2 November 2008
Carnival of Space #77
Another week, another Carnival! Go check out the 77th Carnival of Space at “Tomorrow is Here“!
1 November 2008
Mercury in Color
Check out this true color and exaggerated color view of Mercury, taken by MESSENGER during the recent flyby! In one of my classes on Thursday, we were speculating about why Mercury craters seem to have such long rays on the fresh craters. Our conclusion was that it’s probably just the higher gravity. Mercury is small but very dense, so it’s surface gravity is greater than the moon’s. So with equivalent …
31 October 2008
Phoenix Epitaph Contest
Sad that Phoenix is on its way out? Want some cool NASA swag? Then head on over to Wired and submit an epitaph for Phoenix! If you win, you get official mission gear. Many of the sumbissions are great. I like: ” Will I Dream ? “ because I’m a sucker for sci-fi references (2001: A Space Odyssey), and: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water because of …
Spooky Sounds from Saturn
Happy Halloween! To celebrate, you should go listen to these spooky Saturn sounds.
Phoenix hanging in there
Yesterday, Phoenix went into safe mode, where the spacecraft shuts off all but the most vital systems due to some sort of fault. In this case it related to shutting off the heater for the arm and was totally expected. But when controllers here on Earth tried to communicate, they got no response. Is phoenix dead? Not yet. The twitter feed reports that phoenix is still alive, but will be …
30 October 2008
Kids These Days…
You may have heard a while back that Buzz Aldrin thinks that science fiction is the reason that kids aren’t interested in real space travel: “I blame the fantastic and unbelievable shows about space flight and rocket ships that are on today. All the shows where they beam people around and things like that have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It’s …
29 October 2008
It's Getting Dark…
Phoenix is losing power by the day as it gets darker near the Martian north pole. This press release discusses how NASA engineers are trying to keep Phoenix alive for as long as possible. Most notably, they are turning off the heater for the robotic arm, meaning it will probably be unable to move very soon. For more information, check these posts at the Planetary Society blog and Cumbrian Sky. …
NaNoWriMo
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein Starting on Saturday, I will be participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an annual activity in which insane writers attempt to complete a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. The rules are that you can plan as much (or as little) as you want beforehand, but the page must …
28 October 2008
Mars Art: Linear Dunes near the North Pole
I am starting a new thing. Every week, I will browse through data from current and past Mars missions and find an “artistic” image to post here. I’ll talk briefly about what the image says scientifically, but mostly this is about eye-candy and the crossover between science and art, which I have talked about before. Without further ado, here’s your first piece of “Mars Art”: This image is a HiRISE …
27 October 2008
Carnival of Space #75
This week’s carnival of space is being hosted over at As(si)stronomi, a Swedish astronomy blog! Don’t worry if you can’t read Swedish, because Assi kindly hosted the Carnival in English! So go check it out!
