MONDAY September 6: Blueshift’s Weekly Awesomeness Round Up highlights Stephen Colbert’s astronaut encounter, an image from an Indian radio telescope, America’s top chef in orbit, and other astronomical-scientific tidbits of the previous week.
TUESDAY September 7: Sensors on Terra and Aqua satellites spot fires for a new United Nations website.
WEDNESDAY September 8: LROC Image of the Day: the moon seen from the east.
River of sorrow: NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day shows the swollen Indus River and flooded fields from orbit.
Say what? The What On Earth bloggers have posted an Earth-related mystery sound. Well, THAT narrows it down! See if you can guess what it is.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
MONDAY AUGUST 16:MODIS Image of the Day posts beautific satellite snapshot of microscopic plant life in the oceans blooming off the coast of Newfoundland.
On the edge: The IBEX spacecraft reports from the electrifying edge of Earth’s magnetic bubble.
More awesomeness:NASA Blueshift’sWeekly Awesomeness Roundup revisits a recent Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovery, the Perseid meteor shower, and a visit to Goddard by the local Fox TV station.
Billions and billions: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Facebook page reports that the LOLA surface mapping instrument has shot more than a billion pulses of laser light at the moon’s surface.
Earth buzz: The What On Earth bloghighlights steamy July temps, the lowdown on the shakedown in the Gulf, and our planet in its grayest and gloomiest glory
What On Earth Is That? NASA Earth blogger Adam Voiland posts another mystery image waiting for you to identify. Looks like dried mud flats to me. . .
Get a GRIP:Visit NASA hurricane scientists inside the DC-8 as it flew into the remnants of Tropical Depression Five over southern Louisiana.
Viking 1 gazes out at the surafce of Mars. . .
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
Are you ready for International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN)? In a previous post I told you about this event, which was conceived by NASA lunar scientists and educators, but involvement has since become more widespread and international.
You should get involved, too. The InOMN website has everything you will need to participate. I and other members of the Goddard Astronomy Club will be at Goddard’s Visitor Center September 18 with telescopes, showing the public a cavalcade of craters.
Access to Photoshop software and basic Photoshop skills.
Here’s how to make the portrait:
Mount the camera on a tripod. You will need to keep the camera steady for the best results.
Take a background shot of the land, sky, and the moon just starting to rise.
Then shoot additional images of the moon as it rises. Scholten shot the eclipsing moon every 10 minutes with a 500mm telephoto lens. This is why the tripod is important: Even a slight jiggle while shooting in telephoto mode can blur the image.
To make sure you get the best possible shot, “bracket” the exposures a couple of settings above and below the initial one. This will give you more choices to work with in the Photoshop assembly phase.
Scholten used Photoshop to select the 12 best moon images and arrange them in a series onto the initial background image. To do this, you need to understand how to use the Layers function of Photoshop and the Marquee selection tool (elliptical). Fortunately, this is pretty easy to learn, with many clear and free tutorials available on the Web. Good luck!
“Not your grandfather’s moon” And last but not least, today the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team announced images that bear on the moon’s evolution. The new stuff from LRO adds to mounting evidence that the moon has been more dynamic then people thought, and is not at all a “dead” solar system body.
From the press release:
Newly discovered cliffs in the lunar crust indicate the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today, according to a team analyzing new images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. The results provide important clues to the moon’s recent geologic and tectonic evolution.
Here’s a crack in the incredible shrinking moon:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
SUNDAY July 25: Blogger Tzu Chien Chan’s (syn)thetic blog features photos of Goddard technology in “Michael Solurion the still life of space hardware.” These are artful portraits of the special tools developed at Goddard to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit.
MONDAY July 26:NASA Blueshift’sWeekly Awesomeness Round-Up features the Webb mirror’s golden gleam, massively massive stars, cool planetarium widget for your computer, and buckyballs in space.
I CAN SEE YOUR BRUSH FIRE FROM HERE: The MODIS Image of the Day, courtesy the Aqua satellite, captures thousands of individual fires in south-central Africa.
TREE WORK: On the What On Earth blog, Adam Voilandprofiles Colorado State University researcher Michael Lefsky, who created the first global map of forest heights using data from NASA’s IceSat satellite.
TUESDAY July 27:New video created from GOES-13 satellite images shows the violent storm that attacked the East Coast July 25.
NEW MOON: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Image of the Day shows a new 30-foot-wide crater on the moon, created sometime after the Apollo astronauts touched down.
spacequake
SPACEQUAKE! In a feature story in NASA Science, Tony Phillips of Science@NASAexplains how researchers used the THEMIS spacecraft fleet to discover a form of space weather that packs the punch of an earthquake and plays a key role in sparking bright Northern Lights.
WEDNESDAY July 28: The latest issue of Goddard View includes an interview with Nobel laureate John Mather about life outside the gates of Goddard.
GODDARD AT WORK: In a new video profile, astrochemist Jamie Cook talks about her work in the lab and some of her most exciting discoveries.
TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER: NASA Administrator Charles Boldenattended a townhall meeting at Goddard Space Flight Center to talk with NASA interns, fellows, and scholars about the importance of continued interest in science, technology, engineering and math careers.
snowpocalypse 2010
SNOWPOCALYPSE REVISTED: In the What On Earth blog, Goddard writer Michelle Williams highlights a new data visualization, derived from the Goddard Earth Observing System Model Version 5 (GEOS-5) and created by NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio. It shows the first wave of the February “Snowpocalypse” snowstorms hitting the East Coast.
THANKS FOR STOPPING BY: Shuttle astronauts of the recent STS-132 mission shared their experiences during a visit to Goddard.
FRIDAY July 30: FOX 5’s Holly Morris visited Greenbelt, Maryland is this week’s stop on the station’s “Hometown Fridays” tour. See the video of their visit to Goddard Space Flight Center here.
COOL LINK:In a story published on Smart Planet, an environmental website, writer Andrew Nusca explains how researchers used a computer simulation of the land surface developed at Goddard to evaluate the impacts on painting roofs white. Answer: it saves energy and cools the climate.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
MONDAY JULY 12:Washington Post weather blogger Andrew Freedman writes about a recent glacier retreat in NASA eyeballs glacial melt in Greenland. . . . NASA Earth science storyteller Mike Carlowicz explained the science last week.
AWESOMENESS: NASA Blueshift‘s Weekly Awesomeness Roundup covers Hubble fireworks, renegade planets, a mind-blowing physics experiment in Germany, and other USDA Choice Scientific Beef of the week.
MARS ROCKS! Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate Chief Scientist James Garvin gives you a guided tour of Martian geology on WorldWideTelescope. Here’s the article in The Universe Today.
THREE’S A CHARM: On this day in 1961, NASA launched the Tiros 3 satellite. . . In 1960, Tiros 1 had taken the first-ever image of Earth from orbit. . . . Tiros stands for Television and InfraRed Observation Satellite, designed to test experimental television techniques and infrared equipment.
TUESDAY JULY 13: What, ANOTHER fabulous Hubble Space Telescope image of a cosmic star factory? This one’s in the constellation Puppis, the poop deck of Jason’s fabled ship Argo from Greek mythology.
GRAB A SHOVEL: In today’s Systems Engineering Seminar, Warren Mitchell, Syed Hasan, and Jason Laing of the Goddard Flight Dynamics Facility recalled the drama of supporting the Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-130) mission and the launch and operation of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during the worst snowstorm in memory. Rani Gran’s account of Goddard’s Snowpocalyse adventure provides details.
WEDNESDAY JULY 14: NASA’s Swift observatory is temporarily blinded by the X–ray flash triggered by the explosion of a massive star morphing into a new black hole. . . . ME TOO! Gogblog profiles Phil Evans, the British investigator who uncovered the X-ray flash. . . . FAST WORK: PSU and gogblog post the story 10:58 am; Science NOW posts a “ScienceShot” news brief at 4:24 pm by astro-writer extraordinaire Ken Croswell. . . . LISTEN: “How a bright star fooled a top observatory into thinking it was unreal,” according to BBC Five Live presenter Dotun Adebayo. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: The University of Leicester, where Phil Evans works, posts its own release on the blinding blast.
RED PLANET RENDEZVOUS: Forty-five years ago today, the Mariner 4 space probe flew within 6,118 miles of Mars after an 8-month journey. . . . MARINER 4 was the first spacecraft to take close-up pictures of another planet.
NEW TREND: Goddard Tech Trends releases its summer issue, featuring blacker-than-black nanotechnology and other innovations brewing at Goddard.
SUPER-HUBBLE: Is it a planet? Is it a comet? No — it’s . . . . ANOTHER mind-numbingly interesting Hubble Space Telescope exoplanet discovery!
ORDER UP: According to a report in eWeek.com, Dell Inc. will sell Goddard’s NASA Center for Climate Simulation souped-up servers in a contract worth up to $5.1 million dollars . . . . The new servers will double NCCS’s computational capacity to more than 300 trillion calculations per second.
RUN THAT BY ME AGAIN: “The extreme tail loading and unloading observed at Mercury implies that the relative intensity of substorms must be much larger than at Earth.” Find out what Goddard space physicist James A. Slavin is talking about in a web feature about recent discoveries by the MESSENGER spacecraft.
ECLIPSE PORTRAIT: Like most earthlings, you probably didn’t make it to Easter Island to see the solar eclipse on Sunday July 11. But here’s something you would not have been able to see even from Easter Island: a combined space-and-surface view of the eclipse, created by Goddard media specialist and sun worshipper Steele Hill.
PLANKTON ON PARADE: The What On Earth blog posts the last of four dispatches from guest writer Karen Romano Young on the ICESCAPE expedition, “Plankton On Parade.”
man on the moon
FRIDAY JULY 16: Today in 1969, Apollo 11blasted off at 09:32:00 am EDT from Launch Complex 39-A Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first manned landing on the moon.
WoE OF THE WEEK:The What On Earth bloggers post the latest NASA Earth Buzz, with the top recent Earth science stories and the answer to the “What on Earth is THAT?” image quiz from last week. . . . ANSWER: soot particles from a wildfire.
WARM DATA: NASA’s Earth Observatory posts a global temperature anomaly map comparing readings for July 4–11, 2010, to the same dates from 2000 to 2008. Land surface temps come courtesy of the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite.
HOT LINKS: The Physics Today website offers a feature story about NASA’s A-Train of satellites, Touring the atmosphere aboard the A-Train, by Tristan S. L’Ecuyer and Jonathan H. Jiang. “A convoy of satellites orbiting Earth measures cloud properties, greenhouse gas concentrations, and more to provide a multifaceted perspective on the processes that affect climate.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
Goddard Astronomy Club president Cornelis Dutoit took this picture two days after first quarter moon. It's what you would see through a small telescope with a low-power eyepiece.
I recently bumped into Andrea Jones, a senior outreach coordinator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission. That means she helps get LRO science into classrooms. Andrea is bright, enthusiastic, and personable — just the sort of person you want for this job.
It’s always good to get around Goddard and talk to people. You never know what you’ll learn. For example, I learned a new email emoticon from corresponding with Andrea: :o Does it say “I am happy and smiling while emailing with you” or “I am a hungry little baby bird; please feed me.” It’s hard to say.
More importantly, she clued me in on a cool new astronomical event of global proportions coming up in September. It’s called International Observe the Moon Night — InOMN for short. It was hatched by the LRO people at Goddard and other lunar types at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
Going lunar
To be part of InOMN, if only in spirit, all you have to do is look up in the sky on September 18th. A waxing gibbous moon will be (we hope) shining brightly in a clear sky in your part of the world. What will you see? Check out the chart below.
When people ask me how they can “get into astronomy,” I always say: Look at the moon. It’s one of the most unappreciated heavenly bodies I know. That and the dog-bone-shaped asteroid 216 Kleopatra.
The moon and I go back a long way, at least 0.0000008% of the moon’s age. I got my first telescope for Christmas in 1974. Naturally, the first thing I did was spy on a neighbor through his kitchen window.
Ugh: some guy standing in front of the stove, cooking scrambled eggs. Not very exciting, 11-year-old-boy-wise.
Second stop: the moon. Humans had left the moon just a year and 6 days earlier after multiple missions of exploration. But Earth’s natural satellite was still terra incognita to me. I looked into the eyepiece: WOW! Vast craters and mountains leaped out of the formerly featureless glow of a waxing gibbous moon. Yes, a waxing gibbous moon, just like on September 18 this year. Some coincidence, eh?
Goddard Astronomy Club member Daniel Antonson snapped this image using a cell phone camera, looking through the eyepiece of the club's 12-inch reflecting telescope.
If you have never looked at the moon through a telescope or binoculars, you should. Mark down September 18 on your calendar: “Observe the moon tonight.”
It’s a Saturday, so the moon will have to square off against “American Idol” and “Dancing With The Stars.” But at least give it a quick look during the commercial break.
Depending on where you live, you might benefit from the expert guidance of a local astronomy club. If you come to the event at NASA Goddard’s Visitor Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, you will meet me and my friends from the Goddard Astronomy Club and peer through their phalanx of telescopes.
Schools will be involved in InOMN, as well as major astronomical observatories. The Adler Planetarium in Chicago is jumping in. Other partners already include Astronomers Without Borders, the Museum Alliance, Mauna Kea Observatories Outreach Committee, Navajo Nation, Solar System Ambassadors, the Astronomy Society of the Pacific’s Night Sky Network, and Astronomy from the Ground Up.
Foreign nations where events will be held now include Canada, Chile, Greece, Great Britain, and Italy. Quite a party.
Hey, you don’t even need to join some fancy organization to get involved. You could host your own Observe the Moon party.
If you need information and inspiration, go to the InOMN website: www.observethemoonnight.org. The site is still under construction, but already includes a number of downloads to help people host InOMN events, such as a promotional flier and various moon maps. InOMN will also host a Tweet-Up and a photo contest. Follow these hashtags for updates: #InOMN and #InOMN2010.
“InOMN 2010 is only the first of what we hope will become an annual event,” Andrea says. “2011 to 2014 are already planned, and it’d be great if it could go on even after that.”
Goddard Astronomy Club member Joseph Novotka took this photo while observing through his 8-inch Newtonian reflecting telescope using his Nikon D90 camera to look through the eyepiece.
Over the moon about the moon
International Observe the Moon Night has its roots in the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, June 18, 2009.
Here at Goddard, we hosted a public event August 1 called “We’re At The Moon!” That same night, education and public outreach teams with the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite and the NASA Lunar Science Institute hosted a similar event at Ames Research Center.
Both events were huge hits with the public, so the organizers started to think they were onto something. Thus was born International Observe the Moon Night.
Hope to see you there. Stay tuned to gogblog for updates.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
On Monday June 21, “The Case of the Mylar Mystery” debuted on the History Detectives program. The detectives came to Goddard in January to figure out whether a scrap of silvery Mylar was could be traced back to Goddard’s Echo II satelloon project. . . . Well, gogblog won’t ruin it for you by revealing the answer, but you can download the transcript if you don’t have time to watch the show.
On Wednesday June 23, the Goddard Public Affairs Office (PAO) posted a mission update feature, ‘L2′ Will be the James Webb Space Telescope’s Home in Space. The orbital sweet spot is called L2 and it sits about 930,000 miles from Earth, where the gravitational tugs of the sun and Earth balance out . . . . .Why the way-out waystation? For one thing, the gravitational stalemate means it takes minimal energy to make the ‘scope stay put at L2. Also, the frigid temperature out there keeps Webb’s sensitive instruments frosty and sharp. And L2 offers an unobstructed view of the cosmos.
The lunar farside
Also on Wednesday, Goddard PAO’s Andrew Freeberg chilled out on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s first birthday at the moon with Ten Cool Things Seen in the First Year of LRO. And the winning contestants are 1) the coldest place in the solar system ever measured, 2) astronaut footprints, 3) a near miss with Cone Crater, 4) a lost Soviet rover, 5) the lunar farside, 6) a bevy of boulders, 7) mountains, 08) rilles, 9) pits, and 10) frigid polar craters. Andy’s fine review features lots of blogolicious moon images.
Goddard Astronomy Club president Cornelis Dutoit keeps an eye on the sun as relentless shimmering waves of solar energy melt the faces off of everyone else attending Celebrate Goddard 2010.
On Thursday June 24, “Celebrate Goddard” took over the grassy mall near the main gate, spotlighting “the diverse skills and individual differences that have made our legacy of success possible.” Atta boy, Goddard! You go, major NASA center for research in astronomy, earth, and space science! Lookin’ sharp, kid! . . . . . The day featured exhibits by Goddard scientists, organizations, and clubs; a Center talent show; and the first-ever Celebrate Goddard parade, featuring the DuVal High Marching Tigers. . . . . The weather: hot enough to melt your face off, with heat index up to 104 degrees.
Also on Thursday, NASA released a near-full disk image of Earth snapped by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team created it by assembling multiple scans captured by LRO’s Narrow Angle Camera. The image was originally posted on the Arizona State University LROC featured image site by Mark Robinson, LROC’s Principle Investigator.
***UPDATE: Friday June 25, 4:22 pm . . . NASA released another LRO image: Goddard Crater, located along the Moon’s eastern limb and named after the namesake of our beloved Center, pioneering rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945). The LOLA instrument that captured the image was built here.
Astronaut Sally K. Ride
HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES
Thursday marked 27 years since the space shuttle mission — STS-7, June 18-24, 1983 — that carried astrophysicist Sally K. Ride into space and into history as the first American woman in orbit. . . . . But the anniversary is bittersweet: STS-7 was a flight of the Challenger, which was lost with all hands about three years later, January 28, 1986. Two female astronauts died that day: Judith Resnik and Christa McAuliffe.
On June 25, 1997, the Russian resupply vessel Progress collided with the science module Spektor on the Mir space station while attempting to dock. The blow punctured and decompressed Spektor, and knocked out its solar panels. . . . . The two cosmonauts and one American astronaut (Michael Foale) on Mir were not harmed. . . . . The Russian space agency refused to abandon ship, and kept Mir alive until it could be repaired. Foale stayed aboard, too. . . . . Watch the animated recreation of this near-catastrophe on YouTube to get a sense of just how bad it was — and how lucky the astro/cosmonauts were to make it through alive!
On June 26, 1978, NASA launched Seasat-A, the first satellite to make global observations of Earth’s oceans. The satellite carried the first spaceborne synthetic aperture radar. After 105 days of returning data, Seasat was crippled by an electrical fault. . . . . Now here is a blogolicious Seasat-A science fact: While not anticipated by the satellite’s designers, Seasat-A was actually able to detect the waves of SUBMERGED submarines!
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Gogblog loves space tech, and here is a massive dose of it for like-minded technophiles. Remembering the Giants: Apollo Rocket Propulsion Development, Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 45 (NASA SP-2009-4545), edited by Steven C. Fisher and Shamim A. Rahman. . . . . This monograph is the proceedings from a series of lectures on Apollo propulsion development hosted by NASA’s Stennis Space Center. . . . . Request a copy of this monograph by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the NASA History Division, Room CO72, NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20546. Or just download a PDF of the report.
Gogblog gratefully credits the NASA History Division website as the source of the historical tidbits this week.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
A year ago today, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter — that’s “LRO” to the spacecraft’s many close personal friends — reached the moon. It’s been an eventful and successful mission. LRO, let me be the first to say, “You Rock!”
Speaking of rocks, LRO has seen rocks a’plenty. Not to mention lunar rilles, a Russian rover, and the coldest place in the solar system ever measured. For more details and blogolicious weblinks, see the roundup of LRO discoveries and observations by Goddard’s own Andy Freeberg.
Here are Gogblog’s LRO mission highlights, fun facts, sideshows, and uninvited commentary:
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched June 18 2009 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It arrived at the moon Tuesday June 23.
Historical irony: In the 1960s, the United States was locked in a race to the moon with the Soviet Union. But today, a Russian-built RD-180 first-stage rocket engine lifts every Atlas V off the pad, including the one that took LRO to the moon. Also, a Russian team built LRO’s Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector.
Fly me to the moon . . .
Science mission: The spacecraft carries 7 instruments to survey the moon’s surface and environment and look for water. This is data that any future human explorers would benefit from — for instance, to identify safe landing sites, locate sources of water and energy, and minimize radiation exposure.
Fun fact: An observing station at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center shoots a laser beam at LRO every day to measure the spacecraft’s distance to an accuracy of 4 inches.
NASA imaging team discovers shocking new evidence that intelligent beings once walked on the moon! (click to see)
On July 2, NASA released the first images of the moon from the supersharp Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, showing a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).
On July 17, fake moon landing conspiracy enthusiasts suffered a devastating dose of reality when NASA released LROC images of the lunar lander sites for Apollo 11, 14, 15, 16, and 17. In the Apollo 14 image, footprints and scientific instruments left by the astronauts were visible — I mean, unless the LROC images are fakes, and pigs can fly, and the tooth fairy is real.
Fun fact: In the LROC images, the 12-foot diameter lunar landers occupy just 9 pixels.
Great pixels: If you want to drink up some fantastic images from LRO and the history of manned exploration of the moon, check out the Big Picture image spread that ran in January 2010 on the Boston Globe website.
Cold storage: shadowed craters could keep water frozen for billions of years.
On September 17, LRO science teams released early results of the mission. Included in the findings: LRO’s Diviner instrument found spots in permanently shadowed polar craters at -415 degrees Fahrenheit (-248 Celsius). That’s cold enough to store water ice or hydrogen for billions of years.
In a related development . . . On September 25, a team of scientists reported in the journal Science that data from the Indian lunar Chandrayaan-1 probe and NASA’s Deep Impact and Cassini spacecraft confirmed the presence of water molecules on the moon’s surface — especially near the poles.
A second mission, the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), had piggybacked to the moon on LRO’s Atlas V. (Its instruments rode to space in a ring-shaped package stuck between the top of the Atlas V’s “Centaur” second stage and the bottom of the LRO payload.)
The scientists crashed the spent Centaur into the moon’s surface on October 9 and used LCROSS’s instruments to search the debris plume for water.On November 13, the LCROSS science team announcedthey found it. “I am here today to tell you that, indeed, yes we found water,” said Anthony Colaprete, lead scientist for LCROSS. “And we didn’t find just a little bit; we found a significant amount.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
MONDAY September 6: Blueshift’s Weekly Awesomeness Round Up highlights Stephen Colbert’s astronaut encounter, an image from an Indian radio telescope, America’s top chef in orbit, and other astronomical-scientific tidbits of the previous week.
GRIPping tale: On the What On Earth blog, Q&A with Dryden Flight Research Center DC-8 pilot Dick Ewers and the GRIP mission.
RATS! Two Goddard scientists head for the Arizona desert to test technology and procedures for exploring other planets.
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