In this Nov.2, 2011 photo distributed by Russian Roscosmos space agency on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, Russian space engineers work to prapare the unmanned Phobos-Grunt probe on the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The daring Russian mission to fly an unmanned probe to Phobos, a moon of Mars, and fly samples of its soil back to Earth was derailed on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, right after its launch by equipment failure.(AP photo/ Russian Roscosmoc space agency, HO) EDITORIAL USE ONLY
In this Nov.2, 2011 photo distributed by Russian Roscosmos space agency on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, Russian space engineers work to prapare the unmanned Phobos-Grunt probe on the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The daring Russian mission to fly an unmanned probe to Phobos, a moon of Mars, and fly samples of its soil back to Earth was derailed on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, right after its launch by equipment failure.(AP photo/ Russian Roscosmoc space agency, HO) EDITORIAL USE ONLY
The Zenit-2SB rocket with Phobos-Grunt (Phobos-Soil) craft blasts off from its launch pad at the Cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, early Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011. The daring Russian mission to fly an unmanned probe to Phobos, a moon of Mars, and fly samples of its soil back to Earth was derailed right after its launch by equipment failure.(AP Photo/Oleg Urusov, Pool)
In this Nov.2, 2011 photo distributed by Russian Roscosmos space agency on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, the unmanned Phobos-Grunt probe is seen on the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The daring Russian mission to fly an unmanned probe to Phobos, a moon of Mars, and fly samples of its soil back to Earth was derailed on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, right after its launch by equipment failure.(AP photo/ Russian Roscosmoc space agency, HO) EDITORIAL USE ONLY
MOSCOW (AP) ? A Russian space probe became stuck in orbit Wednesday after an equipment failure, raising fears it could come crashing down and spill tons of highly toxic fuel on Earth unless engineers can steer it back to its flight path.
One U.S. expert said the spacecraft could become the most dangerous manmade object ever to hit the planet. The mishap was the latest in a series of recent Russian failures that have raised concerns about the condition of the country's space industries.
The unmanned $170 million Phobos-Ground craft was successfully launched by a Zenit-2 booster rocket just after midnight Moscow time Wednesday (2016 GMT Tuesday) from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It separated from the booster about 11 minutes later and was supposed to fire its engines twice to set out on its path toward Mars, but never did. The craft was aiming to get ground samples from Phobos, one of Mars' two moons.
Federal Space Agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said neither of the two engine burns worked, probably because the craft's orientation system failed. He said engineers have three days to reset and fix the spacecraft's computer program before its batteries die ? but the space agency later said the probe's orbit and its power sources could allow it to circle the Earth for about two weeks.
Russia news agencies cited space experts who offered widely varying estimates of how long the craft could stay in orbit before crashing down ? from five days to one month.
James Oberg, a NASA veteran who now works as a space consultant, said it's still possible to regain control over the probe.
"This is not an impossible challenge," Oberg said in an email to The Associated Press. "Nothing irreversibly bad has happened, the full propellant load is still available, and short-term 'stay healthy' maneuvers can be performed" like deploying the craft's solar panels to boost its power.
He warned, however, that if controllers failed to bring the Phobos-Ground back to life, the tons of highly toxic fuel it carries would turn it into the most dangerous spacecraft ever to fall from orbit.
"About seven tons of nitrogen teroxide and hydrazine, which could freeze before ultimately entering, will make it the most toxic falling satellite ever," he said. "What was billed as the heaviest interplanetary probe ever may become one of the heaviest space derelicts to ever fall back to Earth out of control."
Oberg said such a crash could cause significantly more damage than the Russian Mars-96 that crashed in the Andes Mountains or the American USA 193 spy satellite that was shot down by a U.S. Navy missile in 2008 to prevent it from splashing its toxic fuel.
The Russian rescue effort Wednesday was being hampered by a limited earth-to-space communications network that already forced flight controllers to ask people in South America to help find the spacecraft. Amateur astronomers were the first to spot the trouble when they detected the craft was stuck in an Earth orbit.
The Phobos-Ground was Russia's first interplanetary mission since a botched 1996 robotic mission to Mars, which failed when the probe crashed shortly after the launch due to an engine failure.
The spacecraft is 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons), with fuel accounting for a large share of its weight. It was manufactured by the Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin, which specializes in interplanetary vehicles.
The company also designed the craft for Russia's botched 1996 launch and the two probes sent to Phobos in 1988, which also failed. One was lost a few months after the launch due to an operator's mistake, and contact was lost with its twin when it was orbiting Mars.
The Russian space agency responded to the failures by promising to establish its own quality inspection teams at rocket factories to tighten oversight over production quality.
In contrast with the failures that dogged Soviet and Russian efforts to explore Mars, a succession of NASA's landers and rovers, including Spirit and Opportunity, have successfully studied the Red Planet.
If Russian space experts manage to fix the Phobos-Ground, it should reach Mars orbit in September 2012 and land on Phobos in February 2013. The return vehicle is expected to carry up to 200 grams (7 ounces) of ground samples from Phobos back to Earth in August 2014.
It is arguably the most challenging unmanned interplanetary mission ever. It requires a long series of precision maneuvers for the probe to reach the potato-shaped moon measuring just 20 kilometers (over 12 miles) in diameter, land on its cratered surface, scrape it for samples and fly back.
Scientists had hoped that studies of Phobos' surface could help solve the mystery of its origin and shed more light on the genesis of the solar system. Some believe Phobos is an asteroid captured by Mars' gravity, while others think it's debris from when Mars collided with another celestial object.
China contributed to the mission by adding a mini-satellite that is to be released when the craft enters an orbit around Mars on its way to Phobos. The 115-kilogram (250-pound) satellite, Yinghuo-1, will become the first Chinese spacecraft to explore Mars, studying the planet during two years in orbit.
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Astronomers have found two small galaxies that appear to circle our Milky Way's galactic neighbor Andromeda, and could shed new light on the mystery of dark matter in the universe, scientists say.
The newfound dwarf galaxies, called Andromeda 28 and 29, are two of the most distant satellites galaxies from Andromeda ever detected. They are located about 600,000 light-years away from Andromeda, and approximately 1.1 million light-years from Earth, researchers said.
The Andromeda galaxy is about 2.5 million light-years away and is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. Like our galaxy, Andromeda is surrounded by numerous dwarf satellite galaxies.
These newly found dwarf galaxies were discovered using a star-counting technique on the newest data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which has mapped more than a third of the night sky.
The research team, led by astronomer Eric Bell of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich., also analyzed follow-up observations from the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii.
The Andromeda galaxy is the closest spiral galaxy to Earth beyond our own Milky Way, the researchers said. At 600,000 light-years away from their host galaxy, Andromeda 28 and 29 are also 100,000 times fainter and invisible to the naked eye.
Even with large telescopes these dwarf galaxies can barely be seen, the researchers said.
The discovery could help astronomers better understand dark matter, which is thought to make up majority of the universe's mass. While dark matter has yet to be directly detected, it is inferred because of the gravitational effects it has on visible matter. The invisible substance is thought to be responsible for organizing visible matter into galaxies, the researchers said. [Infographic Gallery: The History and Structure of the Universe]
"These faint, dwarf, relatively nearby galaxies are a real battleground in trying to understand how dark matter acts at small scales," Bell said in a statement. "The stakes are high."
The prevailing hypothesis is that visible galaxies are all nestled in beds of dark matter and each bed contains a galaxy, the researchers said. For a given volume of the universe, the predictions match observations of large galaxies, but there are still some unknowns.
"[It] seems to break down when we get to smaller galaxies," said Colin Slater, an astronomy Ph.D. student who worked with Bell on the new study. "The models predict far more dark matter halos than we observe galaxies. We don't know if it's because we're not seeing all of the galaxies or because our predictions are wrong."
The results of the study could help astronomers narrow down the search for dark matter.
"The exciting answer would be that there just aren't that many dark matter halos," Bell said. "This is part of the grand effort to test that paradigm."
The new study will be detailed in the Nov. 20 edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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Continue reading T-Mobile Galaxy S II screen issues have some seeing (poorly rendered) red
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MILITARY robots could soon be carrying out dangerous missions abroad while their operators control them remotely from back home in the US.
Ground robots, unlike drones, are limited to line-of-sight control, but the US army's Long Distance Tele-Operation system (LDTO) will add cellular radio so they can be controlled remotely via a secure web portal. This uses a customised interface with a video link to the robot's cameras.
Robots equipped with this long-distance control, developed by the Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Centre (TARDEC) based at Warren, Michigan, could carry out much longer missions.
However, there is still an issue with latency - the lag in communication between operator and robot. Drones rarely need to make sharp turns, but ground robots manoeuvre constantly to avoid obstacles and even a half-second lag makes driving more difficult. The US navy recently tested an intelligence-gathering system based on Autonomous Solutions' Chaos robot that helps overcome this. This has more autonomy than existing robots and can avoid obstacles on its own.
In the future, ground robots could be dropped close to the target area and carry out a mission while the operator remains back at base or in the US. It would also allow a central pool of bomb-disposal experts to virtually move from incident to incident in different countries.
However, some worry that this will pave the way for armed, autonomous robots on the battlefield. "This is another step towards automating death," warns roboticist Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield in the UK.
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Getting a carwash is one of those tasks that I avoid until I absolutely need to get it done. Frankly, it's not high up on the list of things I want to do when I have spare time on the weekend. Enter Cherry, a newly launched startup that brings on-demand carwashes to you and your car. The startup is also announcing $750,000 in seed funding from a number of ex-PayPal employees including Yammer CEO David Sacks, PayPal founder Max Levchin and Square COO Keith Rabois. The service replicates how disruptive taxi service Uber allows users to book cars. Using either a web or a iOS app (Android will be launching soon), users can specify the location of their car on a street (as well as what type of car, color and license plate number) in a parking lot, or another public area. Once you check in with your car?s location on Cherry, the service's technology immediately finds and dispatches a carwash professional to wash your car right where you left it, and you don?t even need to be there.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/UJkjV1O96lc/
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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) ? Penn State coach Joe Paterno said he's shocked by sexual abuse charges brought against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky and deeply saddened by the allegations.
Paterno in a statement issued Sunday evening by his son, Scott, said he's troubled that someone he thought he knew may have harmed young people. Paterno said he and wife, Sue have devoted their lives to helping young people reach their potential.
"The fact that someone we thought we knew might have harmed young people to this extent is deeply troubling," he said. "If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families. They are in our prayers."
Paterno referred to his grand jury testimony in which he testified that he was informed by an assistant coach in 2002 that he had witnessed an incident in the shower of the team locker room. Prosecutors have said Paterno had passed on the information to athletic director Tim Curley.
But Paterno said specific actions alleged to have occurred in the grand jury report were not relayed to him.
"It was obvious that the witness was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the grand jury report," Paterno said in the statement. "Regardless, it was clear that the witness saw something inappropriate involving Mr. Sandusky. As coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at that time, I referred the matter to university administrators."
Sandusky retired from his assistant's job in 1999. He is charged with sexually abusing eight boys over 15 years.
Curley and Gary Schultz, the university's senior vice president for finance and business, were charged Saturday with failing to report to state and county officials that a witness told them he saw Sandusky sexually abusing a naked boy in the locker room showers in 2002.
Schultz and Curley were both also charged with perjury. Lawyers for all three men have said they are innocent.
"I understand that people are upset and angry, but let's be fair and let the legal process unfold," Paterno said in the statement. "In the meantime I would ask all Penn Staters to continue to trust in what that name represents, continue to pursue their lives every day with high ideals and not let these events shake their beliefs nor who they are."
A Hall of Famer, Paterno on Oct. 29 won his 409th victory, most among Division I coaches. Penn State was off this weekend and next plays Nebraska on Saturday in the home finale.
''If true, the nature and amount of charges made are very shocking to me and all Penn Staters," he said. "While I did what I was supposed to with the one charge brought to my attention, like anyone else involved I can't help but be deeply saddened these matters are alleged to have occurred."
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SAN FRANCISCO ? A major Yahoo shareholder believes the slumping Internet company would be better off without Jerry Yang on its board as it mulls a possible sale.
In a Friday letter to Yahoo's board, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb asserts Yang has too many conflicts of interest to keep the board seat he has held since starting the company more than 16 years ago.
Loeb, who owns a 5.2 percent stake in Yahoo Inc. through a fund called Third Point LLC, based his conclusion on published reports that Yang has been talking to several buyout firms about joining forces to buy a controlling stake in the company. The letter lists the Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, Silver Lake, KKR & Co. and the Blackstone Group as the firms talking to Yang.
In a statement, a Yahoo reiterated its board has been exploring various ways to boost the company's stock price and brushed off the reports cited in Loeb's letter as "rumor and speculation."
"Mr. Yang is one of nine directors with the exact same fiduciary duties and motivation as all of his fellow directors ? to serve the best interests of all the company's shareholders," Yahoo said.
Loeb questioned whether Yang is more interested in selling Yahoo to the highest bidder or negotiating a deal that keeps the company in "friendly hands." The letter also refers to Yang's "ineptitude" in 2008 when he squandered an opportunity to sell Yahoo to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share ? more than twice the company's current market value.
"It is now clear that (Yang) is simply not aligned with shareholders," Loeb wrote.
Yang holds a 3.6 percent stake in Yahoo, meaning he no longer owns as much of the company as Loeb does.
The attack on Yang is the latest bit of drama at a company that has been immersed in a soap opera since former movie mogul Terry Semel resigned as CEO to placate frustrated shareholders in mid-2007.
Yang then took a stab at being CEO, only to spend much of his time at the top fending off Microsoft's unsolicited takeover bid and jousting with another brash shareholder, Carl Icahn. Microsoft eventually withdrew its offer in exasperation and Icahn gained three seats on the company's board before Yang turned over the CEO job to Carol Bartz in January 2009.
Loeb entered the picture two months ago after Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock fired Bartz in a brusque phone call.
In an in initial attempt to shake up the board, Loeb urged Yang in a Sept. 14 letter to work with him to oust Bostock, who has been lambasted by other unhappy shareholders during the past three years..
Now Loeb wants both Yang and Bostock to be tossed from the board so he can be awarded two director seats. If he doesn't get his way, Loeb indicated he is prepared to finance a shareholder rebellion against the board ? a tactic that Icahn used in 2008 to muscle his way into the company's boardroom. Icahn stepped down from the board two years ago.
Besides discussing a possible sale to buyout firms, Yahoo is also believed to be considered selling its holdings in China's Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. Those Asian stakes could fetch as much as $16 billion before taxes, based on analyst estimates.
Yahoo shares fell 24 cents Friday to close at $15.24.
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Dr. Conrad Murray's fate is now up to jury of his peers.
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