Really Rocket Science - Space Exploration

Spitzer Spots Spock's Planet

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:51:10 -0700

Star Trek fans may remember Spock's home star, Epsilon Eridani. Now, with the help of the Spitzer Space Telescope, the discovery of asteroid belts within the nearby system (10.5 light years away) is prompting new comparisons to our own system -- and perhaps a planet Vulcan:

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected two asteroid belts around Epsilon Eridani, the planetary system closest to ours and home to Star Trek's fictitious First Officer Spock, the space agency reported yesterday.
A planet near the inner asteroid belt was identified eight years ago. The newly spotted planet is in the vicinity of the outer belt.
Epsilon Eridani is around 10 light-years, or 62 trillion miles (98 trillion kilometers), away from Earth's solar system and, at a mere 850 million years old, is considered a younger, similar version of our own 4.5- billion-year-old system. Star Trek creators made it the home of Vulcan, and it's possible that there are as-yet-unseen Earth-like planets between the star system and its inner ring, astronomer Massimo Marengo of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told McClatchy Newspapers.
"We certainly haven't seen it yet, but if its solar system is anything like ours, then there should be planets like ours," Marengo told USA Today.

Naturally, this prompted an active discussion on Slashdot, with several citations to literary fiction. More serious discussions abound.

The update from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics doesn't mention Mr. Spock or Vulcans, just what it means to scientists:

Epsilon Eridani and its planetary system show remarkable similarities to our solar system at a comparable age.
"Studying Epsilon Eridani is like having a time machine to look at our solar system when it was young," said Smithsonian astronomer Massimo Marengo (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). Marengo is a co-author of the discovery paper, which will appear in the Jan. 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
Lead author Dana Backman (SETI Institute) agreed, saying, "This system probably looks a lot like ours did when life first took root on Earth."
Our solar system has a rocky asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, about 3 astronomical units from the Sun. (An astronomical unit equals the average Earth-Sun distance of 93 million miles.) In total, it contains about 1/20 the mass of Earth's Moon. Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the team of astronomers found an identical asteroid belt orbiting Epsilon Eridani at a similar distance of 3 astronomical units.
They also discovered a second asteroid belt 20 astronomical units from Epsilon Eridani (about where Uranus is located in our solar system). The second asteroid belt contains about as much mass as Earth's Moon.
A third, icy ring of material seen previously extends about 35 to 100 astronomical units from Epsilon Eridani. A similar icy reservoir in our solar system is called the Kuiper Belt. However, Epsilon Eridani's outer ring holds about 100 times more material than ours.
When the Sun was 850 million years old, theorists calculate that our Kuiper Belt looked about the same as that of Epsilon Eridani. Since then, much of the Kuiper Belt material was swept away, some hurled out of the solar system and some sent plunging into the inner planets in an event called the Late Heavy Bombardment. (The Moon shows evidence of the Late Heavy Bombardment - giant craters that formed the lunar seas of lava called mare.) It is possible that Epsilon Eridani will undergo a similar dramatic clearing in the future.

Some of us would like to believe another planet like ours exists, which recalls the power of the Vulcan Mind Meld in convincing people to think otherwise.

Here's one of my favorite clips from the original TV series:

Chandrayaan-1 Launched

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:24:47 -0700

ISRO's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft launched:

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully launched the Chandrayaan-1, meaning "moon craft" in ancient Sanskrit, into orbit from a launch facility in southern India.
"It's a historic moment, as far as India is concerned... We have started our journey to the moon and the first leg of the journey has gone perfectly well," ISRO president Madhavan Nair said. "It's a remarkable performance by the launch vehicle, every parameter was on the dot... Today what we have started is a remarkable journey for the Indian spacecraft to go to the moon and try to unravel the mysteries of the moon."
Chandrayaan-1 will orbit 60 miles above the moon's surface, while documenting its surface and chemical characteristics.
ISRO hopes this first launch will help the nation launch future lunar missions that can help researchers learn more about the moon and its origin. ISRO hopes to one day launch a manned mission to the moon, but admitted that it would take years before it is able to develop the necessary technologies.
ISRO hopes to launch another moon mission in 2012, as the space agency continues to develop the necessary infrastructure for a manned moon mission.
"Earlier missions did not come out with a full understanding of the moon and that is the reason scientists are still interested. This will lay the foundation for bigger missions and also open up new possibilities of international networking and support for planetary programs," the ISRO said in a statement published on its web site.

Here are two videos...

Technorati Tags: moon india moon+mission indian+space+research+organization chandrayaan isro pslv indian+rocket moon+probe

Bread & Satellites

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:25:50 -0700

If you've spent some time in Ann Arbor, Michigan, you may have come across a Zingerman's -- a host of specialty foods delis, restaurants and related businesses. They're known for having one of the best mail-order breads in the U.S.

The University of Michigan's Student Space Systems Fabrication Laboratory is working on a micro-satellite about the size of a loaf of bread. The story, via Space Daily, gives us more:

U.S. scientists say they are developing a satellite about the size of a loaf of bread that will be deployed to study space weather.
The National Science Foundation-funded project called Radio Explorer, or RAX, is being led by the University of Michigan and the SRI International Corp., a California independent research and technology development organization.
The satellite, called CubeSat, is to be the first free-flying spacecraft, and will be built, in part, by members of the university's Student Space Systems Fabrication Laboratory.
CubeSats are approximately 4-inch cube-shaped devices that launch from inside a P-Pod -- a special rocket attachment developed by California Polytechnic State University and Stanford University.
The RAX satellite will essentially be made of three CubeSats and will measure the energy flow in the Earth's ionosphere, where solar radiation turns regular atoms into charged particles.
"This project will help us better understand space weather processes, how the Earth and sun interact and how this weather produces noise in space communication signals -- noise that translates to lower quality telecommunications capabilities and error in GPS signals," said Assistant Professor James Cutler, a co-principal investigator with physicist Hasan Bahcivan of SRI.

The grants from the National Science Foundation, who use a less-imaginative "half gallon carton of milk" metaphor, hopes to develop more student interest in space, too:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a grant to SRI International, an independent non-profit research and development organization based in Menlo Park, Calif., to carry out the first space weather CubeSat mission.
CubeSats are tiny satellites with dimensions of 10��10��10 centimeters, weighing about 1 kilogram, and typically using commercial off-the-shelf electronics components.
Developed through joint efforts, California Polytechnic State University and Stanford University introduced CubeSats to academia as a way for universities throughout the world to enter the realm of space science and exploration.
According to atmospheric scientists, CubeSats have the potential to be excellent platforms for technology development and small science missions, and promote student involvement in design, fabrication and flight missions.
"One of the goals is to help train future space scientists and aerospace engineers," said Therese Moretto Jorgensen, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences. "CubeSats will also help answer questions in space weather such as the cause of disturbances in the ionosphere, and the rise and decay of the Earth's radiation belts during geomagnetic storms."

SRI International's team will include many, including support from NASA:

“SRI is excited about the NSF contract, and working in collaboration with the University of Michigan,” said Hasan Bahcivan, research physicist at SRI International. “This program provides a cost effective way to support space weather and atmospheric research. It is also well positioned to provide excellent training opportunities for students that hope to become engineers or scientists. We expect 20 to 30 students to take significant roles in the design, development, and science operations of the satellite.”
The project’s mission is designed to remotely explore small-scale ionization structures in the form of plasma turbulence that occurs in response to intense electrical currents in the space environment. The structures can adversely impact communication and navigation signals by perturbing the refractive index along the signal propagation paths. By utilizing signals from powerful transmitters on the ground and receiving the scattered signals in space, researchers are achieving effective and powerful space-based radar to probe these structures, which would be expensive to accomplish via a stand-alone satellite radar.
"We have a multidisciplinary, cross-departmental team working on the project, that includes several engineers and faculty, and a large number of undergraduate and graduate students," said James Cutler, an assistant professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Michigan. "My research laboratory will be partnering with several space-related classes and the Student Space Systems Fabrication Laboratory (S3FL) to build and fly RAX."
The first launch opportunity for the NSF satellite program will be with the Department of Defense Space Test Program, and is scheduled for December 2009 aboard a Minotaur-4 launch vehicle out of Kodiak, Alaska. Commissioning and launch support for the mission will be provided by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Wallops Flight Facility.

This is the kind of government support we need to develop the future of rocket science.

Technorati Tags: sri michigan rax cubesat space+weather nsf+grant national+science+foundation ann+arbor

India, to the Moon!

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:49:18 -0700

Who is this man?

He's the man who'll give India the moon, otherwise known as Mylswamy Annadurai, the recipient of the Hariom Ashram pretit Vikram Sarabhai Research Award for his outstanding Contributions to Systems Analysis and Space systems management(2004), and the recipient of a citation from ISRO for his contribution to the INSAT systems Mission management(2003) and Team Excellence award for his contribution to Indian Space Program (2007):

On the shoulders of the soft-spoken M Annadurai rests a mission that will make history for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and for India. The man, who has worked on a dozen ISRO missions, is now the project director of the most ambitious of missions of ISRO till date. Annadurai... is now preparing to send India’s first mission to the moon, Chandrayaan I.

The spacecraft, which will carry 11 payloads, of which five are from India and six from the US, Europe and Bulgaria, will be launched onboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C11 (PSLV), with improved strap-on motors. On D-day (as of now, October 22), the PSLV’s lift-off will take India into the league of nations that have had a date with the moon, remotely. This could be just the warming up before an Indian lands on the moon.

Here's a good illustration of the Chandrayaan I mission. Integration with the launch rocket has begun at Sriharikota Range (SHAR), and the launch is scheduled for the 22nd of this month:

At SHAR, the lunar probe will undergo a further series of electrical and mechanical checks, including those of its solar panels. It has already undergone preliminary thermal and vibration tests at the ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) in Bangalore.

The upgraded version of the launch rocket PSLV-C11 will have a lift-off weight of 316 tonnes, and will be used to inject the 1,304-kg mass Chandrayaan-I into a 240 x 24,000 km orbit. Subsequently, the spacecraft's own propulsion system will be used to position it in a 100-km polar orbit around the moon.

We'll have more about the liftoff as the 22nd approaches.

Technorati Tags: ISRO exploration solar+system technology science space moon india pslv

Tasting The Ice Plumes of Enceladus

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:59:43 -0700

Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco is very happy this week, judging from her blog post on recent Cassini-Huygens images:

Well, folks, the images are down ... at last!! ... and I can't print here what I first said upon seeing them. What a dazzling success! There doesn't even appear to be any smear. Paul Helfenstein (imaging team associate who planned the images), you genius ... here's one big hug from me, man! We here at CICLOPS are all giddy, even moved to tears.

The ice plumes of the Saturn moon were first seen last October. Here's an animated rendering:

This week's mission is noteworthy, as they've practically brushed by the surface:

During closest approach, Cassini successfully passed only 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the surface of the tiny moon.
Cassini's signal was picked up by the Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia, and relayed to the Cassini mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"We are happy to report that Cassini's begun sending data home," said Julie Webster, Cassini team chief at JPL. "The downlink will continue through the night and into tomorrow morning."
Closest approach occurred at approximately 3:21 p.m. PDT, while Cassini was traveling at a swift 17.7 kilometers per second (40,000 miles per hour) relative to Enceladus.

During the flyby, Cassini focused its cameras and other remote sensing instruments on Enceladus with an emphasis on the moon's south pole where parallel stripes or fissures dubbed "tiger stripes" line the region. That area is of particular interest because geysers of water-ice and vapor jet out of the fissures and supply material to Saturn's E-ring. Scientists hope to learn more about the fissures and whether liquid water is indeed the engine powering the geysers.

You'll enjoy this video:

Technorati Tags: saturn enceladus ice+plumes saturn+moon cassini esa nasa cassini-huygens jpl

Mars Madness is Building

Thu, 15 May 2008 08:08:37 -0700

Mars Madness is on the rise in Tucson, the Arizona Daily Star reports. That's because on May 25th, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled to touch down on the red planet. The event is significant in Tucson because the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Lab team is leading the mission's science and built some of the instruments.

But the fever is spreading well beyond Arizona for this risky mission:

Fewer than half of attempts to land on Mars have succeeded, but planetary scientists leading the Phoenix Mars mission are cautiously optimistic. So far, all looks good, they say.
Public events to celebrate the landing are planned for at least 110 sites around the world, including London and Paris. There's even a virtual landing bash planned, in Second Life, which is a virtual social world on the Internet.

Just how risky and difficult is it to put a lander on the surface of Mars? To answer that question, check out this excellent video from NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory. (NASA has done a fantastic job promoting the mission and landing in the style of a summer movie blockbuster):

The Phoenix Mars Mission website provides additional detail:

At 125 km (78 miles) above the surface, Phoenix will enter the thin martian atmosphere. It will slow itself down by using friction. A heat shield will protect the lander from the extreme temperatures generated during entry. Antennas located on the back of the shell which encases the lander will be used to communicate with one of three spacecraft currently orbiting Mars. These orbiters will then relay signals and landing info to Earth.

After the lander has decelerated to Mach 1.7 (1.7 times the speed of sound), the parachute is deployed. Shortly after the parachute is deployed, the heat shield is jettisoned, the landing radar is activated, and the lander legs are extended. The lander continues through the Martian atmosphere until it comes within 1 km (.6 miles) of the Martian surface. At this point, the lander separates itself from the parachute. It then throttles up its landing thrusters and decelerates.

When Phoenix is either at an altitude of 12 m (39 ft) or traveling at 2.4 m/s (7.9 ft/s), the spacecraft begins traveling at a constant velocity. The landing engines are turned off when sensors located on the footpads of the lander detect touchdown.

As we've mentioned, only half of all international attempts to land on Mars have succeeded. Back in 1999, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) went missing as it entered Mars’s atmosphere, and its fate has been a mystery ever since. But now there is a chance for a member of the public to locate the missing spacecraft and help work out what went wrong, thanks to a new "Spot the Spacecraft" challenge:

The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), based at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has a raft of images of the MPL’s projected landing area, but scans of the huge images came up blank.

So now, the HiRISE team’s blog has published 18 images, and has challenged the public to find the lost lander.

Can you find the MPL? The images can be viewed here.

We'll report more on the landing of the Phoenix Mars Lander after the 25th.

Technorati Tags: phoneix+mars+mission phoenix planets space solar+system science nasa mars mars+polar+lander mars+madness

Nagging in Space?

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:35:18 -0700

Ballistic re-entry, again. Yes, that's the story here. But there's more: did Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, really say what was attributed to him?

You know in Russia, there are certain bad omens about this sort of thing, but thank God that everything worked out successfully. Of course in the future, we will work somehow to ensure that the number of women will not surpass [the number of men]. This isn't discrimination. I'm just saying that when a majority [of the crew] is female, sometimes certain kinds of unsanctioned behaviour or something else occurs, that's what I'm talking about.

Does this imply the women were ganging up on the guy to "just get us home," or something? Unsanctioned behavior -- could include "nagging," but I kind of doubt that.

They experienced 8 to 10 times the forces of gravity, which is very serious, according to the next astronaut from Australia:

The steeper-than-normal angle of re-entry subjects the crew to enormous gravitational force, up to 10 times that which is experienced on the ground.
Nik Halik, an Australian adventurer and entrepreneur, has experienced such forces during his cosmonaut training at Star City, near Moscow.
"The force in your chest, it's incredible," he said.
"It's like a boa constrictor is just squeezing you and squeezing and you can hardly breathe.
"That's why we do training here to make sure that our bodies can cope with the actual stresses because they are very, very excessive."
Mr Halik lives in a room on the floor below the quarantine area where the cosmonauts have been held since their return to Earth.
He has wanted to travel in space since he was four years old and he will soon get his wish. He graduates as a cosmonaut in September after five years of study and training.
Already, he's been named as the back-up crew member for the next Soyuz mission, currently known as TMA-13.
"The back-up historically has the primary spot, the following flight, which in this case will be the spring of '09 flight," he said.
"It's incredibly exciting for an Australian civilian."

Astronaut Yi is recovering in a Moscow hospital and is expected back in South Korea next week:

When she was salvaged from the charred Soyuz space on the Kazahkstan steppe, Yi looked so exhausted that she was not able to walk by herself. ``There was a shock during landing, and I'm having trouble with my sense of direction,'' she told SBS TV as she was waiting to be airlifted by a military helicopter. Veteran crewmates Peggy Whitson of the United States and Yuri Malenchenko of Russia also looked worn out.
In a press conference held at the Kustanaj airport in Kazakhstan a few hours later, the 29-year-old Korean seemed to have regained some of her energy and cheerfulness. When asked about the most difficult part of her 12-day trip to the International Space Station, she said nothing was harder than the training she received on the ground.
``I have always said the spinning chair was most difficult for me,'' she said in English. ``Otherwise, it was all exciting and fantastic. The most impressive thing was flying in outer space, so now I'm little bit confused whether I can fly or not.''

Technorati Tags: roscosmos perminov yi russian+superstition nasa soyuz ballistic korean+astronaut soyuz+capsule

Nice Science Project, Kid

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:18:14 -0700

"Der Junge aus Potsdam habe recht" -- that's what NASA said, as reported by the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten over the weekend. Translation: The boy from Potsdam is right:

Ein Potsdamer Schüler hat die Gefahr eines Asteroideneinschlags richtig berechnet und damit die Nasa blamiert. Was der 13-Jährige für das Jahr 2036 voraussagt, ist alles andere als beruhigend.

NASA figured there was a 1 in 45,000 chance the Apophis asteroid could collide with Earth. More like 1 in 450, according to Nico Marquardt. Here's the story in English, via the AFP:

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.
Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.
NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.
The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of Apophis running into one or more of the 40,000 satellites orbiting Earth during its path close to the planet on April 13 2029.
Those satellites travel at 3.07 kilometres a second (1.9 miles), at up to 35,880 kilometres above earth -- and the Apophis asteroid will pass by earth at a distance of 32,500 kilometres.
If the asteroid strikes a satellite in 2029, that will change its trajectory making it hit earth on its next orbit in 2036.
Both NASA and Marquardt agree that if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.
The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.
The 13-year old made his discovery as part of a regional science competition for which he submitted a project entitled: "Apophis -- The Killer Astroid."

Technorati Tags: Nico+Marquardt esa nasa asteroid apophis potsdam

Black Holes & Taxes

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:17:52 -0700

Paid my taxes the other day -- yes, I had to pay. The forthcoming golden goose from the U.S. Treasury will act as a counter-balance, but I'm still paying up. Where does my money go?

The U.S. Defense Budget dwarfs hundreds of other counties' budgets combined -- in fact, the DoD overspent by $295 billion last year, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Does that include the "black budget?" The New York Times did a great piece on it on April Fools Day:

The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Those billions have expanded a secret world of advanced science and technology in which military units and federal contractors push back the frontiers of warfare. In the past, such handiwork has produced some of the most advanced jets, weapons and spy satellites, as well as notorious boondoggles.
Budget documents tell little. This year, for instance, the Pentagon says Program Element 0603891c is receiving $196 million but will disclose nothing about what the project does. Private analysts say it apparently aims at developing space weapons.

More than the FDA, NSF and NASA budget combined? Dude, that's a black hole, which some find interesting. Hey, I'm all for space research and development, but a cure for cancer would be better

More interesting, in my opinion, was the news from the ESA press release yesterday about a "certified monster" black hole:

A team of Japanese astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton, along with NASA and Japanese X-ray satellites, has discovered that our galaxy’s central black hole let loose a powerful flare three centuries ago.

The finding helps resolve a long-standing mystery: why is the Milky Way’s black hole so quiescent? The black hole, known as Sagittarius A-star (A*), is a certified monster, containing about 4 million times the mass of our Sun. Yet the energy radiated from its surroundings is thousands of millions of times weaker than the radiation emitted from central black holes in other galaxies.
"We have wondered why the Milky Way’s black hole appears to be a slumbering giant," says team leader Tatsuya Inui of Kyoto University in Japan. "But now we realise that the black hole was far more active in the past. Perhaps it’s just resting after a major outburst."
The observations, collected between 1994 and 2005, revealed that clouds of gas near the central black hole brightened and faded quickly in X-ray light as they responded to X-ray pulses emanating from just outside the black hole. When gas spirals inward toward the black hole, it heats up to millions of degrees and emits X-rays. As more matter piles up near the black hole, the X-ray output becomes greater.

These X-ray pulses take 300 years to traverse the distance between the central black hole and a large cloud known as Sagittarius B2, so the cloud responds to events that occurred 300 years earlier.

Bosnian Phenomena

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:08:39 -0700

"Meteori padaju!!" That's what Radivoje Lajic has been saying for months (that's Croatian for "the meteors are falling"). The news item, via Daily News & Analysis:

A Bosnian man whose home has been hit an incredible five times by meteorites believes he is being targeted by aliens.
Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed that all the rocks Radivoje Lajic has handed over were meteorites. They are now investigating local magnetic fields to try and work out what makes the property so attractive to the heavenly bodies.
But Lajic, who has had a steel girder reinforced roof put on the house he owns in the northern village of Gornja Lamovite, has an alternative explanation.
He said: “I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don’t know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense.”

The Daily Mail is reporting he thinks he's being targeted by aliens. What are the odds of five meteorites hitting the same house? Must be astronomical. Although he's got rock-solid evidence, could his neighbors be playing tricks on him? Consider also the idea of the Bosnian Pyramids:

Inhabitants in Visoko have been fascinated by the hill for thousands of years. Anthropologists discovered that Visoko has a rich history and that it was the center of organized human settlements in the Middle Ages. German and Bosnian archeologists found 24 000 Neolithic artifacts which are 7 000 years old.
Visocica hill is 2120 ft (650 m) high and has a triangular form. Back in time, the medieval fortress was constructed by Bosnian kings at the top of the hill. The fortress was built over an old Roman Empire observation post which was made over the ruins of a prehistoric settlement. In other words, the hill can be used as a typical illustration of cultures building on top of other cultures.
There are no records of any civilizations in Europe attempting to build pyramids. Local and international experts dispute the theory about Bosnian pyramids. They claim that ancient civilizations in Bosnia were not capable of constructing colossal structures as the Bosinan pyramids.
However, Mr. Osmanagic claims that the hill has 4 perfectly formed slopes pointing toward the cardinal points, a plane top and an entrance complex (not yet discovered).

Could have been built by extraterrestrials? Is Bosnia littered with space rocks? If you find this intriguing, attend the International Scientific Conference for the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids this August, in Sarajevo.

Technorati Tags: bosnia meteors bosnian+pyramids pyramids

1400-megapixel Camera to Change View of Universe

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:00:37 -0700

How many pixels? 1400-megapixel? That's 1.4 billion pixels, shutterbugs. And it won't fit in your pocket.

The camera is part of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), which promises to change our view of the Universe, producing the largest and most detailed map of the heavens ever produced. Defense Industry Daily reports the project is about to get $8 million in funding from the U.S. Air Force:

Kirkland AFB, NM recently gave the University of Hawaii of Honolulu, Hawaii a modified contract for $8 million for the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PanSTARRS) multi-year program. The initial effort to develop and deploy a telescope data management system was awarded via a Grant to the University of Hawaii (considered a Minority Institute) and “as the various phases progressed, the Air Force determined that a Cooperative Agreement would be the more appropriate instrument as now we would be substantially involved.” At this time all $8 million has been committed (FA9451-06-2-0338, P00002).

Located on top of a dormant volcano in Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS telescope will survey the visible sky, taking up to 1,000 exposures per night. In fact, this one telescope may be able to discover up to five times as many near-Earth asteroids as all present survey telescopes combined.

Check out this page for a comparison of what other observation platforms/systems can see: Hubble, Subaru, Pan-STARRS and Palomar Sky Survey. This is an amazing telescope, with 400 times the sensitivity of the Palomar Sky Survey.

Technorati Tags: hawaii nasa hubble subaru+observatory kirkland+afb pan-starrs nea asteroids

Mars Colony

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:32:37 -0700

Screw $200,000 sub-orbital flights, when you can go to Mars. You heard me right – Mars:

Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.

Using their massive combined wealth, Branson, Page, and Brin will begin settling Mars in 2014. Worried by the coming climate crisis and aided by dramatic advances in spacecraft development and new Mars discoveries, the team is convinced the project is doable in the next 6-8 years. The team's scientists have already chosen a location:

Our landing site is located on Lunae Planum on the northwest side of Kasei Valles. Lunae Planum marks the transition between the high Tharsis rise, a giant volcanic bulge, and the northern lowland plains. This region shows many signs of significant crustal deformation and other structures that are likely caused by ice. Scientists have hypothesized that this area's valleys and ridges (called "fretted terrain") may have developed as icy debris flowed onto the northern plains eons ago, during the great Martian flood epoch. It's an ideal place for our settlement, because of the likelihood of both subsurface water and nearby lava tubes and pits; mild weather (in Martian terms) due to its proximity to the equator; and proximity to Kasei Valles, which, after terraformation, will be highly attractive shorefront property. The Virgle 1 should settle down not far from Chryse Planitia, the Plains of Gold, where the Viking 1 spacecraft landed on July 20, 1976.

Watch Branson's introductory video:

In other news, G-Mail announced a much anticipated custom time feature, TechCrunch is suing Facebook, and today marks the 500th anniversary of a major holiday.

Technorati Tags: Google Virgin Branson Page Brin Virgle Custom+Time Mars April+Fools

Cassini Tastes Organic Material

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:52:27 -0700

This isn't a Whole Foods ad. NASA's Cassini spacecraft "tasted" a surprising composition of organic materials erupting from Saturn's moon, Enceladus, during a close flyby on March 12:

New heat maps of the surface show higher temperatures than previously known in the south polar region, with hot tracks running the length of giant fissures. Additionally, scientists say the organics "taste and smell" like some of those found in a comet. The jets themselves harmlessly peppered Cassini, exerting measurable torque on the spacecraft, and providing an indirect measure of the plume density.

"A completely unexpected surprise is that the chemistry of Enceladus, what's coming out from inside, resembles that of a comet," said Hunter Waite, principal investigator for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "To have primordial material coming out from inside a Saturn moon raises many questions on the formation of the Saturn system."

"Enceladus is by no means a comet. Comets have tails and orbit the sun, and Enceladus' activity is powered by internal heat while comet activity is powered by sunlight. Enceladus' brew is like carbonated water with an essence of natural gas," said Waite.

The Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer saw a much higher density of volatile gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as organic materials, some 20 times denser than expected. This dramatic increase in density was evident as the spacecraft flew over the area of the plumes.

The food metaphors don't stop with "Whole Foods." Apparently we have a "recipe for life:"

"Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life," Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in the statement. "We have quite a recipe for life on our hands, but we have yet to find the final ingredient, liquid water."

Saturn's moons have long been of interest to scientists, who say the largest, Titan, may resemble an early version of Earth, providing clues to how the planet developed. Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon, had already surprised scientists when in 2005 they detected a "significant atmosphere."

Technorati Tags: Enceladus Saturn Whole+Foods Space Spacecraft Comet Cassini

"How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time"

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:51:54 -0700

Typically well done obituary in Wednesday's New York Times:

Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90

By GERALD JONAS

Published: March 19, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90.

Rohan de Silva, an aide, confirmed the death and said Mr. Clarke had been experiencing breathing problems, The Associated Press reported. He had suffered from post-polio syndrome for the last two decades.

The author of almost 100 books, Mr. Clarke was an ardent promoter of the idea that humanity’s destiny lay beyond the confines of Earth. It was a vision served most vividly by “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the classic 1968 science-fiction film he created with the director Stanley Kubrick and the novel of the same title that he wrote as part of the project.

His work was also prophetic: his detailed forecast of telecommunications satellites in 1945 came more than a decade before the first orbital rocket flight.

Other early advocates of a space program argued that it would pay for itself by jump-starting new technology. Mr. Clarke set his sights higher. Borrowing a phrase from William James, he suggested that exploring the solar system could serve as the “moral equivalent of war,” giving an outlet to energies that might otherwise lead to nuclear holocaust.

Mr. Clarke’s influence on public attitudes toward space was acknowledged by American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, by scientists like the astronomer Carl Sagan and by movie and television producers. Gene Roddenberry credited Mr. Clarke’s writings with giving him courage to pursue his “Star Trek” project in the face of indifference, even ridicule, from television executives.

In his later years, after settling in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mr. Clarke continued to bask in worldwide acclaim as both a scientific sage and the pre-eminent science fiction writer of the 20th century. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

Mr. Clarke played down his success in foretelling a globe-spanning network of communications satellites. “No one can predict the future,” he always maintained. But as a science fiction writer he couldn’t resist drawing up timelines for what he called “possible futures.” Far from displaying uncanny prescience, these conjectures mainly demonstrated his lifelong, and often disappointed, optimism about the peaceful uses of technology — from his calculation in 1945 that atomic-fueled rockets could be no more than 20 years away to his conviction in 1999 that “clean, safe power” from “cold fusion” would be commercially available in the first years of the new millennium.

Popularizer of Science

Mr. Clarke was well aware of the importance of his role as science spokesman to the general population: “Most technological achievements were preceded by people writing and imagining them,” he noted. “I’m sure we would not have had men on the Moon,” he added, if it had not been for H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. “I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.”

Arthur Charles Clarke was born on Dec. 16, 1917, in the seaside town of Minehead, Somerset, England. His father was a farmer; his mother a post office telegrapher. The eldest of four children, he was educated as a scholarship student at a secondary school in the nearby town of Taunton. He remembered a number of incidents in early childhood that awakened his scientific imagination: exploratory rambles along the Somerset shoreline, with its “wonderland of rock pools”; a card from a pack of cigarettes that his father showed him, with a picture of a dinosaur; the gift of a Meccano set, a British construction toy similar to American Erector Sets.

He also spent time, he said, “mapping the moon” through a telescope he constructed himself out of “a cardboard tube and a couple of lenses.” But the formative event of his childhood was his discovery, at age 13 — the year his father died — of a copy of Astounding Stories of Super-Science, then the leading American science fiction magazine. He found its mix of boyish adventure and far-out (sometimes bogus) science intoxicating.

While still in school, he joined the newly formed British Interplanetary Society, a small band of sci-fi enthusiasts who held the controversial view that space travel was not only possible but could be achieved in the not-so-distant future. In 1937, a year after he moved to London to take a civil service job, he began writing his first science fiction novel, a story of the far, far future that was later published as “Against the Fall of Night” (1953).

Mr. Clarke spent World War II as an officer in the Royal Air Force. In 1943 he was assigned to work with a team of American scientist-engineers who had developed the first radar-controlled system for landing airplanes in bad weather. That experience led to Mr. Clarke’s only non-science fiction novel, “Glide Path” (1963). More important, it led in 1945 to a technical paper, published in the British journal Wireless World, establishing the feasibility of artificial satellites as relay stations for Earth-based communications.

The meat of the paper was a series of diagrams and equations showing that “space stations” parked in a circular orbit roughly 22,240 miles above the equator would exactly match the Earth’s rotation period of 24 hours. In such an orbit, a satellite would remain above the same spot on the ground, providing a “stationary” target for transmitted signals, which could then be retransmitted to wide swaths of territory below. This so-called geostationary orbit has been officially designated the Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.

Decades later, Mr. Clarke called his Wireless World paper “the most important thing I ever wrote.” In a wry piece entitled, “A Short Pre-History of Comsats, Or: How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time,” he claimed that a lawyer had dissuaded him from applying for a patent. The lawyer, he said, thought the notion of relaying signals from space was too far-fetched to be taken seriously.

But Mr. Clarke also acknowledged that nothing in his paper — from the notion of artificial satellites to the mathematics of the geostationary orbit — was new. His chief contribution was to clarify and publicize an idea whose time had almost come: it was a feat of consciousness-raising of the kind he would continue to excel at throughout his career.

A Fiction Career Is Born

The year 1945 also saw the start of Mr. Clarke’s career as a fiction writer. He sold a short story called “Rescue Party” to the same magazine — now re-titled Astounding Science Fiction — that had captured his imagination 15 years earlier.

For the next two years Mr. Clarke attended King’s College, London, on the British equivalent of a G.I. Bill scholarship, graduating in 1948 with first-class honors in physics and mathematics. But he continued to write and sell stories, and after a stint as assistant editor at the scientific journal Physics Abstracts, he decided he could support himself as a free-lance writer. Success came quickly. His primer on space flight, “The Exploration of Space,” became an American Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

Over the next two decades he wrote a series of nonfiction bestsellers as well as his best-known novels, including “Childhood’s End” (1953) and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). For a scientifically trained writer whose optimism about technology seemed boundless, Mr. Clarke delighted in confronting his characters with obstacles they could not overcome without help from forces beyond their comprehension.

In “Childhood’s End,” a race of aliens who happen to look like devils imposes peace on an Earth torn by Cold War tensions. But the aliens’ real mission is to prepare humanity for the next stage of evolution. In an ending that is both heartbreakingly poignant and literally earth-shattering, Mr. Clarke suggests that mankind can escape its suicidal tendencies only by ceasing to be human.

“There was nothing left of Earth,” he wrote. “It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the infant plant while it climbs towards the Sun.”

The Cold War also forms the backdrop for “2001.” Its genesis was a short story called “The Sentinel,” first published in a science fiction magazine in 1951. It tells of an alien artifact found on the Moon, a little crystalline pyramid that explorers from Earth destroy while trying to open. One explorer realizes that the artifact was a kind of fail-safe beacon; in silencing it, human beings have signaled their existence to its far-off creators.

Enter Stanley Kubrick

In the spring of 1964, Stanley Kubrick, fresh from his triumph with “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” met Mr. Clarke in New York, and the two agreed to make the “proverbial really good science fiction movie” based on “The Sentinel.” This led to a four-year collaboration; Mr. Clarke wrote the novel and Mr. Kubrick produced and directed the film; they are jointly credited with the screenplay.

Many reviewers were puzzled by the film, especially the final scene in which an astronaut who has been transformed by aliens returns to orbit the Earth as a “Star-Child.” In the book he demonstrates his new-found powers by detonating from space the entire arsenal of Soviet and United States nuclear weapons. Like much of the plot, this denouement is not clear in the film, from which Mr. Kubrick cut most of the expository material.

As a fiction writer, Mr. Clarke was often criticized for failing to create fully realized characters. HAL, the mutinous computer in “2001,” is probably his most “human” creation: a self-satisfied know-it-all with a touching but misguided faith in his own infallibility.

If Mr. Clarke’s heroes are less than memorable, it’s also true that there are no out-and-out villains in his work; his characters are generally too busy struggling to make sense of an implacable universe to engage in petty schemes of dominance or revenge.

Mr. Clarke’s own relationship with machines was somewhat ambivalent. Although he held a driver’s license as a young man, he never drove a car. Yet he stayed in touch with the rest of the world from his home in Sri Lanka through an ever-expanding collection of up-to-date computers and communications accessories. And until his health declined, he was an expert scuba diver in the waters around Sri Lanka.

He first became interested in diving in the early 1950s, when he realized that he could find underwater, he said, something very close to the weightlessness of outer space. He settled permanently in Colombo, the capital of what was then Ceylon, in 1956. With a partner, he established a guided diving service for tourists and wrote vividly about his diving experiences in a number of books, beginning with “The Coast of Coral” (1956).

Of his scores of books, some like “Childhood’s End,” have been in print continuously. His works have been translated into some 40 languages, and worldwide sales have been estimated at more than $25 million.

In 1962 he suffered a severe attack of polio. His apparently complete recovery was marked by a return to top form at his favorite sport, table tennis. But in 1984 he developed post-polio syndrome, a progressive condition characterized by muscle weakness and extreme fatigue. He spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair.

Clarke’s Three Laws

Among his legacies are Clarke’s Three Laws, provocative observations on science, science fiction and society that were published in his “Profiles of the Future” (1962):

¶“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

¶“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

¶“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Along with Verne and Wells, Mr. Clarke said his greatest influences as a writer were Lord Dunsany, a British fantasist noted for his lyrical, if sometimes overblown, prose; Olaf Stapledon, a British philosopher who wrote vast speculative narratives that projected human evolution to the farthest reaches of space and time; and Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.”

While sharing his passions for space and the sea with a worldwide readership, Mr. Clarke kept his emotional life private. He was briefly married in 1953 to an American diving enthusiast named Marilyn Mayfield; they separated after a few months and were divorced in 1964, having had no children.

One of his closest relationships was with Leslie Ekanayake, a fellow diver in Sri Lanka, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1977. Mr. Clarke shared his home in Colombo with his friend’s brother, Hector, his partner in the diving business; Hector’s wife, Valerie; and their three daughters.

Mr. Clarke reveled in his fame. One whole room in his house — which he referred to as the Ego Chamber — was filled with photos and other memorabilia of his career, including pictures of him with Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

Mr. Clarke’s reputation as a prophet of the space age rests on more than a few accurate predictions. His visions helped bring about the future he longed to see. His contributions to the space program were lauded by Charles Kohlhase, who planned NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn and who said of Mr. Clarke, “When you dream what is possible, and add a knowledge of physics, you make it happen.”

At the time of his death he was working on another novel, “The Last Theorem,” Agence France-Presse reported. “ The Last Theorem’ has taken a lot longer than I expected,” the agency quoted him as saying. “That could well be my last novel, but then I’ve said that before.”

On to the next dimension, Sir Arthur.

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Spitzer's New Look

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:19:31 -0700

This is not about my governor.

We're talking about one of our favorite space instruments, the Spitzer Space Telescope. They've got a new feature on their site, one where you can zoom in and pan on some very cool space images.

Be sure the check out some of the animations. I like "Spitzer's Delicate Ring Flower:"

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope finds a delicate flower in the Ring Nebula, as shown in this animation. The outer shell of this planetary nebula looks surprisingly similar to the delicate petals of a camellia blossom. A planetary nebula is a shell of material ejected from a dying star. Located about 2,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, the Ring Nebula is also known as Messier Object 57 and NGC 6720. It is one of the best examples of a planetary nebula and a favorite target of amateur astronomers.

The "ring" is a thick cylinder of glowing gas and dust around the doomed star. As the star begins to run out of fuel, its core becomes smaller and hotter, boiling off its outer layers.

Spitzer's infrared array camera detected this material expelled from the withering star. Previous images of the Ring Nebula taken by visible-light telescopes usually showed just the inner glowing loop of gas around the star. The outer regions are especially prominent in this new image because Spitzer sees the infrared light from hydrogen molecules. The molecules emit infrared light because they have absorbed ultraviolet radiation from the star or have been heated by the wind from the star.

NASA called it a celestial valentine.

The candles are lit, the champagne is on ice. All you need now are flowers and a ring. This Valentine's Day, NASA's Spitzer and Cassini spacecraft provide you with both, in two engaging new images.

NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission and Spitzer Space Telescope have captured images of Saturn's rings and the Ring Nebula, respectively, to bring home spectacular views of two of the most looked-at objects in the sky. The Cassini image shows a detailed color mosaic of Saturn's shimmering rings. Spitzer imaged the outer shell of the Ring Nebula, which looks surprisingly similar to the delicate petals of a camellia blossom.

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