Gizmorama
November 3, 2010
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Good Morning,
NASA is experiencing a few engine difficulties with today's
launch of the space shuttle Discovery. Read all the details
on the problem including what will happen if it is not
resolved in a timely manner in the first article.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Engineers looking at shuttle glitch
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Engineers are hoping to solve an
engine controller glitch in a backup system on the shuttle
Discovery in time for todday's scheduled launch, NASA
says. In a statement, NASA said that during the shuttle's
main engine checkouts the backup computer controller on
Discovery's Main Engine No. 3 did not turn on as expected,
SPACE.com reported. If the problem is corrected, NASA will
begin fueling Discovery's external tank early this mor-
ning for its afternoon launch into space. "After addressing
a couple issues last night, our countdown work is currently
back on schedule," NASA test director Steve Payne said Tues-
day morning. Discovery's launch has already been delayed two
days by technical issues that have been corrected. If the
launch is delayed another 24 hours, a weather front pushing
down into parts of central Florida could cause concerns,
Kathy Winters, NASA's shuttle weather officer, said. NASA
has until Sunday to launch Discovery within the current
window. It the launch does not occur, the space agency would
have to wait until early December for another attempt,
SPACE.com reported.
Dolphin fossil said to be new species
ROTTERDAM, Netherlands - Dutch scientists say a North Sea
fossil is of a previously unknown species of dolphin with a
short, spoon-shaped nose and high, bulbous forehead. Re-
searchers at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam have named
it Platalearostrum hoekmani after Albert Hoekman, a Dutch
fisherman who trawled up a bone from the creature's skull in
2008, the BBC reported Monday. Museum researchers Klaas Post
and Erwin Kompanje say the North Sea has offered up a rich
bounty of fossils in recent decades as bottom-trawling has
become more common. The 20-foot dolphin lived 2 million to
3 million years ago, part of the family of marine mammals
known as Delphinids, oceangoing dolphins that include both
killer and pilot whales. The fossil bone shows an unusually
large tip region containing six teeth known as the prema-
xilla, suggesting the broad, blunt nature of the creature's
snout, researchers say. They say analyses of similar fossils
and modern relatives within the family convince them they
have found a new species whose closest living relative is
the pilot whale, the BBC reported.
FDA OKs drug for TS brain tumors
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved
a drug to treat tumors caused by a rare genetic disorder,
tuberous sclerosis. The drug, Afinitor, is intended to treat
slow-growing benign tumors associated with TS in the brain
called subependymal giant cell astrocytomas, an FDA release
said Monday. Such tumors, SEGAs for short, are considered a
major diagnostic feature of TS, seen in 6 percent to 9 per-
cent of patients. The disease can be fatal for patients who
develop complications with tumor growth on the brain. Surgery
can be used to remove the tumor growths in some patients, but
Afinitor has been approved for cases that cannot be treated
with surgery, the FDA says. "Patients with this disease cur-
rently have limited treatment options beyond surgical inter-
vention," Dr. Richard Pazdur of the FDA's Center for Drug
Evaluation and Research said. "It is important for research
to continue in rare diseases where patients have few or no
existing drug treatment options."
Trips to Mars might be a one-way ticket
SAN FRANCISCO - NASA says feasibility studies are looking
at whether astronauts could be sent on permanent, one-way
missions to Mars or its moons to colonize them. NASA's Ames
Research Center, based in Moffett Field, Calif., is spear-
heading the studies, The Daily Telegraphs reported. Ames
Director Pete Worden confirmed the studies at a conference
in San Francisco last weekend, the British newspaper said.
"The human space program is now really aimed at settling
other worlds," Worden said. "Twenty years ago, you had to
whisper that in dark bars and get fired. "Within a few years
we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that
will take us between worlds." Such a journey to Mars would
take up to nine months with volunteers embarking on the
mission knowing they would never return to Earth because the
cost of returning astronauts home would make the project
prohibitively expensive. Supplies would be continuously
sent to make them self-sufficient. Two researchers suggest
four volunteer astronauts could undertake the first mission
to permanently colonize Mars. "There are many reasons why a
human colony on Mars is a desirable goal, scientifically
and politically," Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State
University and Paul Davies of Arizona State University said.
The two admit such a mission would come with considerable
"ethical considerations."
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