CRIRES model-based computer-generated impression of the Plutonian surface, with atmospheric haze, and Charon and the Sun in the sky.
The official budget won’t be released until Monday, but word is NASA’s unmanned program will see big cuts and Mars missions will take the brunt of them. Sadly, when it comes to our budget priorities as of late, we are one screwed-up country: [Read more…]
I found this color enhanced shot of dunes on Mars as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft last Fall. Does it remind anyone of a scarred palm and a few fingers? Click to beautifully embiginate.
Ice cores drilled at Vostok. Vostok Station is seen in the background. Image courtesy of the Wiki, click for more info on Lake Vostok
I took a few days off from, well, everything. In hope that my shoulder would heal up a bit — it has been quite sore following a routine injury almost two weeks ago. I can report it has improved a tad, many thanks to those who humored my prior complaints, and I look forward to a more active blogging schedule and especially a semblance of life without constant pain. Couldn’t a merciful Creator have come up with a better system than intractable pain?
Meanwhile, science marches on, far to the south, [Read more…]
It may not have made the world news, but a Martian tried to sneak in under our radar cover last summer and set up residence in the desert of Northwest Africa not far from Morocco. But of course it was nothing biological, no LGM’s or off-world octopi, dammit! This was merely an inert piece of Mars. Chipped off the surface of the Red Planet eons ago, and newly fallen to earth after a no doubt long journey through the inner solar system. Needless to say, rocks form mars hitting earth are rare, and rarer still that we actually see one streak in. [Read more…]
Update 12:10 AM CDT: nothing official but it seems to have reentered and crashed into Pacific Ocean a few mins ago. Click image above for latest info.
Follow the latest events on Twitter using the hashtag #PhobosGrunt and follow @PHG_Reentry.
The ill-fated Phobos-Grunt mission, which would have returned samples from the tiny Martian satellite Phobos, will plunge into the stratosphere later today and become a spectacular meteor. Debris from the 15 ton spacecraft, which is carying more than 10 tons of toxic rocket fuel, is expected to strike the earth, although where exactly that happens is still literally up in the air: [Read more…]
When the AI enhanced remnant that had once been fictional astronaut David Bowman in Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey looked into the monolith, he said “My God, it’s full of Stars!” [Read more…]
Answer: Pretty fucking big! I saw this on Phil’s site and of course had to swipe it immediately. What you’re seeing is an outline of the lower 48 states superimposed to scale on Saturn. The thin line bisecting the outline is the rings seen edge on, the banded items below the outline on Saturn’s surface are the shadows cast by dozens of major rings and hundreds of minor ones. You can’t even see the poles or the rounded limb of Saturn in this image, the planet is simply too large. Click image to embiggen and enlighten.
The first detected “mini-Earth” and an Earth-sized planet with a water-vapour atmosphere are two of five planets found orbiting Kepler-20. Image: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech.
Two weeks ago Kepler gave us its first probable earth-like world orbiting the habitable zone of a sun-like star. This week it’s not one but two, count ’em two, small and probably rocky worlds. And these guys are tiny by exoplanetary standards: [Read more…]
The blue ice covering the lake comes from glacial meltwater from the Canada Glacier and other smaller glaciers. The fresh water stays on top of the lake and freezes, sealing in briny water below.
It seems a shame, an entire continent rugged and rich in its own way, wasted, at least for exploitation by modern day humans. But that unique environment has enormous potential for science, and it could be an ideal place for astronomy and space exploration research that might reach far beyond the icy plains and frozen mountains: [Read more…]
On a simmering ocean world, under an oversized blue-white star, the tendrils of one Qax reach out to the limb of another in the distance.
With over 700 exo-solar planets and counting, the infant intersection between astronomy and biology grew a new two-tiered rating system intended to identify worlds of interest. The first tier is obvious: earth-like worlds in mass and temperature, where water is a liquid (And pizza is not a vegetable). But the other set is less familiar: [Read more…]