Sub-Orbital Space Flights & Satellite Exploration
ANCHOR: A new discovery by NASA scientists shows that snow was vaporizing before reaching the Mars surface. The Mars Lander Phoenix helped the scientists discover water on this rocky planet. Lets take a look. STORY: Since touching down on Mars in late May the Phoenix lander has established that liquid water once flowed on the surface of the Red Planet. It now appears that snow falls there too. This image, recorded by the NASA explorer, detected snow, frost and cloud forming in the Martian atmosphere above the north pole. But the snow is vaporizing before it reaches the ground. NASA scientist Jim Whiteway said the mission was trying to find evidence that snow is actually landing on the surface – providing a tantalising clue that life may once have existed on Mars. [Jim Whiteway, NASA Lead Scientist]: “And we’re going to be watching very closely over the next month for evidence that the snow is actually landing on the surface. And this is a very important factor in the hydrological cycle on Mars, with the exchange of water between the surface and the atmosphere.” Time is short – the onset of the Martian winter will soon ‘kill-off’ the solar-powered lander. It’s already survived far longer than expected – but soon the sun will dip below the horizon until next April, consigning the craft to a dusty Martian grave.
Tags: Mars, phoenix, ntd, rocky
Hubblecast Episode 40: Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) – Hubble’s New Miracle Camera In early 2009, a team of astronauts visited Hubble to repair the wear and tear of twenty years of operating in a hostile environment – and to install two new instruments, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, and Wide Field Camera 3 – better known as WFC3. — Please subscribe to Science & Reason: • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com — Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) is a combined ultraviolet, visible and infrared camera that dramatically extends Hubble’s ability to image astronomical objects. With these new capabilities, Hubble is still pushing the boundaries of science after two decades in orbit. In episode 30 of the Hubblecast, we saw some of the very first pictures to come back from Wide Field Camera 3, Hubble’s newest and most advanced instrument. Today we’re going to look at some of the science behind these pictures. We’ll find out how this remarkable new camera is helping Hubble to see the invisible, look far back in time and spot objects further away from us than ever before. WFC3 was installed on Hubble in place of WFPC2, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, which for many years had been the main workhorse instrument on Hubble. Not only do the two instruments have very similar names, and look virtually identical, the capabilities of WFC3 are also in some respects just a tweaked version of those of its predecessor — although with sharper pictures and more …
Tags: NASA, science, ASTRONOMICAL, redshift
A RARE VIDEO CLOSE-UP OF THE SHUTTLE LAUNCH WITH EXCELLENT HUBBLE TELESCOPE VIDEO OF NEBULA — NO AMAMATION! MUSIC BY THE VENTURES – “SLEEP WALK”
Tags: Telescopes, rings, War, ESO
Time lapse video of our engineering project at UMass Amherst. Our weather balloon, named the Shuttlecraft, reached an altitude of approximately 104000 ft. Pictures were taken every 5 seconds during the fight with a Canon a560 digital camera. The balloon traveled west as it gained altitude and then turned east where it climbed to its burst altitude. Upon reaching the maximum altitude, the balloon popped and the capsule descended back to earth. It landed off the coast of Plum Island, MA. The total trip time from launch to splashdown is 2.8 hours. Its ascent took 142 minutes and 20 seconds and it took 25 minutes and 55 seconds for it to descend back to earth. The capsule turned up four days later on the beach where it was found by a self proclaimed “Professional Beach bum” who kindly called us to arrange a pickup. After four days in the Atlantic we managed to retrieve the 8gb SDHC and get the pictures. Pictures include the Connecticut River and surrounding area, Granby MA, Holyoke MA, the former Mount Tom Ski Area, and the Atlantic Ocean. Special Thanks go to the “professional beach bum” who was kind enough to call us and meet us so we could retrieve our project. Without his help, our project would have been lost. We wish him well in his retirement. We would also like to thank Invensys for kindly sponsoring a second launch. We are currently testing the replacement parts and plan on launching it within the next 2 weeks. If you have any questions about our project, feel free …
Tags: Farm, balloon, Amherst, model
Science & Reason on Facebook: tinyurl.com ESA Space Science: Why go to Mars? Millions of years ago, the primitive environments of Mars and Earth were probably similar, so since life exists on Earth, then we can legitimately consider the hypothesis that it could also have developed on Mars. — Please subscribe to Science & Reason: • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com — Signatures of life Where there’s water, there could be life. “Meteorites from Mars that have landed on Earth show clear evidence that conditions appropriate to life did exist on the planet, including in the recent past,” said Colin Pillinger, Consortium Leader for the Beagle 2 lander at the Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. “However, features in the meteorites which have been described as nanofossils are highly controversial. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure that organic matter found in the meteorites is the remnant of organisms that lived on Mars and not due to contamination on Earth. We need to repeat the experiments on rocks that never left the Red Planet.” The Beagle 2 lander would have looked for signatures of life on Mars, whether long-dead or still-living, by measuring the ratio of two different types of carbon in the rock. Biological processes on Earth favour the lighter isotope of carbon, carbon-12, over the heavier carbon-13. Hence, a high carbon-12 to carbon-13 ratio is taken as evidence of life and has been found in rocks up to 4000 million years old, even …
Tags: Mars, Planets, Mission, Methane
SPACE SHUTTLE LAUNCH RARE CLOSE-UP LAUNCH VIDEO EXELENT HUBBLE TELESCOPE VIDEO. BACKGROUND MUSIC BY THE VENTURES – “SLEEP WALK”
Tags: poles, southern, cosmology, sun
Click Watch in HD “NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This is an important step along the trail of finding the chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life as we know it. The Jupiter-sized planet, called HD 189733b, is too hot for life. But the Hubble observations are a proof-of-concept demonstration that the basic chemistry for life can be measured on planets orbiting other stars. Organic compounds can also be a by-product of life processes, and their detection on an Earth-like planet may someday provide the first evidence of life beyond Earth.”
Tags: Exploration, Water, Planets, extrasolar
The Phoenix Lander, expected to last just 90 Martian days, is still exploring the red planet’s air, ice and soil many weeks after it was expected to die. More than 130 days after landing near the planet’s north pole, the lander has recently discovered snow falling from clouds as winter on northern Mars approaches.
Tags: techonology, science, discovery, news
Another picture-music video. This time about Terraforming: The process of Changing other planets and moons to fit our needs. The Song is “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong. (PS – I don’t own or claim the music or images to be my own.) My Twitter: twitter.com
Tags: solar, Venus, greenhouse, universe
NASA Science Update to Discuss Mars Atmosphere Activity www.nasa.gov the Martian atmosphere that raises the possibility of life or geologic activity.
Tags: atmosphere, update, science, Mars