2014年10月31日 星期五

Milky Way over Devils Tower



A mysterious formation known as Devils Tower rises into the dark above northeastern Wyoming's prairie landscape in this 16 frame panoramic view. Seen against the night sky's thin, pale clouds and eerie green airglow, star clusters and nebulae of the Milky Way arc toward the galaxy's central realm at right. Of course the scene contains the Milky Way's own haunting and grisly visages of halloween, including ghosts, a flaming skull, a glowing eye and a witch's broom. To find them, slide your cursor over the picture or just follow this link, if you dare. And have a safe and Happy Halloween! via NASA http://ift.tt/1zPvpcL

SpaceShipTwo Reactions

- SNC Statement in Response to Inquiries Regarding Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Incident - Space Frontier Foundation Mourns This Week's Events Involving SpaceShipTwo and Orb-3 - Media Update from Virgin Galactic - Oct. 31, 2014 6:15PM PST - Statement from New...



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And Today's Space Ambulance Chaser Award Goes To ...

.@spacecom - Doug Messier - is already back at his favorite sport: dumping on @virgingalactic - hours after a fatal accident. What a creep.— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) November 1, 2014...



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Chang'e 5 test vehicle "Xiaofei" lands successfully

The Chang'e 5 test vehicle landed successfully in Inner Mongolia today after an 8-day mission. It demonstrated technology that China plans to use for automated sample return by the Chang'e 5 mission in 2017.



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Statement from NASA Administrator on Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Mishap

“On behalf of the entire NASA family, I offer our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the pilot lost in today’s accident involving Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, and we are praying for a speedy recovery of the other pilot."



October 31, 2014

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Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Destroyed in Accident

The private spaceflight company's spaceplane was destroyed in an accident over California's Mojave Desert.



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Virgin Galactic Experiences Serious Problem

#SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly. Additional info and statement forthcoming.— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) October 31, 2014 Energency crews report two on board, one survivor located.— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 31, 2014 One patient with moderate neck and back...



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The Art of Planetary Science

On October 17-19, 2014, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory on the University of Arizona campus hosted the second annual Art of Planetary Science exhibition. This exhibition featured works of art inspired by the solar system, alongside works by scientists created from their scientific data.



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NASA Program Enhances Climate Resilience at Agency Facilities

A new study in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society provides an in-depth look at how NASA facilities have been affected by climate extremes and climate change in recent years and how the agency is preparing for the future.



October 31, 2014

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Specular Spectacular



This near-infrared, color mosaic from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the sun glinting off of Titan's north polar seas. While Cassini has captured, separately, views of the polar seas (see PIA17470) and the sun glinting off of them (see PIA12481 and PIA18433) in the past, this is the first time both have been seen together in the same view. The sunglint, also called a specular reflection, is the bright area near the 11 o'clock position at upper left. This mirror-like reflection, known as the specular point, is in the south of Titan's largest sea, Kraken Mare, just north of an island archipelago separating two separate parts of the sea. This particular sunglint was so bright as to saturate the detector of Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument, which captures the view. It is also the sunglint seen with the highest observation elevation so far -- the sun was a full 40 degrees above the horizon as seen from Kraken Mare at this time -- much higher than the 22 degrees seen in PIA18433. Because it was so bright, this glint was visible through the haze at much lower wavelengths than before, down to 1.3 microns. The southern portion of Kraken Mare (the area surrounding the specular feature toward upper left) displays a "bathtub ring" -- a bright margin of evaporate deposits -- which indicates that the sea was larger at some point in the past and has become smaller due to evaporation. The deposits are material left behind after the methane & ethane liquid evaporates, somewhat akin to the saline crust on a salt flat. The highest resolution data from this flyby -- the area seen immediately to the right of the sunglint -- cover the labyrinth of channels that connect Kraken Mare to another large sea, Ligeia Mare. Ligeia Mare itself is partially covered in its northern reaches by a bright, arrow-shaped complex of clouds. The clouds are made of liquid methane droplets, and could be actively refilling the lakes with rainfall. The view was acquired during Cassini's August 21, 2014, flyby of Titan, also referred to as "T104" by the Cassini team. The view contains real color information, although it is not the natural color the human eye would see. Here, red in the image corresponds to 5.0 microns, green to 2.0 microns, and blue to 1.3 microns. These wavelengths correspond to atmospheric windows through which Titan's surface is visible. The unaided human eye would see nothing but haze, as in PIA12528. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The VIMS team is based at the University of Arizona in Tucson. More information about Cassini is available at http://ift.tt/ZjpQgB and http://ift.tt/Jcddhk. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho via NASA http://ift.tt/1s0kCnh

Happy Solarween!

Even the Sun is getting into the holiday spirit.


That image, taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on Oct. 8, 2014, shows places on the Sun where magnetic activity is high. In the far ultraviolet, the intense energies tossed around by these ridiculously strong magnetic fields can be seen, in contrast to more sedate areas. And, happily, on that date the Sun wound up looking like a giant pumpkin.


A pumpkin big enough to have over 100 Earths across its face, and well over a million needed to fill it up. If you want terrifying, then a star is a pretty decent way to go.


But if you do want more cosmic Halloweeny goodness, then you should go to my gallery of spooky star stuff, which has some honestly really cool and creepy shots in it. The Skull Flower gets me every time. This one of a ghostly chase scene embedded in a nebula is pretty funny, too.


Happy Halloween!






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2014年10月30日 星期四

A Spectre in the Eastern Veil



Frightening forms and scary faces are a mark of the Halloween season. They also haunt this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star. While the Veil is roughly circular in shape and covers nearly 3 degrees on the sky in the constellation Cygnus, this portion of the eastern Veil spans only 1/2 degree, about the apparent size of the Moon. That translates to 12 light-years at the Veil's estimated distance, a reassuring 1,400 light-years from planet Earth. In the composite of image data recorded through broad and narrow band filters, emission from hydrogen atoms in the remnant is shown in red with strong emission from oxygen atoms in blue-green hues. Of course, in the western part of the Veil lies another seasonal apparition, the Witch's Broom. via NASA http://ift.tt/1q1lTtw

A (Difficult) Day in the Solar System

On a bad day on the launch pad, some perspective.



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Looking at ORB-3 Antares Telemetry

Orbital's Statement Regarding Orb-3 Launch Mishap (UPDATE) "Telemetry data has been released to Orbital and our engineers presented a very quick look assessment to the Accident Investigation Board at the end of the day. It appears the Antares vehicle had...



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Beth Robinson Heads to ALPA

ALPA Names Dr. Elizabeth Robinson as Its New Chief Financial Officer "Today, the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) announced that Elizabeth Robinson, PhD, will be joining the Association as director of Finance and chief financial officer (CFO) on November...



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LightSail Vibration Test Shakes Loose New Problems

LightSail's random vibration test, meant to simulate the stress of an Atlas V rocket launch, shook loose new problems that the team will have to address.



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Haven't I Seen That Spacecraft Before?

Keith's note: I was immediately struck by the similarity of this image (much larger uncropped version) that Lockheed Martin released today of Orion and a shot from the iconic "2001: A Space Odyssey". Or maybe I am just thinking...



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Are New Russian Engines a Good Thing for an American Rocket?

Russia's Izvestia newspaper reports @OrbitalSciences picked Energomash's RD-193 engine as replacement for Antares' AJ-26.— Brian Berger (@Berger_SN) October 30, 2014...



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Are Old Engines Good For New Rockets?

40-Year-Old Russian Engine at Heart of Rocket Investigation "The thing to keep in mind in all this is that we don't know what caused the mishap," Cowing cautions. "We all saw the explosion at the bottom of the rocket, but...



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Fifteen Years of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory



This Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the Hydra A galaxy cluster was taken on Oct. 30, 1999, with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) in an observation that lasted about six hours. Hydra A is a galaxy cluster that is 840 million light years from Earth. The cluster gets its name from the strong radio source, Hydra A, that originates in a galaxy near the center of the cluster. Optical observations show a few hundred galaxies in the cluster. Chandra X-ray observations reveal a large cloud of hot gas that extends throughout the cluster. The gas cloud is several million light years across and has a temperature of about 40 million degrees in the outer parts decreasing to about 35 million degrees in the inner region. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched into space fifteen years ago aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Since its deployment on July 23, 1999, Chandra has helped revolutionize our understanding of the universe through its unrivaled X-ray vision. Chandra, one of NASA's current "Great Observatories," along with the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, is specially designed to detect X-ray emission from hot and energetic regions of the universe. Image Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO via NASA http://ift.tt/1DCG9ru

Hayabusa 2 nearly ready for launch: Photos from Tanegashima, and new artist's renderings

On October 27, JAXA provided media with an opportunity to view the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft at the Tanegashima space center, where it's making final preparations for launch. Koumei Shibata was there, and took several photos. And artist Go Miyazaki has shared several terrific new renderings of the spacecraft in flight.



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From the Moon to the Earth

Every now and again, a picture is returned from space that is so stunning it becomes an instant icon, a touchstone that defines what space travel is about.


The Chinese engineering lunar test mission Chang’e 5-T1 has sent home precisely such an image. It is stunning almost beyond words.


The Earth hangs like a white and blue bauble in the black of space, distant and heart-achingly beautiful. Much closer lies the Moon, gray and white and black, its more-unfamiliar far side facing the spacecraft as it rounds the world, preparing to head back to Earth. For just a fleeting moment I could have been convinced someone had added a photo of the planet Mercury here; the Moon’s obverse half is so strikingly different than the near side. The lack of dark maria (except for Mare Moscoviense to the upper left) makes the Moon look like every bit the alien world that it really is.


You can read more about this astonishing image, and see more like it, at the Planetary Society Blog.


As I gazed upon it, though, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it looked somehow familiar. Then it occurred to me: I have seen it before. I even remember the exact date: Sept. 13, 1999.


Life sometimes really does imitate art.


Tip o’ the commlink to Emily Lakdawalla.






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2014年10月29日 星期三

The Antares Accident: Who's Rocket Was It?

Despite some in the media declaring it a NASA rocket disaster, Antares represents a new way of doing business. It's owned by a private company providing a service to NASA to resupply the space station. How is this different from other rockets NASA uses?



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Iridescent Cloud Edge Over Colorado



Sometimes your eclipse viewing goes bad in an interesting way. While watching and photographing last Thursday's partial solar eclipse, a popular astronomy blogger suffered through long periods of clouds blocking the Sun. Unexpectedly, however, a nearby cloud began to show a rare effect: iridescence. Frequently part of a more familiar solar corona effect, iridescence is the diffraction of sunlight around a thin screen of nearly uniformly-sized water droplets. Different colors of the sunlight become deflected by slightly different angles and so come to the observer from slightly different directions. This display, featured here, was quite bright and exhibited an unusually broad range of colors. On the right, the contrails of an airplane are also visible. via NASA http://ift.tt/1tJ7ad5

Wallops Damage Report

Wallops Completes Initial Assessment after Orbital Launch Mishap "The Wallops Incident Response Team completed an initial assessment Wednesday of Wallops Island, Virginia, following the catastrophic failure of Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket shortly after liftoff Tuesday from Pad 0A of...



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NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Completes Initial Assessment after Orbital Launch Mishap

The Wallops Incident Response Team completed today an initial assessment of Wallops Island, Virginia, following the catastrophic failure of Orbital Science Corp.’s Antares rocket shortly after liftoff at 6:22 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Oct. 28, from Pad 0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.



October 29, 2014

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Asteroid Redirect Mission Critique

Human spaceflight: Find asteroids to get to Mars "Some options are better than others. The cost and complexity of human space exploration demands that each element be measured by its value towards the ultimate goal: Mars. But NASA's stated next...



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Sunrise From the International Space Station



NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman posted this image of a sunrise, captured from the International Space Station, to social media on Oct. 29, 2014. Wiseman wrote, "Not every day is easy. Today was a tough one." Wiseman was referring to the loss on Oct. 28 of the Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft, moments after launch at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The Cygnus spacecraft was filled with about 5,000 pounds of supplies slated for the International Space Station, including science experiments, experiment hardware, spare parts, and crew provisions. The station crew is in no danger of running out of food or other critical supplies. Image Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman via NASA http://ift.tt/1rAyUKd

ORB-3 Loss: Business Aftershocks

Rockets blow up; we move on, Leroy Chiao, CNN "Without a doubt, critics will arise and question why we are entrusting cargo deliveries and future crew exchanges to commercial companies. The answer is simple: It is the logical evolution of...



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The Warm Glow of Mach 3



The Flight Loads Laboratory at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center is celebrating 50 years. It sprang into existence during the era of the X-15 rocket plane and the YF-12 and SR-71 Blackbirds, and was dedicated to testing the latest in high-speed flight. In this image from 1971, the YF-12 forebody's radiant heating system is being tested at the Flight Loads Laboratory under conditions experienced at Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, over 2,000 miles an hour. Eventually the entire airframe was tested in the lab, always with the goal to collect data, validate parts and reduce risk to the aircraft and the pilots who flew them. Image credit: NASA Read More About the Flight Loads Laboratory Anniversary Read About Modern Aeronautics Testing in the Flight Loads Laboratory via NASA http://ift.tt/1zJyN90

2014年10月28日 星期二

Retrograde Mars



Why would Mars appear to move backwards? Most of the time, the apparent motion of Mars in Earth's sky is in one direction, slow but steady in front of the far distant stars. About every two years, however, the Earth passes Mars as they orbit around the Sun. During the most recent such pass starting late last year, Mars as usual, loomed large and bright. Also during this time, Mars appeared to move backwards in the sky, a phenomenon called retrograde motion. Featured here is a series of images digitally stacked so that all of the stars coincide. Here, Mars appears to trace out a narrow loop in the sky. At the center of the loop, Earth passed Mars and the retrograde motion was the highest. Retrograde motion can also be seen for other Solar System planets. via NASA http://ift.tt/1DV3Du8

NASA Statement Regarding Oct. 28 Orbital Sciences Corp. Launch Mishap

The following statement is from William Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, regarding the mishap that occurred at Pad 0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the attempted launch of Orbital Sciences Corp’s Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo spacecraft at 6:22 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28.



October 28, 2014

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Antares Rocket Explodes Seconds after Liftoff

An Antares rocket fell back to the launch pad shortly after liftoff, exploding into a fireball that appeared to destroy the vehicle.



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ORB-3 Antares Explodes Shortly After Launch

Marc's Note: There should be a NASA news conference this evening. As soon as we know when we'll let you know. NASA is currently providing ongoing TV coverage....



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NASA Wallops Preparations on Track for Tonight’s Orbital Sciences Launch to International Space Station

Ahead of the third U.S. commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station by Orbital Sciences Corp., NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia continues to enable successful launches from the Eastern Shore. Orbital’s Antares rocket carrying 5,000 pounds of NASA cargo aboard the company’s Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to liftoff at 6:22 p.m. EDT this evening from Pad 0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops.



October 28, 2014

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NASA Seeks Proposals to Develop Capabilities for Deep Space Exploration, Journey to Mars

NASA is soliciting proposals for concept studies or technology development projects that will be necessary to enable human pioneers to go to deep space destinations such as an asteroid and Mars.



October 28, 2014

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New Planetary Deep Drill Project

The Planetary Society has a futuristic new project: the Planetary Deep Drill with Honeybee Robotics to develop a prototype of a drill that could allow drilling hundreds of meters to even kilometers through planetary ices.



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Chang'e 5 T1 rounds the lunar farside, returns lovely photo of Earth and the Moon together

The Chang'e 5 test vehicle's short mission is more than half over. It has rounded the far side of the Moon and is on its way back to Earth for a planned October 31 test of lunar sample return technology. It's not a science mission -- it's an engineering mission -- but it has managed to return an absolutely iconic photo of its distant home, seen across the very unfamiliar far side of the Moon.



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Here’s Looking at You: Spooky Shadow Gives Jupiter a Giant Eye



This trick that the planet is looking back at you is actually a Hubble treat: An eerie, close-up view of Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system. Hubble was monitoring changes in Jupiter’s immense Great Red Spot (GRS) storm on April 21, 2014, when the shadow of the Jovian moon, Ganymede, swept across the center of the storm. This gave the giant planet the uncanny appearance of having a pupil in the center of a 10,000 mile-diameter “eye.” For a moment, Jupiter “stared” back at Hubble like a one-eyed giant Cyclops. Click on the image to view Jupiter from a distance. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) Caption: Ray Villard, Space Science Telescope Institute Acknowledgment: C. Go and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/here-s-looking-at-you-spooky-shadow-gives-jupiter-a-giant-eye

When Nixon Stopped Human Exploration

Society Board Member John Logsdon describes how the decisions made by Richard Nixon in late 1969 and early 1970 effectively ended human exploration beyond Earth orbit for the indefinite future.



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2014年10月27日 星期一

Plane, Clouds, Moon, Spots, Sun



What's that in front of the Sun? The closest object is an airplane, visible just below the Sun's center and caught purely by chance. Next out are numerous clouds in Earth's atmosphere, creating a series of darkened horizontal streaks. Farther out is Earth's Moon, seen as the large dark circular bite on the upper right. Just above the airplane and just below the Sun's surface are sunspots. The main sunspot group captured here, AR 2192, is one of the largest ever recorded and has been crackling and bursting with flares since it came around the edge of the Sun early last week. Taken last Thursday, this show of solar silhouettes was unfortunately short-lived. Within a few seconds the plane flew away. Within a few minutes the clouds drifted off. Within a few hours the partial solar eclipse of the Sun by the Moon was over. Only the sunspot group remains, but within a few more days even AR 2192 will disappear around the edge of the Sun. Fortunately, when it comes to the Sun, even unexpected alignments are surprisingly frequent. via NASA http://ift.tt/1oNEuOT

A feast of comet features from Rosetta at Churyumov-Gerasimenko

I have been horribly behind in posting images from Rosetta's exploration of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and that's a shame, because the spacecraft has lately been exploring the comet from a range of only 10 kilometers. From that range, the NavCam gets sub-meter resolution, and we're seeing a menagerie of odd surface features



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Wallops Launch Delayed By A Boat

Launch of Third Orbital Sciences Mission to Space Station Rescheduled; NASA TV Coverage Reset "The third Orbital Sciences cargo mission to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract is scheduled to launch at 6:22 p.m. EDT Tuesday,...



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Launch of Third Orbital Sciences Mission to Space Station Rescheduled; NASA TV Coverage Reset

The third Orbital Sciences cargo mission to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract is scheduled to launch at 6:22 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Oct. 28, from Pad 0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.



October 27, 2014

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NASA Awards Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Support Contract

NASA has awarded the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Support Contract to Science Systems and Applications, Inc., of Greenbelt, Maryland.



October 27, 2014

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NASA’S Chandra Observatory Identifies Impact of Cosmic Chaos on Star Birth

The same phenomenon that causes a bumpy airplane ride, turbulence, may be the solution to a long-standing mystery about stars’ birth, or the absence of it, according to a new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.



October 27, 2014

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Planetary Resources A3 Technology Demonstrator Spacecraft Set for Launch

Orbital ORB-3 Launch to Include Planetary Resources A3 Technology Demonstrator Spacecraft, SpaceRef Business "Today's launch of an Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket with the Cygnus cargo spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station will include the first hardware from commercial...



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Rosetta NAVCAM's Shades of Grey

What do “light” and “dark” mean for an object like Comet 67P/C-G? Here are some details on how Rosetta's NAVCAM images are taken and displayed to make a wide range of surface features possible.



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Another Dragon Returns from Space

Critical NASA Science Returns to Earth aboard SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft "SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft splashed down at 3:39 p.m. EDT Saturday, Oct. 25, in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 300 miles west of Baja California, returning 3,276 pounds of NASA cargo...



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NASA Administrator to Visit Marshall Space Flight Center; Talks Space Station Oct. 28

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will get a behind-the-scenes look at the science command post for the International Space Station when he visits NASA's Payload Operations Integration Center at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Oct. 28.



October 27, 2014

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Orbital Antares Rocket at the Launch Pad



The Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket, with the Cygnus spacecraft onboard, is seen on launch Pad-0A, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The Antares will launch with the Cygnus spacecraft filled with over 5,000 pounds of supplies for the International Space Station, including science experiments, experiment hardware, spare parts, and crew provisions. The Orbital-3 mission is Orbital Sciences' third contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Launch is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 27 at 6:45 p.m. EDT. > Latest: Orbital Launch Blog Image Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky via NASA http://ift.tt/1zzRTyz

Routine Commercial ISS Resupply Continues

Photo: Antares Rocket With Cygnus on Launch Pad at NASA Wallops Flight Facility Orbital Set to Launch Cargo Delivery Mission to International Space Station "Pending completion of final vehicle testing and acceptable local weather conditions, the launch of the Orb-3...



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An Ionized Flower Blooms in Space

Oh, do I love me some young stars throwing their weight around! Behold what happens when they do:


This photo was taken by “amateur” astronomer Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn, using a 20 cm Astro-Tech RC telescope, and is a total of nearly nine hours of exposure through various filters.


What it shows is the famed Cocoon Nebula, also called IC 5146. What you’re seeing is actually a cluster of young stars called Collinder 470, which is roughly 2500 light years away. And I do mean young; the bright star in the center of the nebula is only about 100,000 years old. Compare that to the Sun’s 4,560,000,000 years, and you’ll understand why these stars are mere whippersnappers*.


Stars form from clouds of gas and dust, and there are both in plenty here. The dark dust is strewn everywhere in this picture; you can see it as gray or black diffuse clouds. Note that where it lies, swaths of stars appear red; dust scatters away or absorbs blue light, letting only red light through. Most of the stars you see glowing ruddily in the dust are literally in that dust, or behind it.


But the bloom of the rose in this photo is obviously the bright pink nebula itself. The star in the center, called BD+46°3474, is a hot, massive B-type star. It’s a beast, five times the diameter of the Sun, 15 times its mass, and a brutal 20,000 times as luminous. Replace the Sun with BD+46 and the Earth would be a smoking ruin.


The power of a star like this can profoundly affect its environment. In this case, the star is embedded in a molecular cloud, a huge, dense clump of cold material — in this case, several hundred times the mass of the Sun worth of material. BD+46 was near the edge of the cloud, and when the star was born, its fierce light and energy inflated the cloud, created a blister in the side, and then blew it out entirely. What’s left is a cavity carved out of the side of the dense cloud filled with much lower density gas. The hydrogen gas inside the cavity glows characteristically red/pink, lit up literally like a neon sign.


At first I thought this might be a Strömgren sphere: a lone gas cloud in space lit by a star within. The edge of such a sphere is defined by where the starlight gets too weak to make the gas glow. But those tend to have sharper edges than what we see here, and clearly the Cocoon has fuzzy edges. That implies the gas is interacting with denser material, which is what you expect from a blowout in the side of the cloud. In this sense, it’s much like the Orion nebula, though on a somewhat smaller scale.


Gorgeous, isn’t it? If you like it, you should check out more of Hepburn’s work. She’s quite gifted, and has an amazing array of photos on her site.


* Get off my galaxy! <shakes fist>






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2014年10月26日 星期日

Too Close to a Black Hole



What would you see if you went right up to a black hole? Featured is a computer generated image highlighting how strange things would look. The black hole has such strong gravity that light is noticeably bent towards it - causing some very unusual visual distortions. Every star in the normal frame has at least two bright images - one on each side of the black hole. Near the black hole, you can see the whole sky - light from every direction is bent around and comes back to you. The original background map was taken from the 2MASS infrared sky survey, with stars from the Henry Draper catalog superposed. Black holes are thought to be the densest state of matter, and there is indirect evidence for their presence in stellar binary systems and the centers of globular clusters, galaxies, and quasars. via NASA http://ift.tt/1t4wS8Q

Antares Rocket at Sunrise



The Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket, with the Cygnus spacecraft onboard, is seen on launch Pad-0A during sunrise, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The Antares will launch with the Cygnus spacecraft filled with over 5,000 pounds of supplies for the International Space Station, including science experiments, experiment hardware, spare parts, and crew provisions. The Orbital-3 mission is Orbital Sciences' third contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Launch is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 27 at 6:45 p.m. EDT.Image Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky via NASA http://ift.tt/1zw8Auu

2014年10月25日 星期六

Sunspots and Solar Eclipse



A New Moon joined giant sunspot group AR 2192 to dim the bright solar disk during Thursday's much anticipated partial solar eclipse. Visible from much of North America, the Moon's broad silhouette is captured in this extreme telephoto snapshot near eclipse maximum from Santa Cruz, California. About the size of Jupiter, the remarkable AR 2192 itself darkens a noticeable fraction of the Sun, near center and below the curved lunar limb. As the sunspot group slowly rotates across the Sun and out of view in the coming days its activity is difficult to forecast. But the timing of solar eclipses is easier to predict. The next will be a total solar eclipse on March 20, 2015. via NASA http://ift.tt/1skb2KM

Critical NASA Science Returns to Earth aboard SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft

SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft splashed down at 3:39 p.m. EDT Saturday, Oct. 25, in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 300 miles west of Baja California, returning 3,276 pounds of NASA cargo and science samples from the International Space Station (ISS).



October 25, 2014

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2014年10月24日 星期五

AR 2192: Giant on the Sun



As you (safely!) watched the progress of yesterday's partial solar eclipse, you probably also spotted a giant sunspot group. Captured in this sharp telescopic image from October 22nd the complex AR 2192 is beautiful to see, a sprawling solar active region comparable in size to the diameter of Jupiter. Like other smaller sunspot groups, AR 2192 is now crossing the Earth-facing side of the Sun and appears dark in visible light because it is cooler than the surrounding surface. Still, the energy stored in the region's twisted magnetic fields is enormous and has already generated powerful explosions, including two X-class solar flares this week. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) associated with the flares have not affected planet Earth, so far. The forecast for further activity from AR 2192 is still significant though, as it swings across the center of the solar disk and Earth-directed CMEs become possible. via NASA http://ift.tt/1tPQWQ6

NASA Hosts First Agency-wide Social Media Event for Orion’s First Flight Test

NASA invites social media followers to apply for credentials to get a preview of the Orion spacecraft’s first flight test during NASA Social events Dec. 3 at each of its 10 centers.



October 24, 2014

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NASA Media Accreditation Opens for Launch of Next SpaceX Station Resupply Mission

Media accreditation is open for the launch of NASA's next commercial cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station.



October 24, 2014

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Surveyor Digitization Project Will Bring Thousands of Unseen Lunar Images to Light

A team of scientists at the University of Arizona plan to digitize 87,000 vintage images from the surface of the moon, of which less than two percent have ever been seen.



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NASA Seeks Ultra-lightweight Materials to Help Enable Journey to Mars

NASA is seeking proposals to develop and manufacture ultra-lightweight materials for aerospace vehicles and structures of the future. Proposals will demonstrate lower-mass alternatives to honeycomb or foam cores currently used in composite sandwich structures.



October 24, 2014

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NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly Shares Bullying Prevention Message Ahead of His One-Year Mission

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who is scheduled to fly on a one-year spaceflight mission in 2015, is lending his voice to help reduce childhood bullying. As part of Bullying Prevention Awareness Month, Kelly recorded a special message encouraging bystanders to take action.



October 24, 2014

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Problems With STEREO Behind Spacecraft

STEREO Behind Spacecraft Experiencing Communication Problems "Communications with the STEREO Behind spacecraft were interrupted on October 1, immediately after a planned reset of the spacecraft performed as part of a test of solar conjunction operations. The cause of the anomaly...



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ISS Daily Summary Report – 10/23/14

Muscle Atrophy Resistive Exercise System (MARES): Gerst configured cabling, set up and activated the European Physiology Module (EPM) laptop in support of future MARES activities scheduled for later this year. Ocular Health: Gerst conducted his Return minus 30 day Ocular Health tests. With Wiseman as the Crew Medical Officer (CMO) operator, the ultrasonic eye imaging […]



October 24, 2014 at 12:42AM

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Gallery: The Partial Solar Eclipse of October 2014

Yesterday was the last solar eclipse the US will see until August 2017. This was a partial eclipse, so the Sun wasn’t completely blocked by the Moon, but it was still a lot of fun. Judging by my Facebook and Twitter feeds, a lot of folks watched this eclipse and took pictures. I was out on my porch taking shots, too – well over a hundred, though only a few came out.


Some people had far better circumstances than I did, though. I asked for them to send me pictures, and I got a lot! Here are just a few of the ones I received… and I threw in one I took as well. You’ll see why.


All photos below used by permission.


Why not start things off with a classic? Craig Ruff took this shot in Table Mesa using a 10 cm telescope. The detail is great; you can see the brain-grindingly huge sunspot group AR 2192 looming in the middle of the Sun’s face as the Moon blocks a big chunk of solar real estate.


Edward Plumer got an unusual view using an H-alpha filter, which lets through light form warm hydrogen. This accentuates the twisted magnetic fields of the Sun, and you can see a huge filament lying across the Sun like a scar. Compare the visible light image on the left with what you can see using the filter, and you can understand why astronomers like to see things in as many different ways as possible.


Astronomer Alex Parker took this wonderful shot as Sun set behind the iconic Boulder Flatirons. He said it was a syzygy, an alignment of three objects: The Sun, the Moon, and the Earth itself blocking the Sun as it set.


Astronomer and friend Emily Lakdawalla knew that one part of her house creates a spectrum when sunlight hits it. Sure enough, when the Sun was in the right spot, it threw out this amazing multiple-colored eclipse rainbow. I like how each color is a complete (if somewhat distorted) image of the Sun. I used to work with spectra like this back in my Hubble days… though I never observed the Sun with it.


But I have to add Hubble did observe the Sun, exactly once.


For most of the US, the eclipse happened in the late afternoon, so the Sun set mid-eclipse for a lot of people. Bob Robinson caught it between clouds, illuminating the sky is a glorious red. I like how the foreground is silhouetted, including the tower on the left.


I asked for clever photos, ones you might not expect, and Jonathan Albright delivered: he used binoculars to project the Sun, and it was low enough that his shadow made a cameo in the photo as well.


Sometimes you just get lucky: Doyle Sliff was shooting photos of the eclipse when an airplane made an unexpected appearance. It’s about the same apparent size as the sunspot… but in reality the sunspot is well over ten million times bigger.


And why not: I’ll wrap this up with a shot I took myself. The beginning and end of the eclipse were clear here, but the long middle was cloudy. I waited patiently, then less patiently… and was rewarded when the clouds thinned a bit. I think they added a lot of drama to the picture, especially with the airplane contrail across the bottom. It goes to show you that astronomy (and photography, and especially the two together) is sometimes a waiting game. It’s worth trying, even when it seems like the odds are hopelessly stacked against you.


If there’s a life metaphor to take from that, well, feel free to find it. But patience is something we’ll all need to see the next eclipse around these parts. I’m very much looking forward to it… since it may very well be the very first total solar eclipse I’ll have ever seen.


I think I’ve been patient long enough.






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2014年10月23日 星期四

Galaxies in Pegasus



This wide, sharp telescopic view reveals galaxies scattered beyond the stars and faint dust nebulae of the Milky Way at the northern boundary of the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Prominent at the upper right is NGC 7331. A mere 50 million light-years away, the large spiral is one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog. The disturbed looking group of galaxies at the lower left is well-known as Stephan's Quintet. About 300 million light-years distant, the quintet dramatically illustrates a multiple galaxy collision, its powerful, ongoing interactions posed for a brief cosmic snapshot. On the sky, the quintet and NGC 7331 are separated by about half a degree. via NASA http://ift.tt/1mZrII2

GSA 2014: The puzzle of Gale crater's basaltic sedimentary rocks

At the Geological Society of America conference this week, Curiosity scientists dug into the geology of Gale crater and shared puzzling results about the nature of the rocks that the rover has found there.



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Critique of OIG Review of SMD Mission Extension Process

Letter From Clive Neal to NASA Inspector General Regarding NASA SMD Mission Extension Process Report "I am writing this open letter with regard to the Inspector General Report No. IG-15- 001 (hereafter "IG-Report") regarding the Science Mission Directorate's (SMD) Mission...



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CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: COMET SIDING SPRING SEEN NEXT TO MARS

This composite NASA Hubble Space Telescope Image captures the positions of comet Siding Spring and Mars in a never-before-seen close passage of a comet by the Red Planet.



October 23, 2014

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OIG Report on KSC Commercial Space Activities

NASA's Launch Support and Infrastructure Modernization: Commercial Space Launch Activities at Kennedy Space Center, NASA OIG "We found Kennedy has made progress in its effort to become a multiuser spaceport with the Center having leased or in the process of...



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China to launch test mission for Chang'e 5 program today

No description available



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SpaceX Milestone - 100th Merlin 1D Engine Completed

SpaceX Reaches Milestone With 100th Merlin 1D Engine, SpaceRef Business "The 100th Merlin 1D engine has come off the assembly at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. According to SpaceX it was less than two years ago that production began on...



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Our Solar System and Galaxy … Seen by an Astronaut

First off, let’s get this straight: If you use Twitter, you should be following space station astronaut Reid Wiseman. He posts amazing photos all the time, and your life will be the better for it.


For example, on Sept. 28, while orbiting over the Sahara Desert, he took this stunning photo:


If that doesn’t take your breath away, then please, give me a moment to explain what you’re seeing.


The sky is dominated by the glow of the Milky Way, the combined might of billions of stars, faded only by the terrible distances of interstellar space. Our galaxy is shaped like a great, flat disk, 100,000 light-years across, with a central spherical hub of stars swelling out from the middle. Wiseman was facing in this direction when he took this photograph, so the hub can be seen bulging out in the center.


The dark lanes, filigreed and branching away, are literally space dust, large grains of complex organic compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons—essentially soot. They litter the galaxy, strewn across it as stars are born, and as they die. The dust is opaque, so it blocks the light of stars behind it. You are literally seeing the silhouette of smoke blown out from the life cycle of stars, scattered across a million billion kilometers.


You can see a few clusters of stars, looking like fuzzy puffs here and there. There are also thousands of stars in the photo, including the bright red supergiant Antares, the heart of Scorpius, just to the right of the center of the picture. You may note it looks blurred; to get the fainter Milky Way in the photo, Wiseman had to take a time exposure. During the exposure the space station moved eight kilometers every second around the Earth. The stars streak a bit during that time.


Closer to home, the bright red dot next to Antares is Mars. Yes, the planet, where we humans have currently more than a half-dozen robots flying or roving over the surface.


Below that is the eerily lit and ruddily colored edge of the Earth. The Sahara Desert makes its hue known. The thin red and green glowing arc above the Earth’s limb is called airglow, and is due to complicated chemical processes occurring about 100 km over the surface, as molecules release the energy they absorbed from the Sun during the day.


Note that well: You can see the curve of the ground, the horizon, in the photo, and just how thin our atmosphere is from this vantage point. It’s a narrow, delicate, fragile shell surrounding us, and yet it allows all life to exist.


And that basic truth is belied by the framework of this photo: The space station itself, modules and docked spacecraft pointing to the fact that we have managed to leave this Earth, if only for a short distance and small span of time.


It’s not easy, this exploration of space, but we can do it. We have the intelligence, the ability, the imagination needed to see where it will take us. All we need is the will. I think we have that too, when we are at our best.


So. If that photo didn’t take your breath away when you first saw it, please take a second look. The whole Universe, our entire future, is framed in that picture, taken by a man who happened to be in the very right place at the very right time.






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2014年10月22日 星期三

Major Problem With NWS Satellite Data Continues

Weather Service stops receiving satellite data, issues notice about forecast quality, Washington Post "Since at least Tuesday, some satellite data - an important input to weather prediction models - has stopped flowing into the National Weather Service due to an...



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NASA Television Coverage Set for Orbital Resupply Mission to Space Station

Orbital Sciences Corp. will launch its next mission to resupply the International Space Station Monday, Oct. 27, and NASA Television will broadcast live coverage of the event, including pre- and post-launch briefings and arrival at the station.



October 22, 2014

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NASA Awards Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder for the Joint Polar Satellite System-2 Mission

NASA has awarded a sole source contract modification to Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, of Azusa, California, for the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) Instrument for flight on the Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2) mission.



October 22, 2014

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Congress Has Questions for NASA

Letter from House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology to NASA "On August 27, 2014, we wrote you to request an update on the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion crew vehicle shortly after NASA conducted its Key Decision...



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Sen. Coburn Is Very Confused About NASA's Budget

Coburn's 'Wastebook' Targets Include Mountain Lions, Sheep, Beer, Roll Call "NASA draws criticism in a few areas, with Coburn skeptical of the costs associated with the International Space Station itself, including the presence of experiments designed by students. "Some of...



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Herschel observations of Comet Siding Spring initiated by an amateur astronomer

The European satellite Herschel acquired images of Comet Siding Spring before its death in 2013 — thanks to an observing proposal from an amateur astronomer!



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NASA TV Broadcasts Space Station Cargo Ship Activities

NASA Television will broadcast live the departure of an unpiloted Russian cargo spacecraft from the International Space Station (ISS) Monday, Oct. 27, as well as the launch and docking of its replacement Wednesday, Oct. 29.



October 22, 2014

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Monster Sunspot Will Make Thursday’s Eclipse That Much Cooler

Right now, a truly ginormous sunspot is turning its baleful eye toward Earth.


The spot, called Active Region 2192, is a bit hard to wrap your brain around: Its dark core is easily big enough to swallow the Earth whole without it even coming close to touching the sides, and the whole region is several times larger than that, easily more than 100,000 kilometers across. It’s the biggest sunspot we’ve seen this solar cycle (bigger than one I reported on in January that was also huge).


It’s feisty, too, having blown off a series of moderate M-class solar flares recently, and one that edged into X-class. We’re expecting more from it as well, so stay tuned to SpaceWeather.com, SpaceWeatherLive.com, and Realtime Flares on Twitter for up-to-the-moment news about any big eruptions. [Update (Oct. 22 at 15:00 UTC): Yup. AR 2192 blew off an X1.6 flare at 14:00 UTC today.]


When I saw pictures of it a couple of days ago, I knew it would be big enough to see without binoculars or a telescope. Using just my solar viewing glasses (which are rated safe to use to view the Sun; see here for more) I easily saw the sunspot with my own eyes as a black blemish near the Sun’s edge. Holy wow!


I decided to try my hand at getting a shot of it. Sacrificing a pair of solar glasses, I rigged up a small filter for my camera, went outside, and got this:


Not bad! You can see AR 2192, as well as a few other spots (including the small one near the Sun’s edge that is visible in the SDO picture at the top of this post).


Clouds started rolling in, but far from being discouraged I figured that might actually make for a dramatic scene. I was right:


Nifty. And good practice; I want to make sure I’m ready for the partial solar eclipse tomorrow.


Speaking of which, let me repeat my call: If you get good and clever shots of the eclipse, please let me know! I want to post a gallery of a half-dozen or so. Make sure you tell me where you took them, what equipment you used, and whether they’re also online (so I can link to you).






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James Webb Space Telescope's Heart Survives Deep Freeze Test



After 116 days of being subjected to extremely frigid temperatures like that in space, the heart of the James Webb Space Telescope, the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) and its sensitive instruments, emerged unscathed from the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Webb telescope's images will reveal the first galaxies forming 13.5 billion years ago. The telescope will also pierce through interstellar dust clouds to capture stars and planets forming in our own galaxy. At the telescope's final destination in space, one million miles away from Earth, it will operate at incredibly cold temperatures of -387 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40 degrees Kelvin. This is 260 degrees Fahrenheit colder than any place on the Earth’s surface has ever been. To create temperatures that cold on Earth, the team uses the massive thermal vacuum chamber at Goddard called the Space Environment Simulator, or SES, that duplicates the vacuum and extreme temperatures of space. This 40-foot-tall, 27-foot-diameter cylindrical chamber eliminates the tiniest trace of air with vacuum pumps and uses liquid nitrogen and even colder liquid helium to drop the temperature simulating the space environment. The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. > More: NASA Webb's Heart Survives Deep Freeze Test Image Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn via NASA http://ift.tt/1yYhfoh

2014年10月21日 星期二

Hacked Kepler Continues to Amaze

Sun's stroke keeps Kepler online, Nature "Wiemer had fashioned a crutch for Kepler using the only resource available: sunlight. Positioned so that its long side faces the Sun, the spacecraft leans against the pressure created by the onslaught of photons...



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NASA Employees Really Like Working at NASA

NASA maintains lofty worker-satisfaction ratings for 2014, Washington Post "National Aeronautics and Space Administration employees remained largely satisfied with their agency this year, likely continuing the agency's trend of ranking among the best places to work in the federal government,...



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NASA OIG Report on NASA Travel

NASA OIG: Audit of NASA's Premium Air Travel "Generally, the 2 years of NASA premium-class travel we reviewed was properly authorized and complied with Federal and Agency travel policy. However, we identified four instances of premium travel that did not...



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2014年10月20日 星期一

Comet Siding Spring Passes Mars



Yesterday, a comet passed very close to Mars. In fact, Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) passed closer to the red planet than any comet has ever passed to Earth in recorded history. To take advantage of this unique opportunity to study the close interaction of a comet and a planet, humanity currently has five active spacecraft orbiting Mars: NASA's MAVEN, MRO, Mars Odyssey, as well as ESA's Mars Express, and India's Mars Orbiter. Most of these spacecraft have now sent back information that they have not been damaged by small pieces of the passing comet. These spacecraft, as well as the two active rovers on the Martian surface -- NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity -- have taken data and images that will be downloaded to Earth for weeks to come and likely studied for years to come. The featured image taken yesterday, however, was not taken from Mars but from Earth and shows Comet Siding Spring on the lower left as it passed Mars, on the upper right. via NASA http://ift.tt/11Um6sU

Ah, The Revolving Door in Washington

Key Senate NASA Staffer Moving on to Lockheed Martin, SpacePolicyOnline "Ann Zulkosky, the top Senate Democratic staffer dealing with NASA issues on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, is leaving to join Lockheed Martin. Zulkosky is a member of...



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When Good Rockets Go Bad: Orion's Launch Abort System

One of the tricky parts of launching humans into space is deciding what to do if something goes wrong. And that's where Orion's Launch Abort System comes in.



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Status update: All Mars missions fine after Siding Spring flyby

All seven Mars spacecraft are doing perfectly fine after comet Siding Spring's close encounter with Mars.



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Collaboration Between OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa-2

The University of Arizona (UA) hosted representatives of the Hayabusa-2 asteroid sample return mission to explore opportunities for collaboration with the OSIRIS-REx team.



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Extreme Ultraviolet Image of a Significant Solar Flare



The sun emitted a significant solar flare on Oct. 19, 2014, peaking at 1:01 a.m. EDT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is always observing the sun, captured this image of the event in extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 131 Angstroms – a wavelength that can see the intense heat of a flare and that is typically colorized in teal. This flare is classified as an X1.1-class flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 flare is twice as intense as an X1, and an X3 is three times as intense. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. > More: NASA's SDO Observes an X-class Solar Flare Image Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory via NASA http://ift.tt/1rXNFXo

Media Invited to Participate in Interactive Space Station Technology Forum

Media are invited to interact with NASA experts who will answer questions about technologies being demonstrated on the International Space Station (ISS) during "Destination Station: ISS Technology Forum" from 10 to 11 a.m. EDT (9 to 10 a.m. CDT) Monday, Oct. 27, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.



October 20, 2014

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NASA TV Coverage Set for U.S. Cargo Ship’s Departure from International Space Station

After delivering almost 5,000 pounds of supplies and experiments to the International Space Station during a month-long stay, the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is set to leave the orbital laboratory on Saturday, Oct. 25.



October 20, 2014

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JSC Is Abandoning NASA History

Keith's note: NASA JSC is shutting down its Media Research Center. The MRC employees, with more than a century of collective service stretching back to the Apollo era, are being laid off effective 22 October. The building that houses...



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Earth's Comet Hunting Blind Spot

Earth at risk after cuts close comet-spotting program, scientists warn, The Guardian "The Earth has been left with a huge blind spot for potentially devastating comet strikes after the only dedicated comet-spotting program in the southern hemisphere lost its funding,...



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2014年10月19日 星期日

Comet McNaught Over New Zealand



Comet McNaught was perhaps the most photogenic comet of modern times -- from Earth. After making quite a show in the northern hemisphere in early January of 2007, the comet moved south and developed a long and unusual dust tail that dazzled southern hemisphere observers. In late January 2007, Comet McNaught was captured between Mount Remarkable and Cecil Peak in this spectacular image taken from Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand. The bright comet dominates the right part of the above image, while the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy dominates the left. Careful inspection of the image will reveal a meteor streak just to the left of the comet. Today, Comet Siding Spring may become the most photogenic comet of modern times -- from Mars. via NASA http://ift.tt/1ohO7Fd

NASA's Mars Fleet Checks In

- NASA's Mars Odyssey Orbiter Watches Comet Fly Near - NASA's MAVEN Studies Passing Comet and Its Effects - NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Studies Comet Flyby...



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2014年10月18日 星期六

Melotte 15 in the Heart



Cosmic clouds form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. The clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula's newborn star cluster, Melotte 15. About 1.5 million years young, the cluster stars are toward the right in this colorful skyscape, along with dark dust clouds in silhouette against glowing atomic gas. A composite of narrowband and broadband telescopic images, the view spans about 30 light-years and includes emission from ionized hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms mapped to green, red, and blue hues in the popular Hubble Palette. Wider field images reveal that IC 1805's simpler, overall outline suggests its popular name - The Heart Nebula. IC 1805 is located about 7,500 light years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. via NASA http://ift.tt/1sSWBCx

2014年10月17日 星期五

Messier 6 and Comet Siding Spring



This looks like a near miss but the greenish coma and tail of Comet Siding Spring (C/2013 A1) are really 2,000 light-years or so away from the stars of open cluster Messier 6. They do appear close together though, along the same line-of-sight in this gorgeous October 9th skyscape toward the constellation Scorpius. Still, on Sunday, October 19th this comet really will be involved in a near miss, passing within only 139,500 kilometers of planet Mars. That's about 10 times closer than any known comet flyby of planet Earth, and nearly one third the Earth-Moon distance. While an impact with the nucleus is not a threat the comet's dust, moving with a speed of about 56 kilometers per second relative to the Red Planet, and outskirts of its gaseous coma could interact with the thin Martian atmosphere. Of course, the comet's close encounter will be followed intently by spacecraft in Martian orbit and rovers on the surface. via NASA http://ift.tt/1piHLQG

Watching Siding Spring's encounter with Mars

The nucleus of comet Siding Spring passes close by Mars on Sunday, October 19, at 18:32 UTC. Here are links to webcasts and websites that should have updates throughout the encounter.



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NASA Partners with Leading Technology Innovators to Enable Future Exploration

Recognizing that technology drives exploration, NASA has selected four teams of agency technologists for participation in the Early Career Initiative (ECI) pilot program. The program encourages creativity and innovation among early career NASA technologists by engaging them in hands-on technology development opportunities needed for future missions.



October 17, 2014

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Boeing Concludes Commercial Crew Space Act Agreement for CST-100/Atlas V

Boeing has successfully completed the final milestone of its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreement with NASA. The work and testing completed under the agreement resulted in significant maturation of Boeing’s crew transportation system, including the CST-100 spacecraft and Atlas V rocket.



October 17, 2014

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Curiosity update, sols 764-781: Work complete at Confidence Hills; puzzling arm issues

Curiosity spent a total of four weeks at Confidence Hills, feeding samples to SAM and CheMin several times. On two weekends during this period, the rover's activities were interrupted by faults with the robotic arm. Curiosity drove away from Confidence Hills on sol 780, and is ready to observe comet Siding Spring over the weekend.



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New Commercial Rocket Descent Data May Help NASA with Future Mars Landings

NASA successfully captured thermal images of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on its descent after it launched in September from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The data from these thermal images may provide critical engineering information for future missions to the surface of Mars.



October 17, 2014

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Figuratively Shiny: A Firefly Video

Firefly went off the air over a decade ago now*, but even with the movie Serenity there’s been a Mal-shaped hole in the hearts of fans, including me.


Perhaps now that cavity can be filled in a little bit. The company Lootcrate, with producer and director Julian Higgins, has created a fan-made short video called “The Verse”, about a different crew in the same universe as that of the good ship Serenity. Here’s the thing: It’s really, really good. Seriously. If you’re a Browncoat, you need to watch this right now.


See? Told ya. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Given the time span since the series ended, a reunion show seems pretty unlikely. But I could get into this new crew, I think. And hey, did I spy Vic Mignogna, who plays Jim Kirk in Star Trek Continues , another fan-made production? That must’ve been on purpose.


It’s pretty amazing what dedicated and talented fans can do. And we’re seeing more and better web series all the time, too. This Internet thing may just have a future to it.


* You kids get off my ‘verse!






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Literally Shiny: A Firefly Video

After living practically my whole life on the east coast, one of the things I didn’t count on when I moved west was the lack of fireflies. They were such a ubiquitous phenomenon, such a part of the environment, that it never occurred to me that they might not be everywhere in the States.


But they don’t live in California, where I lived for seven years, or in Colorado, which I’ve called home for the better part of a decade now. I miss them.


But it helps a lot to see this lovely time-lapse (kinda) video of fireflies, shot by Vincent Brady.


Nice. And he used a clever technique for some of the effects. A video is really just a series of still images played rapidly, fooling your brain in to seeing motion. Brady took thousands of still images and strung them together to make the video. For some, he let the frames fade in, linger, then fade out again. The end result is you see the light from the fireflies persist for a few seconds before dimming, with insects at all different distances creating a stop-motion-like dance.


Incidentally, the compound that generates the light is called luciferin (Lucifer was the mythological bringer of light), which is the same class of substrate used by dinoflagellates to glow. I spent an evening kayaking on a lake filled with such protists, and watching the blue sparks fly every time I put the oar in the water was magical.


Nature is amazing. It’s wonderful what happens if you take hydrogen, helium, and a splash of lithium, and let them mix for a few billion years.


Tip of the adenosine triphosphate to Boing Boing .






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2014年10月16日 星期四

Rosetta's Selfie



This Rosetta spacecraft selfie was snapped on October 7th. At the time the spacecraft was about 472 million kilometers from planet Earth, but only 16 kilometers from the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Looming beyond the spacecraft near the top of the frame, dust and gas stream away from the comet's curious double-lobed nucleus and bright sunlight glints off one of Rosetta's 14 meter long solar arrays. In fact, two exposures, one short and one long, were combined to record the dramatic high contrast scene using the CIVA camera system on Rosetta's still-attached Philae lander. Its chosen primary landing site is visible on the smaller lobe of the nucleus. This is the last image anticipated from Philae's cameras before the lander separates from Rosetta on November 12. Shortly after separation Philae will take another image looking back toward the orbiter, and begin its descent to the nucleus of the comet. via NASA http://ift.tt/1rwxZu2

White House Announces Dava Newman Nomination

President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts "Dr. Dava Newman, Nominee for Deputy Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Dr. Dava Newman is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She...



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NASA Begins Sixth Year of Airborne Antarctic Ice Change Study

NASA is carrying out its sixth consecutive year of Operation IceBridge research flights over Antarctica to study changes in the continent’s ice sheet, glaciers and sea ice. This year’s airborne campaign, which began its first flight Thursday morning, will revisit a section of the Antarctic ice sheet that recently was found to be in irreversible decline.



October 16, 2014

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NASA TV to Air Russian Spacewalk from International Space Station

NASA Television will broadcast live coverage of a six-hour spacewalk by two Russian crew members aboard the International Space Station beginning at 9 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 22.



October 16, 2014

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NASA Spacecraft Provides New Information About Sun’s Atmosphere

NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) has provided scientists with five new findings into how the sun’s atmosphere, or corona, is heated far hotter than its surface, what causes the sun’s constant outflow of particles called the solar wind, and what mechanisms accelerate particles that power solar flares.



October 16, 2014

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NASA’s Hubble Finds Extremely Distant Galaxy through Cosmic Magnifying Glass

Peering through a giant cosmic magnifying glass, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a tiny, faint galaxy -- one of the farthest galaxies ever seen. The diminutive object is estimated to be more than 13 billion light-years away.



October 16, 2014

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Ice to See You

The last place in the solar system you’d expect to find ice (except maybe on the Sun, duh) is Mercury. Rocky, barren, airless, and very, very hot, Mercury doesn’t sound like the ideal location for storing vast quantities of frozen water.


But in the 1990s evidence started coming in that perhaps Mercury was holding a surprise. At its north pole are deep craters, and because of their high latitude the low Sun never reaches the crater floors. They’re permanently dark, and because of that they’re very cold. Cold enough to hold on to any water that might have found its way there (presumably through water-bearing asteroid and comet impacts).


The first evidence was from radar observations; those craters were found to be very radar-reflective, which suggested ice, though other materials were possible. But over the years more clues arrived, and when the MESSENGER spacecraft began orbiting the tiny world, the idea of polar water got kick-started. Neutrons were reflected from the crater floors, which indicated the presence of hydrogen (water molecules have two hydrogen atoms each, and are very good at reflecting incoming neutrons). MESSENGER has an infrared laser altimeter on board (it uses timing of pulses of light to measure its height off the surface and get topological data), and the craters were again found to be very reflective, which is consistent with ice.


And now we have further, very striking data: Pictures taken of the floor of the crater Prokofiev* show that some of the surface itself is a bit brighter, a bit shinier, than surrounding material. Not only that, but the brighter regions correspond extremely well with what has been found before.


The picture here shows the data. The upper left (A) is from radar observations; the blue circle is the crater rim, the red region is where it’s permanently shadowed — the Sun never shines there — and the yellow is where the radar reflections were brighter than normal. The bottom left (B) shows where the laser altimeter found unusually bright material. On the right (C and D) are the images taken by MESSENGER’s visible light camera. They are the same area and have the same orientation, but were taken when the Sun was shining from different directions. The brighter landscape there is clearly visible on the right, and as you can see matches the other observations right on the nose.


The scientists found similar results in other craters even farther north on Mercury (Prokofiev is about 5° south of the north pole, and is 112 km (70 miles) across). The amount of ice estimated to be trapped in the floors of these craters is 10 billion to one trillion tons; a huge amount. As the paper points out, that’s about the volume of Lake Ontario.


Personally, I find this to be pretty convincing. It's not a 100% lock, but the evidence is getting to be pretty hard to deny.


The ice is likely to be young, too. Impacts, ultraviolet light breaking down the molecules, and other weathering could darken, bury, or eradicate the ice on a timescale of tens or hundreds of millions of years, so it’s likely this deposit hasn’t been around since the early solar system (astronomers define "young" differently than normal humans).


In practical terms, I have a hard time seeing us sending folks to Mercury, setting up a base at its poles, and taking long hot baths using native water any time soon. But this shows that even now, with our huge telescopes, advanced hardware, and robot probes peeking and poking into every corner of the solar system, there’s still a lot to learn about our neighborhood, and a whole lot of surprises waiting to be unwrapped.


We also have similar evidence of water at the Moon’s poles, too, buried under and mixed into the rock at the floors of eternally-darkened craters. I don’t have a hard time seeing us going there at all. There could be enough water on the Moon to support a colony for quite some time. That is something I would very dearly love to know more about.


* Craters on Mercury are named after artists: composers, painters, writers, and so on. Sergei Prokovief was a Russian romantic composer, and one of my favorites; his Fifth Symphony is an astonishing work. It pleases me that such an important discovery has been found in his namesake.






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Sierra Nevada's CCtCap Scorched Earth Policy

Sierra Nevada Files Suit To Reinstate Hold on Commercial Crew Contracts "In filings with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, Sierra Nevada filed requests for both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to overturn a NASA...



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Lockheed Martin Claims To Be in the Fusion Business Now

Lockheed Martin Pursuing Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor Concept (with video) Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details, Aviation Week "I studied this in graduate school where, under a NASA study, I was charged with how we could get to Mars...



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2014年10月15日 星期三

Mysterious Changing feature on Titan



What is that changing object in a cold hydrocarbon sea of Titan? Radar images from the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn have been recording the surface of the cloud-engulfed moon Titan for years. When imaging the flat -- and hence radar dark -- surface of the methane and ethane lake called Ligeia Mare, an object appeared in 2013 just was not there in 2007. Subsequent observations in 2014 found the object remained -- but had changed! The featured image shows how the 20-km long object has appeared and evolved. Current origin speculative explanations include bubbling foam and floating solids, but no one is sure. Future observations may either resolve the enigma or open up more speculation. via NASA http://ift.tt/1sJMQI0

As Deadlines Loom, LightSail Bends but Doesn't Break

The Planetary Society's LightSail-A spacecraft is close to completing a final series of tests that pave the way for a possible 2015 test flight. But as deadlines loom, a new problem has sent the team scrambling to make a quick repair.



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NASA Soil Moisture Mapper Arrives at Launch Site

A NASA spacecraft designed to track Earth's water in one of its most important, but least recognized forms -- soil moisture -- now is at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, to begin final preparations for launch in January.



October 15, 2014

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Finally! New Horizons has a second target

What a huge relief: there is finally a place for New Horizons to visit beyond Pluto. A team of researchers led by John Spencer has discovered three possible targets, all in the Cold Classical part of the Kuiper belt. One is particularly easy to reach. New Horizons would fly past the 30-45-kilometer object in January 2019.



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NASA’s Hubble Telescope Finds Potential Kuiper Belt Targets for New Horizons Pluto Mission

Peering out to the dim, outer reaches of our solar system, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered three Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) the agency’s New Horizons spacecraft could potentially visit after it flies by Pluto in July 2015.



October 15, 2014

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Evidence for Evolution, Stated Clearly

Here at BA Central, we’re* big supporters of evidence-based reality and using science as a way to collect and weigh that evidence.


The problem is that a lot of science isn’t well understood by the public for a large number of reasons; some folks blame the education system, which certainly has issues, though perhaps a much larger and more endemic problem is ideology, which gets into your brain and acts like a bouncer at a bar, only letting through ideas that are on a preconceived checklist.


Evolution is an obvious example. Despite being one of the fundamental bases for all of modern biology (along with things like molecular biology, genetics, and so on), it is routinely and falsely attacked by many. A lot of scientists and science communicators scratch their heads over that; what’s hard for us on this side of reality to understand is how anyone can ignore the vast mountains of evidence supporting evolution.


My friend Zach Weiner put his finger right on it, in my opinion, when he wrote this:


I think that’s it; the folks who don’t “believe” in evolution are the ones disseminating a weird, wrong, strawman version of it.


While there’s not a huge amount I can do about that, what I can do is try to make correct, easy-to-understand information about evolution available. I’ve done it before and it seemed to work out well.


So I’m pleased to send y’all to a great website called “Stated Clearly,” where artist and science communicator Jon Perry has created a series of wonderful videos where information about and evidence for evolution is, well, stated clearly.


The video “What Is the Evidence for Evolution?” is fantastic. It’s simple without being oversimplified, and it gives clear examples that can be followed easily even if you’re not all that familiar with the science.


That last part is critical, because, as Zach pointed out, the ones fighting tooth and nail against evolution are almost assuredly not that familiar with it. If they were, we wouldn’t be spending our time defending evolution. We’d be spending more money investigating it.


Perry has assembled quite a team to create these videos (including, I was pleased to see, Rosemary Mosco, a field naturalist, science communicator, and friend-of-a-friend). There are articles there as well expounding further on some of the themes.


The evidence video was sponsored wholly through Kickstarter, which is great, since it costs a fair bit to put together something like this. If you have any extra filthy lucre lying around, you should consider throwing it their way. They’ll have merchandise soon, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for that. I want a shirt of Darwin riding an Archaeopteryx.


Tip o’ the telomere to Raw Story.


* I’m






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Field Report from Mars: Sol 3808 — October 10, 2014

Opportunity will become a comet flyby mission beginning in mid-October. The comet Siding Spring will zoom past Mars at a distance of about 135,000 km on October 19.



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Shana Dale Lands at FAA AST

Shana Dale Joins FAA Commercial Space Office as Deputy AA, Space Policy Online "Shana Dale will become Deputy Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as of November 3, 2014. She succeeds George Zamka...



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Wiseman and Wilmore Spacewalk Preparations



Flight Engineers Reid Wiseman and Barry Wilmore spent most of the day on Tuesday, Oct. 14 completing preparations for their 6 ½-hour Oct. 15 spacewalk. The two astronauts set up their spacesuits and tools in the equipment lock of the Quest airlock. Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, who is coordinating spacewalk activities from inside the station, joined Wiseman and Wilmore for a review of spacewalk procedures. During today’s spacewalk, the astronauts will venture out to the starboard truss of the station to remove and replace a power regulator known as a sequential shunt unit, which failed back in mid-May. The two spacewalkers also will move TV and camera equipment in preparation for the relocation of the Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module to accommodate the installation of new docking adapters for future commercial crew vehicles. This photo was taken on Oct. 1, 2014. Image Credit: NASA via NASA http://ift.tt/1rbUjJo

2014年10月14日 星期二

Auroral Corona over Norway



Higher than the highest mountain lies the realm of the aurora. Auroras rarely reach below 60 kilometers, and can range up to 1000 kilometers. Aurora light results from energetic electrons and protons striking atoms and molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. Somewhat uncommon, an auroral corona appears as a center point for a surrounding display and may occur when an aurora develops directly overhead, or when auroral rays are pointed nearly toward the observer. This picturesque but brief green and purple aurora exhibition occurred last month high above Kvaløya, Tromsø, Norway. The Sessøyfjorden fjord runs through the foreground, while numerous stars are visible far in the distance. via NASA http://ift.tt/1vpkEeB

Phobos over Mars

Today the Mars Orbiter Mission released a nice four-image animation of teeny dark Phobos crossing Mars' huge orange disk. Mars Orbiter Mission joins a long line of Mars missions that have produced images of Mars and Phobos together.



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NASA Mission Provides Its First Look at Martian Upper Atmosphere

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft has provided scientists their first look at a storm of energetic solar particles at Mars, produced unprecedented ultraviolet images of the tenuous oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon coronas surrounding the Red Planet, and yielded a comprehensive map of highly-variable ozone in the atmosphere underlying the coronas.



October 14, 2014

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Printing Our Way Across The Solar System

Bootstrapping a Solar System Civilization, OSTP "There's interest outside government as well, with various private companies that see a potential business in mining of asteroids and celestial objects for use in space. Recently, I caught up Dr. Phillip Metzger, a...



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Why Sierra Nevada Did Not Win Any Commercial Crew Funds

Why NASA Rejected Sierra Nevada's Commercial Crew Vehicle, Aviation Week "The internal document, signed by NASA Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier on Sept. 15, the day before the contract awards were announced, says, "I consider SNC's (Sierra Nevada Corp.) design to...



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Self-Portrait 10 Miles from a Comet

Holy Periodic Comet Photos! Check. This. Out!


That is a self-portrait taken by the Philae landing craft onboard the Rosetta space probe, when they were just 16 km (10 miles) from the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. You can see the side of Rosetta on the left, and the solar panel that’s keeping it powered on the right.


And at the top is the comet itself, magnificent and moody in this high-contrast grayscale composite (two images were combined so that both the spacecraft and comet were exposed well). You can even see a jet emanating from the comet, a stream of gas blown out as ice is hit and warmed by sunlight. Stunning.


Rosetta is nosing closer to the comet, and will release the Philae lander in a few weeks. On Nov. 12, the probe will touch down on the surface of the comet, a milestone in our exploration of space. Judging from the quality of this picture, what we will see on that day will be jaw-dropping.






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Stuck on the Rings



Like a drop of dew hanging on a leaf, Tethys appears to be stuck to the A and F rings from this perspective. Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across), like the ring particles, is composed primarily of ice. The gap in the A ring through which Tethys is visible is the Keeler gap, which is kept clear by the small moon Daphnis (not visible here). This view looks toward the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Tethys. North on Tethys is up and rotated 43 degrees to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2014. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 22 degrees. Image scale is 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://ift.tt/ZjpQgB and http://ift.tt/Jcddhk . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org . Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute via NASA http://ift.tt/11j90Fx