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United Launch Alliance (ULA) has enough unsold Delta 2 rockets in inventory to meet NASA's forecasted demand through at least 2015 and could wait until 2012 to decide whether to restart production of the reliable but increasingly expensive workhorse, a top company executive said.

Dan Collins, ULA's chief operating officer, also said the company is considering ways to reduce the Delta 2's price tag as well as developing a less powerful, lower-cost variant of its larger Atlas 5 or Delta 4 rockets. Speaking June 25 here at a meeting of the National Research Council's Space Studies Board, he said ULA of Denver has no intention of ceding the medium-lift launch market it has dominated for decades to new rockets being developed Orbital Sciences Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).

"There's been a lot of talk about [how] we need to go fill the gap [with] the demise of Delta 2," Collins told the board. "Part of my message for you today is we don't know of any gap. We have Delta 2s in inventory that are unsold. We plan on continuing to sell those. With the change in the requirements that we will see as the [U.S. Air Force Medium Launch Vehicle 3] program goes away, we are adjusting Delta 2 and bringing the price down."

The Air Force has been using the Delta 2 since 1989, primarily to launch GPS navigation satellites. With the last of the current-generation GPS satellites slated to lift off aboard a Delta 2 later this year, ULA's long-running Medium Launch Vehicle contract is coming to an end.

An internal study conducted by NASA in 2007 concluded that Delta 2 launch prices, already hovering in the $80 million range, likely would soar once the Air Force abandons the program in favor of manifesting future generations of GPS satellites aboard ULA's larger Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets. NASA has been the other big Delta 2 customer in recent years.

The NASA study, conducted by the agency's in-house rocket buyers, recommended following the Air Force's lead by phasing out Delta 2 and shifting more payloads to Atlas 5 or Delta 4 until a more affordable medium-lift launcher comes along.

While the Air Force has been the anchor customer for Delta 2 since the beginning, Collins said the service's abandonment of the program gives ULA the opportunity to reduce costs without compromising reliability.

"There have been requirements in the government mission set that have driven cost," Collins said, citing as an example the Air Force's insistence that the Delta 2 be kept ready to launch within 40 days of call up.

"That drives significant cost into a program," Collins said. "For instance, it drives having two launch pads at Cape Canaveral. We will not continue to operate two launch pads."

Collins said dropping the 40-day call up requirement also would permit ULA to "significantly lower" the number of people it needs on hand to launch Delta 2.

"So we will see significant changes in the cost structure on the Delta 2 with a significant inventory to continue flying," Collins said. "We plan on being exceptionally competitive in the medium market for the foreseeable future."

ULA has "around half a dozen" unsold Delta 2 rockets on hand, a sufficient inventory, Collins told the board, to meet NASA's scaled-back demand through 2015.

"We don't see any need to guess what the market is going to be in 2016," Collins said, later adding, "When people actually start having programs of record you can start at the time bringing the right vehicle to market."

If by 2012, NASA and other potential customers are forecasting a combined eight to 10 medium launches a year beyond 2015, Collins said, ULA could financially justify restarting Delta 2 production. But if forecasted demand is only four to seven launches annually, Collins said, ULA would be more likely go after that market with a vehicle that combines a new low-cost upper stage with an Atlas 5 or Delta 4 booster core.

Collins said the medium-lift launch market will be extremely competitive for at least the next several years.

"There are six launchers out there trying to split a market of about six launches a year," Collins said. "We're all going to be out trying to make a living in this market and it's going to be difficult."

Collins told the board ULA is determined to stay in the medium market and make Delta 2, or its successor, competitive with the price point Orbital Sciences is shooting for with its planned Taurus 2 rocket.

"We think there's a premium that comes with the experience and reliability record [of Delta 2], but there's only so much that premium can demand, so we need to get down in that same area," Collins said. "Can we get all the way there? I hope so. But if not I think we can get pretty close."

ULA does not disclose Delta 2 pricing, but Collins said NASA pays the company less than what the agency requires its programs to budget for a Delta 2 launch.

Appearing alongside Collins were executives from Orbital Sciences and SpaceX who gave the board updates on their efforts to field Delta 2-class competitors.

Robert T. Richards, vice president of Orbital's Launch Systems Group, said Orbital and its investors are prepared to spend $200 million developing Taurus 2, a medium-class rocket the company expects to launch from Virginia's eastern shore in December 2010 as part of a NASA-funded demonstration. He said Orbital also has hardware in production for a second rocket that could fly a few months earlier if the company finds a customer that needs to launch a medium-sized satellite then.

He said Orbital of Dulles, Va., is aiming to offer Delta 2-class performance at a lower price, or around $65 million a launch.

"There are some edges of the envelope where a Delta 2 Heavy might have a little more performance, but essentially you should think of it as a Delta 2," Richards said.

ULA used a Delta 2 Heavy to loft NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope into orbit June 11 from from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The 4,230-kilogram spacecraft required a Delta 2 augmented with nine strap-on boosters.

Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, the rocket start-up created six years ago by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, aims to price its Falcon 9 rocket significantly below Taurus 2.

SpaceX, like Orbital, is getting financial assistance from NASA under the agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.

Larry Williams, SpaceX vice president of strategic relations, told the Space Studies Board that the company is offering Falcon 9 launches for $36.75 million to $57.75 million depending on the size of the payload and desired destination.

International Space Station-bound cargo flights involving the company's reusable Dragon capsule, Williams said, will cost between $80 million and $100 million

Williams said SpaceX believes it can deliver on its promise of lower launch prices by taking the "Wal-Mart approach," which he characterized as doing hundreds of things 1 percent cheaper than the competition rather than trying to do one thing 90 percent cheaper.

SpaceX has conducted two launches of the smaller Falcon 1 rocket to date, neither of which succeeded in reaching orbit. A third Falcon 1 launch had been tentatively slated for June, but Williams said that attempt has been pushed off until late July or early August due to "a bit of a range issue" at the Kwajalein missile range, where the company has a launch pad.

The first Falcon 9 rocket is expected to arrive at Cape Canaveral by the end of the year for an early 2009 launch for a U.S. government customer SpaceX says it is not permitted to name.

Source: SPACE.com

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BEIJING (AFP) - A huge algae bloom at the Beijing Olympics' sailing venue will take at least another two weeks to eradicate despite more than 10,000 workers being used in the clean-up effort, state media reported.

The environmental problem off the coast of Qingdao has disrupted training for international competitors trying to get used to the conditions there, the Xinhua news agency, citing officials, said late on Sunday.

"We have stressed to all the people devoting to this campaign that the priority should (be) given to the Olympic venue and we expect to eliminate all these sea weeds before July 15th," Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee member Yuan Zhiping was quoted as saying on Sunday.

The algae has covered part of the training area and blocked parts of the sailing routes, Yuan was cited as saying.

More than 10,000 workers and 1,000 boats are cleaning up the bright green algae that has smothered the city's beaches and extends far into the Yellow Sea, about 550 kilometres (340 miles) southeast of Beijing, Xinhua said.

About 16 square kilometers (10 square miles) -- a third of the protected sea area for the sailing events -- are choked with algae, the report said.

In total, the algae has affected 13,000 square kilometers (8,080 square miles) of sea, the report said.

Workers have so far pulled out 100,000 tonnes of algae, the report said.

Xinhua said sailors from at least 30 countries and regions were already training in Qingdao for their events, which run from August 9 to 23.

Algae blooms are common in heavily polluted China, particularly in freshwater lakes.

They are mostly caused by the discharge of untreated sewage containing high concentrations of nitrogen, a main ingredient in detergents and fertilisers.

However, Wang Shulian, an official with the Qingdao Oceanic and Fishery Department, played down the connection between the algae and pollution, saying the water's temperature and salt levels helped the algae grow.

Residents have said Qingdao, which means "Green Island," was prone to summer algae infestations but that this year's was noticeably worse.

Source: news.yahoo.com

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Digital music seller Rhapsody is launching a $50 million marketing assault on Apple's iTunes, offering songs online and via partners including Yahoo Inc and Verizon Wireless, Rhapsody said on Monday.

The songs will be sold in MP3 format, which means users of the Rhapsody service will be able to play them on iPods.

Before now Rhapsody, jointly owned by Real Networks Inc and Viacom Inc's MTV Networks, had focused on a subscription service, allowing unlimited song streaming for $13 to $15 a month, rather than selling downloads.

But Rhapsody Vice President Neil Smith said the fact the service has not been compatible with Apple Inc's top-selling iPod digital player has limited Rhapsody's reach.

"We're no longer competing with the iPod," Smith said. "We're embracing it."

Rhapsody also will be the music store back-end to MTV's music Web sites and iLike, one of the most widely used music applications on social networking site Facebook.

Rhapsody will be available on mobile phones via the Verizon Wireless VCAST Music service. Buyers of a song over-the-air directly from phones also will be able to download that song to their computer. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.

Rhapsody executives describe the strategy as "Music Without Limits." They said it would be backed by a marketing blitz worth up to $50 million in media space over the next year in part by leveraging co-parent MTV's TV networks and Web sites.

CHALLENGERS

Rhapsody is the latest player to challenge iTunes's 70 percent-plus market share of U.S. digital music sales.

Last month digital music service Napster Inc launched an MP3 store. Both Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Amazon.com Inc launched stores last year.

None of the new stores has made much of a dent on Apple's lead. Early this year iTunes became the biggest music retailer in the United States. It has sold more than 5 billion songs since it launched in 2003.

Its success has been due partly to a seamless interface between iTunes and the iPod and because it provides a good user experience, said analyst David Card of Jupiter Research.

The new digital MP3 stores have been made possible because the four major record groups last year started to experiment with allowing retailers to sell music without digital rights management (DRM) software to prevent illegal sharing of music.

Analysts believe the move by Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI Group will help open the market for retailers and music companies.

"I think we'll see retailers begin to compete the way they usually compete with pricing, merchandising and promotions, rather than due to some arbitrary technology," Card said.

(Editing by David Gregorio and Braden Reddall)

Source: yahoo news

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NEW YORK - MetroPCS Communications Inc. has become the largest U.S. wireless carrier to say it will let customers bring cell phones from other carriers, which it will then reprogram for use on its own network.

This week's announcement by the Dallas-based regional carrier is one of a series of moves in the industry that amount to a gradual opening of the U.S. wireless market, giving consumers more choice over what phones to use on what networks.

Carriers generally sell phones that are locked to their own service. This protects their business model, which is based on subsidizing the cost of the phone by hundreds of dollars, then making that money back on monthly service fees.

MetroPCS's move threatens these traditional rules. It allows customers with certain models of phones from Sprint Nextel Corp., Verizon Wireless, Alltel Corp. and a few other carriers to bring their phones to MetroPCS stores, where they will be reprogrammed.

Phones from AT&T Inc., T-Mobile USA or other providers that use a technology known as Global System for Mobile, or GSM, won't work on MetroPCS's network. It is already possible to bring an unlocked GSM phone from, say, T-Mobile, and have it activated on AT&T's network, but AT&T won't unlock the phone for you.

A smaller carrier, Pocket Communications, reprograms phones for customers. Its network covers the San Antonio area.

MetroPCS's network covers 14 large cities, including Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas. It had 4.4 million subscribers at the end of March.

Its network uses the Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, technology. CDMA carriers maintain databases of the serial numbers carried by phones that they have sold, and except for Pocket and now MetroPCS, won't activate phones with other numbers. They generally say that they won't let any phones on to their networks without putting that model through rigorous testing. This applies even to phones that are functionally identical to their own, like the many slight variations of the Motorola Razr sold by different carriers.

Consumer groups have been fighting the locking of phones and exclusive agreements between manufacturers and carriers that, for instance, restrict Apple Inc.'s iPhone to AT&T Inc.'s network.

Apart from locking the phones, carriers protect their business model by signing customers to two-year contracts, and charging an early termination fee if they break it. MetroPCS's move does not change that fact, but major carriers have been reducing their early termination fees this year, prorating them depending on how long a contract has been in force.

Source: yahoo news

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Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed sensors that could be mounted on bridges, aircraft or other large structures to constantly search for faults and flaws, possibly giving officials time to head off disasters like the recent Interstate 35W collapse in Minneapolis.

The Sandia engineers are working on several kinds of sensors. One of them, a self-adhesive rubber patch stuck to the surface of a bridge, would be able to detect cracks propagating through the structure by registering changes in air pressure. Another involves a kind of smart paint that could help detect cracks. A network of permanently mounted sensors would be able to constantly monitor the structure and alert engineers to developing flaws before they become a real problem.—Gregory Mone

Via Newswise

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Engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a flexible, paper-like battery that can function in temperatures up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and derive power from human sweat...and blood. While this might sound strange, the idea is that you could use them to power small implanted devices, like pacemakers, and the electrolytes found in blood, urine or sweat could be used to activate the battery.

But the coolest feature may be the battery's structure. It's 90 percent cellulose, which means it's basically a piece of paper. The difference is that this paper is laced with a carbon nanotube skeleton. The nanotubes conduct electricity through the device, and allow it to be bent and twisted without breaking. Best of all, in the when-does-this-thing-get-into-our-gadgets sense, is the fact that it may end up being cheap to produce, since the materials are inexpensive.—Gregory Mone

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David Hanson, the artist-engineer who builds life-like artificial faces, has now created a 17-inch-tall robot with a cartoon version of a child's face. Popular Science profiled Hanson when he was first starting out, and had created an expressive robotic head modeled after his girlfriend.

This latest marvel, Zeno, has the same name as his 18-month-old son, and can also communicate a range of emotions by twisting its mouth, eyes and various facial features. Hanson has built a range of very real-looking robots in the past, including dead ringers for Einstein and Philip K. Dick. His ultimate goal is to cross the so-called Uncanny Valley, and create robotic faces that draw people in rather than freaking them out.

The coolest part? He hopes to be selling Zenos for $200 to $300 within a few years.—Gregory Mone

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By 2015, 17 percent of the residents of the United States will be getting cosmetic procedures, the body enhancement industry predicts.

A new study published by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) predicts there will be more than 55 million cosmetic surgery procedures performed in 2015. That's nearly one procedure for every five Americans, including children, based on U.S. Census Bureau population projections. Of course, the bulk of procedures are done on adults, and some people might get more than one body part fixed in a year.

The industry is well aware of what is driving all this: "Pushing this growth is increasing consumer awareness, direct-to-consumer marketing and advertising, as well as technological advances in non-surgical options," the group said in a statement today.

In 2007, Americans spent more than $13 billion for nearly 11.7 million cosmetic procedures. That's up from nearly 8.5 million procedures in 2001.

Sales sag

Thanks to the bad economy, times are tough in human body shops right now, however.

"While today's economy reflects a slow-down in plastic surgery procedures, the specialty will weather the current decline in economic growth just as it has previous declines, such as the stock market correction after the 2001 Internet bubble," said ASPS President Richard D'Amico, MD. "This prediction for 2015 is exciting."

Some caution might be in order before the nation plunges head-long into fulfilling the industry's expectations.

"Our concern is that with predicted growth and interest in the broad spectrum of cosmetic procedures, patients will look to the closest, easiest solution," said D'Amico. "Potential patients, however, need to know that board-certified plastic surgeons are uniquely qualified with an in-depth medical knowledge of the entire human body. They have the training necessary to accurately assess your individual needs and map health and beauty goals for your entire lifetime."

The study was based on annual ASPS National Clearinghouse of Plastic Surgery statistics from 1992-2005. The researchers also analyzed the impact of economic and non-economic variables on industry growth.

What's hot?

Women's top-five cosmetic surgical procedures for 2007:

• Breast augmentation: 399,440 procedures
• Liposuction: 398,848
• Eyelid surgery: 208,199

Men's top-five cosmetic surgical procedures for 2007:

• Liposuction: 57,980 procedures
• Eyelid surgery: 32,564
• Nose reshaping: 31,713

In 2005, 34 percent of all procedures performed by ASPS Member Surgeons were surgical and 66 percent were non-surgical, the new study finds. Also in 2005, for non-ASPS members 9.5 percent of their procedures were surgical, while 90.5 percent were non-surgical.

But non-surgical procedures grew 27.9 percent between 1992 and 2005, while surgical procedures grew just 7.5 percent.

The No. 1 non-surgical cosmetic procedure for U.S. men and women last year was Botox injection. By 2015, the researchers predict that 88 percent of all cosmetic procedures will be non-surgical.

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Even if you're an active Web surfer you probably don't pay much attention to the browser you are using. By default, you likely employ Microsoft's Internet Explorer on a Windows machine, if only because Internet Explorer sits right there on your desktop. The Apple crowd typically sticks with Safari.

Still, many of us in recent years have been drawn to a feature-rich browser called Firefox from the non-profit Mozilla organization. This week Mozilla released a speedy and more secure new version called Firefox 3.

I've generally had a very good experience testing Firefox 3 on Windows PCs and Macs. (It also works on Linux.) It's snappier than Internet Explorer and uses less memory. I had no trouble migrating from Firefox 2. And Mozilla claims Firefox 3 has more than 15,000 improvements, though I'll have to take their word for it because most of the action is under the hood.

Why go to the trouble of switching browsers? Through the years, Microsoft has been slow to innovate. Guess that comes with owning a monopoly share. It was late to the party with such features as tabbed browsing, which lets you keep multiple browser windows open at the same time. (The feature is there now.)

And for a while anyway, Internet Explorer seemed to have more gaping holes than Swiss cheese, though to be fair it's gotten a lot more secure in recent iterations. Still, the door was left wide open for more nimble rivals, including Apple's Safari (which now also works on Windows), Norway's Opera and, of course, Firefox.

I've long appreciated the "restore previous session feature" in Firefox, which opens the tabs and windows from your previous session should the browser unexpectedly crash. A Firefox pop-up blocker arrived early on. A built-in spell-checker is another core feature.

As "open source" software - meaning the code is open to all programmers - Firefox is also extremely customizable. Some 5,000 add-on programs have been made available, though not all of them are ready for version 3. I was unable to load Google Send to Phone for Firefox because as a pop-up window warned, "It does not provide secure updates." Mozilla said about 75% of the most-used add-ons were compatible with Firefox 3 in the days leading up to the launch; most of your favorites should catch up quickly.

Firefox 3 is less of a hog on system resources than its predecessor or Internet Explorer. I opened a dozen popular sites in Firefox on a Vista machine and opened the same ones with Microsoft's browser. Firefox used a lot less memory.

Let's take a closer look at the latest version of the Mozilla browser.

•Easy navigation. Arguably the most useful new feature is the "Smart Location Bar," aka, the "Awesome Bar." Start typing and Firefox serves up a drop-down list of possible cyberdestinations based on sites you've already visited, bookmarked or tagged. It learns as you go. The words you type appear in bold, making it a cinch to find an appropriate match if there is one. Typing "Ru" brought up listings of sites I visited after Tim Russert died.

Firefox makes intelligent (and usually correct) guesses when you enter text. You won't always have to type in a complete Web address. When I typed "Mets" and pressed enter, I was transported to the official site of my favorite ball club. When I typed "onion," I was taken to the Onion humor site. On Internet Explorer, typing "Mets" and "onion" took me to search pages instead.

Bookmarking is also a breeze. A star icon appears to the right of the Web address in the location bar. Click the star once to save the location as a bookmark. Or double-click the star to tag and save the site to a particular location.

And you can click on a new Most Visited folder to check out the sites you hang out at most often, one of the available "smart bookmark folders."

•Security. You were warned in Firefox 2, and for that matter Internet Explorer, when coming upon a "phishing" site. These bogus sites try ripping you off by masquerading as real financial (or other) institutions. With Firefox 3, Mozilla broadens the alarm to include sites that attempt to attack your machine with viruses, spyware or other "malware." A pop-up appears with a "get me out of here" button; you can also click for an explanation of why the site is blocked.

Clicking on a tiny icon to the left of the location bar lets you determine if a site you are visiting is legit.

Mozilla's rivals aren't standing still. Opera just released its own new version with features that keep bookmarks and notes synchronized between the desktop browser and one on your cellphone. Microsoft is readying a new version of Internet Explorer, and the bet is Apple is doing the same with Safari. And the Flock "social browser" (which is built on top of Firefox technology) is in trials with a new test version of its own. The way it's going, you may even start paying more attention to the browser that you are using.

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The two main environmental news stories of the past year or so have been the twin impending disasters of global warming and water shortages. There is a scientific consensus that global warming is occurring, and many governments (including, belatedly, the Bush Administration) have taken steps to address the problem.

But the more pressing issue is water; people can live with global warming (and have been for some time), but people cannot live without water.

While drinking water is the most obvious need, everything around us takes water to produce, from food to telephones to tires. Not only is agriculture dependent on water [the U.S. Geological Survey estimates it takes about 1,300 gallons of water to grow a hamburger] but so is virtually every industry. Even energy production needs water, in hydroelectric dams and nuclear reactor cooling towers.

Demand soars

The barrage of news reports warn of a dire water shortage, and provide sobering statistics:

* The global demand for water has tripled over the last 50 years, while water tables are falling in many of the world's most populated countries, including the United States, China, and India.
* Many of the world's great rivers are a fraction of the size they once were, and some have dried up completely.
* Earth's lakes are vanishing at an alarming rate; the Aral Sea, for example, is less than a quarter its original size. Nevada's Lake Mead is half its original capacity; a recent study concluded that there is a 50/50 chance that the lake will be gone in less than fifteen years.

It's true that there is cause for alarm, but to understand the problem people need to read behind the headlines to understand one little fact: There is no water shortage.

Our planet is not running out of water, nor is it losing water. There's about 360 quintillion gallons of water on the planet, and it's not going anywhere except in a circle. Earth's hydrologic cycle is a closed system, and the process is as old as time: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, infiltration, and so on. In fact, there is probably more liquid water on Earth than there was just a few decades ago, due in part to global warming and melting polar ice caps.

The problems

No, there is plenty of water. The problem is that the vast majority of Earth's water is contained in the oceans as saltwater, and must be desalinated before it can be used for drinking or farming.

Large-scale desalination can be done, but it is expensive.

But nor is the world running out of freshwater, either. There's plenty of freshwater on our blue globe; it is not raining any less these days than it did millennia ago. As with any other resource, there are of course regional shortages, and they are getting worse. But the real problems are availability and transport; moving the freshwater from where it is plentiful (such as Canada, South America, and Russia) to where it is scarce (such as the Middle East, India, and Africa). Water is heavy and costly to transport, and those who can afford it will always have water.

Water, not global warming, is likely to be the greatest environmental challenge facing the world in the coming decades and centuries.

To find solutions, it's important to understand the problem. Water is never really "wasted." It simply moves from one place to another. If you let your faucet drip all day, that's clean water going back into the system, the water isn't "lost." What is lost is usefulness, money, and energy, because it takes energy to purify and distribute the water.

Water conservation is very important, but not because there is a shortage of water; it is the ultimate renewable resource. As with any resource, the issue is getting it to those who need it.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Scientists in charge of the Phoenix Mars lander are more convinced there is ice near the Martian North pole as they review new images from the Red Planet.

Eight small pieces of a bright material "have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it," said a statement from Jet Propulsion Laboratory's website.

"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

The bright dice-sized bits were left four days ago in a trench scientists dubbed "Dodo-Goldilocks" and were not there when the lander took a new later image of the trench. Scientists believe the ice evaporated when exposed to the sun.

Phoenix's robotic arm also on Thursday in another trench made contact with a hard surface scientists believe could be an icy layer.

"We have dug a trench and uncovered a hard layer at the same depth as the ice layer in our other trench," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, co-investigator for the robotic arm.

After trying to crack further into it, the arm became immobilized, which is the expected programmed reaction for when it hits a hard surface.

A third technical glitch but the mission Tuesday; it landed near the Martian North pole on May 25. The two previous ones involved two US satellites orbiting the Red Planet that relay information between the probe and Earth.

Yet "the mission is well ahead of schedule. We are making excellent progress toward full mission success," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein.

The three-month Phoenix mission is hoping to find evidence of the existence of water and life-supporting organic minerals in the polar region.

If water filtered down on Mars it would have left its mark on surrounding minerals. Impurities in any ice detected could tell a great deal about the climactic history of this region of the planet.

Mars is currently too cold for liquid water but it is possible that in some distant past the polar regions were warmer, scientists posit.

Water is a main ingredient for life and the polar region at some point may have been habitable: that is a puzzle Phoenix is exploring

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Delivering medicine with tiny robots inside your veins

Imagine a tiny robot or drug-delivery device that could swim through your veins, using blood sugar as its fuel. Such a device could be powered by the same chain of chemical reactions that propel sperm toward an egg, according to researchers at Cornell University.

The researchers are trying to reproduce (pardon the pun) the steps whereby a sperm's whiplike tail generates energy. (Sperm also generate energy using the mitochondria in their midsection.) Running the length of the tail is a fibrous sheath with 10 enzymes attached to it. These enzymes act in series to break down glucose into ATP, the energy source for cells, in a process known as glycolysis.

So far, the Cornell researchers have managed to attach three of the 10 enzymes to a computer chip and confirm that the enzymes still work. If they can attach all 10 enzymes, they'll have a working version of a sperm engine, which could then be attached to nano-devices. The researchers presented their findings at the American Society for Cell Biology's annual meeting today.—Dawn Stover

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - The French-US satellite Jason 2, slated for lift-off Friday from California, will provide precise monitoring of rising sea levels and currents and track the effects of climate change.

Weather permitting, the high-tech oceanography space lab will be launched aboard a Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base from 1946 GMT, when a nine-minute window of opportunity for the launch opens.

Fifty-five minutes after take-off, it will reach its orbit some 1,335 kilometers (830 miles) above the Earth.

"We are set to fly," NASA launch manager Omar Baez said on the Spaceflight Now website.

Jason 2 is programmed to maneuver into the same orbit as its predecessor Jason 1, which was launched in 2001, and eventually replace the older craft.

Rising sea levels is one of the most serious consequences of global warming, threatening dozens of island nations and massively populated delta regions, especially in Asia and Africa.

Data from previous missions showed that sea levels have risen on average by 0.3 centimeters per year since 1993, or twice as much as they did in the whole of the 20th century, according to marine measurements.

But 15 years of data is not enough to draw accurate long-term conclusions, say scientists.

The three-year OSTM (Ocean Surface Topography Mission)/Jason 2 mission will help create the first multi-decade global record of the role of the ocean in climate change, according to scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

It will also provide more accurate forecasts of seasonal weather patterns, and near real-time data on ocean conditions.

"Without this data record, we would have no basis for evaluating change," said the mission's project scientist, Lee-Lueng Fu, in a statement.

Fu compared the sea level record begun in 1992 with the continuous measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide initiated in the 1950s at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

"The Mauna Loa data proved that carbon dioxide levels were indeed rising as had been predicted, and they were the basis for our understanding of the greenhouse effect," Fu said.

"The height of the ocean is another fundamental measurement of our climate. The key is to have rigorous, well-calibrated data collected over a long period of time."

Global sea levels are expected to rise in the coming years as the Earth warms, scientists have said.

The oceans act as the planet's thermostat, and absorb more than 80 percent of the heat from global warming, with the rest absorbed by the atmosphere, land and glaciers, NASA scientists have found.

Warming water and melting ice are the two main factors contributing to rising sea levels.

The OSTM/Jason 2 mission is a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the French National Center of Space Studies (CNES) and the European satellite agency EUMETSAT.

Jason 2's most powerful onboard instrument is CNES's Poseidon 3 radar altimeter, which can measure the height of ocean surfaces in relation to Earth's centre with a margin of error of 3.3 centimetres (1.3 inches).

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SEOUL, South Korea - A South Korean team led by disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk said Thursday it has created 17 clones of an endangered dog breed popular in China.

The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation said in a statement that the cloned Tibetan mastiff dogs were born in April, two months after being requested by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The foundation said it takes two months to produce cloned dogs from pregnancy, but it declined to discuss its success rate, citing internal policy.

The foundation also that all 17 dogs had been cloned from two Tibetan mastiffs — female and male — through six surrogate dogs, citing blind DNA tests by another institute.

However, an official of Kogene Biotech, the Seoul-based institute specializing in DNA analysis that did the tests, said it did not to take its own samples from the dogs and that the samples it tested were provided by the foundation.

Kogene Biotech said it did not know for certain if the samples came from cloned animals or the original dogs, or a combination of both, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

In 2005, Hwang and his team of Seoul National University scientists successfully created the world's first known dog clone, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, an achievement that was independently confirmed.

Hwang scandalized the international scientific community in 2005 when his breakthrough human cloning research involving embryonic stem cells was found to have been faked.

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Are you ready for some football? Robot football, that is. Well, let these bots do the gridiron game for you. Join the Robotic Football League (RFL). Founded in Westminister, Colorado by Active Innovations, this new sport brings teams of robots to a competitive field for some football. These aren’t just any kludged together robots, either. The players in this league are derived from the AI-O1 robot built by Active Innovations. Featuring wireless communications, a PIC microcontroller, and built-in voice, the AI-01 can be configured as a passer, receiver, and blocker. The $119 robot can also be hacked into a “dream player” with a $19.95 RFL USB to AI Adapter from SparkFun Electronics. Designed for 2-bot, 3-bot, and 6-bot rosters, the RFL could be coming to an open 8-x16-foot floor or HobbyTown USA near you.—Dave Prochnow

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A flying saucer is in the works, but it didn’t come from space. It came from Florida.

Subrata Roy, an engineering professor at the University of Florida, is trying to patent his design of a circular, spinning aircraft he dubs WEAV, short for wingless electromagnetic air vehicle.

The suggested prototype offers several advantages. It can hover and take off vertically. With no moving parts, the WEAV should be markedly reliable. And though his battery-powered model is only six inches across, Roy thinks a larger craft is possible.

Roy applied his experience doing U.S. Air Force-funded plasma research to develop the propulsion system devoid of typical aircraft parts such as propellers and engines. Here is how it works: Electrodes lining the vehicle’s surface ionize the surrounding air. This creates plasma on the vehicle’s exterior. An electrical current sent through this plasma generates a force that not only produces the necessary lift and momentum. It also stabilizes the vehicle in windy conditions.

Looking like a flying bundt pan, the WEAV design is partially hollow and continuously curved. This larger surface area improves lift and control.

Besides providing surveillance on Earth, Roy also envisions the craft in other atmospheres, such as that of Saturn’s moon Titan, where high air density and low gravity would be favorable to saucer flight.

But the path from concept to production may not be smooth. Flying in Earth’s air requires a thrust at least 10 times greater than in outer space where drag and gravity are lower. And the plasma necessary to fly also obstructs wave transmission used for communicating with a remote source.

This doesn’t discourage Roy. “Of course the risk is huge, but so is the payoff,” he said. “If successful, we will have an aircraft, a saucer and a helicopter all in one embodiment.”

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TRENTON, N.J. - For centuries, farming has involved plowing the fields and tending to livestock.

Soon, farmers in New Jersey may also be tending to solar panels and windmills.

New Jersey lawmakers are contemplating a bill that defines solar and wind energy generation as agricultural activity. The measure aims to promote alternative energy sources, but has been criticized as a possible danger to farmland preservation efforts.

The bill would allow the owners of preserved farmland to construct, operate and install solar or wind energy facilities or equipment on their farms. The generated power could be used to operate the farm or be sold to a utility company.

The law also would protect solar and wind power generation on farms from nuisance complaints from neighbors, similar to protections farmers have from complaints about the smell of manure, for instance.

"It's very hard for people to get out of that traditional thinking that the only farming there is when you dig up dirt and plant seed," said state Sen. Bob Smith, who is sponsoring the bill.

He acknowledged his bill is an "attempt to think outside the box when it comes to farming," but also said farming and energy are already tied together, noting ethanol is made from corn.

"The environmental goals of renewable energy and farmland preservation are not mutually exclusive," Smith said.

Despite New Jersey being the most densely populated state, it is a leader in farm preservation, with more than 18 percent of its farmland preserved. The Garden State has prevented development of 1,616 farms with a total area of 160,840 acres, at a cumulative cost of $686 million to the state and another $358 million from local governments and charities.

New Jersey has made more money available for farmland preservation than any other state, according to The Farmland Preservation Report.

Critics question whether Smith's bill would hurt farmland conservation.

Alison Mitchell, a policy director with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, said she appreciates efforts to promote solar and wind energy, but said farmland preservation is meant to save agriculture and farmland — not spur new construction on preserved land.

Susan Kraft, the New Jersey Agriculture Committee executive director, questioned whether power generation should be even considered farming.

"I think this crosses a line that the public did not intend," Kraft said.

Jaclyn Rhoads, director for conservation policy for the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, said she worried that opening the door to solar and wind energy construction on preserved farms could lead to other facilities being built on preserved farmland.

The bill has cleared a Senate committee is awaiting a vote by the full Senate. It hasn't received Assembly consideration.

Using solar panels on farms is not a new concept. Sixth-generation farmer Ronny Lee has 360 solar panels on his Lee Turkey Farm near Princeton.

Lee had solar panels installed before his 54-acre farm was preserved, so he didn't face problems with building restrictions. "It runs all the heat lamps in the buildings for the turkeys and things like that. It actually runs the houses, too. It runs everything," Lee said.

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak, the Senate's economic growth chairman, said he isn't worried about the aesthetics of putting energy production facilities on preserved farms. Lesniak recalled biking in France and said the windmills there are "majestic" and "lift your spirits."

"Four-dollars plus for a gallon of gasoline," said Lesniak, D-Union. "The economy in bad shape. The old ways of thinking things have to be looked at over and over again."

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TOCHIGI, Japan (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co (7267.T) kicked off production on Monday of its newest fuel-cell car, as the automaker gears up for the battle to dominate the market for next-generation vehicles.

Honda's FCX Clarity, a sporty-looking fuel-cell sedan, came off the production line in Tochigi, north of Tokyo. The assembly line is Honda's first to be dedicated to building fuel-cell vehicles.

The FCX Clarity will be sold through a newly established fuel-cell vehicle dealership network in the United States from July, Honda said. In Japan, sales are slated to start in autumn.

The automaker is targeting lease sales of about 200 FCX Clarity cars in the first three years in the two countries combined.

"Fuel-cell vehicles, which don't use fossil fuels and don't produce carbon dioxide, are necessary for the environment. We would like to make them more popular," Honda Chief Executive Takeo Fukui told reporters.

Fuel-cell vehicles are widely considered the ultimate longer-term alternative to today's conventional cars as they run on an inexhaustible and cheaper source of fuel -- hydrogen, have no harmful tail-pipe emissions, and do not compromise driving performance.

The main hurdles for their proliferation are a lack of fuelling stations and the high cost of development.

Among the first five customers for the FCX Clarity are actress Jamie Lee Curtis and U.S. filmmaker Christopher Guest, Honda said.

The vehicle, which uses a lithium-ion battery, can run 620 km (385 miles) on a single fuelling as measured under Japan's fuel efficiency test method, and has a top speed of 160 km per hour (99 mph).

Among automakers, Honda and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) were the world's first to put a fuel-cell vehicle on the road in December 2002, and have since been in a tight race to prepare them for mass-commercialization.

Toyota said earlier this month that it has developed an advanced fuel-cell vehicle that can run for 830 km on a single tank of hydrogen.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp (7211.T) has said it would bring its i-MiEV rechargeable electric minicar to market in Japan next year, while plans are also underway to begin fleet testing at some U.S. power companies as early as this autumn.

(Reporting by Nobuhiro Kubo and writing by Mariko Katsumura; Editing by Brent Kininmont)

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MAASTRICHT, Netherlands (AFP) - Romantic human-robot relationships are no longer the stuff of science fiction -- researchers expect them to become reality within four decades.

And they do not mean simply, mechanical sex.

"I am talking about loving relationships about 40 years from now," David Levy, author of the book "Love + sex with robots", told AFP at an international conference held last week at the University of Maastricht in the south-east of the country.

"... when there are robots that have also emotions, personality, consciousness. They can talk to you, they can make you laugh. They can ... say they love you just like a human would say 'I love you', and say it as though they mean it ..."

Robots as sex toys should already be on the market within five years, predicted Levy, "a sort of an upgrade of the sex dolls on sale now".

These would have electronic speech and sensors that make them utter "nice sounds" when a human caresses their "erogenous zones".

But to build robots as real partners would take a bit longer, with conversation skills being the main obstacle for developers.

Scientists were working on artificial personality, emotion and consciousness, said Levy, and some robots already appear lifelike.

"But for loving relationships -- that is something completely different. In loving relationships there are many more things that are important. And the most difficult of all is conversation.

"You want your robot to be able to talk to you about what is interesting to you. You want a partner who has some similar interest to you, who talks to you in a manner that pleases you, who has a similar sense of humour to you."

The field of human-computer conversation is crucial to building robots with whom humans could fall in love, but is lagging behind other areas of development, said the author.

"I am sure it will (happen.) In 40 years ... perhaps sooner. You will find robots, conversation partners, that will talk to you and you will get as much pleasure from it as talking to another human. I am sure of it."

Levy's bombshell thesis, whose publication has had a ripple-effect way beyond the scientific community, gives rise to a number of complicated ethical and relationship questions.

British scholar Dylan Evans pointed out the paradox inherent to any relationship with a robot.

"What is absolutely crucial to the sentiment of love, is the belief that the love is neither unconditional nor eternal.

"Robots cannot choose you, they cannot reject you. That could become very boring, and one can imagine the human becoming cruel against his defenseless partner", said Evans.

A robot could conceivably be programmed with a will of its own and the ability to reject his human partner, he said, "but that would be a very difficult robot to sell".

Some warn against being overhasty.

"Let us not exaggerate the possibilities!" said Dutch researcher Vincent Wiegel of the Technological University of the eastern town of Delft.

"Today, the artificial intelligence we are able to create is that of a child of one year of age."

But Levy is unyielding. He is convinced it will happen, and predicts many societal benefits.

"There are many millions of people in the world who have nobody. They might be shy or they might have some psychological hang-ups or psycho-sexual hang-ups, they might have personality problems, they might be ugly ...

"There will always be many millions of people who cannot make normal satisfactory relationships with humans, and for them the choice is not: 'would I prefer a relationship with a human or would I prefer a relationship with a robot?' -- the choice is no relationship at all or a relationship with a robot."

They might even become human-to-human relationship savers, he predicted.

"Certainly there will be some existing human-human relationships where one partner might say to the other partner: 'if you have sex with a robot I'm leaving you'.

"There will be others who say: 'when you go on your business trip please take your robot because I happen to worry about the red light district'."

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A US space agency (Nasa) mission is about to go one better than Superman.

While the comic-book Kryptonian had to make do with X-ray vision, Nasa is set to launch a space telescope called Glast which will enable astronomers to view the Universe with "gamma-ray glasses".

Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light, vastly more energetic than the light we see with our eyes, or even X-rays.

The upper end of this energy range is almost unexplored in astronomy. So the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope will open up a high-energy frontier where important discoveries are almost guaranteed.

If Glast were a piano, it would have about 23 octaves Dr Steven Ritz, Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center

Glast will study some of the most extreme and exotic phenomena in the Universe.

These include massive explosions that release as much energy in a second as the Sun will release over its 10-billion-year lifetime and supermassive black holes that hurl matter vast distances across space at close to the speed of light.

According to Dr Steven Ritz, project scientist for the Glast mission, one of the most interesting things about the gamma-ray sky is that it is always changing.

"If you look up at the night sky, once a decade or so you might see a comet. You might notice that things are moving incredibly slowly. But it looks fairly placid and unchanging," Dr Ritz told BBC News.

WHAT GLAST WILL STUDY Active galaxies and blazars Gamma-ray bursts Neutron stars, including pulsars Cosmic rays Gamma-ray background radiation Dark matter The early Universe

"If you had gamma-ray glasses, it would look completely different. Once a day there's an explosion somewhere in the Universe where huge amounts of power are released - so-called gamma-ray bursts.

"Supermassive black hole systems are flaring brightly, changing their brightness very quickly. You would see objects pulsating - what we call pulsars."

Dr Dave Thompson, one of the deputy project scientists on Glast, told BBC News: "Our Sun, except when it has a big solar flare, is pretty dim in gamma-rays - almost invisible. So we don't see objects like that. What we do see are things with lots of 'oomph' - lot's of energetic activity."

Historically, Glast follows in the footsteps of another American satellite, the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO). But Glast represents a major step up in capability, covering an incredible range of energy.

"If Glast were a piano, it would have about 23 octaves," explains Dr Ritz.

Dr Thompson adds: "One of the big mysteries left over from the CGRO mission is that half the sources were unidentified - we don't know what they are. That's something we'll be out to solve."

Keeping watch

Gamma-rays are far too energetic to capture in the conventional way. The main scientific instrument on Glast is a telescope without lenses or mirrors: the Large Area Telescope, or Lat. It uses technology adapted from ground-based particle accelerators.

It has 16 so-called tower modules assembled in a four-by-four array. Each tower contains layers of silicon detectors interleaved by thin sheets of tungsten foil.

THE GLAST MISSION Five-year mission, but spacecraft could last for 10 Will look at the Universe in highest-energy form of light Spacecraft is 2.8m (9.2ft) high and 2.4m (8.2ft) in diameter Orbits at an altitude of 565km (350 miles) The mission cost about $690m (£350m) Lat instrument scans entire sky in two orbits of Earth Could pick up about 200 cosmic explosions each year Mission is a team-up between Nasa and US Department of Energy

The gamma-rays are so energetic that when they hit the foil, they are converted into matter, namely an electron and its anti-matter partner the positron. The subsequent paths taken by these particles are tracked by the silicon detectors to reveal where in the sky the gamma-ray came from.

The electron and positron travel down to a calorimeter which measures their energies - and therefore the energy of the original gamma-ray.

Lat's field of view is comparable to the human eye - seeing about 20% of the sky at a time.

"We are sweeping that field of view across the entire sky every three hours. Each region will be exposed for something like 30 minutes," Dr Ritz explains.

"We're keeping watch over the entire sky all the time. And over time, we are able to see dimmer and dimmer things. We're very excited because there are lots of questions as to how variable things are, and the variability is the key to how some of these incredibly powerful engines work."

The other instrument on Glast is the Glast Burst Monitor (GBM), designed specifically to shed light on gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).

Despite lasting only a few milliseconds to several minutes, these are the brightest gamma-ray phenomena known to science. Missions such as Nasa's Swift space telescope have greatly extended our knowledge.

GRBs lasting two seconds or longer are thought to be associated with the explosive deaths of massive stars. Those lasting less than two seconds may arise through a variety of events, such as the merger of two neutron stars, or the merger of a black hole and a neutron star.

But crucial questions remained unanswered.

"Some bursts have a mysterious delayed emission of high energy gamma-rays. That's something we're going to learn about on this mission," says Charles "Chip" Meegan of Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the chief scientist on the GBM.

The GBM will detect about 200 of these fleeting events each year, providing real-time locations for follow-up by ground-based and other space-based telescopes.

But Glast's "bread and butter" will be studying active galactic nuclei, or AGN for short. These are galaxies with extremely luminous cores powered by monster black holes.

"Just to give you a sense of the brightness, the power output in gamma-rays of one of these objects is equivalent to all the power of all the stars in an ordinary galaxy shining over all their wavelengths," Dr Ritz explains.

[Pulsars] are some of the most exotic laboratories in the Universe: extreme gravity, extreme magnetic fields, extreme electric fields, high speeds Dr Dave Thompson, Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center

Huge amounts of energy are liberated as the gas surrounding these "supermassive" black holes and falls in like water spiralling down a plughole. These galactic cores squirt out enormous jets of very high energy particles that move at near light-speed and can travel far beyond their galaxy of origin.

When these are pointed almost directly at Earth, they are known as "blazars": "In a sense, we're looking down the barrel of a gun," says Dave Thompson.

Despite the fantastic scale and speed of the jets, astronomers have not been able to explain how black holes interact with their environment to accelerate matter to more than 99% the speed of light.

Glast should also shed new light on pulsars, a neutron star emitting powerful beams of radiation that sweep across the Earth's line of sight like lighthouse beacons.

GRBs can result from the collision of two neutron stars

They are formed when the core of a massive star collapses and matter is squeezed so tightly that an amount of material the size of a sugar cube would weigh more than one billion tonnes - about the same as Mount Everest.

"We want to know how particles are accelerated in pulsars. They are some of the most exotic laboratories in the Universe: extreme gravity, extreme magnetic fields, extreme electric fields, high speeds - all of these things are found in pulsars," says Dave Thompson.

"So they are like cosmic labs for things we can't come close to producing on Earth."

The spacecraft will probe the origin of cosmic rays, particles from deep space that bombard the Earth's atmosphere. Glast will test the theory that these particles are created when massive stars explode in supernovas.

Searching for the identity of dark matter, one of the most persistent problems in physics, is also on Glast's to-do list. Despite accounting for 22% of everything in the Universe, the fundamental make-up of this dark "stuff" continues to elude physicists.

Unknown unknowns

A leading candidate is the weakly interacting massive particle, or Wimp. According to one model, when two Wimps collide, they destroy - or "annihilate" - one another. This should generate two gamma-ray photons with a combined energy equal to the mass of the original dark particles.

If astronomers see too many gamma-rays in a particular high-energy range, they will know that dark matter is involved.

This observation could be very difficult to make. Most of the radiation released by Wimp collisions should emerge over a broad range of energy. So this signal will swamped by the radiation produced by all other gamma-ray sources in the Universe.

But gamma-rays from dark matter annihilations should have a distinctive spectrum and distribution. They should clump together near the centres of galaxies, and this bias may aid their detection.

The most exciting discoveries, however, might be those that no one expects.

"Are there new classes of objects producing gamma-rays in ways we didn't know about? Are there types of things we know about but which we didn't know produced gamma-rays? These are some of the big questions," Dave Thompson tells me.

The mission's scientific promise has attracted researchers from six countries and a variety of scientific backgrounds.

"There are particle physicists and astrophysicists and astronomers all working together to design, build, operate and use the data from Glast," Dr Ritz explains.

"That's exciting, because it forms a nexus of these areas and great things come out of that."

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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