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.

...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

Watching the last shuttle mission to the Hubble

T-7 minutes and counting! I can't wait to see the new instruments (COS and WFC3) installed. My old camera, WFPC2, is being retired, though...

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!

US "antisatellite test" really was done for safety

Imagine that: the official explanation was the real explanation. Who'da thunk?

[P.S.: the spell-check correctly underlined "who'da" but for reasons unknown to me didn't seem bothered by "thunk."]

Perusing Pravda tonight

"NASA hides the truth about Mars." ("Source: agencies") It's been observed before, but Pravda's turned into the National Enquirer Russian edition lately. Which is probably unfair to the Enquirer, ever since they stopped running articles about UFOs.

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."

Armageddon, here we come!

A lot of my fellow astronomers didn't like the movie Armageddon, since it was pretty ridiculous in its science. True enough, but I don't mind turning off my brain and having a fun time at the movies, so I enjoyed it. But the idea of having astronauts land on an Earth-crossing asteroid is getting some serious consideration now. Rob Landis at Johnson Space Center has been promoting this as a practice for some of the tasks we'll need to master for the manned Mars mission in a few(?) years. He's proposing to use the new Aries/Constellation Crew Exploration Vehicle, which would "land" on the Earth-crossing asteroid 2000SG344. Because it's so small (yacht-sized) and spins, it'd be a tough approach and would have to be anchored to the asteroid.

Landis has a few papers out on this topic. The full text of one is available as a PDF here: Scientific Exploration of Near-Earth Objects Via the Crew Exploration Vehicle. The abstract of another is here.

I love the idea. My only complaint is the use of that horrible PC wording NASA's trying to promote: "crewed" or "human" as opposed to "manned." Ugh! It's a butchery of the English language: "...experience conducting crewed exploration missions..."

The best data recovery I've ever heard of

I see here that a computer hard drive from the space shuttle Columbia has been restored, and 99% of the experimental data on it has been recovered. Wow. This, despite the fact that the outside of the drive was a melted lump of metal and plastic, the seal had broken open, and part of the disk had been pitted with dust-sized debris. But because the computer was running DOS, which stores data in one place at a time, rather than scattering it across the disk, it chanced that the damage was not to the place the experimental data was stored, and 99% of the experiment's results were recovered.

The experiment probed the effect called "shear thinning," which is how substances like canned whipped cream come out like a liquid but then stiffen. They measured shear thinning in xenon near its critical point. NASA's write-up is here (with photos!), and this is a link to the article itself, coming out in Phys. Rev. E.

I think I remember some acquaintances or friends of friends at NASA who had another experiment on Columbia, but I don't know if any of their data were recovered.

Pravda on the Lost Cosmonauts

Instapundit had a link to this, the other day. Pravda has gone from being the official newspaper in Communist Russia (yes, I know it was the Communist Party paper, but they ran the country) to filling a niche in post-Commie Russia for news about UFOs, news of the weird, and conspiracy theories. (Incidentally, take a look at this article on the "USA plung[ing] into poverty." (I'm quoting the headline.) How do you like the photo that accompanies it? This, for a story about the percentage of Washington state (only) residents under the poverty level increasing from 10% in 2001 to 12% in 2005. I like the half-naked kids climbing onto the family wagon (pulled by a horse, of course), surrounded by piles of junk. Very illustrative.)

Aaaaanyway. Glenn had a link to this 2001 story about supposed cosmonauts before Gagarin, but who died during their missions. There have been rumors about this in the West for decades, and given the secrecy with which the Soviet space program was conducted, it's not surprising. But nothing's come of them, even after records were opened up. There is, even less surprisingly, plenty of stuff out there on the web about these. The Encyclopedia Astronautica has a whole list of the names that have popped up in the "Lost Cosmonaut" rumors over the years, and they've thrown in Maj. Tony Nelson and Roger Healy for good measure. (Find the link for "Lost Cosmonauts.") The latter two they must have had fun with, as their biographies are done totally deadpan. Mentions Major Nelson's wife, Jeannie Nelson (formerly of Baghdad), as well as some of his career milestones and some problems that popped up along the way. Like when he had bad eyesight, nearly keeping him from a flight, until it mysteriously fixed itself a day later. (One of the kids brightened up when I read this part, and she said, "I know that episode!") Includes his later Space Shuttle career. Longest-serving US astronaut!

I can only hope that Stalin and Lenin and the rest of their murderous crew are spinning in their graves, to find that Pravda now has "Showbiz" and "Style" sections, just like the decadent West! And isn't it interesting that it's Pravda, of all rags, that's trading in Communist cover-ups now?!

Martian caves?

On a similar note, there's this discovery of caves on Mars. Or at least deep holes in the ground. They're on a volcano, so they're likely to be lava-related, rather than water-carved. They determined their nature by watching their temperatures, compared with their surroundings. Caves on Earth maintain a nearly-constant air temperature inside, day and night, summer and winter. These aren't perfectly constant, but their temperature swings are only one-third that of their surroundings. So if they're not complete caves, they're at least very deep holes.