Space programs across the pond

The United Kingdom is not generally thought of as a major space player today, but it's been a constant source of ideas on the subject and has developed a number of programs over the last half-century. Britain is recognized today mostly for Surrey's innovative microsatellites, but orbital launch vehicles, spaceplanes, and other advanced projects have percolated up many times (usually to be canceled for want of funding.) This website gives a good overview of the major programs.

Interview: Director Worden of NASA Ames

Former USAF general Simon "Pete" Worden is enjoying his role as director of NASA Ames, where he pushes hard for innovative spacecraft and innovative ways of operating and financing NASA research. In this interview, he riffs on everything from Yuri Gagarin to Google.

Salute to Yuri

And we have come to another April 12, and it is time to raise the vodka glass for a toast to Yuri Gagarin, the first human being in space. Gagarin was selected as one of the first class of 20 cosmonauts chosen under the guidance of Chief Designer Sergei Korolev, who called the men his "little eagles." "Little" was true in another sense: the Vostok capsule was even more cramped than its American rival, Mercury, and Gagarin's height of 157 cm came in handy. Gagarin's 108-minute flight on this date in 1961 covered less than one orbit, but he was nonetheless first. Gagarin never returned to space, in part because the USSR would not risk a national hero. It's a little-known fact that cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova once told an audience in Cuba that Gagarin would command a crew on the first lunar flight (with that crew including Tereshkova), but this seems to have been strictly propaganda. Gagarin died in a crash on a training flight in 1968. (The exact cause remains in dispute, and likely always will.) Among the many monuments the Soviets raised to him is one that I can't help but think he would be embarrassed by: a statue of the cosmonaut, looking more like some stylized superhero, placed atop a pillar in Moscow and towering 40 meters above Gagarin Square.

NASA's lunar robot

It's still an unproven concept, and perhaps a far-out one. But JPL engineers are playing with prototypes of a six-legged robot that could take a 15-ton habitat anywhere on the Moon the VSE missions may require. The robot would normally drive (a more energy-efficient mode) on wheels at the end of the legs. When the terrain was too rough, though, the wheels would be locked and the legs would be unlocked, enabling the ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) to stride on its six-meter-long legs at 5 to 10 kph. The linked article includes some cool videos.

Ames aims for the Moon

From the NASA Ames website comes this release on an innovative, low-cost lunar mission:

"MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA is preparing to send a small spacecraft to the moon in 2011 to assess the lunar atmosphere and the nature of dust lofted above the surface.

Called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), the mission will launch before the agency's moon exploration activities accelerate during the next decade. LADEE will gather detailed information about conditions near the surface and environmental influences on lunar dust. A thorough understanding of these influences will help researchers understand how future exploration may shape the lunar environment and how the environment may affect future explorers.

"LADEE represents a low-cost approach to science missions, enabling faster science return and more frequent missions," said Ames Director S. Pete Worden. "These measurements will provide scientific insight into the lunar environment, and give our explorers a clearer understanding of what they'll be up against as they set up the first outpost and begin the process of settling the solar system."

LADEE is a cooperative effort with NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The total cost of the spacecraft is expected to be approximately $80 million."

Name a species at Scripps

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has joined the ranks of institutions looking to fund science by allowing patrons to put their names to new species. Current opportunities range from a spiny worm found in kelp forests ($10,000) to a handsome-looking holothurian for $15,000 and on up to a rarer worm found near hydrothermal vents ($50,000). So if you have the money and want to donate to science while naming something permanently and officially after yourself (or someone else - perhaps someone will name a worm or sea slug after a spouse's divorce attorney?) here is the opportunity.

Musings from the National Space Symposium

I had the opportunity yesterday to explore the cavernous exhibit halls of the National Space Symposium held here in Colorado Springs, sponsored by the Space Foundation. My kids look forward to my making this pilgrimage each year, since the NSS has the best "goodies" of any space conference exhibition center I've ever been to. Orbital Sciences' foam rockets are always a big hit: they fly all over my house until they wear out.
Other discoveries and adventures:
- I scored only 8 out of 10 at the Space Florida trivia game, which was embarrassing. Space Florida seems to have a bigger booth and more exhibits every year: the state is certainly trying to advertise itself as a home for space businesses, perhaps in anticipation of Space Shuttle job losses.
- A lady at Orbital Sciences refused to confirm or deny that the company is bidding on the Orbcomm 2 replacement constellation, which is pretty funny considering it's been in the press for a year that they are not. I asked the question intending to follow up to ask why they were not bidding, but that first answer kind of befuddled me.
- It's easier to get fat this year at the conference - more cookie, ice cream, and popcorn stations were being used to lure people to booths.
- The US Air Force Academy had on display their Falconsat-2 spacecraft, the one that was on board the first SpaceX Falcon 1 booster that did not, shall we say, perform nominally. The satellite was pretty much intact, although the bus was so twisted and bent it was clearly beyond re-use. The booth spokesman noted that the satellite's location transponder had at least worked well, although it did not have much of a function, as the satellite crashed to the ground about ten meters from the crate used to ship it to Kwajalein.
- My longtime acquaintance Gwynne Shotwell, VP of SpaceX, reaffirmed they are holding June 10 as a firm launch date for the third Falcon 1 launch, the one with the ORS Jumpstart mission. I mentioned that founder Elon Musk had said once that they'd have to re-evaluate the business if they had three failures, but Gwynne's comrade in the booth said Musk had disavowed that as a notion made under a very different business model. Given SpaceX's government contracts and the progress toward larger boosters, it didn't apply anymore.
- I stopped by one of my favorite organizations, Space Dynamics Lab of Utah, to see how this innovative satellites-and-sensors outfit, which helps run the AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, was doing. SDL leader Pat Patterson told me they were doing great, with numerous new contracts and employment at a record 400-plus.

All for now,
Matt

Surrey sale is final

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has been sold for 40-50 million GBP to as EADS-owned space company, Astrium. Thales was reported to also be a suitor, which may account for Astrium paying what's generally agreed to be a robust, if not premium, price. Astrium has promised to keep SSTL's independence and character while giving it the resources to bid on some large contracts it missed out on in the past.
COMMENT: I hope SSTL keeps its character and spirit of innovation intact. As I said in the last post, the track record with such acquisitions is not good. But here's keeping fingers crossed.

Lungless frog discovered

Yes, lungless.
From Borneo comes Barbourula kalimantanensis, which gets its oxygen through its skin. The species had been found 30 years ago, but only one other specimen of this rare amphibian had been collected since then. Neither example was ever dissected. Now more frogs have been found in the wild - just in time to stun the biologists who finally looked inside and realized they had the only lungless anuran (frog or toad) known anywhere in the world.

Aerospace history: Kittinger's Leap

Check out this awesome video of Colonel Joseph Kittinger's 16 August 1960 parachute jump from a balloon on the edge of space. The Air Force test pilot's records for highest parachute jump (from an astonishing 31.3 kilometers) and longest freefall still stand today, although there are a few daredevils trying to develop a practical way to exceed them.
Colonel Kittinger (b. 1928) went on to return to operational flying and was assigned to combat duty during the Vietnam war. He spent 11 months as a POW in North Vietnam. In 1984, he set another record by completing the the first solo Atlantic crossing by balloon.

The case of the orange raccoon

No kidding. A raccoon with no black marks and a coat variously described as orange or blond was recently live-trapped after coming up on the porch of an Indiana family in a rural area near Bloomfield to chow down on leftover cat food.
This case is a reminder that the constant shuffling of the genetic card deck in every species sometimes results in a very strange hand being dealt.
The trapper arranged to have the animal taken it deep into the woods and let go.
Looking at the various local stories on this animal, it appears this occurred in February, and the animal (or a close copy, likely a relative given the rarity of the mutation) was live-trapped again in March by a seventh-grader in Greene County. The youngster's family reported calling the Indianapolis Zoo and being unable to convince anyone they really did have an orange raccoon.
More photos and comments are available at www.cryptomundo.com.

I'm not clear on just where the animal is now. Does anybody know?

Boeing's hydrogen-powered plane

Boeing has flown the first manned aircraft powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. It wasn't exactly an airliner, weighing only 800 kg and flying at 100 kph with just the pilot aboard, and indeed Boeing doesn't see a future for the cells in powering large aircraft. The aerospace giant does suggest, however, that "greener" and quieter general aviation fleets may result from further development of this approach. (Their press release didn't mention UAVs, but there's an obvious potential there, especially for military and police users who would appreciate having silent UAVs.)

Cornell University payload competes for Jumpstart

One of the three candidates for the ORS Jumpstart mission this summer is a university-built experiment. Cornell's CUSat is a 44-kg payload comprising two satellites. WHen separated, the satellites will maneuver about 10 meters apart, and one will send three-dimensional images of the other to a control center where a 3D virtual representation of the target will be reconstructed. The objective is to improve the capability of an inspection spacecraft to diagnose or identify a satellite of interest. Other options for Jumpstart include the Air Force Research Laboratory's Plug and Play experimental satellite or SpaceDev's Trailblazer.

The Lions in the Tower

Two lion skulls kept in the Tower of London have been identified as belonging to an extinct subspecies, the black-maned Barbary lion. The skulls have an odd provenance. They were dredged out of the silt in the Tower's moat in the 1930s and dated to the thirteenth century. DNA studies confirm they are the two oldest known Barbary skulls. The DNA from these surprisingly well-preserved specimens will be used for comparison studies with several lions thought to contain Barbary blood and now living in South Africa and elsewhere. The idea of breeding the subspecies back into existence is still an uncertain hope, but this discovery gives zoologists a better starting point.

India enters the microsat field

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has developed considerable expertise in launch vehicles and applications satellites. "Our main aim now is to make the satellite systems as compact as possible," Dr S K Sharma of ISRO's Space Applications Centre (SAC) said last fall. He described plans for a new generation of satellites weighing under 100 kg. The first of these is a multispectral imager, TWSAT (Third World Satellite, so called because its imagery is free to developing nations). TWSAT will offer a resolution of about one meter. It's due to launch in late April, with eight Indian and foreign Cubesats riding along. The main payload on the launch is a sophisticated earth-resources bird, Cartosat-2A.

Is Surrey for sale?

CAUTION: HEAVILY OPINION-LACED POST AHEAD
The giant European aerospace conglomerate, EADS, is in negotiations to buy Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), which has pioneered microspacecraft technology and applications in many areas, notably remote sensing. For those of us with a special interest in seeing what small spacecraft can do, this is very, very depressing. Anyone remember the American smallsat pioneer, Spectrum Astro? It was absorbed into the mass of General Dynamics without a trace. When is the last time anyone saw a breakthrough microspacecraft out of General Dynamics? The last and only one was the Missile Defense Agency's NFIRE (still performing very well), but that was a program acquired from Spectrum Astro. Anyone read In Search of Excellence? The authors explained how large companies buy small ones saying they will keep their identity while the parent company learns from the innovative qualities of the smaller one. That's what happened with Spectrum Astro. The authors went on to explain that this never, repeat never, actually works. The large company gradually imposes more and more of its rules on the smaller firm, until the latter either ceases to exist or becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the corporate mass.
SSTL may carry on in name. But it will not, I fear, be the hotbed of innovation, the company that took the one-time NASA mantra "faster, better, cheaper" and actually made it happen.
Just my personal opinion.
And I fervently hope it's wrong.

GAO weighs in on Ares, Orion, and Constellation in general

THe Government Accountability Office is less reassuring than NASA. Its report opens with, "There are considerable unknowns as to whether NASA's plans for these vehicles can be executed within schedule goals and what these efforts will ultimately cost." One major problem is that NASA is behind the original schedule on defining requirements.

The latest on Ares I

NASA briefed the media (which it has a bad habit, in this particular area, of "forgetting" to do) on the oscillation problems detected in its Ares I booster which might make things very uncomfortable - perhaps even intolerable - for astronauts in the Orion command module. In a nutshell, it's still a problem, but they think it can be solved without impact on the program's current schedule.

Bravo for Jules Verne

The first of ESA's automated one-time-use "space freighters," the Jules Verne, successfully docked with the International Space Station. It's a big success for ESA and a step forward in the unpiloted maneuvering and docking of space vehicles.

Ancient feces yield clue to the peopling of the Americas

Another scientific brick has been thrown through the window of the "Clovis people were first" shop. DNA in human feces from a cave in Oregon have been dated to 14,000 years B.P. Dennis Jenkins, a University of Oregon archaeologist, said, "This is the first time we have been able to get dates that are undeniably human, and they are 1,000 years before Clovis." Clovis people were once thought to have arrived about 10,000 years B.P., but that date has slipped backwards two to three thousand years as new discoveries dictated. Still, this puts a group of people, apparently a nomadic one, well down the west coast of North America from the Bering Sea land bridge a long time before Clovis. Something else besides the Clovis migration happened back then, and we are still working out what it was.

A Fusion Future?

In this excellent entry in the always-readable Cosmic Log, Alan Boyle brings us up to date on the state of fusion research and the various avenues being pursued in an effort to create an energy-generating (and controlled, of course) thermonuclear reaction. The biggest effort is the ITER program, involving the U.S. and six other nations in an effort to build a reactor in France to achieve this goal. Commercial power generation, as Boyle notes, is still some decades off.
COMMENT: We are not going to solve all the needs of an industrial world with the localized resources of solar-electric and wind energy. Something has to replace the coal, oil, and nuclear fission power plants to run cities and industries. Fusion is the only option that looks feasible (not guaranteed, and costly to develop, but feasible). It needs continued - and expanded - support.

A Unique Blog - Women in Planetary Science

A recent article (3/24/08) in this thought-provoking blog suggests women are underrepresentented in the hard sciences for a reason I've never heard before. It's not discrimination or family issues. It's the expectation that Ph.D.'s will fiercely debate and criticize one another's findings in an often confrontational quest to see what ideas really stand up.

Strange Fish in New Family?

A very strange new anglerfish, about the size of a large apple, has icthyologists buzzing. Unlike any other anglerfish, and unlike almost every other fish, period, it has a flat face with the eyes set facing forward, as humans have. This gives it binocular vision and thus depth perception extremely unusual for the class Osteichthyes (bony fishes). Ted Pietsch of the University of Washington thinks the bizarre creature is not just a new species or even a new genus, but the only known representative of a new family. (That would be the 19th family of anglerfish to be classified.) Like most anglerfish, the orange-pink animal (which has a complex color pattern, very good for reef camouflage) has leglike pectoral fins which provide the ability to crawl when needed. Three divers found the fish while exploring a reef in Indonesia.

Anniversary of TIROS-1 launch

This is the 48th anniversary of the launch of the first weather satellite, TIROS-1. The TIROS program remains an outstanding example of what can be accomplished with a small single-purpose satellite.

A New Shrew

As I've observed before, the title of "world's newest mammal" is constantly changing hands (or paws), belying the general belief that we know all the critters of the world. The new title holder is a small one, a shrew from Sri Lanka dubbed Crocidura hikmiya. The rates at which new species are discovered - even if we look at only the vertebrates - have held steady or risen for the last two decades. (At this point, I will, of course, refer the reader to my 2006 book Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology (Hancock House) for further documentation.) The point is that, as we become more aware of the damage we are doing to our planet, new creatures keep popping us to remind us that we don't even know what we're destroying.

Also from Surrey and the BNSC: new student payload competition

Entries have recently closed for a unique contest, in which the British National Space Centre (BNSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL), challenged students age 14 to 18 to design the best space experiment weighing 1kg or less. The winning design team will get a £100,000 budget, and the sponsors will arrange for its launch into orbit.
COMMENT: We need more opportunities like this - a relatively low-cost way to raise excitement about space and related fields among students with real, hands-on work they can see the results of. Actually, we need a LOT more of these. The CubeSat program provides a handy "bus" for a small experiment, and the National Science Foundation program described in my post of 3/4/08 (below) is a great start. Still, there aren't enough sponsored (read: funded) opportunities for students to build and launch space experiments, especially at the high school level. NASA and ESA, are you listening to me? (OK, I'm pretty sure they're not, but I'm still right.)

Science in the MoonLITE

NASA will join the British National Space Centre and small-spacecraft maker Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) in a unique lunar exploration project, dubbed MoonLITE ((Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecom Experiment). The MoonLITE mission will place a small spacecraft in lunar orbit and fire four 36-kg instrumented projectiles into the lunar surface. Total mass at the time of launch would be 846 kg, 306 kg of that being propellant. The mission would revisit one Apollo site and then extend the survey to areas even less well known, placing one probe (with a water sensor) in a polar area and two on the "dark side." If technical reviews and funding are go, the probe would launch in 2012.

The ghost of ASATs past

The recent U.S. shootdown of a failing reconsat, preceded by the Chinese test of a low-orbit antisatellite (ASAT) weapon, have generated new interest in ASAT programs, past and present. The U.S. has only had one operational ASAT, the direct-ascent nuclear-tipped missiles of Program 437 (operational from 1964-72), but there have been many ideas, concepts, and R&D programs that, for one reason or another, stopped short of operational status.
Dr. Dwayne Day, a well-known military space historian, recently found an overlooked relic of one of these. The Army had a program called Kinetic Energy ASAT (KE-ASAT) which began in 1991 and continued for several years, surviving on Congressional earmarks even after the service decided it had higher priorities. Boeing built three prototypes of this system, which extended a large "flyswatter" to disable enemy satellites without creating a debris field.
What Day describes in the article linked above is a model labeled KE-ASAT which does not resemble the Boeing prototypes. It apparently was built by Lockheed as part of its losing bid for the KE-ASAT program. Its dominant feature is a large nosecone, something very odd to see on a satellite. This may have contained Lockheed's own version of the flyswatter.
COMMENT: I am strictly speculating here, but, unlike the Boeing hardware which extended from one side of the ASAT vehicle, this design with its nosecone housing might have used an "uncoiling" circular device, descended from the 4m-wide "umbrella skeleton" of Lockheed's 1980s Kinetic Kill Vehicle (KKV) used in the Homing Overlay Experiment antimissile tests. The metal skeleton used on the KKV could have had a flexible "skin" added for this version to reduce debris from the collision with the target satellite.

Your Honor, Please save the Earth

A lawsuit filed in U.S. Federal court seeks an injunction against starting up the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most costly physics experiment. Why? Because, according to one physicist offering two or three theories most of his colleagues reject as extremely far-fetched, it could destroy the Earth and possibly the universe. The suit was quite pointlessly filed in Hawaii even though the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, which operates the LHC in Geneva, doesn't come under American jurisdiction. CERN insists the system has had many safety reviews, the latest of which completed its report this past January.

NewSpace and capitalist realities

An in-depth article from the online version of Reason magazine looks at the people, ventures, and ideas sometimes bundled under the term "NewSpace" and analyzes which private space efforts may make the jump to reality. (Hint: At least one private spaceplane will fly: the zero-gravity football league will have a a tougher time.)

The Hunting of the Wolf

When the gray wolf population in the Rocky Mountain regions was declared healthy enough to lose Endangered Species Act protection, wildlife-protection groups feared the animals would be subjected to legal hunts. They were right. Idaho has already made plans let hunters kill 100-300 wolves to keep the population in the state to what state wildlife officials deem a manageable number and reduce livestock predation.
COMMENT: There are an estimated 41 breeding pairs in Idaho in a population of about 800 wolves. That doesn't strike me as enough to ensure genetic diversity and allow the population to survive severe winters, epidemics, and other natural threats. Ranchers are already allowed to kill animals menacing livestock. Creating this hunting season seems way, way premature.

A voice from the distant past

Thomas Edison is credited, rightfully, with inventing the first system to record sounds and play them back. It now turns out, though, that the history of recording the human voice dates back to a time before the U.S. Civil War. French researchers have uncovered a perfectly preserved sheet of paper marked by a "phonautograph" on August 9, 1860. The invention represented sound waves as markings traced on a sheet of paper smoked dark by an oil lamp. Ten seconds of a French folk song lay awaiting modern technology that could reconstruct the sound.

Arthur C. Clarke letter from 1956

Posted on the Res Communis blog by my old space law mentor, Dr. Joanne Gabrynowicz, this 1956 letter (just discovered in an archive) by Clarke gives his thoughts on how satellites would provide three worldwide services: TV broadcasting, person-to-person communications, and location services. Pretty darn impressive.

Post-WWII view of German transatlantic rocket

This inaccurate but interesting article from 1947 shows a conflation of two ideas from Wernher von Braun's German missile team - one for a manned version of the V-2 derived A-9 rocket (never flown) and one for a two-stage transatlantic missile. The author put them together and thought this meant the Nazis had planned to send a manned "spaceplane" rocket against New York. In practice, von Braun lacked the time, resources, and materials to make such a technological leap. To Americans in 1947, though, it seemed the Germans had been capable of just about anything.

Mapping Apollo 11

How far did the Apollo 11 astronauts walk on the Moon? This unique site overlays their travels on a soccer field. It turns out that, if you look at distance covered in two dimensions, they didn't walk as far as they probably thought. Armstrong roved the furthest of the two, but still didn't walk very far off the soccer field.

First in the Americas?

It'sd an endlessly fascinating debate: who first set foot in North America, and when? A butchered bison bone is the latest evidence, and it puts hunters on what are now islands off Washington state some 14,000 years ago - at least 2,000 years earlier than the "standard" accepted timeline for the arrival of the early Clovis people much further north.
COMMENT: While debates rage about the dating of many apparent pre-Clovis sites, this is one more chip off what used to be a rock-solid theory - "Clovis first." My impression is that, while the Clovis people might prove to be the first "important" colonizers - the first who left present-day descendants in significant numbers - the idea they were here before anyone else is headed for a gradual extinction.

The first European?

The first alleged species (there's still some dispute as to taxonomy) that could be called "human" in the European fossil record is represented by six partial skeletons from Spain, dated to 800,000 years ago and christened Homo antecessor. Now the antessessor's antesessor may have been found. A human-like jaw fragment, about 5 cm long and sporting several teeth, has been found in the same area and dated to 300,000 - 400,000 years further back. The history of human development, and its presence in Europe, is still very much in the process of being written.

More on Jumpstart

Here is SpaceDev, Inc.'s press release on its selection as prime contractor for the main satellite payload on the ORS Jumpstart mission, slated for June of this year.

Don't forget the Conference on Small Satellites

I am likely to miss the 2008 AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, which is a shame, because there's no space conference I've ever attended with such a "family" feel and so much expertise available on one subject. The theme this year is "Small Satellites - Big Business." Early registration is open until 8 July. Don't miss out if this is your area of interest. I hope to be back next year.

I should mention you can still register for the other conference with a focus on microspacecraft, the 6th Responsive Space Conference, to be held the end of April in Los Angeles. Go to www.responsivespace.com.

ORS: The Army does its part

While DoD is still trying to figure out what kind of doctrine and operational role should be developed for Operationally Responsive Space (ORS), work continues at both Air Force and Army space organizations. The Army's SMDC just awarded $69M to Ducommun / Miltec to look at vehicles and technologies for ORS missions, though details were not released. (Miltec being a subsidiary specializing in missile defense work. It also, as you can see if you go to www.mil-tec.com, has a logo which uses a really unfortunate-looking version of the letter "i.")

The first real test of responsive space

SpaceX's Falcon 1, still looking to make its first successful orbital launch, has a USAF contract to integrate and launch a payload on a four-month schedule. By traditional space standards, this is an unheard-of schedule (or it has been since the 1950s and early 60s, when truly rapid integration and launch on a schedule now considered "impossible" was routine).
In a mission known as Jumpstart, the Falcon will carry an Air Force satellite from SpaceDev, Inc., a rideshare adapter experiment for a Malaysian organization, and two 1-kg CubeSat payloads.

As Air Force Colonel Kevin McLaughlin explained, "The Jumpstart mission is an exciting and important milestone for the ORS Office. It brings together a diverse government and industry team to demonstrate numerous ORS enablers needed to bring space power to our deployed forces."

COMMENT: When I led a study of small rapid-response launchers for Air Force Space Command back in 1996, we worked out a plan involving a 48-hour reaction time. (A quicker response did not seem worth the added expense or the trouble of conflicting with the timelines needed for NOTAMs and treaty notifications.)
The reviewer from the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center said we were hopelessly uninformed: a launch campaign always took many months. I messaged back to ask him if he'd ever heard of an ICBM. (I'm an old Titan II crew commander. We kept a complex, over-age liquid-fuel system and payload ready for instant launch, although I'll grant you that range safety was not exactly a priority.)
We never got an answer.

Space tourism race heats up

We're years away from the first space tourist on a private launcher, and already we have competition on vehicles, business models, and prices. It still seems "far out," but smart people with deep pockets are on board. It'll be exciting to watch, even if I never get to go.

Smallsat Update, item 2

Smallsats also offer university students a chance for real-world engineering experience. This article mentions one example, at Montana State University. Students are building Explorer-1 (Prime), repeating the experiment carried on the original Explorer I 50 years ago. A December launch is hoped for.
COMMENT: David Klumpar, director of MSU's Space Science and Engineering Lab, is a Van Allen disciple who, some time before the great physicist's passing, called Van Allen and told him they were planning on repeating his experiment. As David told me the story in 2006, Van Allen's dryly humorous response was, "Well, I hope you don't prove me wrong."

Smallsat update, item 1

England's Surrey is the best-known specialty builder of small spacecraft, and there are firms in the US, Sweden, and France, among others, which build smallsats. But there's also South Korea, and this article highlights how one man took seven colleagues and built the country's first private satellite R&D organization, Satrec Initiative.
COMMENT: this illustrates one of the good things about small satellites: the cost of entry to the market is much lower than that for the most lucrative segment, the big GEO COMSATS. Smallsat expertise has spread around the world to governments, companies, and universitities, and continues to spread.

Great white shark does the hustle

OK, maybe no one but me will get the Dickie Goodman joke from 1975 in that headline....
In February, the Monterey Bay Aquarium released one of its most popular exhibits, a young great white shark, with a tracking device attached. The shark headed south, not an unknown pattern among great whites, but it surprised everyone with the alacrity of its journey. The animal has passed the southern tip of Baja and is still heading SE to the waters off Mexico. The shark has been making a net movement southward of over 43 km a day, which is very impressive to scientists who note it's undoubtedly not swimming in a straight line, but making the usual detours for hunting and whatever other reasons a shark detours. Why the creature is in such a rush is unknown, which reminds us that relatively little about these predators is known. Experiments like this, though, can help fill in some of the blank pages in the shark's scientific dossier.

Where is the shark today? See for yourself. Look up the "Juvenile White Shark" entry on

http://las.pfeg.noaa.gov/TOPP_recent/sp41_anm.html

The end of the "Moon Hoax" looniness?

OK, maybe some conspiracy nuts will never be convinced, but one of the side benefits or the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter now in the works is that mission managers intend to capture images of the Apollo. Surveyor, Ranger, and Lunkhod landing sites. According to Mark Robinson of Northwestern University's Center for Planetary Sciences, Principal Investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), "We will image the Apollo sites and you will see the descent stages sitting on the surface." The LRO will map the Moon from an altitude of only 50km.

Cool new species from the cold waters

The New Zealand research vessel Tangaroa has completed a 35-day voyage through the icy waters of the Ross Sea to bring back new findings on Antarctic marine biodiversity and habitats, collecting images and samples of some startling marine life. While it's not yet certain which finds represent genuine new species, some surely do, and the collection is a spectacular one. The scientists aboard reported starfish 60 cm across, jellyfish with tentacles reaching nearly 4 m, and a host of smaller invertebrates.

Shuttles coming and going

With the shuttle Endeavour winding up an arduous but successful mission to install a huge two-armed robot named Dextre on the International Space Station (ISS), things look on track for the May 25 launch of the shuttle Discovery with a Japanese laboratory module. The August 28 launch of Atlantis to service the Hubble telescope is not as certain. Since differing orbits make a "safe haven" at the ISS impossible for Atlantis in the event of a mishap, NASA wants Discovery available for a short-notice flight if a rescue mission is needed. Safety-related modifications to the external tank (ET) and other issues at the Michoud assembly facility, however, mean there might not be a flight-ready tank available for the standby shuttle until October. If the Shuttle is to complete its planned slate of missions by the planned retirement date of 2010, it needs to make four more flights in 2008 (May, August, October and December), followed by four in 2009 and up to three in 2010.
COMMENT: The 2010 date is increasingly looking difficult to hit, and there is hardly any margin for unexpected events. The result could well be "schedule pressure," a term which sends a shiver down the spine of NASA managers who remember the Columbia accident. The date should be slipped a year (which, yes, means using money from Constellation and probably slipping that program a year) to allow for safer completion of the scheduled missions and possibly one or two more additional flights to add experiments now in limbo to the ISS.

Water on Titan?

Liquid water in an environment as distant and hostile as Saturn's great moon, Titan, seems very far-fetched indeed. But analysis of radar images and the moon's rotation using data from the Cassini spacecraft indicate a liquid ocean, probably of water mixed with a small amount of ammonia, is "sloshing" about under 100 km of ice. This is not definitive, but it's certainly tantalizing.

Quotes from Arthur C. Clarke

Some Clarke quotes, which I remind us the man had a powerful and broad intellect.

Clarke's Laws:
1.. "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is
impossible, he is very probably wrong."
2.. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to
venture a little way past them into the impossible."
3.. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic."

"New ideas pass through three periods:
- It can't be done.
- It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing.
- I knew it was a good idea all along!"

"Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal."

"As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying."

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert."

"Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all."

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think
we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

Concerning UFOs: "They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere
in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth."

"We are just tenants on this world. We have just been given a new lease, and a warning from the landlord."

"Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what's over the
next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without
information. Without information, you'd go crazy."

"We should always be prepared for future technologies, because
otherwise they will come along and clobber us."

"CNN is one of the participants in the (Persian Gulf) war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power."

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."

"At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years."

"I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books."

"It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars."

"The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space."

"If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative."

When asked what he considered the one event in the 20th century he never would have predicted:
"That we would have gone to the Moon and stopped."

Farewell, Arthur C. Clarke

The space visionary, science fiction writer, and all-around inquirer into the universe around us, Arthur C. Clarke, has died at the age of 90. Clarke first became widely known after WWII for his articles describing the use of the geosynchronous orbit - the "Clarke belt" - for satellite communications. He went on to write many books on space and even more in the realm of science fiction. His seminal work, 2001: a Space Odyssey, is as original and striking now as it was in the 1960s. Clarke's curiosity encompassed everything from the Star of Bethlehem to cryptozoology. He also devised Clarke's Law, which has influenced countless writers of SF and science: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Earth has sent one of its finest minds on the final journey.

Vanguard 1 turns 50

James Oberg offere here a well-written salute to Vanguard 1. The tiny "grapefruit," one of the pioneering milestones of the Space Age, has been in orbit 50 years and, if not collected for a museum, will be there for centuries to come. Oberg and space entrepreneur Dennis Wingo discuss the possibility of a retrieval, maybe as the result of an X-Prize type challenge to reward whoever can bring the satellite back.

Neanderthal language

Edmund Blair Bolles reports from the Evolang (Evolution of Language) conference in Barcelona that there's new evidence Neanderthals had a spoken language. To recent reports that a gene associated with language (the FoxP2 gene) matches in Neanderthals and modern humans, archaeologist Francisco D’Errico adds the new argument that the evidence Neanderthals used symbolic communication (like body pigment) and transmitted the symbols' meaning between groups and generations shows they must have had speech.
COMMENT: I see the logic, but, to this amateur, the definitive "this is proven" position argued strongly by D'Errico still seems a little bit of a reach. This one is creating plenty of stir in the archaeological and anthropological communities.

New bird from Indonesia

From the vast Indonesian archipelago comes the latest new bird species, a small green and white creature dubbed the Togian white-eye Zosterops somadikartai.
It was first spotted in 1997 by Mochamad Indrawan of the University of Indonesia. Now, with the discovery in hand, Indrawan says, "This finding of the bird is only the beginning given the vast opportunities with Indonesian landscapes and seascapes of endemic flora and fauna." American expert Patricia Rasmussen, who did the taxonomic work on the type specimen, adds, "What this discovery highlights is that in some parts of the world there are still virtually unexplored islands where few ornithologists have worked. The world still holds avian surprises for us."

Yet more on the hobbits

A new discovery has confused the case of Flores Island "hobbits" even more, something I would not have thought possible. In the periodic "Hobbit Watch" column from Scientific American, Kate Wong discusses new findings from the Pacific island of Palau. South African paleoanthropologist Lee Berger has published his findings on small human bones, some 1,400 to 2,900 years old. These are definitely from the modern species Homo sapiens, but the size and some other characteristics are reminiscent of the Flores people. Berger suggests "...that Flores LB1 may represent a congenitally abnormal individual drawn from a small-bodied population of H. sapiens." Maybe. And maybe not. Berger doesn't claim to have a definitive solution, just a new hypothesis. And so the tramping of hobbit feet through the corridors of science, as confusing in their way as the mines of Moria, goes on for now.

Cassini's dramatic flyby

The huge ice geysers spouting from Saturn's moon Enceladus have facinated planetary scientists ever since they were discovered. With the billion-dollar Cassini probe's main mission at Saturn nearly complete, NASA decided to make a somewhat risky detour and sent the spacecraft within 50km of the moon's surface to take images and other measurements of the giant geysers. Raw imagery and a live play-by-play were posted on NASA's blog to take the people of Earth along on this successful mission. A software glitch momentarily took out an instrument to analyze the particles in the geyser, but other instruments gathered a great deal of data, and the images are stunning.

Dolphin rescues whales

Dolphins are well known for coming to the aid of their kin in ways such as pushing an ailing dolphin to the surface to breathe. But a dolphin rescuing members of another cetacean species has never been documented - until now. In New Zealand, two pygmy sperm whales which repeatedly stranded themselves despite efforts of human rescuers were apparently saved by a dolphin which herded the disoriented whales back toward the open sea. The dolphin, known locally as Moko, was a common sight in the area and thus could be presumed familiar with the local beaches, sandbars, and safe channels. One rescuer, Juanita Symes, said, "Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales. She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience. The best day of my life." Dolphin experts consulted were somewhat surprised but thought the descriptions of the event were likely true.

A unique whale from Alaska

There have been two sightings off Alaska and the Aleutians, in 1993 and 2001, of what appeared to be a white orca, or killer whale. The animal had assumed a bit of a legendary aura, but now we know it's very real. Scientists have photographed the whale in question, and, though it's not an albino or solid white, its mix of white and light yellow-brown coloration marks it as a most unusual animal. I haven't found any references to any past specimens so colored, although there was a partial albino, kept in captivity from 1970-72, known as Chimo.
About this new oddity, Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory, said, "I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it. It was quite neat to find it."
COMMENT: There are no plans to capture this whale: indeed, such captures are no longer permitted in American waters. Keeping any whale in captivity has become controversial. However, my daughter, who is 11, just returned from her first visit to Sea World. Watching orcas only feet away from her instilled in her an awe and a sensitivity for the animals that videos never could.

Meanwhile, in 10,000 BC

Here's a fun review of archeology and prehistoric biology as painted by the new epic 10,000 B.C. The verdict: nothing, but nothing, makes scientific sense. (Domesticated mammoths? In Egypt? Saber-tooth cats bigger than grizzly bears? The Pyramids under construction 12,000 years ago?) However, Seth Shostak says it's a fun trip if you can turn off your brain long enough to hop on a woolly mammoth and just enjoy the ride.

Jules Verne is aloft

The European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), designed to service the International Space Station, (ISS), is in orbit. The first ATV, dubbed the "Jules Verne," was lofted by an Ariane 5 booster Saturday morning with a cargo including food, fuel, spare parts, and oxygen to bound for the ISS.

Seabird seen after 80 years

Beck's petrel, a seabird not seen since its discovery in the 1920s, has been photographed alive. Israeli ornithologist Hadoram Shirihai was on a ship in the Bismarck Archipelago of the southwestern Pacific when he spotted more than 30 of the birds. Pseudobulweria becki is classified as critically endangered by BirdLife International, and until now was thought possibly extinct.

A Wolf in Massachusetts

A healthy adult gray wolf weghing 39kg has been killed in Massachusetts after using a local sheep farm as a buffet. The animal is the first confirmed wild wolf in all of New England since a specimen killed in Maine in 1993. It has been 167 years since a confirmed wild specimen was taken in this state. Biologists presume the animal came down from Canada, although the length of its migration is very surprising. Some experts think Canadian wolves are slowly infiltrating the northeastern US, and there are other individuals humans have either not seen or misidentified. There have been reported wolf sightings in most of the New England states, although so far they have been rare and scattered.

Concerning hobbits

As I mentioned once or twice, a debate I follow whose duration seems destined to be measured in geologic time is the one over Homo floresiensis - the "hobbits" of Flores Island, Indonesia.

Round 257 or so (I lose count) is based on a new paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
Title:
"Are the small human-like fossils found on Flores human endemic cretins?"
Authors:
Peter J. Obendorf, Charles E. Oxnard and Ben J. Kefford.
The point: "We hypothesize that these individuals are myxoedematous endemic (ME) cretins, part of an inland population of (mostly unaffected) Homo sapiens."
In English: the fossils of the main specimen, LB1, indicate "congenital hypothyroidism."
The entire paper is online at the link above.

My take: I'm not about to wade into the details of a debate whose fine points are pretty much understood only by Ph.D.s. I will note only the problem I've had with all the non-species explanations, that they are based entirely, or almost entirely, on LB1. This is inescapable, since LB1's is the only cranium and the only near-complete skeleton we have, but it also means everyone is generalizing from one specimen. The new-species researchers are more likely to cite features of the other, less complete, specimens that appear in multiple individuals. That does not mean the new-species people are right (although the scientific romantic in me can't help but hope they are), only that I don't think anything is definitive yet. This is not going to be settled until we have more fossils, especially craniums (crania?).
I also note that, as a general rule, the idea that such cretins grew to maturity, which these fossils show they did, seems unlikely in a primitive hunter-gatherer culture. Such cultures tend not to expend the effort to keep marginally functional members alive and well-fed. It's not a hard rule, but it's something else to think about.

NSF seeks scientific microsatellites

From the National Sciencer Foundation comes this announcement of grant funds available for CubeSat-based science missions. For those who believe in the potential of miniature spacecraft, this is exciting stuff. A CubeSat bus is 10cm on a side, and a CubeSat weighs about 1 kg. The concept got its start as an educational tool from a Stanford University laboratory, SSDL. The NSF proposal is a recognition that tiny satellites, launched cheaply as secondary payloads, can do important work as well as providing opportunities for the next generation of aerospace engineers.

ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT

National Science Foundation;
CubeSat-based Science Missions for Space Weather and Atmospheric Research
DESCRIPTION: Lack of essential observations from space is currently a major limiting factor in space weather research. Recent advances in sensor and spacecraft technoloandshy;gies make it feasible to obtain key measurements from low-cost, small satellite missions. A particularly promising aspect of this development is the prospect for obtaining multi-point observations in space that are critical for addressing many outstanding problems in space science. Space-based measurements from small satellites also have great potential to advance discovery and understanding in other areas of atmospheric sciences. To take full advantage of these developments, NSF is soliciting research proposals centered on small satellite missions.
The overarching goal of the program is to support the development, construction, launch, operation, and data analysis of small satellite science missions to advance space weather and atmospheric research. Equally important, it will provide essential opportunities to train the next generation of experimental space scientists and aerospace engineers.
To facilitate launch of the satellites as secondary payloads on existing missions, the focus of the program is on CubeSat-based satellites. Launch of the satellites will be through the standardized CubeSat deployment system, the Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD). Launch of the P-PODS will be as auxiliary payloads on DOD, NASA, or commercial launches. This will be arranged directly by NSF and is not part of this solicitation. Beginning in 2009, NSF expects to launch two to four P-PODs every year, accommodating at least as many (three to six) individual satellite missions. This solicitation covers proposals for science missions to include satellite development, construction, testing and operation as well as data distribution and scientific analysis.

DOCUMENT TYPE: Grant

FUNDING OPPORTUNITY NUMBER: 08-549

POSTED DATE: 20080228

ORIGINAL DUE DATE FOR APPLICATION: 02102009

CURRENT DUE DATE FOR APPLICATION: Full Proposal Deadline(s): May 28, 2008 February 10, 2009 February 10, Annually Thereafter

ARCHIVE DATE:

FUNDING INSTRUMENT TYPE: Grant

CATEGORY OF FUNDING ACTIVITY: Science and Technology and other Research and Development

CATEGORY INFORMATION: Not Available

EXPECTED NUMBER OF AWARDS: 6

ESTIMATED TOTAL PROGRAM FUNDING: 900000

AWARD CEILING: 900000

AWARD FLOOR: 300000

CFDA NUMBER: 47.050

COST SHARING OR MATCHING REQUIREMENT: N

ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS: 99

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON ELIGIBILITY: Not Available

AGENCY NAME: National Science Foundation

OFFICE: None

CONTACT: NSF grants.gov support

grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov

First primate in North America traced

Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History has studied fossils over 55 million years old to identify what appears to be the oldest primate known from the New World. Less than 8 cm in length, Teilhardina magnoliana apparently crossed a land bridge from what is now Asia to plant its tiny feet in North America.

A hibernating fish?

Yes indeed. British researchers have found that the cod Notothenia coriiceps enters a dormant state during the long Antarctic winters.
COMMENT: Adaptation knows very few boundaries. We're still learning about how it works and how life permeates every environment, from hydrothermal vents to clouds.

Farewell, Scott Norman

Who is Scott T. Norman? Those not involved in cryptozoology won't know, and perhaps won't care. But they should.
Scott, who died this past week from a blood clot at the too-young age of 45, is an example of an overlooked figure in science these days, the dedicated amateur enthusiast. Such people have always been the unsung heroes of science. With the exception of some specialized groups (bird-counters and asteroid hunters come to mind), 21st-century science tends to pay little heed to the amateur.
Scott was enraptured by cryptozoology only in the last decade of his tragically short life, but he threw himself into the quest to learn more about the unconfirmed animals that might be out there. In addition to creating some of the leading websites to collect and disseminate information, Scott befriended almost everyone in this field, shared his enthusiasm with everyone he met, and, most significantly, put his money and his body where his heart was. Scott went tramping through the least-known regions of Africa, largely at his own expense, to chase down reports of unknown apes and reptiles.
He never found anything definitive, but that's not the point. The point is that cryptozoology, science in general, and the world at large need people like Scott.
We'll miss you, Scott. I hope you have your answers now.

Cryptozoological Realms, just one of Scott's Web endeavors, is found here:
http://www.cryptozoology.net

Pioner Anomaly shows up in other spacecraft

The anomalous change in velocity (tiny though it may be) detected in tracking the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft is no longer an isolated event. A study of six other space probes has revealed anomalies in the velocity of five of them.
JPL astronomer John Anderson, who discovered the Pioneer anomaly, says, "I am feeling both humble and perplexed by this. There is something very strange going on with spacecraft motions. We have no convincing explanation for either the Pioneer anomaly or the flyby anomaly."
I believe it was Haldane who said the universe was not only stranger than we imagined, but stranger than we could imagine....

Orbital wins contract for innovative DARPA satellites

Orbital Sciences Corp has won a contract from DARPA for the F6 program. (F6 is one of the more torturous DoD acronyms, standing (really) for Future Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft united by Information eXchange.)
The intent of the demonstration program is to build wirelessly connected small satellites which together will do the work of a single large satellite. Something like this was tried a few years ago by the Air Force Research Laboratory with its TechSat-21 system, but that program overreached on new technology and was killed due amid descoping, schedule slips, and rising costs. Hopefully F6 will have a better ending. Orbital has a good track record for delivering on innovative small spacecraft, and I wish them luck.

A seagoing titan from the past

A prehistoric reptile known as a pliosaur has been reconstructed from fossils found in Norway. The animal represents a new species - one about five meters longer than any previously known pliosaur. Everything about the animal is impressive. One flipper alone is three meters long, the teeth were the size of cucumbers, and the mouth, judging from the three-meter lower jaw, could have engulfed a modern rhinoceros.

South Africa to cull elephants

In a highly controversial move, South Africa announced it would permit some tightly regulated killing of elephants, which have become too numerous for the land available to them.
In a sense, the country is the victim of a great success. A century ago, barely 200 elephants were left in South Africa. Now there are 18,000 elephants in a land where the human population has grown enormously. Some wildlife groups remain strongly opposed to any killing, arguing it would open the door to return to the days when elephants were killed indiscriminately.
COMMNET: I hate the thought of animals this intelligent being killed without the direst need. Still, it's not clear what other options South Africa has. Practically speaking, they can't relocate large numbers of people to create more game preserves, and too many elephants in the available space can wreck the habitat for many other species. It points up once again how there are no easy answers to conservation policy questions.

New danger for the world's rarest cat

The least-known, most recently classified, and most endangered cat species in the world are, arguably, all the same creature - the Iriomote wildcat. Unknown to science until 1967, it inhabits one small and remote island of Japan. (There have been some taxonomic disputes resulting at least three suggested names, although Prionailurus iriomotensis seems to be the winner.)
Known locally as the "mountain cat," the housecat-sized feline is so successful in keeping to itself that there are lifelong residents of the island who doubt its existence. Nevertheless, a scientific survey, done over ten years ago, put the population on Iriomote at about 100. Now, experts fear, there are significantly fewer. About three cats a year are killed crossing the island's only major road, despite the building of wildlife underpasses and extraordinary efforts to warn drivers. The animal's habitat is increasingly encroached upon by tourists and residents, and feral domestic cats are known to pass diseases on to their wild relatives. The Japanese government has done much to protect the enigmatic cat, but it may not be enough.

A kill in the Pacific

In this article, crewmembers from the USS Lake Erie describe the SM-3 missile attack that knocked out the malfunctioning recon satellite U.S. 193. While the strike was controversial, it's also quite a display of technical prowess, using as it did an interceptor designed to hit incoming missiles, not satellites. As Captain Randall Hendrickson described the results, "The radar scope went wild. At that point, there was a lot of debris, a lot of pieces and, at that point, we thought we had a pretty good impact. Then that was confirmed by the aircraft that were airborne, the radars ashore and some other sensors that it was pretty much obliterated. Over the next three to four hours, a lot of it was burning up as it was coming down, which was the whole point of it."

A python invasion?

The Burmese python can grow to 7m in length and is more than a match for any animal it's likely to meet in the United States. Why does that matter? Because the species is already breeding in south Florida, and the climate is congenial to its spread across the Southeast and even to Texas. Scientists are worried mainly about the impact on native species.

Jet flight fueled by - nuts?

I've known a couple of pilots I thought were nuts, but I've never seen a plane run on them. Virgin Atlantic has flown the first commercial flight in a biofuel-powered jet. One tank on the London-to-Amsterdam test flight (no passengers aboard) held a biofuel mixture of coconut and babassu oil. The flight was uneventful.
COMMENT: I'm not sure whether this is a useful experiment or a good PR stunt on Richard Branson's part. Biofuel advocates often fail to tackle the hard questions about what kind of infrastructure is needed to grow, process, and ship useful quantities of said fuel, and Branson said nothing about it in connection with this flight.

Last days of a great mission

The Ulysses "solar polar" probe, which gave scientists their first look at the sun and solar system from "above" and "below" the plane of the ecliptic, is on its last legs. Launched in 1990 on a planned five-year mission, the probe kept sending data for 17 years. The joint NASA-ESA mission team reports the 6-billion-mile journey will end in a few weeks.

New lemurs join the lists

Madagascar is one of the world's zoological treasure houses, an altogether fascinating museum of natural history. One of its prize exhibits is the lemur family, a group known to exist nowhere else. Now three new species have been identified. All belong to the palm-sized tribe known as the mouse lemurs. The new species Microcebus mittermeieri, Microcebus simmonsi, and Microcebus jollyae are all named for scientists or conservationists. There were once thought to be only two species of mouse lemurs, but researchers like Mireya Mayor, who co-authored the paper announcing the new species, think there might be as many as 16.

The New Moon Race

The Google Lunar X-Prize race, with a grand prize of $20 million, is underway. The X Prize Foundation received 516 requests for information and has now announced the first 10 teams to have paid the $10,000 entrance fee and completed the required paperwork. One hopes to launch its privately developed robotic lander as soon as 2009.

Wolves off the Endangered List

In a good news story about conservation, the gray wolf population of the northern Rocky Mountains in the U.S. has gone from nearly zero to about 1,500 over the last 13 years. This population is now being delisted from the federal Endangered Species List. Cheering the move are state governments which want more freedom to kill livestock predators, while environmental groups insist the action is premature and will lead to a repeat of the widespread killing that put the wolves on the list in the first place.

It's a Hit

The U.S. Navy displayed a capability no one was sure it had: using a modified SM-3 intended for missile interception to knock the malfunctioning spysat U.S. 193 into countless small pieces. Unlike the fragments produced by the controversial Chinese ASAT test, these are low enough to ensure they reenter and burn up, as some have already done. The 453 kg of hydrazine on board has vaporized, and DoD is patting itself on the back for a job well done - while continuing to emphasize this was a one-time event and the U.S. was not deploying antisatellite weapons.

The grandaddy of all frogs

From Madagascar comes a startling fossil find - what may be the largest frog that ever lived. With an armored skull, a body the size of a bowling ball, and an overall length of 40cm, the animal dwarfs all other known frogs, living or extinct. The amphibian named Beelzebufo ampinga - the "devil frog" - lived 65 to 70 million years ago during the Cretaceous. It weighed about twice as much as the largest living species, the Goliath frog. Another oddity (as if a giant armored frog wasn't odd enough) is that this creature's closest relatives today live in South America, not on Madagascar or in neighboring Africa. Paleontologists are still trying to puzzle that one out.

Self-propelled oceanic robot uses no fuel

From the Department of Really Cool Techie Stuff comes this undersea probe which derives all its power from the temperature difference between water of different depths. Scientists say the robotic explorer will keep going for perhaps another six months without any form of external power or recharging.

Democratic Hopefuls discuss space policy

Senators Clinton and Obama were interviewed by the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle. Senator Clinton spoke for a "robust" human spaceflight policy, though without being explicit about goals, while Senator Obama was much less inclined to fund human spaceflight and indeed did not endorse it even in for the kind of limited (LEO only) program in operation today.

Targeting a satellite

The errant spysat U.S. 193 is going to be targeted by Navy SM-3 missiles designed for antimissile work in an effort to break it into thousands of small pieces (all of which should quickly reenter) and vaporize a tank of frozen hydrazine on board. This will mark the first time since 1978 the US has fired a missile at a satellite. That event was a test of an airlaunched ASAT missile which was never deployed: this is an attempt to remove the danger from an unintended reentry. The U.S. emphasizes this is a jury-rigged effort and does not mark the deployment of a new ASAT capability. "It should be understood by all, at home and abroad, that this is an exceptional circumstance and should not be perceived as the standard U.S. policy for dealing with errant satellites," is how House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton put it.

Two new sharks from Australia

Reminding us that not all new species are small, two new species of wobbegongs, also known as carpet sharks, have been identified from Australian waters. The floral banded wobbegong and the dwarf spotted raise the total of known wobbegong species around Australia to eight.

Robert Jastrow - R.I.P.

Dr. Robert Jastrow, the physicist who made space science understandable to a generation of Americans and went on from NASA to help found the George C. Marshall Institute for public policy, has died at 82. We say a sad farewell to a man whose life was very well lived.

A mini-pterosaur from China

Researchers exploring the fossil beds in the Chinese province of Liaoning in China have announced the discovery of one of the smallest flying reptiles known to science. Nemicolopterus crypticus ("hidden flying forest dweller") was the size of a sparrow and is also notable for curved toes indicating an arboreal (limb-gripping) lifestyle.

The Columbus has landed

The European-built Columbus laboratory module is installed as part of the International Space Station after a spacewalk by American astronauts Rex Walheim and Stanley Love lasting eight and a half hours.

NASA and the Ares-1, Round 23

There are three controversies I cover on this blog that apparently will never go away - the validation of the ivory-billed woodpecker's survival, the taxonomic status of the Flores Island "hobbits," and the wisdom of NASA in choosing the Ares I launch vehicle for the Orion program. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin recently blamed sour grapes on the part of Lockheed Martin (LM), maker of the Atlas V, for the criticism of the Ares.
I sympathize with Griffin, who has one of the toughest jobs in the Federal government. But that's no reason to charge LM with fomenting a launch vehicle insurrection without evidence. And there are plenty of people who have no special love for LM but also don't like the Ares I. (I'm one, if it matters to anybody.) Keith Cowing on NASAWatch.com has put up some of Griffin's own statements from a few years ago indicating the off-the-shelf Atlas and Delta rockets looked like good candidates for carrying manned vehicles.

Plug your cell phone into your knee? Sort of.

A team of researchers from three universities has built a prototype device worn like a light knee brace, which harnesses the motion of the legs to produce enough electricty to power a cell phone for 10 minutes for each minute of walking.
COMMENT: I love stories like this that remind us all just how powerful the human ability to imagine and invent can be.

Atlantis is off

The shuttle Atlantis, with seven astronauts and the Columbus laboratory module for the ISS on board, is on orbit after a flawless liftoff. The multinational crew will swap out a French astronaut for America's Daniel Tani, who will return from the station after four months on orbit.

Scientists create transparent fish

That's the kind of headline that might make a reader think scientists have way too much time on their hands. This specially bred zebrafish, though, has an important role in cancer research. Scientists can watch tumors grow in an adult vertebrate for the first time ever.

NASA's New Probes

Despite its tight budget, NASA is thinking big about the universe. Robotic probes in the planning stages will orbit one of the large moons of Jupiter or Saturn, dive into the corona of the Sun, and explore the mystery of physics known as dark energy. The missions now on the drawing boards will launch by 2017.

NASA budget for 2009 is more bad news

Inflation is running around 4%, but NASA's increase in the President's budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2009 rises only 1.8% to $17.6B. There is more money for Earth science missions, but, in a zero-sum game, that's not really new money, just shuffling between categories.
To NASA advocates, the good news is that this budget submission, the last of Presideat Bush's term, is likely to be ignored in practice. The bad news is that there's no guarantee what Congress produces instead will be any better. Despite Democratic control of the Senate, Democratic Senators have failed to get a $1B plus-up to reimburse NASA for the costs of Hurrican Katrina, and funds to replenish the post-Columbia recovery costs that sapped the agency's budget have never made the cut. Add to that that earmark reform shows no signs of being more than a campaign slogan, and.... well, in space no one can hear you scream.

A striking new monkey

The title of "newest known mammal" is a moniker no species keeps for very long. The giant elephant shrew had it only a matter of days before Australian scientists announced a new ukari, a large species of monkey, from the remote Pantepui region of Brazil. The new species, found after years of study sparked by local citizens' descriptions of a monkey different from the known ukaris, was christened Cacajao ayresii. Discoverer Jean-Phillipe Boubli of Aukland University said, "Finding a relatively large monkey as a new species these days is pretty cool. It shows how little we really know about the biodiversity of the Amazon."

Countdown for Atlantis

After a series of technical delays, the shuttle Atlantis will launch February 7 to the International Space Station. Atlantis is carrying the Columbus science module to add to the ISS.

Science funding in the U.S.

Andrew Stern writes that scientists are less than pleased with their support from the U.S. government.
Basic research depends heavily on the government, as corporations tend to funnel their cash toward applied research likely to pay off soon in the marketplace. The America Competes Act, which set a goal of doubling science funding, has been a casualty of other needs and the chronic budget conflicts between the White House and Capitol Hill. One of the most significant unfunded projects was the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), whose promised $160M contribution from the US didn't materialize.
COMMENT: It's a given (although some politicos imply otherwise) that there will never be enough money to do everything that seems worth doing to all of the countless constituencies in a democratic nation. Some good things won't get funded. But the consequences of neglecting basic research are, I think, lost on a government that is increasingly coming to resemble corporations - looking for near-term results. (The blame falls on both branches of government involved - things aren't going to change magically, or even quickly, no matter who wins this year's elections.)
The only answer is to resolve to continue a long, hard slog as scientists, sciences writers, and other informed citizens make their case through every available means of persuasion.

Hail, Columbia

NASA held its annual memorial for the Columbia's seven astronauts, lost five years ago. Again, it's on occasion where I can't think of much to say, but it should never be overlooked. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin offered this vow: "Americans don't quit and we won't quit. We'll never quit."

The world's newest mammal

An elephant shrew is every bit as strange-looking a mammal as the name implies. The new species Rhynchocyon udzungwensis was first spotted in Tanzania in 2005. It weighs about 0.7kg and is over half a meter long from its tail tip to its very distinctive nose. It's the largest of the known elephant shrews, which are, in fact, more closely related to elephants than shrews.

The Navy's New Rail Gun

The U.S. Navy has test-fired a weapon straight out of science fiction: the electromagnetic rail gun. The gun is a prototype for a proposed operational weapon, still years away, which could fire a projectile at Mach 7 and hit a target 370km away.