Calif. airship reaches record height
BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nev., Oct. 27 (UPI) -- An unmanned airship created by a California company flew 95,085 feet into the air, higher than any airship in history, the company said.
JP Aerospace of Rancho Cordova took the twin-balloon Tandem airship to Nevada's Black Rock Desert Sunday for the launch, KTXL-TV, Sacramento, reported.
Remotely controlled by an operator on the ground, the Tandem's two balloons are separated by a 30-foot-long carbon fiber truss while two 6-foot propellers are each driven by an electric motor to maneuver the airship.
Once at the record-breaking height, the motors were turned on to fly the ship through a series of maneuvers. However, when one of the balloons burst the Tandem was brought down to a soft landing with the help of five parachutes.
Tandem was built to be a "workhorse vehicle" to carry smaller research rockets to high altitudes at a fraction of the cost large aerospace companies are spending, company officials said.
"We've spent about $30,000 and the past five years developing Tandem," JP Aerospace President John Powell said in a release.
Remains of czar and family authenticated
MOSCOW, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- Russian investigators say they've confirmed the purported remains of Czar Nicholas II and his family, buried in a St. Petersburg cathedral, are authentic.
The authenticity of the remains of the czar's family, slain by Bolsheviks in 1918 in the Russian Revolution, has been the subject of controversy for nearly a century.
"As a result of a probe, the Investigative Committee has come to the categorical conclusion that the remains are authentic," investigator Vladimir Solovyov said Thursday in Moscow.
The confirmation was based on "summarized data including court documents, genetic analysis, and historical and other materials," RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.
Nicholas II, his wife, their four daughters and son were shot to death in a cellar in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in the early hours of July 17, 1918.
The remains of some of the family were discovered in 1991 and buried in the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.
The remains of two of the children, Alexei and Maria, were discovered in 2007 near Yekaterinburg and confirmed by DNA tests.
Large asteroid to be studied in Earth pass
GREENBELT, Md., Oct. 27 (UPI) -- A giant asteroid that could threaten Earth in the distant future will pass close enough for Earth observatories to study and measure it, astronomers say.
At its closest approach Nov. 8, asteroid 2005 YU55 will pass within 201,700 miles of Earth, inside the orbit of the moon, SPACE.com reported Thursday.
Scientists will track the asteroid with antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network at Goldstone, Calif., the space agency said.
Although the asteroid's orbit regularly brings it into the vicinity of Earth, the November encounter is the closest it has come for at least the last 200 years, astronomers said.
The last time an asteroid this big came as close to Earth was in 1976, although astronomers were unaware of the flyby at the time.
The next known approach of an asteroid this large will be in 2028, NASA said.
Ancient climate data may predict future
COLUMBIA, Mo., Oct. 27 (UPI) -- Prehistoric data on greenhouse gases from studies of the ocean floor could predict Earth's climate future, researchers at the University of Missouri say.
The greenhouse climate on Earth of the Late Cretaceous Epoch was influenced by circulation in the deep oceans, they said, and changes in those circulation patterns 70 million years ago could help scientists understand the consequences of modern increases in greenhouse gases.
"We are examining ocean conditions from several past greenhouse climate intervals so that we can understand better the interactions among the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere, and climate," Kenneth MacLeod, professor of geological sciences, said in a UM release Thursday.
While high atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide caused Late Cretaceous warmth, ocean circulation influenced how that warmth was distributed around the globe, the researchers said.
"Understanding the degree to which climate influences circulation and vice versa is important today because carbon dioxide levels are rapidly approaching levels most recently seen during ancient greenhouse times," MacLeod said. "In just a few decades, humans are causing changes in the composition of the atmosphere that are as large as the changes that took millions of years to occur during geological climate cycles."
