Mars Mission Ends for Phoenix Spacecraft

Poor thing. We'll miss you!

"Unlike its hardy twin rover cousins Spirit and Opportunity, which are approaching their fifth year near the red planet's more hospitable equatorial region, Phoenix's days were numbered from the outset."

Still, sad.

Labels: Space

Here's a bunch of space science stuff that's been backlogging, waiting for me to post it. Figure It'd do it all in one!

The Smell of Space:
"Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces. It is hard to describe this smell; ... The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space."

So it seems Space, in its infinite emptiness, has a smell. But as I had to remind people, Space is not actually empty. There's background radiation and other forms of energy moving around all over the place, even when there's no matter. So like electricity only has an after-smell when it affects something, I'm thinking the same is true of all that stuff flying through space. My Dad (I think it was) said it was probably just that some of the Sun's radiation had affected just enough of the metallic protective coatings to leave the smell. Makes sense to me, the author did say it was a metallic smell like when he had been welding. Either that, or I figure the Earth's atmosphere extends further than people realize, and it's an after smell of something like ozone.


Mysterious Haze Discovered on Venus:
There's a new weather pattern in Venus's Southern hemisphere! And it's BIG, as in covering 1/3 of the planet it sounds like. Why is this a surprise? Haven't we been studying Venus for decades? Don't we know about the same amount about Venus as we do Mars? I don't get why this is a mystery. If it really is a new thing, then... what's significantly changed? It's either exciting, or scary.



Private Race to the Moon Takes Off:
Cool! It's awesome to see corporations supporting (read: sponsoring) things like this. And of course it's Google! They get to do such fun and cool stuff.


Is This the Real Death Star?:
Wow, just wow. It would suck, but what a way to go! It'd actually be surprised if Earth was in the exact direct line of fire. Space is very large, and despite the size of the beam that star will give off when it blows, it's still going to be just a beam and not a globe. And given the size of space and the distance between that star and Earth, the beam will relatively be a pencil thin line. Plus, taking into account the motion of the heavens we may not even be aligned with it at that time!

Labels: Space

Closer Yet (to Star Trek):
Mersive 360-Degree High-Definition Humvee Simulator Brings the Holodeck One Step Closer

Further and Further Away:
Neutron Star Seen Hurtling Out of the Milky Way

Has a cool picture you should zoom in on. But if the star is going out, and the material is going the opposite way... where is that high speed stellar explosion material going?

This star isn't the object traveling so fast it has a bow shock wave in front of it. I can't remember if I posted about that one or not. It was also a cool picture.

Labels: Space

Originally posted 9/18:
A meteorite has struck in Peru. Which isn't special in and of iteself, but a nearby village is experiencing a mass sickness, which officials assume is a result of the meteorite strike.

Meteorite makes villagers ill

Hope for the best.


Update:
The sickness was caused by arsenic in the local water supply that was evaporated when the meteorite hit, causing the population to be exposed to dangerous levels of the arsenic.

Meteor Crash in Peru Caused Mysterious Illness

Labels: Space

PHYSICS
Last year my co-worker Nick and I first heard about scientists that split a particle and watched both halves behave exactly the same even though the two were not in contact and one was messed with! Since then we have been talking about the possibility of instantaneous communication between (infinitely) distance points since. The only real problem I see in which, is getting the "receiving" particle(s) to the other end. All the rest is just technical details that should be on their way to getting solved.

Today we found that last year was not when this marvel of quantum physics was discovered. In fact, it has been 25 years! So much for considering "radically new views of reality." My question is, why has it taken so long for this to be further researched and confirmed in the scientific community? The implications of it being true are huge, and potentially highly beneficial! Humans can be so stupid.

---

MARS
This one is more immediately in your face than the above. Apparently we may have had evidence since 1976 - when Viking landers arrived at Mars - of microbial life in the soil on Mars! It's not all that similar to commonly found microbial life here, which is how it was overlooked. Supposedly it is based on hydrogen peroxide, which would act as cellular anti-freeze. But since the discovery of new kinds of bacteria and lichen in Antarctic permafrost, an extreme environment in which it was thought no life could survive, the idea that life could exist in extreme environments elsewhere in the solar system has resurfaced. We'll know more after the Phoenix Mars Lander reaches the planet.

But this wouldn't be the first time we've "known" a significant answer to a question about Mars before it was widely realized. Turns out we knew Mars has water on it - in the form of ice and well below the surface - before the recent revelation by one of the rovers. The debate has actually been if there is liquid water on Mars anywhere. :p

Labels: Space

Okay, a few updates on this topic.

Speeding-Bullet Star Leaves Enormous Streak Across Sky
Not a comet, a Star streaking through space! It'd be unreal, except it isn't.

"What causes a star to hurtle through space at such a speed that it has a bow-shock wave front?" -Nick

A very good... and scary question.


AIST develops 3D image projector
Ooo. Not solid images, but a start. One step closer to a Holodeck!

"More like the first season imaging thing above the table, or a Star Wars type hologram" -Nick


11th Star Trek Movie
Is gonna be bad. First, they're doing a prequel. Which we've learned means they are going to rewrite established history. Kirk and Spock did not meet and become friends at the Academy. And, as Paramount learned with Enterprise, we fans do not take well to that. Second, Russel Crowe has been cast to play the bad guy. *CRINGE* Not a good move. This director is making mistakes before the movie has even started filming! Third, they've cast someone who looks nothing like Scotty did to play young Scotty. *sigh* Why wasn't James Doohan's (Scotty) son good enough?

Labels: Space

It seems things worked out over the weekend for the rovers. Yay! Though from the sound of this article I'd say they aren't out of the woods yet, but at least they're seeing the light of day! Literally.

Mars rovers are staying alive despite storms - "As weather improves so does NASA's outlook on their survival"

Excerpts of this article:

Steve Squyres of Cornell University, the lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Rovers project, said that both Spirit and Opportunity are in "excellent shape" based on a radio transmission received this morning.

The amount of sunlight penetrating the dust-choked Martian atmosphere has increased slightly in recent days, and the batteries of both rovers are fully charged, said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Explorations Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Even though the rovers were not designed to weather dust storms of this magnitude, Meyers said mission scientists and engineers are optimistic the rovers will survive the dust storms, which have been raging for nearly a month now. All scientific observations and driving ... remain suspended, for now, to conserve power.

Mission scientists will "wait and make sure that the storm doesn't kick back up," Meyers said. "They're going to wait it out a few more days to make sure."

"Right now, we're just keeping both vehicles safe, and we've been very successful with that so far," Squyres said. "We'll just wait and see what Mars does."

Labels: Space

Well, the Mars rovers have outlived their designed lifespan more than 10 fold (expected to last only 90 days, they've been operating well over 1100)! But now both may be hunkering down without knowing if they will be able to wake up again:

The End of the Rovers?

Opportunity is smack in the middle of a dust storm so bad it's almost getting no sunlight, which is what powers the rovers. Even when "off", the rovers still need a little power to run a heater that keeps temperature sensitive parts from breaking due to the freezing cold. So it's going try to ride out the storm on batteries... hopefully its got enough and the storm is short enough. Opportunity is still waking once a Solar day to report in, but if its battery reserves get too much lower NASA will be preventing even that little daily communication.

Spirit's okay for now, but in anticipation of dust storms on Mars going around the globe they'd better keep a close eye out for it.

Labels: Space

NASA has three space shuttles left: Atlantis (built 1985), Discovery (built 1983), and Endeavour (Challenger's replacement, built 1991). By 2010 they will all be decommissioned. The new fleet of shuttles is supposed to be ready no later than 2014, but hopefully as early as 2011. It'd be bad to not be in space for three years.

Atlantis is going away this year. That's because it's scheduled this year for a maintenance that takes two years, and so by the time it's back in service it'll be nearly time to decommission it!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/21/tech/main1335355.shtml

FYI:
NASA had five space shuttles in the fleet, though not all at the same time. The other two in addition to the above three are Columbia (1979 - 2003) and Challenger (1979 - 1983).

Also, Challenger was originally STA-099 (1972 - 1978), one of two test vehicles for the Space Shuttle program. The other test vehicle was supposed to be named Constitution, but a write in campaign got it named Enterprise! Though that one never was converted for space flight.

Labels: Space

"Poor Pluto just keeps getting downgraded."

It's not even the biggest Dwarf Planet anymore. Aww.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/06/070614-pluto-eris.html


http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/06/15/poor.pluto.ap/index.html

Labels: Space

The first crop circle has been found on Mars!

Of course, there are no crops on Mars....

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070605_mars_hole.html

Labels: Space