‘Yutu’ – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:48:59 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cropped-favicon-32x32.png ‘Yutu’ – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Sleep Apnea & Heart Defect Treatments | SciByte 115 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/49562/sleep-apnea-heart-defect-treatments-scibyte-115/ Tue, 14 Jan 2014 21:11:04 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=49562 We take a look at breast-cancer therapy research, a new sleep apnea treatment, biomedical glue, spacecraft updates, and a little Curiosity news.

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We take a look at breast-cancer therapy research, a new sleep apnea treatment, biomedical glue, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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— Book Pic: —

Breast-Cancer Therapy Research

  • A new breast-cancer therapy partially reverses the cancerous state in cultured breast tumor cells and prevents cancer development in mice, the therapy emerged from a sophisticated effort to reverse-engineer gene networks to identify genes that drive cancer
  • Current Treatment Options
  • To date the only way to stop cancer cells has been to kill them.
  • The treatments that accomplish that, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, often damage healthy tissue, causing harsh side effects
  • Many women currently undergo surgery, chemotherapy and radiation as a precaution, who might never develop the disease
  • In addition some women with a high hereditary risk of breast cancer have chosen to undergo preemptive mastectomies.
  • A therapy that heals rather than kills cancerous tissue could potentially help all these patients, as well as men who develop the disease
  • Identifying Problem Genes
  • First they had to identify the culprit genes among the thousands that are active in a cell at any moment
  • When molecular biologists typically are looking for cancer-causing genes, they search for individual genes that become active as cancer develops, but because genes in cells work in complex networks
  • With this process however, cells that are not cancer-causing often get labeled as such as well
  • To improve the odds of finding the real culprits, a systems biology expert who has developed a sophisticated mathematical and computational method to reverse-engineer bacterial gene networks.
  • Computational Method
  • They were able to hone the computational network to work for the first time on the more complex gene networks of mice and humans
  • The refined method helped the scientists spot more than 100 genes that acted suspiciously just before milk-duct cells in the breast begin to overgrow
  • The team narrowed their list down to six genes that turn other genes on or off, and then narrowed it further to a single gene called HoxA1 that had the strongest statistical link to cancer
  • The HocA1 Gene
  • Researchers wanted to know if blocking the HoxA1 gene could reverse cancer in lab-grown cells, so they grew healthy mouse or human cells in a nutrient-rich, tissue-friendly gel
  • Healthy cells in the gel formed hollow spheres of cells akin to a normal milk duct, cancerous cells, in contrast, packed together into solid, tumor-like spheres.
  • When they treated cancerous cells with a short piece of RNA called a small interfering RNA (siRNA) that blocks only the HoxA1 gene the cells reversed their march to malignancy
  • It stopped the runaway growth and forming hollow balls as healthy cells do, in addition they specialized as if they were growing in healthy tissue
  • The siRNA treatment also stopped breast cancer in a line of mice genetically engineered to have a gene that causes all of them to develop cancer
  • Researchers packed the siRNA into nanoparticles called lipidoids that allow for genes to be silenced for weeks inside the body
  • When they injected these nanoparticles, the treated mice remained healthy, while untreated mice developed breast cancer
  • The Future
  • The idea would be to start the treatment early on and sustain it throughout life to prevent cancer development or progression
  • The same strategy could lead to many new therapies that disable cancer-causing genes no current drugs can stop, and it also can be used to find therapies for other diseases
  • The findings open up the possibility of someday treating patients who have a genetic propensity as more women than ever are undergoing early tests that reveal precancerous breast tissue
  • Early diagnosis could potentially save lives; however, few of those lesions go on to become tumors and doctors have no good way of predicting which ones will turn malignant
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Novel noninvasive therapy prevents breast cancer formation in mice | MedicalXpress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Sleep Apnea Medical Device

  • Implantation of a sleep apnea device called Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation (UAS) therapy can lead to significant improvements for patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)
  • Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)
  • Affects more than 8 million men and 4 million women in the U.S. and is twice as common in men
  • Is characterized by repeated episodes of upper airway collapse during sleep, due to narrowing or blockage
  • Patients with OSA stop breathing, known as apnea, frequently during sleep, often for a minute or longer
  • Repeated episodes of apnea can lead to daytime fatigue, and increase a person\’s risk for heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure and even death.
  • Current Treatments for OSA
  • Include weight loss, upper airway surgeries, oral appliances, and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which is considered the primary treatment for OSA
  • CPAP is a successful treatment when used on a regular basis
  • As many as half of the patients who have been prescribed CPAP are unable to use it regularly, largely due to discomfort with the mask and/or the lack of desire to be tethered to a machine
  • Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation (UAS) Therapy
  • Differs from other traditional sleep apnea devices and surgical procedures as it targets the muscle tone of the throat rather than just the anatomy
  • The device is designed to sense breathing patterns and deliver mild stimulation to a patient\’s airway muscles to keep the airway open during sleep.
  • Surgical implantation of the upper-airway stimulation system was performed by otolaryngologists at 22 academic and private centers
  • Stimulation electrode was placed on the hypoglossal nerve, which provides innervation to the muscles of the tongue
  • The device was implanted in three areas, a sensing lead was placed between rib muscles to detect breathing effort, a neurostimulator was implanted in the upper right chest, just below the clavicle bone
  • Two thirds of patients using the Inspire UAS therapy device had successful control of their OSA, even more reported improvement in snoring, daytime sleepiness and quality of life measures
  • The Study
  • This was the first trial to evaluate the use of upper airway stimulation for sleep apnea
  • Conducted at 22 medical centers in the United States and Europe
  • From 724 candidates initially screened, the STAR trial implanted and prospectively evaluated 126 moderate-to-severe OSA patients who had difficulty using or adhering to CPAP therapy:
  • All patients underwent surgery to implant the device, 83 percent of the participants were men, the mean age was 54.5 years, and the mean body-mass index was 28.4.
  • Patients used a \”controller\” to turn on the device at night, so it is only used when the patient sleeps
  • Long Term
  • Eighty-six percent of patients were still using the device every night at the one year mark, which compares very favorably to CPAP
  • Using various sleep-disorder measuring systems, patients were found to experience 68 to 70 percent fewer sleep-apnea episodes per hour
  • After one year, patients using the device had an approximately 70 percent reduction in sleep apnea severity, as well as significant reductions in daytime sleepiness
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Dr. Soose explains sleep apnea clinical trial | UPMC
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • New device can reduce sleep apnea episodes by 70 percent, study shows | MedicalXpress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Glue for the Heart

  • In a preclinical study, researchers developed a bio-inspired adhesive that could rapidly attach biodegradable patches inside a beating heart in the exact place where congenital holes in the heart occur, such as with ventricular heart defects.
  • Heart Defect Treatments
  • When a child is born with a heart defect such as a hole in the heart, the highly invasive therapies are challenging due to an inability to quickly and safely secure devices inside the heart
  • Sutures take too much time to stitch and can cause stress on fragile heart tissue
  • Currently available clinical adhesives are either too toxic or tend to lose their sticking power in the presence of blood or under dynamic conditions, such as in a beating heart
  • A New Adhesive
  • Many creatures in nature have secretions that are viscous and repel water enabling them to attach under wet and dynamic conditions
  • Researchers developed a material with these properties that also is biodegradable, elastic and biocompatible
  • The degradable patches secured with the glue remained attached even at increased heart rates and blood pressure and it works in the presence of blood and moving structures
  • The adhesive was strong enough to hold tissue and patches onto the heart equivalent to suturing, is biodegradable and biocompatible, so nothing foreign or toxic stays in the bodies of these patients
  • Its adhesive abilities are activated with ultraviolet (UV) light, providing an on-demand, anti-bleeding seal within five seconds of UV light application
  • What This Means
  • Researchers note that their waterproof, light-activated adhesive will be useful in reducing the invasiveness of surgical procedures, as well as operating times, in addition to improving heart surgery outcomes
  • \”It should provide the physician with a completely new, much simpler technology and a new paradigm for tissue reconstruction to improve the quality of life of patients following surgical procedures.\” | Pedro del Nido, MD, Chief of Cardiac Surgery, Boston Children\’s Hospital, co-senior study author
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Bio-inspired glue keeps hearts securely sealed | ScienceDaily.com

Supernova In the Works

  • SN 1987A is the closest supernova to that we’ve been able to study since the invention of the telescope and it has provided scientists with good opportunities to study the physical processes of an exploding star
  • A nebula with a giant star at its center has striking similarities to SN 1987A.
  • Both stars have identical rings of the same size and age, which were travelling at similar speeds; both were located in similar HII regions; and they had the same brightness
  • No one can predict when a star will go supernova, but astronomers are certainly hoping they’ll have the chance to watch it happen.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • What a Star About to Go Supernova Looks Like | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2)

  • 2014 should be the year that Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) brings passengers on suborbital space flights
  • The company started off the year by successfully completing its third rocket-powered supersonic flight after dozens of successful subsonic test flights
  • Getting to Altitude
  • The WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft brought SS2 to an altitude around 46,000 ft, then SS2 was released, and its rocket motor was ignited, powering the spaceship to a planned altitude of 71,000 ft.
  • SS2’s highest altitude to date, and it also reached a speed of Mach 1.4.
  • Testing
  • They tested the spaceship’s Reaction Control System, the newly installed thermal protection coating on the vehicle’s tail booms, and the “feather” re-entry system.
  • The RCS will allow its pilots to maneuver the vehicle in space so that passengers will have great views of Earth, as well as aiding the positioning process for spacecraft re-entry
  • The new reflective protection coating on SS2’s inner tail boom surfaces is being evaluated to help maintain vehicle skin temperatures while the rocket motor is firing.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Stunning video: Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo goes supersonic in test flight | euronews (in English)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • SpaceShipTwo Goes Supersonic in Third Rocket-Powered Test Flight | UniverseToday.com

China’s Lunar Lander and Rover Back “Awake”

  • According to a BACC statement the Chinese Lunar lander, Chang’e-3, and the Yutu rover have \’woken up\’ from their Lunar night hibernation
  • Engineers put them to sleep to conserve energy since there is no sunlight to generate power with the solar arrays during the lunar night.
  • Lunar night time environment when temperatures plunged to below minus 180 degrees Celsius, or minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit
  • During the nocturnal hiatus they were kept alive by a radioisotopic heat source that maintained at a temperature of about minus 40 degrees Celsius to prevent debilitating damage to the computer and electronics subsystems inside a box below the deck
  • Just prior to hibernating, the lander snapped the first image of the Earth taken from the Moon’s surface in some four decades
  • The Yutu rover has already resumed roving, and they expect the Chang’e-3 lander should survive at least a year.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Stunning video: Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo goes supersonic in test flight | euronews (in English)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • China\’s Historic Moon Robot Duo Awaken from 1st Long Frigid Night and Resume Science Operations | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Watching From Orbit
  • NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover and its recent tracks from driving in Gale Crater appear in an image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA\’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Dec. 11, 2013.
  • The tracks show where the rover has zigzagged around obstacles on its route toward the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, its next major destination.
  • HiRISE first imaged the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft while it was descending on a parachute
  • Mars Orbiter Images Rover and Tracks in Gale Crater | mars.nasa.gov
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • January 17, 1929 : 85 years ago : Expanding universe : Edwin Hubble communicated the now classic paper that first showed the universe was expanding (and later provided observational evidence for the Big Bang theory). But Hubble explicitly made no such an interpretation. He left that to the reader. His paper was simply titled “A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae.” He listed the data that he plotted on a graph. It showed a roughly linear relationship between radial velocity for various galaxies and their distance. It dramatically showed that the the further away the galaxy, the faster it is moving away from the observer. However, stating that future new data might change the interpretation, he discretely wrote that he thought it “premature to discuss in detail the obvious consequences of the present results.

Looking up this week

The post Sleep Apnea & Heart Defect Treatments | SciByte 115 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Typing & Dying Silk | SciByte 112 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/47862/typing-dying-silk-scibyte-112/ Tue, 10 Dec 2013 21:12:35 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=47862 We take a look at typing on autopilot, more data on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, dying silk, bone grafting, Curiosity news, and more!

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We take a look at typing on autopilot, more data on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, dying silk, bone grafting, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Typing on Autopilot

  • A conclusion of a recent study conducted by a team of cognitive psychologists shows that when you are typing away at your computer, you don\’t know what your fingers are really doing
  • It found that skilled typists can\’t identify the positions of many of the keys on the QWERTY keyboard and that novice typists don\’t appear to learn key locations in the first place
  • The Study
  • The researchers recruited 100 university students and members from the surrounding community to participate in an experiment
  • The participants completed a short typing test, then they were shown a blank QWERTY keyboard and given 80 seconds to write the letters in the correct location
  • On average, they typed 72 words per minute, moving their fingers to the correct keys six times per second with 94 percent accuracy
  • By contrast, they could accurately place an average of only 15 letters on a blank keyboard.
  • What the Results Mean
  • The fact that the typists did so poorly at identifying the position of specific keys didn\’t come as a surprise
  • For more than a century, scientists have recognized the existence of automatism: the ability to perform actions without conscious thought or intention
  • Automatic behaviors of this type are surprisingly common, ranging from tying shoelaces to making coffee to factory assembly-line work to riding a bicycle and driving a car
  • What did come as a surprise, however, was evidence that conflicts with the basic theory of automatic learning which holds that it starts out as a conscious process and gradually becomes unconscious with repetition
  • Automating Actions
  • According to the widely held theory, when you perform a new task or the first time, you are conscious of each action and store the details in working memory, then as you repeat the task, it becomes increasingly automatic
  • This allows you to think about other things while you performing the task but your conscious recollection of the details gradually fades away
  • Researchers were surprised when they found evidence that the typists never appear to memorize the key positions, not even when they are first learning to type.
  • Evidence for this conclusion came from another experiment included in the study
  • The \”Sub-Set Study\”
  • The researchers recruited 24 typists who were skilled on the QWERTY keyboard and had them learn to type on a Dvorak keyboard, which places keys in different locations.
  • After the participants developed a reasonable proficiency with the alternative keyboard, they were asked to identify the placement of the keys on a blank Dvorak keyboard
  • On average, they could locate only 17 letters correctly, comparable to participants\’ performance with the QWERTY keyboard.
  • \’Memorizing\’ without Memorizing, One Theory
  • According to the researchers, the lack of explicit knowledge of the keyboard may be due to the fact that computers and keyboards have become so ubiquitous that students learn how to use them in an informal, trial-and-error fashion when they are very young
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Automatic Typing | VanderbiltUniversity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Study gives new meaning to \’let your fingers do the walking\’ | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

2011 Tohoku Earthquake

  • In March 2011, a devastating tsunami struck Japan\’s Tohoku region
  • Now, researchers have uncovered the cause of this tsunami, shedding light on what displaced the seafloor off the northeastern coast of Japan
  • The Study
  • Scientists underwent a 50-day expedition on the Japanese drilling vessel Chikyu
  • They then drilled three holes in the Japan Trench area in order to study the rupture zone of the 2011 earthquake
  • A fault in the ocean floor where two of Earth\’s major tectonic plates meet deep beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
  • The Conventional View
  • Deep beneath the seafloor, where rocks are strong, movements of the plates can generate a lot of elastic rebound
  • Closer to the surface of the seafloor, where rocks are softer and less compressed, rebound effect was thought to taper off
  • The Tohoku Earthquake
  • The largest displacement of plates before the 2011 tsunami occurred in 1960 off the coast of Chile when a powerful earthquake displaced sea floor plates by an average of 20 meters
  • The Tohoku earthquake, in contrast, displaced its own plates by 30 to 50 meters.
  • The fault itself is very thin–less than five meters thick in the area sampled, making it the thinnest plate boundary on Earth.
  • In addition, clay deposits that fill the narrow fault are made of extremely fine sediment, which makes it extremely slippery
  • Looking to the Future
  • These findings don\’t just show researchers a bit more about the past; they also have implications for the future
  • Learning more about the 2011 tsunami and its causes is an important step for monitoring future events and could help researchers provide earlier warnings
  • Other subduction zones in the northwest Pacific where this type of clay is present–from Russia\’s Kamchatka peninsula to the Aleutian Islands–may also be capable of generating similar, huge earthquakes
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Scientists Identify Cause of Japan\’s Devastating 2011 Tsunami | ScienceWorldReport.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Coloring Silk Worm Silk

  • How It’s Done Now
  • Coloring fabric normally uses enormous amounts of fresh water
  • The water gets contaminated with dangerous chemicals in the process, requiring costly treatment before factories can dump it back into waterways—or wreaking havoc when factory owners dodge cleanup rules
  • A New Idea
  • A team fed ordinary silkworms mulberry leaves that had been sprayed with fabric dyes.
  • Out of seven tested dyes, only one worked, producing a thread that reminded me of pink-dyed hair.
  • The worms themselves take on some color before they weave their silk cocoons. Their colorful diets did not affect their growth
  • Scientists are just starting to study this idea, however, it remains to be seen if it\’s commercially viable
  • In this experiment, the Indian team tested seven azo dyes, which are cheap and popular in the industry
  • The scientists found different dyes moved through silkworms\’ bodies differently. Some never made it into the worms\’ silk at all
  • Others colored the worms and their cocoons, but the color molecules settled mostly in the sticky protein the worms add to their cocoons
  • That sticky stuff gets washed away before the silk is turned into fabric
  • Only one dye, named \”direct acid fast red,\” showed up in the final, washed silk threads. By the time it made it there, it was a pleasant, light pink.
  • Media
  • YouTube | Silkworms Timelapse | mtwlg
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Scientists Color Silk By Feeding Silkworms Fabric Dyes | Popular Science

Bone Grafting

  • Scientists have now discovered a way to refine sea coral properties so that it is more compatible with natural bone.
  • One Biomaterial Problem
  • When biomaterials do not biodegrade, they can continuously cause problems
  • In extreme conditions, it is possible that the different mechanical properties of the artificial bone graft may cause a re-fracture or become a source for bacterial growth in infection
  • Finding Solutions
  • In order to get around this issue researchers decided to study the calcium carbonate found in the exoskeleton of sea coral and convert it into coralline hydroxyapatite (CHA)
  • They then refined the material to produce coralline hydroxyapatite/calcium carbonate (CHACC)
  • This CHACC composition contained 15 percent of CHA in a thin layer around the calcium carbonate
  • The strong, porous structure has made CHA commercially successful, but contained significantly improved bio-degrading properties to support natural bone healing.
  • Not Ready for Wide Use Quite Yet
  • There is a ways to go before the material can match the benefits of an autograft and can be used by the several million people worldwide that undergo bone grafting procedures each year
    +The development of the CHACC material could provide an important step toward creating a biodegradable material that could help patients in the future
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Sea Coral in Bone Grafting? How the Material is Made Compatible with Natural Bone | ScienceWorldRepoert.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

China’s ‘Yutu’ Lunar Lander

  • China’s moon landing probe successfully entered lunar orbit on Friday, Dec. 6
  • China’s ‘Yutu’ lunar lander is riding piggyback atop the four legged landing probe
  • Chang’e 3 is due to make a powered descent to the Moon’s surface on Dec. 14, firing the landing thrusters at an altitude of 15 km (9 mi) for a soft landing in a preselected area called the Bay of Rainbows or Sinus Iridum region.
  • The Bay of Rainbows is a lava filled crater located in the upper left portion of the moon as seen from Earth. The Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11 landed is the mid-upper right. Moon Map | Wikipedia
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • China’s Maiden Moon Rover Mission Chang’e 3 Achieves Lunar Orbit | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • 100,000 ChemCam Laser Shots
  • Chemistry and Camera instrument (ChemCam) uses the infrared laser to excite material and analyzes the spectrum of light to identify elements in the target
  • As of the start of December, ChemCam has fired its laser on Mars more than 102,000 times, at more than 420 rock or soil targets, and has also returned more than 1,600 images taken by its remote micro-imager camera
  • Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second
  • The 100,000th shot was one of a series of 300 to investigate 10 locations on a rock called \”Ithaca\” in late October
  • The shots were at a distance of 13 feet, 3 inches (4.04 meters) from the laser and telescope on rover\’s mast
  • More Habitable Lake Information
  • Curiosity rover has discovered evidence that an ancient Martian lake had the right chemical ingredients that could have sustained microbial life
  • The shallow ancient lake may have been about 30 miles long by 3 miles wide (50 by 5 kilometers)
  • The research team estimates that the lake existed for at least tens of thousands of years, as recent as 3.7 Billion years ago, perhaps even longer on an off-and-on basis, even when the lake might have been dry, the groundwater\’s still there
  • It could have potentially supported a class of microbes called chemolithoautotrophs, which obtain energy by breaking down rocks and minerals
  • Here on Earth, chemolithoautotrophs are commonly found in habitats beyond the reach of sunlight, such as caves and hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor
  • Cold Lake
  • The lack of weathering on Gale Crater\’s rim suggests that the area was cold when the lake existed
  • It\’s possible that a layer of ice covered the lake on a permanent or occasional basis
  • Even with that it still is a entirely viable habitable environments for chemolithoautotrophs
  • Mission Shift
  • Researchers announced that they are shifting the missions focus from searching for habitable environments to searching for organic molecules – the building blocks of all life as we know it.
  • The team believes they have found a way to increase the chance of finding organics preserved in the sedimentary rock layers
  • This means that the mission is now dedicated to the search for that subset of habitable environments which also preserves organic carbon
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (Dec. 9, 2013): Dating Younger Rocks | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Laser Instrument on NASA Mars Rover Tops 100,000 Zaps | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life, Curiosity Rover Shows | Space.com
  • Curiosity Discovers Ancient Mars Lake Could Support Life | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Dec 14, 1962 : 51 years ago : Mariner 2 Venus Mission : The U.S. space probe Mariner 2 approached within about 34,000 kilometers (21,600 miles) of Venus, transmitting first time information about this planet. Launched 27 Aug 1962 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on an Atlas- Agenda rocket, the Mariner 2 was the world\’s first successful interplanetary spacecraft. It sent back new information about interplanetary space and the very hot, heavy, mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere. The temperature was found to be about 500 ºC (900 ºF). Also for the first time, the spacecraft\’s solar wind experiment measured the density, velocity, composition and variation over time of the solar wind. It discovered that Venus lacks a strong magnetic field and radiation belts. Contact was lost 3 Jan 1963.

Looking up this week

The post Typing & Dying Silk | SciByte 112 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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