10 posts tagged “nasa”
the sound. tearing through. (view launch viddy here)
so made it to florida to see the last hubble mission !
the Orlando Sentinel interviewed launch safety officer Aniline Lo who went into some detail about the real costs of a shuttle launch. "…of course animals die during launches. We've had collisions with eagles during ascent, we've even found dead rats, mice and gophers left on the pad, there has also been injuries to some larger animals in the past. As the Cape is surrounded by water, it is hard to prevent alligators straying too close [...] shuttle exhaust can hurt these reptiles, making them difficult to treat. It also seems the flash from the boosters cause confusion in some animals, including rabbits, actually attracting them to the launch pad at lift off. That always ends very badly." — Aniline Lo, NASA Safety Officer Lo then went into detail about the clean-up operation after launch. "It's a shame, the adrenaline is pumping through your body before launch, but it is up to my team to clear up the mess which is the downer," she said. "If you thought roadkill was bad, imagine it roasted. Hundreds of thousands of dollars post-launch could be saved in man-hours [for clean-up operations] if these animals are prevented from getting near to the rockets." The sad story of Brian the Bat captivated the world, but it looks like his demise was the tip of the iceberg. He was first named on the social networking site Twitter and onAstroengine.com. On launch day @DiscoveryBat appeared on Twitter, apparently tweeting from space and tweeting to this day. Even mainstream media refer to the ill-fated free-tailed bat as "Brian". Consequently, the Brian Bat Foundation was set up to recognise animal endeavours in space. However, it appears the Foundation's scope must now be extended to all the birds, angry alligators and rabbits on, or near, the shuttle's launchpad during lift-off.
the best thing about this is
download obama's carbon report here
I've decided i really want to go see a space shuttle launch - at least once.
it's a pretty large part of childhood symbolism (challenger's demise was our generations' jfk assassination) yet 30 years later it's still a huge massive symbol of science & progress, and is one of the few national symbols that doesn't make me nauseous while we're at war, even if it is an albatross; has triple redundancy of every (1970's built) system, and is as aerodynamic as a brick.
think i'll try this october....
meanwhile... here are all remaining chances:
Remaining missions in 2008
8 October - Atlantis: A mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.
10 November - Endeavour: ISS re-supply, and servicing of rotary joints that allow the big solar arrays to track the Sun.
Missions in 2009
12 February - Discovery: Final pair of solar arrays to be installed on the starboard end of the station's backbone.
15 May - Endeavour: Delivery of third and final component of the Japanese Kibo Laboratory.
30 July - Atlantis: Largely a logistics mission but it will include spacewalks to install equipment on Europe's Columbus lab.
15 October - Discovery: The flight will take up two spare gyroscopes that are needed to maintain station stability.
10 December - Endeavour: Delivery of the final connecting node, Node 3, together with the European-built Cupola window.
Missions in 2010
11 February - Atlantis: Another logistics mission to make sure the station is fully stocked with supplies.
8 April - Discovery: The flight will see the installation of a Russian Mini Research Module to be attached at the rear of the ISS.
31 May - Endeavour: The last flight. The 15-day mission will be the 35th orbiter flight to the station.
image courtesy here.
bascially - the spectroscopic analysis said 'negative' b/c the regolith (dust) was essentially filtered & sat on top of the rover for ages... so all the water evaporated.
meanwhile, b/c we have pictures of the white stuff EVAPORATING (which due to uniform depth around rover, and flatness, was either salt or ice)
it's definately ice. even w/o spectroscopy. but oh that will be nice, as it will be totally certain.
NASA's supposed to do a press briefing later today.
full news here
while we wait for the ballpoint pen-sized ovens to come online so they can incinerate the scoop of the soil so we can get actual tests of the martian soil - o, the suspense - of whether or not this photo from saturday is actually
nasa distracts us with a lovely intermission, a CGI of magnetic field visualization.
