a height of 41km," said one of the lead researchers. "Of course the results would have been more readily accepted and lauded by critics had we isolated novel organisms, or ones with NASA written on them! "
Researchers drilling into Lake Vida, an Antarctic "ice-block" lake, have found the lake isn't really an ice block at all. In the December 16 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reveals that Antarctic Lake Vida may represent a previously unknown ecosystem, a frigid, "ice-sealed," lake that contains the thickest non-glacial lake ice cover on Earth and water seven times saltier than seawater. Because of the arid, chilled environment in which it resides, scientists believe the lake may be an important template for the search for evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars and other icy worlds.
Lobes of unexpectedly hot gas speeding away from a black hole in our galaxy have been discovered with NASA 's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The high temperature and the distance of the lobes from the black hole indicate that violent collisions are occurring between clumps of gas expelled from the vicinity of the black hole. A key finding was evidence indicating rapidly moving hot iron atoms. "Just like a super-highway, it's a dangerous world out there," said Simone Migliari on the University of Amsterdam, lead author on a paper from a September 6, 2002 issue of Science magazine. "Blobs of gas are getting rear-ended at speeds in excess of a hundred million miles per hours!"
Building the next Starship Enterprise may have just gotten a little simpler. NASA has announced what it says is an efficient, timely, revolutionary process that may help design the next generation of space vehicles. Engineers at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, in collaboration with astronauts from NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, are using the Virtual Flight Rapid Integration Test Environment (VF-RITE) to develop and evaluate vehicle designs that may eventually ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The new process quickly and efficiently incorporates virtual test-flight data into the design process, creating a continuous dialog between test pilots and vehicle designers.
NASA's Galileo spacecraft continues to deliver surprises with the discovery that Jupiter's potato-shaped inner moon, named Amalthea, appears to have a very low density, indicating it is full of holes. "The density is unexpectedly low," said Dr. John D. Anderson, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Amalthea is apparently a loosely packed pile of rubble." The empty gaps between solid chunks likely take up more of the moon's total volume than the solid pieces, and even the chunks are probably material that is not dense enough to fit some theories about the origin of Jupiter's moons. "Amalthea now seems more likely to be mostly rock with maybe a little ice, rather than a denser mix of rock and iron," said JPL's Dr. Torrence Johnson, project scientist for Galileo.
A team of researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the Royal Observatory of Belgium has apparently solved a recently observed mystery regarding changes to the physical shape of Earth and its gravity field. The answer, they found, appears to lie in the melting of sub-polar glaciers and mass shifts in the Southern, Pacific and Indian Oceans associated with global-scale climate changes.
A technology designed to restore vision in patients suffering from age-related blindness will be demonstrated by a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley today. Developed by NASA Ames in conjunction with the Stanford University School of Medicine, the "Vision Chip" may help improve age-related macular degeneration, the number one cause of blindness in the elderly. "Nanotechnology that could restore vision is an exciting example of how NASA science and engineering, origially intended for outer space, can return enormous dividends for everyday life here on Earth," said Dr. David J. Loftus, a member of both the Life Sciences Division and the Integrated Product Team on Devices and Nanotechnology at NASA Ames.
A unique design for self-organizing robots controlled by "hormonal" software is moving toward space. At the Robosphere 2002 conference held at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley November 14-15, Wei-Min Shen of the USC School of Engineering's Information Sciences Institute (ISI) presented an overview of an audacious project to have pieces of the proposed half-mile-long Space Solar Power System satellite put themselves together--self-assemble--without the help of astronauts.
NASA Hubble Space Telescope's crisp view has allowed an international team of astronomers to apply a previously unproven technique (astrometry) for making a precise measurement of the mass of a planet outside our solar system. The Hubble results place the planet at 1.89 to 2.4 times the mass of Jupiter, our solar system's largest world. Previous estimates, about which there are some uncertainties, place the planet's mass between 1.9 and 100 times that of Jupiter.
After extensive troubleshooting efforts by the crew of the International Space Station, elements of the Microgravity Science Glovebox are being returned to Earth for repairs this week by Space Shuttle Endeavour. Space Station science experiments and payload operations are managed by the Payload Operations Center at Marshall Center. Elements of the Microgravity Science Glovebox were packed aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour for return to Earth for repairs this week after extensive troubleshooting efforts by the crew of the International Space Station.
NASA has awarded the California Institute of Technology a new five-year contract to manage the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is estimated the contract will cover more than $8 billion worth of work. The contract extends for five years the JPL agreement between Caltech and NASA for management of JPL beyond its current expiration date of Sept. 30, 2003. The NASA contract includes a new provision that, based on performance reviews, may extend the contract period of performance for up to an additional five years.
Less precipitation and more lightning eventually may be forecast as a result of a NASA study that shows that cloud droplets freeze from the outside inward instead of the opposite. The new theory of how super-cooled water droplets in clouds freeze, which appears in this week's on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reverses a 60-year-old assumption.
NASA scientists have invented a biological method to make ultra-small structures that could be used to produce electronics 10 to 100 times smaller than today's components. As part of their new method, scientists use modified proteins from 'extremophile' microbes that live in near-boiling, acidic hot springs to grow mesh-like structures so small that an electron microscope is needed to see them.
"Our innovation takes advantage of the innate ability of proteins to form into ordered structures and for us to use genetic engineering to change nature's plans, transforming these structures into something useful," said one of the project's lead researchers.
