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Posted in Technology on Aug 30th, 2004
An embarrassed European Space Agency (ESA) on May 19 retracted an earlier assertion that its small Proba Earth observation satellite took a remarkably clear image of China’s Great Wall as it orbited 600 kilometers overhead…..
The image turns out to have been of a river feeding into the Miyun Reservoir.
The agency thanked professors from California State [...]
Posted in SETI, The Solar System on Aug 30th, 2004
While NASA is busy as heck driving rovers all over Mars trying to find some itsy bitsy evidence of life or history of life, they could be looking in the wrong place.
“Life” seems to thrive more readily in hotter climates than cold. Maybe we should look at Venus a little closer? Also, the [...]
Posted in The Universe on Aug 30th, 2004
A vague headline on CNN grabbed my wife’s attention. Due to their inability to communicate very well, CNN ran the headline “Huge structure dates back 10.8 billion years”. She thought it meant they had found a building or something, which would have been pretty cool. However, I knew that couldn’t be right. The story is [...]
Posted in Technology on Aug 28th, 2004
Enthusiasts on Friday unveiled an effort to establish an annual competition for space-elevator technologies, taking a page from the playbook for other high-tech contests such as the $10 million Ansari X Prize.
OK, the concept sounds simple enough, just build a permanent reusable elevator to space. For some reason I have never bought into this idea. [...]
Posted in Entertainment on Aug 28th, 2004
Excellent concept here:
A newspaper survey of top scientists has chosen “Blade Runner” as the world’s best science fiction.
And the paper did a heck of a job doing it, interviewing, among others. Isaac Asimov, probably my second favorite sci-fi writer.
But Blade Runner’s the best? 2001 - A Space Odyssey a close second? GIVE ME A BREAK!
First [...]
Posted in The Solar System, Travel on Aug 25th, 2004
Posted in Technology on Aug 25th, 2004
While the debate has been raging over Hubble, other telescopes have very quietly filled Hubble’s role. One of note is the Spitzer Space Telescope.
This is even more evidence IMO, that once again repairing Hubble is not worth the money and effort. Technology is advancing rapidly, retrofitting Hubble just doesn’t make sense to me.
Technorati Tags: hubble, [...]
Posted in Technology on Aug 15th, 2004
The Jet Propulsion Labratory is a fabulous place to find current images and multimedia of events occurring now. They have current images from the Rovers and Cassini. From the homepage you can go to the raw images coming in that have not been touched up yet. I just love this site, wondering through space is [...]
Last night I didn’t sleep too well. Nothing terribly unusual about that. However, during my tossing and turning, I got to thinking how comfortable the couch would be. But, since it was kinda cold, and I didn’t have a blanket available right then, I toughed it out on the bed.
Which got me thinking. Why is [...]
Posted in Technology on Aug 10th, 2004
NASA Gives OK to Fix Hubble Telescope
NASA engineers got the thumbs up on Monday to start planning a robotic mission to rescue the Hubble Space Telescope. Late last week, Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which helps it look at black holes and faraway galaxies, broke.
NASA is envisioning using a special robot trip to fix Hubble. [...]