Year: 2014

The library that tried to ban conservative news researchers backs down.

10:33 am

Victory for free speech: The University of Arkansas has backed down from its attempt to ban a news research team because it was using that research to publish articles critical of Hillary Clinton.

The University of Arkansas library has backed down from its decision to block the Washington Free Beacon from accessing its special collections archives following a month-long public uproar. The library suspended the Free Beacon’s research privileges in June after the outlet published a story based on audiotapes from university archives that included Hillary Clinton discussing her 1975 defense of a child rapist.

The article clearly documents that the university was working on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, trying to impose the ban for political reasons.

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Scientists struggle with earthquake data in the Pacific northwest

10:08 am

The uncertainty of science: A second look at cores drilled in the Pacific northwest has raised doubts about the previous conclusions that the region faces the threat of megaquakes every few centuries.

The bottom line is that though geologists are very confident the northwest faces the threat of future quakes, they can’t yet predict with any confidence their rate or intensity.

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The next U.S. Mars rover will try to make and store oxygen

9:59 am

Of the seven science instruments proposed for the next U.S. Mars rover, scheduled for a 2020 launch date, MOXIE test the engineering to produce and store oxygen, pulled from the Martian atmosphere.

Developed in partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it’s based on the fact that the Martian atmosphere, though extremely thin, is composed of 96 percent carbon dioxide, which means its a vast potential source of oxygen for future explorers and settlers. Essentially, MOXIE is a fuel cell in reverse. Instead of generating electricity by using oxygen to burn a fuel, it uses a process called solid oxide electrolysis , where electricity is employed to split carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon monoxide.

This process would see Martian air pumped into the unit through a dust filter and pressurized before being passed into a fuel cell. At high temperatures, some ceramic oxides act as oxygen ion conductors. In the fuel cell, a thin, non-porous disc of this ceramic separates two porous electrodes. One electrode acts as the cathode and the other as the anode. Carbon dioxide passes through the cathode and when it comes into contact with the ceramic, the interaction of electricity and the ceramic causes the carbon dioxide to split into oxygen and carbon monoxide. The oxygen and the carbon monoxide are then separated and the oxygen stored.

What makes this unusual is that NASA has actually dedicated one science instrument to engineering research, not pure science. The agency does not do this much anymore, but such research is essential if the U.S. is going to someday send humans to other planets.

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SpaceX’s next commercial launch set for tomorrow

9:44 am

The competition heats up: Just three weeks after its previous commercial launch SpaceX is scheduled to put AsiaSat 8 into orbit at 1:25 am tomorrow.

If Tuesday morning’s launch goes well, SpaceX will follow it with another commercial launch just three weeks later, also for Asiasat.

The article above notes how this will be the first launch for Asiasat from the U.S. in more than a decade. They had switched to Russian launchers because of cost and the difficulties of working under U.S. security requirements. The security problems still remain, but might be solved if SpaceX builds its own private spaceport.

William Wade, AsiaSat president and CEO, is excited for the upcoming launches, but confirmed the company’s experience here has not been as easy as at other launch sites. Access to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for roughly 60 employees, shareholders and customers now in town — most not U.S. citizens and many who are Chinese nationals – has been difficult. “That is proving to be somewhat cumbersome,” Wade said. “We have to go through all the security clearances, which is expected, but we are finding as a foreign company that it is a bit more difficult conducting our launches there.”

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Russian umanned space program pushed back three years

9:32 am

Because of the increased workload imposed on Russia when the U.S. suddenly pulled out of the European ExoMars mission, the Russians have imposed a three year delay on their entire program of unmanned science probes.

Although all previously approved projects still remain on the table, the nation’s series of lunar missions face a domino effect of delays. Russia’s first post-Soviet attempt to land on the surface of the Moon was pushed back from 2016 to 2019. Known as Luna-Glob or Luna-25, the unmanned lunar lander was designed to test landing techniques for future lunar missions. On the political front, the successful landing of the Luna-Glob would be a signal to the international scientific community that Russia is back in the planetary exploration business after the 2011 fiasco of the Phobos-Grunt mission.

This report above is a more nuanced analysis than yesterday’s story about the presentation given by the head of the Russia’s Space Research Institute at Saturday’s science conference in Moscow. Today’s story gives the reasoning for the delays, as explained by the Russians themselves, as well as outlines the entire program more thoroughly.

The story describes a string of planned Russian lunar probes, beginning with Luna-Glob. This program was probably approved by the government when the U.S. decided to return to the Moon in 2004 under George Bush. The Russians don’t seem to be able any longer to be self-starters, but instead need the competition from the U.S. to get them jump-started.

Even so, while the U.S. has already flown most of the unmanned probes to the Moon that were proposed in 2004, the Russian program had not yet gotten off the ground.

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67P from less than 200 miles

9:15 am

67P on August 3

Today’s Rosetta image of Comet 67P, shown above, gives us a different angle of the comet. The spacecraft was only 186 miles (300 kilometers) away when it snapped the picture, and this side view emphasizes the nucleus’s jagged shape.

I am reminded of what happens to a block of ice when you spray warm water on it. It begins to melt away, but very randomly and unevenly, producing very weird shapes and the surface evaporates off. In the case of Comet 67P, the nucleus is a dirty ball of ice, and the Sun’s rays have been causing its surface to evaporate off every time it approaches the Sun. Thus, we get a very weird shape.

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Russia outlines its space exploration plans for the next two decades

9:21 am

At a science conference in Moscow on Saturday the director of Russia’s Space Research Institute described in detail the future exploration plans for the Russian space program.

According to the story, Russia plans to return to the Moon and Mars with unmanned probes. He also described how the first missions will be in partnership with Europe, followed by Russian missions designed to test and prove the technologies. If these flights go well, in 2024 Russia will consider trying again with a repeat of the Phobos-Grunt mission that failed in 2012

This last detail is a change from previous reports that said Russia would launch Phobos-Grunt 2 in 2018. It is also consistent with much of the Russian program for the last two decades (as well as most of NASA’s own ambitious manned exploration program), where the agency makes bold announcements of future plans but somehow with each new announcement the dates for the actual launch have always been pushed back. The actual flight never seems to happen.

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Today’s Comet 67P image

9:05 am

Comet 67P on August 2

The image above was taken on August 2 using Rosetta’s navigation camera. It has been processed by the science team to bring out the details. I have also rotated it to match the August 1 image taken at a distance of 620 miles that was taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow angle camera, designed to do the actual science.

You can see that the navigation camera does a pretty good job on its own of capturing the comet’s nucleus. Both images show that the instruments are working perfectly, and thus tell us that the next few months will be quite spectacular after Rosetta goes into orbit in three days, followed in November by the landing of Philae somewhere on the comet’s surface.

If you download both images and then switch back and forth between them you can get a better feel for the geometry of the surface features.

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Ebola patient arrives in U.S.

12:11 am

Doctors in charge of the specialized isolation unit for treating dangerous infectious diseases are confident that they will be able to treat the infected patients safely without the disease escaping.

I have complete confidence that a well run facility like this, with modern technology, could keep the disease isolated. The key words, however, are “well run.” I pray that this description still applies to Emory University Hospital.

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