Water detection on Mars: Russian DAN Instrument on Curiosity

A Russian neutron detector (DAN) on board NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, designed to search for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover's path, was activated on Friday, the Russian manufacturer said. 

"The first scientific information has been received about the substance of Mars and its radiation background in the landing area," the Russian Academy of Sciences Space Research Institute said.

Curiosity successfully touched down on the Red Planet last Monday.

The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons instrument, or DAN, will scout for underground clues to a depth of about 50 centimeters.

DAN will bring to the surface of Mars an enhancement of nuclear technology that has already detected Martian water from orbit.

By measuring the energies of the neutrons leaking from the ground, DAN can detect the fraction that was slowed in these collisions, and therefore the amount of hydrogen.

The neutron generator is mounted on Curiosity's right hip. A module with two neutron detectors is mounted on the left hip.

With pulses lasting about one microsecond and repeated as frequently as 10 times per second, key measurements by the detectors are the flux rate and delay time of moderated neutrons with different energy levels returning from the ground.

The generator will be able to emit a total of about 10 million pulses during the mission, with about 10 million neutrons at each pulse, NASA said.

The service camera installed on the $2.5 billion plutonium-powered rover has sent the first photos from the landing site in the Gale Crater, including one showing a wheel of the rover on the surface.

Curiosity, the biggest and the most scientifically complex Mars rover, will gradually turn on its scientific equipment to carry out geological and geo-chemical research, to study the planet's atmosphere and climate, and to search for water and organic substances.

Its findings will help to determine whether Mars was ever a habitable planet and whether it has any suitable places for habitation now.

ESA Astronaut Samantha Preparing for EVA Simulation in NBL Tank

ESA Astronaut Samantha Christoforetti getting help from 3 burley men to don the waterproof underwater test suit, needed to complete her second Zero-gravity style workout and EVA Simulation in the NBL tank.

ESA ATV-s, Edoardo Amaldi: Unloading the Automated Transfer Vehicle, ATV3

Unloading the Automated Transfer Vehicle, ATV3. in near Zero Gravity.

NASA LandSat Images: The Syrian Desert appears Greener

In this series of four Landsat images, the agricultural fields are about one kilometer across. 

Healthy vegetation appears bright green while dry vegetation appears orange. 

Barren soil is a dark pink, and urban areas, like the town of Tubarjal at the top of each image, have a purple hue. Credit: NASA/GSFC.

Saudi Arabia is drilling for a resource possibly more precious than oil.

Over the last 24 years, it has tapped hidden reserves of water to grow wheat and other crops in the Syrian Desert. This time series of data shows images acquired by three different Landsat satellites operated by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey.

The green fields that dot the desert draw on water that in part was trapped during the last Ice Age. In addition to rainwater that fell over several hundred thousand years, this fossil water filled aquifers that are now buried deep under the desert's shifting sands.

Saudi Arabia reaches these underground rivers and lakes by drilling through the desert floor, directly irrigating the fields with a circular sprinkler system. This technique is called center-pivot irrigation.

Because rainfall in this area is now only a few centimeters (about one inch) each year, water here is a non-renewable resource. Although no one knows how much water is beneath the desert, hydrologists estimate it will only be economical to pump water for about 50 years.

In this series of four Landsat images, the agricultural fields are about one kilometer (.62 miles) across.

The images were created using reflected light from the short wave-infrared, near-infrared, and green portions of the electromagnetic spectrum (bands 7, 4, and 2 from Landsat 4 and 5 TM and Landsat 7 ETM+ sensors). Using this combination of wavelengths, healthy vegetation appears bright green while dry vegetation appears orange.

Barren soil is a dark pink, and urban areas, like the town of Tubarjal at the top of each image, have a purple hue.

Landsat 4 launched in 1982 and provided scientific data for 11 years until 1993. NASA launched Landsat 5 in 1984 and it ran a record-breaking 28 years, sending back what was likely its last data in 2011. Landsat 7 is still up and running; it was launched in 1999.

The data from these and other Landsat satellites has been instrumental in increasing our understanding of forest health, storm damage, agricultural trends, urban growth, and many other ongoing changes to our land.

NASA and the U.S. Department of the Interior through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) jointly manage Landsat, and the USGS preserves a 40-year archive of Landsat images that is freely available data over the Internet.

The next Landsat satellite, now known as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) and later to be called Landsat 8, is scheduled for launch in January 2013.

NASA GRACE Data Visualisation of groundwater Depletion

A new visualization of global groundwater depletion created using data from NASA's GRACE mission has premiered on New York’s Times Square to mark World Water Day 2012. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Irvine/USGS/Richard Vijgen/Peggy Weil/Heads Up! 2012

To highlight declines in the world's groundwater supplies, a new visualization of Earth's groundwater reserves, created in part with space data from the joint NASA/German Aerospace Center (DLR) Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, debuted on New York's Times Square on March 22, International World Water Day.

The 30-second animation, titled "Visualizing Seasonal and Long-term Changes in Groundwater Levels," will be on display several times each hour through April 22 on Times Square's massive Thomson Reuters and NASDAQ digital signboards.

Viewers of the interactive animation are invited to use their mobile devices to submit their city and add a graph to the sign. The animation can be viewed at: http://vimeo.com/user10042778 .

Netherlands designer Richard Vijgen developed the animation using GRACE data analyzed by professor Jay Famiglietti, director of the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling at the University of California, Irvine; and from United States Geological Survey data supplied by Leonard Konikow.

Vijgen was the winning entry in an international design visualization competition sponsored by the organization.

HeadsUP!, in collaboration with Visualizing.org. Founded by digital media artist Peggy Weil, HeadsUp! challenges designers to visualize critical global issues and create a shared sign for the public square.

Groundwater is a critical, but often overlooked, natural resource. According to a U.N. report, more than 1.5 billion people around the world depend on groundwater for their drinking water.

It comes from the natural percolation of precipitation and other surface waters down through Earth's soil and rock, accumulating in cavities and layers of porous rock, gravel, sand or clay.

Groundwater levels respond slowly to changes in weather and can take months or years to replenish once pumped for irrigation or other uses.

Famiglietti's analyses show that groundwater is being depleted at alarming rates in many of the world's major aquifers. "The GRACE data set is exciting, because it gives us the first global pictures of Earth's changing freshwater," he said.

The twin GRACE satellites, which celebrated their 10th year in orbit this week, measure minute changes in Earth's gravity field by measuring micron-scale variations in the separation between the two spacecraft, flying in formation 137 miles (220 kilometers) apart in low Earth orbit.

These variations in gravitational pull are caused by local changes in Earth's mass. Masses of water, ice, air and solid Earth can be moved by weather patterns, seasonal change, climate change and even tectonic events such as large earthquakes. GRACE was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

ESA TIGER Initiative: Managing our water resources from space

Satellite data-derived land cover of the Nile Basin based on ESA’s 2009 GlobCover map.

Credits: Nile Basin Initiative

Today is UN World Water Day, and satellite observations are indispensible for monitoring our water resources. ESA’s TIGER initiative is supporting Africa in monitoring precious water assets by exploiting satellite information.

The demand for water is growing inexorably. Access to water is vital – not only for drinking, but also for agriculture, energy and sanitation.

In certain regions of the world, water scarcity is caused by population growth, climate conditions and increasing climate variability, economic development or urbanisation.

At the sixth World Water Forum held last week in Marseille, France, experts from over 170 countries met to discuss solutions for sustainable water management.

Satellite observations of our planet were widely acknowledged as an indispensable tool for collecting information on available water resources.

This is especially true for areas like cross-boundary river basins, such as the Nile basin and its 11 countries.

Responding to this need for information on water, ESA’s TIGER initiative is running projects and building capacity to use space technology for managing water resources in direct partnership with several African and international organisations, such as the African Ministers’ Council on Water, UNESCO-IHP, African Water Facility, UN-ECA and the Canadian Space Agency.

ESA ISS Image: Water Droplet

A close look at this water bubble onboard the International Space Station reveals a refracted image of European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, Expedition 30 flight engineer. 

Using a 105-mm lens, Kuipers took a series of pictures of the globule following work with the Capillary Flow Experiment-2 (CFE-2) Vane Gap 1 Experiment, in the U.S. Laboratory Destiny.

Credit: ESA

Hubble WFC3 Instrument discovers a true water world

Source: Hubblesite.org

Our solar system contains three types of planets: rocky, terrestrial worlds (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), and ice giants (Uranus and Neptune).

Planets orbiting distant stars come in an even wider variety, including lava worlds and “hot Jupiters.”

Observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have added a new type of planet to the mix. By analyzing the previously discovered world GJ1214b, astronomer Zachory Berta (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and colleagues proved that it is a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere.

“GJ1214b is like no planet we know of,” said Berta. “A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water.”

GJ1214b was discovered in 2009 by the ground-based MEarth (pronounced “mirth”) Project, which is led by CfA’s David Charbonneau.

This super-Earth is about 2.7 times Earth’s diameter and weighs almost 7 times as much.

It orbits a red-dwarf star every 38 hours at a distance of 1.3 million miles, giving it an estimated temperature of 450 ° Fahrenheit.

In 2010, CfA scientist Jacob Bean and colleagues reported that they had measured the atmosphere of GJ1214b, finding it likely that the atmosphere was composed mainly of water.

However, their observations could also be explained by the presence of a world-wide haze in GJ1214b’s atmosphere.

Berta and his co-authors used Hubble’s WFC3 instrument to study GJ1214b when it crossed in front of its host star. During such a transit, the star’s light is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere, giving clues to the mix of gases.

“We’re using Hubble to measure the infrared colour of sunset on this world,” explained Berta.

Hazes are more transparent to infrared light than to visible light, so the Hubble observations help tell the difference between a steamy and a hazy atmosphere.

They found the spectrum of GJ1214b to be featureless over a wide range of wavelengths, or colours. The atmospheric model most consistent with the Hubble data is a dense atmosphere of water vapour.

“The Hubble measurements really tip the balance in favour of a steamy atmosphere,” said Berta.

Since the planet’s mass and size are known, astronomers can calculate the density, which works out to about 2 grams per cubic centimeter.

Water has a density of 1 g/cm3, while Earth’s average density is 5.5 g/cm3. This suggests that GJ1214b has much more water than Earth, and much less rock.

As a result, the internal structure of GJ1214b would be very different than our world.

“The high temperatures and high pressures would form exotic materials like ‘hot ice’ or ‘superfluid water’ – substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience,” said Berta.

Theorists expect that GJ1214b formed farther out from its star, where water ice was plentiful, and migrated inward early in the system’s history.

In the process, it would have passed through the star’s habitable zone. How long it lingered there is unknown.

GJ1214b is located in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, and just 40 light-years from Earth.

Therefore, it’s a prime candidate for study by the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

A paper reporting these results has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online.

This release is being issued jointly with NASA

NASA's Dawn: Does Asteroid Vesta Have Water Ice?

Astronomers from NASA have discovered a giant asteroid - Vesta - that is expected to have water ice. They believe Vesta may have stayed frozen for billions of years. This is contrary to earlier Earth-based observations that the surface of the Vesta is dry.

The information was transmitted from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which entered into orbit around Vesta in July.

The asteroid is reportedly the second largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and is approximately 480km (300 miles) in diameter. It doesn't have a permanent shadow because its axis is tilted to roughly 27 degrees, meaning the asteroid sees seasons similar to the ones we experience on Earth. As a result, almost every part of Vesta's surface is expected to see the Sun, at some point during the year.

The average temperature on Vesta is, however, around minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit... the reason why water ice is able to survive in the soil.

According to the astronomers, the presence of water ice on Vesta gives us an idea about the tiny world's formation and evolution, its history of bombardment by comets and its interaction with the environment in surrounding space. Furthermore, the fact that Vesta may have reserves of water ice could lead to a greater understanding of the solar system.

Meanwhile, the Dawn is also investigating the role of water in the evolution of planets, by studying Vesta and Ceres... two bodies in the asteroid belt that are considered remnant protoplanets (young planets whose growth was interrupted when Jupiter formed).

The spacecraft is looking for water using the Gamma Ray and Neutron Detector (GRaND) spectrometer, a data collection process well suited to the Dawn's current low orbit position.

"On average, it's colder at Vesta's poles than near its equator, so in that sense, they are good places to sustain water ice," said Timothy Stubbs from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "But they also see sunlight for long periods of time during the summer seasons, which isn't so good for sustaining ice. So if water ice exists in those regions, it may be buried beneath a relatively deep layer of dry regolith."

"Hopefully, we'll know in the next few months whether the GRaND spectrometer sees evidence for water ice in Vesta's regolith. This is an important and exciting time in planetary exploration," he added.

"Our perceptions of Vesta have been transformed in a few months as the Dawn spacecraft has entered orbit and spiraled closer to its surface," said Lucy McFadden, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard, "More importantly, our new views of Vesta tell us about the early processes of solar system formation. If we can detect evidence for water beneath the surface, the next question will be is it very old or very young, and that would be exciting to ponder."

ESA ENVISAT & ERS Satellites detect abundance of fresh water in the Arctic

ESA satellites show that a large dome of fresh water has been building up in the Arctic Ocean over the last 15 years.

A change in wind direction could cause the water to spill into the north Atlantic, cooling Europe.

The results are remarkable: since 2002, the sea surface in the studied area has risen by about 15 cm, and the volume of fresh water has increased by some 8000 cubic km – around 10% of all the fresh water in the Arctic Ocean.

Researchers from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) at University College London and the UK’s National Oceanography Centre used data from ESA’s ERS-2 and Envisat satellites to measure sea-surface height over the western Arctic from 1995 to 2010.

The results were published yesterday in the online version of the scientific journal, Nature Geoscience.

	Mean sea surface

The scientists conclude that the dome could be a result of strong Arctic winds accelerating a large ocean circulation known as the Beaufort Gyre, causing the sea surface to bulge.

A change in the direction of the wind would cause the fresh water to spill into the rest of the Arctic Ocean and even reach the north Atlantic.

This could slow a key ocean current, stemming from the Gulf Stream, and subsequently cool Europe.

This current keeps the continent relatively mild compared to other areas at similar latitudes.

“When we looked at our data on a year-to-year basis, we noticed that the changes in the sea surface height did not always follow what the wind was doing, so we thought about reasons why this might happen,” said Katharine Giles, CPOM research fellow and lead author of the study.

“One idea is that sea ice forms a barrier between the atmosphere and the ocean. So as the sea ice cover changes, the effect of the wind on the ocean might also change.

“Our next step is to look into how changes in the sea ice cover might affect the coupling between the atmosphere and the ocean in more detail to see if we can confirm this idea.”

Sea ice can be measured by different types of satellite data. Radar altimeters on satellites such as the two used in the study, Envisat and ERS-2, can be particularly useful when observing inaccessible areas like the Arctic.

ESA ISS Image: A Water drop in Zero Gravity

A water droplet in the ISS escapes from a drinking pouch and floats through the astronauts' cabin.

NASA Lunar Rec Orbiter: LAMP sees water frost on dark side of Moon

New maps produced by the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal features at the Moon’s northern and southern poles in regions that lie in perpetual darkness.

LAMP, developed by Southwest Research Institute, uses a novel method to peer into these so-called permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), making visible the invisible.

LAMP’s principal investigator is Dr. Alan Stern, associate vice president of the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division

The LAMP maps show that many PSRs are darker at far-ultraviolet wavelengths and redder than nearby surface areas that receive sunlight.

The darker regions are consistent with large surface porosities — indicating “fluffy” soils — while the reddening is consistent with the presence of water frost on the surface.

“Our results suggest there could be as much as 1 to 2 percent water frost in some permanently shadowed soils,” says author Dr. Randy Gladstone, an Institute scientist in the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division.

“This is unexpected because naturally occurring interplanetary Lyman-alpha was thought to destroy any water frost before it could accumulate.”

The LAMP team estimates that the loss of water frost is about 16 times slower than previously believed.

In addition, the accumulation of water frost is also likely to be highly dependent on local conditions, such as temperature, thermal cycling and even geologically recent “impact gardening” in which micrometeoroid impacts redistribute the location and depth of volatile compounds.

Finding water frost at these new locations adds to a rapidly improving understanding of the Moon’s water and related species, as discovered by three other space missions through near-infrared emissions observations and found buried within the Cabeus crater by the LCROSS impactor roughly two years ago.

During LRO’s nominal exploration mission, LAMP added to the LCROSS results by measuring hydrogen, mercury and other volatile gases ejected along with the water from the permanently shaded soils of the Moon’s Cabeus crater.

“An even more unexpected finding is that LAMP’s technique for measuring the lunar Lyman-alpha albedo indicates higher surface porosities within PSRs, and supports the long-postulated presence of tenuous ‘fairy-castle’ like arrangements of surface grains in the PSR soils,” says co-author Dr. Kurt Retherford, a senior research scientist also in SwRI’s Space Science and Engineering Division.

Comparisons with future LAMP maps created using data gathered from the Moon’s day side will prove helpful for revealing more about the presence of water frost, as well as the surface porosities of the darker surface features observed.

The LAMP team is also eager to apply the Lyman-alpha technique elsewhere on the Moon and on other solar system objects such as Mercury.

LRO’s findings are expected to be valuable to the future consideration of a permanent Moon base. The permanently shadowed regions of the Moon are revealing themselves to be some of the most exotic places in the solar system, well worthy of future exploration, says Retherford.

Any discovery of water frost and other resources in the area also could reduce the need to transport resources from Earth to a base at the pole.

The paper, “Far-Ultraviolet Reflectance Properties of the Moon’s Permanently Shadowed Regions,” by G.R. Gladstone, K.D. Retherford, A.F. Egan, D.E. Kaufmann, P.F. Miles, et al., was published in the Jan. 7 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., developed and manages the LRO mission.

NASA ESA: The Kitchen in the ISS

The kitchen rack assembly, with hot and cold water on tap plus a built-in fridge module.

Credit: ESA/NASA

Mars Rover Opportunity: Rich Vein Of Gypsum Water Deposits

This colour view of a mineral vein called "Homestake" comes from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

The vein is about the width of a thumb and about 18 inches (45 centimeters) long.

Opportunity examined it in November 2011 and found it to be rich in calcium and sulphur, possibly the calcium-sulphate mineral gypsum. Homestake is near the edge of the "Cape York" segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater.

Exposures combined into this view were taken through Pancam filters admitting light with wavelengths centered at 601 nanometers (red), 535 nanometers (green) and 482 nanometers (blue).

The view is presented in approximate true colour. This "natural colour" is the rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if humans were there and able to see it with their own eyes.

The exposures were taken during the 2,769th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's career on Mars (Nov. 7, 2011).

NASA Orion: Capsule dropped in pool at Langley

The intensity in Steven Gayle’s voice grew as NASA’s 18,000-pound Orion test capsule landed in the pool.

“Don’t flip over, don’t flip over, don’t flip over,” he said as the spacecraft lurched forward.

It didn’t flip over — a sign that astronauts could make a similar plunge into the ocean and remain safe.

“Whooo,” said Gayle, one of several engineers at NASA Langley Research Center leading Thursday’s experiment. “Now we’ll start going over the test data.”

Tests of the capsule, officially called the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, have been ongoing at Langley for months. Aside from a few videos NASA posted online, it kept the operation largely under wraps.

“There’s some new elements here,” said Langley engineer Paresh Parikh, referring to the 115-foot long pool, which NASA calls its Hydro Impact Basin. “We wanted to make sure everything works.”

NASA hoisted Orion about 25 feet in the air with a large crane called the gantry, which Mercury astronauts used during the 1960s to mimic landing on the moon.

NASA released the capsule from its straps following a 15-second countdown. It skidded into the pool with a loud pop, creating a killer whalelike splash that sent water spilling over the concrete toward dozens of onlookers.

Unlike NASA’s recently retired space shuttle, Orion will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and land in water. The capsule, which resembles a gigantic Hershey Kiss that holds four astronauts, will be slowed by parachutes during its descent.

“We call this configuration ‘Apollo on steroids,’” said Gayle, noting it weighs roughly 9,000 pounds more than its 1960s-era predecessor.

Engineers designed Thursday’s experiment to replicate landing in the Pacific Ocean, off southern California. A previous test mimicked landing in the north Atlantic Ocean amid rougher seas.

Instruments aboard Orion track its speed, if any water seeps into the capsule, how it responds to the pressure of the landing and numerous other measurements, Gayle said. Engineers will spend days comparing the results to computer projections.

The idea, Parikh said, is to test every conceivable scenario, which will help NASA better predict where and how the capsule lands. That’s important considering the astronauts may be floating in the ocean for hours waiting for a helicopter to arrive and bring them to a nearby ship, he said.

Tests of the capsule were not certain until earlier this year when President Barack Obama and Congress reached a compromise on NASA’s human spaceflight program.

Careless disposal of antibiotics can create aquatic superbugs

A wastewater treatment plant can provide the perfect mating ground for carelessly disposed of antibiotics to form superbugs that are eventually discharged into streams and lakes, says a University of Michigan researcher.

It’s not the fault of the wastewater treatment plants, says Chuanwu Xi, assistant professor at the UM School of Public Health.

His research team sampled water at five sites in and near Ann Arbor’s Waste Water Treatment Plant and found that the water contained the superbug Acinetobacter, a multidrug-resistant bacterium.

The results were first reported by Xi’s group in 2009, and the research is ongoing.

Treatment plants across the country face the same problem due to the overuse of antibiotics and because people improperly flush them down the toilet, whereby the drugs enter the wastewater treatment systems where they can breed, Xi says.

“When we monitored the survival of these bugs in the Huron River, the downstream level dropped quickly to the level of upstream,” Xi said.

“More robust risk-assessment research is needed to assess the exact risk. This study, along with many other studies, alerts us to proper use and handling of antibiotics.”

The Ann Arbor wastewater plant recently installed technology that enhances the removal of bio-solids from the water, which in turn, will help prevent superbugs from forming.

People with unused antibiotics should not flush them down the toilet but should dispose of them properly, Xi says.

ESA Herschel: Misty Star in the Sea Serpent

This artist's concept illustrates an icy planet-forming disk around a young star called TW Hydrae, located about 175 light-years away in the Hydra, or Sea Serpent, constellation.

Astronomers using the Herschel Space Observatory detected copious amounts of cool water vapor, illustrated in blue, emanating from the star's planet-forming disk of dust and gas.

The water vapour, which probably comes from icy grains in the disk, is located in the frigid outer regions of the star system, where comets will take shape.

In our own solar system, comets are thought to have carried water to Earth, creating our oceans. A similar process might be taking place around TW Hydrae, comets could, over the next several millions of years, transport water to young worlds.

The Herschel results demonstrate that vast reservoirs of water are available around stars for creating these hypothetical water worlds.

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA contributions. Launched in 2009, the spacecraft carries science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes.

NASA's Herschel Project Office based at JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the U.S. astronomical community.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

› See graph

U‐Boat Worx: mini-submersibles available for private charter

Staff from The Netherlands-based company will confer with clients, to determine which of the submersibles will best meet their needs.

That watercraft can then be transported to a destination of the client's choice, with U-Boat Worx supplying the crew, support/technical equipment, and transport to and from the launch site.

For underwater sight-seers, they can also recommend an itinerary for the cruise.

Although there are plans to add other craft to the charter fleet, there will at first be two models available - the C-Quester 3 and the C-Explorer 2. Seating three and two people respectively (including pilot), the mini-submersibles both feature 360-degree transparent acrylic pressure hulls, air conditioning, and a maximum operating depth of 100 meters (328 feet).

Joining the fleet once it's completed late this year will be the five-passenger C-Explorer 5, which will reportedly be able to descend to 300 meters (984 feet). All three subs are said to have an operational time of up to eight hours.

The charter price of €75,000 for one month (all-inclusive with crew, insurance, parts, etc.) is not going to be an option for most of us, but it does at open up the possibilities for some individuals, and particularly for companies and research institutes.

U-Boat Worx is also currently providing guided dives to tourists in a C-Quester 3, based out of Aruba.

The video below (part-way through) shows one such sub cavorting in the briny deep.



U‐Boat Worx makes its mini-submersibles available for private charter

NASA Herschel: Icy Comets seeded Earth oceans

New evidence supports the theory that comets delivered a significant portion of Earth’s oceans, which scientists believe formed about 8 million years after the planet itself.

The findings, which involve a University of Michigan astronomer, are published Oct. 5 online in Nature.

“Life would not exist on Earth without liquid water, and so the questions of how and when the oceans got here is a fundamental one,” said U-M astronomy professor Ted Bergin, “It’s a big puzzle and these new findings are an important piece.”

Bergin is a co-investigator on HiFi, the Heterodyne Instrument for the Infrared on the Hershel Space Observatory. With measurements from HiFi, the researchers found that the ice on a comet called Hartley 2 has the same chemical composition as our oceans.

Both have similar D/H ratios. The D/H ratio is the proportion of deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, in the water. A deuterium atom is a hydrogen with an extra neutron in its nucleus.

This was the first time ocean-like water was detected in a comet.

“We were all surprised,” Bergin said.

Six other comets HiFi measured in recent years had a much different D/H ratio than our oceans, meaning similar comets could not have been responsible for more than 10 percent of Earth’s water.

The astronomers hypothesize that Hartley 2 was born in a different part of the solar system than the other six. Hartley most likely formed in the Kuiper belt, which starts near Pluto at about 30 times farther from the sun than the Earth is. The other six hail from the Oort Cloud more than 5,000 times farther out.

The source of earth’s oceans has been a subject for debate among astronomers for decades. Until now, asteroids were thought to have provided most of the water. Now, however, Herschel has shown that at least one comet does have ocean-like water.

“The results show that the amount of material out there that could have contributed to Earth’s oceans is perhaps larger than we thought,” Bergin said.

Herschel, a European Space Agency mission with NASA participation, is an orbiting telescope that allows astronomers to observe at the far-infrared wavelengths where organic molecules and water emit their chemical signatures.

The paper is called “Ocean-like water in the Jupiter-family comet 103P/Hartley 2.”

Pluto's icy exterior may conceal an ocean

PLUTO could hide a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Indeed, other bodies on the solar system's frigid fringe could also harbour subsurface oceans, and these could provide the conditions to sustain life.

Temperatures on Pluto's surface hover around -230 °C, but researchers have long wondered whether the dwarf planet might boast enough internal heat to sustain a liquid ocean under its icy exterior.

Now Guillaume Robuchon and Francis Nimmo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, say there is a good chance it does. They calculate that an ocean depends on two things: the amount of radioactive potassium in Pluto's rocky core, and the sloshiness of the ice that covers it.

Density measurements suggest a rocky core fills 40 per cent of the dwarf planet's volume. If the core contains potassium at a concentration of 75 parts per billion, its decay could produce enough heat to melt some of the overlying ice, which is made of a mixture of nitrogen and water.

It should have at least that much potassium and probably more, says William McKinnon at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. He points out that Earth, which probably formed with less of the volatile element due to its closer distance to the sun, has 10 times that concentration in its core.

But merely having a source of heat is not enough to maintain a long-lived ocean. Heat from the core will trigger convection in the surrounding ice, and if the ice churns too quickly, the heat will simply escape into space before it can do much melting.

If it flows substantially more slowly than Antarctic glaciers on Earth, however, then the top 165 kilometres of ice could provide enough insulation for a liquid ocean of the same depth to exist below, the team calculates (Icarus, DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2011.08.015).

The viscosity of the ice depends on the size of individual ice particles, with smaller grains flowing more easily. There is no way to measure this from Earth, but Pluto's shape could reveal evidence of an ocean, the team says. 

Pluto's spin is slowing down due to tugs from its large moon Charon. Fast-spinning objects bulge out at their equator, but a soft interior would allow the world to relax into more of a sphere as its spin slows down. NASA's New Horizons probe will image the dwarf planet's shape when it flies past in 2015.

Other distant icy bodies might also have oceans, which could mean that the outer solar system is potentially ripe for life. "It's very exciting to think that these dwarf planets could have astrobiological potential," says New Horizons lead scientist Alan Stern.