Now this is some pretty cool news. The HMS Beagle Project announced yesterday that NASA has agreed to track the progress of the reconstructed HMS Beagle as she makes her way around the globe. According to a press release issued about the joint venture, this partnership will not only benefit the scientific mission of those on board the ship, but also help students all around the world keep track of the ship's journey;
Using satellite link-ups, students in classrooms and laboratories will be able to follow the voyage, and interact with scientists as they apply the tools and techniques of modern science in Darwin's footsteps ashore and at sea. From space, astronauts will use the ISS's high resolution imaging to photograph the Beagle and fix her position as she sails into plankton blooms and takes seawater samples for chemical and biological analysis. Samples will be analysed aboard by marine biologists and also processed and shipped to labs for DNA sequencing and comparison to libraries of known marine organisms using DNA barcoding and metagenomics.
Very exciting news, indeed!
- Log in to post comments
I heard about that! I want to go...hey, I can do genetics work (will work for my fare?).
Charles Darwin
by
Jonathan Vos Post
Origin of Species. What is the origin?
What shapes the flower to the honey-bees,
what paintbrush stripes the tigerskin?
Origin of Species. What is the origin?
Why such dissimilarities
from masculine to feminine?
What is the nature of Natural Selection?
The 10-year-old boy with a beetle collection
stares at their wings in silent reflection.
His father's a doctor, but his affection
is life; upset by blood and by infection
he leaves the theatre in mid-dissection.
A Naturalist's Voyage. Saw the world in five years
with the moody but brilliant Captain Fitz-Roy.
Horseback through Patagonia, with mountaineers
and ten mules crossing the Andes twice. Joy
among Volcanic Islands, in the atmospheres
of learning, working, growing to man from boy.
The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs,
viewed by moonlight from the H.M.S. Beagle,
the cattleman's domesticated beefs,
the cross-bred wheat in heavy golden sheafs
and the fierce expression of the pinioned eagle
all added evidence to the same beliefs.
The Descent of Man. And what is our descent?
Did we evolve by accident or plan?
What was the source of our development?
He studied the native South American;
the Tierra del Fuegan, equally intent,
studied young Charles Darwin with astonishment.
2050-2400
6 May 1981