Feb 23

SpaceX Moves New Rocket to Launch Pad

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, tesla, Today's Chili
SpaceX_Falcon9.jpg
Space Exploration Technologies, also known as SpaceX, is gearing up for final testing of its two-stage Falcon 9 rocket.
Space.com reports that the privately held firm–contracted by NASA, along with one other firm–is now sitting on top of its Florida launch pad, in preparation for a scheduled first flight later this year.
NASA has contracted the two firms for unmanned cargo shipments to the International Space Station on commercially built spaceships, the report said. SpaceX’s $1.6 billion contract calls for 12 missions.
SpaceX is one of former PayPal co-founder Elon Musk’s two largest current ventures, the other being electric sports car maker Tesla Motors.
No Comments | Tags:
Feb 22

NASA Launches Lunar Rover Simulator for iPhone

Posted in: iPhone, NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
NASA_LER_Simulator_iPhone.jpg
NASA has unveiled Lunar Electric Rover Simulator, a free iPhone game that lets players get a taste of what it would be like to support a functioning Lunar Outpost.
The game features an interactive Lunar Electric Rover viewer and separate simulator, multiple difficulty levels, and what appears to be a total lack of documentation–complete with an empty FAQ page. That’s OK, because the idea is so cool, we’ll let it slide.
NASA Lunar Electric Rover Simulator works on the iPhone and iPod touch, and requires iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later. Grab it now for free from Apple’s App Store.
No Comments | Tags:
Feb 22

Astronomers Discover Source of Cosmic Explosions

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
NASA_Chandra_Supernova2.jpg
Astronomers have used ever-mysterious supernovas to help measure the expansion of the universe for decades, but now may finally have an answer as to what causes them in the first place.
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany studied Type 1a supernovae in Andromeda and five nearby elliptical galaxies, according to AFP. They found that almost all of them come from two white dwarf stars merge; if one comes from accretion, or the drawing in of material from a companion star, it would be 50 times brighter in x-rays, the report said.
White dwarf pairs are extremely rare, but the study–published in the February 18th edition of Nature–said that once white dwarfs spiral close enough to merge, the explosion occurs within a few tenths of a second. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Chandra-Spitzer X-ray/Infrared hybrid)

No Comments | Tags:
Feb 19

NASA Releases First Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Images

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
NASA_WISE_Image.jpg
NASA has released the first images from WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, a probe that first launched in mid-December–and they’re pretty striking.
The images include Andromeda, our nearest galaxy neighbor, as well as a comet and a “star factory” 20,000 light years away inside our own galaxy (pictured), as the BBC reports.
The report said Wise will continue to scan the skies through October, at which point its supply of frozen coolant will run out. By that point, Wise will have done one and a half complete scans of the sky.
Click here for more images at NASA’s Web site.
No Comments | Tags:
Feb 16

Astronauts Attach Room With a View to Space Station

Posted in: NASA, science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
NASA_Tranquility_ISS.jpg
NASA astronauts have finished attaching a new observation deck to the International Space Station after fighting three jammed bolts and a stuck capture mechanism.
The 1.6-ton, $27 million Cupola observation deck is now attached to the station’s new Tranquility module, a 24-foot-long room that’s about the size of a small bus, according to Space.com.
The new, 10-foot-wide observation deck will give astronauts unprecedented panoramic views of Earth and space. It features a 31-inch round window in the center, flanked by six smaller windows. The ESA built both Tranquility and Cupola, and are NASA’s last major pieces for the $100 billion ISS. (Image credit: NASA)
No Comments | Tags:
Feb 12

PCs Join Globally to Map the Milky Way

Posted in: science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili
Milky_Way_Sloan.jpg
In the spirit of SETI@home–the decade-old distributed computing project dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life–over 17,000 people are now working together to help map the shape of the Milky Way, according to RPI (the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY).
The new MilkyWay@Home project focuses on the distribution of stars and mysterious dark matter in our own galaxy. The project uses the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform, the same one that provides the foundation for SETI@home, to create a three-dimensional model of the Milky Way based on data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
To this end, MilkyWay@Home participants have so far combined to deliver over one petaflop of computing power. That effectively places this distributed ‘supercomputer’ at number two in the world in sheer speed, according to the report. For more information on the project, head to the main MilkyWay@home site, or grab the BOINC 6.10.21 client to participate. (Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey)
No Comments | Tags:
Feb 11

Todays Solar Dynamics Observatory Launch, In 140 Characters or Less

Posted in: space, Space Tech, Today's Chili, twitter

tonysaturnvtwitpic.jpg

Tony Hoffman, our managing editor for printers, scanners,
and projectors, is braving the Florida
sunshine this week, as a Twitter correspondent for NASA’s launch of the Solar
Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Tony was one of 15 people picked by NASA to cover
the event in an official capacity via the microblogging service, and he’s got a
ton of cool TwitPics to show for it [like the one above].

Tony will be blogging more extensively about the launch
(which happened an hour or so ago), but in the meantime, his abbreviated
coverage certainly warrants a follow–and maybe a star or two. 

No Comments
Feb 11

Ground-Based Telescope Reveals Stunning Orion Nebula Image

Posted in: science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili

VISTA_Orion_Nebula.jpg

The orbiting Hubble Space Telescope isn’t the only way to get stunning images of distant objects.

This breathtaking photo of the Orion Nebula (M42), a stellar nursery about 1,350 light years from Earth, was taken by the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), the newest scope to grace the European Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, according to Space.com.

Orion is an easy target even for amateur astronomers using home-based telescopes. But VISTA’s image shows what those telescopes can’t: the large portion of Orion’s gas cloud that only reveals itself to detectors sensitive to longer, infrared wavelength radiation, the report said.

No Comments | Tags:
Feb 05

How the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Will Revolutionize Our Understanding of the Sun

Posted in: NASA, satellite, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili

sdoisgo.jpg

Yesterday I blogged about next Tuesday’s launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which I’ll be attending as a Twitter correspondent, and the spate of educational events and tweetups around the world that will accompany the launch. So why is this mission important enough to garner all this attention, and for NASA to deem it the crown jewel of its solar science space fleet?

THe SDO will image the Sun at a far greater resolution than previous missions, and take images and measurements at much shorter intervals. This will let scientists look at short-term changes in the Sun’s brightness, appearance, and magnetic field in unprecedented detail, and should allow them to better understand the processes that drive solar activity and produce the “space weather” that can, upon reaching our world, cause geomagnetic storms that endanger astronauts and satellites, disrupt radio communications, and cause power surges or blackouts.

No Comments
Feb 05

LHC Gears Up for Extended Mystery Particle Search

Posted in: science, Space Tech, Today's Chili

LHC_CERN_2.jpg

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is about to embark on a non-stop run through late 2011 at up to 7 tera-electron volts (TeV) in order to find the elusive Higgs Boson particle, Reuters reports.

Scientists at CERN hope that the particle will appear sometime during the lengthy experiment, once they power up the LHC again. The goal is to shed light on gives mass to matter.

The report said that even if scientists don’t see the particle, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist; scientists are also planning a longer run at the LHC’s highest possible energy level, 14 TeV, beginning in 2013.

The LHC ran into some trouble after an explosion caused significant damage back in 2008, shortly after powering up for the first time. (Image credit: CERN)

No Comments