Astronauts go deep for undersea 'asteroid' trip

'Aquanauts' will spend nearly two weeks at a depth of 60 feet, off the coast of Florida

After waiting out stormy weather and rough seas, a team of astronauts successfully began a tough mission Thursday, but instead of launching into space, this crew is headed for the ocean floor on a mock asteroid trip.

NASA's NEEMO 15 expedition will simulate aspects of a mission to an asteroid.
In this illustration, a configured rock wall can be seen near the underwater Aquarius laboratory.

The six "aquanauts" splashed down at 2:15 p.m. EDT (1815 GMT) and will spend the next 13 days living inside a small laboratory called Aquarius on the ocean floor during their undersea mission to test different ways to explore an asteroid. The expedition was originally scheduled to begin Monday, Oct. 17, but heavy rain and storms in the area made the waters unsafe for the dive, NASA officials said.

This is NASA's 15th NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) voyage to test technology and innovative engineering solutions for future space missions. NEEMO 15, however, is the first to experiment with concepts of how to visit and explore an asteroid. [Gallery: Visions of NASA Asteroid Mission]

The weather delays alone make this a good simulation of real spaceflight, NEEMO 15 aquanaut David Saint-Jacques, of the Canadian Space Agency, joked to SPACE.com.

Working underwater 

For nearly two weeks, the NEEMO 15 crew will live and work at the Aquarius Underwater Laboratory, which sits 60 feet (18 meters) below the Atlantic Ocean, about 3 1/2 miles off the shore of Key Largo, Fla. The agency uses this lab to approximate the weightless conditions in space and on an asteroid.

"There are a lot of aspects to what we can do on NEEMO that are directly comparable to flying in space," NASA astronaut and NEEMO 15 commander Shannon Walker told SPACE.com. "For this particular mission, because we're on the ocean floor, we're able to be mutually buoyant. It's one of the few places where we can do tasks as if we're on an asteroid."

To train for spacewalks on the exterior of the International Space Station, astronauts don full spacesuits and meticulously rehearse the steps in a giant swimming pool called the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. For NEEMO missions, working on the ocean floor helps astronauts and engineers create more realistic simulations to test concepts and technology.

"A lot of what we do here could be done in the NBL, but it would not have the air of reality," Saint-Jacques said. "It wouldn't put the operational pressure on everybody to do things just like on an asteroid mission. Here, it's really like a space mission. We have a mobile mission control, and lots of technical support to make this work."

A diver anchoring to a simulated asteroid surface
created for NASA's underwater NEEMO 15 mission.

Furthermore, since the aquanauts will be living underwater for 13 days, they practice diving techniques that allow their bodies to adapt and become saturated in the underwater environment to avoid the dangers of decompression sickness, or the bends. This enables the crew to work longer hours on the ocean floor.

"Because we are saturated, it means we can do two or three hours of [extravehicular activities] a day," Saint-Jacques said. "That would be impossible in the NBL."

Stepping stones to an asteroid 

NEEMO 15 will test various concepts of how to anchor to an asteroid, travel around on its surface, and perform experiments. During the mission, aquanauts will work outside the Aquarius lab for two to three hours each day.

A mock asteroid landscape on the ocean floor was set up earlier this year for the NEEMO 15 expedition. A fiberglass wall will also enable the aquanauts to test different ways to drill anchors to the surface of an asteroid. [Video: Rock & Roll Asteroids]

"Once we go off to an asteroid, that's a huge undertaking that we want to be in the best position to do things efficiently and successfully," Walker said. "We want to test all these different combinations and see what's the most efficient way to accomplish science tasks. Along with that, we're going to have to figure out how to attach to it and maneuver around the asteroid."

NASA astronauts Stan Love, Richard Arnold and Mike Gernhardt will also be at the controls of a small submarine, called the DeepWorker submersible. The submarine will be used in place of the agency's Space Exploration Vehicle, which is a rover that is being developed for a future manned asteroid mission.

Future space missions 

The results of NEEMO 15 will help NASA plan for a future manned mission to a space rock.

"NASA's exploration branch is really keen on this mission," Saint-Jacques said. "They are waiting for the results to inform their engineering teams as to what are the good architectural solutions to pursue. It's a very smart way to work because before you get the big engineering team working and spend a lot of time, manpower and resources, you do these relatively cheap investigations to make sure you're on the right track."

Walker, Saint-Jacques and Takuya Onishi, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will live aboard the Aquarius lab for 13 days. Noted Mars planetary scientist Steve Squyres and two veteran divers, James Talacek and Nate Bender of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, will also provide support and work with the NEEMO 15 crew underwater.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and Jeanette Epps of NASA will guide the NEEMO 15 crewmembers as capsule communicators in Mission Control.

As part of the agency's new direction, NASA is aiming to send humans on a mission to an asteroid by the year 2025. Walker said she is excited to play a role in planning such a mission, and would be keen on visiting an asteroid in the future.

"I would love to go wherever NASA wants to go," Walker said. "I might be near the end of my career, but I would still be interested."

The NEEMO mission is a joint venture between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which owns the Aquarius laboratory, and the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, which operates the underwater facility.

Quoted from MSN

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Dog death row... Sunday Mirror investigation reveals 250,000 cats and dogs are gassed each year in Japan

Waiting to die: Pedigree Japanese Akita puppy scratches the window of his cage... moments later he is taken to the gas chamber

A puppy scratches at a window in a pitiful attempt to escape the horror which is about to unfold.

Minutes later the pedigree Japanese Akita is among a large group of dogs led into a “dream box”, an ­execution chamber which will be pumped full of carbon dioxide.

As the deadly gas slowly fills the box it takes 10 minutes for the barking inside to die down into heart-breaking whimpers. And as the dogs writhe in agony, it takes another 20 minutes before their twitching bodies are finally still.

The animals have just become the latest batch of the 200,000 cats and dogs which will be gassed to death in Japan this year.

Today a Sunday Mirror investigation uncovers this conveyor-belt of slaughter – which is completely legal and run by the country’s government.

The carnage is happening because of an explosion in the Japanese pet industry, which is worth £20billion a year. There are now 23 million pet cats and dogs in Japan... that’s more than the number of children.

Unregulated breeders sell the latest fashionable breeds, some costing up to £5,000, which fill the ­windows of thousands of pet shops across the country.

Yet those which can’t be sold, or are too old to be used for breeding, have a piece of red string tied around their neck and are led off to die.

The euphemistically named “dream” boxes where they spend their final moments are fully mechanised gas chambers housed in health centres called ­hokenjos.

There are 108 in Japan and they each kill an average of 550 animals a day. The gas chambers were ­invented by scientists in Japan, where Buddhism teaches that all life is sacred. Even a vet will not take an animal’s life. Yet as our pictures show, there is no room for such compassion in Japan’s ­burgeoning pet trade.

We were granted rare access to one of the execution chambers.

At the single-storey building in Chiba, 50 miles from Tokyo, six ­stainless steel walled rooms serve as death row for at least 30 dogs.

“It’s quiet now,” says Mr Nohira, the director. “We get ­especially busy just before the summer when the cages are full of puppies.” Last year more than 5,000 cats and 2,000 dogs were ­slaughtered here.

Among the dozens of animals ­frantically pacing the tiny cages are a dachshund, a miniature pointer, a ­terrier and a poodle.

The red nylon string around their necks indicates they have exceeded the maximum seven-day stay and will have to be killed. Any longer would be ­“wasting resources”. Hundreds of cats await the same ­awful fate in another room. That comes at 8.30am sharp every Tuesday and Friday when the animals are forced along a narrow ­concrete ­passage into the dream box.

Mr Ishizaki, the operator, a gentle and apologetic man, presses the green button in the control room. He then watches as cylinders release the carbon dioxide.

“When I first did it I was very sad,” he explains. “Now it’s just my job. I don’t dwell on it any more.”

The stench of death fills the air, the metal rails matted with the fur from the tens of thousands of cats and dogs that have already been through the centre.

Puppies and kittens die more slowly because the gas takes longer to penetrate their tiny bodies, Mr Ishizaki explains.

Once dead, the animals are dumped through a hatch into an incinerator. The 600C heat quickly turns them into ash, which is put into white plastic boxes labelled industrial waste.

According to official figures, 90 per cent of abandoned pets are dumped in government pounds each year.

That compares with just nine per cent in the UK.

One reason is because Japanese pedigree dogs have high rates of ­genetic defects. It means just one or two from a litter will possess the “cute factor”.

Miniature “tea cup” toy poodles are the current trend in Japan. They sell for as much as £2,500, while a puppy with “red” fur was on sale last week in Tokyo for double that. Pet shop chains make millions in profits each year.

DESIGNER GOODS

Some are open until 3am and cater to the businessmen and ­hostesses who spill out of nearby clubs and buy puppies and kittens to pop into their designer handbags.

Paris Hilton posed outside one such store, OneWan, a couple of years ago among Gucci dog collars ­selling for £1,400.

Emi Kaneko, director of the Lifeboat charity which has saved 8,000 cats from the gas chambers, says: “Buying a pet is no different to buying a ­handbag for lots of people in Japan.

“People buy them without any thought and then throw them away like toys.

“It would be better if the Japanese stopped buying pets ­altogether from the shops – then there would be no puppy mills, no hokenjos.”

Campaigners like Emi are the only hope for many cats and dogs. Small pockets of activists do all they can.

But it is a thankless task in the face of Japan’s appalling animal rights record. Fusako Nogami, of the animal rights group Alive, has spent years trying to expose the black market trade in ­pedigree cats and dogs bred in “pet mills” across the country.

These tiny pet factories, often in crudely converted houses, are stuffed with squalid cages of pets.

One campaigner, who asked for ­anonymity, spent two years trying to get the authorities to shut down a pet mill near Fukuoka in southern Japan.

“Hundreds of animals were crammed in a tiny space,” she said. “The stench was overpowering, with carcasses lying around and dead animals being dumped with the garbage.”

The campaigner was arrested and charged with trespassing as she tried to gather evidence. No action was taken against the owner.

Only one breeder has been closed down in Japan in the past five years.

“The current laws are inadequate, ambiguous and weakly enforced,” says Mr Nogami.

For now there seems little chance of that happening. Yesterday in Tokyo one designer dog selling for £4,200 was ­attracting a throng outside a pet shop window.

As he pawed at the window the ­onlookers laughed and even took a picture. Then they turned on their heels, leaving the dog scratching at his cage.

Quoted from Mirror

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Steamy windows: The 50 best car sex scenes

For no particular reason, a website has compiled what it calls the "The 50 Best Car Sex Scenes in Movie History."

"Sex in cars is no longer just for horny teenagers. These steamy movies scenes prove just that. Gone is the awkward groping in family station wagons, replaced by stretch limos, convertibles and hot women who aren't afraid to bare it all," says the site, Complex.com. You can see the list of all 50 scenes by clicking here.

To spare you the drama, know that the top hottest movie was Gael Garcia Bernal and Maribel Verdu in the Mexican film, Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001).

The list also includes such memorable love by the dashboard light as can be found in:

• Justin Theroux and Alyssa Milano in Body Count (1997)
• Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson in The Chase (1994)
• Juan Diego and Penelope Cruz in Jamon, Jamon (1992)
• Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway in Brokeback Mountain (2005)
• Nicholas Cage and Angelina Jolie in Gone In 60 Seconds (2000).

OK, self-styled movie critics, do you agree with this list?

Quoted from Usatoday

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Van Persie brace saves Arsenal

Robin van Persie cemented his status as Arsenal's talisman with a brace from the bench to seal a 3-1 win over Stoke on Sunday.

The Dutchman had been left as a sub, with Marouane Chamakh given a chance by Arsene Wenger. The Moroccan missed a free header in the 10th minute but his blushes were saved by Gervinho, who gave Arsenal the lead when he chested down a delightful ball from Aaron Ramsey to shoot past Asmir Begovic.

Ramsey had missed an earlier chance to give his side the lead, and they were made to pay for their wastefulness when Peter Crouch equalised for Stoke ten minutes from time.

Glenn Whelan lofted the ball into the area, Shawcross' cross found its way to Jon Walters at the far post and his header back across goal was nodded in by Crouch.

Arsenal started the second half slowly but the introduction of van Persie changed everything.

His cross was nearly converted by Ramsey before the 28-year-old squeezed the ball between Begovic and the post from a Gervinho cross.

The same two players combined for van Persie to have the final say six minutes from time, the Gunners captain firing home.

Quoted from Setanta

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