April showers, May flowers, and Gliese 581-C

“April showers bring may flowers” is a silly child’s rhyme that I think is familiar to most my readers. Like most such rhymes, its a teaching tool for young minds, allowing us to explain complex ideas in simple fun ways. That simple little rhyme that many of us learned as very small children helps us understand and conceptualize the changing of the seasons, the emergence of new life, and even such basic concepts as the value of water to life itself. Its something we don’t often think about, but water is one of the most fundamental aspects of everything we’ve ever seen that we called life … it is so fundamental that “life as we know it” simply couldn’t exist without water. Thats not QUITE to say that life can’t exist without water, but if it does, we have no conception of how that would work in practice.

Soviets in Space …

April 12th marks one of the biggest anniversaries in the history of space flight. Back in 1961, April 12th was the day Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to enter space, and on that day he marked two milestones. Along with being the first human to enter sub-orbital space, the Soviet launch also achieved orbit, making Gagarin also the first human to orbit the planet. While it took the US space program almost a full year to match the orbital achievement with John Glenn‘s orbit in Friendship 7, on May 5th, 1961, some 23 days later, NASA launched Alan Shepard into sub-orbital space making him the first American, and second human, to enter space.

The powers of 10 …

In other posts, I’ve talked about the unimaginable size of the universe. “Feeling Insignificant Yet?” talks about how big some of the other planets and stars are in comparison to us and our home planet, and in “And you thought size mattered …” I noted that as unimaginably huge as the sizes of distant stars were, the distances between them makes them seem like specks in the night. But there’s another side to that incredible vastness as well … within each and every one of us are entire universes composed of atoms and molecules that make up the cells that combine to form us.

81 years of the Space Age

On March 16th, 1926, mankind truly entered the Space Age. When we think of the Space Age, we usually think of the launch of Sputnik as the beginning, and in the obvious ways, that’s very true, but it was back in 1926 that it first became physically conceivable to put human objects into space when Robert Goddard successfully tested the first liquid-fuel rocket on his Aunt’s farm in Connecticut. While this first flight only went 41 feet into the air, it marks the very first successful test of the technology that would take Apollo astronauts to the moon some 43 years later.

Anyone for methane-skiing?

Its been a while since I’ve gone all geeky on your asses, but I couldn’t resist posting this rather cool radar image from Titan. The Astronomy Picture of the Day from February 7th, 2007, this image is a false-colour representation of radar data collected by Cassini on a 2006 flyby of Titan, and recently published in Nature as the best proof yet of surface liquid on a planet other than earth. Its still not conclusive … these images simply show areas of higher radar absorption vs areas of lower absorption, but similar patterns appear with radar images of many solid/liquid combinations.

Ch…Ch…Ch…Ch…Changes … water on Mars?

While the notion of a perfect and unchanging heavens has been out of scientific vogue for a few centuries, it was dealt a final death blow recently with photos of the surface of mars. Paradoxically, at the same time, old notions of a living Mars gained new unexpected new breath. In modern times, Mars is the dead planet … unbearably cold with a wispy non-atmosphere, a place where we could study ancient sand formations. Change wasn’t really much in the cards for modern Mars … some mild shifting of dunes by what passes for weather on Mars, but generally speaking, if we look at the same spot twice in 7 years on Mars, we expect it to look pretty much the same both times.

Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

There are a few steps in my path to becoming a space geek.  The first step is pretty clear, and I’ve mentioned it here before … watching the Apollo/Soyuz linkup as a kid, along with some pretty amazing colour illustrations in an encyclopedia set my family had.  But a key part of solidifying that fascination came in my teenage years when i watched the 13 part Carl Sagan series Cosmos.

We live in a vastly different world today.  The Soviet Union and the West were still locked in the Cold War, and that mood is reflected in Cosmos.  The Voyager spacecraft were sending back stunning photos of Jupiter, with the promise of others beyond, and Viking had just recently sent back stunning vistas from Mars.  Still only 8 years away from the last moon landing, and in the midst of speculation about the ‘cutting-edge new Space Shuttle,’ Cosmos came out in 1980 in the midst of some excitement about space exploration still raging.

Its cool to see the show up on the internet for all to see … it really is an education resource for all.  I don’t know how long the links will be active for … I hope forever … but for now, enjoy one of the best astronomy/space series ever put together.

Spaced out imagery

This recent picture from the Cassini spacecraft is fascinating in its own right. While shots of earth from orbit are commonplace these days, the perspective of our planet from the outer solar system is still relatively unique. Other than Cassini, Voyager 1 is the only other space craft to get a picture of earth (Commonly called the Pale Blue Dot) from so far away. The inset in the upper left is a higher resolution version of the dot, high enough resolution to clearly make out Earth’s moon as a tiny bump on the upper left. This is how we look from Saturn, and if you read these pages regularly, you know that’s small potatoes in the area of universal size and distance.

NASA TV – Live Shuttle Video update

NASA TV

I posted a link awhile back to a live feed of the space shuttle.  That link was through Yahoo and it no longer appears to work, however the link at the top of this post is direct to NASA.  It should always stay active.  Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean will be space walking on Wednesday, working to help secure some solar cells to the space station.

So if you are here looking for live space shuttle video feeds, go to NASA TV here …

Is it SMART-1 to crash into the moon?

As planned, at 0542 UT, the spacecraft SMART-1 crashed into the lunar surface.  The planned crash should allow scientists to examine the composition of the lunar surface in the crash location by examining the dust kicked up by the crash.  No one was really sure how visible the crash would be, or whether backyard telescopes would be able to see it or not.  In hindsight, it appears as though only the most powerful backyard telescopes had a chance of picking up the faint crash, so most backyard astronomers likely missed the live show.

Fortunately, the CFH Telescope in Hawaii (CFH=Canadian, French, Hawaii) recorded the images for everyone to see.  The picture I am linking to below is a shot of the actual impact zone precisely as the probe slammed into the surface, but the link will open a page with more detailed before and after shots of the crash.  There’s also a movie version of the crash, but I don’t know how long the link will stay active, as its on a page where the lead story changes.

While this was a planned crash, it wasn’t the point of this mission.  For 16 months, SMART-1 mapped and studied the lunar surface and composition from orbit, and even that mission had ulterior motives, being essentially a useful way to test a new ion-powered engine that may someday propel humans to Mars.  With the ion-drive successfully tested, and with a wealth of data about the moon, the final phase of its mission came to an end this morning, in a giant impact on the lunar surface.  The impact of the mission generally, however, will be felt in the space community for decades, IMO.