Space
msnbc.com |
Click for video: Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports
on the beta release of the WorldWide Telescope.
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After years of thinking and months of internal testing (and occasional tears), Microsoft Research is releasing its WorldWide Telescope software for the public to download and play with. The program requires more computer firepower than other free online astronomy guides, such as Google Sky or Stellarium. But the payoff for the eyes, ears and mind is high enough to make me think about upgrading my hardware.
The last time I caught upgrade fever, the motivation was to watch online video without the computer going into a stall. This time, I'll need to get more memory for my home computer so I don't miss out on the audio and text as I take a tour of the final frontier.
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Univ. of Mich. |
Click for video: An
artist's conception shows
a dust devil on Mars. Click
on the image to watch
time-lapse imagery of
a dust devil from 2007.
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Images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are providing an advance peek at what the Phoenix Mars Lander will be running up against when it lands near the planet's north pole later this month: The spacecraft will be coming down in the middle of a spring thaw, and based on the pictures released this week, there just might be some Martian mini-tornadoes swirling through the scene.
Two of the twisters, known as dust devils, show up on an April 20 image of Phoenix's projected landing area, taken by MRO's Context Camera. The Martian whirlwinds are similar to the desert mini-twisters often seen on Earth - and have previously been caught on camera by the Mars Pathfinder lander as well as NASA's Spirit rover. You can watch a dust devil spin through Spirit's line of sight in this year-old video clip.
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NASA |
Put your name on NASA's
next lunar probe.
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Now's the time to send your name on a trip to the moon ... or find the bright star in the sky known as the international space station ... or catch a meteor shower ... or tune in to the past and the future of space exploration on your computer.
All of these opportunities are available over the next few days, and any one would serve as a fitting celebration of Space Day.
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NBC Nightly News |
Click for video: NBC's
Tom Costello reports
on the Soyuz landing.
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Three spacefliers are still recuperating from this month's rough ride back down to Earth from the international space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the investigation into the glitches that caused the April 19 shake-up is just getting started. But a multiplayer blame game already has begun - with the potential targets ranging from shoddy Russian workmanship, to saboteurs of the space effort, to the entire female sex. The finger-pointing could have an effect on the way spaceflight is done for years to come.
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Pictures from outer space are among the biggest crowd-pleasers we have to offer here, and we're fortunate to have so many to choose from this week. Fifty-nine views of colliding galaxies were released to mark the 18th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's launch, and we're also presenting a separate set of spectacular images in our "Month in Space Pictures" roundup.
You may be wondering where you can get bigger versions of all these beauties, as well as more information about the science behind them. If so, you've come to the right place.
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Mike Massee / XCOR / Rocket Racing Inc. |
Click for video: The XCOR Rocket Racer fires up for a test flight in November.
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The Rocket Racing League says its rocket-powered race planes will take off for their first public exhibition races on Aug. 1 and 2 at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wis. But that's just the start. The league's founders have also acquired an airframe-manufacturing company, taken on a new partner to build rocket engines and set up a string of subsidiaries.
All this is part of an effort to make high-performance aerial racing into a business on a par with high-performance auto racing.
"It's not just about racing rockets around a racetrack in the sky," said Granger Whitelaw, the league's co-founder and chief executive officer. In his view, it's also about building the future of aviation and aerospace.
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Soviet archives via YurisNight.net |
Click for video: Msnbc.com's
Alan Boyle recounts Yuri Gagarin's
historic 1961 spaceflight.
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Saturday night is prime time for a party, and all the better if it's a party celebrating our past and future in outer space. This year, Saturday night is Yuri's Night, which marks the anniversary of humanity's first ride into space as well as the space shuttle's first flight.
The executive director of Yuri's Night, Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, says the event is particularly aimed at Generation Y, the young adults who will be building the spaceships of the future – and paying most of the bill. So it's a good time to remember why space exploration is worth having a party over.
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Researchers have created a first-ever simulation of three black holes circling and colliding, graphically demonstrating how Einstein’s version of gravity differs from Newton's.
They say their supercomputer cluster can juggle the interactions of as many as 22 black holes – and help other researchers recognize the signatures of such rare phenomena on the cosmic frontier.
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NASA / JPL-Caltech |
The call is going out for high-school students, and even elementary-school kids and college undergraduates, to take part in missions to Saturn and Mars.
If you have your heart set on Saturn, you can enter the "Cassini Scientist for a Day" contest, which is open to U.S. students in grades 5 through 12. And if you're mad about Mars, you can apply to be part of the Mars Exploration Student Data Teams, open to high-school and college students. Just last month, students involved in that program presented their research at the prestigious Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
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Justin Stephens / SciFi Channel |
Six (Tricia Helfer) isn't
your typical TV alien.
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The aliens on the TV show "Battlestar Galactica," which starts its final season tonight on the SciFi Channel, aren’t your usual extraterrestrial baddies: They’re highly evolved robots, originally created by the humans they’re now fighting against. How highly evolved? The robots are way sexier than the humans.
Some aspects of the "Galactica" universe may be as bogus as other science-fiction creations (such as spaceships with artificial gravity that instantly jump from one star system to another). But when it comes to the idea that the first intelligent aliens we meet may actually be machines, astronomers say the show is definitely on the right track.
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