9 October 2009
Bomb the Moon!
With 23 minutes left before LCROSS impacts the south pole of the moon, I want to direct you to a post by Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society blog, showing photos of the crater formed back when Apollo 14 smashed its upper stage booster into the moon. Yes, that’s right, we’ve been smashing things into the moon for quite a while now. So all the people freaking out about NASA …
7 October 2009
To the Moon! Zoom, Bang!
As I write this, there is a NASA spacecraft on an unstoppable collision course with the moon. Early on Friday morning it will impact a crater near the moon’s south pole at 9000 km/hr, causing an explosion that will excavate 350 tons of lunar rocks, blasting them up into space and leaving a 66 foot-wide crater. Of course, this is all intentional. The LCROSS mission will use the upper stage …
6 October 2009
Mars Science Laboratory Instruments: MARDI
Next up in my series of posts about the instruments on MSL is the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI). Once again, this camera is made by MSSS just like MastCam and MAHLI, and it shows. Like the other two, MARDI is a color camera, and it shoots high-def 1600×1200 pixel images. MARDI is special because it points straight down, and it can take pictures at 4.5 frames per second. That means …
5 October 2009
Carnival of Space #123
One… Two… Three… Carnival of Space #123! This week the Carnival is hosted over at Weird Warp. As always, check it out for all the spacey goodness you can handle.
30 September 2009
Mars Science Laboratory Instruments: MAHLI
Last time, I talked about the MastCam color cameras on MSL, so it only makes sense to continue with one of the other cameras: the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). MAHLI will serve the same role on MSL that the microscopic imager on the current MER rovers does: it will provide detailed photos of the soil and rock surfaces acessible by the robotic arm. MAHLI is made by the same …
29 September 2009
Dueling Mars Movies
Last week and this week, Dwayne day posted two very nice reviews of the dueling Mars movies of 2000, a.k.a. Mission to Mars and Red Planet. Now, I know, neither was the greatest movie, but Dwayne’s reviews do a nice job of discussing what was done well in addition to what was done…less well. Take a look, and feel free to discuss these cinematic masterpieces in the comments! And in …
27 September 2009
Welcome to Mars! … I mean, Syndey
Last week a dust storm swept its way from the Australian outback and blanketed Sydney with orange dust. The dust storm was pretty large for Earth: 500km x 1000 km, and unusual in that it managed to reach Sydney instead of petering out in the outback. The Big Picture has a great series of photos of the storm, many of which look remarkably martian (if you ignore the water and …
A Detailed Look at Water on the Moon
It looks like Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society blog has beat me to the punch! After the big announcement that three separate groups have found evidence of water on the moon, she dove in, read the papers and has a series of posts with all of the details of their findings. Well worth a read! Part 1: There’s Water on the Moon! Part 2: The Murkier Part of the …
24 September 2009
Water on the Moon
In case you haven’t heard yet, there is quite the buzz building about three separate results that indicate that there is water on the lunar surface. There isn’t much: moon rocks returned by Apollo are pretty darn dry, but it’s still an exciting result, and it means that future missions might be able to extract water for drinking and rocket fuel. I was especially surprised to hear that the water …
