Researchers at the California Institute of Technology, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and other institutions suggest that the eccentricity of Saturn's orbit around the sun may be responsible for the unusually uneven distribution of lakes over the northern and southern polar regions of the planet's largest moon, Titan. A paper describing the theory appears in the Nov. 29 advance online edition of...
Manned space travel, like the manned fighter plane, is a great logic puzzle: Even if you concede that the government should be running this business, the business model makes no sense. The arguments for an all-robot space fleet keep piling up, in low earth orbit and beyond: While the Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses its fraction of NASA's budget to deliver lovable Mars rovers , scientific surprises from...
WISE is a NASA-funded Explorer mission that will provide a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the Universe. Among the objects WISE will study are asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies. WISE is an unmanned satellite carrying an infrared-sensitive telescope that will image the entire sky. * The spacecraft is 2.85 m (9.35 feet) tall,...
This week's Hype To Habit is all about bringing everyone up to speed on space-age technology. LA & NASA: Radical Collaboration for Green Innovation According to a recent announcement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Pasadena institution (and its governing body Caltech) will be partnering with the City of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power to develop new water and...
NASA and Microsoft Corp. have collaborated to create a Web site to allow earthlings to become Martians, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced on Tuesday. By surfing the "Be a Martian" Web site, internet users can have fun while advancing their knowledge of Mars, the JPL said in a press release. The public will be able to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps,...
A partial view of a chart showing blowouts (orange) and leaks (yellow) | Image via LADWP So why have so many water main breaks and leaks in the past few months? If you look at the above chart, it appears that there is nothing unusual other than the attention given to them. Nevertheless, the public pressure is on and rightfully so. The LADWP today released a preliminary investigation report (.pdf),...
Click for large image - This image was created with data collected by the U.S./French satellite during a 10-day period centered on November 1, 2009. It shows a red and white area in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific that is about 10 to 18 centimeters (4 to 7 inches) above normal. Image credit: NASA/JPL Ocean Surface Topography Team From Watts Up With That? From the “WUWT never reports...
From the “WUWT never reports on anything warm department”, JPL reports El Niño looks like it is on schedule to make a Christmas appearance as “The Boy”. The good news is that it will likely help California’s water situation this year. From NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory El Niño is experiencing a late-fall resurgence. Recent sea-level height data [...]
Last chance to lift NASA's spirit (Image: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) From New Scientist: NASA's twin Mars rovers have outlasted their planned three-month missions for so long that they seem indestructible. Nearly six years on, their presence on the Red Planet is taken for granted, as if they are immutable parts of the Martian landscape. But we may soon have to confront a new reality. Spirit, which has...
A new paper, by scientists of Utrecht University, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, in collaboration with colleagues from the Netherlands Royal Meteorological Institute, Delft University of Technology, Bristol University (UK) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (USA) was published in Science recently. The work used the Regional Atmospheric Climate Model to calculate surface processes over...
LOS ANGELES — For NASA's stuck Mars rover, the Spirit may be willing, but the wheels could prove too weak. The space agency on Thursday outlined a rescue plan to try to free the rover Spirit, which has been bogged in a sand trap on the red planet for half a year. The risky operation is expected to last several months. "If it cannot make the great escape from this sand trap, it's likely that...
ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world’s largest user knowledgebase for Oracle® Applications users, announced the organization’s membership has selected its 2010 board of directors. The new board members are John Stouffer, an individual associate member; Floyd M. Teter, system engineer, Technology and Standards Office for Institutional Business...
China's Rocket Pioneer: Left: A Chinese Long-March 4-B rocket blasts off on Nov. 6, 2004. Right: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visits Qian Xuesen on August 2, 2008. Xinhua From Popular Science: Qian Xuesen has died at 98; he helped found Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory before being deported as a suspected Communist. One can only imagine how history might have played out if the United States had not...
The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was a US spacecraft developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched November 1996. It began the United States’s return to Mars after a 10-year absence. It completed its primary mission in January 2001 and was in its third extended mission phase when, on November 2, 2006, the spacecraft failed to [...]
Videos
