Hagel tours new Navy combat vessel

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel waits to deliver his keynote address on "The US Approach to Regional Security" at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-la Dialogue, or IISS Asia Security Summit in Singapore, Saturday, June 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel waits to deliver his keynote address on "The US Approach to Regional Security" at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-la Dialogue, or IISS Asia Security Summit in Singapore, Saturday, June 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

SINGAPORE (AP) ? U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel toured the U.S. Navy's new small combat ship, the USS Freedom, the first of a new class of littoral warships recently deployed to Asia to partner with allies in the region.

His visit to the ship on Sunday comes amid nagging questions about the cost and viability of the roughly $34 billion program and whether the Pentagon's plan to buy as many as 52 of the vessels should be chopped by as much as half because of budget constraints.

Docked at Changi Naval Base, the Freedom has been participating in naval exercises with countries in the region, and going through regular maintenance and logistical checks as part of an effort to work through any problems in its maiden mission.

Hagel is the first Pentagon chief to step aboard a littoral combat ship that has deployed, and this was his first visit to any ship as secretary. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates toured one of the vessels when it was in development at Naval Station Mayport in Florida.

On board the warship, Hagel met with crew members, starting on the deck, where a Black Hawk helicopter stood ready to go, and moving to the bridge and then the compact operations center, with its array of computer stations and displays. He also watched as sailors in a rigid hull inflatable boat demonstrated a launch and landing, easily sliding up into the docking area then returning out in to the Singapore Strait.

The USS Freedom, with its crew of about 90 sailors, arrived in Singapore on April 18, for the first ever overseas deployment of an LCS.

Swift and agile, the smaller ships are designed to operate in littoral waters, which are more shallow and close to shore. Dwarfed by the Navy's larger aircraft carriers and destroyers, the LCS ships give the U.S. the ability to work better with navies from Asian nations ? such as Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and Thailand ? that use smaller vessels to patrol the seas or battle piracy. The U.S. Navy's larger ships are often too big to pull into some ports in the region.

With a maximum speed of more than 40 knots ? compared to the Navy's larger destroyers and cruisers which travel at about 30 knots ? the littoral combat ships are about the size of a Coast Guard cutter. The USS Freedom is a bit longer that a football field.

The ship development program, however, has been fraught with cost hikes, design and construction problems and worries that plans to make two versions of the ship are pricey and may not be necessary.

But Lt. Cmdr. Clay Doss told reporters traveling with Hagel that recent maintenance issues are part of the process any vessel goes through when programs are beginning. It's not unusual, he said, for a ship to experience growing pains that have to be worked out during its first deployment.

Doss said the Freedom is scheduled to leave Singapore in December and the second LCS will arrive in August 2014. In mid-2015 the navy expects to have two of the ships in Singapore and the region at the same time.

Hagel is in Singapore to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference as part of a weeklong trip that will also take him to Brussels for a meeting of NATO defense ministers.

According to a Congressional Research Service report issued about a week ago on the program, the Navy plans to buy 52 ships. So far, the U.S. has bought 12, but plans to buy four this year have been complicated by the automatic budget cuts, known at the sequester. The proposed 2014 budget requests about $1.8 billion for four more.

CRS said there are "concerns over the ships' ability to withstand battle damage, and concerns over whether the ships are sufficiently armed and will be able to perform their stated missions effectively."

The report concluded, however, that the LCS is still the most economical way to meet the mission needs of the Navy. And it said that some of the design and construction issues have been resolved during the normal course of development.

The Navy is buying two versions of the ship, the Freedom and the Independence, and they are designed to be able to be able to switch out various packages of equipment in order to carry out particular missions, such as surface and anti-submarine warfare and mine countermeasures.

The Freedom version is being built by Lockheed Martin with Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wis., and the larger Independence version is being built by General Dynamics Austal USA in Mobile, Ala.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-06-02-Hagel-Ship%20Visit/id-736a2e63ec764bc193eca6ccf8281b6a

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Family of mom dead in Syria had prior FBI contact

BURTON, Mich. (AP) ? The FBI questioned relatives of a 33-year-old Michigan mother killed during fighting in Syria after she took a previous trip to the Middle East a couple of years ago, family members said Friday.

Agents had asked why Nicole Lynn Mansfield traveled to Dubai for a few weeks, but family members said they did not know much about her trip, said Mansfield's aunt, Monica Mansfield-Speelman.

Mansfield first became interested in the Middle East after converting to Islam and marrying an Arab immigrant several years ago, her aunt said, but her family had lost touch with her in recent years and had no idea she had gone to Syria.

"We didn't know she was over there. We didn't know she was gone, but Nicole, she was known to take off like that," Mansfield-Speelman said. "She was a traveler, I guess you could say. She didn't stay in one place."

Family members said FBI agents visited them Thursday and informed them of Mansfield's death. Simon Shaykhet, an FBI spokesman in Detroit, said he could confirm agents spoke to Mansfield's family, but he declined further comment.

Mansfield is the only American known to have been killed fighting in Syria, where 70,000 people have died in a two-year civil war. A pro-Syrian government news agency said Mansfield and two others were fighters for a group opposed to Syria's government and were killed in a confrontation in the northwestern city of Idlib. The report on the circumstances of the deaths could not immediately be confirmed.

She had been on the FBI's radar before she left for Syria, according to a law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't permitted to speak publicly about the investigation. The official did not elaborate and no further details were immediately available.

Mansfield-Speelman, who lives with Mansfield's grandmother, said she doesn't know the whereabouts of Mansfield's ex-husband, but her niece has an 18-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. Mansfield-Speelman and other family members had concerns about her niece's conversion and marriage, but the aunt said she tries to keep an open mind.

"That was her belief ? I respect that, but I don't agree with that," she said of her niece, who had worked for various group homes and hospice facilities.

___

Associated Press reporter Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-05-31-Syria-Michigan/id-59ab920710e74a6fa4a8945648bf7023

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One of the moon's mysteries solved: Origin of mascon basins

May 30, 2013 ? A mystery of the moon that imperiled astronauts and spacecraft on lunar missions has been solved by a Purdue University-led team of scientists as part of NASA's GRAIL mission.

Large concentrations of mass lurk on the lunar surface hidden like coral reefs beneath the ocean waves -- an unseen and devastating hazard. These concentrations change the gravity field and can either pull a spacecraft in or push it off course, sealing its fate to a crash on the face of the moon.

"In 1968 these mass concentrations were an unwelcome discovery as scientists prepared for the Apollo landings, and they have remained a mystery ever since," said Jay Melosh, a member of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, science team who led the research. "GRAIL has now mapped where they lay, and we have a much better understanding of how they developed. If we return to the moon, we can now navigate with great precision."

A better understanding of these features also adds clues to the moon's origin and evolution and will be useful in studying other planets where mass concentrations also are known to exist including Mars and Mercury, said Melosh, who is a distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences and physics.

"We now know the ancient moon must have been much hotter than it is now and the crust thinner than we thought," he said. "For the first time we can figure out what size asteroids hit the moon by looking at the basins left behind and the gravity signature of the areas. We now have tools to figure out more about the heavy asteroid bombardment and what the ancient Earth may have faced."

The team confirmed the standing theory that the concentrations of mass were caused by massive asteroid impacts billions of years ago and determined how these impacts changed the density of material on the moon's surface and, in turn, its gravity field. A paper detailing the results will be published online by the journal Science on May 30.

In addition to Melosh, Purdue team members include Andrew Freed, associate professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, and graduate students Brandon Johnson and David Blair. Additional team members include Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; J. Andrews-Hanna of the Colorado School of Mines; S. Solomon of Columbia University; and the GRAIL Science Team.

"The explanation of mascons has eluded scientists for decades," Zuber said. "Since their initial discovery they have also been observed on Mars and Mercury, and by understanding their formation on the moon we have greatly advanced knowledge of how major impacts modified planetary crusts."

The mass concentrations form a target pattern with a gravity surplus at the bulls-eye surrounded by a ring of gravity deficit and an outer ring of gravity surplus. The team found that this pattern arises as a natural consequence of crater excavation, collapse and cooling following an impact.

The team determined that the increase in density and gravitational pull at the bulls-eye was caused by lunar material melted from the heat of the asteroid impact. The melting causes the material to become more concentrated, stronger and denser, and pulls in additional material from the surrounding areas, Melosh said.

The large asteroid impacts also caused big holes into which the surrounding lunar material collapsed. As the cool, strong lunar crust slid into the holes it bent downward, forming a rigid, curved edge that held down the material beneath it and prevented it from fully rebounding to its original surface height. This causes a ring with less gravitational pull because the mass is held farther below the surface, the top of which is what most influences the gravitational signature, he said.

The outer ring of increased gravitational pull comes from the added mass of the material ejected by the initial impact that then piles on top of the lunar surface.

The team combined expertise in specialized computer analysis methods called hydrocodes and finite element codes to create computer simulations that could show the physical changes occurring from microseconds to millions of years. The team analyzed the Freundlich-Sharanov and Humorum mascon basins.

Melosh is a pioneer in adapting computer hydrocodes -- computer programs originally created to analyze the flow of liquids -- to simulate how complex materials move when high-speed collisions occur, like that of a planetary collision. Hydrocodes can be used to study such phenomena on a time scale of microseconds to hours, but are not practical from time scales much longer than that, he said.

Freed is a leader in adapting finite element codes, like those used to study car crashes, to simulate the changes in density of complex materials upon cooling and the evolution of Earth and other planets on the time scale of hours to millions of years.

Using the GRAIL data set, which offers an unprecedented, detailed map of the distribution of masses in the moon, the team was able to put together a picture of how the moon's crust and mantle behaved and the development of the concentrations of mass in the aftermath of large asteroid impacts.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/jwYCiKAeaNY/130530142009.htm

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Kerry: Iran election unlikely to alter nuke policy

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry says he is not optimistic that Iran's upcoming election will produce any change in the country's nuclear ambitions, which the U.S. and others believe are aimed at developing atomic weapons.

Kerry said Friday that any shift in Iran's nuclear policy will come from the country's supreme leader and not the winner of the June 14 presidential election. The supreme leader has final say on all state matters.

Kerry told reporters at the State Department that the U.S. would continue to pursue a peaceful resolution to the impasse but that time is running out. He said every month that goes by without Iran proving that its nuclear program is peaceful makes the world more dangerous. Iran insists its nuclear program is intended for civilian energy production.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-05-31-US-Iran/id-99beab5f16c640cfaed1bf272d1abc2a

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Radiation poses manned Mars dilemma

30 May 2013 Last updated at 15:26 ET

Nasa's Curiosity rover has confirmed what everyone has long suspected - that astronauts on a Mars mission would get a big dose of damaging radiation.

The robot counted the number of high-energy space particles striking it on its eight-month journey to the planet.

Based on this data, scientists say a human travelling to and from Mars could well be exposed to a radiation dose that breached current safety limits.

This calculation does not even include time spent on the planet's surface.

When the time devoted to exploring the world is taken into account, the dose rises further still.

This would increase the chances of developing a fatal cancer beyond what is presently deemed acceptable for a career astronaut.

Cary Zeitlin from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and colleagues report the Curiosity findings in the latest edition of Science magazine.

They say engineers will have to give careful consideration to the type of shielding that is built into a Mars-bound crew ship. However, they concede that for some of the most damaging radiation particles, there may be little that can be done to shelter the crew other than to get them to Mars and the partial protection of its thin atmosphere and rocky mass as quickly as possible.

At the moment, given existing chemical propulsion technology, Mars transits take months.

"The situation would be greatly improved if we could only get there quite a bit faster," Dr Zeitlin told BBC News.

"It is not just the dose rate that is the problem; it is the number of days that one accumulates that dose that drives the total towards or beyond the career limits. Improved propulsion would really be the ticket if someone could make that work."

New types of propulsion, such as plasma and nuclear thermal rockets, are in development. These could bring the journey time down to a number of weeks.

Curiosity travelled to Mars inside a capsule similar in size to the one now being developed to take astronauts beyond the space station to destinations such as asteroids and even Mars.

For most of its 253-day, 560-million-km journey in 2011/2012, the robot had its Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument switched on inside the cruise vessel, which gave a degree of protection.

RAD counts the numbers of energetic particles - mostly protons - hitting its sensors.

The particles of concern fall into two categories - those that are accelerated away from our dynamic Sun; and those that arrive at high velocity from outside of the Solar System.

This latter category originates from exploded stars and the environs of black holes.

These galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) impart a lot of energy when they strike the human body and will damage DNA in cells. They are also the most difficult to shield against.

Earth's thick atmosphere, its magnetic field and its huge rock bulk provide protection to people living on its surface, but for astronauts in deep space even an aluminium hull 30cm thick is not going to change their exposure to GCRs very much.

The RAD data revealed an average GCR dose equivalent rate of 1.84 milliSieverts (mSv) per day during the rover's cruise to Mars. (The Sievert is a standard measure of the biological impacts of radiation.) This dose rate is about the same as having a full-body CT scan in a hospital every five days or so.

Dr Zeitlin and his team used this measurement as a guide to work out what an astronaut could expect on a Mars mission, assuming he or she had a similarly shielded spacecraft, travelled at a time when the Sun's activity was broadly the same and completed the journey in just 180 days - Nasa's "design reference" transit time for a manned mission to Mars. They calculated the total dose just for the cruise phases to and from Mars to be 0.66Sv. The team promises to come back with the additional number from surface exposure once Curiosity has taken more measurements at its landing location on the planet's equator.

But even this 660mSv figure represents a large proportion of the 1,000mSv for career exposure that several space agencies like to keep their astronauts from approaching. Reaching 1,000mSv is associated with a 5% increase in the risk of developing a fatal cancer. There would likely be neurological impairment and eyesight damage as well.

This should be set against the dangers associated with space travel in general, such as launching on a rocket or trying to land on another planet. It is a dangerous business.

It also needs to be considered in the context of the risks of contracting cancer during a "normal" lifetime on Earth, which is about one-in-four (for a UK citizen).

The space agencies have quite deliberately set conservative limits for their astronauts and they would have to relax their rules somewhat or mitigate the risks in some other way to authorise a Mars mission.

However, the scenario for commercial ventures could be very different. Two initiatives - Inspiration Mars and Mars One - have been announced recently that propose getting people to Mars in the next 10 years using existing technologies.

Privateer astronauts that participate in these projects may regard the extra risks associated with radiation to be an acceptable gamble given the extraordinary prize of walking on the Red Planet.

Dr Kevin Fong is director of the Centre for Space Medicine at University College London, UK, and has written about the dangers associated with space exploration. He said that what Zeitlin and colleagues had done was help remove some of the uncertainty in the risk assessment.

"Radiobiology is actually really tricky because how the body will respond to exposure will depend on many factors, such as whether you're old or young, male or female," he told BBC News.

"What's important about this study is that it characterises the deep space radiation environment for the first time in a vehicle whose shielding is not orders of magnitude different from that which you would expect to put a human crew inside."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22718672#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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