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(02/16/04 5:32am)
SEATTLE -- Three young mules who are the first members of the horse family to be cloned are all healthy, normal and energetically enjoying life, say researchers who put them on display Sunday.\nIdaho Gem, born May 4, 2003, was the first successful cloning of an equine. He was followed by siblings Utah Pioneer on June 9 and Idaho Star on July 27. The clonings were a project of the Northwest Equine Reproduction Laboratory at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho.\nAll three were born to surrogate mares from embryos that were cloned using eggs from horses and cells taken from a the 45-day-old fetus of a mule. The cloned mules are the true siblings of Taz, a famous racing mule.\nGordon Woods, director of the University of Idaho laboratory, said the animals undergo intensive medical tests every three months and all three appear to be normal and healthy.\n"We have not seen anything out of the ordinary with these animals," Woods said at a presentation at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.\nMules are the sterile offspring of mating between a horse and a donkey. Taz, which has won prizes in a western mule racing circuit, was born to a horse mother and fathered by a donkey. Woods said the owner of Taz paid the cost of cloning the three siblings, using a fetus produced by the racing mule's parents.\nWoods said the scientific goal of the project was to test a theory that increasing the amount of calcium surrounding an equine embryo would cause cells to grow more rapidly and, thus, improve equine cloning.\nDirk Vanderwall, a veterinarian who is part of Woods' team, said, using the enhanced calcium levels, the team produced 21 pregnancies from 113 embryos. Only three pregnancies lasted longer than 60 days, and those produced the three mule clones.\n"The manipulation of calcium concentrations to achieve success in equine cloning may have implications for other assisted equine reproduction techniques," said Woods. "Increasing intracellular calcium in horses may increase their fertility in general."\nWoods said he became interested in the effects of calcium levels in cells because he found a possible link between intercellular calcium and cancer.\nCalcium concentrations in the red blood cells of horses are 2.3 times less than in human red blood cells. Calcium concentrations outside of the red blood cells, however, are 1.5 greater in horses than in humans.\nSince calcium is thought to play a role in prostate cancer, he theorized that this may explain why stallions have never been known to develop cancer of the prostate but the disease is common in humans. Cancer in general is more rare in horses, he noted. The disease kills about 8 percent of horses, while the overall cancer mortality rate in humans is about 24 percent.\nWoods said by studying how calcium regulation occurs in horses, it may be possible to develop new ways of treating human disease. In addition to cancer, calcium regulation has been linked in humans to diabetes and heart disease.\nThe Idaho researchers said the university will give lifetime care to the three cloned mules as part of a continuing effort to understand the health implication of cloning members of the equine family.\nFurther cloning, however, is not planned due to the lack of money, said Woods. He said his lab stands ready to attempt to clone horses but that the effort would require about $200,000. Some thoroughbred breeders have shown an interest, he said, but no one has stepped forward with the money.\nThe three cloned mules are not exact duplicates of each other, even though they carry the same DNA. One animal is very slightly smaller than the others and one has a slightly lighter coat. These differences may be the result of environmental factors, said Vanderwall.
(01/15/04 5:39am)
WASHINGTON -- President Bush beckoned the nation "forward into the universe" Wednesday, outlining a costly new effort to return Americans to the moon as early as 2015 and use it as a waystation to Mars and beyond.\nBush said he envisioned "a new foothold on the moon ... and new journeys to the world beyond our own," underscoring a renewed commitment to manned spaceflight less than a year after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and a crew of seven.\nIn an election-year speech at NASA headquarters a few blocks from the White House, Bush said the United States would complete its obligations to the International Space Station by 2010 and retire the aging space shuttle fleet at about the same time. In its place, he called for development of a new Crew Exploratory Vehicle, capable of carrying astronauts to the space station and the moon.\nBush said early financing would total $12 billion for exploration over the next five years, only $1 billion of it in new funds. That meant even if he wins a second term in office, his successors in the Oval Office would be responsible for finding the rest of the money for a program likely to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.\nThe space agency arranged a splashy, high-tech entrance for the president, who strode to the front of a giant video screen beaming an image of Michael Foale, aboard the space station 240 miles above the earth.\n"I know that I'm just one chapter in an ongoing story of discovery," said Foale, making his sixth trip into earth orbit. He said he was also "certain that NASA's journey is just beginning ... "\nBush said the same, delivering a vote of confidence in Sean O'Keefe, the agency's administrator at the time of the Columbia breakup and the months since.\n"It's time for America to take the next step" in space exploration, said Bush, who spoke 32 years after the American Apollo program last landed astronauts on the moon. He drew applause from NASA employees when he outlined a timetable that would put the first human trip to Mars well into the century. Robotic craft would be sent there first, he said, but exploration wouldn't end there.\n"We need to see and examine and touch for ourselves, and only human beings are capable of adapting to the inevitable uncertainties posed by space flight," the president said.\n"Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn to unknown lands and across the open sea," Bush said "We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey."\nThe nation's manned space program drew its first impetus from Cold War competition with the former Soviet Union, and began with a challenge from President John F. Kennedy in 1961.\nBush made no mention of Kennedy, but his remarks underscored the change in global politics. "The vision I outline today is a journey, not a race," he said.
(10/10/03 5:17am)
WASHINGTON -- Repairing the space shuttle heat shield in orbit may be simpler than NASA once thought, requiring one of the most basic of home repair items -- a foam paint brush.\nNASA administrator Sean O'Keefe said that engineers studying ways for spacewalking astronauts to fix a hole in the panels that protect the space shuttle from re-entry heat have found that an ordinary foam paint brush could be used to spread a special compound while the craft is in orbit.\nDesigning and testing such a repair kit is a key part of NASA's efforts to return the space shuttle to orbit in the wake of the Feb. 1 accident that destroyed Columbia and killed seven astronauts. \nThe Columbia Accident Investigation Board determined that the shuttle was destroyed when superheated air entered a hole in the heat shield on the leading edge of the left wing and melted internal aluminum supports. The CAIB called for the space agency to develop a way for spacewalking astronauts to repair such heat shield damage.\nAstronauts on Columbia and engineers in Mission Control were not aware of the extent of damage to the shuttle wing, but officials said that, in any case, there was no equipment on board the orbiting shuttle to patch the wing even if the problem was recognized.\nO'Keefe, at a news conference Wednesday, said that engineers had looked at the problem prior to the Columbia accident and concluded that it would require highly technical tools and a very difficult spacewalk. For that reason, no repair kit was ever flown on the shuttle.\nWith a fresh look at the problem, he said, engineers have determined that patching a heat shield hole may be "elegantly simple."\nHe said experts have developed an applicator that would squirt two compounds into a heat shield hole. The compounds would chemically combine to make a strong patch that would expand when heated by the friction of re-entry, O'Keefe said.\n"The easiest way to spread the compound without having it stick to the instrument turns out to be a simple thing -- a foam brush," he said. Such a brush is commonly available at hardware and paint stores and is routinely used by millions of homeowners when painting their houses.\nFor spacecraft repair, said O'Keefe, the foam brush is "an elegant piece of hardware"
(02/13/03 4:47am)
SPACE CENTER, Houston -- NASA has released transcripts from some of space shuttle Columbia's final radio transmissions, chronicling the efforts of Mission Control engineers as they became painfully aware of the destruction that was unfolding.\nIn the conversations released Tuesday Mission Control reports a litany of problems that seem to worsen by the minute as the shuttle breaks into pieces, killing all seven astronauts aboard.\nThe first bad news came when Jeff Kling, the maintenance, mechanical arm and crew systems officer, reported a sudden and unexplained loss of data from spacecraft sensors. The assessment came in the final six or seven minutes of the flight.\n"I just lost four separate temperature transducers on the left side of the vehicle, the hydraulic return temperatures," Kling said.\nFlight director Leroy Cain quickly asked if there was anything common to the sensors and got bad news in reply. Kling said there was no commonality, suggesting there was a general failure instead of a single system.\nMoments later, more bad news. Mike Sarafin, the guidance and navigation officer, announces Columbia's wing is encountering drag, or increased wind resistance.\nCain, still hopeful, asks if everything else is normal and Sarafin assures him, "I don't see anything out of the ordinary."\nThere is a short indistinct call from the spacecraft and, almost at the same time, Kling says the landing gear tires have lost pressure.\nCapsule communicator Charlie Hobaugh then addresses the spacecraft: "And Columbia, Houston, we see your tire pressure messages and we did not copy your last.\nColumbia commander Rick Husband's response -- "Roger, buh --" -- is abruptly cut off. It is 7:59 a.m. CST.\nIn short order, flight controllers begin reporting a string of more problems. There is evidence of small collisions on the tail, and signals are cut off from the nose landing gear and the right main landing gear. Then more sensors are lost and the drag increases to the left.\nHobaugh begins a series of radio calls to Columbia. There is no response as the minutes tick down toward a planned landing at the Kennedy Space Center.\n"MILA (the Kennedy spacecraft communication center) is not reporting any RF (radio frequency) at this time," says Bill Foster, a ground controller.\n"OK," says Cain, who then asks hopefully when a radar signal was expected.\n"One minute ago, flight," comes the response from Richard Jones, flight dynamics officer.\nThe communication checks continue. So does the silence. A radar station near the Kennedy center then says it is putting its radar in a "search mode."\n"We do not have any valid data at this time," said Jones. He said there was a "blip" but it was bad data.\nThen a long pause, a silence of despair. Then Cain says the final words, the phrase that marked the lack of hope: "Lock the doors."\nThis meant nobody could leave Mission Control or even make phone calls. For the next several hours, the engineers have to ignore the certain loss of the crew and store the data in their computers, finish reports and then write personal accounts of what they saw, heard and did Feb. 1.
(02/10/03 5:08am)
SPACE CENTER, Houston -- Investigators are searching for evidence that a block of ice big enough to damage Columbia's wing may have formed on a waste water vent, a problem that plagued an earlier shuttle flight.\nThey also are looking closely at what may be two key pieces of Columbia debris -- a 2-foot piece of one wing, including an attached chunk of thermal tiles, and a 300-pound cover of a landing gear compartment, possibly the site of a sudden temperature rise moments before the shuttle broke apart.\nOne day after Columbia's Jan. 16 launch, military radar detected an object moving rapidly away from the shuttle. NASA said it is unknown what the object was, but the possibility that it could have been ice from a waste water vent sent investigators back to a detailed search for evidence that the shuttle may have formed ice throughout its mission.\nAdm. Hal Gehman, head of a board investigating the Columbia accident, said Sunday that the object detected near the shuttle could have come from the spacecraft itself and could be ice.\nHe said the U.S. Space Command of the Air Force, which monitors objects in space, is providing data on the object to the investigators.\n"These reports are emerging now right now," Gehman said. "It's too early to say if they mean anything."\nThe waste water vent, which is under the shuttle cabin, in front of the left wing, is used to expel into space both urine and surplus water generated from the shuttle's fuel cell power system.\nUsually the water shoots out into the cold vacuum of space as a spray of crystals, but on at least one shuttle mission, in 1984, the water formed a basketball-sized chunk of ice on the lip of the vent. At the time, NASA engineers were so concerned the ice could damage the shuttle wing during re-entry that they ordered the astronauts aboard Discovery to use the shuttle's robot arm to break off the ice ball.\nThat heavy robot arm, which wasn't necessary for Columbia's 16-day science mission, was left off so more experiments could be added, and the waste water vent could not be seen from the cabin by the seven astronauts. NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said it's possible ice could have formed and not been detected.\nWhen Columbia fired its rockets to drop out of orbit, it could have sent any accumulated ice slamming into the wing where other data suggests there was severe damage to the thermal protection tiles. The theory is unproven and is only one of a number of scenarios being probed by engineers.\nAlthough Gehman and the other members of the Columbia investigation board were appointed by NASA, Gehman said their charter gives them the authority to conduct testing in laboratories not affiliated with the space agency.\nHe said Sunday that the board will split up into three teams and each will gather data at different NASA centers. This will speed up the investigation, Gehman said. The board has 60 days to complete its investigation. Some critics said the board needs more time, noting that the commission that investigated the 1986 Challenger accident required 120 days to complete its investigation.\nNASA administrator Sean O'Keefe said Sunday that no theory has been excluded.\n"Nothing is off the table," he said on CNN. "We're going to let the Columbia accident board guide us in terms of their findings about what caused this accident."\nMore than 12,000 pieces of debris have been located in Texas and Louisiana, including what appears to be a hatch door with a hydraulic opening and closing mechanism that was found Sunday. O'Keefe said the debris will be transported to Kennedy Space Center starting this week where investigators will attempt to reassemble as much of it as possible, though it won't be easy.\n"There is certainly no way we are going be able to reconstruct it. The pieces are just absolutely mangled," O'Keefe said. "It's an awful lot of tangled stuff."\nThe wing segment and landing gear compartment door found in Texas have captured the attention of engineers because they could have been near areas where the shuttle registered a rapid temperature rise during the last minutes of flight Feb. 1.\nGehman declined to say Sunday if the wing was from the left or right side and said he didn't know which side the landing gear door came from.\nMission Control received data from Columbia that showed a sudden rise in temperature in the left landing gear compartment and along the left side of the fuselage. The data also shows that there was increasing wind resistance from the left wing, forcing the autopilot to rapidly move control surfaces and fire jets to maintain stability. The craft seemed to be losing the control battle, engineers said, just before all communications with Columbia stopped.\nNASA's shuttle missions are on hold now, but O'Keefe said Sunday that the agency is still preparing to resume flights as soon as the cause of Columbia's breakup is determined and any shuttle flaws are fixed. "We've still got folks aboard the international space station," he said.
(02/06/03 5:36am)
SPACE CENTER, Houston -- A technical report warned at least nine years ago that space shuttles could be destroyed if tiles protecting critical wing parts were damaged by debris, but NASA engineers never found a complete solution for the safety soft spot.\nNow the failure of the tiles is a leading theory for the catastrophic end of Columbia.\nNASA struggled for years to ensure that the tiles were firmly attached to the shuttle, Paul Fischbeck, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in his analysis.\nHe said Tuesday that NASA engineers "took a lot of our advice to heart" and made changes to lower the risk of debris hitting the tiles during launch. But the problems were never completely solved, he said.\nA patch of foam insulation breaking off from the shuttle's external fuel tank during launch and striking tiles on the underside of the left wing is being studied as the possible cause of Columbia's destruction Saturday, which left all seven astronauts dead.\n"There are very important tiles under there. If you lose the tiles on those stretches ... it can cause the shuttle to be lost," Fischbeck said.\nA NASA spokesman said Tuesday that nobody was available to comment on the report.\nMeanwhile, the search for bits and pieces of the shattered Columbia was expanded westward to California and Arizona, where teams are checking reports of debris. That material could provide clues to the earliest stages of Columbia's disintegration.\nInvestigators also are examining military photos taken from an Apache helicopter of Columbia's final fiery descent.\nFischbeck and his colleagues made an initial report to NASA on their findings in 1990, and they later published follow-up papers on the research.\nThey conducted a risk analysis of the shuttle's thermal protection tile system and found that the spacecraft was highly vulnerable to tiles being knocked off or broken by insulation falling from the fuel tank and from other debris.\nIn a follow-up to the report, Fischbeck said he studied debris strikes during the first 50 shuttle launches and concluded that about 25 thermal tiles per flight sustained damage of at least one inch.\nThe analysis found that the most vulnerable parts of the shuttle were the undersides of the wings close to the fuselage and right under the crew compartment.\nNASA experts said that data from Columbia shows a sudden temperature rise -- a marker for failed tiles -- in the left wheel well, an area Fischbeck's report said was a critical risk.\nFischbeck's report said that a key problem faced by NASA was training technicians to glue tiles on the hull of the space shuttle and then test the strength of the bonding.\nAn adhesive used for the tiles hardened more quickly if it was wet, and the report said NASA found one technician helping the process along by spitting into the glue. The wetting, however, compromised the bond.\nTo find loose tiles, workers conducted a pull test, using a special machine, but the study found this technique missed some problems. The best method was a "wiggle test" that only experienced technicians learned to do, the study found.\nLoose tiles are more easily knocked off by falling debris.\nInvestigators searching for clues to Columbia's loss are focusing on a 2 1/2-pound, 20-inch chunk of foam insulation that fell from the shuttle's external tank moments after liftoff and stuck the underside of the wing, possibly damaging the tiles. The shuttle was traveling at 2 1/2 times the speed of sound at the time, or just over 1,900 mph.\nMichael Kostelnik, NASA's deputy associate administrator for spaceflight, said that foam insulation has peeled off during earlier launches, but none was the size of the chunk that went sailing off Columbia's fuel tank.\nFischbeck said NASA has made improvements in protecting and maintaining the tile system since his study. Foam insulation on the fuel tank has been changed and there are stricter limits on the amount of ice allowed on the fuel tank before launch. Ice forms from the chill of the liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants stored in the tank.
(02/03/03 5:43am)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Just before it disintegrated, space shuttle Columbia experienced an abnormal rise in temperature and wind resistance that forced the craft's automatic pilot to make rapid changes to its flight path -- possible evidence that some heat-protection tiles were missing or damaged, NASA said Sunday.\nEngineers began assembling a grim puzzle from debris recovered in Texas and Louisiana, and disclosed computerized data showing that the unusual events before Saturday's accident occurred on the left side of the shuttle -- the same side hit by a piece of fuel-tank insulation during the launch 16 days earlier.\nShuttle program manager Ron Dittemore cautioned the data was preliminary but said the combination of events and data suggest that the thermal tiles that protect the shuttle from burning up during re-entry may have been damaged on Jan. 16.\n"We've got some more detective work. But we're making progress inch by inch," Dittemore said, adding engineers are trying to extract 32 seconds more of computerized data from the doomed spacecraft.\nAs engineers pinpointed the exact satellite locations of debris, NASA said it had found remains from all seven of the astronauts who perished.\nDittemore said earlier in the mission, NASA had aggressively investigated the possible effects of the impact from the fuel tank's foam insulation and concluded "it did not represent a safety concern."\n"As we gather more evidence, certainly the evidence may take us in another direction," he said.\nDittemore said the engineering data showed a rise of 20 to 30 degrees in the left wheel well about seven minutes before communication was lost with the spacecraft. Then there was a rise of about 60 degrees over five minutes in the lefthand side of the fuselage above the wing, he said.\nOn the right side, the shuttle temperature rose the normal 15 degrees over the same period, he said. All the readings came from sensors underneath the thermal tiles, on the aluminum hull of the craft.\nThe temperature rises were followed by increased drag on the spacecraft that caused its automated flight system to adjust its path, he said. The adjustments were large enough that "we have never seen it to this degree," but still were within the shuttle's capabilities, he said.\nCommunication with the shuttle was lost soon after. "It was if someone had cut the wire," Dittemore said.\nThe left side of the spacecraft has been the focus of suspicion almost from the start. Investigators are focusing on whether a broken-off piece of foam insulation from the big external fuel tank caused damage to the shuttle's left wing during liftoff Jan. 16 that ultimately doomed the flight 16 days later.\nThe manufacturer of the fuel tank disclosed Sunday that NASA used an older version of the tank, which the space agency began phasing out in 2000. NASA's preflight press information stated the shuttle was using one of the newer super-lightweight fuel tanks.\nHarry Wadsworth, a spokesman for Lockheed, the tank maker, said most shuttle launches use the "super-lightweight" tank and the older version is no longer made. Wadsworth said he did not know if there was a difference in how insulation was installed on the two types of tanks.\nWadsworth said the tank used aboard the Columbia mission was manufactured in November 2000 and delivered to NASA the next month. Only one more of the older tanks is left, he said.
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
WASHINGTON -- A New York woman believed suffering from anthrax struggled for her life Tuesday, triggering fresh concerns the disease was spreading beyond the intersection of the postal service and the news media. Postmaster General John Potter said several billion dollars will be needed to safeguard the nation's mail system. \nThe nation's capital struggled with fresh evidence of contamination as officials shut down a second post office and said it would take two weeks to decontaminate an anthrax-plagued office building that houses 50 senators. \nRep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., whose office was found to be contaminated last week, said he had been told by investigators that the letter that carried the spores into the Hart building, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, contained two grams of anthrax, amounting to billions of spores. \nFederal and local health officials said they were particularly troubled by the illness of the 61-year-old New York woman, who works in a stockroom at a health facility. "There's no clear linkage with the mail," said Dr. Steven Ostroff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. \nBut later in the morning, Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, head of the CDC, suggested one possible link. He said that at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital where the woman works, the mail room and the stock room were combined until a remodeling undertaken over the past two weeks. \nNew York Health Commissioner Neal Cohen said the woman was "struggling for her survival." He said other hospitals in the city had been alerted "to take precautions ... and share their findings with us." \nNot counting the woman hospitalized in New York, authorities have tallied 15 confirmed cases of anthrax nationwide since early this month. They include eight cases of the inhalation form of the disease, three deaths among them, and an additional seven people with the less severe skin form of the illness. \nKoplan told reporters that the number of Americans taking antibiotics as a precaution was counted in the tens of thousands, and the government is attempting to track reports of adverse side effects. \nPotter testified before a Senate committee that pressed him on his agency's response to the outbreak of anthrax through the mail. \nAsked about efforts under way to safeguard the system, he said, "I can tell you for certain it will be several billion dollars." \nHe also said the paper contained in the anthrax-tainted letter Daschle was more porous than the paper inside two other letters known to have been spiked. \n"I think there was a different type of paper," he said. That "allowed the anthrax to move through the paper. That's my assumption. I don't consider myself an expert but that appears to be the case. \nAll three letters were dated Sept. 11, the day hijackers killed an estimated 5,000 in terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But the mail to NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw and the New York Post bore postmarks of Sept. 18, while the mail to Daschle was postmarked Oct. 9. \nThe Daschle letter is believed responsible for part or perhaps all of the contamination from the main postal facility in the nation's capital throughout the city, affecting more than one dozen federal facilities and forcing the closure of yet another post office earlier Tuesday. \nPence's statement that the letter contained billions of spores suggested it could have spread infection widely. Dr. David Sullivan, a Johns Hopkins University expert on anthrax, said two grams of the substance could mean up to 20 billion spores, depending on the purity and the moisture content. Other officials have said previously that inhalation of between 8,000 and 10,000 spores is needed to cause illness. \nIn New Jersey, officials confirmed that a 51-year-old Hamilton Township woman not linked to the postal service was suffering from the skin form of anthrax. The source of the infection also was unknown, but officials said it could have come from contact with a piece of mail. \nThe circle of anthrax contamination widened as new traces of anthrax spores were found in the Capitol Police office of the Ford House building, which was already closed because of positive tests in its mail room. Anthrax also was confirmed late Monday in a downtown Agriculture Department office mailroom and technicians were considering a plan to pump a fumigating gas into the shuttered Hart Senate Office Building to kill any lingering anthrax spores there. \nIn Washington, officials closed the Friendship post office after anthrax spores were found. Postal workers there were advised to start antibiotic therapy. \nOfficials said the source of the latest New Jersey anthrax case was uncertain and the case was under investigation. \n"I don't think it is appropriate to draw conclusions about what this latest case may imply," said the CDC's Ostroff. \nActing New Jersey Gov. Donald DiFrancesco ordered anthrax spore testing at 44 post offices in seven counties. All send mail to the Hamilton processing center. Some of these post offices had been tested earlier. \nThe Hamilton center handled anthrax-tainted envelopes delivered to Daschle's office in the Hart building and to the New York offices of NBC News and the New York Post. \nAnthrax escaping from a letter opened in Daschle's office on Oct. 15 forced closure of the Hart building. Environmental Protection Agency officials said Monday they hoped experts would approve a plan to pump chlorine dioxide gas throughout the building to snuff out any remaining anthrax. The process could take 16 days, but would enable the nine-story building, where 50 senators have offices, to reopen in mid-November.
(11/28/01 5:11am)
WASHINGTON -- In an important step in the search for extraterrestrial life, astronomers have made the first direct detection of the chemical composition of the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star. \nScientists focused the Hubble Space Telescope on a star 150 light-years away and found that a planet there contained sodium in its atmosphere. Experts said the achievement demonstrates that it may be possible to search for the chemical signature of life on planets beyond the solar system. \n"Suddenly, discussing searches for Earth-like planets seems quite reasonable," David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, said in a statement. "This opens up an exciting new phase of extrasolar planet exploration, where we can begin to compare and contrast the atmospheres of planets around other stars." \nThe planet orbits a sun-like star called HD 209458 in the constellation Pegasus, some 150 light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles. The planet is one of 76 that have been found in orbit of distant stars, but it is the first to have its atmosphere chemically analyzed. \nThe planet is about 70 percent the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in the sun's family of satellites, but it orbits just 4 million miles from its parent star. As a result, the planet whips around the star every 3.5 days. In contrast, the Earth is about 93 million miles from the sun and takes a year to complete one orbit. \nEarlier studies by Charbonneau and Timothy Brown of the National Center of Atmospheric Research also showed that the planet was gaseous, like Jupiter, instead of solid, like Earth. \nBecause of the planet's orbital motion and position, Charbonneau and Brown devised a space telescope viewing program that would measure the chemistry of the planet's atmosphere. \nThe astronomers knew that as the planet moved in front of its parent star, light from the star would pass through the planet's atmosphere on its way to the Earth. As its passes through the planet's atmosphere, the spectra of the light is changed by the atmospheric chemicals. By measuring the spectral characteristics of this light using Hubble, Charbonneau and Brown were able to confirm that there is sodium in the planet's atmosphere. \nA National Center of Atmospheric Research statement said the Hubble spectrograph was tuned to detect only sodium. A new observation effort is being planned to search for Earth-like chemicals such as methane, water vapor and potassium.