for starters...

Mar 20
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» MESSENGER enters orbit around Mercury

Terrific news out of NASA on Thursday night - MESSENGER successfully entered orbit around Mercury after six and a half years in transit. Great stuff - can’t wait to see what images and science come out of the mission over the next few years!

For a while I was tracking MESSENGER’s status and the early images that have come back from the flybys its done so far have been stunning. For example:

But, time got away from me and the last time I looked at the mission was 2009. The news of successful orbit insertion made for a very welcome surprise at the end of last week! Keep the images coming!

Aug 18
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PBS: What We’re Watching: NASA’s Accidental Video Art

NASA posts videos from their rocket launches occasionally, and PBS was kind enough to link to one of the better ones.  The camera in this video is attached to one of the solid rocket boosters which have a burn time of 126 seconds.  As a result, not much exciting happens until just after the 2 minute mark, but from there on its phenomenal.  PBS’s description below:

The film below is a space shuttle launch from the perspective of a solid rocket booster, one of the giant white rockets attached to the belly of the shuttle during its ascent. Thanks to a tiny camera and contact microphone attached its frame, you can ride along with it as it sends the shuttle into orbit, then free falls back to earth. There’s not much going on visually until the boosters separate at about the two-minute mark—but after that, it’s a film even Stanley Kubrick would be proud of.

Jul 29
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» Slashdot Struggles to Remain Relevant in The Social Web

Sad to read about the decline of Slashdot.org in recent years.  I admit that after being a heavy user 2 years ago I rarely go on the site anymore.  Just as the research shows, I now go to news.yc and my feeds on Google Reader for my daily news.  The king is dead.  Long live the king!

Jun 07
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Daft Punk do Star Wars for Adidas

Watch this - it is phenomenal.

May 25
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Astronomy Picture of the Day: Looking Back Across Mars It’s been a long trip for the Martian rover Opportunity. Last week Opportunity surpassed Viking 1 as the longest running mission on Mars, now extending well over six years. Pictured above, Opportunity’s tire tracks cross a nearly featureless Martian desert, emanating from a distant horizon. Landing in 2004 in Meridiani Planum, the robotic Opportunity has embarked on its longest and most dangerous trek yet, now aiming to reach large Endeavor Crater sometime next year. Endeavor, it is hoped, holds new clues to the ancient geology of Mars and whether Mars could once have harbored life.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Looking Back Across Mars

It’s been a long trip for the Martian rover Opportunity. Last week Opportunity surpassed Viking 1 as the longest running mission on Mars, now extending well over six years. Pictured above, Opportunity’s tire tracks cross a nearly featureless Martian desert, emanating from a distant horizon. Landing in 2004 in Meridiani Planum, the robotic Opportunity has embarked on its longest and most dangerous trek yet, now aiming to reach large Endeavor Crater sometime next year. Endeavor, it is hoped, holds new clues to the ancient geology of Mars and whether Mars could once have harbored life.

May 11
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Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull Volcano, Iceland Seeing this, I can certainly understand why air travel around Europe has been so difficult recently! The plume of ash and steam rising from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano reached five to six kilometers (17,000 to 20,000 feet) into the atmosphere on May 10, 2010, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image. The ash is blowing southeast over the North Atlantic Ocean. Volcanic ash from previous days closed airports in Ireland and Portugal on May 10, said CNN.

Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull Volcano, Iceland

Seeing this, I can certainly understand why air travel around Europe has been so difficult recently!

The plume of ash and steam rising from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano reached five to six kilometers (17,000 to 20,000 feet) into the atmosphere on May 10, 2010, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image. The ash is blowing southeast over the North Atlantic Ocean. Volcanic ash from previous days closed airports in Ireland and Portugal on May 10, said CNN.

Apr 20
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A few years ago I had the good fortune of working with ATK - a company out in Promontory, Utah that makes the solid-rocket-propellant boosters for the NASA space shuttle.  Watching these marvels of engineering being manufactured was awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, I missed out on the true spectacle of the manufacturing process.  Every once in a while ATK test fires a booster in Utah to make sure that everything operates according to spec.  They test fire by pointing the booster into a large cement block in the ground and letting it rip.  For 123 seconds the booster scorches everything within several hundred yards and knocks viewers off their feet.  Unlike at Kennedy Space Center, where viewers are 6 miles away across the water and the boosters shoot up into the sky, at ATK viewers are within 1.5 miles of the rocket and the booster is on the ground for the whole burn. Sad to hear that the booster program did its last test burn - and even sadder that I never had a chance to see one.  There’s always the possibility that they’ll start test-burning the Atlas boosters sometime soon! NASA’s Space Shuttle Program conducted the final test firing of a reusable solid rocket motor Feb. 25 in Promontory, Utah. The flight support motor, or FSM-17, burned for approximately 123 seconds—the same time each reusable solid rocket motor burns during an actual space shuttle launch. Preliminary indications show all test objectives were met. After final test data are analyzed, results for each objective will be published in a NASA report. The test—the 52nd conducted for NASA by ATK Launch Systems, a unit of Alliant Techsystems Inc.—marks the closure of a test program that has spanned more than three decades. The first test was in July 1977. The ATK-built motors have successfully launched the space shuttle into orbit 129 times. Link here.

A few years ago I had the good fortune of working with ATK - a company out in Promontory, Utah that makes the solid-rocket-propellant boosters for the NASA space shuttle.  Watching these marvels of engineering being manufactured was awe-inspiring.

Unfortunately, I missed out on the true spectacle of the manufacturing process.  Every once in a while ATK test fires a booster in Utah to make sure that everything operates according to spec.  They test fire by pointing the booster into a large cement block in the ground and letting it rip.  For 123 seconds the booster scorches everything within several hundred yards and knocks viewers off their feet.  Unlike at Kennedy Space Center, where viewers are 6 miles away across the water and the boosters shoot up into the sky, at ATK viewers are within 1.5 miles of the rocket and the booster is on the ground for the whole burn.

Sad to hear that the booster program did its last test burn - and even sadder that I never had a chance to see one.  There’s always the possibility that they’ll start test-burning the Atlas boosters sometime soon!

NASA’s Space Shuttle Program conducted the final test firing of a reusable solid rocket motor Feb. 25 in Promontory, Utah. The flight support motor, or FSM-17, burned for approximately 123 seconds—the same time each reusable solid rocket motor burns during an actual space shuttle launch. Preliminary indications show all test objectives were met. After final test data are analyzed, results for each objective will be published in a NASA report.

The test—the 52nd conducted for NASA by ATK Launch Systems, a unit of Alliant Techsystems Inc.—marks the closure of a test program that has spanned more than three decades. The first test was in July 1977. The ATK-built motors have successfully launched the space shuttle into orbit 129 times.

Link here.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day comes through again! Why did the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland create so much ash? Although the large ash plume was not unparalleled in its abundance, its location was particularly noticeable because it drifted across such well populated areas. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland began erupting on March 20, with a second eruption starting under the center of a small glacier on April 14. Neither eruption was unusually powerful. The second eruption, however, melted a large amount of glacial ice which then cooled and fragmented lava into gritty glass particles that were carried up with the rising volcanic plume. Pictured above two days ago, lightning bolts illuminate ash pouring out of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

Astronomy Picture of the Day comes through again!

Why did the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland create so much ash? Although the large ash plume was not unparalleled in its abundance, its location was particularly noticeable because it drifted across such well populated areas. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland began erupting on March 20, with a second eruption starting under the center of a small glacier on April 14. Neither eruption was unusually powerful. The second eruption, however, melted a large amount of glacial ice which then cooled and fragmented lava into gritty glass particles that were carried up with the rising volcanic plume. Pictured above two days ago, lightning bolts illuminate ash pouring out of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.