Somehow this simple comparison makes the moon landing seem so much more REAL on a human, experiential level. Brilliant move, NASA.
The map's gigantic - click here to view.
Kottke also has links to the moonwalks supered over a soccer pitch, and a movie backlot (for conspiracy-theorist types).
The Nobel-prize-winning physicist and bestselling author might be the heir to Richard Feynman, but can the guy catch a break here people?
He was one of the most vocal supporters of the Superconducting Supercollider, that big, bad Texan atom smasher that, had it been built, would have made the LHC look like its prison bitch.
We all know how THAT turned out.
Well, thanks to NASA, Weinberg must have deja vu these days. Read on.
Well, this is striking news: Space, apparently, has a peculiar scent all its own, according to a nose that would know — an astronaut on the International Space Station. I know, I know — huh? But International Space Station science officer Don Pettit swears that space bears a distinctive if somewhat ephemeral odor, a "pleasant sweet metallic sensation," like "sweet smelling welding fumes." Um, maybe I should just let him describe it in full:
Few people have experienced traveling into space. Even fewer have experienced the smell of space. Now this sounds strange, that a vacuum could have a smell and that a human being could live to smell that smell. It seems about as improbable as listening to sounds in space, yet space has a definite smell. Being creatures of an atmosphere, we can only smell space indirectly. Sort of like the way a pit viper smells by waving its tongue in the air and then pressing it to the roof of its mouth where sensors process the molecules that have been adsorbed onto the waggling appendage.
I had the pleasure of operating the airlock for two of my crewmates while they went on several space walks. Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn't quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces.
Continue reading 'Space has a smell; astronaut swears 'it wasn't me'' >
Two days ago, President Bush released his $17.6 NASA budget for FY09. There are a few notable points here: the Langley Research Center took a $92 million hit; Mars exploration has been pushed to the periphery with no new landings scheduled after the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory; and over $173 million has been earmarked for Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, restoring some money Congress cut from the $500 million program late last year.
Interestingly, this is the first year that NASA’s Constellation program has received more funding than the Space Shuttle, which will retire in September 2010. Though Constellation will receive an extra $6.5 billion by that time (directly from shuttle program coffers) the program won’t be operational until at least 2015, forcing NASA to rely on the Russians for access to the International Space Station in the interim.
Florida Senator Mel Martinez, for one, is aghast: “Relying on the Russians to put a person in space for us? C’mon, this is the United States of America!” Get ‘em Mel!
The gourmands at Discover enlisted Chicago Tribune food and wine critic Bill Daley to apply his silver palate to astronaut food in a bold effort to learn just what it's like to eat up in space. He encounters loads of freeze-dried crapola, to be sure, but a few meals actually left Daley positive impressions, including the aforementioned thermostabilized cranapple cobbler:
Fortunately, an all-American dessert came to the rescue. The thermostabilized cranapple cobbler was a homey thing, sort of like chunky pie filling looking for a crust. Roughly mashed apples were tossed with some cranberries, lots of sliced almonds, and cinnamon. It was ugly, but for once I wasn’t left feeling cheated about the portion size. The almonds really made the dessert by giving it some crunch, although the spicing needed more complexity and the apples could have been sturdier.
Other standouts included the shrimp cocktail (an astronaut fave) and the "lush but tangy" mango-orange drink. NASA's tea with lemon and sugar also won a few kudos from the man with the golden taste buds. Powdered tea with lemon and sugar also "tasted of home," but the rest of the offerings suffered by comparison.
OK, perhaps not, but even a baby cryptozoologist can spot Ol' Harry Henderson in the lower-left corner of this image taken by Spirit on the Martian surface.
How did Bigfoot get there? What does he subsist on, besides sub-surface frozen water and possible fossilized microbes? These are questions for hardier cryptozoologists than me.
I'm just glad he's getting out of the Pacific Northwest a bit more often.
ShuttleWatch: making something out of nothing
The Latest:
This won't come as any surprise to the Shuttle-haters in our midst, but those pesky ECO problems that scotched Atlantis's launch are nothing new. In fact, NASA officials are admitting they've likely NEVER worked correctly. Of course, that didn't stop a Florida congressman from introducing legislation to keep shuttles flying past their 2010 retirement.
The Details:
Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for space operations, says the ECO problems have "been hanging like a cloud over us for the last two years." But in emails obtained by Aviation Week & Space Technology, Wayne Hale, shuttle program manager, says "It seems to me likely that we have been flying the entire history of the shuttle program with a false sense of security and that we never had reliable protection from a [catastrophic] liquid hydrogen low-level engine cutoff." This means that swapping in another shuttle for Atlantis's mission is no longer an option.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. David Weldon (R-FL), "whose district is home to thousands of space workers," thinks keeping our spit-and-bailing-wire shuttle fleet in operation past 2010 (the date mandated by Pres. Bush to ground 'em for good) is better than lettin' them Russkies and Celestials git the jump on us with manned spaceflight.
For Your Cocktail Party:
This holiday season, while you’re waiting for Atlantis to launch, why not drop a line to the astronauts who will be decking the halls of the International Space Station? There’s a link at the right-hand side of this web page, where you can select, write and “stamp” one of four postcards to send to the crew members, who will literally be celebrating all over the world.
(Look carefully at this one – what do YOU see in the reflection off the astronaut’s mirrored helmet?)
To really personalize your greeting, choose someone to address your postcard to; you can read about some of them here.
Scroll down a little further on the page to watch Expedition 16’s official holiday message, just for you.
And in case you’re wondering, here’s how will they be celebrating the holidays:
Continue reading 'Felices Navidades, International Space Station' >
More news from the American Geophysical Union Meeting:
Last February, NASA launched the Themis mission, five satellites that loiter in the upper reaches of our atmosphere. The satellites take measurements that will help scientists figure out how space storms energize those dazzling light shows known as auroras. The first results are in.
From the AP story:
New data from NASA's Themis mission, a quintet of satellites launched this winter, found the energy comes from a stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun.
The energy is then abruptly released in the form of a shimmering display of lights, said principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California at Los Angeles.
Anyone who's let their eyes glaze over at the latest explanation of Dark Energy will appreciate this deliciously lucid flash presentation of the basics behind it.
Related:
What is Dark Matter?
There's lightning on Venus!
Hi-res NASA mission photos are amazing, vertigo-inducing
[Hubblesite via the always-excellent Bad Astronomy]
Welcome to ShuttleWatch, our new all-shuttle, all-the-time news update. From spacewalk crises to astronaut-taking-a-piss updates, this is your one-stop dock for all the latest shuttley happenings.
The Latest:
Woo hoo, we're launching! We're ready for anything! OK, how about... not launching? Try again tomorrow, y'all.
The Details:
Atlantis's launch was scrubbed because two of the four fuel sensors were saying the shuttle's liquid-hydrogen tank was empty, when it was really full. The seven-person crew's main mission is to install Columbus, the European Space Agency's long-delayed science lab, in the International Space Station. There are three spacewalks planned, and NASA is hoping to extend the mission from 11 days to 13.
For Your Cocktail Party:
Antarctica's Lake Vostok lies below 4 kilometers of ice, is 15 million years old, and may reveal new organisms that survive in total darkness and cold without sustenance from the sun. It also sounds like the perfect place for the base of an evil genius — I'm planning on looking into real estate promptly.
For five years,a joint team of Russian, American and French scientists have sought to core the ice around the lake, which provides a paleo-climatic record of at least 400,000 years, and maybe as much as a million years. Finally, scientists are now thawing ice segments cut from an 11,866-foot ice core drilled back in 1998. Scientists have been worried about contaminating the lake with microbes from the surface world, but they got around that problem by taking the core from 656 feet above the surface of the lake, two miles below the surface of Antarctica. The ice has since been stored at -35 degrees Celsius at the National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver, where I'm applying for a job tomorrow.
Everyone digs retro stuff. I haven't changed my pants for decades — yeah, they smell, but you just can't find acid-washed bellbottoms like these anymore. NASA is basically doing the same thing with their new Orion rocket missions, which will see the return of Apollo-style rockets and space capsules used to complete missions to the International Space Station and eventually the moon.
Rockets came back into fashion at NASA because they are safer and better-designed than the aging, disaster-prone shuttle fleet, and they have better long-range capability than shuttles. Still, it's more than just a matter of pulling the old Gemini out of the closet and Febrezing away that musty Gus Grissom smell:
"We could have already built up an early lunar outpost, or smaller ones at different places of interest," says NASA's administrator Michael Griffin. "Most of the next 15 years will be spent recreating capabilities we once had, and discarded."
Since it's been quite the audiovisual day from me, I just thought I'd cap it by sharing these impressive, hi-res photos of a recent NASA mission at the International Space Station. Takes me back to the days I used to float upside down in the neighborhood pool, training for my inevitable zero-g trip to space.
Continue reading 'Hi-res NASA mission photos are amazing, vertigo-inducing' >
Listen up, kids: It may start with a quick puff in the high-school bathroom, but before long you're jonesing for a nicotine fix right in the middle of a spacewalk. And in space, not even Joe Camel can hear you scream.
NASA imposed a ban on spacewalks this week after an astronaut reported smelling smoke in his suit during ground tests in Houston. There's been no evidence of a "combustion event" thus far, but engineers are running tests on the suit to determine if their are any dangerous generic flaws in the suit architecture.
"During the test, the astronaut smelled just a little bit of smoke," Dean said, adding that even a slight odor is cause for concern given the spacesuit's 100 percent oxygen environment. "They got the crew member out of there in less than a minute."
Today's 60 Second Science podcast is brought to you by Mark Burnett and the American public:
NASA Airs Real Reality TV Show
Full transcript after the jump...
Continue reading 'NASA Airs Real Reality TV Show [podcast]' >
Watch the video. Then watch it again. And again. And then, finally, look up as you say "Goodnight, Moon" and pray to god that the robot with a planned "launchable/releasable grappling hook" carrying payloads of up to 20 tons doesn't come for you in the night. Oh, and by the way, NASA plans to integrate a "useful "voice and gesture" command mode to enable suited astronauts to interact with these vehicles." That way you can beg for your life.
Continue reading 'NASA "a decade or so" from launching ninja robot' >
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/University of Colorado
Remember the first time you saw the rings of Saturn? They're mysterious and beautiful, eerie and perfect, and 10 years ago, NASA's Cassini spacecraft blasted off to explore them.
The most recent report from Cassini's voyage to the Great Ringed One suggests that the disks are the result of cosmic catastrophes. The outermost main ring, called the "A" ring, is littered with tiny holes shaped like airplane propellers. In the most recent issue of Nature, astronomers report that these propeller-shaped gaps point to the existence of thousands of "moonlets," giant boulders (some as large as city blocks) embedded in the ring of dust.
Continue reading 'Demolition derby in Saturn's outer ring' >
NASA's Terra satellite captured this eerily beautiful view of Southern California as smoke from the fires is sucked out over the Pacific Ocean by the Santa Ana winds. (3:10 p.m. on October 24, 2007)
Quentin Schwinn, NASA
Despite a troubling four-inch block of ice that had NASA techs running around with visions of flaming tragedy two hours before launch, the shuttle Discovery took off around 11:38 this morning without a hitch. Commander Pamela Melroy is only the second female shuttle commander in history, and she leads a team who plan to perform the most complex orbital additions ever to everyone's favorite crumbling camper-van-in-space: the International Space Station.
The crew will help install Harmony, an Italian-built living compartment the size of a bus. No word on whether Harmony includes Natuzzi leather couches or DeLonghi espresso machines, but a group of 130 schoolchildren who named it in a competition got to attend the launch.
Continue reading 'Discovery shuttle launches, fails to inspire George Lucas (hopefully)' >
