Year: 2012

The mysterious shiny particles uncovered by Curiosity’s scoop are from Mars, not the rover.

4:00 pm

The mysterious shiny particles uncovered by Curiosity’s scoop are from Mars, not the rover.

After last week’s plastic encounter, Curiosity’s science team worried the new particles might be man-made. Since they turned up in scoop holes, however, the granules must have been buried in the subsurface. They likely came from larger minerals that broke down. They might also represent the product of some geological soil process that generates a bright but unknown mineral.

These are not the same mysterious objects first seen when the rover began science operations. Those particles were on the surface, and looked like bits of plastic that might have come off the rover or its descent stage.

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A Texas judge is expected to rule today on whether cheerleaders have the right to quote the bible at high school football games.

11:25 am

A Texas judge is expected to rule today on whether cheerleaders have the right to quote the bible at high school football games.

And if he rules they can’t, I say they should go ahead anyway, as they have the right to express themselves no matter what a judge says.

Update: The judge has ruled in favor of the cheerleaders.

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Blue Origin has successfully tested its new hydrogen/oxygen rocket engine.

9:27 am

The competition heats up: Blue Origin has successfully tested its new hydrogen/oxygen rocket engine.

This would be the second new American rocket engine since the 1980s, following SpaceX’s Merlin engine. That it uses hydrogen/oxygen is also significant, as these fuels provide the highest ratio of power to weight. (As far as I remember, the shuttle was the only other spacecraft to use hydrogen/oxygen.)

Post corrected. Thanks Paul!

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The science team for New Horizons is considering shifting the spacecraft’s Pluto flyby away from the planet to avoid orbital debris.

9:20 am

The science team for New Horizons is considering shifting the spacecraft’s Pluto flyby away from the planet to avoid orbital debris.

“We’ve found more and more moons orbiting near Pluto — the count is now up to five,” Stern said. “And we’ve come to appreciate that those moons, as well as others not yet discovered, act as debris generators populating the Pluto system with shards from collisions between those moons and small Kuiper Belt objects.”

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Laura Branigan – Forever Young

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Laura Branigan (1957-2004)

Some are like water some are like the heat
Some are the melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why don’t they stay young?
It’s so hard to get old without a cause
I don’t want to perish like a fading horse
Youth’s like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever
So many adventures couldn’t happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams waiting out of the blue
We’ll let them come true

Forever young
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever and ever

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Kepler reveals our Sun might be more variable than we imagine

5:13 pm

More exoplanet news: The problems of Kepler.

The article outlines the status — both good and bad — of Kepler in its hunt for Earthlike exoplanets.

I have already reported on Kepler’s failed reaction wheel. It no longer has a backup and needs every reaction wheel it has to keep it pointed in so precise a manner. Thus, the loss of one more wheel will shut the telescope down.

However, I had not been aware that the scientists now need more than twice as much time, eight years instead of three, to do their work, because they have discovered that sunlike stars are far more variable than expected. To quote the article,
» Read more

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Astronomers have discovered that the nearest star to the Earth, Alpha Centauri, has an exoplanet only slightly heavier than the Earth.

3:28 pm

Big news: Astronomers have discovered that the nearest star to the Earth, Alpha Centauri, has an exoplanet only slightly heavier than the Earth.

Alpha Centauri is actually a triple star system, with two sunlike stars in a tight orbit around each other and a third star far out orbiting them both. The exoplanet orbits one of the inner stars every 3.2 days.

More details from Nature here.

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Faced with stiff competition in the launch market, Europe struggles to come up with a competitive replacement for Ariane 5

1:51 pm

Faced with stiff competition in the launch market, Europe struggles to come up with a competitive replacement for Ariane 5

“I strongly believe we have to decide, as quickly as possible, to develop a new-generation launcher to be competitive in the market as it is forecast, and with the competitors,” [ESA Director General Jean-Jacques] Dordain said at the Berlin air show last month, a reference to new launch vehicle developments in India, China and the U.S., where Space Exploration Technologies’ low-cost Falcon 9 is challenging the global launcher market.

While space cadets might argue about launch prices till the cows come home, the actual competitors in the industry know better: SpaceX’s low prices are real and are forcing everyone to find ways to lower costs or lose business.

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The Cuban government announced today that it will allow its citizens to freely visit other countries for the first time in over a half century.

8:24 am

The Cuban government announced today that, beginning January 13, 2013, it will allow its citizens to freely visit other countries for the first time in over a half century.

This quiet announcement reminds me of what happened in East Germany in 1991. The government then made a quiet announcement saying it would allow travel outside its country, and within days the Berlin Wall was literally being torn down by its citizens. Shortly thereafter East Germany ceased to exist, absorbed into Germany itself, and the communist bloc fell apart.

Hopefully, we shall see the same thing happen to the Cuban dictatorship.

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Just two months after the failure of its second stage during launch, Russia’s Proton rocket successfully put a communications satellite into orbit yesterday.

9:01 am

The competition heats up: Just two months after the failure of its second stage during launch, Russia’s Proton rocket successfully put a communications satellite into orbit yesterday.

This quote, from this Space News article, also implies that there is increasing competitive pressure in the launch industry, which I attribute to the success of SpaceX’s Falcon 9:

Perhaps the most striking element of the launch is that Washington- and Luxembourg-based Intelsat agreed to proceed with it so soon after the August failure of the Proton Breeze-M upper stage. It has been common practice following previous Proton failures that a Russian government mission would be the customer on the return to flight. In this case, Intelsat and its insurance underwriters were sufficiently persuaded that Reston, Va.-based ILS and Proton prime contractor Khrunichev Space Center of Moscow had come to grips with the issue to agree to be the customer for the first flight after the failure.

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