Posted on 05/26/2008 6:50:54 AM PDT by sig226
The Earth isn't going to be inhabitable forever, so we have to start sometime to figure out where to move 5 billion people.
Thank you very much!
There’s more out there on the web...
Patterned ground, Kvadehuksletta, Bröggerhalvöya, Svalbard. Photo: Ó. Ingólfsson, 1998.
Svalbard, BTW, is a territory of Norway. Warning: big pic.
http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Camera_On_Mars_Orbiter_Snaps_Phoenix_During_Landing_999.html
Camera On Mars Orbiter Snaps Phoenix During Landing
Pasadena CA (JPL) May 26, 2008
A telescopic camera in orbit around Mars caught a view of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander suspended from its parachute during the lander’s successful arrival at Mars Sunday evening, May 25.
The image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marks the first time ever one spacecraft has photographed another one in the act of landing on Mars.
Meanwhile, scientists pored over initial images from Phoenix, the first ever taken from the surface of Mars’ polar regions. Phoenix returned information that it was in good health after its first night on Mars, and the Phoenix team sent the spacecraft its to-do list for the day.
“We can see cracks in the troughs that make us think the ice is still modifying the surface,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. “We see fresh cracks. Cracks can’t be old. They would fill in.”
Camera pointing for the image from HiRISE used navigational information about Phoenix updated on landing day. The camera team and Phoenix team would not know until the image was sent to Earth whether it had actually caught Phoenix.
“We saw a few other bright spots in the image first, but when we saw the parachute and the lander with the cords connecting them, there was no question,” said HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen, also of the University of Arizona.
“I’m floored. I’m absolutely floored,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. A team analyzing what can be learned from the Phoenix descent through the Martian atmosphere will use the image to reconstruct events.
HiRISE usually points downward. For this image, the pointing was at 62 degrees, nearly two-thirds of the way from straight down to horizontal. To tilt the camera, the whole orbiter must tilt. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was already pointed toward the expected descent path of Phoenix to record radio transmissions from Phoenix.
McEwen said, “We’ve never taken an image at such an oblique angle before.”
Monday’s tasks for Phoenix include checkouts of some instruments and systems, plus additional imaging of the lander’s surroundings.
Only far out kooks think the moon landing was fake. Nobody can keep THAT big of a secret, and it was a matter of national pride to outdo the Soviet's Sputnik, and we did.
Only far out kooks think the moon landing was fake. Nobody can keep THAT big of a secret, and it was a matter of national pride to outdo the Soviet's Sputnik, and we did.
http://www.moondaily.com/reports/One_Hundred_Explosions_On_The_Moon_And_Counting_999.html
One Hundred Explosions On The Moon And Counting
by Dr Tony Phillips for Science at NASA
Huntsville AL (SPX) May 27, 2008
Not so long ago, anyone claiming to see flashes of light on the Moon would be viewed with deep suspicion by professional astronomers. Such reports were filed under “L”...for lunatic. Not anymore. Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times.
“They’re explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the Moon,” explains Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). “A typical blast is about as powerful as a few hundred pounds of TNT and can be photographed easily using a backyard telescope.”
The impactor was a tiny fragment of extinct comet 2003 EH1. Every year in early January, the Earth-Moon system passes through a stream of debris from that comet, producing the well-known Quadrantid meteor shower.
Here on Earth, Quadrantids disintegrate as flashes of light in the atmosphere; on the airless Moon they hit the ground and explode.
“We started our monitoring program in late 2005 after NASA announced plans to return astronauts to the Moon,” says team leader Rob Suggs of the MSFC. If people were going to be walking around up there, “it seemed like a good idea to measure how often the Moon was getting hit.”
“Almost immediately, we detected a flash.”
That first detection-”I’ll never forget it,” he says—came on Nov. 7, 2005, when a piece of Comet Encke about the size of a baseball hit Mare Imbrium. The resulting explosion produced a 7th magnitude flash, too dim for the naked eye but an easy target for the team’s 10-inch telescope.
A common question, says Cooke, is “how can something explode on the Moon? There’s no oxygen up there.”
These explosions don’t require oxygen or combustion. Meteoroids hit the moon with tremendous kinetic energy, traveling 30,000 mph or faster. “At that speed, even a pebble can blast a crater several feet wide. The impact heats up rocks and soil on the lunar surface hot enough to glow like molten lava—hence the flash.”
During meteor showers such as the Quadrantids or Perseids, when the Moon passes through dense streams of cometary debris, the rate of lunar flashes can go as high as one per hour. Impacts subside when the Moon exits the stream, but curiously the rate never goes to zero.
“Even when no meteor shower is active, we still see flashes,” says Cooke.
These “off-shower” impacts come from a vast swarm of natural space junk littering the inner solar system. Bits of stray comet dust and chips off old asteroids pepper the Moon in small but ultimately significant numbers.
Earth gets hit, too, which is why on any given night you can stand under a dark sky and see a few meteors per hour glide overhead-no meteor shower required. Over the course of a year, these random or “sporadic” impacts outnumber impacts from organized meteor showers by a ratio of approximately 2:1.
“That’s an important finding,” says Suggs. “It means there’s no time of year when the Moon is impact-free.”
Fortunately, says Cooke, astronauts are in little danger. “The odds of a direct hit are negligible. If, however, we start building big lunar outposts with lots of surface area, we’ll have to carefully consider these statistics and bear in mind the odds of a structure getting hit.”
Secondary impacts are the greater concern. When meteoroids strike the Moon, debris goes flying in all directions. A single meteoroid produces a spray consisting of thousands of “secondary” particles all traveling at bullet-like velocities.
This could be a problem because, while the odds of a direct hit are low, the odds of a secondary hit may be significantly greater. “Secondary particles smaller than a millimeter could pierce a spacesuit,” notes Cooke.
At present, no one knows how far and wide secondary particles travel. To get a handle on the problem, Cooke, Suggs and colleagues are shooting artificial meteoroids at simulated moon dust and measuring the spray. This work is being done at the Vertical Gun Range at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA: full story.
Meanwhile, back at the observatory, the team has upgraded their original 10-inch (25 cm) telescope to a pair of telescopes, one 14-inch (36 cm) and one 20-inch (51 cm), located at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
They’ve also established a new observing site in Georgia with a 14-inch telescope. Multiple telescopes allow double- and triple-checking of faint flashes and improve the statistical underpinnings of the survey.
“The Moon is still flashing,” says Suggs. Indeed, during the writing of this story, three more impacts were detected.
http://www.moondaily.com/reports/One_Hundred_Explosions_On_The_Moon_And_Counting_999.html
One Hundred Explosions On The Moon And Counting
by Dr Tony Phillips for Science at NASA
Huntsville AL (SPX) May 27, 2008
Not so long ago, anyone claiming to see flashes of light on the Moon would be viewed with deep suspicion by professional astronomers. Such reports were filed under “L”...for lunatic. Not anymore. Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times.
“They’re explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the Moon,” explains Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). “A typical blast is about as powerful as a few hundred pounds of TNT and can be photographed easily using a backyard telescope.”
The impactor was a tiny fragment of extinct comet 2003 EH1. Every year in early January, the Earth-Moon system passes through a stream of debris from that comet, producing the well-known Quadrantid meteor shower.
Here on Earth, Quadrantids disintegrate as flashes of light in the atmosphere; on the airless Moon they hit the ground and explode.
“We started our monitoring program in late 2005 after NASA announced plans to return astronauts to the Moon,” says team leader Rob Suggs of the MSFC. If people were going to be walking around up there, “it seemed like a good idea to measure how often the Moon was getting hit.”
“Almost immediately, we detected a flash.”
That first detection-”I’ll never forget it,” he says—came on Nov. 7, 2005, when a piece of Comet Encke about the size of a baseball hit Mare Imbrium. The resulting explosion produced a 7th magnitude flash, too dim for the naked eye but an easy target for the team’s 10-inch telescope.
A common question, says Cooke, is “how can something explode on the Moon? There’s no oxygen up there.”
These explosions don’t require oxygen or combustion. Meteoroids hit the moon with tremendous kinetic energy, traveling 30,000 mph or faster. “At that speed, even a pebble can blast a crater several feet wide. The impact heats up rocks and soil on the lunar surface hot enough to glow like molten lava—hence the flash.”
During meteor showers such as the Quadrantids or Perseids, when the Moon passes through dense streams of cometary debris, the rate of lunar flashes can go as high as one per hour. Impacts subside when the Moon exits the stream, but curiously the rate never goes to zero.
“Even when no meteor shower is active, we still see flashes,” says Cooke.
These “off-shower” impacts come from a vast swarm of natural space junk littering the inner solar system. Bits of stray comet dust and chips off old asteroids pepper the Moon in small but ultimately significant numbers.
Earth gets hit, too, which is why on any given night you can stand under a dark sky and see a few meteors per hour glide overhead-no meteor shower required. Over the course of a year, these random or “sporadic” impacts outnumber impacts from organized meteor showers by a ratio of approximately 2:1.
“That’s an important finding,” says Suggs. “It means there’s no time of year when the Moon is impact-free.”
Fortunately, says Cooke, astronauts are in little danger. “The odds of a direct hit are negligible. If, however, we start building big lunar outposts with lots of surface area, we’ll have to carefully consider these statistics and bear in mind the odds of a structure getting hit.”
Secondary impacts are the greater concern. When meteoroids strike the Moon, debris goes flying in all directions. A single meteoroid produces a spray consisting of thousands of “secondary” particles all traveling at bullet-like velocities.
This could be a problem because, while the odds of a direct hit are low, the odds of a secondary hit may be significantly greater. “Secondary particles smaller than a millimeter could pierce a spacesuit,” notes Cooke.
At present, no one knows how far and wide secondary particles travel. To get a handle on the problem, Cooke, Suggs and colleagues are shooting artificial meteoroids at simulated moon dust and measuring the spray. This work is being done at the Vertical Gun Range at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA: full story.
Meanwhile, back at the observatory, the team has upgraded their original 10-inch (25 cm) telescope to a pair of telescopes, one 14-inch (36 cm) and one 20-inch (51 cm), located at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
They’ve also established a new observing site in Georgia with a 14-inch telescope. Multiple telescopes allow double- and triple-checking of faint flashes and improve the statistical underpinnings of the survey.
“The Moon is still flashing,” says Suggs. Indeed, during the writing of this story, three more impacts were detected.
Why are there Kryptonian symbols on the Martian surface?
Does the Manhunter have his own Fortress nearby??
A mirror you say? I’ll put you in the “disprove” column.
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