NASA
eklemetti | February 17, 2010Sakurajima Volcano in Japan, taken from the ISS on February 17. Image courtesy of Soichi Noguchi.
Eruptions reader Tim Stone sent me a link to the TwitPic feed for Soichi Noguchi, the Japanese astronaut currently on board of the International Space Station. The space traveller got a shot of Sakurajima from space, showing a beautiful plume drifting off - and great detail of the towns and roads near the volcano. Soichi has some other great shots (and comments to go with them), including my old haunt Seattle (with a comment about Ichiro), Mt. Aso - another Japanese volcano, and the Patagonian…
eklemetti | February 16, 2010Not a lot of big news, but a lot of little news:
Soufriere Hills at night during the late January 2010 dome growth episode. Note the hot rock falls from the collapsing dome. Image courtesy of Photovolcanica.
This might not be new, but Dr. Boris Behncke brought the new webcam at the rim of Chaiten in Chile to my attention. You get a birds-eye view of the growing dome from the edge of the caldera - pretty nifty view for a once-in-a-hundred-years sort of event.
The NASA Earth Observatory has posted a close-up of the Soufriere Hills imagethat I posted yesterday, showing the February 11 plume. The…
eklemetti | February 15, 2010A couple bits of news:
The ash plume from the February 11, 2010 eruption of Soufriere Hills taken by theAqua MODIS camera. Image courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory.
Flights have been disrupted in the West Indies since last week with the large dome-collapse eruptions of Soufriere Hills on Montserrat. The 10 km / ~35,000 foot ash plume is apparently lingering in the air at commercial flight levels, meaning delays, cancellations or long detours for many flights in the area. Flights in and out of Dominica, Guadelope, Montserrat, Anguilla, St. Kitts and Nevis have all been effected by the ash…
eklemetti | February 11, 2010Two impressive eruptions going on right now:
Soufriere Hills erupting on February 11, 2010. Image courtesy of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory.
Soufriere Hills just keeps on raising the bar during its new eruptive period. The volcano on Montserrat in the West Indies produced a 15 km / ~45 000 foot ash plume as the summit dome partially collapsed again. It was one of the biggest volcanic events at Soufriere Hills in the last 15 years, with 10-15% of the dome collapsing. One of the regional airlines in the West Indies have had to cancel flights due to the ash that has mainly been heading to…
grrlscientist | February 9, 2010tags: NASA, Endeavour, International Space Station, spaceship launch, STS-130,Kennedy Space Center, space exploration, physics, astronomy, engineering, streaming video
Space shuttle Endeavour, carrying Commander George Zamka, pilot Terry Virts, and Mission Specialists Nicholas Patrick, Bob Behnken, Steve Robinson and Kay Hire, successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center in the early hours of February 8, headed for its 13-day STS-130 mission to the International Space Station.
eklemetti | February 4, 2010News!
Pakistan is home to the world's tallest mud volcano in the region of Balochistan - and its somewhat near the reports of an "eruption" earlier this week.
Guess what? Since Wednesday evening, seismicity at Yellowstone has dropped precipitously. The last batch of earthquakes on February 3rd were also back to deeper levels - 8-9 km depth - compared to the potential shallowing earlier in the week. I'm sure the caldera will keep us on our toes, but as of now, it seems to have settled down a bit.
Over in Pakistan, there is mounting evidence that the recent "volcanic" eruption reported as, in…
catdynamics | February 1, 2010NASA 2011 budget is out, and with it the new 5 year plan.
It is drastic, bit more so than I expected.
Short version: Constellation is dead, Dead, DEAD!
Ares I, Ares V and Orion are shut down. ~ $10 billion thrown away, again, with nothing to show for it, again.
More money,
I'll backfill the details and provide links later:
basically NASA will fund a serious launcher technology development program for future heavy launch, but for now they are taking the Space Cadets up on their offer - human and cargo LEO launch services will be bid out, with first bids already out - so if the technology…
esiegel | January 28, 2010We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started... and know the place for the first time. -T.S. Eliot
Yesterday, President Obama delivered his first State of the Union Address, and talked about a number of things that ranged from inspiring to disappointing. But one thing that didn't make it into the address was the rumor that NASA's Constellation program (including the Ares Rocket designed to launch crews) will lose their government funding.
(Please note: what follows is my opinion, and I take responsibility for it.) If this actually…
razib | January 27, 2010NASA to Review Human Spaceflight:
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is preparing for a major evaluation of its human spaceflight program, even as many who will conduct the survey have yet to be informed of the agency's revised mission.
...
The administration might also enlist the help and financing of other nations to handle parts of space exploration -- perhaps giving the European Space Agency the job of building a lunar lander, for example.
Perhaps China vs. the world? Fodder for near-future science fiction.
eklemetti | January 25, 2010Two quick notes:
A Costa Rican farmer evacuating in early January 2010 after renewed activity of Volcan Turrialba.
Well, it appears that after a quiet night on Friday, the current Yellowstone swarm picked up where it left off. We're now up to 1,200 earthquakes since January 17th, with a pair over M3 today. Of course, people are still uppity about the swarm, especially after the earthquake in Haiti, but really, they're about as connected as worrying about the rainy day in Boston when there was a typhoon in Malaysia. Just to get people on the same page, YVO still says: "The swarm events are…
catdynamics | January 5, 2010NASA Administrator Charles Bolden addressed a packed room filled with anxious astronomers at lunch today.
It was interesting, both in what he said and in what was omitted.
I'll get to actual science at the AAS Real Soon Now , so more politics in the meantime.
Bolden's talk was primarily a scripted speech, and he acknowledged as much.
There were no announcements of new initiatives, mission commitments or statements on funding - evidently the White House has not yet settled on a plan for NASA, in particular how to handle "Exploration" - ie human spaceflight.
The preamble anecdote on HST…
grrlscientist | September 11, 2009tags: music video, Beethoven, moonlight sonata, NASA, space station, Astronaut Ed Lu, streaming video
In this video, astronaut Ed Lu plays Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on board the International Space Station in 2003 (Video courtesy of NASA). I can't help but wonder what Beethoven would have thought about his music being performed in space. Was his music the first to be performed in space?
sciencewoman | September 5, 2009Let's see if I can remember how to do this blogging thing....
Proposal 1: We started out doing it by the book. Picked a good research topic, and then found the appropriate RFP, with a deadline comfortably in the future. We had weekly brainstorming meetings to refine our research objectives and were just beginning to write some text, when something shook us. Suddenly our experimental design didn't seem quite so clever or practical anymore. We spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out new ways to approach the problem, and debating whether we were really going to go after the RFP after all.…
sciencewoman | August 4, 2009A wonderful and alert reader writes:
i know you have lots of astronomer readers, so you probably already know about this, but just in case not: http://wia2009.gsfc.nasa.gov/
this is a conference whose title is "women in astronomy 2009: meeting the challenges of an increasingly diverse workforce."
i expect that there will be a lot of emphasis on astronomy, but also a lot of general discussion about life as a woman in science in general.
The conference is in College Park, MD in October and it sounds fantastic! If any of my legions of astronomer readers attend the conference, will you please…
gregladen | July 15, 2009... Maybe .... Sorta....
We've been burned by this one before. As you will recall, the claim was made that the visuals we all saw of the first steps on the moon by humans were a black and white compressed image sent from Australia, shown on a TV at Mission Control (or someplace) and then shot with an old fashioned TV camera (they only had the "old fashioned" ones back in those days, of course).
But, we were told, high quality color videos were taken at the same time but then lost right away. Then, we were told, they were found.
Then we were told by other people who seemed to know what…
gregladen | May 15, 2009It was May, 1992, and I was in a stupor of post thesis-completion cortisol letdown and alcohol-induced lethargy, and Mark Pagel was talking to me as I slouched in a large comfortable chair in the Peabody Museum's smoking lounge.
"It's obvious what they need to do," he was saying, and I could tell from the look on his face, even in my foggy state of mind, that a morsel of wisdom marinated in humor was about to be served up.
I swear this stuff works great. "Hrmphsmeh," I replied, indicating that he should continue, I was interested.
"They need Ross Perot."
"Hrmph???," I knew Mark (and everyone…
sciencewoman | April 29, 2009Let me now sing the praises of NASA's Earth Observatory, a phenomenal web-based public education resource that is celebrating its 10th birthday today. Every day for the past decade, NASA has been uploading spectacular remote sensing images and astronaut photographs and accompanying them with clearly written, jargon-free but scientifically accurate explanations of the pictured phenomena. The Earth Observatory is one of my favorite web destinations, and I get their weekly email newsletter, and follow them on twitter. (Follow me!)
On numerous occasions, I've used Earth Observatory images to…
cevans | April 21, 2009
In 1976, NASA Administrator James Fletcher noted that "The question, 'What is feasible?' can be finally answered only by future historians." He was talking about the elaborate plans for space habitats the agency had spent a summer noodling over, but the same remark could have been made to the incredulous before the first moon landing, for example -- or before the birth of transoceanic voyages in the 14th and 15th Centuries.
So begins of one of my favorite pieces of utopist NASA detritus, a document called Space Settlements: A Design Study, made over the course of a 10-week workshop at the…
illconsidered | March 2, 2009Over 12,000 people are expected at a student climate conference this weekend and today over one thousand will gather today in Washington DC.
The focus of the DC protest is the local coal fired plant that powers capitol buildings heat and air conditioning. The target is symbolic, and congress has preemptively agreed to switch the plant to natural gas.
But the most compelling reason to pay attention to this:
Jim Hansen at NASA, [...] may be arrested today with us all
We can all expect more of this from the attack dogs, of course. (BTW, when I went to that link, the Google Ad prominently…