Planet similar to Earth discovered: NASA

This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's "habitable zone" -- the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist.

NASA announced the discovery of another planet close enough to the sun it orbits to potentially support life.
Called Kepler-22b, about 2.4 times the radius of Earth and about 600 light-years away. And it orbits in the "habitable zone," the region of space just far enough from a star that liquid water could exist on the planet's surface -- a discovery could have profound implications in the quest for alien life, said Alan Boss, an astrophysicist with Carnegie Melon University.
The host star lies about 600 light-years away from us (1 light year is about 6 trillion miles) toward the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus, the researchers said, and is about 25 percent less luminous than the Sun. Kepler-22b orbits the star every 290 days, as compared with 365 days for the Earth, at a distance about 15 percent closer to its star than the Earth from the Sun -- close enough to suggest a pleasing, balmy temperature on the surface.

The planet is  in the middle of what astronomers call the Goldilocks zone, that hard to find place that's not too hot, not too cold, where water, which is essential for life, doesn't freeze or boil and this new planet might well be not only habitable but perhaps even inhabited.
The discovery team, led by William Borucki of the NASA Ames Research Center, pored over photometric data from the NASA Kepler space telescope. They watched for tiny dimmings of star light -- dimmings that can only be measured by a highly specialized space telescope like Kepler -- which indicate that an Earth-size planet is transiting between us and a star.
So far the Kepler telescope has spotted 2,326 candidate planets outside our solar system with 139 of them potentially habitable ones. Even though the confirmed Kepler-22b is a bit big, it is still smaller than most of the other candidates. It is closest to Earth in size, temperature and star than either of the two previously announced planets in the zone.
Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates spotted in February 2011, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed.

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NASA launches Mars-bound spacecraft/CBC NEWS

In this 2011 artist's rendering provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover examines a rock on Mars with a set of tools at the end of its arm. The car-sized, nuclear-powered mobile laboratory will examine Martian soil and rocks. (JPL-Caltech/NASA/Associated Press)

NASA's Mars-bound spacecraft lifted off Saturday morning, carrying a six-wheeled rover that will explore the Red Planet.
The unmanned Atlas 5 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida around 10 a.m. ET.

The $2.5-billion US mission will see a car-sized rover, officially called the Mars Science Laboratory but nicknamed Curiosity, land on Mars in roughly 8½ months after a journey of some 570 million kilometres.

The nuclear-powered mobile laboratory — holding 10 science instruments, including one designed and built in Canada — will sample Martian soil and rocks, and analyze them right there on the surface. The mission is expected to last for at least two years.

With a length of 3 metres and weighing 899 kilograms, Curiosity dwarves the golf cart-sized Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers that landed in 2004.

"It’s not your father’s rover," Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars program, said in a media briefing earlier this month.

Curiosity will land in the Gale Crater — which scientists believe may have once been a lake — in search of evidence of water and microbial life. The area is also particularly rich in minerals.

CBC's Bob McDonald said the mission will be trying to detect faint traces of organic compounds which, if discovered, would prove to be a huge success.

"If they do find signs of life of Mars that'll be the first indication that we're not alone in the universe," he said. "It's a rather big question."

Canadian component
One of Curiosity's 10 scientific tools is the APXS (alpha particle X-ray spectrometer), a $17.8 million device that will be used to identify chemical elements in Martian rock and soil.

It was designed by University of Guelph physics professor Ralf Gellert and built by Richmond, B.C.-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.

Alain Berinstain from the Canadian Space Agency said the APXS provides a modest but critical element of the mission, similar to the role played by the robotic Canadarm.

"It'll help contribute to the overall science goals of the mission," he told CBC News.
Lowered to planet with jet pack

A Mars frenzy gripped the launch site, with more than 13,000 guests jamming the space centre for NASA's first launch to Earth's next-door neighbour in four years, and the first send-off of a Martian rover in eight years.

The world has launched more than three dozen missions to the ever-alluring Mars, which is more like Earth than the other solar-system planets. Yet fewer than half those quests have succeeded.

Just two weeks ago, a Russian spacecraft ended up stuck in orbit around Earth, rather than en route to the Martian moon Phobos.

"Mars really is the Bermuda Triangle of the solar system," Hartman said.
Curiosity's arrival next August will be particularly hair-raising.
In a spacecraft first, the rover will be lowered onto the Martian surface via a jet pack and tether system similar to the sky cranes used to lower heavy equipment into remote areas on Earth.

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RELATED NEWS

• NASA's curiosity Rover sets Off For Mars Missiom / New York Times
• Giant Nasa rover launches to Mars / BBC News
• NASA rover launched to seek out life clues on Mars / Reuters
• NASA launches super-size rover to Mars: 'Go, Go!'/ AP

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NASA launches trailblazing weather/climate satellite

First probe built to track fast weather systems and long-term climate change

Bill Ingalls  /  NASA via Getty Images

A Delta 2 rocket lifts off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base before dawn Friday, lofting NASA's NPP weather and climate satellite into space.

After a five-year delay, NASA launched an Earth-observing satellite on Friday to test new technologies aimed at improving weather forecasts and monitoring climate change.

The $1.5 billion mission comes amid a year of weather extremes, ranging from the Midwest tornado outbreak to the Southwest wildfires to hurricane-caused flooding in New England.

"We've already had 10 separate weather events, each inflicting at least $1 billion in damages," said Louis Uccellini of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The satellite lifted off before dawn from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., aboard a Delta 2 rocket that sent it toward an orbit some 500 miles high.

"Smooth ride," flight commentator Steve Agid reported during the ascent.

The space agency already has a fleet of satellites circling the Earth, taking measurements of the atmosphere, clouds and oceans. But many are aging and need replacement.

The latest — about the size of a small school bus — is more sophisticated. It carries five different types of instruments to collect environmental data, including four that never before have flown into space.

One of the satellite's main jobs is to test key technologies that will be used by next-generation satellites set to launch in a few years.

NOAA meteorologists plan to feed the observations into their weather models to better anticipate and track hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather.

The information will "help us understand what tomorrow will bring," whether it's the next-day forecast or long-term climate change, said Andrew Carson, the mission's program executive at NASA Headquarters.

The satellite is part of a bigger program with a troubled history. Originally envisioned as a joint civil-military weather satellite project, ballooning costs and schedule delays caused the White House last year to dissolve the partnership.

Look toward the southwestern horizon just after sunset on Friday night and you’ll see a triple feature of Venus, Mercury, and the two-day old moon. And there's another planet treat in time for the pre-Halloween weekend, too.

Under the restructuring, the Defense Department is building its own military satellites while NASA is developing a new generation of research satellites for NOAA. Friday's launch was considered the first step toward that goal.

The satellite was supposed to fly in 2006, but problems during the development of several instruments forced a delay. NASA invested about $895 million in the mission while NOAA and the Air Force contributed $677 million.

For the launch, NASA invited 20 of its Twitter followers to Vandenberg, where they had front-row seats to view the liftoff. "Definitely a sight to behold," one of the tweeters, Bobby Lang, wrote from the launch site.

The satellite, built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., will spend the next five years circling the Earth from pole to pole about a dozen times a day. Data will be transmitted to a ground station in Norway and routed to the United States via fiber optic cable. NASA will manage the mission for the first three months before turning it over to NOAA.

msnbc.com

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Telescopes solve 2,000-year-old stellar mystery

NASA - This undated handout image provide by NASA, combines data from four different space telescopes to create a multi-wavelength view of all that remains of the oldest documented example of a supernova, called RCW 86. NASA announced the findings Monday, Oct. 24, 2011, and said the exploded star was observed by the ancient Chinese in the year 185, and visible for eight months. It was later found to be a bigger-than-expected supernova remnant, 8,000 light years away. (AP Photo/NASA)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers finally know why the first documented supernova was super-sized.
The exploded star was observed by the ancient Chinese in the year 185, and visible for eight months. It was later found to be a bigger-than-expected supernova remnant, 8,000 light years away. Each light year is about 6 trillion miles.
New observations in the infrared show the explosion took place in a cavity in space. The cavity allowed the stellar shrapnel to shoot faster and farther out into the universe.
The star — similar to our sun — died peacefully and turned into a dense white dwarf. It sucked up material from another star, and then exploded in a supernova.
NASA announced the findings Monday. Four space telescopes were used in the study.

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NASA's Spitzer Detects Comet Storm in Nearby Solar System

This artist's conception illustrates a storm of comets around a star near our own, called Eta Corvi. Evidence for this barrage comes from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, whose infrared detectors picked up indications that one or more comets was recently torn to shreds after colliding with a rocky body. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected signs of icy bodies raining down in an alien solar system. The downpour resembles our own solar system several billion years ago during a period known as the "Late Heavy Bombardment," which may have brought water and other life-forming ingredients to Earth.
During this epoch, comets and other frosty objects that were flung from the outer solar system pummeled the inner planets. The barrage scarred our moon and produced large amounts of dust.
Now Spitzer has spotted a band of dust around a nearby bright star in the northern sky called Eta Corvi that strongly matches the contents of an obliterated giant comet. This dust is located close enough to Eta Corvi that Earth-like worlds could exist, suggesting a collision took place between a planet and one or more comets. The Eta Corvi system is approximately one billion years old, which researchers think is about the right age for such a hailstorm.
"We believe we have direct evidence for an ongoing Late Heavy Bombardment in the nearby star system Eta Corvi, occurring about the same time as in our solar system," said Carey Lisse, senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., and lead author of a paper detailing the findings. The findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. Lisse presented the results at the Signposts of Planets meeting at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Oct. 19.
Astronomers used Spitzer's infrared detectors to analyze the light coming from the dust around Eta Corvi. Certain chemical fingerprints were observed, including water ice, organics and rock, which indicate a giant comet source.
The light signature emitted by the dust around Eta Corvi also resembles the Almahata Sitta meteorite, which fell to Earth in fragments across Sudan in 2008. The similarities between the meteorite and the object obliterated in Eta Corvi imply a common birthplace in their respective solar systems.
A second, more massive ring of colder dust located at the far edge of the Eta Corvi system seems like the proper environment for a reservoir of cometary bodies. This bright ring, discovered in 2005, looms at about 150 times the distance from Eta Corvi as Earth is from the sun. Our solar system has a similar region, known as the Kuiper Belt, where icy and rocky leftovers from planet formation linger. The new Spitzer data suggest that the Almahata Sitta meteorite may have originated in our own Kuiper Belt.
The Kuiper Belt was home to a vastly greater number of these frozen bodies, collectively dubbed Kuiper Belt objects. About 4 billion years ago, some 600 million years after our solar system formed, scientists think the Kuiper Belt was disturbed by a migration of the gas-giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. This jarring shift in the solar system's gravitational balance scattered the icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt, flinging the vast majority into interstellar space and producing cold dust in the belt. Some Kuiper Belt objects, however, were set on paths that crossed the orbits of the inner planets.
The resulting bombardment of comets lasted until 3.8 billion years ago. After comets impacted the side of the moon that faces Earth, magma seeped out of the lunar crust, eventually cooling into dark "seas," or maria. When viewed against the lighter surrounding areas of the lunar surface, those seas form the distinctive "Man in the Moon" visage. Comets also struck Earth or incinerated in the atmosphere, and are thought to have deposited water and carbon on our planet. This period of impacts might have helped life form by delivering its crucial ingredients.
"We think the Eta Corvi system should be studied in detail to learn more about the rain of impacting comets and other objects that may have started life on our own planet," Lisse said.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
 Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Best-Ever Topographic Map of Earth Released

The most complete digital topographic ever made of the Earth was released by NASA today (Oct. 17).

The map, known as a global digital elevation model, was created from images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite.

At 14,505 feet (4,421 meters) in elevation, California's Mt. Whitney, located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the west side of Owens Valley, is the highest point in the contiguous United States.
CREDIT: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
The 3-D effect is achieved by merging two slightly offset two-dimensional images (called stereo-pair images) to create depth.

The first version of the map was released by NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in June 2009.

"The ASTER global digital elevation model was already the most complete, consistent global topographic map in the world," said Woody Turner, ASTER program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "With these enhancements, its resolution is in many respects comparable to the U.S. data from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, while covering more of the globe."

The Advanced Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft provided this spacebird's-eye view of the eastern part of Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona in this image, acquired July 14, 2011
CREDIT: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
The ASTER data cover 99 percent of Earth's landmass and span from 83 degrees north latitude to 83 degrees south.
The improved version of the map adds 260,000 additional stereo-pair images to improve coverage. It features improved spatial resolution, increased horizontal and vertical accuracy, more realistic coverage over water bodies and the ability to identify lakes as small as 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) in diameter. The map is available online to users everywhere at no cost.
"These data can be used for a broad range of applications, from planning highways and protecting lands with cultural or environmental significance, to searching for natural resources," said Mike Abrams, ASTER science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
(Courtsey of SPACE.com )

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The First Humanoid Robot Astronaut Powers Up Aboard the ISS

This Space Station's Not Big Enough for the Two of Us NASA

Our favorite Twitter ‘bot--no, like an actual robot that tweets--is out of the box and live-tweeting its new life on the International Space Station. Robonaut 2 was actually unboxed several months ago (it was delivered by the final Discovery mission in February) but has been sitting idly, waiting for the crew to get around to firing it up. Now R2 is plugged in, and man is it ever chatty.
“Those electrons feel GOOD!,” R2 tweeted yesterday as its visual systems were powered on. “One small step for man, one giant leap for tinman kind.”
Har har. But humanoid humor aside, this is a big step for those who have been following R2’s progress from the labs at NASA to his launch aboard Discovery to his arrival at the ISS (R2 has been tweeting all of this along the way). It is the first humanoid robot ever taken into space, and he very well could be the model for many future generations of humanoid helper ‘bots launched aboard orbiting spacecraft and perhaps even on a future deep space mission. Along the way, future versions of R2 may even assist ISS astronauts during spacewalks.
Right now, R2 is only a waist-up humanoid; his torso is anchored to a pedestal from which he can use his arms to help human crew members in the orbiting lab. But a pair of legs is being designed for R2 and could launch to the ISS in 2013, at which point it will become something of a real life C-3PO capable of following around its human counterparts, getting into all kinds of scrapes, and providing somewhat flat comic relief.
[io9]

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Electric Plane Wins $1.35 Million in NASA Challenge

NASA has doled out the largest prize in aviation history, in an effort to help make future aircraft cleaner and greener.
A team called Pipistrel-USA.com, of State College, Pa., has taken home the $1.35 million top prize, NASA officials announced Monday (Oct. 3).
The space agency helped organize a competition called the CAFE Green Flight Challenge, which tasked teams to design, build and demonstrate super-efficient aircraft.
Team eGenius, of Ramona, Calif., came in second and scored $120,000. Both top finishers demonstrated working electric planes.
"NASA congratulates Pipistrel-USA.com for proving that ultra-efficient aviation is within our grasp," Joe Parrish, NASA's acting chief technologist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. "Today we've shown that electric aircraft have moved beyond science fiction and are now in the realm of practice." [10 Future Public Transportation Vehicles]
Fourteen teams registered for the competition, whose guidelines instructed them to build aircraft that could fly 200 miles (322 kilometers) in less than two hours using less than one gallon of fuel per passenger, or the equivalent in electricity.
Three of the original 14 teams met these requirements and competed in a fly-off over the past week near Santa Rosa, Calif. Both Pipistrel-USA.com and eGenius flew the 200 miles using just over a half-gallon of fuel equivalent per passenger, NASA officials said.
"Two years ago the thought of flying 200 miles at 100 mph in an electric aircraft was pure science fiction," said Jack Langelaan, team leader of Team Pipistrel-USA.com. "Now we are all looking forward to the future of electric aviation."
The competition marked the culmination of more than two years of work for the teams involved. Collectively, the competing teams spent more than $4 million to design, develop and test their aircraft. The technologies demonstrated during the challenge could find their way into commercial aviation in the future, officials said.
The competition was managed by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation under an agreement with NASA. It was sponsored by Google.

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NASA to admit Students for Astronaut School

In early November, NASA will seek applicants for its next class of astronaut candidates, hoping to bolster its reserves of brave spacemen -- in the face of a National Research Council report that warned the corps was getting too small.
"For scientists, engineers and other professionals who have always dreamed of experiencing spaceflight, this is an exciting time to join the astronaut corps," said Janet Kavandi, director of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
And rocket scientists aren't the only ones who can apply.
A bachelor's degree in engineering, science or math and three years of relevant professional experience are all that's required in order to be considered. Typically, successful applicants have significant qualifications in engineering or science, or extensive experience flying high-performance jet-aircraft, NASA said.
Don't get too excited just yet, however: The space agency won't be seeking hundreds of new astronauts. There will be room for only around 8 to 12, Duane Ross, manager for astronaut candidate training, said
"The number is one of those things you don't decide on until the very end," Ross cautioned, noting that "the number will be small -- last time we picked nine."
This class of astronauts won't necessarily be training as pilots, either, though some will certainly go through such training. The focus will instead be on long-duration missions aboard the International Space Station.
"This next class will support missions to the station and will arrive via transportation systems now in development. They also will have the opportunity to participate in NASA's continuing exploration programs that will include missions beyond low-Earth orbit," Kavandi said.
Beyond the extra-vehicular activity, robotics, and flight training, Russian language training is a part of today's astronaut training.
The class will also include a broad look at such topics as geology and geophysics, Ross said.
The quest for astronauts comes on the heels of a September report from the National Research Council, which argued that the United States must maintain a strong astronaut corps, even though human space flight has been temporarily stalled for NASA and many astronauts have retired or quit this year.
We need astronauts as much as ever, that report argued.
“The shuttle program was only one requirement for astronauts,” Joe Rothenberg, one of the co-chairs for the report, said. “We have a partnership with the Russian Federal Space Agency, the European Space Agency and the others that developed it, and we have a commitment to operate [the space station] until 2020, staffing it with qualified astronauts to do research.”
Ross said NASA had already decided that the astronaut corps needed a boost, but the Research Council report confirmed things.
"We had determined that we needed to go ahead and do a selection, but we were waiting for the National Resource Council report," he expressed.

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NASA announces world’s biggest-ever rocket to take man to Mars and beyond

With the curtain coming down on the Space Shuttle Program, NASA has set its sights on the future with the announcement of a heavy-lift launch vehicle that is designed to take man beyond the moon to explore near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons, and beyond. Dubbed the Space Launch System (SLS) its configuration harks back to the Saturn V rocket-based systems employed to propel Apollo astronauts to the moon but also incorporates technology developed in the Shuttle Program.
The SLS will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system, which will include the RS-25D/E from the Space Shuttle Program for the core stage and the Saturn V-derived J-2X rocket engine for the upper stage. However, initial development flights will also use solid rocket boosters. The SLS will have an initial lift capacity of 70 metric tons (154,324 lbs), which NASA points out is roughly the weight of 40 SUVs. An evolved SLS will then see lift capacity increased to 130 metric tons (286,600 lbs), which by NASA's logic would be roughly the weight of 75 SUVs.
The initial SLS will weigh 2,500 metric tons (5.5 million pounds) and stand taller than the Statue of Liberty, at 97.5 m (320 ft) high. At liftoff it will generate 8.4 million pounds of thrust, which is 10 percent more than the Saturn V. The subsequent evolved SLS will weigh 2,950 metric tons (6.5 million pounds) and stand 122 m (400 ft) high. At liftoff it will generate 9.2 million pounds of thrust, which is 20 percent more than the Saturn V at liftoff.

NASA says the SLS's architecture provides a launch vehicle that can be adapted to suit different missions through the use of different core stage, upper stage, and first-stage booster combinations. This flexibility is designed to allow it to more economically carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as cargo, equipment and science experiments to as low as Earth's orbit and as far as Mars and beyond. While NASA is looking to save money by having private companies ferry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), the SLS will also serve as a backup for commercial and international partner transportation services to the ISS.
The SLS was unveiled by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and several members of Congress on Wednesday, with Bolden saying, "President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we are doing at NASA. While I was proud to fly on the space shuttle, tomorrow's explorers will now dream of one day walking on Mars."
Dreaming big is fine, but with an estimated cost of US$18 billion just for the next five years and the U.S. Government constantly modifying NASA's budget, it remains to be seen whether NASA will be able to make its dream reality. NASA stresses that the SLS architecture benefits from significantly reduced development and operations costs as it leverages existing capabilities resulting from the Space Shuttle and Constellation Programs. NASA says the early developmental flights may take advantage of existing solid boosters and other existing hardware, while a competition will be held to develop the boosters.
"NASA has been making steady progress toward realizing the president's goal of deep space exploration, while doing so in a more affordable way," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. "We have been driving down the costs on the Space Launch System and Orion contracts by adopting new ways of doing business and project hundreds of millions of dollars of savings each year."
The first SLS unmanned developmental flight is targeted for the end of 2017 with the first manned flight penciled in for 2021. NASA then aims to follow up with a manned mission to a nearby asteroid around 2025 and one to Mars in the 2030s.

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SpaceX Dragon to be first private spacecraft to dock at ISS

When SpaceX's Dragon capsule docks at the International Space Station in November, it will mark the first time that a private spacecraft has visited the facility

Although we will never see another space shuttle docking at the International Space Station, that doesn't mean that there are no plans for other American spacecraft to be visiting the facility. In fact, one should be up there on or around December 9th. That's when SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to arrive, following a November 30th launch. It's part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, and will be the first time that a privately-developed spacecraft has docked at the ISS.

California-based SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies had originally proposed two separate missions, COTS Demo 2 and Demo 3, to demonstrate to NASA that its craft could successfully transport cargo to and from the ISS. NASA has reportedly agreed in principle to combining the two into one mission, offering up the November 30th launch date.

Besides carrying a cargo capsule to the ISS in the Dragon itself, SpaceX will also be taking the opportunity to deploy equipment from the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which will be carrying the Dragon into orbit. Although the Dragon is capable of carrying a human crew, it will be unmanned on this mission.
SpaceX is already known for a test flight that took place last December, which officially made the Dragon the world's first private reusable spacecraft.

Source: Dvice

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Scientists Release Most Accurate Simulation of the Universe to Date

The Bolshoi simulation reveals a cosmic web of dark matter that underlies the large-scale structure of the universe and, through its gravitational effects on ordinary matter, drives the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters. The image is a slice of the entire simulation, 1 billion light-years across and about 30 million light-years thick. (Credit: Stefan Gottlober (AIP))
The Bolshoi supercomputer simulation, the most accurate and detailed large cosmological simulation run to date, gives physicists and astronomers a powerful new tool for understanding such cosmic mysteries as galaxy formation, dark matter, and dark energy.
The simulation traces the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe, including the evolution and distribution of the dark matter halos in which galaxies coalesced and grew. Initial studies show good agreement between the simulation's predictions and astronomers' observations.
"In one sense, you might think the initial results are a little boring, because they basically show that our standard cosmological model works," said Joel Primack, distinguished professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "What's exciting is that we now have this highly accurate simulation that will provide the basis for lots of important new studies in the months and years to come."
Primack and Anatoly Klypin, professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University, lead the team that produced the Bolshoi simulation. Klypin wrote the computer code for the simulation, which was run on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA Ames Research Center. "These huge cosmological simulations are essential for interpreting the results of ongoing astronomical observations and for planning the new large surveys of the universe that are expected to help determine the nature of the mysterious dark energy," Klypin said.
Primack, who directs the University of California High-Performance Astrocomputing Center (UC-HIPACC), said the initial release of data from the Bolshoi simulation began in early September. "We've released a lot of the data so that other astrophysicists can start to use it," he said. "So far it's less than one percent of the actual output, because the total output is so huge, but there will be additional releases in the future."
The previous benchmark for large-scale cosmological simulations, known as the Millennium Run, has been the basis for some 400 papers since 2005. But the fundamental parameters used as the input for the Millennium Run are now known to be inaccurate. Produced by the Virgo Consortium of mostly European scientists, the Millennium simulation used cosmological parameters based on the first release of data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). WMAP provided a detailed map of subtle variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, the primordial radiation left over from the Big Bang. But the initial WMAP1 parameters have been superseded by subsequent releases: WMAP5 (five-year results released in 2008) and WMAP7 (seven-year results released in 2010).
The Bolshoi simulation is based on WMAP5 parameters, which are consistent with the later WMAP7 results. "The WMAP1 cosmological parameters on which the Millennium simulation is based are now known to be wrong," Primack said. "Moreover, advances in supercomputer technology allow us to do a much better simulation with higher resolution by almost an order of magnitude. So I expect the Bolshoi simulation will have a big impact on the field."
The standard explanation for how the universe evolved after the Big Bang is known as the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, and it is the theoretical basis for the Bolshoi simulation. According to this model, gravity acted initially on slight density fluctuations present shortly after the Big Bang to pull together the first clumps of dark matter. These grew into larger and larger clumps through the hierarchical merging of smaller progenitors. Although the nature of dark matter remains a mystery, it accounts for about 82 percent of the matter in the universe. As a result, the evolution of structure in the universe has been driven by the gravitational interactions of dark matter. The ordinary matter that forms stars and planets has fallen into the "gravitational wells" created by clumps of dark matter, giving rise to galaxies in the centers of dark matter halos.
A principal purpose of the Bolshoi simulation is to compute and model the evolution of dark matter halos. The characteristics of the halos and subhalos in the Bolshoi simulation are presented in a paper that has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and is now available online. The authors are Klypin, NMSU graduate student Sebastian Trujillo-Gomez, and Primack.
A second paper, also accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and available online, presents the abundance and properties of galaxies predicted by the Bolshoi simulation of dark matter. The authors are Klypin, Trujillo-Gomez, Primack, and UCSC postdoctoral researcher Aaron Romanowsky. A comparison of the Bolshoi predictions with galaxy observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey showed very good agreement, according to Primack.
The Bolshoi simulation focused on a representative section of the universe, computing the evolution of a cubic volume measuring about one billion light-years on a side and following the interactions of 8.6 billion particles of dark matter. It took 6 million CPU-hours to run the full computation on the Pleiades supercomputer, recently ranked as the seventh fastest supercomputer in the world.
A variant of the Bolshoi simulation, known as BigBolshoi or MultiDark, was run on the same supercomputer with the same number of particles, but this time in a volume 64 times larger. BigBolshoi was run to predict the properties and distribution of galaxy clusters and other very large structures in the universe, as well as to help with dark energy projects such as the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS).
Another variant, called MiniBolshoi, is currently being run on the Pleiades supercomputer. MiniBolshoi focuses on a smaller portion of the universe and provides even higher resolution than Bolshoi. The Bolshoi simulation and its two variants will be made publicly available to astrophysical researchers worldwide in phases via the MultiDark Database, hosted by the Potsdam Astrophysics Institute in Germany and supported by grants from Spain and Germany.
Primack, Klypin, and their collaborators are continuing to analyze the results of the Bolshoi simulation and submit papers for publication. Among their findings are results showing that the simulation correctly predicts the number of galaxies as bright as the Milky Way that have satellite galaxies as bright as the Milky Way's major satellites, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
"A lot more papers are on the way," Primack said.
This research was funded by grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation.

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NASA to demonstrate laser beam communications system

Conceptual image of the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration that is designed to increase the data rate of space communications (Image: NASA)

Since the dawn of the space age, NASA has been relying on radio communications technology to send and receive data to and from spacecraft. Although it has developed higher data-rate radio frequency systems, data-compression, and other techniques to boost the amount of data that its current RF systems can handle, they can't keep pace with the projected data needs of advanced instruments and further human exploration. To break this bottleneck, NASA is turning to optical communications technology that would use lasers to increase data rates over existing systems by anywhere from 10 to 100 times.
NASA's current legacy radio-based network includes a fleet of tracking and data relay satellites and a network of ground stations. At the current limit of 6 Mbps for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), NASA says it currently takes 90 minutes to transmit a single HiRISE high-resolution image from Mars back to Earth. However, the new optical communications system would reduce the transmission time down to just five minutes and even allow streaming of high definition video from distances beyond the Moon.
The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) is designed to enable NASA, other governmental agencies and the commercial space industry to undertake future, complex missions by providing significantly higher data rates for approximately the same mass, power, and volume as a comparable RF system.
NASA says laser-based space communications will enable missions to use bandwidth-hungry instruments, such as hyperspectral imagers, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and other instruments with high definition in spectral, spatial, or temporal modes. Laser communication will also make it possible to establish a "virtual presence" at a remote planet or other solar system body.
The LCRD is expected to fly as a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite developed by Space Systems/Loral, of Palo Alto, California. The experimental payload will include telescopes, lasers, mirrors, detectors, a pointing and tracking system, control electronics, and two different types of modems; one ideal for communicating with deep space missions or tiny, low-power smallsats operating in low-Earth orbit, and another that can handle much higher data rates, particularly from Earth-orbiting spacecraft, including the International Space Station.

A team at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which is leading the development of the system, will encode digital data and transmit the information via laser light from specially equipped ground stations to the experimental payload on the commercial communications satellite. Once the payload receives the data, it would then relay it back to the ground stations that are now scheduled to operate in Hawaii and Southern California.
The multiple ground stations are important, as the optical system requires a clear line of sight between the transmitter and receiver. So if bad weather prevents a signal from being sent or received at one location, the network could hand things over to one of the other ground stations or store it for later transmission.
"Just as the home Internet user hit the wall with dial-up, NASA is approaching the limit of what its existing communications network can handle," said LCRD Principal Investigator Dave Israel. "What we're trying to do is get ahead of the curve. We want to get to the point where communications is no longer a constraint on scientists who want to gather more data, but are worried about getting their data back from space," Israel added. "With the higher-speed modem type, future systems could support data rates of tens of gigabits per second," he said.
NASA plans to demonstrate the LCRD system in 2016, with the demonstration expected to run two to three years. It is one of three proposals NASA has selected as Technology Demonstration Missions because of their potential to provide tangible, near-term products and have high-impact of NASA's future space exploration and science missions.
The other two proposals selected were a Deep Space Atomic Clock designed to provide the unprecedented stability needed for next-generation deep space navigation and radio science and an in-space demonstration of a mission-capable solar sail to enable propellantless in-space navigation for missions such as advanced geostorm warning, economic orbital debris removal, and deep space exploration. More on these later.

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NASA's GRAIL mission will map the Moon's gravity

After its planned launch this morning was canceled due to upper wind levels, a Delta II rocket carrying NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) has been rescheduled to tomorrow morning. The GRAIL mission will incorporate two unmanned spacecraft - GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B - which will fly in formation over the Moon's surface, measuring variations in its gravity. Using this data, scientists hope to learn more about the Moon's thermal history, and how other rocky planets within the inner solar system developed.

Each of the spacecraft are about the size of a washing machine, and have a combined weight of just 1,600 pounds (726 kg). They will be riding side-by-side aboard the rocket, and will be deployed separately once it reaches orbit. GRAILs A and B should take three and a half months to reach the Moon, with A scheduled to arrive this New Year's Eve, and B following on New Year's Day of next year.

After spending five weeks establishing their lunar orbit, the two spacecraft will be maneuvered into formation, and the three month science phase of the mission will begin. During that time, the Moon will rotate three times beneath the orbiters, each 27-day rotation constituting one mapping cycle.

Using a precision formation-flying technique, the twin GRAIL spacecraft will map the moon's gravitational field, as depicted in this artist's rendering

Each time the lead spacecraft encounters a gravitational mass, it will speed up and move forward. When the second spacecraft encounters that same mass, it will also speed up and catch back up with its counterpart. By comparing the differences in the distances between the two units, for each of the three mapping cycles, variations in the Moon's gravitational fields can be determined.

Middle school students will also have the chance to obtain photos of requested lunar targets, via GRAIL's onboard MoonKAM system.

All images courtesy NASA

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