Sun ejects biggest solar flare since last year- HD video
March 8, 2012
On March 7 at just after midnight UTC, the Sun released a massive solar flare and coronal mass ejection towards earth. The CME hit us a few hours ago and from what I can tell the aurorae are ongoing from it. You can keep up with the progress at Spaceweather.com. I’m sure there will be some awesome photos from it in the coming days. This one was powerful enough to disrupt satellite communications, but nothing major has happened so far, that I know of. The main reason for this post, though, was to share this space porn HD video of the actual flare. Just wait till they show the zoomed-in shot. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. Oh, and be sure you set it to full HD!
Playing guitar in space
February 23, 2012
I’m always happy when the worlds of music and science collide in cool ways, as should be quite evident by the name of this blog. In reality science IS music, just like science is everything, but this is one instance where it’s especially cool. Astronaut Chris Hadfield is scheduled to be commander of the International Space Station, and he also happens to be a musician. It turns out music is actually an integral part of maintaining the psychological health of the astronauts, and so NASA decided to put an acoustic guitar on the station. This video from Space.com shows Hadfield explaining the guitar design itself, as well as the challenges and adaptations one has to make when playing in zero gravity. Very cool.
On a side note, I’m well aware of collective facepalm the science community is doing right now since the story broke yesterday that the apparent faster-than-light neutrinos discovered last fall may actually be due to a simple bad GPS cable connection. This is still, as far as I can tell, unconfirmed, so I’m holding off on posting anything in-depth. But I will say that I almost expected it to be something so trivial… We’ll see how it pans out.
Try NASA’s new Facebook game
February 1, 2012
NASA is making strides in their publicity and education efforts with a set of new games- Space Race Blastoff and Sector 33. Space Race Blastoff is a Facebook app that lets you compete with other players in quick, 10-question science trivia rounds. The topics range from general science to NASA missions and astronauts. Of course, I signed up immediately and became addicted for about 10 games, then I started getting repeat questions. BUT, this game is still a beta version, so I’m sure the database of questions will be ever-expanding. Also, I’d like to see a feature where you can directly compete with a friend. All in good time, I’m sure.
I haven’t tried Sector 33 yet because it’s only for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. (I’m an Android user.) But you can read all about it in this post at Universe Today. Basically, it lets you try your hand at being an air traffic controller- widely considered to be one of the most stressful jobs. If you start playing Space Race Blastoff, however, lookout- my name on there is Disco Science, and I dare say I’m a force to be reckoned with.
#nergasm
Kepler finds potentially habitable exoplanet 2.4x size of earth
December 5, 2011
Should’ve gotten to posting this earlier today but I was waaay too busy.
Very exciting news in the science world today- NASA’s Kepler mission has been very busy lately, finding exoplanets left and right. Problem is, those observations have to be followed-up and duplicated by other telescopes, usually ground-based. Thus, it takes a while to fully confirm the existence of an exoplanet discovered by Kepler. Finally though, they’ve found one that is close to earth’s size, and orbits a star similar to our sun within its habitable zone. It’s not quite the “holy grail” of planet hunting because the planet is 2.4 times the size of earth, but it’s getting us ever-closer to the discovery of a true earth-twin. This is awesome. It’s only a matter of time…
Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
For more, check out this article on Space.com, or this article on Discovery News.
Mars Science Laboratory launches/other badassery
November 30, 2011
That is video of the final separation of NASA’s new Mars Science Laboratory rover (named Curiosity), sending it on its way to Mars. The probe launched successfully this past Saturday atop an Atlas V rocket, and will reach Mars in August of 2012. If you follow this blog you’ll know that I’ve mentioned this probe excitedly before- that’s because this is the biggest, boldest of all the robotic rovers we’ve sent to Mars. It’s about the size of a small SUV and it will be looking for evidence of conditions that may have been conducive to the development of microbial life, past and present. Important distinction: the probe is NOT searching for life itself, just for evidence that the planet may have been habitable in the past or maybe even the present. August 2012 will be a tense month for NASA and all following this probe’s progess, because the final landing stages are immensely tedious and complex. (See the landing animation below.) For now though, we just sit and wait as the probe zips through space and the engineers make the final adjustments to its trajectory. For some more expert commentary on this mission, check out Bad Astronomy or Universe Today.
Since I probably won’t be posting again until this Friday’s “A Few Good Shows” post, here are a couple more videos full utter badassery:
“Jetman” Yves Rossy flies alongside fighter jets on his jetpack. It doesn’t get much cooler than that…
Nothing like some shirtless 9-year-olds totally nailing “Crazy Train”
Timelapse videos of auroras from the space station
October 20, 2011
This post needs very few words. Just sit back and enjoy these gorgeous timelapse videos shot from the International Space Station. They’re of the Aurora Borealis and/or Aurora Australis. Be sure to click on the resolution and choose the HD version, and make that shit fullscreen! (All via Universe Today)
Artist's concept of NASA's new SLS
Today NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and members of Congress announced an agreement to build the most powerful rocket in US history. The launch system (or SLS for space launch system) is intended to take astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, including asteroids and Mars. The SLS is a derivative of the space shuttle in that it uses 5 space shuttle engines and a fuel tank based on the design of the shuttle’s external fuel tank. There will also be two solid rocket boosters on either side of the main stack. The key difference is that the multi-purpose crew vehicle (MPCV), which is already under construction, will sit atop the entire stack, and will have an escape rocket system that will enable the crew to safely escape almost any type of failure or explosion at any stage during ascent. In many ways this new system is a hybrid of the Apollo-era Saturn V system and the space shuttle. For more info check out the official story on NASA’s website.
This is an exciting announcement, and it’s good to know that many aspects of this new SLS are based on or directly utilize existing technology. This means that the overall cost should be significantly lower than if we’d tried to build something entirely new. I’m glad there was bipartisan agreement that led to this decision being made relatively quickly. The target date for the initial launch of this new SLS is 2017. That seems realistic and I certainly hope it is. Humanity is long overdue to reach beyond low-Earth orbit and explore deep space.
Credit: NASA (Click for full size)
NASA just released some pretty interesting news this afternoon. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been taking photos of the surface of Mars for many years, and scientists have seen what looked like gullies on the surface. But, they had no way to confirm whether those gullies were caused by water or just sand sliding down a slope, or by frozen CO2. There is still no way to confirm for certain that what we’re seeing was caused by flowing water on the surface, but evidence is starting to lean in that direction. These dark finger-like features have been seen changing shape before- but on the colder side of the slope that faces away from the sun most of the day. That would point toward the gullies being caused by frozen CO2. These new images are of features on the warmer sun-facing side of the slopes, meaning the likelihood of them being caused by flowing liquid water is far greater. The most important thing here is to remember that this is NOT confirmation of liquid water on the surface of Mars. It is, however, highly suggestive of liquid water on the surface of Mars. This is exciting news because if it is indeed liquid water, there’s a much better chance that microbial life might still exist. Another important thing to remember is that we already know water exists on Mars- we’ve seen it as ice, both directly (Phoenix lander) and indirectly (radar soundings from MRO indicating water ice below the surface). The key to life though, is liquid water.
As usual, Dr. Phil Plait has a very good explanation of all this on Bad Astronomy, so I recommend checking that out. The NASA article can be found here.
The end of the Space Shuttle era
July 7, 2011
If all goes as planned, tomorrow’s scheduled launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis will be the beginning of the end for the shuttle program. And when it touches down, the shuttle era will officially be over. With the program literally being almost exactly as old as I am (the first shuttle flight was on April 12, 1981, and I was born on Nov. 20th, 1981), it just seems surreal to know that the shuttles will no longer be operating. They were the face of NASA as I was growing up- they were “it.” But it is time for NASA to move on, let the private spaceflight industry take over the now routine task of ferrying astronauts to the ISS, and focus on exploring beyond low earth orbit.
The last I read, weather is going to be a big concern for the launch tomorrow, so there’s a decent chance it’ll get pushed back days or even weeks. But when it does happen, you should watch it. Especially if you’ve never seen one before. It’ll be all over the media so it’ll be hard to miss.
I decided to gather a few of the more interesting shuttle-related links I’ve come across over the past few days in my various science and space-related RSS feeds:
- Photo gallery of Atlantis on the launchpad, via Universe Today.
- Photo gallery that spans the entire shuttle program’s history, via Discovery News.
- Discovery’s first pilot remembers its troubled first mission, via Discovery News.
- Countdown: 10 amazing space shuttle photos, via Space.com.
- A glimpse into the complex rescue scenario in the event that Atlantis is irreparably damaged and incapable of re-entry, via Space.com.
I’ve been waiting since the end of May for this:
(Click to enlarge) Credit: NASA/Paolo Nespoli
THAT is something that has never been captured on film before. It may not seem like a big deal, but the opportunity to to photograph a space shuttle docked to the ISS from space has never happened before, and never will again. The schedules happened to line up so that a Russian Soyuz capsule undocked from the ISS carrying three astronauts home while Endeavour was still docked. This gave astronaut Paolo Nespoli the opportunity to take photos of the shuttle/ISS combo from the window of the Soyuz capsule as they floated away. They paused the Soyuz some distance away and the space station actually performed a “flip” maneuver to allow for more angles. Please click through to the NASA image gallery and see the rest of these amazing images.
Think the idea of humans boarding a massive spaceship headed into the cosmos for 100’s or even 1,000’s of years (a.k.a. real-life Star Trek) is completely in the realm of science fiction? Think again. Last fall DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the highly secretive experimental arm of the Department of Defense who happened to invent the internet, released an official Request for Information regarding a “100-year starship plan.” Basically, they want people to come up with a fully thought-out plan for forming a team of researchers/engineers/scientists to investigate the technology necessary to build such a spaceship. Needless to say, this is one tiny baby step in a project that could cost many billions of dollars and require decades of advances in propulsion technology, but it’s still rather amazing that there is real, serious effort being put into something that has always seemed so far out of reach for humankind. As pointed out in their RFI, there will no doubt be unanticipated discoveries and technological advances as a “side-effect” of this research. So the actual spaceship itself is not the only purpose of this initiative. It really makes me happy to see something like this happening because I think manned space exploration has been quite stagnant for the last couple of decades. We need this kind of spark to really push forward the technology needed to extend our presence beyond low-Earth orbit. (Via Universe Today)
Ok, that’s really it for this week. Probably. I can’t fathom any more posts because tomorrow morning I will be heading to Manchester with the rest of the Scene/Cream team to photograph Bonnaroo. Keep your eyes on the Nashville Cream for updates on our shenanigans, and to see some of my photos.
steve cross loves music and science 