All systems go for Mercury mission

Britain is to build a space probe that will go into orbit around Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. The order to construct the spacecraft has been won by the aerospace team at Astrium in Stevenage, Herts. Stevenage scientists will also design and build fuel systems that will power the probe's mothership on the BepiColombo mission, due for launch in 2013. Colleagues at Astrium's Portsmouth base will work on the orbiter's 11 scientific instruments that will put the planet under intense scrutiny. The European Space Agency awarded the overall £220 million contract for the mission to aerospace giant Astrium, based in Germany. Astrium immediately revealed that its UK centre in Stevenage, Herts, will be entirely responsible for building the Mercury Planetary Orbiter. The craft will spend at least a year flying from pole to pole, photographing Mercury's mountainous and heavily cratered surface. Astrium's second major UK base in Portsmouth will be responsible for building the spacecraft's instruments. BepiColombo is a joint project with Japan and will also carry their own orbiter probe to measure Mercury's magnetic field. The two probes and their mothership, or transfer module, will be about 15ft tall and weigh around three tons, including fuel. BepiColombo will be launched by a Soyuz rocket from Korou in French Guyana, South America. Conventional fuel thrusters will lift it clear of Earth and then a scifi-style ion engine built in Portsmouth will propel it by "light drive" on its long journey to Mercury. Finally, rockets will again fire to slow it so that it can go into orbit around Mercury. Astrium spokesman Jeremy Close told Skymania News: "It sounds like a long route but it is the most efficient way to get to its target. As the probe flies towards Mercury, it will be pulled by the sun's gravity. We have to make sure it is moving slowly enough when it reaches Mercury to be captured into its orbit." He added: "The fully assembled mission will be about the size of two Transit vans which is quite a fitting analogy. The craft will act like a van by delivering the Japanese probe into orbit and then dropping off the UK orbiter." Little is known about Mercury, a Moon-like planet that lies just 36 million miles from the sun and has a year 88 days long. Nasa's Mariner 10 probe flew past Mercury three times in the Seventies and took photos revealing that it was covered in craters. A UK researcher believes Mercury was formed when an asteroid struck another bigger planet. One of the biggest challenges facing Astrium's engineers will be preparing the probe for the extreme heat it will encounter from solar radiation that will be ten times greater than on Earth. Temperatures reach 470 Celsius on Mercury's surface. BepiColombo will take six years to reach Mercury because engineers will bounce it around the solar system in a game of planetary snooker, just as they are doing with the Rosetta comet probe. The manoeuvres will allow the spacecraft to use the gravity fields of the Moon, Earth and Venus to propel it to its final destination. Picture: An Astrium artist's impression of the European Mercury orbiter. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Rosetta boosted by 'bounce' off Mars

Mission control scientists cheered today as they played cosmic billiards with a European comet probe. They bounced their Rosetta spacecraft off the red ball - planet Mars - by flying it within 155 miles of its surface. Rosetta skimmed past Mars at 22,700mph, taking pictures and testing its onboard instruments. The manouevre has sent the three-ton probe heading back towards the blue ball - Earth - for another "bounce" in November. European space scientist are using the peculiar route through the solar system to help Rosetta build up speed by using the planets' gravity. The flybys will catapult it towards a comet called Churyumov Gerasimenko in 2014 when it will plant a lander called Philae on its surface. UK Professor Ian Wright, of the Open University, who built the UK's ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, is in charge of the lander. It is expected to uncover clues to the early days of the universe. Comets are the oldest and most primitive bodies in the solar system and could have brought life to Earth. This lander, a miniature chemical laboratory, will analyse the comet's surface and nucleus. The Rosetta probe will then chase the comet for a year as it heads towards the inner solar system at 62,000mph. The wealth of information gathered if the mission succeeds will build on the amazing results from Nasa's Deep Impact probe which blew a hole in another comet, Tempel 1, in July 2005. The European Space Agency's Director of Science, David Southwood, was at mission control at Darmstadt, Germany, today. He said: "Today we have reached another milestone on the way to finding an answer to questions such as whether life on Earth began with the help of comets." Rosetta took the above dramatic colour photo of Mars as it headed toward closest approach on Saturday. ESA scientists described it as better than Hubble. Another, narrow-angle camera called OSIRIS imaged cloud structure, such as that shown here, in the upper Martian atmosphere. Photos: ESA. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Giant leap in search for alien life

Scientists are on the verge of discovering ET's fingerprints thanks to a breakthrough in space. An orbiting telescope has collected enough light from alien worlds to identify individual ingredients that make up their atmospheres. Nasa has hailed it a "landmark achievement" and say it is a significant step towards detecting life on rocky worlds in other star systems. No one is more surprised than the astronomers themselves that they can identify particular molecules in the air of planets around other stars. The data was collected by the agency's Spitzer space telescope when it looked at the rainbow of light from two giant gaseous bodies like Jupiter. Called exoplanets, one is labelled HD 189733b and lies 370 trillion miles away in the constellation Vulpecula. The other, HD 209458b, is 904 trillion miles away in the constellation Pegasus. The atmospheres were analysed by observing changes in the spectrum of light as the planets passed in front of and disappeared behind their stars. Earlier this month, we revealed that the Hubble space telescope had detected the atmosphere of HD 209458b which has been unofficially named Osiris. And last year, we told how Spitzer observations had allowed scientists to check out the weather in other solar systems. Astronomers are now searching for smaller planets like Earth using probes such as Europe's £50million Corot probe which blasted off in December. Nasa believe that if Spitzer applies the same techniques on Earth-like worlds, we could see our first signs of ET. Spitzer's result has come years before astronomers had expected to probe alien atmospheres in such detail. "This is an amazing surprise," said Spitzer project scientist Dr Michael Werner of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California. "We had no idea when we designed Spitzer that it would make such a dramatic step in characterising exoplanets." Spitzer's observations gave scientists another surprise. They showed that the two exoplanets - dubbed hot Jupiters because they lie close to their parent suns - are drier and cloudier than predicted. Experts say the reason could be that high clouds of dust are hiding the water from the space telescope's view. Nasa's Dr Jeremy Richardson said of the results, published in Nature: "The theorists' heads were spinning when they saw the data. It is virtually impossible for water, in the form of vapour, to be absent from the planet, so it must be hidden, probably by the dusty cloud layer." Picture: An artist's impression of a hot Jupiter. Nasa/JPL-Caltech. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Supernova's anniversary ring of pearls

The Hubble space telescope has photographed a stunning ring of cosmic pearls left by a star that blew itself to bits exactly 20 years ago. Astronomers witnessed the explosion on February 23, 1987. It was the brightest supernova seen for more than 400 years. Hubble was launched by Nasa three years later and has been monitoring the supernova closely ever since. The suicide star lies 163,000 light years away in a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. That means that the blast happened in 161,000 BC but its light has taken several millennia to get here. The supernova, called SN 1987A, blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months. Since then, scientists have watched as light from the star spread outwards and began to light up its surroundings. The stellar shock wave slammed into, heated up and illuminating a narrow ring of debris that they think surrounded the star at least 20,000 years before it exploded. Today it resembles a pearl necklace and is set to become even brighter over the next few years. Hubble continues to watch as the blast debris moves through the ring. The light show makes the glowing ring look like a pearl necklace. Astronomers think the whole ring will be illuminated in a few years. US astronomer Robert Kirshner, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Masschusetts, said: "The Hubble observations have helped us rewrite the textbooks on exploding stars. In fact, without Hubble we wouldn't even know what to ask." Astronomers are still looking for any evidence of a black hole or tiny, super-dense neutron star left behind by the blast. Photo: Nasa/ESA. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Satellite fleet lifts off to probe aurora

Five satellites flew into orbit on Saturday to investigate the most spectacular natural light show on Earth. The five probes lifted off together on one rocket - a record for a single launch by Nasa - from Cape Canaveral in Florida. They form the Themis mission which will carry out detailed observations and study of the aurora, or northern and southern lights. Scientists want to solve the mystery of what triggers so-called geomagnetic substorms that cause a sudden brightening of the aurora. Their results will be used to help protect astronauts and sensitive electronic instruments aboard commercial satellites. The five identical Themis probes - it stands for the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms - lifted off atop a Delta II rocket. They will eventually line up between the Earth and the Sun to monitor events in different areas of space. The aurora lights up the sky when an invisible wind of electrically charged gas from the Sun buffets the Earth's magnetic field. During substorms, a protective shell called the magnetosphere gets over loaded by solar energy and snaps back like a slingshot, firing particles called electrons towards Earth. These particles, the same electrons that carry electric currents in TVs and mobile phones, stream down invisible lines of magnetic force, making the aurora shine brightly. During a two-year mission, the five satellites are expected to witness around 30 substorms. Principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos said: "The mission will make a breakthrough in our understanding of how Earth's magnetosphere stores and releases energy from the Sun. Substorm processes are fundamental to our understanding of space weather and how it affects satellites and humans." Photo: Nasa. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Plumbing system seen under Antarctica

Scientists have made a fresh major discovery of water flowing deep beneath a planet's surface - but this time it is the Earth. Satellite observations have detected a complex plumbing system of lakes and streams flowing nearly half a mile under the Antarctic ice. The exciting find comes after a Nasa team revealed new evidence that Mars was once an Earth-like planet with abundant supplies of water. The new network of waterways on our own planet was spotted using laser beams from Nasa satellites high in orbit. The liquid water is leaking under fast-moving streams of ice in the Antarctic which is the world's biggest ice sheet. It holds around 90 per cent of the world's ice and 70 per cent of its stock of fresh water. The scientists detected for the first time the subtle rise and fall of the surface of the ice streams as lakes and channels filled and emptied nearly half a mile down. The team, led by Helen Fricker of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California, published their results in the journal Science today. She said: "There's an urgency to learning more about ice sheets when you note that sea level rises and falls in direct response to changes in that ice." Co-author Robert Bindschadler, of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre, Maryland, said: "This exciting discovery has radically altered our view of what is happening at the base of the ice sheet and how ice moves in that environment. The research team combined images from Nasa's Aqua satellite and ICESat to view the changes in the height of the icy surface over a three-year period. Photo: A Nasa satellite photo of Antarctica. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

A fresh water clue to life on Mars

Latest news from Mars is fresh dramatic evidence that water flowed through cracks in underground rock millions of years ago, providing possible habitats for a simple form of life. The fractures are revealed in photos of Candor Chasma, part of the planet's own "grand canyon", Valles Marineris, which is six times deeper than the Earth's Grand Canyon. Patterns in the rock, which used to lie several miles underground, were revealed in images taken last year by the most powerful camera ever sent to Mars. They showed that mineral deposits had been left along the cracks. Experts say the liquid flows may have produced conditions to support the existence of microbial life. The rock patterns in Candor Chasma were noticed by Chris Okubo, a geologist at the University of Arizona. He said: "What caught my eye was the bleaching or lack of dark material along the fracture. That is a sign of mineral alteration by fluids that moved through those joints." Okubo said light tones, or "haloes", reminded him of similar effects he had observed in sandstone on geology field trips to Utah. He added: "The most likely origin for these features is that minerals that were dissolved in water came out of solution and became part of the rock material lining the fractures. Another possibility is that the circulating fluid was a gas, which may or may not have included water vapour in its composition." Professor Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the HiRise camera, said the results showed the value of observations from orbit identifying areas for study by possible future lander missions. He added: "The alteration along fractures, concentrated by the underground fluids, marks locations where we can expect to find key information about chemical and perhaps biologic processes in a subsurface environment that may have been habitable." The HiRise instrument is watching the Red Planet from aboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which can detect an object the size of a coffee table. The new discovery is published in the latest issue of Science. I told back in December how Nasa had discovered evidence that liquid water is still flowing on the surface of Mars today. And last month there came evidence that Martian seas are today locked underground including a frozen sea at Elysium, near the planet's equator. Photo: Nasa/JPL/Univ. of Arizona ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Here's YOUR chance to find Beagle 2

Space fans are being challenged to beat the professionals and find the lost Beagle 2 Mars probe. Yesterday, as I exclusively forecast, Nasa released the first close-up photographs of the region where Britain's craft should have landed. The images of Isidis Planitia include the 20-yard wide crater shown here which is where Professor Colin Pillinger claimed to have detected his lost craft. But there are no obvious signs inside the crater, which was caused by a meteor impact, of any debris from Beagle 2, such as a parachute or airbags. You can compare the new detailed imaged with the lower resolution picture from Mars Global Surveyor which was enhanced by Professor Pillinger's team. Other photos of the region just released from the powerful space camera aboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show that hunting the spaceprobe will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Now the Planetary Society, based in the US, is calling on enthusiasts to download the HiRise images and scour them for any signs of the probe, its heatshield, backshell or chute. They have put images on their website of how these parts of Beagle 2 might look on the photos from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Nasa's HiRise images are huge to download, with one more than 800 MB in size. But the society's blogger Emily Lakdawalla says: "I invite everyone with the patience to download these images and have a look around to see what you can find. There will likely be more images in Isidis Planitia from time to time, and who knows? One of them may contain the missing spacecraft." She adds: "It's been three years since the landing, time enough for some transient markings of a crash to have been blown away. It will be especially hard to find if the parachute never deployed. "Not only would the parachute be the easiest piece of Beagle 2's hardware to spot, but if it didn't deploy then it wouldn't have slowed Beagle 2's descent, so the spacecraft could have landed considerably downrange of where people are looking for it." Nothing has been heard from Beagle 2 since it separated from its mothership, Mars Express, for a landing on Christmas Day 2003. Photo: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Hubble watches another star's death

Another day, another spectacular image of a planetary nebula . . . This time it is Hubble which has come up with the goods and photographed a star's demise. The nebula, which has no fancy name, is catalogued by astronomers as NGC 2440 and lies in the southern constellation of Puppis. At the centre of the bow-tie-shaped cocoon of gas lies the original burned-out star, now a white dwarf. The photo was taken on February 6 with the space telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. NGC 2440 lies around 4,000 light-years from Earth, about five times as far as the Helix nebula that Spitzer recently imaged. Our Milky Way galaxy is littered with these stellar relics. They were termed planetary nebulae because astronomers in the 18th and 19th centuries thought they resembled the disks of Uranus and Neptune through small telescopes. Photo: NASA, ESA, and K. Noll (STScI) ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Comets collide in the Eye of God

The Eye of God stares back at us from deep in the universe in this spectacular picture from a space telescope. The eerie image, shot with Nasa's Spitzer instrument, is really the shimmering remains of a dead star that has thrown its gas out into space. The heat-seeking telescope reveals the star itself like a red pupil at the centre of the eye. And it has discovered a surrounding cloud of dust that astronomers believe is caused by comets colliding as they continue to circle their lost sun. The cloud of gas and dust was dubbed the Eye of God after another space telescope, Hubble, photographed it. Lead scientist Dr Kate Su, of the University of Arizona, said: "We were surprised to see so much dust around this star. The dust must be coming from comets that survived the death of their sun." The cloud is a type known as a planetary nebula, although it has nothing to do with the planets. It is usually known as the Helix and can be seen as a dim ring in stargazers' backyard telescopes. It lies around 700 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius and is so big that light takes two and a half years to travel from one side to the other. The star that formed the Eye is believed to have been much like our own sun before it died and threw off its outer layers. Our own solar system will meet a similar fate five billion years in the future. The expanding shell of gas that forms the white of the Eye is shining like a fluorescent striplight as it is heated by the dead star's core. Experts say that the spectacle will not last long on the cosmic timescale and will fade away in around 10,000 years. Previous spectacular images from Spitzer have included the dust wave threatening the Pillars of Creation and the swirling stellar nursery that is the Orion Nebula. The dust cloud discovery will be announced in next months's issue of the Astrophysical Journal. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Nasa picture clue to Beagle's fate

A powerful space camera orbiting Mars has taken the first close-up photo of the site where Britain's Beagle 2 probe is believed to have crashed. It could finally solve the riddle of what happened to the lander which was due to reach the Red Planet on Christmas Day 2003. But there is apparently no obvious trace of the probe or of any wreckage in the image. Nasa's lead scientist for their Mars exploration program, Michael Meyer, told me on a visit to London: "I've looked at the picture and I couldn't see any sign of it." The HiRise camera aboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is the most powerful ever sent out into the solar system. It can detect an object the size of a coffee table on the Martian surface. Nasa plan to release the highly detailed photo, which was taken two weeks ago, on Wednesday. Beagle 2 should have landed in the Isidis Planitia region of Mars after being carried to the planet by Europe's Mars Express orbiter. But nothing was heard from it after it should have landed. In December 2005, Beagle 2 scientist Colin Pillinger said he thought he had found the probe lying in pieces in a 20ft wide crater. But colleagues said they were not convinced by the grainy, low-resolution image, which was taken by another spacecraft. Professor Pillinger, of the Open University, told me: "I can't say what the new picture shows until I've had a proper chance to look closely at it and talked to Nasa about it." Nasa's Professor Alfred McEwen, who is in charge of the HiRise camera, said: "We plan to release the image on Wednesday. It has already been made available to Colin Pillinger and we plan to let him make the interpretations." The super-powerful camera has already sent back photos showing Nasa's own landers and robot rovers on the Martian surface, including this one of the Opportunity lander. and the rover itself here. The picture is an ESA artist's impression of Beagle 2 entering the Martian atmosphere. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Campaign to send Brits into space

A major UK campaign will be launched tomorrow to send British astronauts into space and, eventually, to Mars. The British Interplanetary Society is calling for Brits to fly to the International Space Station by 2010 and to be on the Moon with the Americans by 2020. I've reported before how Nasa chief Mike Griffin has invited the UK to join America in returning to the Moon. Now the BIS say the Government would need to increase the UK's annual civil space budget of £200 million by just five per cent to join the manned space programme. A modest £50 million project over five years could establish a small UK astronaut corps and fund two ten-day missions to fly to the ISS via the regular Soyuz spacecraft visits. For the future, this UK astronaut group could be enlarged to join international missions to the Moon and, eventually, the manned exploration of Mars. The BIS says this would provide valuable opportunities for scientific research and help inspire our children, the explorers and scientists of tomorrow. The BIS's Britons in Space campaign says that nations that have astronauts have a much better chance of inspiring young people to take up science and engineering courses. The Government has already begun a review of its space policy. But it has historically opted out of human space flight and it has made no commitment to change that position, despite an invitation from NASA to join America in exploring the Moon. The BIS says that, in comparison with other European countries who have an active manned space interest, the UK is only spending about a quarter of what it should do to have a meaningful space industry. The UK is often quoted as having the world’s fourth largest economy. It also has the second largest aerospace industry, but in fact it only applies three per cent of this industry for space related work, whilst Europe is 10-15 per cent and the US is 25 per cent, says a spokesman. This has led to little interest in the UK’s space activities by the general public, despite it being a £4 billion industry with 16,000 direct employees. Britons in Space campaign director Nick Spall said yesterday: "We call on Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to make Britain a leading 21st century technological nation. The Government must agree to help inspire our children to go into science and make a solemn commitment to fund the UK civil space programme with an extra five percent each year to enable Space Minister Malcolm Wicks to oversee a modest UK astronaut programme. "The Prime Minister has said his priorities are education, education, education. What better science and technology educational inspiration could there be than manned space flight? ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Historic luggage tag to fly in space

A luggage label belonging to one of the first English settlers of the USA is to be flown into space next month. The 400-year-old lead tag will be carried aboard the shuttle Atlantis when it blasts off to the International Space Station. It means the tag will have travelled more than four million miles since it set out on its first journey on a fleet of three ships, carrying 108 people, from London. Four commemorative coins issued by the US Mint will also be on shuttle mission STS-117 to mark the historic anniversary. The metal tag was found at the bottom of a well at Jamestown, Virginia, site of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas in 1607. It reads YAMES TOWNE and is thought to have been discarded from either a shipping crate or trunk. After the flight, Nasa will return the shipping tag to the Historic Jamestowne Archaearium, a new museum showcasing items unearthed during 13 years of excavations. Nasa spokesman Lesa Roe said: "Nasa is proud to be entrusted with this piece of exploration history and to participate in the commemoration of America's 400th anniversary. "Remembering the spirit of adventure that led to the establishment of Jamestown is appropriate as this country works toward establishing a permanent outpost on another planetary body." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Giant cloud forms over Titan's pole

A massive cloud half the size of the USA has been spotted above the north pole of Saturn's biggest moon Titan. The vast cloud - pictured by an orbiting spaceprobe called Cassini - is thought to contain the rain that fills the lakes and rivers covering Titan's northern hemisphere. It came into view after being hidden by winter's shadow as spring arrived on that region of the remote moon. Scientists believe the cloudbank could survive for 25 years years - a season on Titan lasts around seven Earth years. Nasa scientist Dr Christophe Sotin, of the University of Nantes, France, said: "We knew this cloud had to be there but were amazed at its size and structure. This cloud system may be a key element in the global formation of organics and their interaction with the surface." Titan's alien Lake District, far on the other side of the solar system, was discovered by Cassini's radar instruments last year. But they are thought to contain liquid methane and other organic materials rather than water as on Earth. Titan, which is 3,200 miles wide, has also been found to have snow-topped mountains. Scientists believe it resembles Earth as it was four billion years ago and so could be a new cradle for life. The Cassini mission is a joint project by Nasa and the European Space Agency. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

First view of alien world's atmosphere

Scientists have observed, for the first time ever, the atmosphere of a planet around another star. Astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to detect layers of air around a distant world labelled HD 209458b in the constellation of Pegasus. The planet, which has unofficially been named Osiris, is the size of Jupiter. It lies so close to its own sun that it zips round it in a "year" that is just 3.5 days long. Intense ultraviolet radiation from the star heats the upper atmosphere so much that it inflates like a balloon. Its upper layer of hydrogen is bleeding out into space like steam escaping from a kettle. The planet is losing the gas at a rate of 10,000 tons a second, more than three times that of water flowing over Niagara Falls. The star itself, 150 light years from Earth, is bright enough to be seen in binoculars. Hubble was able to observe the escaping atmosphere like a comet's tail by analysing the star's light as it passed through it. The planet itself, dubbed a "hot Jupiter", lies too close to the star to be seen directly by the space telescope and is a gassy rather than a rocky world. Osiris lies 20 times closer to its parent star than the Earth is from the Sun. Mercury, the closest planet to our Sun, is ten times its distance from the star. The results, by an international team, were published today in the journal Nature. Leader Gilda Ballester, of the University of Arizona, said: "With this detection we see the details of how a planet loses its atmosphere. This planet's extreme atmosphere could yield insights into the atmospheres of other hot Jupiters." The Nasa picture is an artist's impression of Osiris losing its atmosphere. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!