VG Flying Scientists

Virgin Galactic has always maintained there was more to its business plan than taking adventurous rich people on suborbital flights, and it took a step towards affirming that position recently when it signed an agreement with the Southwest Research Institute to fly two of its scientists on a suborbital flight, with an opton to fly six more.

The scientists will conduct experments in fields from biology to astronomy, beginning to lay the groundwork for future suborbital science. VG says it sees such science flights as a big part of its plans.

X-Prize Entry List Set

The time to enter the Google Lunar X-Prize contest has passed. There will hopefully be a stiff competition, however, as 29 teams from 17 nations have entered the race to land a rover on the Moon, drive it 500 meters across the surface, and send data and images back to Earth.

First prize is $20 million, with another $10 million spread over various secondary achievements. Prize money, therefore, probably wouldn't cover the cost of developing the rover and flying the mission for any of the teams. The point of the prize, though, is to encourage the early development of lunar resources by supporting the development of technology, by private groups, that will allow commercial and other private activity on the Moon.

With 29 teams involved, ranging from not-for-profit efforts to teams backed by major corporations, there might be a reasonable chance a team will claim the prize before the December, 2015, deadline.

Discovery On Orbit

For a final time, space shuttle Discovery was successfully launched into orbit yesterday afternoon. Depending on what Congress does, there could be only two launches left in the shuttle era.

Discovery is now chasing down ISS to rendezvous and dock. During that chase, Discovery's crew will carry out an inspection of the orbiter's underbelly to determine whether any damage was done to the heat shield tiles during launch.

Planet Formation

For years, the dominant theory of how planets form has been that a disk of gas and dust forms around a young star-- a dynamic disk, animated by swirling streams of matter. Clumps of matter begin to form, and grow. Some clumps grow larger than others. Sometimes clumps collide and merge. Eventually, the clumps can grow large enough that they sweep up all the matter around them as they orbit their star, creating gaps in the disk. Clumps can become planets.

Astronomers seem to have found a disk with a gap in it around a young star 350 light years away. The star is similar to the Sun, except that it's only about 7 million years old. They are now looking for an object within the gap to clinch the deal. If they find such an object, it will argue that planets can begin to form quite soon after the parent star ignites.

Cirrous Clouds On Titan

Scientiists have long been intrigued by the atmosphere of Saturn's huge moon, Titan, because they think it bears a resemblance to the atmosphere of early Earth. The hydrocarbons and organics in Titan's atmosphere are thought to be some of the precursors of life on Earth. Now, astronomers have also found cirrous clouds on Titan.

They are made of exotic ices in the incredibly cold air of Titan, not the simple water vapor of their Earthly counterparts, but they are thin, wispy, and bright white in the smoggy, active, dirty atmosphere. Another touch of home.

Discovery's Cargo

When space shuttle Discovery lifts off, it will be carrying a storage module packed with 6,500 pounds of equipment, spare parts, and supplies to ISS. NASA wants to stuff ISS with spare parts and supplies before the shuttle program ends, but there is already a shortage of storage space onboard, hence the new module. Discovery will also deliver a second robotic helper to take some routine housekeeping chores off astronauts.



When the new storage module isn't being used to store, it can house scientific experiments.

WISE Mission Ends

NASA recently ended the mission of its WISE-- Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer-- spacecraft. Its planned mission ended last September, but it has been on an extended mission. The primary purpose of WISE was to conduct an infrared survey of the entire sky. In fact, it surveyed the sky one and a half times and was on its way to completing the second circuit when NASA pulled the plug for budgetary reasons.

Besides completing the all-sky survey and revealing some things in infrared that are not accessible in the visible spectrum, WISE also did work in the Solar System, discovering 19 comets and 33,500 asteroids. Of those asteroids, 120 are near-Earth objects.