Month: August 2012

NASA can put a man on the Moon and a rover on Mars, but somehow it can’t comply with a Freedom of Information document request.

8:40 am

NASA can put a man on the Moon and a rover on Mars, but somehow it can’t comply with a Freedom of Information document request.

The request was an attempt by a newspaper to find out if NASA officials have been partying extravagantly at conferences, like officials in GSA. That NASA can’t provide the documents suggests that something stinks somewhere.

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What do you do with a giant space station when its lifespan is over?

8:36 am

What do you do with a giant space station when its lifespan is over?

The article notes that no date has been set for deorbit, and that it likely will not happen before 2028. The article also includes information about some of medical and engineering problems of long term weightlessness that have been discovered on ISS, and how engineers have attempted to address them.

Unfortunately, some of these problems, such as the recently discovered vision problems, remain unsolved. It is a shame that while Russia wants to do multi-year missions on the station to study these issues, NASA continues to resist.

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One of Curiosity’s two wind sensors has been found to be damaged and is inoperable.

6:57 pm

One of Curiosity’s two wind sensors was apparently damaged in landing and is inoperable.

The Rems team first noticed there was something wrong when readings from the side-facing boom were being returned saturated at high and low values. Further investigation suggested small wires exposed on the sensor circuits were open, probably severed. It is permanent damage. No-one can say for sure how this happened, but engineers are working on the theory that grit thrown on to the rover by the descent crane’s exhaust plume cut the small wires. The wind sensor on the forward-facing mini-boom is unaffected. With just the one sensor, it makes it difficult to fully understand wind behaviour.

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The atheist Freedom from Religion Foundation has threatened to sue 151 Mississippi schools if they allow students to pray using public address systems during athletic events.

6:50 pm

Freedom for me but not for thee: The atheist Freedom from Religion Foundation has threatened to sue 151 Mississippi schools if they allow students to pray using public address systems during athletic events.

In other words, according to this atheist organization, all expression of religion must be banned from the public marketplace of ideas. Only then will we have true freedom!

What is encouraging from this article is the increasing willingness of school officials, religious leaders, and students to resist this oppression.

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Criminal charges have been filed against a German rabbi for performing circumcisions.

2:58 pm

Criminal charges have been filed against a German rabbi for performing circumcisions.

A doctor from Hesse filed a criminal complaint against Rabbi David Goldberg, who serves in the community of Hof, in Upper Franconia (northern Bavaria), according to the Juedische Allgemeine weekly newspaper. The chief prosecutor of Hof confirmed that charges had been filed against the rabbi. The charges are based on the controversial decision of a Cologne district court, which ruled in June that circumcisions for religious reasons constitute illegal bodily harm to newborn babies.

The article does not tell us anything about the doctor who filed the complaint. I wonder what that doctor’s motives are.

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Monday’s successful spacewalk by two Russian astronauts preps ISS for the arrival of a new Russian module.

8:32 am

Monday’s successful spacewalk by two Russian astronauts has prepared ISS for the arrival of a new Russian module.

I should have posted a link about this spacewalk earlier. What is important however is that the Russians continue to move forward, though slowly. And they continue to come up with simple solutions to problems, such as the extra layer of shielding for the living quarters on ISS, installed during this spacewalk.

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Astronomers have found what they believe is the first evidence of a planet consumed by its star as the star expanded and aged.

5:33 pm

Astronomers have found what they believe is the first evidence of a planet consumed by its star as the star expanded and aged.

Sadly, for those of you out there who like the idea of watching planets getting destroyed, the event happened a long time ago, and all the astronomers have is circumstantial evidence that is most likely explained by such an event.

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Astronomers have now confirmed 41 new exoplanets, first pinpointed by the Kepler space telescope

5:20 pm

Astronomers have now confirmed 41 new exoplanets, first pinpointed by the Kepler space telescope.

One paper, by Jiwei Xie at the University of Toronto, confirms 24 new planets in 12 systems. Another study, by Steffen and his colleagues, confirms 27 planets in 13 systems. Five of the systems, and 10 of the planets, are the same in both papers. All in all, the new research adds 20 new planetary systems to the 47 that Kepler had previously confirmed, marking a more than 40 percent increase.

Among the Kepler candidates are five Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone, according to the vidoe at the link. However, this announcement does not tell us if any of those candidates were confirmed by these two papers.

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NASA has announced its next planetary mission, a lander to Mars that will drill down thirty feet into the planet’s surface

3:36 pm

NASA has announced its next planetary mission, a lander to Mars that will drill down thirty feet into the planet’s surface.

Though exciting in its own right, this mission is far less ambitious than the two missions which competed against it, a boat that would have floated on the lakes of Titan and a probe that would have bounced repeatedly off the surface of a comet. I suspect the reason this mission was chosen is the tight budgets at NASA, combined with Curiosity’s success which makes it politically advantageous to approve another Mars mission. As the NASA press release emphasized,
» Read more

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On August 13, 2012, Voyager 2 became the longest-operating spacecraft in history, finally topping Pioneer 6, which was launched on Dec. 16, 1965, and sent its last signal back on Dec. 8, 2000.

2:00 pm

On August 13, 2012, Voyager 2 became the longest-operating spacecraft in history, finally topping Pioneer 6, which was launched on Dec. 16, 1965, and sent its last signal back to Earth on Dec. 8, 2000.

And Voyager 2, along with its partner Voyager 1, are still working, and engineers hope they will still be working for another eight to twelve years, enough time for them to leave the solar system and enter interstellar space.

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Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a robot hand that costs less than $10,000.

9:48 am

Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a robot hand that costs less than $10,000 and is capable of replacing a flashlight battery.

The researchers were able to scrimp in a number of clever ways. “One was scouring the globe for the least expensive, highest-performing components like motors, gears, etcetera,” says Curt Salisbury, the project’s principal investigator. “Another was to build the entire electronics system from commodity parts, especially those found in cell phones. We also moved from metal structural elements to plastic, being careful to design the structures so plastic would provide adequate strength.”

The article focuses on the potential of using such a robot hand to defuse bombs. I see it as a first step in providing amputees a replacement hand that is fully functional. And that their goal is to bring the cost down to $1,000 is even more exciting.

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Todd Akin, the Republican running for the senate in Missouri, tried to explain his opposition to all abortion, even in instances of rape, by saying that “legitimate rape” rarely leads to pregnancy.

10:38 pm

The stupid party: Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican running for the Senate, tried to explain his opposition to all abortion, even in instances of rape, by saying that “legitimate rape” rarely leads to pregnancy.

Note that this is more evidence that Republicans should listen to Sarah Palin, who endorsed and campaigned for one of Akin’s opponents in the primary. It is also evidence that for voters to favor a tea party candidate is not necessarily a big risk.

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Faced with small crowds at their campaign events, the Obama campaign is now claiming that they are intentionally limiting crowd size at rallies to save money on security.

3:33 pm

They can’t seriously think anyone will believe this? Faced with small crowds at their campaign events, the Obama campaign is now claiming that they are intentionally limiting crowd size at rallies to save money on security.

More embarrassing is the original New York Times article, which goes out of its way to sell this absurd claim.

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