In space, science, and technology, there really is very little new news to report today. Instead, almost all the stories are about the passing of Neil Armstrong. On spacetoday.net alone I count almost seventy stories on Armstrong, practically everything posted since yesterday, And that is only a sampling.
This response tells us several things.
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I think the gracious statement by Neil Armstrong’s family sums up his life quite well.
We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.
Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend.
Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. He also found success back home in his native Ohio in business and academia, and became a community leader in Cincinnati.
He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits.
As much as Neil cherished his privacy, he always appreciated the expressions of good will from people around the world and from all walks of life.
While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.
For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.
R.I.P. Neil Armstrong.
The Russians are once again pushing for a year long mission on ISS, while NASA once again appears unenthusiastic.
Though from this article it appears that this time NASA officials are at least considering the idea.
The artist who sculpted a secret message in code — in plain view in the courtyard of CIA headquarters and unsolved now for twenty years — has now provided codebreakers a tiny clue to its solution.
The final mystery of Kryptos – it means “hidden” in Greek – is known as the “Everest of codes” among the thousands of cryptographers who are obsessed with deciphering it. … Three passages were unravelled in 1999. But the fourth and toughest remains defiantly obscure, to the surprise of nobody more than Jim Sanborn, the sculptor who created the enduring puzzle.
Good news! NASA today announced that recent research on ISS into bone loss due to weightlessness has found that proper exercise and diet can stabilize bone loss.
Past Russian research on Mir had found that exercise and diet could limit the bone loss, but not stop it entirely. The key difference in this recent work seems to be the use of more sophisticated exercise equipment.
If this research holds up, it eliminates one of the most serious obstacles to interplanetary travel.
The Friday launch of two NASA satellites designed to study the Van Allen radiation belts was scrubbed at least 24 hours because of the failure of ground tracking equipment needed during launch.
Progress on the commercial space front.
The most important announcement is NASA’s official acceptance of SpaceX’s COTS contract to transport cargo to and from ISS. The first official cargo mission is set for no earlier than October 8.
The first Earthrise picture taken from the Moon, 46 years ago today.
The European cargo ship docked at ISS today successfully fired its engines and raised the station’s orbit to 260 miles.
This is in contrast to a previous attempt on August 15, which cut off prematurely.
Curiosity has made its first test drive, moving about fifteen feet.
A Florida university has broken ground on a new hurricane simulation machine capable of recreating category 5 hurricanes in three dimensions.
The facility will not only allow scientists to study hurricanes, they will also be able to test the engineering of objects trying to survive them.
A rose by any other name: NASA scientists are in a battle with astronomers over who gets to name things on Vesta and Mars.
This is not a new problem. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has maintained its power over naming everything in space since the 1960s, even though the IAU has sometimes ignored the wishes of the actual discoverers and explorers and given names to things that no one likes. For example, even though the Apollo 8 astronauts wanted to give certain unnamed features on the Moon specific names, the IAU refused to accept their choices, even though those astronauts were the first human beings to reach another world and see these features up close.
Eventually, the spacefarers of the future are going to tell the IAU where to go. And that will begin to happen when those spacefarers simply refuse to use the names the IAU assigns.
What do you do with a giant space station when its lifespan is over?
The article notes that no date has been set for deorbit, and that it likely will not happen before 2028. The article also includes information about some of medical and engineering problems of long term weightlessness that have been discovered on ISS, and how engineers have attempted to address them.
Unfortunately, some of these problems, such as the recently discovered vision problems, remain unsolved. It is a shame that while Russia wants to do multi-year missions on the station to study these issues, NASA continues to resist.
The competition heats up: Getting ready for the first Antares launch in October at Wallops Island.
One of Curiosity’s two wind sensors was apparently damaged in landing and is inoperable.
The Rems team first noticed there was something wrong when readings from the side-facing boom were being returned saturated at high and low values. Further investigation suggested small wires exposed on the sensor circuits were open, probably severed. It is permanent damage. No-one can say for sure how this happened, but engineers are working on the theory that grit thrown on to the rover by the descent crane’s exhaust plume cut the small wires. The wind sensor on the forward-facing mini-boom is unaffected. With just the one sensor, it makes it difficult to fully understand wind behaviour.
Monday’s successful spacewalk by two Russian astronauts has prepared ISS for the arrival of a new Russian module.
I should have posted a link about this spacewalk earlier. What is important however is that the Russians continue to move forward, though slowly. And they continue to come up with simple solutions to problems, such as the extra layer of shielding for the living quarters on ISS, installed during this spacewalk.
The invader prepares its attack: For the first time today Curiosity flexed its robot arm.
NASA has announced its next planetary mission, a lander to Mars that will drill down thirty feet into the planet’s surface.
Though exciting in its own right, this mission is far less ambitious than the two missions which competed against it, a boat that would have floated on the lakes of Titan and a probe that would have bounced repeatedly off the surface of a comet. I suspect the reason this mission was chosen is the tight budgets at NASA, combined with Curiosity’s success which makes it politically advantageous to approve another Mars mission. As the NASA press release emphasized,
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The competition heats up: Scaled Composites has posted the results of its latest test firing of the rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo.
Though the test is dated August 9, more than a week ago, I expect the number of engine tests to go up in the coming months as the company works toward the first powered flights of SpaceShipTwo.
On August 13, 2012, Voyager 2 became the longest-operating spacecraft in history, finally topping Pioneer 6, which was launched on Dec. 16, 1965, and sent its last signal back to Earth on Dec. 8, 2000.
And Voyager 2, along with its partner Voyager 1, are still working, and engineers hope they will still be working for another eight to twelve years, enough time for them to leave the solar system and enter interstellar space.
Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a robot hand that costs less than $10,000 and is capable of replacing a flashlight battery.
The researchers were able to scrimp in a number of clever ways. “One was scouring the globe for the least expensive, highest-performing components like motors, gears, etcetera,” says Curt Salisbury, the project’s principal investigator. “Another was to build the entire electronics system from commodity parts, especially those found in cell phones. We also moved from metal structural elements to plastic, being careful to design the structures so plastic would provide adequate strength.”
The article focuses on the potential of using such a robot hand to defuse bombs. I see it as a first step in providing amputees a replacement hand that is fully functional. And that their goal is to bring the cost down to $1,000 is even more exciting.
The man who invented the first programmable computer.
You’ve almost certainly seen pictures of this geological formation, but this article gives the background.
A detailed, fact-based look at the successes and failures of the Obama administration.
Sadly, they are mostly failures. What is significant to me is that this article is from liberal Newsweek of all places. It is another data point indicating that even the intellectuals on the left are beginning to realize how much of a failure Obama has been.
War of the Worlds! The Earth invading spacecraft on Mars has fired its laser for the first time!
Forgive me the hyperbole. I have this childhood vision from that moment when I first read H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, when the Martian tripod first rose up and fired its death ray at a crowd of curious humans. And here we are, a century after Wells penned that classic science fiction novel, and humans have put a spacecraft on Mars, Curiosity, capable of firing lasers! The laser isn’t a death ray but a scientific tool, but nonetheless the ironies remain delicious.
The competition heats up: The Russian owned Sea Launch successfully launched an Intelsat communications satellite today.
