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2 March 2009
The Reasons Behind the MSL Delay
There are a pair of excellent articles in this week’s Space Review by Adrian Brown, looking at the Technical and Budgetary reasons that the Mars Science Lab launch was delayed until 2011. Go take a look; these two essays do a great job of distilling a lot of the relevant information on the launch delay into one place.
The MOC "Book": Volcanic Landforms
More about the MOC paper! This is part six of a series of posts looking at the huge 2001 paper summarizing the results from the Mars Orbital Camera (MOC): the first high-resolution camera in orbit around Mars. Check out the previous posts if you want to get caught up: 1,2,3,4,5 Today’s topic is volcanism, something I’ve written a lot about before on the blog. Mars is essentially a volcanic planet, …
28 February 2009
The MOC Book: Polar Processes
I’m falling behind on my blogging of the MOC “book”! We read a lot this week, so I will just stick to the highlights. In other words: mostly pictures, less text. This paper is really all about the pictures anyway! (if you’re just tuning in to the MOC series, check out posts 1,2,3 and 4) The Martian poles are extremely fascinating but extremely bizarre places. The polar caps are made …
27 February 2009
A Glimpse at NASA's future…
…Or at least at the future budget. The fiscal year 2010 budget summary was released by the White House yesterday, and there was a little bit of info about NASA. First and foremost, NASA is getting some more money! A total of $2.4 billion, counting the stimulus also. That in and of itself is refreshing. But also very interesting is how NASA’s budget is divvied up, and what that means …
25 February 2009
A Tidally Locked Earth
A while ago, I posted about an interesting abstract and poster at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference discussion the possibility that tidally locked exoplanets might still be habitable. Well, apparently the new Discovery series entitled “The World Without…” is doing an episode about what would happen if the Earth stopped rotating. One of their associate producers contacted me after reading my blog post about tidally locked exoplanets and asked …
22 February 2009
First Look at NASA Video Game
Remember when I posted a while ago about NASA’s plans to develop its own Massively Multiplayer Online video game (MMO)? Well, the first glimpses of the game have been made public, and it sounds promising. Some quotes from the article over at Big Download: the goal is to allow gamers to create their own content, including missions and spacecraft, and then share that with others online. “We have access to …
19 February 2009
NASA/ESA Mission to Europa
In case you haven’t heard yet, NASA and ESA have decided that the next big outer planets flagship will be going to Jupiter. I’m generally in favor of this decision. Titan is fascinating, but Cassini is still in the process of studying it. We’ve learned pretty much all we can about Jupiter and its moons, and it’s high time we went back there. Also, my mouth is already watering over …
18 February 2009
Scientifically Accurate Astronomy Sci-Fi!
Check it out, I just found out about “Diamonds in the Sky“: an anthology of scientifically accurate sci-fi stories. It is edited by astronomer and sci-fi writer Mike Brotherton as his “education and public outreach” for NSF. What a great way to bring science to non-scientists! Did I mention the stories are free to download?
16 February 2009
The MOC "book": Dunes, Ripples and Streaks
This is the fourth in a series of posts about the huge paper by Malin and Edgett summarizing the results from the Mars Orbital Camera’s (MOC’s) primary mission. If you’re just tuning in, get caught up by reading the first three posts, and if you want to read along, download a pdf of the paper here. This week we’re looking at two sections: “Aeolian Processes and Landforms” and “Polar Processes …
The Big Picture: Progress on NASA's Constellation
The Big Picture has a cool series of photos today showing NASA’s progress on the constellation program. From the article: NASA’s Constellation program, established in 2005, continues its work toward the building the future of manned space exploration in the U.S. The first test flight of the Ares I-X rocket – a functional mockup of the actual Ares I rocket, similar in shape and mass – is scheduled for July, …
