NASA network holes may jeopardize missions

Weak security practices and critical holes in NASA's agency-wide network could allow an attack over the Internet that would disrupt missions and expose sensitive data, according to a government report.

"Until NASA addresses these critical deficiencies and improves its IT security practices, the Agency is vulnerable to computer incidents that could have a severe to catastrophic effect on Agency assets, operations, and personnel," said the Inspector General's report, titled

"Inadequate Security Practices Expose Key NASA Network to Cyber Attack (PDF)," released yesterday.

NASA uses a series of networks to carry out its various missions, which include controlling spacecraft like the International Space Station and conducting science missions like the Hubble Telescope.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that servers on the NASA network had "high-risk" vulnerabilities that were exploitable from the Internet and that specifically six servers containing critical data and used for controlling spacecraft were found to have holes that would allow a remote attacker to take control over them or render them inaccessible. Once inside the network, an attacker could exploit other weaknesses auditors identified, which could "severely degrade or cripple NASA's operations," the report said.
Poorly configured network servers revealed encryption keys and encrypted passwords and one server disclosed sensitive account data for all its authorized users. The information could be used to target NASA personnel with phishing attacks and e-mails containing malicious code designed to compromise the recipient's computer.
The OIG recommended last May that NASA immediately establish an IT (information technology) security oversight program for the key network. As of last month, such a program was not implemented despite the fact that NASA agreed with the recommendation, the report said.

The problems are not just theoretical; NASA's network has been breached. In January 2009, attackers stole 22 gigabytes of export-restricted data from a Jet Propulsion Laboratory computer system, according to the report. Later that year, a computer system that supports one of NASA's mission networks was infected and was causing the system to make more than 3,000 unauthorized connections to domestic and international Internet Protocol addresses including addresses in China, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Estonia, the OIG said.
"The sophistication of both of these Internet-based intrusions confirms that they were focused and sustained efforts to target assets on NASA's mission computer networks," the report said.
NASA representatives could not be reached for comment late today.
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Image of the Day: One Trillion Stars! Andromedea Galaxy in Infrared & X Ray

The detailed Spitzer Space Telescope view above features infrared light from dust (red) and old stars (blue) in Andromeda, a massive spiral galaxy a mere 2.5 million light-years away. In fact, with over twice the diameter of our own Milky Way, Andromeda is the largest nearby galaxy. Andromeda's population of bright young stars define its sweeping spiral arms in visible light images, but here the infrared view clearly follows the lumpy dust lanes heated by the young stars as they wind even closer to the galaxy's core. Constructed to explore Andromeda's infrared brightness and stellar populations, the full mosaic image is composed of about 3,000 individual frames. Two smaller companion galaxies, NGC 205 (below) and M32 (above) are also included in the combined fields. The data confirm that Andromeda (aka M31) houses around 1 trillion stars, compared to 4 hundred billion for the Milky Way.

The Chandra X-ray image below shows the central portion of the Andromeda Galaxy. The blue dot in the center of the image is an unusually "cool" million degree X-ray source of unknown nature. Just above this cool source is a source (yellow) that is thought to be due to X-rays from matter swirling toward a supermassive black hole in the nucleus of the galaxy. This black hole contains the mass of 30 million suns. Numerous other X-ray sources are also apparent. Most of these are probably due to X-ray binary systems, in which a neutron star or black hole is in a close orbit around a normal star.

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INTEGRAL Discovers Gamma Rays Originating From Black Hole Jets

Artist's impression of Cygnus X-1. Credit: ESA

Can the powerful jets originating from the vicinity of black holes emit gamma rays? ESA's INTEGRAL observatory has shown that they can. An extensive study of Cygnus X-1, a binary system that hosts a black hole, has revealed polarized gamma-ray emission from this source, and shown that this high-energy emission originates from the jets that were originally detected in the radio band.

This first discovery of polarized gamma rays from the vicinity of a black hole opens a new observational window on these enigmatic objects. The results of this study are published online in Science Express.

Black holes that originate from the collapse of massive stars are very compact objects, enclosing up to a few tens of solar masses within a radius of only a few kilometres. Also referred to as 'stellar black holes', they are so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravity.

In theory, these black holes should therefore be impossible to observe, however, when a black hole is part of a binary stellar system, interesting effects arise that can uncover the surroundings of these otherwise 'invisible' objects. It is this phenomenon that has enabled astronomers using INTEGRAL to probe the environment of the black hole in the Cygnus X-1 binary system.

In a binary system, a black hole and a normal star are gravitationally bound and orbit each other around their common centre of mass. With its intense gravitational field, the black hole draws matter from its companion, and the stripped material spirals around the black hole, forming an accretion disc. As friction in the disc heats the material up to millions of degrees, making it shine in X-rays, these objects are known as X-Ray Binaries (XRB).

First observed in the 1960s, soon after observations at these wavelengths became possible, these objects raised immediate interest as black hole candidates; furthermore, in the following decades, data gathered in the radio band revealed jets of relativistic particles emanating from several XRBs, suggesting that a link exists between accretion and ejection of matter in the proximity of such stellar black holes.

  

Astronomers call these objects 'microquasars' because they appear as miniature versions of quasars - the nuclei of active galaxies that harbour, in their cores, supermassive black holes that are millions of times more massive than their stellar counterparts.

In spite of their very different sizes, black holes in both types of systems exhibit very similar dynamics, vigorously accreting matter from their surroundings via a disc and funnelling part of it, by means of the disc rotation, into highly collimated, bipolar jets of particles that are released at relativistic speeds.

"The connection between accretion and ejection of material in microquasars is well established by now, but many questions about the connection between the accretion disc and jets remain open," explains Philippe Laurent from CEA, France, who led the team that discovered highly polarized gamma-ray emission coming from Cygnus X-1, one of the best studied microquasars in the Milky Way.

 

"Our study finally starts to answer some of these questions," he adds.

In 2006, observations performed with INTEGRAL revealed gamma rays from Cygnus X-1, but their origin was unclear. "Some models predict that microquasars may produce jets so powerful they emit even up to gamma rays: in that case, the gamma-ray signal is expected to be highly polarized," notes co-author Jerome Rodriguez, also from CEA.

Polarization is, in fact, a signature of the non-thermal radiation processes that take place in the jets, such as synchrotron or inverse Compton emission. "The discovery was thus a pleasant surprise, allowing us to identify the jets as the source of the gamma-ray emission," he continues.

  

This is the first time that polarized gamma-ray emission has been observed in a black hole binary system, and only the second time ever: in 2008, INTEGRAL detected polarized emission from the Crab Nebula.

"INTEGRAL is the only instrument currently capable of performing polarimetry measurements in the gamma-ray band on astronomical sources other than the Sun," comments Chris Winkler, INTEGRAL project scientist at ESA. This is due to its particular configuration based on two separated detector planes, where incoming photons are initially scattered, in the first plane, and then absorbed in the second one.

 

"By analysing the pattern described by the photons detected in the second plane, it is possible to infer whether the radiation is polarized or not," explains Winkler.

Since the polarized component is only a fraction, albeit large, of the total radiation, the signal is rather weak and it is thus necessary to stack a substantial number of observations of the same source in order to reveal polarization at a reasonable significance - even in this case, the detection is only possible for the brightest sources in the high energy sky. For the current study, the team has used all archival data for Cygnus X-1 collected by INTEGRAL over a period of almost 8 years.

 

"The discovery of polarized gamma-ray emission offers a brand new perspective to look at microquasars, since it also carries important information on the configuration of the source's magnetic field," continues Laurent. Together with further observations of the jets at radio wavelengths, this will allow a better characterisation of the mechanism producing gamma rays in these objects.

"Future studies might reveal polarization also in other, less bright black hole binaries, thus shedding light on the overall accretion and ejection scenario in microquasars," he concludes.

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Russia's New Angara Rockets To Be Test Launched Before 2014

Test launches of Russia's new generation Angara booster rockets will begin no later than 2013, a spokesman for the Russian Space Forces said.

Alexei Zolotukhin said work to build on-ground infrastructure of the space complex for launches of Angara carrier rockets is currently in active stage at Russia's northern space center Plesetsk.

Angara rockets, designed to provide lifting capabilities between 2,000 and 40,500 kg into low earth orbit, are expected to become the core of Russia's carrier rocket fleet, replacing several existing systems.

The rockets have a modular design similar to the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), based on a common Universal Rocket Module (URM).

The main purpose of the Angara rocket family is to give Russia independent access to space. The rockets will reduce Russia's dependence on the Baikonur space center it leases from Kazakhstan by allowing the launch of heavy payloads from more northerly sites such as Plesetsk and from a new space center in Russia's Far East.

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James Cameron's 3D Camera Is Not Going to Mars

NASA Stops Work on James Cameron's Cameras for Mars Science Laboratory

"Work has stopped on an alternative version of the instrument, with a pair of zoom-lens cameras, which would have provided additional capabilities for improved three-dimensional video. The installed Mastcam on the Mars Science Laboratory mission's Curiosity rover uses two fixed-focal-length cameras: a telephoto for one eye and wider angle for the other. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built the Mastcam and was funded by NASA last year to see whether a zoom version could be developed in time for testing on Curiosity."

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Inside NASA's Space Funeral for the Comet-Hunting Stardust Probe

Comet Tempel 1 has been the target of two NASA missions. Here, an artist envisions what the approach of NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft may look like when it arrives at Comet Tempel 1 on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14) in 2011.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL/Cornell/LMSS

DENVER – It may seem funny to some that a lifeless collection of computers and cameras is worthy of a funeral. But when it came time to say goodbye to NASA's 12-year-old Stardust comet probe, scientists made sure the lights went out in style.

NASA shut down the Stardust spacecraft late yesterday (March 24) to end a prolific mission that visited an asteroid in 2002, collected samples from one comet in 2004, and then recycled itself to visit another comet earlier this year.

At about 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT), the mission planners commanded the four thrusters on Stardust to fire until the fuel ran dry – a final experiment to see what was left in the spacecraft's tanks after its 5.7 billion-mile (9.1 billion-kilometer) journey, and how it compared with estimates on the ground.

To the side of the room, Stardust technicians had scrawled their personal estimates of how much fuel remained on a board for all to see.

The real value was anybody’s guess, and the mood was palpable as many scientists prepared to say farewell to Stardust.

"One way to look at this … from now to a few billion years, Stardust can be happy, healthy and fine without all those pesky commands coming up," Don Brownlee, principal investigator for the Stardust mission from the University of Washington.

The spacecraft didn’t go down easy. The maneuver appeared to take longer to confirm than expected.

As engineering data about Stardust’s condition reached computer screens, flight controllers presented a small rubber ball to Allan Cheuvront– Stardust program manager with the probe's builder Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver – in a tradition to relieve stress.

"Stardust's motors burned for 146 seconds," Cheuvront said later in a NASA statement. "We'll crunch the numbers and see how close the reality matches up with our projections. That will be a great data set to have in our back pocket when we plan for future missions." [How NASA's Stardust Comet Mission Worked]

 Don Brownlee, space scientist and a principle investigator on the Stardust mission from Washington University, offered his congratulations to the spacecraft team for a mission well done. 
CREDIT: Barbara David

A comet success story

NASA's Stardust mission was a true comet success story. The $300 million spacecraft launched in 1999 to retrieve samples from the comet Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt 2"). On the way, it swung by the asteroid Annefrank to snap close-up pictures.

By 2004, Stardust caught up with comet Wild 2 and snatched up samples of the icy wanderer in a capsule that it dropped back on Earth in 2006.

Then NASA gave Stardust new marching orders: go meet another object, the comet Tempel 1, which NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft visited in 2005 and hit with an impactor to see what it was made of. The new $29 million mission was called Stardust-NExT.

Stardust flew by comet Tempel 1 on Feb. 14 of this year and beamed back stunning new images, including some that revealed for the first time the artificial crater created by the Deep Impact crash.[Photos of Comet Tempel 1 from NASA's Stardust]

Farewell Stardust

As Stardust's systems flat-lined last night, Cheuvront conducted one final poll among his team members, asking for the final state of subsystems, such as power, attitude control, thermal and navigation.

Each reported what their monitors last indicated as Stardust slipped away silently into the depths of space.

"This kind of feels like the end of one of those old western movies where you watch the hero ride his horse towards the distant setting sun — and then the credits begin to roll," said Stardust-NExT project manager Tim Larson from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Only there's no setting sun in space."

While the end of Stardust's mission had a sad note for some, NASA did have some treats prepared to lighten the mood. Cookies and cupcakes marked with R.I.P. were reportedly on hand during a "wake" following the end of the mission.

Once the last poll was complete, the Stardust's finale had arrived.

"At this time we say goodbye to a good friend. It is safe to say that Stardust is happy, healthy and fine," Cheuvront said. "All stations, we’re going off net now."

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

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Cosmology

Hi Friends,
We will start this new topic (Cosmology) here in the blog. 

Cosmology refers to the study of the Universe in its totality as it is now (or at least as it can be observed now), and by extension, humanity's place in it. Though the word cosmology is recent (first used in 1730 in Christian Wolff's Cosmologia Generalis), the study of the universe has a long history involving science, philosophy, esotericism, and religion. (SeeCosmogony for the study of origins of the Universe and Cosmography for the features of the Universe.) 

This post will be updated to act like Index to all articles and videos related to our subject.

Articles A

01.Entropy

Videos A

Cosmology | Lecture 1

So keep connected :)