Tuesday, 7 December 2010

NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

NASA-funded astrobiology research has changed the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth.

Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.

"The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it."

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Jupiter gets its stripe back


By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 24 November 2010 

BERKELEY — One of Jupiter's dark brown stripes that faded out last spring is regaining its color, providing an unprecedented opportunity for astronomers to observe a rare and mysterious phenomenon caused by the planet's winds and cloud chemistry.
Earlier this year, amateur astronomers noticed that the long-standing stripe, known as the South Equatorial Belt (SEB), just south of Jupiter's equator, had turned white. In early November, amateur astronomer Christopher Go of Cebu City in the Philippines observed a prominent bright spot in the unusually whitened belt, piquing the interest of professional and amateur astronomers around the world.

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More Space Pictures

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Best Space Pictures of 2010

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Saturday, 4 December 2010

Secret military mini-shuttle lands in California

The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle in the encapsulation cell at the Astrotech facility in April 2010, in Titusville, Florida.
Credit: Reuters/U.S. Air Force/Handout

(Reuters) - A miniature robotic space shuttle wrapped up a 224-day classified military mission and made an unannounced landing in darkness on a California runway on Friday, Air Force officials said.
The Orbital Test Vehicle, or X-37B, touched down at 1:16 a.m. PST at Vandenberg Air Force Base, becoming the first U.S. spaceship to land itself on a runaway.
The former Soviet Union's Buran space shuttle accomplished a similar feat in 1988.
"We are very pleased that the program completed all the on-orbit objectives for the first mission," program manager Lt. Col. Troy Giese said in a statement.
The project, which was started by NASA in the late 1990s and later adopted by the military, is intended to test technologies for a next-generational space shuttle.
Rather than carry people, however, the military is looking at the spaceplane as a way to test new equipment, sensors and material in space, with the intention of incorporating successful technologies into satellites and other operational systems.
Another key point of the project is to see if the costs and turnaround time between flights can be reduced from months to days.
The Air Force imposed a news blackout on the X-37B's activities while in orbit, though it was tracked by amateur satellite-watchers throughout its nine-month mission.
The X-37B looks like a space shuttle orbiter, but is smaller, with a similar shape and payload bay for cargo and experiments. But it measures 29 feet, 3 inches in length and has a 15-foot (4.5-metres) wing span, compared to the 122-foot (37-metres) orbiters with wing spans of 78 feet.
Unlike NASA's space shuttles which can stay in orbit about two weeks, X-37B is designed to spend as long as nine months in space, then land itself on a runway.
The Air Force plans to fly its second X-37B vehicle this spring. The spaceplanes were built by Boeing's advanced research lab, Phantom Works.
(Editing by Kevin Gray and Philip Barbara)
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Monday, 22 November 2010

Sky Guide Africa South 2011 on the shelves

Sky Guide Africa South 2011

The Astronomical Handbook for Southern Africa

Sky Guide Africa South is an invaluable practical resource for anyone who has even a passing interest in the night skies of southern Africa.
Prepared yearly by the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa as a reference work for the novice, amateur and professional astronomer, it continues the tradition of the well-established Astronomical Handbook for Southern Africa.
It presents a wealth of information about the Sun, Moon, planets, comets, meteors and bright stars in a clear and accessible way, accompanied by a number of diagrams to support the text.

 Comprising 128 pages in A5 size, it is published and distributed by Struik Nature and is available from bookshops or on-line bookshops such as Loot.co.za or

The recommended retail price is R85.

Ns. Ek was so bietjie teleurgesteld in die kopie wat ek as ASSA-lid ontvang het. Van die bladsye het swak gedruk - die registrasie was uit en dubbelle geblurde letters was die gevolg. So blaai eers mooi deur voor jy koop. (Hannes Pieterse)
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Icy Particle Spray - Comet Hartley 2.


This movie made from images obtained by NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft shows an active end of the nucleus of comet Hartley 2. Icy particles spew from the surface. The specks move as the movie toggles back and forth. Most of these particles are traveling with the nucleus. They are fluffy "snowballs" about 3 centimeters to 30 centimeters (1 inch to 1 foot) across.

The images for the movie were obtained by the Medium Resolution Imager on Nov. 4, 2010, the day the EPOXI mission spacecraft made its closest approach to the comet.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the EPOXI mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of Maryland, College Park, is home to the mission's principal investigator, Michael A'Hearn. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

For more information about EPOXI visit http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi and http://epoxi.umd.edu/.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD/Brown
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NASA Nanosatellite Studies Life in Space, Demonstrates Technology

O/OREOS Nanosatellite Inspection

From left, Charlie Friedericks and Giovanni Minelli, with the NASA’s Ames Research Center inspect the Ames-managed O/OREOS nano satellite at Kodiak Launch Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska, Oct. 17, 2010, in advance of the satellite's planned launch into orbit.
Image credit: U.S. Air Force/Lou Hernandez


 NASA Nanosatellite Studies Life in Space, Demonstrates Technology
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA is preparing to fly a small satellite about the size of a loaf of bread that could help answer astrobiology’s fundamental questions about the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe. The nanosatellite, known as Organism/Organic Exposure to Orbital Stresses, or O/OREOS, is a secondary payload aboard a U.S. Air Force four-stage Minotaur IV rocket planned for launch on Nov. 19, 2010. 
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Thursday, 4 November 2010

STS-133 Flight Plan (Shuttle & ISS)


Changes and additions:
- July 6: Posting initial release
- July 27: Launch time updated
- Sept. 4: Spacewalk tasks changed
- Sept. 17: Slight tweaks
- Oct. 25: Latest revision
- Oct. 27: Tweaks to docking, undocking and landing
- Oct. 30: New launch date of Nov. 3
- Nov. 4: New launch date of Nov. 5

DATE/EASTERN...DD...HH...MM...SS...EVENT

Flight Day 1

11/05
Fri 03:04 PM...00...00...00...00...Launch
Fri 03:41 PM...00...00...37...21...OMS-2 rocket firing
Fri 03:54 PM...00...00...50...00...Post insertion timeline begins
Fri 05:34 PM...00...02...30...00...Laptop computer setup (part 1)
Fri 05:49 PM...00...02...45...00...GIRA install
Fri 06:24 PM...00...03...20...39...NC-1 rendezvous rocket firing
Fri 06:44 PM...00...03...40...00...SRMS powerup
Fri 06:49 PM...00...03...45...00...SEE setup
Fri 06:59 PM...00...03...55...00...Group B computer powerdown
Fri 07:14 PM...00...04...10...00...SRMS checkout
Fri 07:24 PM...00...04...20...00...ET photo
Fri 07:34 PM...00...04...30...00...Wing leading edge sensors activated
Fri 07:34 PM...00...04...30...00...ET video downlink
Fri 07:54 PM...00...04...50...00...ET umbilical downlink
Fri 09:04 PM...00...06...00...00...Crew sleep begins
 










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Animation of the five closest-approach Hartley 2 images ( KFC Chicken leg or cucumber?)

















Those of you who follow my blog must have known this was coming: now that I got all five new Deep Impact images of Comet Hartley 2 posted and explained,  I had to make an animation.  Here they are.  I rotated them all  counterclockwise by a quarter turn and aligned the frames, but otherwise  did no processing.



Animation of Deep Impact close-approach images
About an hour  after its closest approach of Hartley 2, Deep Impact downlinked five  precious images taken during the nearest part of its flyby.  The top two  images were taken 82 and 16 seconds before closest approach, and the  bottom three 18, 57, and 117 seconds after closest approach (image times  are 13:58:07, 13:59:13, 13:59:47, 14:00:26, and 14:01:26 UTC on  November 4, 2010).  They show a very active comet with numerous jets.  Credit: NASA / JPL / UMD / animation by Emily Lakdawalla  









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