Tag Archives: NASA

NASA Set to Test Mars Ice

‘Phoenix’ scraped at an ice layer buried underneath the soil in what mission scientists call the “Snow White” trench. The lander used a blade attached to its robotic arm to scrape up small piles of icy soil that each contain between two and four teaspoonfuls of material. The robotic arm will now scoop up that material and sprinkle it into the lander’s Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. That instrument will use its ovens to “bake” the sample and “sniff” any gases it gives off (water vapor, for example), to determine its composition.

Martian Dirt Could Yield Asparagus

NASA scientists say they are “flabbergasted” to find that soil on Mars appears rich enough to grow such Earth-bound plants as asparagus.

U.S. space researchers revealed the results of their first “wet” chemical analysis of Martian dirt Thursday and said it is not as acidic as expected, appearing to have the requirements and nutrients to support life.

Mars Sunset

Photo from 19 May 2005 by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars.

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander

The successful landing of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is well documented: Soft landing on a rough Mars terrain – Mars Lander Transmits Photos of Arctic Terrain – Phoenix Mars Lander prepares to begin excavation – Scientists Excited After Safe Mars Landing

View animation showing how NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander stays in contact with Earth

As NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter passes overhead approximately every two hours, Phoenix transmits images and scientific data from the surface to the orbiter, which then relays the data to NASA’s Deep Space Network of antennas on Earth. Similarly, NASA’s Deep Space Network transmits instructions from Earth to Odyssey, which then relays the information to Phoenix.

The Phoenix mission is to explore the north polar region of Mars.

NASA Science Website

The NASA Science Mission Directorate sponsors scientific research, and develops and deploys satellites and probes in collaboration with NASA’s partners around the world to answer fundamental questions requiring the view from and into space. SMD seeks to understand the origins, evolution, and destiny of the universe and to understand the nature of the phenomena that shape it. SMD also seeks to understand:

* the nature of life in the universe and what kinds of life may exist beyond Earth;
* the solar system, both scientifically and in preparation for human exploration; and
* the Sun and Earth, changes in the Earth-Sun system, and the consequences of the Earth-Sun relationship for life on Earth.

Maybe, for this site NASA actually listened to the engineers: as this site works rather than making false claims about the visitor’s browser. The site includes content specifically targeted at teachers, students, researchers and the general public.

NASA You Have a Problem

Go to NASA’s web site. Use the security settings that are most intelligent to use, the NoScript plugin for Firefox, and NASA makes this bold pointy haired boss statement at the top of every page:

“There’s a problem with your browser or settings.

Your browser or your browser’s settings are not supported. To get the best experience possible, please download a compatible browser. If you know your browser is up to date, you should check to ensure that javascript is enabled.”

Well no, there is no problem with my browser settings. And I am using the latest version of the most popular browser. 0 for 2 phb. What you mean to say is: I am so lame I hired someone who designed our web site so it fails to work properly without javascript enabled.

Jeez, get someone who know how to program a web site that just works. Any marginally competent individual can have your site work for any modern browser and then add in extra features people can take advantage using javascript, or flash or whatever extra things you want. It is amazing that an agency that is suppose to know about technology can do such a lame job of producing a web site. They do manage to provide good content for their web site (probably the content is provided by engineers while some phb decides they know what is best for the web site code).

Laws of Physics May Need a Revision

Something seems wrong with the laws of physics

Einstein’s general theory of relativity swept Newton away by showing that gravity operates by distorting space itself.

Even Einstein, however, may not have got it right. Modern instruments have shown a departure from his predictions, too. In 1990 mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which operates America’s unmanned interplanetary space probes, noticed something odd happen to a Jupiter-bound craft, called Galileo. As it was flung around the Earth in what is known as a slingshot manoeuvre (designed to speed it on its way to the outer solar system), Galileo picked up more velocity than expected. Not much. Four millimetres a second, to be precise. But well within the range that can reliably be detected.
…
Altogether, John Anderson and his colleagues analysed six slingshots involving five different spacecraft. Their paper on the matter is about to be published in Physical Review Letters. Crucially for the idea that there really is a systematic flaw in the laws of physics as they are understood today, their data can be described by a simple formula. It is therefore possible to predict what should happen on future occasions.

That is what Dr Anderson and his team have now done. They have worked out the exact amount of extra speed that should be observed when they analyse the data from a slingshot last November, which involved a craft called Rosetta. If their prediction is correct, it will confirm that the phenomenon is real and that their formula is capturing its essence. Although the cause would remain unknown, a likely explanation is that something in the laws of gravity needs radical revision.

An interesting puzzle that illustrates how scientists attempt to confirm our understanding and real world results. And those efforts include uncertainty and confusion. Too often, I think, people think science is only about absolute truth and facts without any room for questions. We understand gravity well, but that does not mean we have no mysteries yet to solve about gravity.

Research paper: The Anomalous Trajectories of the Pioneer Spacecraft

Great Self Portrait

photo of astronaut's faceplate reflecting earth

Photo by, and of, Astronaut Clay Anderson, Expedition 15 flight engineer. He used a digital camera to expose a photo of his helmet visor during the mission’s third planned session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on the International Space Station (15 August 2007). Also visible in the reflections in the visor are various components of the station and a blue and white portion of Earth. During the 5-hour, 28-minute spacewalk, Anderson and astronaut Rick Mastracchio (out of frame), STS-118 mission specialist, relocated the S-Band Antenna Sub-Assembly from Port 6 (P6) to Port 1 (P1) truss, installed a new transponder on P1 and retrieved the P6 transponder.

NASA provides their content, photos etc. online in an open access spirit. When linking to content (especially images) it is best to provide context (and with the internet the easiest way to do is so is relevant links). You can find many low resolution pictures of the image above around the internet. Trying to find the context around the image is not so easy – it took me quite awhile to do so. I try to provide the context and links. Lately some more sites will link to some original sources but this is still done far to infrequently.

There are also still far too many pointy haired bosses (PHB) making decisions to break the web by killing pages: web pages must live forever. Those PHB’s decisions do reduce the great benefit of linking but it is still worth doing for those cases where web sites are managed by people with the knowledge and ability to manage an internet resource properly.

Photo: NASA – high resolution version

NASA Robotics Academy

The NASA Robotics Academy is an intensive resident summer program of higher learning for college undergraduate and graduate students interested in pursuing professional and leadership careers in robotics-related fields.

Besides attending lectures and workshops with experts in their field, the Robotics Academy students are involved in supervised research in GSFC laboratories, private companies, and universities, and will participate in visits to other NASA Centers, the Applied Physics Laboratory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a number of robotics-related academic laboratories and industries.

Projects this year include: Conformal Gripping System for Space Robots and Cooperative Team-diagnosis in Multi-robot Systems