Really Rocket Science

We found NASA’s Picture of the Day on Sunday to be particularly fascinating.

This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows dried streambeds—martian gullies— in the mountainous central peak region of Hale Crater. Some scientists have suggested that the fluid which carved these gullies was liquid water, and that it either resulted from ancient snowmelt or from release of groundwater that percolated to the surface in the intensely fractured rock of Hale’s central peak. In either case, the gullies are dry today, and dark sand can be seen as dunes near the right/lower right part of the image.

Loyal readers will recall our assiduous reporting earlier this summer on the explosion of a Dell laptop computer at a  business conference in Japan.

Now, it is evident, our remarkable editorial instinct has once again been proven correct, forcing the Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today and the AP into a desperate scramble to catch up to the new and vaunted journalism embodied by Really Rocket Science.

(When you read breathless news stories about how blogs are changing the media, they are, of course, referring to us.)

Never the sort to gloat, our hearts brim with pity as we think of the strained and perspiring editors of the Gray Lady and the nation’s wire services, clumsily stabbing their porcine fingers at their keyboards, trying to figure out this Google thing in a vain attempt to stay apace with the very edge of the new media vanguard, to break the news that we have invariably already broken — ney, smashed to pieces, exposed for the world to see and understand, then meticulously reconstucted by the nimble prose and dazzling insights of the writers of Really Rocket Science, who selflessly offer their beacon of hope and reason in a world too frequently perceived as chaotic and incomprehensible by journalists of a lesser caliber.

 We do it because we care. We do it because we believing that exploring the vast interiors of ignorance is our small and humble way of contributing to a more civilized world. We are not journalists, nor mere bloggers. We are cartographers of the human spirit, and though others follow to fill in the details of roads and bridges and recalled laptop batteries and so on and so forth, we remain at the front, always, bringing you the news even before the masses have grasped it as news — outlining, as it were, the shapes of new continents that lie at the edge of this vast informational sea known as the Internet.

Land ho! we cry, through the lonesome gale, as the rest of the crew sleeps dreaming of their childhood cribs below the deck. 

We will persist. And we will continue to peer out into the darkness, to alert you of the shape of things to come. To find, as is our burden and fate, safe passage through the ongoing storm.

Send us your tips to [email protected]. 

Arianspace’s Friday evening launch of a twin satellite payload, which Spektor previewed last week, was a success. From the mission update:

After an on-time lift-off at 7:15 p.m. from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, the heavy-lift Ariane 5 delivered Japan’s JCSAT-10 telecommunications spacecraft and the European Syracuse 3B secure military relay platform into an accurate geostationary transfer orbit.

Tonight’s flight was Ariane 5’s 28th mission, and marked its 14th consecutive success – underscoring the launcher’s maturity. JCSAT-10 was installed in the upper payload position on Ariane 5, and was released approximately 27 min. into the mission. This was followed some 5 minutes later by the separation of Syracuse 3B, which occupied the lower slot in the payload "stack." 

A series of photographs from the launch can be seen here. 

In other commercial satellite launch news, Sea Launch will be lifting the Koreasat 5 communications satellite on the evening of August 21st. Sea Launch has provided a nice graphical display of the satellite launche’s profile and groundtrack here.

As always, we’ll have more updates on the launch as it approaches. 

Elementrary and high school students may have to come up with a new mnemonic phrase for remembering the planets, depending on the outcome of a debate taking place this month at the International Astronomical Union’s General Assembly meeting in Prague:

At a 12-day conference beginning Monday, scientists will conduct a galactic census of sorts. Among the possibilities at the meeting of the International Astronomical Union in the Czech Republic capital of Prague: Subtract Pluto or christen one more planet, and possibly dozens more.

"It’s time we have a definition," said Alan Stern, who heads the Colorado-based space science division of the Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio. "It’s embarrassing to the public that we as astronomers don’t have one."

The debate intensified last summer when astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology announced the discovery of a celestial object larger than Pluto. Like Pluto, it is a member of the Kuiper Belt, a mysterious disc-shaped zone beyond Neptune containing thousands of comets and planetary objects. (Brown nicknamed his find "Xena" after a warrior heroine in a cheesy TV series; pending a formal name, it remains 2003 UB313.)

The Hubble Space Telescope measured the bright, rocky object at about 1,490 miles in diameter, roughly 70 miles longer than Pluto. At 9 billion miles from the sun, it is the farthest known object in the solar system.

The discovery stoked the planet debate that had been simmering since Pluto was spotted in 1930.

Some argue that if Pluto kept its crown, Xena should be the 10th planet by default — it is, after all, bigger. Purists maintain that there are only eight traditional planets, and insist Pluto and Xena are poseurs.

"Life would be simpler if we went back to eight planets," said Brian Marsden, director of the astronomical union’s Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass.

 What do you think? How should a planet be defined? Should our solar system have eight, nine or ten planets? And if Xena becomes the 10th, what strange jam will Mary have to make?

Although Skylab, America’s first space station, fell back to Earth more than 17 years ago, the full-size training mock-up of Skylab is still intact — although in incredible disrepair (and inhabited by several raccoons) —  outside the U.S. Space and Rocket Center near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Hunstville, Alabama.

Now, a group of volunteers has launched the Skylab Restoration Project with the goal of restoring the training module to its former glory. CNN reports:

Tom Hancock, a board member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is the leader of the project. He said he is working on the restoration for people like his 18-year-old daughter.

"It’s history. It’s a chance for people my daughter’s age to kick back and see what it was like when I was young," said Hancock.

Made primarily from spare parts left over from the Apollo program, Skylab orbited the Earth for six years beginning in 1973. It helped pave the way for science projects aboard the space shuttle and the International Space Station currently in orbit.

Astronauts learning to live in space trained in Skylab mock-ups at Marshall and the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Three crews of three astronauts each spent a total of 171 days in Skylab, which re-entered the atmosphere in a fiery blaze in 1979.

The Skylab mock-up was displayed for years inside the Space and Rocket Center. But exhibits change, and it was eventually moved outside to a back lot.

 The Skylab Restoration Project is seeking volunteers in the Huntsville area and donations to assist with the project. Visit SaveSkylab.org to learn more and to see "then and now" photos and videos of the Skylab training module.

European commercial space transportation company Arianespace is launching not one but two satellites into orbit this evening. From Europe’s space center, the Guiana Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, Arianespace’s Ariane-5ECA will take to the skies for its 28th time, marking the 172nd mission for the Ariane fleet, at some time between 6:15 pm and 7:52 pm EST. The launch can be watched starting 20 minutes before launch time, at Arianspace’s Video Corner.

The Ariane-5ECA is 50.5 meters tall and will weigh in at about 780 tons at lift off, requiring over 400 tons of fuel to ramp the beast up to over 2900 pounds of fource to lift-off.

The payload, a Japanese television (JCSAT-10) and French military communications (SYRACUSE 3B) satellites, is expected to be in operation for between 15 and 12 years, respectively.

For those looking for even more information, download the launch kit in English or French and you’ll have more data on this evening’s than you ever thought you wanted.

In the annals of rocket science, there are few names that loom larger than James Van Allen. 

Van Allen, who came to national prominence with the launch of the first U.S. satellite Explorer 1 in 1958 and who "made the first major discovery of the early space age," died yesterday in Iowa City, Iowa at the age of 91.

A geiger counter developed by Van Allen was attached to Explorer 1, and data sent back by the counters indicated the existence of two belts of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field — which became known as the Van Allen Belts.

The Telegraph has more on this remarkable man:

The Van Allen belts were discovered by instruments designed by him and carried into space by Explorer I, America’s first satellite. The success of the launch of the 31 lb rocket gave America’s space mission a badly-needed boost after the Soviet Union’s propaganda coup with the Sputnik programme, and Van Allen was featured on the front cover of Time magazine in 1959….

An entire academic discipline, that of magnetospherical physics, owes its existence to Van Allen’s discoveries.

 From the beginning, Van Allen had been keen not only to ensure that rockets were successfully launched, but that they should provide information about aspects of the Earth. In 1950, in conjunction with the British geophysicist Sydney Chapman, he originated plans for an international scientific study of the planet which culminated in the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) of which the satellite programme was the most visible and successful element.

Explorer I’s launch in January 1958 was followed by two further rockets in March, carrying a cigarette-sized "magnetic tape recorder" devised by Van Allen. Explorer IV followed in June, and confirmed the existence of a radiation band 250 miles above the Earth.

He then supervised the Pioneer 10 and 11 rockets, which studied the radiation belts around Jupiter in 1973 and 1974, and went on, five years later, to do the same for Saturn, work which he described in his book First to Jupiter, Saturn and Beyond (1981). He continued to survey the results of the Pioneer and Mariner programmes over decades.

He was also a significant force in the interplanetary missions to Venus, Mars, Neptune, Saturn, Venus and Uranus, contributing to the Voyager programme and the Galileo spacecraft. Much of the knowledge which we now have of the electromagnetic forces, plasmas and radio signals in the solar system derives from the instruments which Van Allen devised and supervised.

 Additional news stories and obituaries can be found here.

Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began its most recent auction of radio spectrum, a move that could bring over $15 billion into Federal coffers and, potentially, major advancements to tomorrow’s communications devices, including new high-speed internet offerings from satellite television providers, more vivid video on mobile phones, better cell coverage, and rapid advances in IPTV.

But while opening up more of the nation’s airwaves might bring greater access to better gadgets, it also could limit spectrum space for engineers and scientists looking to experiment with and develop new technologies.

(Currently, only a tiny fraction of the radio frequency spectrum is unlicensed (e.g. the 2.4 gighertz band used for cordless phones, baby monitors, and Wi-Fi).)

To leave space for future experimentation, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and The Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV) are lobbying the FCC for the creation a band of frequencies specifically for testing purposes.

If approved, new "test bed" frequencies would serve as a virtual sandbox for those looking to develop devices that might otherwise endanger the frequencies of other, more established devices. 

Astronomy buffs who use Google Desktop to organize their computers can now download a cool plugin that delivers an Astronomy Picture of the Day. The plugin allows users to easily share the daily picture with friends using Google Talk:

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

If Google Talk is installed on your system, you can share the sheer beauty of our universe with your friends. If neither Google Talk is available nor any friends are online, the service and its button are unavailable.

With eye candy, transparency and smooth animations for your viewing pleasure. Undocking recommended!

Click here to download the plugin. 

Across the pond, The University of York is reporting that an effort to bring wireless through the skies to people in areas that typically don’t have access to the super-fast Internet is near completion.

By the end of October, researchers on York’s CAPANINA project — which uses everything from solar powered, unmanned aircrafts to giant ballons and airships to relay wireless signals back to planet Earth — will finish its main research and present their findings a couple of week’s later during the University’s conference on High-Altitude Platforms (HAP), York HAP Week.

According to a press release the school put out about the research, the system developed could bring low-cost broadband speeding along at rates 100 times faster than ADSL networks to remote regions of the world and high-speed trains. As the project’s lead scientist, Dr. David Grace says:

"The potential of the system is huge, with possible applications ranging from communications for disaster management and homeland security, to environmental monitoring and providing broadband for developing countries. So far, we have considered a variety of aerial platforms, including airships, balloons, solar-powered unmanned planes and normal aeroplanes — the latter will probably be particularly suited to establish communications very swiftly in disaster zones."

The CAPANINA project may rely upon the "paint-on" antenna technology we mentioned a few weeks ago, and clearly indicates a growing interest in looking to the skies to solve connectivity issues that plague many of the world’s least connected and least connectible areas.