Giant telescope unveiled in Canary Islands

The Gran Telescopio Canarias is seen at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in Spain. Photo Courtesy: AP.

One of the world's most powerful telescopes opened its shutters for the first time on Friday to begin exploring faint light from distant parts of the universe.

The Gran Telescopio Canarias, a euro130 million ($185 million) telescope featuring a 34-foot (10.4-meter) reflecting mirror, sits atop an extinct volcano. Its location above cloud cover takes advantage of the pristine skies in the Atlantic Ocean.

Planning for the telescope began in 1987 and has involved more than 1,000 people from 100 companies. It was inaugurated on Friday by King Juan Carlos.

The observatory is located at 2,400 meters (7,870 feet) above sea-level where prevailing winds keep the atmosphere stable and transparent, the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute said.

The institute, which runs the telescope, said it will capture the birth of stars, study characteristics of black holes and decipher some of the chemical components of the Big Bang.

The telescope is composed of 36 separate mirrors that began slowly focusing in July 2007 to eventually act as a single large reflecting surface that directs light onto a central camera point.

Among those who have done research at La Palma is Brian May, lead guitarist of rock group Queen, who studied there for part of his doctorate in astrophysics at the institute.

May, who published "BANG! The Complete History of the Universe" with astronomers Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott, composed a musical score for the telescope's inauguration.

Large reflecting telescopes began making major contributions to astronomical research when Edwin Hubble perfected the technique of capturing photographic exposures of space with the then-massive 200-inch mirror at Mount Palomar Observatory, in north San Diego County, California in January 1949

American duo complete 1st space walk

In this image taken from NASA video, space shuttle Endeavour astronauts work outside the ISS. Photo Courtesy: AFP.

Sun-Jul 19, 2009

Washington / Agence France-Presse

Two astronauts from the US shuttle Endeavour have successfully completed the first of five scheduled spacewalks aimed at completing a Japanese laboratory at the International Space Station, NASA said.

Tim Kopra, who made his first space walk, and Dave Wolf, an old hand with four walks under his belt, returned to the ISS's decompression chamber and closed the airlock at 2151 GMT on Saturday, 37 minutes ahead of schedule, NASA reported.

The duo's spacewalk lasted five hours and 32 minutes, US space agency officials said.

"The third and final piece of Japan?s Kibo laboratory was assembled on orbit Saturday, a symphony of robotic and spacewalking performances by the 13 member orchestra aboard the International Space Station complex," NASA said in a statement.

The 1.9-tonne unit known as the Japanese Exposed Facility (JEF), will serve "as a type of porch for experiments that require direct exposure to space," NASA said.

From inside the ISS, astronauts Koichi Wakata and Doug Hurley used the station's Canadarm2 to grasp the JEF unit and lift it out of the Endeavour payload bay.

"They handed the facility to the shuttle?s Canadarm and moved the station?s arm into position for installation. The shuttle arm handed off the new Kibo component to the station arm, and then the station arm was used to move the new "porch" into position for installation to the Kibo pressurized module," NASA said.

Earlier, on their first full day in space, the Endeavour crew of six Americans and one Canadian tested rendezvous equipment, installed a camera for the orbiter docking system and extended the docking ring that sits on top of the system.

The Endeavour mission aims to help fulfill "Japan's hope for an out-of-this-world space laboratory," as the shuttle delivers state-of-the-art equipment to conduct experiments in the vacuum of space, according to NASA.

Before heading to bed late on Saturday, Endeavour Commander Mark Polansky and the crew took a moment to note the passing of veteran journalist Walter Cronkite.

Speaking about Cronkite's coverage of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, Polansky said, "That inspired a lot of us.

"I think it's a tribute to him that at the time that we were in the space race back then, that things are a lot different now, and we?re part of a multi-national crew here with representatives of all five of the major partners for the International Space Station, and we have 13 people here for the first time," Polansky pointed out.

The shuttle successfully docked at the space station on Friday amid questions about the integrity of the shuttle's heat shield tiles.

However, NASA on Saturday said that a close analysis of pictures of Endeavour's heat shield confirmed the absence of any damage.

During the delicate docking maneuver on Friday the two space vehicles traveled at 28,000 kilometers (17,398 miles) per hour as they approached each other, giving Commander Mark Polansky a margin of error of 4.5 centimeters (1.8 inches) to complete the procedure, NASA said.

The entry of Endeavour's crew aboard the ISS brought the number of astronauts inside the orbiting space station to a record 13.

Kopra will be staying aboard the ISS, taking over from Japanese engineer Koichi Wakata, who has been in space for 124 days.

The ISS should be completed in 2010, also the target date for the retirement of the US fleet of three space shuttles

New images of Moon landing sites

Science instruments (circled left) and the lunar module lower stage (circled right) are connected by a footprint trail A US spacecraft has captured images of Apollo landing sites on the Moon, revealing hardware and a trail of footprints left on the lunar surface. The release of the images coincides with the 40th anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the Moon. The descent stages from the lunar modules which carried astronauts to and from the Moon can clearly be seen. The image of the Apollo 14 landing site shows scientific instruments and an astronaut footpath in the lunar dust. It is the first time hardware left on the Moon by the Apollo missions has been seen from lunar orbit. The pictures were taken by Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft, which launched on 18 June. The Apollo 11 mission touched down on the Moon on 20 July 1969 The spacecraft is carrying three cameras on board: one low-resolution wide-angle camera and two high-resolution narrow-angle cameras mounted side-by-side. These are known collectively as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) instrument. "The LROC team anxiously awaited each image," said the instrument's principal investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University. "We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill - and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus." Astronaut trail The camera instrument was able to capture five of the six Apollo sites, with the remaining Apollo 12 site expected to be photographed in the coming weeks. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution. Long shadows from a low sun angle make the locations of the lunar modules' descent stages particularly evident. The image of the Apollo 14 landing site had a particularly desirable lighting condition that revealed additional details. The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package, a set of scientific instruments placed by the astronauts at the landing site, is discernable, as are the faint trails between the module and instrument package left by the astronauts' footprints. The LRO satellite reached lunar orbit on June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images were taken before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. "Not only do these images reveal the great accomplishments of Apollo, they also show us that lunar exploration continues," said LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, US. "They demonstrate how LRO will be used to identify the best destinations for the next journeys to the Moon." Although the pictures provide a reminder of past lunar exploration, LRO's primary focus is on paving the way for the future. Data returned by the mission will help Nasa identify safe landing sites for future explorers, locate potential resources, describe the Moon's radiation environment and demonstrate new technologies

The magic of Apollo

Project Apollo might have been commissioned as a feel good project to boost the morale of a bruised Superpower, but it was conceived as a piece of pure scientific exploration. In his final essay marking the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, Dr Christopher Riley looks back at the part scientific curiosity played in inspiring the Moon landings and uniting the world during uncertain times. One of Arthur C Clarke's "laws" states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Some technological advancement take place over centuries, and some can occur within a single generation - leaving those who lived through it with that feeling of magic. Apollo was an even faster example. Within eight years, we leapt from being unable to fly in space to living briefly on the Moon. The world's oldest man at the time - Charlie Smith - reportedly born in 1842 was at the launch of the final Moonshot and simply couldn't believe where the men onboard were heading. The science imperative was there Even Apollo 11's Michael Collins, a man intimately connected with the machinations of his mission, once said he felt that there was some magic within the smooth clockwork-like running of his flight. Such technological leaps require springboards of scientific curiosity, and Apollo was no exception. Unsure about where the new president would point them (as Nasa always tends to be when new administrations come to office), the agency had prepared a number of options for President Kennedy to consider. Chief amongst these were plans for a manned lunar exploration programme; conceived not by military strategists for reasons of Cold War bravado, nor by politicians with an eye on national prestige, but by one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th Century - a man passionately interested in our origins. Planetary scientist Harold Urey had first suggested to Nasa that it commence a lunar exploration programme in the 1950s. Urey figured that the Moon, lacking atmospheric weathering and the recycling of its crust through plate tectonics, might preserve some truly ancient geological relics from the early Solar System, long gone on Earth. Ignited by Urey's curiosity, Nasa came up with ambitious plans to investigate his theories, harnessing an armada of robotic mapping missions and culminating in a manned landing. With an estimated price tag of $11bn, there was little chance of it being adopted by the new President, but Nasa had it on the table just in case. The scale of the project was simply immense That case arose on the 12 April 1961, just three months after Kennedy had come to office, when Major Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth. Kennedy immediately consulted his Vice President to find out what they could do to restore some national pride and Johnson was quick to recommend Nasa's novel lunar exploration programme. At first Kennedy was reportedly unsure. With no guarantees of success, it seemed like a lot of money to convince Congress to spend. But Johnson was persuasive. The Saturn V astonished all those who saw it, and felt its power "To be second in space is to be second in everything," he told the President. Put that way, Kennedy had little choice but to embrace it. Marshalling over 400,000 men and woman across America for this single, focused and determined goal, Nasa's philosophy borrowed from another of Clarke's laws - "the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible". Examine the newspapers from any time during the 1960s and you will read of Apollo's "show stopping" engineering set-backs. From the seemingly insurmountable problems of getting each stage of the Saturn V to work, to the challenges of making the Command Module safe following the fire that killed the first Apollo astronauts, even the engineers would have told you at times that they didn't think it could be done. But against all the odds, on the 16 July 1969, just 30 months after the fatal fire - the first Saturn V rocket attempting to carry men from the surface of one world to another rose into the Florida sky. Those who had worked on Apollo - who intimately knew every nut and bolt - were left gasping at what they'd accomplished. For the rest of us - marvelling at the heaviest vehicle ever to lift off the ground - it was nothing short of magic. Three days later when the first men to reach another world arrived, their initial act, within moments of setting foot there, was to document and collect a precious sample of lunar dust, to share with laboratories across the Earth. It was a fitting thing to do at the climax of a voyage which had been started by a grand scientific idea about our origins. What could we do now that would have the same impact? As this series of essays has shown - whilst Apollo emerged during troubled times; accelerated into being as an antidote to the persistent terror of Armageddon, what transpired was far more than a Cold War race. America's immense national effort devoted to something other than war had united the world in admiration. In these similar times of great uncertainty - engaged in more un-winnable wars and threatened by new terrors - perhaps we need another magical project inspired by scientific curiosity and delivered by engineering ingenuity to lift our spirits and win over hearts and minds. The writer J. Bainbridge summed up Apollo as "a story of engineers who tried to reach the heavens". Is it time once more to challenge our scientists and engineers to reach for the heavens for the sake of all mankind? Dr Christopher Riley is the author of the new Haynes guide: Apollo 11 - an owner's workshop manual. He also curates the Apollo film at the online archive collection Footagevault. He is the producer of the 2009 director's cut of Nasa's original documentary feature film Moonwalk One

Space shuttle finally blasts off

Endeavour takes off from Cape Canaveral The US space agency Nasa has successfully launched the space shuttle Endeavour - at the sixth attempt. Earlier launches at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida were called off because of bad weather and fuel leaks. The crew will spend 11 days on the International Space Station, finishing work on a Japanese research laboratory. If the shuttle had not taken off by Thursday, it would have had to have waited until the end of the month to make way for a Russian cargo ship. The seven crew members will spend 11 days on the space station "The weather is finally co-operating so it is now time to fly, " said launch director Pete Nickolenko. "Persistence pays off, good luck and God speed." "We're ready to go, and we're going to take all of you with us on a great mission," replied mission commander Mark Polansky. The orbiter is taking a seven-strong crew into space, made up of six Americans and one Canadian - Julie Payette - who will operate the shuttle's robotic arm during the mission. Their arrival, on Friday, will bring the total crew on the outpost to 13 - a record for the International Space Station (ISS). On the first of five spacewalks, a platform will be added to the Japanese laboratory complex, Kibo, which can be used for experiments that require materials to be exposed to the harsh environment of space. The crew will also install new batteries to one of the solar arrays, which provide power to the space station, and perform other maintenance tasks. Astronaut Julie Payette is to operate the shuttle's robotic arm In addition, Endeavour will deliver a new long-stay US crew member, Tim Kopra, to the ISS and bring back Japan's Koichi Wakata, who has lived aboard the platform for more than three months. The space station, now about the size of a four-bedroom house, has been under construction for more than a decade. It is costing $100bn, and is a collaboration between 16 nations. This is the 127th space shuttle flight, the 29th to the station, the 23rd for Endeavour and the third in 2009. Seven further flights to the platform remain before the shuttles retire in 2010.

Herschel shows breadth of vision

M74: The Herschel telescope is tuned to see the dust in the galaxy More details Europe's Herschel space observatory is set to become one of the most powerful tools ever to study the Universe. The "first light" data from its three instruments demonstrates a remarkable capability even though their set-up is still not complete. Galaxy images released on Friday by the European Space Agency show detail previously unseen in the objects. The pictures - and the thousands that will follow - should give new insights on star formation and galaxy evolution. "We have some excellent images; they're not calibrated, but they look spectacular," said Dr Göran Pilbratt, Esa's Herschel project scientist. "They tell you we are working; it's just fantastic," he told BBC News. Different view Herschel is sensitive to light at long wavelengths - in the far-infrared and sub-millimetre range (55 to 672 microns). Observations at these longer wavelengths do not produce the "pretty pictures" obtained at shorter wavelengths, such as the visible light detected by the famous Hubble telescope. M66: SPIRE has not yet been properly calibrated More details What they can do, however, is see features in celestial objects that are invisible to Hubble; and with Herschel's giant 3.5m mirror, the detail becomes extremely rich. Friday's release includes the first two galaxy observations using the European telescope's SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver) instrument. SPIRE has pictured M74 (also known as NGC 628), a face-on spiral galaxy located about 24 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces; and M66 (also known as NGC 3627), a barred spiral galaxy located about 36 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. What Herschel sees in these objects is not their stars but the dusty clouds of gas that give rise to stars. SPIRE's view of M74 at progressively shorter wavelengths (from left to right) The shortest wavelengths will always produce the sharpest images A range of wavelengths are needed to see all the features of a galaxy "We're seeing the hidden life of the galaxy that never shows up in visible light images," explained Professor Matt Griffin, the principal investigator on the UK-led SPIRE consortium. "We see the dust which is a tracer for all the gas and dust which are the raw materials from which star formation occurs. These are fairly normal galaxies where star formation is going on in a continuous cycle; and the red [freckles] you see in the images are very distant galaxies, probably undergoing intense bursts of star formation." The design keeps Herschel's critical detectors in an ultra-cold state More details The Cardiff University researcher added: "This really was take off the blindfold, point and shoot, and see what we see. These were the very first observations; and there is a long way to go in terms of the way we set up the instrument, do the image processing and the map making. But it's incredible." Also in the release are new images from Herschel's Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS); and its Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI). PACS, which produced the very first Herschel image last month, has been used to look at a well-known planetary nebula - the Cat's Eye Nebula. The object has nothing to do with planets but is in fact an ageing star surrounded by a shell of ejected material. HIFI has a fine ability to detect the presence of particular chemical species in gas clouds that are birthing new stars. In a test observation of a star-forming region known as DR21 in the constellation Cygnus, the instrument could pick out charged carbon, carbon monoxide, and water. Telescope handover Herschel was despatched into space along with Esa's Planck telescope on 14 May. Over the course of the past two months, both astronomical satellites have been moving to observation positions some 1.5 million km from Earth, on its "night side". The long journey has been used by engineers to switch on and check out all of the telescopes' systems. This past week, a major review of the observatories' status was held in Darmstadt, Germany. The meeting marked the formal handover of the facilities from the industrial manufacturers - a pan-European industrial consortium led by Thales Alenia Space. "We're now going to start to tune the instruments for maximum performance," explained Dr Pilbratt. "We're going to try them out in many different observing situations in order to learn how to get the best out of them." This verification period will then be followed by a six-week demonstration phase in which the operations team hope to show the world the full power of a perfectly prepared, fully mature Herschel space observatory. Routine operations should begin towards the end of the year. Herschel is expected to continue working through to 2013, by which time the super-fluid helium that keeps its instruments and detectors in the necessary ultra-cold state to make observations will have boiled off.