ASTRONAUTS TO HOLD SUMMER OLYMPICS IN SPACE

THE GIST

• A crew of astronauts due to be on board the space station during the Olympics will stage some types of Olympic events.
• The astronauts hope to perform something "team oriented."

enlarge

Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi kicks up his legs and small skis during a makeshift Winter Olympics event aboard the International Space Station in February 2010.Click to enlarge this image. 
NASA TV 

UPDATE (June 19, 2012): The astronauts' schedule may not allow any time for re-enacting the Olympics, NASA officials now say, although the crew will be kept abreast of the games and their home countries' medal counts.

To mark the upcoming Olympic Games in London, a crew of astronauts due to launch to the space station this summer is planning an orbital sporting event for the occasion.

NASA astronaut Sunita (Suni) Williams, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko are due to launch July 14 to the International Space Station.

Their planned four-month stay in space will overlap with the London 2012 Olympics July 27 to Aug. 12, so the sporty spaceflyers have something up their sleeves to celebrate the event.

PHOTOS: Olympic Tech Faster Than Skin

"Something unique about our increment is we have a very huge sports event during our increment, so what we're talking about amongst ourselves is, why don't we do some kind of sports event on board the station too?" Hoshide told reporters during a NASA preview the mission. "We're just tossing around ideas right now, what kind of sport event we can do. That's something I'm looking forward to."

WATCH VIDEO: How safe it is for runners to push their bodies to the limits -- and run 26.2 miles at one time? Find out here.

Astronauts have staged orbital sports before. In fact, for the last Olympic Games, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the 11 astronauts aboard the space station and the space shuttle Endeavour, which was docked there at the time, recreated the event in orbit. (Video: Sports in Space)

The spaceflyers tried their hand at space skiing, the zero-G luge and weightless figure skating, all the while beaming a video of their orbital Olympics to Mission Control.

"You are officially the only folks who are able to get more hang time than Shaun White," the American gold medal-winning snowboarder, Mission Control radioed to the astronauts.

This time around, the spaceflyers are still working out which orbital events to stage, given their limitations.

"We just thought it would be something fun to do on orbit," Hoshide said."We have limited space and limited equipment."

HSW: How the First Olympics Worked

Williams herself has participated in weightless workouts before, when she ran along with the Boston marathon on the treadmill aboard the International Space Station in 2007. She completed the marathon in four hours, 24 minutes, all while orbiting the Earth at some 17,500 miles (28,163 kilometers) per hour.

"Doing anything to encourage physical fitness would be great," Williams said of the upcoming Olympics plans. "I think we're going to do something a little bit more team-oriented this time around, rather than a marathon. I don't think I'll be in marathon shape, but I will be in good sprinting shape."

ESA Rover Traverses Its Path In Desert Before ExoMars Mission

European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully tested its seeker rover in Mars-like environment in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The folks at ESA developed this planetary rover to operate autonomously and find its way to-and-fro the desert. The rover makes its own decisions in a no-GPS field about finding its path back to the start-point. The team that took up this challenge, gave the rover a stereo vision so that it could build a 3D map of its surroundings. With the help of this map, on which it can track its own position with an accuracy of one meter, it decides how far it has traveled & plans the most efficient route to avoid obstacles.

The team first tested the rover’s prototypes indoors and then took it out in the Atacama Desert in May, where it had to go over different kinds of terrain and varying lighting conditions. Finally, the rover became successful in completing ESA’s first large-scale test of 5.1km, a little less than the predetermined 6km aim with a maximum speed of 0.9 km/h. This is great because the ExoMars mission that expects the rover to land on Mars in 2018, would want it to travel only 150m per Martian day and not more than three kilometers during the complete mission.

Fly to the Moon - for just $150 million

London ... Jenn Sander poses in the space suit of American astronaut Peggy Whitson, inside a space craft owned by Excalibur Almaz / pic: Getty Images Source: The Daily Telegraph

A BRITISH company is offering seats to adventurers willing to go the extra mile on a historic journey to the moon - a snip at just $150 million.

The first 800,000km round trip in a converted Soviet-era space station could take place as early as 2015.

Excalibur Almaz (EA) founder and chief executive Art Dula told a space tourism meeting in London: "We're ready to sell the tickets."

The Isle of Man-based space entrepreneur has acquired two Almaz space stations designed for orbital spying operations. Thrusters attached to the stations will convert them to long-distance spaceships.

Four re-entry capsules, or reusable return vehicles, will ferry three people at a time to the orbiting space station and return them to earth.

All the space vehicles - the cost of which is confidential - are housed in hangers on the Isle of Man.

Much of the actual flying will be computer-controlled and all necessary training, including the human skills needed to pilot the spacecraft, is provided in the package.If the bold plan succeeds, it will be the first manned Moon mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Mr Dula said: "The EA fleet has previously flown to space several times and will undertake many more missions. This is scientific fact, not fiction."

A giant Russian Proton rocket, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, will put the 30-tonne space station into orbit.

Robots that can touch and feel?

Researchers have shown that a specially designed robot can outperform humans in identifying a wide range of natural materials according to their textures, paving the way for advancements in prostheses, personal assistive robots and consumer product testing. The robot, built by researchers 

at the University of Southern California''s Viterbi School of Engineering, was equipped with a new type of tactile sensor built to mimic the human fingertip. It also used a newly designed algorithm to make decisions about how to explore the outside world by imitating human strategies.

Capable of other human sensations, the sensor can also tell where and in which direction forces are applied to the fingertip and even the thermal properties of an object being touched.

Like the human finger, the group’s BioTac sensor has a soft, flexible skin over a liquid filling.

The skin even has fingerprints on its surface, greatly enhancing its sensitivity to vibration. As the finger slides over a textured surface, the skin vibrates in characteristic ways. These vibrations are detected by a hydrophone inside the bone-like core of the finger. The human finger uses similar vibrations to identify textures, but the robot finger is even more sensitive.

When humans try to identify an object by touch, they use a wide range of exploratory movements based on their prior experience with similar objects.

A famous theorem by 18th century mathematician Thomas Bayes describes how decisions might be made from the information obtained during these movements. Until now, however, there was no way to decide which exploratory movement to make next.

The study, authored by Professor of Biomedical Engineering Gerald Loeb and recently graduated doctoral student Jeremy Fishel, describes their new theorem for solving this general problem as “Bayesian Exploration.”

Built by Fishel, the specialized robot was trained on 117 common materials gathered from fabric, stationery and hardware stores.

When confronted with one material at random, the robot could correctly identify the material 95 percent of the time, after intelligently selecting and making an average of five exploratory movements. It was only rarely confused by pairs of similar textures that human subjects making their own exploratory movements could not distinguish at all.

So, is touch another task that humans will outsource to robots? Fishel and Loeb pointed out that while their robot is very good at identifying which textures are similar to each other, it has no way to tell what textures people will prefer.

Instead, they say this robot touch technology could be used in human prostheses or to assist companies who employ experts to assess the feel of consumer products and even human skin.

Loeb and Fishel are partners in SynTouch LLC, which develops and manufactures tactile sensors for mechatronic systems that mimic the human hand.

Founded in 2008 by researchers from USC’s Medical Device Development Facility, the start-up is now selling their BioTac sensors to other researchers and manufacturers of industrial robots and prosthetic hands. (ANI)

Mission gets go-ahead to probe Universe's darkest secrets

The first-ever mission dedicated to looking for dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities believed to explain the composition of the universe as we know it, will be launched in 2020, the European Space Agency said Wednesday. 

The 800-million-euro ($1-billion) Euclid project was given the final go-ahead by the agency's science programme committee, a body composed of ESA member states that decides which missions are flown. 

"We're one step closer to learning more about the Universe's darkest secrets," said Rene Laureijs, Euclid project scientist. 

The satellite will use a 1.2-metre (four-foot) diameter telescope and special cameras to map a third of the known universe, a 3D reconstruction of up to two billion galaxies and dark matter associated with them, the agency said in a statement. 

"Euclid is optimised to answer one of the most important questions in modern cosmology: why is the Universe expanding at an accelerating rate rather than slowing down due to the gravitational attraction of all the matter in it?" 

Dark energy is a term used to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe, while dark matter is what is believed to hold it all together, exerting a gravitational force. 

Dark matter is believed to comprise 83 percent of matter in the Universe, but it cannot be detected by the naked eye or by existing astronomical techniques.



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‘I predict natural disasters using vedic knowledge’

Ramachandran with one of his geocentric graphs.

The southwest monsoon was almost a washout with about 50 per cent deficiency in most parts of the country, astro-meteorologist S. Ramachandran said Sunday.

“I predicted this Novem-ber last year whereas India Meteorological Depart-ment admitted deficiency only this week,” he told DC.

Northwest India will be the worst hit. There is some cheer, though.

Mr Ramachandran said the best rainfall of the season would happen between July third week and September 15. He said he had correctly predicted rain during June 11-20.

“My published forecast in 2011, that global temperatures would be higher this year, has come true. “My calculations show Chennai will have floods between mid-November and mid-December.” n

‘I predict natural disasters using vedic knowledge’

Winter this year will set in early, even by mid-October, with night temperatures dropping lower than normal levels, according to astro-meteorologist S. Ramachandran, who has several proven predictions of weather and natural calamities come true in the past — from the devastating Kandla (Gujarat) cyclone in June 1998 to the Sumatra earthquake (2004), Mumbai-Chennai floods (2005), Chinese quake (2008), monsoon failure in the country (2009), Thane cyclone (December 2011), etc.

“The Guchol typhoon now threatening countries in the Pacific, such as east China, Taiwan and south Japan, was forecast by me in December 2011 itself and had been carried in the media”, said Ramachandran, flaunting the newspaper clippings to prove his claim.

“Also, typhoon Mawar that lashed Philippines and Japan was predicted by me with specific dates,” he said.

Ramchandran’s interest in astrology began in early ’90s following a personal incident.

He went deep into ancient texts such as Jyotida Vishayamritham and was fascinated to find Indian astrology “as stout and strong as any western science”.

From thereon, he moved into astro-meteorology through various texts such as Brihit Samhita.
In Vedic astro-meteorology, the geocentric study has divided the solar system into two parts for studying the behaviour patterns — one among the planets between sun and earth and the second among planets beyond earth.

They also provide significance to the alignment of plants with a particular star in the zodiac. For instance, the 2004 tsunami which occurred on a full moon day, owing to a particular inter-planetary struggle and the effect was delivered by moon aligning with Mrigasrisham (Orionis), Ramachandran explained.

“In contrast to my study, done with limited resources, yielding accurate forecasts well ahead of time, I have found that the IMD predictions have failed many times, despite their huge infrastructure, resources and manpower, besides international collaborations”, said Ramachandran, listing out a few IMD ‘mishaps’.

IMD, he pointed out, had admitted in the media in February 2010 that year 2009 had been the hottest in several years “whereas I forecast that even in January 2009 in a printed article”.

“I do not want to fight the IMD. I only want to argue they are missing out a very important and authentic part of our own scientific repository of planetary behaviour written down in Vedic scriptures.

These texts explain the inter-planetary relationships and the struggle between their orbiting positions and the effect of their disturbance on sun and earth.

The modern weatherman only uses the wind pattern and pressure systems in the ocean to forecast weather; this will be accurate only for a couple of days.

Many a time their forecasts for longer period such as 15 days have gone wayward because they have not perfected the study of these pressure systems”, said the ‘Vedic’ weatherman, who prepares his geocentric planetary graph for every year using data from the NASA website and juxtaposes the sutras, which are the formulae available in Vedic texts, to forecast weather and quakes.

“I am willing to share whatever work I have done in this research with a competent and unbiased team of vedic scholars and meteorologists in order to accomplish 100 per cent accurate forecasting system, which will benefit mankind across the globe,” he said.

“Once perfected, we will be able to forecast extreme weather conditions and natural calamities and public tables similar to NASA’s eclipse tables for 7,000 years”, he said.

Huge Asteroid Flies by Earth Today: How to Watch Online

Asteroid 2012 LZ1 has passed Earth by. See the full story and photos here: City Block-Size Asteroid 2012 LZ1 Zips by Earth as Scientists Watch

This story was updated at 3:30 p.m. EDT on June 14.

An asteroid the size of a city block is set to fly by Earth today (June 14), and you may be able to watch it happen live.

The near-Earth asteroid 2012 LZ1, which astronomers think is about 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide, will come within 14 lunar distances of Earth Thursday evening. While there's no danger of an impact on this pass, the huge space rock may come close enough to be caught on camera.

That's what the team running the Slooh Space Camera thinks, anyway. The online skywatching service will train a telescope on the Canary Islands on 2012 LZ1 and stream the footage live, beginning at 8:00 p.m. EDT today (0000 GMT Friday) — the time of closest approach.

Astronomer Rob McNaught, 2012 LZ1's discoverer, will participate in the webcast, as will Astronomy magazine columnist Bob Berman. You can watch the asteroid flyby on Slooh's website, found here:http://events.slooh.com/

During today's close approach, the asteroid will look like a 13th-magnitude "star" in the sky, Slooh officials said. That's pretty faint as far as celestial objects go, too dim to be picked up by the naked eye or a standard pair of binoculars. (In astronomy, lower magnitudes signify relatively brighter objects. Venus' magnitude is around -5, for example, while the full moon's is about -13.)

2012 LZ1 just popped onto astronomers' radar this week. It was spotted on the night of June 10-11 by McNaught and his colleagues, who were peering through the Uppsala Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.

Researchers estimate that the space rock is between 1,000 and 2,300 feet wide (300-700 m). This evening, it will come within about 3.35 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) of our planet, or roughly 14 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

Because of its size and proximity to Earth, 2012 LZ1 qualifies as a potentially hazardous asteroid. Near-Earth asteroids generally have to be at least 500 feet (150 m) wide and come within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) of our planet to be classified as potentially hazardous.

2012 LZ1 is roughly the same size as asteroid 2005 YU55, which made a much-anticipated flyby of Earth last November. But 2005 YU55 gave our planet a much closer shave, coming within 202,000 miles (325,000 km) of us on the evening of Nov. 8. A space rock as big as 2005 YU55 hadn't come so close to Earth since 1976, researchers said.

Astronomers have identified roughly 9,000 near-Earth asteroids, but they think many more are out there.

"We will most certainly find more as NASA, along with other space agencies and astronomers, are on a constant look-out," Berman said in a statement.

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

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Shenzhou-9 docks with Tiangong-1

An artist's impression of the Shenzhou-9 vehicle docking with the Tiangong-1 space lab

Continue reading the main story

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China's Shenzhou-9 capsule, with its crew of three, has docked with the Tiangong-1 space lab.

The coupling of the two vehicles occurred just after 14:00 Beijing time (06:00 GMT; 07:00 BST).

The latest Shenzhou mission was launched on Saturday, taking China's first female astronaut into orbit.

Thirty-three-year old Liu Yang flies with Commander Jing Haipeng, 46, and fellow flight engineer, Liu Wang, 42.

It is China's fourth manned mission and another opportunity to see how far the Asian nation has developed its space technology.

It follows on from last year's unmanned Shenzhou-8 outing which completed successful rendezvous and docking manoeuvres at Tiangong.

That gave Beijing authorities the confidence to put astronauts on the current flight.

After Saturday's lift-off from the Jiuquan spaceport, Shenzhou-9 worked through a series of engine burns to take it higher and closer to the orbiting space lab.

Continue reading the main story

Astronaut Liu Yang

• Born in Henan province and an only child
• Married, with no children
• Air force pilot with rank of major
• Member of Communist Party
• Honoured as a "model" pilot in March 2010
• Landed plane after being struck by birds
• "Little flying knight" on QQ instant messenger
• Likes cooking; a penchant for patriotic speeches

• In pictures: China's manned space mission
• Profile: China's first spacewoman

Monday's docking was an automated procedure; computers - not the crew - were in charge of events.

A suite of radar, laser and optical sensors aligned Shenzhou with Tiangong. The capsule's thrusters then drove it into the space lab's docking ring.

The union happened at an altitude of about 340km (210 miles). Ms Liu operated a handheld video camera to record the moment of docking.

It is understood that only two members of the crew will enter the lab at any one time. The third individual will stay in the Shenzhou craft in case of emergency.

During the flight, a range of scientific experiments are planned, including a number of medical tests geared towards understanding the effects of weightlessness on the human body.

At some point in the next few days, the astronauts will attempt a manual docking.

This would see the crew uncouple their vehicle from the lab, retreat to a defined distance and then command their ship to re-attach itself.

Liu Wang will take the lead in this activity. "We've done over 1,500 simulations," he said during the pre-launch press conference.

"We've mastered the techniques and skills. China has first class technologies and astronauts, and therefore I'm confident we will fulfil the manual rendezvous."

Tiangong-1, which means ''heavenly palace'', was launched in September last year

China is already talking about a Shenzhou-10 mission to Tiangong sometime in the next year.

The lab is a prototype for the type of modules the nation hopes to join in orbit later this decade to form a permanently manned space station.

At about 60 tonnes in mass, this proposed station would be considerably smaller than the 400-tonne international platform operated by the US, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan, but its mere presence in the sky would nonetheless represent a remarkable achievement.

Concept drawings describe a core module weighing some 20-22 tonnes, flanked by two slightly smaller laboratory vessels.

Officials say it would be supplied by freighters in exactly the same way that robotic cargo ships keep the International Space Station (ISS) today stocked with fuel, food, water, air, and spare parts.

The Shenzhou-9 crew are expected back on Earth before the end of the month.

China launches Shenzhou-9 capsule carrying its first female astronaut

What plans do we have for after aliens make contact?

What if aliens actually turn up and want to communicate with us? Everything would change. We'd all remember exactly where we were, the moment we found out that humanity really isn't alone. And then what?

What do we do next? More to the point, does anybody have any plan for what to do, after we find the aliens we've been wondering about for centuries?

People first started looking for aliens in the 1700s, when telescopes really started getting good. Many were so sure that life was out there, they believed it existed on all observable planets, moons — and even the sun.

As they analyzed the celestial objects around Earth more carefully, it became accepted that life was less common than everybody had thought. And as they began appreciating the space between the stars, they began to understand that searching out life was more of an undertaking than anyone had previously thought, that it might be impossible. But in the Space Age, when people started putting up telescopes and satellites that might see far enough and wide enough that they might find life wherever it is, the expectation returned that we'd find someone out there. And with it came the need to plan.

NASA summed up its only first contact-related plans in a simple report entitledWould Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis.

Like any good science nerd report, it begins with categorization. There are three general types of contact that would require planning: beneficial, neutral, and harmful. For their purposes, "beneficial" means absolutely any contact that the human race came out okay from. This could range from merely noticing alien news broadcasts to being saved from falling into the sun by alien altruists to being able to quickly and efficiently deal with alien aggressors.

Neutral means finding aliens that are so different, or so bureaucratically tedious (and remember, these are government workers talking about tedium), that any contact with them wouldn't be worth the effort. Harmful could range from a space plague to them accidentally smooshing us beneath their flying saucers.

Responses to the first and second scenario are, respectively, are break out the champagne, and be disappointed. The third scenario isn't really a response so much as a warning. No one should send out detailed signals about the biology of humans, lest anyone send out biological weapons. We also want to be cautious about stepping into a galactic culture that we don't know much about. If we expand rapidly, and brag about our reach, we may either step on the toes (or the whatever-they-have) of a civilization we're contacting, or threaten a civilization that we haven't detected, but that happens to be allied with a civilization that we're contacting. Don't give anyone a reason to send out a first strike.

Well, that's not much of a plan. In fact, no government has official plans for what to do about contact with alien life. This oversight was criticized at a recent meeting of the Royal Society in London — many of whose members are a little worried that some government somewhere might fly off the handle and respond to alien first contact, bringing doom upon us all. They want any alien contact to be reported to, and voted on, by the United Nations. This is one decision we have to make as a planet.

But what about private organizations? SETI is the only such organization that has a plan in place for any contact with alien life. In fact, they have a whole Post Detection Taskgroup, which has to be the only taskforce on the planet which produces minutes that anyone might want to read. Not surprisingly, the first point of the protocol involves going to SETI for confirmation. To be fair, they do have the set-up for it. And it would be embarrassing if it were, say, a local radio station being mistaken for alien signals. After that, it would be okay to go to the United Nations and the International Astronomical Union, and they would organize a massive press conference, at which the discoverer would announce preliminary findings. While the data used to confirm the discovery would be released, the coordinates would be kept secret until the United Nations could gather information on the broadcaster and decide whether or not to respond.

More importantly, though, what's your plan? What would you do if someone announced intelligent alien life tomorrow? Go to church? Cry? Stockpile food supplies for the riots? Save up your precious germs and bacteria to use as biological weapons against invaders? Or would you try to hack into SETI's system to find out the coordinates, build a radio signal, and try to be the first person to talk back to the alien civilization?

Lake detected near equator of Saturn's Titan

 In a surprise find, scientists say they have spotted hints of a methane-rich lake and several ponds near the equator of Saturn's biggest moon.

Lakes were previously spied near Titan's polar regions. It was long thought that bodies of liquid could not exist at Titan's midsection because energy from the sun at those latitudes would cause methane pools to evaporate.

"This discovery was completely unexpected because lakes are not stable at tropical latitudes," said planetary scientist Caitlin Griffith of the University of Arizona, who led the discovery team.

By measuring reflected sunlight from Titan's surface and atmosphere, the international Cassini spacecraft detected a dark region near the landing site of Huygens, a companion probe that parachuted to Titan's equator in 2005.

Scientists said further analysis of the dark feature suggests the presence of a 927-square-mile hydrocarbon lake — twice as big as Lake Champlain, a freshwater lake that borders upstate New York and Vermont. Near the equatorial lake were hints of four shallow ponds similar in size and depth to marshes on Earth.

The findings were detailed in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Titan is among the few bodies in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, but scientists have wrestled over the source of the thick blanket of nitrogen and methane. Methane gas in the atmosphere is constantly broken up by sunlight and falls to the surface where it is transported back to the poles, condensing to form lakes.

Scientists do not think this process is driving the presence of mid-latitude lakes and ponds. Rather, they think there may be an underground source of methane that periodically vents to the surface to form the hydrocarbon bodies of liquid.

"Titan may have oases," Griffith said.

David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said the latest find was interesting, but noted that the evidence was indirect.

If a subterranean source of methane is confirmed, it's a step toward understanding the persistence of methane in Titan's atmosphere, said Stevenson, who was not part of the research team.

Submersible sets new China dive record

 A manned Chinese submersible set a new record for the country's deepest sea dive Friday, over 6,000 metres, showing Beijing's technological ambitions as it also readies for its first manned space docking.

The "Jiaolong" craft dived over 19,685 feet into the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, the first in a series of six dives which will plumb depths of 7,000 metres, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The deep-sea dive push comes as China prepares to launch a spacecraft on Saturday to conduct its first manned space docking, as part of efforts to establish a permanent space station by 2020.

The submersible, which carried three men, reached around 6,500 metres with only a technical glitch in communications, state media said.

"In our first battle, we have already reached 6,500 metres. All of our tasks have been completed," chief commander Liu Feng told state television aboard the ship carrying the submersible.

He said a piece of communications equipment on the surface of the water failed, but the team switched to a back-up system and restored communications. He did not say whether contact was completely lost with the Jiaolong.

The same vessel -- named after a dragon from Chinese mythology -- reached 5,188 metres in a Pacific dive last July, the nation's previous record.

Friday's dive sparked outpourings of nationalism on the Internet and comparisons to the upcoming space launch.

"Three pilots will take the Jiaolong to attempt the 7,000-metre dive, while three astronauts will take the Shenzhou-9 to connect with the Heavenly Palace," a Shanghai based blogger wrote on his microblog.

"Up in the sky we can pluck the moon, down in the oceans we can catch the turtles," said the posting on Sina's microblog service, quoting a saying attributed to late Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

Experts say China intends to use the submersible for scientific research, such as collecting samples of undersea life and studying geological structures, as well as future development of mineral resources.

But one Chinese expert on Friday described the latest dives as an "experiment" for China and said future use of submersibles for scientific research faced obstacles, such as with stability and durability of the craft.

"Even after it reaches the 7,000-metre depth, it still remains a question whether it can achieve scientific purposes," Zhou Huaiyang, professor of the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences at Shanghai's Tongji University, told AFP.

Scientists say the oceans' floors contain rich deposits of potentially valuable minerals, but the extreme depths pose technical difficulties in harvesting them on a large scale.

Earlier this year, American film director James Cameron descended almost 11,000 metres to the bottom of the Mariana Trench -- the deepest place in the world.

His effort is believed to have at least equalled the record for the deepest manned dive, set by a US Navy officer and a Swiss oceanographer in 1960, according to Guinness World Records.

Xolo X900: First smartphone with Intel inside

        Priced at about Rs 22,000, Xolo X900, which was launched in April, is the first smartphone with Intel inside. 

      Lava's Xolo X900 is based on Intel's smartphone reference design featuring the Intel Atom processor Z2460 with Intel Hyper Threading Technology and supporting HSPA+ 3G connectivity.

      The partnership between Intel and Lava was announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.

          Lava has partnered with Croma for promotion and sale of the Xolo X900.

   Lava's Xolo X900 features an 8-megapixel camera delivering advanced imaging capabilities including burst mode that allows 10 pictures to be captured in under a second.

    The Xolo X900 has a 4.03-inch high-resolution LCD touch screen. The X900 runs on Android Gingerbread, with a planned upgrade to Android's Ice Cream Sandwich platform later.