Fireballs seen in the sky

Article about lights and sounds observed in the sky last week. I got a call from this reporter, asking what it might have been. No major meteor showers going on, he noted. Probably space debris, and I had a student see these the same night.

So does US Space Command have a public information number?

In which I engage Lunar Landing Conspiracy Theorists

Probably a mistake, but here are my two replies to commenters regarding Whoopie Goldberg's lunar landing denialism:

Post one.
Post two.

Lightning on Mars

They've detected lightning on Mars caused by dust storms. Pretty neat.

Using distributed computer processing to work out primordial life

Interesting article from Space.com on using distributed computing (like SETI@home and Einstein@home) applied to biology. The idea is to simulate the conditions and constituents of Earth's early oceans and see if you can get simple cells evolving from pre-biotic material.

The headline is entirely wrong, though: there's no toy model of the "universe" being simulated, but rather a toy model of an ocean. But to the writer's credit, the head of the project did use just that phrase, himself.

It's a really interesting project. As the designer notes, though, chemical reactions run faster than the computers can simulate them at the moment. So the simulation would run more slowly than a real-lab experiment. On the other hand, you've got the ability to control details in a way that you don't in a lab, and some day, the processors will be much faster.

Evidence of ancient Martian lakes

The University of Colorado's Di Achille has announced the discovery of a dry lake shore on Mars, found with the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. "Shalbatana Lake," as they're calling it, was down in a deep valley and about the size and depth of Lake Champlain. Funny thing, though--this lake seems to have formed when Mars was already cold and dry. The warm, wet period astronomers have been establishing was already gone by this time. Interesting.

...and they're away!

Congratulations and deep thanks to the STS-125 crew for such a great mission.

Atlantis is "go" for release!

Hubble release in 15 minutes

The astronauts are preparing to release the Hubble Space Telescope in just 15 minutes! As I see the screens now, they've got it detached from the docking ring and are holding it with the Canada Arm.

All has gone well in this final servicing mission, and we can only pray our telescope holds up for several more years.

Good line from the space walk

"I'm ready for a hot shower and a good meal."

--John Grunsfeld, on finishing up his EVA for today.

(The other astronaut laughed and replied, "We'll...uh...see what we can do.") Actually, they do have halfway decent facilities on board, and the food's improved a lot since the '60s. No more freeze-dried meals.

Hubble Servicing Mission 4

I'm watching John Grunsfeld (whom I've met a few times) do some repair work on the Hubble right now. It's funny how an ordinary thing like operating an electric screwdriver can become so exciting when you see it done in space.

I was sad to have the camera I used for my grad school work (WFPC2) finally be removed after 15 years of service. I feel like holding a memorial service for it.

SRB SEP

Solid Rocket Boosters have separated successfully

STS-125

T-2 minutes

Hubble back up and running

I didn't see this earlier, but the primary camera on the Hubble is again sending data. That's the Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). This had been down for a few weeks, not communicating with the ground. They'd been able to send commands up (they thought), but only the Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS) were talking back.

This short item from NASA doesn't make clear the status of the other cameras, so I don't know if there's still any problem remaining. I suspect so, actually. The New York Times article mentions that they booted up the "side 2" electronics on the camera--backup electronics designed for just such an emergency, in case the primary circuits went down. Trouble is, they're designed a little differently than the primary ("side 1") circuits. (You'd have thought they would make an identical copy, wouldn't you? Well, we were both wrong, then...) So it took a bit of work to make sure everything checked out with them.

Let's hope the other cameras are OK!

Lakes on Titan confirmed

This is great news--Cassini scientists have verified that one of the dark pools on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan is liquid, not solid. We'd seen these features and at first thought they were lakes and seas but then found we couldn't tell from photographs alone whether they were still liquid or had frozen or dried up. The new results use spectroscopy and have picked up the signature of ethane. Larry Soderblom, a USGS scientist, said, "The fact we could detect the ethane spectral signatures of the lake even when it was so dimly illuminated, and at a slanted viewing path through Titan's atmosphere, raises expectations for exciting future lake discoveries by our instrument."

They've named this lake Ontario Lacus, Latin for Lake Ontario, and in fact the lake is a little bigger than Lake Ontario here on earth.

Oh, come on!

Sad to see this from an actual Apollo astronaut who'd walked on the moon. Of course, if I believed him, I'd figure he was an unimpeachable inside source. Since I don't, I figure he's gone a little nutty. Sigh.

Send the space station to the planets?

Well, it's an idea. I haven't read this in detail, so I won't comment on the practicality yet. But it's interesting.

The writer's complaint that the ISS just orbits the earth and doesn't go anywhere (as contrasted with Apollo going to the Moon, or the Constellation/Orion project to go to Mars) reminds me of the SNL parody of the HBO miniseries, "From the Earth to the Moon":
"From the Earth to the Area around the Earth: The story of The Space Shuttle."

The dangers of *trying* to attract the attention of aliens

David Brin, of the Lifeboat Foundation, has an interesting and somewhat disturbing report of the new turn within the SETI community. Instead of just quietly listening for aliens' radio signals, some of the people are wanting to try alerting any aliens to our presence. Brin warns that, if aliens are really there at all, it might not be a good idea to try to make contact, considering the chances are that they're much more advanced than us. Those kinds of first meetings haven't always turned out well for the weaker side.

I've not been terribly interested in SETI or in the chance of intelligent alien life, at least not within the region of space that's easy to contact. I consider it likely that there are little single-celled aliens out there, possibly close by (Mars?!), and that, in all of the billions of galaxies, each with their billions of stars, that there's a great chance of intelligent life out there somewhere. But intergalactic travel is a really tough thing to try to breach. Millions or even billions of light-years is a big, big distance.

Still, if you buy the premise of aliens close enough by for us to pick up their signals, or for them to pick up ours, they might just be close enough to stop by. And are you really sure they're going to be friendly? And that even if they are, that it'll all be for our benefit?

Bonus: a Communist doctrine guides the Russian desire to wave to aliens.

First results from Martian soil samples

The Phoenix lander on Mars has sent back its first results on the soil chemistry, and it looks "friendly" enough to support life! No organic material (yet), mind you, but a slightly alkaline soil that's similar to what you might find in Antarctica. They say you could plant asparagus in it and have it thrive.

There's also some water content. That's more evidence to put into the column for a past wet Mars. And, of course, if we're ultimately looking for signs of life (past or present), that's one ingredient we'll certainly need.

The NYT article is here, and the AP wire story is here.

Mars was struck by Pluto-sized planet early on

Mars' known asymmetry was likely caused by a collision with a Pluto-sized planet. Scientists have known about the asymmetry for years, and the collision hypotheses has been out there since the '80s, but only now have they been able to answer some basic objections to the model.

The Earth had a similar collision with a Mars-sized planet, the debris from which coalesced into the Moon. Hmmm...I wonder why the debris from this collision produced no moon for Mars. Phobos and Deimos are captured asteroids.

Mars, Mars, Mars...

I've got three posts on Martian science coming up. The papers have been full of them this week. I say "papers," and in this case, it's websites of actual newspapers. I remember in Clark's 2010 or 2061 (I've forgotten which, but it was one of his sequels to 2001), one old lady is living in EPCOT Center (remember: it was originally designed as a living community, not just a scientific theme park), and she's described as having a newspaper clipping on her wall, from one of the last of the printed editions of the New York TImes.

Back then, I thought Clark was really stretching, because there's no way we'd want to read our newspapers hunched over a computer monitor. For that matter, I still prefer to read on paper, rather than on a screen. But the economics of the thing is catching up to it. Sigh.