Why am I not surprised? The Russian commission investigating the failure of Phobos-Grunt has concluded that the spacecraft failed because of Russian engineering errors, not U.S. sabotage.
I had suspected this whole kerfuffle was a fake issue inspired by Russian politicians. This report proves it.
Who knew? The hi-tech home of a British soccer star has become a threat to radio astronomy.
The Japanese space agency has released more details about the hacking of their computers.
Drilling down to Lake Vostok has resumed in Antarctica.
This week, a Russian team drilling into Lake Vostok in the center of the Antarctic continent is likely to break through the ice to water. It will be the first time that a subglacial lake has been breached. These modern-day explorers hope to discover whether Vostok, which at 5000 km 3 is the third largest lake on the planet, is teeming with hidden, cold-loving life that could have evolved separately from the rest of the world for hundreds of thousands of years….
After drilling 3720 meters last February, time ran out for the team and the project was stymied just 29.5 meters from its destination as winter set in. Over the summer, they modified their drill bits and now the team is back at work with plenty of time to spare. They had left the large hole filled with antifreeze, so it was ready and waiting for them. It will remain open for years to come, Priscu says, potentially allowing other teams to sample the waters in the future.
Eric Berger has uncovered a statistic about the U.S. space program that will certainly embolden skeptics of NASA and the government.
Could the Russians be right!? In a break from standard practice, U.S. military has removed the links to its tracking data of Phobos-Grunt.
On Jan. 12, the Space Track website originally published information on the estimated re-entry track for Phobos-Grunt, a Russian probe that malfunctioned shortly after its November 2011 launch and was stuck in low-Earth orbit for more than two months.
After routine updates and revised estimates over the course of the next two days, the military removed links to these re-entry predictions and did not publish final confirmation data on the spacecraft’s fall on Jan. 15, according to Aviation Week.
A careful analysis of recent activities by U.S. radar show that it could not have affected Phobos-Grunt. Yet, the U.S. military has now taken actions that not only break with standard procedures, they draw attention to the issue. All very astonishing.
An evening pause: This is the kind of thing which makes me prefer Southwest, when I have to fly.
Orbital Sciences has once again delayed its first launch of Antares, the rocket that will lift its Cygnus cargo capsule to ISS.
A hold-down test of Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Antares rocket, a prerequisite for the launch vehicle’s maiden flight, likely will not be completed before April because of ongoing tests and certification work on the vehicle’s launch pad at Wallops Island, Va., a launch official said.
As much as I am a fan of these private companies (Orbital and SpaceX), I also recognize the great risks. Both companies are building new rockets and capsules, and have many enemies. If they fail, those enemies will jump on their effort like sharks, ready to shut them down and move all government funding to NASA’s big heavy-lift program. Thus, they have to succeed. Better to delay and get things right then hurry and have them blow up in everyone’s face.
Good: The Supreme Court has refused to block a court suit against the San Francisco cops who entered a home without a warrant and ended up killing one of its residents.
If the police invade a home without a warrant they are no different than thieves. Get a warrant, however, and everything changes.
As we spend more of our lives in cyberspace, we come to expect its primary characteristics (convenience, efficiency, abundance) to define our off-screen lives as well. And supertall, mixed-used skyscrapers are currently the most potent physical approximations of the virtual world we have. They’re environments designed for maximum convenience and efficiency, with elevators functioning like hypertext, taking you almost instantly from one mode of existence to the next. Push a button and you’re at work. Push another button, you’re at home.
There’s a lot more. Read the whole thing.
The day of reckoning looms closer all the time: On Tuesday the Treasury Department began using pension funds to keep the federal debt below the debt limit.
This action is, at this time, only a stop-gap until the debt ceiling is raised $1.2 trillion as per Obama’s request. Nonetheless, it signals the federal government’s increasingly dire debt problems.
