Clipmarks | ColoradoRight's 'space' clips

Hubble Space Telescope Repair Planned

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:09:21 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: Lots of things they are planning to do have never been attempted in space before.

Clip Source: space.newscientist.com

Space shuttle astronauts will attempt an unprecedented in-orbit repair of key Hubble Space Telescope (HST) instruments during the servicing mission scheduled for August 2008. The repairs, along with the addition of two new instruments, will make Hubble 90 times as powerful as it was after its flawed optics were corrected in 1993.

The most challenging part of the mission will be to repair ACS and STIS. "We're going to do something that has never been done in space," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's lead spacewalking astronaut for the servicing mission.

Both repairs involve astronauts unfastening dozens of tiny screws to replace some circuit boards on each of the instruments – all while wearing bulky spacesuit gloves. Such a feat has never been attempted before in space.

The astronauts will also have to cut through metal layers to reach the circuit boards, creating sharp edges that could be hazardous to spacesuits.

Tags: space, telescope, nasa

Saturn's "UFO Moons"

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:53:22 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight

Clip Source: space.newscientist.com

Two of Saturn's small moons look eerily like flying saucers, new observations by the Cassini spacecraft reveal. The moons, which lie within the giant planet's rings, may have come by their strange shape by gradually accumulating ring particles in a ridge around their equators.

The Voyager spacecraft discovered the moons, called Pan and Atlas, in the early 1980s.

Both moons have a flattened shape, being wider than they are tall. But their uncanny resemblance to UFOs only became clear recently, when Cassini viewed them with its powerful cameras.

Tags: space, science, explore, saturn, planet, planets, voyager, cassini

Million Light Year Long Particle Beam Found

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:49:02 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: Remarkable

Clip Source: space.newscientist.com

An intergalactic particle beam stretching for more than a million light years is the longest ever seen.

The jet they saw is nearly 1.5 million light years long, twice the length of the previous record holder. If this jet sprang instead from the centre of the Milky Way, it would loom over us like a skyscraper and would stretch halfway to the Andromeda galaxy.

It is unusual in other ways too. Jets usually come in fairly well-matched pairs, pointing in opposite directions. The new jet's counterpart, however, appears much shorter. That could be because the apparently shorter jet is pointing away from us - so light from its far end might not have had time to reach us yet.

Interestingly, the radio waves emitted by the newly discovered jet are strongly polarised, revealing a powerful magnetic field wrapped around the jet.

Tags: space, explore, science, particle, galaxy

Top 10 IT Disasters of All Time

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:43:47 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: Some interesting stuff - including the possibility of Russia starting WW III.

Clip Source: www.zdnet.co.uk

3. The explosion of the Ariane 5 (1996)
In 1996, Europe's newest and unmanned satellite-launching rocket, the Ariane 5, was intentionally blown up just seconds after taking off on its maiden flight from Kourou, French Guiana. The European Space Agency estimated that total development of Ariane 5 cost more than $8bn (£4bn). On board Ariane 5 was a $500m (£240m) set of four scientific satellites created to study how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with Solar Winds.

According to a piece in the New York Times Magazine, the self-destruction was triggered by software trying to stuff "a 64-bit number into a 16-bit space".

"This shutdown occurred 36.7 seconds after launch, when the guidance system's own computer tried to convert one piece of data — the sideways velocity of the rocket — from a 64-bit format to a 16-bit format. The number was too big, and an overflow error resulted.

Tags: technology, it, information, disasters

Soviet & Eastern Bloc Retro-Futuristic Graphics

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:58:11 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: Some really interesting visions of the future from 50 years ago.

Clip Source: www.darkroastedblend.com

collection of the most inspiring & hard-to-find retro-futuristic graphics.

artwork from rather unlikely sources: Soviet & Eastern Bloc "popular tech & science" magazines, German, Italian, British fantastic illustrations and promotional literature - all from the Golden Age of Retro-Future (from 1930s to 1970s)

"Lunar Unicycle" by Frank Tinsley, 1959

Tags: space, explore, technology, future, soviet, ussr, eastern bloc, graphics, stars

Fifth Planet Discovered at star 55 Cancri

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:14:03 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Astronomers have discovered a record-breaking fifth planet around the nearby star 55 Cancri, making it the only star aside from the sun known to have five planets.

An artist's concept of the star 55 Cancri showing the newly discovered planet in the foreground -- a gas giant half the mass of Saturn -- and three already known inner planets (the planet farthest from the star is not pictured). All the inner planets are the size of Neptune or bigger, unlike our solar system's rocky inner planets. The colors of the planets in this illustration were chosen to resemble those of our own solar system. Astronomers do not know what the planets look like.

The unique 55 Cancri system, located 41 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Cancer, is notable also because its clutch of four inner planets and one giant outer planet resembles our own solar system, though without an Earth or Mars.

Tags: space, technology, satellite, planet, solar system

Star Trails (Photo)

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:40:24 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: Wonderful time lapse photo

Clip Source: www.wideangle.ca

Tags: photoshop, photography, space, stars

Spectacular Staircases

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:36:21 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight

Clip Source: deputy-dog.com

1. storage staircase

i can’t believe this type of staircase isn’t already widely used in homes - for people with very little storage space this could be extremely valuable. simply use each step as a drawer and no-one will even notice.

5. internal log staircase

thought to be the world’s only internal log staircase, this beauty has been carved from one giant 140 ton kauri log. the beast took a total of 500 man hours to carve and finish and can be found at ‘ancient kauri kingdom’ in new zealand.

9. ‘impossible’ spiral staircase

there are many mysteries surrounding the construction of the spiral staircase at loretto chapel and many believe the appearance of it to be a miracle. design-wise, the staircase is extremely impressive - there is no visible central beam to hold the staircase up and no nails have been used during its creation. however the central spiral is so narrow that it does indeed act as a support beam for the staircase.

Tags: architecture, furniture, staircase, innovation

Hundreds of Black Holes Found

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:45:09 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2007) — Astronomers have unmasked hundreds of black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away.

This image, taken with Spitzer's infrared vision, shows a fraction of the black holes, which are located deep in the bellies of distant, massive galaxies (circled in blue). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique)

For decades, a large population of active black holes has been considered missing. These highly energetic structures belong to a class of black holes called quasars. A quasar consists of a doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust that surrounds and feeds a budding supermassive black hole.

Tags: space, explore, science, technology, astronomy, cosmology

Moonlet Belt Discovered in Saturn's Rings

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:38:44 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight

Clip Source: www.colorado.edu

A narrow belt harboring moonlets as large as football stadiums discovered in Saturn's outermost ring probably resulted when a larger moon was shattered by a wayward asteroid or comet eons ago, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder study.

The team calculated that there likely are thousands of moonlets ranging in size from semi-trailers to sports arenas embedded in the "A" ring's thin moonlet belt that circles the planet. At about 2,000 miles across, the belt of moonlets is only about 1/80th the diameter of Saturn's total ring system, which at roughly 155,000 miles across would stretch about two-thirds of the way from Earth to the moon.

Tags: space, technology, explore, saturn

Smoke of California Fires From Space

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:15:57 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: Some Strong Winds

Clip Source: rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov

Tags: nature, california, fire, space

Orion Nebula May Be Closer Than It Appears

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:12:40 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: Still a very long, long, long ways away!

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Closer Than We Thought
The Orion Nebula, seen here in an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, is 10 to 20 percent closer to Earth than has long been thought, according to new measurements made by the Very Large Baseline Array.

Tags: space, explore, nebula, telescope, measurement

40th Anniversary of Che's Sacrifice for Global Warming at the Hands of the Bush Administration

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:40:35 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: And it's always George W. Bush's fault......

Clip Source: www.thepeoplescube.com

Dedicated to the 40 year anniversary of Che Guevara's death in Bolivia at the hands of the Bush-Cheney criminal junta.

Featured Speaker Laika the Space Dog will present proof that Che could be a direct descendant of Prophet Mohammed.

Tags: humor, marxism, communism, conspiracy

International Space Station - $130 Billion wasted and counting

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:10:51 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: I support the space program and manned exploration of space. But the ISS has devoured so many billions by now, and our only plan for it once it is complete is to close it down. Why keep building it if it can't/won't be used? Let's get back to the moon and setup some permanent bases.

Clip Source: spacecynic.wordpress.com

For those who don’t know the backstory, allow me to set the wayback machine to the early 1990s, when Dan Goldin told the “big lie”…

In an impassioned attempt to save the ISS from cancellation in Congress, some pretty bogus claims were made about the value of ISS to industry, and more specifically that industry was so itching to use this amazing facility (which had already cost over $10 billion without any hardware even launched yet…) that NASA was promising over 30% of the costs would be covered by industry.

Of course, as the costs escalated and those pesky bean counters started looking at TOTAL life cycle costs, the price tag for ISS had shot up to almost $100 billion by the time it would be completed. Knowing that industry would never pony up $30 billion for this orbiting locker room, the claim was modified to mean “30% of operating costs”.

for those who read the linked Wired article, note that the cost of ISS has been moved up again, now at $130b and counting.

Tags: space, technology, explore, space station, shuttle

Self-Sufficient Space Habitat Design Released

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:19:29 GMT

clipped by: ColoradoRight
clipper's remarks: However, the 20-30 year timeframe to actually get a functioning model seems daunting.

Clip Source: www.cosmosmagazine.com

SYDNEY: Australian-led scientists have designed a new space habitat that might one day allow astronauts on the Moon or Mars to be 90 to 95 per cent self-sufficient.

The development of such as system could save billions of dollars in shuttle trips to re-supply lunar or space colonies and brings closer the vision of a human habitat on Mars.

Devised by an international team of 30 space scientists, Luna Gaia would be a 'closed-loop' environment, meaning that almost all material within the system is recycled with very little need for input from outside sources. The current design caters for a team of 12 astronauts under isolation for up to three years.

The proposed system, is unlikely to be up and running any time soon. Chartres estimates it will be another 20 to 30 years before the funding for the set-up and the practicality of providing the space for plant growth in a spacecraft is realised.

Tags: space, explore, hardware, transportation, ecology, recycle, habitat