Threadbare UK moon landing funded by Kickstarter, public charitable contributions - Video

A British-led consortium has outlined its plans to land a robotic probe on the Moon in 10 years' time, despite, and because of, UK government's lack of investment in science and innovation.

Its aim is to raise £500m for the project from Kickstarter, i.e. donations by the public.

In return, donors would be able to have photos, text and their DNA included in a time capsule which will be buried under the lunar surface.

Lunar Mission One aims to survey the Moon's south pole to see if a human base can be set up in the future.

The plan has received the endorsement of a host of well-known scientists and organisations.

These include Prof Brian Cox, the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees, and Prof Monica Grady of the Open University.

David Iron, who is leading the project, said he was setting up the initiative because governments were increasingly finding it difficult to fund space missions.

"Anyone in the world will be able to get involved for as little as just a few pounds. Lunar Mission One will make a huge contribution to our understanding of the origins of our planet and the Moon," he said.



Immortality

The team hope to raise £600,000, using the international crowd funding web service Kickstarter, in the next four weeks to fund the initial phase of the project.

For the next four years, funds will be received through contributions from the public, who will be able to buy digital storage space on the lander for their own personal text messages, pictures, music and videos.

They will also be able to pay for an immortality of sorts by sending up a strand of their hair, which the project team claim could survive for one billion years.

The cost of a short message will be a few pounds, a compressed photo will be a few tens of pounds while a short compressed video will be about £200. The cost of sending a hair sample will be around £50.

The lander will also contain a public digital archive of human history and science which will be compiled as a legacy which will survive even if our species becomes extinct.

Mr Iron believes the fact that people will have a stake in the mission will make it all the more engaging.

Legacy

"The project's long-term legacy will be a new way of funding space exploration," he told reporters.

"Rather than just watching the mission, people can be directly involved, not just through funding but helping to make key decisions such as the selection of the landing site or what should be included in the public archive."

All the money raised by the project will go to funding the mission, and any money left over will be put into a charitable trust whose proceeds will be spent on future space exploration. Mr Iron described it as "a Wellcome Trust for space exploration".

The mission will also have a scientific component. The aim is to drill and analyse a sample from underneath the lunar surface, something which has never been done before.

A key aim of the project is to educate and inspire a new generation to become engaged in science in the same way that the Apollo Moon landings did in the 1960s and 70s, and as indeed the Rosetta landing did just last week.

International Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM) Data Goes Public

On March 17, 2014 the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission's Core Observatory flew over the East coast's last snow storm of the 2013-2014 winter season.

This was also one of the first major snow storms observed by GPM shortly after it was launched on February 27, 2014.

The GPM Core Observatory carries two instruments that show the location and intensity of rain and snow, which defines a crucial part of the storm structure - and how it will behave.

The GPM Microwave Imager sees through the tops of clouds to observe how much and where precipitation occurs, and the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar observes precise details of precipitation in 3-dimensions.

For forecasters, GPM's microwave and radar data are part of the toolbox of satellite data, including other low Earth orbit and geostationary satellites, that they use to monitor tropical cyclones and hurricanes.

One of the first storms observed by the NASA/JAXA GPM Core Observatory on March 17, 2014, in the eastern United States revealed a full range of precipitation, from rain to snow. 

Image courtesy NASA/JAXA.

The most accurate and comprehensive collection of rain, snowfall and other types of precipitation data ever assembled now is available to the public.

This new resource for climate studies, weather forecasting, and other applications is based on observations by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint mission of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with contributions from a constellation of international partner satellites.

The GPM Core Observatory, launched from Japan on Feb. 27, carries two advanced instruments to measure rainfall, snowfall, ice and other precipitation.

The advanced and precise data from the GPM Core Observatory are used to unify and standardize precipitation observations from other constellation satellites to produce the GPM mission data.

These data are freely available through NASA's Precipitation Processing System at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"We are very pleased to make all these data available to scientists and other users within six months of launch," said Ramesh Kakar, GPM program scientist in the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters, Washington.

Instruments on the GPM Core Observatory and partner satellites measure energy naturally emitted by liquid and frozen precipitation. Scientists use computer programs to convert these data into estimates of rain and snowfall.

The individual instruments on the partner satellites collect similar data, but the absolute numbers for precipitation observed over the same location may not be exactly the same.

The GPM Core Observatory's data are used as a reference standard to smooth out the individual differences, like a principal violinist tuning the individual instruments in an orchestra.

The result is data that are consistent with each other and can be meaningfully compared. With the higher sensitivity to different types of precipitation made possible by the GPM Core Observatory's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR), scientists can for the first time accurately measure the full range of precipitation from heavy rain to light rain and snow.

The instruments are designed not only to detect rain and snow in the clouds, but to measure the size and distribution of the rain particles and snowflakes.

This information gives scientists a better estimate of water content and a new perspective on winter storms, especially near the poles where the majority of precipitation is snowfall.

"With this GPM mission data, we can now see snow in a way we could not before," said Gail Skofronick-Jackson, GPM project scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center.

"Cloud tops high in the atmosphere have ice in them. If the Earth's surface is above freezing, it melts into rain as it falls. But in some parts of the world, it's cold enough that the ice and snow falls all the way to the ground."

US Navy transitions global ocean forecast system for public use

This Image from the Navy Global Ocean Forecast System (GOFS) portrays sea surface temperature (SST) on Jan. 15, 2014. 

The warm tropical waters can be seen to flow through the Gulf of Mexico and northward along the eastern US seaboard where the Gulf Stream separates at Cape Hatteras, off the coast of North Carolina, and flows to the east. 

This warm water "conveyer-belt" alters the ice cover across the north Atlantic. 

Without the ocean transport of heat, global climate and weather would be dramatically changed. 

Credit: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory-Oceanography Division

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) within the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have entered into a formal agreement that results in NCEP using Navy developed global ocean forecast model technology to make environmental ocean forecasts for public use.

"Development of an advanced global ocean prediction system has been a long-term Navy interest," said Dr. Gregg Jacobs, head, NRL Ocean Dynamics and Prediction Branch.

"This use of Navy developed systems for global ocean forecasting represents dual use technology that will benefit civilian interests and is an excellent example of the cutting edge research that is enabled through Navy sponsored investments."

The Navy has had requirements for predicting the ocean environment for its purposes including estimating acoustic propagation, placement of sonar arrays, determining currents for mine drift and burial, drift for search and rescue, and safety of operations on and under the ocean surface.

NRL has enabled Navy operational ocean prediction of tactically relevant information.

To accomplish this task, Jacobs says three critical components are necessary to predict the open ocean environment.


Ocean Circulation Models - Gregg Jacobs.

"The first is access to satellite observations that measure precise sea surface height, sea surface temperature and ice concentration with in situ observations from public sources and Navy ships; second, numerical models representing the dynamical processes capable of understanding the physics of the ocean and numerical methods for efficiently representing those physics; and lastly, the third critical component is the technology to correct the numerical models using the observations through data assimilation."

The new agreement will allow NCEP to use software developed by NRL to assimilate data necessary to maintain daily forecast accuracy that enables safe, at-sea operations, hazard mitigation, resource management, and emergency response.

"This is an example of complementary missions across agencies that through coordinated application leads to protecting our service personnel, who ensure the high seas are safe, and protecting our resources and citizens at home." Jacobs said.

NASA MAVEN Mission: Public invited to send names and messages to Mars

NASA is inviting members of the public to submit their names and a personal message online for a DVD to be carried aboard a spacecraft that will study the Martian upper atmosphere.

The DVD will be in NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is scheduled for launch in November.

The DVD is part of the mission's Going to Mars Campaign coordinated at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (CU/LASP).

The DVD will carry every name submitted. The public also is encouraged to submit a message in the form of a three-line poem, or haiku.

However, only three haikus will be selected. The deadline for all submissions is July 1. An online public vote to determine the top three messages to be placed on the DVD will begin July 15.

Stephanie Renfrow

"The Going to Mars campaign offers people worldwide a way to make a personal connection to space, space exploration, and science in general, and share in our excitement about the MAVEN mission," said Stephanie Renfrow, lead for the MAVEN Education and Public Outreach program at CU/LASP.

Participants who submit their names to the Going to Mars campaign will be able to print a certificate of appreciation to document their involvement with the MAVEN mission.

"This new campaign is a great opportunity to reach the next generation of explorers and excite them about science, technology, engineering and math," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from CU/LASP.

Bruce Jakosky

"I look forward to sharing our science with the worldwide community as MAVEN begins to piece together what happened to the Red Planet's atmosphere."

MAVEN is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The spacecraft will investigate how the loss of Mars' atmosphere to space determined the history of water on the surface.

"This mission will continue NASA's rich history of inspiring and engaging the public in spaceflight in ongoing Mars exploration," said David Mitchell, MAVEN project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

NASA Voyager-1: Public Invited to Fly along

The public will be able to fly along with NASA's Voyager spacecraft as the twin probes head towards interstellar space, which is the space between stars. 

As indicated in this artist's concept, a regularly updated gauge using data from the two spacecraft will indicate the levels of particles that originate from far outside our solar system and those that originate from inside our solar bubble. 

Those are two of the three signs scientists expect to see in interstellar space. 

The other sign is a change in the direction of the magnetic field. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A gauge on the Voyager home page, tracks levels of two of the three key signs scientists believe will appear when the spacecraft leave our solar neighborhood and enter interstellar space.

When the three signs are verified, scientists will know that one of the Voyagers has hurtled beyond the magnetic bubble the sun blows around itself, which is known as the heliosphere.

The gauge indicates the level of fast-moving charged particles, mainly protons, originating from far outside the heliosphere, and the level of slower-moving charged particles, also mainly protons, from inside the heliosphere.

If the level of outside particles jumps dramatically and the level of inside particles drops precipitously, and these two levels hold steady, that means one of the spacecraft is closing in on the edge of interstellar space. These data are updated every six hours.

Scientists then need only see a change in the direction of the magnetic field to confirm that the spacecraft has sailed beyond the breath of the solar wind and finally arrived into the vast cosmic ocean between stars.

The direction of the magnetic field, however, requires periodic instrument calibrations and complicated analyses. These analyses typically take a few months to return after the charged particle data are received on Earth.

Voyager 1

VOYAGER-1
Voyager 1, the most distant human-made spacecraft, appears to have reached this last region before interstellar space, which scientists have called "the magnetic highway." Inside particles are zooming out and outside particles are zooming in.

However, Voyager 1 has not yet seen a change in the direction of the magnetic field, so the consensus among the Voyager team is that it has not yet left the heliosphere.

Voyager-2

VOYAGER-2
Voyager-2, the longest-operating spacecraft, but not as distant as Voyager 1, does not yet appear to have reached the magnetic highway, though it has recently seen some modest drops of the inside particle level.

NASA's Eyes on the Solar System program, a Web-based, video-game-like tool to journey with NASA's spacecraft through the solar system, has added a Voyager module that takes viewers along for a ride with Voyager 1 as it explores the outer limits of the heliosphere.

Time has been sped up to show one day per second. Rolls and other maneuvers are incorporated into the program, based on actual spacecraft navigation data. The charged particle data are also shown.

Visit that module HERE

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

More information about the Voyager spacecraft here.