technology SATURDAY, MAY 26, 2012
SpaceX Dragon makes final approach to space station SpaceX to restore US access to space outpost WASHINGTON: SpaceX’s Dragon capsule yesterday made its final approach toward the International Space Station, edging closer to the climax of its landmark mission to latch on to the orbiting research lab. The first step of the two-phase berthing maneuver was expected at 10:40 am (1440 GMT), when the astronauts aboard the ISS would use the robotic arm to capture the unmanned capsule and shepherd it toward the $100 billion orbiting lab, NASA said. The grapple time was delayed from 9:10 am after sensors aboard the Dragon capsule were found to be reacting to a glint of light off the Japanese Kibo lab on the space station, a situation which had to be fixed before the operation could proceed. Soon after the robotic arm grab takes place, a formal berthing of the Dragon will bring the capsule closer to latch on at the station’s Harmony module so its cargo can be unloaded over the coming days. “The desire is for a daylight pass for the crew so they obviously can see the Dragon a little bit better as they use the robotic arm to reach out and grab on to it,” said a NASA commentator on the space agency’s live broadcast of the event. In the meantime, Dragon is holding 30 meters (yards) from the space station, before moving in to a final distance of 10 meters. Both spacecraft are zooming around the Earth at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour (27,350 kilometers per hour). SpaceX’s supply ship is on a mission to become the first privately owned craft to berth with the space station, restoring US access to the space outpost after the shuttle program’s end. Only Russia, Japan and Europe currently have supply ships that can reach the ISS. The United States lost that capacity when it retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011. So far, the demonstration flight has been near flawless, according to progress reports from NASA and SpaceX since the capsule blasted off atop the Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Tuesday. The launch marked the first time a commercial enterprise has sent its own craft to the orbiting lab and opened what NASA, the White House and SpaceX officials described as a “new era” in spaceflight. California-based SpaceX hopes that
its gumdrop-shaped Dragon capsule will be able to carry astronauts to the ISS in about three years’ time. Russia is now the only nation capable of ferrying astronauts there aboard its Soyuz capsules. In addition, a successful berthing mission opens the way for SpaceX’s $1.6 billion contract with NASA to supply the space station and return cargo to Earth over the coming years. “After this mission we are on contract for at least 12 more missions to the International Space Station,”
said SpaceX flight director John Couluris, noting that while Japan and Europe can carry supplies to the ISS, only Russia can return cargo to Earth. “So we are looking to provide regular services... at a faster rate than some of the other vehicles.” On Thursday, the Dragon capsule successfully completed a fly-under of the ISS at a distance of 2.4 kilometers as well as several other maneuvers to lay the groundwork for the berthing attempt. — AFP
FLORIDA: The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from space launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla. — AP
This image provided by NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft (top) as Dragon approaches the International Space Station yesterday. Dragon is scheduled to spend about a week docked with the station before returning to Earth on May 31 for retrieval. — AP
Facebook launches iPhone camera app NEW YORK: Facebook’s rocky initial public offering hasn’t stopped life at the world’s biggest online social network. On Thursday, the company unveiled a camera app for the iPhone. The app can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store and works like most other camera applications for smart phones. To take a photo, you tap a camera icon in the upper left corner of your screen, aim and shoot. You can then add filters, crop or tilt your photo, and share it on Facebook. The new app is similar to Instagram, the photo-sharing
app Facebook is in the process of buying for $1 billion. The acquisition, however, has not yet been completed, and Instagram’s employees did not work on the photo app. Facebook has said it expects the Instagram acquisition to close sometime this year. Facebook didn’t give details on when it might release a version of the app for phones that run on Google’s Android operating system. In a statement, Facebook said it is “carefully looking at what might make for a good Facebook photos experience across Android devices.” — AP
DNA study seeks origin of Appalachia’s Melungeons NASHVILLE: For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned residents of the southeastern Appalachia region, once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies. Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin. And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn’t sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry. “There were a whole lot of people upset by this study,” lead researcher Roberta Estes said. “They just knew they were Portuguese, or Native American.” Beginning in the early 1800s, or possibly before, the term Melungeon was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border. But it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry. In recent decades, interest in the origin of the Melungeons has risen dramatically with advances both in DNA research and in the advent of Internet resources that allow individuals to trace their ancestry without digging through dusty archives. G Reginald Daniel, a sociologist at the University of CaliforniaSanta Barbara who’s spent more than 30 years examining multiracial people in the US and wasn’t part of this research, said the study is more evidence that race-mixing in the US isn’t a new phenomenon. “All of us are multiracial,” he said. “It is recapturing a more authentic US history.” Estes and her fellow researchers theorize that the various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery. They conclude that as laws were put in place to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating together from Virginia through the Carolinas before settling primarily in the mountains of East Tennessee. Claims of Portuguese ancestry likely were a ruse they used in order to remain free and retain other privileges that came with being considered white, according to the study’s authors. The study quotes from an 1874 court case in Tennessee in which a Melungeon woman’s inheritance was challenged. If Martha Simmerman were found to have African blood, she would lose the inheritance. Her attorney, Lewis Shepherd, argued successfully that the Simmerman’s family was descended from ancient Phoenicians who eventually migrated to Portugal and then to North America. Writing about his argument in a memoir published years later, Shepherd stated, “Our Southern high-bred people will never tolerate on equal terms any person who is even remotely tainted with negro blood, but they do not make the same objection to other brown or darkskinned people, like the Spanish, the Cubans, the Italians, etc.” In another lawsuit in 1855, Jacob Perkins, who is described as “an East Tennessean of a Melungeon family,” sued a man who had accused him of having “negro blood.” In a note to his attorney, Perkins wrote why he felt the accusation was damaging. Writing in the era of slavery ahead of the Civil War, Perkins noted the racial discrimination of the age: “1st the words imply that we are liable to be indicted (equals) liable to be whipped (equals) liable to be fined ... “ Later generations came to believe some of the tales their ancestors wove out of necessity. Jack Goins, who has researched Melungeon history for about 40 years and was the driving force behind the DNA study, said his distant relatives were listed as Portuguese on an 1880 census. — AP