Race to the Moon for Nuclear Fuel
John Lasker, Wired News
NASA's planned moon base announced
last week could pave the way for deeper space exploration to Mars,
but one of the biggest beneficiaries may be the terrestrial energy
industry.
Nestled among the agency's 200-point
mission goals is a proposal to mine the moon for fuel used in fusion
reactors -- futuristic power plants that have been demonstrated in
proof-of-concept but are likely decades away from commercial
deployment.
Helium-3 is considered a safe,
environmentally friendly fuel candidate for these generators, and
while it is scarce on Earth it is plentiful on the moon.
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New
Giant Dinosaur Bones Found in Spain
Big
bones belong to a new type of dinosaur with claws the size of a football
Reuters
WASHINGTON - Scientists in Spain have found the
fossilized remains of one of the largest animals ever to walk the earth, a
gargantuan plant-eating dinosaur up to 125 feet (38 meters) long and weighing
as much as seven elephants.
Turiasaurus Riodevensis, named for the region
and village in Spain where it was found, lived about 145 million years ago and
was a sauropod, that familiar kind of dinosaur with a long neck, long tail and
massive body that walked on four stout legs.
It is the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe.
Previous dinosaurs of this scale have been found mostly in the Americas and
Africa...
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Scientists Push for Manned Trip to
Mars
CNN
SAN
FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The chief
scientist behind the twin Mars rovers said he supports a human
presence on the moon, but hopes the journey will not dead-end there.
Earlier this month,
NASA announced its plan to return to the moon will include
establishing a lunar outpost for a permanent human presence by 2024.
Eventually, the space agency said, it wants to land humans on Mars.
(Full
story)
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Moonbase: In
the Dark On Lunar Ice
By Leonard David, Space.com
NASA is on a flight path to replant
astronauts on the
Moon,
looking to sustain a human presence on that cratered, airless orb on
a “go-as-the nation-can-afford-to-pay” basis. That approach is seen
as letting people step back onto the
lunar
surface no later than 2020.
Space engineers have honed in on one
possible site for a lunar outpost: the Moon’s south pole. It’s a
tactical setting on the rim of
Shackleton Crater, a feature some 12 miles (19 kilometers) in
diameter. There’s real estate here that basks in near-perpetual
sunlight. Also, it’s a region that is a doorway into the depths of
always dark, Sun-deprived, territory.
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Probe Studies
'Extreme Physics'
by Paul Rincon, BBC News
A pioneering US space agency
spacecraft is set to launch on a mission to explore the most
energetic phenomena in the Universe.
The Gamma-ray Large
Area Space Telescope (Glast) has been described as an "extreme
physics" laboratory.
The probe is due to
launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral base in November on a Boeing
Delta II rocket.
The team presented
details of the mission at the meeting of the American Astronomical
Society in Seattle.
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