Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
More info on the engine failure of Phobos-Grunt, and what might still be done to save the mission.
Phobos-Grunt appears to be in trouble in Earth orbit.
In a posting to an online forum for the Phobos-Grunt mission, Anton Ledkov of the Russian Space Research Institute reported that there was “no telemetry” from the spacecraft.
Another report suggests that a variety of engine thrusters did not fire as planned.
To leap or not to leap: Scientists are considering abandoning the solar year as their method for synchronizing their atomic clocks.
At issue is whether to abolish the ‘leap second’ — the extra second added every year or so to keep [Coordinated Universal Time] (UTC) in step with Earth’s slightly unpredictable orbit. UTC — the reference against which international time zones are set — is calculated by averaging signals from around 400 atomic clocks, with leap seconds added to stop UTC drifting away from solar time at a rate of about one minute every 90 years.
Mars Express takes a close look at one of Mars’ giant volcanoes, Tharsis Tholus.
At least two large sections have collapsed around its eastern and western flanks during its four-billion-year history and these catastrophes are now visible as scarps up to several kilometers high. The main feature of Tharsis Tholus is, however, the caldera in its center. It has an almost circular outline, about 32 x 34 km, and is ringed by faults that have allowed the caldera floor to subside by as much as 2.7 km.
NASA has moved the scheduled first flight test of the Orion capsule up three years to 2014.
This action, while good, was almost certainly triggered by the competition from the private space companies. The managers at NASA are finally realizing that if they don’t speed up deployment of their own spacecraft, they will certainly lose in the competition for government dollars. That they will have to use another rocket other than their heavy-lift vehicle for this launch, however, will not help that particular project’s lobbying effort.
Either way, I think this action is only further proof that the more competition we have, the quicker we will get into space. And the journey will cost less too, not only because it will take less time and therefore less money, but the competition between companies (or NASA) will force everyone — including NASA — to lower costs to show they can do it better.
A gallery of Occupy Wall Street hatred.
I think this collection of stories from the various “Occupy Whatever” protests gives a good flavor of what this protest movement stands for. And unlike the tea party protests, it appears that it is the violent extremists that form the movement’s heart.
And then there’s this, recorded yesterday in New York. Note: Language warning.
The day of reckoning looms: We’re still not cutting.
In the spring fight to avert a government shutdown, Republicans promised $100 billion in real cuts but then compromised for $38.5 billion in future savings. In reality, the Congressional Budget Office found the deal still resulted in an increase of more than $170 billion in federal spending from 2010 to 2011. The “largest spending cut in history” ended up being a spending increase.
And this:
But the [super]committee isn’t really trying to cut spending. It seeks only to spend the country into bankruptcy a little slower. Rather than letting the country rack up $23.4 trillion of debt by 2021, the supercommittee hopes to keep it to $21.3 trillion. It’s the difference between speeding off a cliff at 91 miles per hour versus 100 miles per hour.
DARPA has launched a program to use airplanes as a launchpad for putting satellites in orbit.
The Pentagon’s research agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), also anticipates slashing small satellite payload costs from more than $30,000 per pound to less than $10,000 per pound — making such launches three times cheaper. . . . DARPA wants the program to demonstrate at least 12 launches of 100-pound payloads to low Earth orbit, with each launch costing about $1 million. Launches could start as soon as 2015, according to DARPA’s official announcement of the program on Nov. 4.
At first glance this appears to be good news for Orbital Sciences and its Pegasus rocket, the only commercial launch system that has successfully put satellites into orbit using a commercial L1011 airplane as its first stage. At the same time, however, it appears DARPA is pushing for new technology to lower costs below what Orbital charges, meaning the game is open to anyone.
NASA’s Deep Space Network has captured a radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55, set to buzz past the Earth tomorrow.
On another campaign note, a new website, put together by some noted conservative Republicans, has just appeared called Not Mitt Romney. An explanation can be found here.
Remember how Nancy Pelosi said we need to pass Obamacare “so you can find out what’s in it?” Well, is it any different with Mitt Romney? Does anybody really have the slightest idea what he’d do as President? Nobody can even reasonably predict where the guy will be on any issue six months from now, much less what he’ll do if he becomes the leader of the free world.
Before and after pictures in Japan, six months after the March 11 tsunami.
Watch asteroid 2005 YU55 buzz the Earth tomorrow with your backyard telescope.
We’re here to help you: A federal agency has ruled that thousands of lakefront homes in Missouri must be removed, despite being built legally and having been in place for decades.
A fragment of human jaw unearthed in a cave in Britain appears to be the earliest evidence of modern humans in north-west Europe.
An international team of astronauts recently completed a six day underground cave mission in an effort to simulate some of the aspects of space exploration on another world.
I, along with my cave exploration friends, find this article somewhat humorous, as these astronauts weren’t doing anything that unusual from our perspective. Routinely we have teams going underground for three to five days to do exploration and survey work as part of the Germany Valley Karst Survey in West Virginia. The result has been more than fifty miles of virgin passage in the past eight years.
But, if these astronauts want to join us and do some exploration, they’d be welcome!
Rather than learning to fly by gliding, a new theory proposes that the first flying bats learned how to fly by fluttering down on their prey.
The tolerance of Islam: Iranian officials have been pressuring a jailed pastor to return to Islam rather than be executed for converting to Christianity.
An inside look at NASA’s bureaucratic madness.
Much of the time NASA appears to be a loose confederation of 10 quasi independent fiefdoms, each pretty much in charge of their own business. People often ask me what would I do if I were king of NASA for a day. They expect me to say something like: build this rocket, launch that satellite. Rather I think how I would standardize the procurement processes, or the human resources procedures, or the engineering standards used across the agency. But then I always was a dreamer, tilting at impossible windmills. Launching rockets is easy; getting engineers to agree on standards is hard.
And people wonder why I strongly oppose NASA’s heavy-lift rocket (which I think will never get built), or worry that NASA’s interference will choke to death the new independent commercial space companies.
The largest sunspot in years released the largest flare in years on Thursday.
HAL lives! The first in-orbit tests of Robonaut were halted today on ISS because the robot did not carry out its commands as expected.
NASA robot operator Phil Strawser said joint movements in the weightless space environment have proven to be different than those performed in normal gravity on Earth. Consequently, software used to operate the robot needs to be “fine-tuned,” he said.
Russia heads for Mars: a detailed look at the Phobos/Grunt sample return mission, set to launch on November 8.
I really wish the Russians good luck with this project. Not only would it herald their return to planetary science since the fall of the Soviet Union, success here would break their long string of failures to the red planet. Though their unmanned planetary program had some remarkable achievements during the Soviet era, of the 19 missions they flew to Mars in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, all were failures, producing almost no useful data.
Get ready for another government shutdown battle.
The 520-day simulated mission to Mars has been completed.
Newer is not always better: A study has found that vintage leather football helmets used in the early 1900s can be as good if not better than modern hard football helmets in protecting the head.
The Mars rover Opportunity has spotted a geological formation not previously seen anywhere on Mars.
The largest sunspot in years has appeared on the sun.
Repeal the damn thing! The Obama administration has failed to meet more than half the deadlines in its own healthcare law.
Communism fails again: For the first time in a half-century, a new law will allow Cubans to buy and sell real estate.
The global output of atmospheric carbon dioxide jumped in 2010 by the biggest amount on record, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
In 2007 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel.
And yet, the global temperatures are not rising, as also predicted by those same IPCC models.
