Posts tagged: nasa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Impact_Demonstration:
The Controlled Impact Demonstration (or colloquially the Crash In the Desert) was a joint project between NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aimed at acquiring data, as well as demonstrating and testing new technologies, with the intent of improving occupant crash survivability, by crashing a Boeing 720 aircraft. The tests involved the efforts of NASA Ames Research Center, Langley Research Center, Dryden Flight Research Center, the FAA, and General Electric, and required more than 4 years of work before the test occurred. The aircraft was remotely controlled for the tests, and numerous test runs were undertaken prior to performing the actual impact. The impact test flight occurred on December 1, 1984, proceeding generally according to plan, and resulting in a spectacular fireball which required more than an hour to extinguish.
Herschel Finds Oceans of Water in Disk of Nearby Star
PASADENA, Calif. — Using data from the Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers have detected for the first time cold water vapor enveloping a dusty disk around a young star. The findings suggest that this disk, which is poised to develop into a solar system, contains great quantities of water, suggesting that water-covered planets like Earth may be common in the universe. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions.
Scientists previously found warm water vapor in planet-forming disks close to a central star. Evidence for vast quantities of water extending out into the cooler, far reaches of disks where comets take shape had not been seen until now. The more water available in disks for icy comets to form, the greater the chances that large amounts eventually will reach new planets through impacts.
dvdp:
“A wide field meteor camera at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center recorded this spectacular meteor breaking up in Earth’s atmosphere on Sept. 30, 2011, 8:37 p.m. EDT. Also visible is a star-like object moving slowly toward the upper middle of the field of view — the upper stage of the Zenit booster that launched the Russian Cosmos 2219 intelligence satellite back in 1992. Orbiting 500 miles above Earth, this empty rocket body can get bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye.”
dudes are always harshing all ‘where is my flying car //this future is disappoint// meanwhile i am watching a gif of a meteor impact that nasa made with a satellite //on my telephone//.
A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica.
What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth? (by yesterday2221)
# a still more glorious dawn
![this-is-ryan:
nasa :: astronomy picture of the day
The robotic Cassini spacecraft … drifted in [the] giant planet’s shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn’s rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn’s E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/ultralaser/10469633273/1/tumblr_lrshlhjB1J1qzr6b2)
nasa :: astronomy picture of the day
The robotic Cassini spacecraft … drifted in [the] giant planet’s shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn’s rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn’s E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.
The Space Shuttle Endeavour’s Final Launch seen from a commercial plane window, captured by Stefanie Gordon.
Incredible film of a trip to Saturn, made entirely from photographs taken by the Cassini spacecraft.
(watch full screen)
truly magnificent.
(via fuckyeahspace)
“With your help, we can reorient NASA’s mission back toward human spaceflight by reducing funding for climate change research and reallocating those funds to NASA’s human spaceflight accounts, all while moving overall discretionary spending toward [fiscal 2008] levels,” states a Feb. 7 letter to Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the panel’s commerce, justice, science subcommittee that oversees NASA spending.
[…]
Citing the need to ensure U.S. national security and economic competitiveness with China, India and Russia, the letter calls on House appropriators to fund NASA’s continued global leadership in human spaceflight.
“We must not put ourselves in the position of watching Chinese astronauts planting their flag on the moon while we sit — earthbound by our own shortsightedness,” the letter states.
House Group Proposes Shifting Earth Science Funds to Manned Spaceflight | SpaceNews.com
let the earth burn, all the rich people will be evacuated to our new moonbase. the chinese are not invited.
yay xenophobia. good thing global warming isn’t real, amirite?
[h/t ellis king]
Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt at Night (NASA, International Space Station Science, 10/28/10) (by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center)
From 220 miles above Earth, one of the Expedition 25 crew members on the International Space Station took this night time photo featuring the bright lights of Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt on the Mediterranean coast. The Nile River and its delta stand out clearly as well. On the horizon, the airglow of the atmosphere is seen across the Mediterranean. The Sinai Peninsula, at right, is outlined with lights highlighting the Gulf of Suez and Gulf of Aqaba.
(via free proxy)
Aircraft contrails
as seen from the International Space Station.
• Image Credit: NASA
![[evidently i had to fix this one too. 0.10 seconds for each frame except the first (0.20) and last (0.90). like, wtf, nasa.]](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_le4ymySKbg1qzr2iro1_500.gif)
[evidently i had to fix this one too. 0.10 seconds for each frame except the first (0.20) and last (0.90). like, wtf, nasa.]
The dynamic Crab pulsar
Look carefully at this animated image. What you see is the Crab pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star at the heart of the Crab Nebula, propelling matter and antimatter outward at near the speed of light, seen in 24 sequential images acquired over several months by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Crab pulsar is a tiny, dense remnant of a star that exploded in a supernova, observed here on Earth in the year 1054. It is very small - only about 25 km (15 miles) across, has a mass about 1.5 times our own Sun, and rotates at an amazing rate of 30 times per second.
Bright wisps of energetic particles can be seen moving outward from the pulsar at half the speed of light to form an expanding ring. These wisps appear to originate from a shock wave that shows up as an inner X-ray ring. Also, a turbulent jet appears to be spewing material to the left, looking much like steam from a high-pressure boiler - except it’s a stream of matter and anti-matter electrons moving at half the speed of light.
This little neutron star, some 6,500 light-years away, has been doing this energetic pirouette for the past thousand years, and, undisturbed, will likely continue to do so for billions of years more.
Absolutely ridiculously mind blowing.
![misfitsofscience2:
Dark Jupiter May Haunt Edge of Solar System - Wired.com
In 1999, Matese and colleague Daniel Whitmire suggested the sun has a hidden companion that boots icy bodies from the Oort Cloud, a spherical haze of comets at the solar system’s fringes, into the inner solar system where we can see them.
In a new analysis of observations dating back to 1898, Matese and Whitmire confirm their original idea: About 20 percent of the comets visible from Earth were sent by a dark, distant planet.
This idea was a reaction to an earlier notion that a dim brown-dwarf or red-dwarf star, ominously dubbed Nemesis, has pummeled the Earth with deadly comet showers every 30 million years or so. Later research suggested that mass extinctions on Earth don’t line up with the Nemesis predictions, so many astronomers now think that object doesn’t exist.
“But we began to ask, what kind of an object could you hope to infer from the present data that we are seeing?” Matese said. “What could possibly tickle [comets’] orbits and make them come very close to the sun so we could see them?”
Rather than a malevolent death star, a smaller and more benign companion called Tyche (Nemesis’ good sister in Greek mythology) could send comets streaming from the Oort Cloud toward Earth.](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/ultralaser/2196461639/1/tumblr_ldbvxtOyzO1qzr6b2)
Dark Jupiter May Haunt Edge of Solar System - Wired.com
In 1999, Matese and colleague Daniel Whitmire suggested the sun has a hidden companion that boots icy bodies from the Oort Cloud, a spherical haze of comets at the solar system’s fringes, into the inner solar system where we can see them.
In a new analysis of observations dating back to 1898, Matese and Whitmire confirm their original idea: About 20 percent of the comets visible from Earth were sent by a dark, distant planet.
This idea was a reaction to an earlier notion that a dim brown-dwarf or red-dwarf star, ominously dubbed Nemesis, has pummeled the Earth with deadly comet showers every 30 million years or so. Later research suggested that mass extinctions on Earth don’t line up with the Nemesis predictions, so many astronomers now think that object doesn’t exist.
“But we began to ask, what kind of an object could you hope to infer from the present data that we are seeing?” Matese said. “What could possibly tickle [comets’] orbits and make them come very close to the sun so we could see them?”
Rather than a malevolent death star, a smaller and more benign companion called Tyche (Nemesis’ good sister in Greek mythology) could send comets streaming from the Oort Cloud toward Earth.
