Really Rocket Science

The HI-SEAS experiment is an interesting proposition. Lock six people into a dome for four months and have them work with non-perishable food. On the north slope of Mauna Loa.

Hawaii? Why not the South Pole? Well, that has its cohabitation challenges. It only looks like Mars — without the minus-60-degree Celsius temps.

They had interesting things to do, for example. With power and Internet, why not tune in and munch out?

I could probably survive with these ingredients, which include Spam. The most important one was actually a treat: Nutella. Which, by the way, is looking into different colors. They should sell a limited edition “Mars Red Nutella” for the geek market.

Ain’t nobody got time for watching Mars Curiosity rover videos!

Here’s the first year, in two minutes.

Japan will be first with sending talking robot into space, named Kirobo.

Check out the promo video, in Japanese, which is very well done. Probably because Dentsu is in on it. Nice site, too.

First Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) movie, 21 hours after opening the telescope door. This video has been slowed forty percent and looped four times to show greater detail. Credit: NASA/IRIS

Very interesting piece by Liz Fuller-Wright in the CSM last week on the discovery of variably-pulsating stars. Intially referred to as LGM-1 by the astronomers at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, including graduate student Jocelyn Bell. The “LGM” stood for “little green men.”

For seven years, the research team observed more than 3,000 young stars in the star cluster NGC 3766 for a few weeks each year. They found variable stars – 163 of them – including 36 that seem to break all the rules of pulsars. In fact, they held off on labeling the stars “pulsars,” choosing the less controversial label of “periodic variable stars,” though they said that they expect the scientific community to confirm that they are, in fact, pulsars.

As with many astronomic discoveries, it takes quite a while to confirm “discoveries.” This one in particular may rewrite the book on pulsar formation.

That’s pretty awesome. Maybe we’ll see pulsars in BigBangPrints soon.

This weekend, at Rockland Community College in Suffern, N.Y., the Northeast Astronomy Forum is featuring a special guest! Jimmy Neutron creator John Davis.

I wonder if he drives a Chrysler, too.

Our friends from BigBangPrints will be there as well, among many others. Hope you can make it.

What is that? HFS!! It’s a meteorite!! A 10-ton rock falling from the sky at 20 km/second — that’s 745 miles per hour! Injured 500 people, too.

The Russian Academy of Sciences is referring to it as the “Chelyabinsk Fireball,” weighing 10 tons and with a velocity of up to 20 meters per second.

Сегодня утром в районе города Челябинска было зарегистрировано падение космического тела, вызвавшее яркую световую вспышку и сильную ударную волну.

Сообщается о выбитых стеклах в домах. По нашим оценкам размер тела составлял несколько метров, масса порядка десяти тонн, энергия несколько килотонн. Тело вошло в атмосферу со скоростью 15-20 км/с, разрушилось на высотах 30-50 км, движение фрагментов с большой скоростью вызвало мощное свечение и сильную ударную волну. Основная часть вещества падающего тела испарилась (сгорела), оставшиеся куски затормозились и могли выпасть на землю в виде метеоритов. Обычно суммарная масса найденных метеоритов составляет не больше 1-5% от начальной массы. Основная энергия выделилась на высотах 5-15 км. Тела такого размера падают довольно часто, несколько раз в год, однако обычно сгорают на больших высотах (порядка 30-50 км). Рассматриваемое тело, по-видимому, было очень прочным, возможно железным. Последний раз похожее явление на территории России наблюдалось в 2002 году (Витимский болид). Более точные оценки можно дать после получения всей имеющейся информации.

Wow. Massive. From the AP…

A meteor that scientists estimate weighed 10 tons streaked at supersonic speed over Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday, setting off blasts that injured some 500 people and frightened countless more.
The Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement that the meteor over the Chelyabinsk region entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 33,000 mph and shattered about 18-32 miles above ground.
The fall caused explosions that broke glass over a wide area. The Emergency Ministry says more than 500 people sought treatment after the blasts and that 34 of them were hospitalized.

“There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people’s houses to check if they were OK,” said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, about 930 miles east of Moscow, the biggest city in the affected region.

“We saw a big burst of light then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud thundering sound,” he told The Associated Press by telephone.
Another Chelyabinsk resident, Valya Kazakov, said some elderly women in his neighborhood started crying out that the world was ending.
Some fragments fell in a reservoir outside the town of Cherbakul, the regional governor’s office said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. It was not immediately clear if any people were struck by fragments.

The agency also cited military spokesman Yarslavl Roshupkin as saying that a six-meter-wide (20-foot-wide) crater was found in the same area which could be the result of fragments striking the ground.

Meteors typically cause sizeable sonic booms when they enter the atmosphere because they are traveling much faster than the speed of sound. Injuries on the scale reported Friday, however, are extraordinarily rare.
Interior Ministry spokesman Vadim Kolesnikov said that about 600 square meters (6000 square feet) of a roof at a zinc factory had collapsed. There was no immediate clarification of whether the collapse was caused by meteorites or by a shock wave from one of the explosions.

Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. A spokeswoman for the Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, told The Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteor.

Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 a.m. local time (0320 GMT), leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash.

Donald Yeomans, manager of U.S. Near Earth Object Program in California, said he thought the event was probably “an exploding fireball event.”

Pretty awesome of MSNBC to report on the Kepler mission’s discoveries…

Our Milky Way galaxy is home to at least 100 billion alien planets, and possibly many more, a new study suggests.

“It’s a staggering number, if you think about it,” lead author Jonathan Swift, of Caltech in Pasadena, said in a statement. “Basically there’s one of these planets per star.”

Swift and his colleagues arrived at their estimate after studying a five-planet system called Kepler-32, which lies about 915 light-years from Earth. The five worlds were detected by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which flags the tiny brightness dips caused when exoplanets cross their star’s face from the instrument’s perspective.

It was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal. Good luck finding the abstract.

Hoping some of these images make it to the BigBangPrints.com gallery.

Just in time for the 12-12-12 Concert to benefit Sandy victims, Phil Plait’s piece in Slate suggests the Bon Jovi song…

Oh!
Shot through the heart
And you’re to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name (bad name)

Just watch the video from the Hubble folks…

GPS shoes to be commercially available in the U.K and Ireland, enabling tracking of wandering Alzheimer’s patients who wear them.
[SatNews – 10/12/2012]

The Season of Bulgarian TV Shows II from Martin Simeonov on Vimeo.

Intelsat gets agreements with two Bulgarian media companies for transponder services to enable digital terrestrial television and distribution of HD programming.
[SatNews – 10/12/2012]

B612 Foundation Sentinel Special Review Team concludes that the Sentinel Mission implementation plans and mission design and will lead to successful Sentinel mission to find and track Near Earth Asteroids.
[Satellite Today – 10/12/2012]

SpaceX Dragon loses Orbcomm satellite on way to Space Station.
[NewScientist – 10/11/2012]

Astrium successfully completes ASTRA 2F testing in orbit and turns over control to SES.
[SatNews – 10/11/2012]

Boeing is selected by SES S.A. to build SES-9 Ku-band satellite for DTH to Asia and Indonesia.
[Space Daily – 10/11/2012]

Eutelsat chooses Thales Alenia Space to build the EUTELSAT 8 West B satellite for broadcast over the Middle East and North Africa.
[herald online – 10/11/2012]

Components for fourth, fifth, and sixth Soyuz launches from French Guiana have arrived at the Spaceport.
[SatNews – 10/11/2012]

Avanti’s $25 million operating loss sends shares down.
[Space News – 10/11/2012]

Russian Federation approves use of Iridium service throughout its territory.
[SatNews – 10/11/2012]

Marlink commits to completing a maritime VSAT installation within 24 hours.
[SatNews – 10/11/2012]

DigitalGlobe gets USGIF Industry Intelligence Award for its work with Satellite Sentinel Project, monitoring human rights violations in Sudan and South Sudan using satellite imagery.
[SatNews – 10/11/2012]

Air Force Space Command commander order Accident Investigation Board to investigate why a Delta IV RL-10B-2 upper stage engine did not perform as expected, even though the GPS IIF satellite was successfully deployed into orbit.
[SatNews – 10/11/2012]

Ariane 5 VA210 flight to orbit EUTELSAT 21B for Eutelsat and Star One C3 for Brazil in November; Soyuz Flight VS03 scheduled for launch October 12 with two European Space Agency GPS satellites.
[Space Ref – 10/10/2012]

Avanti announces that HYLAS 2 is now fully operational and providing coverage across Africa, Caucasia, and the Middle East.
[SatNews – 10/10/2012]

EADS and BAE Systems terminate merger discussions on heels of discussions with several governments about their issues with the merger.
[SatNews – 10/10/2012]

Australian company EM Solutions wins tender with Tokyo based Jepico Corporation to provide Ka-band Satellite on the Move (SOTM) platform to Japanese Government’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.
[SatNews – 10/10/2012]

Azerbaijani Deputy Communications and IT Minister says first Azerbaijani telecommunications satellite Azerspace will be launched in January 2013.
[Trend – 10/09/2012]

ATK gets $50M NASA contract to complete engineering development and risk reduction tests as part of the Advanced Concept Booster Development for the Space Launch System.
[SatNews – 10/09/2012]

Beam Communications installs Inmarsat products IsatDock Pro at Russian Antarctic Polar Station.
[herald online – 10/09/2012]

GeoEye is connected to additional government networks through the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
[SatNews – 10/09/2012]

Hughes signs 10-year smart grid satellite connectivity deal with Emtele of Finland.
[Satellite Today – 10/09/2012]

Inmarsat signs long-term alliance with Cisco, enabling it to deliver advanced services over Inmarsat’s new high-throughput satellite broadband network, Global Xpress.
[Market Watch – 10/08/2012]

Indian Space Research Organization plans to launch 58 space missions, among them 33 satellites, by 2017.
[Satellite Today – 10/08/2012]

Inmarsat signs master distribution agreement with Honeywell for GX Aviation services, to bring the service to the business aviation market.
[SatNews – 10/08/2012]

Space Systems/Loral to build EchoStar 8 for Dish Network.
[Satellite Today – 10/08/2012]

New ESA project led by Irish industry puts satellite data to use for monitoring quality of coastal water.
[SatNews – 10/08/2012]

NASA plans space network upgrade for Goddard Space Flight Center to accommodate third generation Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, with launch of TDRS-K scheduled for December.
[Satellite Today – 10/08/2012]

NASA’s Terra satellite observes plume cause by eruption of Shiveluch volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
[SatNews – 10/08/2012]

Two TV market studies show increasing IPTV effect on traditional video, giving satellite TV providers something to think about.
[Satellite Today – 10/08/2012]

NASA TDRS-K satellite under final system checks by Boeing in preparation for December launch.
[phys.org – 10/06/2012]

FCC lets access rules expire that required cable companies to sell local content like sports channels to satellite TV providers.
[Wall Street Journal – 10/05/2012]

Race for gigabit satellite throughput explored in WTA report, “Teleports in a Gigabit World.”
[World Teleport Site – October, 2012]

Satellite industry girds for another likely spectrum battle in 2015.
[Satellite Today – 10/01/2012]

WBMSAT satellite communications consulting services