Who wins? NJ legislature has passed a ban on fracking for natural gas, while NY has moved to lift its ban.
Another astonishing space photograph, this time from lunar orbit, taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on June 11, 2011.
The image looks down at the central peak of Tycho crater, with enough detail to make out individual boulders at the summit. Go the link to see some closeups.
Mysterious bubble of light, caused by military suborbital rocket, captured by Hawaii telescopes.
A “dirty hack” has restored the Cluster solar wind mission from near loss.
The image below was taken on January 11, 2011 by the space probe Cassini, in orbit around Saturn. First we see the southern polar regions of the moon Rhea, 949 miles in diameter. Beyond is the moon Dione, 698 miles across, appearing to sit on the rings of Saturn.
As far as I am concerned, this image, as well as almost every other image from Cassini, proves that any hotel built in orbit around Saturn is unquestionably going to be one of the hottest tourist spots in the solar system.
The Japanese solar sail Ikaros continues to function, more than 100 million miles from Earth.
A massive Windows botnet is “almost indestructible,” say researchers.
Biosphere 2 gets a new owner and a boost in funding.
We’re here to help you: The EPA has approved a warning label for its approval of 15% ethanol gasoline.
EPA says tests show E15 won’t harm 2001 and newer vehicles, which have hoses and gaskets and seals specially designed to resist corrosive ethanol. But using E15 fuel in older vehicles or in power equipment such as mowers, chainsaws and boats, can cause damage and now is literally a federal offense.
Capitalism in space: China has purchased a three Earth observation satellite constellation from a United Kingdom firm.
The launch of a military satellite out of Wallops Island, Maryland has been delayed until Wednesday.
Astronauts retreated to their Soyuz lifeboats early today as a piece of space junk zipped less than 1000 feet past the station.
A rocket launch tonight at Wallops Island will be visible to most of the mid-Atlantic eastern United States.
We’re here to help you! A experiment with the nation’s electric grid could mess up traffic lights, security systems and some computers — and make plug-in clocks and appliances like programmable coffeemakers run up to 20 minutes fast. Then there’s this quote:
A lot of people are going to have things break and they’re not going to know why,
Another private space plane moves forward.
Want to send a probe to another planet? Do it cheaply, as these scientists did.
The cost of solar energy is plummeting.
Though it can’t work in many places in the world and therefore can’t completely replace the electrical grid, this is still good news.
An evening pause: Note how long it takes for the 747 to get off the ground. The plane is big and heavy.
Cassini has directly sampled the plumes from Enceladus and discovered a salty ocean-like spray.
The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 mph (23,000 and 63,000 kilometers per hour), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.
The data suggest a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.
From Clark Lindsey: Branson says Virgin Galactic will fly a suborbital flight within a year.
Busy day for travel to and from ISS: The European unmanned ATV freighter Johannes Kepler burned up in the atmosphere even as a Russian Progress freighter was launched.
In related news, the U.S. and ESA are in negotiations to merge the European unmanned ATV freighter program with NASA’s manned Orion derivative. At the same time, Europe has announced its plans to test fly a reusable space plane.
The first Soyuz launch from French Guiana has now been scheduled for October 20, 2011.
According to the chief of the Russian space agency, it presently does not have the capacity to produce additional Soyuz capsule for tourist flights.
The cost of rare earth metals used in electronics has soared to record levels in the past two weeks as China clamps down on illegal mining and limits supplies.
A prototype of an unmanned sailing ship will begin a test voyage this fall.
Although Harbor Wing will operate without a captain and crew by sailing on a pre-programmed course, “the man is always in the loop,” Ott said. An operator, seated at a computer that could be hundreds of miles away, can control the craft with keystrokes that relay commands via satellite. The transmission gap, from order to receipt, is only 18 seconds, which “on the open ocean is not much,” he said, “so you have very close control.”
An evening pause: Let’s take a strange journey, down 275 feet deep into a well. No sound, but fascinating nonetheless.
NASA is about to decide on its shuttle heavy-lift replacement, and it looks like it will be almost entirely shuttle-derived.
As I have said previously, this rocket will almost certainly never fly. NASA has to start over after spending billions and years developing Constellation, and is being given less money and time to do it.
And even if I am wrong and this rocket does fly, I bet it will do only one flight and then be retired as too costly.
