Tag Archives: nasa

Watch NASA’s Next Mars Orbiter Be Put Together, Piece by Piece

by Leon51tt8 Posted on September 16, 2013

In just two months NASA is going back to Mars. The agency’s MAVEN orbiter, set to launch November 18, will circle the red planet, studying Mars’ incredibly thin atmosphere and trying to figure out how it interacts with the solar wind. But before MAVEN can be launched from Cape Canaveral, it had to be put together, by hand, piece by piece.

Lockheed Martin, the company that built MAVEN, recorded this time lapse of the satellite’s construction, showing you just how much work goes into assembling one of these things.

h/t Emily Lakdawalla

More from Smithsonian.com:

This Is What a Watery Mars May Have Looked Like
Curiosity Nails It: Mars Used to Have Flowing Water

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Watch NASA’s Next Mars Orbiter Be Put Together, Piece by Piece

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Watch NASA’s Next Mars Lander Be Put Together, Piece by Piece

by Thorzar Posted on September 16, 2013

In just two months NASA is going back to Mars. The agency’s MAVEN orbiter, set to launch November 18, will circle the red planet, studying Mars’ incredibly thin atmosphere and trying to figure out how it interacts with the solar wind. But before MAVEN can be launched from Cape Canaveral, it had to be put together, by hand, piece by piece.

Lockheed Martin, the company that built MAVEN, recorded this time lapse of the satellite’s construction, showing you just how much work goes into assembling one of these things.

h/t Emily Lakdawalla

More from Smithsonian.com:

This Is What a Watery Mars May Have Looked Like
Curiosity Nails It: Mars Used to Have Flowing Water

Read article here:

Watch NASA’s Next Mars Lander Be Put Together, Piece by Piece

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Here’s an Incredible Image of Venus Passing in Front of the Sun

by 41laowo Posted on August 20, 2013

The sun is not a planet, but if it was it would probably be your favorite. Just look at this incredible image that NASA released recently.

Image: NASA

What you’re seeing is a strange solar eclipse, in which Venus passed in front of the sun. The tiny black dot on the top lefthand side is Venus. The giant psychedelic fireball is the sun, imaged in three colors of ultraviolet light.

NASA captions the image more technically:

An unusual type of solar eclipse occurred last year. Usually it is the Earth’s Moon that eclipses the Sun. Last June, most unusually, the planet Venus took a turn. Like a solar eclipse by the Moon, the phase of Venus became a continually thinner crescent as Venus became increasingly better aligned with the Sun. Eventually the alignment became perfect and thephase of Venus dropped to zero. The dark spot of Venus crossed our parent star. The situation could technically be labeled a Venusian annular eclipse with an extraordinarily large ring of fire. Pictured above during the occultation, the Sun was imaged in three colors of ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, with the dark region toward the right corresponding to a coronal hole. Hours later, as Venus continued in its orbit, a slight crescent phase appeared again. The next Venusian solar eclipse will occur in 2117.

More from Smithsonian.com:

An Amazing Look at Solar Flares
NASA’s Inflatable Spacecraft Heat Shield

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Here’s an Incredible Image of Venus Passing in Front of the Sun

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Smile! A Satellite Around Saturn Is About To Take Your Picture

by eltonwagner4653 Posted on July 18, 2013

This is what astronomers think the photo should look like. Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech

On Friday afternoon at around 5:30 on the east coast, 2:30 on the west, look up to the sky and smile. Nine hundred million miles away, a camera is taking your photo. Our Earth and everything on it is playing the backdrop to a portrait of Saturn taken by a camera aboard NASA’s Cassini orbiter. That satellite has been cruising around Saturn since 2004.

The photo will see Saturn obscure the Sun, giving a good view of the gas giant’s rings. Blocking out the Sun also means that the relatively faint light of the Earth will be able to shine through. NASA:

“While Earth will be only about a pixel in size from Cassini’s vantage point 898 million [1.44 billion kilometers] away, the team is looking forward to giving the world a chance to see what their home looks like from Saturn,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “We hope you’ll join us in waving at Saturn from Earth, so we can commemorate this special opportunity.”

Cassini will start obtaining the Earth part of the mosaic at 2:27 p.m. PDT (5:27 p.m. EDT or 21:27 UTC) and end about 15 minutes later, all while Saturn is eclipsing the sun from Cassini’s point of view. The spacecraft’s unique vantage point in Saturn’s shadow will provide a special scientific opportunity to look at the planet’s rings. At the time of the photo, North America and part of the Atlantic Ocean will be in sunlight.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Fantastic Photos of our Solar System
Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon Is a Raging Hurricane

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Smile! A Satellite Around Saturn Is About To Take Your Picture

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New Mexico’s record drought forcing farmers to extremes

by bukaroso Posted on July 17, 2013

green4us

The Flower Recipe Book – Alethea Harampolis & Jill Rizzo

Flower arranging has never been simpler or more enticing. The women behind Studio Choo, the hottest floral design studio in the country, have created a flower-arranging bible for today’s aesthetic. Filled with an array of stunning, easy-to-find flowers, it features 400 high-resolution photos,more than 40 step-by-step slideshows,and tappable pop-tips thr […]

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Following Atticus – Tom Ryan

After a close friend died of cancer, middle-aged, overweight, acrophobic newspaperman Tom Ryan decided to pay tribute to her in a most unorthodox manner. Ryan and his friend, miniature schnauzer Atticus M. Finch, would attempt to climb all forty-eight of New Hampshire’s four thousand- foot peaks twice in one winter while raising money for charity. It wa […]

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Warhammer 40,000: The Rules – Games Workshop

There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only WAR. In the nightmare future of the 41st Millennium, Mankind teeters upon the brink of destruction. The galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man is beset on all sides by ravening aliens and threatened from within by Warp-spawned entities and heretical plots. Only the strength of the immortal […]

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The Honest Life – Jessica Alba

As a new mom, Jessica Alba wanted to create the safest, healthiest environment for her family. But she was frustrated by the lack of trustworthy information on how to live healthier and cleaner—delivered in a way that a busy mom could act on without going to extremes. In 2012, with serial entrepreneur Brian Lee and environmental advocate Christopher Gavigan, […]

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Apocalypse – Games Workshop

The greatest heroes of the age lead battalions of troops and tanks against the foe. Super-heavy war machines dominate the conflict like gods of battle as bombardments rain from the skies. This is war on a whole new level. Apocalypse is a new way of playing games of Warhammer 40,000. Allowing you to field as many miniatures as you like, in any combinati […]

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Kids Puzzle Fun #1 – Lovatts Crosswords & Puzzles

Junior puzzlers will enjoy hours of quality entertainment with the first issue of Kids Puzzle Fun! This interactive book features ‘Magic Touch’ drawing tools, allowing kids to solve the puzzles by using their finger as a pen. Magic Touch unites the tactile feel of a printed book with a superior digital format, resulting in a more natural, intuitive experienc […]

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Farsight Enclaves – A Codex: Tau Empire Supplement – Games Workshop

Commander Farsight was once hailed by every Tau caste as a genius warrior-leader without compare. As his career blazed a bloody path across the Damocles Gulf and back again, O’Shovah split away from the Tau Empire, doggedly pursuing the Orks that had killed so many of his Fire caste comrades. It was the first overt sign of a rebellion that was to change the […]

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The Cannabis Grow Bible – Greg Green

The definitive guide to growing marijuana just got better! Greg Green’s original Cannabis Grow Bible set a new standard for handbooks on cannabis horticulture and established Green as the leading authority in the field. Green’s comprehensive and professionally presented work on how to cultivate superior cannabis struck a chord with beginner, amateur and prof […]

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Apocalypse (Digital Collection) – Games Workshop

The greatest heroes of the age lead battalions of troops and tanks against the foe. Super-heavy war machines dominate the conflict like gods of battle as bombardments rain from the skies. This is war on a whole new level. Apocalypse is a new way of playing games of Warhammer 40,000. Allowing you to field as many miniatures as you like, in any combinati […]

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Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 1 – J.D. Lenzen

J.D. Lenzen is the creator of the highly acclaimed YouTube channel “Tying It All Together”, and the producer of over 200 instructional videos. He’s been formally recognized by the International Guild of Knot Tyers (IGKT) for his contributions to knotting, and is the originator of fusion knotting-innovative knots created through the merging of […]

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New Mexico’s record drought forcing farmers to extremes

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, growing marijuana, horticulture, Monterey, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New Mexico’s record drought forcing farmers to extremes

Scientists Just Measured the True Color of a Far-Off Planet

by Aaren Smith Posted on July 11, 2013

The Pale Blue Dot, Earth as seen by Voyager 1. Photo: NASA / Voyager 1

Twenty three years ago and from 3.8 billion miles away the Voyager 1 probe turned and snapped a photo of Earth—the Pale Blue Dot. The photo showed our Earth as a speck in the dark sky—all of human existence wrapped up in a pixel.

Though the Earth is still all we’ve got, in recent years astronomers discovered potentially billions of other planets, many seemingly just like ours. Now, astronomers have found a new, simple parallel between one of these far-off planets and Carl Sagan’s famous blue dot, says the European Space Agency. For the first time ever, astronomers have directly measured the color of a planet in another solar system. And it’s blue—“a deep azure blue, reminiscent of Earth’s colour as seen from space,” says the ESA.

Pale Blue Dots parallelisms aside, though, the planet, HD 189733b, is more like Neptune’s evil twin than a distant Earth.

This “deep blue dot” is a huge gas giant orbiting very close to its host star. The planet’s atmosphere is scorching with a temperature of over 1000 degrees Celsius, and it rains glass, sideways, in howling 7000 kilometre-per-hour winds.

An artist’s rendering of the planet HD 189773b. Photo: NASA / ESA / M. Kornmesser

The planet orbits the star HD 189733 in the Vulpecula constellation, and to figure out its color, researchers used Hubble to measure the light coming from the star, both when the planet was in front and when it wasn’t. Looking at the subtle shifts in the color of the light let them figure out the color of the planet’s atmosphere.

More from Smithsonian.com:

You Can’t Throw a Rock in the Milky Way Without Hitting an Earth-Like Planet
This Is an Actual Photo of a Planet in Another Solar System

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Scientists Just Measured the True Color of a Far-Off Planet

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How Do You Shield Astronauts and Satellites From Deadly Micrometeorites?

by p9zyztu Posted on June 28, 2013

Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson in the ISS’ Cupola, where a micrometeorite hit the window last year. Photo: NASA

Late last month GOES-13, a weather satellite that helps the U.S. government forecast hurricanes, got smacked by a piece of supersonic space dust. A little micrometeorite, a small-but-incredibly-fast piece of space debris, says USA Today, “struck the arm of the satellite’s power-producing solar array, engineers say. The jolt knocked the satellite off balance, and spacecraft instruments automatically turned themselves off.” The orbital collision brought the satellite down for a few weeks as engineers figured out what was wrong.

Astronauts on the International Space Station have had their own run-ins with micrometeorites, too. Last year, one slammed into one of the station’s giant windows. “Micrometeroid and orbital debris (MMOD) impacts are part of life in low Earth orbit,” says Space Safety Magazine. “MMOD impacts occur all the time on ISS and other spacecraft, although most are not easily visible through a window. Returning Space Shuttles have shown pock marks from high velocity MMODs.” As humans enter low-Earth orbit with increasing regularity, the threat posed by small bits of space debris—an errant bolt, say—goes up.

To protect satellites and astronauts (and soon, space tourists), engineers have to give the ships some sort of armor. Right now, NASA uses something called “Whipple Shielding”:

In the 1940s, Fred Whipple proposed a meteoroid shield for spacecraft, called the Whipple shield in recognition of his contribution. The Whipple shield consists of a thin, aluminum “sacrificial” wall mounted at a distance from a rear wall. The function of the first sheet or “BUMPER” is to break up the projectile into a cloud of material containing both projectile and BUMPER debris. This cloud expands while moving across the standoff, resulting in the impactor momentum being distributed over a wide area of the rear wall (Figure 2). The back sheet must be thick enough to withstand the blast loading from the debris cloud and any solid fragments that remain.

In updated versions of this design, says NASA, “bulletproof” Kevlar or other materials are placed between the outer sacrificial wall and the inside plate.

The designs amount to, essentially, putting something thick in the way that will hopefully stop the micrometeorite before it can ram its way all the way through your spacecraft. But once that hole is punctured, the strength of the shield is reduced until it can be repaired—not the greatest if you want to leave your satellite up there for years at a time, or you want your commerical space ship to do back-to-back flights.

The future of spacecraft shielding could stem from ongoing research into “self-healing” shields, materials that automatically repair themselves after they’re hit. The CBC recently toured the Planetary and Space Science Centre at the University of New Brunswick, where researchers use a gigantic gun to simulate micrometeorite strikes and test the space shields of the future:

More from Smithsonian.com:

One Tiny Piece of Space Debris Can Destroy a Satellite

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How Do You Shield Astronauts and Satellites From Deadly Micrometeorites?

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A Clear View of Alaska

by Myrna Posted on June 20, 2013

And maybe our future. NASA Alaska, it so happens, is pretty big. If you take Alaska and subtract Texas, the amount left over is still bigger than Texas. Given that, plus the usual atmospheric conditions, it’s pretty rare to get a picture of the nearly the entire state free of clouds. But that’s just what NASA’s Terra satellite saw on Monday: What an amazing shot! The snow-covered mountains in the southeast really stand out, and you can see a forest fire raging farther to the west. I know we’re seeing a huge swath of land, so the scale is huge—the picture shows an area about 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) across—but it’s still striking not to see any real signs of human activity here. To keep reading, click here. View original post here: A Clear View of Alaska Related Articles Al Gore says Obama Must Veto ‘Atrocity’ of Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline Occupy Sandy, Once Welcomed, Now Questioned Are Fungus-Farming Ants the Key to Better Biofuel?

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A Clear View of Alaska

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Scientist drinks billion-year-old water: "It tastes terrible"

by Myrna Posted on June 18, 2013

One of the great scientific questions has now been answered. No, it’s not something about the Higgs Boson or the Riemann hypothesis… Jump to original:   Scientist drinks billion-year-old water: "It tastes terrible" ; ;Related ArticlesWhy scientific proof isn’t always needed to justify concernsMonstanto vs. organics: court rules that a website promise is good enoughAre Fungus-Farming Ants the Key to Better Biofuel? ;

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Scientist drinks billion-year-old water: "It tastes terrible"

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3D-Printed Pizza Brings Us One Step Closer to Meal-in-a-Pill

by graptorm Posted on May 21, 2013

Nom. Photo: British Mum

NASA, those great engineers of tomorrow, just put $125,000 behind work intended to build a 3D food printer—a device that will be able to crank out “nutritionally-appropriate meals” from a mix of oils and powders, says Christopher Mims for Quartz. The money is going to a mechanical engineer, Anjan Contractor, who will build a prototype of the machine. “Contractor’s vision,” says Mims, “would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store.”

Laid down layer by layer using a waterless mix of carbohydrates, protein and nutrient, according to Contractor, the device should be able to make meals out of pretty much any source of these essential foodstuffs—plants, bugs, seeds, whatever.

NASA wants the printer for long-distance space flights. Waterless powders don’t go bad, and living in space you’d probably get sick of slurping soup out of a baggie. Pizza sounds much better:

Pizza is an obvious candidate for 3D printing because it can be printed in distinct layers, so it only requires the print head to extrude one substance at a time. Contractor’s “pizza printer” is still at the conceptual stage, and he will begin building it within two weeks. It works by first “printing” a layer of dough, which is baked at the same time it’s printed, by a heated plate at the bottom of the printer. Then it lays down a tomato base, “which is also stored in a powdered form, and then mixed with water and oil,” says Contractor.

Finally, the pizza is topped with the delicious-sounding “protein layer,” which could come from any source, including animals, milk or plants.

While a 3D food printer would be able to make food-looking food, the idea isn’t so far off from the mainstay futuristic projections of the early 20th century that said we were all supposed to be eating our food in pill form by now. Against that, we’ll take the “protein” pizza.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Solar System Lollipops And Other Food That Looks Like Things

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3D-Printed Pizza Brings Us One Step Closer to Meal-in-a-Pill

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