solar tsunami

Solar Tsunami Headed Towards Earth(Aug 03 2010)

The Sun’s surface erupted early Sunday morning, blasting tons of plasma into interplanetary space directly towards the Earth.That wall of ionized atoms should hit the planet this night, say scientists, creating a geomagnetic storm and a spectacular light show and possibly threatening satellites in orbit.

Solar tsunamis were observed before with the SOHO spacecraft, but this is the 1st time they have been observed in 4 different wavelengths corresponding to 4 different temperatures, enabling the team to see how the wave moved through the different layers of the solar atmosphere.

This was possible because STEREO observes images at all 4 wavelengths at a much higher time cadence than SOHO.

space shuttle landing

Clouds Delay Shuttle Landing Until Tuesday

NASA is delaying the homecoming of the Discovery space shuttle until Tuesday after bad weather has spoiled 2 landing attempts on Monday, according to NASA officials.

The landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida has been rescheduled for 7:33 am (EDT) Tuesday morning. NASA has allowed for several backup plans that could possibly push the landing to the west coast if the weather doesn’t cooperate.

NASA would rather land in Florida than California, as the shuttle would have to be ferried back to Florida for processing, which would be both costly and time-consuming.

The 13 day mission has already been extended an extra day so astronauts could use the International Space Station’s communications system to relay heat shield inspection results, as NASA discovered a communications antenna failure on the shuttle shortly after the April 5 launch.

The Discovery crew has enough supplies to last until Wednesday, however, NASA will land on Tuesday even if they have to move the landing to Edwards Air Force Base in California, said flight director Bryan Lunney.

Tuesday’s forecast for Florida shows improvement, but still includes a chance for rain showers within 30 miles of the space center.

Discovery spent 10 days at the space station, a $100 billion project that is due to be completed this year after more than a decade of construction. The shuttle delivered a new ammonia coolant tank and other necessary supplies including a darkroom for Earth observations.

Three shuttle missions remain to ferry supplies to the station before the shuttle fleet is retired. Many shuttle workers for NASA had hopes that the shuttle program might be extended. Those hopes were crushed when President Obama announced his space policy at Kennedy Space Center on April 15.

nasa tv

NASA makes as-yet unseen hit on moon with probes

NASA bulldozed two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed four minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash.

But the big live public splash NASA had hoped for didn't quite happen. Screens got fuzz and no immediate pictures of the crash or the six-mile plume of lunar dust that the mission was all about.

NASA officials said their instruments were working, but the planned live photos were missing.

Nearly half an hour after the crash, NASA was promising pictures updated to its Web site. But so far all NASA had was "images on the way in," said NASA spokesman Grey Hautaluoma.

People who got up before dawn to look for the crash at Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory threw confused looks at each other instead.

Telescope demonstrator Jim Mahon called the celestial show "anticlimactic."

"I was hoping we'd see a flash or a flare," Mahon said.

The first and much bigger crash was supposed to hit with the force of 1.5 tons of TNT into crater Cabeus and create a mini-crater about half the size of an Olympic pool. The second crash was to be about only one-third as strong.

The idea is to confirm the theory that water — a key resource if people are going to go back to the moon — is hidden below the barren moonscape.

The images were to come from the probe itself. The probe is LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and pronounced L-Cross. It had five cameras and four other pieces of equipment to look for ice or any form of water as it dove through the dust storm created by the empty hull. NASA did broadcast live pictures of a moon that was getting closer to LCROSS, but no plume.

Until the glitch with live images, NASA was riding high, reporting no trouble at the Ames Research Center in California, where the mission was being controlled.

"Everything is working so very well," NASA's Victoria Friedensen, a manager in NASA's exploration office, said minutes before the planned one-two smack into the moon's south pole.

More information: http://nikkicatsourasaccident.blogspot.com/2009/10/nasa-tv.html

hubble images

hubble images

NASA To Give Hubble New Life With Atlantis Mission Launching Today.

On Monday, May 11, at 2:01 PM EDT, the space shuttle Atlantis will lift off for the final service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. For close to twenty years, Hubble has dazzled the world with its wonderful images and led to new scientific understandings about our universe. With this service mission, NASA will install updated equipment, including a the new Wide Field Camera 3. The camera promises to return images of the cosmos at an unprecedented level of detail. The STS-125 mission will spend 11 days in orbit as they perform the upgrade and maintenance.

You can watch the launch Monday afternoon live on NASA TV.