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Russian scientists eye mission to moon this decade

  Read the story here:

Russian scientists eye mission to moon this decade

Have we Found Aliens? Unusual Remains Found in Peru


(TopNewsOnLineUK)  The remains of a large headed mummy was discovered in the city of Andahuaylillas, the discovery was made by Renato Davila Riquelme who found two sets of remains.

The first one has a very large head for the size of the body and the eye sockets are much larger than normal, at around 20 inches long it is the size of a very young child, the strange thing about it is the fontanel is still open as you would expect in a small child but in the jaw it has two large molars which are characteristic with older people.

The strangely shaped head is almost as large as its body and the eye sockets are much larger than a normal humans, in the right socket remains of an eyeball has been found and Renato Davila Riquelme who works for Privado Ritos Andinos museum in Cusco south eastern Peru will test a sample for DNA so he can clarify if these are human remains or not.

The second mummy was only 12-inches long but it lacked a face and was found in the fetal position and looked like it was wrapped in a layer like a placenta. The remains looks very much like the skull they used in the Indiana Jones film The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull which turned out to be alien and have special powers.

Several anthropologists from Spain and Russia who have examined the remains don’t believe it has any resemblance to any ethnic group in the world, they all said it was not human!

Another explanation comes from old customs used by ancient civilisations dating back about 9000 years, people like the Mayans and the North American natives.

They used to tightly bind the head of a new born baby with cloth starting around a month old and leaving it for about 6 months at that age the skull is very pliable. For cranial flattening, the head would be placed between two pieces of wood, changing the shape of the skull to either flat, round our conical was seen as a sign of social status or to signify group affiliation.

Source

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Note:  Clearly these are unusual remains but are they alien, hybrid (alien and human cross), or of a deformed, yet very human individual?   I suppose time and testing will tell, -SW

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Toxic Russian Mars Probe Heads Back To Earth
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Image: An artist's impression of Phobos-Grunt in Mars orbit (ROSCOSMOS/edit by Discovery News)

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It's hard to believe that only last week we were getting excited for Russia's first interplanetary mission in 15 years to launch. By now, we should be happy in the knowledge that the ambitious -- and awesome -- mission is powering through space, toward the Martian moon Phobos.

The reality is that we are now discussing uncontrolled reentry scenarios.

As if that wasn't enough bad news, we are looking at an uncontrolled toxic reentry scenario. Phobos-Grunt -- correctly written "Fobos-Grunt," meaning "Phobos-Soil" or "Phobos-Ground" -- is fully-laden with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide; that's ten tons of fuel and oxidizer. The probe itself weighs-in at only three tons.


ANALYSIS: Time Running Short for Stranded Mars Probe

The majority of the fuel will likely vaporize during reentry, but everyone will be hoping for a splash-down in an ocean (which covers two-thirds of Earth, fortunately), as the wreckage will still be hazardous. There's also a small quantity of radioactive cobalt-57 in one of the science missions housed in the probe -- a fact that will most likely cause a media frenzy.

It is for these reasons that the Russian media is dubbing Phobos-Grunt "Most toxic falling satellite ever."

(NOTE: At time of writing, there is no official word from the Russian space agency about the Phobos-Grunt situation.)

Though Russian mission controllers are frantically trying to regain control of the craft, it's not looking good. Today's efforts are widely regarded as a last-ditch attempt to salvage the mission. Other space agencies such as NASA and ESA have offered to assist, but it's looking like the probe is quickly becoming unrecoverable.

"Last night there were several attempts to obtain telemetry information from the unit. All of them ended with a zero result. The probability of saving the (probe) is very, very small," an anonymous industry source told

Interfax (translated from Russian).

Since Phobos-Grunt was placed in low-Earth orbit (LEO) on Tuesday, and the probe successfully separated from its booster rocket, its attached cruise stage rocket has yet to light up, providing a critical two burns to blast the probe away from Earth to begin its planned 10-month journey to the Red Planet.

ANALYSIS: Russia's Mars Mission May Be In Trouble
It is unknown whether there's a software error or hardware glitch, but attempts to upload new commands to the on board computers have so far failed to change the situation. Phobos-Grunt's batteries are draining and its orbit is degrading. It looks as if the probe will reenter later this month/early December. NORAD is putting a Nov. 26 reentry date on Phobos-Grunt.

And guess what? This will be the third large piece of space junk to reenter in an uncontrolled manner this year. In September, NASA's 6-ton UARS atmospheric satellite burned-up over the Pacific. In October, the German 2.4-ton ROSAT X-ray space mission reentered over the Bay of Bengal. Could November be the third consecutive reentry month?

Like UARS and ROSAT, the likely Phobos-Grunt reentry will be uncontrolled and at the mercy of a highly dynamic upper atmosphere. Also, the probe's orbit takes it between the latitudes 51.4 degrees North to 51.4 degrees South -- most of the world's population lives within that zone, and Phobos-Grunt could come down anywhere. Despite the fact that pieces of the probe will hit the ground, it is still extremely unlikely it will cause death and destruction, however.

NEWS: Russia Aims For Mars Moon

The demise of Phobos-Grunt will be a huge loss to the scientific community. Not only was the mission designed to land and scoop-up some regolith (dust and rock) from Phobos' surface, returning it to Earth for analysis, it is also carrying a fascinating Planetary Society experiment called the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or "LIFE."

LIFE is composed of many different types of bacteria to small organisms that seem to tolerate the space environment pretty well. Tardigrades -- known as water bears -- were also a part of the payload.
What was the point of sending microscopic organisms to a Martian moon?

In an effort to understand how life appeared on Earth, the experiment would have put the hypothesis of "panspermia" to the test. Panspermia is a proposed mechanism by with life may "hop" from one planetary body to the next -- meteorites slamming into Mars, say, ejecting many tons of debris into space. Should any organisms be "hitching a ride" on the debris, could they (or at least their genetic information) survive the interplanetary journey, and atmospheric entry, to spawn life on another world?

Alas, the LIFE experiment has been cut short. The first Chinese Mars satellite, Yinghuo-1, was also hitching a ride and won't go any further than LEO either.

So what now? As we await the inevitable reentry of Phobos-Grunt, it would appear the Russian authorities are looking for someone to blame after a string of mission failures.  According to a (translated) Interfax bulletin, an anonymous (expert) source indicated this may force reform in the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. Also, "a number of positions of responsible persons" could face jail time.
I think it's about time we ask those tardigrades for a favor...

               Thanks to Discovery News.

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Editor's Note:  This doesn't look good, folks.  With all the space junk that has been crashing to Earth lately and now this?  Looks like there will be more than just finger pointing and blaming going on. -SW


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The Yeti has been a thing of fantasy for hundreds of years. The cryptozoological puzzle of Sasquatch and Yeti has long been a thing of puzzle. A group of experts were invited to Russia to search for proof of the yeti. As reported by the regional government, evidence of the yeti has been discovered.

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Yeti/Bigfoot and UFOs.  What is the connection? Illustration by SW/LITS.

Scientists from a number of countries (Russia, the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Estonia, Mongolia and China), will conference this week (Thursday - Saturday), to evaluate the existence of the legendary creatures known as the Yeti.

From this conference, a team of scientist will be sent out to scour the Kemerovo and neighboring Altai region, about 1,988 miles (3,200 kilometers) east of Moscow, in search of the elusive "ape-man".

The scientists will examine evidence of the existence of the creatures, such as twisted branches, footprints of up to 14 inches (35 centimeters) and even basic twig huts.  Evidence will also include both audio recordings and photographs and it is even alleged by local game wardens, that evidence was obtained by a motion-triggered camera in a cave 50 miles from Tashtagol. 

Though there had been a much smaller expedition in September, this new expedition will be the first of its kind since 1958, when scientists from the Soviet Academy of Sciences searched Western Siberia, in an attempt to catch a Yeti.

Igor Burtsev, head of the Moscow-based International Center of Hominology, recently said, "When Homo sapiens started populating the world, it viciously exterminated its closest relative in the hominid family, Homo neanderthalensis. Some of the Neanderthals, however, may have survived to this day in some mountainous wooded habitats that are more or less off limits to their arch foes."

Will these scientists find unequivocal proof of the existence of the Yeti?  I wish them luck, as it seems researchers here in our own back yard can't seem to find proof of the existence of our own Bigfoot (relative of the Yeti?), or proof positive evidence of Extraterrestrial visits from outer space.

If the scientists and researchers do find proof of Yeti, Bigfoot, aliens, or any of the many other cryptids right here on our own planet, how is that going to impact our lives?  Are they all connected in some way?  I'm left to wonder... and so are many others.

Source
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A Russian Soyuz rocket launches the unmanned Progress 44 cargo ship from Baikonur Cosmodrome on Aug. 24, 2011 to deliver fresh supplies to the International Space Station. The rocket and spacecraft crashed in eastern Russian just over five minutes after liftoff. CREDIT: RSC Energia

Space Station Crew Closely Watching Russian Rocket Crash Investigation


Space.com-  Astronauts on the International Space Station are keeping a close eye on the investigation into the recent crash of a Russian rocket in order to learn how it will impact their mission in orbit.
The Soyuz rocket was carrying Russia's Progress 44 supply ship for the International Space Station, which was expected to deliver 3 tons of supplies to the orbiting lab's six-man crew. Instead, the rocket and cargo ship crashed in eastern Russia after a malfunction in the booster's third stage forced an engine shutdown.

"It's a pity the launch of Progress resupply vehicle didn't go well. Experts have worked on the investigation of its various impacts," station astronaut Satoshi Furukawa of Japan wrote on Aug. 26, two days after the crash, on Twitter, where he posts updates about his mission as @Astro_Satoshi. "But, as there are plenty of supplies to support the crew, we'll be fine for a while."


Since Russia's Federal Space Agency uses similar versions of its Soyuz rocket design to launch unmanned Progress vehicles and its crewed space capsules, officials want to make sure that they are safe to carry astronauts and cosmonauts. The next Soyuz to ferry a crew to the station was slated to launch Sept. 22 to replace three astronauts who are due to return home on Sept. 8.

Those plans may now change, the astronauts said. It's possible that the launch of the new station crew will be delayed until the crash investigation is complete, and that may force the three returning crewmembers to stay in orbit longer than planned.

"We don't have a lot of decisions made yet because we want to make sure we have the right course of action," station astronaut Ron Garan, of NASA, told SPACE.com from orbit Thursday (Aug. 25). "So we're going to take a little bit of time to think about it and make sure we have all the facts together before we go on and have a game plan." [Video: Station Crew Discusses Rocket Crash with SPACE.com]

Garan is one of the three astronauts who would have to extend their stay on the space station. They were due to land next week to end a six-month spaceflight.

"Up here, we're in kind of a wait-and-see mindset," Garan said. "We're fully prepared to support whatever decisions are made."

NASA will hold a press conference today at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) with the latest on the crash's impacts on the space station crew.





Russian rocket inquiry
Before the Progress 44 crash, Russia was expected to launch four Soyuz rockets —two carrying new crews and two with unmanned Progress cargo ships — as part of the regular flight schedule.

If the investigation into last week's rocket crash isn't completed quickly, NASA and its space station partners may consider cutting the orbiting lab's crew size in half, from six people to three,  or even leaving the space station unmanned for a time until flights can be resumed, station managers have said. Space station flight planners have until October to decide to shift down to a three-person crew, they added.

[Photos: Building the International Space Station]

"If things extend too long, which we don't have any indication today that's the case but given the anomaly we have to be prepared, there is an ability to operate station with less than six crew if that becomes necessary," NASA's space station program manager Mike Suffering told reporters last week just after the rocket crash.

With NASA's space shuttle fleet retired (the final flight was in July), Russia's Soyuz space capsules are the only vehicle currently ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Robotic cargo ships built by Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency also make deliveries to the orbiting lab.

NASA currently has contracts with two private U.S. spaceflight companies, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, to provide unmanned cargo deliveries to the station in the next few years. Test flights for those vehicles are expected in the coming months. NASA also plans to eventually use commercial spacecraft for astronaut launches, too.

However, Russia's string of rocket and satellite failures in the last year that has caused some concern among U.S. lawmakers and experts since the country is also the sole avenue for American spaceflight until the new private spaceships become available.

Suffredini said he is confident NASA's Russian partners will find the cause of the Soyuz rocket malfunction and resume flights as soon as it is safe to do so.

"We're trying, right now, to give our Russian colleagues time to collect the data," Suffredini said. "Really, what you need right now is time."





Space station crew size cut ahead?
The space station currently has enough supplies to support a full, six-person for about 50 extra days beyond the scheduled Sept. 8 return of Garan and his crewmates, Suffredini added. There are enough supplies to support a smaller crew through at least March 2012, when the next European space freighter is due at the station, he said.

Suffredini also said that, barring an unforeseen major system or equipment failure, the space station could be even be flown without a crew for up to a year. Such a move, however, would be unprecedented.

The $100 billion space station has been continuously inhabited by crews of various sizes, from two-person skeleton crews to a full complement of six, since the first crew took up residence in 2001. The space station was completed earlier this year after more than a decade of orbital construction. It is larger than a football field and can be easily spotted by observers on Earth at night if they have clear skies and know where to look.

Space station officials are hopeful Russia's Soyuz rocket crash will be solved in time for the next scheduled launch of a Progress cargo ship, which is slated for late October.

On the space station, the astronauts said they, too, are confident that Russia's rocket issues will be solved, and that they are ready for any challenges, be it a decision to extend the current crew's mission or cut the station crew size in half temporarily.

"Obviously, I would have mixed feelings … I mean I've been away from home for a long time. But a lot of people are away from home doing things that they believe in," Garan said, adding that at the very least he'd have more time to share his spaceflight experience with people on Earth.  "So there's an upside and a downside and whatever the decision is, I think it will be what's best for the program and we'll fully support it."

Read more here.


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'Suitcase' Nuclear Reactors to Power Mars Colonies

Image credit: NASA

Discovery News-  Nuclear power is an emotive subject -- particularly in the wake of the Fukushima power plant disaster after Japan's March earthquake and tsunami -- but in space, it may be an essential component of spreading mankind beyond terrestrial shores.

On Monday, at the 242nd National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Denver, Colo., the future face of space nuclear power was described. You can forget the huge reactor buildings, cooling towers and hundreds of workers; the first nuclear reactors to be landed on alien worlds to support human settlement will be tiny.

Think less "building sized" and more "suitcase sized."

"People would never recognize the fission power system as a nuclear power reactor," said James E. Werner, lead of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Idaho National Laboratory.

"The reactor itself may be about 1 feet wide by 2 feet high, about the size of a carry-on suitcase. There are no cooling towers. A fission power system is a compact, reliable, safe system that may be critical to the establishment of outposts or habitats on other planets. Fission power technology can be applied on Earth's Moon, on Mars, or wherever NASA sees the need for continuous power."
Tumbleweed WATCH VIDEO: New concepts for Mars-probing rovers would use Martian wind to move around the planet.

Obviously, this will be welcome news to Mars colonization advocates; to have a dependable power source on the Martian surface will be of paramount importance. The habitats will need to have a constant power supply simply to keep the occupants alive. This will be "climate control" on an unprecedented level.

Water extraction, reclamation and recycling; food cultivation and storage; oxygen production and carbon dioxide scrubbing; lighting; hardware, tools and electronics; waste management -- these are a few of the basic systems that will need to be powered from the moment humans set foot on the Red Planet, 24 hours 39 minutes a day (or "sol" -- a Martian day), 669 sols a year.

Fission reactors can provide that.

However, nuclear fission reactors have had a very limited part to play in space exploration up until now. Russia has launched over 30 fission reactors, whereas the US has launched only one. All have been used to power satellites.

Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), on the other hand, have played a very important role in the exploration of the solar system since 1961.

These are not fission reactors, which split uranium atoms to produce heat that can then be converted into electricity. RTGs depend on small pellets of the radioisotope plutonium-238 to produce a steady heat as they decay. NASA's Pluto New Horizons and Cassini Solstice missions are equipped with RTGs (not solar arrays) for all their power needs. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), to be launched in November 2011, is powered by RTGs for Mars roving day or night.

RTGs are great, but to power a Mars base, fission reactors would be desirable because they deliver more energy. And although solar arrays will undoubtedly have a role to play, fission reactors will be the premier energy source for the immediate future.

"The biggest difference between solar and nuclear reactors is that nuclear reactors can produce power in any environment," said Werner. "Fission power technology doesn't rely on sunlight, making it able to produce large, steady amounts of power at night or in harsh environments like those found on the Moon or Mars. A fission power system on the Moon could generate 40 kilowatts or more of electric power, approximately the same amount of energy needed to power eight houses on Earth."

"The main point is that nuclear power has the ability to provide a power-rich environment to the astronauts or science packages anywhere in our solar system and that this technology is mature, affordable and safe to use."

Of course, to make these "mini-nuclear reactors" a viable option for the first moon and Mars settlements, they'll need to be compact, lightweight and safe. Werner contends that once the technology is validated, we'll have one of the most versatile and affordable power resources to support manned exploration of the solar system.

Sadly, I suspect the biggest hurdle facing space fission power won't be the viability of its technology, but the bad press nuclear power receives, on Earth and in space.

Read more here.



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Diligent researcher Isaac Koi has published on his blog some details about some unusual space debris that was found in northern Saskatchewan in 1968. It was the largest piece ever found to that date, and was definitely considered to have come from space. However, the Canadian military and government could not definitively explain what it was from.


Koi got the docs and photos from a collection of UFO-related material held by the Canadian National Archives and made available online.







I have noted before that this is not "Disclosure" because the Canadian government has been making UFO docs available for decades at the Archives in Ottawa. It's only recently that they scanned several thousand docs and put them online.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread736264/pg1
http://www.ufoupdateslist.com/2011/aug/m16-001.shtml

Anyway, I replied to Koi in Errol Bruce-Knapp's UFO Updates and noted the found space debris was one of a number of known, documented crashes of objects in Canada.
http://www.ufoupdateslist.com/2011/aug/m16-006.shtml

Here's my updated, annotated list:

Known and documented Canadian "UFO crashes" include:

March 15, 1960
A U-2 spy plane made a forced landing on Wapawekka Lake in northern Saskatchewan.
http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Saskatchewan/u2_drops_in.htm
Few people know that there was another U-2 incident other than that of Francis Gary Powers. It's a good thing that Flin Flon was more friendly than Russia. As far as we know, no one saw the U-2 make the emergency landing in Saskatchewan, which might have resulted in a UFO report.

June 22, 1960
An object is seen to fall into Clan Lake, Northwest Territories.
http://uforum.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html
The RCMP officer who met the witness recalled in 2010 that he was a reliable and trustworthy individual, not prone to exaggeration and well-liked in the community. If it was a meteorite under the water of significant size, you'd think the scientists would want to recover it.

October 4, 1967
A bright object was seen by several witnesses to fall into Shag Harbour, off the coast of Nova Scotia.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread736264/pg1#pid11980698
Called "Canada's Roswell," it's actually a bit better because we have official docs that something really happened, unlike Roswell.

October 17, 1968
Fragments of a "space vehicle" found near Wollaston Lake in Saskatchewan are received by the NRC.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread736264/pg1
Koi notes that this chunk of metal was the largest such debris found to that date, and yet it still didn't make it into any list of known space debris recoveries.

January 24, 1978
Cosmos 954 crashes into northern Canada, mostly near Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories but also, of course, Saskatchewan.
http://sciradioactive.com/Taylors_Nuke_Site/Operation_Morning_Light.html
This radioactive Russian spacecraft was seen to fragment and fall over a very wide area in the largely uninhabited Canadian north. Still, radioactive debris was painstakingly tracked, located and taken to the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment in Pinawa, Manitoba, for examination. Aboriginal people throughout the area were given medical examinations and tested for radioactive contamination.

The significance of the above events is that each has official documentation and was investigated by authorities. The U-2 was technically not a crash or a UFO incident, but it's interesting it took place in a region where other events are now know to have occurred. Largely uninhabited, what else might have happened in the Canadian north that is yet to be discovered?

Video Link




Russian television recently released a report of an attack to huge UFO... of at least 656 feet in diameter upon Khabarovsk.
Allegedly, air and land missiles and Air Force attacked this object.
I shall present the report.  What do you think?

Russian television informed that a huge UFO of about 656 feet in diameter, was seen on May 16, 2011 above khabarovsk, the second important city at the eastern end of the country.
The unknown object was so threatening that it was attacked by military men.
People of khabarovsk said it was scary to see a huge craft that spinned and descended... overflew the city.
The witnesses assured the object didn't look like anything made by human science.

"It was about 656 feet (200 meters) in diameter, bigger than a commercial airplane."

Young and adults gathered upon the streets to stare the amazing bright object.  They panicked at moments.
T.V. news informed the UFO seen by the military from nearby facility, although it wasn't detected by the radar.
The military considered this presence in the sky to be hostile and immediately decided to shoot missiles and artillery against the UFO.
The missiles reached the UFO which suddenly changed direction and propelled out into space and disappeared.
The witnesses tried to record the UFO event that lasted 2 hours, but inexplicably the object wasn't caught on tape.

A teenager talks about it.
"I tried to record it with my cell phone camera but the alien technology didn't let me.  It was overwhelming."

The T.V. news informed that the government agent told the neighbors that what they saw was just a meteor of atmospheric phenomenon, but it wasn't anything strange.

"It's something about the weather in May and September.  You can see light refractions that could be caused by the swamp water."

An insect specialist that works for the government said that it was a swarm of bright insects.
But the witnesses that saw the UFO are not convinced with these illogical explanations.

This is not the first UFO incident reported in Russia.   On February 26, 2011 in Severodvinks, Russia, this bright object was caught on tape.  Some researchers assure it was a spiral UFO. 
Observe the extraordinary images.

Besides on April 5, 2011, Russian television informed about the sighting of a huge round blue UFO above Mansijsk, Russia.

A witness of this strange event was a Hanti Mansijsk resident.  At night he saw a bright light in the sky above the city. He took some pictures with his cell phone.  It was a bright blue elongated object.

"At first it was suspended in the sky, then it disappeared and everything was silent." The witness said the images were extraordinary.

"I woke up at 3 AM to smoke a cigarette.  I went outside to the yard and there I saw a blue light in the sky.  At first I thought it could be some military aircraft... those things happen...  Then I realized it couldn't be a helicopter because it was noiseless. It was completely silent.  There was no wind, I can't say it was an airplane, a helicopter or not. I'll leave it to the experts.   I'm only a viewer just like you."

People in Khabarovsk didn't accept the Russian governments hypothesis.
They ask themselves: "Is it possible that all the witnesses, including the military, had mistaken a swarm of insects?  Don't Russian military men have the capability of distinguishing a weather phenomenon... from an unidentified object?"

 [END]


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