Air Force's Mysterious X-37B Space Plane Survives 1 Year in Orbit

by Leonard David, SPACE.com’s Space Insider Columnist

Date: 06 March 2012 Time: 01:02 PM ET

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center image shows on-orbit functions for the reusable X-37 space plane, now under the wing of the U.S. Air Force. CREDIT: NASA/MSFC

The U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane has celebrated a silent anniversary, surpassing an entire year in Earth orbit on a mystery mission for American military. Meanwhile, a third X-37B space plane mission is being readied, and could even launch later this year, SPACE.com has learned.
The X-37B space plane currently orbiting Earth is the second spacecraft of its kind built for the Air Force by Boeing’s Phantom Works. Known as the Orbital Test Vehicle 2, or OTV-2, its classified mission is under the wing of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.

MORE: http://www.space.com/14799-secret-air-force-space-plane-x37b.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29

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Titanic Sunk by the Moon?

What sank the Titanic? Scientists point to the moon

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO | Tue Mar 6, 2012 3:30pm EST
 

(Reuters) - A century after the Titanic disaster, scientists have found an unexpected culprit for the sinking: the moon.
Anyone who knows history or has seen the blockbuster movies knows that the cause of the transatlantic liner's accident 100 years ago next month was that it hit an iceberg.
"But the lunar connection may explain how an unusually large number of icebergs got into the path of the Titanic," said Donald Olson, a Texas State University physicist whose team of forensic astronomers examined the moon's role.
Ever since the Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912, killing 1,517 people, researchers have puzzled over Captain Edward Smith's seeming disregard of warnings that icebergs were in the area where the ship was sailing.
MORE: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/06/us-titanic-moon-idUSTRE8251LC20120306

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Glenn A. Walsh, Project Director,
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Electronic Mail - < gawalsh@planetarium.cc >
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Subatomic particle discovery pushes limits of current physics

It could help shed light on mystery of why universe is made mostly of matter, not antimatter

CERN / Maximilien Brice, Rachel Barbier

Members of the LHCb team stand in front of their experiment, the LHCb detecor, at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

By Clara Moskowitz

updated 3/5/2012 4:40:20 PM ET

 

Observations of extremely rare subatomic particle actions have allowed scientists to put one of the most stringent limits yet on the reigning theory of particle physics.

Physicists at the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, have watched a type of particle called B mesons decay into other particles called muons — a very unusual occurrence. By measuring just how often this happens, the scientists can test predictions made by the Standard Model, the theory that governs the realm of these tiny particles.
This theory is very successful at describing all of the known building blocks of matter, including the protons, neutrons and electrons that make up atoms, and many of their more exotic cousins. Yet physicists know the Standard Model is incomplete because it doesn't include dark matter or dark energy.

MORE: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46632004/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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Glenn A. Walsh, Project Director,
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Electronic Mail - < gawalsh@planetarium.cc >
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* Buhl Planetarium, Pittsburgh:
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Can Humans See 'Spooky' Quantum Images?

Jesse Emspak, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 04 March 2012 Time: 09:37 AM ET

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What do you think the world would look like if we could see such higher-order images, in which two tiny particles are entangled even when separated by large distances in space? CREDIT: optimarc | Shutterstock View full size image

Quantum physics deals with the realm of the very small, and most of us never expect to see the weird world it describes. But could we? Recently, scientist Geraldo Barbosa of Northwestern University designed an experiment to answer that question.
The quantum effect Barbosa is hoping to see is called quantum entanglement, in which two or more particles can become "entangled" so that even after they are separated in space, when an action is performed on one particle, the other particle responds immediately.
A common experiment illustrating entanglement is to fire a laser at a special type of crystal. Occasionally a photon particle from the laser "splits" into two. The energy and momentum of the two new photons each add up to the value of the one originally fired.


MORE: http://www.livescience.com/18814-humans-spooky-quantum-entanglement.html

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Glenn A. Walsh, Project Director,
Friends of the Zeiss < http://friendsofthezeiss.org >
Electronic Mail - < gawalsh@planetarium.cc >
SPACE & SCIENCE NEWS, ASTRONOMICAL CALENDAR:
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Mars Has Close Encounter With Earth Tonight

by Tariq Malik, SPACE.com Managing Editor

Date: 05 March 2012 Time: 03:25 PM ET

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This sky map shows where Mars will appear in the eastern sky on March 5, 2012 at 8 p.m. local time to observers at mid-northern latitudes. CREDIT: Starry Night Software View full size image

The planet Mars will make its closest swing by Earth in more than two years tonight (March 5), just days after reaching a celestial milestone called "opposition" as it circles the sun.
Tonight, the orbit of Mars will bring the Red Planet within about 63 million miles (112 million kilometers) of Earth. At this time, Mars is closer to Earth than at any other point of its 26-month journey around the sun.

MORE: http://www.space.com/14788-mars-close-encounter-earth-skywatching.html







gaw

Glenn A. Walsh, Project Director,
Friends of the Zeiss < http://friendsofthezeiss.org >
Electronic Mail - < gawalsh@planetarium.cc >
SPACE & SCIENCE NEWS, ASTRONOMICAL CALENDAR:
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Blog: < http://spacewatchtower.blogspot.com/ >
Author of History Web Sites on the Internet --
* Buhl Planetarium, Pittsburgh:
  < http://www.planetarium.cc >
* Adler Planetarium, Chicago:
  < http://adlerplanetarium.tripod.com >
* Astronomer, Educator, Optician John A. Brashear:
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* Andrew Carnegie & Carnegie Libraries:
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Project at Carnegie Mellon is to put a robot on moon

By Debra Erdley, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, March 5, 2012

Photos

click to enlarge

William "Red" Whittaker
Andrew Russell | Tribune-Review

About the writer

Deb Erdley is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review staff writer and can be reached at 412-320-7996 or via e-mail.

William "Red" Whittaker is still shooting for the moon.
But Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor and CEO of Astrobotic Technology Inc., says his team has pushed back its plans to land a robot on the moon by a year — to May 2015 — to tailor a robot suited to the expedition's new destination: the lunar south pole.
The CMU/Astrobotic team is competing to claim a portion of a multimillion-dollar prize for landing a robot on the moon. The team's new plan calls for a robot prospector to drill for ice samples at the moon's south pole to try to confirm the existence of water there, a possibility lunar orbiters and a lunar penetrator have strongly suggested in recent years.
"It is high-risk and high-return," Whittaker said.

MORE: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/education/s_784867.html

gaw

Glenn A. Walsh, Project Director,
Friends of the Zeiss < http://friendsofthezeiss.org >
Electronic Mail - < gawalsh@planetarium.cc >
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* Buhl Planetarium, Pittsburgh:
  < http://www.planetarium.cc >
* Adler Planetarium, Chicago:
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* Andrew Carnegie & Carnegie Libraries:
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No, asteroid 2012 DA14 will not hit us next year

No, asteroid 2012 DA14 will not hit us next year

For the tl;dr crowd, let’s get this out of the way right away: asteroid 2012 DA14 is almost certainly not going to hit the Earth next February. And by "almost certainly", I mean it: the odds of an impact are so low they are essentially zero. This does not rule out an impact at some future date, but for now we’re safe.

---

So what’s the story?
A small near-Earth asteroid was discovered in late February by astronomers at the Observatorio Astronómico de La Sagra in Spain, less than two weeks ago. Designated 2012 DA14, it’s estimated to be about 45 meters (150 feet) in diameter, and has an orbit that is similar to Earth’s.


Its orbit is an inclined ellipse, tilted a bit compared to Earth’s orbit around the Sun (the positions of Earth and DA14 are shown for August of 2012 — I picked that randomly to make the orbits clear), and it spends most of its time well away from our planet. However, the path of the rock does bring it somewhat close to the Earth twice per orbit, or about every six months. The last time it passed us was on February 16 – two weeks ago — when it was about 2.5 million km (1.5 million miles) away, equal to about 6 times the distance to the Moon. That’s usually about the scale of these encounters — it misses us by quite a margin.

MORE: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/03/04/no-asteroid-2012-da14-will-not-hit-us-next-year/

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Glenn A. Walsh, Project Director,
Friends of the Zeiss < http://friendsofthezeiss.org >
Electronic Mail - < gawalsh@planetarium.cc >
SPACE & SCIENCE NEWS, ASTRONOMICAL CALENDAR:
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Author of History Web Sites on the Internet --
* Buhl Planetarium, Pittsburgh:
  < http://www.planetarium.cc >
* Adler Planetarium, Chicago:
  < http://adlerplanetarium.tripod.com >
* Astronomer, Educator, Optician John A. Brashear:
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* Andrew Carnegie & Carnegie Libraries:
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* Civil War Museum of Andrew Carnegie Free Library:
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* Duquesne Incline cable-car railway, Pittsburgh:
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