Eole Water claims to have successfully modified the traditional wind turbine design to create the WMS1000, an appliance that can manufacture drinking water from humid air.

The company aims to start rolling out the giant products for sale later in 2012, initially focusing on remote communities in arid countries where water resources are scarce.

“This technology could enable rural areas to become self-sufficient in terms of water supply,” says Thibault Janin, director of marketing at Eole Water.

“As the design and capabilities develop, the next step will be to create turbines that can provide water for small cities or areas with denser populations,” he adds.

Eole Water is currently displaying a working prototype of the 24 meter tall WMS1000 in the desert near Abu Dhabi that has been able to produce 62 liters of water an hour, says Janin. Newsvine

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

“Facilitating access to the Internet for all individuals, with as little restriction to online content as possible, should be a priority for all States,” says the report, published on May 16 by Frank La Rue, a “special rapporteur” for the UN’s Human Rights Council.

“… The unique features of the Internet, which allow individuals to spread information instantly, to organize themselves, and to inform the world about situations of injustice and inequality, have also created fear among Governments and the powerful,” La Rue said in a press release.

The report urges states to avoid or amend any laws that “permit users to be disconnected from Internet access.”

Wired’s Threat Level, which was first to point out the report, said that La Rue was also “alarmed” by recent decisions by the UK and France to allow unplugging illegal file sharers.

The UN report defines Internet access to include both free information flow as well as access to infrastructure, “such as cables, modems, computers and software, to access the Internet in the first place.”

In the recent past, governments have restricted access to the Internet as they got wind of uprisings. Earlier today, after escalating conflict in the country, large parts of Syria lost access to the Internet. Egypt’s goverment similarly blocked access to the Internet in the early days of its spring revolution, and Bahrain’s connection slowed as demonstrations got underway there. Newswing

At noon, local time Monday (10 p.m. ET Sunday), the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker’s “vertical torpedo” sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, some 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Guam.

After a descent that took roughly two and a half hours, Cameron spent about three hours conducting the first manned scientific exploration of Challenger Deep.

For his return trip, Cameron experienced a faster-than-expected, roughly 70-minute ascent, which he described as a “heckuva ride.”

Bobbing in the open ocean, his custom-designed sub, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, was spotted by helicopter and plucked from the Pacific by a research ship’s crane.

The expedition was designed so that Cameron could spend up to six hours collecting samples and video at the bottom of the trench. But his mission was cut short due in part to a hydraulic fluid leak that coated the window of the sub’s “pilot sphere,” obscuring his view.

“I lost hydraulics toward the latter part of dive, and I was unable to use the manipulator arm,” Cameron said this morning during a post-dive press conference held aboard the Octopus, a yacht owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, a longtime Cameron friend. (Allen was on the scene for the historic dive and posted live updates of the event on Twitter from aboard his yacht, which provided backup support for the mission.)

Considering the daunting task of sending humans into the deep, such technical glitches are to be expected, Cameron emphasized: “It’s a prototype vehicle, so it’s gonna take time to iron out the bugs.

“The important thing is that we have a vehicle that’s a robust platform—it gets us there safely, the lights work, the cameras work, and hopefully next time the hydraulics will work.”

And although he wasn’t able to capture as many samples on this first dive as science teams might have been hoping for, “that just means I gotta go back and get some more,” said Cameron, also a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence.

In fact, he and sub co-designer Ron Allum, managing director of the Australia-based Acheron Project research and design company, already have more dives planned in the coming weeks as part of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE project, a partnership with the National Geographic Society and Rolex. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

“I see this as the beginning … of opening up this frontier to science and really understanding these deep places,” Cameron said.

Little Life Found in the Deepest Place on Earth

Aboard the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, Cameron had a host of tools at his disposal, including a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges. (See pictures of Cameron’s sub.)

The sub is also outfitted with multiple 3-D cameras and an 8-foot (2.5-meter) tower of LEDs.

But in part due to the hydraulics leak and a host of lost thrusters, Cameron wasn’t able to capture any biological samples, and an attempted sediment core sample was only partially retrieved.

“I didn’t see big jellyfish and big anemones like I saw [during test dives] at the New Britain Trench,” off Papua New Guinea, Cameron said. (See “Giant ‘Amoebas’ Found in Deepest Place on Earth.”)

At Challenger Deep “I landed on a very soft, almost gelatinous flat plain. Once I got my bearings, I drove across it for quite a distance … and finally worked my way up the slope.”

The whole time, Cameron said, he didn’t see any fish, or any living creatures more than an inch (2.5 centimeters) long: “The only free swimmers I saw were small amphipods”—shrimplike bottom-feeders that appear to be common across most marine environments.

“When I was in the New Britain Trench a couple weeks ago, the bottom was covered in the tracks of small animals, which gave it an eggshell appearance,” he added.

“But when I came to Challenger Deep, the bottom was completely featureless. I had this idea that life would adapt to the deep … but I don’t think we’re seeing that.”

Still, the science team is hopeful that the small sample Cameron took of the trench’s sediments, along with the sub’s constantly whirring cameras, will provide some new insight into the remote underwater realm. (Video: how sound revealed that Challenger Deep is the deepest spot in the ocean.)

The mud, they say, could contain exotic species of microbial life that may not only advance our understanding of the deep ocean but also help in the search for extraterrestrial life.

For instance, scientists think Jupiter’s moon Europa could harbor a global ocean beneath its thick shell of ice—an ocean that, like Challenger Deep, would be lightless, near freezing, and home to areas of intense pressure. (See “Could Jupiter Moon Harbor Fish-Size Life?”)

Deep Dive was Like a Trip to Another Planet

Until Cameron’s dive, the only manned Challenger Deep expedition was a mission that took place in 1960, when retired U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh and late Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard descended in the Navy submersible Trieste.

Climbing into the cockpit of DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, Cameron said he was “intimately aware of the design of the vehicle … and I felt we’d done the engineering right.

“When the hatch closed, I felt the vehicle around me was able to withstand the pressure. There may be butterflies in your stomach beforehand, but once you’re inside the sub, the excitement of going someplace [few have] been before takes over … the adrenaline takes over, and the fear really goes away.”

Cameron also had to overcome the sheer physical experience of the dive—the 57-year-old explorer was crammed into the sub’s 43-inch-wide (109-centimeter-wide) pilot sphere, which itself was loaded up with navigation controls, cameras, and other electronics.

“I wind up packed in like a Mercury astronaut, if you will,” Cameron said. (Video: how the sub sphere protects Cameron.)

“When you first close the hatch, all these electronics are dumping heat into the sphere.” Since the Mariana Trench lies near the Equator, surface temperatures are high, and the inside of the sub’s cockpit “gets very hot right away—it’s like a sauna inside.

“But as you start descending, the sub goes very fast. I’m screaming down, and in just a few minutes I’m in water that’s 36 degrees Fahrenheit [2.2 degrees Celsius].

“All of sudden my feet are freezing, the back of my head is freezing, but the middle part of my body is still warm,” he said.

Then, “literally within a minute or two I’m out of sunlight, and you’re in total darkness for most of this dive, so the sub gets very cold, and you have to put on warm clothing. … The walls have condensation all over them and I’m constantly getting dripped on by cold water.”

Despite the physical challenges, Cameron seemed in awe of what he’d experienced in the remote ocean depths.

“This is a vast frontier down there that’s going to take us a while to understand,” he said. “The impression to me was it’s very lunar, very isolated. I felt as if, in the space of one day, I’d gone to another planet and come back.”

Hoping for Gifts From the Ocean

According to biological oceanographer Lisa Levin, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE program’s potential for generating public interest in deep-ocean science is just as important as anything Cameron might have discovered.

“I consider Cameron to be doing for the trenches what Jacques Cousteau did for the ocean many decades ago,” Levin, who’s part of the team but didn’t participate in the seagoing expedition, said in a previous interview with National Geographic News.

At a time of fast-shrinking funds for undersea research, Levin said, “what scientists need is the public support to be able to continue exploration and research of the deep ocean.”

Perhaps referring to his friend’s most recent movie, expedition physician Joe MacInnis called Cameron a real-world “avatar.”

Cameron was “down there on behalf of everybody else on this planet,” MacInnis said. “There are seven billion people who can’t go, and he can. And he’s aware of that.”

Camron added, “Every time you dive, you hope you’ll see something new—some new species. Sometimes the ocean gives you a gift, sometimes it doesn’t.

“But I call this dive just the first phase. We prove that the vehicle works, and hopefully bring some real science back.” By Victoria Jaggard, National Geographic News

At the Pentagon recently, US President Barack Obama announced deep cuts to the US military and set out a shift in attention towards the Asia-Pacific region, in a thinly-veiled message to China.

Despite a narrative of peaceful intent, China’s leaders have struggled to reassure the US over the direction of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Both countries admit that their military dialogue falls well behind other aspects of the relationship.

So the shift has brought renewed scrutiny of the PLA’s latest capabilities against US dominance in the Pacific.

In recent years the PLA has demonstrated impressive new capabilities at sea and in space, aimed at showcasing the success of its modernisation effort.

The obvious message is to deliver a powerful warning if Taiwan were to declare formal independence.

But Pentagon planners are now concerned that the Taiwan contingency has been eclipsed by China’s broader maritime territorial claims and demands for more international space to protect the arteries feeding China’s growth.

‘Unrestricted warfare’

China is developing a range of capabilities linked to the space and cyber domain in order to sidestep the overwhelming might of the US military in the Pacific region. The PLA calls this fighting “local wars under informationised conditions”.

China recognised almost two decades ago that in the mid-term the PLA could be no match for US conventional forces. So it began working on what was dubbed “unrestricted warfare” – combining multiple methods to defeat a superior opponent.

At the same time party leaders launched adventurous civilian acquisition projects in the high-tech domain to increase Chinese competitiveness and to boost indigenous production capabilities.

The PLA has been running military projects mirroring these civilian acquisition ventures. Sometimes involving dual-use technologies, the military and civilian strands have often been indistinguishable.

China’s space programme is a case in point. The recent successful docking manoeuvre between a Shenzhou module and the Tiangong Space station is as much a triumph for the PLA as it is for China’s civilian space agency.

Space theatre

Should the US ever intervene in a cross-strait clash or challenge China’s maritime claims, Beijing would employ a pre-emptive “sea denial” strategy alongside its conventional operations – preventing US battle carrier groups operating in or near its claimed territorial waters.

Its submarine-launched ballistic and cruise missiles are now a lethal force. China’s long-range nuclear weapons systems have also undergone significant upgrades and its strategic rocket force, the Second Artillery Corps, is very much the pride of the PLA.

One of the most pressing concerns for the US navy is the threat posed by a “carrier killer” anti-ship missile with enhanced targeting capabilities facilitated from space. China very recently launched its own Beidou Positioning System, challenging the monopoly of the US Global Positioning System (GPS).

One of the PLA’s most sensitive advances has been the secret deployment and testing of advanced anti-satellite (ASAT) and Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) weapons systems.

Two years ago, China successfully intercepted one of its own ballistic missiles as it streaked through space. This test coincided with the Pentagon’s sale of Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) Patriot systems to Taiwan.

Some experts believe a Chinese ASAT campaign against a careful selected group of US satellites could have catastrophic effect on the US military.

This capability, combined with the potential for China to develop its own Ballistic Missile Defence umbrella, suggests that the space domain will be a new theatre for US-China rivalry.

Chinese ASAT capabilities are not exclusively reserved for “kill vehicles”, like the one which obliterated an ageing Chinese weather satellite in 2007.

It is now believed that the successful 2007 “kill” was in fact the third test in a series. Previous tests had demonstrated an ability to manoeuvre in proximity to targeted satellites.

This would suggest that China has experimented with techniques which could be used for “space mining”, where mines or mini-satellites armed with jamming technologies could be placed within the orbits of an opponent’s spacecraft.

Carrier group

In addition to its “sea denial” and space warfare strategies, China is also expanding its conventional capabilities.

The PLA Air Force in recent years has extended its ability for offshore operations, enhancing an offensive capability. It is planning an overhaul of its ageing fleet with the deployment of over 3,000 new aircraft.

For the most part China has relied on copying Russian fighter technology. However, the roll-out of the Chengdu J-20 Stealth fighter prototype raised eyebrows last year, carefully timed to coincide with a visit by the US defence secretary.

There have been some very significant developments in the deployment of Chinese submarines in recent years. Beijing possesses 10 Russian-built ultra-quiet Kilo class submarines possibly armed with 200km-range anti-ship cruise missiles.

Since 2006, when a Chinese submarine surfaced undetected within torpedo range of the US aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, China’s submarine force has regularly marauded the US Navy and its allies in the Pacific.

It is thought that China plans to build three aircraft carrier battle groups, each armed with 40 fighters, up to eight warships, three nuclear-powered attack submarines and a number of support vessels. The PLA Navy’s retrofitted Varyag carrier, currently under sea-trials, will serve as a training platform.

Even if the aircraft carrier would likely be a prestige piece and more directed at Chinese domestic pride, the prospect of a Chinese aircraft carrier will certainly cause ripples for the broader East Asian naval balance.

Uncertain factors

While much attention has been paid to the breakneck speed of Chinese military modernisation over the last decade, the events of 9/11 and the subsequent campaigns in the Middle East and Afghanistan provided a window of opportunity for China to accelerate development.

In some cases there may have been, quite literally, windfalls for the PLA. There is speculation that China acquired undamaged Tomahawk cruise missile components in the early stages of the Afghanistan campaign a decade ago.

When US special forces failed to completely destroy one of their stealth helicopters during Operation Geronimo, Pakistan’s military may have allowed PLA counterparts to inspect the tail rotor.

The PLA must be congratulating itself on the impressive array of weaponry which has tilted the balance in the Taiwan Strait in its favour.

China’s new-found capabilities combined with the opaque nature of its military modernisation create a formula for mistrust with the US.

There are perhaps three factors for uncertainty. Firstly, the Chinese military’s confidence in its new equipment could lead to an overestimation of its capability as an emerging great power.

Secondly, the Chinese leadership could underestimate its ability to control an unexpected escalation of hostilities in the Pacific.

Finally, the domestic political factor – the PLA’s external behaviour could become a reaction to internal nationalistic sentiment, instability or faction fighting as Beijing prepares for the fifth generation leadership handover this year. BBC News

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Yet environmentalists, experts and politicians from El Salvador to Japan to South Africa have flocked here in the past year to learn how Feldheim, a village of just 145 people, is already putting into practice Germany’s vision of a future powered entirely by renewable energy.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government passed legislation in June setting the country on course to generate a third of its power through renewable sources – such as wind, solar, geothermal and bioenergy – within a decade, reaching 80 percent by 2050, while creating jobs, increasing energy security and reducing harmful emissions.

The goals are among the world’s most ambitious, and expensive, and other industrialized nations from the U.S. to Japan are watching to see whether transforming into a nation powered by renewable energy sources can really work.

“Germany can’t afford to fail, because the whole world is looking at the German model and asking, can Germany move us to new business models, new infrastructure?,” said Jeremy Rifkin, a U.S. economist who has advised the European Union and Merkel.

In June, the nation passed the 20 percent mark for drawing electric power from a mix of wind, solar and other renewables. That compares with about 9 percent in the United States or Japan – both of which rely heavily on hydroelectric power, an energy source that has long been used.

Expanding renewables depends on the right mix of resources, as well as government subsidies and investment incentive – and a willingness by taxpayers to shoulder their share of the burden. Germans currently pay a 3.5 euro cent per kilowatt-hour tax, roughly euro157 ($205) per year for a typical family of four, to support research and investment in and subsidize the production and consumption of energy from renewable sources.

That allows for homeowners who install solar panels on their rooftops, or communities like Feldheim that build their own biogas plants, to be paid above-market prices for selling back to the grid, to ensure that their investment at least breaks even.

Critics, like the Institute for Energy Research, based in Washington, D.C., maintain such tariffs put an unfair burden of expanding renewables squarely on the taxpayer. At the same time, to make renewable energy work on the larger scale, Germany will have to pour billions into infrastructure, including updating its grid.

Key to success of the transformation will be getting the nation’s powerful industries on board, to drive innovation in technology and create jobs. According to the Environment Ministry, overall investment in renewable energy production equipment more than doubled to euro29.4 billion ($38.44 billion) in 2011. Solid growth in the sector is projected through the next decade.

Some 370,000 people in Germany now have jobs in the renewable sector, more than double the number in 2004, a point used as proof that tax payers’ investment is paying off.

Feldheim has zero unemployment – despite its tiny size – compared with roughly 30 percent in other villages in the economically depressed state of Brandenburg, which views investments in renewables as a ticket for a brighter future. Most residents work in the plant that produces biogas – fuel made by the breakdown of organic material such as plants or food waste – or maintain the wind and solar parks that provide the village’s electricity.

“The energy revolution is already taking place right here,” says Werner Frohwitter, spokesman for the Energiequelle company that helped set up and run Feldheim’s energy concept.

But it’s not only in the country. Earlier this month in Berlin, officials unveiled a prototype of a self-sustaining, energy-efficient home, built from recycled materials and complete with electric vehicles that can be charged in its garage.

The aim of the prototype home is to produce twice as much energy as is used by a family of four – chosen from a willing pool of volunteers who will be selected to live in the home for 15 months – through a combination of solar photovoltaics and energy management technology, in order to show the technology already exists to allow people to be energy self-sufficient.

“We want to show people that already today it is possible to live completely from renewable energy,” said German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer as the project, dubbed “Efficiency House Plus,” was unveiled. The house is part of a wider euro1.2 million ($1.57 million) project investing in energy-efficient buildings.

“The Efficiency House Plus will set standards that can be adopted by the majority in the short term,” Ramsauer told The Associated Press. “The basic principle is that the house produces more energy than needed to live. The extra energy is then used to charge electric-powered cars and bicycles or sold back to the public grid.

“Germany’s four leading car makers are also participating in the project with BMW AG, Daimler AG, Volkswagen AG and Opel, which is part of Buick’s parent company, General Motors Co., each making an E-car for use by in the home.

Such strong cooperation between Germany’s industrial sector coupled with a political landscape that emphasizes stability and a heightened public ecological sensibility makes Germany fertile ground to lead the way in the transformation from a post-carbon economy to one run on renewable energy.

“Germany has the most robust industrial economy per capita. When you talk about industrial revolution, that’s Germany. It’s German technology, it’s German IT, it’s German commutation,” said Rifkin, who outlines what he calls the “The Third Industrial Revolution,” in a newly released book of the same title that explains how the economies in the future could swap fossil fuels for renewable energies and still maintain growth.

Robert Pottmann, an asset manager with Munich Re, one of the world’s biggest reinsurers, says the company seeks to invest about euro2.5 billion ($3.27 billion) in the next few years in renewable energy assets such as “wind farms, solar projects or maybe new electricity grids.

“Alan Simpson, an independent energy and climate adviser from Britain who visited Feldheim as part of a wider tour of Germany last month to see what the renewable revolution looks like up close said it was inspiring to view what is being accomplished on the ground.

“It’s great to think about Germany delivering on everything that we are being told in Great Britain is impossible,” Simpson said.

Amid the excitement, there is also an awareness of the real need for the German experiment to succeed.

“If Germany can’t pull this off,” said Rifkin. “We don’t have a plan B.” By Melissa Eddy, Lexington Herald-Leader

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

Iran “will respond with full force to any aggression or even threats in a way that will demolish the aggressors from within,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told students at a Teheran military college. Khamenei said the message was directed at Iran’s enemies, “especially America and its stooges and the Zionist regime (Israel).”

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta considers military strike would lead to serious impact.

In Washington, Panetta said a military strike on Iran would have a “serious impact” on the Middle East and possibly on American forces in the region, without seriously disrupting Iran’s nuclear program.

“You’ve got to be careful of unintended consequences here,” Mr. Panetta said, reiterating the Obama administration’s view that diplomatic pressure and international sanctions were the preferred courses of action.

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) citing “credible” evidence said this week that Iran has been engaged in projects and experiments relevant to development of nuclear weapons.

At the United Nations on Thursday, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, pleaded for restraint on all sides, apparently in reaction to the speculation that Israel may attack suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.

A United Nations spokesman, Martin Nesirky, said that Mr. Ban had reiterated “his belief that a negotiated rather than a military solution is the only way to resolve this issue,” Reuters reported.

The United States, France and Britain have said the Iranians must answer the questions raised in the United Nations report or face further penalties, beyond the four rounds of sanctions already imposed by the United Nations Security Council.

But the prospects for further Security Council sanctions are bleak at best because of objections by Russia and China. All five powers are veto-wielding members of the Security Council. By Evelyn Lin, Taiwan News

Yet for all its science-fiction sophistication, key elements have now been replicated in laboratory settings by security experts with little time, money or specialized skill. It is an alarming development that shows how technical advances are eroding the barrier that has long prevented computer assaults from leaping from the digital to the physical world.

The techniques demonstrated in recent months highlight the danger to operators of power plants, water systems and other crucial infrastructure around the world.

“Things that sounded extremely unlikely a few years ago are now coming along,” said Scott Borg, director of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit group that helps the U.S. government prepare for future attacks.

While the experiments have been performed in laboratory settings, and the findings presented at security conferences or in technical papers, the danger of another real-world attack such as the one on Iran is profound.

The team behind the so-called Stuxnet worm that was used to attack the Iranian nuclear facility may still be active. New malicious software with some of Stuxnet’s original code and behavior has surfaced, suggesting ongoing reconnaissance against industrial control systems.

And attacks on crucial infrastructure are increasing. The Idaho National Laboratory, home to secretive defense labs intended to protect the nation’s power grids, water systems and other crucial infrastructure, has responded to triple the number of computer attacks from clients this year over last, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has revealed.

For years, ill-intentioned hackers have dreamed of plaguing the world’s infrastructure with a brand of sabotage reserved for Hollywood. They have mused about wreaking havoc in industrial settings by burning out power plants, bursting oil and gas pipelines, or stalling manufacturing plants.

But a key roadblock has prevented them from causing widespread destruction: They’ve lacked a way to take remote control of the electronic “controller” boxes that serve as the nerve centers for heavy machinery.

The attack on Iran changed all that. Now, security experts — and presumably, malicious hackers — are racing to find weaknesses. They’ve found a slew of vulnerabilities.

One thing all of the findings have in common is that mitigating the threat requires organizations to bridge a cultural divide that exists in many facilities. Among other things, separate teams responsible for computer and physical security need to start talking to each other and coordinate efforts.

Many of the threats at these facilities involve electronic equipment known as controllers. These devices take computer commands and send instructions to physical machinery, such as regulating how fast a conveyor belt moves.

They function as bridges between the computer and physical worlds. Computer hackers can exploit them to take over physical infrastructure. Stuxnet, for example, was designed to damage centrifuges in the nuclear plant being built in Iran by affecting how fast the controllers instructed the centrifuges to spin. Iran has blamed the U.S. and Israel for trying to sabotage what it says is a peaceful program.

Security researcher Dillon Beresford said it took him just two months and $20,000 in equipment to find more than a dozen vulnerabilities in the same type of electronic controllers used in Iran. The vulnerabilities, which included weak password protections, allowed him to take remote control of the devices and reprogram them.

“What all this is saying is you don’t have to be a nation-state to do this stuff. That’s very scary,” said Joe Weiss, an industrial control system expert.

One of the biggest makers of industrial controllers is Siemens AG, which made the controllers in question. The company said it has alerted customers, fixed some of the problems and is working closely with CERT, the cybersecurity arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Siemens said the issue largely affects older models of controllers. Even with those, the company said, a hacker would have to bypass passwords and other security measures that operators should have in place. Siemens said it knows of no actual break-ins using the techniques identified by Beresford, who works in Austin, Texas, for NSS Labs Inc.

The threat isn’t limited to power plants. Even jails and prisons are vulnerable.

Another research team, based in Virginia, was allowed to inspect a correctional facility — it won’t say which one — and found vulnerabilities that would allow it to open and close the facility’s doors, suppress alarms and tamper with video surveillance feeds.

During a tour of the facility, the researchers noticed controllers like the ones in Iran. They used knowledge of the facility’s network and that controller to demonstrate weaknesses. By Jordan Robertson, Richmond Times Dispatch