Monday, May 25, 2009
Image above: Space shuttle Atlantis lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA/Carla Thomas
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NASA Managers Praise the STS-125 Mission and Crew
Space shuttle Atlantis landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California at 11:39 a.m. EDT, completing a 13-day journey of approximately 5.3 million miles in space.
During a press conference held at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Ed Weiler said, "Now, and only now can we declare this mission a total success -- the astronauts are safely on the ground."
Weiler called NASA's Hubble Space Telescope the great comeback story. He said the public continues to be captivated by the telescope's images of the universe and he hopes to see Hubble operate into its third decade of service.
NASA Launch Integration Manager Mike Moses agreed that this was a fantastic mission. "It's good to have Atlantis back here on the ground," said Moses. He also said the crew did a great job trying to get the shuttle back to Kennedy, even though the weather wouldn't cooperate.
Mike Leinbach, NASA space shuttle launch director, congratulated the STS-125 crew and also commended the crew members who were ready and standing by in case space shuttle Endeavour was needed for a rescue mission.
He also said NASA still is targeting June 13 for Endeavour's mission to the International Space Station.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
New 'American Idol' Named in Show's Finale
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Deepika Padukone
Daughter of famous badminton player, Prakash Padukone, Deepika was born on January 5, 1986. She took to modeling at an early age, while still in college and was a supermodel before she turned to acting. Her height, slenderness and fresh looking face have gone a long way in making her a supermodel and stand out from the crowd. During her modeling years, Deepika has been the face for almost all the famous Indian brands such as Liril, Dabur Lal powder, Close-Up and Limca.
Artist concept of Kepler. Image credit: NASA Kepler Mission Status Report
NASA's Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for other Earth-like worlds. The mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 6, will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars for telltale signs of planets. Kepler has the unique ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans.
"Now the fun begins," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "We are all really excited to start sorting through the data and discovering the planets."
Scientists and engineers have spent the last two months checking out and calibrating the Kepler spacecraft. Data have been collected to characterize the imaging performance as well as the noise level in the measurement electronics. The scientists have constructed the list of targets for the start of the planet search, and this information has been loaded onto the spacecraft.
"If Kepler got into a staring contest, it would win," said James Fanson, Kepler project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The spacecraft is ready to stare intently at the same stars for several years so that it can precisely measure the slightest changes in their brightness caused by planets." Kepler will hunt for planets by looking for periodic dips in the brightness of stars -- events that occur when orbiting planets cross in front of their stars and partially block the light.
The mission's first finds are expected to be large, gas planets situated close to their stars. Such discoveries could be announced as early as next year.
Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is the home organization of the science principal investigator, and is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. JPL manages the Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations.
Astronauts Set to Make First Hubble Spacewalk
Astronauts Set to Make First Hubble Spacewalk
Thu, 14 May 2009 07:04:16 AM GMT+0500STS-125 astronauts John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel are set to make the first of five Hubble servicing spacewalks Thursday. Scheduled to begin work at 8:16 a.m. EDT, the astronauts will remove Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and replace it with the new Wide Field Camera 3. They will also replace a failed science data processing computer that delayed the launch from last October and install a mechanism for a spacecraft to capture Hubble for de-orbit at the end of its life. Meanwhile, the crew was informed that a focused inspection will not be required for any area of the shuttle. The official decision will be made during tomorrow's Mission Management Team meeting. The crew also was notified that the imagery from scans of the underbelly and scans of the crew cabin did not sufficiently overlap, leaving a row of 16 heat shield tiles in an area of the port side of the shuttle's nose where there isn't sufficient imagery. The crew will be asked to use the arm's end effector camera to go over that area. The flight director has asked the flight activities officer to potentially insert the brief inspection into the crew's timeline on flight day 5. The survey would take 45 minutes, at most. There was no further communication with the crew about a possible conjunction due to debris from the Chinese Fengyun-1C weather satellite. The 10 cm object was to make its closest approach to Atlantis at 7:28 p.m. EDT. It passed without incident.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Galileo's Observation of Sky
| Galileo and his Telescope |
Galileo, The Starry Messenger (1610) |
| About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly see as if nearby. Of this truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons gave credence while others denied them. A few days later the report was confirmed to me in a letter from a noble Frenchman at Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to inquire into the means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did shortly afterwards, my basis being the theory of refraction. First I prepared a tube of lead, at the ends of which I fitted two glass lenses, both plane on one side while on the other side was one spherically convex and the other concave. Then placing my eye near the concave lens I perceived objects satisfactorily large and near, for they appeared three times closer and nine times larger than when see with the naked eye alone. Next I constructed another one, more accurate, which represented objects as enlarged more than sixty times. Finally, sparing neither labor nor expense, I succeeded in constructing for myself so excellent an instrument that objects seen by means of it appeared nearly one thousand times larger and over thirty times closer than when regarded with our natural vision. It would be superfluous to enumerate the number and importance of the advantages of such an instrument at sea as well as on land. But forsaking terrestrial observations, I turned to celestial ones, and first I saw the moon from as near at hand as if it were scarcely two terrestrial radii away. After that I observed often with wondering delight both the planets and the fixed stars, and since I saw these latter to be very crowded, I began to seek (and eventually found) a method by which I might measure their distances apart . . . . Now let us review the observations made during the past two months, once more inviting the attention of all who are eager for true philosophy to the first steps of such important contemplations. Let us speak first of that surface of the moon which faces us, For greater clarity I distinguish two parts of this surface, a lighter and a darker; the lighter part seems to surround and to pervade the whole hemisphere, while the darker part discolors the moon's surface like a kind of cloud, and makes it appear covered with spots. Now those spots which are fairly dark and rather large are plain to everyone and have been seen throughout the ages; these I shall call the "large" or "ancient" spots, distinguishing them from others that are smaller in size but so numerous as to occur all over the lunar surface, and especially the lighter part. The latter spots had never been seen by anyone before me. From observations of these spots repeated many times I have been led to the opinion and conviction that the surface of the moon is not smooth, uniform, and precisely spherical as a great number of philosophers believe it (and the other heavenly bodies) to be, but is uneven, rough, and full of cavities and prominences, being not unlike the face of the earth, relieved by chains of mountains and deep valleys . . . . On the seventh day of January in this present year 1610, at the first hour of night, when I was viewing the heavenly bodies with a telescope, Jupiter presented itself to me; and because I had prepared a very excellent instrument for myself, I perceived (as I had not before, on account of the weakness of my previous instrument) that beside the planet there were three starlets, small indeed, but very bright. Though I believed them to be among the host of fixed stars, they aroused my curiosity somewhat by appearing to lie in an exact straight line parallel to the ecliptic, and by their being more splendid than others of their size. . . . There were two stars on the eastern side and one to the west. The most easterly star and the western one appeared larger than the other. I paid no attention to the distances between them and Jupiter, for at the outset I thought them to be fixed stars, as I have said. But returning to the same investigation on January eight -- led by what, I do not know -- I found a very different arrangement. The three starlets were now all to the west of Jupiter, closer together, and at equal intervals from one another . . . . On the tenth of January . . . there were but two of them, both easterly, the third (as I supposed) being hidden behind Jupiter . . . . There was no way in which such alterations could be attributed to Jupiter's motion, yet being certain that these were still the same stars I had observed . . . my perplexity was now transformed into amazement. I was sure that the apparent changes belonged not to Jupiter but to the observed stars, and I resolved to pursue this investigation with greater care and attention . . . . I had now decided beyond all question that there existed in the heavens three stars wandering about Jupiter as do Venus and Mercury about the sun, and this became plainer than daylight from observations on similar occasions which followed. Nor were there just three such stars; four wanderers complete their revolution about Jupiter . . . . Here we have a fine and elegant argument for quieting the doubts of those who, while accepting with tranquil mind the revolutions of the planets about the sun in the Copernican system, are mightily disturbed to have the moon alone revolve about the earth and accompany it in annual rotation about the sun. Some have believed that this structure of the universe should be rejected as impossible. But now we have not just one planet rotating about another while both run through a greater orbit around the sun; our eyes show us four stars which wander about Jupiter as does the moon around the earth, while all together trace out a grand revolution about the sun in the space of twelve years. |
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