A surprising piece of news was buried in an article this week. Friday, The Mercury News reported the three top executives at Google, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, are offering to pay $33 million to finish the restoration of the historic airship hangar at Moffett Field. The giant structure, built in the 1930s and called Hangar One, sits a few miles from the Googleplex and it’s well known the Google executives have special permission from NASA to park their jets at Moffett. → Read More
While giveaways and “follow us and win!” contests aren’t always worth calling out, this promotion from @NASA is too great to pass up. They’re planning on inviting 150 of their followers to watch the Curiosity Mars Rover launch. Yes, the actual launch, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. → Read More
You’ve likely already heard about that defunct six-ton satellite hurtling its way to the Earth’s surface. Unless you’re paranoid, you also know that the chances of this changing anyone’s life, anywhere (save for a few NASA peeps) are very small. Like, microscopic.
Still, it’s been a slow news week and the media has to keep pumping things out — and so begins the emergence of a thousand different news stories on several hunks of space metal that will likely land in an ocean. Rather than feign some notion of severity in this situation, my favorite comedic newscaster Stephen Colbert has weighed in. → Read More
Space buffs like me are sure to get a kick out of this one: NASA has released a score of historical sound bites from the space program for use as ringtones or system sounds.
I ask you, what could be more appropriate to herald an error on your PC than Jack Swigert’s “Houston, we have a problem” from Apollo 13? Or, alternately, what better way to celebrate a successful boot than listening to the ground crew celebrate Apollo 11′s liftoff?
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This beauty is a Nikon F Photomic T, which first hit the streets all the back in 1965. Aside from being a gorgeous piece of retro tech, it’s also one of several NASA-owned cameras from the estate of collector Arthur Keir that have been put up for auction. → Read More
Yes, that headline sounds a little ridiculous. But it’s not much of an exaggeration.
Today Google has posted a video showcasing how the Nexus S is being used by NASA to power its SPHERE satellites — the free-floating devices that NASA says were actually inspired by the lightsaber sparring droid seen in Star Wars. The satellites have been on the International Space Station since 2006, so they obviously predate Android, but they include a special expansion port that lets NASA add additional sensors and other capabilities.
Which is where the Nexus S comes in. After taking a ride up to the ISS on the last manned Shuttle launch, two Nexus S devices are being used by NASA to give these droids — err, robots — more powers. → Read More
Better lay your millions on the table now and reserve your spot on the ISS now. Russia, NASA, and the rest of the ISS’ partners announced today that they are going to allow the ISS to crash into the atmosphere after it’s decommissioned in 2020. The reason? Space doesn’t need more junk.
The first ISS component launched in 1998 and has slowly grown into a large space station with 15 units. The original plan was to bring the ISS down in 2015 but the European Space Agency extended its life to 2020. But it can’t stay up there forever. → Read More
Today, after 133 launches spanning nearly three decades, the era of the Space Shuttle is set to close with one final launch. Atlantis is currently on the launchpad, fueled, loaded with her four man crew and ready to delivery supplies to the ISS. It’s a bittersweet day as an exciting time in the US’s space history comes to a close, but unfortunately due to budget constraints rather than replacement with a new launch vehicle.
The launch is scheduled for 11:26 EDT today, but it might not happen. The weather isn’t cooperating but Launch Director Mike Leinbach told the launch team, “We do have a shot at this today.” If today’s launch is scrubbed, they will try again tomorrow.
NASA has the social media thing down. There are several different venues to follow along. The Ustream feed is embedded after the jump and NASA’s official Twitter feed is understandable active this morning. Xeni Jardin also happens to be on site and is liveblogging the event. Follow her updates here. → Read More
Think Arizona’s dust storm was huge? Check out the Great White Spot on Saturn. What first started as a small but bright dot last December, has grown to a massive storm that is currently encompassing a vast part of the planet’s upper half. The Cassini spacecraft first picked it up on December 5, 2010 and then astronomers then noticed the bright dot. Cassini then observed lightning strikes 10,000 times stronger than what happens here on Earth. Saturn is known for its violent, long-lasting storms, but this is the first major event recorded in the planet’s northern hemisphere. [NASA] → Read More
After the retirement of the Shuttle program, NASA will begin flying along with – and funding – multiple “commercial crews” including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin group and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. NASA is paying out $270 million to SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada (not the beer) and Boeing. This program, begun in 2009 and is now vitally important as it pairs NASA’s scientists and astronauts with commercial crews to perform spaceflights. → Read More
Don’t fret if NASA passed up your place as one of the Shuttles’ permanent homes as there are plenty of avation icons to go around. Like this Concorde. It’s only $150k. But there’s a catch. Yeah, there’s always a damn catch, but in this case I think it’s better this way. → Read More
30 years ago today the Space Shuttle Columbia blasted off on the first shuttle mission. Two missions ended in disaster, but a total of five different shuttles spent a collective 1289 days in space over 132 missions. The program is set for retirement after Atlantis’ final voyage later this month. The three remaining shuttles, along with the Enterprise prototype, are going to need cozy homes.
Of course every museum around the US wants one, but there are only four shuttles to go around with one already reserved for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The shuttles new homes are to cover the $28.8 million cost of prepping and transporting the massive shuttles, but those costs should be easily recovered with ticket sales. NASA has been talking with suitors for the last few months and used the historic anniversary to announce the winners. → Read More
Get ready for a nuclear-powered spacecraft—maybe! The Russian Federal Space Agency says that it will hold talks with Nasa and a number of countries on April 15 to see if they can’t get started on creating a “nuclear engine” by 2012. Such an engine, it’s believed, would only cost around $600m to develop. → Read More
The final Endeavour launch — which could be the final space shuttle launch — was slated for April 19th but had to be moved 10 days primarily because of a scheduling conflict. The Russian resupply space vehicle is also scheduled to be docked at the International Space Station during that time and the station is not outfitted to support two docked vehicles. Apparently Russia doesn’t know how to share Google Calendars. → Read More
Nasa is planning to stream their next launch in HD. This will be the first time Nasa will show a launch in HD on their online HDTV channel. The ISS crew will fly out to the ISS in the Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Make sure you’re around for the launch on April 4th at 5:18 pm EST.
Details after the break. → Read More
Although the Mars rovers have gone way, way beyond the call of duty (the original mission was for 90 days; Opportunity is still active after more than six years), the dream has to end sometime — and evidence is mounting that for Spirit, the first of the two rovers to touch down, may be down for the count. After a year of being trapped in sand, its last big hope was a big solar boost over this last month, but it seems that was insufficient to bring the poor little guy back to life, and NASA is moving on. It’s not impossible that it could be reinvigorated by a fresh breeze and some sun (like many of us), but things don’t look good. → Read More
If James Cameron were to take all the revenues from both Titanic and Avatar, then he may be able to send his own mars rover to space. That’s the closest he’ll ever get to having his 3D tech blasted into orbit now that Nasa pulled the plug on his plans. → Read More
One day after McAfee warned about the dangers of corporations becoming vulnerable to hackers, we now learn that Nasa has similar concerns. Its inspector general, Paul Martin, has written a report entitled “Security Practices Expose Key Nasa Network To Cyber Attack,” and you can guess what that means. Actually, don’t bother guessing. The report warns that six of Nasa’s servers that just so happen to contain critical data are vulnerable to remote attack. And if a hacker were so inclined, he could exploit those vulnerabilities to get further inside Nasa, wreaking all sorts of havoc (say, “cripple Nasa’s operations”) in the process. Again, panic. → Read More
Why this is making a splash today, I can’t really answer, but here we go. Nasa published a white paperin November that discusses how best to protect our GPS satellites from any sort of impropriety. The primary suggestion is to have the president declare our GPS satellites critical infrastructure. Once they’ve been classified as such the Department of Homeland Security will be put in charge of making sure they’re fully operational. → Read More
