Universe Today has a cool story about a dust devil. 800 meters high and with a diameter of 30, we call it huge. And so do they.
Tag Archives: universe today
Into the real world
NASA’s chief climate scientist James E. Hansen built his career studying Earth’s atmosphere and modeling humans’ potential impacts on climate. Then he realized that laboratory work wasn’t enough. Hansen never thought his decision to study atmospheric models would lead to his arrest. But there he was in handcuffs this summer, protesting at the White House against a pipeline that would carry crude oil from Alberta’s oil sands to the Gulf of Mexico.
It wasn’t the first arrest, either. Hansen, who has directed NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 31 years, earned the sobriquet “father of global warming” after testifying before Congress in 1988 on the dangers of global warming. He appeared again in 1989. Then he quietly returned to his work, turning aside television and media requests for the next 15 years because, as he said, “you have no time to do the science if you’re talking to the media.” … (Universe Today)
Amateur Jupiter
This is a picture taken by an amateur photographer. It’s hardly believable. Less than 20 years ago even professional astronomers would be jealous on any colleague able to take such a picture – from a ground based observatory. Now an “amateur” is the author and artist. Kudos. See more stunning photo’s at the contest result page on Universe Today. No wonder this won first prize.
© Damian Peach
LRO going down
LRO_NASA sent out a few interesting tweets about LRO dipping down to a met 20 kms above the surface of the Moon to scout the Apollo landing sites again.
Universe Today has a cool story filling in the blanks.
Our own colored potato
Now what is this? It’s our own, cosy home planet. Imaged by GOCE.
Earth is a colorful potato – Universe Today
In the NASA vault
Universe Today points to a great website I was unfamiliar with, the NASA Tech Home Page. It’s a regular treasure trove not only for technical information but first and foremost for beautiful pictures and movies. A great find.
click for larger version
Spontaneuos ej… ejection
This is weird:
Wednesday, Jan. 19 at 11:30 a.m. EST, engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., confirmed that the NanoSail-D nanosatellite ejected from Fast Affordable Scientific and Technology Satellite, FASTSAT. The ejection event occurred spontaneously and was identified this morning when engineers at the center analyzed onboard FASTSAT telemetry. The ejection of NanoSail-D also has been confirmed by ground-based satellite tracking assets.
Amateur ham operators are asked to listen for the signal to verify NanoSail-D is operating. This information should be sent to the NanoSail-D dashboard at: http://nanosaild.engr.scu.edu/dashboard.htm. The NanoSail-D beacon signal can be found at 437.270 MHz.
The NanoSail-D science team is hopeful the nanosatellite is healthy and can complete its solar sail mission. After ejection, a timer within NanoSail-D begins a three-day countdown as the satellite orbits the Earth. Once the timer reaches zero, four booms will quickly deploy and the NanoSail-D sail will start to unfold to a 100-square-foot polymer sail. Within five seconds the sail fully unfurls.
“This is great news for our team. We’re anxious to hear the beacon which tells us that NanoSail-D is healthy and operating as planned,” said Dean Alhorn, NanoSail-D principal investigator and aerospace engineer at the Marshall Center. “The science team is hopeful to see that NanoSail-D is operational and will be able to unfurl its solar sail.”
On Dec. 6,, 2010, NASA triggered the planned ejection of NanoSail-D from FASTSAT. At that time, the team confirmed that the door successfully opened and data indicated a successful ejection. Upon further analysis, no evidence of NanoSail-D was identified in low-Earth orbit, leading the team to believe NanoSail-D remained inside FASTSAT.
The FASTSAT mission has continued to operate as planned with the five other scientific experiments operating nominally.
“We knew that the door opened and it was possible that NanoSail-D could eject on its own,” said Mark Boudreaux, FASTSAT project manager at the Marshall Center. “What a pleasant surprise this morning when our flight operations team confirmed that NanoSail-D is now a free flyer.”
If the deployment is successful, NanoSail-D will stay in low-Earth orbit between 70 and 120 days, depending on atmospheric conditions. NanoSail-D is designed to demonstrate deployment of a compact solar sail boom system that could lead to further development of this alternative solar sail propulsion technology and FASTSAT’s ability to eject a nano-satellite from a micro-satellite — while avoiding re-contact with the FASTSAT satellite bus. (Marshall Space Flight Center via Universe Today)
