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5 April 2009
400 Years of the Telescope
So, you do know that this year is the International Year of Astronomy, right? Well they chose 2009 because it marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first look at the night sky with his telescope. As part of the IYA festivities, PBS is airing an awesome new documentary on April 10 called “400 Years of the Telescope“. It was filmed with a new type of technology with ~5 times the …
Creepy Batteries
I saw two rather disturbing articles today about batteries. First: batteries that feed on blood. Apparently they are powered by a colony of specialized yeast that can consume blood for energy. Obviously this would be useful for things like pacemakers, assuming that the cyborg battery doesn’t infiltrate its host’s central nervous system, become sentient and then take over the world… Second: Virus-powered batteries. Apparently some researchers at MIT have used …
4 April 2009
Yuri's Night and 100 Hours of Astronomy
Are you going to a Yuri’s Night party this year? I am! In about five minutes! In case you’ve never heard of it, Yuri’s night is a worldwide series of parties held on April 4-12 to commemorate Yuri Gagarin’s first spaceflight! It is the brainchild of Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, a fellow NASA Academy alum and all around cool person. This year there are 171 parties in 41 countries on six continents …
2 April 2009
New NASA Hiring Policy
The NASA workforce is, on the whole, old. Yeah yeah, I know I think everyone is old because I’m just a young whippersnapper, but it’s true. The average age of NASA employees is 47. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t young folks (said the young’un who’s currently working at JSC) but we’re a minority. Back in the Apollo days, most of NASA was young. The average age of the people …
30 March 2009
Awesome Moon Photo
Remember how I mentioned the other day that NASA and ASU are in the process of digitizing all the old Apollo photos? Well, apparently there’s an effort to restore the lunar images from other early missions too! Check this bad boy out. This is an oblique view of Copernicus crater, taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1. This image drives home the point that the moon is really a world, …
ISS, Backlit
I’m starting my first day of work at Johnson Space Center today, and coincidentally, I just came across this awesome photo of the International Space Station. It seemed fitting to post it since I’m going to be about a block from mission control. The ISS may have its critics but you can’t deny that this is an amazing photo of an amazing human achievement.
29 March 2009
Review: Battlestar Galactica Series Finale
I just watched the series finale of Battlestar Galactica last night. I’ve been toying around with posting occasional reviews on the blog, and this seemed like a good place to start. Be warned, there are going to be spoilers, so if you have not seen the episode, don’t read on. First off, my thoughts on the series as a whole, so you know where I’m coming from. I really liked …
28 March 2009
LPSC: The Masursky Lecture
Every year at LPSC one of the big events is the Masursky lecture, given by that year’s winner of the Masursky prize recognizing “individuals who have rendered outstanding service to planetary science and exploration through engineering, managerial, programmatic, or public service activities”. This year’s winner was Alan Stern, and he gave a thought-provoking talk about everyone’s favorite subject: What is a Planet? The official title was “Planet Categorization and Planetary …
LPSC 2009: Day 2
Day 2 was all about ice in the mars sessions: the morning focused on the polar caps and the afternoon focused on the subsurface. I also managed to catch a few non-mars talks. One of the first talks I saw was by Ken Tanaka, famed for his geologic maps of Mars. He showed the results of his studies of the north polar cap, and identified at least two major hiatuses. …
