ISS Astronauts Celebrate 'Cosmos' with Weightless Experiment in Space Station - Video

The new "Cosmos" science TV series on Fox has received an out-of-this-world from astronauts on the International Space Station in a new video showing how weightlessness works.

In the new video beamed from space, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio considers Isaac Newton's third law of motion - every action produces an equal and opposite reaction - and demonstrates how this works in microgravity, 260 miles (418 kilometers) above Earth.

To demonstrate this, Rick Mastracchio pushes his colleague and ISS Commander, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, along with a model of NASA's now-retired space shuttle.

As Wakata and the model spacecraft float forward, Mastracchio drifts backwards.

NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio shows how Newton's third law of motion works in microgravity. 

Credit: YouTube | NASA

"This is simple science but the more complex science we're doing here on the space station will help us bring real world benefits back to humanity on Earth, as well as take us further into the cosmos than ever before, including to an asteroid, the moon or on to Mars," Mastracchio said.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey," introduced the video of his "friends in high places," saying, "when you're doing science, you have to do experiments."

Geckos in space: Novel robot takes a step to cosmos

Abigaille, a wall-crawling robot inspired by the gecko, has taken a small but important step towards a future in space, ESA scientists said on Thursday.

The tiny legged prototype could be the forerunner of automatons which crawl along the hulls of spacecraft, cleaning and maintaining them, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

Its footpads are covered with dry microfibres modelled on the toe hair of the gecko, which is celebrated for its ability to scuttle up windows and along walls yet not leave a trace.

The lizard does the trick through millions of ultra-fine hairs called setae, which interact with the climbing surface to create a molecular attraction known as the van der Waals force.

A handout photo released on January 2, 2013 by the European Space Agency shows the six-legged Abigaille climbing robot, which is able to transition from vertical to horizontal surfaces.

Credit: ESA

Researchers at Canada's Simon Fraser University first built a 240-gramme (eight-ounce) tank-like gecko-bot, using tracks with microfibre treads.

They then developed this into a six-legged climbing robot, nicknamed Abigaille.

"This approach is an example of biomimicry, taking engineering solutions from the natural world," said team leader Mike Henrey.

The "dry adhesive" that helps Abigaille climb walls has now been put through its paces at a materials-testing lab at ESA's European Space and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Replicating the vacuum and temperatures of space, but not the zero gravity, the tests found that the adhesive worked like a charm, the agency said.

"A depth-sensing indentation instrument was used inside a vacuum chamber to precisely assess the dry adhesive's sticking performance," ESA specialist Laurent Pambaguian said in a press release.

"Experimental success means deployment in space might one day be possible."

ESA Planck study: Cold Gas Pockets May Point to Star Formation, Cosmos Blueprint

(Photo: ESA/Planck)
Distribution of carbon monoxide (CO), a molecule used by astronomers to trace molecular clouds across the sky, as seen by Planck (blue). 

A compilation of previous surveys, which left large areas of the sky unobserved, has been superimposed for comparison (red). The outlines identify the portions of the sky covered by these surveys.
 
Astronomers are closer to uncovering a blueprint of the cosmos after finding islands of cold gas and mysterious microwaves and for the first time map out carbon dioxide through the universe.

The discovery came from the Planck mission from the European Space Agency and was presented at an international conference in Bologna, Italy.

Most people think of carbon monoxide as a poisonous gas sometimes found in households, but an international team mapped out carbon monoxide that is part of the cold clouds in the Milky Way and other galaxies.

Astronomers hypothesized that these hydrogen-rich regions could be the birth places for stars.

"The great advantage of Planck is that it scans the whole sky, allowing us to detect concentrations of molecular gas where we didn't expect to find them," Planck collaborator Jonathan Aumont from the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, Universite Paris XI, Orsay, France, said in a statement.

The microwave haze defied explanation, according to scientists, who are still studying the dataset.

"The results achieved thus far by Planck on the galactic haze and on the carbon monoxide distribution provide us with a fresh view on some interesting processes taking place in our galaxy," Jan Tauber, ESA's Project Scientist for Planck, said in a statement.

The astronomers plan to release the Planck dataset in 2013.

For more details click here.

Close Encounters of the Galactic Kind

These two composite images show a sample of the pairs of galaxies that are undergoing close encounters in the survey. 

In these images, the data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple and Hubble Space Telescope data are in gold. 

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/IPMU/J.Silverman et al; Optical: NASA/STScI/Caltech/N.Scoville et al.

Astronomers have used a large survey to test a prediction that close encounters between galaxies can trigger the rapid growth of supermassive black holes. Key to this work was Chandra's unique ability to pinpoint actively growing black holes through the X-rays they generate.

The researchers looked at 562 pairs of galaxies ranging in distances from about 3 billion to 8 billion light years from Earth. They found that the galaxies in the early stages of an encounter with another were more likely than isolated, or "lonelier" galaxies to have actively growing black holes in their cores.

These two composite images show a sample of the pairs of galaxies that are undergoing close encounters in the survey. In these images, the data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple and Hubble Space Telescope data are in gold.

In both images, the point-like X-ray source near the center is generated by gas that has been heated to millions of degrees as it falls toward a supermassive black hole located in the middle of its host galaxy.

The other faint X-ray emission may be caused by hot gas associated with the pair of galaxies.

The authors of the study estimate that nearly one-fifth of all moderately active black holes are found in galaxies undergoing the early stages of an interaction.

This leaves open the question of what events are responsible for fueling the remaining 80% of growing black holes.

Some of these may involve the late stages of mergers between two galaxies. Less violent events such as gas falling in from the halo of the galaxy, or the disruption of small satellite galaxies are also likely to play an important role.

The survey used in this research is called the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), which covers two square degrees on the sky with observations from several major space-based observatories including Chandra and Hubble.

Accurate distance information about the galaxies was also derived from optical observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The researchers compared a sample of 562 galaxies in pairs with 2726 solo galaxies to come to their conclusions.

Activating a Supermassive Black Hole

This very deep image shows the COSMOS field imaged by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). Huge numbers of very faint galaxies are visible.

A new study of this field, combining data from ESO's Very Large Telescope and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has turned up a big surprise.

Most of the huge black holes in the centres of active galaxies in the past 11 billion years were not turned on by mergers between galaxies, as had been previously thought.

Some of the active galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centres that were used in the new study are marked with red crosses on this picture.

Credit: CFHT/IAP/Terapix/CNRS/ESO

Carl Sagan and the Blue Dot

Click on the picture to play the GIF!

Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) finds 'Slingshot in Space'

There are two possible explanations for this 'slingshot' in space: kickback by a triple black hole system, or the effects of gravitational waves produced after two supermassive black holes merged a few million years earlier.

The discovery of this object comes from a large, multi-wavelength survey, known as the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS).

This survey includes data from Chandra, HST, XMM- Newton, as well as ground-based observatories.

Of the 2,600 X-ray sources found in COSMOS, only one -- named CID-42 and located in a galaxy about 3.9 billion light years away -- coincides with two very close, compact optical sources.

Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Civano et al. Optical: NASA/STScI

Russian Satellite Burns up over Central Mexico

A loud explosion and ball of fire that people in central Mexico reported seeing in the sky was actually a Russian satellite plunging back to earth, experts said Thursday.

"We think it was the space wreckage of a Russian satellite that was catalogued by the Department of Defense of the United States and which we knew could pass over Mexican territory," said Fernando de la Peno, an engineer who is also a chief proponent of establishing a Mexican space agency.

Reports of a large meteorite reached Mexican media and police on Wednesday from the Hidalgo and Puebla states.

Many said they felt the ground shake with the blast and some reported seeing a huge crater on the ground blown out by the fiery object. But nothing was found after a through search of the area on Thursday.

De la Pena said the space debris was likely the Cosmos 2421 reconnaissance satellite launched by the Russian Navy in June 2006 that malfunctioned and broke apart into 15 pieces two years later.

To boldly grow....

Gardener on the Moon
A greenhouse to grow mustard flowers will piggyback on a lunar lander being developed by Odyssey Moon, a competitor in the Google Lunar X Prize contest (Illustration: Paragon Space Development)

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