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Posts Tagged ‘Space’

Last Space Shuttle flight scheduled for February, 2011

01 Jul

The very last Space Shuttle flight will take place on February 26, 2011. After that, American astronauts will have to bum rides with the Russians if they want to visit the International Space Station. Shame.

There’s two more missions aboard the Space Shuttle. There’s one on November 1, 2010 (Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-133) and the aforementioned February, 2011 one (Space Shuttle Endeavour, STS-134).

Apparently Space Shuttle Atlantis may get one more flight, but Nasa will wait until next month before it decides one way or the other.

Both flights will bring various pieces of equipment to the ISS, chief among them the ALPHA MAGNETIC SPECTROMETER~! which is a type of cosmic ray detector that Nasa hopes will be used to better understand the formation and structure of the universe.

And yup, after this we’ll have no way of getting to the ISS without having to pay the Russians for a seat on one of their spacecraft—slightly embarrassing for a country as wealthy as the U.S. to not have an active space program, yes.

 
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A 3D atlas of the universe: Carter Emmart on TED.com

01 Jul

For the last 12 years, Carter Emmart has been coordinating the efforts of scientists, artists and programmers to build a complete 3D visualization of our known universe. He demos this stunning tour and explains how it's being shared with facilities around the world. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 6:57)

Watch Cater Emmart's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.

 
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100+ amazing pieces of Star Wars concept art [Concept Art]

20 Jun
You can't celebrate the awesomeness of concept art without paying special tribute to Star Wars. Ralph McQuarrie's paintings for the original trilogy inspired every concept artist today, and the prequels and video games' art was eye-popping. Here are our favorites. More »
 
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Spacewatch: Milky Way Over Canyonlands

12 Oct

By Evan Ackerman

This picture of the milky way galaxy was taken by amateur astrophotographer Wally Pacholka in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. It’s a panorama of 4 individual pictures stitched together, each one a 25 second exposure on a Canon 5D at 1600 ISO with a 24mm lens. The lighting inside the cave comes from flashlights bouncing soft light off rocks, but the rest of the lightning comes from nothing but a crescent moon and the stars. It took him five 1600 mile trips out to Utah, plus a 2 mile hike in the dark (and he got lost every time) to get this one image. Worth it? Yeah, obviously. You can buy 11 x 14 prints of this picture starting at $55.

[ Wally Pacholka ] VIA [ Digg ]

 
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New Telescope to Create 150 Petabyte Database of the Universe [Space]

03 Oct

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is "a proposed ground-based 6.7 meter effective diameter (8.4 meter primary mirror), 10 square-degree-field telescope that will provide digital imaging of faint astronomical objects across the entire sky, night after night." What's that mean? Well, it means, if it's built, we'll have a telescope attempting to catalog the entire night sky into an absolutely massive 150 petabyte database. Awesome!

The LSST isn't slated to open up shop until 2016, but when it does, it'll record a whopping 30TB of data a night by aiming itself into the sky and recording what it sees. It'll be used to "trace billions of remote galaxies and measure the distortions in their shapes produced by lumps of Dark Matter, providing multiple tests of the mysterious Dark Energy."

What's more impressive is the setup they'll need to get all that data recorded. Check it:

* the Mountain/Base facility, which does initial data reduction and alert generation on a 25 TFLOPS Linux cluster with 60PB of storage (in year 10 of the survey)
* a 2.5 Gbps network that transfers the data from Chile (where the telescope itself will be based) to the U.S. and within the US
* the Archive Center, which re-reduces the data and produces annual data releases on a 250 TFLOPS Linux cluster and 60PB of storage (in year 10 of the survey)
* the Data Access Centers which provide access to all of the data products as well as 45 TFLOPS and 12 Petabytes of end user available computing and storage.

Pretty amazing stuff. [The Register]


 
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Charles Simonyi to Become World’s First Repeat Space Tourist [Space Cadet]

30 Sep

Not content with his first astronautic experience, Ex-Microsofter billionaire Charles Simonyi is now training for a second trip to the International Space Station in Spring 2009. Simonyi will be the first repeat Space Adventures customer since the company began sending private citizens into the final frontier in 2001.

The last time he went (in 2007), Simonyi paid roughly $20 million to participate in a lower back muscle study, map the station's radiation environment and test HD camera components. This time around, he'll have to pay $30 million thanks to inflation and increased costs. [MSNBC]


 
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China shuttle blasts off, set for country’s first space-walk

25 Sep

China's Shenzhou 7 spacecraft is in Earth orbit, carrying a three–astronaut crew, one of whom is expected to make that country's first spacewalk this weekend. [More]

 
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Hubble Finds Unidentified Object in Space, Scientists Puzzled [Hubble]

15 Sep

This is exactly why we send astronauts to risk their life to service Hubble: in a paper published last week in the Astrophysical Journal, scientists detail the discovery of a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere. I don't know about you, but when a research paper conclusion says "We suggest that the transient may be one of a new class" I get a chill of oooh-aaahness down my spine. Especially when after a hundred days of observation, it disappeared from the sky with no explanation. Get your tinfoil hats out, because it gets even weirder.

The object also appeared out of nowhere. It just wasn't there before. In fact, they don't even know where it is exactly located because it didn't behave like anything they know. Apparently, it can't be closer than 130 light-years but it can be as far as 11 billion light-years away. It's not in any known galaxy either. And they have ruled out a supernova too. It's something that they have never encountered before. In other words: they don't have a single clue about where or what the heck this thing is.

The shape of the light curve is inconsistent with microlensing. In addition to being inconsistent with all known supernova types, is not matched to any spectrum in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database.

The only thing the astronomers—working on the Supernova Cosmology Project—can tell is that it appeared all of the sudden in the direction of a cluster with the catchy name of CL 1432.5+3332.8, about 8.2 billion light-years away. Hubble caught a spark that continued to brighten during a 100-day period, peaking at the 21st magnitude, only to fade away in the same period of time.

Apparently, a scientist at the LHC declared that the object is similar to the flash that an Imperial Star Destroyer does when reaching Warp 10. Either that or some dust on the Hubble lenses, so someone tell NASA to get some Windex up there too. [Sky and Telescope]


 
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Mars Phoenix Will Bravely and Passionately Twitter Until the Final Beat of Its Adorable Electronic Heart [Goodnight Sweet Rover]

08 Sep

The Mars Phoenix Lander has been Twittering away its mission details since landing on Mars in May. But lately, you can see a sense of impending doom starting to creep in, slowly: "It's noon, Sol 81. I've spotted frost around my landing site in AM," tweeted Phoenix a few weeks ago. "Seasons are longer here...I'll be surrounded by ice & don't expect to survive til Spring," comes a few days later. But unlike other eerie autobiographical accounts of impending death, the wildly successful Mars Phoenix Lander has a trick up its sleeve for a potential reincarnation after the thaw.

"But as I've said before, I'm programmed with a 'Lazarus mode' so I'll call up to the Mars orbiters if I re-awaken in the Spring," said Phoenix last week, probably in response to tearful return Tweets lamenting his/her/its grim disposition. If its solar panels collect enough juice come springtime, the first auto-function will be to contact the Mars Orbiter above with the good news of its reincarnation.

The folks at NASA are proud to be operating Phoenix at all at this point, having said anything beyond the intended 90-day mission (now officially extended to 120 days after water was officially collected for the first time) is a gift to be savored. That Lazarus Tweet we'll be watching for with open hearts. Show that Winter who's boss, little fella! [Twitter]


 
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