Gizmorama - October 14, 2015

Good Morning,

Looking forward to seeing a man on Mars? Well, you might want to pack a lunch because a manned mission to the Red Planet may be more problematic than expected. Don't worry, NASA is working the bugs out.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- NASA outlines obstacles to putting a human on Mars --*
WASHINGTON - The engineers, scientists and astronauts at NASA are working on an endless list of fascinating experiments, projects and missions. But one target looms above all: putting a human on Mars.

A manned mission to Mars remains some time off, but much of NASA's current workload is executed with this ultimate goal in mind. On Thursday, NASA detailed the ways in which its current work will pave a path to Mars.

"NASA is closer to sending American astronauts to Mars than at any point in our history," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at a press conference on Thursday. "Today, we are publishing additional details about our journey to Mars plan and how we are aligning all of our work in support of this goal."

NASA says its journey to Mars is comprised of three types of work: Earth reliant, proving ground and Earth independent. Earth reliant work includes all the Mars-related science experiments being conducted on the International Space Station -- much of it focused on astronaut health. Proving ground work includes the engineering and logistics work that will enable complex missions to be carried out in deep space.

Earth independent work looks ahead to the future, when the culmination of lessons learned during Earth reliant and proving ground work are demonstrated and perfected on missions to locations within the vicinity of Mars -- perhaps sending a manned spacecraft to orbit Mars, landing a probe on a Martian moon or using rovers to harvest Martian resources for fuel, water and food.

"NASA's strategy connects near-term activities and capability development to the journey to Mars and a future with a sustainable human presence in deep space," explained NASA official William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations. "This strategy charts a course toward horizon goals, while delivering near-term benefits, and defining a resilient architecture that can accommodate budgetary changes, political priorities, new scientific discoveries, technological breakthroughs, and evolving partnerships."

NASA's new plan also organizes the types of challenges they're facing into three main categories: transportation, working in space and staying healthy.

Ongoing health experiments on ISS apply most directly the category of staying healthy. While NASA's Space Launch System, Orion crewed spacecraft, and revitalized space launch complex all are focused on the challenges of transportation. A variety of other science projects are working to improve NASA's deep space communications systems and other in-flight capabilities.

NASA has sent a host of orbiters, probes and landers to Mars, advancing its robotic capabilities and understanding of the Red Planet. But sending humans adds many more layers of complexity.

The space agency says each new mission gets them closer to their goal -- each mission offering "successively more capable technologies and partnerships."


*-- Astronomers spot strange ripples emanating from star --*
PARIS - Images from Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope have revealed a unique set of ripples traveling through the dusty protoplanetary disc of a nearby star.

Astronomers have never seen anything like it, and neither did they expect to.

A team of researchers spotted the phenomenon while analyzing the dust and debris surrounding the star AU Microscopii, or AU Mic, using the Very Large Telescope's SPHERE instrument. AU Mic is a relatively young star. By watching its protoplanetary disc, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of how planets form and evolve.

But now, thanks to the high-contrasting imaging abilities of SPHERE, scientists have a new mystery.

"Our observations have shown something unexpected," Anthony Boccaletti, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, France, said in a press release. "The images from SPHERE show a set of unexplained features in the disc which have an arch-like, or wave-like, structure, unlike anything that has ever been observed before."

Boccaletti is the lead author of a new paper on the phenomenon, published this week in the journal Nature.

Analysis shows the ripples are moving quite fast, and that portions of the wave-like feature are moving faster as they get farther away from star -- fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of AU Mic. Scientists say the ripple's speed suggests an external force is at play.

"Everything about this find was pretty surprising!" said co-author Carol Grady, a researcher with Eureka Scientific, in the United States. "And because nothing like this has been observed or predicted in theory we can only hypothesise when it comes to what we are seeing and how it came about."

Researchers have ruled out asteroids and gravitational instability as possible causes of the ripple, but they still don't know what might be responsible for the wave-like movements.

Currently, their most promising guess is that a stellar flare set of a chain reaction -- a ripple effect.

"One explanation for the strange structure links them to the star's flares. AU Mic is a star with high flaring activity -- it often lets off huge and sudden bursts of energy from on or near its surface," explained co-author Glenn Schneider, as astronomer at Steward Observatory, at the University of Arizona. "One of these flares could perhaps have triggered something on one of the planets - if there are planets -- like a violent stripping of material which could now be propagating through the disc, propelled by the flare's force."

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