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Tag Archives: NASA
Zircons provide new reading on the atmosphere for origin of life
How can you tell what the atmosphere of Earth was like four billion years ago? The answer is simple, although technically difficult to do – read the rocks. Geologists and now astrogeologists and astrobiologists go back to the question of what the atmosphere was like during the early history of Earth because it is one [...]
Posted in News: Origin of Life Also tagged atmosphere, cerium, Hadean, life origin, oxygen atmosphere, Tailby, Trail, Watson, zircon Leave a comment
Asteroid 2005 YU55: No impact on the neighborhood
Asteroid 2005 YU55 photographed in passing…Credit: NASA November 9, 2011: It was a reminder for the neighborhood (Earth and Moon) that strangers pass in the night. Night being metaphorical in this case because the asteroid 2005 YU55 actually took about three days to orbit through the vicinity of the Earth and Moon. As asteroids go, [...]
Posted in News: Impact Event Also tagged 2005 YU55, asteroid, NEA, Near Earth Asteroid, NEO Leave a comment
Mars 500: The simulation ends
The Mars 500 facility, in a parking lot….Credit: ESA, Wikimedia Commons It was, as so many jokingly put it, a real down-to-earth mission to Mars. As in, the mission never left Earth. Beginning June 3, 2010 and ending November 4, 2011, the Mars 500 mission took place in a facility at the Russian Academy of [...]
Posted in Commentable Also tagged Biosphere, cosmonauts, ESA, Mars 500, Mars mission, microgravity, space psychology Leave a comment
The Global Warming controversy is ended…
Global surface temperatures………Credit: Berkeley Earth Project The Global Warming controversy is ended. Right. Take a look at the graph above. It shows the results of global temperature measurements over a span of some 100-200 years as compiled by four groups: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), United Kingdom Meteorology [...]
Posted in Impact: Climate Change Also tagged AGW, Berkeley, climate change, Earth Surface Temperature, global warming, Met Office, Muller, NOAA, Rohde, skeptic 1 Comment
The Prestige: China orbits practice unit
The Heavenly Palace is in orbit, or at least the first practice piece – Tiangong 1 – is in orbit. CNSA, the Chinese National Space Agency reports that the 10.5 meter cylinder is designed to practice docking and other aspects of orbital navigation over the next 3-5 years, with the ultimate goal being a functioning [...]
Posted in Commentable Also tagged China, CNSA, Heavenly Palace, ISS, space platform, Tiangong Leave a comment
New evidence for liquid water on Mars
The possible seasonal rills of running water on Mars……Credit: NASA, JPL Earth has lots of liquid water, like oceans of it – though salty. Why would people be excited by briny water on Mars? However, for those intrepid, dreaming human beings who think of traveling to Mars and one day pitching camp there, the news [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged brine, carbon dioxide, CRISM, exogenous life, liquid water, Mars, Mars colonies, MRO, spectrograph Leave a comment
The Big Splat: New two moon hypothesis
It doesn’t sound very scientific, but some scientists are calling it the “Big Splat.” That refers to the results of a new computer model showing the early Earth having two moons that collided. Planetary scientists Martin Jutzi and Erik Asphaug at the University of Southern California, Santa Cruz (USA) and publishing in the journal Nature [...]
Space Shuttle Atlantis: happy landing, and out with a whimper
Among the many things said and written about the ending of the American space shuttle program, one thing we are not likely to hear any time soon is the last word. In short, it’s going to require the perspective of history, probably fifty years, before the impact of the space shuttle program – operating, then [...]
Posted in Essay Also tagged Atlantis, ISS, manned, space exploration, space probes, space shuttle, space station, unmanned Leave a comment
Ocean on Enceladus has built-in heater
Surface eruption on Enceladus, Saturn in the background….Credit : NASA/JPL About this time last year the American space agency NASA reported on new data from the Cassini mission to the planet Saturn confirming that one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, has liquid water and probably an ocean. [SciTechStory post: Enceladus has at least a sea, possibly [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged Cassini, Dione, Enceladus, infrared spectrometer, life, oceans, Saturn, Saturn moons, tidal stress, tiger stripes Leave a comment
Technology advances: Powering space elevators with laser beams
As serendipity would have it, there is a mini-flood of sci-tech news concerning the use of light (lasers mostly) just when SciTechStory introduces a new impact area – photonics – the study of energy in the bandwidth of light. Here are the two most recent posts: Transformation optics: The light fantastic Optogenetics: Controlling live neurons [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged laser, optogenetics, photonics, space elevator, space exploration, Tsiolkovsky 1 Comment
Almahata Sitta: A meteorite suggests a new way to form amino acids
Asteroid collision, NASA Hubble Space Telescope picture….credit: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt Finding amino acids, the building blocks of life, in meteorites is not new. Finding them in a meteorite that is a fragment of an asteroid collision, a piece formed at more than two thousand degrees Fahrenheit (1100 degrees Celsius) – now that makes astrobiologists [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged Almahata Sitta, amino acid, asteroid, chirality, exogenous life, Hubble, life origin, meteorite, proteins Leave a comment
Falcon 9 – Dragon: Setting a milestone in commercial space flight
Artist’s conception of the Dragon capsule in orbit….Credit: Space X When President Obama, on the recommendation of the Augustine Commission, committed to raising the profile of commercial space flight, there were (and are) plenty of skeptics. Many assumed this was a zero-sum game, where if one company or agency wins more contract money, another loses. [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged astronauts, Augustine Commission, Dragon capsule, Falcon 9, ISS, Space X Leave a comment
“Gentlemen, engineer your astronauts.”
“I say let’s build better astronauts.” Craggy Windman was serious. He was standing on the dais in a slept-in Armani suit, tie undone, disheveled salt-and-pepper beard and talking to an assembly of rocket scientists. (Yes, you had to be a rocket scientist with a NASA badge to get into the room.) He stabbed his pointer [...]
Posted in Spun Also tagged gene modification, genome, human engineering, microbiome, satire, synthetic biology, tissue engineering Leave a comment
Published results: LCROSS lunar impact reveals scientific treasure
The hypothesis: In the shadows of deep craters that pock the south pole of the Moon there might be ever-frozen water. The experiment: Guide the final stages of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) rocket into one of the craters and crash it into the surface, hopefully sending a plume of dust into [...]
Posted in Impact: Space Exploration Also tagged Cabeus, crater, gasses, hydrogen, LCROSS, LRO, Moon, solar system, south pole, water Leave a comment
Boeing throws (subsidized) hat into space tourism ring
Boeing Corporation, the giant American aero-space company, announced that it will be joining the effort to provide transport for ‘space tourists’ to and from the International Space Station (ISS). This sounds like a major step for the commercial development of space. It could be. However, in reality it’s a step into the often contradictory world [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged Augustine Commission, Boeing, commercial crew, ISS, space tourism Leave a comment
A spate of exoplanets
The search for planets outside the solar system that could (repeat, could) harbor life goes on at a faster pace. The big gun is the Kepler Space Telescope, which in part was designed to look for terrestrial-like planets, and is now coming into the full stream of operation. Kepler scientists reported on Thursday (August 26, [...]
Posted in News: Exolife Also tagged Earth-like, ESO, exoplanets, HARPS, Hydrus, Kepler, Kepler-9, seven-planet system, solar system Leave a comment
No muscle, no Mars
After feeding upon the thrills of Star Trek, Star Wars, Avatar and their ilk, we (that is, people of the entertainment soaked portion of the world) are conditioned to be optimistic about human beings in space. There’s also the reality of landing on the Moon, the International Space Station, and the inspiring history of astronauts [...]
Posted in Spun Also tagged bone loss, exercise in space, ISS, muscle loss, muscle mass, physiology, space exploration Leave a comment
New Russian spaceport: Vostochny Cosmodrome
Some space facilities are built in secret (military) or with little fanfare perhaps because they’re not very ambitious. But when the Russian Prime Minister (V. Putin) announces the building of a new $800 million spaceport – or cosmodrome, it’s clearly intended to be very public. This fits with the avowed use for a new ‘civilian’ [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged Baikonur, commercial space, cosmodrome, ISS, Putin, Russia, Vostochny Leave a comment
Falcon 9 flies for COTS
Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS) sounds like a circumlocution, a long-winded way of saying space-taxi, but the first flight of the commercial rocket Falcon 9 by the Space X Corporation is a milestone in the movement (trend, effort, or struggle) toward private for-profit companies taking at least some of the space flights that have been [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged commercial, Falcon 9, launch, LEO, private space company, Space X Leave a comment
Life on Titan through a hydrocarbon haze
The hazy methane-red surface of Titan. NASA/JPL Even before the wildly successful Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its lunar neighborhood, scientists have looked at the largest moon, Titan, studied it with telescopes and other instruments, noted its methane-rich atmosphere, its extreme cold (around 90 degrees Kelvin, -183C or -290F), and wondered if somehow in its [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged acetylene, astrobiology, Cassini, Huygens, hydrogen, methane-based life, organic chemistry, Saturn, Titan Leave a comment
Microgravity: Overlooking the weightless elephant in the room
Astronaut Marsha Ivins (STS-98) with weightless long hair. . Credit: NASA The American space agency NASA is going through a mid-life crisis. Its future is at stake, and whatever directions are chosen they will be controversial. While NASA isn’t the be-all end-all of world space efforts, it is arguably the biggest, most visible, and iconic [...]
Posted in Impact: Space Exploration Also tagged bone loss, free fall, gravity, International Space Station, microgravity, space adaptation syndrome, zero g, zero gravity Leave a comment
Exploiting suborbital space
The commercial ‘exploitation’ of space has been developing for more than a decade. By exploitation I mean simply ‘making a profit’ from it. Lofting satellites into orbit was once the purview of governments. In fact, rockets into any level of space were usually government projects (and mostly military). That began changing a decade or two [...]
Posted in Impact: Space Exploration Also tagged commercial space, ESA, ISS, LEO, NASA mission, private space companies, rocketry, suborbital space Leave a comment
Off to Mars. Yes and no.