Science and Space

space and astronomy articles.

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View your house or your target location in satellite photos

Want to see satellite view of your house or your target location check out Google Maps.You can zoom in, zoom out, or pan in any direction. This is still in beta (many more improvements are coming), but feel free to go ahead and try it

The service is available for the United States only, at least for the time being.

posted by: kyawoo at 11:43 | link | comments (1) |
space science

Retiring Space Shuttle

Even as the space shuttle prepares to resume flight, NASA has begun planning to retire the spacecraft in five years.

The nation’s fleet of three shuttles has been grounded since the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003.

posted by: kyawoo at 07:39 | link | comments |
space shuttle

Latest news on Genesis mission

When the $264 million Genesis mission and its Sun-soaked cargo plummeted to the ground, the result was a "mangled mess" of a spacecraft.

Later inspection of the breached specimen canister buoyed the hopes of project officials that valuable science could be salvaged from the shattered leftovers of sample trays.

200 miles-per-hour crash isn’t going to dislodge solar wind atoms that are buried in the collectors. It’s going to take longer and people are going to have to work harder…but the samples are still there.

Getting to the solar wind samples, however, has not been easy as some of the collector fragments were contaminated by Utah dirt and lakebed salt crystals. Pulverized carbon-carbon heatshield material from Genesis was tossed into the mix too. Heat eking into the reentered canister didn’t help the situation either. Also, silicon wafers onboard the craft turned into powder on impact, with the material was found sprinkled atop all the other samples.

Making the task even more onerous, very few collectors stayed affixed to their assigned array locations on impact. More than a month was spent in Utah bagging, tagging and classifying recovered shards as to size, identify, and found location. All manner of fragment cleaning techniques are being weighed. That includes use of flowing inert gas, hydrogen plasma and ultra-pure water to utilizing cryogenic "snow" and defocused laser energy to remove contaminants.

posted by: kyawoo at 03:37 | link | comments (1) |
unmanned missions