Hasta La Gadget!

It was a bit of a long shot to begin with, but our hopes for an undead Mars lander appear to be fading. Today, NASA has begun attempts to re-establish contact with the frozen-solid Phoenix Mars Lander after more than a year, reports Space.com.

NASA will listen for faint radio signals from the lander via the Mars Odyssey orbiter. There’s some hope that the lander’s secret-ninja Lazarus mode could force a reboot once the solar arrays collect enough energy after thawing a bit. But it’s likely that the frost caused the electronics aboard Phoenix to “become brittle and crack,” according to the report.

Odyssey will pass over the Phoenix landing site about 30 times during three consecutive days of listening this month, plus two longer listening attempts during the next two months, the article said.

Today at about 7:45 AM EST, a small asteroid called 2010 AL30 flew by Earth at a distance of 80,000 miles–just one third of the way from here to the Moon, reports Discovery News.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that 2010 AL30 is in fact an “Apollo” class near-Earth asteroid (NEA) and not man-made space junk. Earlier theories revolved around the latter since the object’s orbital period is almost exactly one year. That made it a candidate for all the spent rocket boosters and spacecraft pieces floating in orbit.

Even if 2010 AL30 had struck the planet, it wouldn’t have done any damage. Instead, it would have vaporized in the upper atmosphere, which is something that happens about once per year for objects of this size. The report said that if anything, planetary scientists now know we get a two-day warning for 10-meter-wide asteroids before they hit us.

Nine years for a trip is a long time by just about any measure. But it’s already halfway over for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which is currently on track for a 2015 arrival with Pluto. (You know, the non-planet.)

Space.com reports that the craft is now 1.53 billion miles from Earth, and 1.53 billion miles from Pluto. It will first pass Pluto on July 14th, 2015 before dipping into the Kuiper Belt.

“This is the first of several milestones over the next 10 months that mark the halfway points in our journey to the solar system’s frontier, where Pluto lies,” said Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado and New Horizons principal investigator, in the article.

On a personal note, I was fortunate enough to see Alan Stern speak at the Hayden Planetarium in New York back in 2005, right before the craft launched in January 2006. At the time, he characterized the spacecraft as about the size of a Mini Cooper, and had targeted the summer 2015 date back then as well. (Image credit: NASA)

Most people know which brand of camera went to (and stayed on) the Moon: Hasselblad. Those old medium-format cameras could stand up to the extremes of heat and cold, were insanely reliable due to being both solidly built and manual, and as we know, they took great pictures.

But what does NASA use now for its space cameras? Nikons, as it turns out. The agency just ordered 11 shiny-new Nikon D3s DSLRs, along with AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED lenses, to be used on board the International Space Station. We imagine that the ultra-wide zoom is essential in such cramped quarters.

These cameras are, says Nikon, completely stock, just like you or I could buy in the store. They’re not the first Nikons in space, either: the company has been supplying NASA with camera from as long ago as 1971, and right now there are around 35 lenses and six D2XS cameras already aboard the ISS. In total, NASA has taken around 700,000 photos with Nikon kit, and now everything is digital we expect the numbers to, ahem, skyrocket.

NASA Orders D3S Digital SLR Cameras and Interchangeable Lenses from Nikon [Nikon]

Photo of Nikon Space Camera, 1983: NASA

See Also:

• Watchmen Movie: Doc Manhattan is a Camera Nerd

NASA has launched a new infrared space telescope that will scan the cosmos for asteroids and comets that could threaten our planet, CNN reports.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft lifted off at 9:09 am ET Monday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California mounted to a Delta II rocket.

The telescope features an infrared camera for finding light- and heat-emitting objects that optical telescopes like Hubble could miss. WISE will orbit 326 miles above Earth for nine months. The report said its lens will eventually cover the entire sky one and a half times, snapping photos every 11 seconds.

WISE joins two other infrared telescopes, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, in orbit, though WISE is the only scope of the three mapping the entire sky.