The International Space projects is foreseen

The new program includes a mixed funding - Rs 1.12 billion from the state budget is 1.46 billion USD - from investors. Most (415 million USD) are going to spend for sensing of the Earth. Another USD 178 million provided for exploration of the solar system and 42 million USD - the use of space in the "interests of national security and defense." In this case, the participation of Ukrainian cosmonauts in the International Space projects is foreseen.

Mars-500, space mission for 500 days

Teams of astronauts may soon start work on the International Space Station is not for 6 months, as before, and for the year, according to the news agency RIA Novosti.

First annual expedition will be experimental and will not until 2015 to carry out a test mission will select two players - one a Russian cosmonaut and a NASA astronaut. If all goes well, than will be considering a one-year term for expeditions to the ISS on a regular basis.

Solve the mystery of the missing gas clouds, quasars

Scientists have been able to unpick the mystery arise just a few years of disappearance in 19 quasars gas clouds.

The internal structure of quasars - the ancient galaxies, the luminosity of which are so high that they can be confused with the nearby bright star - has interesting features. When approaching the central black hole accretion disk galaxies substance strongly heated and emits more light than the rest of the stars of the galaxy together. Powerful wind of charged particles generated by the heated gas, thus can take a portion of the incident with the black hole matter.

The database project in space

NASA is going to throw astronauts to the libration point of the Earth-Moon system, thus developing the idea of going beyond low-Earth orbit, already moderately alive in the spacecraft "Orion".

NASA scientists want, based on the experience of international cooperation in the ISS project, to place equipment and astronauts to the second Lagrange point (L2) of the Earth-Moon system.

The victim of a supernova explosion

Scientists are trying to way down the star, which died in the explosion of a supernova that transpires in the past year.

The outbreak of the star was found May 31, 2011 in a rather famous Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), which lies at a distance of 23 million light years from our own Milky Way galaxy. Supernova explosions occur when the supply of fuel massive stars, stellar, completing the life cycle comes to an end, and the stars begin to collapse, turning eventually into a neutron star or black hole.

The shore of an ancient Martian water channel

The rover Curiosity found some extraordinary features on the surface of the Red Planet that have a strong similarity to the shores of the land waterways.

For example, today's image shows the small ledge of rock that most likely formed by water erosion circulating underneath. The outgoing texture appears to be a sedimentary conglomerate, ie dried debris numerous smaller rocks that stuck together. 

Frosting on the rover Curiosity Martian environment

From mid-September during the day just frosting on the rover Curiosity Martian environment. REMS mediambiental Station, Spanish production, has been a 'nice' day temperature of 6 ° C and atmospheric pressure is also rising slightly. Of course, at night it is very cold: below -70 ° C, according to data presented this week at the European Planetary Science Congress.

The average air temperature has reached at 6 ° C during the day in the Gale Crater on Mars, where last August 6 vehicles landed on NASA's Curiosity. So what has been the leading Spanish instrument onboard REMS (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station).

"The longer we are seeing day temperatures as ‘warm’ are a surprise and very interesting," said Felipe Gomez, a researcher at the Centre for Astrobiology (CAB, INTA-CSIC) which has developed the instrument. REMS the first data is presented this week at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC2012) which was held in Madrid.

The environmental station data, which are available in English and Castilian in a web, confirm that since 13 September temperatures have been at or above 0 ° C during the day. In fact it has frozen in half the days recorded while the sun shone in the southern hemisphere of Mars, where Curiosity-but close to Ecuador-spring approaches, and scientists are eager to learn how to evolve the temperatures until midsummer.

"We are still at an early stage and testing our models, but if this trend continues 'warm' during the summer and is not timely, we could even predict temperatures around 20," said Gomez. "And this would be very exciting from the point of view of the habitability (the goal of the mission's rover MSL), and we could have daytime temperatures high enough for the formation of liquid water. "

Frigid nights

At night, however, dramatically lower registers below -70 ° C. Since the Martian atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's and much drier surface, the effects of solar heating in the air and soil are much more pronounced than on Earth.

REMS has also found that the pressure has increased from a daily average of about 730 Pascals during the first three weeks after landing until about 750 pascals-less than one hundredth of earth pressure. The figure of 685 is minimum and 780 maximum pascals, slightly higher values ​​than expected. Most of the variation is due to the 'tidal' Martian, there are related to the sun's energy rather than the influence of the Moon as on Earth.

"The tides are affected by the distribution of clouds and dust in the atmosphere, and the pattern of large-scale wind," says Javier Gomez-Elvira, the principal investigator and director of the CAB REMS.

Concerning the two units REMS wind, Gomez-Elvira explained to SINC that was damaged "probably for some small stone that crashed during landing, although the ultimate reason we do not know yet." Regarding the other, located on the second boom, "and we have a collection of data that we are processing and expect to be operational in the coming weeks."

"The rest of the sensors are working properly," confirms the researcher, "but the humidity is in a period of 'characterization' and is checking in collaboration with the team of the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI, Finland) that has developed”.

Both Gomez and Gomez-Elvira have highlighted the announcement made yesterday by NASA of the discovery of rocks that confirm the presence of past water on Mars, but it is a visual observation in which REMS Curiosity has not intervened.

A crater drier than expected

During the presentation at the conference of the preliminary data of the Spanish season, have also released the first results of another instrument: DAN (Dynamic Albedo Neutrons). It is a device that analyzes the presence in the subsoil water through the effect of one of its two elements, hydrogen, on the neutrons.

The information provided by DAN far suggests that the environment could be drier Curiosity than expected. "The prediction based on previous measurements with data from the Mars Odyssey orbiter was that the crater floor would have about 6% water, but the data show that only a fraction of that," said Maxim Mokrousov, Space Research Institute Russia and principal designer of the instrument.

One possible explanation for this discrepancy could be that the water content varies considerably along the surface of Mars. The Polar Regions are those with more water, but there may be significant local variations, including at specific regions, such as Gale crater.