Lots of cool space stuff today, so just bear with me. Earlier this week, NASA announced that they've completed restoring over one hundred hours of footage from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs that got us to the moon. MSNBC has more on the story:
The HD makeover was performed by the Discovery Channel for "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions," a documentary series due to premiere in June.
The archive includes dramatic shots of the first American spacewalk, conducted in 1965 by Gemini 4 astronaut Ed White. If White's spacesuit failed, there were few options available for rescuing him, Gemini 4 commander James McDivitt recalled.
"We didn't have a plan. We didn't have a checklist on how you kill your best friend," McDivitt told the filmmakers behind "When We Left Earth."
The best part about all of this? Besides receiving what will surely be a great Discovery Channel special, the entire high definition library will be made available for our viewing pleasure. This news has me itching to watch one of my favorite mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon, all over again. MSNBC has some of the remastered footage available to watch, but it's not streamed in HD. Go figure.
NASA sent out a media advisory today, announcing a press conference for next Wednesday, May 14. What's the purpose of the press conference? NASA is being rather coy about the whole ordeal, but according to them it's to "announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. This finding was made by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with ground-based observations."
What does that mean? What could it be? We'll have to wait to find out, but based on the kind of research the Chandra X-ray Observatory performs, my guess is that they've found direct evidence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. What are your thoughts?
Any Southern California space junkies out there? Do you want to go on a field trip to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA? Well you're in luck, as JPL will be providing a rare opportunity for the general public to tour its labs when they hold their open house on Saturday, May 3, and Sunday, May 4. Here's a bit more on the event, direct from JPL:
At this free, all-day event, visitors can watch 700-pound robots glide under artificial stars in JPL's Robodome, get an up-close view of full-scale models of Mars rovers, and learn how spacecraft are prepared for their journeys in special clean rooms.
They will see numerous solar system, robotics and Earth science exhibits and learn about various space missions, including the Mars Phoenix Lander, scheduled to land on the Red Planet on May 25. Visitors can also see how NASA instruments measure greenhouse gases, which will help scientists better understand global climate change.
The HiRISE camera hitching a ride aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken several stunning photographs of the Martian moon Phobos. At only 22 km in diameter, Phobos is a dinky object, which is good news for Mars, as Phobos will eventually slam into the planet. How Phobos, and its smaller brother Deimos, came into existence remains unclear. Each were either asteroids in their former life that were eventually captured by the gravity of Mars, or both moons formed from material that was shed from Mars during an ancient and mammoth impact.
The most prominent feature on Phobos is the Stickney crater, which has a diameter of 9 km. If whatever clobbered Phobos to form that crater had been just a hair larger, it would have shattered the moon into a zillion pieces.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a 19-page report that is highly critical of NASA's Constellation Program. Constellation is the program that is supposed to find America returning to the moon, building a base, and eventually heading to Mars for human exploration.
According to the GAO:
NASA is currently working toward preliminary design reviews for the Ares I and Orion vehicles. While this is a phase for discovery and risk reduction, there are considerable unknowns as to whether NASA's plans for these vehicles can be executed within schedule goals and what these efforts will ultimately cost. This is primarily because NASA is still in the process of defining many performance requirements. Such uncertainties could affect the mass, loads, and weight requirements for the vehicles. NASA is aiming to complete this process in 2008, but it will be challenged to do so given the level of knowledge that still needs to be attained. The challenges NASA is facing pose risks to the successful outcome of the projects.
Personally, as a hardcore supporter of NASA, the Constellation Program is a massive waste of money to achieve goals that aren't adequately defined or needed, which shouldn't come as a surprise when one considers this entire thing was urged by the Bush Administration. Sending humans to Mars is more for our collective ego than it is for science, especially when robotics are far more inexpensive.
Brainiacs at UC Irvine have discovered a cluster of galaxies in the early stages of formation, pegging the age at a whopping 11.4 billion years old, which stands as the new record holder.
“When you observe objects this far away, you are actually seeing the universe as it was a very long time ago,” said Jeff Cooke, a McCue Postdoctoral Fellow in physics and astronomy at UCI and lead author of this study. “It is as if a timeline is just sitting out there in front of you. These galaxies represent what the universe looked like well before the Earth existed.”
“Our finding suggests that this is a monster structure being born in a very bright, catastrophic event with a lot of gas and matter collapsing at once,” Bullock said. “We are not just seeing one solitary galaxy. We are seeing a bunch of bright galaxies coming together at the dawn of structure formation in the universe.”
That didn't take long. In less than 24-hours, NASA has reversed course on unplugging the Spirit rover on Mars due to budget cuts.
From Discovery News:
NASA is saying Tuesday that it has rescinded a letter that recommended budget cuts in the Mars Rover program to cover the cost of a next-generation rover on the Red Planet.
The move comes a day after scientists at the agency's robotics center said they would need to hibernate one of the twin Mars robots and limit the duties of the other because their budget was being cut by $4 million.
I guess we can scrap plans for that cookie-drive now.
NASA has ordered $4-million in funding for the Mars Exploration Rover program to be cut from its paltry $20-million annual budget, putting at least one of the rovers in serious jeopardy.
Steve Squyres, main man for the project, tells CNN that operations for Spirit will be the likely target, with Spirit entering a forced hibernation until more money is somehow found.
These poor rovers have managed to live well beyond their projected shelf life, returning amazing data that will aid humanity in the future, have faced perilous cliffs, dust-devils and wicked storms, yet good ole budget problems are going to do them in.
Sad. Sad. Sad.
$4-million is chump change when the advancement of human knowledge and understanding is involved, but for some reason, we can always find money if it involves killing people.
The journal Science is slated to report in its online edition that scientists have discovered the oldest asteroids ever detected in our solar system. Three rocks in particular were observed by Hawaii's Mauna Kea telescope using infrared and visible light, offering up results that showed huge amounts of calcium and aluminum.
From Space.com:
An abundance of these elements indicates that the objects were formed when the solar system was young because during that time the first materials to condense into solid particles were rich in calcium and aluminum. These three asteroids contain two to three times the amount of calcium and aluminum-rich material of any space rock found on Earth.
The Swift satellite, which normally discovers two Gamma-Ray Bursts a week, detected 5 bursts yesterday and one of them is the new king.
Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) occur when a star finally gives up the ghost and explodes. Yesterday's record holder was so intense that it poured out more light than all the stars in 5 million galaxies. Let that sink in. Okay, let's continue.
Here's some more mind-boggling info: The burst occurred 7.5-billion light-years away, yet...it was so powerful it could be seen with the naked eye...without binoculars.
Astronomers around the world are now observing the decaying glow from this burst as it fades away. These include UK teams from the Universities of Leicester, Warwick and Hertfordshire using the Gemini-North Telescope in Hawaii and the Liverpool John Moores University using the Liverpool Telescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands.
It was just last week that I posted about one star in particular that may wipe out all life on Earth when it finally dies. Read all about that here.
Dextre the Robot, the Canadian Space Agency's pride and joy, strikes a threatening pose in this new photograph. No doubt it's gearing up for an imminent attack on the crew of the ISS, wherein it will jettison their bodies out of the airlock, commandeer the bridge and proceed to issue demands.
It's long been theorized that farts are globally funny. No matter where you live, what language you speak, the simple act of hearing gas escape from an anus (preferably your own), is enough to evoke a minor amount of giggling, more so if you're easily amused. Why do I bring this up? Because methane, a key component in terrestrial farts, has been found on a planet 63 light years away. This marks the first time astronomers have detected the organic compound outside of our solar system. What's the significance? Well, it could mean something is living there and, like us, laughing at fart sounds.
Co-author Giovanna Tinetti from University College, London, told BBC News: "This planet is a gas giant very similar to our own Jupiter, but orbiting very close to its star. The methane here, although we can call it an organic constituent, is not produced by life - it is way too hot there for life."
Okay, well, it's not conclusive evidence that farts are universally funny, but it is evidence that we're getting ever closer to finding some kind of life out there, even if it's just a speck in a Petri dish.
According to scientists at Lancaster University in the UK, new research has revealed that ancient geysers on Mars spewed forth towering jets of...carbonated water! This is huge news for Coca-Cola, assuming they have any interest in terraforming the Red Planet.
The evidence for this appears at two sites on Mars where cracks hundreds of kilometres long called Mangala Fossa and Cerberus Fossae stretch across the surface. Both cracks are the starting points for broad channels that appear to have carried huge quantities of water – between 10 and 100 times the flow of the Amazon River.
How was Mars able to generate enough power to send a jet of carbonated water 3-4 kilometers into the air? Answers...and more questions, on page 2.
Astronauts Rick Linnehan and Mike Foreman spent a whopping 7-hours in vacuum as they assembled Dextre, a mammoth two-armed robot that will serve as external handyman for the International Space Station. Dextre can remove and replace small components with total precision and is equipped with specialized grippers, built-in socket wrenches, four robotic tools, video equipment, lights and umbilical connectors that provide power and data.
"It's really eerie out here," Linnehan said as he lifted Dextre's massive trunk from the end of the space station's robotic arm. "It's pitch black and it's just this big white kind of demonoid looking thing below me, with arms and legs."
NASA didn't waste any time in using the event to reacquaint astronauts with Isaac Asimov's Three Rules of Robotics, which you'll find on page 2, as well as some cool footage of Dextreitself.
The Official Google Blog made a great announcement today that should please armchair astronomers across the globe: Google Sky is now available and works like a charm. Coded in only 3 months, it allows users to search for planets, listen to Earth & Sky podcasts, view Hubbleimages and explore historical maps of the sky.
After playing around with it, I must say, it's quite impressive.
