Posts Tagged ‘NASA’

NASA Has Been Cool My Entire Life


25 Apr

A lot of attention gets paid to what NASA is doing now, both in the news and here on this blog. And rightly so. The Mars Rover missions are amazing and deserve the attention. But what we forget sometimes is exactly how long NASA has been doing amazing things, and the timelines for those missions.

The Voyager missions were launched in 1977. That is over 35 years ago, and they are still going strong. In fact, Voyager 1 is now the farthest man-made object from the Earth, over 18 billion kilometers away and still moving, and we can ride along.

I Want to Be A Bubble Girl


17 Jan

My head is still in space, though no longer on Mars. Instead, I’m dreaming of vacationing in space, staying in a private bubble, my own little room with a view, and oh, what a view it will be.

Lest you think I am only dreaming, the owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain also owns a company that is designing a low cost, expandable space dwelling, the BEAM- basically a portable space station. The plan is to be able to have these in space and let rich people vacation up there (and also to lease them for research).

Martian Curiosity


16 Jan

Curious about Mars? The rover Curiosity is still going strong on the Martian surface and should begin drilling down into the planet’s crust sometime in the next few weeks. While NASA is still in contact with the rover Opportunity, neither it, nor the rover Spirit, were able to do more than peel away rock layers. Curiosity will be able to drill several inches down to collect samples.

Curiosity is running a bit behind schedule, but not for technical reasons. Scientists were so interested in what it was “seeing” that they had it linger at the previous location longer than expected.

Curiosity


06 Aug

Curious about Mars? So is most of NASA, and last night, the new Curiosity rover arrived on Mars safe and sound after 8 months of travel. Just like a good teenager, it texted it’s safe arrival back home and shortly after landing posted some sight seeing pictures.

The plan is for Curiosity to be working and sending back data for two years, though scientists hope it will last longer than that. And they have good reason to hope. The Spirit andOpportunityrovers landed in 2004. Spirit stopped working after 6 years.Opportunityis still sending data home.

Congratulations NASA.

Mars


02 Aug

Humans can’t go to Mars just yet. We have to settle for sending rovers to the surface and living through pictures taken by telescopes (like the picture in this post from the Hubble spacecraft). But even if we have to visit Mars vicariously, this week we can still do it “live”. The Slooh Space Camera is webcasting live views of Mars August 1 through 3. The webcasts will include commentary from NASA scientists.

Of course, on Sunday, the newest Mars Rover will land on the planet, and the hunt for water will begin again. It’s called “Curiosity” for a reason.

A First and Final Mission


22 May

This morning, a private spacecraft was launched out ofCape Canaveral. Its mission is to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. It is the first every private vessel that will be allowed to dock with the space station. A new era is beginning.

Besides giving things cool names (the capsule is called Dragon, the rocket that launches it Falcon-9), SpaceX did one more thing right this morning. In the rocket, set for one final mission to space, are the ashes of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and our favorite engineer, James Doohan- “Scotty” from Star Trek. Rest in peace, gentlemen.

The Year in Science Stories


29 Dec

I love end of year lists. They let me sort through things and find what I’ve missed. It’s not my full time job to find interesting movies or books, or scientific breakthroughs, even though I love all of those things. Reading the year end lists from those whose full time jobs it is, means that I get to catch up.

To that end, over the next week or so, you’ll probably be seeing a number of posts by me from the Cosmic Log’s year end round ups of the biggest stories in outer space, archeology, and science stories in general.

Space Harpoon


21 Dec

NASA is developing a harpoon. They aren’t looking for blubber (Star Trek IV taught us not to kill the whales), but for other natural resources, in comets.

This isn’t an offensive weapon. It’s a research tool. The goal is for astronauts to be able to harpoon a comet and bring samples back so that they can study what comets are made of and how they are formed. But, knowing how comets are made could help us learn how to deflect them away from the earth.

And, we’ll leave the tip of the harpoon in the comet. What a nice souvenir.

The Goldilocks Planet


06 Dec

You all know I love space exploration. I am excited by the discovery of Kepler-22, the first potentially human habitable planet discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. But here’s what gets me. Notice how I said “human habitable”. Everyone else just say “habitable”. There is the assumption that life couldn’t have formed on a planet that humans couldn’t live on. Hydrogen based life, perhaps, couldn’t form on a planet without water as we know it, but why are we so certain that all intelligent life has to be hydrogen based? And why are we certain the planets need to be Earth-size?

Oh, The Places We’ll Go


23 Nov

Sticking with space news for one more day, did you realize that we (and by we, I mean astronomers, not me at all) have found over 700 planets outside our own solar system?

I should clarify, according to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, run by Jean Schneider of the Paris-Meudon Observatory, 702 planets outside our solar system have been located. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory maintains a different database called PlanetQuest: New Worlds Atlas, and it currently has 687 alien planets.

What’s really exciting is how quickly the databases have grown in recent years. I love living in an age of discovery.

100 Words On

topics explored in exactly 100 words