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Archive for The discovery
The discovery of huge amounts of water ice and possible organic compounds on the heat-blasted planet Mercury suggests that the raw materials necessary for life as we know it may be common throughout the solar system, researchers say.
Categories : Galaxy
Space-watchers were set abuzz this week after the lead researcher of NASA’s latest mission to Mars hinted at a groundbreaking potential discovery.
Earthbound NASA scientists have been receiving data from a soil-analysis instrument inside Curiosity, the rover that landed on the red planet in August. That instrument, known as SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars), is particularly looking for chemical compounds that suggest the planet is capable of supporting life.
In a radio segment aired Tuesday, the mission’s project scientist, John Grotzinger, wouldn’t tell an NPR reporter what the analysis had turned up until further tests verified the findings. But, Grotzinger said: “This data is going be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”
His remarks set off a predictable round of alien-related hype in the non-technical press. “Nasa may have discovered life on Mars,” one British tabloid speculated.
But it also set off some grumbling among scientists and industry-watchers. Would the discovery be truly exciting — or part of what some see as a pattern of overhyped NASA announcements?
“I think it’s obviously a deliberate attempt to drum up interest,” said John Pike, a space and policy expert and director of GlobalSecurity.org. NASA space shuttles are all retired and the agency is facing budget cuts. And if publicity-mongering was not the intent of the comments, Pike said, “somebody who works on the program would have the capacity to get excited about things that civilians would not.”
Or as Phil Plait, an astronomer who blogs for Slate, wrote: “OK, everyone, can we all take a sec and just breathe?” He added: “This has happened before. More than once.”
In 2008, Plait pointed out, NASA sent out a provocative news release. It was titled “NASA to Announce Success of Long Galactic Hunt,” and it touted the discovery of something astronomers have “been hunting for more than 50 years.”
It turned out to be a young supernova, a less-than-earth-shattering discovery for most non-scientists, and definitely not aliens.
And in 2010, Plait and many others noted, NASA scheduled a news conference to “discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” Astrobiology, that news release reminded everyone, “is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.” Still not aliens.
The findings did initially provoke excitement: a team had discovered that bacteria living in a lake in California sustained their growth using arsenic, a usually toxic element and one not counted among the building blocks of all known organic life. The discovery raised the possibility that life on other planets could evolve in ways totally unlike how it does on Earth.
But other scientists raised serious doubts about the arsenic findings. Evidence now suggests the California bacteria rely on phosphorus after all.
Yet Grotzinger’s remarks differed in one major way from those examples: they were not prepared by public relations staff, but made to a single visiting reporter.
In an email, a media staffer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where Grotzinger’s team works, seemed to suggest this was a case of an excited scientist speaking off the cuff.
“John Grotzinger was delighted about the quality and range of information coming in from SAM during the day a reporter happened to be sitting in John’s office last week,” Guy Webster wrote. “He has been similarly delighted by results at other points during the mission so far.”
And: “The whole mission is for the history books.”
Indeed, when other scientific institutions hint at exciting forthcoming discoveries, public frothing about aliens does not generally follow.
Whether the hype or the criticism are warranted will be known on Dec. 3, when a team of scientists plans to discuss recent findings from the rover at a news conference in San Francisco.
Article source: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1292397--mysterious-mars-rover-discovery-draws-alien-hype-critical-backlash
Tags: mission to mars, The discovery, john grotzinger, nasa space shuttles, on Dec. 3, John Pike, phil plait <BR/>Categories : Mars News
Space-watchers were set abuzz this week after the lead researcher of NASA’s latest mission to Mars hinted at a groundbreaking potential discovery.
Earthbound NASA scientists have been receiving data from a soil-analysis instrument inside Curiosity, the rover that landed on the red planet in August. That instrument, known as SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars), is particularly looking for chemical compounds that suggest the planet is capable of supporting life.
In a radio segment aired Tuesday, the mission’s project scientist, John Grotzinger, wouldn’t tell an NPR reporter what the analysis had turned up until further tests verified the findings. But, Grotzinger said: “This data is going be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”
His remarks set off a predictable round of alien-related hype in the non-technical press. “Nasa may have discovered life on Mars,” one British tabloid speculated.
But it also set off some grumbling among scientists and industry-watchers. Would the discovery be truly exciting — or part of what some see as a pattern of overhyped NASA announcements?
“I think it’s obviously a deliberate attempt to drum up interest,” said John Pike, a space and policy expert and director of GlobalSecurity.org. NASA space shuttles are all retired and the agency is facing budget cuts. And if publicity-mongering was not the intent of the comments, Pike said, “somebody who works on the program would have the capacity to get excited about things that civilians would not.”
Or as Phil Plait, an astronomer who blogs for Slate, wrote: “OK, everyone, can we all take a sec and just breathe?” He added: “This has happened before. More than once.”
In 2008, Plait pointed out, NASA sent out a provocative news release. It was titled “NASA to Announce Success of Long Galactic Hunt,” and it touted the discovery of something astronomers have “been hunting for more than 50 years.”
It turned out to be a young supernova, a less-than-earth-shattering discovery for most non-scientists, and definitely not aliens.
And in 2010, Plait and many others noted, NASA scheduled a news conference to “discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” Astrobiology, that news release reminded everyone, “is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.” Still not aliens.
The findings did initially provoke excitement: a team had discovered that bacteria living in a lake in California sustained their growth using arsenic, a usually toxic element and one not counted among the building blocks of all known organic life. The discovery raised the possibility that life on other planets could evolve in ways totally unlike how it does on Earth.
But other scientists raised serious doubts about the arsenic findings. Evidence now suggests the California bacteria rely on phosphorus after all.
Yet Grotzinger’s remarks differed in one major way from those examples: they were not prepared by public relations staff, but made to a single visiting reporter.
In an email, a media staffer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where Grotzinger’s team works, seemed to suggest this was a case of an excited scientist speaking off the cuff.
“John Grotzinger was delighted about the quality and range of information coming in from SAM during the day a reporter happened to be sitting in John’s office last week,” Guy Webster wrote. “He has been similarly delighted by results at other points during the mission so far.”
And: “The whole mission is for the history books.”
Indeed, when other scientific institutions hint at exciting forthcoming discoveries, public frothing about aliens does not generally follow.
Whether the hype or the criticism are warranted will be known on Dec. 3, when a team of scientists plans to discuss recent findings from the rover at a news conference in San Francisco.
Article source: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1292397--mysterious-mars-rover-discovery-draws-alien-hype-critical-backlash
Tags: mars rover, phil plait, mission to mars <BR/>Categories : Mars News
A newly discovered planet is so large it would dwarf our solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter.
According to NASA astronomers, the newly discovered planet is classified as a ‘super-Jupiter’ planet, thirteen times larger than Jupiter. The planet orbits a star called Kappa Andromedae that is 2.5 times the mass of the Sun and is located 170 light-years away from Earth.
The finding is an amazing discovery for astronomers. The team that announced the discovery said the size of the planet is just short of that required to produce its own energy through fusion. The planet could present astronomers with an interesting test for theories of planet formation.
“According to conventional models of planetary formation, Kappa And b falls just shy of being able to generate energy by fusion, at which point it would be considered a brown dwarf rather than a planet,” Michael McElwain, a member of the discovery team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. “But this isn’t definitive, and other considerations could nudge the object across the line into brown dwarf territory.”
Astrophysicists at the University of Toronto say the object, which could represent the first new observed exoplanet system in almost four years.
“This planetary system is very different from our own,” said Thayne Currie, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Astronomy Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and co-author of the paper.
“The star is much more massive than our sun, and Kappa And b is at least 10 times more massive than any planet in the solar system. And, Kappa And b is located further from the star than any of the solar system planets are from the sun. Because it is generally much harder to form massive planets at large distances from the parent star, Kappa And b could really be a challenge for our theories about how planets form.”
The finding is the latest step forward for the astronomy community. A series of stunning planetary findings was announced earlier this week, including the discovery of a ‘wandering’ planet. The series of findings, including a spate of planet discoveries over the past months, has left the astronomy community buzzing over the potential of additional discoveries.
“There could really be a lot of them,” said Christian Veillet, former director of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. “But it’s a big challenge in terms of observing them.”
The discovery was a collaboration between astrophysicists at the University of Toronto and other institutions across the United States, Europe and Asia, as part of the Strategic Explorations of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru (SEEDS) program.
The report on the super-Jupiter is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Have something to say? Let us know in the comments section or send an email to the author. You can share ideas for stories by contacting us here.
Article source: http://thespacereporter.com/2012/11/newly-discovered-super-jupiter-would-devour-planets-say-astronomers/
Tags: planetary system, The discovery, Christian Veillet, brown dwarf, Thayne Currie, Kappa Andromedae, newly discovered planet <BR/>Categories : Astronomy News
Amateur astronomers have helped discover an alien planet with two suns and a twinkling twist: The entire twin-sun setup, a real-life version of Tatooine from “Star Wars,” is orbited by two more stars — a solar system that is the first of its kind known.
The alien planet, called PH1, is a gas giant planet slightly bigger than Neptune. Its discovery in the midst of a strange, four-star planetary system is the first confirmed world discovered as part of the Yale University-led Planet Hunters project, in which armchair astronomers work with professional scientists to find evidence of new worlds in the bountiful data collected by NASA’s Kepler space telescope.
“Planet Hunters is a symbiotic project, pairing the discovery power of the people with follow-up by a team of astronomers,” said Debra Fischer, a professor of astronomy at Yale and planet expert who helped launch Planet Hunters in 2010, in a statement. “This unique system might have been entirely missed if not for the sharp eyes of the public.”
Since its March 2009 launch, Kepler has found evidence of more than 2,300 candidate alien worlds. [Gallery: More Alien Planets with Twin Suns]
Finding a strange, new world
Since its initial discovery via Planet Hunters, the existence of PH1 has been confirmed by a team of professional astronomers, who will present their work today (Oct. 15) at the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in Reno, Nev.
With a radius about 6.2 times that of Earth’s, PH1 is a smidge bigger than Neptune. The gassy planet spends 138 days completing a single orbit around its two parent stars, which have masses about 1.5 and 0.41 times that of the sun. The stars circle each other once every 20 days.
‘It’s a great honor to be a Planet Hunter, citizen scientist … [and to] make a real contribution to science.’
- Robert Gagliano, Planet Hunter
The two other stars orbiting the PH1′s twin suns are about 1,000 astronomical units (AU) from the parent stars. (One AU is about the distance between the Earth and sun, about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers.)
If you’re hoping to catch the quadruple sunset, this may not be your best bet. The researchers estimate PH1′s temperature would range from a minimum of about 484 degrees Fahrenheit (524 Kelvin, or 251 degrees Celsius) and a maximum of 644 degrees F (613 Kelvin, or 340 degrees C), too hot to be in the habitable zone.
“Although PH1 is a gas giant planet, even if there is a possibility of rocky moons orbiting the body, their surfaces would be too hot for liquid water to exist,” researcher Meg Schwamb of Yale University and colleagues write in a draft of their research article.
A planet with two suns
Until now, scientists had identified just six planets orbiting two parent stars, called circumbinary planets, and none of these have stellar companions orbiting them. Until their discovery, circumbinary planets were once the realm of science fiction with Tatooine, the fictional homeworld of Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars,” among the most famous.
“Circumbinary planets are the extremes of planet formation,” Schwamb said in a statement. “The discovery of these systems is forcing us to go back to the drawing board to understand how such planets can assemble and evolve in these dynamically challenging environments.”
The Planet Hunter volunteers, Kian Jek of San Francisco, Calif., and Robert Gagliano of Cottonwood, Ariz., spotted PH1 using the transit method, noticing faint dips in light as the plant passed in front of, or transited, its parent stars.
Gagliano said he was “absolutely ecstatic” about the finding. “It’s a great honor to be a Planet Hunter, citizen scientist, and work hand in hand with professional astronomers, making a real contribution to science,” he said.
Jek, too, expressed his amazement.
“It still continues to astonish me how we can detect, let alone glean so much information, about another planet thousands of light-years away just by studying the light from its parent star,” he said in a statement.
Schwamb led the team of professional astronomers who confirmed the discovery and characterized the planet, following observations from the Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
The research was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship.
For more information on the Planet Hunters project, visit: http://www.planethunters.org.
Article source: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/10/16/amateur-team-finds-tatooine-planet-with-4-suns/
Tags: The discovery, planet hunters, amateur astronomers, gas giant planet, Robert Gagliano <BR/>A constant shower of subatomic particles rains down from space. A hundred years ago, Austrian physicist Victor Franz Hess discovered “cosmic radiation.” Among other things, the discovery laid the foundation for a whole new field of research — high-energy physics, which recently gave us the first experimental evidence for the Higgs boson. An anniversary conference will look at the past milestones of cosmic-ray research and future experiments.
When Hess landed his hydrogen balloon at Bad Saarow in the German state of Brandenburg August 7, 1912, he had on board a discovery with far-reaching consequences, which he surely wasn’t fully aware of at the time. On his seventh balloon voyage, equipped with three ionization measuring instruments, Hess had just identified the existence of a pervasive radiation at 17,400 feet (5,300 meters) above Schwieloch Lake in the southeast of Brandenburg. Only later it became evident that this so-called cosmic radiation was comprised mostly of energetic, electrically charged atomic nuclei. The discovery of cosmic rays won Hess the Nobel Prize in Physics 24 years later.
“The detection of the cosmic radiation was the discovery of a century and brought us completely new insights into the cosmos,” said Christian Stegmann from the DESY institute at Zeuthen near Berlin. “Furthermore, it became a cornerstone of early particle physics. Before the development of particle accelerators, cosmic-ray research led to the discovery of many important elementary particles, among them the antiparticle of the electron — the positron — as well as the muon and the pion.”
DESY, the University of Potsdam, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin are jointly organizing a symposium on the 100th anniversary of the discovery of cosmic rays. From August 6-8, 2012, scientists from all over the world will meet in Bad Saarow, where Hess landed his balloon, to present and discuss the development of various sub-areas ranging from the historic beginnings up to ideas for new projects.
A memorial stone will be unveiled, participants may book balloon flights, and electroscopes that were then used all over the world to carry out ionization measurements will be on display.
“The advent of a centenary is a time for both looking back at the development of the subject and forward: “Where do we go from here?,” said Sir Wolfendale. “Cosmic-ray research has led to new areas of research, including ‘the new astronomies,’ and the future for them is bright, indeed. Neutrino astronomy is on the verge of starting, and gamma-ray astronomy has begun in earnest.”
Physicists expect to gain new insights into the nature of cosmic particle accelerators, which are a million times stronger than the best accelerators on Earth, from gamma-ray astronomy. Single protons from cosmic radiation may have as much energy as a powerfully hit tennis ball, but due to their electric charge, the fast particles are deflected by numerous magnetic fields as they travel through the cosmos. This means that one cannot retrace their point of origin from their direction of flight when they hit Earth.
Therefore, a hundred years since their discovery, the mystery of the origin of cosmic rays is far from being solved. “The universe is full of natural particle accelerators, as for example in supernova explosions, in binary star systems, or in active galactic nuclei. So far, only 150 of these objects are known to us, and we have just an initial physical understanding of these fascinating systems,” said Stegmann.
In contrast to what the name might suggest, cosmic radiation is mostly comprised of particles, but a small fraction is, indeed, gamma radiation, which is not deflected on its way through space and thus points directly to its source. Because physicists expect the sources of cosmic gamma radiation to be the same as for cosmic particles, they are using specialized gamma-ray observatories to hunt for them.
Observatories like H.E.S.S. in Namibia, named in honor of the discoverer of cosmic radiation, MAGIC on the Canary Island La Palma, and VERITAS in the United States, with DESY participation, have detected more than 100 high-energy cosmic gamma-radiation sources. The planned Cerenkov Telescope Array (CTA), for which DESY is currently building a first prototype instrument, will follow this path of discovery. “The Cerenkov Telescope Array will observe thousands of these accelerators with unprecedented sensitivity,” Stegmann said.
Similar to gamma rays, cosmic neutrinos also open a window to the universe’s particle accelerators. Neutrinos are lightweight, electrically neutral elementary particles, which are also not deflected by magnetic fields. This means that the incident path of a neutrino points back directly to its origin. With the participation of DESY, the world’s largest neutrino telescope, IceCube in Antarctica, was finished in December 2010 and has just begun to look for cosmic neutrinos.
“On either route, we expect fascinating insights into the natural particle accelerators in the universe that will throw new light onto the remaining mysteries of cosmic rays,” said Stegmann.
Article source: http://www.astronomy.com/~/link.aspx?_id=7eb093e1-189d-4a7a-9405-5cb1b88b3ece
Tags: Christian Stegmann, particle physics, particle accelerators, gamma radiation, The discovery, cosmic rays <BR/>It may have taken the discovery of a new moon to finally get members of Congress to reconsider major funding cuts in NASA’s budget.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reportedly spotted a fifth moon orbiting the Solar System’s farthest planet, Pluto and the discovery may be enough to save the Hubble Space Telescope’s successor, the James Webb Telescope.
The discovery is likely to reignite the debate over whether to continue programs such as the Hubble Space Telescope, which is slated for replacement later this decade.
The finding, which was reported Thursday, may also reignite the debate over Pluto’s place in the universe. The dwarf planet, which was downgraded from a full-size planet in 2006, has long held a deep fascination for astronomers, who see the planet’s place within the solar system as indicative of the evolution of the inner planets. The leading theory concerning the evolution of the planet’s moon holds that all the moons are remnants of a collision billions of years ago between Pluto and another large object from the Kuiper Belt – the region of the solar system beyond Neptune.
“Given that Pluto has been recently ‘demoted’ to the status of a dwarf planet, it is somewhat amusing that it now has no fewer than five moons!” said Mario Livio, senior astrophysicist with the Space Telescope Science Institute. “The discovery is important in part because it helps scientists better understand the origins of our solar system’s Kuiper belt, in which Pluto resides.”
Provisionally named “S/2012 (134340) 1,” the new moon was detected in nine separate sets of images taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in late June and early July. It remains unclear whether NASA will seek recommendations for its official name, but the finding has resulted in chatter from those in and outside of the astronomy community.
The debate over the funding of U.S. space missions comes as President Obama has sought to shift funding for space exploration from the space agency into private hands. Mr. Obama’s proposed budget for the space agency digs deep into the coffers for NASA’s Mars mission, while shifting new funds to human exploration and space technology.
Meanwhile, Congress has repeatedly questioned the continued funding of the James Webb Space Telescope, which is slated to begin its mission in 2018. The telescope was named after the NASA administrator who crafted the Apollo program, and who was a staunch supporter of space science. Hubble’s discovery is likely just one of many upcoming discoveries as it continues to provide valuable information for researchers, say members of Congress who support the mission.
Nearly one year ago NASA chief Charlie Bolden defended the James Webb Space Telescope, telling members of Congress that the instrument has greater potential for astronomical sciences than the iconic Hubble Space Telescope.
“I have tried to explain what I think is the importance of James Webb, in terms of opening new horizons far greater than we got from Hubble,” Mr. Bolden said at the time. “I would only say that for about the same cost as Hubble in real-year dollars, we’ll bring James Webb into operation.”
While a number of astronomers have touted the potential benefits of the James Webb Telescope, last November an independent review panel found that the project will cost at least $6.5 billion and could launch no earlier than September 2015, putting it $1.5 billion over budget and more than a year behind schedule. Already the US House of Representatives’ appropriations committee on commerce, justice, and science considered canceling the project, saying it had had enough of the escalating costs.
The latest interplanetary finding has also left NASA scientists pondering another mission: the New Horizons mission.
In 2006, NASA dispatched an ambassador to the planetary frontier. The New Horizons spacecraft is now halfway between Earth and Pluto, on approach for a dramatic flight past the icy planet and its moons in July 2015. After 10 years and more than 3 billion miles, on a historic voyage that has already taken it over the storms and around the moons of Jupiter, New Horizons will shed light on the outer planets of the solar system, a first for the U.S. space agency.
Astronomers say the discovery of Pluto’s fifth moon reveals that material orbiting the icy planet may be more prevalent than previously thought. Bits of small material orbiting the planet could pose a hazard to the space mission, say astronomers.
“The discovery of so many small moons indirectly tells us that there must be lots of small particles lurking unseen in the Pluto system,” said Harold Weaver, a research professor with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
“All of this stuff poses a navigation hazard for New Horizons,” adds Ray Villard, news director for the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Hubble’s science mission. “It’s a messy place. You have moons and perhaps small particles.”
Article source: http://www.capitolcolumn.com/news/nasas-hubble-spies-new-moon-orbiting-pluto/
Tags: james webb, hubble space telescope, space telescope science institute, solar system, james webb telescope, dwarf planet <BR/>As the space shuttle Discovery flew three times around Washington, a final salute before landing at Dulles Airport for retirement in a museum, thousands on the ground gazed upward with marvel and pride. Yet what they were witnessing, for all its elegance, was a funeral march.
The shuttle was being carried — its pallbearer, a 747 — because it cannot fly, nor will it ever again. It was being sent for interment. Above ground, to be sure. But just as surely embalmed as Lenin in Red Square.
Is there a better symbol of willed American decline?
The pity is not the Discovery’s retirement — beautiful as it was, the shuttle proved too expensive and risky to operate — but that it died without a successor. The planned follow-on — the Constellation rocket-capsule program to take humans back into orbit and from there to the moon — was suddenly canceled in 2010.
And with that, control of manned spaceflight was gratuitously ceded to Russia and China.
Russia went for the cash, doubling its price for carrying an astronaut into orbit to $55.8 million. (Return included. Thank you, Boris.)
China goes for the glory. Having already mastered launch and rendezvous, the Chinese plan to land on the moon by 2025. They understand well the value of symbols. And nothing could better symbolize China overtaking America than its taking our place on the moon, walking over footprints first laid down, then casually abandoned, by us.
Who cares, you say? What is national greatness, scientific prestige or inspiring the young — legacies of NASA — when we are in economic distress? OK.
But if we’re talking jobs and growth, science and technology, RD and innovation — what President Barack Obama insists are the keys to “an economy built to last” — why on Earth cancel an incomparably sophisticated, uniquely American technological enterprise?
We lament the decline of American manufacturing, yet we stop production of the most complex machine ever made by man — and cancel the successor meant to return us to orbit. The result? Abolition of thousands of the most highly advanced aerospace jobs anywhere — its workforce abruptly unemployed and drifting away from spaceflight, never to be reconstituted.
Well, you say, we can’t afford all that in a time of massive deficits.
There are always excuses for putting off strenuous national endeavors: deficits, joblessness, poverty, whatever. But they shall always be with us.
We’ve had exactly five balanced budgets since Alan Shepard rode Freedom 7 in 1961. If we had put off space exploration until these Earth-bound social and economic conundrums were solved, our rocketry would be about where North Korea’s is today.
Moreover, today’s deficits are not inevitable, nor even structural. They are partly the result of the 2008 financial panic and recession. Those are over now. The rest is the result of a massive three-year expansion of federal spending.
But there is no reason the federal government has to keep spending 24 percent of GDP. The historical postwar average is just over 20 percent — and those budgets sustained a robust manned space program.
NASA will tell you that it’s got a new program to go way beyond low Earth orbit and, as per Obama’s instructions, land on an asteroid by the mid-2020s. Considering that Constellation did not even last five years between birth and cancellation, don’t hold your breath for the asteroid landing.
Nor for the private sector to get us back into orbit, as Obama assumes it will. True, hauling MREs up and trash back down could be done by private vehicles.
But manned flight is infinitely more complex and risky, requiring massive redundancy and inevitably larger expenditures.
Can private entities really handle that? And within the next lost decade or two?
Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Gene Cernan are deeply skeptical. In a 2010 open letter, they called Obama’s cancellation of Constellation a “devastating” decision that “destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature.”
Which is why museum visits to the embalmed Discovery will be sad indeed. America rarely retreats from a new frontier. Yet today, we can’t even do what John Glenn did in 1962, let alone fly a circa-1980 shuttle.
At least the Discovery won’t suffer the fate of the Temeraire, the British warship tenderly rendered in Turner’s famous painting “The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth To Be Broken Up, 1838.” Too beautiful for the scrapheap, the Discovery will lie intact, a magnificent and melancholy rebuke to constricted horizons.
Reach Krauthammer at letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
Article source: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/2012/04/19/20120419space-shuttle-flyover-nasa-funeral-march.html
Tags: President Barack Obama, the space shuttle Discovery, Dulles Airport <BR/>Categories : Nasa News
Delivery crews have dusted off an apparatus last used in the 1980s for transporting the shuttle. They’ve rehearsed the delicate task of unloading the orbiter from atop a Boeing 747. And they’ve surveyed streets to ensure they can withstand the spacecraft’s weight.
The challenges will come into focus this week with the delivery of the Discovery to its new home, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum annex in northern Virginia. That delivery will follow a rare flyover in the Washington area atop a modified Boeing 747.
About 20 truckloads of equipment needed to unload the orbiter from the plane had to be hauled from Kennedy Space Center to Dulles International Airport. Two large cranes were brought in as well.
“They’ve got X marks the spot out at Dulles so they know exactly where the cranes have to be situated,” Valerie Neal, space shuttle program curator at the National Air and Space Museum, said in an interview.
NASA had to test equipment last used in 1985 when the Enterprise test shuttle – now destined for New York – was delivered to the Smithsonian.
“There are some things that have been sitting in boxes,” Stephanie Stilson, who is overseeing the delivery for NASA, told the Los Angeles Times. She noted that crews staged a dry run with the equipment “three times” to ensure it would work.
Delivery of the Endeavour to Los Angeles in September or October presents more of a logistical challenge.
The orbiter, which has traveled about 123 million miles, will need to go another 12 miles or so through city streets from Los Angeles International Airport to the California Science Center in Exposition Park near downtown.
Designed to travel up to 17,500 mph in space, the shuttle is likely to poke along at 1 mph.
Shuttles also will be delivered to New York – via barge from John F. Kennedy International Airport to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum – this summer and to the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex in Florida late this year or early next year.
Officials hope the deliveries will go more smoothly than the political turbulence encountered when NASA awarded the shuttles to cities other than Houston, home of NASA mission control. At the time, a headline in the Houston Chronicle read, “One Giant Snub for Houston.”
Splashy ceremonies are planned to welcome the shuttles.
The 747 carrying Discovery will fly over the Washington area at about 1,500 feet on Tuesday. And on Thursday, the Smithsonian ceremony will feature Discovery crew members and space pioneer John Glenn, who returned to space in 1998 aboard the Discovery at age 77.
In Los Angeles, officials considered moving the Endeavor at night to reduce traffic disruptions. But plans now call for moving the orbiter during the day, probably on a weekend, so the public can see it.
“Never before and never again will a space shuttle move through a major urban area,” Jeffrey N. Rudolph, the science center’s president, said in an interview. “Even if we did it at midnight, people are going to come out in large numbers.”
A final route has yet to be selected.
The science center has already paid $14.2 million to NASA for preparation and delivery.
Los Angeles officials have secured the “overland transporter” used to ferry shuttles in the 1980s from the Palmdale assembly site to Edwards Air Force Base. Officials also are videotaping a proposed route to see what obstacles, such as traffic lights and utility poles, would need to be moved to accommodate the wide load.
The Discovery will be exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., “in landing configuration” with the crew cabin and payload bay door closed. Visitors won’t be able to venture inside the Discovery, but Neal said they would be able to experience the interior through “virtual reality kiosks.”
The California Science Center initially plans to display the Endeavor horizontally but eventually will mount it vertically, as if for launch. The Kennedy Space Center plans to display the Atlantis in “orbital configuration with payload bay doors open.”
Article source: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/04/16/2483043/space-shuttles-final-journeys.html
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NASA Image of the day
Pavlof Volcano From Station
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) photographed this striking view of Pavlof Volcano on May 18, 2013. The oblique perspective from the ISS reveals the three dimensional structure of the ash plume, which is often obscured by the top-down view of most remote sensing satellites. Situated in the Aleutian Arc about 625 miles (1,000 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, Pavlof began erupting on May 13, 2013. The volcano jetted lava into the air and spewed an ash cloud 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) high. When photograph ISS036-E-2105 (top) was taken, the space station was about 475 miles south-southeast of the volcano (49.1° North latitude, 157.4° West longitude). The volcanic plume extended southeastward over the North Pacific Ocean. › Additional information/larger images. Image Credit: NASA
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