Orion Spacecraft Goes for a Dive

Last Friday, a mock-up of the Orion spacecraft was put into the worst landing scenarios a spacecraft can have while ascending down back to earth.
What the test encompassed is parachutes being deployed at an impact pitch of 42 degrees, which is a very high impact for something like that. The capsule got to around 47 MPH before it hit the water, flipped over, and reached the Stable 2 position. The video of the test can be seen below from a few view points. Enjoy!

Humans to get to Mars by 2030?

Charles Bolden, a NASA administrator stated that president Obama and the congress have been constantly making ambitious plans for the space agency.

Bolden says that Obama's plan challenges NASA to accomplish very big things. First, Obama expects the space agency to rendezvous with an asteroid by 2025. Secondly, and what is one of the biggest things on the agenda, Obama wants NASA to land people on the red planet, Mars, in the 2030s.

Charles Bolden also adds that low-orbit transportation will be handed off to private companies, while NASA will be focusing on inventing new technologies that will allow for better deep-space exploration, and make quieter, cleaner, and safer planes! Kind of odd that he would add that in a statement about deep-space exploration, but the safer the better.

Water found on Europa?

NASA has long thought that there was a gigantic lake larger in volume than all the oceans on earth combined hiding in the depths of Jupiter;s moon, Europa, bu it would be miles upon miles below the surface.

New research suggests that the moon actually has a body of water the size of the Great Lakes only about 2 miles below the surface! Does that mean that life exists below Europa's icy surface? Scientists can't say yet because there are so many variables to take into consideration, but one thing is for sure - the probability of there being life on Europa has increased.

New data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft has made some scientists make a correlation between a lake-like body of water under Europa's surface and strange areas made up of bumpy and irregular terrain on the surface of Europa called "chaos terrains".

The video below should put everything into perspective pretty nicely and will allow you to see just how scientists think that these "chaos terrains" form.

NASA's Curiosity to launch on November 26

NASA's new rover called Curiosity will launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force station located in Florida.
Curiosity's destination and mission objective? It's supposed to land inside the Gale crater on planet Mars. There, it will look for signs on whether Mars' environment was ever suitable for microbial life.

Source: NASA

Much longer and also much heavier than its two predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity weighs in at 900kg and is 3 feet long. It boasts ten scientific tools that all together weigh 15 times more than Spirit or Opportunity's scientific tools.
Curiosity is supposed to get to Mars in August of next year, after a long and treacherous 8 month journey through our solar system. 

NASA recommends 'No-Fly Zones' on the Moon

By the end of the month, it is said that NASA will come up with a list of 'recommendations' for any spacecraft or astronauts what will be going to the moon. They include the landing sites for the Apollo 11 and 17 lunar landers. Now, these recommendations will not be legally binding because of a treaty that was made in 1967 that states that the Moon has no real owner, but are still there to try and preserve the more than 30 historical sites that have been made on the moon by the U.S.

What made NASA make these recommendations to begin with was the Google Lunar X contest that consists of landing a robot on the Moon, having it travel 500 meters and take a picture or video of the lunar surface. Since taking pictures of one of the landing sites would most likely win the grand prize, NASA decided to try and stop the teams from doing so since it might ruin the original landing sites. Now, not everyone will want to follow these recommendations. For example, studying bacteria in the feces and food left by astronauts on the moon will show if the bacteria died out or how it mutated to survive the harsh radiation from the sun. Any metallic objects will show how they have degraded over time due to all the radiation exposure from the sun. NASA remains hopeful that people will try and respect these limits and that they try and preserve such historic artifacts.

Martian 'Tree Stump' Stuns The Scientific World

A photograph made ​​by NASA scientists during the mission on Mars in 2004, that was recently published, sparked a fierce controversy and dispute among scientists. The image shows a formation that looks strikingly like a tree trunk which - yet again - brings into question the existence of past or present life on Mars.

The discovery ignited the spirits of conspiracy theorists who said they were convinced that NASA hides the truth about the Mars mission from the public. Most of them are convinced that life flourished on the Red Planet as it did on Earth and that, for unknown reasons, the U.S. space agency and the U.S. government deliberately hides such information.

Scientists from NASA said that it's just an interpretation in which specific people associate images of unknown objects with ones they have in memory. They say that the "tree" on Mars is nothing but a rock formation with a form that is unusual. Researchers have emphasized that one of the vital elements of life, water, has been discovered on Mars even if it exists exclusively in the form of ice.

"I found two elements that could support life on Mars or are likely to sustain it in the future: water and nutrients from the soil. There was, however, no evidence of the existence of any plant or other living things." said Sam Kounaves, one of the researchers involved in the latest NASA space mission to Mars.

Signals From Space ? - SETI Signal

NASA - Secret Pictures

Lightning produces antimatter ?

Scientists have detected particles of antimatter over lightning on Earth, an unknown phenomenon, informs NASA. Researchers at NASA detected Gamma radiation with Fermi telescope's help. They believe that antimatter particles were formed inside the storm and lightning associated with them. 

"These signals are the first direct evidence that storms produce antimatter particles", said Michael Briggs,a member of the study team from the University of Alabama. The Fermi telescope is designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest given by light energy. When antimatter particles collide with normal matter, both particles are annihilated and converted into gamma radiation.