New N. Korea complex for possible ICBM launch

North Korea is building a new complex at its main rocket launch site, possibly for training and launches of road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, a US think-tank said.

Satellite imagery from May 10 suggests the North is conducting a number of important construction projects at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station on its western coast, the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said Tuesday.

"One working hypothesis is that the North is building a new complex to conduct future training and launches for mobile missiles such as the KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)", it said on its website, 38 North.

"Moreover, that hypothesis is consistent with ongoing KN-08 engine tests being conducted (at) Sohae's rocket engine test stand, where a probable KN-08 first stage is currently seen on the stand, possibly left there after early April 2014 tests or for use in the future".

Three KN-08 rocket engine test series have been identified for the first and possibly second stages dating back to mid-2013, the institute said early this month, adding the next technically logical step would be a flight test of the entire system.

North Korea successfully put a satellite into orbit in December 2012 on a rocket -- the Unha 3 -- that Pyongyang said was designed for purely scientific missions.

The international community said the launch was a disguised ballistic missile test and the UN Security Council tightened existing sanctions as a result.

The May 10 imagery also indicates that Pyongyang's effort to upgrade the existing Sohae launch pad to handle space launch vehicles larger than the Unha-3 is continuing but work has slowed, possibly due to the greater priority placed on these new construction projects.

"As a result, North Korea will be unable to conduct SLV (space launch vehicle) tests from this site until at least mid to late summer 2014 when work should be completed", it said.

The successful 2012 satellite launch caused serious concern, but experts stressed that it lacked the re-entry technology needed to bring an ICBM down onto a target.

Full-scale models of the road-mobile KN-08 missile were given pride of place in North Korean military parades in 2012 and in July last year.

But several experts ridiculed the models, with at least one respected aerospace engineer labelling them technically preposterous and a "big hoax".

The North is developing a working ICBM as a national priority and a successful test of such a missile would take the nuclear threat posed by Pyongyang to an entirely new level.

The institute said last week that despite fears to the contrary, satellite imagery suggests North Korea is not preparing an imminent nuclear test.

Imagery dated May 9 does show high levels of activity at the Punggye-ri test site, but most of it seems to be of a mundane, routine nature that would not be consistent with an impending test, it said last week.

SETI HEKTOR: Distant asteroid, a complex mini geological world

Artistic representation of the Trojan system showing the large 250 km dual shape Hektor and its 12 km moon. 

Credit: H. Marchis & F. Marchis

After 8 years of observations, scientists from the SETI Institute have found an exotic orbit for the largest Trojan asteroid, (624) Hektor, the only one known to possess a moon.

The formation of this system made of a dual primary and a small moon is still a mystery, but they found the asteroid could be a captured Kuiper body product of the reshuffling of giant planets in our solar system.

The results are being published today in Astrophysical Letters.

This study, based on W. M. Keck Observatory data and photometric observations from telescopes throughout the world, suggests that the asteroid and its moon are products of the collision of two icy asteroids.

This work sheds light on the complex youth of our solar system, when the building blocks that formed the core of Giant planets and their satellites were tossed around or captured during the giant planet migrations.

Franck Marchis

In 2006, a small team of astronomers led by Franck Marchis, astronomer at the Carl Sagan center of the SETI Institute, detected the presence of a small 12 km diameter moon around the large Trojan asteroid (624) Hektor using the 10 m Keck II telescope atop Mauna Kea, fitted with the NIRC-2 (Near-Infrared Camera 2) instrument behind the adaptive optics and laser guide star system (LGS-AO).

Since then, they collaborated with several researchers from University of California at Berkeley to determine the orbit of this moon and understand the origin of the system.

Trojan asteroids are those that are temporarily trapped in regions 60 degrees in front or 60 degrees behind the planet Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun. They are difficult to study since they are small and faint.

While the asteroid has been studied for 8 years, there were a couple of significant challenges before a paper could be published, according to Marchis.

"The major one was technical: the satellite can be seen only with a telescope like Keck Observatory's fitted with LSG-AO, but time on the mighty Keck's is highly prized and in limited availability," he said.

"Secondly, the orbit of the satellite is so bizarre that we had to develop a complex new algorithm to be able to pin it down and understand its stability over time."

The research, conducted with expert assistance from colleagues at the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides (IMCCE) of the Observatoire de Paris, revealed that the 12 km moon orbits the large 250 km asteroid every 3 days at a distance of 600 km in an ellipse inclined almost 45 degrees with respect to the asteroid's equator.

More Information: "The puzzling mutual orbit of the binary Trojan asteroid (624) Hektor" published today by ApJL is co-authored by F. Marchis (SETI Institute), J. Durech (Charles University), J. Castillo-Rogez (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), F. Vachier (IMCCE-Obs. De Paris), M. Cuk (SETI Institute), J. Berthier (IMCCE-Obs. De Paris), M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley), P. Kalas (UC Berkeley), G. Duchene (UC Berkeley), M. A. van Dam (Flat Wavefronts), H. Hamanowa (Hamanowa observatory)and M. Viikinkoski (Tampere University) arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1402/1402.7336.pdf

Extraterrestrial Intelligence: The Challenge of Comprehending E.T.'s IQ

A tiny jellyfish with green-glowing, fluorescent tentacles and red fluorescence in its body, owing to the chlorophyll in gobbled-up algae. 

Could we detect any evidence of intelligent signaling in such a creature if it were an alien species? 

Credit: Mikhail Matz, Islands in the Stream 2002, NOAA-OER

Although we often ponder the possible otherworldly morphology of extraterrestrials, a harder exercise is conceiving alien intelligences.

An alien might have four limbs, just like we humans or it might sport 17 tentacles, depending on evolutionary pressures.

We can observe, quantify and describe such things. But how can we truly gauge the workings of an alien mind?

A new paper, publishing in Acta Astronautica in February, offers a preliminary exercise meant to get us to think outside our own box in assessing alien intellect.

The exercise is called COMPLEX, which stands for "COmplexity of Markers for Profiling Life in EXobiology."

The project compares various non-human intelligences—including animals, microbes and machines—to each other (rather than humans) and across several categories of behavior and mental capability.

Denise Herzing

"The goal of COMPLEX would be to prepare ourselves for assessing other species if we find life in space," said Denise Herzing, the study's author and a biologist at Florida Atlantic University.

The research could be critical to astrobiology, which relies heavily on understanding Earthlings to gauge what's possible on other planets.

Across the dizzying array of Earth's biota, "intelligence" is an awfully tricky thing to pin down.

Historically, we've often defined intelligence in other beings based on how much it resembles our own.

We collect sound patterns from whales that could qualify as language, seize upon rudimentary tool use by crows, and admire the social complexity of elephant societies.

Viewing these non-human intelligences through a human lens, however, might be shortchanging these creatures' intellectual abilities.

Furthermore, when applied to non-Earthly life forms, our bias towards human intelligence's characteristics might really miss the mark.

Denise Herzing's background has well-prepared her for such an astrobiological undertaking. She is the research director and founder of the Wild Dolphin Project, an organization that has studied a dolphin pod for nearly three decades to learn about the animals' behaviours, social structure and more.

Many scientists consider dolphins (technically, porpoises; "dolphin" is a common name given to the animal) among the most intelligent creatures on Earth, perhaps on par with non-human primates.

Read the full article here

More information: Denise L Herzing, "Profiling nonhuman intelligence: An exercise in developing unbiased tools for describing other "types" of intelligence on earth," Acta Astronautica, Volume 94, Issue 2, February 2014, Pages 676-680, ISSN 0094-5765, dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2013.08.007

Astrobiologists Discover Sweet Spots For Formation of Complex Organic Molecules

Scientists within the New York Center for Astrobiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have compiled years of research to help locate areas in outer space that have extreme potential for complex organic molecule formation.

The scientists searched for methanol, a key ingredient in the synthesis of organic molecules that could lead to life.

Their results have implications for determining the origins of molecules that spark life in the cosmos.

The findings will be published in the Nov. 20 edition of The Astrophysical Journal in a paper titled "Observational constraints on methanol production in interstellar and preplanetary ices."

The work is collaboration between researchers at Rensselaer, NASA Ames Research Center, the SETI Institute, and Ohio State University.

"Methanol formation is the major chemical pathway to complex organic molecules in interstellar space," said the lead researcher of the study and director of the NASA-funded center, Douglas Whittet of Rensselaer.

If scientists can identify regions where conditions are right for rich methanol production, they will be better able to understand where and how the complex organic molecules needed to create life are formed.

In other words, follow the methanol and you may be able to follow the chemistry that leads to life.

Using powerful telescopes on Earth, scientists have observed large concentrations of simple molecules such as carbon monoxide in the clouds that give birth to new stars.

To make more complex organic molecules, hydrogen needs to enter the chemical process. The best way for this chemistry to occur is on the surfaces of tiny dust grains in space, according to Whittet.

In the right conditions, carbon monoxide on the surface of interstellar dust can react at low temperatures with hydrogen to create methanol (CH3OH).

Methanol then serves as an important steppingstone to formation of the much more complex organic molecules that are required to create life.

Scientists have known that methanol is out there, but to date there has been limited detail on where it is most readily produced.

What Whittet and his collaborators have discovered is that methanol is most abundant around a very small number of newly formed stars. Not all young stars reach such potential for organic chemistry.

In fact, the range in methanol concentration varies from negligible amounts in some regions of the interstellar medium to approximately 30 percent of the ices around a handful of newly formed stars.

They also discovered methanol for the first time in low concentrations (1 to 2 percent) in the cold clouds that will eventually give birth to new stars.

The scientists conclude in the paper that there is a "sweet spot" in the physical conditions surrounding some stars that accounts for the large discrepancy in methanol formation in the galaxy.

The complexity of the chemistry depends on how fast certain molecules reach the dust grains surrounding new stars, according to Whittet.

The rate of molecule accumulation on the particles can result in an organic boom or a literal dead end.

Ultra-Precise Mirrors and Optical Systems For Space

Ultra-Precise Mirrors and Optical Systems For Space

Metal mirrors made with extremely high precision and exactly positioned are the key elements of modern telescopes.

A new production technique enables complex optical surfaces to be manufactured with excellent trueness of shape and hitherto unattained positional accuracy.

The mirrors have been built for an infrared sounder telescope.

For space research as well as climate observation and weather forecasting satellites need increasingly powerful optical measurement and recording devices.

They often consist of several aspherically shaped mirror elements which through their precise interplay provide the desired reflection of the incident light.

"All the mirrors must be produced and characterised with extreme precision, that is to an accuracy of less than one micrometer. They also have to be exactly positioned in relation to each other," explains Sebastian Scheiding from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Jena. Up to now this positioning has been very time consuming as it takes place step by step.

First the individual mirrors are fitted in the telescope one after the other, then the imaging quality is measured.

If inaccuracies or errors are found, they are corrected by positional adjustments to the mirrors. Then further measurements and adjustments are made until all components are optimally arranged.

"We wanted to simplify this complicated and time-consuming adjustment process," says Scheiding. In the research project initiated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) the scientist has therefore developed an innovative production technique which takes into account the later alignment of the components right from the outset.

For this purpose, the individual mirror surfaces are positioned in relation to each other as precisely during processing as they will be later in the telescope. This reduces to a minimum the errors and corrections made when the mirrors are being fitted. The assembly process is simple and reproducible.

"The trick is that we mount all the mirrors for a module in the same machine at the same time and assign them to a common system of coordinates.

To this end, each mirror blank is provided with defined, ultra-precise measurement marks and reference surfaces," explains Scheiding. These fixed marks embody the system of coordinates for diamond turning of the mirror shapes. At the same time, however, they fix the position of each mirror in relation to the adjacent mirrors. Finally they also serve as reference points for subsequent measurement processes to check the quality of the optical system.