Sun Tsunami Heading into Earth Day

Earth is threatened due to being hit by a wave of bad weather in space this Tuesday, after a huge explosion of the Sun. Thus the warning issued by scientists.Sun explosion that happened last week was recorded by several satellites, including the latest satellite of the U.S. space agency, NASA, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), who observed shock waves on the surface of the Sun.

Explosion leads to Earth and potentially send ‘tsunami Sun’ which crossed the sky over 93 million miles.Site of New Scientist reports, satellite images generated SDO showed flare shock waves from the Sun into space.Experts say, the wave will reach Earth superkilat gas this Tuesday – which will hit the shield that protects the Earth’s magnetic field.This event is expected to trigger the appearance of spectacular aurora, or northern and southern lights on Earth.Scientists have warned previously, that the sun blasts a huge big potential to damage satellites and power, and means of communication on Earth.NASA recently warned that the UK could suffer due to power outages and damage communications system for a long time, after the storm hit the Earth the Sun.

http://www.youtube.com/v/mvdRMgmUR7c&rel=0&fs=1

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph page spread predictions of a senior space expert who believes the Earth will be hit by a storm of energy that startling sun, after sun up from the ‘long sleep’ some time in the year 2013.Dr Lucie Green of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Surrey, continue to observe increased activity of the Sun through a telescope Japan, Hinode.”Fireworks are produced by the Sun was incredible,” he said, such as pages loaded Telegraph, Monday, August 2, 2010.”This is a rare phenomenon, the explosion was not only one, two nearly simultaneous explosions occurred in different locations, and will be launched toward the Earth.

He explained, this eruption occurred when a large magnetic structures in the Sun’s atmosphere and the loss of stability can no longer pressed by the gravity of the Sun.”The first eruption seen so large that changing the magnetic field at half the Sun’s atmosphere and conditioning for the second explosion.”The explosion led to the Earth’s potential, but may run at different speeds.””This means we have an excellent opportunity to observe the effects, both main effects and prolonged impact.” However, there has been no explanation from a spokesman for NASA.
———

As NewScientist page is loaded, the Sun’s magnetic explosions will form a cloud complex which sends electrical particles to Earth.When it hit the early Earth, can occur anytime, even now, it would trigger auroras at the poles.At worst, this could be a threat to satellites – though probably not the worst.Earth is threatened due to being hit by a wave of bad weather in space this Tuesday, after a huge explosion of the Sun. Thus the warning issued by scientists.

Sun explosion that happened last week was recorded by several satellites, including the latest satellite of the U.S. space agency, NASA, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), who observed shock waves on the surface of the Sun.Explosion leads to Earth and potentially send ‘tsunami Sun’ which crossed the sky over 93 million miles.Site of New Scientist reports, satellite images generated SDO showed flare shock waves from the Sun into space.

Experts say, the wave will reach Earth superkilat gas this Tuesday – which will hit the shield that protects the Earth’s magnetic field.This event is expected to trigger the appearance of spectacular aurora, or northern and southern lights on Earth.Scientists have warned previously, that the sun blasts a huge big potential to damage satellites and power, and means of communication on Earth.NASA recently warned that the UK could suffer due to power outages and damage communications system for a long time, after the storm hit the Earth the Sun.

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph page spread predictions of a senior space expert who believes the Earth will be hit by a storm of energy that startling sun, after sun up from the ‘long sleep’ some time in the year 2013.Dr Lucie Green of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Surrey, continue to observe increased activity of the Sun through a telescope Japan, Hinode.

“Fireworks are produced by the Sun was incredible,” he said, such as pages loaded Telegraph, Monday, August 2, 2010.”This is a rare phenomenon, the explosion was not only one, two nearly simultaneous explosions occurred in different locations, and will be launched toward the Earth.He explained, this eruption occurred when a large magnetic structures in the Sun’s atmosphere and the loss of stability can no longer pressed by the gravity of the Sun.”The first eruption seen so large that changing the magnetic field at half the Sun’s atmosphere and conditioning for the second explosion.”The explosion led to the Earth’s potential, but may run at different speeds.””This means we have an excellent opportunity to observe the

——-

As NewScientist page is loaded, the Sun’s magnetic explosions will form a cloud complex which sends electrical particles to Earth.When it hit the early Earth, can occur anytime, even now, it would trigger auroras at the poles.At worst, this could be a threat to satellites – though probably not the worst.

The threat of Hurricane Sun, 20 times larger than the effects of Hurricane Katrina

Solar activity would become more active and will result in negative effects for the Earth. To prepare for the worst, a leading solar scientists gathered in Washington DC, USA Tuesday, June 8, 2010, to discuss the best ways to protect satellites and Earth’s vital systems of the solar storm.

Solar storm occurs when some point the sun burst and spew splashing of particles that can be damaging. This activity took place in a cycle of 11 years. “The sun has got up from bed length. And in the next few years we will see solar activity in the higher level,” said the head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, Richard Fisher, like the Christian Science Monitor published pages.

‘At the same time, technological society is developing a new sense of the storm the sun. Society in the 21st century rely heavily on high-tech systems in everyday life are susceptible to storm the sun. GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications could all die suddenly by solar activity. Economic damage caused by solar storms are expected twenty times larger than Hurricane Katrina – as a warning, issued the National Academy of Sciences in a report in 2008.

Fortunately, a lot of damage can be overcome if it knows when a storm is coming. That is why understanding of solar weather and a better ability to provide early warning, it is very important. Placing the satellite in ‘safe mode’ and release the transformer in order to protect the electronics from damaging power surge.

“Space weather forecast is still under development, but we’re making rapid progress,” said Thomas Bogdan, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NASA and NOAA are working together to manage the fleet of satellites that monitor the sun and help to predict changes in solar.

A pair of spacecraft called Stereo (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) is located on the opposite side of the sun, which can display a mix of 90 percent of the solar surface. In addition, the SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory which), which has just launched in February 2010, can produce new photo active part in the solar surface.

Also, an old satellite, called the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE), which was launched in 1997, still monitoring the sun. “I believe we are on the verge of new era where space weather can affect our lives everyday like usual weather of the earth.” Fisher said. “For us, this is very serious.”

Design of Future Aircraft NASA

An 18-month NASA research effort to visualize the passenger airplanes of the future has produced some ideas that at first glance may appear to be old fashioned. Instead of exotic new designs seemingly borrowed from science fiction, familiar shapes dominate the pages of advanced concept studies which four industry teams completed for NASA’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program in April 2010.

Look more closely at these concepts for airplanes that may enter service 20 to 25 years from now and you’ll see things that are quite different from the aircraft of today. Just beneath the skin of these concepts lie breakthrough airframe and propulsion technologies designed to help the commercial aircraft of tomorrow fly significantly quieter, cleaner, and more fuel-efficiently, with more passenger comfort, and to more of America’s airports.

You may see ultramodern shape memory alloys, ceramic or fiber composites, carbon nanotube or fiber optic cabling, self-healing skin, hybrid electric engines, folding wings, double fuselages and virtual reality windows. “Standing next to the airplane, you may not be able to tell the difference, but the improvements will be revolutionary,” said Richard Wahls, project scientist for the Fundamental Aeronautics Program’s Subsonic Fixed Wing Project at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. “Technological beauty is more than skin deep.”

In October 2008, NASA asked industry and academia to imagine what the future might bring and develop advanced concepts for aircraft that can satisfy anticipated commercial air transportation needs while meeting specific energy efficiency, environmental and operational goals in 2030 and beyond. The studies were intended to identify key technology development needs to enable the envisioned advanced airframes and propulsion systems.
NASA’s goals for a 2030-era aircraft, compared with an aircraft entering service today, are:

• A 71-decibel reduction below current Federal Aviation Administration noise standards, which aim to contain objectionable noise within airport boundaries.
• A greater than 75 percent reduction on the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection Sixth Meeting, or CAEP/6, standard for nitrogen oxide emissions, which aims to improve air quality around airports.
• A greater than 70 percent reduction in fuel burn performance, which could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the cost of air travel.
• The ability to exploit metroplex concepts that enable optimal use of runways at multiple airports within metropolitan areas, as a means of reducing air traffic congestion and delays.

The teams were led by General Electric, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Company. Here are some highlights from their final reports:

• The GE Aviation team conceptualizes a 20-passenger aircraft that could reduce congestion at major metropolitan hubs by using community airports for point-to-point travel. The aircraft has an oval-shaped fuselage that seats four across in full-sized seats. Other features include an aircraft shape that smoothes the flow of air over all surfaces, and electricity-generating fuel cells to power advanced electrical systems. The aircraft’s advanced turboprop engines sport low-noise propellers and further mitigate noise by providing thrust sufficient for short takeoffs and quick climbs.
• With its 180-passenger D8 “double bubble” configuration, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team strays farthest from the familiar, fusing two aircraft bodies together lengthwise and mounting three turbofan jet engines on the tail. Important components of the MIT concept are the use of composite materials for lower weight and turbofan engines with an ultra high bypass ratio (meaning air flow through the core of the engine is even smaller, while air flow through the duct surrounding the core is substantially larger, than in a conventional engine) for more efficient thrust. In a reversal of current design trends the MIT concept increases the bypass ratio by minimizing expansion of the overall diameter of the engine and shrinking the diameter of the jet exhaust instead. The team said it designed the D8 to do the same work as a Boeing 737-800. The D8’s unusual shape gives it a roomier coach cabin than the 737.
• The Northrop Grumman team foresees the greatest need for a smaller 120-passenger aircraft that is tailored for shorter runways in order to help expand capacity and reduce delays. The team describes its Silent Efficient Low Emissions Commercial Transport, or SELECT, concept as “revolutionary in its performance, if not in its appearance.” Ceramic composites, nanotechnology and shape memory alloys figure prominently in the airframe and ultra high bypass ratio propulsion system construction. The aircraft delivers on environmental and operational goals in large part by using smaller airports, with runways as short as 5,000 feet, for a wider geographic distribution of air traffic.
• The Boeing Company’s Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research, or SUGAR, team examined five concepts. The team’s preferred concept, the SUGAR Volt, is a twin-engine aircraft with hybrid propulsion technology, a tube-shaped body and a truss-braced wing mounted to the top. Compared to the typical wing used today, the SUGAR Volt wing is longer from tip to tip, shorter from leading edge to trailing edge, and has less sweep. It also may include hinges to fold the wings while parked close together at airport gates. Projected advances in battery technology enable a unique, hybrid turbo-electric propulsion system. The aircraft’s engines could use both fuel to burn in the engine’s core, and electricity to turn the turbofan when the core is powered down.

NASA did not specify future commercial air transportation needs as domestic or global. All four teams focused on aircraft sized for travel within a single continent because their business cases showed that small- and medium-sized planes will continue to account for the largest percentage of the overall fleet in the future. One team, however, did present a large hybrid wing concept for intercontinental transport.

All of the teams provided “clear paths” for future technology research and development, said Ruben Del Rosario, principal investigator for the Subsonic Fixed Wing Project at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “Their reports will make a difference in planning our research portfolio. We will identify the common themes in these studies and use them to build a more effective strategy for the future,” Del Rosario said.

These are some of the common themes from the four reports:

• Slower cruising — at about Mach 0.7, or seven-tenths the speed of sound, which is 5 percent to 10 percent slower than today’s aircraft — and at higher altitudes, to save fuel.
• Engines that require less power on takeoff, for quieter flight.
• Shorter runways — about 5,000 feet long, on average — to increase operating capacity and efficiency.
• Smaller aircraft – in the medium-size class of a Boeing 737, with cabin accommodations for no more than 180 passengers – flying shorter and more direct routes, for cost-efficiency.
• Reliance on promised advancements in air traffic management such as the use of automated decision-making tools for merging and spacing enroute and during departure climbs and arrival descents.

The teams recommended a variety of improvements in lightweight composite structures, heat- and stress-tolerant engine materials, and aerodynamic modeling that can help bring their ideas to reality. NASA is weighing the recommendations against its objective of developing aeronautics technologies that can be applied to a broad range of aircraft and operating scenarios for the greatest public benefit.

“This input from our customers has provided us with well thought-out scenarios for our vision of the future, and it will help us place our research investment decisions squarely in the mainstream,” said Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for aeronautics research at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Identifying those necessary technologies will help us establish a research roadmap to follow in bringing these innovations to life during the coming years,” Shin said.

The next step in NASA’s effort to design the aircraft of 2030 is a second phase of studies to begin developing the new technologies that will be necessary to meet the national goals related to an improved air transportation system with increased energy efficiency and reduced environmental impact. The agency received proposals from the four teams in late April and expects to award one or two research contracts for work starting in 2011.

NASA managers also will reassess the goals for 2030 aircraft to determine whether some of the crucial technologies will need additional time to move from laboratory and field testing into operational use. The four teams managed to meet either the fuel burn or the noise goal with their concepts, not both.

A companion research effort looked at concepts for a new generation of supersonic transport aircraft capable of meeting NASA’s noise, emissions and fuel efficiency goals for 2030. NASA envisions a broader market for supersonic travel, with aircraft carrying more passengers to improve economic viability while meeting increasingly stringent environmental requirements.

Teams lead by The Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin evaluated market conditions, design goals and constraints, conventional and unconventional configurations, and enabling technologies to create proposed road maps for research and development activities. Both teams produced concepts for aircraft that can carry more than 100 passengers at cruise speeds of more than 1.6 Mach and a range of up to 5,000 miles.

Astronomers find loads of water-ice on big asteroid

A slushy cocktail of water-ice and organic materials has been directly detected on the surface of an asteroid for the first time. The finding strengthens the theory that asteroids delivered the ingredients for Earth’s oceans and life, and could make astronomers rethink conventional models for how the Solar System evolved.

It has long been thought that asteroids, which lie in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, are rocky bodies that sit too close to the Sun to retain ice. By contrast, comets, which form further out beyond Neptune, are ice-rich bodies that develop distinctive tails of vaporized gas and dust when they approach the Sun. However, this distinction was blurred in 2006 by the discovery of small objects with comet-like tails in the asteroid belt1, says astronomer Andrew Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.To investigate the composition of these ‘main-belt comets’, Rivkin and his colleague Joshua Emery, of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, turned the infra-red telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, onto the asteroid 24 Themis — the parent body from which two of the smaller comet-like asteroids observed in 2006 were chipped. Emery and Rivkin took seven measurements of 24 Themis over a period of six years, each time looking at a different face of the asteroid as it travelled around its orbit. They consistently found a band in the absorption spectrum of light reflected from its surface that indicated the presence of grains coated in water ice, as well as the signature of carbon-to-hydrogen chemical bonds — as found in organic materials. Rivkin and Emery’s work is published in this week’s Nature2.

“Astronomers have looked at dozens of asteroids with this technique, but this is the first time we’ve seen ice on the surface and organics,” says Rivkin. The result was independently confirmed by a team led by Humberto Campins at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He and his colleagues observed 24 Themis for 7 hours one night, as it almost fully rotated on its axis. “Between us, we have seen the asteroid from almost every angle and we see global coverage,” says Campins. He and his team also publish their findings in this week’s Nature3.

Julie Castillo-Rogez, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, describes the findings as “huge”. “This answers the long-term question of whether there is free water in the asteroid belt,” she says.
Icy interloper

Because 24 Themis lies only about 479 million kilometres from the Sun (roughly three times the mean distance from Earth to the Sun), it is surprising that the surface ice has not all been vaporized. Both teams speculate that more ice may be held in a reservoir beneath the asteroid’s surface, shielded from the Sun, and that this ice is slowly churned up as the asteroid is struck by small bodies in the belt, thus replenishing the surface ice.The findings lend weight to the idea that asteroids and comets are the source of Earth’s water and organic material. Geochemists think that the early Earth went through a molten phase when any organic molecules would have dissociated, so new organic material would have had to be delivered to the planet at a later time, says Campins. “I believe our findings are linked to the origin of life on Earth,” he says.To assess the plausibility of this scenario, astronomers must determine whether the make-up of 24 Themis is typical of other asteroids and, if so, what exactly they hold, says Castillo-Rogez. A priority should be to search for water ice on near-Earth asteroids that could be targeted by NASA’s planned robotic and manned missions. “If we find ice samples that contain the same ratio of deuterium [‘heavy hydrogen’ made up of one neutron and one proton] to hydrogen as seen on Earth, that would be a strong pointer,” she says.

However, 24 Themis may not be a typical member of the belt it could be an interloper that formed beyond Neptune, along with the comets, which was later knocked inwards, says Rivkin. If so, this would fit well with the controversial ‘Nice model’ of the evolution of the Solar System. Proposed in 2005, this model suggests that the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and asteroids migrated to their present orbits after formation4. Either way, says Rivkin, “The old-fashioned picture of the Solar System in which asteroids are asteroids and comets are comets is getting harder to sustain.”(nature)

NASA's last space shuttle mission will be delayed until November so scientists can adapt a $2 billion particle detector for an extended life aboard the International Space Station

NASA’s last space shuttle mission will be delayed until November so scientists can adapt a $2 billion particle detector for an extended life aboard the International Space Station, officials said Monday.Three more shuttle flights remain and the space agency had planned to close out the program by September 30 with a final mission by shuttle Discovery to resupply the orbital outpost.That mission now moves ahead of shuttle Endeavour’s launch with the Alpha Magnetic Spectometer, a 16-nation project overseen by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”It became clear that (Endeavour) could not fly in July like was on the manifest,” said NASA spokesman Kyle Herring.

AMS, which is designed to look for antimatter particles and other exotic forms of matter in space, had been set to fly in July. But with the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the space station program until at least 2020, scientists decided to switch the detector’s cryogenically cooled superconducting magnet, estimated to last three years, to a permanent magnet that would last 10 to 18 years.

“We began thinking about this at the end of last year and the beginning of January when people were talking about the space station going to 2020 and beyond,” Ting said in an interview.”I began to realize that we’d have a museum piece.”

Dumping AMS’ liquid helium-cooled magnet cuts the device’s power to bend the path of charged cosmic particles as they pass through five different types of detectors. But Ting says adding more precision detectors and the extra years in orbit more than compensates for that.The replacement magnet, which flew in a prototype AMS during a 1998 shuttle mission, was taken out of clean room storage in Germany and tested. No degradation was found and it is scheduled to arrive at CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research — in Geneva where the AMS is being assembled this week.

Delaying the last shuttle flight will give the 6,000 to 8,000 workers at the Kennedy Space Center preparing for layoffs a short reprieve.

Obama’s budget request for NASA for the year beginning October 1, which still must be approved by Congress, includes $600 million to keep the program going until the end of the year if necessary to accommodate technical or weather-related delays.The schedule change is not expected to affect the final planned flight of shuttle Atlantis, targeted for liftoff on May 14 to deliver a Russian docking port to the station.(Reuters)

Robonaut 2/R2 will become permanent residents of the international space station

United States space agency, NASA, will get a new crew in outer space. NASA’s new astronauts are unique, because he’s not human, but robots that resemble humans. This robot will be sent into space this year. Astronaut robot called Robonaut 2 or R2 will become permanent residents of the international space station.Robot astronaut is a project of cooperation between NASA with General Motors (GM) – an American car company. R2 specification does not indiscriminate. He must be able to become an assistant and worked with humans, both astronauts in outer space on Earth maupung GM workers.

Robot R2 weighing 300 pounds was made up of head, body, with two arms and two hands. R2 will be launched simultaneously with the launch of space shuttle Discovery, as part of STS-133 mission planned next September. While R2 flight out, engineers on Earth will continue to monitor the robot working in a room without weights. For a while, the activity of R2 will be limited in the Destiny laboratory. However, in the future, with additional modifications, this will enable robots to work more broadly, outside or in a complex space station.

“The project is realizing the promise that in the future, robots could work in outer space or on Earth. Not only to replace humans, but also works with humans,” said Director of NASA’s Exploration Systems in Washington, John’s Olson, just as it loaded the page NASA. “Combined robotic and human potential, will allow us to go far, reaching more than what we can possibly imagine today. Not just shapes such as humans, R2 is also similar to the way humans work, can even replace humans in dangerous tasks. For now, still a prototype and R2 do not have adequate protection to exist outside the space station in extreme temperatures.

Meteor shower caught on tape in MILWAUKEE,from 16/04/2010 till 26/04/2010 start from 1am night to 5am .

MILWAUKEE A large meteor streaked across the Midwestern sky momentarily turning night into day, rattling houses and causing trees and the ground to shake, authorities said Thursday. There were no immediate reports of injuries.Witnesses say the meteor lit up the sky Wednesday about 10:10 p.m. National Weather Service offices across the Midwest said it was visible from southwestern Wisconsin and northern Iowa to central Missouri.Radar information suggests the meteor landed in the southwest corner of Wisconsin, either Grant or Lafayette counties, said Ashley Sears, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Milwaukee office. Officials in both counties said no one reported seeing a meteorite or crater.

Lafayette County Sheriff Scott Pedley said his office received multiple reports of a very bright light in the sky followed by houses and the ground shaking.”There were reports of four to five minutes of explosions or rumbling,” he said. He couldn’t say what the sound was but speculated it may have been a sonic boom if the meteor broke the sound barrier.

A dashboard camera in the squad car of a Howard County sheriff’s deputy in Iowa caught a glimpse of the fireball. In the video, the object streaks toward the ground, then swells and brightens in an apparent explosion before disappearing behind a distant clump of trees.As large as the halo seems, history suggests the object might only be the size of a softball or basketball, said James Lattis, the director of the University of Wisconsin Space Place in Madison.

“These things are surprisingly small,” Lattis said. He noted meteor showers can produce streaks visible from miles away even though the objects that are burning up might be the size of a grain of sand.Lattis said because Wednesday’s meteor apparently exploded, it’s possible it will never be recovered. Unless the fragments landed on a rooftop, car, yard or other prominent place, they could be virtually indistinguishable from other rocks and pebbles on the ground.

“In that case it will just be luck if anyone happens to recognize it,” he said.Lattis said there’s even a chance the sighting wasn’t a meteor, noting an object such as a broken satellite part could create a similar effect. A message seeking comment was left with NASA.Sean Thompson was watching television in his Iowa City, Iowa, apartment when a bright light caught his eye for about 10 seconds before it disappeared.”It was somewhat alarming to me,” Thompson said. “I’ve seen shooting stars, but I’ve never seen something jetting across the sky with flames shooting off it.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/TR2uNajroOM&rel=0&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/It4cBYN3eP8&rel=0&fs=1

Some initially speculated the object was part of a two-week-long meteor shower currently under way. But Lattis said it most likely wasn’t part of the Gamma Virginids shower because it came from the opposite direction.The Gamma Virginids shower began April 4 and is expected to last through April 21. Thursday is expected to be the second straight day of peak activity.Meteors are caused by bits of space debris, such as that left by a comet. Dust and debris burn up in the atmosphere and create streaks of light. Unlike other celestial sightings that require a telescope or binoculars, the best way to watch a meteor shower is with the naked eye.

The NASA Narrows Robotic Missions to 3 Contenders

osiris

The latter two missions would include the return of samples, while the Venusian lander would test the planet’s composition much like the Phoenix Lander did on Mars. The NASA anointing means that the teams proposing the excursions will have some money to make more detailed plans.The winning mission will be the next in a series of explorations under the New Frontiers program. New Frontiers missions have to run under $650 million and be ready to launch relatively quickly. In this case, the final pick will be made in 2011 and will launch just seven years later.While NASA personnel will be digging into the proposals to come up with the official decision, we’d like to know which proposal you like. Read up on the contenders, and vote in the poll afterwards.

Name: The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer (SAGE)
Destination: Venus
Principal Investigator: Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado in Boulder
Plan: The SAGE mission would release a probe that would descend through Venus’ thick atmosphere to its surface. There, it would dig into the crust and measure its composition, not unlike what the Phoenix Lander did on Mars.
Why: “Venus is like a twin sister of the Earth, and it’s gone terribly bad,” Esposito told Colorado Daily. Scientists want to know what happened.

Name: Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (Osiris-Rex)
Destination: A “primitive asteroid”
Principal Investigator: Michael Drake, of the University of Arizona in Tucson
Plan: Osiris-Rex would fly to a primitive asteroid, orbit it, and then land on it. After collecting two ounces of material, it would fly the samples back to Earth. It’s a bit like Russia’s planned Phobos-Grunt mission, which would return samples from a Martian moon. (Osiris is pictured above.)
Why: “A primary motivation for an asteroid sample return mission is the desire to both acquire samples with known geologic context and to return materials that are either unlikely to survive passage to Earth (e.g., friable, volatile-rich material) or would be compromised by terrestrial contamination upon their fall (e.g.,
extraterrestrial organics).” — according to a description of the mission plan [pdf]

Name: MoonRise
Destination: Aitken Basin, at the Moon’s south pole
Principal Investigator: Bradley Jolliff, of Washington University in St. Louis
Plan: The mission would place a lander in a south polar lunar basin, where it would excavate about two pounds of lunar material. The samples would be returned to Earth.
Why: The area where MoonRise would dig is believed to be composed of rocks from the moon’s mantle conveniently exposed by a massive meteorite strike. Understanding the interior of the moon could help explain a lot about the formation of the solar system.

Saturn's mysterious hexagon

Saturn Hexagon

Stunning images of the intriguing hexagon shape crowning Saturn have been captured by Nasa’s Cassini spacecraft.Scientists have waited nearly 30 years for the Sun to illuminate the ringed planet’s north pole, which heralds the arrival of spring on Saturn.It has allowed them to take the most detailed pictures yet of the hexagon phenomenon, which has a diameter wider than two Earths. The images, taken from 475,000 miles away, have revealed concentric circles, curlicues, walls and streamers within the hexagon.

The data will help shed light on space weather and unanswered questions about the same processes on Earth.The unusual shape is created by a jet stream flowing around the north pole, but scientists are baffled by what causes the hexagon and where it sucks in and expels its energy.They are also intrigued by how it has managed to stay organised for so long. The last visible-light images of the entire hexagon were captured by Nasa’s Voyager spacecraft nearly 30 years ago, the last time spring began on Saturn.

A view of Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft taken today

The hexagon was originally discovered in images taken by the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s. It encircles Saturn at about 77 degrees north latitude. The jet stream is believed to whip along the hexagon at around 220 miles per hour.Saturn should give scientists a good model to study the physics of circulation patterns and atmosphere, before it does not have land masses or oceans on its surface to complicate weather the way Earth does.

Cassini has shown Saturn's region of space to be active

Nasa scientist Kevin Baines has studied the hexagon with Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.He said: ‘Now that we can see undulations and circular features instead of blobs in the hexagon, we can start trying to solve some of the unanswered questions about one of the most bizarre things we’ve ever seen in the solar system.

‘Solving these unanswered questions about the hexagon will help us answer basic questions about weather that we’re still asking about our own planet.’

The Cassini team plan to search the new images for clues, taking an especially close look at the newly identified waves that radiate from the corners of the hexagon – where the jet takes its hardest turns – and the multi-walled structure that extends to the top of Saturn’s cloud layer in each of the hexagon’s six sides.

Scientists are also particularly intrigued by a large dark spot that appeared in a different position in a previous infrared image from Cassini. In the latest images, the spot appears in the 2 o’clock position.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Nasa prepares to launch all-seeing telescope to find new asteroids

The Wide-field Infra red Survey Explorer (WISE)

Scientists are set to launch an all-seeing telescope with an ability to map the sky hundreds of times greater than other observatories.The Wide-field Infra red Survey Explorer (WISE) will now be launched on Monday after the mission, scheduled for for today, was delayed because of a problem with the spacecraft’s steering engine.WISE, which will blast off from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, will scan the entire sky in infra red light in search of never-before-seen asteroids, comets, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies.Infra red is light beyond the red part of the rainbow that is invisible to our eyes.The Nasa spacecraft, about the size of a Smart car, will snap 7,500 pictures a day at four different infra red wavelengths and the findings could totally revise the familiar portrait of our solar system.

One of its main tasks is to catalog objects posing a danger to Earth.Some astronomers have speculated the telescope could even reveal a huge gas planet in the outer reaches of our solar system.Peter Eisenhardt, a project scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told The Times: ‘What we’re doing is opening up the sky in a way that hasn’t been possible before.’It will transform the picture of our solar neighbourhood.’

The £195million satellite will orbit Earth 15 times a day, in low orbit 325 miles above the ground.The mission will last about 10 months, until its supply of solid hydrogen runs out, and will scan the entire sky about one-and-a-half times.Solar panels will provide WISE with the electricity it needs to operate and it will take six months to orbit the sky once.