Moon's magnetic material may have come from an asteroid
By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2012
A giant crater at the moon's south pole may hold the answer to a long-standing mystery about why portions of the lunar crust have a magnetic field and other parts don't.
After running sophisticated computer models, a trio of researchers is suggesting that mysterious magnetic material detected on the surface was delivered by a 120-mile-wide asteroid that crashed into the moon about 4.5 billion years ago. The collision left behind a gaping hole on the far side of the moon that is one of the largest-known impact craters in the solar system.
The South Pole-Aitken basin is "this huge, whopping crater that's roughly half the size of the U.S.," said Mark Wieczorek, lead author of a paper about the discovery published in Friday's edition of the journal Science. The presence of magnetized patches near its northern rim led Wieczorek and his colleagues to think there might be a connection.
The moon doesn't have a global magnetic field as the Earth does, but things may have been different in the distant past. READ....
By IND Web Design
Signs of Ancient Ocean on Mars Spotted by European Spacecraft
SPACE.com February 06, 2012
A European spacecraft orbiting Mars has found more revealing evidence that an ocean may have covered parts of the Red Planet billions of years ago.
The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft detected sediments on Mars' northern plains that are reminiscent of an ocean floor, in a region that has also previously been identified as the site of ancient Martian shorelines, the researchers said.
"We interpret these as sedimentary deposits, maybe ice-rich," study leader Jérémie Mouginot, of the Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG) in France and the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement. "It is a strong new indication that there was once an ocean here."
As part of its mission, Mars Express uses a radar instrument, called MARSIS, to probe beneath the Martian surface and search for liquid and solid water in the upper portions of the planet's crust. READ...
By IND Web Design
US Navy Launches Next-Generation Military Satellite
by Mike Wall, 24 February 2012
The United States Navy launched an advanced tactical satellite today (Feb. 24), lofting to orbit the first spacecraft in a new communications constellation that should provide a big upgrade for American troops.
The Mobile User Objective System-1 (MUOS-1) satellite blasted off at 5:15 p.m. EST (2215 GMT) today, riding an Atlas 5 rocket into the skies above Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station after an eight-day delay. The satellite was supposed to launch last week, but strong upper-level winds and thick clouds caused scrubs on both Feb. 16 and Feb. 17.
MUOS-1 will settle into a geostationary orbit above the Pacific Ocean, then undergo about six months of checkouts and tests before becoming operational, Navy officials have said.
The four-satellite MUOS constellation is designed to augment and eventually replace the current network that helps American warfighters around the globe communicate and coordinate. READ.....
By IND Web Design