Hasta La Gadget!

Welcome back to Mars, ladies and gentlemen, as the NASA Curiosity mission continues its epic journey across the planet’s surface with a news note that they have found radiation levels totally safe for human beings. This finding is entirely encouraging for the future of Mars exploration as far as actually sending human beings there goes, and certainly doesn’t send a negative mark back on the possibility of us living there someday. Of course if you’re a fan of the original Total Recall, you don’t care one way or another simply for the safety of your eyeballs, but still.

Of special note here is the fact that this is the very first time radiation has been measured from the surface of another planet – besides Earth, that is. This is done with the rover’s RAD, or Radiation Assessment Detector, and has shown the radiation levels on the ground as rather similar to what the astronauts on the International Space Station experience daily. RAD Principal Investigator Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute’s Boulder, Colorado branch noted the findings as encouraging.

“We see a definite pattern related to the daily thermal tides of the atmosphere. The atmosphere provides a level of shielding, and so charged-particle radiation is less when the atmosphere is thicker. Overall, Mars’ atmosphere reduces the radiation dose compared to what we saw during the flight to Mars.” – Hassler

NASA has also added that the overall goal for this mission is to use 10 instruments on Curiosity “to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes.” This mission has been followed by tech blogs, science publications, and everywhere in-between simply because of the rarity of a Mars mission of this magnitude. We’ve seen tiny findings that mean little to us average citizens as well as lovely photos taken from the surface, perfectly suitable for wallpapers for your smartphone.

Above: The header image in this article shows five scoopfulls of material from what NASA describes as a patch of dusty sand called “Rocknest.” This set of five “bite-marks” shows how little NASA needs to analyze the surface – each mark is about 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide.

Have a peek at the timeline below of just a small sample of the goings-on around the Curiosity mission and consider the implications of the impact this NASA action is having on the future of space exploration. We’re hoping that science will prevail, allowing here more funding for NASA so that we can continue to expand our space-loving minds through the rest of our lifetimes and beyond – make it happen, public!

[via NASA]

Curiosity Mars rover finds radiation levels safe for humankind is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Scientists have given some thought as to how we’ll defend ourselves when a giant asteroid inevitably heads our way and solutions range from paintballs to nukes. A team at Iowa State University has settled on the latter, and they’ve got plans for a ship that can do it waiting in the wings. More »

If you’re bored and looking for something to do to kill a bit of time, Google has a new Chrome Experiment called 100,000 Stars. The idea is that it is a map of the galaxy of roughly 100,000 stars that are close to the earth on a cosmic scale. Close on a cosmic scale means within a few light years.

The project allows users to zoom in and out using the mouse or track pad on a notebook. You can get more information on stars, including their name, and you can see a digital version of the real star. It reminds me a little of that old Windows screen saver with starts zooming by.

The 100,000 Stars website uses WebGL, CSS3D, and Web Audio technologies. Music for the site is from Sam Hulick, who also composed music for video games such as Mass Effect. The service has a “take a tour” button that you can click it will take you wanted to work of some of the most prominent stars near us. As the word “space” implies, outer space is vast.

As it is right now, the furthest man-made object from our star is the Voyager probe, and it’s only 17 light hours away as it gets ready to leave our solar system. The nearest star system to our sun is Alpha Centauri, and it is 4.3 light-years away. I won’t say that the 100,000 Stars experiment is as cool some of the real images that NASA offers, but it’s up there with Google Space.

[via PC Mag]

Google helps you kill time with 100,000 Stars experiment is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re stuck in a big city with no hopes of seeing more than a handful of lights in the night sky, you’ll more than get your fill of celestial bodies with this mind-blowing site that puts 100,000 stars in your browser. For full enjoyment you’ll need a capable system with a decent graphics card, and about three hours of free time this afternoon to fully explore the wonders in our local galaxy. [100,000 Stars via The Awesomer] More »

Russia has been facing some challenges in its space program over the last year. The most recent issue with Russia’s space program happened when one of its rockets failed to push its payload into the desired orbit in August. The rocket was a Briz-M rocket motor and is the third that has failed since 2007.

The latest Russian rocket failure left two fully fueled spacecraft stranded in orbit according to NASA. The Russian Briz-M upper stage was carrying the Telekom 3 and Express MD2 spacecraft. The rocket shut down shortly after the start of its third of four planned maneuvers on August 6.

When the rocket shut down it was in an orbit of roughly 165 miles x 3116 miles at an inclination of 49.9° relative to the equator. Both spacecraft on board were later autonomously released. However, when the third stage rocket engine became stranded in orbit, there were fears that the rocket could explode.

That fear proved true in the middle of October when the rocket stage exploded creating a massive new cloud of space debris that poses a threat to other orbiting satellites and could threaten the International Space Station. The explosion left behind a cloud of debris with more than 500 pieces. Even tiny pieces traveling at thousands of miles per hour in orbit pose a significant risk to satellites and for space travel. Scientists estimate that there are roughly 21,000 pieces of space junk larger than about 4 inches in orbit. There are roughly 500,000 pieces of debris between 0.4 and four-inches, and over 100 million pieces of junk in orbit smaller than 1 cm. Even those tiny pieces can cause catastrophe.

Russian rocket explosion leaves new space junk in orbit is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.