Snake Monster: Six-legged robot first of new breed of reconfigurable modular robots - Video

Carnegie Mellon University's latest robot is called Snake Monster, however, with six legs, it looks more like an insect than a snake, but it really doesn't matter what you call it, says its inventor,

Howie Choset, the whole point of the project is to make modular robots that can easily be reconfigured to meet a user's needs.

Choset, a professor in CMU's Robotics Institute, said the walking robot, developed in just six months, is only one example of the robots that eventually can be built using this modular system.

His team already is working on modules such as force-sensing feet, wheels and tank-like treads that will enable the assembly of totally different robots.

"By creating a system that can be readily reconfigured and that also is easy to program, we believe we can build robots that are not only robust and flexible, but also inexpensive," Choset said.

"Modularity has the potential to rapidly accelerate the development of traditional industrial robots, as well as all kinds of new robots."

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored this work through its Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program, which focuses on ways to design and build robots more rapidly and enhance their ability to manipulate objects and move in natural environments.

Snake Monster, as well as some of Choset's other robots, will be demonstrated at the finals of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, June 5-6 in Pomona, Calif.

For years, Choset's lab has concentrated on building and operating snake-like robots—chains of repeated component joints.

By careful coordination of these joints, the robots can be made to move in ways that are similar to a snake's natural undulations and in other ways not seen in nature, such as rolling.

Applications for these robots include urban search and rescue, archaeological exploration and, thanks to the robots' ability to move through pipes, inspection of power plants, refineries and sewers.

The Wolf Moon: First full Moon of the year

A commercial airliner crosses the first full Moon of the year, called the Wolf Moon over Whittier on its way to Los Angeles Airport

Credit: AP Photo/Nick Ut

Russia's First Angara 5 rocket blasts off

The Angara 5 rocket on the launch pad before Tuesday’s liftoff. Credit: Spetsstroy.ru

A new Russian rocket designed as a successor to the workhorse Proton booster lifted off Tuesday on a maiden test flight that could signify Russia’s shift away from launching satellites at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The 180-foot-tall Angara 5 rocket ignited five kerosene-fueled RD-191 booster engines and lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a military-run spaceport 500 miles north of Moscow, at 0557 GMT (12:57 a.m. EST) Tuesday, according to the Russian Federal Space Agency.

The RIA Novosti news agency reported the Angara 5 rocket’s lower stages, comprising the new technologies to be tested on Tuesday’s flight, performed as designed and released a Breeze M upper stage to begin a series of engine firings to put a dummy satellite into geostationary orbit 22,300 miles over the equator.

The Russian Ministry of Defence confirmed the Angara booster worked as expected before deploying the Breeze M stage 12 minutes after liftoff.

Russian President Vladimir Putin watched the launch via video conference, RIA Novosti reported. The launch was not broadcast live to the public.

Weighing 773 metric tons (852 tons) when filled with kerosene, liquid oxygen and hypergolic propellants, the Angara 5 is the biggest Russian launcher to debut since the Energia rocket for the Soviet Union’s Buran space shuttle flew in the late 1980s.

The rocket’s kerosene-fueled RD-191 engines, made by NPO Energomash of Khimki, Russia, generated roughly 2 million pounds of thrust at maximum throttle to drive the launcher into the sky. Engineers derived the single-chamber RD-191 engine from the four-nozzle RD-171 and dual-chamber RD-180 engines flying on the Zenit and Atlas 5 launchers.

Russia tested a smaller version of the Angara rocket in July on a suborbital flight powered by a single RD-191 engine. Engineers designed the Angara 5 booster to use five RD-191 engine cores bolted together to put Russia’s heaviest satellites into orbit.

The five engines were supposed to fire in unison for more than three minutes, when four of the outboard boosters were expected to shut down and fall away from the launcher.

The core RD-191 engine, operated at a partial thrust throttle setting in the first phase of the flight, was programmed to ramp up to full power and continue burning until it consumed all of its kerosene and liquid oxygen propellant supply.

A second stage RD-0124A engine and a Breeze M upper stage, borrowed from Russia’s Soyuz 2-1b and Proton rockets, were to finish the job.

The Angara 5’s five-meter (16-foot) diameter payload shroud was also armed to jettison once the rocket flew out of the dense lower layers of the atmosphere.

The flight’s Breeze M main engine was expected to ignite four times over several hours to reach the mission’s targeted orbit.

Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency reported the test launch was aiming for a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles over the equator with a dummy satellite weighing about two tons.

The end of the test flight was scheduled for 1457 GMT (9:57 a.m. EST) with a simulated separation of the mock-up payload, according to RIA Novosti.

Argentina launches its first home-built satellite, ARSAT-1

In this photo provided by Service Optique CSG, the Ariane 5 lifts-off carrying the Argentine made ARSAT-1 geostationary communications satellite, from Kourou, French Guiana, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014. 

According the Argentine authorities the satellite will offer Internet, cell phone and television signals for the next 15 years for Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. 

Credit: AP Photo/Service Optique CSG

Argentina launched its first domestically built communications satellite Thursday.

The ARSAT-1 satellite is the first to be constructed with local technology in Latin America.

It was built by INVAP, a crew of about 500 scientists over seven years at a cost of $250 million.

The satellite was launched from a base in French Guiana and is to orbit 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth.

"ARSAT-1 is on its way to space. What a thrill," President Cristina Fernandez said shortly after the launch via her Twitter account.

ARSAT-1 is designed to provide digital television and cellphone services to Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay for the next 15 years.

It's also expected to improve telephone and Internet connections in remote places, including for scientists working in the Antarctic region.

Fernandez has said that through ARSAT-1, Argentina joins an elite group that is able to build these types of satellites.

Other nations with this capability include European Union states, the United States, Russia, China, India, Israel and Japan.

Scientists build first 3D map of hidden universe

3D map of the cosmic web at a distance of 10.8 billion light years from Earth. 

The map was generated from imprints of hydrogen gas observed in the spectrum of 24 background galaxies, which are located behind the volume being mapped. 

This is the first time that large-scale structures in such a distant part of the Universe have been mapped directly. 

The colouring represents the density of hydrogen gas tracing the cosmic web, with brighter colors representing higher density. 

Credit: Casey Stark (UC Berkeley) and Khee-gan Lee (MPIA)

A team led by astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has created the first three-dimensional map of the 'adolescent' Universe, just 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

This map, built from data collected from the W. M. Keck Observatory, is millions of light-years across and provides a tantalizing glimpse of large structures in the 'cosmic web', the backbone of cosmic structure.

On the largest scales, matter in the Universe is arranged in a vast network of filamentary structures known as the 'cosmic web', its tangled strands spanning hundreds of millions of light-years.

Dark matter, which emits no light, forms the backbone of this web, which is also suffused with primordial hydrogen gas left over from the Big Bang.

Galaxies like our own Milky Way are embedded inside this web, but fill only a tiny fraction of its volume.

Now a team of astronomers led by Khee-gan Lee, a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, has created a map of hydrogen absorption revealing a three-dimensional section of the universe 11 billions light years away, the first time the cosmic web has been mapped at such a vast distance.

Since observing to such immense distances is also looking back in time, the map reveals the early stages of cosmic structure formation when the Universe was only a quarter of its current age, during an era when the galaxies were undergoing a major 'growth spurt'.

The map was created by using faint background galaxies as light sources, against which gas could be seen by the characteristic absorption features of hydrogen.

The wavelengths of each hydrogen feature showed the presence of gas at a specific distance from us.

Combining all of the measurements across the entire field of view allowed the team a tantalizing glimpse of giant filamentary structures extending across millions of light-years, and paves the way for more extensive studies that will reveal not only the structure of the cosmic web, but also details of its function, the ways that pristine gas is funneled along the web into galaxies, providing the raw material for the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets.

Credit: Casey Stark (UC Berkeley) And Khee-gan Lee (MPIA)

Using the light from faint background galaxies for this purpose had been thought impossible with current telescopes, until Lee carried out calculations that suggested otherwise.

To ensure success, Lee and his colleagues obtained observing time at Keck Observatory, home of the two largest and most scientifically productive telescopes in the world.

Although bad weather limited the astronomers to observing for only 4 hours, the data they collected with the LRIS instrument was completely unprecedented.

"We were pretty disappointed as the weather was terrible and we only managed to collect a few hours of good data, but judging by the data quality as it came off the telescope, it was clear to me that the experiment was going to work," said Max Plank's Joseph Hennawi, who was part of the observing team.

"The data were obtained using the LRIS spectrograph on the Keck I telescope," Lee said.

"With its gargantuan 10m-diameter mirror, this telescope effectively collected enough light from our targeted galaxies that are more than 15 billion times fainter than the faintest stars visible to the naked eye."

"Since we were measuring the dimming of blue light from these distant galaxies caused by the foreground gas, the thin atmosphere at the summit of Mauna Kea allowed more of this blue light to reach the telescope and be measured by the highly sensitive detectors of the LRIS spectrograph."

"The data we collected would have taken at least several times longer to obtain on any other telescope."

Their absorption measurements using 24 faint background galaxies provided sufficient coverage of a small patch of the sky to be combined into a 3D map of the foreground cosmic web.

A crucial element was the computer algorithm used to create the 3D map: due to the large amount of data, a naïve implementation of the map-making procedure would require an inordinate amount of computing time.

Casey Stark

Fortunately, team members Casey Stark and Martin White (UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) devised a new fast algorithm that could create the map within minutes.

"We realized we could simplify the computations by tailoring it to this particular problem, and thus use much less memory. A calculation that previously required a supercomputer now runs on a laptop", says Stark.

The resulting map of hydrogen absorption reveals a three-dimensional section of the universe 11 billions light years away, this is first time the cosmic web has been mapped at such a vast distance.

Since observing to such immense distances is also looking back in time, the map reveals the early stages of cosmic structure formation when the Universe was only a quarter of its current age, during an era when the galaxies were undergoing a major 'growth spurt'.

The map provides a tantalizing glimpse of giant filamentary structures extending across millions of light-years, and paves the way for more extensive studies that will reveal not only the structure of the cosmic web, but also details of its function, the ways that pristine gas is funneled along the web into galaxies, providing the raw material for the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets.

NuSTAR discovers impossibly bright dead star - First ultraluminous pulsar

High-energy X-rays streaming from a rare and mighty pulsar (magenta), the brightest found to date, can be seen in this new image combining multi-wavelength data from three telescopes. 

The bulk of a galaxy called Messier 82 (M82), or the 'Cigar galaxy,' is seen in visible-light data captured by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's 2.1-meter telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. 

Starlight is white, and lanes of dust appear brown. Low-energy X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are colored blue, and higher-energy X-ray data from NuSTAR are pink. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SAO/NOAO

Astronomers working with NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), led by Caltech's Fiona Harrison, have found a pulsating dead star beaming with the energy of about 10 million suns.

The object, previously thought to be a black hole because it is so powerful, is in fact a pulsar, the incredibly dense rotating remains of a star.

"This compact little stellar remnant is a real powerhouse. We've never seen anything quite like it," says Harrison, NuSTAR's principal investigator and the Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics at Caltech.

"We all thought an object with that much energy had to be a black hole."

Dom Walton, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech who works with NuSTAR data, says that with its extreme energy, this pulsar takes the top prize in the weirdness category. Pulsars are typically between one and two times the mass of the sun.

This new pulsar presumably falls in that same range but shines about 100 times brighter than theory suggests something of its mass should be able to.

"We've never seen a pulsar even close to being this bright," Walton says. "Honestly, we don't know how this happens, and theorists will be chewing on it for a long time."

Besides being weird, the finding will help scientists better understand a class of very bright X-ray sources, called ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs).

Harrison, Walton, and their colleagues describe NuSTAR's detection of this first ultraluminous pulsar in a paper that appears in the current issue of Nature.

"This was certainly an unexpected discovery," says Harrison. "In fact, we were looking for something else entirely when we found this."



This animation shows a neutron star, the core of a star that exploded in a massive supernova. 

This particular neutron star is known as a pulsar because it sends out rotating beams of X-rays that sweep past Earth like lighthouse beacons. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Earlier this year, astronomers in London detected a spectacular, once-in-a-century supernova (dubbed SN2014J) in a relatively nearby galaxy known as Messier 82 (M82), or the Cigar Galaxy, 12 million light-years away.

Because of the rarity of that event, telescopes around the world and in space adjusted their gaze to study the aftermath of the explosion in detail.

Besides the supernova, M82 harbours a number of other ULXs. When Matteo Bachetti of the Université de Toulouse in France, the lead author of this new paper, took a closer look at these ULXs in NuSTAR's data, he discovered that something in the galaxy was pulsing, or flashing light.

"That was a big surprise," Harrison says. "For decades everybody has thought these ultraluminous X-ray sources had to be black holes, but black holes don't have a way to create this pulsing."

More information: An Ultraluminous X-ray Source Powered by An Accreting Neutron Star, Nature, dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13791189

ESA Sentinel-1: First Copernicus satellite now operational - Video

Napa Valley quake. 

Credit: Copernicus data (2014) /ESA /PPO.labs /Norut /COMET-SEOM Insarap study

With the commissioning of ESA's Sentinel-1A completed and the satellite's transfer to the team in charge of its exploitation, its data are available as of today to all users.

This marks the beginning of the satellite's operational life, delivering radar coverage for an array of applications in the areas of oceans, ice, changing land and emergency response.

Project Manager Ramón Torres, who led the development team, formally handed over the satellite to the Mission Manager, Pierre Potin.

"The time has arrived for the satellite to exploit its extraordinary capabilities and start helping users," said Ramón.

A leap forward from ESA's earlier Envisat, the unprecedented quality of ESA's Sentinel-1A will ensure that all users' needs are fully met.

"Of course, saying farewell is always difficult, but I am confident that it is in capable and safe hands for the next stage of its journey."

Launched on 3 April, ESA's Sentinel-1A completed commissioning on 23 September, an important process that ensures the satellite, instruments, data acquisition and data processing procedures are working well.

Not only did ESA's Sentinel-1A pass these tests and reach its target orbit on 7 August, eight anticollision manoeuvres to avoid space debris were performed during this phase.



ESA's Sentinel-1A is the first satellite dedicated to Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. 

This new satellite carries an advanced synthetic aperture radar that works in several specialised modes to provide detailed imagery for monitoring the oceans, including shipping lanes, sea ice and oil spills. 

It also provides data to map changing land cover, ground deformation, ice shelves and glaciers, and can be used to help emergency response when disasters such as floods strike and to support humanitarian relief efforts at times of crisis. 

Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

The satellite will now begin delivering radar scans for an array of operational services and scientific research.

"My main objective is to ensure that ESA's Sentinel-1A fulfils the high expectations from the various operational services and scientific users," notes Pierre.

"Looking at the satellite and ground segment performance, as demonstrated during the commissioning, as well as the preliminary results achieved so far, I'm confident that the mission will be a great success."

The satellite will continue to be monitored, operated and controlled from ESA's Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.



The Sentinels are a new fleet of ESA satellite poised to deliver the wealth of data and imagery that are central to Europe's Copernicus programme.

By offering a set of key information services for a broad range of applications, this global monitoring programme is a step change in the way we manage our environment, understand and tackle the effects of climate change, and safeguard everyday lives.

ESA's Sentinel-1A, a two-satellite constellation, is the first in the series and carries an advanced radar to provide an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth's surface.

Flying underground: First hot air balloon flies into Mamet cave in Croatia

Ivan Trifonov, a seventy-year-old Austrian with a Croatian passport, was the first man to try, and succeed in flying a hot-air balloon underground.

This experienced hot-air balloon pilot is already a proud holder of 4 Guinness records, and flying into the Mamet Cave, touching it's bottom and successfully flying out of the Cave is likely to be his fifth record, since no-one has ever done such a thing before.

The inspiration of Trifonov's adventure was the famous Jules Verne's visionary book 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'.

Delta IV Booster Integration Another Step Toward First Orion Flight

A transporter for oversize loads delivers the port, or left, booster for the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy for Exploration Flight Test-1 into the Horizontal Integration Facility, or HIF, on May 7. 

The port booster joins the other two boosters of the Delta IV Heavy already in the HIF.

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

A United Launch Alliance technician monitors progress as core booster elements of a Delta IV Heavy rocket are being integrated in preparation for Exploration Flight Test-1.

Image Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Engineers took another step forward in preparations for the first test flight of NASA’s new Orion spacecraft, in December.

The three primary core elements of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket recently were integrated, forming the first stage of the launch vehicle that will send Orion far from Earth to allow NASA to evaluate the spacecraft’s performance in space.

The three Delta IV Common Booster Cores were attached in ULA’s Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF), at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The HIF building is located at Space Launch Complex 37 where the mission will lift off.

The first booster was attached to the center rocket in June with the second one was attached in early August.

"The day-to-day processing is performed by ULA," said Merri Anne Stowe of NASA's Fleet Systems Integration Branch of the Launch Services Program (LSP).

"NASA’s role is to keep a watchful eye on everything and be there to help if any issues come up."

Stowe explained that during major testing experts from NASA’s Launch Services Program monitor the work on consoles in Hanger AE at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Hangar AE is home to the Kennedy Space Center’s upgraded Launch Vehicle Data Center. The facility allows engineers to monitor voice, data, telemetry and video systems that support expendable launch vehicle missions.

NASA’s Florida spaceport is also where Orion was built and is being processed.

In the Horizontal Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, two core elements of a Delta IV Heavy rocket are brought together in preparation for Exploration Flight Test-1. 

Image Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

The Delta IV rocket stages were assembled at the ULA plant in Decatur, Alabama, about 20 miles west of Huntsville.

After completion, the rocket components were shipped down the Tennessee River and Tombigbee Waterway, a canal, to the Gulf of Mexico. From there they traveled to Cape Canaveral, arriving on May 6.

The elements of the rocket's first stage were then transported to the HIF for preflight processing.

"After the three core stages went through their initial inspections and processing, the struts were attached, connecting the booster stages with the center core," Stowe said. "All of this takes place horizontally."

Inside the Horizontal Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, United Launch Alliance technicians prepare the second stage of a Delta IV Heavy rocket for mating to the central core booster of the three booster stages for the unpiloted Exploration Flight Test-1. 

Image Credit: NASA/Daniel Casper

The three common booster cores are 134 feet in length and 17 feet in diameter.

Each has an RS-68 engine that uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant producing 656,000 pounds of thrust.

All totaled, the three Delta IV boosters collectively generate 1.96 million pounds of thrust.

The second stage of the Delta IV rocket is 45 feet in length and 17 feet in diameter. It uses one RL10-B-2 engine, also burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant creating 25,000 pounds of thrust.

"The second stage was taken to the Delta Operations Center for processing after it arrived," said Stowe. "The second stage was moved to the HIF on Aug. 29 and is scheduled to be horizontally mated to the first stage on Sept. 12."

The same upper stage will be used on the block 1 version of NASA's new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). More powerful than any rocket ever built, SLS will be capable of sending humans aboard Orion to deep-space destinations such as an asteroid and Mars.

"The hardware for Exploration Flight Test-1 is coming together well," Stowe said. "We haven't had to deal with any serious problems. All of the advance planning appears to be paying off."

Once all the launch vehicle stages are mated and thoroughly checked out, the next step is the Test Readiness Review.

ISRO MoM: First images of Mars transmitted - Update

One of the first images taken by the ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft, released on September 25, 2014, shows the surface of Mars seen from a height of 7,300m.

Credit: ISRO

India's spacecraft has beamed back its first photos of Mars, showing its crater-marked surface, as the country glowed with pride Thursday after winning Asia's race to the Red Planet.

ISRO Scientists present a print of MoM's first image of Mars to India's PM Narendra Modi.

Credit: ISRO, Hindustan Times

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) uploaded one of the photos onto its Facebook page, showing an orange surface and dark holes, taken from a height of 7.3 kilometres (4.5 miles).

ISRO also posted the photo on Twitter, with the caption "The view is nice up here."

A senior ISRO official told reporters several photos have been successfully received, while a spokesman for the government agency said the spacecraft was working well.

India became the first Asian country to reach Mars on Wednesday when its unmanned Mangalyaan spacecraft entered the orbit after a 10-month journey on a shoestring budget.

The mission, which is designed to search for evidence of life on the planet, is a huge source of national pride for India as it competes with Asian rivals for success in space.

India's first Mars orbiter Mangalyaan captured this photo of the Martian atmosphere just after arriving at Mars on Sept. 24, 2014 Indian Standard Time. 

The Indian Space Research Organisation released the image on Sept. 25.

Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation

India beat rival neighbour China, whose first attempt flopped in 2011 despite the Asian superpower pouring billions of dollars into its programme.

At just $74 million, India's mission cost is less than the estimated $100 million budget of the sci-fi blockbuster "Gravity".

It also represents just a fraction of the cost of NASA's $671 million MAVEN spacecraft, which successfully began orbiting the fourth planet from the sun on Sunday.

The true test of success will come from the quality, value and extent of the scientific data collected by both spacecraft and their ability to advance our understanding of Mars and our Solar System.

An Indian Space Research Organisation official uses a scale model of the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft to explain how parts of the orbiter works, at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore on September 15, 2014

Credit: ISRO

India now joins an elite club of the United States, Russia and Europe who can boast of reaching Mars.

More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in failure.

This photo of Earth was the first photo from India's Mars Orbiter Mission and captured on Nov. 19, 2013. It shows India and the surrounding region from Earth orbit.

Credit: ISRO

The mission's success received front-page coverage in Indian newspapers on Thursday, with the Hindustan Times declaring "MARTIAN RACE WON" and the Times of India saying "India enters super exclusive Mars club."

Indians, from government ministers to office workers and cricketers poured onto Twitter to show their national pride, while school students celebrated by eating traditional Indian sweets.

ESA Gaia team discovers their first Type Ia supernova

An artist’s impression of a Type Ia supernova, the explosion of a white dwarf locked in a binary system with a companion star. 

While other types of supernovas are the explosive demises of massive stars, several times more massive than the Sun, Type Ia supernovas are the end product of their less massive counterparts.

Low-mass stars, with masses similar to the Sun’s, end their lives gently, puffing up their outer layers and leaving behind a compact white dwarf. 

Due to their high density, white dwarfs can exert an intense gravitational pull on a nearby companion star, accreting mass from it until the white dwarf reaches a critical mass that then sparks a violent explosion. 

Credit: ESA/ATG medialab/C. Carreau

While scanning the sky to measure the positions and movements of stars in our Galaxy, ESA's Gaia satellite has discovered its first stellar explosion in another galaxy far, far away.

This powerful event, now named Gaia14aaa, took place in a distant galaxy some 500 million light-years away, and was revealed via a sudden rise in the galaxy's brightness between two Gaia observations separated by one month.

Add caption

ESA Gaia, which began its scientific work on 25 July, repeatedly scans the entire sky, so that each of the roughly one billion stars in the final catalogue will be examined an average of 70 times over the next five years.

"This kind of repeated survey comes in handy for studying the changeable nature of the sky," comments Simon Hodgkin from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK.

Many astronomical sources are variable: some exhibit a regular pattern, with a periodically rising and declining brightness, while others may undergo sudden and dramatic changes.

"As ESA's Gaia goes back to each patch of the sky over and over, we have a chance to spot thousands of 'guest stars' on the celestial tapestry," notes Dr Hodgkin.

"These transient sources can be signposts to some of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe, like this supernova."

Dr Hodgkin is part of Gaia's Science Alert Team, which includes astronomers from the Universities of Cambridge, UK, and Warsaw, Poland, who are combing through the scans in search of unexpected changes.

It did not take long until they found the first 'anomaly' in the form of a sudden spike in the light coming from a distant galaxy, detected on 30 August.

The same galaxy appeared much dimmer when Gaia first looked at it just a month before.

"We immediately thought it might be a supernova, but needed more clues to back up our claim," explains Łukasz Wyrzykowski from the Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory, Poland.

Other powerful cosmic events may resemble a supernova in a distant galaxy, such as outbursts caused by the mass-devouring supermassive black hole at the galaxy centre.

However, in Gaia14aaa, the position of the bright spot of light was slightly offset from the galaxy's core, suggesting that it was unlikely to be related to a central black hole.

Supernova Gaia14aaa and its host galaxy. 

Credit: M. Fraser /S. Hodgkin /L. Wyrzykowski /H. Campbell /N. Blagorodnova /Z. Kostrzewa-Rutkowska /Liverpool Telescope /SDSS

Isaac Newton Telescope (INT)

To confirm the nature of this supernova, the astronomers complemented the Gaia data with more observations from the ground, using the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) and the robotic Liverpool Telescope on La Palma, in the Canary Islands, Spain.

A high-resolution spectrum, obtained on 3 September with the INT, confirmed not only that the explosion corresponds to a Type Ia supernova, but also provided an estimate of its distance.

This proved that the supernova happened in the galaxy where it was observed.

"This is the first supernova in what we expect to be a long series of discoveries with Gaia," says Timo Prusti, ESA's Gaia Project Scientist.

Supernovas are rare events: only a couple of these explosions happen every century in a typical galaxy, but they are not so rare over the whole sky, if we take into account the hundreds of billions of galaxies that populate the Universe.

In addition to supernovas, Gaia will discover thousands of transient sources of other kinds, stellar explosions on smaller scale than supernovas, flares from young stars coming to life, outbursts caused by black holes that disrupt and devour a nearby star, and possibly some entirely new phenomena never seen before.

"The sky is ablaze with peculiar sources of light, and we are looking forward to probing plenty of those with Gaia in the coming years," concludes Dr Prusti.

Space Station to welcome 1st Female Russian Crewmember This Month

A Russian cosmonaut is poised to make a bit of history this when she launches to the International Space Station this month, even if she considers the mission a routine spaceflight.

When cosmonaut Elena Serova launches to the station on Sept. 25 with two other crew mates, she will become the International Space Station's first-ever female Russian crew member and only the fourth female cosmonaut to reach space.

She'll also be the first female Russian cosmonaut to fly in the 17 years since cosmonaut Yelena Kondakova's STS-84 space shuttle mission in May 1997 but Serova, 38, said she doesn't see her mission any differently than that of a male cosmonaut.

"I wouldn't say I am doing more ... than what my colleagues are doing," she said in translated remarks during a preflight briefing at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in July.

Elena Serova will be the fourth female cosmonaut to fly in space during Expedition 41/42 in 2014.

Credit: NASA

Serova pointed out that women have gone into space before, and that her focus is on fulfilling her assigned duties as a flight engineer.

"I want to perform my job really well," she said.

In 1963, Russia (then part of the Soviet Union) was the first nation to fly a woman in space, sending Valentina Tereshkova aloft in June of that year on a mission that lasted nearly three days in Earth orbit.

The Expedition 41/42 crew includes, from left, Barry Wilmore (NASA), Alexander Samokutyaev (Roscosmos) and Elena Serova (Roscosmos).

Credit: NASA

Svetlana Savitskaya was the second Soviet female cosmonaut, making two flights into space in 1982 and 1984 and staying aboard the Salyut 7 space station.

She also was the first female to peform a spacewalk.

The United States didn't send its first woman to space until 1983, when Sally Ride blasted off.

Dozens of women from the United States and other nations have flown since, but only one other from Russia: Kondakova.

She made two trips to the Mir space station, in 1994 (on a Soyuz capsule) and 1997 (on a space shuttle).

Serova has said she's been fascinated by space since childhood, and that she always felt visiting the final frontier was possible.

"The door to space was opened to all women by Valentina Tereshkova," she said in a NASA interview.

Oppressive China's first private rocket firm aims for market

Hu Zhenyu was born in Jiangxi, Jiujiang in 1993. After graduating from South China University of Technology, Hu and Yan Cheng Yi (M) from Tsinghua University and Wu Xiaofei (R), who has six years of mechanical background, together set up the first private rocket company in China.

Hu Zhenyu, 21, founder of Link Space, China's first private rocket firm, does not want people to call him a "rocket scientist" but a rocket entrepreneur.

Rocket launches have traditionally been been a state monopoly in China, but the young graduate from South China University of Technology plans bust the oligopoly with his first commercial launch in 2017.

On July 29 last year, Hu's team launched a rocket with a payload of 50 kg in northwest China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

In January of this year, the company was registered in Shenzhen by Hu and two other men in their 20s: Yan Chengyi, a PhD candidate at Tsinghua University and Wu Xiaofei, a machinery manufacturing specialist.

On Aug. 5, they had a successful trial of a liquid-propellant rocket engine at a courtyard in a suburb of Gaoyou City in east China's Jiangsu Province, Wu's hometown.

The space industry is capital-intensive, so Hu is offering 16 percent of the company for 16 million yuan (2.6 million U.S. dollars) to venture capitalists, valuing the enterprise at a highly speculative 100 million yuan. Hu claims he has already been offered 6.7 million yuan from several investors.

The focus of Link Space is a rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during sub-orbital flight.

The rocket will carry instruments to an altitude of up to 200 kilometers. It is very different from the kind of launch vehicle that carries heavy satellites into space.

The average price for launching such a commercial rocket is about 3 million yuan but Link Space intends to cut that price by a third.

"The domestic rocket market is worth tens of millions of yuan but will grow to hundreds of millions soon if we can provide more value," Hu said.

Hu is very familiar with SpaceX, California's commercial space venture founded by Elon Musk.

"I admire Elon Musk but Link Space will never copy SpaceX or anybody else," he said.

SpaceX's Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets had diameters of 1.7 meters and 3.5 meters respectively.

"If our research goes smoothly, we plan to produce rockets with a diameter of 7 meters by 2020," said Hu.

But space missions are a very costly business.

"Rockets need decades of technological accumulation and billions of yuan," said Luo Shu, chairman of KCSA, a non-governmental space enthusiast organization. He feels that time is not ripe for a Chinese SpaceX.

"The achievements of U.S. private rocket firms are based on the long history of its space industry, not a sudden start-up fairytale" Shu said.

"China has no private space testing ground, so launch trials will be problematic," he added. Hu's team experiments in the Tsinghua University lab where Yan Chengyi works or the courtyard in Gaoyou City.

A 2011 white paper on China's space industry encouraged scientific and academic institutions as well as social groups to actively participate in the industry.

"Though we cannot catch up with the major state-owned players on technology in the short term, our presence will be a positive stimulus to the industry," Hu said.

Yi So-yeon: South Korea's first and only astronaut resigns

South Korea's first and only astronaut, Yi So-yeon, has resigned her position, effectively ending the country's space program.

The then 29-year-old bio-engineering student was one of 36,000 Koreans to apply for the position when the Korean government decided to create its own space agency, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute.

In 2008, So-yeon made history when she spent 11 days on the International Space Station, becoming the first Korean and 49th woman in space.

She was delivered to the space station via Russia's Soyuz spacecraft; Korea reportedly paid Russia $20 million for the trip.

Now 34 years old, So-yeon is pursuing an MBA degree at UC Berkley's Haas School of Business.

"California is an easy place to be an Asian woman engineer," she recently said of her experience at Haas.

"It feels like home," but studying business and being astronaut was apparently too much for So-yeon.

Officials at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute confirmed this week that So-yeon had mailed a letter informing the agency of her decision to resign her post, citing "personal reasons."

NASA OCO-2 Satellite Takes First Look at Earth's Carbon Dioxide

Artist's rendition of NASA's OCO-2 satellite in orbit. 

OCO-2 was launched on July 2, 2014 and made its first science measurements a month later, on Aug. 6. 

Credit: JPL/NASA

NASA's newest satellite has arrived in its final orbit and begun tracking levels of the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2), which blasted off July 2, arrived in its final orbit 438 miles (705 kilometers) above the Earth on Aug. 3.

The satellite then collected its first test data three days later while flying over Papua New Guinea, agency officials said.

"The initial data from OCO-2 appear exactly as expected, the spectral lines are well resolved, sharp and deep," OCO-2's chief architect and calibration lead, Randy Pollock, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement Monday (Aug. 11).

"We still have a lot of work to do to go from having a working instrument to having a well-calibrated and scientifically useful instrument, but this was an important milestone on this journey."



OCO-2 is the first operational NASA satellite dedicated to measuring atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, which scientists say is largely responsible for Earth's recent warming trend.

Concentrations of the gas in Earth's air have risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) before the Industrial Revolution to about 400 ppm today, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities.

OCO-2 will use its single scientific instrument, a grading spectrometer, to gather precise CO2 data thousands of times each day, helping researchers get a much clearer picture of how the gas is cycling through the atmosphere, what sources are pumping it out, and which "sinks" are sucking it up, NASA officials said.

OCO-2 will become the leader of the Afternoon Constellation, or A-Train, as shown in this artist's concept. 

Japan’s Global Change Observation Mission - Water (GCOM-W1) satellite and NASA’s Aqua, CALIPSO, CloudSat and Aura satellites follow. 

Image Credit: NASA

By reaching its ultimate, near-polar orbit, OCO-2 joined five other Earth-observation satellites in a constellation known as the "A-Train." (The name is short for "Afternoon Train"; all of the spacecraft cross the equator going north in the early afternoon local time.)

The OCO-2 mission team will calibrate the spacecraft's spectrometer over the next few weeks.

The satellite will also beam to Earth up to 1 million scientific measurements every day, to help test out data-processing systems on the ground, NASA officials said.

The $465 million mission should start delivering calibrated science data before the end of 2014, they added.

NASA's First 3D-Printed Space Cameras

This is a view of the cubesat with 3D printed parts.

Credit: NASA Goddard/Jason Budinoff

NASA is already using 3d printing to make rocket engine parts, a space pizza maker and even physical photos from the Hubble Space Telescope but by the end of September, one NASA engineer expects to complete the first space cameras made almost entirely out of 3D-printed stuff.

"As far as I know, we are the first to attempt to build an entire instrument with 3D printing," Jason Budinoff, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in a statement.

Next year, Principal Investigator Jason Budinoff plans to experiment with printing instrument components made of Invar alloy, a material being prepared for 3-D printing by Goddard technologist Tim Stephenson, who is pictured here along with his Invar structure.

Image Credit: NASA Goddard/Bill Hrybyk

Budinoff is building a 2-inch (50 millimeters) camera for a cubesat, a relatively miniature satellite.

The camera will have to pass vibration and thermal-vacuum tests next year to prove that it's capable of space travel. Budinoff is also using 3D printing to build a 14-inch (350 mm) dual-channel telescope.

Both instruments are being built to demonstrate how 3D printing (also called "additive manufacturing") can be used as a boon for space exploration. The new technique could cut down both the time and cost of traditional manufacturing.

To build the 3D-printed instruments, first a computer-controlled laser melts down a pile of metal powder. It then fuses the melted metal into a specific configuration determined by a 3D computer design.

The instruments are built and assembled layer by layer, like slices of bread from a loaf. The layered approach makes it possible to build in tiny internal features and grooves that are impossible to build using traditional manufacturing.

But the instruments are not deep-space ready, at least not yet, according to Budinoff.

"I basically want to show that additive-machined instruments can fly,"Budinoff said in the same statement.

"We will have mitigated the risk, and when future program managers ask, 'Can we use this technology?' we can say, 'Yes, we already have qualified it.'"

In the future, 3D printers could reduce the overall cost of building space exploring instruments. For example, Budinoff's 3D printed camera only requires four separate pieces, whereas a conventional camera would require between five and 10 times the number of parts, according to Budinoff.

Budinoff is also working on a way to build 3D-printed metal mirrors. Mirrors are crucial parts of telescopes, and it may be possible to create them with powdered aluminum.

Aluminum is notoriously porous, which makes it difficult to polish. If Budinoff's theory is correct, then a process called "hot isostatic pressing" could convert the aluminum into a gleaming mirror.

The pressing technique involves taking a 3D printed aluminum mirror and placing it in a heated chamber under 15,000 pounds per square inch of pressure.

The intense heat and pressure would lower the aluminum's surface porosity and create a polished mirror.

This kind of mirror could be especially useful for infrared instruments that must operate at extremely cold temperatures.

Infrared sensors are usually made out of several different materials. But if all the parts were made out of aluminum, it would be easier to control the instrument's temperature.

Budinoff will likely finish both instruments this year, and they will undergo spaceflight testing in 2015.