On June 1, 2016 Saturn Is Going To Be Very Close To The Earth And You Dare Not Miss It!

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has confirmed the news that on June 1, 2016, Saturn will be closest to Earth than it has ever been in the past 10,000 years. This astronomical sight is going to be really special, especially for all astronomy lovers and students.

The last few years have been really incredible for NASA and other space agencies of the world, especially for Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The search of life on Mars has been the major attraction in the last couple of years.

This sight is going to be 'unlike any other astronomical sight.'

NASA spokesperson George Pooler says-

Saturn does not often come this close to Earth, and this will be a sight no one currently living has ever seen.

He says that NASA hopes to see the opposite side of Saturn as it rotates by.

The other side of the second largest planet in our solar system has never been photographed yet.

This isn't going to be an ordinary space event!

We are extremely excited to be able to study this planet better, but also, that people will be able to get a glimpse of an amazing, ringed planet, which is not something normally able to happen," Pooler continues.

In 1930, Saturn came very close, but not as close as it will come this time

We have some images of Saturn from the last rotation, but this will be an amazing sight that will blow the last time out of the water.

We are expecting this worldwide spectacle on June 1st 2016.

NASA spokesman Pooler informed about the timing of the space event. "we will be able to see Saturn here in the United States at 4:45 PM EST and in the United Kingdom at 9:45 PM ET

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Planet Labs Raises $52 Million to Map the Earth With Small Satellites

NASA may be devoting more attention to asteroids these days, but a group of former employees of the agency are focusing on something a little closer to home.

Planet Labs, a San Francisco startup founded by three former NASA physicists, announcedWednesday that it has raised $52 million in a Series B round of funding to launch of a bunch of imaging satellites into orbit and map the earth.

SEE ALSO: Sex on Mars: A Dangerous Love Story

Since its founding in 2010, the Planet Labs team has worked to develop small satellites called "Doves" that are launched into low orbit to measure the planet's environmental changes in high resolution. That data is updated frequently and provided to paying clients. Planet Labs launched four satellites into orbit this year and plans to launch another two dozen in the immediate future.

The new round of funding was led by Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire who has also invested inFacebook and Twitter, among other notable tech companies. In a statement, he praised the startup for "revolutionizing the spacecraft sector" and "pushing the boundaries of what was thought to be possible in satellite manufacturing and deployment."

Planet Labs has raised about $65 million since it was founded in 2010.

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NASA Plans to Put an 'Iron Man' Robot on Mars

At 6'2", 275 pounds, NASA's latest robot look like a decent football player, but Valkyrie could be earmarked for another human profession — astronaut.
The android — which was built to be a search-and-rescue bot — comes with sonar equipment, cameras embedded from head to feet and a giant backpack battery. Its arms, legs and hips aren't as flexible as a person's, but it moves in a similar fashion, which could be important for studying the limits of human motion on Mars.

"Likely NASA will send robots ahead of the astronauts to the [red] planet," Nicolaus Radford, head of the Dexterous Robotics Lab at NASA, said in a video about Valkyrie. "These robots will start preparing the way for the human explorers. And when the humans arrive, the robots and the humans will work together in conjunction."
Radford wants NASA's Mars-bound robots to help people build houses and lay the foundations of civilization on humanity's second planet, which means these android helpers are taking a big step up from their predecessors that were tasked with chores such as vacuuming.
Valkyrie, which looks so much like Iron Man it even has a glowing orb in its chest, will compete with other androids at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Robotics Challenge. The competition compares robots in categories such as strength and dexterity to determine which would be best to deploy in emergency situations that are too dangerous for people.
The competition looks stiff. DARPA's own robot, Atlas, shows an ability to avoid minor ground obstacles in this YouTube video, and has human-like details down to rotatable wrists. An android built by Team THOR (Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot) also demonstrates that its feet can adjust to changes on the ground.
None of these robots is likely to be the one that first visits Mars, but an advanced version of any of them could see the inside of a space shuttle in the not-too-distant future.

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6-Year-Old Starts Petition to Save His Dreams of Going to Space

After realizing the $10.41 in his piggy bank wouldn't be enough to support NASA, a 6-year-old boy with dreams of becoming an astronaut decided to petition President Barack Obama's administration to increase funding for the space program.
Under the advisement of his parents, Connor Johnson of Denver, Colo., filed his plea on the government website We the People. In less than two weeks, the petition has garnered more than 10,000 digital signatures.

See also: 15 Twitter Accounts Every Space Lover Should Follow

"NASA's mostly the only space company I've known for a very long time," Connor said in a video on local news station KUSA.
The timing of Connor's petition is poignant, as NASA's planetary science branch recently announced it would restructure its research funding process.
That announcement has ruffled the feathers of many in the planetary science community who now won't be able to apply for new grants until 2015. Science celebrity Bill Nye implored Obama to increase NASA's funding in an impassioned open letter he read in a YouTube video posted last week.

Connor seems to share Nye's sentiment that space exploration shouldn't fall victim to budget cuts.

Connor seems to share Nye's sentiment that space exploration shouldn't fall victim to budget cuts."The whole reason I want to be an astronaut is so I can discover new worlds," Connor said in the KUSA video, "to discover astroids or stuff that I could build stuff out of."
The White House responds to petitions on We the People that reach 100,000 signatures in one month. Connor's needs about 90,000 more signatures by Dec. 29 to achieve that goal.
Watch the video below for more on Connor's story:

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Radiation Exposure Won't Stop a Manned Mission to Mars

The risk of radiation exposure is not a show-stopper for a long-term manned mission to Mars, new results from NASA's Curiosity rover suggest.
A mission consisting of a 180-day cruise to Mars, a 500-day stay on the Red Planet and a 180-day return flight to Earth would expose astronauts to a cumulative radiation dose of about 1.01 sieverts, measurements by Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument indicate.
To put that in perspective: The European Space Agency generally limits its astronauts to a total career radiation dose of 1 sievert, which is associated with a 5% increase in lifetime fatal cancer risk.

"It's certainly a manageable number," said RAD principal investigator Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., lead author of a study that reports the results Monday in the journal Science.
A 1-sievert dose from radiation on Mars would violate NASA's current standards, which cap astronauts' excess-cancer risk at 3 percent. But those guidelines were drawn up with missions to low-Earth orbit in mind, and adjustments to accommodate trips farther afield may be in the offing, Hassler said.
"NASA is working with the National Academies' Institute of Medicine to evaluate what appropriate limits would be for a deep-space mission, such as a mission to Mars," Hassler told SPACE.com. "So that's an exciting activity."
The new results represent the most complete picture yet of the radiation environment en route to Mars and on the Red Planet's surface. They incorporate data that RAD gathered during Curiosity's eight-month cruise through space and the rover's first 300 days on Mars, where it touched down in August 2012.
The RAD measurements cover two different types of energetic-particle radiation — galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), which are accelerated to incredible speeds by far-off supernova explosions, and solar energetic particles (SEPs), which are blasted into space by storms on our own sun.

RAD's data show that astronauts exploring the Martian surface would accumulate about 0.64 millisieverts of radiation per day. The dose rate is nearly three times greater during the journey to Mars, at 1.84 millisieverts per day.
But Mars' radiation environment is dynamic, so Curiosity's measurements thus far should not be viewed as the final word, Hassler stressed. For example, RAD's data have been gathered near the peak of the sun's 11-year activity cycle, a time when the GCR flux is relatively low (because solar plasma tends to scatter galactic cosmic rays).
Curiosity's radiation measurements should help NASA plan out a manned mission to Mars, which the space agency hopes to pull off by the mid-2030s, Hassler said. And they should also inform the search for signs of past or present life on the Red Planet — another top NASA priority.
For example, the new RAD results suggest that microbial life is unlikely to exist right at the Martian surface, Hassler said. But future missions may not have to drill too deeply underground to find pockets of Mars life, if it ever existed.
"These measurements do tell us that we think it could be viable to find signs of possible extant or past life as shallow as 1 meter deep," Hassler said.
The new study is one of six papers published in Science Monday that report new results from Curiosity. Most of the other studies present evidence that the rover has found an ancient freshwater lake that could have supported microbial life for tens of thousands, and perhaps millions, of years.

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Curiosity Rover Finds Ancient Life-Supporting Lakebed on Mars

The site where NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity landed last year contains at least one lake that would have been perfectly suited for colonies of simple, rock-eating microbes found in caves and hydrothermal vents on Earth.
Analysis of mudstones in an area known as Yellowknife Bay, located inside the rover’s Gale Crater landing site, show that fresh water pooled on the surface for tens of thousands — or even hundreds of thousands — of years.

“The results show that the lake was definitely a habitable environment,” Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology, told Discovery News.
The really big surprise, however, was that clays drilled out from inside two mudstones and analyzed by the rover are much younger than scientists expected, a finding that extends the window of time for when Mars may have been suitable for life.

These numbers now overlap with the oldest rocks on Earth that contain evidence of a former biosphere on Earth,” Grotzinger said.
The rover explored Yellowknife Bay before heading toward a three-mile high mountain of layered sediments rising from the floor of Gale Crater known at Mount Sharp

Curiosity landed in August 2012 to assess if Gale Crater had the right ingredients and environments to support ancient microbial life. Within six months, scientists had the answer to that question: Yes.
Now, in addition to characterizing specific potential habitats, scientists are coming up with a search strategy to determine which sites hold the most promise for finding organic carbon, a far more difficult and complex challenge and the focus of future studies at Mount Sharp.
“Habitability only requires that the chemicals and minerals in the rock preserve evidence of an ancient environment. To search for organic carbon you’re actually looking for particular material ... that is not really compatible with the present environment of Mars. To find something you need a guidebook, you need some rules,” Grotzinger said.
One of those rules involves how much radiation a rock has been exposed to. Mars today has only has a thin atmosphere and no protective magnetic field, so scientists have been thinking they will need to dig deep to find carbon-laced samples, or they will have to probe craters relatively recently excavated by an impact.
Analysis of the Yellowknife Bay rocks points to another path. Dating the ages of the rocks’ surfaces show they are as young as about 70 million years, the result of being sand-blasted by Martian winds.

“In the future, if we find a rock that looks like a place where organics were accumulating and if it looks like the chemistry would have been favorable for preservation ... we can now very deliberately manage the risk that the rock would have been cooking away in the presence of radiation for hundreds of millions of years by looking for these scarps, these miniature cliffs, and then drilling the rock and date it to see how long it’s been laying around,” Grotzinger said.
In related research, scientists found that the amount of radiation measured by Curiosity during its first year on the Martian surface is about 40% of what the rover experienced during its nine-month cruise.
Most of the reduction, as expected, is due to the planet’s body serving as a buffer, but scientists also found that solar activity is a key factor, said Cary Zeitlin at Southwest Research Institute.
Six papers on Curiosity’s new findings are published in this week’s journal Science and unveiled at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

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