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Tag: NASA

  • SpaceX Preps Test For May 7th Space Flight

    SpaceX Preps Test For May 7th Space Flight

    On Monday April 30th, 2012, SpaceX will do a static launch test of their rocket propulsion system, called Falcon 9, in advance of their planned launch. The static launch, which is available for viewing here will start at 2:30pm EST with the actual static firing of the rocket boosters taking place at 3:00pm EST. The Firing, which will take place at SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, is part of a full dress rehearsal for the real launch to take place shortly thereafter on May 7th.

    The dress rehearsal will also have SpaceX engineers running through all countdown processes as though it were launch day. The exercise will end with all nine engines firing at full power for two seconds. If the test is successful, then SpaceX will launch a Dragon spacecraft into low-Earth orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket. If that launch in May is successful, then the spacecraft will get the approval form NASA to dock with the International Space Station and the crew there will unload the cargo.

    If the Dragon is found capable of doing it’s job, SpaceX will then start to fulfill its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract for NASA for at least 12 missions to carry cargo to and from the space station. Dragon and Falcon 9 were designed to carry astronauts but this mission will give them valuable experience.

    SpaceX made history in December of 2010 by the first commercial company in history to send a spacecraft to orbit and return it safely to Earth.

  • Astronomers Find Habitable Planet 22 Light Years Away

    Astronomers have found a super earth located just 22 light years away from us. This follows a discovery that there is a distinct possibility that there are close to 1 billion habitable planets in our galaxy and close to 100 within 20 light years. The planet named Gliese 667Cc, is orbiting a binary star system. That means there are two suns instead of one, just like Luke Skywalkers home planet of Tatooine.

    (image)

    The High Accuracy Radial Planetary Searcher (HARPS) telescope, which measures the radial velocity of a star, was used to find the planet. It was initially discovered last year, but they recently went back over the data with a new equation and discovered that the planet in question is not only in the green zone, but that it is a solid planet, not gaseous as previously thought.

    Steven Vogt, an astronomer from the University of California, said: “It´s the Holy Grail of exo-planet research to find a planet orbiting around a star at the right distance so it´s not too close where it would lose all its water and not too far where it would freeze. He also added, “It´s right there in the habitable zone – there´s no question or discussion about it. It is not on the edge. It is right in there.”

    Before you get all excited about this planet, you need to realize that at current technology and speeds it would take 492,000 years (light travels 129,329,758,210,039.39 in 22 years, divide that by the fastest man made object Voyager which is appox. 30,000MPH I get 4,310,991 hours. Divide that by 24 hrs in a day and I get 179,624,664 days, divide that by 365 days in a year and I get 492122 years).

    Basically that by the time we got to the destination, assuming that man has neither been destroyed or destroyed himself, and that technology continues to advance at its current rate, we would pass them up hundreds of thousands of years before they even get there. Is there a point in even looking for a world like that until we are even remotely close to even achieving 1/10 of the speed of light? Then It would only take 220 years to get there which is still a long time but only about 9 generations deep.

    (image)
    This photo is courtesy of PHL @ UPR Arecibo (phl.upr.edu)

  • Did NASA Spot A UFO Near The Sun?

    The UFO chatter has really been picking up in the past few weeks. First there was the one at the Chilean air show, then the one that was filmed by the South Korean airline passenger. Now we have another really weird sighting. The ones in space are usually the ones that are skeptical when NASA or the military tries to convince us that it isn’t real.

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    This time a UFO was spotted by a camera on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and then posted on YouTube. The object looks like a boomerang style ship and it is very close to the Sun. So close indeed that it is impossible that it is man made, because anything that close made by humans would have burned up by now based on our technology. “The streaks in question are consistent with energetic particle (proton) impacts on the CCD, something which is apparent in just about every image,” said Nathan Rich, lead ground systems engineer in the NRL’s solar physics branch.

    (image)

    I’m pretty tired of every single so called expert saying that this is routine. If this is routine and found in most pictures, then please give me proof. Like I said, the ones on earth, I can understand if they are fake or optical illusions, but ones in space? It will take more than a guy like this to tell me that it isn’t real. I want a real explanation.

  • SpaceX Prepares for Historic Launch This May

    SpaceX Prepares for Historic Launch This May

    After a series of delays, SpaceX is finally expected to launch on May 7th. The event will mark the first time a privately owned vessel has made the long, hard trip to the International Space Station (ISS). Additionally, this adventure represents a return to space travel since NASA famously ended its program last year.

    The Dragon, a transport that will carry supplies to those on-board the ISS, was originally scheduled to make its excursion into the the cosmos on February 7th. However, SpaceX determined that more tests were required before properly launching the capsule, pushing the date back to April. Now that everything appears to be a-okay with the space-bound container, officials have penciled its initial flight for May. The time of the launch is scheduled for 9:38am.

    When the Dragon docks with the ISS, it will bring with it 1,149 pounds of cargo. The return trip home will find the capsule carrying a 1,455 payload back to Earth.

    Privately funded trips into space are expected to become the norm within the next ten years. NASA has dumped an impressive $270 millions into such programs, which they hope will become big business in the near future. These commercial flights will also allow US astronauts to make trips to the ISS without relying on the Russian space program for assistance, the price for which is estimated to skyrocket by 2015.

    Companies such as BlueOrigin LLC, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and Boeing are looking to toss their space-friendly hats into the proverbial ring, as well.

    For an animated look at what’s expected to transpire at the International Space Station this May, take a peek at the video embedded below.

  • NASA’s Sustainability Base: Greenest Gov’t Building Ever!

    NASA’s newest research center is going to be the greenest and most self-sustaining government building ever built. Innovations are all courtesy of space travel quality technologies and conveniences. For instance, the water treatment system uses forward osmosis to reuse grey waste water, the ceiling panels cool the air, and shades open and close automatically to make the most efficient use of natural light and heat.

    Integration with nature is essential to the design of the base and the engineers have taken great care in connecting the inner workings of the building with the external landscapes. To be at one with nature, there are as many outdoor meeting spaces as indoor and large open rooms are meant to facilitate a fresh holistic-type environment.

    building 4

    Building 1

    The structure is located in Moffett Field, California on the campus of NASA’s Silicon Valley Ames Research Center. It really doesn’t cost a huge amount of dollars more to construct a facility of this magnitude, according to NASA, as many of the innovations, such as the geothermal well, will pay for themselves in efficiency over time.

    building 2

    building 3

    The research center will become NASA’s premier place for testing green and energy efficient technologies. Building technology is a crucial part of what NASA does, and the idea of creating more friendly, efficient, and enjoyable work environments was at the forefront of design and engineering when the plans for the center were conceived.

    Take a look at USA Today’s coverage of the building site:

  • A Brief History of the Space Shuttle Discovery

    The space shuttle Discovery arrived at the Smithsonian today after a short flight from Dulles Airport. NASA officially handed over the shuttle to the National Air and Space Museum in a symbolic end to an era of federal funded American space exploration.

    As you can see from the infographic by FedTech, Discovery flew in 39 missions into outer space. It’s last mission in 2011.

    “As NASA transfers the shuttle orbiters to museums across the country, we are embarked on an exciting new space exploration journey,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. “Relying on American ingenuity and know-how, NASA is partnering with private industry to provide crew and cargo transportation to the International Space Station, while developing the most powerful rocket ever built to take the nation farther than ever before into the solar system.”

    NASA says the remaining fleet will retire to locations in New York Virginia, California, and Florida. The Space Shuttle Endeavor will go to the California Science Center. Atlantis will stay at KSC.

    Shuttle Enterprise will go from the Smithsonian to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York. It is scheduled to fly over New York City on April 23 between 9:30 and 11:30 before landing at JFK.

    The final flight of the space shuttle Discovery.

  • NASA’s Social Media Team Wins Outreach Award

    Every year an organization or team is presented with the Space Foundation’s Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award, which recognizes distinguished contributions to public awareness and understanding of current space programs. The award, presented on Monday in Colorado Springs, was given to NASA’s social media team during the 28th National Space Symposium at The Broadmoor Hotel.

    The group is recognized particularly for getting million of viewers involved in the efforts of NASA via social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. The team, shown at the event, is featured in the pictures above and below.

    David Weaver, associate administrator for Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington commented on the team and their accomplishments:

    “NASA’s social media team works to tell our story using innovative platforms to let as many people as possible learn about the work we’re doing in space exploration and aeronautics research,”

    “The Space Foundation’s recognition is another testament to the team’s success.”
    Social media seems to be at the forefront of all aspects of life these day; business, personal, sports, dining, and now even NASA and space exploration. I thought i’d take a look at Twitter and see what folks on there had to say about the awards at NASA:

    RT @nasa: Here’s to our followers! We are humbled to receive the Space Foundation Award for public outreach. http://t.co/d3Y7PxPB #NSS28 13 minutes ago via HootSuite ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    Good show. RT @LosAlamosNatLab: Congrats @NASA! Well deserved public outreach award from @SpaceFoundationhttp://t.co/gnK0ACWc 17 hours ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    .@Schierholz @Yembrick @VeronicaMcG Congratulations to @NASA social team. You inspire us all to ever-greater heights. http://t.co/fxt4oc7L 18 hours ago via Osfoora HD ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    Pretty darn impressive! MT @schierholz Wow @USAirForce Four-star Shelton just congratulated me for the @NASA social media team award. #NSS28 9 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @schierholz: Honored by @NASA social media team award! @Yembrick @veronicamcg & I wish whole team were here! #NSS28 http://t.co/NK8oMVkk 18 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    NASA's Social Media Team

  • Bake Sale/Car Wash To Raise Funding, Awareness For NASA

    You’ve probably seen that bumper sticker that says something along the lines of, “It will be great when schools have all the funding they need and the Navy has to have a bake sale to buy a battleship” (another variation replaces the Navy and a battleship with the Air Force and a bomber, but the point holds). Well, in the fine spirit of fundraisers everywhere, the somewhat inelegantly-named Southwest Research Institute Planetary Science Directorate is going to be conducting a combination bake sale/car wash to benefit the red-headed step-child of government agencies: NASA.

    The National Planetary Exploration Car Wash and Bake Sale is set for June 9th, and will be happening at locations around the country. Institutions like Caltech, UCLA, Notre Dame, and several others, including the Google X Prize-winning Moon Express, have signed on as anchor partner institutions. Though donations will be accepted and passed along, the goal of the event is to raise awareness, rather than funds. I spoke with Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, and he said that “our primary objective is to raise awareness about the deep and damaging cuts (over $1B) to the NASA planetary exploration budget, and to focus attention on repairing those cuts.”

    NASA has suffered severely in recent years. As the economy has struggled the government has repeatedly cannibalized the agency, to the point that NASA’s budget for 2012 is far too small to fund any of the major projects the agency once had planned. New manned missions to the moon? Gone. Unmanned probes to Mars? Nope. Manned missions to Mars? Fat chance. So desperate has the situation become, in fact, that last week NASA put out a call for help from scientists and engineers who could help the agency come up with ways to get to Mars on its paltry new budget.

    Growing up in the 1980s, NASA and its space shuttles loomed large in my imagination. If you’d asked the kids in my third grade class what we wanted to be when we grew up, a sizable portion (myself included) would’ve said we wanted to be astronauts. Though I (obviously) pursued other career paths, I never really lost my childhood infatuation with space.

    By the time my young son came along and developed his own love of space, the shuttle program was already on its last legs. At that time there was less than a year left of shuttle missions, and so the decision was made to take him to see a shuttle launch. With the shuttle program now done and no heir apparent waiting to replace it, the people of my generation are faced with the prospect of telling our children that they live in a country that once put men on the moon, and that was planning to send human beings to Mars, right up until we stopped caring.

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    The goal of the Planetary Exploration Car Wash and Bake Sale is not to make up for the shortfalls in NASA’s budget – it would be hard to wash that many cars or sell that many cookies. Instead, the institutions are trying to make people aware of the budget crisis currently facing America’s space program and of the benefits of a fully-funded NASA.

    [Lead Image: Space Shuttle Discovery on board a modified Boeing 747, en route to Washington, D.C. to take up residence at the Smithsonian. Credit: Dinesh Cyanam]

  • NASA Taps App Developers to Improve Access to Planetary Data System

    Even if you do happen to be NASA, sorting through 100 terabytes of data and images amassed over the past thirty years of planetary exploration is still a daunting task. NASA, however, had decided to make the best of the situation and announced an open competition for developers to build mobile and web-based apps that will increase the general public’s access to the colossal amount of information archived in the Planetary Data System.

    The NASA Tournament Lab is collaborating with the TopCoder community to host the competition, which is now entering its second phase of the PDS Challenge series. The goal of the collaboration is to hopefully build new and different types of apps with the non-technical users in mind, making it easier for children or instructors to access PDS’s trove of data.

    Competition registration is open now through 6:00PM EST Friday, April 20, at TopCoder’s website. This stage of the PDS Challenge series is offering $13,000 in total cash awards, an invitation to visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, to experience the Mars Science Laboratory mission landing on site and an opportunity to meet members of the NASA astronaut-led judging panel.

    “There is a huge untapped potential for the extraction of knowledge and insight from within the PDS archive which could be transformed by average people from different, non-scientific walks of life,” said Jason Crusan, NASA Chief Technologist for Human Exploration and Operations. “These kinds of Challenges are being made to produce useful tools which will allow, for example, high school-level students to access, organize and make their own discoveries from this huge volume of digital data.”

    This task looks to be no slouch, either. Given that PDS has fourteen different search tools dedicated to just the search of data related to Mars, typically divided up into how the information was collected (e.g., images captured by the Viking Orbiter or the Mars Pathfinder), entrants into the competition will most definitely need to wear their developer Nikes.

  • NASA Hosts Communication Competition

    NASA Hosts Communication Competition

    Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) of Star Trek fame will host the FameLab Astrobiology finals competition on Monday, April 16, from 7-9 p.m. EDT at the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center in Atlanta. In the competition young scientists will compete to see who can use advanced scientific knowledge to prove themselves the most effective communicator.

    A panel of scientific experts will judge the contest where participants can use only props they carry on stage to articulate the concept they have in mind. Contestants have been tirelessly making their way through preliminary trials since January. The winner will go on to compete in the International competition.

    NASA television will broadcast the event. Those interested in the competition should follow this link. NASA television is available by clicking here.

  • Mars Viking Robots ‘Found Life’ In 1976

    Are we alone in this universe? Is Earth so unique that out of the trillions upon trillions of planets in the universe, we are the only one that harbors life? What if the nearest life to us wasn’t orbiting Alpha Centauri but was on our nearest celestial neighbor? That is what scientist are saying after reviewing data collected from the 1976 Mars Viking rovers.

    Scientists have recently started to reexamine the data that the Viking probes sent back from Mars 36 years ago. They have come to the conclusion that there was bacteria on Mars. Further, NASA doesn’t need a human expedition to Mars to nail down the claim, neuropharmacologist and biologist Joseph Miller, with the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, told Discovery News.

    “The ultimate proof is to take a video of a Martian bacteria. They should send a microscope — watch the bacteria move,” Miller said. “On the basis of what we’ve done so far, I’d say I’m 99 percent sure there’s life there!”

    Researchers crunched raw data collected during runs of the Labeled Release experiment, which looked for signs of microbial metabolism in soil samples scooped up and processed by the two Viking landers. General consensus of scientists has been that the experiment didn’t find any biological activity. They took a different approach this time by crunching raw numbers looking for the complexities caused by bacteria.

    Critics counter that the method has not yet been proven effective for differentiating between biological and non-biological processes on Earth so it’s premature to draw any conclusions.

    “Ideally to use a technique on data from Mars one would want to show that the technique has been well calibrated and well established on Earth. The need to do so is clear; on Mars we have no way to test the method, while on Earth we can,” planetary scientist and astrobiologist Christopher McKay, with NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

    The research is published online in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences.

  • Astronauts Condemn NASA’s Global Warming Stance

    Global warming is happening! That was the belief up until 2009 when it was discovered that the worlds most trusted and renowned center for studying climate change, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, was fudging it’s data and climate algorithms to make the data seem way worse than it actually was. This was discovered and largely ignored by the mainstream media outlets of CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. It was only until the internet raised it’s eyebrow and fury did the MSM finally admit that maybe there might be a small chance that there was a problem.

    This hasn’t stopped a select group of people (see: Al Gore) from continuing to beat the global warming drum. One of the most out spoken of these people is James Hansen, who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. This is the man that equated global warming to slavery! Recently he was in China and spoke openly about trying to bring the United States to it’s knees with a global carbon tax. This is what he had to say:

    “After agreement with other nations, e.g., the European Union, China and these nations could impose rising internal carbon fees. Existing rules of the World Trade Organization would allow collection of a rising border duty on products from all nations that do not have an equivalent internal carbon fee or tax. The United States then would be forced to make a choice. It could either address its fossil-fuel addiction … or … accept continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being.”

    This guy works for the United States Government. He is funded by taxpayer money and is petitioning to bring America to it’s knees over it’s failure to pass cap and trade legislation. His tirades are starting to hurt NASA’s credibility when it comes to climatology.

    On March 28, fifty former NASA employees including several Apollo astronauts signed this letter to Charles Bolden, NASA’s Administrator:

    “Dear Charlie,

    We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.

    The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.

    As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.

    For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.

    Thank you for considering this request.”

    They wrote this because as they say: “We feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate,” they wrote. “At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.”

    It will be interesting to see if any real change is made at the world’s most renown space agency before this years election.

  • NASA to Extend Kepler Mission to 2016?

    The Kepler mission may be extended for another two years after a report from NASA’s senior review board. The spacecraft was named in honor of the 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler and was launched in March 2009. It was supposed to return around September of 2012.

    The purpose of the mission is to survey portions of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.

    It has been determined that Kepler has, “enabled remarkable stellar science” through its discovery of several exoplanets.

    In the past few days we have gotten news that there are quite possibly billions of planets in the Milky Way that can suport life. Including up to 100 planets within 20 light years.

    Astronomers have been reaching out for funding in reaction to these discoveries to continue their Kepler-related work through websites like PetriDish. In an effort to answer whether we are alone in this world or not PetriDish has been trying to gain funding for the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK) project. The donations will go towards the creation of a super computer dedicated to finding exomoons.

    The importance of such research comes from the theory that there may be more habitable exomoons in the cosmos than exoplanets.

    Do you think we are in a golden age of planetary research?

  • First “Alien Earth” To Be Found By 2014

    Scientists from NASA firmly believe that we will find an alien planet, and that we can say, “that planet can support life.” In the past few days we have gotten news that there are quite possibly billions of planets in the Milky Way that can suport life. Including up to 100 planets within 20 light years.

    Most of these planets that we have found have come from the Kepler planet finding project. “I believe Kepler will find a ‘Goldilocks planet’ within the next two years,” Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a researcher at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. said in a statement. “We’ll be able to point at a specific star in the night sky and say ‘There it is — a planet that could support life!’”

    NASA also has plans to use the Tess (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). Supported in part by Google, this mission is designed to find alien planets in our local galactic neighborhood. Tess would study hundreds of stars within 50 light-years of Earth, close enough to study in some detail.

    “With better detectors and instruments designed to block the glare of the parent stars, these next-generation telescopes could not only find a Goldilocks planet, but also tell us what its atmosphere is made of, what sort of cloud cover graces its skies, and maybe even what the surface is like — whether oceans cover part of the globe, how much land there is, and so on,” Hudgins said.

    Domagal-Goldman expects big finds, and big surprises. “We’ve found so many unexpected things about planets that now I expect to be amazed,” he said. “When we can study a Goldilocks planet, I believe we’ll discover something revolutionary about how life interacts with a planetary environment. Nature is so much more diverse than we anticipated.”

  • Ocean Robots Are More Cost Feasible Than Ships

    NASA is developing robots that can navigate the sea for years.

    Bill Vass, CEO of Liquid Robotics, will present “Where The Cloud Meets the Ocean,” at 2 p.m. on April 3rd and discuss how “seven megatrends are converging to change the way ocean research operations and data collection is done across the globe.”

    The movement will inevitably save research organizations considerable money. Bill Vass explained in the following YouTube video that:

    Ships obviously are wonderful things for moving cargo and people and those kinds of things but a ship has tremendous expense based on bunker fuel, capital depreciation, maintenance, insurance risk, all those kinds of things. None of that is true of a robot — … so having that autonomy and ability to operate for long periods of time is something that makes us much more flexible than a ship.

    The robotic technology within these machines is a combination of smartphone technology, micro and nano sensors, wave energy propulsion systems, GPS, wireless communication systems, and cloud computing.

  • Massive Solar Tornado Spotted on the Sun

    Massive Solar Tornado Spotted on the Sun

    NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) satellite has captured images and video of a tornado on the sun several times as large as the Earth.

    Last September the SDO satellite filmed this twirling mass of superheated gas, which ranges in temperature from 50,000 to 2,000,000 Kelvin, over the course of three hours. The tornado was 200,000 kilometers in height, which is a little more than half the distance between the Earth and the moon. It spun at nearly 300,000 kilometers per hour.

    Solar tornados are not created by wind, though – the sun’s magnetic fields twist these formations up from its surface. They often occur at the root of huge coronal mass ejections, which can damage satellites and knock out electricity grids when ejected in the direction of Earth.

    “This unique and spectacular tornado must play a role in triggering global solar storms,” said Dr. Huw Morgan, co-discoverer of solar tornadoes.

    This particular tornado was presented in Manchester, England at the National Astronomy Meeting on Thursday. Though other solar tornadoes have been observed, this one was the first one caught on film.

    “This is perhaps the first time that such a huge solar tornado [has been] filmed by an imager. Previously much smaller solar tornadoes were found my SOHO satellite. But they were not filmed,” says Dr. Xing Li

    Subsequent tornadoes were filmed in February, as can be seen in this video:

  • International Space Station Stars Look Prettier Than Earth Stars

    Have you ever imagined what stars might look like while aboard the International Space Station? Well, they probably look like stars, right? But beyond that, there’s some added beauty when you have the rim of Earth hovering in the foreground of a canvas of stars. Additionally, from the ISS you wouldn’t have to contend with the heavy light pollution that obscures our terrestrial gaze.

    Anyways, whether you imagine often or rarely at all, here’s your chance to peer the heavens from a place that isn’t Earth. Courtesy of of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, the following video compiles a series of time-lapsed video captured from a low-earth orbit. Aside from the stars, there’s also some stunning imagery of Earth detailing the Lite Brite makeup of the power grid, several captures of electrical storms happening, and some wild activity from the aurora borealis. Beyond the terrestrial imagery, the whirlpool of stars’ light trails from the vantage of the ISS reveal what nearly looks like the galaxy’s vanishing point (a brain-melter of a thought in and of itself).

    To really see the detail in the star trails, I recommend that you enlarge the video to the full screen view.

    The Stars as Viewed from the International Space Station. from AJRCLIPS on Vimeo.

  • NASA’s ‘Perpetual Ocean’ Video is Hypnotic

    The Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is responsible for many fascinating and beautiful animations that bring to life the weather and other effects on a planetary scale. These animations take data from real research papers and plug it into computational models to produce these stunning images.

    This particular visualization was created using a computational model called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II (ECCO2). In layman’s terms, its a model to estimate the temperature and flow of ocean water. From data gathered between June 2005 and December 2007, animators were able to show the direction of ocean currents by using white lines that show the direction and speed of ocean water worldwide.

    The animation was created at the last minute for entry into SIGGRAPH, the Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques annual conference for computer graphics, but was not accepted. There is no narration accompanying the video. The goal was “to use ocean flow data to create a simple, visceral experience.”

  • NASA Launches 5 Rockets To Test Jet Stream

    Since the 1960’s when when manned rockets were first launched, NASA noticed something odd at about 60-65 miles above the surface of the earth. Up until now there was speculation about how these 200-300 mph winds were affecting satellites and rockets. Well NASA successfully launched five suborbital sounding rockets this morning from its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia as part of a study of the upper level jet stream. The first rocket was launched at 4:58 a.m. EDT and each subsequent rocket was launched 80 seconds apart. Each of the rockets released a chemical tracer that created milky, white clouds at the edge of space. The launches and clouds were reported to be seen from as far south as Wilmington, N.C.; west to Charlestown, W. Va.; and north to Buffalo, N.Y..

    The Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX) is a Heliophysics sounding rocket mission that will gather information needed to better understand the process responsible for the high-altitude jet stream located 60 to 65 miles above the surface of the Earth.

    “This area shows winds much larger than expected,” says Miguel Larsen, a space scientist at Clemson University who is the principal investigator for these five rockets, known as the Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX). “We don’t yet know what we’re going to see, but there is definitely something unusual going on. ATREX will help us understand the big question about what is driving these fast winds.” “People have launched single rockets before,” says Larsen. “But the key here is that we’re extending the range of measurements to many hundreds of miles. The furthest rocket will make it half way to Bermuda.”

    “In 3-D turbulence, one sees complicated movement,” says Larsen. “But there’s a tendency for 2-D turbulence to behave almost in the opposite manner – the airflow coalesces into single streams, like a jet stream.”

    In order for the launches to occur, clear skies are required at three special camera sites located along the coast in Virginia, North Carolina and New Jersey.

    The rockets being used for the mission are two Terrier-Improved Malemutes, two Terrier-Improved Orions and one Terrier-Oriole.

    ATREX was successfully launched on March 27, 2012 at 4:58 a.m. EDT. Here’s an image of clouds created by the research. http://t.co/ocG7mizn 2 hours ago  via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

  • Unmanned European Rocket Takes Supplies To ISS

    Early this morning the European Space Agency(ESA) launched their 3rd Automated Transfer Vehicle(ATV-3) from a pad in Kourou, French Guiana. The ATV-3 is nicknamed “Edoardo Amaldi” after the famed Italian physicist and spaceflight pioneer who is credited with helping to create the European Space Agency.

    The European ATVs, which are considered the most complex spacecraft ever built in europe, are part of an international fleet of disposable robot cargo ships that are used to transport hardware and critical supplies to the space station. Russia’s unmanned Progress ships and Japan’s H-2 Transfer Vehicles (HTVs) also regularly ferry cargo to the orbiting outpost. The cargo ships then remain attached to the complex for up to six months before they are packed with garbage and deliberately sent to burn up during atmospheric re-entry.

    “We are proud that ESA is providing the most sophisticated vehicle servicing the Space Station,” said Thomas Reiter, ESA’s Director of Human Spaceflight and Operations. “Based on the capabilities and knowhow that ESA and European industry developed in the context of the ATV programme, we have now the opportunity to further evolve this technology. This will open up a wide range of opportunities for us to contribute to future ventures in space exploration.”

    The spacecraft is 35 feet long and 14.7 feet wide – large enough to fit a double-decker bus inside. Europe’s disposable ATVs are designed to automatically dock to the Zvezda module on the Russian portion of the International Space Station.

    Things between the ESA and NASA have deteriorated in the recent past due to budget cuts at Cape Canaveral.

    Check out these great pictures via the ESA:

  • NASA To Start Blowing Up Stars, Creating Supernovas

    Hah, made ya look! While we probably won’t be including “star blowing up” on our list of things to do on Spring Break, NASA did announce that, thanks to new studies using X-ray and ultraviolet observations from the agency’s Swift satellite, its scientists have learned exactly what it takes to cause a star to blow up.

    “For all their importance, it’s a bit embarrassing for astronomers that we don’t know fundamental facts about the environs of these supernovae,” said Stefan Immler, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Now, thanks to unprecedented X-ray and ultraviolet data from Swift, we have a clearer picture of what’s required to blow up these stars.”

    The type of supernova NASA now knows how to spark, a Type Ia supernova, releases explosions that “can outshine their galaxy for weeks and release large and consistent amounts of energy at visible wavelengths.” Evan Ackerman at DVICE made some sense out of NASA’s discovery for the terrestrials: “Type Ia supernovae are a specific type of stellar explosion that are very, very important because astronomers can use them as what’s called “standard candles.” Given that, standard candles are uniquely valuable because they have a known and consistent luminosity that can then be used in to determine the distance of between celestial objects.

    So here’s something: if scientists are learning what causes the obliteration of stars even in the current financial state of NASA, just imagine what spectacular achievements we’d be making if the U.S. federal government didn’t keep hacking away at the agency’s budget.

    Sigh.