Orbit 17 +++ Space and beyond
galaxies, science, exploration, astronomy (blog)
Archive for December, 2009
3 Astronauts Land on International Space Station
Dec 28th
Three astronauts have landed safely on the International Space Station
floating 220 miles away from Earth. The newest residents of the space station are NASA astronaut T.J.
Creamer, Japanese Aerospace
Exploration Agency astronaut and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov. The crew met up with Jeff Williams and Maksim Suraev, who have been on board the ISS since October 2009.
The crew has several projects planned during their stay on the ISS over the next several months. The newest crew is slated to stay until May 2010. Kotov and Suraev are scheduled for a space walk in January with the others beginning work on various other projects.
Williams and Suraev are scheduled to return to Earth in March. Three more crew members from various space agencies
around the world will land on the ISS in April bumping the space crew total to six.
The newcomers brought plenty of Christmas cheer aboard the ISS. They brought a Christmas tree and Santa hats for a family photo aboard the ISS. The astronauts will have the Christmas holiday off before jumping back into work.
Voyager 2 on a ‘magic mission’ beyond Milky Way
Dec 27th
A map of the Milky Way. Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Holiday tidings come from NASA’s Voyager 2 this week, offering a view of deep space beyond our sun’s solar system.
Now speeding through space at more than 34,000 miles-per-hour, the 1977 space probe resides more than 8.3. billion miles away from the sun. That is twice as far as Pluto. Two years ago, Voyager 2 passed into the region of space where the sun’s solar wind peters out as it plows into the interstellar gases of our Milky Way galaxy. And now it’s giving us some news from this region, called the “heliosheath,” by astrophysicists.
“This is a magic mission,” says space scientist Merav Opher of George Mason University. in Fairfax, Va.. “After all these years, Voyager 2 is still working and sending us first hand (on-site) data.”
Voyager 2’s vantage, revealed in the Dec. 24 Nature journal in a study led by Opher and colleagues, shows that beyond the solar system, the galaxy’s magnetic field is unexpectedly strong, about twice as much as expected, and unexpectedly tilted. Our galaxy is essentially a twin-armed flat disk of stars 100,000 light years across rotating around a spherical ball of stars in its center (one light year is about 5.9 trillion miles.).
Can global warming be conquered with a stratospheric hose? Earth needs saving.
Dec 27th
Earth as seen from Apollo 17 Credit: NASA Public domain
Myhrvold, is the president and founder of Intellectual Ventures and a former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer, who started his own company in 2000 to provide capital for new patents, innovative ideas, and software.
The former Microsoft engineer entered college at age 14 to study mathematics, space physics, and geophysics at UCLA, where he earned Masters and Bachelor of Science degrees. At age 23, he entered Princeton and completed his PhD in theoretical mathematics and earned a Masters in mathematical economics.
On a recent interview with CNN’s Zareed Zakaria, Myhrvold talked about how venture capital should be available, but in today’s market, it’s not.
“No one funds inventers,” Nathan said, and he wants to change that, because inventers from other countries, who used to come to the United States to get funding for their inventions innovative ideas, are no longer doing so. Without venture capital, Microsoft, Apple, and Intel would not exist today.
US Drone attacks kill 13 in North Waziristan, Islamabad – loc8id.com/71vX2t
Dec 27th
Eight more bodies have been recovered from a house where spying US Drone carried out strikes on a suspected position of terrorists on Saturday.
Last day five bodies were recovered but eight more bodies have been found from the rubbles on Sunday. The death toll reaches at 13. The attacks were carried out in village Seedgi, near Miram Shah. Sources also informed that three people were injured.
The suspected US Drone attacks have killed at least seven people in North Waziristan, sources told SAMAA on Friday (December 18).
SAMAA learnt that three missiles were fired over a village, Paikhel, some 30 km away from Miranshah where at least seven people were killed on the spot while five others injured, sources added.
MSNBC +++ Cosmic Log +++ The year in space
Dec 27th
The highest highlight of 2009 was clearly the revival of the Hubble Space Telescope, a mission that blended moments of beauty and brute force 350 miles above the earth.
Or was it?
Maybe the top story was the reassessment of NASA’s plans for human spaceflight. After all, tens of billions of dollars could be at stake. Or maybe it was the series of victories in NASA-backed competitions that had gone unwon for years.
Trio of NASA missions in 2010 will probe answers to secrets of the Earth, sun
Dec 26th
Taken by astronaut William Anders from the Apollo 8 spacecraft, this December 1968 photo of Earth rising over the lunar surface would become one of the most famous images of the 20th century. Credit: NASA
NASA heads into 2010 with the bittersweet assignment of retiring the space shuttle after nearly three decades. But that’s not all the agency has planned: There are also launches of three new satellites aimed at better understanding the Earth’s climate and oceans, and the sun.
Two of the probes will examine Earth — specifically the concentration of salt in the world’s oceans and the presence of aerosol particles, such as soot, in the atmosphere. A third mission will study the sun and its effect on space weather including solar flares that can disrupt communication on Earth.
All three come at a critical time for NASA. Data from the two Earth probes will likely influence global-warming research, and the trio of launches could serve as bright spots in a year otherwise dominated by debate over the future of the agency’s manned space program.
“They are extraordinary timely,” said Michael Freilich, head of NASA’s Earth-science division, of the two Earth probes. “It is a quest for understanding of the Earth system and [to improve] our ability to predict how our wonderful environment and our planet is going to change in the future.”
Combined, the three missions will cost more than $1.5 billion.
NASA’s Kepler mission looks for new planets – just like Johannes wanted
Dec 26th
“…we must choose between two assumptions: either the souls which move the planets are the less active the farther the planet is removed from the sun, or there is only one moving soul in the center of all the orbits, that is the sun, which drives the planet the more vigorously the closer the planet is, but whose force is quasi-exhausted when acting on the outer planets because of the long distance and the weakening of the force which it entails.” (in ref. 1, p 261)
As the story goes, on Christmas night 2,000 years ago, wise men followed a star in the night sky to reach the baby Jesus. NASA-Ames is following the stars too, looking for life on other worlds, and astronomers have a new celestial tool to help them.
“If we’re going to be looking for planets, earth-like planets are the key,” Foothill College Astronomy Department Chair Andrew Fraknoi said.
Fraknoi has loved astronomy since childhood. He says NASA’s Kepler mission is one of the most exciting in quite some time.
“In the last 16 years, we’ve discovered over 400 planets going around other stars, but the methods so far that we have been using only allowed us to find big planets like Jupiter,” Fraknoi said.
Kepler is a telescope designed to find planets orbiting other stars by looking for a break in the star light as a planet moves in front of it.
The challenge now is to find planets that are half to twice the size of the earth in the habitable zone of their stars, where it is possible that water and even life might exist.
NASA crashes MD-500 helicopter to test new shield for cars
Dec 26th
NASA has intentionally crashed a 3,000-pound MD-500 helicopter loaded with dummies to test a new safety shield, which could someday be used to make the cars we drive safer.
According to a report in Discovery News, the small helicopter, donated by the US Army for NASA’s research program, survived a 35-foot plunge to the ground intact, thanks to a lightweight honeycomb structure that bore the brunt of the impact.
The honeycomb shield, made of Kevlar 129 – the same material used to make bulletproof vests – was attached to the underside of a 3,000-pound MD-500 helicopter at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
The shields can be made of any material, as it is the structure of the honeycomb that provides the strength and flexibility to cushion the impact.
“The beauty of the honeycomb is that it will allow you to customize,” said project engineer Sotiris Kellas.
“We like composites because we have more options for tailoring, but they can be made out of any material you want,” he added.
For the test, which took place earlier this month, the craft was suspended in the air with cables. Restraints were released, allowing the helicopter to fall, and just before it hit the ground, explosive devices fired to break the cable.
Detroit: British student in al-Qaeda airline bomb attempt
Dec 26th
Detroit: UK student in al-Qaeda airline bomb attempt Credit: Reuters
The 23-year-old attempted to ignite an explosive device strapped to his leg as a Northwest Airlines flight carrying 278 passengers and 11 crew came in to land in Detroit, according to US security officials.
He suffered second degree burns before being overpowered by other passengers including one who jumped on him and was also burned.
Mutallab, whom US security sources said was a student at University College London, claimed to have picked up his device in Yemen and to be an agent of al-Qaeda.
The White House said it believed it was an attempted act of terrorism, and that stricter security measures were quickly imposed on airline travel. It did not specify what those were.
President Barack Obama was notified of the incident and discussed it with security officials, the White House said. It said he is monitoring the situation and receiving regular updates from his vacation spot in Hawaii.