Boeing’s CST-100 capsule (short for Commercial Space Transportation-100) is being designed to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and other destinations in low-Earth orbit. The spacecraft will initially launch from Florida atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket, but the company is not ruling out other booster options in the future, officials have said.

The capsule is being designed as part of a NASA program that supports the development of a new fleet of commercially built spaceships to fill the gap made by the retirement of the shuttle program.

“It’s been an interesting last couple of years for us,” Roger Krone, president of Boeing’s network and space systems, told reporters this month. “I think many people in the industry associate Boeing with the shuttle program and the International Space Station. [This is] kind of a chance for us to rethink what our space strategy is.”

A private space race

Boeing is one of several competitors, including SpaceX and Sierra Nevada, who are engaged in a private space race to build new manned space taxis. Boeing is aiming to have the CST-100 ready to launch the first crew in 2015, but this is heavily dependent on the amount of funding received by NASA, said John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Boeing’s space exploration division. [Photos: Boeing's Space Capsule CST-100]

“We could launch as early as 2015, depending on funding, but the way the budget is laid out, it most likely will be 2016,” Elbon said.

Over the last two years, NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program has divided $320 million among four American spacecraft builders: SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada and Boeing. So far, the agency has awarded Boeing with approximately $120 million for the company’s work on the CST-100 capsule.

But funding for the program has been an ongoing challenge.

In 2012, Congress gave just $406 million for commercial crew development in 2012, which was less than half of the $850 million originally requested by NASA.

The bleak budget environment has already delayed NASA’s first planned launch aboard a commercial spacecraft by two years, and the agency will likely face more financial constraints going forward.

In its fiscal year 2013 budget, NASA has requested $830 million for the commercial crew program, but two bills that were recently approved in the House and Senate would set aside only $500 million and $525 million, respectively, for the agency to support the development of these new spaceships.

Building a spaceship

Still, Boeing is forging ahead with the development of the CST-100. The capsule recently underwent a parachute drop test from a helicopter on April 3 at the Delamar Dry Lake Bed near Alamo, Nev.

“The CST-100 is set up to land in the desert on airbags,” Elbon said. “On this test, we dropped from a helicopter and checked the deployment and operation of three large chutes.”

Boeing will conduct another test in early May to evaluate the performance of the parachutes that are designed to slow the capsule’s descent after it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, he added.

The gumdrop-shaped CST-100 spacecraft will be able to seat as many as seven astronauts. The capsule measures 14.8 feet (4.5 meters) across at its widest point and will be reusable for up to 10 flights, company officials have said.

The CST-100 design is similar to NASA’s cone-shaped Apollo spacecraft, and the capsule utilizes proven technology from the Apollo and space shuttle programs. While the CST-100 is expected to make ground landings, the spacecraft will also be able to land in the water in case of an abort situation. [Inside Boeing's CST-100 Space Capsule (Infographic)]

NASA is relying on commercial spaceships to eventually carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. After 30 years and 135 missions, the agency retired the space shuttle program to focus on exploration beyond low-Earth orbit, such as an asteroid or Mars. The agency hopes to be able to pay for flights aboard American-made commercial vehicles by 2015, to close the current gap in human spaceflight.

“Its role is to provide affordable transportation to the space station so there’s money left in the budget to develop beyond [low-Earth orbit] capability,” Elbon said.

Building a commercial market

Boeing is also partnered with Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, which is developing commercially operated inflatable space habitats, and Virginia-based Space Adventures, a space tourism firm that intends to sell open seats on the CST-100 for paid jaunts to destinations in low-Earth orbit.

These combined ventures should help Boeing develop a dynamic and viable business case, Elbon said.

“There is significant potential for a commercial market to grow once transportation to low-Earth orbit is available,” Elbon said. “There’s definite interest there. It’s certainly a doable thing to have [Bigelow's] customers, which are primarily countries that can’t afford their own space programs.

“Whether or not you can close a business case on that alone is something we haven’t determined is a feasible thing if that’s the only market we’re going after. Transportation to the space station and allowing the commercial market to develop in parallel is something very workable,” Elbon added. “I think if NASA was the only business, this wouldn’t be such an exciting venture — it wouldn’t be such an attractive business case.” Yahoo Daily News

Between 20 and 30 fragments of the probe with a total weight of up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) will survive the fiery plunge and shower the Earth’s surface, Roscosmos warned in a statement.

The agency said the unmanned Phobos-Ground spacecraft will plummet to Earth between Jan. 6 and Jan. 19, and the rough area of where the fragments could fall could only be calculated a few days ahead of its plunge.

While the agency had lost contact with the probe following its launch on Nov. 9, this was the first time acknowledged that the $170-million craft has been lost and will come crashing down.

Since its November launch the engineers in Russia and at the European Space Agency have attempted unsuccessfully to propel it away from Earths orbit and toward its target.

Phobos-Ground weighs 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons), which includes 11 metric tons (12 tons) of highly toxic fuel. Experts had warned that if the fuel has frozen, some could survive entry into Earth and pose a serious threat if it falls over populated areas.

But Roscosmos said it is sure that all fuel will burn on re-entry some 100 kilometers (330,000 feet) above the ground and pose no danger. It said that 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of Cobalt-57, a radioactive metal contained in one of the craft’s instruments, will not pose a threat of radioactive contamination.

The failed mission was the latest in a series of recent Russian launch failures that have raised concerns about the condition of the country’s space industries. By Vladimir Isachenkov, The Miami Herald

An international team, led by the Australian National University, compared models of temperature and pressure conditions on Earth with those on Mars to estimate how much of the distant planet was liveable for Earth-like organisms.

While just one per cent of Earth’s volume — from core to upper atmosphere — was occupied by life, the scientists said their world-first modelling showed three per cent of Mars was habitable, though most of it was underground.

“What we tried to do, simply, was take almost all of the information we could and put it together and say ‘is the big picture consistent with there being life on Mars?’. And the simple answer is yes. There are large regions of Mars that are compatible with terrestrial life,” the media quoted Charley Lineweaver, who led the team, as saying.

Where previous studies had taken a “piecemeal” approach by examining particular sites on Mars for potential signs of life, Lineweaver said that his research was a “comprehensive compilation” of the entire planet using decades of data.

Mars’ average surface temperature is minus 63 degrees Celsius.

Frozen water has been found at the poles on Mars and the ANU study examined how much of the planet could sustain water “that could be habitable by Earth-like standards by Earth-like microbes”, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

Lineweaver said his study was “the best estimate yet published of how habitable Mars is to terrestrial microbes” and a significant finding given mankind had evolved from microbial life. Indian Express

It is among 500 planets found to orbit stars beyond our solar system – and the smallest and the best-positioned to have liquid water on its surface.

Kepler-22b could prove a key to the ongoing quest to learn if life exists beyond Earth.

San Jose State University astronomer Natalie Batalha, of Nasa’s Kepler Space Telescope which made the discovery, said: “We are homing in on the true Earth-sized, habitable planets.”

And Douglas Hudgins, Kepler programme scientist at Nasa, said: “This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin.”

The telescope, which was launched three years ago, is staring at about 150,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

It looks for faint and periodic dimming as any circling planets pass by, relative to Kepler’s line of sight.

The results are used to assess how many of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy harbour potentially habitable, Earth-size planets.

Kepler-22b is the first such planet orbiting a Sun-like star discovered, scientists reported in findings to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Planets about the same distance from their parent stars as Earth take roughly a year to complete an orbit.

Scientists want to see at least three transits to be able to rule out other explanations for fluctuations in a star’s light, such as small companion stars.

Results are also verified by ground and other space telescopes.

Kepler-22b, which is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth, sits squarely in its star’s so-called “habitable zone”, the region where liquid water could exist on the surface.

Scientists say that if the planet has a surface and a cushion of atmosphere similar to Earth’s, it would be about 72F (22C), about the same as a spring day in Earth’s temperate zone.

:: A light year is the distance light travels in a year, about six trillion miles.

French astronomers earlier this year confirmed the first rocky exoplanet to meet key requirements for sustaining life. But Kepler-22b, initially glimpsed in 2009, is the first the US space agency has been able to confirm.

Confirmation means that astronomers have seen it crossing in front of its star three times. But it doesn’t mean that astronomers know whether life actually exists there, simply that the conditions are right.

Such planets have the right distance from their star to support water, plus a suitable temperature and atmosphere to support life.

“We have now got good planet confirmation with Kepler-22b,” said Bill Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at Nasa Ames Research Center.

“We are certain that it is in the habitable zone and if it has a surface, it ought to have a nice temperature,” he told reporters.

Spinning around its star some 600 light years away, Kepler-22b is 2.4 times the size of the Earth, putting it in class known as “super-Earths,” and orbits its Sun-like star every 290 days.

Its near-surface temperature is presumed to be about 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 Celsius). Scientists do not know, however, whether the planet is rocky, gaseous or liquid.

The planet’s first “transit,” or star crossover, was captured shortly after Nasa launched its Kepler spacecraft in March 2009.

Nasa also announced that Kepler has uncovered 1,094 more potential planets, twice the number it previously had been tracking, according to research being presented at a conference in California this week.

Kepler is Nasa’s first mission in search of Earth-like planets orbiting suns similar to ours, and cost the US space agency about $600 million.

It is equipped with the largest camera ever sent into space – a 95-megapixel array of charge-coupled devices – and is expected to continue sending information back to Earth until at least November 2012.

Kepler is searching for planets as small as Earth, including those orbiting stars in a warm, habitable zone where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet.

The latest confirmed exoplanet that could support life brings to three the total number confirmed by global astronomers.

In addition to French astronomers’ confirmed finding of Gliese 581d in May, Swiss astronomers reported in August that another planet, HD 85512 b, about 36 light years away seemed to be in the habitable zone of its star.

However, those two planets are “orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our Sun,” Nasa said in a statement, noting that Kepler-22b “is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our Sun.”

“The Europeans have also been very active, actively working on confirming our candidates,” said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at San Jose State University.

“They have already confirmed two that are published and they have got another batch that are on the preprint servers so those will be, I’m sure, in the published literature soon,” she added.

“So we are just thrilled about this. We need all telescopes observing these candidates so we can confirm as many as possible.”

A total of 48 exoplanets and exomoons are potential habitable candidates, among a total of 2,326 possibilities that Kepler has identified so far. NZ Herald

But the Mars500 crewmembers are not the only ones who have faced extreme conditions in simulating a real space mission. An international team of five astronauts recently completed a spaceflight training mission in Europe that required them to live and work in a dark and isolated cave for nearly a week.

The September training mission was organized by the European Space Agency to simulate aspects of a real space exploration mission. The astronauts were stationed deep within a complex cave system on the Italian island of Sardinia in the Mediterranean.

For six days, the astronauts lived and worked in the island’s caves, exploring areas that are unmapped and largely undisturbed, as part of the CAVES 2011 expedition. The crew re-emerged to the surface on Sept. 21.

The CAVES 2011 exercise was designed to simulate aspects of a spaceflight mission, including operating in a potentially dangerous environment and working with an international crew.

“Even for astronauts, life in the dark, cool, humid underground environment can be a completely new situation, with interesting psychological and logistical problems,” Loredana Bessone, an astronaut trainer at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany, said in a statement. “The cave environment is isolated from the outside world. There is confinement, minimal privacy, technical challenges and limited equipment and supplies for hygiene and comfort — just like in space.” [Amazing Caves Around the World]

Working as a team

Bessone has used caves as training grounds before, but this recent excursion was the first that included such a diverse group of astronauts. The team was made up of European astronauts Tim Peake and Thomas Pesquet, NASA astronaut Randolph Bresnik, Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai, and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov.

“Everyone was focused and we had a great time together,” Pesquet said. “Being in a cave was something like mountaineering, but much more challenging — with isolation, darkness and the need for full situational awareness to avoid snagging ourselves on sharp rocks or crevices.”

Despite the physical challenges of living in a cave, the astronauts also had to cope with language barriers and cultural differences, which proved to be a valuable lesson, and one that spaceflyers often have to deal with on real missions.

“It was a rare opportunity to experience problems encountered during a space mission in a training environment,” Peake said. “Our mission required teamwork and working through problems as a small international team where different cultures and primary languages require consideration.”

Making it realistic

The CAVES 2011 mission was also structured like a real space mission, with planning sessions held twice a day, a dedicated telephone line at the cave’s mouth to speak to a support team, and daily routines governed by detailed timelines.

But, like space missions, the crew also had to troubleshoot issues on their own and make on-the-spot decisions based on their previous training. [Gallery: Visions of the Future of Human Spaceflight]

“The most exciting moments were the times when we were in unknown passages and had to make decisions on how to proceed and how to organize ourselves,” Pesquet said. “We encountered underground lakes, had to decide if we used ropes or an inflatable boat … should we continue together or divide into small groups … and so on.”

The astronauts also completed a variety of science objectives along the way, including mapping, photography, monitoring air flow, temperature and humidity. Crewmembers also took geological and microbiological samples as part of their exploration.

And even though the astronauts never stepped foot off planet Earth during the CAVES 2011 mission, the expedition was a more accurate spaceflight simulation than you might think.

“It took about five hours to come back from the cave to our campsite, requiring technical caving and a support team to help us,” Peak said. “We really had a feeling of being far away. When we came back, everything on the surface looked strange: the blue of the sky and other colors looked painted and all the smells of nature were so strong. The real world felt all too real, exaggerated.”

At the completion of the mission, the crewmembers were debriefed and performed a report on the experience. The data will be used to prepare training runs for the next round of “cavenauts,” officials at the European Space Agency said. By Denise Chow, Yahoo Daily News

A defunct German research satellite crashed into the Earth somewhere in Southeast Asia on Sunday, a U.S. scientist said — but no one is still quite sure where.

Most parts of the minivan-sized ROSAT research satellite were expected to burn up as they hit the atmosphere at speeds up to 280 mph (450 kph), but up to 30 fragments weighing a total of 1.87 tons (1.7 metric tons) could have crashed, the German Aerospace Center said.

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the satellite appears to have gone down over Southeast Asia. He said two Chinese cities with millions of inhabitants each, Chongqing and Chengdu, had been in the satellite’s projected path during its re-entry time.

“But if it had come down over a populated area there probably would be reports by now,” the astrophysicist, who tracks man-made space objects, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Calculations based on U.S. military data indicate that satellite debris must have crashed somewhere east of Sri Lanka over the Indian Ocean, or over the Andaman Sea off the coast of Myanmar, or further inland in Myanmar or as far inland as China, he said.

The satellite entered the atmosphere between 0145 GMT to 0215 GMT Sunday (9:45 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. Saturday EDT) and would have taken 15 minutes or less to hit the ground, the German Aerospace Center said. Hours before the re-entry, the center said the satellite was not expected to land in Europe, Africa or Australia.

There were no immediate reports from Asian governments or space agencies about the fallen satellite.

The satellite used to circle the planet in about 90 minutes, and it may have traveled several thousand kilometers (miles) during its re-entry, rendering exact predictions of where it crashed difficult.

German space agency spokesman Andreas Schuetz said a falling satellite also can change its flight pattern or even its direction once it sinks to within 90 miles (150 kilometers) above the Earth.

Schuetz said the agency was waiting for data from scientific partners around the globe. He noted it took the U.S. space agency NASA several days to establish where one of its satellites had hit last month.

The 2.69-ton (2.4 metric ton) scientific ROSAT satellite was launched in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 1990 and retired in 1999 after being used for research on black holes and neutron stars and performing the first all-sky survey of X-ray sources with an imaging telescope.

ROSAT’s largest single fragment that could have hit is the telescope’s heavy heat-resistant mirror.

“The impact would be similar to, say, an airliner having dropped an engine,” said McDowell. “It would damage whatever it fell on, but it wouldn’t have widespread consequences.”

A dead NASA satellite fell into the southern Pacific Ocean last month, causing no damage but spreading debris over a 500-mile (800-kilometer) area.

Since 1991, space agencies have adopted new procedures to lessen space junk and having satellites falling back to Earth. NASA says it has no more large satellites that will fall back to Earth uncontrolled in the next 25 years. By Juergen Baetz, Knox News

It seems that previous models have greatly underestimated the quantities of water vapour at heights of 20-50 km.

This surprising discovery has major implications for understanding the Martian water cycle and the historical evolution of the atmosphere, researchers say.

Using data from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, astronomers determined that water in the upper Martian atmosphere undergoes a process known as supersaturation – something astronomers thought could not occur on the dry, dusty planet.

Under normal conditions on Earth, water vapour condenses around tiny dust or aerosol particles or salts when the atmospheric temperature drops below a certain “dew point”.

The atmosphere is then said to be “saturated”, since it cannot hold any more moisture at that temperature and pressure. Any water vapour in excess of the “dew point” will normally condense to form droplets or icy crystals.

However, supersaturation may occur when some of the water vapour remains in the atmosphere, instead of condensing or freezing. When condensation nuclei (assumed to be dust aerosols on Mars) are too rare, condensation is impeded, leaving substantial amounts of excess vapour.

Until now, it was generally assumed that such supersaturation cannot exist in the cold Martian atmosphere.

However, the SPICAM data have revealed that supersaturation occurs frequently in the middle atmosphere – at altitudes of up to 50 km above the surface – during the aphelion season, the period when Mars is near its farthest point from the Sun. Newstrack India

NASA chief Charles Bolden made the announcement of the design for the new Space Launch System, which the space agency touted as the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V rocket put US astronauts on the moon.

“President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that’s exactly what we are doing at NASA,” said Mr Bolden. “While I was proud to fly on the space shuttle, tomorrow’s explorers will now dream of one day walking on Mars.”

The launcher, which will take until 2017 to build and cost an estimated $US35 billion ($33.99 billion), will fill a gap in US manned flight program created by the retirement of the last US space shuttle in July after.

But NASA said it will be far more powerful, capable of carrying much larger payloads beyond low-Earth orbit deep into space, and eventually to Mars.

Still, the so-called Space Launch System borrows heavily from the space shuttle, said John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

For instance, the first stage of the new launcher will use the shuttle’s cryogenic engine fuelled with a mix of hydrogen and oxygen kept at very low temperatures, he said.

The system will be topped with a capsule initially capable of carrying into space payloads of 70 to 100 metric tonnes, and expanded over time to carry up to 130 metric tonnes.

“The booster will be America’s most powerful since the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon and will launch humans to places no-one has gone before,” NASA said.

“The SLS will carry human crews beyond low-Earth orbit in a capsule named the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle,” NASA said.

The first test launch is scheduled for 2017 followed by manned flights in 2021.

NASA could use it for a mission to an asteroid in 2025. NASA has indicated that it expects to send astronauts around Mars before eventually landing on the red plan, but not before 2030. The Daily Telegraph Australia

A collision between the two created the mountainous highlands on the moon’s far side that have long puzzled scientists, according to this theory.

The side of the moon facing the Earth and the side facing away have strikingly different topographies. While the near side is relatively low and flat, the far side is high and mountainous with a much thicker crust.

Scientists have proposed different theories to explain this lack of symmetry. One leading idea is that gravitational tidal forces reshaped the moon’s crust and made it lopsided.

The new US theory builds on the “giant impact” model that explains the moon’s creation.

Many experts believe a Mars-sized object collided with the Earth early in the Solar System’s history, ejecting debris that was later drawn together by gravity to form the moon.

The “second” moon is also thought to have been generated by the giant impact, remaining in orbit for tens of millions of years.

The two moons collided relatively slowly, according to the theory described today in the journal Nature . Such low velocity impacts do not produce craters or cause much melting. Instead, most of the colliding material is piled onto the impacted hemisphere as a thick new layer of solid crust.

This could have formed the mountainous region now seen on the far side of the moon.

“Our model works well with models of the moon-forming giant impact, which predict there should be massive debris left in orbit about the Earth, besides the moon itself,” said lead researcher Professor Erik Asphaug, from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC)

.“It agrees with what is known about the dynamical stability of such a system, the timing of the cooling of the moon, and the ages of lunar rocks.” UCSC colleague Professor Francis Nimmo, one of the authors of the “tidal forces” theory, said: “The fact that the near side of the moon looks so different to the far side has been a puzzle since the dawn of the space age, perhaps second only to the origin of the moon itself.

“One of the elegant aspects of Erik’s article is that it links these two puzzles together: perhaps the giant collision that formed the moon also spalled off some smaller bodies, one of which later fell back to the moon to cause the dichotomy that we see today.”

Right now there is not enough data to say which of the two hypotheses is most likely to be correct, he added. Irish Times