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POPSControllers Cheer as Data Arrive From NASA's Spirit Rover Now we are analyzing the data we've received to determine what the next commands should be, but this is all good news." Spirit has been operating on Mars for nearly five years in an exploration mission originally planned to last three months. The recent dust storm is clearing, but a coating of dust on Spirit's solar panels is reducing the rover's ability to generate electricity even when the sky is clear. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
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POPSNASA Dispatches Rubber Ducks for Science When a sophisticated science probe failed to return any data about whether pools of melted glacial ice were showing up in the ocean, a NASA researcher turned to a decidedly low-tech solution: a brigade of rubber ducks.
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POPSRocket Scientists Say We'll Never Reach the Stars Even the most theoretically efficient type of propulsion, an imaginary engine powered by antimatter, would still require decades to reach Alpha Centauri, according to Robert Frisbee, group leader in the Advanced Propulsion Technology Group within NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And then there's the issue of fuel. It would take at least the current energy output of the entire world to send a probe to the nearest star
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POPSWill NASA Test a Plasma Drive on the ISS? A plasma engine such as the VASIMR uses radio waves to ionize a propellant, and magnetic fields to accelerate or decelerate the resulting plasma to generate thrust. The VASIMR injects a gas such as hydrogen in to an engine that turns it in to plasma. The radio waves are now used to energize the plasma further as it moves through the engine. The plasma, now accelerated and heated, is focused and directed as exhaust using a magnetic nozzle.
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POPS Phoenix Ready For Mars Landing Sunday
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter camera run showed the weather will be good on Sunday, with no significant dust storms around the landing site, said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith. U.S. scientists will be joined by their counterparts from Canada and Europe in running the mission robotically from a headquarters in Tucson, Ariz. Canada's contribution is a Meteorological Station, or Met, designed to monitor changes in water abundance, dust, temperature and other variables in the Martian atmosphere. Of 11 previous attempts to land spacecraft on Mars, only five have succeeded. The Canadian Space Agency and a team headed by York University — and including contributions from the University of Alberta, Dalhousie University, the Geological Survey of Canada and instrument-maker Optech and — will oversee the science operations of the station, which was built by Canadarm maker MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., also known as MDA, of Richmond, B.C.
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POPSNEW TEMP MEASURING SHOWS NO GLOBAL WARMING Climate-change promoters also are perplexed by the observations of NASA's eight weather satellites. In contrast to some 7,000 land-based stations, they take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily over the surface of the Earth. In 30 years of operation, the satellites have recorded a warming trend of just 0.14C — well within the range of normal variations. If the Argos buoys and satellites had confirmed the greenie computer models and Gore hype instead of natural temperature variations, it would have been big news. The silence speaks volumes.
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POPSFirst images of avalanches on Mars I can't be sure but I'm sure I remember reading that all it took was a few grains of dust or sand to start the 'ball' rolling, and it caused a chain reaction, but you'd have to check with an avalanche expert.
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POPSLatest Antarctic Sea Ice Extent ''it is mid-summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Ice extent remains well (one million square kilometers) above the 28 year average and an impressive 3 million square kilometers above last year at this time!. There is clearly a lot of year to year variability in the record but the demise of the Antartic icecap seems to be anything but imminent. Most of the warming and melt in recent years has been in the vicinity of the Antarctic Peninsula, a small portion of the Antarctic which reaches above the Antarctic Circle and is a choke-point for the circumpolar ocean currents, and is more susceptible to variations. There’s also an active subsea volcano in the area, perhaps leading to the warm water upwelling in the study''
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POPSChance of Asteroid Hit on Mars Increases "Some researchers are hoping for a cosmic smash" Some? This is the kind of thing astronomers dream of At the moment its known as 2007 WD5. I'm sure if it hits it will get a better name.
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