Alok Jha | May 24

The Guardian - Notoriously reclusive Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong gives video interview to Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia

As the first person to walk on the moon, he is a man whose name will be remembered for generations to come. But perhaps one of the other well-known things about Neil Armstrong is that he hardly ever gives interviews.

It was therefore something of a coup for Alex Malley, chief executive of Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia, to secure almost an hour of Armstrong's time to discuss the astronaut's trip to the moon.

In the illuminating conversation posted online on the CPA Australia website, Armstrong revealed how he thought his mission, Apollo 11, only had a 50% chance of landing safely on the moon's surface and said it was "sad" that the current US government's ambitions for Nasa were so reduced compared with the achievements of the 1960s.

"Nasa has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve," said Armstrong. "It's sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people."

** CPA Australia Presents
An Audience with Neil Armstrong
In this four part series the first man to walk on the moon, gives a personal commentary on Apollo 11’s historic lunar landing, his thoughts on leadership and taking risks to innovate for the future

Andy Gallacher | Cape Canaveral, FL | May 19

Al Jazeera - SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral ends NASA's decades-long dominance and marks debut for commercial space operators.

For the first time in history, a private company plans to launch an unmanned rocket into orbit.

People working near the Cape Canaveral on Florida's "Space Coast" are keenly awaiting Saturday's scheduled launch of the SpaceX mission.

It appears that access codes to the International Space Station were kept, unencrypted (although I'm not sure it would make a difference) on a laptop that was stolen last year.

Now, this is kind of silly: first, unencrypted? Really? So some guy sitting in his underwear in his den could, say, point the ISS in the other direction? And apparently, unencrypted laptops seem to be the norm at NASA, which ought to put paid to the notion that NASA is strictly a DoD department.

Worse, what if...and this seems a pretty likely scenario now...the laptop was stolen just to gain access to the ISS? After all, a notable exclusion to the program is China (Russia, Japan, Canada, and Europe are the principal partners...and who the hell thought it was a good idea to leave the only nation with any money off the team?)

Ross Andersen | Feb 16

The Atlantic - Late one night in the summer of 1977, a large radio telescope outside Delaware, Ohio intercepted a radio signal that seemed for a brief time like it might change the course of human history. The telescope was searching the sky on behalf of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the signal, though it lasted only seventy-two seconds, fit the profile of a message beamed from another world. Despite its potential import, several days went by before Jerry Ehman, a project scientist for SETI, noticed the data. He was flipping through the computer printouts generated by the telescope when he noticed a string of letters within a long sequence of low numbers---ones, twos, threes and fours. The low numbers represent background noise, the low hum of an ordinary signal. As the telescope swept across the sky, it momentarily landed on something quite extraordinary, causing the signal to surge and the computer to shift from numbers to letters and then keep climbing all the way up to "U," which represented a signal thirty times higher than the background noise level. Seeing the consecutive letters, the mark of something strange or even alien, Ehman circled them in red ink and wrote "Wow!" thus christening the most famous and tantalizing signal of SETI's short history: The "Wow!" signal.

Despite several decades of searching, by amateur and professional astronomers alike, the "Wow!" signal has never again been found. In his new book, The Elusive Wow, amateur astronomer Robert Gray tells the story of the "Wow!" signal, and of astronomy's quest to solve the puzzle of its origin. It's a story he is well-positioned to tell. That's because Gray has been the "Wow!" signal's most devoted seeker and chronicler, having traveled to the very ends of the earth in search of it. Gray has even co-authored several scientific articles about the "Wow!" signal, including a paper detailing his use of the Very Large Array Radio Observatory in New Mexico to search for it. I spoke with Gray about the "Wow!" signal, radio telescopes, and the economics of prospective extraterrestrial civilizations.

interview at site

Feb 16

WaPo - The tidy Swiss want to clean up space.

Swiss scientists said Wednesday they plan to launch a “janitor satellite” specially designed to get rid of space junk, the orbiting debris that can do serious and costly damage to valuable satellites or even manned space ships.

The 10-million-franc ($11-million) satellite called CleanSpace One — the prototype for a family of such satellites — is being built by the Swiss Space Center at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL.

Its launch would come within three to five years and its first tasks will be to grab two Swiss satellites that were launched in 2009 and 2010 but will be phased out of use, EPFL said.

The U.S. space agency NASA says over 500,000 pieces of spent rocket stages, broken satellites and other debris are orbiting Earth. The debris travels at speeds approaching 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour), fast enough to destroy or inflict expensive and time-draining damage on a satellite or spacecraft. Collisions, in turn, generate more fragments floating in space.

A colony in the Americas is a waste of money. We have spent untold treasures building ships to send men to the far corners of the world, and what do we have to show for it? What is the purpose of all this commotion and expense? A few holds full of strange and exotic commodities? Only luxury items are worth shipping such great distances, and that is hardly the basis for funding more expeditions and certainly not in any way capable of justifying wholesale colonization!

Ok, sarcasm aside, Frum seems to miss some very basic points:

Most of the research purpose of sending human beings into space is to test the effects of sending human beings into space. The missions exist to test whether the missions can continue. This seems the very definition of futility.

Have you ever wondered what the sunset on strange planet might look like? Compare and contrast these two planets. Pretty cool, eh?

Update: Justadood asked if we could get a binary star sunset. Well, we might soon get the chance. Kepler has discovered one. How cool is that? Well, odds are good for more as a new study indicates that every star may very well have planets.

Dec 29

Space.com - China has switched on its own satellite navigation system, marking a big step forward for a nation eager to reduce its reliance on the West for key strategic technologies.

The Beidou system — whose name translates as "Big Dipper" — began providing positioning and navigation services on Tuesday (Dec. 27), according to state news reports. The emergence of Beidou should make China far less dependent on the GPS constellation, which is operated by the United States military and is currently the world's dominant satellite navigation

"Countries build their own systems because owning an independent satellite navigation system is important to economic development and national security," said Pang Zhihao, deputy editor-in-chief of the publication Space International, according to the newspaper China Daily .

The initiation of Beidou follows closely on the heels of another Chinese space milestone. In November, the nation successfully docked two robotic spacecraft in Earth orbit, a key step in its quest to have a manned space station up and running by 2020.

Beidou currently consists of 10 satellites and covers a swath of the Asia-Pacific region from Australia in the south to Russia in the north. The system is accurate to within 82 feet (25 meters) and now serves China and surrounding areas on a pilot basis.

But those specs will all change. China plans to expand the satellite constellation and its coverage, making Beidou a truly global system. Six more satellites are due to launch next year, and the nation envisions having 35 in the constellation by 2020, according to China Daily.

Beidou's performance will improve as the constellation grows. The system should be able to pinpoint locations to within 33 feet (10 m) when the six additional satellites are lofted in 2012, officials said.

. . . discussion on Fermi's paradox can be found here. I always love pondering this kind of stuff. And with the discovery and profusion of Kepler planets, of which several hundred have been discovered to date, the discussion may not be so 'academic' for much longer.

Alissa de Carbonnel | Star City, Russia | Oct 19

Reuters - The United States may have put the first man on the moon, but Russian scientists and space explorers are now gazing at a new goal -- setting up a colony on the moon.

The discovery of volcanic tunnels on the moon could provide a natural shelter for the first lunar colony, cosmonauts and scientists said on Tuesday.

Researchers have long suspected the moon's volcanic past left an underground network of lava tubes as its legacy, and 2008 images from Japan's Kaguya spacecraft showed a possible way down -- a mysterious, meters-deep hole breaching the surface.

"This new discovery that the moon may be a rather porous body could significantly alter our approach to founding lunar bases," veteran spaceman Sergei Krikalyov, who heads Russia's Star City cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow, said at a forum on the future of manned spaceflight.

"If it turns out that the moon has a number of caves that can provide some protection from radiation and meteor showers, it could be an even more interesting destination than previously thought," he said.

Windsor Genova | El Paso | Oct 18

AHN - The world’s first commercial spaceship terminal was inaugurated on Monday in the uninhabited desert town of Upham in New Mexico.

British billionaire Richard Branson, owner of pay-for-spaceflight company Virgin Galactic, and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez led the inauguration of the Spaceport America, 90 miles north of El Paso, Texas.

Highlighting the inauguration was the christening of the spaceport’s hangar, The Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space, that will house two spaceships. Branson broke a champagne bottle against the wall of the building after rappelling down its side.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, witnessed the inauguration together with 150 people whom Virgin Galactic booked for suborbital flights aboard the White Knight Two and SpaceShipTwo.

Each passenger paid $200,000 for the flights, which Branson said will start after 12 months. Rocket tests are still being conducted and part of the spaceport is still under construction.

About 550 locals will run the facility, according to Martinez. Aside from employment, the state will benefit from the spaceport’s flight earnings.

Denise Chow | September 24

NASA - Thankfully, they pinned down the expected re-entry area. Accordingly, if you live anywhere within the UARS flight over "Canada, Africa and parts of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans", you should double check to see if you're still alive. (Either ask somebody; look in the mirror for your reflection; or post something to the Agonist.)

Tariq Malik | September 16

Space.com - NASA space junk experts have refined the forecast for the anticipated death plunge of a giant satellite, with the U.S. space agency now predicting the 6 1/2-ton climate probe will plummet to Earth around Sept. 23, a day earlier than previously reported.

The defunct bus-size spacecraft is NASA's Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS), which launched in 1991 and was shut down in 2005 after completing its mission. The satellite was expected to fall to Earth sometime this year, with experts initially pegging a weeks-long window between late September and early October, then narrowing it to the last week of this month.

That window, NASA now says, has been trimmed to just three days.

Sept 10

WIRED - This morning, NASA launched the GRAIL mission to the Moon. Launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Delta II rocket, the GRAIL mission is going to map the gravitational field of the Moon in unprecedented detail and provide new insight into the Moon’s internal structure.

Based on the very successful GRACE mission, GRAIL stands for the Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory. The mission actually consists of two spacecraft that were launched together, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B. The two spacecraft will fly in a near circular polar orbit of the Moon approximately 200 km apart. By continually taking very precise measurements of the distance between the two spacecraft, the mission can measure changes in the gravitational field of the Moon as the twin spacecraft pass over the surface. The is accomplished through the use of precision radio distance ranging between the two spacecraft. It will take the two spacecraft about three and a half months to reach Lunar orbit due to the low-energy transfer orbit being implemented that dramatically reduces the amount of fuel needed to get to the Moon.

In addition to this primary science mission, there are a secondary set of cameras with the specific mission goal of engaging students in science and engineering. Led by Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, the cameras are part of the Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, or MoonKAM:

GRAIL MoonKAM will engage middle schools across the country in the GRAIL mission and lunar exploration. Tens of thousands of fifth- to eighth-grade students will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center (MOC). Photos of the target areas will be sent back by the GRAIL satellites and made available in the Images section of this Web site. Students will use the images to study lunar features such as craters, highlands, and maria while also learning about future landing sites.

Steve Gorman | Sept 8

The Independent -

California astronomers have found the closest, brightest supernova of its kind in 25 years, catching the glimmer of a tiny self-destructing star a mere 21 million light years from Earth and soon visible to amateur skywatchers.

The discovery, announced today, was made in what was believed to be the first hours of the rare cosmic explosion using a special telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego and powerful supercomputers at a government laboratory in Berkeley.

The detection so early of a supernova so near has created a worldwide stir among astronomers, who are clamoring to observe it with every telescope at their disposal, including the giant Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists behind the discovery at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley say the extraordinary phenomenon - labeled by the rather obscure designation PTF 11kly - will likely become the most-studied supernova in history.

"It is an instant cosmic classic," said Peter Nugent, the senior scientist at UC Berkeley who first spotted it.

PTF 11kly occurred in the Pinwheel Galaxy, located in the Ursa Major constellation, better known as the Big Dipper. At a distance of roughly 21 million light years, that puts it, on a cosmic scale, practically "in our backyard," Nugent said.

By comparison, most supernova found with the 48-inch Palomar telescope are about 1 billion light years away and far too faint for the general public to see, Nugent said.

Initially detected on August 24, the PTF 11kly has literally grown brighter by the minute and was already 20 times more luminous in just one day.

It is expected to reach its peak sometime between September 9 and 12, when it will become visible to stargazers using a good pair of binoculars or small telescope.

It will appear, blueish-white, just above and to the left of the last two stars in the Big Dipper handle.

WaPo blogPOST - Get out your binoculars and telescopes. This weekend, a supernova that is closer to Earth than any found in at least the last 25 years will be visible from your back yard. [Peak luminosity is expected September 9th].

The violently exploding white dwarf star is brightening in the Pinwheel Galaxy, approximately 21 million light-years away, Wired reports. (Most supernovas spotted by astronomers are around 1 billion light-years away and cannot be seen by amateurs.)

[...]

A team of astronomers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley found the Type 1a supernova with a specialized survey telescope at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California this week.