Twenty-one teams are hard at work trying to win the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon. The GLXP folks released a video this week as an update on how the teams are progressing. The challenge is not only to land a robot on the Moon, but it also must complete a few tasks – and none of this is easy: travel at least 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to Earth.
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Overview of the UAVSAR interferogram of the magnitude 7.2 Baja California earthquake of April 4, 2010, overlaid atop a Google Earth image of the region. Major fault systems are shown by red lines, while recent aftershocks are denoted by yellow, orange and red dots. Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS/Google ›

From a JPL press release.

NASA has released the first-ever airborne radar images of the deformation in Earth's surface caused by a major earthquake — the magnitude 7.2 temblor that rocked Mexico's state of Baja California and parts of the American Southwest on April 4, 2010. The data reveal that in the area studied, the quake moved the Calexico, Calif., region in a downward and southerly direction up to 80 centimeters (31 inches).
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Slices through the SDSS 3-dimensional map of the distribution of galaxies. Earth is at the center, and each point represents a galaxy, typically containing about 100 billion stars. Galaxies are colored according to the ages of their stars, with the redder, more strongly clustered points showing galaxies that are made of older stars. The outer circle is at a distance of two billion light years. The region between the wedges was not mapped by the SDSS because dust in our own Galaxy obscures the view of the distant universe in these directions. Both slices contain all galaxies within -1.25 and 1.25 degrees declination. Credit: M. Blanton and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Cosmologists – and not particle physicists — could be the ones who finally measure the mass of the elusive neutrino particle. A group of cosmologists have made their most accurate measurement yet of the mass of these mysterious so-called "ghost particles." They didn't use a giant particle detector but used data from the largest survey ever of galaxies, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. While previous experiments had shown that neutrinos have a mass, it is thought to be so small that it was very hard to measure. But looking at the Sloan data on galaxies, PhD student Shawn Thomas and his advisers at University College London put the mass of a neutrino at no greater than 0.28 electron volts, which is less than a billionth of the mass of a single hydrogen atom. This is one of the most accurate measurements of the mass of a neutrino to date.
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Artists impression of the 'hot Jupiter' HD209458b, which has incredible storms. Credit: ESO.

Likely, future interstellar flights will not include the exoplanet HD209458b as a featured get-away destination. Not only is this extrasolar planet a scorchingly hot world where the poisonous carbon monoxide atmosphere is being evaporated, but new observations show this gas giant also has superstorms with winds of 5,000 to 10,000 km per hour. "It's definitely not a place for the faint-hearted," said Ignas Snellen, from Leiden University in the Netherlands who led a team of astronomers using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to observe HD209458b, one of the most-studied planets orbiting around other stars. But Snellen told Universe Today that being able to detect this superstorm is extremely exciting and bodes well for finding possible life on other, more Earth-like planets.
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Don’t miss the Southern California Astronomy Expo (SCAE) on Saturday, July 10th and Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at Oceanside Photo & Telescope! The store will be open from 10:00 AM until 5:00 PM on Saturday, July 10th and from 10:00 AM until 7:00 PM on July 17th. Check out the line-up of events they have planned for SCAE…you gotta come! And if you don't live in the SoCal area? Don't be discouraged. This isn't a shameless attempt at advertising – it's your chance to win some very expensive astronomy equipment. OPT is offering a free, on-line giveaway to Universe Today readers with total prizes worth more than $8000. All you have to do is register to get your chance to win! (...)
Read the rest of Sixth Annual Southern California Astronomy Exposition (629 words)

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA

One year ago today, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) officially reached orbit about the Moon, and in the past 12 months has gathered more digital information than any previous planetary mission in history. NASA says that maps and datasets collected by LRO’s state-of-the-art instruments will form the foundation for all future lunar exploration plans, as well as be critical to scientists working to better understand the moon and its environment. To celebrate one year in orbit, here are ten great observations made by LRO.
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Sixteen seventh-graders at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found the Martian pit feature at the center of the superimposed red square in this image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Tip number one on "How to impress your classmates:" Find a mysterious cave on Mars. A group of 16 seventh-graders at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, California, USA found a dark pit that appears to be an opening to a cave on Mars. Dennis Mitchell's science class were examining Martian lava tubes as their project in the Mars Student Imaging Program offered by NASA and Arizona State University, which takes advantage of the huge database of images taken by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. The students found the skylight pit on the slope of an equatorial volcano named Pavonis Mons, and it appears to be an entrance to an underground lava tube. Similar 'cave skylight' features have been found elsewhere on Mars, but this is the first seen on this volcano.
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The launch of Israel's Ofeq 9 satellite with the Shavit launch vehicle on June 22, 2010. Image courtesy Israeli Aerospace Industries, Ltd.

Israel launched an "Ofeq 9" satellite on Tuesday, an advanced remote sensing satellite that likely is capable of high resolution surveillance to monitor Iran's nuclear program. The satellite was launched on Israel's Shavit launch vehicle.

The Israel Defense Ministry gave no public details on the satellite, only releasing this statement following the launch: "A few minutes ago the State of Israel launched the Ofek-9 (Horizon-9) satellite from the Palmachim base (Israel's Air Force test range). The results of the launch are being examined by the technical team."

But in an Israel Defense Ministry document provided to Universe Today, (...)
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This week's Carnival of Space is hosted by Brian Wang over at Next Big Future.

Click here to read the Carnival of Space #159.

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let Fraser know if you can be a host, and he’ll schedule you into the calendar.

Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space. Help us get the word out.

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Hubble view of the huge star formation region N11 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Credit: NASA, ESA and Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain).

Within the Large Magellenic Cloud is one of the most active star forming regions in our nearby Universe. This new Hubble image highlights N11 – also known as the Bean Nebula — a beautiful region of energetic star formation. The billowing pink clouds that look like cotton candy and bright bubbles of glowing gasses and are telltale signs that stars are being created. Click the image for a larger, hi-res version.

Beans, bubbles and candy aren't the only terrestrial shapes to be found in this spectacular image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
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John Glenn flew on the space shuttle in 1998. Credit: NASA

US spaceflight legend John Glenn has weighed in on the current human spaceflight debate, releasing an 8-page paper outlining his feelings and a potential plan to allow US astronauts to keep launching on US vehicles. While Glenn supports President Barack Obama's plan to extend operations of the International Space Station and to forego returning to the Moon for the time being, he thinks retiring the space shuttles at this point is a mistake.

"The world's only heavy lift spacecraft and the U.S.'s only access to space should stay in operation until suitably replaced by a new and well tested heavy lift vehicle," Glenn wrote. "The Shuttle system is working extremely well, has had systems upgrades through the years, and has had "the bugs" worked out of it through many years of use. The Shuttle is probably the most complex vehicle ever assembled and flies in the harshest of environments. Why terminate a perfectly good system that has been made more safe and reliable through many years of development?"
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Satellite image of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, as seen on June 19, 2010. Credit: MODIS Rapid Response Team.

Here's the latest satellite image of the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil keeps spreading towards the northeast, and appears as a maze of silvery-gray ribbons in this image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. The MODIS team said that the spot of black just north of the location of the oil well may be smoke; reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that oil and gas continue to be captured and burned as part of the emergency response efforts.

The MODIS team is putting out about two satellite images of the region a day, which can be seen at this link.

Below is a video from reporter David Hammer from the Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans, Louisiana, who is covering the BP oil spill, explaining the latest developments as of June 21,2010. Apologies for the 15 second ad at the beginning, but Hammer provides a good overview of what has been happening.
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The search (xkcd)

To date, SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) has focused on ETs who 'phone home' using the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and even a very small region within that.

But what if ET's phone doesn't use radio waves? Sure the xkcd comic, is funny, but maybe it points to a deep flaw in our attempts to contact, or hear from, an ETI?

When Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison suggested the possibility of interstellar communication via electromagnetic waves in a 1959 paper in Nature, only radio was feasible, as we then had the ability to detect only artificial radio signals, if produced by ETIs with 1959 human technology. Since then we've developed the ability to detect a laser signal, brighter than the Sun (if only for a nanosecond) if it came from a source several light-years away … but lasers weren't invented then.

What might ET's equivalent of ants' pheromones be?
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Titan and Dione as seen by Cassini. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Another stunning image from the Cassini spacecraft, suitable for wallpaper on your desktop. Click image for larger version, or click here for a large 1.125 MB version.

This is Saturn's moon Dione, in crisp detail, against a hazy, ghostly Titan. Simply stunning.

The "wispy" terrain on Dione is visible, and on Titan are hints of atmospheric banding around Titan's north pole. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Dione (1123 kilometers, 698 miles across) and Titan (5150 kilometers, 3200 miles across), and was taken on April 10, 2010.

No images available yet from Cassini's extremely close flyby of Titan over the weekend where it buzzed the hazy moon at an altitude of just 880 kilometers (547 miles) above the surface. (...)
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Sunrise as seen by Doug Wheelock (Astro_Wheels on Twitter) from the ISS.

Expedition 23 astronaut Soichi Noguchi took and shared so many amazing images during his 6-month stay on board the International Space Station, and I was a little worried that his return to Earth would result in a bit of a let-down in the space imaging department. I now see I had nothing to fear: Three new members of the Expedition 24 crew arrived at the ISS late last week and Doug Wheelock seems to have filled Soichi's shoes (or socks, since they don't wear shoes on the ISS) quite nicely. He posted two new images today on his Twitpic page that are nothing short of stunning. This image, above of an orbital sunrise provides a great look at the ISS bathed in "morning" light.

"A stunning sunrise aboard the International Space Station, as seen from the Russian MRM1 Module. We're blessed with 16 sunrises each day!" Wheelock, a.k.a Astro_Wheels wrote.

See below for an aurora he captured over the South Pole.
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Expedition 24 heads to the ISS, more water on the Moon (and Mars, too), Kepler finds lots of potential planets, and Miles O'Brien has an exclusive interview with former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin about SpaceX and the space program's new direction.

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Credit: SETI Institute

Fifty years of eerie silence in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence has prompted some rethinking about what we should be looking for.

After all, it’s unlikely that many civilizations would invest a lot of time and resources into broadcasting a Yoo-hoo, over here signal, so maybe we have to look for incidental signs of alien activity – anything from atmospheric pollution on an exoplanet to signs of stellar engineering undertaken by an alien civilization working to keep their aging star from turning into a red giant.(...)
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An artist's rendering of a Kuiper Belt object. Image: NASA

How do you study an extremely small planetary body in the dim outer reaches of our solar system? Get all your friends from around the world to wait for a very elusive – if not short-lived – special event. And in doing so, you may find something completely unexpected. Enter James Elliot from MIT, who worked with dozens of observatories and astronomers across the globe, including Jay Pasachoff from Williams College in Massachusetts, in an attempt to make observations of the Kuiper Belt Object 55636, (also known as 2002 TX300) a small body orbiting about 48 AU away from the Sun. Since this KBO is too small and distant for direct observations of its surface, the astronomers tracked and plotted its course, figuring out when it would pass in front of a distant star.

The KBO occulted, or passed in front of a bright background star, an event which lasted only 10 seconds. But in that short amount of time, the astronomers were able to determine the object's size and albedo. Both of these results were surprising.
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It's a crater, but where is it located? You can find the answer to this week's Where In The Universe Challenge back on the original post. And check back next week for another test of your visual knowledge of the cosmos! Great job, everyone!

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Mars500 participant Diego Urbina (follow him on Twitter at @diegou) provides a tour inside the Mars500 facilities – see how the crew are living and working for the next 17 months in isolation. On June 3, 2010 Urbina and five fellow crewmates from Europe, Russia and China embarked on a 520-day mock mission to Mars, and are living in a crew module in a warehouse in Moscow. See our preview article here.

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