New Images From Phoenix Lander May Show Martian Ice

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander may have already caught its first glimpse of Martian ice less than a week after arriving at its new red planet home.

New images released Saturday reveal what could be a patch of exposed ice beneath the Phoenix lander, mission managers said in an announcement today. Phoenix beamed the images back to Earth late Friday from its Vastitas Borealis landing site in the northern polar region of Mars after using a robotic arm-mounted camera to peer beneath its undercarriage.

The new views revealed patches of smooth, level surfaces beneath Phoenix's thrusters, boosting the confidence of researchers who had hoped the spacecraft's pulse rocket engines could kick up the Martian topsoil to expose a buried layer of water ice.

"This suggests we have an ice table under a thin layer of loose soil," said Horst Uwe Keller, the lead scientist for Phoenix's robotic arm camera at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

Phoenix, a stationary lander, set down in the Martian arctic on May 25 to begin a planned three-month mission to probe its surroundings for buried water ice using a scoop-mounted robotic arm, as well as onboard ovens and wet chemistry lab. The probe's $422 million mission is aimed at determining whether the icy Martian north could have once been habitable for primitive life.

"We were expecting to find ice within two to six inches of the surface," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in a statement. "The thrusters have excavated two to six inches and, sure enough, we see something that looks like ice. It's not impossible that it's something else, but our leading interpretation is ice."

Phoenix pulsed its rocket engines to make a three-point landing on a broad, flat valley in a region similar in latitude northwestern Canada on Earth. The area is in a region where spacecraft orbiting Mars have spotted indications of subsurface water ice in the past, making it a prime digging site for Phoenix's robotic arm.

NASA's Phoenix spacecraft is one of three now currently operating on the surface of Mars. The lander joined two twin robots, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed in 2004 and continue to explore different areas of the planet's equatorial regions.

SPACE.com -- New Images From Phoenix Lander May Show Martian Ice

Sci Fi Channel Working on MMO, TV Show Combo

The Sci Fi Channel is preparing to launch a franchise that consists of a television show and a concurrently running massively multiplayer online title, the latter of which will help shape the plot of the former, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The unnamed television series is being handled internally by the Sci Fi Channel, while a virtually unknown development house known as Trion World Network is crafting the MMO. They expect to launch the project in Summer of 2010.

"A television show that is on once a week isn't enough. The fans today want the experience to go beyond that," said Sci Fi Channel president Dave Howe. "For example, we can tell them that there will be an alien invasion at a certain place in the game, at a certain time, and to be there with all their friends and be ready. The outcome depends on them. And then that battle will be part of the universe in the show."

Sci Fi Channel Working on MMO, TV Show Combo | Game | Life from Wired.com

Free COD 4 Map Pack Hits PC June 5 - Shacknews

The first downloadable map pack for Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare will hit PCs on June 5, the developer has revealed.

Dubbed the Variety Map Pack, it brings four new multiplayer maps to the fold: Creek, Broadcast, Killhouse, and Chinatown, a remake of the classic CoD map Carentan.

 

Unlike the pack's earlier console releases, which sold for $10, the PC edition will be available for free thanks to a sponsorship from Nvidia.

"In addition to the map pack hitting, PC Players will be receiving the 1.6 Patch for the PC version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that will add support for the new maps, fix a server crash exploit recently reported by the community, and a few additional features / bug fixes," community manager Robert Bowling wrote on his blog.

Free COD 4 Map Pack Hits PC June 5 - Shacknews

More Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Songs Unveiled

Publisher Activision has issued new screenshots and a partial tracklist of the tracks from the upcoming celebration of rock known as Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.

The list, which details the first five tiers of opening acts and Aerosmith sets, includes contributions from such artists as Run DMC, Lenny Kravitz, Black Crowes, and Mott the Hoople.

The game is to hit stores on June 29. As with Guitar Hero 3 and the forthcoming Guitar Hero World Tour, Neversoft in handling the PS3 and 360 editions, with Vicarious Visions on the Wii version and Budcat developing the PS2 release.

Read on for today's list, as well as glimpse of a polygonal Run DMC.

Announced tracks as of June 2, 2008:

Nipmuc High School
1. Mott the Hoople - All the Young Dudes*
2. Cheap Trick - Dream Police
3. Aerosmith - Make It
4. Aerosmith - Uncle Salty
5. Aerosmith - Draw the Line
   
   Max's Kansas City
6. Joan Jett - I Hate Myself for Loving You
7. The Kinks - All Day and All of the Night*
8. Aerosmith - Movin' Out
9. Aerosmith - No Surprize
10. Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion
    
    The Orpheum Theater
11. The Clash - Complete Control
12. New York Dolls - Personality Crisis*
13. Aerosmith - Livin' on the Edge
14. Aersomith - Ragdoll
15. Aerosmith - Love in an Elevator
    
    Half Time Show
16. Lenny Kravitz - Always on the Run
17. Black Crowes - Hard to Handle*
18. Aerosmith - Back in the Saddle
19. Aerosmith - Beyond Beautiful
20. Aerosmith - Dream On
    
    Moscow
21. The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary
22. Run DMC - King of Rock
23. Aerosmith - Bright Light Fright
24. Aerosmith - Nobody's Fault
25. Run DMC featuring Aerosmith - Walk This Way
    * designates a cover

More Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Songs Unveiled

Battlefield 2142 Patch 1.50 Released - Shacknews

A new Battlefield 2142 patch has made its debut, ushering in two new maps, modes and other features.

Patch 1.5 adds the Wake Island 2142 and Operation Shingle maps, as well as the ability to use widescreen resolutions in the game. Two new modes, No Vehicles and Conquest Assault, are also now available in the game.

For a full list of changes and additions, check out the full patch notes.

Battlefield 2142 Patch 1.50 Released - Shacknews

EcoGeek - World's First Renewable Gasoline

The title might sound impossible, but Sapphire Energy, a California-based company, has been working away to create actual gasoline from a renewable, carbon neutral source: algae. While we've heard of many different processes for making fuels from algae, this one certainly tops the list. They've managed to produce 91-octane, ASTM certified gasoline, ready to be pumped into your car. They stress that it is not ethanol, and not biodiesel.

Move over Brent Crude, it's Green Crude's turn.

The company, they say, started with 3 friends discussing a very interesting question: "Why is the biofuel industry spending so much time and energy to manufacture ethanol — a fundamentally inferior fuel?" A very good question indeed, and one they sought to answer on their own terms. The friends - a bioengineer, a chemist, and a biologist - set out to recruit the best minds they could find to collaborate with them on the project, and the results are staggering. "The company has built a revolutionary platform using sunlight, CO₂ and microorganisms such as algae" to produce the fuel, without the use of arable land, and while we haven't yet seen any data, they claim it to be very water efficient.

They also announced that they raised $50 million from Arch Rock Ventures, Venrock, and the Wellcome Trust. It is evident that Sapphire will become a major player in the coming years for alternative fuel production, and one cannot help but be inspired with confidence when Arch Rock says: "We realized at that point we could change the world, so we sat them down and told them, 'the checkbook is completely open; tell us what you need'." Not a statement you hear everyday from a venture capital firm.

We will have more on this story as it develops; we are eager for more info and will pass it on as soon as we get it.

EcoGeek - Technology for the Environment

DailyTech - Seagate CEO Says 2TB HDD and Its First SSD Coming Next Year

Seagate says it will target enterprise customers with its first SSD
Seagate doesn’t currently have any drives in the SSD market. Seagate currently is one of the largest makers of traditional hard drives and while it foresees a time when the solid state drive (SSD) is a better value than traditional HDDs; that time is not now.

Seagate announced that next year it will double its highest capacity traditional HDD to 2TB and will introduce its first SSD. CEO Bill Watkins says Seagate will first target enterprise customers with its SSDs where the benefits of lower power consumption and faster data access will be most welcome. The enterprise environment will also be willing to pay the premium SSDs will still demand whereas the majority of the consumer market is not willing to pay the premium at this time says Seagate.

PC World quotes Watkins saying, “SSDs are not price-competitive yet.” The cost per gigabyte for SSDs isn’t expected to come down for several years. Watkins believes that SSDs will become a focus for Seagate when the cost per gigabyte of SSD storage is around $0.10.

Currently, the cost per gigabyte for the average SSD is about $3.58 per gigabyte according to Krishna Chander, an analyst at iSuppli. There are problems with SSDs to be tackled over the next few years other than price. The typical SSD still has a storage capacity too low for most users and the SSD lifespan is short compared to a traditional HDD.

The answer to the problem of durability may lie in using the SSD for data reading and fast access to commonly used files and having less frequently used stuff moved off to a HDD for more permanent storage according to some. Despite the fact that Seagate doesn’t currently sell SSDs, it does own several patents that cover technology currently used in many SSDs on the market.

In April 2008 Seagate announced it was going to begin filing patent infringement suits against SSD makers who were using its patented technology in their products with the first suit filed against STEC.

DailyTech - Seagate CEO Says 2TB HDD and Its First SSD Coming Next Year