1 October 2008
Jules Verne Burns Up!
No, not the pioneering french sci-fi author. The robotic European “space freighter” that autonomously docked with the ISS a while back. It had outlived its use on the ISS, so it was filled with waste, detached and sent into a controlled re-entry. At 20 metric tons, it made for quite the fireworks show:
29 September 2008
Phoenix Sees Snow and Carbonates on Mars!
Big news from the Phoenix lander! A new JPL press release just came out, announcing the detection of snow and carbonates on Mars! From the press release: A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft’s landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground. “Nothing like this …
What can $700 Billion Buy?
With all the talk about the government bailout in the news right now, I got to thinking about just how much money $700 billion dollars is. So here are some depressing numbers. $700,000,000,000 = 1.25 Iraq Wars (based on the ~$558 billion cost shown at this site at 12:30 am EDT on Sept 29, 2008) or 5 Apollo Programs (at ~$135 billion inflation-adjusted dollars for the entire program from conception …
28 September 2008
Geology in Spaaaaace
It turns out that there is a geology blog carnival too called the Accretionary Wedge! Even better, this week’s theme is “Geology in Spaaaace“! So head on over to Good Schist for some excellent space-related geology posts!
26 September 2008
Carnival of Space #72
It’s friday, and that means it’s Carnival of Space Time! This week the Carnival is being hosted over at Twisted Physics. Go check it out!
Plumbing on Mars: HiRISE Reveals Groundwater Cracks
This image from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, shows cracks in the rocks on Mars that once formed the underground plumbing through which groundwater traveled. Groundwater flow on Mars has been speculated for a long time, but it takes powerful cameras like HiRISE to actually find the evidence. These cracks resisted erosion because they were filled with minerals deposited by groundwater, so now we can see them …
24 September 2008
Rain on Mars?
Universe Today is reporting that scientists have found evidence of rainfall and stable surface water on Mars. Unfortunately, the paper is published in a journal that Cornell does not subscribe to, so all I have to go on is the press release and the abstract for the paper. Still, it doesn’t sound to me like there is anything really ground-breaking in this study. They are reporting evidence for fan-shaped delta …
Phoenix Self-Portrait
Check it out! Phoenix recently used its arm camera to take a photo of its mast cameras, just like a tourist taking a self-portrait with their digital camera held at arm’s length.
Low-Gravity Volcanoes
During my series of posts about volcanoes last month, a reader emailed me and asked what the effect of lower gravity would be on martian volcanoes, and I thought it was such a good question that I decided to answer it here! Most of my answer is based on a (rather large) review paper by Wilson and Head that is available here. One of the first effects of low gravity …
23 September 2008
More on Science Policy
Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has some more detailed thoughts and comments about McCain and Obama’s answers to the ScienceDebate questions. I encourage you to go check them out!
