Author Archives: Tom

Recent Geologic Activity on the Moon?

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The Moons crust showing stretches according to scientists. Click for larger. Image: LRO / NASA

 

Just when we think we have something figured out.  Here’s one I just have to take their word for.

The LRO press release:

New images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft show the moon’s crust is being stretched, forming minute valleys in a few small areas on the lunar surface. Scientists propose this geologic activity occurred less than 50 million years ago, which is considered recent compared to the moon’s age of more than 4.5 billion years.

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Friendship 7

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50 years ago today John Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth.  A few are confused on this point thinking Glenn was the first American in space, that distinction belongs to Alan Shepard who flew the first (sub-orbital) spaceflight.  Incidentally, Shepard was the only Mercury Astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 mission.  Anyway, the confusion might arise because of the name of the capsule Glenn flew: Freedom 7.  These two names are enough alike, well you get the idea.

The Mercury program used two different rockets to put the capsules into space: the Redstone and the Atlas. The program suffered some early failures: the first launch of a Mercury capsule on an Atlas rocket exploded and the first Redstone flight only achieved an altitude of about four inches. To be sure the program was safe for humans, the first beings to fly in the Mercury capsules were not men but a rhesus monkey named Sam and two chimps named Ham and Enos. Sam flew a “Little Joe” rocket, Ham a Redstone and Sam an Atlas. Even though all the primates made it back safely, the men chosen to fly were extremely brave and all had a active role in making the rockets and spacecraft safe.

You may have noticed the names both include a “7″.  Ever wonder why?  The Mercury program was named after the fleet-footed Roman god.  Each of the manned capsules were named by the astronauts who flew them.  The number “7″ was first added by Alan Shepard because his capsule was the seventh made.  The other program astronauts followed suit to honor the first seven project astronauts named by the fledgling NASA.

Mercury Flight Mission Name Astronaut Capsule
1 Mercury-Redstone 3 Alan Shepard Freedom 7
2 Mercury-Redstone 4 Gus Grissom Liberty Bell 7
3 Mercury-Atlas 6 John Glenn Friendship 7
4 Mercury-Atlas 7 Scott Carpenter Aurora 7
5 Mercury-Atlas 8 Wally Schirra Sigma 7
6 Mercury-Atlas 9 Gordon Cooper Faith 7

Credit: NASA / Video source

ESA’s Swarm Mission

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ESA is launching the Swarm mission later this year to study the Earth’s magnetic field.

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The Taurus Molecular Cloud

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APEX's image of the Taurus Molecular Cloud. Click for larger. Image: ESO

The APEX telescope is working great!

APEX, short for Atacama Pathfinder Experiment Telescope is a 12-meter diameter telescope used to observe the Universe in millimeter- and submillimeter-wavelength radiation. APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), and ESO, with operations of the telescope entrusted to ESO. APEX is located in Chile on the Chajnantor plateau.

I was going to make a chart showing the location, problem was while I had the general location almost exact I thought that bright star was different than what they are saying so I bagged the effort. Turns out the ESO included a locator chart as part of the release. I know, I should have known they would do a thorough job.

I’ve included part of the press release and you can get the complete release and more images by clicking the link below.

About the image from the ESO:

The Taurus Molecular Cloud, in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), lies about 450 light-years from Earth. This image shows two parts of a long, filamentary structure in this cloud, which are known as Barnard 211 and Barnard 213. Their names come from Edward Emerson Barnard’s photographic atlas of the “dark markings of the sky”, compiled in the early 20th century. In visible light, these regions appear as dark lanes, lacking in stars. Barnard correctly argued that this appearance was due to “obscuring matter in space”.

The upper-right part of the filament shown here is Barnard 211, while the lower-left part is Barnard 213. The millimetre-range observations from the LABOCA camera on APEX, which reveal the heat glow of the cosmic dust grains, are shown here in orange tones, and are superimposed on a visible light image of the region, which shows the rich background of stars. The bright star above the filament is Tauri, while the one partially visible at the left-hand edge of the image is HD 27482. Both stars are closer to us than the filament, and are not associated with it.

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The MIT ’16 EA Tube Hack

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The MIT Admissions Office challenge:

“2012 is the anniversary of an old MIT balloon hack, so we put a letter in all of the Early Action admit tubes telling them we wanted them to hack the tubes somehow, and set up http://hackthetubes.mitadmissions.org to collect responses,” says Chris Peterson, Admissions office counselor, as reported on BoingBoing. “Lots of them are great, but this one, from Erin King (MIT ’16) in Georgia, is the best.”

This video is documentation of Erin King’s response and it’s great!  Erin, you deserve a hearty well done!!

Here’s Erin’s thoughts from the YouTube video source.

Vega Launched

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The first flight of ESA’s Vega rocket occurred yesterday.

The payload consisted of two Italian satellites: ASI’s LARES laser relativity satellite and the University of Bologna’s ALMASat-1. Flight VV01 will also carry seven picosatellites provided by European universities: e-St@r (Italy), Goliat (Romania), MaSat-1 (Hungary), PW-Sat (Poland), Robusta (France), UniCubeSat GG (Italy) and Xatcobeo (Spain).

One of Italian satellites aims to put Einstein to the test – this is VERY cool stuff.

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Don’t forget about the Bonus riddle and I’m thinking about having a Second Chance Riddle this Saturday, need to hook up with Marian on this before it’s for sure, but if all goes well.