NASA Successfully Lands on Mars

Late last night millions of people around the world sat in awe as NASA successfully carried out one of their most complicated and futuristic missions of all time. The program, called Curiosity, is one of the most advanced and most adventurous trips to mars and many believe it might be the mission that proves whether or not life is sustainable on mars.

The mission has been in the spotlight for a while now after NASA announced their incredibly complex 7 minutes of terror landing but initial reports and live telemetry showed that thins went off without a hitch. NASA reports that not only did the landing go well, the entire mission went well as they successfully hit their target, landed on time, and had absolutely no major malfunctions.

The curiosity rover is expected to explore the surface of mars for quite some time which will likely send back plenty of information about mars. While there have been multiple rovers on mars this is the by far the most complicated and the most powerful and advanced one yet. NASA is hopeful that curiosity will find something valuable and impressive but for now they are simply happy to report that the mission is a complete success so far and will likely begin exploration of the surface in the very near future.

NASA Announces Green Airplane Contest Winner-- Source: LATimes

For quite some time now the issue of cleaner aircraft has been a big deal to environmentalists. Currently aircraft including airliners and general aviation planes pollute a substantial amount and despite the money involved there was no real push for any alternative fuels. Fortunately greener technologies were being developed by various people and NASA helped push that drive by creating the first green aviation competition. This week NASA officially crowned the winners of the contest.

According to NASA the requirements for the contest were based entirely on fuel consumption and flight distance. Each aircraft was required to travel 200 miles while only burning a single gallon of fuel per occupant; all of this must be completed within 2 hours as well so the aircraft were required to be somewhat practical. The winning team was the first to successfully build and test a design meeting these requirements and the winning team was a private research team from Pennsylvania.

Thanks to the efficiency and speed of the aircraft the winning team managed to earn the $1.3 million dollar prize from NASA. Obviously there was a substantial amount of money spent to develop the technology but the company behind the design is hopeful that someday they will in fact be able to transfer everything they have learned in this project over to full size aircraft and airliners so that emissions will be reduced and the environmental impact of aircraft will be substantially reduced. All in all this is great news environmentally and technologically.

Winning Songs Played For Space Shuttle Crew

NASA announced one of their most popular contests ever earlier this year and today the contest officially came to a close as the winner was given his prize. The contest was all about writing a song to honor and remember Space Shuttle Endeavor and the once in a lifetime prize has having the winning song played for the Space Shuttle crew just before the mission ended.

The winner of this incredibly contest was Jorge Otero from Spain along with his band; the song is titled “Sunrise Number 1”. Just as the contest called for the song was made to commemorate the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavor. The shuttle crew will be hearing the winning song just before they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, drawing a close to the final mission.

The second place song was also given a very prestigious award today. “Dreams you Give” by Brian Plunkett from Missouri was played as a wakeup song for the Space Shuttle Endeavor crew this morning. Neither of the contest winners have commented on the prize though it is surely something they will never forget; especially given how rare it is for such a prize to be available.

Space Shuttle Endeavor is scheduled to finish the current mission Tuesday afternoon when it lands back home at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There will be one more space shuttle mission before the program ends; it is currently scheduled to take place in the next two months.

Giffords Attends Space Shuttle Launch

Just one week into the New Year Arizona Representative, Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in an attempted assassination. Through the past 5 months she has been undergoing substantial surgeries and treatments to help expedite her recovery and today Giffords showed the best sign of recovery yet.

What Giffords did today is gaining all sorts of press conference not because of the miraculous recovery but simply because she was able to attend Space Shuttle Endeavor’s final launch. Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, was commanding Endeavor as it lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the last time and up until recently Giffords’ doctors were not sure if she would be able to attend.

The original schedule for Endeavor’s final launch would have made it much more difficult for Giffords to attend but after nearly 2 weeks of delays she had absolutely no trouble making to Florida to see the launch in person. Overall doctors say it is a very good sign that Giffords has recovered enough to accomplish such a feat.

Of course recovery is not over for Representative Giffords either. Doctors are planning another incredibly important surgery which will replace a large portion of her skull that was removed. At this time doctors have not yet chosen an exact surgery date though overall most medical analysts agree that Giffords’ long term outlook for recovery looks very good. 5 months ago many doctors and medical experts believed she had little chance of survival but she has proven them wrong today by showing how much she has recovered.

Friday’s Shuttle Launch Looking Good

NASA is planning to launch Space Shuttle Endeavor on its final mission this Friday and currently the outlook is good for the flight. This is scheduled to be the second to last space shuttle launch ever and as a result there is quite a bit of attention surrounding the upcoming launch. Even better news is that Representative Giffords will reportedly be attending the launch.

Giffords’ husband is one of the crewmembers for this final launch of Space Shuttle Endeavor and ever since the tragic shooting doctors were unsure if Giffords would be able to attend to watch her husband leave for space. Fortunately she has been recovering remarkably well and as a result will be attending the launch.

Besides Giffords’ miraculous recovery this shuttle launch is also gaining plenty of attention thanks to the fact that it is brining the NASA Space Shuttle era to an end. Currently there is no alternative launch vehicle so obviously NASA and others are sad to see the project coming to an end.

NASA is also hopeful that the experiments being conducted during this mission will reveal some critical information about the universe and how it works. The flight is scheduled to last 14 days which will be spent primarily at the international space station where they will be conducting various experiments, upgrades, and tests. No word on exactly when the final shuttle mission will occur though it will likely draw even more attention as the space shuttle program officially draws to a close.

NASA Celebrate’s Hubble’s 21st Birthday

Hubble Space Telescope is possibly one of the longest unmanned space vehicles to be used continuously for this long and even after 21 years Hubble is showing no signs of stopping. Ever since Hubble launched 21 years ago it has been providing Earth with astounding photographs and images and even today Hubble is still making incredible discoveries and providing incredible pictures.

The original plan for Hubble was to simply explore deep space by monitoring and relaying images back to Earth but as the years passed Hubble has turned into a fulltime space telescope which is being used to find far away galaxies for future study. This week Hubble even managed to discover what could be the oldest and farthest away galaxy we have ever seen.

The galaxy in question is apparently as much as tens of thousands of light years away. This is an astonishing discovery because previously there were no known objects this far away from our current position. Obviously NASA is still going to continue with studies but unfortunately given the distance of the galaxy it is nearly impossible to find out much about what it contains.

As for other notable discoveries Hubble has numerous. Possibly the biggest contribution however is simply the incredible images provided by the Hubble Space Telescope; textbooks, movies and TV shows are filled with images from Hubble and fortunately thanks to recent upgrades and repairs it looks like Hubble will be able to continue providing us with astounding images for years to come.

What Secrets Lie Within?

A 4.5 billion year old meteorite, known as Yamato 691, was originally discovered in Antarctica back in 1969. Only recently one of its secrets has been revealed with the discovery of a mineral heretofore unknown to the modern world. The International Mineralogical Association approved the name of the new mineral, Wassonite, which honors Professor John T. Wasson of UCLA, well known for his achievements in the area of impact and meteorite research.

The size of the mineral sample defies the imagination as the amount the scientists found was minute; just one-hundredth the width of a human hair, proving that good things do indeed come in small packages. Although Wassonite is formed from only sulfur and titanium, its crystal structure is unique and has never been seen before anywhere. It is hoped this element formation will give scientists insight into how planets were originally formed.

Back in 1969, Yamato 691 was in the good company of other lunar samples from the first Apollo and the Allende and Murchison meteorites.  The source of the ancient space stone can only be speculated but it is possible that it may have originated from an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.

The discovery of the new mineral would have been impossible without NASA’s transmission electron microscope, which is capable of isolating the mineral’s grains and determining their chemical composition and atomic structure.

The good news is that this is a very exciting time for scientists to live learn and teach. Every day, technology brings the realm of science fiction closer and closer to reality. While no one can say which is more frightening, information about how planets formed so many eons ago can only enhance mankind and push him further along the path to enlightenment.