Category Archives: NASA

R2 and Harmony

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Obama Speaks with Astronauts from the Discovery Spacecraft

While it may just be another flight back home from space for the Discovery spacecraft, 39 visits to space total, it’s the first for R2. R2 is a state of the art humanoid robot designed to help the ISS crew and was a subject of conversation during an interview between the crew and President Obama.

When they admitted that R2 remained in packing foam Obama joked:

“C’mon, unpack the guy! He flew all that way and you guys aren’t unpacking him?”

CC: NASA.gov

A sentimental point that both the crew of the ISS and President Obama brought up was the literally “out-of-this-world” harmony between nations.

 Able to connect and collaborate without starting another cold war, the United States, Russia, European Space Agency, and Japan were able to build and maintain life on the I.S.S.

President Obama during the interview called the harmony a testimony to the way we need to

 ”live and work together productively in space, and maybe back here on earth.”

Colonel Steven Lindsey concurred, commenting on how

 ”All of these countries put together probably the most complex thing ever built, and built it in space.”  

Not only did they put it all together in space, but as Col. Lindsey observed

 ”everything fit the first time we tried it.”

which makes it just poetic.



Moon "Diviner" finds useful minerals

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Diviner. Illustration: NASA/UCLA

Good news for Moon setters: Scientists seeking mineral wealth on the Moon have struck upon minerals that can be used to make nuke fuel and fertilizer.

Among the mineral wealth detected by NASA’s Moon recon orbiter vessel, Diviner, is the element thorium, which might be used to power nuclear energy plants on the Moon.

More from a recent announcement:

Most impressively, in several locations around the Moon, Diviner has detected the presence of highly silicic minerals such as quartz, potassium-rich, and sodium-rich feldspar – minerals that are only ever found in association with highly evolved lithologies (rocks that have undergone extensive magmatic processing).

via New Types Of Rock Found On Moon By Researchers At Stony Brook University And NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Saturday space foto: The light o'er Kraken Mare

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Kraken Mare. Sounds Gaelic enough. NASA snaps this pic of a 150,000 mile methane lake.

That’s about five times the surface area of Lake Superior.

From the space agency:

By comparing the new image to radar and near-infrared light images acquired from 2006 to 2008, Cassini scientists were able to correlate the reflection to the southern shoreline of a Titan lake called Kraken Mare. The sprawling Kraken Mare covers about 400,000 square kilometers 150,000 square miles. The reflection appeared to come from a part of the lake around 71 degrees north latitude and 337 degrees west latitude.

via Cassini Equinox Mission: Image Details.

Moon landing? Don't believe your lying eyes

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Space blogger to moon landing skeptics: Trust “scientists, engineers (and) the government.”

(Looks to good to be true. Photo: NASA)

Universe Today hopes this NASA image from the Apollo 11 mission (above) is so undeniably realistic-looking, few people will again dare to insist the U.S.’s moon landings were hoaxed. (Link, excerpt, below.)

Many conspiracists would be happy to see the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter prove them wrong. They just doubt it will.

Still Mythbusting | Universe Today
After last night’s “Mythbusters” show about the Apollo Moon Landing Hoax Myth, I’m cautiously hopeful that at least some people who believe(d) in this myth had their eyes opened and minds changed. Alas, there will always be folks out there who for some reason are set on not believing scientists, engineers or the government and won’t subscribe to any type of proof, be it scientific or television-ific. Perhaps the upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission will be able to take hi-resolution images of one of the Apollo sites.

Robots not good enough, say would-be Martians

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A reluctant U.S. Congress might change its mind about sending humans to Mars, if Phoenix discovers organic matter, Planetary Society and Mars Society members hope (see believe).

In its NASA funding legislation, the Democrat-controlled body is seeking to bar any funds that might be spent on manned Mars missions. The Mars Society, meanwhile (which I joined for a year, because I had to have that membership card), is acknowledging this week its failure to capture the imaginations of many Americans. The organization plans to lobby Congress to support manned missions.

Will the Mars Phoenix Mission Clear the Way for Manned Missions? If organic compounds are present on Mars, they’re more likely to have been preserved in ice, which is why NASA targeted the Phoenix mission for the planet’s high northern plains, where they predicted about six inches of soft red soil should cover the ice so the digger shouldn’t have to probe too deeply.

Sci-Fi cover for a real-life agenda?

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A Second Life transhumanist, despite her sim’s ties to movement leaders and government agencies, insists it’s all “science fiction.”

Fishers of pre-posthumans? Second Lifers drop a line in the Extropia sim. (Image: From the Extropia Core website)

by Mark Baard

One of the founders of Extropia said this week denied she is propagating any ideology through the online sim.

Extropia founder and blogger “Galatea Gynoid,” as she’s known in Second Life, this week posted a rebuttal to “certain people” (see excerpt, below) who see more to the sim than an evolving work of pure fiction.

Extropia is an area within Second Life where people, via their 3D avatars, gather to discuss transhumanism, science and science fiction.

Gynoid says she started Extropia so that she and like-minded Second Lifers might enjoy an alternative to the depressing, dystopian sims they found elsewhere in the metaverse.

But Gynoid, by trying to have it both ways, may be trying to duck criticism from those who see the transhumanist agenda at work in Extropia.

By co-hosting events with real life (RL) transhumanists and U.S. government agencies, for example, it is clear that Extropia is more than fiction. It is also a meeting place for believers.

Extropia co-hosted a NASA “future forum” on May 14. And in two weeks, the sim will host a technology and religion conference meant to “re-cast our understanding of ‘humanity’ in the Third Millennium.”

Why “Extropia”? | Extropia Core
There are certain people out there who are insisting you need to subscribe to a particular ideology to be welcome here. The funny thing is, the majority of the Board of Directors wouldnt [sic] be allowed in Extropia if what they said is true. I myself, the founder and owner of the sims, would not be allowed in Extropia if what they said was true. Its utterly, patently ridiculous.

A different "Spitzer" story: Scope spots H2O in space

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Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope have spotted organic material and water vapor swirling around a young star (artist’s conception, above). The star, AA Turi, is less than a million years old — a baby in celestial terms. It is one of several young stars surrounded by disks containing similar materials.

The orbiting Spitzer is the last in the Great Observatory family, which includes Hubble.

Spitzer Finds Organics and Water Where New Planets May Grow
With their new procedures, they were able to detect the minute spectral signatures for three simple organic molecules–hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and carbon dioxide–plus water vapor. In addition, they found more of these substances in the disk than are found in the dense interstellar gas called molecular clouds from which the disk originated. “Molecular clouds provide the raw material from which the protoplanetary disks are created,” said Carr. “So this is evidence for an active organic chemistry going on within the disk, forming and enhancing these molecules.”

Mars: home to one brave nudist

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Is this a thick-skinned, sunbathing Martian?
Nerds poring over each pixel taken by the NASA Mars Explorer Spirit recently struck paydirt: Some of them see an alien chilling out along an outcropping, perhaps lost in its alien thoughts.

But here’s the best part: Dude, it’s a she, and she’s naked.

Life on Mars? Amazing photos from Nasa probe reveal image of mystery figure on Red Planet
A few of the UK papers covered this mars rover picture today of what looks like a small statue, pasted the story from the Daily Mail below.

Interesting but not conclusive for me barring a peek at the close- up NASA maybe has hidden away somewhere.

What I found more curious was this ‘V’ cut rock located in the vicinity of the red circle, no straight lines in nature?

Also: A correspondent to Jeff Rense also notes the presence of an unusual object nearby (see image, below), which looks like the cap to my backyard fire pit.

Mars: home to one brave nudist

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Is this a thick-skinned, sunbathing Martian?
Nerds poring over each pixel taken by the NASA Mars Explorer Spirit recently struck paydirt: Some of them see an alien chilling out along an outcropping, perhaps lost in its alien thoughts.

But here’s the best part: Dude, it’s a she, and she’s naked.

Life on Mars? Amazing photos from Nasa probe reveal image of mystery figure on Red Planet
A few of the UK papers covered this mars rover picture today of what looks like a small statue, pasted the story from the Daily Mail below.

Interesting but not conclusive for me barring a peek at the close- up NASA maybe has hidden away somewhere.

What I found more curious was this ‘V’ cut rock located in the vicinity of the red circle, no straight lines in nature?

Also: A correspondent to Jeff Rense also notes the presence of an unusual object nearby (see image, below), which looks like the cap to my backyard fire pit.

NASA sats to ID disease hotspots

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The forecast calls for a flu outbreak, here. NASA scientists, social and behavioral scientists and epidemiologists believe satellite images can signal coming epidemics.

NASA’s satellite images of Earth ground temperatures and pollution will help epidemiologists and behavioral scientists, the space agency says.
NASA is partnering with a university public health laboratory (which is run by an Egyptologist, interestingly enough) to better understand the environmental causes of disease.

The Laboratory for Global Health Observation at the University of Alabama will study how water (presumably flouridated) affects dental health, as well as the links between lead, mercury, pesticides and the health of babies.

Tire fires (easily seen from space), for example, create ideal conditions for the spread of West Nile Virus, according to NASA.

More from NASA:

NASA – NASA Scientists Learn to Speak New Language

Studies sponsored by the lab have already led to critical research in fighting malaria. Infrared imagery from satellites is helping scientists locate warm standing water – fertile breeding ground for mosquitos. Then the problem areas can be treated effectively and precisely, stopping the spread of malaria.

Other researchers at the lab are using satellite imagery to correlate cases of West Nile virus with nearness to tire dumps — a favorite breeding ground for the virus-carrying mosquito.

This idea led UAB to create a remote sensing lab – in fact the first U.S. dedicated remote sensing lab for medical and public health use – to do just that.

The scientists from UAB and NASA realized that rocket science could be focused down to the level of microbiology and public health and yield huge advances in both.

And here is a temperature map of the type the new global health observation will use:

– Mark Baard