Clipmarks | pokkets's 'space' clips

NASA spacecraft to visit Mercury again

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:48:51 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: I suppose now they have more of an idea where to look

A US space probe is poised to glide past Mercury to photograph the solar system's smallest planet, in the second of three planned passes, says NASA.

The NASA spacecraft MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) will pass the innermost planet at an altitude of 201 kilometres with its camera expected to take more than 1200 images of the cratered surface.

Mercury is the closest of all the planets to the Sun, and because of the high-risks of its proximity - the Sun's enormous gravitational pull, and massively high levels of radiation - it is one of the most mysterious bodies in the solar system, even though it is relatively close to Earth.

"The results from MESSENGER's first fly-by of Mercury resolved debates that are more than 30 years old," says Sean Solomon, the mission's principal investigator from the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

"This second encounter will uncover even more information about the planet."

China targets space Station, moon

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:29:59 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: I'm still not sure if they Know what to do about the Van Allen Belt. It's particularly Radioactive

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

China has set its sights on a trip to the moon and an orbiting space station after completing a historic mission that included the country's first space walk.

China laid out the ambitious targets after the return to earth of its third human mission into space, a 68-hour voyage hailed as a major boost to its space ambitions.

"We believe that as long as we can make further progress in science and technology, we can achieve the dream of a manned space flight to the moon in the near future," says Wang Zhaoyao, spokesman for China's space programme.

China is aiming to build a long-term orbiting space facility in 2020, followed by a lunar mission at an undetermined date, says Wang.

He adds that China's plans called for new missions from 2011 aimed at developing the knowledge - such as docking technologies - required for long-term space habitation.

These would ultimately build up to a lunar mission, he says, although he did not give a date.

Mars Pictures From European Spacecraft Are Incredible (PHOTOS)

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:06:02 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: Wow!

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The European spacecraft in orbit around Mars has sent back these incredible, high-resolution images of the planet's surface. The photos remind us that Mars' past was filled with fast-flowing streams, rivers and oceans.

Tags: space, science, mars, technology, pictures, wow

What if Electricity Was FREE???

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:23:04 GMT

clipped by: sahara
clipper's remarks: The life story and work of Nikola Tesla. He invented AC electricity, Neon Lights, Radio transmission, The Electric motor, Wireless electricity transfer, Remote control, Hydraulics, Lasers, Space weapons, Robotics, and many, many more things.

As Tesla claimed to have invented a way to harness free energy from the voltage difference in the ionosphere that causes lightning, he was seen as a threat to the world energy economy and most of his inventions were classified for national security by the US government.

A lot of his discoveries in physics have not been released to the public, despite being invented nearly 100 years ago. In 2006 the first company publicly announced it could successfully power items by remote power without wires, (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6129460. stm) something Tesla had invented nearly a century ago.

Clip Source: www.deepinfo.com

Tesla showed that gravity does not pull us to earth, but rather is a force gradient present everywhere, even in space. The earth acts as a shield from the push of the energy forces that would be under us. Newtonian physics was refined: 2 objects do not attract to the inverse square of their distances: they mutually shield from gravitational "push"
Tesla wanted everyone to have FREE ELECTRICITY, so he invented a FREE ENERGY machine to convert the high potential energy gradient (present everywhere) to electricity. Unfortunately, his notes disappeared when he died. Research based on his has produced different forms of a FREE ENERGY convertor . Tesla's convertor gave much more power than current re-creations.

Clip Source: www.tesla.org

Who was Nikola Tesla ? * Tesla's Inventions * The Tesla Timeline

More on TESLA * Tesla Society of New York * The Tesla Coil

Tesla Power Transmitter Tower * Tesla's Writings * Tesla Coil WebRing

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: energy, greed, physics

Telescope spots monster galactic cluster

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:08:22 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: They theorize that the fact that it's 7.7 billion light years away (as far as they know) meant that it was before the acceleration due to dark energy made it impossible for galactic clusters that large to hold together.
It reminded me of a poem by Hughes Mearns.
'Antigonish'
As I was going up the stair,
I saw a star that wasn’t there.
It wasn’t there again today,
I wish, that star would stay away.
(I thought I'd adjust it to cover Light years, and dark matter.)

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

A massive cluster of galaxies in deep space imaged spotted by an orbiting observatory can only be explained by the exotic phenomenon known as dark energy, say astronomers.

The huge galactic cluster, which appears as a blue cloud in this image, may help confirm the existence of dark energy

The observation was made by a team led by Georg Lamer of the Potsdam Astrophysics Institute, Germany, using the European Space Agency's (ESA) orbiting x-ray telescope XMM-Newton.

Their findings will appear in

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Intrigued by the indicators of scorching gases spewed out by x-ray sources, the team followed up by obtaining a deep exposure image of the region from a large binocular telescope in the Arizona desert.

Known by its catalogue number of 2XMM J083026+524133, the cluster's mass is about 1000 times that of our own galaxy and lies 7.7 billion light years from earth

in more recent times, massive galaxy clusters have lacked the gravitational glue to be able to form

Moon transits Earth

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:58:34 GMT

clipped by: milmufmas

Clip Source: www.ridingwithrobots.org

The moon transits the Earth in a series of images taken recently by the Epoxi spacecraft from 31 million miles away in deep space. Viewing the Earth from such large distances provides good practice for remote sensing of alien worlds. Epoxi is the extended astronomy mission that is using the spacecraft from the Deep Impact comet-smashing expedition of 2005. Epoxi will also fly by comet Hartley 2 in 2010. Learn more.

NASA's moon rocket gets shock treatment

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:13:40 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

The next generation of astronauts will have a smoother ride into space, with the US space agency announced today that they will use shock-absorbers to fix a problem with heavy vibrations in the new Ares rocket.

Engineers from NASA have recommended using a system employing spring-mounted weights and shock-absorbing tubes between the first and second stage of the rocket to rectify excessive vibrations.

The Ares solid rocket booster is designed to launch the Orion capsule

the planned successor to the space shuttle

to the moon and eventually Mars

It isolates the vibrations just travelling through the structure all the way up to the seats of the astronauts

Without such devices in place, astronauts would be subjected to twice the shaking felt by crew members of the space shuttle, according to NASA

The vibrations do not pose a threat to the crew members' health but could make it difficult for them to read flight instruments or flick switches, says Garry Lyles

at the Marshall Space Flight Center

Surfing faster than the speed of light

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 05:06:23 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: I wonder how easy it will be to navigate with these drives. Will the passage of a vehicle through space-time in a bubble leave an imprint?
they could start some rifts around bottlenecks like docking stations.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Eric Bland

Future generations could be travelling across the universe faster than the speed of light, without breaking any astronomical road rules, by manipulating extra dimensions of space and time, according to two US physicists.

"We think we can create an effective warp drive, based on general relatively and string theory," says Dr Gerald Cleaver from Baylor University in the US, a coauthor of a paper that recently appeared on ArXiv.org.

The warp engine is based on a design first proposed in 1994 by Dr Michael Alcubierre.

The Alcubierre drive, as it's known, involves expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship would rest in between the expanding and shrinking space-time, essentially surfing down the side of the bubble.

The tricky part is that the ship wouldn't actually move; space itself would move underneath the stationary spacecraft.

The fabric of space has moved faster than light before

right after the Big Bang

"Exploding Asteroid" Theory Strengthened By New Evidence

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:40:11 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (July 3, 2008) — Geological evidence found in Ohio and Indiana in recent weeks is strengthening the case to attribute what happened 12,900 years ago in North America -- when the end of the last Ice Age unexpectedly turned into a phase of extinction for animals and humans – to a cataclysmic comet or asteroid explosion over top of Canada.

A comet/asteroid theory advanced by Arizona-based geophysicist Allen West in the past two years says that an object from space exploded just above the earth’s surface at that time over modern-day Canada, sparking a massive shock wave and heat-generating event that set large parts of the northern hemisphere ablaze, setting the stage for the extinctions.

"The kind of evidence we are finding does suggest that climate change at the end of the last Ice Age was the result of a catastrophic event," Tankersley says.

Tags: ice age, catastrophe, asteroids, comets, climate change

Virgin mothership ready for test flights.

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:51:00 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Because it is a mothership, Richard Branson named it after his mother Eve

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

British tycoon Richard Branson has unveiled the futuristic aircraft that will ferry tourists to the edge of the heavens as part of Virgin Galactic's much-anticipated space program.

The aircraft

WhiteKnightTwo

was rolled out for media and invited guests, including Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, at an early morning ceremony in the Mojave desert north of Los Angeles

The high-altitude aircraft, also named "Eve" in honour of Branson's mother, will act as the mothership for the spacecraft Spaceship Two, which in turn will launch in midair and send two crew and six passengers hurtling into space

flights of WhiteKnightTwo are expected to take place later this year, with Spaceship Two being attached for a maiden flight

in 2009

Virgin Galactic is hoping to send its first paying customers into suborbital space some 110 kilometres above the earth in 2010

WhiteKnightTwo boasts a wingspan of 43 metres

With a maximum altitude of more than 15,240 metres

and is the world's largest carbon composite aircraft

Five Ways Reality Went Sci-Fi So Far This Century

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:18:34 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: io9.com

We love a good science fiction story, but sometimes reality is just as strange. While we may have seen 2001 come and go without an actual space odyssey, the last eight years have been full of events that - had they not actually happened - could easily pass for science fiction. Here are five real life events that still seem like they've come straight from the set-up of a big budget summer blockbuster.

Estonian Cyberwar: It may not have been the biggest cyber attack ever, but it's probably the strangest. Last year, Russian hackers got so ticked off when the tiny nation of Estonia digs up the remains of Soviet war heroes that they shut down Estonian newspapers, banks, and practically the entire government by using denial of service attacks on a huge scale.

CERN: You need only look at pictures from inside the Large Hadron Collider to realize the incredible, science fictional scale of the apparatus.

Space Tourism:

SARS, bird flu, and the other near-pandemics:

9/11:

Tags: reality, sci-fi

Dino diversity earlier than first thought

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:27:31 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Maybe there is the idea that species including the dinosaurs were trying to deal with conditions brought about by the meteor, so many adaptations arose, but nature loves nothing more than competition, even when times are good.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

The belief that dinosaurs underwent explosive species diversification just before they were wiped out is an illusion, a study says.

The end of the Cretaceous era some 65 million years, marked the demise of the dinosaurs - possibly due to a space rock that slammed into earth.

A new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Proceedings B, suggests the evolution of dinosaurs leading up to this event took place over a period of millions of years.

Fossils dating from between 125 million to 80 million years ago, a period called the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, suggest the earth experienced riotous biodiversity. This resulted in the evolution of flowering plants, social insects, butterflies, modern groups of lizards, mammals and possibly birds.

Some experts have suggested that dinosaurs were also part of the show, as so many weird fossils, such as duckbilled hadrosaurs, horned ceratopsians, pachycephalosaurs and other wonders, date from this time.

A trip to Mars in a Week?

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:42:56 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator
clipper's remarks: Wow thats 100 million km

Clip Source: www.photonics.com

Thruster May Shorten Mars Trip

TUSTIN, Calif., Sept. 7, 2007 -- An amplified photon thruster that could potentially shorten the trip to Mars from six months to a week has reportedly attracted the attention of aerospace agencies and contractors.

“This is the tip of the iceberg," Bae said in a statement from the institute. "PLT has immense potential for the aerospace industry. For example, PLT-powered spacecraft could transit the 100 million km to Mars in less than a week.”

The demonstration produced a photon thrust of 35 µN and is scalable to achieve much greater thrust for future space missions, the institute said. Applications include highly precise satellite formation flying configurations for building large synthetic apertures in space for earth or space observation, precision contaminant-free spacecraft docking operations, and propelling spacecraft to unprecedented speeds -- faster than 100 km/sec.

Tags: science, technology

Atom laser to keep spacecraft on track.

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:39:33 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Models predict that the atom laser will be 11 orders of magnitude more sensitive than light laser gyroscopes, offering measurements that could be 100 billion times more precise.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Anna Salleh

A laser beam that emits a continuous stream of atoms may one day help ultra-precise navigation of space craft, say Australian experts.

Travelling far from Earth, a space craft needs an independent way of knowing its location

Physicists Dr Nick Robins and colleagues from the Australian National University in Canberra report their progress on developing the first gyroscope of its kind, in the journal Nature Physics.

While atom lasers have been made before, research team member Associate Professor John Closesays the team has overcome a major barrier to developing a laser that pumps atoms continuously.

"It carries the promise of measuring at enormously increased precision," he says.

He says one application for this could be in a space craft that is too far away from earth to use a global positioning system.

Current gyroscopes often use light lasers to precisely measure rotation.

But Close says that atom lasers could provide much more accurate measurements by using "matter waves".

Most spectacular view in the Solar System

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 04:48:48 GMT

clipped by: abramsv
clipper's remarks: Few sights in the solar system are more strikingly beautiful than softly hued Saturn embraced by the shadows of its stately rings. The Cassini Orbiter on its mission in deep space caught this rare occasion of Saturn eclipsing the Sun.

Clip Source: thrillingwonder.blogspot.com

Most Spectacular View of Saturn

SATURN ECLIPSES THE SUN

Incredible opportunity to take possibly the most stunning photograph in the Solar System

Few sights in the solar system are more strikingly beautiful than softly hued Saturn embraced by the shadows of its stately rings. The Cassini Orbiter on its mission in deep space caught this rare occasion of Saturn eclipsing the Sun.

This marvelous panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006. The mosaic images were acquired as the spacecraft drifted in the darkness of Saturn's shadow for about 12 hours, allowing a multitude of unique observations of the microscopic particles that compose Saturn's faint rings.

Earth - a pale blue orb

Cassini casts powerful eyes on our home planet, and captures Earth, a pale blue orb -- and a faint suggestion of our moon -- among the glories of the Saturn system. You can certainly marvel at how small and yet endearing our home planet looks. By the way, there is another famous image of Earth as a pale dot - view it here

Panoramic Rings

The rings are awash in subtle tones of gold and cream in this view:

Tags: space, photography