Human moon missions could be on the horizon under Trump
PBS NewsHour | March 1, 2017: Is there renewed focus inside the Trump administration, NASA and the private sector to revive travel to the moon? There are signs, like a single reference in President Trump's address to Congress, that seem to suggest that a space journey may be sooner than we might think. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins Judy Woodruff to discuss what we could learn and why it’s back on the table.

Credit: +PBS NewsHour
Duration: 5 minutes
Release Date: March 1, 2017

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+NASA's Kennedy Space Center
+NASA Johnson Space Center
+SpaceX
+Elon Musk

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World's oldest fossils unearthed in Quebec, Canada | UCL
University College London (UCL) | Feb. 23, 2017: Remains of microorganisms at least 3,770 million years old have been discovered by an international team led by UCL scientists, providing direct evidence of one of the oldest life forms on Earth.

Tiny filaments and tubes formed by bacteria that lived on iron were found encased in quartz layers in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB), Quebec, Canada.

The NSB contains some of the oldest sedimentary rocks known on Earth which likely formed part of an iron-rich deep-sea hydrothermal vent system that provided a habitat for Earth’s first life forms between 3,770 and 4,300 million years ago.

“Our discovery supports the idea that life emerged from hot, seafloor vents shortly after planet Earth formed. This speedy appearance of life on Earth fits with other evidence of recently discovered 3,700 million year old sedimentary mounds that were shaped by microorganisms,” explained first author, PhD student Matthew Dodd (UCL Earth Sciences and the London Centre for Nanotechnology).

Published today in Nature and funded by UCL, NASA, Carnegie of Canada and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the study describes the discovery and the detailed analysis of the remains undertaken by the team from UCL, the Geological Survey of Norway, US Geological Survey, The University of Western Australia, the University of Ottawa and the University of Leeds.

Prior to this discovery, the oldest microfossils reported were found in Western Australia and dated at 3,460 million years old but some scientists think they might be non-biological artefacts in the rocks. It was therefore a priority for the UCL-led team to determine whether the remains from Canada had biological origins.

The researchers systematically looked at the ways the tubes and filaments, made of haematite—a form of iron oxide or ‘rust’—could have been made through non-biological methods such as temperature and pressure changes in the rock during burial of the sediments, but found all of the possibilities unlikely.

The haematite structures have the same characteristic branching of iron-oxidising bacteria found near other hydrothermal vents today and were found alongside graphite and minerals like apatite and carbonate which are found in biological matter including bones and teeth and are frequently associated with fossils.

They also found that the mineralised fossils are associated with spheroidal structures that usually contain fossils in younger rocks, suggesting that the haematite most likely formed when bacteria that oxidised iron for energy were fossilised in the rock.

“We found the filaments and tubes inside centimetre-sized structures called concretions or nodules, as well as other tiny spheroidal structures, called rosettes and granules, all of which we think are the products of putrefaction. They are mineralogically identical to those in younger rocks from Norway, the Great Lakes area of North America and Western Australia,” explained study lead, Dr Dominic Papineau (UCL Earth Sciences and the London Centre for Nanotechnology).

“The structures are composed of the minerals expected to form from putrefaction, and have been well documented throughout the geological record, from the beginning until today. The fact we unearthed them from one of the oldest known rock formations, suggests we’ve found direct evidence of one of Earth’s oldest life forms. This discovery helps us piece together the history of our planet and the remarkable life on it, and will help to identify traces of life elsewhere in the universe.”

Matthew Dodd concluded, “These discoveries demonstrate life developed on Earth at a time when Mars and Earth had liquid water at their surfaces, posing exciting questions for extra-terrestrial life. Therefore, we expect to find evidence for past life on Mars 4,000 million years ago, or if not, Earth may have been a special exception.”

Credit: University College London (UCL)
Duration: 4 minutes
Release Date: February 23, 2017

+UCL
+uOttawa
+NASA Astrobiology
+Astrobiology Magazine
+Nature News & Comment
+NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Oldest traces of life on Earth found in Quebec, dating back roughly 3.8 billion years | CBC News
May aid in search for traces of life elsewhere in our solar system
March 1, 2017: A team of international scientists has found the oldest record of life on Earth in Northern Quebec, dating back at least 3.8 billion years.

Our solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists believe that about 4.3 billion years ago, water already existed at the surface. However, what isn't known is when the earliest life emerged. Recent research has found life at 3.4 billion years and, most recently 3.7 billion years.

The discovery was made in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Northern Quebec in rock known as "banded iron formations." These formations existed billions of years ago, a result of organisms reacting with dissolved iron in the water that covered the planet. They appear in rock as red or white layers.

While there is some debate as to whether or not the the age of the rock in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt is 3.8 billion years old or 4.3 billion years old, Jonathan O'Neill, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, believes it to be on the older side. But even if the rock is younger than that, it would still make their finding the oldest record of life on Earth, by 100 million years.

"It's impressive," O'Neill said. "We now have evidence in rock that I can hold in my hand that we had life already established extremely early on the Earth."

Emerging life

Discoveries such as this one greatly help scientists better understand the early Earth. O'Neill said that scientists had previously theorized that Earth was a truly inhospitable place at this young geological age, a searing, active world with molten lava lakes incapable of supporting any surface water or life. However, O'Neill said that recent research is painting a far different picture.

"Within the last 15, 20 years, we have more and more evidence that that's not the case," he said. "Very quickly after its formation, the Earth became closer to what it is today. We already have evidence of water at the surface of the Earth by about 4.3 billion years ago."

Click on article link below to read more...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/oldest-record-life-earth-found-quebec-1.4004545?cmp=news-digests-canada-and-world-evening

Credit: +CBC News
Release Date: March 1, 2017

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+Nature News & Comment

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Earliest evidence of life on Earth 'found' | BBC News
Scientists have discovered what they say could be fossils of some of the earliest living organisms on Earth.
March 1, 2017: They are represented by tiny filaments, knobs and tubes in Canadian rocks dated to be up to 4.28 billion years old. That is a time not long after the planet's formation and hundreds of millions of years before what is currently accepted as evidence for the most ancient life yet found on Earth.

The researchers report their investigation in the journal Nature.
As with all such claims about ancient life, the study is contentious. But the team believes it can answer any doubts.
The scientists' putative microbes from Quebec are one-tenth the width of a human hair and contain significant quantities of haematite - a form of iron oxide or "rust".

Matthew Dodd, who analysed the structures at University College London, UK, claimed the discovery would shed new light on the origins of life.

"This discovery answers the biggest questions mankind has asked itself—which are: where do we come from and why we are here?

"It is very humbling to have the oldest known lifeforms in your hands and being able to look at them and analyse them," he told BBC News.

The fossil structures were encased in quartz layers in the so-called Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB).

The NSB is a chunk of ancient ocean floor. It contains some of the oldest volcanic and sedimentary rocks known to science.

Click on article link below to read more...
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39117523

Credit: +BBC News
Release Date: March 1, 2017

+Nature News & Comment
+NASA Astrobiology
+Astrobiology Magazine

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Snow in the Middle East | NASA Aqua Satellite
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this view of snow in the Middle East on February 20, 2017. The white coating stretched from eastern Turkey and the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea.

Credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response
Caption Credit: Pola Lem
Instrument(s): Aqua - MODIS

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+NASA Goddard

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Tonight's Sky: March 2017 | HubbleSite
Backyard stargazers get a monthly guide to the northern hemisphere's skywatching events with "Tonight's Sky." The March equinox still grants plenty of dark nighttime skies for planet-hunting.

"Tonight's Sky" is produced by HubbleSite.org, online home of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: http://HubbleSite.org
Duration: 6 minutes
Release Date: February 22, 2017

+Hubble Space Telescope
+Space Telescope Science Institute
+NASA Goddard


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Dust Storm over North Africa | Suomi-NPP Earth Satellite
On February 21, 2017, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this natural-color image of a large dust plume streaming from North Africa toward Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. Additional images of the storm, acquired on February 22 and February 23, are available.

Image Credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response
Caption Credit: Adam Voiland
Image Date: February 21, 2017
Instrument(s): Suomi NPP - VIIRS

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Dust Devils on Mars Seen by NASA's Curiosity Rover | JPL
Feb. 27, 2017: On recent summer afternoons on Mars, navigation cameras aboard NASA's Curiosity Mars rover observed several whirlwinds carrying Martian dust across Gale Crater. Dust devils result from sunshine warming the ground, prompting convective rising of air. All the dust devils were seen in a southward direction from the rover. Timing is accelerated and contrast has been modified to make frame-to-frame changes easier to see.

For more information, read the full article at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6758

Video Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/TAMU
Duration: 1 minute
Release Date: February 27, 2017

+Curiosity
+NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Astronomical cooperation | Hubble & ALMA
The events surrounding the Big Bang were so cataclysmic that they left an indelible imprint on the fabric of the cosmos. We can detect these scars today by observing the oldest light in the Universe. As it was created nearly 14 billion years ago, this light —which exists now as weak microwave radiation and is thus named the cosmic microwave background (CMB)—has now expanded to permeate the entire cosmos, filling it with detectable photons.

The CMB can be used to probe the cosmos via something known as the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect, which was first observed over 30 years ago. We detect the CMB here on Earth when its constituent microwave photons travel to us through space. On their journey to us, they can pass through galaxy clusters that contain high-energy electrons. These electrons give the photons a tiny boost of energy. Detecting these boosted photons through our telescopes is challenging but important— they can help astronomers to understand some of the fundamental properties of the Universe, such as the location and distribution of dense galaxy clusters.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed one of most massive known galaxy clusters, RX J1347.5–1145, seen in this Picture of the Week, as part of the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH). This observation of the cluster, 5 billion light-years from Earth, helped the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to study the cosmic microwave background using the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect. The observations made with ALMA are visible as the blue-purple hues.

Credit:
ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Kitayama (Toho University, Japan)
Release Date: February 20, 2017

+Hubble Space Telescope
+European Southern Observatory (ESO)
+European Space Agency, ESA
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+Space Telescope Science Institute
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