Voyager: Goodbye Solar System, Hello Interstellar Space

From Discovery News: http://news.discovery.com/space/voyager-1-probe-interstellar-mission-130912.htm

After a 35-year, 13-billion mile journey, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first human-made object to reach interstellar space, new evidence from a team of scientists shows.

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Peace Out, Voyager 1

Anthony Carboni asks: which spacecraft is more likely to find life in space?

NASA

“It’s kind of like landing on the moon. It’s a milestone in history. Like all science, it’s exploration. It’s new knowledge,” long-time Voyager scientist Donald Gurnett, with the University of Iowa, told Discovery News.
PHOTOS: Voyager 2's Outer Solar System Odyssey
In the end, it was the sun itself that in essence “rang Voyager’s bell,” providing the definitive proof that had eluded scientists for the past year or so about whether or not the spacecraft had reached the space between the stars.
On Aug. 25, 2012, Voyager, which was launched in 1977 to study the outer planets, detected a sudden drop in the number of particles trapped in the bubble of space under the sun’s influence, the so-called heliosphere, and a corresponding spike in the number of galactic cosmic rays from outside the solar system.
That evidence alone, however, was not enough to convince scientists Voyager had finally reached interstellar space. What they really wanted to know was how much plasma -- ionized molecules and atoms -- was around Voyager, but that measurement was not possible since the spacecraft’s plasma detector stopped working more than 30 years ago.
Computer models had long predicted that within the heliosphere, which is filed with the sun’s hot breath of solar wind, plasma density would be a small fraction of what exists in cold interstellar space.
But there was another way. Under very special circumstances, Voyager’s two 10-meter (33-foot) antennas can detect vibrations in the plasma that scientists can then use to calculate density.
“If you displace the electrons from their normal position and release them, there is a restoring force that pulls them back and the electrons then oscillate. It’s a very characteristic frequency -- like hitting a bell -- and if we can detect that we can compute the density,” Gurnett said.
NEWS: Voyager Reaches Mystery Interstellar Doorstep
“It’s very straight-forward,” he added.
But not very common. It happened nine years ago when Voyager 1 crossed a shockwave, a telltale sign that the solar wind was no longer moving at supersonic speeds.
Another hint of Voyager’s whereabouts came in October and November 2012 when the spacecraft’s antennas registered the effects of a solar flare. The bevy of particles emitted in the so-called coronal mass ejection traveled for about a year before reaching Voyager.
Conclusive proof came this spring when Voyager detected another solar outburst.
“We were able, for the first time, to measure the density of the plasma, the number of particles per cubic meter,” Gurnett said. “As soon as we detected those oscillations, we knew that we were in the interstellar medium.”
“The definition of the heliopause is based on the plasma density and they just couldn’t measure that. And we, by some good fortune having to do with solar events, finally could do that,” he said.
NEWS: Voyager 1 Hits New Solar System Exit Zone
Extrapolating back in time, scientists calculate that Voyager 1 likely crossed into interstellar space back in August 2012, the same time it measured changes in the prevalence of cosmic rays and solar particles.
While one step of Voyager’s journey is over, a new expedition is beginning.
“We are now in interstellar space. This is a very exciting new phase of the mission,” said lead scientist Edward Stone, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“As usual, the most important thing we’ll find is probably something that we didn’t expect. That’s what makes this mission so very special,” he said.
The research appears in this week’s Science.

Time Runs Out for Telescope, Examining Kepler's Contribution to Space Research

From PBS: Time Runs Out for Telescope, Examining Kepler's Contribution to Space Research

JUDY WOODRUFF: The U.S. space agency confirmed yesterday that its renowned Kepler telescope is beyond repair, a big blow in its search for planets.
The Kepler was launched into an orbit around the sun in 2009, its purpose, observe stars thousands of light years from Earth that may harbor Earth-like planets. By looking at what happens to the light emanated by the stars, it's discovered more than 3,500 possible planets, more than 100 of which have been independently confirmed.

          

But it has not yet found one planet that has the right conditions for sustaining life as here on Earth. NASA says the spacecraft's wheels, which are critical for keeping it pointed correctly, do not work anymore. Astronomers are now assessing its legacy.
Michael Lemonick is the author of a book about Kepler called “Mirror Earth." He has long written about space and science for TIME magazine.
Michael Lemonick, welcome to the NewsHour.
Tell us a little bit more about what the original mission for the Kepler was.

MORE: Wheels Stopped for Kepler, but Still More to Study

MICHAEL LEMONICK, author: The original mission was to take a census, really, of a group of stars, an average group of stars, to find out what percentage of them have planets of any kind, and what sizes those planets come in and how far they are from their stars, how the temperature on the surface of those planets would be, if you were there.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And why is that important? And how much of that mission did it get done?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: It got -- well, first of all, it got a huge amount done.
It's important because when -- the reason we look for planets around other stars at all is because we're interested in whether there is life elsewhere in the universe. And the best bet for life, we would think, would be on a planet just like Earth, that is, about the same size as Earth, orbiting a star like sun, with the right temperature for water to exist in liquid form, which is a requirement for life, we think.
And since we know there's a planet like that already in the universe, and life is here, we want to look for a planet like that elsewhere as the best bet for finding life.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And so what happened to the telescope? We mentioned the wheels not working. What -- was this something they expected would go wrong?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: Well, so, these wheels help the telescope point very precisely at the stars it's looking at.
You have to hold the telescope very steady in order to detect the very faint fluctuations in light that happen when a planet goes in front of a star, so it dims just a tiny bit. And the wheels help keep it pointed incredibly precisely. And they have had four of these reaction wheels that the satellite went up with.
One of them failed last year. Another one failed last spring. And with only two wheels still working, you can't point with the accuracy that you need. And so the telescope is still in perfect working order. It just can't aim in the direction that it's supposed to.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Michael Lemonick, it must be incredibly frustrating for the NASA scientists who put so much effort into this. How are they taking it?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: Well, they're actually taking it pretty well. When Kepler was first approved in 2000, it was approved for a four-year mission. That's what the scientists asked for. And NASA said, yes, you can have four years.
And they have completed the four years. In 2012, the scientists said, wow, we could do better science if we had another several years, and they got another three-and-a-half. But the first primary phase of the mission has been completed. And only the first two years worth of data from those four years have been analyzed yet. And those numbers you quoted in the introduction, all those planets it's found already, that's just from the first two years of data.
So they have got two more years' worth to probe through, many more discoveries to make. All they're -- all that is lacking is the ability to then go even deeper and look even further. So they're disappointed, of course. They would have liked to do more with this amazing satellite, but they're incredibly satisfied with what they found already.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But in terms of adding to our understanding of space, you're saying this is significant?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: This is very significant.
What they have done in the survey is discovered what they are convinced are more than 3,000 planets. They haven't all been confirmed yet, but most of them will be. And what they see is that if you look out around average stars, you will see some planets, like Jupiter, big, gassy, giant planets that would be very inhospitable to life, more, smaller planets like Neptune, still not very hospitable.
But as you get smaller and smaller and closer to Earth in size, there are more and more planets. And if they extrapolate from what they have seen, one estimate, one lowball estimate is that in the Milky Way, there would be 17 billion planets with just the right conditions for life, and that's a low estimate. There are probably more than that.
So, we didn't know any of this before Kepler. Now we know that Earth-like planets are almost certainly very common in the Milky Way. Fifteen years ago, we didn't even know there were planets at all around other stars. Now we know that Earths are very common in the Milky Way.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And what do they believe it's going to take to find out where those other Earths are?
MICHAEL LEMONICK: Well, so Kepler's primary mission is often misunderstood.
It wasn't specifically to find those planets in particular. It was to get an idea of how common they are. That's the basic mission. So, if it found that Earth-like planets are very rare, that tells astronomers, OK, maybe it's not worth going out now and trying to find specific ones. What it's found instead is that Earth-like planets are probably very common.
There are probably plenty of them reasonably close to us, and now we can start targeting, with new telescopes, targeting stars closer to Earth than the Kepler stars, which are quite far away, looking for those planets, and, ultimately, with more powerful telescopes, looking at their atmospheres and their surfaces to try and determine whether there's really life there, because it's one thing to say, yes, this is a good place where life could exist.
We want to be able to say, yes, life does exist on these planets. And that is now not a crazy thing to try and do, thanks to Kepler. We now know it's not a quixotic endeavor.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, that is pretty exciting.
Michael Lemonick, thank you very much.
MICHAEL LEMONICK: I think so.
Thank you.

Restored Star Trek ship Galileo arrives in Houston

From Yahoo News : Restored Star Trek ship Galileo arrives in Houston

HOUSTON (AP) — When the smoke cleared and the music died down, Candy Torres could no longer contain herself. Looking at the shiny, restored Star Trek Galileo shuttlecraft sitting in Houston in all its TV glory, she broke down.

"All of a sudden I was just crying. I was in tears. I couldn't believe it," Torres said, donning a brown tourist engineer hat and a NASA mission operations shirt. "It meant something."

And Torres wasn't alone. Trekkies of all stripes arrived in Houston Wednesday for the momentous unveiling of the shuttlecraft that crash-landed on a hostile planet in the 1967 "Star Trek" episode called "The Galileo Seven." Some wore Scotty's Repair Shop T-shirts, others full-blown spandex outfits worn by Mr. Spock and his peers in the famous TV show and movies that have garnered a following so large and so devoted it is almost cult-like.

Adam Schneider paid $61,000 for the battered shuttlecraft in an auction and spent about a year restoring the fiberglass ship and making it look nearly as it did on that episode. He flew in from New York to mark the unveiling at the Space Center Houston, where it will be permanently displayed not far from NASA's Mission Control.

"Unbelievably proud," he said, beaming alongside the white shuttle. "Like sending your kid to college and having them get a job to build a successful life, because this was under our care for a year and we grew very attached.
Jeff Langston, 45, drove more than 160 miles from Austin with his two sons to see the moment. He and his 12-year-old son, Pearce, wore matching red Scotty's Repair Shop T-shirts. His 10-year-old son, Neo, couldn't find his shirt, but that didn't put a damper on the moment.

"It was very exciting," Neo said, bouncing on his feet. "When they filmed Star Trek the Galileo was cool and now that they remade it, it's cool to see a new version of the Galileo. And it's beautiful."

Richard Allen, the space center's 63-year-old CEO and president, hopes that just as the Star Trek movies and others like it inspired Torres to pursue a career in science and engineering, that today's generation will be similarly inspired when they see the Galileo.

"It's fantastic," he said of the shuttlecraft. "We're all about exciting and educating ... and I'm convinced that space is one of the best, if not the best, way of creating inquiry in young minds."

Showdown over NASA funding likely

From USA Today: Showdown over NASA funding likely

WASHINGTON — A Senate panel Tuesday narrowly approved a bill reauthorizing NASA, setting up a showdown with the House over how much money the nation's space program should get.

The three-year bill, which now heads to the full Senate, would give the space agency $18.1 billion in fiscal year 2014, $18.4 billion in 2015 and $18.8 billion in 2016 -- $2 billion more per year than the U.S. House is considering. NASA received $17.7 billion in fiscal 2013, which ends Sept. 30.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed the bill 13-12 along party lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.

"While it's not as much as we'd like NASA to have, it's certainly a step in the right direction," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said after the vote. Nelson chairs the Science and Space Subcommittee that helped shape and steer the legislation.

If the Democratic-led Senate passes the bill as expected, lawmakers likely will have to reconcile it with a House bill that promises NASA much less. Earlier this month, lawmakers on the GOP-led House Science, Space and Technology Committee settled on a funding figure closer to $16.8 billion for fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015. A vote on the House floor is expected later this year.

The partisan conflict over NASA funding largely involves each party's view of how much money is available to spend on most federal programs, such as space and science.

Republicans are unwilling to go beyond the overall allocations spelled out in the budget they approved earlier this year. Those levels assume the government-wide budget cuts Congress agreed to in 2011 -- known as sequestration -- will remain in effect.

Democrats on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee argued Tuesday that NASA reauthorization should be based on how much money the agency realistically needs, not on what might be available in the next budget cycle.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., called a Republican amendment to reduce the bill's funding levels "a misguided attempt to really turn the committee into nothing but the Appropriations (Committee)."

"And I think we have very important technology-mission oversight that we have to focus on," she said.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the top Republican on the panel, sounded optimistic that lawmakers can compromise.

The NASA bill "will likely need even more work before (it) reflects the kind of consensus that has characterized our committee's enacted legislation," he told panel members. "With additional effort, however, I am hopeful that we can get there in the weeks and months ahead."

The difference is not just about money. It's also about NASA's overall direction and whether the agency should be allowed — or trusted — to pursue the course it's laid out for the next few years.
Both the House and Senate measures would provide money to continue developing NASA's top priorities: a deep-space mission to Mars, a joint venture with aerospace firms to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, and completion of the James Webb Space Telescope.

But while the Senate bill would permit an asteroid retrieval mission the agency wants to undertake as part of its stepping-stone approach to Mars, the House measure strictly prohibits it.

"I don't think that is the position of a committee to be telling the scientists and the NASA experts of what we should be doing," Nelson said Tuesday.

PR: NASA, Bigelow To Discuss Private Sector Human Space Exploration And Development

NASA, Bigelow To Discuss Private Sector Human Space Exploration And Development

 

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2013 -- /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA and Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas are holding a media availability at 1:30 p.m. EDT, Thursday, May 23, to discuss the agency's Space Act Agreement with the company for its insight on collaborating with commercial industry on exploration beyond Earth orbit. Journalists can participate in-person or by teleconference.

The media availability participants are:

• William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator, human exploration and operations, NASA
• Robert Bigelow, founder and president, Bigelow Aerospace

Journalist who want to attend in-person at NASA Headquarters, 300 E St. SW in Washington, or dial-in to ask questions should contact Rachel Kraft at rachel.h.kraft@nasa.gov or 202-358-1100 by 11 a.m. May 23.
Under the agreement, Bigelow will work with a variety of commercial space companies to assess and develop options for innovative and dynamic private and public investments to create infrastructure to support domestic and international governmental exploration activities alongside revenue generating private sector enterprises. Bigelow will deliver its analysis by the end of this year.
The agreement includes a two-phased approach that will help NASA assess potential opportunities for collaboration. During the first phase, Bigelow will leverage its existing relationships with other private companies and its expertise from continuing operations in space to form common objectives between the private sector and NASA. In the second phase, Bigelow will create a series of options for public-private collaboration that lower costs and takes advantage of rapid implementation.
For more information on Bigelow Aerospace, visit:
http://www.bigelowaerospace.com
For more information on NASA's exploration goals, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration
SOURCE NASA

 

Take your blood pressure medication!

Spent most of yesterday in the hospital, where my mother was admitted. Her doctor had changed her blood pressure medication a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't doing the job. Unfortunately her doctor was out of town and a home therapist said we should take her to the Emergency Room.

Bad idea, as far as I'm concerned. Put her back on her old medication which was working, just causing her to cough.

Instead we brought her to the emergency room, and since she's old and deaf, this got her more stressed out and scared than ever, because they were all gathered around her shouting questions and wanting to run tests and I'm sure she thought she was dying or something, which sent her blood pressure even higher.

She spent the night there, and is still in today for more tests, which I don't think she needs but I guess since they've got her in there they want to get their money's worth out of our insurance...  she's in a private room which must be costing a fortune....

The reason for my headline... she was about 40 when she was first diagnosed with high blood pressure...took pills for a couple of days but didn't like how they made her feel....so she stopped taking them and tried to do the "natural remedy" thing.

Result, 20 years later she had congestive heart failure, and now instead of taking 1 pill a day she has to take 4. And has to go into the hospital periodically on occasions like these.

Moral of the story - go get your blood pressure checked, and if you have high blood pressure make sure you take your meds, otherwise believe me you'll wish you had, when it is too late...

How Video Games Help Fuel Space Exploration

From Space.com: How Video Games Help Fuel Space Exploration
Having traveled to other worlds in his game creations such as "Ultima," Richard Garriott de Cayeux is now doing the real thing. He flew to the International Space Station in 2008 (on a reported $30 million ticket). And his company, Space Adventures, has organized flights on Soyuz craft for about a dozen other moguls.
At the South by Southwest conference in Austin this week, Garriott de Cayeux explained why he thinks that private companies can make spaceflight radically cheaper and more common. Ideas include having NASA contract with private rocket companies for human spaceflight instead of building all its own craft (which it already does to launch robots such as the Mars Rover Curiosity). Garriott de Cayeux also promotes reusable spacecraft, which he claims offer tenfold to hundredfold cost savings.
Elon Musk of SpaceX, the most successful extraterrestrial entrepreneur so far, is testing reusable technology called Grasshopper. And so is John Carmack, creator of blockbuster video game franchises "Doom" and "Quake." His company, Armadillo Aerospace, is focused on building reusable craft.
TechNewsDaily asked Garriott de Cayeux why game creators are attracted to spaceflight. "If there was something specific to the games industry, it would have to be from exploring virtual worlds," he said. "It would have to be … creating experiences that let people go into the unknown. Noting his many adventures, including into space, to Antarctica and to the bottom of the ocean, he said, "I find my drive to go explore is identical and very closely linked with my personal drive to create things for people to explore."
But the images in many games may not be the best thing to motivate future generations of explorers, said astronaut Mae Jemison. In a panel session, she spoke about the 100 Year Starship Project she leads, which aims to kick-start the technologies to make interstellar spaceflight possible within a century.
Many of the most popular video games over the years, including "Doom" and "Quake," are also very violent. "I'm struck by the fact that we have all the slasher, blood-and-guts, shoot-'em-up movies and stuff like that," Jemison said. "It doesn't make you very hopeful for the future."
Jemison's fellow panelist Jill Tarter of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) said that games could be helpful, "to the extent that people can … build interactive experiences that aren't always shooting and competitive."
LeVar Burton of "Star Trek" fame, also on the panel, told TechNewsDaily that he was excited about the use of biofeedback in games. "I can certainly imagine games that are … first-person experience, where you really have to be in a calm and imaginative state in order to advance in the gameplay," he said. "And I think that's a lot more productive in terms of entrainment than … the first-person shooter." [See also: Video Games Improve Surgeons' Skills]
Jemison also sees games as a way to study how people interact, which is critical to creating livable conditions for a space mission that will span entire lifetimes. Games, she said, could help to, "ferret out some information about human behavior."
Burton agreed: "Using gameplay to problem-solve — fantastic use of the technology."
This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, sister site to SPACE.com.

National Geographic Timeline of Space Exploration

It's a presentation, so you have to go see it via a computer, but it looks pretty cool so check it out.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/125/timelines/space-exploration/?source=hp_125_nghistoryt_imeline_20130215

Challenger Center inspires love of space exploration

From NWIT Times:  Challenger Center inspires love of space exploration

Challenger Learning Center students explore outer space while still on Earth but thanks to that experience, many start setting their sights to the stars.
The science education center, on Hammond Purdue University Calumet campus, uses space as the hook to get kids interested in career skills related to science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM.
It does 95 percent of its work during school based field trips, but also features public programs such as Family Science Night and summer camps, said Becky Manis, the center’s executive director.
New this school year is "Moon Based Explorers", which was developed for students in kindergarten through second grade.
“It’s all part of a simulation where they pretend they are astronauts and use their skills,” Manis said. “It’s Next Generation Standards based. It also meets the Common Core Standards for language and math.”
Kindergartners at Elliott Elementary School in Munster took advantage of the new program.
“They love all the hands-on experiments that help them understand what would be needed to live away from Earth,” said Julie Glavin, a kindergarten through fifth grade science teacher at the school. “They really enjoy putting on their space suits and ‘going to the moon.’ ”
Elliott students have been taking field trips to the center since its inception and currently its kindergartners, third- and fifth- graders visit.
“Its activities provide, inform and enhance the school’s science curriculum,” Glavin said. “Most importantly, the Challenger Center is very complimentary to the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) initiative that is becoming integral in instructing 21st century learners.”
Karey Shanks, who currently teaches second grade at Elliott, said she always enjoyed visiting the Challenger Center when she taught fifth grade.
“This experience provided an event that was memorable,” she said. “Even years after the students left Elliott School, they remembered their Challenger Center experiences.”
The Challenger Center helped her students gain confidence, she said, because it gave them grown-up achievements.
“They really felt like astronauts and did not want to let their team members down,” she said of the life-like experience. It inspired her students to aspire to be astronauts or scientists.
“Lights, sirens, computers, robotic arms, controlled radiation chambers, medical tests, smoke, what was not to love?” she said. The students loved every part of it from the chamber where they entered the space station to problem solving in mission control to debriefing and speaking with astronaut Jerry Ross.
Shanks said the experience was so real that many of her students truly believed they discovered a new object in space, and she was honored when they often chose to name it after her.
The center staff hopes to reach more future scientists with a new underwater astronaut training camp, which they hope to launch as a summer camp, Manis said. Working with SCUBA instructors, camp attendees will mimic the astronauts’ work in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab and practice tasks in the pool.
Another plan for the summer is an intergenerational camp that will bring together grandparents and their grandkids.
Summer camp registration typically begins in March and sessions fill up quickly.
“Our center is not just about space but it’s about the science and engineering and math. It’s about work force ready skills. If you think about our future, how much knowledge citizens will need to be productive and strengthen the U.S. We have such a heavy future ahead of us and we need to prepare our kids for the future. Our programs do that. They inspire kids by using space as the hook.”
Manis said the programs are highly educational with a lot of content built into them so teachers can match many standards.
“It should make it easy for teachers to prove that the field trips they take here are worthwhile.”
For more information on the center, call 219-989-3250 or visit www.clcnwi.com.

OMG!

Never realized I hadn't posted in over 2 weeks!

Sorry, folks

Things have just gotten away from me the last week and a half...posting should be back on schedule starting this weekend.

Herschel: The Asteroid Apophis More Massive Than Though

From Sci-News:  Herschel: Asteroid Apophis More Massive Than Thought

New observations of the asteroid Apophis made with ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory as it approached our planet few days ago show the asteroid to be bigger than first thought.

Herschel’s view of the asteroid Apophis at wavelengths 70, 100 and 160 microns (ESA / Herschel / PACS / MACH-11 / MPE / B.Altieri / ESAC / C. Kiss / Konkoly Observatory)

Apophis (known as 99942 and 2004 MN4) is a near-Earth asteroid discovered on June 19, 2004 by R. A. Tucker, D. J. Tholen and F. Bernardi at the Kitt Peak National Observatory.
ESA’s Herschel observed the asteroid on January 5-6, 2013 during about 2 hours on its approach to Earth at about 14.5 million km.
“As well as the data being scientifically important in their own right, understanding key properties of asteroids will provide vital details for missions that might eventually visit potentially hazardous objects,” said Dr Laurence O’Rourke of the European Space Astronomy Center in Spain.
Herschel provided the first thermal infrared observations of Apophis at different wavelengths, which together with optical measurements helped refine estimates of the asteroid’s properties.
Previous estimates bracketed the asteroid’s average diameter at 270 ± 60 m; the new observations returned a more precise diameter of 325 ± 15 m.
“The 20% increase in diameter, from 270 to 325 m, translates into a 75% increase in our estimates of the asteroid’s volume or mass,” explained Dr Thomas Müller of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, who led the analysis of the new Herschel data.
By analyzing the heat emitted by Apophis, Herschel also provided a new estimate of the asteroid’s albedo of 0.23. This value means that 23% of the sunlight falling onto the asteroid is reflected; the rest is absorbed and heats up the asteroid. The previous albedo estimate for Apophis was 0.33.
“These numbers are first estimates based on the Herschel measurements alone, and other ongoing ground-based campaigns might produce additional pieces of information which will allow us to improve our results,” Dr Müller said.
“Although Apophis initially caught public interest as a possible Earth impactor, which is now considered highly improbable for the foreseeable future, it is of considerable interest in its own right, and as an example of the class of Near Earth Objects,” said Dr Göran Pilbratt, ESA’s Herschel Project Scientist. “Our unique Herschel measurements play a key role for the physical characterization of Apophis, and will improve the long-term prediction of its orbit.”

Posting resumes Thursday

I know I've been saying this periodically but this will be the last time I say it...I'm visiting relatives and although they have Wi fi I don't have a private room to work.

I'll be home Thursaday and will get back into the swing of things then.

Russia to allocate 2.1 trln rubles for space exploration by 2020 - Medvedev

From Russia: Beyond the Healines:  Russia to allocate 2.1 trln rubles for space exploration by 2020 - Medvedev

The Russian space exploration industry will receive 2.1 trillion rubles in funding in 2013-2020, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said.

"Historically, our positions in the space exploration field have probably been the strongest in the world, and this should be maintained. Russia has been and will remain a leading space power," Medvedev said at the last government session in 2012 on Thursday.

"The aggregate size of financing is very significant - 2 trillion and 100 billion rubles, including extra-budgetary sources," the premier said.

"Quite a lot of problems" have piled up in the industry, Medvedev said. He recalled that conferences on optimizing the industry's administration and improvement of rocket equipment's quality and reliability were held three times from August to November.

 "The draft government program is aimed at attaining these objectives and ensuring defense capability and security in the development of this country's economy and social sector and further exploration of outer space," he said.

This program would enable Russia to be properly involved in promising joint projects, such as the International Space Station or the exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies, he said.

Medvedev also emphasized that, given proper funding, rocket industry enterprises must increase their labor productivity and improve the quality and reliability of its products. "As for reliability, I specifically emphasize this word. This is a key factor now," he said.