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The Future of Women in Chemistry and Science
Posted by Charlene Anderson on 2011/02/28 04:10 CST
Are you concerned about the future of women in science? Well, you should be, since the women working in science today and tomorrow will help shape the world you live in.
What's up in the solar system in March 2011
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/28 02:43 CST
I don't think there's any question what the big event of this month will be: MESSENGER is finally, finally entering orbit at Mercury on March 18 at 00:45 UTC (March 17 at 16:45 for me).
Announcing the winners of the "Are We There Yet?" contest
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/28 12:44 CST
I'm pleased to announce the winners of the Planetary Society's "Are We There Yet?" Stardust contest!
365 Days of Astronomy Podcast: Stardust at Tempel 1
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/28 11:45 CST
Yesterday the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast aired my contribution, Stardust at Tempel 1: The First Second Trip to a Comet.
Posted by A.J.S. Rayl on 2011/02/28 11:00 CST
The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission emerged from its third solar conjunction this month and, as March roars in, is embarking on its 86th month on the Red Planet. While Opportunity roved away from a surface target it had been studying at Santa Maria Crater and on to an intriguing blue boulder, JPL engineers on Earth stepped up their efforts to recover Spirit, which has been silent, ostensibly in hibernation mode, since late March, nearly one year ago.
Posted by Charlene Anderson on 2011/02/25 03:25 CST
A Planetary Society trifecta -- that's what Neil Tyson calls this episode of his StarTalk radio show broadcast this week. His guests include the Society's Vice President, Heidi Hammel, and its Executive Director, Bill Nye, (along with the Society's friend, Steve Squyres, Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers).
Stardust update: last image taken today
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/24 05:50 CST
According to the Stardust website, the spacecraft has continued taking navigational camera images of Tempel 1 since last Monday's flyby. But "This will end with a Navcam calibration that will take place [today]. This will be the end of the official Tempel 1 encounter activities. Planning is under way for the decommissioning of the spacecraft."
New website full of color versions of Opportunity rover's microscopic images
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/24 04:47 CST
There is a fascinating new page on the Mars Exploration Rover Pancam science team's website, full of color versions of Opportunity's microscopic images. The Microscopic Imager is one of the tools on the end of the robotic arm, and serves as a hand lens for the robot geologist to explore the rocks and sands of Mars in great detail.
A dog-bone-shaped asteroid's two moons: Kleopatra, Cleoselene, and Alexhelios
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/23 12:47 CST
Asteroid (216) Kleopatra has been interesting to astronomers for a long time because its brightness is highly variable, but it seems to get more interesting every time somebody looks at it with a new instrument. This week a paper was published in Icarus revealed that it's 30 to 50% empty space.
Rosetta Update: 98% of rendezvous burn achieved, more detail on the safing event
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/22 03:17 CST
ESA's Rosetta comet chaser has achieved 98% of the velocity change that it needed to accomplish in order to set itself up for the final leg of its cruise to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The original plan was to perform this velocity change in a series of five rocket burns at the end of January, but the plans were interrupted by a scary event: the spacecraft went into safe mode during the second burn, on January 18.
The Solar System from the Inside Out - and the Outside In
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/18 02:27 CST
Space probes grant us perspective, the ability to see our place within the vastness of the solar system. But opportunities to see all of the solar system's planets in one observation are rare. In fact, there's only been one opportunity on one mission to see the whole solar system at once, until now.
Sounds of Stardust, and a cool morphed Tempel 1 video
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/18 01:26 CST
Here's two more items from Tuesday's flyby of comet Tempel 1 by the Stardust spacecraft to add to my previous roundup of Tempel 1 data. The first represents data from a dust counting instrument, portrayed as sound, and the second is a terrific morph animation of the flyby produced by Daniel Macháček.
Conjunction season is over, and Opportunity is back to work
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/17 04:04 CST
It's always a relief when conjunction passes. Opportunity has gotten right back to work, sending down data acquired just before the moratorium, which spanned from January 27 to February 11.
Some early scientific impressions of Stardust's Tempel 1 flyby
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/16 03:20 CST
I've spent a day with the Stardust images from Tempel 1, and had a chat with co-investigator Jessica Sunshine, so here are a bunch of images with some preliminary scientific commentary.
All Stardust data is now on Earth
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/15 11:21 CST
A status update from Stardust posted this afternoon contained welcome news.
Highlights from today's Stardust Tempel 1 press briefing
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/15 03:10 CST
It was a very happy science team at this afternoon's press briefing following the Stardust encounter with Tempel 1.
Quick-and-dirty animation of Stardust Tempel 1 images through closest approach
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/15 11:05 CST
Here's a quick-and-dirty animated GIF of the 39 images of Tempel 1 that have arrived on Earth so far from Stardust. I've put a big watermark on this animation because it's not a final product.
High-res images of Tempel 1 from Stardust now arriving
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/15 10:09 CST
I really didn't expect these images to look so good! I'd prepared myself for blurry images and a lot of squinting to try to match up features in pictures between Deep Impact and Stardust views of Tempel 1, but in fact the resemblance is obvious and you can clearly see that they successfully imaged the area in which Deep Impact's Impactor craft collided with the comet.
First image from Stardust! ...but a delay for the close-approach ones
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/15 02:25 CST
Here it is, the first image from Stardust of Tempel 1 during the close-approach phase!
Stardust update: Things seem to have gone well with Tempel 1 flyby
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/14 10:19 CST
Just a brief update on the Stardust flyby of Tempel 1, which happened about half an hour ago: the spacecraft seems to have executed the flyby as commanded and has 72 science images on board.
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