Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
The annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to peak tonight and tomorrow, and Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log has some good tips for the best way to not only view it, but to hear it as well!
With the success of yesterday’s spacewalk, NASA engineers have revamped their remaining spacewalk plans for replacing that failed pump. The third spacewalk has been moved from Sunday to Monday to give everyone more time to prepare, and they are now planning a fourth spacewalk after that to finish things up.
Important news! Obamas announce surprise vacation to nation’s capital!
The Japanese government has approved a new asteroid mission similar to Hayabusa. The new mission could launch as early as 2014 and bring samples back by 2020.
Today’s spacewalk on ISS was a complete success. The astronauts successfully removed the failed coolant pump and made preparations to install the replacement pump on their next spacewalk.
NASA officials have reviewed the list of Near Earth Objects and found only three that meet all the constraints for a manned mission. Key quote:
Out of the 44 reachable asteroids, 27 were too small, and only 15 have orbits that allow for exploration between 2020 and 2050 — the timeframe NASA wants to pursue for NEO missions. The 180-day mission constraint further cuts the list to three.
It must also be noted that none of these asteroids are reachable without a heavy-lift rocket like the Ares V.
Freedom of speech alert! Plus a bit of stupidity. A security guard at the Lincoln Memorial ordered students to stop singing the National Anthem, staying that their actions were a violation of federal law.
The great disconnect, part 2,345: In July, the first month of California’s fiscal year, the state spent $1 billion dollars more than had been forecast. Meanwhile, the state legislature has not yet passed a budget.
In this paper [pdf] adapted from a lecture he gave at an astronomy conference, Harvard researcher Abraham Loeb warns young scientists that their tendency today to take on safe research projects is unwise. Moreover, he notes the increasing “herd mentality” due to “stronger social pressure”, “more competition in the job market,” and the “growing fraction of observational and theoretical projects . . . done in large groups with rigid research agendas and tight schedules.” Key quote:
It is always prudent to allocate some limited resources to innovative ideas beyond any dogmatic “mainstream,” because even if only one out of a million such ideas bears fruit, it could transform our view of reality and justify the entire effort. This lesson is surprisingly unpopular in the current culture of funding agencies like NSF or NASA, which promote research with predictable and safe goals.
Another spectacular Hubble Space Telescope image was released today, showing a face-on spiral galaxy in the Coma cluster, located about 320 million light years away. Key quote:
The galaxy, known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes of dust and gas near its center. These are silhouetted against glowing newborn star clusters and iridescent pink clouds of hydrogen, the existence of which indicates ongoing star formation. Hubble has also captured the outer spiral arms of NGC 4911, along with thousands of other galaxies of varying sizes.
Here’s another detailed look at tomorrow’s planned spacewalk, and what NASA engineers are doing on the ground and what the astronauts will do in space to eliminate the ammonia leak.
SpaceX is readying its Dragon capsule for its first test flight, sometime this fall.
Freedom of speech alert? I’d like more information. Four protesters arrested on a Texas campus on Monday during a visit by Obama.
Update: Keith Cowing of SpaceRef reports that Sean O’Keefe and his son have survived the Alaskan plane crash today that killed former senator Ted Stevens.
Update: Thanks to commenter Ric who noted that Ted Stevens was not governor but senator. Too much travel and not enough sleep. I’ve corrected the webpage.
Talk about having trouble with reality: According to a new State department report listing worldwide terrorist organizations, the Taliban does not qualify.
In an amazing illustration of what I call the great disconnect, AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka blandly claims in this interview that the United States does “not have a deficit crisis.”
Spacevidcast has posted on YouTube as well as on their own webpage the first 10 minutes of a 20 minute interview with Elon Musk of SpaceX. You can see the full 20 miutes if you sign up for their Epic service.
For me, the interesting part of the interview is when he discusses the recent story about SpaceX’s plans to build a heavy-lift rocket, dubbed Falcon X. He explained that the proposal was not actually part of the company’s official plans. but the brainstorming ideas of one of the company’s engineers at an engineering conference. He also made it clear that he did not reject the idea. He likes giving his engineers the freedom to talk about such things publicly, even if the company is not yet ready to pursue them.
Watch the reaction of Democrat Bill Skaggs, the Kansas City mayor pro tem (1st district councilman) and former member of the State House of Representatives when he notices that he is being videotaped on this public street, then ask yourself if this is a reasonable reaction for an elected official.
A plane crash in Alaska with nine passengers included former Alaska senator Ted Stevens and former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe. Though five deaths are reported, the identities of the dead and suvivors has not yet been releasted.
Two University of York researchers have identified the scribes who first made copies of some of English literatures most important early works. Key quote:
The discoveries were the result of painstaking research in the London Metropolitan Archives, where the York scholars matched the handwriting of scribes copying important early English literary manuscripts with the hands of Guildhall clerks copying documents and custumals.
Rising from the dead. The satellite phone company Iridium, once bankrupt, reports strong growth in sales and subscribers.
NASA engineers are working out a strategy for the next spacewalk, now tentatively scheduled of Wednesday, to continue repair efforts on the International Space Station. The new plans call for the astronauts to close several valves on the leaking coolant line while ground controllers lower pressure on the line, then drain the excess ammonia from it. This will hopefully allow the astronauts to disconnect the line from the pump without spewing ammonia all over the place, and then proceed with the removal of the failed pump.
This article helps explain why so many people today have little faith in modern journalism.
On August 6 former NASA administrator Mike Griffin bluntly attacked the Obama proposals for NASA in a speech at the 13th Annual International Mars Society convention in Dayton, Ohio, Key quotes:
We’re not going anywhere and we’re going to spend a lot of money doing it.
The US space program has not accomplished as much in its last 15 years as in its first 15 years, given more money. So, if you like that, you’ll really like the next decade, in which we do almost nothing and spend just as much.
Bureaucrats in space! The ministers of the African Union are proposing creating the African Space Agency to “focus on the development of common space policy for the continent .”
The efforts to fix the cooling system on ISS has not only limited use of the humans inside the station. It has delayed the maintenance work of the Canadian-built robot Dextre on the outside of the station.
A preprint paper [pdf] published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph website has found evidence that the oxygen and neon content of our Sun matches the abundances found in the galaxy. This result is important in that previous research has suggested that the Sun’s oxygen abundance was significantly higher than the rest of the galaxy, a possibility that not only caused problems for the theorists but raised interesting questions about the uniqueness of our solar system.
William Harwood of CBS News and Spaceflight Now provides a very detailed and clearly written description of the problems experienced during Saturday’s spacewalk, as well as the options faced by NASA to overcome them.
British engineers/scientists are about to send a robot into the Great Pyramid at Khufu in Egypt to find out what lies hidden behind the doors at the end of two 200 foot long shafts. Fun quote:
No one knows what the shafts are for. In 1992, a camera sent up the shaft leading from the south wall of the Queen’s Chamber discovered it was blocked after 60 metres [200 feet] by a limestone door with two copper handles. In 2002, a further expedition drilled through this door and revealed, 20 centimetres [8 inches] behind it, a second door.
“The second door is unlike the first. It looks as if it is screening or covering something,” said Dr Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council who is in charge of the expedition. The north shaft bends by 45 degrees after 18 metres [60 feet] but, after 60 metres, is also blocked by a limestone door.
Data from the AIRS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite shows the dramatic increase in carbon monoxide in the atmosphere at 18,000 feet over Russia due to the wildfires there. Key quote from press release:
The concentration of carbon monoxide is continuing to grow. According to Aug. 4 NASA estimates, the smoke plume from the fires spans about 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) from east to west.
