The Soyuz fly-around of the space station to photograph it with the shuttle docked has been canceled.
Faced with pressure from Congress and the courts, Interior Secretary Salazar finally stopped stalling and issued late Monday the first Gulf of Mexico drilling permit since the BP oil spill.
The crash of the computer that runs the station’s robot arm stranded a spacewalking astronaut in space for about 20 minutes yesterday.
The Southwest Research Institute has purchased two tickets from Virgin Galactic for its scientists to fly on SpaceShipTwo.
Not all space agencies (think NASA) have budget problems: India has given its space agency ISRO a 35% hike for 2011.
The sponge-like Saturn moon. Key quote:
Hyperion measures about 250kms across; it rotates chaotically and has a density so low that it might house a vast system of caverns inside.
R.I.P. Leif J. Robinson, who served as editor of Sky & Telescope for twenty years, passed away Sunday at the age of 71 at his home in Costa Rica.
Take a gander at this spectacular image of the shuttle approaching ISS, taken by an amateur astronomer from the ground!
The beer has landed: The first test of space beer in weightlessness has been completed. Key quote:
Astronauts4Hire Flight Member Todd Romberger was selected to perform the flight research. Todd sampled the beer during 12 microgravity parabolas, each reproducing the weightless conditions of space for 30 seconds at a time, and recorded qualitative data on beverage taste and drinkability as well as biometric data to gain a first look at alcohol effects the body.
This is why I call it pork and a waste of money: NASA’s chief technologist admits it will be a decade before Orion and the heavy-lift rocket mandated by Congress flies.
The beginning of the end: The shuttle Discovery docked successfully with the space station, its 13th and final visit to ISS.
Two high-priority climate missions dropped from NASA’s budget by the White House. And what’s most amazing: No one’s squealing!
“Removal of these missions was not what we desired and not what the administration desired, but it was a clear recognition and acknowledgement of the budget issues we face as a nation,” [said Steve Volz, associate director for flight programs at NASA’s Earth Science Division]. “It’s cleaner to be allowed to delete the scope that goes along with the dollars than to have to figure out how to do more with less.”
More problems for the James Webb Space Telescope: The detector arrays for several instruments are deteriorating, even as they sit on the shelf. And remember, the 2014 launch date is probably going to be delayed until 2016. Key quote:
“As you get further and further out with [the launch date], it really raises questions about how far down the [integration and test] process you go for the instruments … and how long you have to store all that before you actually launch,” [Webb program director Rick Howard] told the NASA Advisory Council’s astrophysics subcommittee during a Feb. 16 public meeting here. “And that just makes everybody even more nervous about this problem than anything else.”
I have mostly focused on the federal budget battles. However, Wisconsin highlights how the same battle is going on at the state level. Here is a round-up of the state budget efforts under several Republican administrations, put forth by a California newspaper (located in a Democrat-run state with its own budget problems).
Have the Democrats blinked? Senate Democrats have expressed support for the most recent House Republican proposal, a short-term continuing resolution that cuts $4 billion for its two week span and terminates 8 programs outright. A lot more details here, including a program-by-program breakdown of the cuts. Key quote:
Republicans have made abundantly clear that they wish to avoid a government shutdown, as have Democrats to a degree, though for the most part they [the Democrats] have spent the last few weeks preemptively blaming Republicans for a shutdown, while at the same time failing to produce a single piece of legislation that would prevent one.
Freedom of speech alert! A man who would stand on the steps of a courthouse and hand out pamphlets advocating jury nullification has been indicted for doing so. Key quote:
Since 2009, Mr. Heicklen has stood there and at courthouse entrances elsewhere and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience. That concept, called jury nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance violates the law against jury tampering. He was arraigned on Friday in a somewhat contentious hearing before Judge Kimba M. Wood, who entered a not guilty plea on his behalf when he refused to say how he would plead. During the proceeding, he railed at the judge and the government, and called the indictment “a tissue of lies.”
Mr. Heicklen insists that he never tries to influence specific jurors or cases, and instead gives his brochures to passers-by, hoping that jurors are among them.
Scientists have uncovered the oldest cremated human remains ever discovered in northern North America at a dig site in central Alaska. Key quote:
Archaeologists discovered the remains last spring in a fire pit in an abandoned living area from 13,200 years ago and dated the child’s death to about 11,500 years ago.
More civility on the left: Five-foot, one-inch female assaulted by union protester because she was videotaping him. Video at the link. Key quote:
“It’s one thing to be called a violent teabagger. It’s another to be called a violent teabagger while you’re being assaulted.”
A new record! On January 19, the Pan-Starrs telescope in Hawaii discovered 19 near-earth asteroids, the most for a single night of asteroid-hunting by anyone.
More launch news: The launch of the climate satellite Glory was postponed again today. No new launch date is set.
