China launches first Moon probe

China has launched its first mission to the Moon - the first step towards putting a man on the surface before 2020. Their 2.3-ton robot probe, Chang'e 1, was fired into space on 24 October from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in south-western China, on top of a Long March 3A rocket. Thousands of locals living within 1.6 miles of the launch site and under its flight path were evacuated for their safety. The Chinese, who have already put three astronauts into Earth orbit, may be keen to beat the Americans back to our natural satellite. They have also fired the starting pistol for a new Asian space race - Japan put a lunar probe in orbit earlier this month and India plans a mission next year. Chang'e 1, named after a Chinese goddess who flew to the Moon, will spend a year exploring the world. It will spend a year flying just 125 miles above the lunar surface, measuring the depth of the soil and what it is made of. Europe is backing the mission by providing vital communications support via spacecraft and tracking stations on this side of the Earth. As Skymania News has previously reported, the UK is set to become directly involved with China on a follow-up mission to land on the Moon in 2012. Our scientists have already signed co-operation agreements which could lead to putting British experiments on a robot lander, to be called Chang'e 2. Picture: Nasa. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Discovery on way to space station

Astronaut Pam Melroy was at the controls today as the shuttle Discovery launched on the most-challenging mission yet to the International Space Station. Pam, only the second woman to command a shuttle, lifted off with her six crew at 11.38 local time from launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, with six other crew. She will arrive on Thursday at the space station which is also, for the first time, currently under the command of a woman, Nasa's Peggy Whitson. It is the first time that two simultaneous space missions have both been commanded by women. The craft raced into a partly cloudy sky - the second shuttle in a row to launch on the scheduled date and time. It will spend 14 days in orbit. With Pam are rookie pilot George Zamka, flight engineer Stephanie Wilson, Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli, plus Scott Parazynski, Doug Wheelock, and Dan Tani. During their two-week mission the crew will carry out several tough tasks that will involve five spacewalks by Parazynski, Wheelock and Tani. First they must attach a vital new module called Harmony, which is nearly 24 ft long and 15 ft wide, to the cosmic construction site. This latest part of the space station jigsaw is like a corridor with six ports - doorways ready for further "rooms" to be added. In December, the first of these, a European-built module called Columbus, will be added by the next shuttle crew. The additions will make the ISS even more brilliant in the night sky. The Discovery crew also need to disconnect and a giant set of solar panels, 240 ft long, and then move them to the other end of the orbiting outpost. It is a highly complex procedure which will involve the power unit being passed between the robotic arms of both the shuttle and the station. The astronauts' fifth spacewalk will be to test repairing the shuttle's heat shield in space. Previous shuttle flights have been struck by foam insulation falling from the fuel tanks. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Eye in sky sees California burn

A European satellite has captured this dramatic picture from space of the killer fires raging across California. Vast plumes of smoke trail from the forests and way out to sea in the photos taken by Envisat, the biggest spacecraft ever launched to monitor the Earth. At least one person has died, hundreds of homes have been destroyed and thousands are at risk from Los Angeles down to the Mexico border. A quarter of a million people have been evacuated by Caifornian authorities and 1,500 National Guardsmen brought in to help fire-fighters. Images from orbit taken on Monday, October 22, show the strength of the gale-force winds whipping the flames, with sand clearly visible being blown out over the Pacific. Envisat was launched in March 2002 and carries ten sophisticated optical and radar instruments to provide continuous observation and monitoring of the Earth's land, atmosphere, oceans and ice caps. Photo: European Space Agency. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Armageddon asteroid is identified

Scientists have made an important breakthrough in deciding how to deal with an asteroid impact threat that still faces Earth. They have discovered which materials make up a giant space rock that could just possibly hit us in 2036. The chance of disaster is rated at only one in 45,000 but has proved impossible to rule out. Any impact on land would wipe out a country the size of France or cause a devastating tsunami if it hit the sea. Using two giant telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, astronomers found that the cosmic missile, called Apophis, is identical to a rare type of meteorite found on Earth. Such a space rock is called a "Type LL chondrite," and is rich in the minerals pyroxene and olivine. The information about the asteroid, which is 270 metres wide and weighs 25 million tons, is vital in helping Nasa and other space organisations to decide how to deal with the deadly threat. Professor Richard Binzel, of the Massachsetts Institute of Technology, said: "Basic characterisation is the first line of defence. We've got to know the enemy. The composition is, I think, finally nailed." Apophis will have Earth in its sights twice in the next 30 years. During the first close encounter, in 2029, Apophis will miss us by 22,000 miles, putting it closer than TV and GPS satellites. But experts fear that the near miss in 2029 will put the asteroid on a direct collision course with our planet seven years later in 2036. It would strike with the force of 65,000 atom bombs. The US-based Planetary Society has put up a $50,000 prize for whoever comes up with the best scheme to tackle the threat that Apophis poses. Proposals to prevent an Armageddon-style disaster range from using bombs, lasers or spacecraft to nudge it out of the way to blasting it with nuclear missiles. Earlier this month, UK scientist suggested that a swarm of satellites could focus sunlight onto Apophis to steer it off course. The UK arm of satellite builders EADS Astrium has come up with its own plans for a mission to visit the asteroid and divert it. The US scientists studied Apophis in visible and infrared light, using the MIT Magellan telescope in Chile and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. The tell-tale signature of its spectrum was found to match the special type of meteorite. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Sharpest ever picture of Pluto

It might not look very much, but this is said to be the sharpest picture of Pluto and its moons that has ever been taken. The astronomer who produced it says that, by using special techniques with a giant telescope on Hawaii, he managed to exceed the detail possible with Hubble. The image combines two sets of exposures - one that recorded Pluto and its biggest satellite Charon and another that picked up the much fainter companions Nix and Hydra, the upper two starlike points. The telescope, one of the twin Keck instruments on Mauna Kea, was tracking the Pluto system which means the background stars appear as caterpillar-like trails in the picture. University of Hawaii astronomer David Tholen took 16 photos during a one-hour period on September 5. The 10-metre telescope was fitted with so-called adaptive optics which combines sensors and a flexible mirror to compensate for blurring turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere. Dr Tholen said: "Several favourable factors occurred simultaneously to yield these spectacular images of the Pluto system. The natural seeing was better than average that night, more sensitive wavefront sensors were installed on the telescope, and Pluto was at its maximum brightness, thereby giving the improved adaptive optics system more light with which to work its magic." Pluto is so faint - more than a thousand times fainter than the faintest star you can see with your eyes alone - that most amateur astronomers have never seen it. It has an apparent magnitude of 14 and so is shown here in a cutaway disk alongside Nix and Hydra, which are much, much fainter at magnitude 23. Dr Tholen added: "It is our intent to obtain several more images of the Pluto system, hopefully with this same level of quality, so that we can track Nix and Hydra completely around Pluto several times." He said that by measuring the tiny moons' precise positions, it would be possible to calculate their masses, or how much they "weigh". Astronomers have estimated that Nix and Hydra are less than 100 km in diameter, compared with 1,212 km for Charon and about 2,300 km for Pluto. Pluto was discovered in 1930 and was considered the ninth planet until astronomy's controlling authority, the International Astronomical Union, demoted it to the rank of dwarf planet in 2006. But many scientists have protested the decision, particularly those in the United States from where it was the only planet to be discovered. A leading protester against the IAU's decision was Alan Stern, chief scientist for the first mission from Earth to Pluto, New Horizons. You can see a Hubble image of Pluto and its satellites here. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Drizzle on Titan, clearing later

Space scientists have seen the first clear signs of rain falling on another world in the solar system. Their interplanetary weather check found high cloud producing a widespread and persistent drizzle on Saturn's biggest moon, Titan. The rain is falling over the foothills of Titan's largest continent, Xanadu, which is the size of Australia. Titan is the most Earth-like world in the solar system apart from Mars. Today's revelation came as it was also announced that Cassini, a spaceprobe orbiting Saturn, has discovered three giant lakes, each bigger than Lake Superior, in Titan's southern hemisphere. The vast reservoirs are the first to be found on this half of the planet and follow the finding of a widely-spread lake district in the north. Nasa scientists have also released a new image of this northern region, showing how Cassini is gradually piecing together a jigsaw map of this moon. Planetary scientists are excited because conditions on Titan seem to be very similar to those on an early Earth and it could become home to primitive life. Apart from lakes, the landscape also features clouds, rivers, coastlines, and mile-high mountains topped with snow. Liquid forming the rain and filling Titan's rivers and lakes is not water but hydrocarbons such as methane. The weather findings were made by a team of US astronomers using giant telescopes in Hawaii and Chile to make "heat maps" of Titan by observing in the infrared part of the spectrum. The discovery team, from the University of California, say the drizzle may turn to mist before it hits the ground, producing a foggy "morning" that lasts around three Earth-days after local sunrise. Titan rotates once every 16 days. Titan has a thick atmosphere made up mainly of nitrogen which resembles the early atmosphere of Earth. UK scientists led a European team that parachuted an unmanned probe called Huygens onto its surface in January 2005. Professor John Zarnecki, of the UK's Open University, who led the lander team, said yesterday: "These results reinforce some of the similarities between conditions on Titan and Earth – cirrus clouds, drizzle, lakes. "All are indicative of a cycle at work, albeit with methane on Titan. By pooling data gathered from space and ground based observations we can piece together a global picture of this distant world." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Asteroid tribute to space milestone

The 100,000th asteroid logged in the solar system has been named Astronautica to mark 50 years since the start of the space age. The mile-wide space rock was discovered 25 years ago and was previously known simply as 1982 SH1. Astronomer Jim Gibson detected it from Mount Palomar Observatory in California. It was chosen to mark the space milestone because space is defined by scientists to begin 100,000 meters above the Earth - 62 miles. The cosmic rock's new name, which means "star sailor" in Latin, was awarded by the Minor Planet Centre in Massachusetts, the world's official clearing house for asteroid discoveries. It is led by British scientist Brian Marsden. He said: "Fifty years ago, a tiny satellite named Sputnik became the world's first artificial satellite. It seemed only fitting to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the dawn of the Space Age in some astronomical way." He added: "Astronautica is not a particularly unusual object. It just happened to be the 100,000th entry into our database." The asteroid is not a threat to the Earth as it stays in an orbit around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Last month a Nasa mission called Dawn was launched to explore this region's two biggest inhabitants, Ceres and Vesta. Astronautica's name was approved by the International Astronomical Union's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature, of which Marsden is a member. Currently, 14,077 asteroids have names while a total of 164,612 asteroids have been identified and numbered. The picture is not Astronautica, but an asteroid called Gaspra, pictured by the Galileo spaceprobe en route to Jupiter in 1991. Photo: Nasa. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Orion's babies are closer and older

The most famous celestial nursery in the heavens, the Orion Nebula, is much closer than previously thought, astronomers have discovered. Observations with a vast network of radio telescopes show that the cluster of new-born stars lies 1,270 light-years away instead of the 1,565 light-years previously measured. The 20 per cent difference has profound implications because it means the stars are much fainter than thought and so are twice as old as had been estimated. Observations of stars at the centre of the nebula, also known as Messier 42, were made using a technique called parallax. This involves observing them six months apart, when the Earth-bound telescopes are on opposite sides of the Sun, to see how they have shifted against the stelllar background. The ten telescopes used to make the discovery stretch from Hawaii to the Caribbean and are known as the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). Operated by the US National Science Foundation, they work together to study the universe in great detail. Astronomer Geoff Bower, of the University of California, said: "This measurement is four times more precise than previous distance estimates. Because our measurement reduces the distance to this region, it tells us that the stars there are less bright than thought before, and changes the estimates of their ages." The scientists determined the distance to one particular star, called GMR A, by measuring the slight shift in its apparent position as the Earth circled the Sun. Bower added: "These stars are nearly twice as old as previously thought.' Colleague J E G Peek said: Getting a more-accurate distance is going to pay off in many ways by improving our understanding of what is one of the most frequently-studied star-forming regions in the Universe." The new results will appear this week in the Astrophysical Journal. The photo is a Hubble close-up of the central region of the Orion nebula. A dramatic image of the gas cloud was produced last year by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Swarm of bees to save the Earth

Sending a swarm of mirrors into space is the best way to save the Earth from a devastating asteroid impact, British scientists have discovered. Their research shows that launching a fleet of satellites, like robot bees, each fitted with a "shaving mirror" 20 metres wide, would deflect a threatening space rock. The swarm of mirrors would all be turned to concentrate sunlight onto the asteroid, like a multitude of magnifying glasses, melting the surface and producing a jet of material. This jet would act like a rocket thruster, steering the asteroid onto a path away from the Earth. The satellite swarm, dubbed mirror-bees, is the brainchild of researchers at Glasgow University who compared nine methods of responding to a real-life Armageddon threat. Just ten mirror-bees flying together would be enough to stop a small space rock. But a 5,000-stong fleet would be required to deal with a bigger asteroid such as that which hit Mexico 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. Announcing the plan, Dr Massimiliano Vasile, of Glasgow's Department of Aerospace Engineering, said: "Asteroid impacts are a real threat. The Tunguska explosion in Siberia 1908 devastated an area bigger than Greater London. With only 10 spacecraft flying in formation, we could deflect a similar-sized asteroid into a safe orbit in about six months." Dr Vasile said that the UK proposal was safer than the option of blasting the asteroid with missiles because that could just break it up into several dangerous rocks. He said: "Our studies show that this technology is genuinely feasible and, unlike methods where an explosion or impactor is used to divert the asteroid, there is no further risk from fragments." Although it is highly unlikely, scientists have still not been able to rule out an from a 250-yard wide asteroid called Apophis in 2036. If it strikes, with the force of 65,000 atomic bombs, it could wipe out a country and cause global devastation. Skymania reported in August how leading satellite company Astrium propose to deal with Apophis. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Deadly space rock found at last

Space detectives have ended a celestial "manhunt" by tracking down one of the biggest cosmic missiles to threaten the Earth. Astronomers rediscovered a giant space rock more than 500 ft (150 metres) wide that was lost way back in 1960. It is officially termed a "potentially hazardous object" because it comes close enough to collide. The scientists worked out that a newly discovered asteroid called 2007 RR9 is actually the same as the long-lost chunk of cosmic debris labelled 6344 P-L. Astronomer Peter Jenniskens, of the SETI Institute in California, said: "The object was long recognized to be dangerous, but we didn’t know where it was. Now it is no longer just out there." Jenniskens believes that the space rock is actually the giant head of an ancient comet that has lost its gassy tail. He believes smaller fragments that broke away from the comet already strike the Earth from mid-October to early November in a minor meteor shower called the Gamma Piscids. These fragments swiftly burn up in the atmosphere as "shooting stars" but the comet's head itself poses a real danger. It is one of only 886 objects bigger than 500 ft wide (150 metres) that cross the Earth's orbit. 2007 RR9 takes 4.7 years to make one circuit of the Sun, swinging in past us after travelling out beyond the orbit of giant planet Jupiter. There is no currently forecast threat of an impact but the Earth has had other close shaves with disaster. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Jodrell is HQ for new giant telescope

Britain's famous Jodrell Bank observatory has been given a special present to celebrate its 50th anniversary - it will be the nerve centre for a new telescope that will be the biggest in the world. This telescope, with 50 times more listening power than the best today, will have a primary agenda to advance further our knowledge of the make-up of the universe. But it will be so powerful that it could also make Man's first contact with aliens by tuning into TV or radar signals from ET. The new £1 billion telescope, called the Single Kilometre Array, will be made up of thousands of antennae spread across nearly 2,000 miles (3,000 km). Half will be located in a central region just three miles (5 km) wide. They will work together as an electronic ear so sensitive that it will be able to detect signals from transmitters like those used at international airports. Astronomers are confident that if ET is broadcasting from a star in our Milky Way galaxy, then they will find him. Jodrell Bank, in Cheshire, is part of the University of Manchester. Its own giant dish, which is one of Britain's most famous landmarks, immediately hit the headlines when it tuned into the first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957. This weekend it will become the world's biggest cinema when movies are projected onto the dish. The new observatory will be built across a remote region of either Australia or South Africa to minimise man-made radio interference, and will involve astronomers and engineers in 17 countries. Professor Phil Diamond, Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, said: "The Square Kilometre Array looks set to become one of the great scientific projects of the 21st century. We are very proud that its global headquarters will be here in Manchester." Professor Richard Schilizzi, International SKA Director, said: "This powerful new telescope will greatly extend our knowledge of the universe. Not only will it improve our understanding of objects ranging from black holes to the earliest stars and galaxies, but it is also bound to discover as yet unknown phenomena." Work on building the new telescope is due to begin in 2012 with it becoming fully operational by 2020. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Spitzer sees birth of a new Earth

Astronomers have discovered evidence that a planet like the Earth is forming around another star. The find was made with Nasa's Spitzer space telescope. Scientists say conditions around the sun-like star, 424 light-years away, are perfect for a rocky planet where life could one day exist. Their heat-seeking telescope, which views the universe in the infrared part of the spectrum, detected a huge belt of warm dust swirling around the star in a system called HD 113766 in Centaurus. With an age of ten million years, the star is at the right stage to form rocky worlds and the amount of dust is enough to build a planet the size of Mars or bigger. Spitzer showed that the mix of materials in the dust are also just the right ingredients to make terrestrial planets. And the planet factory lies slap in the middle of what astronomers call the star's "habitable zone", just as the Earth is in the same zone around the sun. The discovery team's leader, Dr Carey Lisse, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in Maryland, will officially announce the find at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting at Orlando, Florida, next week. A report will also appear in the Astrophysical Journal. In August evidence was reported from Spitzer of water raining on to a new solar system forming around another star. Spitzer had previously checked out an exoplanet's windy weather, and also identified a planet as glowing like a cinder. Of the newest discovery, Dr Lisse said: "The timing for this system to be building an Earth is very good. If the system was too young, its planet-forming disk would be full of gas, and it would be making gas-giant planets like Jupiter instead. If the system was too old, then dust aggregation or clumping would have already occurred and all the system's rocky planets would have already formed." He added: "The material mix in this belt is most reminiscent of the stuff found in lava flows on Earth. It contains raw rock and is abundant in iron sulphides, which are similar to fool's gold. It is fantastic to think we are able to detect the process of terrestrial planet formation. Stay tuned — I expect lots more fireworks as the planet in HD 113766 grows." Picture: An artist's impression of the dust ring around HD 113766. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Hubble lifts lid on jewel box

Astronomers have worked their image-reprocessing magic to produce another spectacular picture from the Hubble space telescope. It lifts the lid on a celestial jewel box and shows, once again, what a great ambassador Hubble is for science. Thousands of new-born stars sparkle like diamonds in the view of one of the biggest clusters in our home galaxy. The stellar nursery lies at the heart of a nebula - a vast cloud of gas and dust called NGC 3603 which lies 20,000 light-years away in a spiral arm of the Milky Way in the constellation of Carina. The cloud, discovered by British scientist Sir John Herschel in 1834, is so big that light, travelling at 300,000 km a second (186,300 miles), takes around 17 years just to cross from one side to the other. Hubble took the picture using its Advanced Camera for Surveys, which stopped working earlier this year. Nasa astronauts are set to repair Hubble in a daring shuttle mission next year which will be filmed for the biggest of big screens using an Imax camera. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Sun storm rips off comet's tail

Astronomers have watched astonished as a massive solar storm ripped the tail off a passing comet. The cosmic hurricane burst from the Sun and slammed into the comet, sending its gas tail, more than a million miles long, flying towards the depths of the solar system. It is the first time that such a dramatic display of space weather has been witnessed by astronomers. The violent solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, hurled a vast cloud of magnetised gas into space. A Nasa observatory, called Stereo-A, recorded the dramatic wave of energy in a video as it watched the Sun from its own orbit. It used a camera, called the Heliospheric Imager, that was built in the United Kingdom by scientists at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford, and the University of Birmingham. You can see the moment that the tail was swept away for yourselves by viewing a spectacular video of the event on Nasa's own website. The comet, called Encke, is famous as it has the fastest orbit of any known, spinning around the Sun in less than three and a half years. such objects are thought to be icy debris left over from the formation of the solar system. Nasa missions are due to find out more about them. Some believe that life on Earth came from comets. Encke was relatively close to the Sun, inside the orbit of Mercury, when it took its solar battering. The event happened on April 20, but details are only just being released and will appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters next week. Angelos Vourlidas, lead author and researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, said: "We were awestruck when we saw these images. "This is the first time we've witnessed a collision between a coronal mass ejection and a comet and the surprise of seeing the disconnection of the tail was the icing on the cake." Professor Richard Harrison of the UK's Rutherford Appleton Lab, said: "This was a spectacular result - snapping the exact moment the violent Sun broke the tail from Comet Encke. People think of space as empty or quiet, I think we have clearly demonstrated what a dynamic and dangerous place it can be!" Encke did not stay tail-less for very long. A new one grew instantly as the Sun's warmth caused plumes of gas to erupt and stream away from the comet's icy head. Stereo's twin observatory, Stereo-B, sent home its own remarkable movie earlier this year of an eclipse of the Sun as never seen before. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Nasa spot huge loss of Arctic ice

The Arctic lost nearly a quarter of its permanent sea ice cover over the past two winters, space scientists have revealed. The drastic 23 per cent reduction was the fastest ever on record and equivalent to losing an area the size of California and Texas combined. It was measured by Nasa's QuikScat satellite combined with observations made by the Arctic Buoy Programme. It leaves the total amount of Arctic ice at its smallest level ever. A team led by Son Nghiem of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, discovered the latest evidence of the effects of global warming. The latest severe loss continues a trend of rapid decreases in perennial ice during the current decade, they will report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters this week. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice. The scientists observed less perennial ice cover in March 2007 than ever before, with the thick ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Nghiem said: "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic." When it reached warmer waters, it melted. Our picture is a Nasa artist's impression of QuikScat in orbit. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • Skymania welcomes your comments on our stories! For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.