Were Dinosaurs Destined to Be Big? Testing Cope's Rule

In the evolutionary long run, small critters tend to evolve into bigger beasts -- at least according to the idea attributed to paleontologist Edward Cope, now known as Cope's Rule. Using the latest advanced statistical modeling methods, a new test of this rule as it applies dinosaurs shows that Cope was right -- sometimes.

"For a long time, dinosaurs were thought to be the example of Cope's Rule," says Gene Hunt, curator in the Department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C. Other groups, particularly mammals, also provide plenty of classic examples of the rule, Hunt says. To see if Cope's rule really applies to dinosaurs, Hunt and colleagues Richard FitzJohn of the University of British Columbia and Matthew Carrano of the NMNH used dinosaur thigh bones (aka femurs) as proxies for animal size. They then used that femur data in their statistical model to look for two things: directional trends in size over time and whether there were any detectable upper limits for body size. "What we did then was explore how constant a rule is this Cope's Rule trend within dinosaurs," said Hunt. They looked across the "family tree" of dinosaurs and found that some groups, or clades, of dinosaurs do indeed trend larger over time, following Cope's Rule. Ceratopsids and hadrosaurs, for instance, show more increases in size than decreases over time, according to Hunt. Although birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs, the team excluded them from the study because of the evolutionary pressure birds faced to lighten up and get smaller so they could fly better. As for the upper limits to size, the results were sometimes yes, sometimes no. The four-legged sauropods (i.e., long-necked, small-headed herbivores) and ornithopod (i.e., iguanodons, ceratopsids) clades showed no indication of upper limits to how large they could evolve. And indeed, these groups contain the largest land animals that ever lived. Theropods, which include the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, on the other hand, did show what appears to be an upper limit on body size. This may not be particularly surprising, says Hunt, because theropods were bipedal, and there are physical limits to how massive you can get while still being able to move around on two legs. Hunt, FitzJohn, and Carrano will be presenting the results of their study on Nov. 4, at the annual meeting of The Geological Society of America in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. As for why Cope's Rule works at all, that is not very well understood, says Hunt. "It does happen sometimes, but not always," he added. The traditional idea that somehow "bigger is better" because a bigger animal is less likely to be preyed upon is naïve, Hunt says. After all, even the biggest animals start out small enough to be preyed upon and spend a long, vulnerable, time getting gigantic. Abstract: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2012AM/webprogram/Paper211594.html

Our Solar System Is Not Quite as Special as Once Believed, New Research Suggests

Some 4.567 billion years ago, our solar system's planets spawned from an expansive disc of gas and dust rotating around the sun. While similar processes are witnessed in younger solar systems throughout the Milky Way, the formative stages of our own solar system were believed to have taken twice as long to occur. Now, new research lead by the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, suggests otherwise. Indeed, our solar system is not quite as special as once believed. Supergiant Using improved methods of analysis of uranium and lead isotopes, the current study of primitive meteorites has enabled researchers to date the formation of two very different types of materials, so-called calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (or CAI's for short) and chondrules, found within the same meteorite. By doing so, the chronology and therefore overall understanding of our solar system's development has been altered. The study has just been published in the scientific journal Science. 4.567 billion years -- this is how far back we must travel to experience our nascent solar system. The researchers at the University of Copenhagen Centre for Star and Planet Formation took a closer look at the first three million years of the solar system's development by analysing primitive meteorites composed of a blend of our solar system's very oldest materials. In part, the study confirmed previous analyses demonstrating that CAI's were formed during a very short period of time. The new discovery is that the so-called chondrules were formed during the first three million years of the solar system's development as well. This stands in contrast with previous assumptions asserting that chondrules only started forming roughly two million years after CAIs. Painting a new picture of the Solar System "By using this process to date the formation of these two very different types of materials found in the same meteorite, we are not only able to alter the chronology of our solar system's historical development, we are able to paint a new picture of our solar system's development, which is very much like the picture that other researchers have observed in other planetary systems," says James Connelly of the Centre for Star and Planet Formation. We aren't that special... Showing that chondrules are as old as CAIs addresses a long-standing question of why chondrule formation should be delayed by up to 2 million years after CAIs. The answer -- it is not. "In general, we have shown that we are not quite as unique as we once thought. Our solar system closely resembles other observable planetary systems within our galaxy. In this way, our results serve to corroborate other research results which indicate that earth-like planets are more widespread in the universe than previously believed," says Professor Martin Bizzarro, head of the Centre for Star and Planet Formation. Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

New Sun God Temple Reveals Maya Beliefs

Rubber Robot Can Change Colors

ONE GREEN THING BOTH PARTIES AGREE ON

If there's one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on it's pedal-powered buses, seriously! Humana, Inc. will provide 20 pedal-powered buses from Freewheelin for both parties National Conventions in Charlotte, N.C. and Tampa F.L., respectively, in the coming weeks. What is a pedal-powered bus? Think Fred Flintstone's car, but bigger and green. The buses can hold eight people, along with a driver, that will pedal along the special trails at the conferences as well as popular areas in both cities. The idea behind this was to provide a fun, environmentally friendly, and healthy way for visitors to get around. Humana's Chairman and CEO Mike McCalister said in a press release, "Whether it's a pedal bus, bicycle, hand-cycle or unicycle, pedaling is good for the body, the mind and the environment." The shaded vehicles are estimated to save one pound of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the air and burn between 140 to 380 calories per rider. Freewheelin first started as a bike-sharing initiative on the health insurance company's Louisville K.Y., campus in 2007, which was then replicated at the 2008 political conventions. The Republican National Convention starts next week on Aug. 27-30 in Tampa, Florida. The Democrats meet up in Charlotte, North Carolina Sept. 2-6. If you're planning to attend and want to catch a ride, find a representative on site to register.

ALIEN ROBOTS THAT LEFT THEIR MARK ON MARS: PHOTOS

Google puts legally blind man behind the wheel of its self-driving car

http://newstotalk.com/google-self-driving-car-puts-legally-blind-man-behind-the-wheel/ Google's experiment to build a self-driving Toyota Prius has already logged hundreds of thousands of miles with only one known fender bender. To tout its potential, Google put a legally blind man behind the wheel and filmed the quotidian yet touching results shown above. What we still don't know is: Who would have been responsible if something had gone wrong? There's no denying the impact of the video, or the idea that a self-driving car could aid people -- like driver/rider Steve Mahan -- whose mobility has been curbed by disability regain a portion of freedom. Several automakers and parts suppliers, including Volkswagen, General Motors and Continental, have experiments underway to automate some driving scenarios, to research how it could improve safety and fuel economy. But there's a few things not noted in Google's push, starting with the phrase "self-driving." The Prius used by Google doesn't pick its own locations, and it still needs a human operator; even in Nevada, which has approved self-driving cars for the street, two people must be inside the car at all times, one of which can take control in emergencies. (Google says Mahan's drive was "carefully programmed.") While technology has advanced, many basic questions remain unanswered, and most experts say any builder of an autonomous vehicle sold to the public could face a massive amount of legal liabilities. With federal agencies arguing that driver distraction poses such a threat that cellphones and moving navigation screens should be limited, a self-driving car would be the ultimate proof of driver distraction. Any good traffic lawyer filing suit after a crash with a self-driving vehicle would immediately use its presence as proof that the owner's habits ran to ignoring the road -- whether the system was on or not. And the web of radar and sensors used in all self-driving experiments remains far from foolproof

Spanish cave paintings shown as oldest in world

This undated handout photo provided … WASHINGTON (AP) — New tests show that crude Spanish cave paintings of a red sphere and handprints are the oldest in the world, so ancient they may not have been by modern man. Some scientists say they might have even been made by the much-maligned Neanderthals, but others disagree. Testing the coating of paintings in 11 Spanish caves, researchers found that one is at least 40,800 years old, which is at least 15,000 years older than previously thought. That makes them older than the more famous French cave paintings by thousands of years. Scientists dated the Spanish cave paintings by measuring the decay of uranium atoms, instead of traditional carbon-dating, according to a report released Thursday by the journal Science. The paintings were first discovered in the 1870s. The oldest of the paintings is a red sphere from a cave called El Castillo. About 25 outlined handprints in another cave are at least 37,300 years old. Slightly younger paintings include horses. Cave paintings are "one of the most exquisite examples of human symbolic behavior," said study co-author Joao Zilhao, an anthropologist at the University of Barcelona. "And that, that's what makes us human." There is older sculpture and other portable art. Before the latest test, the oldest known cave paintings were those France's Chauvet cave, considered between 32,000 and 37,000 years old. What makes the dating of the Spanish cave paintings important is that it's around the time when modern humans first came into Europe from Africa. Study authors say they could have been from modern man decorating their new digs or they could have been the working of the long-time former tenant of Europe: the Neanderthal. Scientists said Neanderthals were in Europe from about 250,000 years ago until about 35,000 years ago. Modern humans arrived in Europe about 41,000 to 45,000 years ago — with some claims they moved in even earlier — and replaced Neanderthals. "There is a strong chance that these results imply Neanderthal authorship," Zilhao said. "But I will not say we have proven it because we haven't." In a telephone press conference, Zilhao said Neanderthals recently have gotten "bad press" over their abilities. They decorated their tools and bodies. So, he said, they could have painted caves. But there's a debate in the scientific community about Neanderthals. Other anthropologists say Zilhao is in a minority of researchers who believe in more complex abilities of Neanderthals. Eric Delson, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and John Shea at Long Island's Stony Brook University said the dating work in the Science paper is compelling and important, but they didn't quite buy the theory that Neanderthals could have been the artists. "There is no clear evidence of paintings associated with Neanderthal tools or fossils, so any such evidence would be surprising," Delson said. He said around 41,000 years ago Neanderthals were already moving south in Europe, away from modern man and these caves. Shea said it is more likely that modern humans were making such paintings in Africa even earlier, but the works didn't survive because of the different geology on the continent. "The people who came in to Europe were very much like us. They used art, they used symbols," Shea said. "They were not like Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble." Online: Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

Rare monster lobster caught on East Coast

BOOTHBAY HARBOR — A giant 27-pound lobster caught off the Maine coast will be released back into the wild, said Maine State Aquarium Director Aimee Hayden-Rodriques on Wednesday.

http://media.pressherald.com/images/300*210/portland-press-herald_3614472.jpg

click image to enlarge

Maine State Aquarium Director Aimee Hayden-Rodriques holds a 27 pound, nearly 40 inch long, lobster caught by Robert Malone off the coast of Maine near Rockland on Feb. 17. The aquarium named the crustacean "Rocky."

AP Photo/Maine State Aquarium

http://media.pressherald.com/images/300*168/GiantLobster3.jpg

click image to enlarge

The 27-pound lobster is displayed at the Maine State Aquarium.

Courtesy photo of the Maine State Aquarium

Archaeologist traces Pocahontas wedding site

Beverly Straube, senior archaeological curator at the site of Jamestown, Virginia, …

Archeologist William Kelso is certain he's discovered the remains of the oldest Protestant church in the United States, standing between two holes he insists once held wooden posts.

In 1614, Pocahontas was "married right here, I guarantee," Kelso told AFP at the Jamestown, Virginia archeological site southeast of the nation's capital.

Near the James River, on May 14, 1607, a group of about a hundred men landed on commission from England to form the first colony in the Americas.

"It's fantastically exciting and significant because Jamestown is usually depicted -- the whole early settlement depicted -- as it was carried out by lazy gentlemen who wanted to get rich quick, and go right back to England."

The area was carefully excavated to reveal several large post holes 6.5 feet (two meters) deep and the trace remnants of four graves.

Two other Protestant churches are thought to have been built before, but left no trace, and remains of a Catholic church were also found in Florida -- but Kelso is sure this one is the oldest left.


"Religion played a big role" in the community, Kelso said as he stood near the river where small fluttering flags marked the building's outline. Settlers "put a lot of work in the building of this big church, and that became very important for the colony."

Noting the size of the wood post's holes, Kelso said the church would have been able to support the mud and stud building's heavy roof.

According to surviving records describing the church kept by the secretary of the colony, what was built matches what can be seen today at the site. "I'm convinced because it's the right size," said Kelso.

The four graves also match with the four important members of the colony who would have been buried so close to the church. Kelso said there were a knight, two captains and Reverend Robert Hunt, the first cleric to come to the site.

Pointing out where Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's favorite daughter, would have stood when she married an Englishman, Kelso marveled at the event's place in colonial history, allowing further settlements in what was then foreign, hostile territory for the European settlers.

"With that wedding, the Indians backed off and there was no more fighting," Kelso recalled.

The Indian princess, well known to American children, was popularized through an animated Walt Disney film that transformed her meeting with Englishman John Smith into a romance.

Renamed Rebecca, she was later to marry another Englishman, John Rolfe, before dying in England at the tender age of 21.

The next tasks for archeologists in the coming months will be to dig up the graves.

"We know the ages, we have baptism records," Kelso said, excited at the tantalizing possibility of confirming their identities with the study of bones, teeth and possibly markings from injuries still traced to the bones.

Strongest solar storm since 2005 hitting Earth

This handout image provided by NASA, taken Sunday night, Jan. 22, 2012, shows a solar …

WASHINGTON (AP) — The sun is bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption.

The solar flare occurred at about 11 p.m. EST Sunday and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times. The biggest issue is radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.

The radiation is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug Biesecker.

Radiation from Sunday's flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Wednesday. Levels are considered strong but other storms have been more severe. There are two higher levels of radiation on NOAA's storm scale — severe and extreme — Biesecker said. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005.

The radiation — in the form of protons — came flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour.

"The whole volume of space between here and Jupiter is just filled with protons and you just don't get rid of them like that," Biesecker said. That's why the effects will stick around for a couple days.

NASA's flight surgeons and solar experts examined the solar flare's expected effects and decided that the six astronauts on the International Space Station do not have to do anything to protect themselves from the radiation, spokesman Rob Navias said.

A solar eruption is followed by a one-two-three punch, said Antti Pulkkinen, a physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Catholic University.

First comes electromagnetic radiation, followed by radiation in the form of protons.

Then, finally the coronal mass ejection — that's the plasma from the sun itself — hits. Usually that travels at about 1 or 2 million miles per hour, but this storm is particularly speedy and is shooting out at 4 million miles per hour, Biesecker said.

It's the plasma that causes much of the noticeable problems on Earth, such as electrical grid outages. In 1989, a solar storm caused a massive blackout in Quebec. It can also pull the northern lights further south.

But this coronal mass ejection seems likely to be only moderate, with a chance for becoming strong, Biesecker said. The worst of the storm is likely to go north of Earth.

And unlike last October, when a freak solar storm caused auroras to be seen as far south as Alabama, the northern lights aren't likely to dip too far south this time, Biesecker said. Parts of New England, upstate New York, northern Michigan, Montana and the Pacific Northwest could see an aurora but not until Tuesday evening, he said.

For the past several years the sun had been quiet, almost too quiet. Part of that was the normal calm part of the sun's 11-year cycle of activity. Last year, scientists started to speculate that the sun was going into an unusually quiet cycle that seems to happen maybe once a century or so.

Now that super-quiet cycle doesn't seem as likely, Biesecker said.

Scientists watching the sun with a new NASA satellite launched in 2010 — during the sun's quiet period — are excited.

"We haven't had anything like this for a number of years," Pulkkinen said. "It's kind of special."

China launches first aircraft carrier on maiden sea trial

Color China Photo - In this photo taken on Aug. 6, 2011, a Chinese aircraft carrier, which had been under refurbishment, is docked at Dalian port in in northeast Liaoning province. China's first aircraft carrier …more
China's first aircraft carrier is seen at its shipyard at Dalian Port in northeast …

In this photo taken on Aug. 6, 2011, a Chinese aircraft carrier, which had been under
BEIJING (Reuters) - China launched its first aircraft carrier for a maiden run on Wednesday, a step likely to boost patriotic pride at home and jitters abroad about Beijing's naval ambitions.

The long-awaited debut of the vessel, a refitted former Soviet craft, marked a step forward in China's long-term plan to build a carrier force that can project power into the Asian region, where seas are spanned by busy shipping lanes and thorny territorial disputes.

"Its symbolic significance outweighs its practical significance," said Ni Lexiong, an expert on Chinese maritime policy at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.

"We're already a maritime power, and so we need an appropriate force, whether that's aircraft carriers or battleships, just like the United States or the British empire did," he said in a telephone interview.

The carrier "left its shipyard in Dalian Port in northeast Liaoning province on Wednesday morning to start its first sea trial," said the official Xinhua news agency, describing the trip as a tentative test run for the unfinished ship.

The aircraft carrier, which is about 300 meters (984 feet) long, plowed through fog and sounded its horn three times as it left the dock, Xinhua said on its military news microblog.

Xinhua said that "building a strong navy that is commensurate with China's rising status is a necessary step and an inevitable choice for the country to safeguard its increasingly globalised national interests."

Chinese citizens said the carrier launch showed their country deserved more respect from the rest of the world, despite problems it faces at home.

A high-speed train crash last month left many Chinese people bemoaning what they called officials' reckless hunger for passing technological milestones.

"An aircraft carrier is the mark of major powers," Pan Chunli, a 29-year-old IT technician in Beijing told Reuters.

"China has grown dramatically. The whole world should take a fresh look at China, viewing it as a rising power that it has the ability to defend its rights and territory."

Retired Chinese navy Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo told state-run television that his country intended to build an air carrier group, but the task would be long and difficult.

"As for forming a carrier group, I think that will take at least ten years," he told a Chinese television broadcast on the carrier launch.

PRESTIGE AND POWER

Last month, China confirmed that it was refitting the old, unfinished Soviet carrier hull bought from Ukraine's government, and sources told Reuters it was also building two of its own carriers.

"China has had a longstanding fascination with the national prestige attached to aircraft carriers, and this first sea trial may be seen as a crucial step toward the goal of achieving great naval power status," said Chengxin Pan, an expert on China at Deakin University in Australia.

If Beijing is serious about having a viable carrier strike group, however, it will need three carriers, Ashley Townshend at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney told Reuters in an interview before the debut of the vessel.

China would also have to develop support ships and aircraft for any carrier group, Townshend said.

In China's neighborhood, India and Thailand already have aircraft carriers, and Australia has ordered two multi-purpose carriers. The United States operates 11 carriers.

Before the launch, a Pentagon spokesman played down the likelihood of any immediate leaps from China's carrier program. U.S. experts on the Chinese navy agreed.

"A newly-wed couple wants a 'starter home', a new great power wants a 'starter carrier'," Andrew Erickson of the U.S. Naval War College and Gabriel Collins, a security analyst, wrote in a note about the carrier launch (www.andrewerickson.com).

"China's 'starter carrier' is of very limited military utility, and will primarily serve to confer prestige on a rising great power, to help the military master basic procedures, and to project a bit of power," they wrote.

LONG-STANDING DISPUTES

But the carrier is just one part of China's naval modernization drive, which has forged ahead while other powers tighten their military budgets to cope with debt woes.

"For many neighbors, it may symbolize something different and more unsettling," said Pan, the Deakin University lecturer, referring to China's carrier.

"It is inevitable that neighboring countries will react with some alarm, especially given recent disputes in the South China Sea as well as the maritime incident between China and Japan last year," he said.

China has been building new submarines, ships and anti-ship ballistic missiles as part of its naval modernization.

The country's growing reach at sea is triggering regional jitters that have fed into long-standing territorial disputes, and could speed up military expansion across Asia.

In the past year, China has had run-ins at sea with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. The incidents -- boat crashes and charges of territorial incursions -- have been minor, but the diplomatic fallout often heated.

"They want to assert their dominance in East Asia as well as the Chinese sea and they have very ambitious plans of asserting their claims over some islands," retired Indian Major General Ashok Mehta, a defense analyst in Delhi, said of China.

"India has lot of catching up to do and the history of India's catching up is not very impressive," he said, noting New Delhi's plan to have three aircraft carriers by 2015.

Last week, Japan warned that China's naval forces were likely to increase activities around its waters.

But China did not want to rile its neighbors with the carrier debut, said Ni, the Shanghai professor.

"A single, solitary aircraft carrier floating on the sea, without the accompanying forces, doesn't constitute a battle force," said Ni. "It would be a sitting duck if you tried to send it out."

(Additional reporting by Sabrina Mao and Sally Huang in Beijing; Manoj Kumar in New Delhi; Manny Mogato in Manila; Jeremy Laurence in Seoul; Michael Perry in Sydney; and Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo; Editing by John Chalmers) …

Surprise Underwater Volcanic Eruption Discovered

The discovery came as a surprise, as researchers attempted to recover instruments they'd left behind to monitor the peak a year earlier. When the researchers hefted a seafaring robotic vehicle overboard to fetch the instruments, the feed from the onboard camera sent back images of an alien seafloor landscape.

"At first we were really confused, and thought we were in the wrong place," said Bill Chadwick, a geologist with Oregon State University. "Finally we figured out we were in the right place but the whole seafloor had changed, and that's why we couldn't recognize anything. All of a sudden it hit us that, wow, there had been an eruption. So it was very exciting."

In addition to producing hardened lakes of blobby lava, in places more than a mile (1.6 km) across, the eruption changed the architecture of the region's seafloor hot springs.

"There are more vents, they're higher temperature, and there are microbes living in them that are usually deep in the crust that come up to the surface in these events," Chadwick told OurAmazingPlanet.

Eruption predicted

The Axial Volcano rises 3,000 feet (900 m) above the seafloor, the most active of a string of volcanoes along the Juan de Fuca Ridge, a plate boundary where the seafloor is slowly pulling apart.

Chadwick and colleagues have been keeping tabs on the peak since it last erupted in 1998. Thanks to a monitoring system they developed to measure the mountain's minute movements, the team predicted the volcano was due for another eruption sometime between 2011 and 2014.

"So for me, it's a very exciting thing that this worked!" Chadwick said.

The instruments kept track of the movement of the seafloor, which very gradually inflates and deflates like a giant, magma-filled balloon, Chadwick said, collapsing suddenly after an eruption, and rising, in this case, by about 6 inches (15 cm) per year in the lead up to an eruption.

First long-term picture

Scientists have long known about the existence of subsea volcanoes, but information on their behavior is relatively sparse. Eruptions were first observed in the 1990s, and, although technology has improved, getting to the underwater peaks to study them is difficult.

Data from the Axial Seamount's recent eruption will provide the first long-term picture of a subsea volcano from one eruption to the next. [Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench]

Chadwick said scientists are still trying to figure out how seafloor volcanoes differ from their terrestrial counterparts.

It could be it's easier to predict ocean eruptions, Chadwick said. It's possible that because the crust is thinner there, and magma is in ready supply, the mountains' slow inflations provide a good analogue for knowing when eruptions will occur. However, he cautioned that a single successful prediction wasn’t enough to forecast what the future holds.

"At Axial we've only seen this once, so we don't know for sure it's going to be reliable," Chadwick said. "So we'll certainly keep making these measurements, and hopefully be around to see what happens next."

What's Next For NASA?

"As a former astronaut and the current NASA Administrator, I'm here to tell you that American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we have laid the foundation for success -- and failure is not an option."
Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator
National Press Club, July 1, 2011
The end of the space shuttle program does not mean the end of NASA, or even of NASA sending humans into space. NASA has a robust program of exploration, technology development and scientific research that will last for years to come. Here is what's next for NASA:

NASA is designing and building the capabilities to send humans to explore the solar system, working toward a goal of landing humans on Mars. We will build the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, based on the design for the Orion capsule, with a capacity to take four astronauts on 21-day missions.

We will soon announce the design for the heavy-lift Space Launch System that will carry us out of low Earth orbit. We are developing the technologies we will need for human exploration of the solar system, including solar electric propulsion, refueling depots in orbit, radiation protection and high-reliability life support systems.

International Space Station
The International Space Station is the centerpiece of our human spaceflight activities in low Earth orbit. The ISS is fully staffed with a crew of six, and American astronauts will continue to live and work there in space 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Part of the U.S. portion of the station has been designated as a national laboratory, and NASA is committed to using this unique resource for scientific research.

The ISS is a test bed for exploration technologies such as autonomous refueling of spacecraft, advanced life support systems and human/robotic interfaces. Commercial companies are well on their way to providing cargo and crew flights to the ISS, allowing NASA to focus its attention on the next steps into our solar system.

Aeronautics
NASA is researching ways to design and build aircraft that are safer, more fuel-efficient, quieter, and environmentally responsible. We are also working to create traffic management systems that are safer, more efficient and more flexible. We are developing technologies that improve routing during flights and enable aircraft to climb to and descend from their cruising altitude without interruption.

We believe it is possible to build an aircraft that uses less fuel, gives off fewer emissions, and is quieter, and we are working on the technologies to create that aircraft. NASA is also part of the government team that is working to develop the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, to be in place by the year 2025. We will continue to validate new, complex aircraft and air traffic control systems to ensure that they meet extremely high safety levels.

Science
NASA is conducting an unprecedented array of missions that will seek new knowledge and understanding of Earth, the solar system and the universe. On July 16, the Dawn spacecraft begins a year-long visit to the large asteroid Vesta to help us understand the earliest chapter of our solar system's history. In August, the Juno spacecraft will launch to investigate Jupiter's origins, structure, and atmosphere. The September launch of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project is a critical first step in building a next-generation Earth-monitoring satellite system.

NASA returns to the moon to study the moon's gravity field and determine the structure of the lunar interior with the October launch of GRAIL. In November, we launch the Mars Science Laboratory named Curiosity on its journey to Mars to look for evidence of microbial life on the red planet. And in February 2012, we will launch the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array to search for black holes, map supernova explosions, and study the most extreme active galaxies.