Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Where In The Universe Challenge #122

Ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Here’s #122! Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft, telescope or instrument responsible for the image. We provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. And Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess. (Some folks have been messing that up lately — let’s get it right, people!!)

UPDATE: Answer now posted below.

As some of you guessed (knew!) this is phytoplankton bloom off the coast of Argentina in early February 2010, which colors the Atlantic Ocean’s waters blue-green. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite is the instrument and spacecraft responsible for this image. See the full image and more information at the NASA Earth Observatory website.

Posted on by Jerry Coffey

How Big Is Neptune

Are There Oceans on Neptune
Neptune is more than just the 8th planet in our solar system; it is a celestial reminder of the power that mathematics grants us.

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There are many ways to determine ‘how big is Neptune’. It has an equatorial radius 24,764 km, a polar radius of 24,341 km, and a surface area of 7.6408×10,sup>9km2. It has a volume of 6.254×1013km3, a mass of 1.0243×1026kg, and a mean density of 1.638 g/cm3. Now that you know most of the planet’s critical digits, here is a little information about its make up.

Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun. It is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third-largest by mass. Neptune’s mass is 17 times that of the Earth. On average, Neptune orbits the Sun at a distance of 30.1 astronomical units. It was discovered on September 23, 1846. Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction rather than direct observation. Alexis Bouvard deduced its existence from gravitational perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. The planet was later observed by Johann Galle. Its largest moon, Triton, was observed a short time later.

Neptune’s atmosphere is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium along with traces of hydrocarbons and nitrogen. It also contains a high proportion of ices like: water, ammonia, and methane. Astronomers occasionally categorize Neptune as an ice giant. The interior of Neptune, like that of Uranus, is primarily composed of ices and rock. Traces of methane in the outermost regions in part account for the planet’s blue appearance. Neptune’s atmosphere is notable for its active and visible weather patterns. When Voyager 2 flew by the planet’s southern hemisphere possessed a Great Dark Spot. These weather patterns are driven by the strongest sustained winds of any planet in the Solar System, with recorded wind speeds as high as 2,100 km/h.Because of its great distance from the Sun, Neptune’s outer atmosphere is one of the coldest places in the Solar System, with temperatures at its cloud tops approaching ?218°C. Temperatures at the planet’s center are approximately 5,000°C.

Neptune has a planetary ring system. The rings may consist of ice particles coated with silicates or carbon-based material, which gives them a reddish hue. The three main rings are the narrow Adams Ring, 63,000 km from the center of Neptune, the Le Verrier Ring, at 53,000 km, and the broader, fainter Galle Ring, at 42,000 km. A faint outward extension to the Le Verrier Ring has been named Lassell; it is bounded at its outer edge by the Arago Ring at 57,000 km. Not only is the planet large, but it has many interesting features as well.

We have written many articles about Neptune for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the color of Neptune, and here are some pictures of Neptune.

If you’d like more information on Neptune, take a look at Hubblesite’s News Releases about Neptune, and here’s a link to NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide to Neptune.

We’ve also recorded an entire episode of Astronomy Cast all about Neptune. Listen here, Episode 63: Neptune.

Source: NASA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

How NASA Helped Rescue the Chilean Miners

Oct. 13, 2010: Trapped miner Victor Segovia reaches the surface to become the 15th to be rescued from the San Jose mine in Copiapo. Source: Reuters

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The world has been transfixed by the rescue of 33 miners trapped nearly a kilometer (about a half a mile) underground in the San Jose mine near Copiapo, Chile. Seeing the men emerge from their 69-day-long ordeal has been emotional for everyone involved, as well as for those of us just watching from afar. But were it not for NASA, the rescue might not be going as smoothly and trouble-free as, thankfully, it has. NASA’s expertise in long duration space missions – which are similar in many respects to what the miners endured – as well as the space agency’s knowledge in specialized engineering and training for emergencies has been invaluable during the rescue operations. NASA provided suggestions regarding the rescue cages that were specially-designed to pull the trapped miners out of the narrow shaft that was drilled to rescue them, and also is providing on-site expert advice on medical, nutritional and behavioral health issues.

“What we brought to the table for the Chileans was our experience in behavior health support, not only in terms of the confinement and entrapment for that period of time but also what the miners and the families could experience once the miner had been rescued,” said Dr. Michael Duncan, who led the team of NASA experts who traveled to Chile, in answer to a question posed by Universe Today during a web chat. “In working with our astronauts and their families we prepare them beforehand and we support them during the mission and we support them after the astronaut returns. And I think our expertise in those areas was very helpful for the Chilean doctors and psychologists.”

Among NASA’s suggestions were an increased supplement of Vitamin D to normalize sleep patterns and developing an organized daily routine that includes exercise.

NASA also helped with diet suggestions which would help their well being during their entrapment, as well as making sure the miners would be well enough and trim enough to ride in the rescue capsule.

Indeed, the miners have emerged looking healthy and several have bounded out from the capsule, running to hug family and friends or greet the cheering crowd.

When the Chilean engineers decided a capsule was the best way to rescue 33 trapped miners, the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) provided about 75 recommendations, said Clinton Cragg, principal engineer at NESC, in an interview on WAVY.com. Most of those design elements found their way into the 4-meter (13 foot) 420 kg (926-pound) capsule dubbed “Phoenix.”

With the cramped, one-at-a-time ride taking 20 minutes or more, the miners are monitored by video on the way up for any sign of distress or panic. They have oxygen masks, dark glasses to protect their eyes from unfamiliar daylight and sweaters for the huge temperature differences from the heat of underground to the chilling cold in the high altitude Atacama Desert in Chile.

Satellite image of the San Jose Mine area where the miners were trapped. NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using Earth Observer-1 satellite.

“The Chileans had a very limited set of requirements that they had given their own engineers with regards to how to design this cage, and that was primarily length, diameter, and weight,” said Duncan. “Looking at the video of the cage, some of these things they’ve certainly incorporated into their design.”

In an image from video, rescuer Manuel Gonzalez Pavez reaches the 33 miners in the collapsed mine. Source: AP

Now that the miners are safe, Duncan said each will be observed for any medical conditions that they may have developed. “Of course, we’re looking for things like skin infections or infections of the sinuses or the lungs,” he said during the web chat. “Something that they may have acquired due to exposure to the warm, humid and dusty conditions in the mine.”

In regards to the psychological health of the miners, Duncan said doctors and psychologists have been working with the miners and their families in an effort to educate them on these types of issues and the sudden celebrity that the miners now find themselves in, and they hope to try to prevent any future psychological issues from occurring.

The NASA team assisting the Chilean rescue included two medical doctors, Duncan and J.D Polk; psychologist Al Holland and Cragg.

“I am proud of the people of this agency who were able to bring the experience of spaceflight down to Earth when it was needed most,” said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden in a statement. “As the drama of this rescue continues to unfold before us, we pray for the safe return of each and every miner.”

For a wonderful slideshow of images from the rescue, see this link to Reuters.

Sources: NASA, Washington Post Web chat, WAVY-TV NASA Earth Observatory,

Posted on by Mark Thompson

Galaxy Growth Not Always Result of Violent Collisions

Artist’s impression of a young galaxy accreting material. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

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Until recently, it was thought the galactic equivalent of a motorway pile-up was the only way galaxies got bigger. But startling new evidence from a European team of astronomers suggests that violent galactic collisions are not the only way that galaxies evolve and grow, and instead there seems to be something else happening that has affected the majority of galaxies — a kinder, gentler action which is not quite so disruptive.

For some years, astronomers have struggled to understand why the mass of galaxies seems to have increased dramatically just a few billion years after the Big Bang. We know from observation that galaxies collide but this is an incredibly violent activity and one that is not particularly common.

A new study using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), by a team led by Giovanni Cresci, looked for evidence that galaxies might be accreting material from the hydrogen and helium gas that filled the early Universe and permeates the space between the galaxies. We know that they are surrounded by halos of unseen material but Cresci’s team wanted to see if there was any evidence of material being sucked into the galaxy from the surrounding environment.

Their study focused on a group of distant galaxies which would represent those in the early Universe, about 2 billion years after the big bang, to see if they could detect any evidence of this gas accretion.

Using the SINFONI (Spectrograph for Integral Field Observation in the Near Infrared) attached to the VLT, Cresci and his team mapped the distribution of elements within the target galaxies. Their findings showed that instead of heavier elements being concentrated around the core as we find in today’s galaxies, the core was surprisingly abundant of the lighter elements hydrogen and helium. This can only be as a result of accretion of lighter elements from the surrounding area boosting the rate of star formation in the core. The accretion process itself relies on cool gas being transferred directly into the core of the galaxy.

“The primordial gas in the halo of galaxies, especially at great distances, is mostly shock heated and therefore very hot,” Cresci told Universe Today. “To be accreted it has to be cooled and this is not an efficient process. Recent theoretical models have shown that narrow streams of cold gas can form, and that they are able to penetrate the hot gas and to provide fresh gas to the centre of the galaxy. Unlike more destructive and violent mergers between galaxies, the streams are likely to keep the rotating disk configuration intact, although turbulent.”

This new discovery means astronomers have perhaps found an answer to a long standing question but with the major consequence of needing to rewrite our current theories of the evolution of the Universe.

Source: ESO, email exchange with Cresci

Mark Thompson is a writer and the astronomy presenter on the BBC One Show. See his website, The People’s Astronomer, and you can follow him on Twitter, @PeoplesAstro

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

Hubble Sees Asteroid Collision in Slow-Motion

The collision between two asteroids in early 2009 produced a strange, X-shaped aftermath. Image Credit: NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

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Alas, the image above is not marking alien pirate treasure in space – for the first time, the aftermath of a collision between two asteroids has been imaged. Last January, an international team of astronomers saw the strange X-shaped object with the Hubble Space Telescope after ground-based observatories spotted evidence of an asteroid collision in the asteroid belt. The team has now used Hubble to do follow-up observations and uncovered a few surprises about the collision.

The collision produced an X shape, followed by a long comet-like tail. The astronomers, led by David Jewitt of the University of California in Los Angeles, were surprised to find that the collision did not happen as recently as they’d thought, but had actually occurred almost a year previous to the detection. It’s likely that the two asteroids smashed together sometime in February or March of 2009.

“When I saw the Hubbble image I knew it was something special,” said ESA astronomer Jessica Agarwal in a press release.

Named P/2010 A2, the object is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroid collisions are thought to be a commonplace occurrence, and are responsible for kicking up dust in our Solar System and other planetary systems. Just how much dust is produced, and how frequent the collisions happen is still a hazy topic, and the recent observation of P/2010 A2 should help astronomers to better model this phenomenon.

By figuring out how much dust is produced by the process of ‘collisional grinding’, astronomers could better model the dusty debris disks of other planetary systems, as well as our own.

The team monitored the slow-motion expansion of the leftovers of the colliding asteroids with the Hubble Space Telescope between January and May of 2010. They’ve determined that P/2010 A2 is about 120 meters (393 feet) wide, and the particles of dust that make up the tail following it are between 1 millimeter (0.04 inches) to 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in diameter.

The collision producing the object P/2010 A2, as observed over the course of a few months by Hubble. Image Credit: NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

The remnants of the collision suggest that a smaller asteroid – 3 to 5 meters (10-16 feet) wide – collided into a larger one at about 18,000 km per hour (11,000 miles per hour). This vaporized the smaller asteroid, and ejected material from the larger one.

Why is the object X-shaped? That mystery has yet to be determined. It is likely, according to the team, that the filaments produced by the collision suggest asymmetries in the colliding objects. Further observations of P/2010 A2 with the Hubble in 2011 will show just how the collision continues to change, allowing for a more precise model of how it started out.

The observed tail is caused by the same mechanism that produces cometary tails – radiation pressure from the Sun pushes the dust away from the nucleus of the object.

As to why we don’t have thousands of Hubble images to produce a whole alphabet of asteroid collisions shapes – “Catching colliding asteroids on camera is difficult because large impacts are rare, while small ones, such as the one that produced P/2010 A2, are exceedingly faint,” Jewitt said. The results of their observations will be published in the October 14th issue of the journal Nature.

Source: ESA Press Release

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Galaxy Zoo Project Crowd-sources Old Climate Data

The newest citizen science project from the Galaxy Zoo team lets the public travel back in time and join the crews of over 280 different World War I royal navy warships. While an engaging historical journey, the project will help scientists better understand the climate of the past. There are gaps in weather and climate data records, particularly before 1920, prior to when weather station observations were accurately recorded. But old naval ships routinely recorded the weather they encountered – marking down temperatures and conditions even while in battle. The information in many of these weather logbooks has not been utilized – until now, as the “Old Weather” project has made its debut as the newest way for the public to contribute in scientific research.

The project is designed to provide a detailed map of the world’s climate around 100 years ago, which will help tell us more about the climate today. Anyone can take part, read the logs, follow events aboard the vessels and contribute to this fun and historical project, which could tell us more about our climate’s future.

“These naval logbooks contain an amazing treasure trove of information but because the entries are handwritten they are incredibly difficult for a computer to read,’ said Dr. Chris Lintott of Oxford University, a Galaxy Zoo founder and developer of the OldWeather.org project. “By getting an army of online human volunteers to retrace these voyages and transcribe the information recorded by British sailors we can relive both the climate of the past and key moments in naval history.”

By transcribing information about weather, and any interesting events, from images of each ship’s logbook web volunteers will help scientists to build a more accurate picture of how our climate has changed over the last century, as well as adding to our knowledge of this important period of British history.

HMS Acacia, one of the ships in the Old Weather project.

“Historical weather data is vital because it allows us to test our models of the Earth’s climate,”said Dr. Peter Stott, Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the British meteorology, or Met Office. “If we can correctly account for what the weather was doing in the past, then we can have more confidence in our predictions of the future. Unfortunately, the historical record is full of gaps, particularly from before 1920 and at sea, so this project is invaluable.”

Weather observations by Royal Navy sailors were made every four hours without fail, said Dr. Robert Simpson of Oxford University, who added that this project is almost like “launching a weather satellite into the skies at a time when manpowered flight was still in its infancy.”

What is Old Weather from National Maritime Museum on Vimeo.

If you are not yet familiar yet with the Zooniverse, which includes citizen science projects like Galaxy Zoo and Moon Zoo, you are really missing out on a fun and engaging way to do actual, meaningful science. In those projects, 320,000 people have made over 150 million classifications and published several scientific papers – which shown that ordinary web users can make observations that are as accurate as those made by experts.

Old Weather is unique among the eight scientific projects encompassed by the Zooniverse because of how old the data is, and participating really is a trip back in time. The ‘virtual sailors’ visiting OldWeather.org are rewarded for their efforts by a rise through the ratings from cadet to captain of a particular ship according to the number of pages they transcribe. Historians are also hoping that a look into these old records will provide a fresh insight into naval history and encourage people to find out more about the past.

Here’s a tutorial on how to participate in Old Weather:

Old Weather – Getting Started from The Zooniverse on Vimeo.

To find out more, and participate visit OldWeather.org. There’s also an Old Weather blog at http://blogs.zooniverse.org/oldweather

You can also follow the project on Twitter (@OldWeather) and Facebook.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Astronomers Find Giant Structures From the Early Universe

An infrared/optical representative-color image of a massive galaxy cluster located 7 billion light-years from Earth. Credit: Infrared Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Brodwin (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) Optical Image: CTIO Blanco 4-m telescope/J. Mohr (LMU Munich)

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Looking back to when our Universe was about half the age it is now, astronomers have discovered the most massive galaxy cluster yet seen at so great a distance. The researchers say that if we could see it as it appears today, it would be one of the most massive galaxy clusters in the universe. The cluster, modestly named SPT-CL J0546-5345, weighs in at around 800 trillion Suns, and holds hundreds of galaxies. “This galaxy cluster wins the heavyweight title,”said Mark Brodwin, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “This cluster is full of ‘old’ galaxies, meaning that it had to come together very early in the universe’s history – within the first two billion years.”


Using the new South Pole Telescope, Brodwin and his colleagues are searching for giant galaxy clusters using the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect – a small distortion of the cosmic microwave background, a pervasive all-sky glow left over from the Big Bang. Such distortions are created as background radiation passes through a large galaxy cluster.

They found the heavyweight cluster in some of their first observations with the new telescope.
Located in the southern constellation Pictor (the Painter), the cluster has a redshift of z=1.07, putting it at a distance of about 7 billion light-years, meaning we see it as it appeared 7 billion years ago, when the universe was half as old as now and our solar system didn’t exist yet.

Even at that young age, the cluster was almost as massive as the nearby Coma cluster. Since then, it should have grown about four times larger.

This optical image of the newfound galaxy cluster highlights how faint and reddened these galaxies are due to their great distance. Credit: CTIO Blanco 4-m telescope/J. Mohr (LMU Munich)

Galaxy clusters like this can be used to study how dark matter and dark energy influenced the growth of cosmic structures. Long ago, the universe was smaller and more compact, so gravity had a greater influence. It was easier for galaxy clusters to grow, especially in areas that already were denser than their surroundings.

“You could say that the rich get richer, and the dense get denser,” quipped Harvard astronomer Robert Kirshner, commenting on the study.

As the universe expanded at an accelerating rate due to dark energy, it grew more diffuse. Dark energy now dominates over the pull of gravity and chokes off the formation of new galaxy clusters.

The main goal of the SPT survey is to find a large sample of massive galaxy clusters in order to measure the equation of state of the dark energy, which characterizes cosmic inflation and the accelerated expansion of the universe. Additional goals include understanding the evolution of hot gas within galaxy clusters, studying the evolution of massive galaxies in clusters, and identifying distant, gravitationally lensed, rapidly star-forming galaxies.

The team expects to find many more giant galaxy clusters lurking in the distance once the South Pole Telescope survey is completed.

Follow-up observations on the cluster were done using the Infrared Array Camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Magellan telescopes in Chile. A paper announcing the discovery has been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

The team’s paper is available at arXiv.

For more information on the South Pole Telescope, see this link.

Source: Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Buzz About Gliese 581g: Doubts of Its Existence; Aliens Signals Detected

Goldilocks Zone
Artists impression of Gliese 581g. Credit: Lynette Cook/NSF

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Ever since the announcement of the discovery of exoplanet Gliese 581g, there has been a buzz in the news, on websites, Twitter – pretty much everywhere, about the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet. But the past couple of days there has been a different sort of buzz about this distant world. Two stories have surfaced and they both can’t be true. The first one is fairly off the deep end: an astrophysicist from Australia claims that while doing a SETI search two years ago, he picked up a “suspicious signal” from the vicinity of the Gliese 581 system, and a couple of websites have connected some dots between that signal and a potentially habitable Gliese 581g.

The second one is more sobering. At an International Astronomical Union meeting this week, other astronomers have raised doubts whether Gliese 581g actually exists.

Unless you’ve been under a rock the past two weeks, you likely know that this newest and most promising of potential habitable extra solar planets was described by the scientists who discovered it as a rocky world about 3 times the mass of Earth, and it orbits within the red dwarf star’s habitable zone, the place that is just right for water to remain as a liquid on a planetary surface. And it is fairly close to us, too, at about 20 light years away, located in the constellation Libra.

Also announced was the discovery of planet ‘f’, a 7-Earth mass planet with a 433-day orbit around Gliese 581.

Astronomer Steven Vogt announced the discoveries by his team, which used the HIRES instrument on the Keck I telescope in Hawaii. They also used 119 measurements from the HARPS instrument on the La Silla telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

On Monday, Steinn Siggurdson broke the news on his Dynamics of Cats blog that an astronomer who works on HARPS data at the Geneva Observatory, said at the IAU meeting this week that his team could not confirm the existence of Gliese 581 g.

In an article on the Astrobiology Magazine website today (Tuesday) the astronomer, Francesco Pepe, said that not only can they not confirm the existence of planet ‘g’, but also the ‘f’ planet.

In 2009, the Geneva team announced the discovery of planet ‘e’ in the Gliese 581 solar system. At approximately 1.9 Earth masses, this ‘e’ planet is the lowest mass extrasolar planet found at that time, and has a 3.15-day orbital period around the star.

Pepe said they have studied this planet-rich system frequently, gathering a total of 180 data points in 6.5 years (with about 60 of those data points since 2009) and they can only see evidence of the 4 previously announced planets b, c, d, and e.

There is a signal which could possibly be f, but the signal amplitude of this potential fifth planet is very low and basically at the level of the measurement noise, said Pepe.

The planets in the Gliese 581 system were discovered using spectroscopic radial velocity measurements. Planets ‘tug’ on the star they orbit, causing it to shift in position (stars and planets actually orbit a common center of mass). By measuring the star’s movement in the sky, astronomers can figure out what sort of planets are orbiting it. Multi-planet systems create a complicated signal, and astronomers must tease out the spectral lines to figure out what represents a planet, and what is just “noise” – shifts in the star light not caused by an orbiting planet. Astronomers have developed various ways to reduce such noise in their telescopic observations, but it still creates a level of uncertainty in detecting extrasolar planets.

The Geneva team plugged the HARPS data on Gliese 581 into computer models, and the models show “the probability that such a signal is just produced ‘by chance’ out of the noise is not negligible, of the order of several percents,” Pepe said. “Under these conditions we cannot confirm the presence of the announced planet Gliese 581 g.”

While this doesn’t definitively mean Gliese 581g doesn’t exist, it certainly casts doubt on it. More teams will be looking at the Gliese 581 star to try and determine what is really out there. This story is not over yet.

As for the alien signal, this news has met some pretty harsh criticism — even from Dr. Frank Drake, a leader in SETI community. Astronomer Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, said he detected an unusual pulse of light nearly two years ago from the same region at Gliese 581, and with the news of the potential habitable world there, his claims came up again. In an article in Space.com Drake said is suspicious because Bhathal would not share his data with anyone.

You can read an article published in 2009 in the Australian about Bhathal’s claimed discovery.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Carnival of Space #173: Social Network Edition

Carnival of Space. Image by Jason Major.

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This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by a familiar name here at Universe Today: Ian O’Neill! Of course, you know that Ian now leads the crew over at Discovery News: Space. And as the host of this week’s Carnival of Space he has, of course, put together a very unique version, which pulls in the social network phenomena of Twitter and Facebook.

Click here to read the Carnival of Space #173, the “Social Carnival of Space.”

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let Fraser know if you can be a host, and he’ll schedule you into the calendar.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Attempt to Break Free-Fall Record Halted by Lawsuit

Baumgartner, left with Joe Kittinger. Credit: Red Bull Stratos

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An attempt to reach supersonic speeds during freefall has hit a snag as a promoter who says the stunt was originally his idea has filed a lawsuit against the Red Bull Stratos team. Daniel Hogan claims he pitched the idea of breaking a 50-year old freefall record to Red Bull in 2004, and that Red Bull said they weren’t interested, but later, the company went forward with the idea. Hogan has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the energy drink company, prompting Red Bull to stand down with the record-breaking attempt until the issue can be resolved.

Red Bull issued this statement today:

“Despite the fact that many other people over the past 50 years have tried to break Colonel (Ret.) Joe Kittinger’s record, and that other individuals have sought to work with Red Bull in an attempt to break his record, Mr. Hogan claims to own certain rights to the project and filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit earlier this year in a Californian court. Red Bull has acted appropriately in its prior dealings with Mr. Hogan, and will demonstrate this as the case progresses. Due to the lawsuit, we have decided to stop the project until this case has been resolved.”

Austrian Skydiver Felix Baumgartner had been scheduled to jump from a balloon at 120,000 feet and attempt a freefall jump that would, for the first time, reach supersonic speeds as well as, Red Bull says, deliver valuable scientific data. If successful, it would break a record set in 1960 by US Air Force captain named Joe Kittinger when he jumped from 31,000 meters (102,800 feet). His jump contributed valuable data that provided ground work for spacesuit technology and knowledge about human physiology for the US space program. There have been several attempts to surpass Kittinger’s record, but none have succeeded, and people have given their lives for the quest.

Kittinger has been supportive of Baumgartner’s attempt and appeared in this video with him.

Hogan says he pitched the idea to Red Bull as a “marriage of daredevil, record-breaking ‘stuntsmanship’ and cutting-edge technology.” After a year of talks, during which Hogan says Red Bull executives encouraged him to reveal the minutest details of the project, the company backed out.

In January this year, Red Bull announced the Red Bull Stratos dive, which Hogan said is precisely the project he pitched except for two things: the name was been changed and he was cut out of it.

Earlier this year, Hogan sought an injunction to halt the project, disgorgement of any profits and punitive damages. He also sought a declaration that Red Bull has certain, specific duties to him.

In his complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court, Hogan claims the daredevil stunt would be worth $375 million to $625 million in advertising to any corporate sponsor.

Hogan claims his proposed dive would be made from 130,000 feet. He also said he had assembled a team that included Per Lindstrand, who holds the hot-air balloon altitude record, Dr. Coy Foster, a former NASA flight surgeon, Dr. Steve Lingard, an expert in the aerodynamics of the human body, filmmaker Slim McDonald, and a Russian company that agreed to develop the spacesuit.

Hogan claims that in meetings, emails and other communications Red Bull received specifications for the gondola to be used, the spacesuit, the timeline for developing and testing the equipment, and a list of potential corporate partners.

But on Oct. 13, 2005, Hogan says the company sent him an email stating that “after a very detailed investigation of your proposal, we finally came to the conclusion that we would not like to continue our joint work on the space Dive project.”

Hogan says Red Bull never acknowledged his idea nor has it offered to compensate him for his contributions or sought permission to use information that he disclosed in confidence.

Sources: Red Bull Stratos, Courthouse News Service