Well, maybe not so dreaded. With the atmospheric pressure being so low on Mars you could stand in one of these dust devils and not worry too much about your safety.
Category: Space
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is On The Way
On Friday the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter lifted off on a seven month journey to the red planet on a mission to see if there is any evidence of water.
Once in place the orbiter will not only conduct sub surface mapping and weather surveys, but will also be acting as a communications and navigations link for future missions.
The cameras on board will be able to detect a dinner plate sized object on the surface in order to assist in future landing site selection. It will also be the first link in the ‘Interplanetary Internet’ system that will link other space missions in a more efficient manner.
Clavius Moon Base
I found this while researching my Abandoned Spaceship and Moon Buggies post – this is a must read site, if only for the ‘Why a Conspiracy’ page.
Moon Base Clavius is an organization of amateurs and professionals devoted to the Apollo program and its manned exploration of the moon. Our special mission is to debunk the so-called conspiracy theories that state such a landing may never have occurred.
Clavius Moon Base – debunking the moon hoax
Abandoned Spaceships and Moon Buggies
Good. High time that the moon landing hoax nuts are put in their place. But wait, as they are ‘true believers‘ they will cry out about the obvious conspiracy that has taken place. The images will have been doctored, robotic dummy landers will have been landed (true, some people think that men did not go to the moon but the hardware did), or something even wilder will be the reason that the Apollo hardware is seen in the images. I’m hoping that they will get some high resolution images of the poles and prehaps find some nice places for future landings. We need a base up there.
(BTW, I’m putting this in the ‘paranormal’ catagory just because I don’t have much in there.)
The spacecraft’s high-resolution camera, called “LROC,” short for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, has a resolution of about half a meter. That means that a half-meter square on the Moon’s surface would fill a single pixel in its digital images.
Apollo moon buggies are about 2 meters wide and 3 meters long. So in the LROC images, those abandoned vehicles will fill about 4 by 6 pixels.
NASA – Abandoned Spaceships and Moon Buggies
Space Ram, the Noodle of Astronauts
I’m sure this item will eventualy make it to the ramen noodle museum in Yokohama Japan soon.
Astronaut Soichi Noguchi on Tuesday described his encounter with instant noodles aboard the space shuttle Discovery with zeal.
Noguchi said during a news conference broadcast from space that he tried the instant ramen dish on the second day of his journey.
“I enjoyed it — it was surprisingly close to the taste (of noodles) on Earth,” he said.
The special noodles, Space Ram, were developed by instant noodle pioneer Nissin Food Products Co.
They become edible after five minutes steeped in 70-degree water. To prevent spilling in zero-gravity, the broth is thicker than normal and the noodles are in blocks.
Noguchi helped develop the product in its initial stages.
Noguchi relishes his space-shuttle instant noodles
NASA TV Feeds
If your looking to keep up with what is going on with the current Space Shuttle mission and can’t get NASA TV in your area, you should take a look at this list. Dozens of links to feeds with a quality rating next to each one. I like the 350 kb/s feed myself, it’s almost like watching the video feed on cable. I’m watching the crew move the Canada arm around so they can install Raffaello, the Multi Purpose Logistics Module that was hauled up on orbit by the shuttle, to the ISS. It’s simplay amazing to see something like this and know that its happening right now.
Go celebrate NASA’s return to space by geeking out in front of your computer and absorb some hard core space news.