Ten thousandth near-Earth object unearthed in space

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Asteroid 2013 MZ5 as seen in this University of Hawaii picture from the PanSTARR-1 telescope. The Asteroid is in the right of the image, towards the top, moving diagonally left/down. Credit: PS-1/UH
Read more at:Ten thousandth near-Earth object unearthed in space

“Finding 10,000 near-Earth objects is a significant milestone,” said Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington. “But there are at least 10 times that many more to be found before we can be assured we will have found any and all that could impact and do significant harm to the citizens of Earth.” During Johnson’s decade-long tenure, 76 percent of the NEO discoveries have been made.

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that can approach the Earth’s orbital distance to within about 28 million miles (45 million kilometers). They range in size from as small as a few feet to as large as 25 miles (41 kilometers) for the largest near-Earth asteroid, 1036 Ganymed.

Asteroid 2013 MZ5 is approximately 1,000 feet (300 meters) across. Its orbit is well understood and will not approach close enough to Earth to be considered potentially hazardous.

Lots of resources to be developed for the expansion of humanity in space and the reduction of our impact on Earth, in a half century or so, when we will really understand we need it.

To Dream of Space

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell: The Case for Commercial Rockets
PM catches up with SpaceX’s Shotwell to find out about the company’s Grasshopper tests, the way to get to Mars, and how she’d like to see space in person.
Read more: SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell: The Case for Commercial Rockets – Popular Mechanics

What I’d love to have is some sort of inflatable structure that comes out of the top of Dragon—a clear inflatable structure. This is a visionary thing, not an engineering thing, but I can imagine popping out of the Dragon hatch into this clear sphere floating around in space.

YES!

For Hubble, a long healthy life possible, could it be extended further?

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

I always knew you were a Hologram!

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Professor Skenderis has developed a mathematic model which finds striking similarities between flat space-time and negatively curved space-time, with the latter however formulated in a negative number of dimensions, beyond our realm of physical perception.
He comments: “According to holography, at a fundamental level the universe has one less dimension than we perceive in everyday life and is governed by laws similar to electromagnetism. The idea is similar to that of ordinary holograms where a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface, such as in the hologram on a credit card, but now it is the entire Universe that is encoded in such a fashion.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-05-mathematical-links-space-time-theories.html
This sounds cool and provides my SciFi writing persona just oodles of rope.

Going to Mars, but Talk about the negative!

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

WIRED: Why We Can’t Send Humans to Mars Yet (And How We’ll Fix That)
BY ADAM MANN
This is a good article and it has an excellent recap of needed technology, but it is in my opinion reduced in power by a negative tone. It seems biased by a drum beat I have been seeing about how hard, how expensive, how risky…etc, and while I appreciate the challenges one does not open frontiers by dwelling on all the horrid ways one is likely to die. This also seems Blue centric NASA, NASA, NASA. In the end the commercial civilian drive will send us outbound not risk averse bureaucrats.

To The Moon!

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Vision of an international research base on the Moon. Credit: ESA

New report indicates private industry interested in building moon base: by Bob Yirka

Two months ago NASA commissioned Bigelow Aerospace to conduct a survey of the corporate sector to learn about private enterprise plans for space exploration. While the report has not yet been completed, Bigelow president Robert Bigelow and NASA’s head of space operations William Gerstenmaier held a teleconference with reporter’s to discuss findings thus far
Bigelow told those on the line that he and his company have surveyed approximately 20 of the biggest names in aerospace, including some foreign entities. He says the major area of interest for aerospace companies right now is in establishing a permanent presence on the moon. Gerstenmaier responded by suggesting NASA would welcome such a development as it would work well with the agency’s future plans.

A distant Kablaam!

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

This image shows one of many fresh impact craters spotted by the UA-led HiRISE camera, orbiting the Red Planet on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter since 2006. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/UA
Scientists using images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across.

Titan, Cassini still exploring the moons of Saturn

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

To create the first global, topographic map of Saturn’s moon Titan, scientists analyzed data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and a mathematical process called splining. This method effectively uses smooth curved surfaces to “join” the areas between grids of existing topography profiles obtained by Cassini’s radar instrument. In the upper panel of this graphic, gold colors show where radar images have been obtained over almost half of Titan’s surface. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/JHUAPL/Cornell/Weizmann

Planet hunting techniques expand

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Planet hunting techniques expand:http://phys.org/news/2013-05-method-planets-scores-discovery.html

The new method looks for three small effects that occur simultaneously as a planet orbits the star. Einstein’s “beaming” effect causes the star to brighten as it moves toward us, tugged by the planet, and dim as it moves away. The brightening results from photons “piling up” in energy, as well as light getting focused in the direction of the star’s motion due to relativistic effects.
“This is the first time that this aspect of Einstein’s theory of relativity has been used to discover a planet,” said co-author Tsevi Mazeh of Tel Aviv University.
The team also looked for signs that the star was stretched into a football shape by gravitational tides from the orbiting planet. The star would appear brighter when we observe the “football” from the side, due to more visible surface area, and fainter when viewed end-on. The third small effect was due to starlight reflected by the planet itself.