NASA claims US-Russia space ties 'normal' - Within Tolerable Boundaries

NASA chief Charles Bolden said Tuesday the US space agency's relationship with Russia remained normal despite the ongoing international crisis in Ukraine.

Russia is a key nation in the International Space Station alliance, and not only the US astronauts rely on Soyuz spacecraft to get to the orbiting outpost and back. 

The US lost or relinquished direct access since the US space shuttle fleet retired in 2011 and have yet to replace the Shuttle or Soyuz spacecrafts with a more viable option.

Under a signed agreement, the US pays Russia $70 million to ferry each American astronaut to the space station and back.

This deal is contracted to last for several more years until private US enterprises, the Europeans or Japanese, develop the capacity to carry space travelers again.

There is also the threat of the global aspirations of oppressive China expanding into the domination of Space and the Earth's outer atmosphere. Indications of this are already apparent.

Asked by reporters about the US space agency's ties with Russia during a media briefing, NASA administrator Bolden said nothing has changed.

"Right now, everything is normal in our relationship with the Russians," Bolden said.

"We continue to monitor the situation," he said, but stressed repeatedly that the US-Russian "partnership in space remains intact and normal."

Mike Hopkins, an American astronaut aboard the ISS, is set to return to Earth at the end of the month on a Russian rocket, and those plans have not changed, Bolden said.

"Things are nominal right now and our crews are doing well," he said.

Bolden said the US-Russian rapport in space goes back years, and recalled that it was not affected by the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia over break-away territories Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

"People lose track of the fact we have occupied the ISS now for 13 consecutive years uninterrupted and that has been through multiple international crises," Bolden said.

Earlier Tuesday, the US government announced a $1 billion support package for Ukraine as Secretary of State John Kerry visited Kiev.

Kerry accused Moscow of looking for a "pretext" to invade Ukraine and condemned Russia's intervention on the flashpoint Crimean peninsula as an "act of aggression."

In the meantime the ISS astronauts of all nations remain vulnerable to the outcome of this political debacle and we wish for a successful and peaceful outcome for everyone's sake.

The Grand Tack model: 'Rogue' asteroids may be normal

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

To get an idea of how the early solar system may have formed, scientists often look to asteroids.

These relics of rock and dust represent what today's planets may have been before they differentiated into bodies of core, mantle, and crust.

In the 1980s, scientists' view of the solar system's asteroids was essentially static: Asteroids that formed near the sun remained near the sun; those that formed farther out stayed on the outskirts.

But in the last decade, astronomers have detected asteroids with compositions unexpected for their locations in space: Those that looked like they formed in warmer environments were found further out in the solar system, and vice versa. Scientists considered these objects to be anomalous "rogue" asteroids.

But now, a new map developed by researchers from MIT and the Paris Observatory charts the size, composition, and location of more than 100,000 asteroids throughout the solar system, and shows that rogue asteroids are actually more common than previously thought.

Particularly in the solar system's main asteroid belt—between Mars and Jupiter—the researchers found a compositionally diverse mix of asteroids.

The new asteroid map suggests that the early solar system may have undergone dramatic changes before the planets assumed their current alignment.

For instance, Jupiter may have drifted closer to the sun, dragging with it a host of asteroids that originally formed in the colder edges of the solar system, before moving back out to its current position.

Jupiter's migration may have simultaneously knocked around more close-in asteroids, scattering them outward.

Francesca DeMeo

"It's like Jupiter bowled a strike through the asteroid belt," says Francesca DeMeo, who did much of the mapping as a postdoc in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

"Everything that was there moves, so you have this melting pot of material coming from all over the solar system."

DeMeo says the new map will help theorists flesh out such theories of how the solar system evolved early in its history.

She and Benoit Carry of the Paris Observatory have published details of the map in Nature.

The compositional diversity seen in this new asteroid map may add weight to a theory of planetary migration called the Grand Tack model.

This model lays out a scenario in which Jupiter, within the first few million years of the solar system's creation, migrated as close to the sun as Mars is today.

During its migration, Jupiter may have moved right through the asteroid belt, scattering its contents and repopulating it with asteroids from both the inner and outer solar system before moving back out to its current position—a picture that is very different from the traditional, static view of a solar system that formed and stayed essentially in place for the past 4.5 billion years.

"That [theory] has been completely turned on its head," DeMeo says. "Today we think the absolute opposite: Everything's been moved around a lot and the solar system has been very dynamic."

DeMeo adds that the early pinballing of asteroids around the solar system may have had big impacts on Earth.

For instance, colder asteroids that formed further out likely contained ice. When they were brought closer in by planetary migrations, they may have collided with Earth, leaving remnants of ice that eventually melted into water.

"The story of what the asteroid belt is telling us also relates to how Earth developed water, and how it stayed in this Goldilocks region of habitability today," DeMeo says.

More information: Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12908

Supernova 2011fe: An Unusual supernova, doubly unusual for being normal

Supernova 2011fe was discovered by the Palomar Transient Observatory just hours after it exploded in the Big Dipper. 

Studies by the Nearby Supernova Factory of its colours and spectrum as they evolved over time have produced a benchmark atlas of data by which to measure all future Type Ia's. 

Credit: B. J. Fulton, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network

August, 2011, saw the dazzling appearance of the closest and brightest Type Ia supernova since Type Ia's were established as "standard candles" for measuring the expansion of the universe.

The brilliant visitor, labeled SN 2011fe, was caught by the Palomar Transient Factory less than 12 hours after it exploded in the Pinwheel Galaxy in the Big Dipper.

Easy to see through binoculars, 2011fe was soon dubbed the Backyard Supernova. Major astronomical studies from the ground and from space followed close on its heels, recording its luminosity and colors as it rapidly brightened and then slowly faded away.

The international Nearby Supernova Factory (SNfactory), led by Greg Aldering of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has now released a unique dataset based on 32 nights of repeated observations of 2011fe with the SuperNova Integral Field Spectrograph (SNIFS), built by the SNfactory's partners in Lyon and Paris, France, and mounted on the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter telescope on Mauna Kea.

The observations began two weeks before the supernova reached its peak brightness and continued for over three months after maximum light had passed.

"We'd never before seen a Type Ia supernova this early," says Aldering, a cosmologist in Berkeley Lab's Physics Division. "Our measurements showed how remarkably normal 2011fe is."

SNfactory member Rui Pereira of the Institut de Physique Nucléaire de Lyon says that the collected data "will be benchmark atlas for all future studies of Type Ia's."

Pereira is the lead author of the article presenting the observations in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Type Ia supernovae aren't so much standard candles as "standardisable" ones. Graphs of how their brightness and spectral features change over time – their light curves – vary, but because timing and brightness are related, the light curves can be stretched (or squeezed) to match the standard. SN 2011fe's light curve falls right in the peak of the distribution – as astrophysicists say, it has "stretch 1."

Rollin Thomas, of Berkeley Lab's Computational Research Division, was deeply involved in the 2011fe analysis.

As new data arrived from the telescope each night he recalls thinking "please don't be peculiar, please don't be peculiar," and was pleased to find that the supernova was so normal.

More information: "Spectrophotometric time series of SN 2011fe from the Nearby Supernova Factory," www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2013/06/aa21008-12/aa21008-12.html

NASA Mission Control: Progress 44 Cargo craft - report of an “off-nominal situation”

Mission Control Moscow reported an abnormal situation from the Progress 44 cargo craft that launched on time at 9 a.m. EDT today.

Progress 44 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome into a cloudless sky at 7 p.m. Kazakhstan time bound for the International Space Station and a docking on Friday. At the time of launch, the space station was flying 230 miles over Equatorial Guinea on the west coast of Africa. The spacecraft is carrying 2.9 tons of food, fuel and supplies for the space station.

But, 5 minutes and 50 seconds after launch, Mission Control Houston received a report of an “off-nominal situation” during the rocket's third and final stage. Additional information will be provided as soon as it is available.

› Read more about Expedition 28

A new strategy to restore normal blood sugar levels in diabetes

Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have identified a new strategy for treating type 2 diabetes, identifying a cellular pathway that fails when people become obese.

By re-activating this pathway artificially, they were able to normalize blood glucose levels in severely obese and diabetic mice. Their findings will be published online by Nature Medicine on March 28.

Epidemiologists have long known that obesity contributes to type 2 diabetes. In previous work, researcher Umut Ozcan, MD, in Division of Endocrinology at Children's, showed that the brain, liver and fat cells of obese mice have increased stress in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), a structure in the cell where proteins are assembled, folded into their proper shapes, and dispatched to do jobs for the cell. In the presence of obesity, the ER is overwhelmed and its operations break down.

This so-called "ER stress" activates a cascade of events that suppress the body's response to insulin, and is a key link between obesity and type 2 diabetes.

To read the full article click here