Show Notes: techsnap.systems/391

The post Firecracker Fundamentals | TechSNAP 391 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We explain the Venom vulnerability, what the impact is & the steps major providers are taking to protect themselves.

Plus strategies to mitigate Cyber Intrusions, a truly genius spammer, great questions, a huge round up & more!

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• Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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— Show Notes: —

VENOM: Virtualized Environment Neglected Operations Manipulation

• A flaw in the way qemu emulates floppy disks could allow an attacker to break out of a virtual machine and take over the host
• “This vulnerability may allow an attacker to escape from the confines of an affected virtual machine (VM) guest and potentially obtain code-execution access to the host. Absent mitigation, this VM escape could open access to the host system and all other VMs running on that host, potentially giving adversaries significant elevated access to the host’s local network and adjacent systems.”
• This vulnerability affects qemu, KVM, VirtualBox, and some types of Xen, because they all share the same qemu floppy emulation code
• Unaffected hypervisors include: VMWare, Hyper-V, Bochs, and bhyve
• The issue has been assigned the identifier CVE-2015-3456
• “Since the VENOM vulnerability exists in the hypervisor’s codebase, the vulnerability is agnostic of the host operating system (Linux, Windows, Mac OS, FreeBSD, etc.).”
• “It needs to be noted that even if a guest does not explicitly have a virtual floppy disk configured and attached, this issue is exploitable. The problem exists in the Floppy Disk Controller, which is initialized for every x86 and x86_64 guest regardless of the configuration and cannot be removed or disabled.”
• “The guest operating system communicates with the FDC by sending commands such as seek, read, write, format, etc. to the FDC’s input/output port. QEMU’s virtual FDC uses a fixed-size buffer for storing these commands and their associated data parameters. The FDC keeps track of how much data to expect for each command and, after all expected data for a given command is received from the guest system, the FDC executes the command and clears the buffer for the next command. This buffer reset is performed immediately at the completion of processing for all FDC commands, except for two of the defined commands. An attacker can send these commands and specially crafted parameter data from the guest system to the FDC to overflow the data buffer and execute arbitrary code in the context of the host’s hypervisor process.”
• “The VENOM vulnerability has existed since 2004, when the virtual Floppy Disk Controller was first added to the QEMU codebase.”
• “After verifying the vulnerability, CrowdStrike responsibly disclosed VENOM to the QEMU Security Contact List, Xen Security mailing list, Oracle security mailing list, and the Operating System Distribution Security mailing list on April 30, 2015.
• After a patch was developed CrowdStrike publicly disclosed VENOM on May 13, 2015. Since the availability of the patch, CrowdStrike has continued to work with major users of these vulnerable hypervisors to make sure that the vulnerability is patched as quickly as possible.”
• CrowdStrike blog about the disclosure
• “While it seems obvious that infrastructure providers could be impacted, there are many other less obvious technologies that depend on virtualization. For example, security appliances that perform virtual detonation of malware often run these untrusted files with administrative privileges, potentially allowing an adversary to use the VENOM vulnerability to bypass, crash or gain code execution on the very device designed to detect malware.”
• “CrowdStrike would also like to publicly recognize Dan Kaminsky, Chief Scientist at White Ops, who is a renowned researcher with extensive experience discovering and disclosing major vulnerabilities. Dan provided invaluable advice to us throughout this process on how best to coordinate the release of open source patches across the numerous vendors and users of these technologies.”
• Xen Advisory
• Amazon Statement
• Digital Ocean statement
• Redhat Advisory
• Working PoC exploit
• This has refocused attention on some older work to exploit qemu/KVM, like this from DEFCON / BlackHat 2011
• Or this paper from a Google researcher from 2007: An Empirical Study into the Security Exposure to Hosts of Hostile Virtualized Environments
• There is also some backlash against the naming and glamorization of vulnerabilities, as seen with the recent announcement of AnalBleed

Strategies to Mitigate Targeted Cyber Intrusions – From the Australian Signals Directorate

• The Australian equivalent to the NSA has published a study on the top 35 mitigation methods to protect networks for targeted cyber attacks
• They say that 85% of all network intrusions could be prevented if organizations adopted just the top 4 recommendations
• These 4 recommendations are:
  • Use application whitelisting, to prevent malicious software from being able to run
  • Install application updates (especially java, flash, PDF readers, browsers, etc)
  • Install OS updates (quickly!), Do not use Windows XP
  • Do not give administrator privileges to more people than absolutely required
• Video: Catch, Patch, and Match
• Table: The full list of 35 mitigation strategies
• How to employ the top 4 mitigations in a Linux environment
• The ASD even goes so far as to rank each mitigation strategy by its effectiveness, how much users will resist/complain, how much work it will be to setup, and how much work it will be to maintain.
• “Once organisations have implemented the Top 4 mitigation strategies, first on the computers of users who are most likely to be targeted by cyber intrusions and then on all computers and servers, additional mitigation strategies can be selected to address security gaps until an acceptable level of residual risk is reached. “
• Of these, only the application whitelisting is likely to rise the ire of the average end user
• Additional Coverage – SecureList
• The list of 35 mitigation methods can be roughly divided into 4 categories:
• Administrative — Training, physical security
• Networking — These measures are easier to implement at a network hardware level
• System administration — The OS contains everything needed for implementation
• Specialized security solutions — Specialized security software is applicable
• Kaspersky SecureList has broken its analysis of the ASD publication down into 4 parts in its Security Encyclopedia:
• Part 1. How to mitigate APTs. Applied theory
• Part 2. Top-4 mitigation strategies which address 85% of threats
• Part 3. Strategies outside the Top-4. For real bulletproof defense
• Part 4. Forewarned is Forearmed: the Detection Strategy against Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)
• Gartner: Best Practices for Mitigating Advanced Persistent Threats

Mumblehard — Muttering spam from your servers

• “Several thousand computers running the Linux and FreeBSD operating systems have been infected over the past seven months with sophisticated malware that surreptitiously makes them part of a renegade network blasting the Internet with spam”
• The virus consisted of perl code packed into an ELF binary
• During a 7 month monitoring period, Eset researchers saw 8,867 IP addresses connect to one of the command and control servers
• “The Mumblehard malware is the brainchild of experienced and highly skilled programmers. It includes a backdoor and a spam daemon, which is a behind-the-scenes process that sends large batches of junk mail.”
• “These two main components are written in Perl and they’re obfuscated inside a custom “packer” that’s written in assembly, a low-level programming language that closely corresponds to the native machine code of the computer hardware it runs on. Some of the Perl script contains a separate executable with the same assembly-based packer that’s arranged in the fashion of a Russian nesting doll. The result is a very stealthy infection that causes production servers to send spam and may serve other nefarious purposes.”
• “Malware targeting Linux and BSD servers is becoming more and more complex,” researchers from Eset wrote. “The fact that the authors used a custom packer to hide the Perl source code is somewhat sophisticated. However, it is definitely not as complex as the Windigo Operation we documented in 2014. Nonetheless, it is worrying that the Mumblehard operators have been active for many years without disruption.”
• The way the malware was architected, it polled a list of Command and Control servers, accepting commands from any of them
• The list included some legitimate sites, to throw researchers off
• “A version of the Mumblehard spam component was uploaded to the VirusTotal online malware checking service in 2009, an indication that the spammer program has existed for more than five years. The researchers were able to monitor the botnet by registering one of the domain names that Mumblehard-infected machines query every 15 minutes.”
• At some point, one of the domains on the command and control list became available, so the researchers registered it and directed all of the infected machines to talk to their own command and control server
• The communications with the C&C servers was cleverly hidden in what look like PHP Session cookies, and in the fake browser user-agent strings
• One of the giveaways is the fact that the base browser user-agent string is for Firefox 7.0.1 on Windows 7
• Part of the version string would be replaced with the command id, http status, and number of bytes downloaded by the infected machine
• “The Eset researchers still aren’t certain how Mumblehard is installed. Based on their analysis of the infected server, they suspect the malware may take hold by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Joomla and WordPress content management systems. Their other theory is that the infections are the result of installing pirated versions of the DirecMailer program.”
• Eset research PDF

Feedback:

• Jupiter Broadcasting Meetup

• zfs send (and receive)

• What really is DevOps?

• Is my FreeNAS open?

• answer to question last week

Round-Up:

• Cybersecurity Firm May Have Hacked Its Own Clients To Extort Them Additional Coverage – CNN Money
• Enterprise SSDs may start to lose data if left powered off for even just a few days
• RHEL 7 will break with its typical long term backporting strategy, and update GTK3/Gnome3 mid-cycle
• Interesting issue with PHP Hash comparisons could result in many vulnerability announcements in the coming weeks. In php: 0e == 0 (or 0e), so hashes could falsely match
• Military Strategy: A West Point Teacher’s Last Letter to His Cadets
• Brian Krebs Discusses Investigative Security Journalism – Indepth interview with Norse “Dark Matters” blog
• Top cyber attack vectors for critical SAP systems
• Proof of concept Linux rootkit uses processor and memory of GPU to hide from operating system
• Beware the ticking Internet of Things security time bomb
• Ad network compromised, spreads “nuclear exploit kit”
• Australia outlaws warrant canaries
• Dropbox updates Terms of Service, users ourside North America will be served from Ireland instead of the USA
• Virus Scanners need to be more than just a GUI with a big “SAFE” label on them
• Intels new Core M 5Y71 keeps pace with its Core i5 cousins
• Adallom is not a Bureaucracy checkbox
• What year is this: Researcher Richard Bejtlich posts an excerpt from a novel about computer security, guess when it was written
• Bug Bounty Program | United Airlines

The post Venomous Floppy Legacy | TechSNAP 214 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Venom is claimed to be the new Heartbleed threatening datacenters around the world but is it legit?

The new 4k Blu-Ray spec is revealed & the YotaPhone 2 with an E-ink display back is coming to a country near you!

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Show Notes:

‘Venom’ Security Vulnerability Threatens Most Datacenters

A new vulnerability found in open source virtualization software QEMU, which is run on hardware in datacenters around the world (CVE-2015-3456). “The cause is a widely-ignored, legacy virtual floppy disk controller that, if sent specially crafted code, can crash the entire hypervisor. That can allow a hacker to break out of their own virtual machine to access other machines — including those owned by other people or companies.” The vulnerable code is used in Xen, KVM, and VirtualBox, while VMware, Hyper-V, and Bochs are unaffected. “Dan Kaminsky, a veteran security expert and researcher, said in an email that the bug went unnoticed for more than a decade because almost nobody looked at the legacy disk drive system, which happens to be in almost every virtualization software.” The vulnerability has been dubbed “Venom,” for “Virtualized Environment Neglected Operations Manipulation.”

• VENOM Vulnerability

Ultra HD Blu-ray specification now complete, logo unveiled – CNET

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has announced the Ultra HD Blu-ray (4K) specification is now complete and has also revealed the next-gen format’s official logo.

The BDA says the format incorporates a 3,840×2,160-pixel resolution, expanded color range support, high dynamic range (HDR) and high frame rate content (read 60fps). As well as the promise of up-to-date video, UHD Blu-ray will also support “next-generation immersive, object-based sound formats.”

YotaPhone 2 adds white color option to AMOLED + E-ink display hardware, Lollipop update rolling out

YotaPhone 2 sports a completely functional 4.7-inch E-ink display with always-on capabilities on its back.

As for the planned North American debut of the unique YotaPhone 2, the company says its Indiegogo campaign to help bring it to the US will kick off on May 19th with early bird pricing for the first backers ahead of its summer release.

ASUS confirms next-gen Android Wear ZenWatch coming early Q3, improved 4-day battery life

ASUS reportedly confirmed that the device will feature improved battery life, up from 2 days on the first-gen ZenWatch to 4 days on the upcoming version. That still falls short of the company’s goal to offer 7-days battery life, according to the report.

The company added that it expects to sell less than a million units of its smartwatch this year.

The post Venomous Snakeoil | Tech Talk Today 170 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Project lead of the new KDE Visual Design Group, Jens Reuterberg, joins us to discuss building a culture of design around KDE, driving community consensus, and how they hope to design by collaboration.

Plus: Linux had a strong showing at Mobile World Congress, we’ll round it up, another major game land for Linux…

AND SO MUCH MORE!

All this week on, The Linux Action Show!

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— Show Notes: —

KDE’s Visual Design Group:

Brought to you by: System76

Jens Reuterberg

This is the portfolio site of me, Jens Reuterberg (or Ohyran).

• Jens Reuterberg – Google+

• Jens Reuterberg – Twitter

• KDE Visual Design Group

• KDE Visual Design Group: Monday Report #4

• KDE Visual Design Group: The issue with icons

We are too small to influence them, but too big not to get sued – is the long and the short of it.

– Picks –

Runs Linux:

• q5sys one of our Action Producers, Runs Linux

• q5sys’ Linux Rig Specs

Desktop App Pick

• Tox

Project Tox, also known as Tox, is a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) instant messaging application aimed to replace Skype.
The goal of this project is to create a configuration-free P2P skype replacement. Configuration-free means that the user will simply have to open the program and without any account configuration will be capable of adding people to his friends list and start conversing with them. There are many so-called skype replacements and all of them are either hard to configure for the normal user or suffer from being way too centralized.

• Binaries – Tox Wiki

• Venom · GitHub

A Vala/Gtk+ graphical user interface for Tox

Weekly Spotlight

• Wings of Saint Nazaire

Wings of Saint Nazaire is a retro space combat sim in the vein of Wing Commander(tm) and X-Wing(tm) developed today!

• Wings of St. Nazaire (WingsOfNazaire) on Twitter

• Wings Of Saint Nazaire Alpha On Linux – YouTube

• Happy Birthday to the Rasberry Pi – Possibly open source RPU Drives on the Way?

— NEWS —

Portal 2 for Linux Beta Released

There are a few bugs but Valve is tracking those on a public Github page.

• ValveSoftware/portal2 · GitHub

Important: To play Portal 2 on Linux you must opt-in to the beta. You may do this by right-clicking on Portal 2 (Beta) in Steam, clicking Properties -> Betas and then select ‘beta’ from the drop-down. If you do not do this, Portal 2 will not run on Linux.

Ubuntu wins Tom’s Hardware Best of MWC 2014

Tom’s Hardware noted: Overall, the experience was a lot smoother, and the operating system itself was a pleasure to use, being both intuitive and visually appealing.

Ubuntu Meizu MX3 and BQ Aquaris – First look ahead of UK launch (Wired UK)

Wired.co.uk went hands-on with the two prototype devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The MX3 has a 5.1-inch screen.

Provisional specs for the phone include an octa-core chip, a 3-core graphics processor and 2GB of RAM.

It should be available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions and will be powered by a 2,400mAh battery.

There are no specific specs available yet for the BQ Aquaris

Canonical’s CEO tells Wired.co.uk:

The marketing strategy for the phones when they officially launch will be a global online campaign. It will be a relatively soft launch, she adds, that will give Ubuntu fans the opportunity to get their hands on the devices first.

Hands-On with the $25 Firefox Phone

Mozilla engineers were able to accomplish this by adjusting the hardware requirements of the operating system to run on a 1 GHz CPU, single core Spreadtrum chipset with only 128 MB of RAM. That’s only 25 to 50 percent of the RAM found in existing entry-level devices on the market

Lawrence Lessig At SCALE12x

At SCALE12x the 12th Southern California Linux Expo in Los Angeles, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig delivered an
opening keynote that challenged the free software community to do
something it does not normally attempt: engage with the political
system. Lessig is perhaps best known as a public advocate for reform
in the US government’s patent and copyright systems and for his activism in intellectual property issues (such as founding
Creative Commons).

As he explained to the SCALE crowd, those affected public policy areas include some key
technology issues—and Lessig’s own commitment to the cause he
credits directly to his friendship with developer Aaron Swartz.

The talk was an unusual one for SCALE, where politics is rarely on the agenda. But the crowd responded with enthusiasm, to the stories of technology policy, and to the analogy of zeroing in on a flaw like a bug and fixing it.

• Samsung smartwatches run on Tizen

Samsung unveiled three Tizen smartwatches

Set to ship in April, with pricing unknown, the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, and Gear Fit will ship with 100 Tizen apps.

Both devices offer the same 1.63-inch, 320 x 320-pixel Super AMOLED screen found on the Galaxy Gear, but they advance to a faster 1GHz, dual-core processor. Memory stays put at 512MB RAM and 4GB flash.

• Microsoft Said to Cut Windows Price 70% to Counter Rivals

Cutting the price of Windows 8.1 by 70 percent for makers of low-cost computers and tablets

Manufacturers will be charged $15 to license Windows 8.1 and preinstall it on devices that retail for less than $250.

Instead of the usual fee of $50.

• Microsoft experimenting with free version of Windows 8.1 | The Verge

We’re told that Microsoft is aiming to position Windows 8.1 with Bing as a free or low-cost upgrade for Windows 7 users. Any upgrade offers will be focused on boosting the number of people using Windows 8.1. This Bing-powered version of Windows 8.1 may also be offered to PC makers as part of recent license cuts for devices under $250.

– Feedback: –

• Fitbit for Linux

• Lots of really good Howto Linux producer submissions. The audience is full of amazing people.

• Contact will be made early next week to folks we want to discuss things further with.

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The post Kulture of Design | LAS s31e02 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at habitable zone exoplanets, diabetes treatment advances, water in Jupiter, living on Mars, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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[asa]B00B7VZN76[/asa]

Show Notes:

More Habitable Zone Exoplanets

• Astronomers have announced that they have found three new, potentially rocky, planets in the habitable zone of their stars by analyzing nearly three years’ worth of data
• Kepler Space Telescope
• As of April 2013, Kepler data has uncovered more than 2,700 potential planets, with about 120 of them having been confirmed to date
• Mission scientists expect that more than 90 percent of the planets detected are real and not illusions in the data
• Until now planets in the habitable zone were discovered by what is known as the radial velocity method, which gives a lower limit for the planet’s mass, but no information about its radius
• While a small radius (less than 2 Earth radii) is a strong indicator that a planet around is indeed rocky it is difficult to assess whether or not a planet is rocky, like the Earth.
• Finding planets in the habitable zones of larger stars is harder because those planets have relatively long orbits and barely cast a shadow as they pass across the faces of their suns
• Kepler-62
• Kepler62 is a red dwarf star, about two-thirds the size of the sun and several hundred degrees Celsius cooler
• It is only 20 percent as bright as the sun and is about 1,200 light years away and contains five planets currently identified
• Two of the worlds, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are the smallest exoplanets yet found in a habitable zone, and they might both be covered in water or ice, depending on what kind of atmosphere they might have
• Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity, or fire for metallurgy
• The biggest uncertainty right now is about both planets composition, early evidence suggests that at least 62f is rocky
• Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f would exhibit distinctly different colors and make our search for signatures of life easier on such planets in the near future
• Kepler-62e
• Orbit is 122 days
• 1.6 times the diameter of Earth
• Kepler-62e would have a bit more clouds than Earth according to computer models to sustain an ocean
• An astronomer at the University of Washington not involved in the research says that Kepler-62e may be too close to its star – and therefore too hot – to sustain life
• If 62e is a rocky planet, it’s almost certainly tidally locked with its star, half of its surface always facing the star, and the other always facing away
• Kepler62-f
• Orbit is 267 days
• 1.4 times the diameter of Earth
• Kepler-62f would need the greenhouse effect from plenty of carbon dioxide to warm it enough to host an ocean
• Kepler-69 System
• Kepler-36 is a sun-like star located 2,700 light-years away,
• The Kepler-69 system contains one known planet in that star\’s habitable zone
• Kepler-69c
• 1.7 times bigger than Earth, sits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is almost certainly a super-Venus rather than a super-Earth
• Habitable Zone Types
• The \”empirical habitable zone\” is where liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet if that planet has sufficient cloud cover
• The \”narrow habitable zone\” is where liquid water can exist on the surface even without the presence of a cloud cover
• Of Note
• According to the Planetary Habitability Laboratory, there are now nine potential habitable worlds outside of our solar system, with 18 more potentially habitable planetary candidates found by Kepler waiting to be confirmed
• Astronomers predict there are 25 potentially habitable exomoons
• Kepler cannot search for signs of life on worlds like Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c, but the telescope is paving the way for future missions that should do just that
• Next-generation missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which NASA approved earlier this month for launch in 2017, will take on the task of finding nearer planets that astronomers can study in depth
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Animation of the Kepler 62 Planetary System | UniverseTodayVideos
• YouTube | NASA\’s Kepler Discovers Its Smallest \’Habitable Zone\’ Planets to Date | NASASolarSystem
• Infographic | 3 Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Planets Explained | Space.com
• IMAGE | Diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-69 | Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
• IMAGE | Diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-62 | Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
• IMAGE | Current known potentially habitable exoplanets | Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory/University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo.
• IMAGE | The habitable zone for different types of stars | Image: L. Kaltenegger (MPIA)
• YouTube | Full Anouncement | Kepler Makes Discoveries Inside the Habitable Zone | NASAtelevision
• Further Reading / In the News
• Discovered! Most Earth-Like Alien Planet & 2 Other Possibly Habitable Worlds | Space.com
• Most Earthlike planets yet seen bring Kepler closer to its holy grail | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
• Habitable Worlds? New Kepler Planetary Systems in Images | UniverseToday.com
• Kepler Team Finds System with Two Potentially Habitable Planets | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

New Possible Diabetes Treatment Option

• Researchers have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes and believe that the hormone might also have a role in treating type 1, or juvenile, diabetes
• Type 1 Diabetes
• While betatrophin primarily as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, it is believed it might play a role in the treatment of type 1 diabetes as well
• Perhaps boosting the number of beta cells and slowing the progression of that autoimmune disease when it\’s first diagnosed
• Type 2 Diabetes
• Type 2 diabetes is usually caused by a combination of excess weight and lack of exercise and causes patients to slowly lose beta cells and the ability to produce adequate insulin
• Provide this hormone, the type 2 diabetic will make more of their own insulin-producing cells, and this will slow down, if not stop, the progression of their diabetes
• Betatrophin
• The hormone, called betatrophin, causes mice to produce insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells at up to 30 times the normal rate
• In addition the new beta cells only produce insulin when called for by the body, offering the potential for the natural regulation of insulin
• The researchers know that the hormone exists in human plasma; betatrophin definitely exists in humans
• The Research
• The team wasn\’t just looking at what happens when an animal doesn\’t have enough insulin, they were able to find this a gene that had largely gone unnoticed before
• Another hint came from studying what happens during pregnancy, when there are more beta cells needed, and it turns out that this hormone goes up
• When a woman gets pregnant, her carbohydrate load, her call for insulin, can increase an enormous amount because of the weight and nutrition needs of the fetus
• The Future
• Betatrophin could be in human clinical trials within three to five years, an extremely short time in the normal course of drug discovery and development
• If it works as they hope it will it could eventually mean that instead of taking insulin injections three times a day, you might take an injection of this hormone once a week or month, or even year
• The researchers who discovered betatrophin caution that much work remains to be done before it could be used as a treatment in humans
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Potential Diabetes Breakthrough | Harvard
• Further Reading / In the News
• Potential diabetes breakthrough: Researchers discover new hormone spurring beta cell production | MedicalXPress.com

Soaking up Venom in Blood

• A tiny sponge camouflaged as a red blood cell could soak up toxins ranging from anthrax to snake venom, new research suggests
• Bacteria and Poisons
• One of the mainstay strategies of bacteria and poison is to poke holes in cells, disrupting their internal chemical balance and causing them to burst
• So far, researchers haven\’t had much success creating all-purpose treatments to exploit this vulnerability
• Nanosponges
• Researchers created a tiny spherical core of a lactic acid byproduct, which forms naturally during metabolism in the human body
• To get the outer skin of red blood cells, they used a difference in particle concentration inside and outside the cells to cause them to burst, and then collected their outer membranes
• They then wrapped the cores in the outer surface of the red blood cell
• The nanoparticles, also called nanosponges, act as decoys that lure and inactivate the deadly compounds
• The entire ensemble became a tiny nanosponge, which was about 85 nanometers in diameter, or 100 times smaller than a human hair
• The sponges\’ tiny size means a small amount of blood, for camouflage, can be used to make an effective dose
• In cell cultures, the camouflaged sponges act as decoys, luring the toxins from the bacteria that causes strep throat and bee venom
• The toxins then bind to the structure the \”poisons\” normally use to poke through cells
• When they stick onto the nanosponge, that particular damaging structure gets preoccupied, since the sponges are so small they can circulate freely through blood vessels, and then the body can digest the entire particle
• Experiment
• The team injected 18 mice with a lethal dose of a MRSA, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, toxin. Half the mice then got a dose of the nanosponges
• Whereas all the mice in the control group died, all but one that received the treatment survived
• When injected into mice, the tiny decoys protect mice against lethal doses of a toxin produced by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
• The Future
• The researchers want to see whether the method works in human blood, and against other toxic chemicals, such as scorpion venom and anthrax, which use similar attack strategies
• Because so many bacteria use the same pore-forming strategy, the nanosponges could be used as a universal treatment option when doctors don\’t know exactly what is causing an illness
• Further Reading / In the News
• Tiny Sponge Soaks Up Venom in Blood | Scientific American

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Water in Jupiter\’s Clouds

• How Did It Get There?
• In July 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 plowed into Jupiter leaving behind millions of gallons of water.
• Water from the impact still makes up at least 95 percent of the water in the planet’s upper atmosphere
• Telescopes had previously spotted water in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, some 100 kilometers above the planet’s ammonia cloud tops, but those surveys could not determine where the water came from
• Now astronomers have created a high-resolution map of water vapor distribution throughout Jupiter’s atmosphere
• They found that the concentration of water peaked in the planet’s southern hemisphere, right in the region where the comet struck
• More water also appeared at higher altitudes around the planet, which supports the comet as its origin.
• Water from other sources such as Jupiter’s icy moons would likely spread out more evenly around the planet and would gradually filter down to lower altitudes
• Multimedia
• Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 – How The Universe Works | DiscoveryTV
• Further Reading / In the News
• News in Brief: Comet\’s water still hanging around on Jupiter | Atom & Cosmos | Science News

MarsOne and Life on Mars and Science

• Mars colony project will do its best to avoid disturbing potential Red Planet life rather than aggressively hunt it down
• Science and Life
• The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One opened its astronaut-selection process on April 22
• They plan to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 to make a permanent human colony on the Red Planet, with new crews arriving every two years thereafter
• Human explorers will doubtless contaminate whatever site is chosen for the settlement, so the organization will try to pick a place unlikely to host indigenous life to localize the pollution
• Mars One is working with experts to minimize the risks its colonization effort may pose to potential Red Planet lifeforms
• While Mars One hasn\’t picked a precise location for its settlement yet, the organization is targeting a swath of the Red Planet between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude
• Mars One astronauts will not necessarily be scientists
• Anyone over the age of 18 is eligible to apply, with the selection committee prizing traits such as intelligence, resourcefulness, determination and psychological stability over academic background
• Science is not the main focus of what we are doing; although, crewmembers will take some scientific gear with them
• Mars One officials won\’t dictate what the experiments should be, but there will be a budget for equipment that they want to take for scientific research
• Multimedia
• Mars 2023 – Inhabitants wanted | MarsOneProject
• YouTube Channel | Mars One – Human Settlement of Mars
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars One
• Private Mars Colony Won\’t Seek Martian Life | Mars One | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK—

Peter, AKA \”Korlus\” | Check This Out!

• On April 4, 2012 he Fermi spacecraft almost ended it\’s mission to map the highest-energy light in the universe because of a collision with a dead Cold-War spy satellite
• What Happened?
• An automatically generated report arrived from NASA\’s Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team based at NASA\’s Goddard Space Flight Center was sent to the FERMI team just one week away from an unusually close encounter with Cosmos 1805, a defunct spy satellite dating back to the Cold War.
• The two objects, speeding around Earth at thousands of miles an hour in nearly perpendicular orbits, were expected to miss each other by a mere 700 feet
• An update days later indicated the satellites would occupy the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of each other
• Using thrusters for use at the end of Fermi\’s operating life designed to take it out of orbit and allow it burn up in the atmosphere they were able to adjust the orbit just slightly enough to evade a collision
• The U.S. Space Surveillance Network continues to keep tabs on every artificial object larger than 4 inches across in Earth orbit. Of the 17,000 objects currently tracked, only about 7 percent are active satellites
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Near Miss – Dead Russian Spy Satellite Forces NASA Probe Move | VideoFromSpace
• YouTube | Animation of Earth with Near-Earth Orbital Debris [HD] | TheMarsUnderground
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars One
• Private Mars Colony Won\’t Seek Martian Life | Mars One | Space.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

New Atlantis Exhibit Prep

• The Space shuttle Atlantis is set to go on public display June 29 at NASA\’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida
• Shuttle Reveal
• It was revealed Friday, April 26 after workers spent two days peeling off its protective shrink-wrap cover of the past five months.
• Workers began carefully cutting back the 16,000 square feet (1,486 square meters) of shrink wrap that protected Atlantis as its $100 million exhibition building was completed around it
• By the end of the first day, the shuttle\’s nose, tail, aft engines and left wing were exposed, the workers completed the process the next day, revealing Atlantis\’ right wing and its 60-foot-long (18 meter) payload bay
• Opening the payload bay is set to begin in May, will take about two weeks, as the doors are very slowly hoisted open, one by one.
• Atlantis has been mounted. Thirty feet (9 meters) in the air, the space shuttle has been tilted 43.21 degrees, such that its left wing extends toward the ground.
• Atlantis will appear to be back in space – an effect that will be enhanced by lighting and a mural-size digital screen that will project the Earth\’s horizon behind the shuttle
• Multimedia
• YouTube Clip | Uncovering the Nose
• YouTube Clip | Uncovering a Wing
• YouTube Clip | Peeling Back the Layers
• YouTube | Shuttle Atlantis Unwrapped & Revealed at Kennedy Visitor Center | SpaceVidsNet
• Further Reading / In the News
• Atlantis Exposed: Space Shuttle Fully Unwrapped for NASA Exhibit | Kennedy Space Center | Space.com

SpaceShipTwo

• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 91 | Apollo 13 and Brain Training | Virgin Galactic Test Flight
• Lights Hybrid Rocket Engines
• Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) commercial spaceliner named “Enterprise” lit up her hybrid rocket engines in flight and reached supersonic speeds for the first time in history on
• The Breakdown
• Once SpaceShipTwo is operational, WhiteKnightTwo will carry the vehicle up to an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) before releasing it.
• After separation, SpaceShipTwo will accelerate to 2,500 mph (4,000 km/h) and eventually pass an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers), the point at which passengers are considered astronauts
• The spaceship will reach a peak altitude of 68 miles (110 km), giving the six passengers and two pilots about five minutes of weightlessness
• Upon re-entry, SpaceShipTwo will be able to land on a conventional runway
• A seat on board a SpaceShipTwo flight costs $200,000. More than 550 people have put down deposits to reserve a spot
• Multimedia
• YouTube Clip | Release and Rocket Start
• YouTube Clip | In Orbit
• YouTube Clip | Weightless M-M\’s
• YouTube | Virgin Galactic 8 5min video
• Further Reading / In the News
• SpaceShipTwo Fires Rocket Engines for First Ever Supersonic Test Flight- Photos & Video | UniverseToday.com

Opportunity Rover Back Fron Glitch

• Mars rover Opportunity has overcome a glitch that put the robot into standby mode late last month
• What Happened?
• Opportunity apparently put itself into standby auto mode, in which it maintains power balance but waits for instructions from the ground, on April 22, after sensing a problem during a routine camera check, mission officials said.
• The rover\’s handlers didn\’t notice the problem until April 27, when Opportunity got back in touch after a nearly three-week communications moratorium
• They then prepared a new set of commands on April 29 designed to get things back to normal, and the fix has apparently worked
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Rover Opportunity Back in Action After Glitch | Mars Solar Conjunction | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Smithsonian Award
• The team in charge of successfully landing NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity has received the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum\’s highest group honor
• The award is for Current Achievement honors outstanding achievements in the fields of aerospace science and technology
• Several NASA planetary mission teams have won the award in previous years, including last year, when NASA\’s Cassini mission to Saturn
• Haiku to Mars
• NASA is inviting members of the public to submit their names and a personal message online for a DVD to be carried aboard a spacecraft that will study the Martian upper atmosphere
• Information in the show was not all correct, corrected information to come next week
• Conjunction
• YouTube | Mars in a Minute: What Happens When the Sun Blocks our Signal? | JPLnews
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Current Achievement Trophy Award 2013: Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) Team | airandspace
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• National Air and Space Museum’s Trophy Awarded to Joseph Sutter and the Mars Science Laboratory EDL Team | Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Press Release
• Curiosity Wins National Air and Space Museum Trophy | https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• NASA Wants To Send Your Haiku To Mars | Popular Science

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 01, 1958 : 55 years ago : Van Allen radiation belts : The discovery of the powerful Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth was published in the Washington Evening Star. The article covered the report made by their discoverer James. A. Van Allen to the joint symposium of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society in Washington DC. He used data from the Explorer I and Pioneer III space probes of the earth\’s magnetosphere region to reveal the existence of the radiation belts – concentrations of electrically charged particles. Van Allen (born 7 Sep 1914) was also featured on the cover of the 4 May 1959 Time magazine for this discovery. He was the principal investigator on 23 other space probes

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Thurs | May 9 | New Moon is around 8:28pm EDT in the NW
• Fri | May 10 | ~30 min after sunset you might be able to see a very thin crescent moon near Venus
• Fri | May 10 | An annular eclipse of the Sun crosses parts of Australia and the central Pacific. The eclipse is partial for all of Australia, Indonesia, and Hawaii Map and details
• Sat | May 11 | Evening twilight in the W you can see the crescent moon below Jupiter
• Planets
• Venus | About 15-20 min after sunset in the W-NW it i starting to appear in the evening
• Jupiter | The first \”star\” to come out in the W after sunset, appearing a little lower each day and moving towards the horizon over the course of each night

• Saturn | Was at opposition last week, but still glows bright in the lower E-SE skies in late twilight

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | SciByte 92 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at an exoplanets atmosphere, HIV killing bee venom, ancient sundials, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Exoplanet Atmosphere

• A team led by an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, has found hints of ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and acetylene in an exo-planets’ atmosphere in the sharpest spectrum ever obtained of an extrasolar planet
• Searching for Exoplanets
• In the past, astronomers inferred the existence of exoplanets and their gases by looking for subtle changes in the light streaming from the planet’s star
• Now, with improved instruments, a team has detected light coming directly from a planet light-years away
• The data have high enough resolution to reveal not only the presence but the abundance of carbon monoxide and water in the planet’s atmosphere
• Such information could shed light on how the planet formed
• Studies could also reveal the presence of life on a distant planet, but this planet’s size and orbit have already ruled it out as a habitable world
• The System
• In 2008 the first image of a multi planet system outside the solar system, showing three gas giants orbiting the star HR 8799
• The results suggest the HR 8799 system is like a scaled-up Solar System
• HR 8799 is about 130 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Pegasus
• The planets are scorching hot, making them bright enough for astronomers to detect directly
• In 2010, the researchers imaged a fourth planet around HR 8799, a new study focused on one of these planets, HR 8799c.
• HR 8799c
• Five to 10 times as massive as Jupiter, HR 8799c sits about eight times farther away from its star than Jupiter does from the sun
• Because of that great distance, the astronomers could block the star’s light and record infrared light
• Even with water present on this world, it is incredibly hostile to life
• Like Jupiter, it has no solid surface, and it has a temperature of more than a thousand degree
• The Studies
• Because different gases absorb and emit light in distinct ways, the team could identify carbon monoxide and water but found no methane, which scientists had thought might be present.
• In another new study researchers simultaneously collected infrared light from the atmospheres of all four planets
• The chemistry of each planet varies different from anything in our own solar system
• Although the teams looked at different wavelengths of light, which pick up different types of molecules, the two studies appear consistent
• By peering at just one planet, one team obtained more detailed data that allowed the researchers to get a sense of how much carbon and oxygen is in HR 8799c’s atmosphere
• Knowing the ratio of carbon to oxygen in the atmosphere may reveal how the planet formed
• Planetary Formation Theories
• Astronomers have two competing theories of how planets arise from the disk of gas and dust encircling a young star
• In the gravitational instability model, some of the gas and dust suddenly clumps and collapses, simultaneously creating a planet’s core and atmosphere
• In this scenario, the chemical composition of a planet should match that of its star
• In the other model, known as core accretion, planets are built in two-steps
• First, material from the disk accumulates into a core, later the core captures gases swirling in the disk to form an atmosphere.
• In this case, the carbon-to-oxygen ratio of the planet may differ from the star because the accretion of cores may deplete the disk of certain elements
• What This Planet\’s Data Tells Us
• Compared with its star, HR 8799c appears to have slightly more carbon relative to oxygen, suggesting the planet originated via core accretion
• It is surmises that when the disk around HR 8799 formed, water froze into particles of ice, the bits of ice then collided to form the planet’s core, leaving behind little water vapor, and therefore less oxygen, when the planet accumulated its atmosphere later on
• Other researchers are not convinced by this conclusion saying “We don’t really understand planetary formation enough to make a strong case either way,”
• The Future
• Either Way the data from both new studies may help astronomers refine their simulations of planetary formation
• Not that astronomers have directly imaged planets around three distant stars researchers are poised to capture light from many more planets
• Project 1640, is looking for Jupiter-sized planets around some 200 stars
• “Ultimately, with better instruments, people will be able to use these methods on Earthlike planets.”
• Multimedia
• YouTube Remote Reconnaissance of Another Solar System | AMNHorg
• Video Clip Nearby Stars with planets| AMNHorg
• Video Clip HR 8799 System| AMNHorg
• Further Reading / In the News
• Exoplanet Atmospheres Provide Clues to Solar System Formation | UniverseToday.com
• Distant planets\’ atmospheres revealed | Atom & Cosmos | ScienceNews.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Bees Against HIV

• Nanoparticles carrying a toxin found in bee venom can destroy human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while leaving surrounding cells unharmed
• What it Does
• Bee venom contains a potent toxin called melittin that can poke holes in the protective envelope that surrounds HIV, and other viruses
• The new study shows that melittin loaded onto these nanoparticles does not harm normal cells, because added protective bumpers to the nanoparticle surface
• When the nanoparticles come into contact with normal cells, which are much larger in size, the particles simply bounce off
• HIV, on the other hand, is even smaller than the nanoparticle, so HIV fits between the bumpers and makes contact with the surface of the nanoparticle, where the bee toxin awaits
• The advantage of this approach is that the nanoparticle attacks an essential part of the virus\’ structure. In contrast, most anti-HIV drugs inhibit the virus\’s ability to replicate.
• Drawbacks
• This anti-replication strategy does nothing to stop initial infection, and some strains of the virus have found ways around these drugs and reproduce anyway.
• Where it does work, because it attacks the inherent physical property of HIV, theoretically, there isn\’t any way for the virus to adapt to this treatment
• The potential for using nanoparticles with melittin as therapy for existing HIV infections, especially those that are drug-resistant
• Other Uses
• The hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people could use this gel as a preventive measure to stop the initial infection
• Since melittin attacks double-layered membranes indiscriminately, this concept is not limited to HIV.
• Many viruses, including hepatitis B and C, rely on the same kind of protective envelope and would be vulnerable to melittin-loaded nanoparticles
• In addition to antiviral therapy, the paper\’s senior author has shown melittin-loaded nanoparticles to be effective in killing tumor cells.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Nanoparticles loaded with bee venom kill HIV | MedicalXPress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Worlds Oldest Egyptian Sundials

• Telling Time in Ancient Egypt
• During archaeological excavations in the Kings\’ Valley in Upper Egypt a team of researchers found one of the world\’s oldest ancient Egyptian sundials
• During this year\’s excavations the researchers found a flattened piece of limestone (so-called Ostracon) on which a semicircle in black color had been drawn
• The semicircle is divided into twelve sections of about 15 degrees each.
• A dent in the middle of the approximately 16 centimeter long horizontal baseline served to insert a wooden or metal bolt that would cast a shadow to show the hours of the day
• Small dots in the middle of each section were used for even more detailed time measuring
• It was found in an area of stone huts that were used in the 13th century BC to house the men working at the construction of the graves, possibly used to measure their work hours
• The division of the sun path into hours also played a crucial role in the so-called netherworld guides that were drawn onto the walls of the royal tombs
• These guides are illustrated texts that chronologically describe the nightly progression of the sun-god through the underworld.
• The sundial could also have served to further visualize this phenomenon.
• Multimedia
• Image Ancients Egyptian sun dial | Phys.org | Credit: University of Basel
• Further Reading / In the News
• One of the world\’s oldest sun dial dug up in Kings\’ Valley | Phys.org

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

ESTCube

• Karl Sakrits
• Estonia is sending up their first satellite, a CubeSat, made by University students to test the electric solar wind sail
• CubeSat
• The CubeSat standard for nanosatellites was followed during the engineering of ESTCube-1,
• The CubeSat standard has three different sizes corresponding to size 1U, 2U and 3U. Base side lengths are the same but height is 2 to 3 times bigger than 1U CubeSats
• Mass is also set in CubeSat standard, the highest possible mass for 1U CubeSat is 1300 grams, 2U CubeSat 2600 grams and 3U CubeSat 4000 grams
• CubeSat base side length must be 100.0 +/- 0.1 millimeters and satellite height must be 113.5±0.1 mm
• Purpose
• Although its main purpose was to educate students, the satellite does have a scientific purpose.
• On board of the satellite is an electric solar wind sail (e-sail) which was created by a Finnish scientist Pekka Janhunen, which will be the first real experimentation of the e-sail
• Subsystems
• ADCS – attitude determination and control system, determines and modifies satellite\’s alignment
• CAM – onboard camera for taking pictures of the Earth and the unreeled tether
• CDHS – command and data handling system, the satellite\’s main onboard computer
• COM – communications system for up- and downlinks
• EPS – electrical power system, provides electrical power for the satellite
• PL – payload, the satellite\’s experiment module, that contains the tether and everything else related to the experiment
• STR – satellite\’s structure
• Solar Wind Sail
• 10 meters of e-sail 50 to 20 micrometers thick wire of high-technology structure so-called Heytether will be deployed from the satellite.
• The deployment of the Heytether can be detected by decrease of the satellite\’s speed of rotation or by a on-board camera
• To control the loaded solar wind sail elements interaction with the plasma surrounding the earth and the effect it has on the spacecraft spinning speed the spacecraft has two on-board nanotechnologic electron emitters/gun
• The electron emitters are connected to the e-sail element and by shooting out electrons it loads the e-sail element positively to 500 volts
• The positive ions in the plasma push the e-sail element and have an influence on the satellites rotation speed
• The effect of the e-sail is measured by the change in rotation speed
• The camera is used to take a picture of Earth and the successfully deployed Heytether.
• Mission
• ESTCube-1 will be sent to orbit by the European Space Agency\’s rocket Vega in spring of 2013
• Half an hour after the satellites deployment from the start capsule satellites antennas will be opened and radio transmitter and important subsystems will be switched on
• The first days or weeks will be used to test the satellite and set it to work on full capacity
• They will then orient the satellite so the on-board camera will be faced to earth so that they can try to take a picture of Estonia
• They will rotate the satellite on an axis with a speed of 1 revolution per second
• The E-sail element will deploy from the satellite by a centrifugal force and will confirm the deployment via the on-board camera
• Then they will activate the electron emitter and loading the e-sail, measuring the e-sails and Lorentz force by satellites revolutions per second
• If possible they will use the negatively charged e-sail to take the satellite off orbit and burn it in the earths atmosphere
• Should everything go perfect the mission could be completed within a few weeks to a month
• Communication
• Communicating with the satellite will be held by two International Amateur Radio Unions three registered frequencies [437.250 MHz, 437.505 MHz]
• The maximum possible connection speed is 19,200 bits per second, only to be used when the satellite has been given a specific order
• Important satellite parameters will be transmitted every 3 to 5 minutes, and periodic but slow communication can be done on a telegraphic signal
• A 9600 baud connection speed and AX.25 standard is used, a slower communication frequency which allow a maximum of 25 kiloherz bandwidth, fast connection will only be used when the satellite has been given a specific
• Software
• FreeRTOS on the satellite\’s Command and Data Handling System and camera module
  TinyOS on the satellite\’s communication module
• Financing and costs
• This option is the cheapest possibility to send a satellite into orbit is offered by European Space Agency
• Estonia is an associated member of ESA most of the launch expenses (about 70,000 euros) will be covered from Estonian member fee for educational expenses
• The total expense, with launch cost, for the project are approximately 100,000 euros
• Multimedia
• YouTube estcube dissection2 | taavi torim
• YouTube Packing ESTCube-1 for shipping. Tallinn TV Tower 21.1.2013. | AjattaraQuad
• ESTCube.eu | Video Library
• Twitter
• ESTCube @ESTCube
• Further Reading / In the News
• ESTCube.eu

— Updates —

Space Shuttle Atlantis

• The plastic wrap protecting the Space Shuttle Atlantis from construction debris and will be unveiled to the public at the FLorida Kennedy Space Center Visitor complex in June 2013 in its new 90,000-square-foot home
• The Layout
• The payload bay doors will be carefully opened and the Canadian built remote manipulator system (RMS), or robotic arm, will be installed and extended
• Atlantis is mounted on steel pedestals 30 feet off the ground, at 43.21 degrees, simulating the ‘in flight’ tilt when it\’s orbiting Earth and approaching the International Space Station (ISS).
• With the tilt, the nose rises 26.5 feet above the ground and the portside wingtip sits only 7.5 feet from the floor, the opposite is 87 feet from the ground
• Next to the Atlantis will be a high fidelity full scale replica of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope
• Multimedia
• Space Shuttle Atlantis wraped in plastic shrink-wrap | UniverseToday.com | Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)
• Further Reading / In the News
• Atlantis Exhibit | Kennedy Space Center
• Plastic Wrapped Shuttle Atlantis Slated for Grand Public Unveiling in June | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

SpaceX’s Grasshopper Hops Higher

• GrassHopper
• Grasshopper stands 10 stories tall and consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage tank, Merlin 1D engine, four steel and aluminum landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure
• The goal of Grasshopper is to eventually create a reusable first stage for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which would be able to land safely instead of falling back into the ocean and not being usable again
• On March 7, 2013, the vertical and takeoff and landing (VTVL) vehicle, rose 24 stories, 263 ft / 80m, hovered for approximately 34 seconds and then landed safely, and more accurately than ever before
• Previous Tests
• This is Grasshopper’s fourth in a series of test flights, with each test demonstrating exponential increases in altitude
• September 2012 | Flew to 8.2 ft / 2.5 meters
• November 2012 | Flew to 17.7 ft / 5.4 meters
• December 2012 | Flew to 131 ft / 40 meters
• Multimedia
• Ring of Fire | spacexchannel
• Further Reading / In the News
• SpaceX Grasshopper Takes a Leap Into a \’Ring of Fire\’ | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Analyzing the Drill Sample
• Curiosity obtained her first drill sample and passed that sample on to her onboard analytical lab instruments, called CheMin and SAM
• These powerful instruments can tell about what minerals are present in these rocks and whether they contain the ingredients necessary to sustain life as we know it.
• When the rover science team combine the data from remote sensing and contact science instruments from CheMin and SAM, we get a picture of an ancient watery environment, which would have been habitable had life been present in it.
• At that site of Opportunity rover, the sedimentary rocks record evidence of an environment that was only wet on a very intermittent basis, and when it was, the waters that were there were highly acidic, very salty, and not favorable for the survival of organic compounds.
• CheMin instrument, tells us that the minerals that are present in this lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein are very different from just about anything we\’ve ever analyzed before on Mars and was deposited in a freshwater environment
• The SAM instrument is telling us that these rocks contained all of the ingredients necessary for a habitable environment
• The science team found carbon, sulfur and oxygen, all present and a number of other elements in states that life could have taken advantage of.
• Image Mosaic
• The mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity shows Mount Sharp in raw color as recorded by the camera.
• This mosaic was assembled from dozens of images from the 100-millimeter-focal-length telephoto lens camera mounted on the right side of the Mastcam instrument
• Raw color shows the scene\’s colors as they would look in a typical smart-phone camera photo, before any adjustment.
• White-balancing helps scientists recognize rock materials based on their experience looking at rocks on Earth
• White balancing yields an overly blue hue in images that have very little blue information, such as Martian landscapes, because the white balancing tends to overcompensate for the low inherent blue content.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Mar. 15, 2013) | Rover Hits Paydirt | JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• March 23, 2001 : 12 years ago : Mir destroyed : The Russian space station, Mir, ended 15 years in orbit by burning up in Earth\’s atmosphere as the way chosen to end its life. Mir, launched in 1986, had far exceeded its original planned five year lifespan. The Russian government decided in Oct 2000 that its poor condition could no longer justify the expense to maintain its use. A docked Progress tanker had been remotely commanded by mission controllers to fire rockets and lower its orbit and cause re-entry into the atmosphere. The debris that did not burn up during reentry fell harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean at the planned target zone between New Zealand and Chile. For safety, airlines had rerouted Pacific flights in anticipation of the event, and ships had been warned earlier

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Jupiter | sunset – Evening | High in the SW at sunset, moving to the W sky later in the evening. To its lower left is Aldebaran, and to the lower right are the Pleiades

• Saturn | ~ 11pm local (DST) | Rises in the E-SE, moving to the high in the S sky by early morning

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post Exoplanet & Bee Venom | SciByte 86 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.