Arctic Ice on Track for Another All-Time Low (3)
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Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides (28)
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Wired Science (406)
13 hours, 8 minutes
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The Northwest Passage is about to be ice-free for the second year in the row, as seen on satellite images released today by the European Space Agency. The less direct Amundsen Northwest Passage has already been passable for about a month. Last September scientists were very concerned when the Arctic ice pack shrunk to its smallest size since satellite measurements began almost 30 years ago. This year the ice has already claimed the title of ...
Satellite image sharpener (1)
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Tom (574)
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New Scientist Invention Blog (8)
23 hours, 48 minutes
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Images from spy satellites are often blurred by swirls of atmospheric turbulence. Finding better ways to correct for that could help anyone from CIA spooks to people checking out the neighbour's swimming pool on Google Earth.The most promising method so far involves determining how the turbulence has distorted a simple point source of light in the image and reversing the effect.But a human expert is required to locate what appear to be point-like sources from ...
A New Look At Our Gamma Universe [Blazar Detector] (2)
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Ed Grabianowski (125)
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io9 (3889)
1 day, 2 hours
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Here's what the universe would look like if your eyes could see gamma rays. The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) showed off its abilities this week by taking this "full sky" gamma image in just 95 hours of observation time. NASA's new gamma telescope is ready to find all sorts of cool, exotic cosmic objects. The same day NASA released this image, they also renamed the GLAST, which is now the Fermi Gamma-ray Space ...
NASA Rocks Out Through 5 Decades of Space (1)
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Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides (28)
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Wired Science (406)
1 day, 6 hours
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I had successfully avoided checking out NASA's in depth "multimedia feature" celebrating their 50th anniversary since they launched it earlier this month. But today when their promo featured Astronaut Snoopy-- my Achilles heel-- I caved. Adobe awarded them "Site of the Day" August 18th, but could it stand up to Wired Science scrutiny? The feature is divided up by decade and you default to the 1950's with the jukebox playing and everything in back and ...
Secret Space Race, Revealed (3)
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Noah Shachtman (208)
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Danger Room (252)
1 day, 16 hours
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I'm not exactly sure how the hell I managed to miss "Astrospies," PBS' beyond-awesome documentary about the secret Cold War space race to put spooks in orbit. I'm just glad I was able to catch the show -- which originally aired in February -- on-line, last night. If Astrospies passed you by, too, stop what you're doing. Close your e-mail. Cancel your meetings. And spend the next hour or so in utter, Space Age bliss. ...
Fringe 'Space Marines' Idea Gets First Official Meeting (1)
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David Axe (87)
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Danger Room (252)
1 day, 18 hours
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Seven years ago in the Pentagon cafeteria, two sci-fi-loving Marines shared a vision: to build a Space Shuttle-like "spaceplane" that could "to instantaneously deliver Marine squads anywhere on Earth." The two Marines, Roosevelt Lafontant and Franz Gayl, and their mildly crazy idea were the subjects of my Popular Science cover story from last year. "The whole idea still rings of science fiction, and the question is whether its proponents can corral the various technologies together ...
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JDAL. said:
They should refer to themselves as Starship Troopers.
Computer Virus Finds Its Way Into Orbit Aboard ISS Systems [Space, Infected] (7)
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John Mahoney (1044)
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Gizmodo (17038)
1 day, 22 hours
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The ISS is full of laptops, used for experiments, email, or just watching movie rips on VCDs in 2001. But this time, someone's laptop has managed to make it all the way up into Earth orbit carrying the Gammima.AG worm—one that leeches login data for Asian MMORPGs. We're doomed! The ISS doesn't have a full-time net connection, but astronauts can send email periodically through the Ku-band main data link. NASA reassures us that any virus ...
Tiny Linux Space Cube: Oh boy, more stuff to misplace (5)
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Doug Aamoth (597)
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CrunchGear (2933)
2 days
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The future! Look at the size of this tiny Linux PC, wouldja? It’s nary larger than a small apple. What’s crammed inside, you ask? A 300 MHz processor, 16MB of onboard flash memory, 64MB of SDRAM, and a 1GB CompactFlash card loaded with Red Hat Linux. On the outside, there’s a single USB port, VGA, Ethernet port, RS232 port, and mic and speaker plugs. The whole shebang’s powered by a 5V plug. There’s also a ...
Mars Phoenix Says Goodbye to the Midnight Sun (1)
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Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides (28)
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Wired Science (406)
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This week marked the first time the Phoenix lander saw the sun set since landing on May 25th. Summer is over in the Martian arctic; gone are the 'sols' of 24.6 hours of sunlight, time to start getting ready for winter. August 25th would have been the end of the mission too, had mission managers not extended it through late September. This is good news for Phoenix as it allows for some additional sampling and ...
Mythbustin’ the Moon Hoax, Part V: The review! (12)
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Phil Plait (291)
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Bad Astronomy (517)
2 days
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The day has dawned, the clock has rung, the time has come, calloo callay! Tonight, the Mythbusters take on the Moon Hoax (check your local listings)! OK, for you newbies, read Parts 1 - 4 (here, here, here, and here). That’ll catch you up on the history. I was able to get an advance copy of the show — I have powers beyond those of mortal men… or maybe I’m just on a Discovery Channel ...
Computer Virus Aboard the ISS (14)
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timothy (2179)
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Slashdot (9953)
2 days, 4 hours
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chrb writes "BBC News is reporting that laptops taken to the International Space Station by NASA astronauts are infected with the Gammima.AG worm. The laptops have no net connection; officials suspect the worm may have been transferred via a USB flash drive owned by an astronaut. NASA have said this isn't the first time computer viruses had travelled into space."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Oneiros said:
As long as it isn't a quasi-sentient virus bent on destroying life support or taking over, they're probably Ok...
First Oort Cloud Object May Have Been Discovered (4)
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kdawson (3049)
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Slashdot: Science (52)
2 days, 4 hours
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SpuriousLogic alerts us to the discovery of what may be the first object ever discovered from the inner edge of the Oort cloud. 2006 SQ372 was found on images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Its discoverers theorize that this comet-like object and the planetoid Sedna, first spotted in 2003, might be Oort denizens. Sedna is in a stable orbit but 2006 SQ372 has been perturbed by the gravity of Uranus and/or Neptune, simulations suggest, ...
Geek Trivia: Cast to the 404 winds (1)
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Jay Garmon (5)
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Geekend (5)
2 days, 4 hours
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One of the prevailing criticisms of the U.S. space shuttle program is that it is comprised of antiquated equipment. Designed in the 1970s, built in the 1980s, and with two decades of operational fatigue on the fleet, Discovery, Endeavor, and Atlantis aren’t cutting edge technology in any respect — especially their computer systems. The space program is an exercise in proven, cost-effective, work-horse tech, rather than the latest and greatest innovations. We’ve come a long ...
MD195 - The Google Lunar X PRIZE, interview with Will Pomerantz (2)
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Mahalo Daily (11)
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Mahalo Daily (72)
2 days, 13 hours
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Mahalo Daily Show Archive Download: MOV | MP3 | M4V Watch: Blip | Break | Viddler | Yahoo Subscribe: YouTube | iTunes <-- View our previous episode! Subscribe to Mahalo Daily In September of 2007, Google announced it will sponsor an X Prize Foundation contest to award $20 million to the first non-governmental organization that lands a robot explorer on the moon by the year 2012, named the Google Lunar X Prize. Second place and ...
Ocean Circulation Explorer, the Formula 1 of satellites (1)
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CharlieWhite (72)
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DVICE (674)
3 days, 1 hour
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Those hip Europeans. They make the sleekest cars, and now they’ve taken that chic design sense into space with the Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), perhaps the most badass satellite to ever ply the cosmos. This shiny space ornament is set to blast into orbit on September 10th, and will be using its Electrostatic Gravity Gradiometer to measure the earth’s gravitational fields. Its main mission is to figure out the speed and direction of ocean currents, ...
Russian Astronaut Uses ISS to Take Photos of Ossetia (9)
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Jesus Diaz (1898)
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3 days, 7 hours
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According to the NASA International Space Station status report, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko used a digital camera with 800mm telephoto lenses and a video camera to take images of the "after-effects of border conflict operations in the Caucasus." In theory, this seems to have violated the non-military use clause of the station, but Russia has claimed "humanitarian motives." The article 14 of the ISS agreement says: "The Space Station together with its additions of evolutionary ...
TED Talks - Patricia Burchat: The search for dark energy and dark matter (1)
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WH (55)
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Integral Options Cafe (55)
3 days, 17 hours
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A very cool TED Talk on dark energy and dark matters, the biggest mysteries in astrophysics.Physicist Patricia Burchat sheds light on two basic ingredients of our universe: dark matter and dark energy. Comprising 96% of the universe between them, they can't be directly measured, but their influence is immense.Patricia Burchat studies the universe's most basic ingredients -- the mysterious dark energy and dark matter that are massively more abundant than the visible stars and galaxies. ...
Very Large Array Getting Even Larger (8)
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Ed Grabianowski (125)
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io9 (3889)
3 days, 19 hours
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The 27 massive antenna dishes that make up the Very Large Array radio telescope have given us some astonishing glimpses into the cosmos (and have repeatedly detected signals sent by intelligent aliens in some of our favorite scifi films). As impressive as it is, the VLA is about to get a major upgrade. Astronomers are going to be able to do some amazing things with VLA 2.0. The VLA is an awesome piece of technology. ...
Software To Provide Astronaut Counseling (3)
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ScuttleMonkey (1112)
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Slashdot (9953)
3 days, 19 hours
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Currently, whenever an astronaut needs to talk to someone, a counselor is only a radio call away. Unfortunately, for voyages further out, this contact time starts to increase quite a bit, so researchers have started to look for alternative methods of counseling. I just hope the new counseling software has the Dr. Sbaitso voice. "Instead of asking astronauts to reflect on their feelings, Mark Hegel of Dartmouth Medical School has them create lists of concrete ...
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Mike said:
Holy crap, this is huge! Soon we may have software to provide wife counseling! Yeeeee haw!
A Professional Food Critic Samples Space Food [Nasa Dinner] (8)
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Mark Wilson (2188)
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Gizmodo (17038)
3 days, 23 hours
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Bill Daley is the food critic for the Chicago Tribune, accustomed to differentiating the finer points of the expensive, aged steaks of Rush Street, not the freeze dried packets of astronaut cuisine. So when NASA sent him a few packets to test out (most of them cooked through injection with hot water) we were pretty keen on hearing just how well our men and women of the cosmos were eating (with no access to real ...
