NASA clears space shuttle for June 13 launch
NASA managers cleared the space shuttle Endeavour on Wednesday for a June 13 launch on a mission to outfit the International Space Station with a Japanese-built outdoor porch for science experiments.
Slated to last 16 days, the flight will be among NASA's lengthiest space station servicing missions and, with five spacewalks and simultaneous use of three robotic cranes, one of its more complex.
"I don't think there are any easy flights from now till the end," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for space operations. "This one is unique in that it has all the robotics activity."
Endeavour will carry the last of three pieces to complete Japan's Kibo laboratory complex at the space station. The astronauts also plan to replace batteries for the station's solar power system.
The U.S. space agency has eight missions remaining to complete construction of the $100 billion orbital outpost before the shuttle fleet is retired in about 18 months.
Nevertheless, if weather or technical issues keep Endeavour on the ground beyond June 15, NASA plans to reschedule the mission for July so it can launch an unmanned lunar probe.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is the debut mission of NASA's new Constellation program, which is intended to push human spaceflight beyond near-Earth orbit. The probe is designed to scout the moon's surface for landing sites.
Endeavour's launch attempt will come less than three weeks after sister ship Atlantis returned from NASA's last mission to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope.ace shuttle for June 13 launch

einstien

Celebrating a landmark experiment
In May 1919, British scientist Arthur Eddington embarked on an historic expedition to the island of Principe, off the west African coast, to observe a total solar eclipse.

David Tennant played Eddington in a recent BBC drama
Stars in the Hyades cluster were behind the Sun during the eclipse, and appeared to shift from their true positions. This discovery provided the first experimental confirmation for Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Astronomer Richard Massey, from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, will be travelling to Principe with colleagues to mark the 90th anniversary of Eddington's expedition and is writing a diary for BBC News.

WARPED SPACE AND BENT LIGHT
During this week in 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington profoundly changed the way we view the Universe.
Eddington watched stars near the Sun during a total solar eclipse on the African island of Principe. When the Sun was in front of the stars, they appeared to move away from their true positions, which Eddington had recorded in Oxford, three-and-a-half months earlier.
This was the first observational proof of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Interestingly, Einstein's first celebration was, like Eddington, to write to his mum. There must be a moral to take from this common theme.
General relativity describes how any massive object, such as the Sun, produces gravity by bending space and time around it. Everything in that space is also bent: even rays of light, and these get deflected.
Light doesn't always travel in straight lines.

Gravitational lensing occurs when the light from a distant object is bent around a massive object in between it and the observer.
The massive body distorts the spacetime (represented as the yellow grid) making the distant object look distorted
Distant sources behind the massive object can therefore appear to move - or also get brighter or change shape.
Einstein's prediction of this effect was used to determine the nature of gravity. But now that it is well understood, the effect of "gravitational lensing" has become one of the most powerful tools used by astronomers to probe the Universe.
Gravitational lenses work effectively like glass lenses, focusing and magnifying light - but on a huge scale. They let us see objects otherwise too far away or faint for even the largest telescopes on Earth.

Scientists have recently discovered that most of the Universe is in the form of invisible dark matter and dark energy.

But because it still has gravity, it is revealed by gravitational lensing. Images of distant galaxies that appear grossly distorted and magnified in Hubble Space Telescope photographs are a sure sign that a lot of dark matter is sitting in front of them.
To mark this anniversary, and the special place that this island holds in the history of science, we will, on Friday, unveil an informational plaque at the site on Principe, amid a series of talks from us and local people.

SETTING OFF
What was arguably the most important scientific experiment of the 20th Century, happened in a slave plantation on a remote African island.
In 1919, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) launched an expedition to observe a total solar eclipse from Principe, to prove or disprove Einstein's theory of general relativity. This week, we are going back.
Astronomers Pedro Ferreira and myself, with Oxford University anthropologist Gisa Weszkalnys, are paying homage to the original expedition by Sir Arthur Eddington.
The island holds a special place in the history of science. In concert with the local and Portuguese governments, we shall be giving a series of public talks, unveiling an informational plaque at the plantation, and installing an exhibition in the capital.

The team will unveil an informational plaque on Principe
Our expedition left on Thursday 21 May, and will reach a climax on 29 May, the anniversary of the eclipse.
In the aftermath of World War One, Eddington's journey to Principe took six weeks by steam ship. He frequently wrote home and his archives at Trinity College, Cambridge, tell an adventure from a forgotten age.
Eddington got stuck on Madeira for three weeks, when all the ships were full of returning troops. Amid ongoing rationing in Britain, the sugar and exotic fruits were welcome relief.
But he seems some sort of fanatic for Madeira bananas, eating about a dozen every day. Most of his letters went to his mother; somehow he failed to mention the island's casino.
Principe is still not easy to reach. From Edinburgh, it will take me four flights, some of which run only once a week. Getting all of the equipment there on time is also proving only slightly less of a challenge than in 1919.

To a modern scientist, Eddington's archives also provide a fascinating snapshot into the frustratingly slow pace of early 20th Century research. We now rely totally on the internet to maintain the pace of international collaborations.
Wi-fi permitting, I will continue the story next week from Principe.
Richard Massey is an astronomy fellow at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh and is a visiting associate in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Gisa Weszkalnys is an anthropologist at the University of Oxford who studies the economics of Principe island. Pedro Ferreira is a professor of astronomy at the University of Oxford

obama

Obama names US space agency chief

Maj-Gen Bolden flew four times on the space shuttle
President Barack Obama has chosen retired astronaut Charles Bolden to lead Nasa, ending months of speculation about the position.
Lori Garver, a former Nasa official and space adviser to the Obama campaign, was named as his deputy. Both positions require US Senate confirmation.
If confirmed, Maj-Gen Bolden, 62, would be only the second astronaut to lead Nasa during its 50-year history.

Vice-Adm Richard Truly, who ran Nasa from 1989-1992, was the first.
"He's a real leader," George Abbey, a former head of Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and friend of the major-general, told the Associated Press news agency.
"Nasa has been looking for a leader like this that they could have confidence in."
Challenges
Maj-Gen Bolden grew up in segregated South Carolina and flew on more than 100 combat sorties in Vietnam.

He joined Nasa in 1980 and is a veteran of four space shuttle flights, commanding the mission that launched the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit in 1990.
Maj-Gen Bolden inherits the space agency at a critical time, when it faces significant challenges amid budgetary constraints.

In 2004, President George W Bush instigated ambitious plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020, necessitating the replacement of the shuttle by a new space vehicle.
However, the new Ares-Orion vehicle is not expected to be ready until at least 2015.
So for five years after the shuttle's retirement in 2010, American astronauts will be dependent on Russia to fly them into orbit on their space capsule, Soyuz.

The Ares rocket system being developed to loft the shuttle's replacement into orbit has also come under fire. Critics say alternative launchers could be built faster and more cheaply.
In addition, some of Nasa's biggest science programmes are over-budget.
This month, the White House ordered a sweeping independent review of Nasa's manned spaceflight strategy.

Earlier this year, retired Air Force General Scott Gration was said to be favoured for the position of Nasa administrator. However, his bid reportedly ran into opposition on Capitol Hill.
In April, the previous Nasa chief, Dr Michael Griffin, joined the University of Alabama in Huntsville as a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering.

science today

Chile faces climate change challenge
By James Painter BBC Latin America analyst

Chile has enjoyed one of the most dynamic economies in Latin America in recent years, largely based on a booming export sector.

But new studies by Chilean scientists suggest climate change could pose huge challenges for the country.

The scientists say their models show projected temperature increases of at least 1C to 1.5C and a drop in rainfall of at least 10 to 15% in the next 40 years.

These changes could have a particular impact on agriculture in Chile's central zone, home to a large part of the country's population.

"Agriculture is the most exposed sector, particularly the forestry sector, and the vines and fruits in the central region which are reliant on irrigation schemes," Professor Fernando Santibanez from the University of Chile told the BBC.

Wine woes
Chile is the world's largest exporter of copper, but wine, fruit and forestry products feature strongly, accounting for about a quarter of its exports.

Prof Santibanez says Chile's world-famous wines could be particularly vulnerable to the expected changes in the climate.

"Vines are sensitive to heat stress," he says. "Hotter temperatures can cause too fast a ripening process which can affect productivity and the quality of the wine."

The Merlot grape is thought to be amongst those sensitive to changes in the climate.
More generations of harmful insects created by a temperature increase of just 1C could also affect grape production.

The value of Chile's wine exports has boomed in the last 20 years from about $2m (£1.2m) to $1.5bn last year. The UK, for example, now imports more wine from Chile than from South Africa.
"There is no doubt we are worried about global warming," says Ricardo Poblete, a director of the Chilean Wine Corporation.
"But there are plenty of ways of adapting."

Chile's central valley is particularly suitable to vine growing as it has many days of uninterrupted sunshine, cool but not frosty nights, and plenty of natural water supplies from melting snow on the Andes mountains. A change in the temperature could alter that.
"Some companies like Concha y Toro are buying land in more southern areas," says Mr Poblete. "Climate change is one of the factors behind the change."
However, Mr Poblete says that in the future, vine growing could also shift more towards the Pacific Ocean or towards the Andean foothills in search of cooler temperatures.

Water worries
Another area of great concern is the long-term availability of water.
Climate change is not a problem for the future... It's a problem right now
Constance NalegachChile's UN representative
As in other Andean countries, the rate at which many of Chile's glaciers are melting has increased significantly in recent years, due mainly to temperature rises.
Climate scientists say Chile is probably less dependent on glacial melt for water supplies than some areas of neighbouring Peru or Bolivia.
However, they worry that the combination of more demand, less rainfall, less melting snow, and less water trapped in glaciers could combine to cause a serious decline in water availability, particularly in the summer months.

Sebastian Vicuna, executive director of the Global Change Research Centre at the Catholic University in Santiago, has calculated that the Maipo River - by far the largest source of irrigation and drinking water for the central region - could suffer a severe decline in its flow in the summer months.

Based on hydrological simulations, he says that by 2065 the water in the river could have fallen by 70%, from 170 cubic metres per second to no more than 60.

"We are particularly concerned about the impact of global warming on our hydroelectric supplies," he told the BBC. "More than half the energy supply to central Chile comes from hydroelectricity generated by water coming from three basins where there will be much less water."

Energy crisis
Chile is only responsible for a tiny amount of the world's total emissions of greenhouse gases. But when expressed in per capita terms, the country is one of the worst in Latin America.

The rate at which Chile's glaciers are melting has increased in recent years
Critics point out that Chile is currently committed to building coal-fired power plants. This is partly a response to Argentina's almost complete halting of gas exports to its neighbour, due to its own energy shortages.
According to the National Energy Commission, coal will account for 25% of Chile's electricity supplies by 2020, and emissions will rise fourfold from the current level of 70 million tonnes a year to 300 million by 2030.

However, government supporters say it is beginning to take climate change seriously. It launched a national action plan for climate change in December, and a new environment ministry was approved this month in the lower house of Congress.
Constance Nalegach, Chile's negotiator at the UN's climate change talks, says her country is prepared to set its own emissions targets, but also wants to see sweeping cuts from industrialised countries.

"Climate change is not a problem for the future," she says. "It's a problem right now."
Professor Santibanez is confident Chile can adapt to the future climate, as long as it starts planning and investing now.
"We need more early warning weather systems, better institutional co-ordination and more planned water management," he says

science-environment

Prince urges action over climate


Prince urges action over climate

Prince Charles stressed the urgency of action
Hesitation over tackling climate change could be catastrophic, Prince Charles has told global warming experts.
Speaking at St James' Palace, in London, the prince said: "It seems to me that in many ways we already have some of the answers to hand.
"We know about energy efficiency, renewable energy, and how to reduce deforestation... but we seem strangely reluctant to apply them," he went on.
He said he hoped the scientists could influence a conference in Copenhagen.
It is hoped nations can agree to a deal on cutting carbon emissions at the climate change conference in the Danish capital in December. The prince said he hoped it would be a "historic occasion".
Last chance
The symposium of more than 60 scientists, among them 20 Nobel Laureates, is examining the latest developments about climate change.
On Thursday, they are expected to sign an agreed memorandum of their findings.
Somehow, global decision makers have to be persuaded that strong, committed and co-ordinated action is needed now, not in 10 years' time, or even in five, but now
Prince Charles
The prince told them: "I don't know about your own experience, but it seems to me that whilst there is now only a mercifully small, if vociferous, number of people who do not accept the science of climate change and who should know better, there are still a great many who fail to recognised the real urgency of the situation.
"In so many ways we already are in the last chance saloon."
"So, somehow, global decision makers have to be persuaded that strong, committed and co-ordinated action is needed now, not in 10 years' time, or even in five, but now."