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!

Efforts to save Russian probe Phobos Grunt ceased!

Russia's space probe that was headed for one of Mars' moons named Phobos Grunt malfunctioned on November 8 shortly after launch. The problem was with one of the probe's engine thrusters. This caused it to be stuck in Earths orbit since then. 

Last week, a signal from Phobos-Grunt was picked up by an European tracking station in Australia and since then the European Space Agency has been trying to help Russia in salvaging the lost probe.

Now, the probe wont be able to reach Mars at all, because the window of opportunity which requires the Earth and the Red Planet to be aligned in a specific way is gone, but that doesn't mean that we can just leave a $165 million piece of metal floating in our orbit. While the ESA had been sending the probe signals to boost its atmosphere, no response was given.

Today, the ESA stated that in an agreement with the probe's mission managers, the ESA will stop trying to contact the probe. Now, the ESA stated that all efforts have not been lost and that if conditions seem to change they will offer their full support once again. What seems to be extremely interesting is that since 1960, Russia has launched 18 spacecrafts towards Mars, and Phobos Grunt was supposed to be the 19th one. Out of all those missions, none have been 100% successful. Definitely something the Russians should look into in my opinion. 

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.

Light created from nothing!

The dynamic Casimir effect has finally been proven true after more than 40 years since it was predicted. A team of scientist in Sweden lead by Chris Wilson are the ones that made it possible. Wilson said that "they were very happy when it worked" and I'm not surprised.

How'd they do it? Well first, they got a SQUID, or Superconducting Quantum Interface Device, and made it move at the speed of light in a vacuum. The rapid movement of the SQUID starts transferring its kinetic energy to virtual particles. What did this yield? Photons, also know as light started appearing, therefore proving that space is not empty, even though it is a vacuum.

That being said, I don't think we're gonna have any light sources made out of virtual photons any time soon, because Wilson and the team aren't yet sure as to how many "real" photons they can get get out of the "virtual" ones.

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. 

The Source Of Life On Earth - A Poisonous Substance ?

 A new study shows that formaldehyde, a poisonous chemical, could be one of the factors that led to the creation of organic compounds that gave rise to life. 

Formaldehyde formed from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, is a common molecule found in the Solar System. This chemical compound is commonly used on Earth in conservation actions such as anointing or biological samples. 

The organic molecules, in the composition of which is carbon is found, are found in solid forms on asteroids and comets. Scientists have been puzzled by the source of these organic molecules, professionals wanting to understand how they occurred. The answer they found recently is that they probably were created from formaldehyde in the primitive Solar System. 

George Cody and his co-researchers, Conel Alexander and Larry Nittler Carnegie at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, studied the carbon content of the meteorites to obtain information on the original organic compounds. "It is ironic that it is very likely that life appeared to be due to formaldehyde, a substance that is poisonous to living organisms on Earth," they said. 

To test the hypothesis that formaldehyde was the origin of life, scientists have developed a chemical process to produce organic compounds with formaldehyde as a starting point. They left the reaction to proceed, then the results are analyzed. 

Organic molecules obtained in the laboratory showed a striking resemblance to those found in meteorites and other organic material collected in the solar system (samples collected from comet 81P/Wild 2, interplanetary dust particles and other asteroids or comets). 

From the knowledge gained from research our primitive solar system, it appears that the chemical reaction produced in the laboratory may explain how organic compounds from outer space occurred naturally.

This study was published online on April 4, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

NASA - Secret Pictures