“It’s certainly not good news,” Charles Sobeck, deputy project manager for the $600 million mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center, told reporters Wednesday.

But Sobeck and other mission managers emphasized that there was still a chance that the probe could be revived. “I wouldn’t call Kepler down and out just yet,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters.

The problem has to do with the reaction wheels that are part of Kepler’s fine-pointing system. The space telescope identifies worlds in far-off solar systems by watching for the telltale dips in starlight when the planet’s disk passes over its parent sun. But in order to make those observations, Kepler has to hold itself in a precise position with the aid of four gyroscopic reaction wheels. One of the wheels failed last July, but Kepler could still do the job with the other three.

On Sunday, however, the spacecraft put itself into safe mode when it couldn’t stay in its proper orbit around the sun, 40 million miles (640 million kilometers) from Earth. When the mission team did its regular check-up with Kepler on Tuesday, they found that a second reaction wheel wasn’t working. In a mission update, NASA said the problem was probably caused by “a structural failure of the wheel bearing.”

That forced an end to Kepler’s planet quest. “We need three wheels in service to give us the pointing precision to make this work,” the mission’s principal investigator, William Borucki of NASA Ames.

Sobeck said the spacecraft itself could remain stable as long as it had fuel for its thrusters, but the thrusters aren’t capable of providing the precise pointing that Borucki and his colleagues need. Over the next several months, members of the Kepler team will assess their technical options, and gauge what kind of science could be accomplished using those options, said Paul Hertz, astrophysics director at NASA Headquarters.

It’s the third buyback the city has held in May, racing to take unwanted guns off the hands of residents before a new state law goes into effect that would require police to resell any lost, forfeited or abandoned firearms they receive.

“Recently I received a phone call from an individual who was motivated by the success of the Phoenix gun buyback program,” city Mayor Greg Stanton said on Tuesday. “That donor has made a donation also in the amount of $100,000.”

Epecuen was once a bustling little lakeside resort, where 1,500 people served 20,000 tourists a season. During Argentina’s golden age, the same trains that carried grain to the outside world brought visitors from the capital to relax in Epecuen’s saltwater baths and spas.

Buildings lie in ruins. Epecuen was once home to 1,500 residents before it started flooding on November 10, 1985. After heavy rains the lake Epecuen burst its banks . It only took 20 days for the town to submerge beneath almost 10 meters of water, forcing everybody to leave.

The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 69 to 27, getting support from Republicans and Democrats alike. But opposition from some conservatives who view it as a tax increase will make it a tougher sell in the House. President Barack Obama has conveyed his support for the measure.

Under current law, states can only require retailers to collect sales taxes if the store has a physical presence in the state.

That means big retailers with stores all over the country like Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target collect sales taxes when they sell goods over the Internet. But online retailers like eBay and Amazon don’t have to collect sales taxes, except in states where they have offices or distribution centers.

As a result, many online sales are tax-free, giving Internet retailers an advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.

“We ought to have a structure in place in the states that treats all retail the same,” said Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation. “Small retailers are collecting (sales tax) on the first dollar of any sale they make, and it’s only fair that other retailers who are selling to those same customers the same product have those same obligations.”

The bill would empower states to require businesses to collect taxes for products they sell on the Internet, in catalogs and through radio and TV ads. Under the legislation, the sales taxes would be sent to the state where the shopper lives.

Supporters say the current tax disparity is turning some traditional stores into showrooms, where shoppers pick out items they like, then buy them on the Internet to avoid sales taxes.

“It’s about the way commerce has changed in America,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. “Bookstores, stores that sell running shoes, bicycles and appliances are at a distinct disadvantage. They’ve become showrooms.”

Internet giant eBay is leading the fight against the bill, along with lawmakers from states with no sales tax and several prominent anti-tax groups. The bill’s opponents say it would put an expensive obligation on small businesses because they are not as equipped as national merchandisers to collect and remit sales taxes at the multitude of state rates.

“Giant retailers have a requirement to collect sales taxes nationwide because they have physical presence nationwide,” eBay president John Donahoe wrote in an online column over the weekend. “Likewise, today small retail stores and online retailers collect sales taxes for the one state where they are located. That’s a fair requirement.”

“If the bill passes, small online businesses would have the same tax compliance obligations and face the same enforcement risks as giant retailers, despite the fact that they are usually located in just one state.”

Businesses with less than $1 million in online sales would be exempt. EBay wants to exempt businesses with up to $10 million in sales or fewer than 50 employees.

The tower was one of the smaller airport towers flagged for closure under the Federal Aviation Administration’s initial plan to deal with automatic spending cuts.

Lee and Bishop sent letters to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administration administrator Michael Huerta asking for clarification of why the FAA said it had received no feedback from the Department of Defense related to potential safety concerns at the Ogden Airport if it lost its tower.

DOD, according to the letter, later confirmed to Sen. Lee’s office that it had in fact provided a detailed report to the Department of Transportation — overseer of the FAA — which grouped Ogden-Hinckley as part of 38 contract towers whose closures would have a “severe” impact on DOD operations.

“We want to know exactly what happened, who received the information,” said Lee’s communications director Brian Phillips. “There clearly is a very strong impact on defense operations, at least according to the DOD, and we feel that they should revisit that decision — first of all they should explain it, and then revisit that decision.”

Air Force and defense officials were surveying Ogden-Hinckley on-site Monday, airport manager Royal Eccles confirmed.

Towers at Ogden’s Airport — and Provo’s — were initially slated to close along with 147 others across the country.

One particular project of interest, BRRISON (Balloon Rapid Response for ISON) will send a helium filled balloon more than 20 miles above the surface of Earth for one day to capture images of the object that scientists say will be about as good as what the Hubble Space Telescope can get “at a tiny fraction of the cost”, according to Eliot Young.

While many say that ISON will be a spectacular site, some scientists believe the 3 mile long comet will fizzle out before it nears earth and will create unusual meteor showers out of the more than 110,000 pounds of dust and 130 pounds of water it’s losing every minute in space at the present time.  Unfortunately, the majority of these meteor showers will not be visible to those of us on the ground without high tech equipment.  Much of the debris can take as long as months or years to settle out of our atmosphere and fall towards the surface of the planet, while only a few bits will be visible to the naked eye.

Watch the video!!!

http://youtu.be/aqltgn2PIAI

The 6-inch-long mummified skeleton, which resembles that of a human but has a large, elongated head, was discovered in 2003 in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Known as the Atacama humanoid, some suggested it could be an alien, while others believed it could be the skeleton of a primate.

Newly released data from DNA and other tests shows the skeleton is that of a human, though, who was 6- to 8-years-old when he or she died.

“While the jury is out regarding the mutations that cause the deformity, and there is a real discrepancy in how we account for the apparent age of the bones … every nucleotide I’ve been able to look at is human,” researcher Garry Nolan told LiveScience.

Researchers analyzed the skeleton with high-resolution photography, X-rays and computed tomography scans, as well as DNA sequencing, to determine the origin of the remains. They said the skull had deformities and mild underdevelopment of the mid-face and jaw, leading them to ask whether the skeleton was the result of a rare disorder.

“It’s an interesting medical mystery of an unfortunate human with a series of birth defects that currently the genetics of which are not obvious,” Nolan wrote, according to UPI.

Nine percent of the genes did not match up with the reference human genome, according to LiveScience, but that could be attributed to a variety of factors, including degradation and insufficient data.