Walk a Mile in Buzz Aldrin's Nike shoes

Buzz Aldrin—the original Rocket Hero—serves as an icon of space exploration, a pioneer and maverick who is always looking towards the next frontier.

It only makes sense that he’d choose to collaborate with the global giant and industry leader in athletic footwear—Nike.

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, shared his lunar experiences, including photographs from the Apollo 11 mission, and his vision for future space travel, including his hand-drawn rocket schematics, with the Nike team.

This sleek midnight black shoe physically represents the infinite darkness and unseen depths of space, as experienced by Buzz Aldrin.


For further information on the shoes, walk this way ...

NASA Shuttle Endeavour Night Launch: HD Video

Russia To Track Glonass Satellites From Antarctic Station

The Academician Fyodorov scientific research vessel has arrived at the Russian Antarctic outpost of Bellingshausen on a mission to set up a station for tracking the GLONASS navigation satellites, the Voice of Russia reported.

Glonass - the Global Navigation Satellite System - is the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS, and is designed for both military and civilian use. Both systems allow users to determine their positions to within a few meters.

Russia currently has a total of 22 Glonass satellites in orbit, but only 16 of them are operational.

Three satellites have been temporarily withdrawn from the grouping over technical problems, one satellite will be decommissioned and two new satellites are expected to enter service in the near future.

The Glonass system requires a constellation of 18 operational satellites for continuous navigation services covering the entire territory of Russia and at least 24 satellites to provide navigation services worldwide.

A total of 9.9 billion rubles ($360 million) was allocated for the Glonass project from the federal budget in 2007, and 4.7 billion rubles ($170 million) in 2006.

An additional $2.6 billion was allocated to develop the system in September 2008.

Galileo
ESA and the Europeans are also entering the global GPS market with their Galileo constellation.

In January 2010, Mr René Oosterlinck, ESA’s Director of the Galileo Programme and Navigation-related Activities, signed the first three contracts for the Galileo full operational capability phase. This event marks the start of building the Galileo operational infrastructure

NASA Cassini views water on Saturn's Enceladus

There seems little doubt that Saturn's moon Enceladus hides a large body of liquid water beneath its icy skin.

The Cassini probe, which periodically sweeps past the little moon, has returned yet more data to back up the idea of a sub-surface sea.

This time, it is the detection of negatively charged water molecules in the atmosphere of Enceladus.

On Earth, such ions are often seen where liquid water is in motion, such as waterfalls or crashing ocean waves.

There are no "rollers" on the moon but it does have a very active region near its south pole where water vapour and ice particles shoot through cracks in the surface and rise high into the Enceladian sky.

"We see water molecules that have additional electrons added," explained Andrew Coates from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

"There are two ways they could be added - from the ambient plasma environment, or it could be to do with friction as these water clusters come out of the jets, like rubbing a balloon and sticking it on the ceiling,"

• Enceladus experiences tidal contortions as it orbits its parent planet
• This energy is producing a "hotspot" at the satellite's southern pole
• Big cracks (L) are 100 degrees warmer than the surrounding ice surface
• These so called tiger stripes are the source of immense plumes (R)

Caps found not just the negatively charged water ions but hints of negatively charged hydrocarbons, too. Positively charged hydrocarbons at Enceladus have already been identified by Cassini's Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS).

Where Caps has definitely seen negatively charged hydrocarbons is at Saturn's largest moon, Titan. There, it found colossal ions, some measuring more than 13,000 amu (an amu is roughly the mass of a single hydrogen atom).

"If you have a methane and nitrogen atmosphere and you bombard it with particles from the Saturn's magnetosphere and ultraviolet light from the Sun, you can cook up really large molecules," explained Dr Coates.

"They get bigger as the altitude decreases. They are the source of Titan's haze and also maybe the source of the dunes on the surface as they rain down."

Cassini is a joint venture between the US space agency (Nasa), the European Space Agency (Esa) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).

NASA Shuttle Endeavour Night Launch

The US space shuttle has made its final night launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Endeavour orbiter soared into the Florida sky on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station.

It will be the final night launch for Nasa which plans just four further shuttle missions after this one, all in daylight hours.

For further information on the Shuttle Endeavour, click here ....

Netherlands adds to UN climate report controversy

Netherlands adds to UN climate report controversy

The Netherlands has asked the UN climate change panel to explain an inaccurate claim in a landmark 2007 report that more than half the country was below sea level, the Dutch government said Friday.

According to the Dutch authorities, only 26 percent of the country is below sea level, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be asked to account for its figures, environment ministry spokesman Trimo Vallaart told AFP.

The incident could cause further embarrassment for the IPCC, which recently admitted a claim in the same report that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was wrong.

IPCC experts calculated that 55 percent of the Netherlands was below sea level by adding the area below sea level -- 26 percent -- to the area threatened by river flooding -- 29 percent -- Vallaart said.

"They should have been clearer," Vallaart said, adding that the Dutch office for environmental planning, an IPCC partner, had exact figures.

Correcting the error had been "on the agenda several times" but had never actually happened, Vallaart said.

The spokesman said he regretted the fact that proper procedure was not followed and said it should not be left to politicians to check the IPCC's numbers.

The Dutch environment ministry will order a review of the report to see if it contains any more errors, Vallaart said.

NASA Airborne Radar To Study Quake Faults in Haiti

NASA Airborne Radar To Study Quake Faults in Haiti

In response to the disaster in Haiti on Jan. 12, NASA has added a series of science overflights of earthquake faults in Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola to a previously scheduled three-week airborne radar campaign to Central America.

NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, left NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., on Jan. 25 aboard a modified NASA Gulfstream III aircraft.

During its trek to Central America, which will run through mid-February, the repeat-pass L-band wavelength radar, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will study the structure of tropical forests; monitor volcanic deformation and volcano processes; and examine Mayan archeology sites.