Jaw structures suggest that at least three homo species once roamed the African plains. (from Nature.com)

Fossilized skulls show that at least three distinct species belonging to the genus homo existed between 1.7 million and 2 million years ago, settling a long-standing debate in palaeoanthropology.
A study published this week in Nature focuses on homo rudolfensis, a hominin with a relatively flat face, which was first identified from a single large skull in 1972. Several other big-skulled fossils have been attributed to the species since then, but none has included both a face and a lower jaw. This has been problematic: in palaeoanthropology, faces and jaws function like fingerprints for identifying a specimen as a particular species (which is indicated by the second word in a Linnaean title, such as ‘rudolfensis’), as opposed to the broader grouping of genus (the first word, as in ‘ homo’).

Without complete skulls, it has been difficult to reach a consensus on whether specimens attributed to H. rudolfensis are genuinely members of a distinct species, or actually belong to other homo species that lived around the same time, such as homo habilis or  homo erectus. Understanding how many different homo species there were, and whether they lived concurrently, would help to determine whether the history of the human lineage saw fierce competition between multiple hominins, or a steady succession from one species to another.
But the latest result has dissipated much of this uncertainty. It concerns three fossils — two lower jaws and a juvenile’s lower face — that were found in a desert area called Koobi Fora in northern Kenya. The team that pulled them out of the ground, led by Meave Leakey, a palaeontologist at the Turkana Basin Institute in Nairobi, describes how the dental arcade, the arch created by the teeth at the front of the mouth, is nearly rectangular, just like the palate structure of the 1972 skull. By contrast, the average modern human mouth has a curved dental arcade.
Further evidence comes from the juvenile’s face, which tellingly has cheek bones joining the palate quite far forward. “It was such an extended excitement as the juvenile face slowly emerged from the encasing rock, and its similarity to the 1972 specimen became so striking,” recalls Leakey.

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation. (from nasa.gov)

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack.

“Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars. Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on Mars — or if the planet can sustain life in the future,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “This is an amazing achievement, made possible by a team of scientists and engineers from around the world and led by the extraordinary men and women of NASA and our Jet Propulsion Laboratory. President Obama has laid out a bold vision for sending humans to Mars in the mid-2030’s, and today’s landing marks a significant step toward achieving this goal.”

Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. Aug. 5, PDT, (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) near the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter inside Gale Crater. During a nearly two-year prime mission, the rover will investigate whether the region ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life.

“The Seven Minutes of Terror has turned into the Seven Minutes of Triumph,” said NASA Associate Administrator for Science John Grunsfeld. “My immense joy in the success of this mission is matched only by overwhelming pride I feel for the women and men of the mission’s team.”

Curiosity returned its first view of Mars, a wide-angle scene of rocky ground near the front of the rover. More images are anticipated in the next several days as the mission blends observations of the landing site with activities to configure the rover for work and check the performance of its instruments and mechanisms.

“Our Curiosity is talking to us from the surface of Mars,” said MSL Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “The landing takes us past the most hazardous moments for this project, and begins a new and exciting mission to pursue its scientific objectives.”

Confirmation of Curiosity’s successful landing came in communications relayed by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter and received by the Canberra, Australia, antenna station of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking elemental composition of rocks from a distance. The rover will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover.

To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater’s interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.

The mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information on the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity And http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

Officials at the Russian Federal Space Agency(RosCosmos) announce that the Progress 48 space capsule reached the International Space Station(ISS) earlier today. What is so special about this particular resupply mission is that the spacecraft docked to the station less than six hours after launch. (from google)

This was the first flight that attempted a new launch and navigation procedure. Usually, Russian Progress and Soyuz capsules take up to two days to track down the orbital lab, before they dock.

Progress 48 launched aboard a Soyuz delivery system from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, at 3:35 pm EDT (1935 GMT), on Thursday, August 1. Its automated docking system saw it latching on the ISS Pirs module at 9:19 pm EDT (0119 GMT), on August 2, less than six hours later.

The successful test of the new flight approach will be very appreciated by astronauts. Currently, all crew rotations aboard the station are handled through Russian Soyuz capsule. These vehicles carry three astronauts at one time, who spend 48 hours crammed up in a tiny space.

RosCosmos orbital engineers have developed the new paths for the capsules so that the flight is made as comfortable as possible for the crew. It was first tested on Progress 48 because this is an unmanned, resupply flight.

The cargo capsule carries food, water, scientific experiments, propellant for the ISS thrusters, and personal items for the six astronauts making up the Expedition 32 crew, Space reports.

The Russians are “looking to eventually take this into the Soyuz phase. If you can get the crew to orbit in six hours and onboard the International Space Station, that could be a tremendous benefit over the two-plus days it takes today,” NASA ISS operations and integration manager, Dan Harman, said.

In addition to extra comfort for the crew, the capsules themselves could carry more cargo, since the amount of fuel currently needed for two days of travel could be eliminated.

“The quicker rendezvous that you have, the less consumables you would need for the first day, and the better crew comfort in a small capsule,” ISS flight director Chris Edelen added.

The official says that same-day launch and docking procedures are very complex, and require tremendous amounts of calculations. Both the launching spacecraft and the ISS have to be in very precise positions when liftoff occurs.

Progress 48 is scheduled to remain docked to the ISS until December. After undocking, it will be purposefully destroyed in the upper atmosphere.