Like most visitors to Hawaii, David Wettergreen spent his two-week trip there in the sand. But instead of sunbathing, he was busy putting Scarab, his robotic moon rover, through rigorous test drives in the lunar-like volcanic ash-filled crater at Mauna Kea.
A promising new climate-monitoring satellite is snuffed out before it reaches orbit
By Bjorn Carey
Posted 02.24.2009 at 1:02 pm 3 Comments
Early this morning, thousands of scientists had their hearts broken as a NASA satellite crucial to studying climate change suffered a critical failure during launch and plunked into the Pacific Ocean.
Training to be an astronaut is not for the faint of heart. Your training includes being strapped into a contraption that whirls you around at high speeds until you're on the verge of losing consciousness. You get to ride on a plane -- affectionately referred to as the "vomit comet" -- that nosedives into a freefall to simulate microgravity. Or, you might also get to spend six hours in an underwater tank wearing a 650-pound spacesuit. Luckily, it wouldn't feel like 650 pounds, because you'd be in a state of neutral buoyancy.
Ever wonder what would happen if the world’s top minds came together to establish a university? It’s time to find out. NASA and Google have teamed up with leading science and technology entrepreneurs to open Singularity University (SU), a school devoted to fostering collaboration and innovation “in order to address humanity’s grand challenges.”
Ever wonder what would happen if the world’s top minds came together to establish a university? It’s time to find out. NASA and Google have teamed up with leading science and technology entrepreneurs to open Singular University (SU), a school devoted to fostering collaboration and innovation “in order to address humanity’s grand challenges.”
By Christopher Mims
Posted 02.03.2009 at 11:16 am Comments
It’s true: The brain of NASA’s primary vehicle has the computational power of an IBM 5150, that ’80s icon that goes for $20 at yard sales. According to NASA and IBM, the shuttle’s General Purpose Computer (GPC)—which controls, among other things, the entire launch sequence—is an upgrade of the 500-kilobyte computer the shuttle flew with until 1991.
If you roll out of bed and see the headline "Life on Mars," is it because: a) it's a hoax, b) NASA got lucky, c) scientific genius won out, or d) it is written in a British tabloid?
Mars Science Laboratory
Launching in the fall, this research rover will collect and examine Martian soil and rock samples for traces of carbon, life’s most common building block. To find that carbon, ChemCam will fire lasers at the ground and analyze the vapor produced by the impact.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
NASA is going back to the moon—after the LRO finds astronauts a good place to land. Launching on April 24, the LRO will map out the moon’s surface and home in on the poles, where scientists believe there could be water.
Earth’s twin could be waiting for us hundreds of light-years away. In fact, thousands of Earth doppelgängers may be lurking in the cosmic distance, orbiting stars just like our sun and maybe, just maybe, harboring life of their own. Although telescopes have identified more than 300 planets outside our solar system, most of them are too harsh to host life. One notable exception to the typical “hot Jupiter” model is a rocky Earth-like planet discovered in 2007, dubbed Gliese 581 c.
NASA will fire up its latest rocket this April for its first test flight. Ares 1 is designed to haul a 25-ton payload, making it capable of ferrying either six astronauts to the International Space Station or four astronauts to low-Earth orbit, where they can transfer to another vehicle and head to the moon. The rocket contains two stages: a reusable solid rocket booster and an engine powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. If all goes well with Orion, NASA’s planned crew vehicle, Ares 1 will be whisking the first crews into space by 2015.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is not playing nice with the Obama transition team, according to a post by Robert Block of the Orlando Sentinel. He reports that Griffin is resisting efforts by former NASA associate administrator Lori Garver, who heads Obama's space transition team, to "look under the hood" of the space program.
When lunar astronauts flick on their televisions after a long day of prospecting, they’ll have a trashcan-size nuclear reactor to thank for their nightly dose of prime time. NASA, looking past the already daunting task of simply getting humans to the moon by 2020, recently started considering proposals for ways to power lunar habitats. Batteries and fuel cells provide only short-term solutions. Solar power would be limited where a single night lasts as long as 354 hours. So space-agency officials have started making plans to go nuclear.
When lunar astronauts flick on their televisions after a long day of prospecting, they’ll have a trashcan-size nuclear reactor to thank for their nightly dose of prime time. NASA, looking past the already daunting task of simply getting humans to the moon by 2020, recently started considering proposals for ways to power lunar habitats. Batteries and fuel cells provide only short-term solutions. Solar power would be limited where a single night lasts as long as 354 hours. So space-agency officials have started making plans to go nuclear.
Get ready for more interstellar signposts. Astronomers have directly spotted no less than three planets orbiting a star that sits 130 light-years from Earth. The three gas giants are 10 to seven times the size of Jupiter, with their parent star weighing in at 1.5 times the mass of our sun. Both the Gemini North telescope and W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii helped scope out the planets through infrared light.
Day is Done . . .:Time to whistle "Taps" for the Phoenix Mars Lander. NASA
NASA has begun bidding a planned goodbye to its Phoenix Mars Lander. The lander relies on solar panels and the sun's golden touch to reawaken it each day, but a dust storm has hastened the end in the face of the oncoming Martian winter.
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.
