The winds of Titan
Scientists are beginning to unravel the wind patterns on Titan.
Tag: science
Spirit appears dead
After more than six years, it appears that the Mars rover Spirit has finally died. The rover was originally designed to only operate 90 days.
Rube Goldberg machine, part 1
An evening pause: We’ve had animated machines and actors pretending to be machines. Now, let’s have a Rube Goldberg machine.
Hayabusa on display
The Japanese space agency JAXA has put Hayabusa’s heat shield, outer capsule, and parachute on public display, to large crowds.
The non-face on Mars
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter takes a picture of the non-face on Mars.
Opportunity sees its first dust devil
The Mars rover Opportunity has spotted its first dust devil after six-plus years of travel.
Themis satellites transferred to Moon
Two NASA probes, originally launched to study the Sun and having completed their mission, have had their orbits adjusted so that they can study the Moon instead.
Images show water ice?
Radar images from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter appear to show deposits of approximately 1.6 trillion pounds of water ice on the Moon.
Solar sail conference
Solar sail engineers from around the world gathered in Brooklyn last week for the Second International Symposium on Solar Sailing. Ben Diedrich, fellow caver, solar sail expert, and the man behind wiki.solarsails.info, gave two papers. He also emailed me to say that “Japan’s contingent gave several talks – many of which compared analysis of deployment, flight, or steering with actual flight data” of Ikaros. A review of the program [pdf] revealed some fascinating uses for solar sails. I like this paper title the best: “Deflecting Apophis with a flotilla of solar sails.” [ed. Apophis is an asteroid with the potential of hitting the Earth.]
Update: Japanese scientists have now announced that they have been able to adjust Ikaros’s attitude using sunlight.
Another update: Ben Diedrich emailed me the link to read the actual proceedings from the conference. See pg 103 to read the paper on using solar sails to deflect Apophis.
Lichens in space
An experiment flown in space for 10 days by the European Space Agency has found that three species of lichen can survive the hazards of outer space.
Asteroid impact threat
End of the world alert! Scientists have identified an almost half mile wide asteroid with a 1 in 1000 chance of hitting the Earth in 2182.
Scientist uncover fossil of biggest rat ever
A cave exacavation in East Timor has uncovered the bones of the largest rat species on record, weighing over 13 pounds and living approximately one to two thousand years ago. The dig also uncovered 11 previously unknown rat species.