Science Opinions

Federal authorities have declared the West Coast ocean salmon fishery a failure, opening the way for Congress to appropriate economic disaster assistance for coastal communities in California, Oregon and Washington.
The declaration Thursday stems from the sudden collapse of the chinook salmon run in California’s Sacramento River, where the salmon return to spawn. Scientists are studying the causes of the collapse, with possible factors ranging from ocean conditions and habitat destruction to dam operations and agricultural pollution.
Only 60,000 chinook are expected to return to the river this fall, about a third of the minimum set by fisheries managers for spawning the next generation. That compares with 775,000 that returned in 2002 when times were flush.
“This is a bleak year,” Jim Balsiger, acting assistant administrator of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, said at a news conference Thursday in Portland, Ore.
The fisheries service, the federal agency in charge of salmon management, estimated that the value of this year’s lost catch was $22 million and that direct income losses to sport and commercial fishing boats, processors, bait shops and other related businesses were $60 million in the three states.
The states’ governors, who requested the declaration, have estimated that those losses rise to $290 million as they ripple through the economy. California is seeking $208 million in disaster aid, Oregon $45 million and Washington $36 million.
“Certainly this has a dramatic effect on all the coastal fishing communities,” said Bob Lohn, Northwest regional administrator of NOAA Fisheries.
This marks the second year in the past three that a federal fishery failure has been declared for West Coast salmon, and last year’s catch was poor, despite liberal fishing seasons. Fishing cutbacks in 2006 because of the collapse of chinook run in the Klamath River, which straddles the Oregon-California line, caused a drop in catch value estimated at $16 million. Congress appropriated $60 million in disaster assistance that was distributed last year.
Fisherman Jeff Reeves said he was happy to hear of the latest declaration because disaster assistance from the 2006 season closure kept him from bankruptcy.
“Salmon was my moneymaker,” Reeves said from his boat off Charleston, Ore. “It just seems to be getting more and more difficult to stay in the fishing business.”
The Sacramento chinook run is the backbone of commercial fisheries off California and Oregon, where the Pacific Fishery Management Council last month recommended the first total shutdown in ocean salmon fishing. Poor returns along the coast left room for only vestigial sport and commercial fishing off Washington this year.
Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., said members of Congress from the West Coast hoped to attach a disaster aid measure to the supplemental war funding bill expected to make it to the Senate floor in coming weeks, but the amount remains to be worked out.
He added that the White House has opposed attaching extra measures to the bill, but he was confident that Congress would approve aid before the end of the session.

via AOL

This is a first step toward providing federal disaster assistance to commercial and charter salmon fishermen and related businesses in California, Oregon and Washington.PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - It’s official: This year’s West Coast salmon fishery is an economic disaster. NOAA Fisheries made the declaration Thursday in Portland. The governors of those states have estimated $290 million in losses due to the shutdown of salmon fishing. The fishing was curtailed because of a sudden collapse in populations of chinook salmon from California’s Sacramento Valley. NOAA Fisheries is the federal agency in charge of ocean fisheries and turning around the long-standing decline in salmon populations.

via MSN

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Major South Korean corn processors have begun importing genetically modified varieties of the crop because of shortages of conventional corn on the world market since China began limiting its exports, officials said Friday.
About 63,000 tons of genetically modified U.S. corn arrived in South Korea on Thursday, the first large-scale imports for human consumption since the government began regulating biotech crops in 2001.
Four major South Korean companies, which make up about 90 percent of the corn processing market, had refrained from importing such corn because of negative perceptions among consumers of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
But now they say they cannot help but import GMO corn.
“China has stopped exports, while European countries are sweeping off non-GMO corn from Latin American nations,” said Yoo Chang-kyu, an official with the Korea Corn Processing Association, the business lobby for the four companies. “We don’t have any other options.”
The companies use corn to produce corn starch, a key ingredient in cookies, beverages, ice cream and other foods.
Environmental and consumer groups protested the import of biotech corn, calling it “monster food.”
“The safety of genetically modified corn has not been fully verified,” they said in a joint statement. “If food is made with it, the health of our nation’s people can be threatened.”
On Thursday, activists held a protest at the port of Ulsan, where the GMO corn arrived, Yonhap news agency reported.
South Korea imported about 10.5 million tons of corn last year, with 8.2 million tons intended for animal feed and 2.3 million tons for human consumption, according to the Agriculture Ministry.
About half of the amount for human consumption was imported from China, 30 percent from the United States and the remainder from Brazil and other Latin American nations, it said.
China began limiting corn exports last year to avoid domestic shortages.
Local newspapers said the four Korean companies are expected to import about 1.3 million tons of GMO corn this year.
But Yoo, of the corn processing association, said the amount is likely to be less than that considering the expected backlash from consumers. He provided no exact estimate.
Yoo said the price of non-GMO corn has more than doubled to about US$360 per ton since 2006.
South Korea enforced a regulation in 2001 that calls for the labeling of products that contain GMOs.
Although no GMO corn had been imported in large amounts since then, about 70 percent of the country’s soybean imports are genetically modified, according to the Korea Food and Drug Administration.

via AOL

SEOUL, South Korea - Major South Korean corn processors have begun importing genetically modified varieties of the crop because of the lack of conventional corn available in the international market since China began regulating its exports, officials said Friday.

About 57,000 metric tons of genetically modified U.S. corn arrived in South Korea on Thursday, marking the first time the country has imported genetically modified corn in large amounts for human consumption since the government began regulating biotech crops in 2001.

Four major South Korean companies which make up about 90 percent of the local corn processing market had refrained from importing such corn because of negative perceptions among consumers about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

But now they say they cannot help but import GMO corn.

“China has stopped exports, while European countries are sweeping off non-GMO corns from Latin American nations,” said Yoo Chang-kyu, an official with the Korea Corn Processing Association, the business lobby for the four companies. “We don’t have any other options.”

The companies, including industry leader Daesang Corp., a major food company, use corn to produce corn starch, a key ingredient in cookies, beverages, ice cream and other foods.

Environmental and consumer groups, including the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement, have protested the import of biotech corn, calling the crops a “monster food.”

“The safety of genetically modified corn has not been fully verified,” they said in a joint statement. “If food is made with it, the health of our nation’s people can be threatened.”

On Thursday, activists held a protest at the port of Ulsan, 414 kilometers (257 miles) southeast of Seoul, where the GMO corn arrived, holding signs bearing anti-GMO slogans such as “No GMO,” Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korea imported about 9.5 million tons of corn last year, with 7.4 million tons intended for animal feed and 2.1 million tons for human consumption, according to the Agriculture Ministry.

About half the amount for human consumption was imported from China, 30 percent from the United States and the remainder from Brazil and other Latin American nations, it said.

China began regulating corn exports last year, with the National Development and Reform Commission calling in October for “the necessary control on the export of processed corn products, to avoid supply shortages in the domestic market.”

No figures were available on how much China has restricted exports.

Local newspapers said the four Korean companies are expected to import about 1.2 million tons of GMO corn this year.

But Yoo, of the corn processing association, said the amount is expected to be lower than that considering the expected backlash from consumers. He provided no exact figure.

Yoo said the price of non-GMO corn has more than doubled to about US$360 (euro232) per ton since 2006.

South Korea enforced a regulation in 2001 that calls for putting labels on products that used GMOs.

Although no GMO corn was imported in large amounts since then, about 70 percent of the country’s soybean imports are genetically modified, according to the Korea Food and Drug Administration.

via MSN

After a week and a half of complex orbital construction work, Endeavour’s seven astronauts undocked from the international space station and began their journey home.
The space shuttle is scheduled to land on Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center, ending a record-setting mission to the orbiting outpost. Endeavour’s astronauts will spend Tuesday preparing their ship for touchdown.
Pilot Gregory Johnson backed Endeavour away from the space station on Monday evening, ending 12 days of linked flight. He then guided the shuttle through a loop around the orbiting complex so the crew could take pictures of its new look.
Endeavour’s astronauts built a giant handyman robot and installed the first segment of Japan’s Kibo lab during their stay at the station.
“We really appreciate everything you’ve done for us over the last couple of weeks,” station commander Peggy Whitson radioed Endeavour as the shuttle pulled away. “Thanks a bunch.”
The 10 space travelers performed a record-tying five spacewalks to put together the space station robot, attach the new Japanese compartment and complete other chores.
Flight director Mike Moses thanked the astronauts and the ground crew for a job well done.
“I am immensely proud of the teams, all the teams, that got us to this point,” he said.
NASA’s next shuttle mission is set for late May, when Discovery will deliver the enormous Japanese lab Kibo, which means hope. Endeavour delivered a storage compartment for the lab.
But the Hubble Space Telescope mission, at the end of August, might wind up being postponed because of a slowdown in shuttle fuel-tank production.
Only now, five years after the Columbia accident, are fuel tanks and their insulating foam skin being built from scratch, said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team.
The fuel tank used to propel Endeavour into orbit on March 11 was the last one that was already in production when Columbia was destroyed, and so it was easier to make the post-accident safety changes.
These changes, most if not all of them involving foam, took time to refine. NASA also became bogged down by a recurring fuel-gauge problem that finally was resolved a few months ago.
“We’re on a learning curve here,” Cain said.
On the Net:
NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

via AOL

HOUSTON (Reuters) — Shuttle Endeavour astronauts on Sunday prepared to leave the International Space Station after a successful 12-day visit to install the first piece of a Japanese laboratory and assemble a Canadian maintenance robot.

The crew swapped spacesuits, leaving its newest gear and spare parts aboard the outpost, and packed up experiment samples for return to Earth. The shuttle is scheduled to depart the station on Monday.

For the first part of the day, the crew enjoyed time off.

“We had over 33 hours of spacewalking time (on this flight). It’s great to see it behind us. The crew is due for a little rest,” lead spacewalk officer Zebulon Scoville told reporters at Johnson Space Center.

On a spacewalk that ended on Saturday night, Robert Behnken and Michael Foreman performed chores that included Foreman checking out a balky rotary joint for one of the station’s wing-like solar power panels.

NASA discovered metal shavings inside the mechanism last year and is trying to trace their source.

Space station flight director Dana Weigel said Foreman found no evidence that orbital debris had struck the joint, which eliminated one possible cause.

“That’s a big help for us. That kind of narrows down one of the chains of the fault tree,” she said.

The rotary joint was designed to keep the panel pointed at the sun to maximize electricity production, but has been locked in place to prevent further damage. However, the station is growing and its power needs increasing so NASA must soon make decisions about how to repair the joint, Weigel said.

“The first decision point is going to be the end of March,” she said. One option is simply “to try to clean it up and live with it,” Weigel said.

Endeavour, after a night launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, arrived at the space station on March 12 with the first piece of Japan’s Kibo lab and with Dextre, the Canadian-built maintenance robot. The second of Kibo’s three parts, the main laboratory, is scheduled to be transported to the station on a May shuttle flight.

The U.S. space agency plans to fly 10 more construction and resupply flights to the station as well as a mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.

Endeavour is due to land at the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday.

via MSN

As for the jammed rotating solar joint, it’s filled with metal shavings because of grinding parts.
NASA has been trying since last fall to figure out what is broken and how best to fix the joint. Spacewalking astronauts inspected the joint several times before and even collected samples of the steel grit for analysis back on Earth. But five covers had yet to be removed, and that’s where Foreman focused his efforts. He photographed what appeared to be a pit in the joint.
“You’re doing great with that camera, Mike. We’re going to hire you to do my cousin’s bar mitzvah,” astronaut Garrett Reisman radioed from inside.
Saturday night’s spacewalk, which lasted six hours, was the last major space station job for Endeavour’s crew. The shuttle arrived at the orbiting complex March 12, delivering the first section of the Kibo lab and a Canadian robot with 11-foot arms that is designed to assist future spacewalkers.
Endeavour is scheduled to undock from the space station on Monday night and land back at Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday night. The shuttle will have spent 12 days at the station - the longest shuttle visit ever. It was the most spacewalks ever performed - five - during a joint shuttle-station flight.
On the Net:
NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

via AOL

HOUSTON - After a final inspection of Endeavour’s thermal shield, astronauts aboard the linked shuttle-station complex began preparing for a Saturday spacewalk to store on the station the laser-tipped boom they used to search for damage.

Every shuttle crew that’s flown since the Columbia disaster has used the boom to check for problems with the shield that protects the ship from the searing heat of re-entry.

The boom is being left at the space station because there won’t be room for it in Discovery’s payload bay on its next mission because the enormous Japanese Kibo lab will take up almost every square inch.

Astronauts Robert Behnken and Michael Foreman plan to attach the 50-foot inspection boom to the outside of the space station on Saturday during the fifth and final spacewalk of Endeavour’s mission. Discovery will carry the boom back to Earth after its mission ends.

Shortly after reaching orbit last week, the astronauts attached the boom to Endeavour’s 50-foot robot arm to check the wings and nose for any launch damage. None was found. They repeated the inspection Friday in the remote chance the wings or nose were struck by a micrometeorite or space junk during the past week and a half.

The inspection went smoothly and nothing stood out in early examinations of the images, shuttle flight director Mike Moses said. He expected the analysis to be complete by Sunday.

‘Executed well’”The crew was well trained. They executed well. Everything went perfect,” Moses said.

Slide show Space ShotsFeast your eyes on a total lunar eclipse, the northern lights, a space shuttle launch and other out-of-this-world highlights.

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After the boom is secure, Behnken will try again to attach a couple of suitcase-sized science experiments to the outside of the European Columbus lab. He had trouble getting the first experiment to latch down in an earlier spacewalk.

Meanwhile, Foreman will conduct yet another inspection of a solar rotary joint that’s been broken since last fall. NASA still doesn’t know what might be causing the metal parts to grind, clogging the joint with shavings.

Foreman will check out a pockmark spotted in images gathered by other spacewalkers. If it’s a divot, Moses said, it could be “a hint towards our smoking gun.” Then again, he said, it could just be a large clump of debris.

Foreman also will remove some thermal covers to check whether it’s possible a micrometeorite hit showered debris throughout the joint, which is supposed to continuously rotate 360 degrees to keep the solar wings pointing toward the sun.

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Saturday night’s spacewalk will wrap up Endeavour’s space station work and clear the way for undocking on Monday night. It will be the most spacewalks ever performed during a joint shuttle-station flight.

NASA, meanwhile, may be forced to delay some of the year’s later shuttle flights _ including the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission at the end of August _ because of a slowdown in building new external fuel tanks with post-Columbia design changes. Shuttle officials are evaluating the schedule and what can be done, if anything, to keep the launches on track.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) - Three years after gigantic geysers were spied on an icy Saturn moon, the international Cassini spacecraft is poised to plunge through the fringes of the mysterious plumes to learn how they formed.
Wednesday’s flyby will bring Cassini within 30 miles of the surface of Enceladus (en-SELL’-uh-duhs) at closest approach. The unmanned probe will be about 120 miles above the moon as it sweeps through the edge of the geysers and measures their chemical makeup.
The carefully orchestrated event will take Cassini “deeper than we’ve been before,” mission scientist Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute said in an e-mail.
Scientists long believed Enceladus, the shiniest object in the solar system, was cold and still because it resides hundreds of millions of miles from the sun. But recent evidence shows the Arizona-sized satellite is geologically active with a significant atmosphere and a relatively warm south pole.
In 2005, Cassini surprised scientists when it snapped images of geyser-like eruptions of ice particles and water vapor spewing from the south pole. The dramatic images effectively put Enceladus on the short list of places within the solar system most likely to have conditions suitable for extraterrestrial life.
Scientists generally agree the presence of water, organic compounds and a stable heat source are needed to support primitive life.
Previous measurements by Cassini showed the eruptions were frequent, with gases and particles venting from the surface at about 800 mph and forming plumes hundreds of miles high.
The source of the geysers is a mystery, but some theorize reservoirs of liquid water below the surface likely are supplying the ice and vapor seen in the plumes.
Until now, scientists have not been able to measure the plumes’ makeup in detail. Using its particle analyzers, Cassini will calculate the density, size and speed of the various gases and particles. The spacecraft’s cameras will also image the moon during the flyby.
Of particular interest is whether the plumes contain ammonia, which can keep water in liquid form and would bolster the theory that liquid water lies beneath.
“There’s not much for us … to do regarding the upcoming flyby except to hold our breaths and cross our fingers,” John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., wrote on the Cassini blog.
The close encounter poses little danger to Cassini because the plume particles are small compared with the dust-sized debris the spacecraft is used to flying through while orbiting Saturn, scientists said.
The Cassini mission is a collaboration between NASA and the European and Italian space agencies.
On the Net:
Cassini mission: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

via AOL

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft circling the planet Saturn will plunge through the outer fringes of an icy plume spewing out from cracks in one of the ringed world’s many moons on Wednesday.

Cassini will zip through the edges of immense frozen water vapor geysers gushing from fractures in the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The flyby is Cassini’s first of four swings past icy Enceladus this year, where the spacecraft will use onboard instruments to “sniff and taste” the satellite’s Old Faithful-like water-ice eruptions, mission managers said.

“This daring flyby requires exquisite technical finesse, but it has the potential to revolutionize our knowledge of the geysers of Enceladus,” said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, in a statement.

At its closest approach, Cassini will skim just 32 miles above the surface of Enceladus before passing through the moon’s icy plume at an altitude of about 120 miles. The spacecraft will zoom past Enceladus at about 32,234 mph, snapping photos on approach and departure that will return the first-ever views of some northern regions, NASA officials said.

But Cassini will use particle analyzers during the flyby itself to determine the exact make up of the moon’s odd plume material, which contains water vapor and traces of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases.

“We want to know if there is a difference in composition of gases coming from the plume versus the material surrounding the moon,” said Hunter Waite, principal investigator for Cassini’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute. “This may help answer the question of how the plume formed.”

NASA/JPL/SSIWispy fingers of bright, icy material reach tens of thousands of kilometers outward from Saturn’s moon Enceladus into the E ring, while the moon’s active south polar jets continue to fire away.Cassini first spotted Enceladus’ icy plume in 2005, when its onboard instruments recorded water vapor geysers rushing out to distances of up to three times the 310-mile wide moon’s diameter. The ice particles themselves are tiny, just one ten-thousandth of an inch or about the size of the width of a human hair but jet out of Enceladus at about 800 mph.

The apparently continuous eruptions appear to periodically give Enceladus a fresh coat of surface material and spew out ice dust that bolsters Saturn’s faint E-ring.

Cassini researchers already know that there are at least two types of particles pure water-ice and water-ice intermixed with other material in Enceladus’ plume.

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“We think the clean water-ice particles are being bounced off the surface and the dirty water-ice particles are coming from inside the moon,” said Sascha Kempf, deputy principal investigator for Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. “This flyby will show us whether this concept is right or wrong.”

Cassini mission managers will watch how their spacecraft weathers Wednesday’s Enceladus flyby to aid planning for additional swings past the Saturnian moon. Cassini is due to make seven trips past Enceladus during its extended mission, and could swing closer to the moon should this weeks’ rendezvous go well, NASA officials said.

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HOUSTON (AP) - Now that the space station’s new robot is fully assembled, astronauts prepared to attach the giant machine directly to the orbiting outpost for the first time on Tuesday.
Astronauts Richard Linnehan and Robert Behnken went on a spacewalk Monday to add a tool belt and two cameras that will serve as the robot’s eyes as it helps maintain the station.
The robot, called Dextre, flew in pieces to the station aboard the shuttle Endeavour. It has been assembled over the course of three spacewalks. So far, the 12-foot robot and both of its 11-foot arms have checked out fine.
On Tuesday evening, astronauts plan to use the space station’s mechanical arm to attach Dextre to the outside of the station’s U.S. lab, Destiny.
The spacewalkers’ robot-related chores went smoothly, but Behnken had some trouble attaching a science experiment to Europe’s Columbus lab. He couldn’t get the suitcase-sized experiment to latch firmly onto the platform.
Behnken ended up carrying the experiment back to Endeavour’s payload bay, repeatedly expressing his disappointment.
“You gave it your all, Bob,” Linnehan said. “No one could have done any better.”
Experts on the ground will spend the next couple of days trying to figure out what’s causing the problem and how to fix it or work around it.
Astronauts participating in one of the mission’s final two spacewalks may end up tying down the experiment and its twin instead of bolting them, said Zebulon Scoville, the lead spacewalk officer for Endeavour’s mission.
Despite the problem, Scoville said he couldn’t have been more pleased with the spacewalkers’ work.
“You’re making rock stars question their job choice,” Scoville radioed Behnken before asking him several questions about the troublesome fitting.
Five spacewalks are planned for Endeavour’s 16-day flight, which is about halfway done. While shuttle astronauts have performed five spacewalks before on a single flight - on trips to the Hubble Space Telescope - it will be a record for a shuttle-station mission.
In addition to delivering Dextre to the space station, Endeavour’s crew dropped off a storage compartment for the Japanese lab that will fly up in May. The astronauts not involved with the spacewalks - including Japanese astronaut Takao Doi - continued setting up the storage compartment in preparation for the arrival of the lab, which is named Kibo. The word is Japanese for hope.
On the Net:
NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

via AOL

The Canadian robot, named Dextre, needs power to heat its joints, limbs and electronics. The $200 million machine could be damaged if left cold for days.

Canadian engineers initially suspected the trouble could be with a timer, and they created a software patch to fix it.

But Pierre Jean, Canada’s acting space station program manager, said experts now believe the problem stems from a design flaw in the temporary cable that is supposed to provide power to Dextre until it is fully assembled.

If that’s the case, Jean said, Dextre should have no trouble powering up once the astronauts finish putting it together and install it on the station next week.

To be sure, the crew plans to hook up Dextre to the space station’s robotic arm later Friday. If the problem is with the temporary cables, Dextre should receive power from the arm. If it doesn’t, engineers will have to find another fix.

“I think at this point in time we’re pretty confident that by 10 o’clock tonight we should have the answer to this particular question,” Jean said.

In the worst case, spacewalking astronauts could go back out to disassemble Dextre and leave it in pieces at the space station. That way, the robot would not have to be heated.

The crew still ran the software patch to see if it helped, but it didn’t.

While spacewalkers Richard Linnehan and Garrett Reisman worked on the robot, two of their crew mates used a robotic arm to remove a Japanese storage compartment from shuttle Endeavour’s cargo bay and attach it to the space station. Watch astronauts begin spacewalk »

It’s the first part of Japan’s massive Kibo lab, which means “hope.” Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to deliver the main part of the lab in May.

The spacewalkers oohed and aahed as the compartment glided slowly through space on the robotic arm.

“That’s fantastic,” Reisman said.

via CNN

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Most days, Moko the bottlenosed dolphin swims playfully with humans at a New Zealand beach. But this week, it seems, Moko found his mojo. Witnesses described Wednesday how they saw the 053; APGROUP:Oceania;) )

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Most days, Moko the bottlenosed dolphin swims playfully with humans at a New Zealand beach. But this week, it seems, Moko found his mojo.

Witnesses described Wednesday how they saw the dolphin swim up to two stranded whales and guide them to safety.

Before Moko arrived, rescue workers had been working for more than an hour to get two pygmy sperm whales, a mother and her calf, back out to sea after they were stranded Monday off Mahia Beach, said Conservation Department worker Malcolm Smith.

But Smith said the whales restranded themselves four times on a sandbar slightly out to sea from the beach, about 300 miles northeast of the capital, Wellington. It looked likely they would have to be euthanized to prevent a prolonged death, he said.

“They kept getting disorientated and stranding again,” said Smith, who was among the rescuers. “They obviously couldn’t find their way back past (the sandbar) to the sea.”

Then along came Moko, who approached the whales and appeared to lead them as they swam 200 yards along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea.

“Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales,” Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told The Associated Press. “She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience.”

Anton van Helden, a marine mammals expert at New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, said the reports of Moko’s rescue were “fantastic” but believable because the dolphins have “a great capacity for altruistic activities.”

These included evidence of dolphins protecting people lost at sea, and their playfulness with other animals.

“But it’s the first time I’ve heard of an inter-species refloating technique. I think that’s wonderful,” said van Helden, who was not involved in the rescue but spoke afterward to Smith.

via MSN

Spacewalking astronauts added hands to a robot outside the international space station early Friday as experts on the ground prepared to beam up a software patch they hoped would fix a problem getting power to the giant machine.
The Canadian robot, named Dextre, needs to have power to heat its joints, limbs and electronics. The $200 million machine could be damaged if left cold for days.
Mike Suffredini, NASA’s space station program manager, said he was confident the problem that cropped up Thursday could be resolved fairly quickly.
Canadian engineers suspected the trouble could be with a timer and created the software patch to fix it. Other options were being considered in case that didn’t work, including relaying power to Dextre through the space station’s robot arm.
In the worst case, spacewalking astronauts could go back out to disassemble Dextre and leave it in pieces at the space station, Suffredini said. That way, the robot would not have to be heated.
While spacewalkers Richard Linnehan and Garrett Reisman worked on the robot, two of their crew mates used a robotic arm to remove a Japanese storage compartment from shuttle Endeavour’s cargo bay and attach it to the space station.
It’s the first part of Japan’s massive Kibo lab, which means “hope.” Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to deliver the main part of the lab in May.
The spacewalkers oohed and aahed as the compartment glided slowly through space on the robotic arm.
“That’s fantastic,” Reisman said.
The spacewalk, which lasted seven hours, was the first of five planned during Endeavour’s unusually long stay at the space station. Three of them will focus on Dextre, one of the Canadian Space Agency’s main contributions to the space station.
Dextre rode up on Endeavour in nine pieces, all of them attached to a transport bed. That transporter, or pallet, was unloaded from the shuttle early Thursday and attached to the railway system on the space station for the Canadian-built robot arm. That’s when the power problem struck.
The 3,400-pound robot, when assembled, is 12 feet high and has a shoulder span of nearly 8 feet. It’s designed to help spacewalkers with some of their more routine maintenance chores, with the eventual goal of reducing the amount of time astronauts spend outside.
It was the first spacewalk for Reisman, who flew up on Endeavour and will live aboard the station until June. It was the fourth spacewalk for Linnehan, who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002.
Toward the end of their outing, the spacewalkers were treated to a stunning view of city lights in the midwestern United States, probably Chicago.
“Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. Wow,” Linnehan said. “It’s a pretty amazing view.”
On the Net:
NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

via AOL

A massive robot and Japan’s first room in space are set for delivery to the international space station next week aboard NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour.

Canada’s two-armed robot, named Dextre for its nimble capabilities, should give astronauts a break from basic repair and maintenance tasks outside of the growing space station. The Japanese Logistics Pressurized (JLP) Module marks the first of three components for that nation’s massive Kibo science lab.

“This flight will be a monumental flight for Japan,” said Tetsuro Yokoyama, operations project deputy manager for Kibo, during a press briefing at Johnson Space Center this week. “We are very close to a long-awaited moment.”

The seven-astronaut STS-123 space shuttle crew, led by commander Dominic Gorie, is slated to launch at 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 GMT) on March 11 aboard Endeavour. The crew aims to install Japan’s new orbital room in a temporary position on March 14, then begin Dextre’s assembly on March 15.

Meet Dextre To fit the Canadian Space Agency’s $274-million, 3,440-pound (1,560-kilogram) robot into Endeavour’s payload bay, engineers crafted it into large chunks that spacewalking astronauts could assemble outside of the space station.

Once astronauts latch each piece in place and attach it to a mobile platform on the space station, Dextre will be able to do many standard tasks with an astronaut or earthbound operators at its controls.

“He’s got huge arms, kind of got like a head up there and a lower torso,” said astronaut Rick Linnehan, a mission specialist on the STS-123 mission, comparing it “Gigantor,” a famous cartoon robot. “It allows us to … increase the amount of robotics tasks we do up on station.”

That’s important, NASA officials have said, because spacewalking is risky business for astronauts. The new robot is also expected to give space station crewmembers more time to focus on science and other tasks, they added.

“It’s sitting out there in the harsh environment of space all the time, basically ready to go,” said Daniel Rey, manager for the Dextre project. “It doesn’t require any pre-breathe protocol and it doesn’t require any cleanup. It’s an operational robot that’s pushing the limits of what we can do in space today with robotics.”

Each of Dextre’s seven-jointed arms will possess a “hand” an orbital replacement unit backed by a sensor sensitive to less than 1 pound (0.5 kilogram) of force, or about the weight of a small water bottle. The device will use a suite of tools to replace burned-out components outside the space station, as well as assist spacewalkers with their duties.

Space closet Japan’s JLP module will serve primarily as attic space for the three-part Kibo science laboratory when it’s finished some time in 2009. Initially, however, the 9.2-ton cylindrical room will be used to ferry eight systems and science experiment racks to the space station.

“I feel it’s a little bit small inside,” said Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, noting that the module was slightly larger than a small walk-in closet. “As you know this is a module for storage purposes.” Doi, an STS-123 mission specialist representing the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), will deliver the new room to the space station using Endeavour’s robotic arm.

The module, to be followed by a “back porch” exposed to space and a school bus-sized science lab, is part of Japan’s 680 billion yen ($6.6 billion) space station science initiative, JAXA officials have said.

Aside from Dextre and Japan’s module, Endeavour will carry experiments to Europe’s Columbus laboratory module, as well as a testbed to demonstrate a repair method to fix chinked heat-resistant tiles on a shuttle’s heat shield. NASA is also sending up RIGEX short for Rigidizable Inflatable Get-Away-Special Experiment that is a small, automated experiment designed to test making inflatable structures in orbit.

Gorie and his crew’s anticipated 16-day journey in space will be the longest ever attempted for a space station assembly mission to date.

Click for related contentNASA worries about relying on Russia Japan’s space program takes off Astronauts eager for longest construction job

via MSN

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Vietnam is preparing to launch its first satellite, hoping to improve the country’s telecommunications to keep pace with its rapid economic development, officials said Wednesday.
Vinasat No. 1 is scheduled to be launched April 12 from Kourou spaceport in South America, and will be ready for use in May, Nguyen Ba Thuoc, vice general director of state-owned Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Corp., or VNPT, told reporters.
The $200 million satellite, which has a medium transmission capacity, will help make Internet and television accessible nationwide, Thuoc said.
“Vietnam has reached the point where significant improvements of the telecommunication infrastructure are needed for its economic and social development,” said Thuoc. Better telecommunications would bring more investment into the country, he said.
Currently, businesses and the Vietnamese government are renting satellites from Australia, Thailand and Russia.
Vietnam’s economy has grown at an average annual rate of more than 7 percent for the last 10 years. It has 19 million Internet users, and more than 40 million telephones, according to government figures.

via AOL

HANOI - Vietnam, which has seen demand for telecommunications surge by about 30 percent each year, will launch its first satellite in April as part of efforts to reduce its reliance on the leasing of foreign satellites.

VINASAT-I is scheduled to be launched into orbit on April 12 in French Guiana by European firm ArianeSpace, state-run Vietnam Posts and Telecommunication Group (VNPT) said on Wednesday.

The $200-million VINASAT-I, built by Lockheed Martin , will have a life span of 15 to 20 years, VNPT Vice General Director Nguyen Ba Thuoc said at a press conference in Hanoi. “Vietnam will be more active to improve network capability and quality of telecommunication, IT and communication services and to reduce the gap between cities and rural areas,” he said.

VINASAT-I has a transmission capacity of 10,000 voice/Internet/Data channels or 120 television channels, VNPT said.

Demand for telecommunication services is rising fast, along with annual GDP growth of more than 8 percent, in the communist-ruled Southeast Asian country.

About 19 million people out of a population of 85 million subscribed to Internet services by the end of 2007, up nearly 30 percent from 2006 and mobile phone use is common countrywide.

via MSN

Nguyen Ba Thuoc, vice director of Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Corp., told reporters Wednesday that Vinasat No. 1 satellite is scheduled to be launched on April 12 and will be ready for use a month later.

The satellite, which has a medium transmission capacity, will help improve Internet, television and telecommunication transmission in Vietnam. It will also contribute to the country’s natural disaster prevention work.
via CNN

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Astronauts bound for orbit this week will dabble in science fiction, assembling a “monstrous” two-armed space station robot that will rise like Frankenstein from its transport bed.
Putting together Dextre, the robot, will be one of the main jobs for the seven Endeavour astronauts, who are scheduled to blast off in the wee hours of Tuesday, less than three weeks after the last shuttle flight.
They’re also delivering the first piece of Japan’s massive Kibo space station lab, a float-in closet for storing tools, experiments and spare parts. For the first time, each of the five major international space station partners will own a piece of the real estate.
At 16 days, the mission will be NASA’s longest space station trip ever and will include five spacewalks, the most ever performed while a shuttle is docked there. Three of those spacewalks will feature Dextre, which is sure to steal the show.
With 11-foot arms, a shoulder span of nearly 8 feet and a height of 12 feet, the Canadian Space Agency’s Dextre - short for dexterous and pronounced like Dexter - is more than a little intimidating, at least for astronaut Garrett Reisman.
“Now I wouldn’t go as far to say that we’re worried it’s going to go run amok and take over the space station or turn evil or anything because we all know how it’s operated and it doesn’t have a lot of its own intelligence,” Reisman told The Associated Press last week.
“But I’ll tell you something … He’s enormous and to see him with his giant arms, it is a little scary. It’s a little monstrous, it is.”
Dextre will be flying up aboard Endeavour in pieces, and it will be up to a team of spacewalking astronauts to assemble the 3,400-pound robot and attach it to the outside of the space station. That job will fall to Reisman, Michael Foreman and Richard Linnehan.
“I feel kind of like dad on Christmas Eve, you know, opening up this present and trying to put it together for the son or daughter and going, ‘Whoa, what have I gotten myself into here with this ’some assembly required’ part of the space station,” Foreman said.
Reisman, who will be moving into the space station, can’t wait to see Dextre rise from its shuttle transport pallet, rotating up “almost like it’s Frankenstein’s monster coming alive.”
In reality, there’s nothing sinister about Dextre. The robot, in fact, was once in the running to be the Hubble Space Telescope’s savior.
Following the 2003 Columbia disaster, NASA canceled the last remaining Hubble repair mission by shuttle astronauts because of safety concerns, and considered sending Dextre up to do the job. The shuttle flight was restored after a change at NASA’s helm - it’s scheduled for late summer - and Dextre went back to being a space station assistant.
Dextre - which cost more than $200 million - was created by the same Canadian team that built the space shuttle and space station robot arms.
Equipped with a tool holster, Dextre is designed to assist spacewalking astronauts and, ultimately, to take over some of their dangerous outdoor work.
Dextre can pivot at the waist, and has seven joints per arm. Its hands, or grippers, have built-in socket wrenches, cameras and lights. Only one arm is designed to move at a time to keep the robot stable and avoid a two-arm collision. The robot has no face or legs, and with its long arms certainly doesn’t look human.
Space station astronauts will be able to control Dextre, as will flight controllers on the ground. The robot will be attached at times to the end of the space station arm, and also be able to ride by itself along the space station arm’s railway.
Canadian officials said they’re convinced Dextre could have pulled off the Hubble repair job, and should have no problems replacing old batteries and other space station parts.
“It’s quite surprising what a robot like Dextre can do with its sense of touch and its precision,” said Daniel Rey, a Canadian Space Agency engineer who heads the project.
Dextre has only three tools, for now, versus the more than 100 tools available to spacewalking astronauts, Rey said. It will probably take months to learn how to properly use the robot; its first real job could come next year.
Linnehan, who worked on Hubble in 2002, wonders just how much Dextre will be able to do.
Even though it’s suited for space station maintenance, astronauts are faster, Linnehan said. As for Hubble, he said Dextre cannot compare to a human repairman because it lacks fine motor control, and cannot think and react to problems that might crop up.
That said, Linnehan acknowledges it’s “a cool project” that reminds him of Japanese animation shows from decades past, namely Gigantor the space-age robot. NASA officials agree that a big part of Dextre is learning how robots operate in space, for future exploration.
Dextre, by the way, isn’t necessarily a “he.”
“I tend to use ‘he’ because I think Dextre is a masculine name,” Rey said. “But it’s a robot. It’s tele-operated. It doesn’t have artificial intelligence yet. So I need to be more careful when I say ‘he.
‘ “
On the Net:
NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov
Canadian Space Agency: http://www.espace.gc.ca/asc/eng/missions/sts-123/default.asp

by AOL

A massive robot and Japan’s first room in space are set for delivery to the international space station next week aboard NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour.

Canada’s two-armed robot, named Dextre for its nimble capabilities, should give astronauts a break from basic repair and maintenance tasks outside of the growing space station. The Japanese Logistics Pressurized (JLP) Module marks the first of three components for that nation’s massive Kibo science lab.

“This flight will be a monumental flight for Japan,” said Tetsuro Yokoyama, operations project deputy manager for Kibo, during a press briefing at Johnson Space Center this week. “We are very close to a long-awaited moment.”

The seven-astronaut STS-123 space shuttle crew, led by commander Dominic Gorie, is slated to launch at 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 GMT) on March 11 aboard Endeavour. The crew aims to install Japan’s new orbital room in a temporary position on March 14, then begin Dextre’s assembly on March 15.

Meet Dextre To fit the Canadian Space Agency’s $274-million, 3,440-pound (1,560-kilogram) robot into Endeavour’s payload bay, engineers crafted it into large chunks that spacewalking astronauts could assemble outside of the space station.

Once astronauts latch each piece in place and attach it to a mobile platform on the space station, Dextre will be able to do many standard tasks with an astronaut or earthbound operators at its controls.

“He’s got huge arms, kind of got like a head up there and a lower torso,” said astronaut Rick Linnehan, a mission specialist on the STS-123 mission, comparing it “Gigantor,” a famous cartoon robot. “It allows us to … increase the amount of robotics tasks we do up on station.”

That’s important, NASA officials have said, because spacewalking is risky business for astronauts. The new robot is also expected to give space station crewmembers more time to focus on science and other tasks, they added.

“It’s sitting out there in the harsh environment of space all the time, basically ready to go,” said Daniel Rey, manager for the Dextre project. “It doesn’t require any pre-breathe protocol and it doesn’t require any cleanup. It’s an operational robot that’s pushing the limits of what we can do in space today with robotics.”

Each of Dextre’s seven-jointed arms will possess a “hand” an orbital replacement unit backed by a sensor sensitive to less than 1 pound (0.5 kilogram) of force, or about the weight of a small water bottle. The device will use a suite of tools to replace burned-out components outside the space station, as well as assist spacewalkers with their duties.

Space closet Japan’s JLP module will serve primarily as attic space for the three-part Kibo science laboratory when it’s finished some time in 2009. Initially, however, the 9.2-ton cylindrical room will be used to ferry eight systems and science experiment racks to the space station.

“I feel it’s a little bit small inside,” said Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, noting that the module was slightly larger than a small walk-in closet. “As you know this is a module for storage purposes.” Doi, an STS-123 mission specialist representing the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), will deliver the new room to the space station using Endeavour’s robotic arm.

The module, to be followed by a “back porch” exposed to space and a school bus-sized science lab, is part of Japan’s 680 billion yen ($6.6 billion) space station science initiative, JAXA officials have said.

Aside from Dextre and Japan’s module, Endeavour will carry experiments to Europe’s Columbus laboratory module, as well as a testbed to demonstrate a repair method to fix chinked heat-resistant tiles on a shuttle’s heat shield. NASA is also sending up RIGEX short for Rigidizable Inflatable Get-Away-Special Experiment that is a small, automated experiment designed to test making inflatable structures in orbit.

Gorie and his crew’s anticipated 16-day journey in space will be the longest ever attempted for a space station assembly mission to date.

Click for related contentNASA worries about relying on Russia Japan’s space program takes off Astronauts eager for longest construction job

by MSN