8 July 2008
This is your future – Why the Moon?
With all my moon-related posts, you’d think it was Monday!* I just got this in my email, and thought I would share it with all of you space enthusiasts: What would YOU like to ask of young people that work at NASA? On July 20, 2008, members from the younger generation from four NASA Centers will discuss the future of space exploration as part of the Lunar Science Conference at …
The Moon: Then and Now
Boston.com has a fantastic photo-essay showing some of the new hardware that NASA is testing for the return to the moon, plus some classic images from the Apollo missions. You should really check it out, and pass the link on to everyone you know. More people need to know that NASA is serious about returning to the Moon! Here’s a sample picture from the site: These are the All-Terrain Hex-Legged …
4 July 2008
Happy 4th!
A little patriotism from Phoenix: And, from the edge of human exploration: It’s the USA’s spirit of exploration and innovation that has gotten us to these distant places, and let’s keep that spirit alive in the years to come!
3 July 2008
What shape is the solar system?
A cool bit of news from beyond Mars this week: Voyager 2 has relayed new info on the shape of the solar system! New data from the spacecraft, published yesterday in Nature, indicates that Voyager 2 passed through the termination shock in the heliosphere back in August/September of last year. Without the jargon, that means that Voyager 2 reached the location where the solar wind goes from super-sonic to sub-sonic, …
Carnival of Space #61
Carnival of Space #61 is up over at Mang’s Bat Page! Why is a scouting-themed blog with a bat-related name hosting the carnival of space? Because they wanted to! And they did a great job! Check it out!
Phoenix update: More ice, newer panorama
Emily over at the Planetary Society has a fantastic update on Phoenix. Highlights include: * Phoenix has been scraping away at the icy-soil layer at the Snow White trench, and has begun sampling the soil-ice interface. The team was hoping to deliver a sample of this to TEGA, but concerns about the potential for short-cicuiting in TEGA have slowed down progress on this, and we probably won’t see ice samples …
2 July 2008
Spore
Have you heard of the game Spore? It is a computer game being released this fall and is the first game in quite a while that I am considering buying, despite the fact that I have no time to play games anymore. Here is an old video of an early version of the game: Here’s the gist of it (paraphrased from the wiki article): The game begins with a comet …
26 June 2008
Does martian soil contain evidence for rain?
There’s a news story floating around on the net about a new study on soil at the Viking, Pathfinder, and MER landing sites that’s coming out later this month. The study, by UC Berkeley prof Ronald Amundson and his team of terrestrial geologists, suggests that the chemical profiles in the soils at the landing sites may have been the result of precipitation (i.e. water rain). Trench at Meridiani (Unmanned Spaceflight) …
Phoenix landing site panorama – almost done!
One of the goals of the Phoenix mission is to create a full color panorama of the landing site, and the team is well on their way to completing it! Emily over at the Planetary Society has put together what’s available so far, and has created this beautiful mosaic (image links to full res): As Emily mentions, the team still has to fill in the area immediately around the lander, …
