Tag: NASA

Spock’s home planet in our sights?

I haven’t posted anything Star Trek-related in, oh, days, so here’s something: Science fiction may soon become science fact. Astronomers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have recently concluded that the upcoming planet-finding mission, SIM PlanetQuest, would be able to detect an Earth-like planet around the star 40 Eridani, a planet familiar to “Star Trek” fans …

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Science fiction headline of the day:

“Star Trek shields will protect man in space.” From the TimesOnline story: “It’s no accident that Star Trek featured this sort of technology, as it had advisers who work for Nasa and it’s feasible,” Dr Bamford said. “The shields seem to be some sort of invisible barrier, which energy bounces off, and that sort of …

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Amazing video of a solar flare…

…here. It was captured by Japan’s Hinode spacecraft in January: “I managed to stay in my seat,” says solar physicist John Davis of the Marshall Space Flight Center, “but just barely.” Davis is NASA’s project scientist for Hinode, Japanese for Sunrise. The spacecraft was launched in Sept. 2006 from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan …

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Robotic sub to explore sinkhole

NASA is sending an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle–a.k.a. a robotic sub–to explore the world’s deepest sinkhole: Like La Pilita, Zacatón is in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and was formed by the collapse of a limestone chamber dissolved by warm, acidic groundwater that originated in a nearby volcanic region. The current theory is that the cenote …

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Back to the Moon

Popular Mechanics explains the plans. I’m really happy we’re heading back to the moon, but I found this paragraph depressing: It took pilots 50 years to progress from scarf-and-goggles barnstorming to setting down footprints on the Sea of Tranquility; it will have taken another half-century for us to return to the moon. Sigh. Oh, and …

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Robert A. Heinlein’s legacy lives on:

This NASA story, about how the Moon bears witness to the early history of the solar system, and could tell us whether “extinction events” caused by heavy bombardments from outer space really recur every 26 million years on Earth as some have hypothesized, is headlined “The Moon is a harsh witness.” Somebody there has read …

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The Viking probes 30 years ago may have found life on Mars..

…and then promptly killed it.

A manned mission to an asteroid?

It’s being seriously considered. There’s interest in asteroids for a range of reasons…for exploration, for pure science, resource utilization, as well as learning how to mitigate the threat from a sniping space rock that has its crosshairs on Earth. Neither Bruce Willis nor Clint Eastwood, I hasten to add, will be involved in any putative …

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Transit of Mercury: The Movie

I think it’s probably impossible for us to truly understand the size of a star, even an ordinary, not particularly big star like our sun. Check out this page from NASA with images from the recent transit of Mercury across the face of the sun. In particular, take time to download the movie. Watch the …

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Apollo 11’s 35th anniversary

It’s hard to believe, for those of us of a certain age, but July 20 marked the 35th anniversary of the first manned moon landing (and, as it happens, the 35th anniversary of my 10th birthday, in case you’re wondering just what “a certain age” is). In January, President George W. Bush called for the …

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Farewell to Pioneer 10

This week, we bid farewell to a true pioneer: Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to leave our solar system. NASA last received a signal from Pioneer 10 on January 22. A February attempt failed, and last week NASA announced there would be no more attempts. That final faint signal traveled more than 12 billion kilometers—a …

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Space: what’s NExT?

I’m a child of the Space Age, born a year and a half after Sputnik. Apollo 11 landed on the moon on my 10th birthday; Viking landed on Mars on my 17th. There is no doubt in my mind that if the human race is to survive, we must move out into space, to make …

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