False alarm of ammonia leak in the ISS – all astronauts are safe

#ammonialeak #ISS #NASA #ESA The International Space Station houses six astronauts – two of them are Americans, there is one Italian and the remaining three are Russians. They occupy two separate living spaces and, due to the scare of leaking ammonia gas, the Americans and the Italian had to evacuate to the Russian side of the orbiting lab.
However, the ammonia alarm in the ISS appears to be a false alarm as confirmed by NASA. They have said that there was no ammonia leak into the station's atmosphere and the astronauts were free to roam the outpost.
The station, at present, has a six-person crew - two of them are Americans, three Russians and an Italian astronaut. Once the scare started, all of them took refuge in the station's Russian-built segment. Thereby, they isolated themselves from modules built by NASA, Europe and Japan.
Latest information is that NASA astronauts Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Terry Virts along with European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian are all "safe and in good shape" with their Russian crewmates.
Incidentally, the ISS has approximately the same living space as a five bedroom house and it has been continuously occupied by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since 2000.

Japan launches its Hayabusa 2 on its asteroid capture mission

Japan has launched its Hayabusa 2 space module successfully - it blasted off on an H-IIA rocket from the Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Japan after being delayed by bad weather. This space module is on a six-year return trip which has a specific mission of blowing a hole in a remote asteroid. The broad objective is to find clues to how our planet the Earth evolved.
The space explorer separated once the rocket had climbed out of the Earth's gravitational pull and would make use of the Earth's gravity as a slingshot to propel it towards its target.
The target is an asteroid identified as 1999JU3 – this is in deep space and this carbonaceous asteroid is believed to contain organic matter and water, the basic ingredients of life.
It is expected that Hayabusa 2 would reach the destination in mid-2018 and spend around 18 months in the area to be able to collect materials that have remained unexposed to millions of years of wind and radiation and bring them back to Earth by 2020. Hopefully, the answers could provide valuable clues about life and the universe.
Incidentally, this Japanese mission has come after the European Space Agency had succeeded in making the first-ever landing on a comet and images sent back from robot lab Philae, after its release from its mothership Rosetta, has revealed traces of organic molecules and a surface much harder than imagined.

Planet Earth is too crowded – let us send message to Mars and go there

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of NASA's Mariner 4 mission to Mars, plans have been chalked out to use Radio telescopes on Earth to beam out 90,000 ‘hello’ messages to Mars – it would commemorate the launch 50 years ago of the first robotic probe to the Red planet.
The program has been developed by a US space funding company called Uwingu – the intention is not just to say ‘hello’ to whosoever may be listening out there but also to raise funds for its other projects. The program of Uwingu is called "Beam Me To Mars" and participants can send digital radio-wave transmissions of their names, messages and pictures to Mars for fees ranging from $5 to $99.
As per information, the transmission would travel at the speed of light and the messages will reach Mars within 15 minutes and it would be repeated twice.
The novel program has attracted a number of celebrities including actor and comedian Seth Green and actor George Takei, who portrayed Mr. Sulu on the television series "Star Trek."
As far as Man’s attachment with Mars is concerned, Mariner 4 had successful flown-by Mars and sent back the first ever pictures of the planet's surface – subsequently, over 20 other spacecraft have successfully visited, orbited or landed on the planet's surface. NASA at present has three orbiters and two rovers working on Mars – one of these is Curiosity. The European Space Agency and India each have one Mars orbiter.
With every passing day, our Planet Earth is getting more and more crowded and we would like to migrate to another world where there is no violence and where peace reigns supreme – our eyes have been set on Mars and efforts have been undertaken by various agencies like Mars One to train would-be astronauts to shift base to the unknown plant and rough terrain and set up a new civilization. The take-off of Mars One is fixed tentatively for 2023, when the first group of 4 men and women will land on Mars.