Phantom Eye hydrogen-powered spy plane unveiled

Boeing has unveiled its unmanned hydrogen-powered spy plane which can fly non-stop for up to four days.

The high-altitude plane, called Phantom Eye, will remain aloft at 20,000m (65,000ft), according to the company.

The demonstrator will be shipped to Nasa's Dryden Flight Research Center in California later this summer to prepare for its first flight in early 2011.

Boeing says the aircraft could eventually carry out "persistent intelligence and surveillance".

It is a product of the company's secretive Phantom Works research and development arm.

Boeing says the aircraft is capable of long endurance flights because of its "lighter" and "more powerful" hydrogen fuel system.

"We flew Condor [the company's previous reconnaissance drone] for 60 hours in 1989 on regular jet fuel, and that was the maximum," said Chris Haddox from Boeing Phantom Works. "Now we're talking 96 hours."

The company explained in a statement that Phantom Eye was "powered by two 2.3 litre, four-cylinder engines that provide 150 horsepower each".

It is also very large, with a 46m (150ft) wingspan.

"It isn't built for stealth - it's built for endurance," Mr Haddox told BBC News.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has an ongoing interest in long-endurance high-altitude planes for surveillance and is considering a several different technologies, including solar power, to meet the requirements of what it refers to as its "Scavenger project".

The aerospace and defence company Qinetiq are carrying out trials in conjunction with the MoD to develop a solar powered plane called Zephyr.

A spokesperson for the MoD said: "Four days is very good but we are considering a range of options for our deep and persistent reconnaissance requirements.

Experts rediscover plant presumed extinct for 60 years

In a small, noisy laboratory, tucked away in London's Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, a tiny plant is growing.

It looks just like a very small parsley bush, but it is actually a very special little plant indeed.

Clean air has to be constantly circulated in the lab to protect it from any bacteria.

This precious specimen is the Anogramma ascensionis fern, commonly known as the parsley fern. Since the 1950s, botanists believed it to be extinct.

It is native to Ascension - an island in the South Atlantic, which is one of Britain's overseas territories. And a small project supported by Kew's overseas territories programme has rediscovered and rescued it - a timely success story, as this year has been dubbed International Year of Biodiversity.

Kew botanist Phil Lamden and local conservation officer Stedson Stroud found the plucky little plant clinging to a precarious existence on a mountainside in the harsh volcanic landscape.

"We were down the back of Ascension's Green Mountain, which has very, very steep slopes. You have to be really careful because if you slip you're a goner," Mr Stroud recalled.

"And we came across this beautiful little fern and immediately knew it was the lost Anogramma that had been extinct for the last 60 years."

Ascension is covered by bleak, forbidding lava flows, and only 10 plant species are known to be truly "endemic" - found nowhere else in the world.

According to Kew scientists, goats that were released on to Ascension by Portuguese explorers in the 1500s, ate their way voraciously through the island's greenery for 350 years before any of the flora was even described to science.

The introduction of more invasive herbivores - rabbits, sheep, rats and donkeys, together with over 200 species of invasive plants, further squeezed out the island's original plant inhabitants. The rediscovery of Anogramma boosts to seven the number of surviving endemic plant species on the island.

Mr Stroud said that, in the excitement, both of the researchers "forgot where they were".

"We were scrambling around, looking to see if there were more, and then we realised, we should really have safety ropes and stuff around us," he said.

24-hour rescue

There were more plants - four in total. But as far as the researchers knew, these were all that remained of Anogramma. So with the help of his colleague, Olivia Renshaw, Mr Stroud mounted a rather perilous effort to protect them.

"We had to keep the plants alive - they were on a bare rock face and it was a really dry period, so Olivia and I went down twice a week carrying water and we set up a drip feed," said Stedson.

After a few weeks of tending the plants, the next part of their plan was even more risky. They had to get pieces of the ferns back to Kew so that more plants could be grown in the safety and sterility of the lab.

Stedson climbed down the ridge one again - this time to collect a few small cuttings of the spore-forming or reproductive parts of the plants.

Once harvested, the spores were vulnerable to drying and contamination, and the team had just 24 hours to transfer the precious cargo to the laboratory in Kew's Conservation Biotechnology Unit (CBU).

The samples were placed in a sterile container and rushed to the nearby airfield. From there, they were flown to a military airport in the UK, where a car was waiting to race them to Kew. Fortunately, the dust-like fern spores survived the journey intact.

Dr Viswambharan Sarasan is head of the CBU. He explained that their arrival was not the end of the challenge.

The spores had to be bleached to eliminate any bacteria, before the plants could be grown in culture.

"That is the really risky part," he said. "If you bleach them for too long, you could kill the spores, but if you don't treat them for long enough, there could be remaining bacteria that will grow in culture and kill them."

And Dr Sarasan had only a one-pence-piece-sized clipping of fern to work with - the smallest sample he had ever cultured from.

After another nervous period of waiting, he was relieved to discover that the process had left the spores intact and viable.

He and his colleague Katie Baker, a botany undergraduate student working at Kew, have now succeeded in growing 60 new Anogramma plants in culture - all from four tiny plants on a cliff face in Ascension.

The team hope eventually to restore Anogramma to its former wild habitats on Ascension's Green Mountain.

And Mr Stroud has even managed to grow some of the plants in a shade house on the island itself.

"Each and every day, you're there, tending and looking, and hoping that something will happen," he said.

"Then one day you see something and - watching the plants grow - you can't ask for anything more."

Colin Clubbe, who leads the UK overseas territories programme at Kew, says that this rescue effort was a small but vital part of a much wider goal to protect native plants in Britain's overseas territories before they are lost forever.

Plants are such an important component of our lives," he said. "And if we lose them, we lose them - extinction is forever.

He says that "holding on to our natural environment" could help us protect many of the plants we depend on.

"We do exploit species - we're reliant on plant products. We use them as a source of genes and, in these extremely dry habitats, like Ascension, plants that are naturally adapted may hold some answers to things like plants' responses to climate change."

This is actually the third extinct plant that Mr Stroud has rediscovered and, for him, it is an ongoing and very personal mission.

"There's never a time that I'm not actually looking fort these species because, we say they're extinct, but I believe they are there," he said.

"It's so satisfying, bringing a plant back from the brink of extinction."

Mars' entire surface was shaped by water

The whole of Mars' surface was shaped by liquid water around four billion years ago, say scientists.


Signs of liquid water had been seen on southern Mars, but the latest findings reveal similar signals in craters in the north of the Red Planet.

The team made their discovery by examining data from instruments on board Europe's Mars Express and Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

They report the findings in the latest issue of the journal Science.

John Carter, of the University of Paris, led the team of France- and US-based scientists.

"Until now, we had no idea what half Mars was made of in terms of mineral composition".

"Now, with the Esa and Nasa probes, we have been able to get a mixture of images and spectral information about the composition of the rock."

He explained that these instruments had revealed clay-type minerals called phyllosilicates - "the stuff you would find in mud and in river beds."

"It's not the species of mineral itself that's important," said Dr Carter, "it's more the fact that the minerals contain water.

"This enhances the picture of liquid water on Mars."

Liquid rock

Previously, researchers have seen similar signs of water in the highlands of southern Mars in rocks that are up to four billion years old. But in the northern part of the planet, more recently formed rocks have buried the older geology.

The prevailing theory for why this is, is that a giant object slammed into northern Mars, turning nearly half of the planet's surface into the Solar System's largest impact crater.

Dr Carter explained that this meant a thick veneer of younger rock covered the older geology, "so the craters are the only way of accessing the older stuff".

But the craters are relatively small and more difficult for the orbiting probes to take measurements from.

"There's also ice and dust coverage in the north of the planet, making it harder to get signals from these craters," said Dr Carter.

The new findings suggest that at least part of the wet period on Mars, that could have been favourable to life, extended into the time between that giant impact and when volcanic and other rocks formed an overlying mantle.

This indicates that, 4.2 billion years ago, the planet was probably altered by liquid water on a global scale.

But Dr Carter said that the findings did not paint a picture of huge Martian oceans.

"It was probably a very dry place," he said. "But we're seeing signals of what were once river beds, small seas and lakes."

Russia's oil exploration threatens gray whales

Oil exploration plans in eastern Russia are a serious threat to gray whales in the area, say scientists with the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

The Rosneft company is due to begin a seismic survey around Sakhalin island within the next few weeks.

The IWC's Scientific Committee is "extremely concerned" about the plans and is calling for a postponement.

The gray whale population is critically endangered, with only about 130 animals left and only 20 breeding females.

Russia says it is aware of the problem, but the company's capacity to shift is limited for financial reasons.

Western Pacific gray whales (also known as grey whales) come to Sakhalin each summer to feed, and seismic survey work - which involves producing high-intensity sound pulses and studying reflections from rock strata under the sea floor - can seriously disrupt their feeding.

The small area where the whales congregate has shallow water, and scientists suspect this is where mothers teach their calves how to feed at the sea floor.

The IWC's head of science, Greg Donovan, said the survey work was planned for the period "when there's probably the highest density of gray whales and particularly mother-calf pairs.

"The Scientific Committee is requesting them to postpone the survey until next year, and to do it as early in the season as possible when there are as few whales there as possible," he told BBC News.

"We actually made a similar recommendation to another company, Sakhalin Energy; they have followed that recommendation and this year, they are carrying out the survey with a very detailed mitigation plan as early in the season as possible."

The mitigation plan includes a provision that testing must stop if mother-and-calf pairs appear in the area.

Energy balance

Russia's IWC commissioner, Valentin Ilyashenko, said he accepted the scientists' conclusions, but there might be a problem in following through on its recommendations.

"Our government and minister of natural resources know this problem... and this question was discussed maybe one month ago," he said.

"From my information, it's very difficult to start this work next year, because the work was planned last year and the money was in the budget for this year, and all equipment and the mothership is rented.

"It's very difficult to change that work but in any case, I know that our scientists and the staff of our ministers is working with this problem with this company."

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been working with companies including Sakhalin Energy to minimise the impact on gray whales.

But Rosneft, reportedly, has appeared less interested in the issue.

Justin Cooke, a member of the IUCN panel, said that if the planned tests go ahead, there was a risk that mothers with calves could be driven out of their feeding grounds.

"This could have a crucial impact on this critically endangered population," he said.

"We have some evidence of a slow recovery, but that would be jeopardised by serious disruption in their feeding grounds."

The population has to recover and expand, he said, if its survival is to be assured.

Going south

The western grays spend the winters in breeding grounds further south, where another issue threatening their survival is entrapment in fishing nets.

Japan is trying to reduce this bycatch in its fleet through an education programme.

Fishermen are not now allowed to sell gray whale meat, and are asked to report entanglements so that authorities can release the whales.

Since the programme's introduction in 2008, there have been no reports of gray whales deaths through this mechanism.

This is one component of a comprehensive conservation plan drawn up by scientists from a number of countries and endorsed here by the IWC.

A key priority is to locate the breeding grounds, which are thought to be close to the Chinese coast - perhaps in a military zone.