NASA lunar lander test sparked a grass fire
NASA lunar lander test sparked a grass fire yesterday.
NASA lunar lander test sparked a grass fire yesterday.
NASA lunar lander test sparked a grass fire yesterday.
Good news for trout fisherman: A new study of the evasive algae Didymo has figured out why the algae blooms in places it shouldn’t.
The result may help managers identify water bodies susceptible to Didymo blooms, and develop management strategies. “It also has the potential to lead to discoveries that may stem this organism’s prolific growth in rivers around in the world,” says [P.V. Sundareshwar of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City].
The Russian greenhouse on ISS underwent an upgrade today.
The onboard greenhouse was dismantled in April last year, as a need arose to replace the outdated control unit, recalled head of the Rasteniya-2 (Plants-2) experiment, chief of the laboratory of the Institute of Medico-Biological Problems (IMBP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Vladimir Sychev. In early 2010, the crop area of the orbital garden was extended twice – the second leaf chamber was delivered to the ISS in which the crew managed to harvest the Mizuna lettuce, before the greenhouse was dismantled. Now, the cosmonauts will plant in these two chambers different cultures – super-dwarf wheat and dwarf tomatoes.
As I described in detail in Leaving Earth, the Russians have decades of experience in growing plants in space, with the goal of not only providing a natural system to recycle the station’s atmosphere, but also giving the astronauts a morale-boosting activity (gardening) that also gives them something tasty to eat. Though the engineering has still not made it possible to germinate seeds in weightlessness and then have grow there, this will be an absolute requirement if humans are ever to travel to the planets and beyond to the stars.
The scientific battle over arsenic life goes on.
Planetary scientists push for Enceladus mission to search for alien life.
Cowards: Two New York Metropolitan Opera stars, fearing radiation, have backed out of a Japanese tour in the cities of Tokyo and Nagoya. This, despite the documented lack of radiation:
Tokyo briefly registered nominally higher radiation levels in its air and water, but they have subsided to pre-tsunami levels. There was never any scientific concern of a radiation impact on Nagoya, which is much farther away.
Meanwhile, the efforts to stabilize the reactors in Fukushima are proceeding.
China’s largest inland lake has disappeared in the worst drought in more than half a century.
Four spectacular waterspouts were seen off the coast of Australia today. With images!
Robot exploration in the Great Pyramid at Giza.
The robot explorer that took the images is named Djedi, after the magician whom Pharaoh Khufu consulted when planning the layout of the Great Pyramid. It was designed and built by engineers at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with Scoutek UK and Dassault Systemes, France.
Opportunity’s journey across the deserts of Mars continues; with pictures.
The un-owned feral cats had larger territories than the house cats, but both had larger territories than expected. One of the male feral cats had a home range of 1,351 acres, while the pet cats had a mean home range of about 5 acres.
Budget deficits signal a decline in spending for astronomy telescopes, both on the ground and in space, for the next decade.
Did a spotless sun cause the Little Ice Age after all?
The dark ages return: Italy is going to put seven earthquake scientists on trial for failing to predict an earthquake in 2009. More details here, from Nature.
Asteroid sample return mission on slate for NASA in 2016. The asteroid chosen in 1999 RQ36, which is significant.
The space rock has been classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, since its orbit brings it close to Earth in the year 2182. There is an extremely remote chance (a recent study pegs it at about 1-in-1000) that the 1,900-foot-wide (579-meter) asteroid could pose a threat to Earth.
A bullet dodged? The next Mars rover, the Mars Science Lab, appears to be okay after last week’s mishap.
NASA has decided to abandon efforts to contact the rover Spirit, incommunicado for more than a year.
Evidence mounts for liquid water on Enceladus.
Facing a launch window that ends December 18, the next rover mission to Mars was damaged last week upon arriving at the Kennedy Space Center.
Satellite monitoring of the new Iceland volcano eruption.
More on the new Kepler results: Lots of multiple planet systems.
New results from Kepler.
From JunkScience: Google to censor climate skeptics?
The next Moon mission, launching this summer.
New data provides further confirmation of the existence of dark energy.