The LCROSS mission

NASA has selected a final destination for its Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) which will impact the crater Cabeus A on 9 October.

LCROSS will search for water ice by sending its spent upper stage Centaur rocket to impact the permanently shadowed polar crater at the lunar south pole, while the satellite will fly through the plume of debris thrown up by the impact to measure its properties. After the first impact, and just four minutes later, the LCROSS satellite will too meet its fate in the crater, while the Moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Earth-based telescopes look on in the search for watery signatures. Shrouded in darkness for billions of years, this is the first time that such pristine material will be exposed to sunlight.

Close up of Cabeus A near the Moon's south pole. Image: NASA/JPL.

The LCROSS mission will reach fruition on 9 October. Image: NASA.

The LCROSS mission is a search for water on the moon. The LCROSS mission is going to do this by sending a rocket crashing into the moon causing a big impact and creating a crater, throwing tons of debris and potentially water ice and vapor above the lunar surface. This impact will release materials from the lunar surface that will be analyzed for the presence of hydrated minerals which would tell researchers if water is there or not. The two main components of the LCROSS mission are the Shepherding Spacecraft (S-S/C) and the Centaur upper stage rocket. The Shepherding Spacecraft guides the rocket to a site selected on the moon that has a high probability of containing water. Because they have only one chance with this mission in finding water, the researchers have to be very precise where they program the Shepherding Spacecraft to guide the rocket.

resources: www.astronomynow.com/news/n0909/14LCROSS/
http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/mission.htm

Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool

Australian online advertising firm, uSocial wants to help companies get more friends on Facebook by making them pay to attract members.

"Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool," said Leon Hill, uSocial CEO. "The simple fact is that with a large following on Facebook, you have an instant and targeted group of people you can contact and promote whatever it is you want to promote."

"The only problem is that it can be extremely difficult to achieve such a following, which is where we come in," added Hill.

The company offers packages starting with 1,000 Facebook friends for $177 up to 10,000 friends for $1,167. read more

NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander

PASADENA, Calif. – The big day has finally arrived: After 10 months of spaceflight, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is headed for its long-awaited attempt to touch down in the arctic region of the red planet later today.

"We've bet the whole farm on this safe landing," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in a Saturday briefing here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "We can't do our science without the safe landing."

The $420-million Phoenix mission, which launched in August, is expected to dig down into the rock-hard layers of water ice thought to lie under the Martian soil in the planet's northern polar region. It carries a robotic arm, ovens and wet chemistry lab to test the soil and ice to see if the region could have once been a habitable zone for microbial life.

The craft has performed beautifully so far, with all systems checking out throughout the 422 million-mile (679 million-km) trip to Mars, mission scientists have said. "Now what we need is a successful entry, descent and landing," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration program for NASA.

Phoenix is slated to land on the Vastitas Borealis plains of Mars later today, with mission scientists expecting to receive the first signal that Phoenix has landed at 7:53 p.m. EDT (2353 GMT). (The signal should arrive at Earth about 15 minutes after leaving Mars due to the 171 million miles (275 million km) between the red planet and Earth.)
SPACE.com's Phoenix mission coverage and a link to NASA TV.

Russia will concentrate on a State Arms Program

Russia will concentrate on a State Arms Program to be carried out by 2015. One of the program's priorities is to equip the armed forces with high accuracy weapons.
At first glance, it seems that the plans and legislative initiatives fully correspond with military-technical achievements. The latter include the development of the non-nuclear tactical Iskander missile (NATO reporting name SS-26) for the ground troops.
Last June, Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces General of the Army Alexander Maslov said that under the Arms Program until 2015 the missile and artillery forces will receive five missile brigades, each equipped with the Iskander-M missiles (NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone).
Defense Ministry planners have now made the unmistakable conclusion about the need to reduce the range or the quantity of military hardware. I have strong doubts that the reduction will affect the range - modern Russian arms have been reliably hidden into the golden cage of export contracts. T-90 tanks in the Russian armed forces can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But 310 of these tanks have already been produced for India, and there are contractual commitments to supply it with another 347. The Iskander system is no exception. It has long been popular in the Middle East.
If the situation remains the same, our tanks will leave our tank-training grounds, and our surface aircraft will land on foreign ships. But the effectiveness of our own program of rearmament will be close to zero.
reff. taken from :Andrei Kislyakov (The Moscow News)

Mesothelioma Treatment Options

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by previous exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body’s internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and chest cavity), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart).

Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or have been exposed to asbestos dust and fibre in other ways, such as by washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos, or by home renovation using asbestos cement products. Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking