Now Space Companies Looking for New Horizons Without Shuttles

Less than a year, NASA ended its space shuttle program, U.S. companies that participated in this adventure are now looking for new horizons.

United Technologies Corp. is the latest company to announce that markedly reduce its participation in space exploration. Put up for sale its subsidiary Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a manufacturer of rocket engines and liquid propulsion systems purchased seven years ago.

The sale of Rocketdyne and other businesses aims to raise 3,000 million dollars to finance the acquisition of aerospace parts subsidiary of Goodrich Corp. Chief Financial Officer United Technologies, Greg Hayes, criticized the U.S. space policy by announcing in mid-March the sale of Rocketdyne. "Growth will be limited Rocketdyne," said Hayes to investment analysts. "Still a very good business. It is a national asset ... but unfortunately, without a national space policy, growth will be limited for some time."

Rocketdyne dates from the early days of space rockets and worked with pioneers such as Wernher von Braun, contributing to the propulsion of spacecraft of the Apollo program in the 1960 and 1970 that carried astronauts to the moon. The company has a future with NASA's future even if the organism is not clear, said President Rocketdyne, Jim Maser. Three of the four companies competing to carry astronauts to the space station will use the Rocketdyne propulsion system, he said. But he said NASA's future is unclear. "There is an official policy space and honestly I can not mention it," said Maser. the shuttle program began 30 years ago by NASA concluded in July with the flight of Atlantis.

The shuttle Discovery now a museum piece, supplied by NASA in mid-April to the Smithsonian Institute. Other companies have shifted their activities to other fields in space exploration. Lockheed Martin Corp. closed its production plant for shuttle fuel tanks in New Orleans in 2010, laying off about 1,400 employees. A year later, NASA selected the site for building components of the new heavy-lift rocket, but only if Congress funds the project. ATK Space SystemsTech has fired hundreds of employees in Utah due to the withdrawal of the shuttle program and the lag Minuteman III missile. And Space Center in Florida has lost thousands of jobs. NASA will continue to use companies like Boeing, SpaceX and others to carry cargo and astronauts to and from the International Space Station from three to five years. Until then pay tens of millions of dollars per seat in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Rocky World Planet Turns To Dust

"Rocky World Planet situated to 1,500 light years away, disintegrates without remedy under the scorching heat of its star"

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA Researchers have identified 1,500 light years away a rocky planet not much bigger than Mercury, which seems to be evaporating under scorching heat of its star. A long trail of debris, much like a comet, continues to this world as a permanent reminder of what will be its tragic end. According to the team's calculations, the exoplanet will disintegrate completely within 100 million years.

The Researchers found that rocky planet is dusty and circles its star every 15 hours, one of the planetary orbits shortest ever observed. A walk is so short that both bodies are very close, so the planet must be heated by its star at a temperature of nearly 2,000°C. Researchers believe that at these temperatures infernal rock material in the planet's surface melts and evaporates, forming a wind that carries the gas and dust into space.

The group's findings are based on data from Kepler, a space telescope that observes more than 160,000 stars in the Milky Way. The observatory records the brightness of each star at regular intervals and scientists analyze the data for signs of new planets outside our solar system.

Astronomers using the Kepler satellite usually identify exoplanets by searching for regular spots in the brightness of a star, indicating that something is up ahead. However, the researchers found a curious pattern of light in a star called KIC 12557548. The group examined the light curves of the star and found that its light was reduced at different intensities every 15 hours, suggesting that something was blocking the star regularly, but to varying degrees.

"Deaths extraordinary"

What happened? The team considered several explanations, including the possibility of a planetary duo-two planets that orbit each other, also revolve around the star. but in the end the data did not support this hypothesis. Instead, researchers came up with another possibility: that the different light intensities were caused by some amorphous, which changes shape.

The researchers investigated ways in which dust can be created and torn from a planet. If this occurs, this world must have a low gravitational field, like that of Mercury , so that the gas and dust can escape from the gravitational pull on the planet. It must also be very hot, about 1,982 ° C.

Dan Fabrycky, science team member of the observatory Kepler believed that this may be one of the many ways in which a planet may disappear. "The planets are not eternal objects can have extraordinary deaths and in this case the planet would evaporate completely in the future.