"Photograph," which will be released as an e-book on Apple's iBookstore on June 12, will coincide with a Grammy Museum exhibit on Starr, entitled "Ringo: Peace & Love," the book's publishers said on Wednesday.

A limited-edition hand-bound book signed by Starr will be available for purchase in December.

The book will include photographs from the musician's childhood in Liverpool, England, to his road to fame as part of the Fab Four, with Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison.

"These are shots that no one else could have," Starr, 72, said in a statement.

Highlights from the collection include behind-the-scenes candids of the Beatles in their daily lives and Starr's travel photography as the band toured the world.

Starr has also recorded videos featuring commentary to accompany the e-book.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Three people who ordered food at a Taco Bell drive-thru in western Michigan got something more valuable: $3,600 in cash.

A Taco Bell employee mistakenly passed the cash to the trio instead of their food Saturday. The money was returned a short time later.

Kennidi Rue told WZZM-TV and MLive.com that she and two friends thought about keeping the money but decided they'd feel guilty if they didn't return it. Grand Rapids police Capt. Jeff Hertel confirmed the incident, saying an officer was called to assist.

"I thought it was joke," said Rue, 18, of Holland, Mich. "I thought we were on camera. ... The store manager literally just burst out in tears. She was so happy we brought it back."

The money was in a store bag for deposit at a bank. A message seeking comment was left with Taco Bell.

Rue, boyfriend Grant Kruse, 20, and another friend, Luke Postma, 25, got their meal when they returned the money. Kruse and Postma are National Guard members who were in Grand Rapids for training.

DAKAR (Reuters) - In Nouakchott, a dusty city wedged between the Atlantic ocean and western dunes of the Sahara, a young hip-hop fan coordinates a diverse group of hackers targeting websites worldwide in the name of Islam.

Logging on to his computer, he greets his Facebook followers with a "good morning all" in English before posting links to 746 websites they have hacked in the last 48 hours along with his digital calling card: a half-skull, half-cyborg Guy Fawkes mask.

He calls himself Mauritania Attacker, after the remote Islamic republic in west Africa from which he leads a youthful group scattered across the Maghreb, southeast Asia and the West.

As jihadists battle regional governments from the deserts of southern Algeria to the scrubland of north Nigeria, Mauritania Attacker says the hacking collective which he founded, AnonGhost, is fighting for Islam using peaceful means.

"We're not extremists," he said, via a Facebook account which a cyber security expert identified as his. "AnonGhost is a team that hacks for a cause. We defend the dignity of Muslims."

During a series of conversations via Facebook, the 23-year-old spoke of his love of house music and hip hop, and the aims of his collective, whose targets have included U.S. and British small businesses and the oil industry.

He represents a new generation of Western-style Islamists who promote religious conservatism and traditional values, and oppose those they see as backing Zionism and Western hegemony.

In April, AnonGhost launched a cyber attack dubbed OpIsrael that disrupted access to several Israeli government websites, attracting the attention of security experts worldwide.

"AnonGhost is considered one of the most active groups of hacktivists of the first quarter of 2013," said Pierluigi Paganini, security analyst and editor of Cyber Defense magazine.

An online archive of hacked Web sites, Hack DB, lists more than 10,400 domains AnonGhost defaced in the past seven months.

Mauritania, a poor desert nation straddling the Arab Maghreb and black sub-Saharan Africa, is an unlikely hacker base. It has 3.5 million inhabitants spread across an area the size of France and Germany, and only 3 percent of them have Internet access.

Much of the population lives in the capital Nouakchott, which has boomed from a town of less than 10,000 people 40 years ago to a sprawling, ramshackle city of a million inhabitants. In its suburbs, tin and cinderblock shanties battle the Sahara's encroaching dunes and desert nomads stop to water their camels.

In the past six months experts have noted an increase in hacking activity from Mauritania and neighboring countries. In part, that reflects Mauritania Attacker's role in connecting pockets of hackers, said Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions at Radware.

"This one figure, Mauritania Attacker, is kind a figure who brings many of these groups together," Herberger told Reuters.

MODERN TECHNOLOGY, ANCIENT MISSION

Mauritania Attacker says his activities are split between cyber cafes and his home, punctuated by the five daily Muslim prayers.

Well-educated, he speaks French and Arabic among other languages and updates his social media accounts regularly with details of the latest defacements and email hacks. He would not say how he made a living.

His cyber threats are often accented with smiley faces and programmer slang, and he posts links to dancefloor hits and amusing Youtube videos. But his message is a centuries-old Islamist call for return to religious purity.

"Today Islam is divisive and corrupt," he said in an online exchange. "We have abandoned the Koran."

Mauritanian Attacker aims to promote "correct Islam" by striking at servers hosted by countries they see as hostile to sharia law. "There is no Islam without sharia," he said.

Mauritania is renowned for its strict Islamic law. The sale of alcohol is forbidden and it is one of only a handful of states where homosexuality and atheism are punished by death.

The quality of Mauritania's religious scholars and koranic schools, or madrassas, attract students from around the world. Mauritanians have risen to prominent positions in regional jihadist groups, including al Qaeda's north African branch AQIM.

As hackers from the region organize into groups, the Maghreb is emerging as a haven for hacktivism as it lacks the laws and means to prosecute cyber criminals, Herberger said.

"There's a great degree of anonymity and there's a great degree of implied impunity," he said.

Security sources in Nouakchott said they were not aware of the activities of Mauritania Attacker.

He says he supports Islamists in Mauritania but opposes his government's support for the West, which sees the country as one of its main allies in its fight against al Qaeda in the region.

With tech-savy young Muslims in the Maghreb chafing under repressive regimes, analysts anticipate a rise in hacktivism.

Hacking is a way for young people to express religious and political views without being censored, says Aaron Zelin, fellow at the Washington Institute.

"These societies are relatively closed in terms of people's ability to openly discuss topics that are taboo," he said.

For disillusioned youth in countries like Mauritania, where General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz seized power in a 2008 coup before winning elections the next year, hacking has become "a way of expressing their distaste with status quo," Zelin said.

JURY OUT ON GROUP'S REACH

AnonGhost's global reach is its greatest weapon, but it has yet to stage a major attack on a Western economic target.

Most of AnonGhost's campaigns have simply defaced Web sites, ranging from kosher dieting sites to American weapon aficionado blogs, with messages about Islam and anti-Zionism.

It has attacked servers, often hosting small business websites, located in the United States, Brazil, France, Israel and Germany among others.

Mauritania Attacker and the AnonGhost crew say these countries have "betrayed Muslims" by supporting Israel and by participating in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"We are the new generation of Muslims and we are not stupid," read a message posted on the Web site of a party supply business in Italy. "We represent Islam. We fight together. We stand together. We die together."

The team has also leaked email credentials, some belonging to government workers from the United States and elsewhere.

As part of a June 20 operation against the oil industry, carried out alongside the international hacking network Anonymous, Mauritania Attacker released what he said were the email addresses and passwords for employees of Total.

A spokesperson for the French oil major did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

One security expert said AnonGhost's attacks exploited "well-known vulnerabilities in configurations of servers" in target countries rather than going after high-profile companies.

Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions at Radware, remains unconvinced AnonGhost has the technical skills to wage full-scale cyber terrorism by harming operational capabilities of companies or government agencies.

"The jury is still out," he said, but cautioned against underestimating the emerging group. "You're never quite sure what they're going to do on the offensive, so they have to be right only once and you have to be right always."

(Additional reporting by Laurent Prieur in Nouakchott; editing by Daniel Flynn and Philippa Fletcher)

The ISM manufacturing survey for the U.S. showed a rebound in June thanks to new orders and higher production. The increase to 50.9 points from May's 49 shows the sector is expanding once again. A reading above 50 suggests growth, while those below indicate contraction.

The survey showed employment in the sector remained weak, however, suggesting companies are still cautious about the future.

The survey boosted stock markets as investors estimated it was strong enough to show the recovery is on track, but not so strong as to encourage the Federal Reserve to start ending its monetary stimulus program ahead of time.

In Europe, Germany's DAX rose 0.3 percent to close at 7,983.92 while France's CAC-40 gained 0.8 percent to 3,767.48. Britain's FTSE 100 rose 1.5 percent to 6,307.78.

On Wall Street, the Dow was up 1.1 percent to 15,070.68 while the broader S&P 500 was 1.2 percent higher at 1,625.53.

"This rebound in the ISM and moderate employment growth in June would leave the Fed on track to start tapering" its bond purchases in September, said Paul Dales, analyst at Capital Economics.

U.S. economic indicators have been one of the main market drivers in recent weeks as investors gauge when the Fed is likely to wind down its stimulus.

After a volatile few weeks, Fed officials are trying to calm investors' concerns about the central bank's planned reduction in monthly purchases of financial assets. Those purchases are aimed at stimulating the economy by pushing down market interest rates, and investors worry that as the economy improves, a pullback could deprive them of cheap borrowing rates.

In that vein, the U.S. monthly jobs report due Friday will get huge attention as it is the most closely watched indicator for the world's largest economy.

In Europe, economic indicators remain more mixed. Unemployment across the 17-country eurozone rose to another record high, at 12.1 percent in May. The number shows the massive amount of work governments have to address the social impact that their debt reduction policies have had.

A separate report, however, showed an improvement in manufacturing activity in Britain, France and Italy and stabilization in Spain.

Markets had been buoyed earlier in the day, during Asian trading hours, by the Bank of Japan's closely-watched quarterly "tankan" survey for June. It showed that the index for major manufacturers rose to positive 4 points from negative 8 in March, the first positive figure since September 2011. A positive reading means more companies are optimistic than pessimistic.

The report, along with another survey showing consumer prices stopped falling for the first time in seven months, suggests companies are reacting positively to the weaker yen and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policies to revive the economy.

That helped temper concerns by a separate report showing China's manufacturing decelerated in June for a second month. The survey by HSBC Corp. and a Chinese industry group declined to 48.2 points from May's 49.2. The drop reflects in part a tightening in lending conditions as Beijing sought to stabilize the credit market.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 rose 1.3 percent to close at 13,852.50 while China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index gained a more moderate 0.8 percent to 1,998.24.

Earlier in Asia, smaller stock markets mostly fell on concern that China's manufacturing slowdown might hurt their economies. Sydney's ASX/S&P 200 lost 1.9 percent to 4,710.30.

Taiwan's Taiex shed 0.3 percent to 8,036 while South Korea's Kospi fell 0.4 percent to 1,855.73. Singapore, Bangkok and Manila gained while Hong Kong was closed for a holiday.

In other markets, the benchmark crude oil contract for August delivery was up $1.12 at $97.68 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The dollar gained to 99.67 yen from 99.11 yen late Friday. The euro rose to $1.3061 from $1.3013.

___

Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.

LONDON (Reuters) - A British writer whose debut novel about mothers at the school gate sparked a seven-way bidding war between publishers has attributed the overnight success of her book to striking a chord with women used to negotiating the politics of female groups.

The hype around "The Hive" led to Gill Hornby being described as publisher Little Brown's "most important new author of 2013" and NBC Universals' arthouse Focus Features snapped up the film rights even before the book's release on May 23.

Hornby said she was slightly bemused by all the attention for her book which hit the top 10 bestselling fiction list in the UK in its first week, drawing comparisons to the huge success of EL James's "Fifty Shades of Grey" series last year.

After all it is Hornby's first novel although she is far from new to publishing. She is married to Robert Harris, best-selling author of thrillers like "Enigma" and "Archangel" and her brother Nick Hornby wrote "High Fidelity" and "Fever Pitch".

Hornby, who has four children aged 12 to 22, said the book took her two years to write but was in her head for years.

"I've always been very conscious about the groups girls and women make but I was too busy living the life to write about it," Hornby told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"This book is based at a school but really it is about women and their relationships .. about ordinary, domestic life."

"The Hive" is based at a fictional school, St Ambrose Primary, in a smart English rural town, which has a new headmaster and a group of mothers committed to raising funds for his plan to build a new school library.

The fund-raising is led by the undisputed queen bee Beatrice while Heather desperately tries to be more popular and other mothers steer clear or unintentionally fuel the rivalries, one-upmanship and smugness that comes with mother-led school group.

As the cliques swerve the lunch ladder and car boot sale, the school year becomes the backdrop of various life-changing events from broken relationships, depression, to cancer scares.

Hornby, a columnist with the Daily Telegraph until 2010, said the characters were based on the six roles outlined in Rosalind Wiseman's 2002 book "Queen Bees and Wannabes" that dealt with girls' friendships and conflicts.

The six are the Queen Bee, the sidekick, wannabe, floater, target, and torn bystander.

"The book is not autobiographical and not revenge against anybody. I've always been an amused observer," said Hornby,

Hornby is working on her second book about another group of women in the same town who are 15 years older with departed children and downplays "The Hive" being hailed as starting a new genre for women who are the main buyers of fiction.

Publishers have been trying to second guess the next big trend among women readers after the phenomenal success last year of "Fifty Shades of Grey" which appealed to a wide group of older women no longer interested in the shelf loads of chicklit.

"After mummy porn, mumlit?" asked the Guardian newspaper.

"I do worry about people comparing it to "50 Shades" because there is no sex at all in my book," said Hornby.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Paul Casciato)

The American Cancer Society is pushing to make New York the first state to enact a comprehensive restriction on the sale of candy- and fruit-flavored cigarillos, chewing tobacco and tobacco used in water pipes. Its proposal would restrict the sale of all fruit- and candy-flavored tobacco products to tobacco shops, banning those products from convenience stories.

Maine bans the sale of larger "premium" flavored cigars and other states including Maryland have proposed laws, according to the University of Maryland Law School. New York City and Providence, R.I., also have restricted the sale of flavored tobacco.

"If New York acts, it would be the first state in the nation, and turbocharge efforts nationally," said Blair Horner, vice president of advocacy at the American Cancer Society and Cancer Action Network of New York and New Jersey.

The little cigars, chewing tobacco and loose tobacco for use in water pipes are sold individually for as little as 99 cents or in packs and avoid stiff cigarette taxes aimed at dissuading young people from smoking.

"I couldn't believe this when I saw it," Horner said. "Lawmakers may not even know about them ... this ease of access of cheap, tasty, and deadly tobacco."

New York law prohibits the sale of tobacco products to anyone under age 18. But anti-smoking advocates say restricting sales to adults-only smoke shops would stymie illegal sales and hinder youths purchasing cigarettes through an adult who buys them at a corner store.

Not everyone agrees with the proposed crackdown on sweet smokes.

"This is an adult product, like you have flavored liquors," said Audrey Silk, founder of NYC CLASH, a national smokers' rights group based in New York City. "The flavoring is an excuse to exploit the emotional driven 'for the children' (argument). Adults should be allowed to smoke flavored tobacco. There are already laws that exist that restrict sales to minors."

Driving flavored cigars and other products out of convenience stories will simply drive sales to unregulated sources, such as the Internet, the mail, or Indian tribes, said James Calvin, president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores.

"Do you want them sold in a regulated environment or sold without any controls?" Calvin said.

There has been a rise in flavored tobacco products over the last five years, he said, and store owners have improved compliance to 94 percent in state stings to root out stores selling cigarettes to underage customers. A decade ago, the compliance rate was 80 percent, he said.

A tobacco industry spokeswoman had no immediate comment Friday. Tobacco companies have said they oppose smoking by those under age 18. The companies have mounted extensive efforts to curb youth smoking and some of the billions the companies paid in a nationwide court settlement have been directed at keeping minors from starting to smoke.

In 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned candy-, fruit- and clove-flavored cigarettes. Federal health authorities and regulators say those products appeal especially to young people and are thought to attract new smokers. The FDA says 17-year-old smokers are three times as likely to use flavored cigarettes as smokers over the age of 25.

The agency says almost 90 percent of adult smokers picked up the habit as teenagers, and it estimates the 2009 ban helps prevent an average of more than 3,600 young people each day from starting to smoke.

The ban on manufacturing, importing, marketing and distributing flavored cigarettes didn't include menthol cigarettes or some flavored tobacco products such as cigars. The FDA is studying those products.

Although New York City has a measure to restrict the candy- and fruit-flavored tobacco, city youths can easily buy them across the city line. As other states consider restrictions, the New York state effort is bolstered by New York City's already enacted ordinance that the courts have upheld.

"They are not selling broccoli and spinach flavored products," said Russ Haven of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which supports the New York bill. "These are marketed for kids."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA called on backyard astronomers and other citizen-scientists on Tuesday to help track asteroids that could create havoc on Earth.

The U.S. space agency has already identified 95 percent of the potentially planet-killing NEOs - near Earth objects - with a diameter of .62 miles or more, a size comparable to the space rock many scientists believe wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

Now NASA wants to work with individuals, government agencies, international partners and academia to "find all asteroid threats to human populations and know what to do about them." More information is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/initiative/grand_challenge.html .

Between 50 and 100 amateur astronomers are doing what is called light-curve analysis on space rocks, making repeated images of the astronomical bodies to help determine their characteristics, said Jason Kessler, program executive for what NASA calls Astroid Grand Challenge.

"We're certainly going to need more help with that as our detection rate goes up," Kessler said by telephone. He acknowledged that what NASA aims to do, at least in part, is to crowd-source asteroid detection.

Even smaller space rocks can be dangerous, whether or not they hit the Earth. In February, a meteorite about 19 yards in diameter exploded over central Russia, shattering windows, damaging buildings and injuring 1,200 people.

Earlier this month, an asteroid the size of a small truck zoomed past the Earth four times closer than the moon, crossing within about 65,000 miles over the Southern Ocean south of Tasmania, Australia.

Estimates suggest less than 10 percent of NEOs smaller than 328 yards across have been detected, and less than 1 percent of objects smaller than 109 yards in diameter have been detected, NASA said in a statement.

The initiative aims to detect all NEOs of 33 yards or larger, Kessler said.

The space agency has also announced plans for a mission to capture a small asteroid, redirect it into a stable orbit and send humans to study it as early as 2021.

U.S. lawmakers have also become interested in NEO. In March the House of Representatives' science committee held a hearing on "Threats from Space" that reviewed efforts to track and mitigate asteroids and meteors.

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Ros Krasny and Mohammad Zargham)

U.S. Middle District Judge Yvette Kane's decision put an early end to the antitrust lawsuit Gov. Tom Corbett filed in January in which he sought to overturn a $60 million fine, a four-year bowl ban, scholarship limits and other penalties.

She said she could not "find any factual allegations supporting (Corbett's) allegation of 'concerted action' that might nudge its conspiracy claim into 'plausible' territory."

The NCAA said it was "exceedingly pleased" and hoped the ruling would help heal divisions caused by the Sandusky scandal.

Corbett expressed disappointment and said he feels strongly the claims he raised were compelling and deserved a thorough review by the courts.

"Countless individuals and small businesses throughout the state will continue to suffer because of the NCAA's actions," Corbett said.

The judge wrote that even if the penalties make it harder for Penn State to recruit quality football players, that would not make it an antitrust case.

"The fact that Penn State will offer fewer scholarships over a period of four years does not plausibly support its allegation that the reduction of scholarships at Penn State will result in a market-wide anticompetitive effect, such that the 'nation's top scholastic football players' would be unable to obtain a scholarship in the nationwide market for Division I football players," Kane wrote.

She said the case raises issues that are important matters of public debate but not antitrust questions.

"In another forum the complaint's appeal to equity and common sense may win the day, but in the antitrust world these arguments fail to advance the ball," Kane said.

Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach, is serving a decades-long prison sentence for sexual abuse of 10 boys. He has maintained his innocence.

The university, which agreed to the NCAA penalties, was not a party to the case.

Kane produced a "thorough analysis and thoughtful opinion," said Donald Remy, the NCAA's chief legal officer.

"Our hope is that this decision not only will end this case but also serve as a beginning of the end of the divide among those who, like Penn State, want to move forward to put the horror of the Sandusky crimes behind the university and those who want to prolong the fight and with it the pain for all involved," Remy said.

Corbett said the decision was under legal review and did not indicate if he plans to appeal. His office has not disclosed the cost for outside legal counsel to pursue the lawsuit.

During arguments last month, the NCAA's lawyer said the sanctions were not likely to harm the overall market for higher education or for top-flight football players. He said antitrust law did not apply and that the organization acted to enforce rules about honesty, sportsmanship and conduct.

Relatives of the late Joe Paterno, who was Sandusky's boss for decades, five Penn State trustees and others connected to the university have filed their own lawsuit against the NCAA in county court. That suit also seeks to overturn the NCAA sanctions.

Wick Sollers, a lawyer who represents the Paterno family, said their lawsuit against the NCAA raises "significantly different claims and legal theories."

State College area state Sen. Jake Corman, who sponsored a law Corbett signed in February that requires $60 million NCAA fine to be spent exclusively in Pennsylvania, is pursuing a Commonwealth Court lawsuit against the association over the use of the money. An NCAA challenge of that law remains pending before Kane in federal court.

In examining the plans NASA devises for human missions beyond low Earth orbit, in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) experiments or demonstrations are sometimes included but never incorporated into the imperative of the mission sequence, or what engineers call "the critical path." ISRU simply means that you make stuff you need in space from resources available in space.

At current levels of development, such stuff would largely consist of high-mass, low-information materials, such as propellant and shielding. By reducing the amount of mass launched from the Earth through the use of ISRU techniques, the United States would save many billions of dollars of its limited. So why isn't the public hearing more about this?

Certainly nothing in the chemistry or physics of ISRU indicates that it is impossible or unduly futuristic most processes date back to antiquity (such as melting ice into water) or, at latest, to 18th- and 19th-century industrial chemistry (e.g., carbothermal reduction). But no one has actually attempted ISRU with extraterrestrial materials and real hardware in space. In other words, aerospace engineers haven't done it; to them, the concept is more from the realm of science fiction. ("Set the replicators on beef stew tonight, Mr. Sulu!"). They reactively imagine potential disasters resulting from the effort, rather than appreciate its possible benefits.

Engineers tend to be cautious when undertaking new designs that incorporate untried techniques, and in the case of human spaceflight, they should be. However, when caution keeps you locked in a comfort zone, initiative and programs will atrophy and cripple the U.S.' space progress.

Carrying the load

Several years ago, Bob Zubrin, my friend and sometime public debate opponent, had a key insight. When you bring everything you need with you from Earth in order to get to Mars, the mass you send to orbit can be prohibitive (consequences from themultiply the gross departure weight by a large amount); it costs thousands of dollars per pound for delivery to low-Earth orbit (LEO). If you don't bring the fuel for the return trip home, your departure mass is much lower. For the trip home, Zubrin'sutilizes rocket propellant made on the Martian surface. In one fell swoop, he reduced by more than 50 percent the amount of mass needed in LEO to go to Mars a significant finding.

The currentutilizes eight launches of a superheavy-lift vehicle (150 tons, or 136 metric tons, to LEO) to construct the 500-ton (454 metric tons) Mars craft in Earth orbit. (Another analysis projects 10 to 12 launches.) More than 80 percent of this mass is propellant. If the heavy-lift vehicles end up costing a couple of billion dollars each, the cost of a human Mars mission is not only unaffordable, but so much so that it will never be undertaken.

And don't think the hallowedwill save you, either: Those vehicles are too small (their payload is much smaller than 150 tons) and will need to use storable propellant because thewill boil away into space between their individual launches. Storable propellants have much less energythan LOX-H2 and, thus, besides the complexity of logistical assembly from a greater number of flights, the total required mass in LEO multiplies frighteningly.

Engineers are reluctant to mandate ISRU as part of the Mars architecture because it's never been done (risky) and it's never been done because it's too risky the classic catch-22. How can space missions move beyond this impasse? Reduce the size of the risk roadblock by demonstrating ISRU on the moon.

Engineers can design an ISRU strategy for moon missions that not only retires risk for future ISRU use on Mars, but can also provision the Mars trip from lunar materials, further reducing the amount of mass launched from Earth. But why use the moon to document the value of ISRU, rather than a near-Earth asteroid? Simply put, the moon has the right materials and properties for performing this risk-reduction activity.

The moon's critical resources

The results of the , in which a Centaur upper stage was crashed into a dark area near the moon's south pole, demonstrated that not only ison the moon, but there are other volatiles there as well, including methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide and some simple organic compounds. On the basis of their observed abundance, all of these substances are probably derived from comets that, over geological time, have hit the moon and are preserved in the permanently shadowed, cold areas near the poles. Asteroids typically do not contain those exotic, volatile substances; if water is present in asteroids, it is chemically bound in mineral structures and requires considerable energy and processing to be extracted and used.

Lunar ISRU can harvest not only water (and thus, oxygen) but also methane from the moon's polar deposits. Methane is the propellant Zubrin's Mars Direct architecture uses for Earth return. (However, because the martian crust is water-rich, LOX-LH2 could also be used on Mars, making the lunar polar deposits doubly relevant.) From the Earth-moon , either landing on or taking off from the poles of the moon requires about a 1.6 miles per second (2.6 kilometers per second) change in velocity, whereas transfer from the surface of Mars to Mars orbit for rendezvous and return to Earth requires a change in velocity of 2 mps (3.2 km/sec). Thus, the transfer energies for the two missions are comparable. This means that we can test the methane ISRU systems not only in principle but the actual Mars equipment, in practice, three days away on the moon and in cislunar space (the area between the Earth and the moon). Moreover, if crews get into trouble during a mission, better for it to happen on the moon, where rescue might be possible.

In effect, these lunar properties mean that a complete, end-to-end systems test of all the pieces of a Mars Direct-style architecture could be performed in cislunar space, overcoming the most critical obstacle: the "risk" of requiring ISRU in the critical path.

In my opinion, ISRU is the most important and game-changing technology for future spaceflight. I will go so far as to say that a human Mars mission is inconceivable without incorporating ISRU in some form, most likely as a source of propellant but also for other potential uses (e.g., shielding, oxygen and water). And, such ISRU will not occur until it is proven in space, most easily and usefully on the moon.

A Mars mission conducted in the Apollo mode (everything launched from Earth) is not fiscally or politically possible. A national security imperative duringallowed the United States to bludgeon technical problems to death with money. We no longer live in that world. Space programs must be affordable, which means that we cannot opt for the easiest or most familiar way to do something we must be clever, frugal and use what is available.

Moving forward

During a , the two witnesses Steve Squyres of Cornell University and Tom Young of Lockheed Martin Corporation bothfor human Mars missions. They are both wrong. The critical path to Mars goes through the Moon, although not in the way most engineers have been looking at it. They've viewed a lunar mission as a fancy dress rehearsal for the Mars mission, with people landing on the moon to conduct a complex and carefully choreographed , to practice how they plan to explore Mars and then leave the moon as soon as possible. In their view, the main object of the lunar mission is to get it over with.

For a manned mission to Mars to be successful, a sustained lunar return is much more valuable than a touch-and-go, flyby or hover-over mission. Only on the moon can we learn for the first time how to extract and use off-planet resources. We permanently retire ISRU risk and open up space by using lunar resources. We practice the entire Mars surface mission sequence with Mars hardware flying in space from landing, to refueling and ascent. To go to Mars without ISRU requires too much mass in LEO, and will necessitate multiple launches of expensive, disposable vehicles. As a result, a manned Mars mission would be unaffordable and, thus, unlikely to ever happen. Such expense cannot be justified under virtually any conceivable political circumstance, save for those associated with some national emergency certainly an eventuality not to be hoped for.

And yes, for those following the breadcrumbs, by using the ISRU process, we'll develop a system that can routinely access all of cislunar space, including the lunar surface.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This article was originally published on.

Obama outlined the policy objectives which focus onin the United States, preparing communities to withstand the effects of a warming planet, and leading global efforts to fight climate change in a speech this afternoon at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

"The question is not whether we need to act," Obama said in his address. "The overwhelming judgment of science of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements has put all that to rest. So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it's too late."

As part of the plan, Obama said he will direct the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set standards for greenhouse gas emissions for new and existing power plants, which currently contribute 40 percent of the country's carbon emissions. These measures reinforce the president's earlier pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2020. []

"About 40 percent of our carbon pollution comes from power plants, but there are no federal limits to the amount of carbon pollution those plants can pump into our air," Obama said. "It's not right, it's not safe, and it needs to stop."

Obama also emphasized efforts to develop and deploy clean energy alternatives, and stated his intent to expandon public land.

The president's previous goal of establishing 10 gigawatts of renewable energy on public land by the end of 2012 was met by the Department of the Interior (DOI) ahead of schedule. In today's newly announced plan, Obama directs the DOI to permit enough wind and solar energy projects on public land to power more than 6 million homes by 2020.

While the president did not deliver a judgment today on the proposed , which would transport heavy oil from Canadian oil sands in Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries, Obama maintained that the project's environmental impact will be heavily considered in the decision-making process.

"Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built would require a finding that doing so would be in our nation's interest, and our national interest will be served if this project does not significantly exacerbate the ," Obama said. "The net effects of the pipeline's impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward."

Yet, even mentioning the Keystone pipeline in today's address could be a signal of the administration's stance on the controversial project, said Victor Flatt, a professor of environmental law at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill, and director of the school's Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation, and Resources.

"I do think it tips their hand, and yet it does that while also distracting the president from what other people are going to consider a political decision," Flatt told LiveScience. "It's trying to couch it in terms that are not political, and basing it on scientific judgment of whether it will make climate change worse, which is what will, and should, drive the State Department's decision."

In today's speech, the president also took aim at , calling them "doomsayers," who will invariably claim that federal environmental regulations will come at the expense of jobs and a growing economy.

Instead, Obama said a low-carbon, clean air economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come, and that maintaining the health of the economy and preserving the wellbeing of the planet for future generations should not be mutually exclusive goals. []

"The problem with all these tired excuses for inaction is that it suggests a fundamental lack of faith in American business and American ingenuity," Obama said.

The announcement of a sweeping plan to address climate change already signifies an important shift in the political landscape, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on ClimateChange Communication at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

"It was, by far, the most comprehensive speech he's ever given on the issue," Leiserowitz told LiveScience. "Just the fact that he gave this speech is a major shift, especially for an administration that, for a number of years, has really avoided the topic."

Identifying a clear roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions should provide the necessary assurances to companies and industry members that investing inis a priority, said Frank Lowenstein, Climate Adaptation Strategy Leader for The Nature Conservancy's Global Freshwater Team,

"A call to action and a clear direction is something the public, business community, and the world is hungry for," Lowenstein said.

According to senior White House officials, the president's plan relies on existing executive authority, which means none of the proposed measures require approval from Congress, where a number ofhave stalled or been defeated in the past.

"For too long, the barricade of special interests in Washington has stopped Congress from acting against carbon pollution," Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said in a statement. President Obama knows that we cant wait to address this issue. Were already paying the costs of climate change. Our oceans are warmer, more acidic, and rising; our seasons are shifting; and the dice are loaded for more frequent and more severe ."

Still, the president stressed that even with these measures in place, the effects of climate change cannot be slowed, or reversed, overnight. As such, to prepare communities for the possibility of more frequent and severe weather events, Obama announced plans to help cities and towns become more resilient to the realities of a warming planet, which includesand floods.

"Those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don't have time to deny it. They're dealing with it," Obama said, pausing frequently throughout his speech to wipe away perspiration from the sweltering summer heat in the nation's capital.

If addressing climate change is properly recognized as a priority, the president said the actions taken by the United States and the global community will "have a profound impact on the world we leave behind."

"We will have the satisfaction of knowing that the world we leave to our children will be better off for what we did," Obama said. "That's what we're fighting for. If we remember that, I'm absolutely sure we'll succeed."

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