The ingenious plan engineers have devised to do good science with the crippled Kepler space telescope.
They are going to use the spacecraft’s solar panels as a pseudo third reaction wheel. This will allow it to point with acceptable accuracy for short periods.
It appears firefighters saved a half billion dollar NASA satellite from burning up in a truck fire today.
Using home computers, astronomers have discovered four new gamma ray pulsars, all in the plane of the Milky Way.
The Supreme Court has decided to rule on the Obamacare contraceptive mandate.
Remember, Obamacare does not have what lawyers call a severability clause. If they rule any part of the law unconstitutional, without this clause they are required to rule the entire law unconstitutional.
Of course, these rules existed when we followed rules. Nowadays, who knows?
The uncertainty of climate science: This year’s hurricane season, predicted to be above average, was the weakest in decades.
This failure also continues a pattern seen in recent years, where the number of actual hurricanes ends up far below their prediction, but the number of named hurricanes still ends up about right (see the charts on the prediction link above). I noted this in 2012, and now it has happened again. As I said then,
I wonder if their naming process was fudged to get them the numbers they wanted. While it might be possible to do that with the naming process of tropical storms, it is far more difficult to fudge the number of actual hurricanes. My skeptical nature and the recent willingness in the climate field to fiddle with data probably makes me more suspicious than I should be.
Thus to me, these seasonal hurricane predictions are becoming increasingly suspect.
The day of reckoning looms: Another wave of mortgage loan defaults is about to hit.
The loans are a problem now because an increasing number are hitting their 10-year anniversary, at which point borrowers usually must start paying down the principal on the loans as well as the interest they had been paying all along. More than $221 billion of these loans at the largest banks will hit this mark over the next four years, about 40 percent of the home equity lines of credit now outstanding.
For a typical consumer, that shift can translate to their monthly payment more than tripling, a particular burden for the subprime borrowers that often took out these loans. And payments will rise further when the Federal Reserve starts to hike rates, because the loans usually carry floating interest rates.
Read the whole article. The possibilities, especially for some large banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America, are not good.
Five disastrous predictions that the Republicans got right about Obamacare.
Before Obamacare was passed, when Democrats were telling the public that it would make health care cheaper, better, and would cure cancer right after it makes your bed in the morning and cuts your grass, Republicans were pointing out the very flaws that the American people are bitterly complaining about today.
Sadly, the worst is yet to come, all of which have also been predicted by conservatives. And the most important prediction of all has been that there will no way to repair the damage created by this law by minor fixes. It must be repealed.
Update: Here’s another prediction that is going to hit 80 to 100 million people just before next year’s midterms. I wonder if it will cause any of those diehard low information Democratic voters to finally consider changing their votes.
A Progress freighter, launched yesterday, will not dock with ISS for four days in order to test upgrades to its rendezvou radar system.
Unlike recent Progress vehicles that used the 2AO-VKA and AKR-VKA antennas of Kurs-A system, M-21M is sporting a AO-753A antenna of the Kurs-NA system instead. Once the Progress reaches its preliminary orbit, it will conduct a series of automated engine burns to put it on track to fly within one mile of the station on Wednesday, allowing for the test of the lighter, more-efficient Kurs automated rendezvous system hardware for upgraded Soyuz and Progress vehicles.
After it finishes its flyby, the Progress will loop above and behind the station, returning Friday for a docking.
Cuirosity has resumed science operations after experiencing a short circuit and voltage drop.
Though the press release notes that engineers have apparently pinpointed the source of the voltage drop, it does not explain why the drop has disappeared. I wish they provided more information.
China’s next lunar mission, set to launch next month, will have a rover named “Yutu”.
In Chinese folklore, Yutu is the white pet rabbit of Chang’e, the moon goddess who has lent her name to the Chinese lunar mission. Legend has it that, after swallowing a magic pill, Chang’e took her pet and flew toward the moon, where she became a goddess, and has lived there with the white jade rabbit ever since.
Chang’e 2 is the name of the entire mission.
Faced with stiff competition from SpaceX, Arianespace is considering lowering its launch prices.
SpaceX has scrubbed today’s first geosynchronous launch of its Falcon 9 rocket.
The scrub occurred after the third unplanned hold. There was an issue with the first stage, but more information has not yet been released, though they also said that they have rescheduled the next launch attempt for Thursday, 5:38 pm, on Thanksgiving.
