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Mars Base

Expedition 32 Lands Safely in Kazakhstan - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-32-lands-safely-in-kazakhstan

scibyte63 Soyuz Expedition32

shared by Mars Base on 17 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • landed
  • 02:54 UTC on Monday, September 17 (8:53 a.m. Kazakhstan time Monday, 10:53 p.m. EDT Sunday, September 16
  • Expedition 33 is now underway as Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineers Aki Hoshide and Yuri Malenchenko continue their stay until Nov. 12
Mars Base

Touchdown! Soyuz Spacecraft Lands Safely with Russian-US Crew | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/fely-with-russian-us-crew.html

scibyte63 Soyuz

shared by Mars Base on 17 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American spaceflyer has landed safely back on Earth
  • 16 September 2012
  • Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka, Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • local time was early Monday morning.
  • Soyuz crew was in good health and spirits
  • He and his Russian crewmates signed their Soyuz spacecraft, which is destined for a Russian museum
  • 125-day spaceflight began in mid-May and included three spacewalks and several robotic cargo ship arrivals.
  • . The three spaceflyers were originally slated to blast off in March, but a pressure test incident cracked their first Soyuz capsule, causing a six-week delay while another spacecraft was readied.
  • launched on May 14 and arrived at the $100 billion orbiting lab May 17. Just eight days later, SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule docked with the station on a historic demonstration mission, becoming the first private vehicle ever to do so.
  • on Sept. 5, crewmates Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide performed an extra spacewalk — the third for the mission — to replace a vital power unit on the station's backbone-like truss. Using improvised tools such as spare parts and a toothbrush
  • a stuck bolt that had delayed the fix a week earlier
  • Expedition 33
  • will have the station to themselves until mid-October, when three more astronauts will float through the hatch and bring the expedition up to its full complement of six crewmembers.
Mars Base

Say Ahhh to Mars - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...say-ahhh-to-mars

scibyte63 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 14 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • new panorama from Mars
  • Zoom in and you can see actual rocks
  • a look of things to come. In black-and-white image from Curiosity, there appear to be big dunes to cross to get to the foothills of Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Curiosity has nearly finished robotic arm tests. Once complete, the rover will be able to touch and examine its first Mars rock
  • about to drive some more and try to find the right rock to begin doing contact science with the arm
Mars Base

Strange Mystery Spheres on Mars Baffle Scientists | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/range-photo-martian-rocks.html

scibyte63 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 15 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • A strange picture of odd, spherical rock formations on Mars from NASA's Opportunity rover has scientists scratching their heads over what exactly they're looking at.
  • Mars photo by Opportunity shows a close-up of a rock outcrop
  • covered in blister-like bumps that mission scientists can't yet explain
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • At first
  • the formations appear similar to so-called Martian "blueberries" — iron-rich spherical formations first seen by Opportunity in 2004 — but they actually differ in several key ways, scientist said
  • This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission
  • Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different
  • never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."
  • The new photo by Opportunity is actually a mosaic of four images taken by a microscope-like imager on its robotic arm
  • Opportunity is currently exploring a location known as Cape York along the western rim of a giant Martian crater called Endeavour
  • Despite its advanced age, Opportunity is still pumping out new discoveries after more than eight years on Mars.
  • first spotted Martian blueberries soon after its landing in 2004
  • blueberries are actually concretions created by minerals in water that settled into sedimentary rock.
  • Opportunity has seen Martian blueberries at many of its science site
  • bumpy, spherical formations on the Kirkwood rock represent something new
  • . In Opportunity's new photo, many of the strange features are broken, revealing odd concentric circles inside
  • seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle
  • different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution
  • science team have several theories, but none that truly stand out as the best explanation
  • Kirkwood outcrop is just one science pit stop at Cape York for Opportunity. Mission scientists have already picked out another interesting rock outcrop nearby, a pale patch that may contain tantalizing clay minerals, for possibly study after Opportunity completes its current analysis.
  • spring equinox is approaching on Mars, ensuring increasing levels of sunshine for Opportunity's solar arrays
  • "Energy production levels are comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago
Mars Base

'Cool pavement' technologies studied to address hot urban surfaces - 0 views

phys.org/...nt-technologies-hot-urban.html

scibyte63 pavement

shared by Mars Base on 14 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • n a typical city, pavements account for 35 to 50 percent of surface area,
  • half is comprised of streets and about 40 percent of exposed parking lots
  • Most of these
  • ...36 more annotations...
  • are constructed with dark materials
  • "Because dark pavements absorb almost all of the sun's energy, the pavement surface heats up, which in turn also warms the local air
  • Berkeley Lab scientists have been studying "cool pavement" technologies
  • Like cool roofs, which are lighter-colored roofs that keep the air both inside and outside the building cooler by reflecting more of the sun's energy
  • pavements reflect as much as 30 to 50 percent of the sun's energy, compared to only 5 percent for new asphalt (and 10 to 20 percent for aged asphalt)
  • Heat Island Group has converted a portion of a new temporary parking lot at Berkeley Lab into a cool pavement exhibit that will also allow them to evaluate the products over time
  • provides an opportunity to feature cool pavement coatings that are applied directly to existing paved surfaces
  • the exhibit features six coatings donated by two manufacturers
  • Emerald Cities Cool Pavement and StreetBond.
  • Cool pavements can either be made from traditional pavement materials that are lighter in color
  • such as cement concrete
  • or can consist of cool-colored coatings or surface treatments for asphalt surfaces
  • An ideal design goal would be a pavement with solar reflectance of at least 35 percent
  • Sealcoats are a common maintenance practice for parking lots and schoolyards since the asphalt pavement structure degrades over tim
  • asphalt
  • can be used in lieu of a sealcoat, and are a good strategy for cities looking to introduce cool pavement technologies
  • Cool pavements come in different hues, including green, blue and yellow, and their solar reflectance value depends on both color and material
  • some colors that look dark but are actually more reflective in the near infrared spectrum
  • scientists will be collecting data to see how the coatings fare over time
  • At some point they will reach an equilibrium at which the solar reflectance won't degrade much anymore
  • very interested to see what happens when it rains, which may help the coatings self-clean and restore higher reflectance
  • "Across an entire city, small changes in air temperature could be a huge benefit as it can slow the formation of smog
  • Just a couple of degrees can also reduce peak power demand, by reducing the energy load from air-conditioning
  • Chicago has reported energy savings from using solar-reflective pavements in its alleys
  • more reflective parking lots could allow building owners and cities to save on energy needed to illuminate streets and parking lots
  • field studies are needed to verify and quantify the results.
  • many of these benefits have been confirmed by scientific models
  • leading a study
  • will closely monitor the solar reflectance values and temperatures of 20 x 24 square-foot pavement sections of six different materials on a residential street on the UC Davis campu
  • scientists hope to better understand how changes in solar reflectance over time affect heat transfer throughout the pavement structure
  • may assist policymakers and pavement professionals in making informed decisions regarding cool pavement requirements for building codes and project specifications
  • may also help sell cool pavement coatings since they tend to be more expensive than traditional sealants
  • hurdle is that the benefits of cool pavements are more for the public rather than the building owner
  • benefits are less immediately tangible than for cool roofs
  • initial cost premium can potentially be offset over the lifespan of the product with increased durability and less need for ongoing maintenance
  • schoolyards are a particular target because of the negative health implications of hot blacktops for schoolchildren
Mars Base

Water Boils Sans Bubbles - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...Water_boils_sans_bubbles

scibyte63 BoilingWater

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • researchers covered a steel ball with Glaco Mirror Coat, a water-hating material, along with some other water-repelling chemical
  • turned the sphere’s exterior into a nanoscale mountain range peppered with deep valleys
  • Heating the sphere to 400º Celsius and dropping it in room-temperature water spurred boiling, but no furious bubbles
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • water near the sphere became vapor that got trapped in the valleys on the sphere’s surface. Eventually this sheet of vapor slipped off and a new one formed
  • Treating the surface of another sphere to make it water-loving had the opposite effect, locking the water in the violent bubbling phase
  • Manipulating this phase-chemistry could lead to tricks for reducing drag on ships or preventing forceful bubbling explosions in labs or kitchens
Mars Base

Mars Clays May Have Volcanic Source - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...clays_may_have_volcanic_source

scibyte63 mars

shared by Mars Base on 10 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Ancient clay deposits on Mars may not indicate that the Red Planet was originally a warm, wet place, as scientists have thought. Instead of needing liquid water to form, many of Mars’ 4-billion-year-old clays could have originated from cooling lava, researchers report
  • last year, some researchers suggested that underground hydrothermal activity provided the water that is necessary to form the clays
  • “We’re not saying all clays on Mars formed by this process,” says coauthor Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary geologist at Caltech. However, “if most clays formed by a magmatic process, it says maybe water wasn’t so available on early Mars.”
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • ow there’s another suggestion: Crystallizing lava may have contained tiny pockets where water could react with other chemicals to make small amounts of iron- and magnesium-rich clay. No additional water flowing on the surface or belowground would be needed. So early Mars could have been a largely cold, dry world
  • not saying all clays on Mars formed by this process
  • “if most clays formed by a magmatic process, it says maybe water wasn’t so available on early Mars
  • researchers investigated the cooling-lava scenario because some Martian clays don’t appear to fit with previous explanations
  • Some Martian meteorites contain clay minerals with hydrogen isotope compositions characteristic of water coming from Mars’ mantle and carried in lava — not from the atmosphere or surface — suggesting water-rich lava has produced some Martian clay.
  • The researchers also looked at clay deposits from French Polynesia’s Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean that formed from cooling lava
  • This clay reflects the same wavelengths of infrared light as Martian deposits
  • suggesting that both have similar mineralogical properties and thus probably formed in the same way.
  • team says cooling lava can account for the most geographically abundant Noachian clay minerals
  • that doesn’t mean water didn’t flow on the surface during brief episodes
  • evidenced by the planet’s ancient river valleys, says coauthor
  • Ehlmann says scientists need to find a spot on Mars where Noachian-aged clay is found so that all three proposed clay-forming mechanisms can be tested
  • where NASA’s Curiosity landed is not a good test location because the clays there are slightly younger and are clearly part of a sedimentary
  • Mars Base on 10 Sep 12
     
    Highlight
Mars Base

Space Shuttle Endeavour Taking Cross-Country Flight for Display | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ur-museum-flight-schedule.html

scibyte62 scibyte63 scibyte67 shuttle

shared by Mars Base on 07 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • The trip is set to begin on Sept. 17, weather permitting, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and culminate at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Sept. 20
  • The carrier aircraft will arrive at Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 11
  • Three days later, the orbiter will be rolled out to meet the SCA at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), where Endeavour returned to Earth for its 25th and final time in the early morning hours of June 1, 2011
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Endeavour will be hoisted off the ground by crane
  • then be lowered onto the SCA's back and secured for flight
  • Coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration, the SCA will perform low flyovers — as low as 1,500 feet (457 meters) — as it passes NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and the agency's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.
  • low passes over areas around Houston, Clear Lake and Galveston in Texas before making a landing at Ellington Field near NASA's Johnson Space Center.
  • Weather permitting, the SCA and Endeavour will remain at Ellington for the remainder of the day and all day on Sept. 18, providing Johnson employees and the Houston public an ample opportunity to see the shuttle.
  • take to the air again at sunrise on Sept. 19, and after a brief refueling stop at Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso, Texas
  • low-level flyovers of White Sands Test Facility near Las Cruces, N.M., and Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California
  • morning of Sept. 20
  • Finally on the morning of Sept. 20, Endeavour, still on top of the SCA, will take off one last time, departing Dryden to fly over Northern California, passing above NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field and various landmarks in multiple cities, including San Francisco and Sacramento, the state's capitol
  • The carrier aircraft will fly near
  • , the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena before performing flyovers over many Los Angeles landmarks on its way to a landing at LAX
  • According to NASA, some of the flyovers or layovers that are planned could be delayed or cancelled as a result
  • flies over seven states and eight of NASA's facilities
Mars Base

Snow on Mars: 'Dry Ice' Snowflakes Discovered by NASA Probe | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-carbon-dioxide-discovery.html

scibyte63 mars

shared by Mars Base on 14 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • spacecraft orbiting Mars has detected carbon dioxide snow falling on the Red Planet
  • the only body in the solar system known to
  • weather phenomenon
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • snow on Mars fell from clouds around the planet's south pole during the Martian winter spanning 2006 and 2007
  • The Martian south pole hosts a frozen carbon dioxide — or "dry ice" — cap year-round
  • new discovery may help explain how it formed and persists, researchers
  • the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds
  • "We firmly establish the clouds are composed of carbon dioxide — flakes of Martian air — and they are thick enough to result in snowfall accumulation at the surface.
  • find means Mars hosts two different kinds of snowfall
  • In 2008, NASA's Phoenix lander observed water-ice snow
  • near the Red Planet's north pole
  • studied data gathered by MRO's Mars Climate Sounder instrument during the Red Planet's southern winter in 2006-2007
  • instrument measures brightness in nine different wavelengths of visible and infrared light, allowing scientists to learn key characteristics of the particles and gases in the Martian atmosphere, such as their sizes and concentrations.
  • one behemoth 300 miles (500 kilometers) wide
  • One line of evidence for snow is that the carbon-dioxide ice particles in the clouds are large enough to fall to the ground during the lifespan of the clouds
  • Another comes from observations when the instrument is pointed toward the horizon
  • "The infrared spectra signature of the clouds viewed from this angle is clearly carbon-dioxide ice particles, and they extend to the surface
  • "The finding of snowfall could mean that the type of deposition — snow or frost — is somehow linked to the year-to-year preservation of the residual ca
  • Dry ice requires temperatures of about minus 193 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 125 Celsius) to fall, reinforcing just how cold the Martian surface is.
  • Astronomers still aren't entirely sure how the dry ice sustaining Mars' south polar cap — the only place where frozen carbon dioxide exists year-round on the planet's surface — is deposited. It could come from snowfall, or the stuff may freeze out of the air at ground level, researchers said.
Mars Base

Santorini Bulges as Magma Balloons Underneath - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...lava-santorini-volcano-science

scibyte63 Santorini

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Santorini locals began to suspect last year that something was afoot with the volcano under their Greek island group
  • Wine glasses occasionally vibrated and clinked in cafes, suggesting tiny tremors, and tour guides smelled strange gasses.
  • satellite radar technology has revealed the source of the symptoms. A rush of molten rock swelled the magma chamber under the volcano by some 13 to 26 million cubic yards (10 to 20 million cubic meters)—about 15 times the volume of London's Olympic Stadium—between January 2011 and April 2012
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • even forced parts of the island's surface to rise upward and outward by 3 to 5.5 inches (8 to 14 centimeters).
  • volcano has been quiet for 60 years
  • recent events don't indicate an imminent eruption
  • the earthquake activity and the rate of bulging have both slowed right down in the last few months, it doesn't look as though the volcano is about to start to erupt, and it is quite likely that it could remain quiet for another few years or decades.
  • don't know enough about the lifecycle of large volcanoes in between eruptions to be certain
  • beginning in the January 2011 data, more than a thousand small quakes, most of them imperceptible
  • confirmed a subtle rise in Santorini's surface level with satellite radar images and GPS receivers
  • Catastrophic eruptions on Santorini, which produce mostly pumice rather than lava, appear to occur here about 20,000 years apart
  • The last one, in 1950, oozed enough lava to cover a few tennis courts
  • Despite its relative quiet, Santorini is an ideal location to learn more about processes like the magma chamber's rapid inflation
  • While satellite evidence of swelling magma chambers has rarely been available for an active volcano, the processes the data represent may not be all that unusual
  • some large volcanoes like Santorini and Yellowstone spend hundreds or thousands of years in a state of what you'd call dormancy
  • they'll often have these little restless patches
  • These types of phenomena are likely to be common, but you need the right instruments and technology to detect what are usually rather small changes in behavior."
  • we aren't any closer to knowing if, or when, the next lava eruption might happen
  • likening the recent swelling to someone blowing a big breath into an invisible balloon.
  • don't know how small or big the balloon is, and we don't know whether just one more breath will be enough for it to pop or not
Mars Base

Is Homeopathy Really As Implausible As It Sounds? | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...lity-test-homeopathic-medicine

scibyte63 Homeopathy

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • The new British minister of health has recently become the target of scorn and mockery, after a science writer with The Telegraph noted that he supports homeopathy
  • there’s a difference between something that hasn’t been proven to work and something that couldn’t possibly work
  • Improvements in brain imaging technology, for example, have shown that meditation—a practice long dismissed by Western doctors as pure mysticism—can improve both the structure and function of the brain
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Let's ignore, for example, the homeopathic notion that illness is caused by a disturbance in an individual's "vital force" rather than something external, like a bacterium or virus
  • Another thing homeopathy has in common with Western medicine is its strict attention to how treatments are dosed
  • All homeopathic remedies are available in a huge range of concentrations
  • those concentrations are really small
  • homeopaths think of a large dose as a high dilution, instead of a high concentration.
  • idea that a lower dose of a drug has a bigger effect than a high dose runs contrary to what western medicine has found
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