The rover put itself into a precautionary safe standby mode on July 2.

After investigating why the rover put itself into a safe mode, NASA's engineers said that the most likely cause was a software mismatch in one mode of how image data are transferred on board.

Science activity planning for the rover is avoiding use of that mode which involves writing images from some cameras' memories into files on the rover's main computer.

Alternate means are available for handling and transmitting all image data.

Curiosity was now communicating with ground controllers and was stable. The rover ceased most activities other than keeping itself healthy and following a prescribed sequence for resuming communications.

Curiosity has entered safe mode three times previously, all during 2013.

The rover landed in Mars' Gale Crater and has been exploring the area since August 2012.

During its first year on Mars, the mission achieved its goal by determining that, more than three billion years ago, the region offered fresh-water lakes and rivers with environmental conditions well-suited to supporting microbial life, if life has ever existed on Mars.

In continuing investigations, the mission is learning more about the ancient wet environments and how and when they evolved to drier and less habitable conditions.

Recently, the US space agency said it was planning to drive the Curiosity Rover towards water sites on the Martian surface to further investigate the long, seasonally changing dark streaks briny water in the hope of finding evidence of life.

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New York, March 5 (IANS) The rainbow hues of lakes that dot the Himalayas helped NASA astronaut Scott Kelly keep his wits during his 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station which aimed at studying the effects of weightlessness in humans, the media reported.

"The earth is a beautiful planet," Kelly said during a press conference on Friday in Houston, as he described the striking colours of the waters around the Bahamas and the beautiful lakes that dot the northern Himalayas.

He said he would like to visit that region, though he would first need to learn "which country actually owns it", the Guardian reported.

"It seemed like I lived there forever," said the former navy pilot, describing the length of his mission as the biggest challenge. "Maybe occasionally you do go bananas," he added.

But the view from the space "is great, too", he said. The astronaut posted some spectacular photos on social media of the Earth’s cities, landscapes, oceans and atmosphere which he captured through the windows of the space station's cupola module.

Besides the serene lakes of Himalayas, he said he focused on “milestones” such as the next crew arrival, science projects, spacewalks and the presidential primaries. “That made a big difference to me, just for my sanity,” he said.

The astronaut, however, did see the entire system of pollution -- smoke clouds from wildfires that covered parts of the US, and sections of Asia with continuous, visible pollution nearly all year round.

“The planet will get better, it’s us that won’t be here because we will destroy the environment,” Kelly warned.

The world’s thin shield of atmosphere “makes you more of an environmentalist after spending so much time looking down”, he said.

“It’s for us to take care of the air we breathe and the water we drink. And I do believe we have an impact on that and we do have the ability to change it, if we make the decision to,” said the astronaut who along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko landed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

Kelly also spoke about his temporary height gain in space, which has generated significant attention. The low gravity of space elongated the astronaut's spine during his time in orbit, making him 1.5 inches taller on his return.

“There are things we are going to discover about our experience in space in the space station that we don’t even know now,” Kelly said.

Scientists also studied the differences between the astronaut and his twin brother, Mark, a retired astronaut, back on Earth.

The tests will continue, to help NASA learn about how the body copes with the severe strains of spaceflight.

NASA aims to send a manned mission to Mars by 2035, a vast roundtrip journey that could take more than two years. However, Kelly himself predicted that he would not fly again with the space agency.

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Washington, March 1 (IANS)

In late November and early December 2015, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission made a series of close approaches to the Martian moon Phobos, collecting data from within 500 kms of the moon.

Among the data returned were spectral images of Phobos in the ultraviolet.

The images will allow MAVEN scientists to better assess the composition of this enigmatic object whose origin is unknown.

Comparing MAVEN's images and spectra of the surface of Phobos to similar data from asteroids and meteorites will help planetary scientists understand the moon's origin - whether it is a captured asteroid or was formed in orbit around Mars.

The MAVEN data, when fully analysed, will also help scientists look for organic molecules on the surface.

Evidence for such molecules has been reported by previous measurements from the ultraviolet spectrograph on the Mars Express spacecraft.

The observations were made by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument aboard MAVEN.

MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics while NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN project.

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New Delhi, Feb 25 (IANS) There is nothing that cannot be achieved if a person has the will and is determined to make decisions, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams said on Thursday.

"A person should aspire to try out new things and explore new opportunities. Confidence, perseverance, persistence and knowledge play a key role in achieving the most challenging feats," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronaut, who is also a US Navy Captain, said while addressing a session on women's empowerment here.

The event was organised by the women wing of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

"I considered myself the girl next door, but I always grabbed the opportunities and explored them," Williams added.

She said opportunities were aplenty and the need was to grab and explore them. It was important to be a good student as it opened doors of opportunities, the United States Navy officer of Indian-Slovenian descent said.

Williams also recounted her experience of viewing 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in a single day during her space mission.

"I was in a spacecraft moving at tremendous speed (28,000 km per hour) around the earth. There was a time when I saw 16 sunrises in a couple of hours," she said.

Speaking on the theme of the session 'Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics(STEM)', she said: "Studying STEM today offers a plethora of areas to learn, explore and understand."

Reminiscing her journey, she said when she joined the US Naval Academy, there were only 10 percent women students but the number had doubled over the years.

"NASA is keen on having young and feisty females in its midst," she remarked.

Williams also spoke about her experiences in a male-dominated field. She said she often found herself in a minority but it never deterred her or interfered with her goals.

"I knew my tasks well and was competent to take on any challenge. And every woman brings to the table team work and willingly takes care of the team as it's her innate nature."

Nothing that can't be achieved through will, determination: Sunita Williams

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The Korea US-Air Quality study (KORUS-AQ) will assess air quality across urban, rural and coastal areas of South Korea using the combined observations of aircraft, ground sites, ships and satellites.

"KORUS-AQ is a step forward in an international effort to develop a global air quality observing system," said James Crawford, scientist on the project from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

"Both of our countries will be launching geostationary satellites that will join other satellites in a system that includes surface networks, air quality models, and targeted airborne sampling," Crawford added.

South Korea's capital Seoul is one of the world's five most-populated metropolitan areas.

Because of the country's varied topography and its location close to rapidly industrialising China as well as ocean, the impacts associated with the many factors controlling air quality are larger and often easier to measure over the Korean peninsula than elsewhere.

"Working with our South Korean colleagues on KORUS-AQ, we will improve our understanding of the detailed factors controlling air quality, how the processes interact, and how they are changing over time," Crawford said.

KORUS-AQ will benefit the development of a new a constellation of space-borne science satellites and instruments expected to launch in the years 2018-2022 that will make air quality measurements over Asia, North America, Europe, and North Africa, NASA said.

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PHOTOGRAPHERS: BILL STAFFORD, JAMES BLAIR, REGAN GEESEMAN

Washington, Feb 24 (IANS) In its bid to help astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) focus on key space research, NASA is asking coders to create algorithms for Robonaut 2 or R2 that will improve its 3D vision to maintain the orbiting laboratory.

The "Robonaut Vision Tool Manipulation" contest offers a total of $10,000 in prizes for the best algorithms to help the first humanoid robot on the ISS see better.

Serving as an extra set of hands for ISS crew members, R2 is looking to help with the more mundane or repetitive tasks that are required for maintaining the million-pound laboratory -- freeing up its human colleagues for critical science and repair work.

While astronauts can control R2 directly, making the robot more autonomous will make work on the station and on future deep space exploration missions more efficient.

One goal is to help R2 "see" better. In order to use a tool, R2 relies on an algorithm to determine a 3D representation of the tool.

The algorithm works with the robot’s control system and allows R2 to create a plan for grasping objects and completing its tasks.

Existing algorithms assume that high-resolution images are always available but new algorithms are needed that can determine differences in objects based on noisy, stereo vision data.

“The objective for the contest is to create algorithms that will receive a pair of noisy stereo images of common space tools such as an Radio-frequency identification (RFID) reader, an EVA handrail or a softbox, among others, and determine the correct 3-D representation of the object in the image pair,” the US space agency said in a statement.

For example, R2 manages inventory using an RFID reader and fastens bolts with a drill.

The first Robonaut R1 was built as a ground prototype to explore the potential for a humanoid robot to help astronauts during spacewalks by preparing worksites and providing an extra pair of dexterous hands during maintenance tasks.

R2 was co-developed with General Motors (GM) through a Space Act Agreement.

R2 is a faster, more dexterous robot than the first iteration of Robonaut.

With more sensing, a greater range of motion and a safety system that allows it to work side-by-side with astronauts, R2 holds great potential to assist with space station activities.

The contest is supported by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and managed by NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI).

NASA asks people to help its humanoid robot see better

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New York, Feb 23 (IANS)

Although the text from the transcript of the discussion was released in 2008, the audio recording is only just being made public and will be played in an upcoming Science Channel series "NASA's Unexplained Files", CNN reported.

Since it is not possible to receive radio signals on the far side of the Moon, the musical dance of frequencies and noise made astronauts Eugene Cernan and John Young wonder whether "that whistling sound" could be an "outer-space-type music".

"That music even sounds outer-spacey, doesn't it? You hear that? That whistling sound? Whoooooo," says Cernan in the recording.

Young answers in the affirmative, saying: "I wonder what it is."

So, what could possibly be the explanation?

In a statement released last week by NASA, Cernan said: "I don't remember that incident exciting me enough to take it seriously. It was probably just radio interference. Had we thought it was something other than that we would have briefed everyone after the flight. We never gave it another thought."

In the promo of "NASA's Unexplained Files", astronaut Al Worden says that "logic tells me that if there was something recorded on there, then there's something there", but according to cbsnews.com, Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins provided a detailed explanation about the noise in his 1974 book "Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys", which he co-authored with Charles Lindbergh.

As Collins waited for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to catch up after blasting off from the lunar surface, he too heard "a strange noise" in his headset - "an eerie woo-woo sound", Collins wrote.

"Had I not been warned about it, it would have scared hell out of me," he further wrote.

"Stafford's Apollo 10 crew had first heard it, during their practice rendezvous around the moon. Alone on the back side, they were more than a little surprised to hear a noise that John Young in the command module and Stafford in the LM (lunar module) each denied making," Collins added.

After returning to Earth, the Apollo 10 crew "gingerly mentioned it in their debriefing sessions, but fortunately the radio technicians (rather than the UFO fans) had a ready explanation for it", Collins noted.

"It was interference between the LM's and command module's VHF radios. We had heard it yesterday when we turned our VHF radios on after separating our two vehicles, and Neil said that it 'sounds like wind whipping around the trees'. It stopped as soon as the LM got on the ground, and started up again just a short time ago. A strange noise in a strange place," he wrote in the book.

NASA releases 1969 recording of 'strange music' from outer space

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Washington, Feb 23 (IANS) Inspired by the CubeSats technology where cube-shaped satellites are set to help scientists study the Earth's atmosphere like never before, the US space agency has selected four new projects to be developed, built, and launched into low-Earth orbit.

These tiny satellites are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand or as big as a large shoebox.

“Validating these new compact instrument subsystems today will enable the relevant constellation measurements of the future,” said Charles Norton, program associate of the Earth Science Technology office (ESTO) from Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech.

The four new CubeSat selections are CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation (CubeRRT), Compact Infrared Radiometer in Space (CIRiS), CubeSat Infrared Atmospheric Sounder (CIRAS) and Precipitation Profiling Radar in a CubeSat (RainCube).

CubeRRT is a project to observe, detect and mitigate radio frequency interference (RFI) for microwave radiometers - an instrument that measures Earth’s properties, including atmospheric water vapor or soil moisture.

CIRiS will adapt an existing instrument to be CubeSat compatible to validate instrument performance in low-Earth orbit.

The CIRiS mission will also validate data processing algorithms as well as on-orbit instrument calibration - important for enabling new instruments that could be used in a variety of missions.

CIRAS is designed to develop a CubeSat-size instrument system capable of matching the temperature and water vapour profile measurements in the lower troposphere of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) an instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite and the Cross Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) - an instrument on the NASA/NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System.

RainCube will be the first active radar on a CubeSat platform. It will use a very compact deployable antenna and new processing technologies to validate a Ka-band precipitation radar.

A constellation of RainCube satellites would be able to provide the temporal resolution for weather observations that could be used to improve forecasting models.

“These quick-turnaround projects, once validated, have the potential to improve and supplement Earth science observations available to researchers worldwide covering topics from weather to climate, and soil moisture to land use,” the US space agency said in a statement.

The four newly-selected CubeSats, each measuring 10x20x30 centimeters, received funding through a recent solicitation held by NASA’s In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST) programme.

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Washington, Feb 23 (IANS) NASA astronaut Scott Kelly who along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in March last year will return together to Earth in little more than a week.

Kelly paved the way for future missions including Mars when he embarked on a one-year mission. The year-long endeavour has seen Kelly accomplishing several key missions, including growing the first space vegetable and flower, the US space agency said in a statement.

NASA has partnered with other space agencies to conduct numerous human research investigations to see how the human body changes during a year in space.

Coinciding with the one-year mission is the twins study. Scott's identical twin brother Mark, himself a former astronaut, is spending the year on Earth, enabling researchers to focus on a near-identical comparison of the brothers' genomics profiles -- something never captured before in human space research.

This new field of study, akin to personalised medicine, produces so much information and data to analyse that it's hard to imagine.

"The mission will continue even after Scott returns," said John Charles, chief scientist of the NASA Human Research Programme.

“For the one-year mission research, we will be collecting post-flight medical data three-months and six-months after he is back on Earth. For the twins study research, we will continue to collect data as far out as a year after his return,” he added.

The post-flight data are as important as the inflight data to help scientists learn how to send humans safely to Mars and return them safely to Earth.

To date, NASA has approximately 15 years of data from the space station about how space affects the human body on six-month missions.

Now, the “Human Research Programme” is building on that foundation by proposing more international collaboration on future one-year space station missions.

NASA astronaut coming back to Earth but efforts on to reach Mars

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New York, Feb 22 (IANS) For humans to arrive at the Red Planet with the available technology, it will approximately take five months to touch down on the Martian surface. NASA researchers are now working on a new laser technology that can send humans to Mars in flat three days.

The idea is to use lasers to propel spacecraft with giant sails to Mars in just three days and this is no science fiction.

The new “photonic propulsion” system relies on the momentum of photons - particles of light - to move forward.

But instead of photons from the Sun's rays, the design from NASA scientist Philip Lubin will involve a push by giant Earth-based lasers to the spacecraft, sciencealert.com reported.

According to Lubin, the technology is very much readily available and that the system could easily be scaled up.

“There are recent advances that take this from science fiction to science reality. There is no known reason why we cannot do this,” Lubin was quoted as saying.

Despite not having any mass, particles of light have both energy and momentum.

“When they reflect off an object, that momentum is transferred into a little push. With a large, reflective sail, it's possible to generate enough momentum to gradually accelerate a spacecraft,” the report added.

Lubin's calculations predict that photonic propulsion could get a 100-kg robotic spacecraft to Mars in just three days.

“Electromagnetic acceleration is only limited by the speed of light while chemical systems are limited to the energy of chemical processes,” Lubin wrote.

Lubin and his team have received a proof-of-concept grant from NASA to show that photonic propulsion could be used for space travel.

NASA is currently building the Space Launch System (SLS), the world's most powerful rocket that will take humans to Mars.

SLS is one of the most experienced large rocket engines in the world, with more than a million seconds of ground test and flight operations time.

When completed, SLS will enable astronauts to begin their journey to explore destinations far into the solar system.

The SLS will carry 13 small satellites along with an uncrewed Orion spacecraft during its first flight in 2018.

US President Barak Obama has proposed $19 billion for the US space agency in the fiscal 2017 budget - a little less that $19.3 billion NASA received for the fiscal 2016.

Novel laser technology to propel humans to Mars in three days!

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Washington, Feb 22 (IANS) NASA’s "flying" telescope aboard a highly modified Boeing 747SP jetliner has begun its fourth series of flights to map planets, asteroids, stars, galaxies and more.

This operational period, known as "Cycle 4", is a one-year-long observing period in which the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is scheduled for 106 flights between now and the end of January 2017.

“The Cycle 4 programme will make more than 550 hours of observations,” said Pamela Marcum, NASA's SOFIA project scientist in a statement.

“We’ll be studying objects including planets, moons, asteroids and comets in our solar system; star and planet formation; extrasolar planets and the evolution of planetary systems; the interstellar medium and interstellar chemistry; and nearby normal and active galaxies,” Marcum explained.

SOFIA’s instruments observe infrared energy - one part of the electromagnetic spectrum which includes visible light, x-rays, radio waves and others.

Many objects in space, for example newborn stars, emit almost all their energy at infrared wavelengths and are undetectable when observed in ordinary visible light.

In other cases, clouds of gas and dust in space block visible light objects but allow infrared energy to reach Earth.

In both situations, the celestial objects of interest can only be studied using infrared facilities like SOFIA.

“During the February third flight, the target objects ranged from a young planetary system around the naked-eye star Vega, only 25 light years from us, to an infant star 1,500 light years away in the Orion star forming region,” noted Erick Young, SOFIA’s science mission operations director.

“We also observed a supermassive black hole hidden behind dense dust clouds in the center of a galaxy 170 million light years away,” he added.

Later in “Cycle 4”, the SOFIA observatory is scheduled to deploy to the Southern Hemisphere for seven weeks in June and July 2016, with 24 science flights planned from a base at Christchurch, New Zealand.

There, scientists will have the opportunity to observe areas of interest such as the Galactic Center and other parts of the Milky Way that are not visible or difficult to observe from the Northern Hemisphere.

SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, manages the SOFIA programme.

NASA's 'flying' telescope begins studying asteroids, stars

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A close-up of the canyons on Charon, Pluto's big moon, taken by New Horizons during its close approach to the Pluto system in July last year. (Photo: NASA)

Washington, Feb 20 (IANS) Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, once had a sub-surface ocean that has long since frozen and expanded - pushing outward and causing the moon’s surface to stretch and fracture on a massive scale, new images from NASA’s New Horizons mission have revealed.

Charon is characterised by a system of “pull apart” tectonic faults, which are expressed as ridges, scarps and valleys - the latter sometimes reaching more than 6 km deep.

Charon’s tectonic landscape shows that somehow, the moon expanded in its past and Charon’s surface fractured as it stretched.

“The outer layer of Charon is primarily water ice. This layer was kept warm when Charon was young by heat provided by the decay of radioactive elements, as well as Charon’s own internal heat of formation,” the US space agency said in a statement.

Scientists say Charon could have been warm enough to cause the water ice to melt deep down, creating a subsurface ocean.

But as Charon cooled over time, this ocean would have frozen and expanded - lifting the outermost layers of the moon and producing the massive chasms we see today.

The top portion of this image shows part of the feature informally named Serenity Chasma, part of a vast equatorial belt of chasms on Charon.

The lower portion of the image shows color-coded topography of the same scene.

Measurements of the shape of this feature tell scientists that Charon’s water ice layer may have been at least partially liquid in its early history and has since refrozen.

This image was obtained by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons.

Frozen ocean spotted on Pluto's 'Hulk-like' moon Charon

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Washington, Feb 20 (IANS) US space agency NASA said on Friday that a record number of Americans have applied to be astronauts this year.

NASA said in a statement it has received more than 18,300 applications for its 2017 astronaut class, almost three times the number it received in 2012 for the most recent astronaut class, and far surpassing the previous record of 8,000 in 1978.

"It's not at all surprising to me that so many Americans from diverse backgrounds want to personally contribute to blazing the trail on our journey to Mars," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, himself a former astronaut.

"A few exceptionally talented men and women will become the astronauts chosen in this group who will once again launch to space from US soil on American-made spacecraft."

The application window opened on December 14, and closed on Thursday. Now, an 18-month process will begin to choose eight to 14 individuals for the opportunity to become astronaut candidates, reports Xinhua.

NASA said it will to announce its selections in mid-2017.

Then, the astronaut candidates will go through about two years of initial training on spacecraft systems, spacewalking skills and teamwork, Russian language and other requisite skills.

Finally, those who complete the training will be assigned on any of four different spacecraft: the International Space Station, NASA's Orion spacecraft for deep space exploration, or one of two American-made commercial crew spacecraft currently in development -- Boeing's CST-100 Starliner or the SpaceX Crew Dragon, NASA added.

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Washington, Feb 19 (IANS) In a maiden attempt to decode the rotation of a massive exoplanet, astronomers using Hubble Space Telescope have measured the rotation rate of a cloudy "super-Jupiter" by observing the varied brightness in its atmosphere.

The planet called 2M1207b is about four times more massive than Jupiter. It is a companion to a failed star known as a brown dwarf, orbiting the object at a distance of five billion miles.

By contrast, Jupiter is approximately 500 million miles from the Sun. The brown dwarf is known as 2M1207. The system resides 170 light-years away from Earth.

“The result is very exciting. It gives us a unique technique to explore the atmospheres of exoplanets and to measure their rotation rates,” said Daniel Apai from University of Arizona in Tucson.

The researchers attribute the brightness variation to complex clouds patterns in the planet's atmosphere.

The new Hubble measurements not only verify the presence of these clouds but also show that the cloud layers are patchy and colorless.

The observations revealed that the exoplanet's atmosphere is hot enough to have "rain" clouds made of silicates - vaporised rock that cools down to form tiny particles with sizes similar to those in cigarette smoke.

Deeper into the atmosphere, iron droplets are forming and falling like rain, eventually evaporating as they enter the lower levels of the atmosphere.

"So at higher altitudes it rains glass, and at lower altitudes it rains iron," added Yifan Zhou from University of Arizona and lead author.

The “super-Jupiter” is so hot that it appears brightest in infrared light. The planet is hot because it is only about 10 million years old and is still contracting and cooling.

For comparison, Jupiter in our solar system is about 4.5 billion years old.

The planet, however, will not maintain these sizzling temperatures. Over the next few billion years, the object will cool and fade dramatically.

As its temperature decreases, the iron and silicate clouds will also form lower and lower in the atmosphere and will eventually disappear from view.

Zhou and his team also determined that the super-Jupiter completes one rotation approximately every 10 hours, spinning at about the same fast rate as Jupiter.

The super-Jupiter and its companion may have formed throughout the gravitational collapse of a pair of separate disks.

“Our study demonstrates that Hubble and its successor, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, will be able to derive cloud maps for exoplanets, based on the light we receive from them," Apai noted in a paper appeared in The Astrophysical Journal.

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Washington, Feb 19 (IANS) In a fresh attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe, NASA has announced to build a new, wider telescope that will have a view 100 times bigger than that of Hubble Space Telescope.

Called the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), it will help researchers unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter and explore the evolution of the universe.

Slated to be launched in the mid-2020s, the observatory will also discover new worlds outside our solar system and advance the search for worlds that could be suitable for life.

WFIRST is the agency's next major astrophysics observatory, following the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.

"WFIRST has the potential to open our eyes to the wonders of the universe, much the same way Hubble has," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, DC.

"“This mission uniquely combines the ability to discover and characterise planets beyond our own solar system with the sensitivity and optics to look wide and deep into the universe in a quest to unravel the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter", ” he explained in a statement.

The observatory will survey large regions of the sky in near-infrared light to answer fundamental questions about the structure and evolution of the universe and expand our knowledge of planets beyond our solar system - known as exoplanets.

It will carry a Wide Field Instrument for surveys, and a Coronagraph Instrument designed to block the glare of individual stars and reveal the faint light of planets orbiting around them.

By blocking the light of the host star, the Coronagraph Instrument will enable detailed measurements of the chemical makeup of planetary atmospheres.

Comparing these data across many worlds will allow scientists to better understand the origin and physics of these atmospheres, and search for chemical signs of environments suitable for life.

"WFIRST is designed to address science areas identified as top priorities by the astronomical community," added Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division.

The telescope'’s sensitivity and the wide view will enable a large-scale search for exoplanets by monitoring the brightness of millions of stars in the crowded central region of our galaxy.

By measuring the distances of thousands of supernovae, astronomers can map in detail how cosmic expansion has increased with time.
WFIRST also can precisely measure the shapes, positions and distances of millions of galaxies to track the distribution and growth of cosmic structures, including galaxy clusters and the dark matter accompanying them.

The observatory will begin operations after travelling to a gravitational balance point known as “Earth-Sun L2” which is located about one million miles from Earth in a direction directly opposite the Sun, NASA said.

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New York, Feb 18 (IANS)

NASA has funded a spaceflight propulsion system to be built around a tabletop-sized thruster developed by Alec Gallimore, the Richard F and Eleanor A Towner professor of engineering.

The US space agency awarded $6.5 million over the next three years to Aerojet Rocketdyne for the development of the propulsion system, dubbed the XR-100.

Gallimore's thruster, called X3, is central to this system and his team will receive $1 million of the award for work on the thruster.

The XR-100 is up against two competing designs. All three of them rely on ejecting plasma -- an energetic state of matter in which electrons and charged atoms called ions coexist -- out of the back of the thruster.

But the X3 has a bit of a head start. For thrusters of its design power, 200 kilowatts, it is relatively small and light.

The core technology - the Hall thruster - is already in use for maneuvering satellites in orbit around Earth.

“For comparison, the most powerful Hall thruster in orbit right now is 4.5 kilowatts," Gallimore said.

That's sufficient to adjust the orbit or orientation of a satellite but it's too little power to move the massive amounts of cargo needed to support human exploration of deep space.

Scott Hall, a doctoral student in Gallimore's lab, will use the funding to put the X3 through a battery of tests, running it up to 60 kilowatts and then up to 200 kilowatts.

Doctoral student Sarah Cusson will investigate a tweak that could allow the X3 to remain operational for five-to-10 times longer than its current lifetime of a little over a year.

“If we do our jobs over the next three years, we can deliver both projects. If I had to predict, I would say this thruster would be the basis for sending humans to Mars,” Gallimore added.

The US space agency selected the thruster as part of its Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) programme.

NextSTEP encompasses a set of projects aimed at improving small satellites, propulsion and human living quarters in space.

These are milestones toward sending humans into orbit between Earth and the moon in the 2020s and to Mars the following decade.

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Washington, Feb 17 (IANS) Using the data from NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have discovered a jet from a very distant supermassive black hole being illuminated by the oldest light in the universe.

The discovery shows that black holes with powerful jets may be more common than previously thought in the first few billion years after the Big Bang.

The light detected from this jet was emitted when the universe was only 2.7 billion years old, a fifth of its present age.

At this point, the intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) left over from the Big Bang was much greater than it is today.

"We essentially stumbled onto this remarkable jet because it happened to be in Chandras field of view while we were observing something else, explained co-author Lukasz Stawarz of Jagiellonian University in Poland.

The length of the jet, found in the system known as B3 0727+409, is at least 300,000 light years.

Many long jets emitted by supermassive black holes have been detected in the nearby universe, but exactly how these jets give off X-rays has remained a matter of debate.

In B3 0727+409, it appears that the CMB is being boosted to X-ray wavelengths.

"Because we are seeing this jet when the universe was less than three billion years old, the jet is about 150 times brighter in X-rays than it would be in the nearby Universe, said Aurora Simionescu at JAXAs Institute of Space and Astronautical Studies (ISAS) who led the study.

Electrons in black hole jets usually emit strongly at radio wavelengths, so typically these systems are found using radio observations.

The discovery of the jet in B3 0727+409 is special because so far almost no radio signal has been detected from this object, while it is easily seen in the X-ray image.

"Supermassive black hole activity, including the launching of jets, may be different in the early Universe than what we see later on, noted study co-author Teddy Cheung of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

By studying more of these distant jets, scientist can start to grasp how the properties of supermassive black holes might change over billions of years.

The results were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Photos of the Ground Zinnias' Harvesting inside the SSPF

Washington, Feb 13 (IANS) As crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) get ready to harvest the flowering zinnia plants on Valentine's Day, scientists on the ground are doing exactly the same to learn more about growing crops for deep space missions and, eventually, Mars.

Mesmerising Zinnia plants from the Veggie ground control system are being harvested in the flight equipment development laboratory in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The ground plants did not experience some of the same stressors as those grown simultaneously on the ISS - like unexpected fungus growth.

However, some of the zinnia plants aboard the floating laboratory pulled through due to collaboration between the astronauts and the ground team at Kennedy.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly who became an autonomous gardener provided researchers with even more information about how to effectively grow plants in space than they expected, the space agency said in a statement.

“I think we’ve learned a lot about doing this kind of experiment. We’re being farmers in space,” Kelly said. “I was extra motivated to bring the plants back to life. I’m going to harvest them on Valentine’s Day.”

Researchers hope to gather good data regarding long duration seed stow and germination.

The experiment will also tell them whether pollen could affect crew health and how having colourful flowering plants to grow could improve crew morale.

“We need to learn a tremendous amount to help develop more robust sustainable food production systems as NASA moves toward long duration exploration and the journey to Mars,” added Gioia Massa, NASA Kennedy payload scientist for Veggie.

Veggie is the biggest plant/flower experiment to fly on the station. According to the behavioural health scientists, part of the pleasure for astronauts is just being involved in meaningful work. But crews in space aren’t the only ones positively affected by growing plants.

“We are sad to see them go. We have been caring for them for quite a while. But it’s for the interest of science so we can go to Mars,” noted Chuck Spern, project engineer with Vencore on the Engineering Services Contract at Kennedy.

The plant pillows containing the zinnia seeds were activated in the Veggie system on the space station and in the ground control experiment on November 13 last year.

The plants grew for nearly three months, much longer than the previous red romaine lettuce crop which grew for 33 days.

The flowers were watered and monitored by Kelly and other crew members on the space station.

“The flowers going to seed are a good demonstration for sustainable food crops,” said Nicole Dufour, NASA mechanical engineer. “It’s a good example of starting with seeds and ending with seeds, which is what you need to sustain crop growth.”

The zinnia crop will give researchers insights that are valuable for a number of longer duration and fruiting crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, strawberries and other staple crops such as beans and peanuts.

The next Veggie experiment called Veg-03 will be delivered to the space station on a future commercial resupply services mission.

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New York, Feb 10 (IANS) The US space agency NASA is not only full of scientists but it is also home to artistic dreamers and thinkers who once again stormed the internet with the release of new space tourism posters.

These artists were behind the Exoplanet Travel Bureau poster series that was published last year and after its success, they are now releasing a more extensive run of posters, The Verge reported on Tuesday.

The new series known as "Visions of the Future" includes beautiful takes on Europa, Venus, and even Earth and the first three posters of the series were published on Tuesday.

The artists work in a studio that was formed about 13 years ago at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The JPL design team works closely with NASA scientists and engineers and is in tune with the latest discoveries and biggest mysteries in our solar system.

This proximity allows the artists to come up with a poster theme that revolves around planetary exploration easily.

"Each new poster mixes a bit of that reality with an optimistic take on what exploring our solar system might actually look like someday," the report said.

For example, while the poster for Venus calls for visitors to come see the "Cloud 9 Observatory", the poster for Europa advertises the ability to see underwater life -- something that does not feel so far-fetched considering the moon is home to a global sub-surface ocean, the report added.

All 14 posters -- including the "Exoplanet" series -- are now available for download on the JPL website.

NASA Releases New Space Tourism Posters

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Washington, Feb 10 (IANS) US President Barak Obama has proposed $19 billion for the US space agency in the fiscal 2017 budget - a little less that $19.3 billion NASA received for the fiscal 2016.

According to the initial numbers released by NASA, while $5.6 billion are earmarked for science, $3.3 billion are for deep-space exploration programmes like Mars.

The proposed budget also lists $5.1 billion for space operations, including $1.4 billion for upkeep of the International Space Station (ISS) and $1.2 billion for the Commercial Crew programme to replace the space shuttle, the US space agency said in a statement.

“The $19 billion budget, as proposed, would shift some funds from NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion programmes to aeronautics and space technology, in addition to the overall cuts, while also move funds within the agency’s science account,” spacenews.com reported.

The decrease in NASA budget is partly due to Obama's proposal to cut $840 million from deep-space exploration programmes and $100 million from planetary science.

“This imbalanced proposal continues to tie our astronauts’ feet to the ground and makes a Mars mission all but impossible," Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said in a statement.

“This is not the proposal of an administration that is serious about maintaining America’s leadership in space,” Smith added.

In a “State of NASA” speech at the agency’s Langley Research Centre, NASA administrator Charles Bolden made no specific mention of those cuts.

“We’ll continue to make great progress on the SLS,” he said.

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Washington, Feb 10 (IANS) Scientists at the US space agency NASA have discounted reports that an Indian bus driver in Tamil Nadu was killed by a meteorite, saying he was likely hit by a land based explosion.

Online photographs of the site of the suspected meteorite hit in a college campus on Saturday were more consistent with "a land based explosion" than with something from space, the New York Times reported Tuesday citing NASA scientists.

Early reports included images of a crater, five feet deep and two feet wide. Witnesses described hearing an explosion, and police recovered a black, pockmarked stone from the site in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu.

Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defence officer, told the US daily in an email that a death by meteorite impact was so rare that one has never been scientifically confirmed in recorded history.

"There have been reports of injuries, but even those were extremely rare before the Chelyabinsk event three years ago," she said, referring to a 2013 episode in Russia.

In addition, meteorites are often cool to the touch when they land, and the object recovered from the site in India weighed only a few grams and appeared to be a fragment of a common earth rock.

The US daily also cited a scientist at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics which is analysing samples of the rock provided by the police as doubting if it was a meteorite.

"Considering that there was no prediction of a meteorite shower and there was no meteorite shower observed, this certainly is a rare phenomenon if it is a meteorite," professor G.C. Anupama, the dean of the institute, told the daily over the telephone.

Deaths and injuries by meteorites are tracked by the International Comet Quarterly, which notes the locations and sizes of meteorites.

Some smash through houses, kill animals and spatter buildings. But deaths have been hard to confirm, the Times said.

In 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia, an apparent "airblast" of an object entering the Earth's atmosphere leveled hundreds of square miles of forest and killed two men and hundreds of reindeer. But no meteorites were recovered, the New York Times said citing the quarterly.

In one of the largest recent events, meteorites or pieces of space rock fell in Chelyabinsk from a meteor that hit the Earth's atmosphere in February 2013.

About 1,200 people - 200 of them children - were injured, mostly by glass that exploded into schools and workplaces, the Times said, citing Russia's interior ministry.

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A look at some of the small, rocky exoplanets discovered by Kepler. Photo: NASA

New York, Feb 9 (IANS) The interior structure of rocky exoplanets orbiting other stars will have interiors very similar to Earth -- a thin outer crust, a thick mantle, and a Mars-sized core, researchers have shown using a computer model.

"We wanted to see how Earth-like these rocky planets are. It turns out they are very Earth-like," said lead author Li Zeng of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA).

Zeng and his team applied a computer model known as the Preliminary Reference Earth Model (PREM), which is the standard model for Earth's interior. They adjusted it to accommodate different masses and compositions, and applied it to six known rocky exoplanets with well-measured masses and physical sizes.

They found that the other planets, despite their differences from Earth, all should have a nickel/iron core containing about 30 percent of the planet's mass. In comparison, about a third of the Earth's mass is in its core.

The remainder of each planet would be mantle and crust, just as with Earth, according to a CfA statement.

"We've only understood the Earth's structure for the past hundred years. Now we can calculate the structures of planets orbiting other stars, even though we can't visit them," Zeng said.

The model assumes that distant exoplanets have chemical compositions similar to Earth. This is reasonable based on the relevant abundance of key chemical elements like iron, magnesium, silicon, and oxygen in nearby systems.

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Washington, Feb 8 (IANS) Aerodynamics engineers including an Indian-origin scientist are studying sports balls to learn lessons in aerodynamics that will help build aircrafts more earth-friendly and allow spacecrafts to take the most efficient route to Mars in the future.

Aerodynamics is the study of how air and liquids, referred to collectively as "fluids," flow around objects.

By understanding how fluids flow around basic shapes such as cylinders and spheres, NASA's engineers predict how even minor alterations in these basic shapes change flow patterns and events like Super Bowl come handy.

Sports provide a great opportunity to introduce the next generation of researchers to our field of aerodynamics by showing them something they can relate to, said Rabi Mehta, chief of the Experimental Aero-Physics Branch at NASA's Ames Research Centre - located less than 16 km from the home of Super Bowl 50 - Levis Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

The way air moves around different shapes plays a significant role in the flight of all sports balls.

What is the best way to throw a football? Why does a curve ball curve, why does it knuckle?

Researchers can demonstrate the science behind these complex questions using relatively simple visualisations of fluids flowing over sports balls in small test facilities at NASA.

A football is shaped like a wing and more aerodynamic than a round ball so the flow is very different.

When a quarterback throws the football, he ideally wants to throw a tight spiral with high rotation rate to help stabilise the ball as it flies through the air.

This produces lower drag than a wobbling ball so it will get there faster. Wobbling balls are also harder for the receiver to catch and more easily picked off by the defense, Mehta added.

Kicking is another aspect of football aerodynamics.

We've all seen how critical the final kick can be, if the ball is a little bit off you can lose the whole game and the entire season, said Mehta.

Ideally, the kicker should kick the ball so that it spins along the horizontal axis if angled the ball veers sideways.

To get results, Mehta spoke directly with athletes, using visual tools to illustrate aerodynamics concepts.

Ive witnessed it quite often, Mehta said. The understanding on their faces is remarkable, and that, I find very gratifying.

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Washington, Feb 6 (IANS) A small asteroid that is expected to make its closest approach to Earth on March 5 will pass peacefully without disturbing our world at a distance of between 9,000-17,000 km.

According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the asteroid named 2013 “TX68” will keep passing on a regular basis but there is very rarely any cause for alarm.

The only noticeable thing is that the asteroid will get far closer to Earth than the Moon ever does.

Roughly 100 feet in diameter, the near-Earth asteroid will pass the Earth us again in September 2017 and will be making flybys in 2046 and 2097 and in all cases, the odds of an impact are even lower.

“The possibilities of a collision on any of the three future flyby dates are far too small to be of any real concern. I fully expect any future observations to reduce the probability even more… ,” said Paul Chodas, manager of CNEOS, in a recent statement

"“This asteroid’'s orbit is quite uncertain, and it will be hard to predict where to look for it. There is a chance that the asteroid will be picked up by our asteroid search telescopes when it safely flies past us next month, providing us with data to more precisely define its orbit around the Sun",” he added.

An asteroid measuring 65 feet broke up in the atmosphere over the Russian town of Chelyabinsk in 2013, causing property damage and over 1,500 injuries.

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Washington, Feb 6 (IANS) Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, a module pilot on Apollo 14 mission that touched down the lunar surface on February 5, 1971, died in Florida this week on the eve of the 45th anniversary of his lunar landing.

Mitchell joined Apollo 14 commander Alan Shephard, Jr., the first American in space, in the lunar module Antares which touched down in the Fra Mauro highlands on the Moon.

Shepard and Mitchell were assigned to traverse the lunar surface to deploy scientific instruments and perform a communications test on the surface as well as photograph the lunar surface and any deep space phenomena. It was Mitchells only spaceflight.

Mitchell and Shephard set mission records for the time of the longest distance traversed on the lunar surface, the largest payload returned from lunar surface and the longest lunar stay time (33 hours).

They were also the first to transmit colour TV from the lunar surface.

Mitchell helped collect 94 pounds of lunar rock and soil samples that were distributed across 187 scientific teams in the US and 14 other countries for analysis.

As a member of the Apollo 14 crew, Edgar is one of only 12 men to walk on the moon and he helped to change how we view our place in the universe, said NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.

Mitchell was drawn to the spaceflight by President John F Kennedy's call to send astronauts to the moon.

After Kennedy announced the moon programme, that's what I wanted because it was the bear going over the mountain to see what he could see, and what could you learn, and I've been devoted to that - to exploration, education, and discovery since my earliest years, and that's what kept me going," Mitchell said in 1997 interview for NASA's oral history programme.

In his book titled The Way of the Explorer, Mitchell wrote: "There was a sense that our presence as space travelers, and the existence of the universe itself, was not accidental but that there was an intelligent process at work.

Mitchell retired from NASA and the US Navy and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973 to sponsor research in the nature of consciousness.

In 1984, he co-founded the Association of Space Explorers, and international organisation for all who share experience of space travel.

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The hills, which are in the vast ice plain informally named Sputnik Planum within Pluto's heart is likely miniature versions of the larger, jumbled mountains on Sputnik Planum's western border.

Because water ice is less dense than nitrogen-dominated ice, scientists believe these water ice hills are floating in a sea of frozen nitrogen and move over time like icebergs in the Earths Arctic Ocean.

The hills are likely fragments of the rugged uplands that have broken away and are being carried by the nitrogen glaciers into Sputnik Planum.

Chains of the drifting hills are formed along the flow paths of the glaciers.

When the hills enter the cellular terrain of central Sputnik Planum, they become subject to the convective motions of the nitrogen ice, and are pushed to the edges of the cells, where the hills cluster in groups reaching up to 20 km across.

The image measures a little over 500 km long and about 340 km wide. It was obtained at a range of approximately 16,000 km from Pluto, about 12 minutes before New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015.

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Washington, Feb 4 (IANS) Set to arrive at Jupiter this year to study the giant planet from an elliptical, polar orbit, NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft successfully executed a maneuver to adjust its flight path on Wednesday.

This is the first of two trajectory adjustments that fine tune Junos orbit around the Sun, perfecting our rendezvous with Jupiter on July 4, said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

The Juno spacecraft's thrusters consumed about 0.6 kg of fuel during the burn and changed the spacecraft's speed by 0.31 metres per second.

At the time of the maneuver, Juno was about 82 million kms from Jupiter and approximately 684 million kms from Earth.

The next trajectory correction maneuver is scheduled on May 31.

Launched on August 5, 2011, thee spacecraft will orbit the Jovian world 33 times, skimming to within 5,000 kms above the planet's cloud tops every 14 days.

During the flybys, Juno will probe beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and study its aurorae to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

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Washington, Feb 3 (IANS) New images taken from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory show a spectacular jet that emanates from a black hole in the centre of the galaxy and extends across 300,000 years toward a brilliant hotspot and a counter jet pointing in the opposite direction.

The Pictor A galaxy is located nearly 500 million light years from Earth and contains a supermassive black hole at its centre.

A huge amount of gravitational energy is released as material swirls towards the event horizon, the point of no return for infalling material.

This energy produces an enormous beam, or jet, of particles travelling at nearly the speed of light into intergalactic space.

To obtain images of this jet, scientists used Chandra observatory at various times over 15 years.

The jet in Pictor displays continuous X-ray emission over a distance of 300,000 light years.

By comparison, the entire Milky Way is about 100,000 light years in diameter.

Because of its relative proximity and Chandra's ability to make detailed X-ray images, scientists can look at detailed features in the jet and test ideas of how the X-ray emission is produced.

In addition to the prominent jet seen pointing to the right in the image, researchers report evidence for another jet pointing in the opposite direction, known as a "counterjet".

While tentative evidence for this counterjet had been previously reported, these new Chandra data confirm its existence.

The detailed properties of the jet and counterjet observed with Chandra show that their X-ray emission likely comes from electrons spiraling around magnetic field lines, a process called synchrotron emission.

In this case, the electrons must be continuously re-accelerated as they move out along the jet. How this occurs is not well understood.

A paper describing these results is forthcoming in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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New York, Feb 2 (IANS) The Orion capsule, NASA's spacecraft designed to land humans on Mars, was carried from the US space agency's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to Kennedy Space Centre Florida for structural integrity tests.

"The pressure vessel of @NASA_Orion for Exploration Mission-1 is heading to KSC today," NASA's Kennedy Space Center tweeted on Monday.

The Orion, which was carried in a Super Guppy aircraft, will carry four astronauts and will be launched from NASA's rocket-in-the-making -- the Space Launch System (SLS) for the mission currently scheduled for 2018.

The Super Guppy has a cargo area that is 25 feet tall, 25 feet wide and 111 feet long and the jumbo plane, which can carry over 26 tonnes of cargo, is often used by NASA to ferry large components around the country that would take too long (or be impossible) to ship by land or by sea, techcrunch.com reported.

The aircraft was designed during the Apollo programme and was used in the 1960s to carry parts of the Saturn V rocket from California to Florida.

The vehicle has also been used to ship NASA's supersonic jets as well as modules from the International Space Station.

In 2013, the Super Guppy was used to carry Orion's heat shield, which was the largest of its kind ever built.

Assuming there are no delays or changes in NASA's mandate, Orion's first crewed-mission will take place in 2023. NASA hopes to use Orion to send humans to Mars by the mid-2030s.

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Washington, Feb 1 (IANS)

The video displays invisible magnetic lines where the Sun appears as a mass of noodle-like energy in constant flux, pulsating and sending out bursts of magnetically-charged particles.

For this, they have turned to a combination of real-time observations and computer simulations to best analyse how material courses through the solar upper atmosphere -- the million-degree corona which cannot be seen in the visible light.

"We're not sure exactly where in the sun the magnetic field is created. It could be close to the solar surface or deep inside the sun -- or over a wide range of depths," said Dean Pesnell, a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Getting a handle on what drives that magnetic system is crucial for understanding the nature of space throughout the solar system.

The Sun's magnetic field is responsible for everything from the solar explosions that cause space weather on the Earth -- such as auroras -- to the interplanetary magnetic field and radiation through which our spacecraft journeying around the solar system must travel.

"So how do we even see these invisible fields? First, we observe the material on the Sun. The sun is made of plasma, a gas-like state of matter in which electrons and ions have separated, creating a super-hot mix of charged particles," the US space agency said in a statement.

"We can observe the shape of the magnetic fields above the Sun's surface because they guide the motion of that plasma -- the loops and towers of material in the corona glow brightly in images," Pesnell added.

Additionally, the footpoints on the Sun's surface or photosphere of these magnetic loops can be more precisely measured using an instrument called a magnetograph, which measures the strength and direction of magnetic fields.

"At solar maximum, the magnetic field has a very complicated shape with lots of small structures throughout -- these are the active regions we see," Pesnell informed.

"At solar minimum, the field is weaker and concentrated at the poles. It's a very smooth structure that doesn't form sunspots," he added.

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Washington, Jan 30 (IANS) In its latest selfie sent back home, NASA's Curiosity rover shows the car-size mobile laboratory beside a dark dune where it has been scooping and sieving samples of sand.

The new selfie combines 57 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of Curiosity's arm.

The rover has been investigating a group of active sand dunes for two months, studying how the wind moves and sorts sand particles on Mars.

The site is part of Bagnold Dune Field, which lines the northwestern flank of Mars' Mount Sharp.

When the component images were taken, the rover had scuffed the edge of "Namib Dune" and collected the first of three scoops of sand from that dune.

During processing, an actuator in the sample-processing device did not perform as expected when commanded. This week, the Curiosity team is identifying possible reasons for the actuator's performance.

The rover responded properly to this unexpected event. It stopped moving the actuator and halted further use of the arm and sampling system, said Steve Lee, deputy project manager for Curiosity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

One part of the dune investigation is to view the same location repeatedly to check for movement of sand grains caused by the wind on Mars.

If movement occurs, the team can use the rover's wind measurements to figure out the strength and direction of the winds that caused the movement.

Researchers are evaluating possible sites for the next use of Curiosity's drill to collect rock-powder samples of the bedrock in the area.

Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp in 2014 after fruitfully investigating outcrops closer to its landing site and then trekking to the layered mountain.

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Washington, Jan 29 (IANS) NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a monstrous cloud of hydrogen gas that is plummeting toward our galaxy at nearly 1.1 million km per hour.

Though hundreds of enormous, high-velocity gas clouds whiz around the outskirts of our galaxy, this so-called "Smith Cloud" is unique because its trajectory is well known.

New Hubble observations suggest it was launched from the outer regions of the galactic disk, around 70 million years ago.

The cloud was discovered in the early 1960s by doctoral astronomy student Gail Smith, who detected the radio waves emitted by its hydrogen.

The cloud is on a return collision course and is expected to plow into the Milky Way's disk in about 30 million years.

When it does, astronomers believe it will ignite a spectacular burst of star formation, perhaps providing enough gas to make two million Suns.

"The cloud is an example of how the galaxy is changing with time. It's telling us that the Milky Way is a bubbling, very active place where gas can be thrown out of one part of the disk and then return back down into another," explained team leader Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

Our galaxy is recycling its gas through clouds, the Smith Cloud being one example, and will form stars in different places than before.

"Hubble's measurements of the Smith Cloud are helping us to visualise how active the disks of galaxies are," Fox added in a NASA statement.

Astronomers have measured this comet-shaped region of gas to be 11,000 light-years long and 2,500 light-years across.

If the cloud could be seen in visible light, it would span the sky with an apparent diameter 30 times greater than the size of the full moon.

The team used Hubble to measure the Smith Cloud's chemical composition for the first time, to determine where it came from.

They observed the ultraviolet light from the bright cores of three active galaxies that reside billions of light-years beyond the cloud.

The astronomers found that the "Smith Cloud" is as rich in sulfur as the Milky Way's outer disk, a region about 40,000 light-years from the galaxy's centre (about 15,000 light-years farther out than our sun and solar system).

This means that the "Smith Cloud" was enriched by material from stars. This would not happen if it were pristine hydrogen from outside the galaxy, or if it were the remnant of a failed galaxy devoid of stars.

"Instead, the cloud appears to have been ejected from within the Milky Way and is now boomeranging back," the authors noted in a paper appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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New York, Jan 29 (IANS) The US space agency NASA has released a photo taken by its New Horizons spacecraft that shows Pluto's atmosphere in infrared wavelengths.

It is the first image of the atmosphere made with data from the New Horizons Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument.

The image, in which the sunlight is coming from above and behind Pluto, was captured on July 14, 2015, while New Horizons was about 180,000 km away.

The blue ring around Pluto is caused by sunlight scattering from haze particles common in Pluto's atmosphere and scientists believe the haze is a photochemical smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and other molecules, producing a complex mixture of hydrocarbons such as acetylene and ethylene, a report on NASA's website said.

These hydrocarbons accumulate into small particles -- a fraction of a micrometer in size -- which scatter sunlight to make the blue haze.

The new infrared image, when combined with earlier images made at shorter, visible wavelengths, gives scientists new clues into the size distribution of the particles.

The whitish patches around Pluto's limb in this image are sunlight bouncing off more reflective or smoother areas on Pluto's surface, the report noted.

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The hummingbird glyph and its surroundings in the Nasa world heritage site. (Photo: NASA)

Washington, Jan 28 (IANS) In just two 10-minute overflights, an airborne NASA radar has pinpointed areas of disturbance in Peru's Nasca lines World Heritage Site.

The data collected on the two flights will help Peruvian authorities fully catalog the thousand-year-old designs drawn on the ground in and around the site for the first time.

It will also give them a new tool for protecting the fragile constructions from both careless humans and natural disturbances such as floods.

A shape called the Hummingbird is faintly visible above and to the left of the scale line, its long beak ending below a road that cuts diagonally from the right edge of the image to the centre.

"In the synthetic aperture radar image of the same site, right, areas of disturbance appear dark. There are extensive areas of disturbance around the Hummingbird as well as a pathway down the gully directly above the glyph. Other small disturbances may have been caused by erosion in the dry creek beds," the US space agency said in a statement.

NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) can record changes on the ground beneath the aircraft that occur between multiple flights which take exactly the same flight path.

The instrument is used to monitor how volcanoes, earthquakes, and other natural hazards are changing Earth.

"The UAVSAR is ideally suited for observing the Nasca site because the region has virtually no vegetation and receives no rainfall whatsoever in most years, meaning that natural disturbances are minimal," said principal investigator Bruce Chapman.

The UAVSAR images of the site appeared in a paper in the journal Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites.

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SUBJECT: High quality, production photos of Valkyrie Robot for PAO
PHOTOGRAPHERS: BILL STAFFORD, JAMES BLAIR, REGAN GEESEMAN

New York, Jan 25 (IANS) The US space agency NASA is considering making new humanoid robots that could offer astronauts a helping hand in risky and extremely hazardous future space expeditions.

The agency is developing a six-feet tall, 131.5 kg heavy humanoid robot called R5, previously known as Valkyrie, which will work as a ready-to-assist machine in every dangerous task of the utmost importance during long-lasting journeys beyond the Earth, Astrowatch.net reported on Sunday.

"NASA is counting on robots to setup and care for deep space exploration facilities and equipment pre-deployed ahead of astronauts. Robots are also excellent precursors for conducting science missions ahead of human exploration," Sasha Congiu Ellis of NASA's Langley Research Centre in Hampton, Virginia, said.

Interestingly, the robot was initially designed to complete disaster relief manoeuvres.

In November 2015, NASA awarded two R5 robots to university groups competing in the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge (DRC).

While one robot is tested by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge under its Robust Autonomy for Extreme Space Environments programme, the other is available for Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts for its Accessible Testing on Humanoid-Robot-R5 and Evaluation of NASA Administered (ATHENA) Space Robotics Challenge.

According to NASA, the teams have two years to perform research and software development to improve the robot's autonomy.

The universities will be receiving $250,000 a year and have access to onsite and virtual technical support from the agency.

Moreover, the robots will compete in a Space Robotics Challenge through NASA's Centennial Challenge Programme.

"This will be our first hands-on experience with this hardware. We will leverage our lessons learned from the DARPA Robotics Challenge to perform tasks relevant to future space missions with Valkyrie autonomously," Taskin Padir, the principal investigator of ATHENA at the Northeastern University, said.

Padir's team will make contributions in three main areas - constrained motion planning and control, grasping of unknown objects and human-robot interaction.

The R5 project is part of NASA's Game Changing Development Programme. The programme advances space technologies that may lead to entirely new approaches for the agency's future space missions and provide solutions to significant national needs.

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