NASA ends Mars rover contact attempts
PASADENA, Calif., May 25 (UPI) -- NASA says it is giving up on making contact with the Mars rover Spirit, suspecting it has succumbed to the planet's frigid winters after seven years of work.
With inadequate energy to run its survival heaters, the rover probably experienced colder internal temperatures last year than in any of its prior six years on Mars, the agency said in a release Wednesday.
Spirit landed on Mars on Jan. 3, 2004, for a mission designed to last three months. Its twin, the rover Opportunity, is still engaged in ongoing exploration of Mars.
Communications systems used to communicate with Spirit in the past, including the Deep Space Network of antennas on Earth, are needed to prepare for the Mars Science Laboratory mission scheduled to launch later this year, NASA said.
"We're now transitioning assets to support the November launch of our next generation Mars rover, Curiosity," Dave Lavery, NASA's program head for solar system exploration, said.
"However, while we no longer believe there is a realistic probability of hearing from Spirit, the Deep Space Network may occasionally listen for any faint signals when the schedule permits."
Measles vaccinations urged as cases rise
ATLANTA, May 25 (UPI) -- U.S. health authorities say the number of cases of measles reported in the first 4 1/2 months of 2011 is the highest since 1996.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 118 cases of measles were reported in 23 U.S. states in that time period, Medical News Today reported Tuesday.
Endemic or sustained measles transmission has not happened in America since the mid-1990s in spite of infected people coming in from abroad, the CDC report said.
Between 2001 and 2008, an average of 56 cases were reported each year, making 118 cases in the first 19 weeks of 2011 a considerable increase, it said.
Of the 118 reported cases, 89 percent were linked to importations from abroad, including 34 Americans coming back home and 12 foreign visitors.
The increase in measles importations has led the CDC to urge vaccinations against the extremely contagious disease that can infect 90 percent of exposed susceptible individuals.
Satellites reveal 'lost' Egyptian pyramids
CAIRO, May 25 (UPI) -- A satellite survey of Egypt has revealed 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements in infrared images that can detect underground structures, scientists say.
Seventeen lost pyramids are among the structures identified in the survey, two of which have already been confirmed with initial excavations, the BBC reported Wednesday.
"To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist," U.S. Egyptologist Sarah Parcak, a pioneer of space-based archaeology, said.
Working at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, she and a team of researchers analyzed images from satellites orbiting 435 miles above the earth, equipped with cameras that can capture images of objects less than a yard in diameter on the Earth's surface.
Structures underground, such as houses, temples and tombs, were revealed using infrared imaging, as ancient Egyptians constructed their buildings out of mud brick, which is much denser than the soil that surrounds it.
"These are just the sites [close to] the surface," Parcak said. "There are many thousands of additional sites that the Nile has covered over with silt. This is just the beginning of this kind of work."
Stored nuclear fuel seen as U.S. risk
WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- The threat of released radioactive materials from a spent fuel pool at Japan's Fukushima plant is dwarfed by the risk posed by similar U.S. pools, a study says.
At one plant, the Vermont Yankee facility on the border of Massachusetts and Vermont that is almost a twin of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the spent fuel in a pool at the solitary reactor is greater than the amount in all four of the damaged Fukushima reactors combined, the report by the non-profit Institute for Policy Studies said.
The report recommends the United States move most of the country's spent nuclear fuel from the pools filled with cooling water to dry sealed steel casks to limit the risk of an accident, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
"The largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet will remain in storage at U.S. reactor sites for the indefinite future," senior institute researcher Robert Alvarez, the author of the report, wrote. "In protecting America from nuclear catastrophe, safely securing the spent fuel by eliminating highly radioactive, crowded pools should be a public safety priority of the highest degree."
Nearly all U.S. reactors, particularly older ones, are storing far more spent fuel at their locations than was anticipated at the time of their design, Alvarez wrote.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says pool storage is safe, although it has said it will re-examine the pool issue in light of events at Fukushima, the Times reported.
