NASA scientists have announced on Thursday that the Mars Pheonix Lander has discovered water ice on Mars. Their statement is backed by “photographic evidence” which have eluded this mystery and now we can say that there is ice therefore water could exist on Mars.

The photos show ice which sublimed after four days and Peter Smith, Phoenix Lander lead investigator, said that “these little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice”.

The goal of the Mars Pheonix Lander was to find water ice and then analyze it, so now we can say that this is an important step and we will only have to wait for the results. The lander will also look for organic molecules and although it doesn’t feature instruments that directly detect life, it can make some important analyzes.

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As you probably know by now, the Pheonix Lander has descended and landed on Mars. Another first for NASA is that the MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) has photographed the Pheonix while the spacecraft was descending on Mars. The high-resolution camera caught an awesome image on Sunday of the Pheonix which currently sends images from the landing site.

The Pheonix spacecraft will transmit information and pictures from Mars’ northern polar region with the help of the MRO. The information that it will be sent are mainly meteorological and geological samples. Although there were some problems with the data relay through the MRO, the Pheonix will send its studies over the next three months.

NASA released some images of a new-born star extending itself over 100,000 light years away from the center of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. The star was called M83 and the first image is from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer and it pictures ultraviolet data.

The second image includes radio data from the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array, New Mexico and it shows the radio emission in red. The M83 baby-star is situated at about 15 million light years away in the Southern Constellation Hydra.

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Omega Centauri is one fascinating star cluster, that orbits our galaxy and with the help of Spitzer Space Telescope we are able to see in more details the stars that form it. We are even able to see which stars are old and which are young. By looking in the photo you can view the older ones ( red ) and the younger ( blue ). Also this photo shows that the stars cycle a black hole, located at Omega Centauri’s core.

Astronomers want to know everything about the planets in our solar system and one of the most interesting places is Mars. If they already can map the surface, it has been very hard to get information about the underground. There is one technology that can complete this task - it’s MARSIS, EPA’s Mars Express radar sounder.

MARSIS stands for Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding and it managed to take a look under the Mars’ surface which means that it opened to a new world of planetary exploration, the third dimension world.

The success of MARSIS was a surprise even for its developers as they stated that this was an experiment as nobody used a radar sounder on other planets before. Ali Safaeinili, MARSIS co-investigator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California, USA said that “it was a leap into the unknown” and Roberto Orosei, MARSIS Deputy Principal Investigator, IASF-INAF, added that they “demonstrated that the polar caps at Mars are mostly water ice, and produced an inventory so now we know exactly how much water there is”.

MARSIS is a result of the collaboration between Europe and America and this technology could be helpful here on Earth in order to find more about Antarctica’s ice sheets.

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NASA is preparing for its 50th anniversary this year. In 1958, NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, replaced NACA which stood for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and since then they began to explore the space and on May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard was lurking outside our atmosphere for about 15 minutes. For its jubilee, NASA prepared a special collection of space images.

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In our solar system it does not exist any moon with moons and now astronomers are trying to discover this fact in other solar systems. They already found asteroids with moons but this is not satisfactory for those guys at NASA and if this is possible and adding the fact that the aforementioned space-specialists put spacecrafts on our Moon’s orbit, then it means that it’s physically possible.

According to Seth Shostak, astronomer at the SETI Institute, it’s very hard for moons to have their own moons because they are unlikely to dominate the gravitational force of the parent planet because “You would need to have a wide space between the moon and planet”.

Earlier I said that it’s physically possible that moons to have their own moons, but this would not last too long as the “tidal forces from the parent planet will tend, over time, to destabilize the orbit of the moon’s moon, eventually pulling it out of orbit”, said Webster Cash, professor at the University of Colorado Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy.

As the astronomers are hunting new planets, there is no problem if they search for moons that can handle their own moons and if they discover at least one then it would be one of the biggest NASA achievements.

Lynx is a rocket with two seats unveiled in Los Angeles as the first spaceship designed for tourism purposes. XCOR Aerospace have been working on liquid fueled rocket engines since 1999 in Mojave, California with the initial purpose of creating a reusable vehicle, that will fly often and with relatively low costs.

They have a range of engines, from small alcohol powered rockets for expositions to the 7,500-pound-thrust  methane powered engine finished last year for NASA. Teaming up with Rocket Racing League, they came up with the X Racer, a raceplane that XCOR are currently testing. Space is defined at a 62 miles altitude, and Lynx is expected to cross that imaginary line by 4 or 5 miles, to give the passenger the chance to experience the weightless sensation.

Suborbital flight is still hard to realize by any private company, so far only Scaled Composites also from the Mojave managed to achieve it. Their  vehicle, called the SpaceShipOne, has managed to crack three times the speed of sound using rocket power and make a safe landing. Lynx is expected to launch in 2010 and the competition for private space conquerers is already heating up.

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After being reported that Titan hosts a methane sea, researchers issue a new theory that states its crust could cover a sea of liquid water mixed with ammonia. Saturn’s moon is already of major interest for scientists due to its dunes, mountains and lakes, and now the Cassini probe found evidence of a possible underground sea on the sphere.

Radar engineers collected the locations of 50 unique landmarks on Titan’s surface and in a second study of the territories, they saw that the prominent surface features seemed to have shifted from their initial positions by almost 31 km.

Since these changes could not have taken place if Titan would have spun around its axis in a regular fashion, they believe that atmospheric or seasonal changes in its motion must be the cause. However, these changes are very unlikely to have such an effect on the moon, the most plausible explanation being that the crust is not fixed to the core, so there must be some sort of liquid on which it floats.

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NASA’s $2 million Lunar Chariot has been tested by John Schwartz, a NYT reporter. No, he didn’t get to drive the thing, he just stayed on the passenger’s seat, on which he rather stood. The massive machine that has a weight of around 4,500 pounds has some elements that need improvements, but also a few impressive capabilities.

Its main flaws are its top speed, that can get only at 15mph and its weight, that would make it very difficult to be transported to the Moon or to another planet. Aside that, it is able to navigate through some really challenging types of terrain. For that purpose, it has six wheels, each controlled independently from a joystick.Its chassis can be raised to 28 inches in height so the suspension is incredible. It also has a few parts that are not made by NASA, like a cheap webcam and regular rubber tires that are unlikely to last long in other environments.

As a conclusion, I think for $2 million NASA should have built something a little more efficient than a huge machine that can almost be surpassed by a runner. It covers, of course, other important aspects of the spatial trips, but there is much more to be developed if we want to get an acceptable vehicle for extra-terrestrial usage.

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