Spetember 12, 2011

Good Morning,

Even in the economic debate over the practicality of human
space flight, the government has agreed that it is vital to
continue training astronauts. Take a look at the numbers and read about why this is needed in the first article.

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Until Next Time,
Erin

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Report: NASA must still train astronauts

WASHINGTON - NASA needs to keep the training pipeline for its astronaut corps intact to stabilize the ranks of U.S. agency astronauts, a report by an expert panel says. Astronaut numbers are down from about 150 in the mid-1990s to about 60, with a number of them retiring as the space shuttle program ends this year, USA Today reported Wednesday. "Since 2009, there has been considerable debate and disagreement between Congress and the White House about the future direction of the U.S. human spaceflight program," the National Research Council's panel report said. "While there is currently no clear plan to send U.S. astronauts beyond low Earth orbit in the foreseeable future, it remains a possibility, particularly in light of NASA's recent announcement of the agency's intention to develop a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle for follow-on exploration of space," it said. Training astronauts for missions on the International Space Station takes three years as opposed to the one year shuttle missions required, the report noted, saying NASA's margin for extra astronauts should be raised, the report said.


Natural gas not a climate cure over coal

BOULDER, Colo. - Switching from coal to natural gas, even though natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide, wouldn't significantly slow down climate change, a U.S. study says. The study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research underscores the conflicting ways in which fossil fuel burning affects Earth's climate. While coal use contributes to warming because it emits heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it also releases comparatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles that, although detrimental to the environment, cool the planet by blocking incoming sunlight, an NCAR release said. Natural gas operations, on the other hand, are known to leak a certain amount of methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Computer simulations run by NCAR researcher Tom Wigley suggest a greater reliance on natural gas would begin to slow down the increase in global average temperature by 2050 but only by a few tenths of a degree. "Relying more on natural gas would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, but it would do little to help solve the climate problem," Wigley said. "It would be many decades before it would slow down global warming at all, and even then it would just be making a difference around the edges."


Greenhouse gas detection goes mobile

LIVERMORE, Calif. - Researchers in California say they've designed and built a mobile research facility able to trace and identify the origin of greenhouse gases. Scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore say the mobile facility, in addition to pinpointing the gases' location, can help researchers learn whether the gases are biogenic, coming from plant sources, or anthropogenic, from man-made sources. This is important when officials are attempting to identify and reduce emission impacts in their particular communities, regions or states, a Sandia Labs release said Thursday. "Information from this kind of facility should be useful to both researchers and policymakers," SNL researcher Hope Michelsen said. "To figure out whether emissions reduction policies are effective, we need a way to measure emissions by emissions sector, such as power generation or transportation. "We currently don't have the tools in place to do these types of measurements, so we hope our idea can be part of the solution," she said. The mobile system consists of two large trucks, each equipped with instrumentation and equipment to measure greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, as well as other gases such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, ozone and other traditional pollutants.


African fossil may be human ancestor

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - An African fossil of a possible human relative showing both human-like and ape-like traits has been called a "snapshot" of human evolution in progress. The fossil skeleton of an adolescent dubbed Karabo -- "answer" in a South African dialect -- and much of an adult female were found in a cave some 25 miles north of Johannesburg. The fossils have been dated to 1.98 million years ago, from an era notoriously lacking in evidence of possible human relatives, The Washington Post reported Thursday. Researchers say Karabo was built to climb like an ape but walked upright like a human, and had low-hanging arms like an orangutan's but possessed human-like hands that could grasp stick and rocks. While the researchers stop short of claiming the creature an ancestor to the human lineage known as Homo, the species is "possibly the best candidate" yet for a Homo ancestor, said Lee Berger of the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, who discovered Karabo in a fossil-rich region known as the Cradle of Humankind. Some researchers agree. "This is what evolutionary theory would predict, exactly this confusion, this mix of features of Australopithecines and Homo," Darryl de Ruiter, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University who contributed to the research, said. Others, however, say they're not so sure, suggesting Berger's fossils could be "another branch of the family tree" that eventually died out instead of evolving into humans.

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