Boing Boing » NASA

Kepler's greatest hits

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:48:13 +0000

Your guide to the most awesome exoplanets yet found by NASA's Kepler space telescope… — all in one handy place, thanks to Wired's Adam Mann.

NASA launched three smartphone satellites into orbit

David Pescovitz — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:22:33 +0000

On Sunday, NASA launched three PhoneSats into orbit. House in a standard "cubesat" structures, a Google-HTC Nexus One serves as the onboard computer and sensor system, taking photos of Earth. Aamateur radio operators are monitoring the transmissions and picking up data packets that will be recombined here on Earth. According to a NASA press release, the use of commercial-of-the-shelf parts, a minimalist design, and limited mission requirements kept the cost of each satellite as low as $3500. PhoneSat: NASA's Smartphone Nanosatellite

Space bubble

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:57:10 +0000

Canadian Space Agency astronaut and flight engineer Chris Hadfield watches a water bubble float freely between him and the camera in the Unity node of the International Space Station. Hadfield became the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station on March 13. [NASA]

Space spy? NASA researcher, a Chinese national, arrested on plane bound for China

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:53:04 +0000

Aerospace contractor Bo Jiang, who is accused by U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) of being a spy, made a first appearance in federal court on Monday. The Chinese national worked on contract at NASA's Langley's Research Center in Hampton, VA.

Federal agents grabbed him over the weekend just as he was boarding a flight from Dulles airport (in DC) to Beijing. He is charged with making false statements to U.S. authorities by failing to disclose all of the electronic devices he was carrying on his one-way flight, and has since been jailed.

From congressman Wolf's statement, which references the text of the federal warrant:

On Friday, March 15, federal agents learned that Mr. Jiang "was leaving the United States abruptly to return to China on a one-way ticket."
On Saturday, March 16, Mr. Jiang traveled by plane from Norfolk to Dulles to connect to a flight to China. While at Dulles he boarded a plane to Beijing. During a "border stop," federal agents conducted a search of Jiang's personal items.
And I'm quoting now directly from the arrest warrant: "During the consensual encounter, federal agents asked Jiang what electronic media he had with him. Jiang told the Homeland Security agent that he had a cellphone, a memory stick, and external hard drive and a new computer. However, during the search, other media items were located that Jiang did not reveal. Such items include an additional laptop, an old hard drive and a SIM card."
The warrant also notes that the FBI "believes this to be material to the federal investigation, in that it was important to learn what electronic media Jiang was taking out of the United States." It also mentions that agents are aware that Mr. Jiang previously traveled to China with a laptop belonging to NASA that agents believe to have contained sensitive information.

NASAWatch has links to all the early coverage.

CBS News has an updated account here. The Atlantic has an explainer post here, and the arrest warrant.

Sen. John Kerry has a planned trip to China coming up in the next few weeks. I'd imagine the Chinese government will not be happy about this case, which by any measure has so far provided all involved with more questions than answers.

(Thanks, Aileen Graef)

Apollo F-1 engines recovered from Atlantic ocean floor by Bezos Expeditions

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:03:34 +0000

Gas Generator and Manifold. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

A space history project led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has exciting news out today: Apollo mission F-1 engines have been recovered from deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic ocean, as the "F-1 Recovery Project" years in the making reaches a successful conclusion.

Here's video of the Remote Operated Vehicles recovering the engines from the ocean floor.

The F-1 rocket engine is still a modern wonder — one and a half million pounds of thrust, 32 million horsepower, and burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second. On July 16, 1969, the world watched as five particular F-1 engines fired in concert, beginning the historic Apollo 11 mission. Those five F-1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean, just as NASA planned. A few days later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

"We're excited to be bringing a couple of your F-1s home," Bezos said to NASA.

And Boing Boing has a statement from NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden:

Nearly one year ago, Jeff Bezos shared with us his plans to recover F-1 engines that helped power Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We share the excitement expressed by Jeff and his team in announcing the recovery of two of the powerful Saturn V first-stage engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
This is a historic find and I congratulate the team for its determination and perseverance in the recovery of these important artifacts of our first efforts to send humans beyond Earth orbit.
We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff's desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display.
Jeff and his colleagues at Blue Origin are helping to usher in a new commercial era of space exploration and we are confident that our continued collaboration will soon result in private human access to space, creating jobs and driving America's leadership in innovation and exploration.

And here is a snip from the blog post by Bezos, just published moments ago:

What an incredible adventure. We are right now onboard the Seabed Worker headed back to Cape Canaveral after finishing three weeks at sea, working almost 3 miles below the surface. We found so much. We’ve seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program. We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.
Many of the original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, which is going to make mission identification difficult. We might see more during restoration. The objects themselves are gorgeous. The technology used for the recovery is in its own way as otherworldly as the Apollo technology itself. The Remotely Operated Vehicles worked at a depth of more than 14,000 feet, tethered to our ship with fiber optics for data and electric cables transmitting power at more than 4,000 volts. We on the team were often struck by poetic echoes of the lunar missions. The buoyancy of the ROVs looks every bit like microgravity. The blackness of the horizon. The gray and colorless ocean floor. Only the occasional deep sea fish broke the illusion.

Thrust Chamber and Fuel Manifold. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

F-1 Thrust Chamber. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

F-1 Thrust Chamber on ocean floor. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

Saturn V Stage Structure. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

Nozzle. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project: how you can help save historic space data

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:14:55 +0000

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) was started by Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing in 2008. They obtained the original analog tape drives from lunar missions in the '60s, which were literally covered in dust in a farmer’s barn, and they also got their hands on a complete collection of Lunar Orbiter analog data tapes that held a full set of all images carried back to Earth by the five spacecraft that flew between 1966 and 67.

Amazing, historic stuff. But all of these old media formats are fragile, and preservation can be a long and tedious process.

Cowing and Wingo funded the archival effort themselves in the beginning, then secured some funding from NASA. But the NASA funding was modest, and has run out; the guys have been funding the project themselves, and they don't have the resources they need. They have exceeded the requirements of NASA’s funding, but just haven't been able to retrieve and digitally archive all of these irreplaceable historic space images—yet.

So they're crowdsourcing funds on RocketHub. They've raised about 1/3 of their goal at the time of this blog post, and they have only 5 days left.

Miles O'Brien did a "This week in Space" webshow episode about the project back in 2010; check it out above.

Below, more on the project from Cowing, who is also the guy behind NASAwatch.

The LOIRP team managed to obtain original tape drives from the 1960s (covered in dust in a farmer’s barn) and a full set of original Lunar Orbiter analog data tapes (threatened with erasure) containing all images sent back to Earth by the five spacecraft between 1966-67.
None of this had been functional or usable since the late 1960s.
From the onset the project has been run on a shoestring budget. The LOIRP effort is housed in an abandoned McDonalds burger joint at Moffett Field, California (also known as "McMoons").
The LOIRP folks used spare parts bought on eBay, discarded government equipment, new hardware reverse-engineered from math equations in 50 year old documentation, modern laptops, the expertise of retired engineers and scientists, and the dedication of young students.
Think of this as “Antique Roadshow” meets “The Right Stuff” in an Apple Store. They’ve also called this activity “technoarchaeology” and “dumpster diving for science”. A pirate flag has been displayed in the front window since they started.
With this unlikely assembly of people, hardware, and hacking they have been able to retrieve Lunar Orbiter images with far more resolution and dynamic range than was possible in the 1960s. Indeed, many of the images they have retrieved equal or exceed what the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is sending back from the Moon today. Taken together, this Lunar Orbiter imagery combined with LRO data, provides a time machine of sorts with which researchers can look at recent lunar history.
After five years the LOIRP team has optimized their hardware, software, and procedures so as to achieve an efficiency far greater than they initially possessed. In addition to capturing the remaining images, they still need to generate a formal submission of all images to NASA’s Planetary Data System.
Three weeks ago we began a crowd funding effort on RocketHub at http://www.rockethub.com/projects/14882-lunar-orbiter-image-recovery-project You will note that among the things we offer to supporters are rare photographs donated to the LOIRP by original Lunar Orbiter program participants specifically for the purpose of fundraising.
The fact that we have managed to pull all of this together still surprises us. Many people told us that this was impossible. However, if we stop this project, it is unlikely that this capability can ever be re-created.

UPDATE: From project co-lead Dennis Wingo:

I would like to thank all the boingboing folks who have so generously donated to our project.
We call what we are doing technoarcheology because we are literally digging up our technical past to restore it. It is said that only 1% of the literary works of the Greek and Roman civilizations have made it to us today. I would estimate that out of that 1% only 1% of the engineering and science works have made it to us today.
The Greeks were masterful mechanical engineers and the Romans were unsurpassed Civil Engineers. Just think if we had not lost that legacy.
This is what our project is all about, preserving the technical legacy of the American technical civilization.

A gravity map of the Moon

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:42:18 +0000

Gravity isn't uniform. Denser planets and objects in space — that is, things with more mass to them — experience a stronger pull of gravity. But even if you zoom in to the level of a single planet (or, in this case, our Moon), gravity isn't uniform all the way around. That's because the mass of the Moon isn't uniform, either. It varies, along with the topography. In some places, the Moon's crust is thicker. Those places have more mass, and thus, more gravitational pull.

This map, showing changes in density and gravity across the surface of the Moon, was made from data collected by Ebb and Flow — a matched set of NASA probes that mapped the Moon's gravitational field before being intentionally crashed on its surface last December. By measuring the gravitational field, these probes told us a lot about how the density of the Moon varies which, in turn, tells us a lot about topography.

You can read more about the probes (and see some videos they took of the lunar surface) at the NASA Visualization Explorer.

How bad research gets published (and promoted)

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 17:37:27 +0000

In 2010, a group of scientists claimed to have found bacteria that could build its DNA using arsenic, instead of the phosphorous used by the rest of Earth's life forms. Within days, the research behind "arsenic life" was under serious scrutiny and we now know that it was totally wrong. But the work was peer-reviewed. It was sponsored by NASA. How do so many experts make such a big mistake? Dan Vergano at USA Today has an excellent article looking at just that — and it includes the peer review comments that helped the arsenic life paper get published. Though normally secret, Vergano got a hold of them through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Meet Curiosity rover's earthbound sibling

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:55:36 +0000

Photo: Glenn Fleishman

Go and check out Glenn Fleishman's fantastic set of photos from the Jet Propulsion Lab's sandbox, where the scientists get to hang out and play with one of Curiosity rover's siblings.…

Eye of the furnace: Hubble captures close-up of spiral galaxy NGC 1097

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:54:34 +0000

From NASA's Image of the Day blog: "This face-on galaxy, lying 45 million light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), is particularly attractive for astronomers. NGC 1097 is a Seyfert galaxy. Lurking at the very center of the galaxy, a supermassive black hole 100 million times the mass of our sun is gradually sucking in the matter around it. The area immediately around the black hole shines powerfully with radiation coming from the material falling in."

NASA Johnson Style (Gangnam Style Parody)

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 20:26:30 +0000

Best one yet, guys! NASA Johnson Style is a volunteer outreach video project created by the students of NASA's Johnson Space Center. It was created as an educational parody of Psy's Gangnam Style. The lyrics and scenes in the video have been re-imagined in order to inform the public about the amazing work going on at NASA and the Johnson Space Center. Lyrics and "making of" information here! (thanks, Aileen Graef)

We left the moon 40 years ago today. Will we ever return?

Miles O'Brien — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 17:14:24 +0000

It was forty years today (at 22:54:37 UT) that human beings left the moon for the last time. Commander Gene Cernan's last words as stood on the moon were lofty, rehearsed and memorized:

"As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come (but we believe not too long into the future), I'd like to just say what I believe history will record: That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return: with peace and hope for all mankind."

His real last words uttered on the moon, just before hitting the button that would launch the "Challenger" Lunar Module carrying him and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt back to the orbiting Command Module "America" were more apt for a card-carrying member of the "Right Stuff Club".

"Okay, Jack, let's get this mutha outta here," said Cernan.

Cernan's autobiography "The Last Man on the Moon" is a great read. Among the things you might find surprising: Cernan crashed a Bell B-13 (M*A*S*H) helicopter into still water at Cape Canaveral in January of 1971 nearly killing himself.

He admits he was showboating for people on the beach. Chief Astronaut Deke Slayton covered for him, saying it was a mechanical malfunction. Had the real story come to the attention of Flight Director Chris Kraft, the last man on the moon might very well have been backup commander John Young.

Much to Cernan's chagrin, to this day he still holds that unique title. Why we have not returned is a long, complicated tale of politics and puny thinking.

Will we ever become a truly spacefaring nation? Hard to imagine as our "leaders" march us off the fiscal cliff. Maybe space is the answer. A cliff is meaningless in the absence of gravity.

My good friend Andrew Chaikin wrote the definitive historical account of the Apollo Missions, "A Man on the Moon". It is a must read for anyone interested in space.

Andy, who was there when Apollo 17 launched, has produced a nice video that offers a compelling argument for returning to the moon today. It makes me sad to watch it. But those of us who care about space exploration need to keep reminding the world why this is important.

40th anniversary of the Blue Marble photo

David Pescovitz — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 21:16:05 +0000

Today is the 40th anniversary of the "Blue Marble," the iconic photo taken by the crew of the Apollo 17. More on the photo and its impact at LIFE.com and Wikipedia. Here's NASA's original caption:

View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is Madagascar. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast."

What's up with NASA's warp drive spaceship?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 19:48:00 +0000

Here's the best way I can sum up this story: Yes, some NASA scientists are working on a design for a warp drive. No, that doesn't mean warp drives are real.

Warp drives — as a purely theoretical thing and/or science-fiction plot device — involve manipulating space-time to allow a spaceship to go faster than the speed of light. It's basically loophole that would allow you to get around those pesky laws of physics. Swiss bank account:taxes::Warp drives:speed of light. You get the picture.

Harold White of NASA’s Johnson Space Center is currently leading an effort to design a warp drive space ship. But, as Amy Teitel explains in a story for Vice's Motherboard, the fact that this is happening does not necessarily mean a real working warp drive is possible. It's more about the fact that NASA is partly in the business of letting really smart people try things that are kind of crazy and unlikely, if they can back up the idea with a reasonably plausible hypothesis. Speculative research is a thing that happens.

The problem is that breaking the light barrier isn’t at all like breaking the sound barrier. The sound barrier–properly, the aerodynamic effects of pressure waves interacting with a body as it approaches the speed of sound–was broken with a cleverly engineered aircraft and an at-the-time state of the art rocket engine.

Bell’s X-1 was, importantly, a physical aircraft made of matter, not made of sound. But the atoms and molecules that make up all matter are connected by electromagnetic fields, and that’s the same stuff that light is made of. So when it comes to breaking the light barrier, it’s like breaking through light with light (sort of… ask Brian Greene). As NASA poses the question, “How can an object travel faster than that which links its atoms?” It’s a very different matter.

Another issue special relativity brings up is the light speed barrier. Moving takes energy, and the faster you move the more energy you use. So, theoretically, to move at the cosmic speed limit of light you need an infinite amount of energy. That’s a distinct barrier if there ever was one.

Read the rest of the story at Vice's Motherboard

Cool things to find (Curiosity parody of "Dumb ways to die")

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:29:29 +0000

What might the Curiosity rover find on Mars? So many cool things. Maybe friends that hug your face! Maybe Nixon's secret tapes! Or maybe even something less easily fit into song lyrics, like significant amounts of Martian methane.

This video, made by Cinesaurus, is a parody of "Dumb Ways to Die", an adorably demented public safety message from Australia's Metro Trains Melbourne. If you've not seen that yet, you should check it out as well.

Thanks to Andrew Balfour and Michael Bernstein!

NASA downplays still-unannounced findings from Mars

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:14:32 +0000

Just before Thanksgiving, the lead mission scientist for the Curiosity rover told NPR that his team had found something that would "be one for the history books." Naturally, we all began speculating about the presence of life, giant obelisks, and half-buried Statues of Liberty. Yesterday, however, a different NASA spokesman basically asked the world to not get its hopes up too high, revising the level of importance down from "earthshaking" to "interesting". So far, nobody has said what, exactly, was discovered. (Via Colin Schultz)

Report: Now that election's decided, NASA may announce new manned lunar mission

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 14:05:44 +0000

Space.com spoke to space policy expert John Logsdon, a professor emeritus at George Washington University, about rumors that NASA may soon unveil new manned moon missions.

"Plans have probably already been cleared with the Obama Administration but have been kept under wraps in case Republican candidate Mitt Romney won," according to Space.com.

As the Independent notes, these comments sync with remarks by NASA deputy chief Lori Garver at a conference in September. (via Jenny Winder)

This NASA simulation of a galaxy is begging for a snazzy soundtrack

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:04:44 +0000

This computer simulation uses what we know about physical forces in the universe to model how a galaxy might have been born, and how it might grow over 13.5 billion years.

This cosmological simulation follows the development of a single disk galaxy over about 13.5 billion years, from shortly after the Big Bang to the present time. Colors indicate old stars (red), young stars (white and bright blue) and the distribution of gas density (pale blue); the view is 300,000 light-years across. The simulation ran on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and required about 1 million CPU hours. It assumes a universe dominated by dark energy and dark matter.

The result is a beautiful (if silent) video that is significantly labeled as public domain. It seemed like something you guys might enjoy playing around with.

Check out this Wikipedia article for more information on the growth of galaxies

Via labgrab

Sandy, as viewed from the International Space Station (pics)

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:04:53 +0000

Said one astronaut on the ISS just now, during the video transmission I screengrabbed these stills from: "We just flew over the big storm down there, hope everyone's doing okay." Source: NASA TV.

…

Carl Sagan's Cosmos: The Meat Planet (with pork volcano)

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:46:11 +0000

"A giant planet with a liquid interior full of liquid beef and pork, into which a thousand earths would fit."

Darren Cullen of Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives and friend Mark Tolson edited together this 'lost episode' of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, about a fabled Meat Planet, with details of its famous pork volcano, Mount Sustenance, "well-known to astronomers since the time of Galileo."

If NASA would focus on the important planets, the delicious bacon-y ones like this, perhaps we'd have a real future in space exploration. Astronomy-gastronomy!

Curiosity's big idea: Was Mars ever a habitable planet?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:18:17 +0000

This video interview with Ashwin Vasavada, Deputy Project Scientist of the Mars Science Laboratory, is a nice overview of the what everybody's favorite currently operational Mars rover is looking for.…

NASA finds Cookie Monster on surface of Mercury

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:01:52 +0000

Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Institution of WA

"The superposition of younger craters on older craters (in this case two smaller craters upon the rim of an older crater) can result in landforms that appear to resemble more familiar shapes to human eyes." Definitely Cookie Monster. More: NASA.

(thanks, Miles O'Brien)

Shuttle Endeavour transits Los Angeles this weekend, en route to her final resting place

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:24:04 +0000

NASA orbiter Endeavour is squeezing her way through tree-stripped streets of Los Angeles this weekend, en route to a permanent retirement home at the California Science Center.

Here's a Google Map of the route, with stopping points. Big shuttle is big. Bigger than the streets that must accommodate her. Basically, the whole thing is like the ultimate slow-speed car chase, but with fewer live news choppers overhead.

Above: BB reader Troy B. Asher caught Endeavour parked in a parking lot today. More of his pix here.

Endeavour as she moved past the shops, not sure if the crew stopped for a massage twitter.com/CNNkimsegal/st…
— Kim Segal CNN Miami (@CNNkimsegal) October 12, 2012

SpaceX Dragon spacecraft successfully attaches to ISS

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:20:47 +0000

At 9:03A ET, #Dragon was secured to the space station, its home for the next 2.5 weeks. twitter.com/SpaceX/status/…
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 10, 2012

For the second time in 2012, a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has connected with the International Space Station. ISS expedition 33 crew members Akihiko Hoshide and Sunita Williams grappled Dragon and attached it to the station, completing a critical stage of the SpaceX CRS-1 cargo resupply mission.

Meet NASA's apocalypse expert

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:22:09 +0000

OK, I know that I promised to never post anything ever again about a certain hypothetical disaster that rhymes with Schmapocalypse MiffyMelve, but hear me out. This really isn't about that. Instead, I want to highlight an excellent profile of a scientist whose work and interactions with the public have been affected by that unnamed bit of urban mythology.

David Morrison is a 72-year-old senior scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center. He runs NASA's "Ask an Astrobiologist" column, and considers it his way of following in the footsteps of Carl Sagan. In this story, written by Dan Duray at The Awl, we learn about Morrison's deep commitment to communicating science to the public ... a commitment that has led him to spend the last eight years answering a increasingly heavy flood of letters about the end of the world. It's an interesting look at the effects pop culture has on real people.

The questions that Dr. Morrison receives circle around a surprisingly cohesive set of theories, each grounded in some kind of real science that then veers off in a wild direction ... It's possible that many of the people who write to Dr. Morrison are trolls, or have Kindle books to sell, or want to garner enough YouTube views to merit an ad before their videos (some of the "Nibiru exposed" videos now feature a pre-roll for the conspiracy movie Branded). But his younger questioners certainly aren't faking it. He read me some of the more serious emails over the phone:

"I know that everyone has been asking you the same question but how do I know the world is not going to end by a planet or a flood or something? I'm scared because I'm in 10th grade and I have a full life ahead of me so PLEASE I WOULD REALLY LIKE AN ANSWER TO MY QUESTION."

"I am really scared about the end of the world on 21 December. I'm headed into 7th grade and I am very scared. I hear you work for the government and I don't know what to do. Can someone help me? I can't sleep, I am crying every day, I can't eat, I stay in my room, I go to a councilor, it helps, but not with this problem. Can someone help me?"

It's not all serious business, though. In one of the funnier moments, a 72-year-old man tries to figure out how to deal with YouTube commenters accusing him of being a secret Lizard Person.

Read the full profile at The Awl

Image: Apocalypse, a Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from torek's photostream

SpaceX launches first official cargo resupply mission to International Space Station

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:07:32 +0000

SpaceX this weekend "successfully launched its Dragon spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on the first official cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station," at 8:35 p.m. ET on Sunday from Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Details from the commercial space startup below.

The SpaceX CRS-1 mission marks the first of at least 12 SpaceX missions to the space station under the company’s cargo resupply contract with NASA. On board the Dragon spacecraft are materials to support investigations planned for the station’s Expedition 33 crew, as well as crew supplies and space station hardware.
Dragon – the only space station cargo craft capable of returning a significant amount of supplies back to Earth -- will return with scientific materials and space station hardware.
The Falcon 9 rocket, powered by nine Merlin engines, performed nominally today during every phase of its approach to orbit, including two stage separations, solar array deployment, and the final push of Dragon into its intended orbit. Dragon will now chase the space station before beginning a series of burns that will bring it into close proximity to the station. If all goes well, Dragon will attach to the complex on October 10 and spend over two weeks there before an expected return to Earth on October 28.
“We are right where we need to be at this stage in the mission,” said Elon Musk, CEO and Chief Technical Officer, SpaceX. “We still have a lot of work to do, of course, as we guide Dragon’s approach to the space station. But the launch was an unqualified success.”
The CRS-1 mission follows a historic demonstration flight last May when SpaceX’s Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to attach to the space station, exchange cargo, and return safely to Earth. The flight signaled restoration of American capability to resupply the space station, not possible since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.

Photo (SpaceX): Liftoff of Falcon 9 and Dragon from Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Fl. October 7, 2012.

A four-year-old's interpretation of the Mars Curiosity Rover mission

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 19:49:16 +0000

Josh Stearns writes,

My four year old son painted this at school and told his teacher, “This is Mars. Mars is red. And there is a robot there taking pictures and sending them back to earth.”

Mars Curiosity, eat

…

Curiosity adds to evidence that water once flowed on Mars

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:45:18 +0000

When a narrow stream, flowing downhill, meets a wide, significantly-flatter valley, you get an alluvial fan — a place where the flow of water spreads out, slows down, and leaves behind all the rocks and sediment it's no longer moving fast enough to carry. At least, that's how it works on Earth.

Once upon a time, it may have worked that way on Mars, too. Yesterday, NASA announced that the Curiosity rover had documented geology that looks very much like an alluvial fan and rocky deposits that also look very much like what would be left in an alluvial fan on Earth. You can see the comparison of some of those in the image above. In these Martian geological features — as in an Earth-bound stream bed — you find smooth, rounded pebbles and conglomerates, masses of pebbles cemented together over time. The rocks photographed by Curiosity are also too large to have been blown into this sort of arrangement by the wind.

All of this adds to the long string of evidence that Mars once had flowing water on its surface. In fact, reading up for this post, I was surprised to see how much evidence there actually is for this, some direct and some indirect, stretching all the way back to the Mariner 9 orbiter mission in the early 1970s. And, of course, there is water on Mars right now. It's just not flowing water. Previous probes have measured a small amount of water in the Martian atmosphere, and the planet's polar regions contain both frozen carbon dioxide and frozen water. Viking 2 took pictures of frost on the ground in the late 1970s, and in 2008, the Phoenix lander literally dropped out of the sky onto a patch of ice.

Frost on the surface of Mars, as photographed by Viking 2.

The bright spot near the lander's leg was later verified to be a patch of ice.

The new photos from Curiosity add to this growing body of evidence. Taken all together, it's pretty safe to assume that Mars was once a wetter place. Here's NPR's Bill Chappell:

"There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars," the agency said in a press release, "but this evidence — images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels — is the first of its kind."

Scientists have not yet estimated the age of the rocks, which may have been buried beneath the surface. Their age could be several billion years.

The next step will be to find a good spot to drill into the rock, NASA says. And they'll be looking for possible carbon deposits to determine whether the water on Mars once supported life.

Read the rest of the NPR story

Read astrobiologist Caleb Scharf's thoughts at the Life, Unbounded blog

Read Wikipedia's extensive entry on evidence for water on Mars

Check out this 2007 report prepared by the National Academies of Science, which discusses a strategy for looking for evidence of life on Mars. It includes a summary of evidence for water on the planet.

The Shuttle Shokunin, and Kennedy Space Center's 50th anniversary

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 17:43:12 +0000

Discovery launch. Source: NASA.

This past weekend, I accompanied Miles O'Brien to the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Space Center. In attendance were present and past KSC directors, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, astronauts and space heroes of all eras—from Thomas Stafford to Cady Coleman—and many of the so-called "pad rats" who built spacecraft from the Apollo era through the Shuttle era. Miles delivered an amazing speech dedicated to those pad rats.

If you're familiar with traditional Japanese craftsmanship culture or you've seen the film Jiro Dreams of Sushi, you'll know why he calls them "The Shuttle Shokunin."

Snip:

The recurring theme here is of an extraordinarily passionate, proud, meticulous workforce that embraces a philosophy that is lost on many Americans. Here they take tremendous pride in everything they do – and for all the right reasons.
The Japanese call this shokunin kihitsu. Literally translated: the craftsman’s spirit. But that doesn’t do it justice.
Those who ascribe to this way of life take pride in everything they do. In Japan, sushi chefs, fishermen, and carpenters all practice their craft— no matter how seemingly menial—with a driving sense of obligation to work to their utmost for the good of all.
And here is an essential point: shokunin make something for the pure joy of it; carefully, beautifully, and to the best of their ability. It has nothing to do with fame or fortune. It is nothing short of an unyielding pursuit of perfection. At KSC, they have mastered a trade that demands it—and they have risen to meet the challenge time and again.

[video link].

There's a wonderful NASA image gallery here of historic photographs related to KSC's 50th anniversary, and here's a video montage they played at the dinner.

Mercury Mission Control, Astronaut Scott Carpenter. Astronaut Scott Carpenter stands in front of the Mercury Control Center at Cape Canaveral. Carpenter was the pilot for the Mercury-Atlas 7 mission aboard Aurora 7, which launched May 24, 1962.

Image credit: NASA

My night with the International Space Orchestra: Jasmina Tesanovic

Jasmina Tesanovic — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:49:27 +0000

The International Space Orchestra in front of Vacuum Chambers, NASA Ames Research Center. Photo: Neil Berrett.

I never dreamed I would be in a NASA base in California, singing and playing music.

The Ground Control Opera performance by Nelly Ben Hayoun, presented the International Space Orchestra, 50 local technicians and scientists, playing in the city of San Jose at the Zero1 Biennial 2012. The opera reenacts the first minutes of Neil Armstrong's landing on the Moon. It's dedicated to the memory of the recently gone cosmonauts and astronauts, and the endeavors of scientists at ground-control stations, still trying to make our 20th century dreams of spaceflight come true.

My daughter asked me when she mis-heard that I was singing for "NASA": Mom why are you singing to "NATO?" NATO bombed us in Serbia in 1999! I said my dear this is NASA, not NATO, they have planes and rockets but not bombers and missiles! They are searching for habitable planets with the Kepler space probe! Maybe there are other space controllers somewhere out there!

We've never yet settled alien planets, but maybe Silicon Valley will do. Tthe topic of this years art and science biennial is "Seeking Silicon Valley." The show was curated by five women from Korea, Brazil, Germany, Canada, and California.

The Zero1 event brought in thirty pieces of art/installations: Cell phones were methodically smashed in one installation, toasters made out of stone appeared in another, books made of internet addresses in yet another one. You could be hugged breathless by a smart chair, have your face virtually eaten by a mushroom while imagining your grave… You could play with an enormous inflated bubble which would cover you with charcoal smears -- pleasant to interact with, like a giant pet.

This art event connected to local happenings on the ground in sprawling San Jose, the self proclaimed "Capital of Silicon Valley." Silicon Valley, by its nature, is hyper realistic, inflated, shiny, soulless and somewhat scary. Unlike cities elsewhere, a perfect but lonely machine. The morning after the show and party, the Sunday sun was scorching the homeless derelicts in the emptied streets of San Jose... nobody else to be seen there.

In the conceptual essay of Gisela Domschke, one of the curators of the show, we were asked to express our ideas and feelings about the Silicon Valley.

Alessandro Ludovico: a place whose virtual importance transcend its real presence. Marcus Bastos: the counterculture ethos which shaped work environments in todays major corporations. Bruce Sterling: when will Californians realize that their gold rushes always finish ugly? Marisa Olson: I remember a picture in black and white: a handsome young visionary sitting lotus-like alone on the floor of what appears to be a large home: empty save for what appears to be a lamp!

Yes, Steve Jobs is gone now but the iPhone 5 is about to show up, here in the capital of Silicon Valley. People are already queuing to pay and play; like some mystical 13th nomadic tribe of unknown ethnic origin. The virtuals are here, like a horde of a million astronauts -- what souls do they have, what dreams?