Researchers say they have identified an entirely new kind of planet, dominated not by rock, gas or other common materials, but water.

New York - An astronaut attempting to visit recently discovered planet GJ1214b would land in hot water - literally, US scientists say.

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said they have identified an entirely new kind of planet, dominated not by rock, gas or other common materials, but water.

The planet is “a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere,” they said in a statement, after scrutinising the planet with Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope.

“GJ1214b is like no planet we know of,” astronomer Zachary Berta said. “A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water.”

GJ1214b was discovered in 2009 by the ground-based MEarth Project. Described as a “super-Earth,” it is about 2.7 times Earth's diameter and weighs almost 7 times as much.

Further studies in 2010 led to scientists suspecting that the planet, where the temperature is some 450 degrees Fahrenheit (232 Celsius), was largely covered in water. This was confirmed by Berta and his co-authors using Hubble to study the planet when it crossed in front of its host star.

The light of the star, filtered through the planet's atmosphere, gave clues to the mix of gasses, backing up the water vapour theory.

“The Hubble measurements really tip the balance in favour of a steamy atmosphere,” Berta said.

Further measurements and estimates led scientists to conclude that the planet has much more water than Earth and much less rock. That, together with high temperatures and pressure, likely produce some highly exotic results, including “hot ice,” scientists say.

Our solar system contains three basic planet types: rocky, like Earth; gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn; and ice giants like Uranus. - Sapa-AFP

John Glenn's groundbreaking flight in 1962, put the United States into a heated space race with the Soviet Union.

Columbus, Ohio - John Glenn, marking the 50th anniversary on Monday of becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, remembered the flight as the best day of his life.

Glenn, 90, told an audience in Columbus the flight was the result of “more than two years of training and working with a marvellous team.”

“That is why the craft was called Friendship 7, because of the team,” he said.

Glenn's groundbreaking flight on Feb. 20, 1962, put the United States into a heated space race with the Soviet Union, which had launched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit 10 months earlier.

“It was the best day of my life,” said Glenn, who went on to serve as Democratic senator from Ohio from 1974 to 1999.

“It seems more like two weeks than 50 years,” he said of the flight, noting it had since been “a rare day” when someone had not asked him a question about space or his flight.

The anniversary has been marked by a series of celebratory events, and Glenn has taken the opportunity to speak out against funding cuts to the nation's space program.

Glenn returned to space in 1998, at age 77, on board the space shuttle Discovery as a research subject for experiments on aging sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. - Reuters

Fifty years after John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, Nasa no longer has the ability to fly astronauts in space.

Cape Canaveral - Fifty years after John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, Nasa no longer has the ability to fly astronauts in space, a decision Glenn lays squarely on the shoulders of the Bush administration.

Glenn's groundbreaking flight on Feb. 20, 1962, put the United States into a heated space race with the Soviet Union, which had launched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit 10 months earlier.

The retirement of the shuttles last year left the United States dependent on its former Cold War foe to get astronauts to and from the jointly owned International Space Station, which flies about 240 miles (385km) above the planet.

“I regret that that is the way things have developed,” Glenn told a crowd of current and former Nasa employees and guests at the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex on Saturday night, part of a series of celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of his flight.

“We spent over $100 billion dollars putting the space station up there. It's too bad in the previous administration the decision was made to end the shuttle, so now we have to go somewhere else to even get up to our station,” said Glenn, who served as a Democratic senator from Ohio between 1975 to 1999.

The United States grounded its aging shuttles last year due to high operating costs and to free up funds for a new generation of spacecraft that can fly farther from Earth. More money would have been needed years earlier in order for the new ships to be ready by the time the old ones were retired.

Glenn parlayed his political connections into a long-awaited return to space in 1998 when, at age 77, he flew aboard the space shuttle Discovery as a research subject for experiments on aging sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Now 90, Glenn, a retired Marine Corps pilot, said research is the most important benefit of the US space program and lauded the decision to extend the International Space Station's life to at least 2020 from 2015.

“People say, 'Well, what good is research?' I think every bit of progress made by human beings has been made because somebody was curious about the unknown,” Glenn said.

“If there's one thing we have learned through the history of our country, it's that money spent on basic research has a way of paying back in the future beyond anything we ever see at the outset,” he said.

Though research was not the reason Glenn and his Mercury Seven colleagues were launched into orbit, scientists had many questions about how the human body would manage in the weightless environment of space.

“The things we were looking at back on those first flights seem so primitive now, they're almost laughable,” Glenn said. “The doctors were literally concerned that your eyes might change shape and your vision might change enough that you couldn't even see the instrument panel. We actually put a little miniaturised eye chart on the top of instrument panel.

Scott Carpenter, who followed Glenn into orbit three months later, said he swallowed radioactive food so doctors could see if his body could metabolize food in weightlessness.

“It was senseless, because you can eat food standing on your head and you process it very nicely. Why couldn't we do it the same way in zero gravity? Well, we had to prove it. I was given some radioactive food in a toothpaste tube and I was told to eat that on the first orbit. It was radioactive so they could trace its movement through my body,” Carpenter said.

Two more Mercury missions followed Glenn and Carpenter's three-orbit flights, paving the way for the Gemini program and finally the real goal of the nascent human space program - sending a crew to the Moon.

“Although we were behind the Soviet Union, we were able to overtake them and do exactly what (President John F.) Kennedy told us to do,” Glenn said. “In so doing we would beat the Russians to the Moon.”

Now it is Russia that flies Americans into space aboard its Soyuz spacecraft, a service that costs Nasa more than $300 million a year. The US space agency also is spending about $3 billion a year to develop a capsule and rocket that can carry astronauts to the Moon, asteroids, Mars and other destinations beyond the space station. The first manned test flight is expected in 2021.

Meanwhile, in hopes of breaking Russia's monopoly on station crew transportation, Nasa has invested $365.5 million since 2010 in six companies working to develop commercial space taxis. The agency wants $830 million for the year beginning Oct. 1 to keep work going at two or more firms.

“I hope that some of these efforts to re-create our own transportation system come through and don't have a lot of problems because until then we are dependent on the Russians to get us into space,” Glenn told Reuters.

“If anything happens to the Soyuz, if it should have to be grounded for any particular reason, we have no way of getting into space. It would end our manned program until we can invent new ways to get up there,” Glenn said.

“There are lots of reasons behind our current predicament,” added Carpenter. “But what it boils down to is the simple fact that when John and I went to work for this country, the United States was recognised around the world as a can-do nation. We have become viewed around the planet as a can't-do nation and I deplore that.” - Reuters

SA’s two representatives on the SKA Organisation’s international board of directors say they know nothing about negotiations with the preferred bidder.

A leading Australian newspaper’s claim that negotiations with the preferred bidder for hosting the giant Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope are already under way, has been dismissed as “speculation”.

And SA’s two representatives on the SKA Organisation’s international board of directors both say they know nothing about it.

However, tensions are rising ahead of the scheduled board meeting on April 4, where there is the first possibility for a firm decision between sites proposed by SA and its eight African partners, and by Australia in partnership with New Zealand.

The Australians are upping the ante to counter what they apparently believe is political sympathy for the African bid.

Senator Chris Evans, Australia’s minister for science and research, will lead a high-level delegation to China and Italy next weekend to promote the Australasian bid. He will also visit the UK and the Netherlands early next month, just weeks before the first vote on the site.

The four countries he’s targetting – China, Italy, the UK and the Netherlands – are all founder members of the SKA Organisation and will between them effectively make the site decision.

Evans made it clear that he planned to counter what he perceived as sympathy support for the Africa bid with its developmental emphasis, and to push for a straight “scientific vote”. He also took a thinly disguised swipe at Africa’s economic and political stability.

According to an official transcript of a “doorstop” exchange with journalists, he said: “We’ll get the scientific recommendation in the next week or so, but we think there’ll then be a process where countries analyse not only the scientific recommendation, but other aspects of the bid. That’s why we need to, if you like, be in their faces, making it clear that we are serious...

“I think we’ve got to be realistic. I think we’ve got the best site and we’ve got the best scientific investment, if you like, and capacity. But I think it’s also the case that in Europe there is some sympathy for the need to help Africa develop.

“But I want to make it clear, this isn’t a development project. This is a 50-year science project and we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the best science and the best site. Australia’s got that, but we’ve got to convince people of that.”

He continued: “We think in addition to our site and science advantages, the fact that Australia-New Zealand is economically strong, is very politically stable, will allow us to say to people: ‘If you’re going to invest in a project that is of 50 years’ duration, then you’re going to make sure you’re investing in a place that can get a project of this size up and running and do it in an environment where there is low risk’.”

The Sydney Morning Herald carried a report which stated: “Australia and New Zealand are in a neck-and-neck race with South Africa... A recommendation on the preferred site was made in confidence to the project’s board of directors in London overnight. Negotiations with the preferred site are now under way, ahead of a final decision by April.”

But this was dismissed by SKA Organisation media spokesman Colin Greenwood, who told the Cape Argus: “I can confirm that the report to which you refer is speculation as no official announcement has been made. I can also confirm that the board of directors did not meet last night.”

SA’s two board members, Dr Val Munsami and Dr Bernie Fanaroff, said they’d not been aware of any board meeting. - Cape Argus

A rock which sat on a doorstep for at least 80 years has been revealed as the biggest meteorite ever to fall in Britain.

London - A rock which sat on a doorstep for at least 80 years has been revealed as the biggest meteorite ever to fall in Britain.

The rock, which is 18in across and weighs 200lb, was discovered at Lake House near Wilsford cum Lake, Wiltshire.

It is thought to have landed on Salisbury Plain 30,000 years ago.

Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University, who has been researching its history, believes druids incorporated it into a chalk mound, which protected it from weathering, before it was unearthed by a previous occupant of Lake House.

The meteorite, four times larger than any other found in Britain, is on display at the Royal Society in London until March 31. - Daily Mail

Two Russian astronauts have spent more than six hours on a spacewalk to work on the International Space Station.

Moscow - Two Russian astronauts spent more than six hours on a spacewalk on Thursday to work on the International Space Station (ISS) and prepare it for updates next year.

Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shaplerov moved a crane from the outside of a docking compartment to prepare the compartment to be replaced with a new laboratory and docking module next year, US space agency Nasa said.

The pair were to have installed new shielding to protect the station's work module from microscopic rock particles and space junk, officials at Russia's national space agency Roscosmos said. But they ran out of time to complete that task during the six-hour, 15-minute spacewalk, Nasa said.

The astronauts also took samples from several sections of the station's exterior surface as part of ongoing research on the long-term effect of cosmic particles on a spaceship.

The ISS' shields and solar arrays are under constant bombardment by microscopic space particles. Astronauts sometimes use the station's rockets to shift its position, to avoid larger objects.

Six astronauts are currently aboard the ISS: Shkaplerov, Kononenko, fellow Russian Anatoly Ivanishin, the US' Daniel Burbank and Donald Petit, and Andre Kuipers from the Netherlands. - Sapa-dpa

Humans and robots have united in space with a healthy handshake.

Cape Canaveral - Astronauts and robots have united in space with a healthy handshake.

The commander of the International Space Station, Daniel Burbank, shook hands Wednesday with Robonaut. It's the first handshake ever between a human and a humanoid in space.

Nasa's Robonaut was launched aboard space shuttle Discovery last February. Crews have been testing it to see how it one day might help astronauts perform space station chores.

On Wednesday, ground controllers sent up computer software that enabled the robot to extend its right hand, fingers outstretched. Burbank took the mechanical hand and pumped it up and down. The astronaut says it was a firm handshake.

And he says Robonaut - the first humanoid in space - is quite impressive. It resembles a human from the waist up. - Sapa-AP

About 16 000 pieces of so-called space debris are racing around the planet and pose an increasing threat.

Lausanne, Switzerland - Swiss engineers want to remove man-made waste from space, by building a vehicle that would grab old satellites orbiting the earth, the Swiss Space Centre announced on Wednesday in Lausanne.

About 16 000 pieces of so-called space debris are racing around the planet and pose an increasing threat, as they could collide with active satellites or spacecraft.

The space centre, which is part of the national technology institute EPFL, plans to send a small satellite called CleanSpace One into space to grab the centre's even smaller satellite SwissCube, which was launched in 2009 and measures 10 cubic centimetres.

“We put it up there, so we are going to bring it back down,” said the centre's director Volker Gass, stressing the project's ethical component.

Several space agencies including DLR in Germany are also working on solutions to dispose space waste, but no discarded parts of satellites, rockets or spacecraft have ever been collected.

“We want to offer and sell a whole family of ready-made systems, designed as sustainably as possible, that are able to de-orbit several different kinds of satellites,” Gass said.

However, the first version that is to be launched within three to five years will not yet be able to bring SwissCube back to earth, but both objects will burn when re-entering the atmosphere.

“One has to work on achievable targets. Otherwise you never get into space,” Gass said. - Sapa-dpa

Former US president Dwight Eisenhower had three close encounters with aliens, according to an ex-government consultant.

London - Dwight Eisenhower had three close encounters with aliens, a former US government consultant has claimed.

British lecturer Timothy Good said the secret meetings between the US president and the extra-terrestrials happened at a New Mexico air base in 1954.

Speaking on Frank Skinner’s BBC2 show Opinionated, Mr Good said FBI officials organised the showdowns by sending out “telepathic messages”.

The former consultant to both the US Congress and the Pentagon claimed the initial meeting involved aliens who were “Nordic” in appearance, but an agreement was eventually “signed” with a race called “Alien Greys”.

Mr Eisenhower - president from 1953 to 1961 - was known to have a strong belief in life on other planets. - Daily Mail

The goal of Nasa’s new space plan is to have at least one and preferably several commercial space taxis able to fly to the space station before the end of 2017.

Cape Canaveral - US President Barack Obama's proposed 2013 budget for Nasa boosts spending at the Kennedy Space Centre, which bore the brunt of job layoffs at the end of the space shuttle program last year, the Centre director said on Tuesday.

The president's $17.7 billion budget request for Nasa for the year beginning Oct. 1 includes $2.1 billion for the Florida spaceport, an increase of $323 million over this year's budget.

“During these austere times when other centres went down, for us to go up I think says a lot about the importance of what we're doing and where we're going,” Kennedy Space Centre director and former astronaut Bob Cabana told a National Space Club Florida Committee meeting in Cape Canaveral on Tuesday.

The centre proposed budget increase won't mean more Nasa jobs, however. Cabana told reporters he expects Kennedy Space centre workforce to remain at about 7,500 employees through 2013. That number includes about 2,050 civil servants.

More than 8,000 contractors, mostly in Florida, were laid off when the shuttles were retired last year.

In addition to closing out the shuttle program, which will cost Nasa about $71 million in 2013, the Kennedy Space Centre is overseeing efforts to seed a new commercial human space transportation industry in the United States.

The shuttle program's end left only Russia with the means to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station, a $100 billion research outpost that orbits about 240 miles (385km) above the Earth.

Russia charges the United States about $60 million per person for rides on its Soyuz capsules.

To break the monopoly, Nasa has invested $365.5 million since 2010 in six companies, including Boeing, privately held Sierra Nevada Corp and Space Exploration Technologies, which are all developing passenger spacecraft.

Another round of awards, expected to total more than $300 million, is due to be announced this summer.

The goal of the program is to have at least one and preferably several commercial space taxis able to fly to the space station before the end of 2017.

The Kennedy Space Centre also oversees the agency's launch services program, which purchases rides for science and communications satellites.

The Florida spaceport is in the early phases of reconfiguring the shuttle launch pads, equipment and processing facilities to accommodate other users, such as Space Florida, a state-backed agency working to boost space-related business.

Last year, Space Florida took over one of the shuttle's processing hangars and leased it to Boeing, which wants it for its space taxi work.

Nasa's 2013 spending plan includes $41 million for the Kennedy Space centre planned multi-purpose launch facility.

Another $404 million would go toward upgrading ground support systems in preparation for launches of Nasa's new heavy-lift rocket. The so-called Space Launch System, which is based on shuttle fuel tanks and booster rockets, is being designed to carry astronauts and cargo to the moon, Mars, asteroids and other destinations beyond the space station.

The first crew test flight, which would use an early version of the rocket, is targeted for 2021. Obama has called for a mission to an asteroid in 2025 and a human expedition to Mars in the mid-2030s. - Reuters