Group items tagged

Bar code

In 1974, at 8:01 a.m., a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum with a bar code printed on it passed over a scanner at the Marsh Supermarket, Troy, Ohio, and became the first product ever logged under the new Universal Product Code (UPC) computerized recognition system. Invented by IBM, and approved for use in 1973, the UPC is a 12-number bar code representing the manufacturer's identity and an assigned product number. Within nanoseconds, this information is read with a laser beam moving at around 10,000 inches per second and transfers it to the store’s database computer for price lookup and inventory management

Toothbrush

Satellite

In 1965, the first commerical telephone conversation over a satellite took place over Early Bird I between America and Europe. It had capacity for 240 voice circuits or one black and white TV channel. Positioned to serve the Atlantic Ocean region, Early Bird provided commercial communications service between North America and Western Europe. It exceeded its 18 months designed in-orbit life by 2 additional years. (It was later renamed as Intelsat I.) By 1 Jul 1969, three Intelsat satellites in geostationary orbit provided full global coverage. Only 19 days after Intelsat III became operational, Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew made their historic first landing on the moon, watched by 500 million people back on Earth

Space station Mir accident

In 1997, the space-station Mir suffered a near-fatal mishap when a Progress ferry being docked via remote control by Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev accidentally rammed into the Spektr science module, putting a hole in the pressure vessel and damaging its solar arrays beyond use. To salvage the station, which consisted of a core, a connecting node, and five science modules, crew members severed electrical and data connections between Spektr and the rest of the station and then sealed off the module. They saved the station but lost about half of their electrical power

Friday, June 20

the two brightest stars of summer, Arcturus and Vega, shine equally high overhead as evening grows late: Arcturus in the southwest, Vega toward the east

Saturday, June 21

Tunguska meteorite

In 1908, at around 7:15 am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball nearly as bright as the Sun was seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there was a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 650 km (400 mi) away. Over Tunguska, a meteorite over 50-m diameter, travelling at over 25 km per second (60,000 mph) penetrated Earth's atmosphere, heated to about 10,000 ºC and detonated 6 to10 km above the ground. The blast released the energy of 10-50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 2,200 sq km of forest leaving no trace of life. The Tunguska rock came out of the Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth's orbit twice a year. The first scientific expedition for which records survive was made by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik in 1927

NASA’s Curiosity rover

does get a chance to skygaze on occasion. And while looking at the Sun on June 3, 2014

the rover’s Mastcam spotted

While normal red supergiants derive their energy from nuclear fusion in their cores, TŻOs are powered by the unusual activity of the absorbed neutron stars in their cores

Thorne-Żytkow objects (TŻOs) are hybrids of red supergiant and neutron stars that superficially resemble normal red supergiants,

They differ, however, in their distinct chemical signatures

a Thorne-Zytkow Object, or TZO

the outward appearance of

red supergiants

This is the first transit of the sun by a planet observed from any planet other than Earth, and also the first imaging of Mercury from Mars

Mercury fills only about one-sixth of one pixel as seen from such great distance, so the darkening does not have a distinct shape, but its position follows Mercury's expected path based on orbital calculations.

The observations were made on June 3, 2014,

First woman in space

In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova returned to Earth after spending nearly three days as the first woman in space. She had been interested in parachute jumping when she was young, and that expertise was one of the reasons she was picked for the cosmonaut program. She became the first person to be recruited without experience as a test pilot. On 16 Jun 1963, Tereshkova was launched into space aboard Vostok 6, and became the first woman to travel in space. Her radio name was "Chaika," Russian for "seagull." Her flight made 48 orbits of Earth. Tereshkova never made a second trip into space. She became an important member of the Communist Party and a representative of the Soviet government.

Eratosthenes

It has 4 large antennas that span 91 meters and it spins

once every 3 seconds

Using GNU Radio to Talk to ISEE-3

2013 UQ4 Catalina is brightening on schedule and should be a binocular object greater than +10th magnitude by the end of June

2013 UQ4 belongs to a class of objects known as damocloids

These are thought to be inactive varieties of comet nuclei

Thursday, June 12

Full Moon

Friday, June 13

NASA's flying saucer-shaped test vehicle is ready

for its first engineering shakeout flight.

The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) will gather data about landing heavy payloads on Mars and other planetary surfaces

theory

Billions of years ago

, a Mars-sized body (sometimes called “Theia”) smashed into our young planet

In the days leading up to some recent moderate-sized earthquakes, instruments nearby have picked up brief low-frequency pulses in Earth’s magnetic field

A few scientists have proposed that such pulses, which seemed to become stronger and more frequent just before the earthquakes occurred, could serve as an early warning sign for impending seismic activity

Now, a team has come up with a model for how these magnetic pulses might be generated, though some critics say they may have a humanmade origin.