The Russians have recovered their first sample from Lake Vostok, buried 2.5 miles below the Antarctic icecap.
The Russians have successfully recovered their first sample from Lake Vostok, buried almost 2.5 miles below the Antarctic icecap.
Year: 2013
Spectacular footage from the two GRAIL spacecraft just prior to their lunar impact.
Fly me to the Moon — and then crash! Spectacular footage from the two GRAIL spacecraft just prior to their lunar impact.
The demo mission of robotic refueling of satellites on ISS goes forward this month.
Robot refueling of satellites: The demo mission on ISS goes forward this month.
As much as I celebrate this work, conceived and designed by engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center (the same people who ran the missions that maintained the Hubble Space Telescope), I worry that nothing will come of it. The demo mission itself is designed to duplicate exactly the refueling of several climate satellites already in orbit whose lifespans are ending merely because they are running out of fuel. If the ISS demo succeeds, the next natural step would be to plan an actual robotic mission to refuel these satellites.
The worrisome part is that NASA rarely follows through on this kind of research. For example, the agency did tests of an ion engine back in the early 1970s, and it wasn’t until the late 1990s before they finally flew a mission using that technology. Worse, the federal budget situation probably means there is no money to fly such a mission.
Hopefully, some private company will take a look at this engineering, which is all in the public domain, and decide to use it for their own purposes.
State lawmakers in Wyoming have proposed a law that would make it a felony to enforce a gun ban on semi-automatics or large capacity magazines.
State lawmakers in Wyoming have proposed a law that would make it a felony to enforce a gun ban on semi-automatics or large capacity magazines.
Elvis Presley – Can’t Help Falling In Love
An evening pause: His live performances of this song are wonderful, but I still prefer the original movie version from Blue Hawaii (1961) for its simplicity. The film work might be uninspiring, but the clarity of the song easily makes up for this.
The largest known spiral galaxy.
The largest known spiral galaxy. With images.
Measuring tip-to-tip across its two outsized spiral arms, NGC 6872 spans more than 522,000 light-years, making it more than five times the size of our Milky Way galaxy.
For context, the Milky Way and its two Magellanic Clouds could easily fit inside this galaxy, with lots of room to spare.
Our government’s modern scientific method:
Proving others are wrong is not allowed!
An Interior Department official has been accused of trying to disband a fish research division specifically because its research is politically incorrect.
The research division, the Fisheries Resources Branch, had repeatedly found good evidence that the salmon of the Klamath River in the northwest were not suffering significantly from the presence of the dams on that river, contradicting the accepted wisdom that the dams had to be removed in order for these species to survive. The Interior official, Jason Phillips, along with the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), did not like these results, and decided that scientific work that “proved others wrong” was unacceptable and had to be squelched. From the actual complaint [pdf]:
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The reason why NASA’s planetary probes still use black and white photography.
The reason why NASA’s planetary probes still use black and white photography.
New radar data of Apophis now indicates that its chances of the asteroid hitting the Earth in 2036 is zero.
The sky is not failing: New radar data of Apophis now indicates that its chances of the asteroid hitting the Earth in 2036 is zero.
This data doesn’t eliminate the chance of a collision, only postpones it much farther into the future.
Idea of North – But not for me
An evening pause:
An official of SpaceX announced today that the company plans on its first manned launch by 2015, and that the astronauts will be its employees, not NASA’s.
The competition heats up: An official of SpaceX announced today that the company plans on its first manned launch by 2015, and that the astronauts will be its employees, not NASA’s.
Back when the shuttle program was still alive and NASA astronauts could have applied political pressure to keep it running, some said they should, if only to save their jobs. They did not, and instead toed the party line and supported the shuttle’s retirement even though no replacement was even close to being operational.
How’s that working out for you, guys, eh?
The truth is that there is no justification any longer for the astronaut corp at NASA. They have no vehicle, and any future space vehicle is going to be built and operated by others who will chose their own pilots.
New data from the Herschel Space Telescope suggests that the asteroid Apophis is bigger and less reflective than previous believed.
More Apophis news: New data from the Herschel Space Telescope suggests that the asteroid is bigger and less reflective than previous believed.
Instead of 900 feet across, they now estimate it has a diameter of about 1070 feet. And knowing that the asteroid has a lower albedo means that astronomers will be better able to gauge the effect of solar radiation on Apophis’s orbit.
How to watch the asteroid Apophis as it makes its not-so-close approach to Earth today.
A new National Research Council report honestly admits the possibility that the Sun might be an important factor in climate change.
Pigs fly! A new National Research Council report honestly admits the possibility that the Sun might be an important factor in climate change.
The article, from NASA, itself is a remarkably fair assessment of the field’s state of knowledge (which in truth is quite spotty since we really do not yet understand what is going on with the climate). This, as far as I can remember, is the first time in years, since the early 1990s before the global warming advocates took over the climate field and shut down debate, that an official article from a government organization like NASA has been so open about these issues and not toed the politically correct line that “fossil fuels and carbon dioxide are causing global warming and don’t you dare say anything different!”
The Dillards – The Whole World Round
An evening pause: I especially like the banjo player, as it almost appears like magic how he produces the sound from his instrument.
Tracking the orbit of the exoplanet in Fomalhaut’s debris disk
Tracking the orbit of the exoplanet in Fomalhaut’s debris disk.
Want to learn something of the geology of the Grand Canyon?
Want to learn something of the geology of the Grand Canyon? The Geological Society of America has just published a special volume of papers, with the introductory and afterword [pdf] chapters available online.
Those two chapters provide a very good layman’s summary of the geological state-of-the-art of the Grand Canyon. Very worthwhile reading if you plan to hike down in the near future.
Scientists now think it is possible for there to be floating methane ice on the lakes of Titan.
Scientists now think it is possible for there to be floating methane ice on the lakes of Titan.
Up to this point, Cassini scientists assumed that Titan lakes would not have floating ice, because solid methane is denser than liquid methane and would sink. But the new model considers the interaction between the lakes and the atmosphere, resulting in different mixtures of compositions, pockets of nitrogen gas, and changes in temperature. The result, scientists found, is that winter ice will float in Titan’s methane-and-ethane-rich lakes and seas if the temperature is below the freezing point of methane — minus 297 degrees Fahrenheit (90.4 kelvins). The scientists realized all the varieties of ice they considered would float if they were composed of at least 5 percent “air,” which is an average composition for young sea ice on Earth. (“Air” on Titan has significantly more nitrogen than Earth air and almost no oxygen.)
An Omaha-based chain of fast food restauants has decided to cut the hours of all non-management employees workers’ hours to part time in order to avoid the costs of Obamacare.
The part-timing of America: An Omaha-based chain of fast food restauants has decided to cut the hours of all non-management employees workers’ hours to part time in order to avoid the costs of Obamacare.
Crowd laughs and applauds the Chicago Teachers Union president after she joked about killing the rich.
It is the audience that counts: The attendees at a labor event laughed and applauded the president of the Chicago Teachers Union when she joked about killing the rich.