Rocket Science

Yesterday’s launch of the asteroid-bound Dawn Mission was postponed until September due to bad weather and potential interference with the scheduled launch of the Mars Phoenix Lander on August 8th.NASA has scheduled a news conference for later today to discuss aspects of the postponement and the Phoenix program. Prior to the Phoenix presentations, media will have the opportunity to learn in more detail about the rescheduled Dawn launch.

Image left: Artist’s concept of Phoenix on the surface of Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL.

The Phoenix Lander is the first in a series of landers in NASA’s Mars Scout Program. The “Phoenix” name is taken as the lander is a reincarnation of previous landers or failed missions. Phoenix will land in the icy Northern Plains of Mars and become a fixed-location probe designed to explore the geological history of that region of the planet.

Read more about the Phoenix Lander Program and watch the really cool NASA animated video of the arrival of Phoenix on Mars: Continue reading…

Although there will be an eclipse of the Moon later today, there was a solar eclipse, of sorts, last week — from the vantage point of one of the recently-launched STEREO spacecraft, that is. Astronomy Picture of the Day featured this video of a lunar transit of the Sun taken by the cameras on board STEREO B, one of two STEREO spacecraft en route to their observation stations. The angular subtense of the Moon in this video is about a quarter of the size as would be seen from Earth.

Video courtesy NASA & APOD.

To see is to know — that’s an old science and engineering principle that has been around for most of the history of human technological progress. If you hypothesize you can develop a theory about a topic. If you have a theory, it isn’t much good unless you test it. Testing, it seems, isn’t always easy nor is it infallible. And once in a while, when testing your theories, you come up with a real head-scratcher. Like why is the Sun’s south pole cooler than it’s north pole? Why does that hold true regardless of the solar magnetic field’s north-south orientation?

Image: Ulysses and the Solar Magnetic Field (click image for full-size view) ESA Solar Image Gallery

I know, I know! It must be industrial pollution on planet Earth and greenhouse gasses . . . well, maybe Al Gore can explain it better.

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I worry when a large, politically left-leaning enterprise like Google teams up with a government bureaucracy like NASA. True, I support most of the Space Programs, but wonder if this will pan out.

Google and NASA Ames will focus on making the most useful of NASA’s information available on the Internet. Real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the moon and Mars, real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle will be explored in the future.

Well, it sounds like fun, but . . .

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