May15
…has lost a reaction wheel.
This is bad news for exo-planet hunting.
Having a deep-space capability would allow the repair of systems like this.
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…has lost a reaction wheel.
This is bad news for exo-planet hunting.
Having a deep-space capability would allow the repair of systems like this.
I’m busy preparing my presentation for this afternoon at Space Access, but Ed Wright is announcing a space hacker workshop up at Ames Research Center in Mountain View on May 4-5 for people who want to learn how to build cubesats that can fly suborbitally on XCOR’s Lynx.
[Update Friday morning]
I originally wrote this post in Phoenix last Saturday, but didn’t actually publish it until yesterday, in case it had anyone scratching their heads.
Europa could be a challenging place to land.
It seems to me that you just have to budget some extra propellant for a hover to melt it, then drop in with a floating ship. Too bad there’s no ice in the rings, or you could mine some propellant from them. But you could fuel up in the Belt before heading on to Jupiter.
…from the very thoughty Professor John Lewis.
I’ll be interested to see how long the media interest in this lasts.
“Fifty years ago, we would have had no way of seeing an asteroid like this coming. Now, thanks to the discoveries NASA has made in its short history, we have known about 2012 DA14 for about a year. As the world leader in space exploration, America has made great progress for mankind,” Smith continued. “But our work is not done. We should continue to study, research, and explore space to better understand our universe and better protect our planet.”
The chairman announced a hearing in the coming weeks to examine ways to better identify and address asteroids that pose a potential threat to Earth.
I hope they have Ed Lu testify.
[Update a while later]
Jeff Foust has more.
Right next door?
Maybe it’s more motivation to develop interstellar propulsion, but we’re still a long way from it, and thirteen light years is still a long way away.
…and sequestration. Which is looking more and more likely.
Obviously, if I were running the agency, and didn’t care what Congress thought, I’d just cancel SLS and Orion. Webb should go, too, but the sequestration goal can be met with those two alone. I’d cancel Webb if I could redirect the money elsewhere. But Charlie and Lori aren’t going to have that option as long as Dick Shelby and Barbara Mikulski are calling the shots. So we’ll continue to waste billions on unneeded rockets and capsules, and an overpriced telescope, while planetary science goes fallow.
This is strongly related to my concept of the Apollo cargo cult. If we want to justify humans in space, we have to stop using the word “exploration,” because it simply raises the issue of letting robots do it. Talking instead about space development and particularly settlement implies humans, by definition. And if we can’t persuade the taxpayers that those are worthwhile goals, and instead try to sell them a bill of goods, then we don’t deserve taxpayer money for our hobbies. And cults.
This is good news for space settlement:
The scientists ran their experiment on Arabidopsis plants—a go-to species for plant biologists. The control group was germinated and grown at the Kennedy Space Center (A), while the comparative group was housed on the International Space Station (B). For 15 days, researchers took pictures of the plants at six-hour intervals and compared them. Their results surprised even them: the plants in space exhibited the same growth patterns as those on Earth.
The researchers were looking for two specific patterns of root growth: waving and skewing. With waving, the root tips grow back and forth, much like waves. Skewing occurs when a plant’s roots grow at an angle, rather than straight down. Scientists don’t know exactly why these root behaviors occur, but gravity was thought to be the driving force for both.
So much for that theory. This means the potential for fresh food at ISS, if you’re a vegetarian (or even if not). They should be learning how to do weightless hydroponics. Of course, we still don’t know if animals, and particularly humans, can gestate, or how, and that’s true of partial gravities as well. And we’re not likely to until SSI gets funding for its variable-gravity lab.
A Tonguska-sized rock just came within the moon’s orbit, with little warning.
There really is no excuse for us to not have a better survey of these objects, when you consider the money we’re wasting on things like SLS.
Next Big Future has quite a few interesting links.
NASA has to hope that Curiosity doesn’t find any. This is part of a broader issue. People who want to settle Mars had better hope we don’t find life there, or the biologists and greens will be decrying the “genocide” we might cause by contaminating the planet.
Should be a good weekend for the Perseids. The moon isn’t new, but it will be out of the way for most of the night.
Well, this twitter feed was inevitable. It’s pretty good.
Is Curiosity a sign of a new NASA?
I’ll believe there’s a new NASA when Webb and SLS are finally put out of their misery. But the problem isn’t just NASA — it’s Congress.
The pointless debate continues. And of course, it continues to carry its implicit and unshared assumption with it (e.g., that the purpose of this is “science.”).
Here’s a live webcast from Fraser Cain, Phil Plait, et al.
How to watch it this afternoon.
You know, if we were a true spacefaring civilization, we’d move the planet to get it in the same orbital plane as earth so we could do this every few months instead of once a century or so.
The ISS is not 1200 miles up.
It turns out that it was a fairly rare type, containing amino acids.
What would they look like from the surface?
Why do they face the earth?
There may be a lot of them. I think that this is a good example of how little we know about planet formation.
Was it caused by an impact event in the mid-Atlantic?
Maybe, but only temporary ones.
Can anything be salved from it, scientifically? Some thoughts from one of the scientists. If we were really a spacefaring nation, we’d have someone on their way to it right now, or soon, to retrieve or fix it.
[Update a while later]
The latest from Emily Lakdawalla. As she says, unless there’s a change in the situation, not much more to report until it comes down, either on its own or with assistance from the ground. I also agree with her that it’s strange that anyone thinks they can predict an entry date at this point.
[Update a few minutes later]
Alan Boyle: “NASA’s Nicholas Johnson tells me @PhobosGrunt isn’t projected to re-enter till next month; too early to be more specific right now.”
That’s right.
What a name. Anyway, I have an article about it up over at Popular Mechanics.
[Update a while later]
Here’s some more info. According to that piece, it’s dropping in altitude a little over a mile per orbit, but that will accelerate as it gets lower in the coming weeks, if they can’t get it on its way.
[Update a few minutes later]
Emily Lakdawalla has the latest. It’s not looking good, according to sources in Russia.
…and early German movies, from Lileks.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Ain’t it the truth? Dispatches from Venus, and Mars.
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