en-us http://planetary.org/blog/ A guide to interesting stuff going on in space science, space exploration, and space advocacy. 15 Sun, 11 May 2008 22:42:31 GMT Sun, 11 May 2008 22:42:31 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/00001421/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001421/ I was surprised and pleased by the number of people who wrote to me to help me out with the Kaguya videos. As many people explained to me, an .ASX file is just a shortcut (written in XML) to the actual files in Windows Media .WMV format. So all I needed to do is right click on the link to the .ASX file, save target as to download it as text, look in there to find the URLs to the files, and then plug those URLs into a piece of software that can .... Sat, 10 May 2008 21:05:43 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001420/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001420/ EDIT: I've got my answer; see the next post for links to the videos, and thanks to all who replied!The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) has just created in English a website they've had in Japanese for a month or so, streaming some higher-resolution versions of the full Earthrise and Earthset video from Kaguya. They are closer to high-definition resolution than any previous release, but still not there yet. Unfortunately, they don't .... Fri, 09 May 2008 19:55:51 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001419/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001419/ I apologize for the long hiatus in this White Rock series, but I hope this entry will be worth the wait. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is the latest and greatest of Earth's orbital emissaries to Mars. It's much bigger than either Mars Global Surveyor or Mars Odyssey and has a correspondingly huge radio dish, which it needs in order to return about a couple of Terabits of data every month. Actually, the dish is so large and the communications .... Thu, 08 May 2008 22:48:46 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001418/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001418/ The latest Carnival of Space is up over at Space Cynics. Check it out! .... Thu, 08 May 2008 22:47:59 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001417/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001417/ What's left to do in assembling the Space Station Yesterday Nancy Atkinson over at Universe Today wrote a very helpful post describing the final eleven Space Shuttle launches, ten of which are to complete the assembly of the International Space Station. (The eleventh is to perform the final Hubble servicing mission.) That post spurred me to run through a little project I've been wanting to do for some time, combing the NASA archives for .... Wed, 07 May 2008 23:25:38 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001416/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001416/ Spring has come to the north pole of Mars, and with the long-awaited arrival of the Sun to light things up the Mars orbiters have been busy capturing images of the Phoenix landing site. They have two goals: to wallpaper the landing ellipse with high-resolution images, so as to be prepared to find Phoenix and identify nearby landscape features after it lands; and to monitor the weather. Any place that is dark half the year and sunlit half the .... Tue, 06 May 2008 22:02:07 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001415/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001415/ Here's what's happening on active planetary missions this week. At Saturn, Cassini is at apoapsis today, beginning rev 67 (which will actually be its 68th complete orbit of Saturn). Like revs 63-66, rev 67 will a 9.6-day, steeply inclined orbit around Saturn. It is currently on the north (unlit) side of the rings, and will cross to the lit side at 00:05 UTC on Saturday, May 10, reaching periapsis two hours later. It's headed for a targeted .... Mon, 05 May 2008 19:46:52 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001414/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001414/ We're doing it again -- helping to gather people's names for flight to another place in the solar system. This time it's to a nearby destination, the Moon, aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is scheduled to launch this fall. Go here to read about it and add your name! You have until June 27, 2008 to get on the spacecraft. If you're a member of The Planetary Society, your name will automatically be flown on the orbiter, though I .... Fri, 02 May 2008 23:46:28 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001413/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001413/ Another item from the "just plain cool" department: here is a website with a neat little application that shows the motions of bodies in our solar system: the Solar System Visualizer. You can just watch it spin and spin and see how fast we go around the sun compared to the outer planets, then zoom in and see how Mercury outpaces us. You can zoom to individual planets to see solar systems in miniature, and get a sense of how truly weird it is .... Fri, 02 May 2008 22:26:43 GMT http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001412/ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001412/ I've enthused before about websites that make it easy to access the archives of images from Mars missions, present and past. My favorite of these, from an ease-of-use standpoint, is the Mars Express HRSCview site; and a close second is ASU's global maps of Mars website, which collects under one roof all the data from Viking's cameras, Mars Global Surveyor's cameras and laser altimeter, Mars Odyssey's THEMIS imaging spectrometer, and Mars .... Fri, 02 May 2008 00:11:04 GMT