en-us http://planetary.org/blog/ A guide to interesting stuff going on in space science, space exploration, and space advocacy. 15 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 07:41:13 GMT Fri, 05 Dec 2008 07:41:13 GMT http://www.planetary.org/_img/rss/logo.jpg 127 111 http://planetary.org/blog/ blog@planetary.org (Emily Ladakawalla) Copyright © 2008 by The Planetary Society. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001763/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001763/ Amid the lengthy discussion of cost overruns and schedule delays on Mars Science Laboratory came a surprise announcement that is as important as it is welcome: NASA and ESA administrators have agreed in principle to cooperate on future Mars exploration, rather than continue developing separate Mars programs. I wanted to go back and transcribe exactly what Ed Weiler said about this, because it's important. But first, I want to point you to a .... Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:06:51 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001762/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001762/ NASA just announced (in their third press release today) that the Hubble Servicing Mission is now rescheduled for May 12, 2009. (See this post for the history of the delay of this mission.) The release states that "The final servicing mission to Hubble was delayed in September when a data handling unit on the telescope failed. Since then, engineers have been working to prepare a spare for flight. They expect to be able to ship the spare, known .... Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:02:27 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001761/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001761/ It was a lengthy press briefing today, with the four bigwigs on the press panel being exceptionally long-winded. Here's the short version, which I'll follow up with more detail.Unanticipated problems, principally with the motors and gearboxes (collectively called "actuators") needed to drive every moving part of the rover, have resulted in there simply not being enough time to prepare MSL for the planned October 2009 launch period.In .... Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:07:20 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001760/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001760/ Mars Science Laboratory will not be ready for launch in October 2009 as planned. And since Mars launches are limited by the vagaries of celestial mechanics to launch periods spaced about two years apart, that means it cannot launch until the end of 2011. There will be no American launch to Mars in the 2009 opportunity; Russia is still set on the 2009 opportunity for the launch of Phobos-Grunt and Yinghuo-1. A press briefing is happening now; .... Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:01:17 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001759/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001759/ This sounds really good right about now... Click to enlarge >Space BeerOn December 2, the Sapporo brewing company unveiled "Space Barley," a beer brewed from barley descended from barley grains that spent five months aboard the International Space Station in 2006. Sapporo only brewed 100 liters of the space beer. As of the date of these images, Sapporo had no plans to sell the beer, and had announced no specific plans for distribution. Credit: .... Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:17:37 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001758/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001758/ After Phoenix fell silent on November 2, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that they'd carry on listening for faint transmissions from the spacecraft, using the two NASA orbiters, until the period of Mars conjunction began. Well, conjunction has begun, and JPL announced this morning that "The last attempt to listen for a signal from Phoenix was when [Mars] Odyssey passed overhead at 3:49 p.m. PST Saturday, Nov. 29 (4:26 p.m. local Mars .... Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:05:10 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001757/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001757/ Shortly after Chandrayaan-1 launched I received an email from a skeptical Indian saying "how can we really be sure that the spacecraft is as successful as the government is telling us it is?" I don't believe that the question was from the point of view of the nutty conspiracy theorists that tend to haunt public discussion of space exploration (e.g. the "we didn't land on the Moon" people) -- it seemed more like the healthy sort of doubt any .... Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:56:26 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001756/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001756/ Varuna is one of the few formally named Kuiper belt objects because it's relatively large -- in fact, for a time, it was the second largest known object in the Kuiper belt, after Pluto. It's always difficult to know exactly how big such a distant object is, though. You can estimate the size by making an assumption about the albedo, which is a measurement of how much of the Sun's light the body reflects. But albedos of objects in the solar .... Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:36:44 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001755/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001755/ Here's our monthly checkup with the Dawn mission, contributed by Marc Rayman, the mission's Project System Engineer. Thanks Marc! --ESL by Dr. Marc D. Rayman Dear Indawnviduals, The Dawn spacecraft is healthy and on course for its flyby of Mars early next year. The planet's gravity will help boost the probe on its way to rendezvous with Vesta. While the spacecraft has its sights set on the asteroid belt (via Mars), its path is now bringing it .... Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:12:17 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001754/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001754/ In my most recent post on Chandrayaan-1 I mentioned the first results from the RADOM experiment, provided to the Indian mission by the nation of Bulgaria. I also mentioned that "I don't know anything about Bulgaria's previous contributions to planetary exploration," and two of you readers took the hint to send me further information about exactly that topic. Thanks to their help, I can now tell you that Bulgaria -- a country with a population .... Sat, 29 Nov 2008 22:02:31 GMT