You are browsing the archive for NASA.
20 January 2009
15 Awesome Space Projects
Here’s a great post from one of my favorite blogs, Web Urbanist: 15 Cool Space Projects for Today and Tomorrow. The post has a bunch of awesome images, and gives a good overview of the current plans of space agencies across the globe. Check it out!
Mars Methane Movie
NASA has put together a nice movie of Dr. Mike Mumma summarizing his discovery of methane on Mars. He brings up the possibility that the methane detection might influence landing site selection for MSL. I suspect that the Nili Fossae site will get some more attention because it was identified as one of the methane-producing regions, but it was taken off the list of finalist sites mostly due to safety …
15 January 2009
Citizen's Briefing Book
Ever wish you could tell the president something? Now you can! change.gov has started a new feature called the citizen’s briefing book where people can submit their own ideas and give other ideas a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”. The ideas that are voted up by the most people will be presented to President Obama once he takes office. There are some great ideas and some weird ones on the …
A Commercial Pancam Spinoff?
Ever wish you could make a stunning panorama like the rovers do? Apparently now you can! A friend of mine just sent me a link to GigaPan systems, who are selling a beta version of a robotic tripod and software for making panoramic images. I love NASA spinoffs! From the site: The GigaPan Imager uses the same panoramic photo technology as the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, used to …
14 January 2009
Earth, Observed
A lot of people don’t realize that NASA studies the Earth as well as the rest of the universe. Sure, pictures from Hubble and Cassini and the Mars Rovers are spectacular, but there are some great views of our own planet too, many of which are available at NASA’s Earth Observatory site. Today the Big Picture has a selection of some of the best photos of Earth from NASA’s collections. …
What the Ares V Rocket Could Do for Astronomy
The Ares V rocket is being designed to launch the next crewed mission to the moon. The idea is that the Ares V would do the heavy lifting, bringing the lunar orbiter and lander up to Earth orbit, where they would meet up with the astronauts who would launch on the smaller Ares I. Then the whole package would head to the moon. It’s a cool plan for getting back …
6 January 2009
Obama's Solution to NASA's Moon Woes?
Apologies for the slow posting lately. I’m paying for my sloth over the holidays by rushing to get an abstract written for this year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by Thursday, which means I need to have something resembling results… I thought it would be worth taking a moment and pointing you at this article, though. If I’m reading it correctly, it suggests that Obama may make the moon effort …
17 December 2008
AGU Day 2: Venus
Poor Venus. Even though it is right next door to Earth, it tends not to get much attention. This is because it’s so hot that we can’t last long if we land there, and it’s so cloudy that we can’t study its surface very easily from orbit. It’s a really interesting place though: it is the closest planet in size to the Earth, but it’s climate is drastically different. NASA …
16 December 2008
Why we need Ares
There’s an interesting article up at Daily Kos about the uncertain future of NASA. Here’s an excerpt: But the traditional battle lines between manned and human spaceflight are, as usual, the crux of conflict. The Griffin era managers are concerned the Constellation program, consisting of the Ares heavy booster rocket[s] and the Orion crew module, will be delayed or scrapped altogether along with their life’s work. That conflict is most …
4 December 2008
A single Mars program for the Earth?
One interesting tidbit that came out of the NASA presser on the MSL delay are comments made by NASA Assoc. Admin. for the Science Mission Directorate, Ed Weiler. Apparently, NASA and ESA have gotten clearance to start laying the groundwork for a joint Mars program. As Ed Weiler said: So David [Southwood – ESA Director of Science] and I sort of talked about the possibility of maybe we oughta think …
