Happy Birthday Neil Armstrong!

-FUPPETS- wishes Neil Armstrong a very happy 80th birthday. It would be an honor to meet the man, one of the greatest explorers in the history of humanity. -FUPPETS- did get the chance to briefly meet his cohort, Buzz Aldrin. It was an amazing experience. Here is a more recent photo of Mr. Neil Armstrong.

-FUPPETS- Will Miss the Space Shuttle Fleet

-FUPPETS- was there, looking out over the tops of the grammar school, as the Space Shuttle Columbia became the first shuttle to blast off from Cape Canaveral. From Puerto Rico, the shuttle could be seen arcing high into the sky and into outer space. It was a magnificent sight, never to be forgotten.
-FUPPETS- remembers siting in the middle school lunch room when a friend came by, flustered and anxious, to tell of that morning's Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. It was a reminder of just how insanely risky any and all jaunts into outer space are.
-FUPPETS- was in Austin when the Space Shuttle Atlantis passed by around 10:15 PM one night, on it's way to it's scheduled landing in Florida. The bright white plume behind the glinting shuttle reflected the sunlight which was no longer hitting that side of the Earth. The shuttle crossed the whole arc of the visible sky in less than a minute, for it was going around ten thousand miles per hour. Rushing inside to find that, less than a minute after seeing it over Texas, the shuttle had reached Florida and was touching down, really stressed how very fast that ship was rocketing through the atmosphere.
-FUPPETS- has never had, and will never have, the luxury of seeing a Space Shuttle launch in person, for the last mission has just ended. Sadness for the science nerds. The Space Shuttle fleet has been retired, and all await the new replacement fleet, which will not be ready for years, forcing the USA and NASA to rely on the Russian space program to get anything up to the International Space Station. This sucks major.
Mr. Jay Penfield has been good enough to share a link to an amazing 4 minute time-lapse movie, compiled from hundreds of hours of footage taken of the preparation and launch of one of the Space Shuttles. It is an amazing thing to see just how much work goes into every tiny aspect of space travel.

Enjoy. Click HERE for the time-lapse movie.

-FUPPETS- Loves Rocketry and Super Slo-Mo

Oh yes. This is exactly what today needed. -FUPPETS- is ecstatic to find a tremendous video of the launch of Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing. This footage is filmed at 500 frames/second, which makes the 8 minute film represent just over 30 seconds of actual time. It is amazing to see just how hard it is to launch a projectile off of our Earth's surface, and into either orbit, or further into outer space. It is also humbling to know the bravery shown by the men and women who strap themselves atop this controlled explosion and ride it out to the desolation of space.
Scientists say that very small animals see our movements as lumbering and slow, since they are used to living in a much quicker state of being. This is partly why it is so hard to swat a fly, for, while we may be swinging that fly-swatter super hard, to the fly it is coming down with plenty of time to spare so it can move away.
Enjoy this footage. -FUPPETS- definitely will.

SPACE IS THE PLACE

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Asteroid Collision Caught By Hubble Space Telescope

The amazing and now-venerable Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of an event that, while an extremely common occurrence in our Solar System, has never been caught on camera before by any of our instruments.
Our Solar System has a band of rocks and debris termed the Asteroid Belt, which is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. In this belt there exist countless millions of rocks and aggregate boulders, each spinning around our Sun in their own orbit. Oftentimes, these asteroids glance off of one another, disrupting their orbits. Recently there has been much talk about near-Earth asteroids tracked by NASA and other space agencies. These asteroids all come from the asteroid belt, and are knocked off their orbits and toward our planet's orbit, by collisions such as the one captured by the Hubble.
On January 25th and then again on the 29th, the Hubble Space Telescope captured this striking image. (click image to enlarge)

Below is the close-up of the image. (click image to enlarge)

What appears to be a drooping "X" shape on the left of the image is the end result of the collission.

Astronomers have long thought the asteroid belt is being ground down because of collisions, but such a head-on crash had never been seen before.
"If this interpretation is correct, two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight," said principal investigator David Jewitt, from the University of California at Los Angeles.
At first, astronomers thought what they saw might be a main belt comet, a rare case of a comet orbiting while in the asteroid belt.
But the images taken by Hubble revealed the complex X-pattern of filamentary structures near the object's nucleus.
Jewitt said the filaments are made of dust and gravel. Some of them are being swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight, creating the long, straight dust streaks, he said.
The nucleus of the presumed boom is 460 feet in diameter, NASA said. ( CNN )

Even with the relatively crowded asteroid belt's many inhabitants, capturing an image of a collision is an amazing feat. -FUPPETS- continues to be astounded by the magnificence of the human scientific endeavor.
Can you imagine being asked to point out something just 460 feet in diameter from about 2.7 AU away?

Farther in Time and Distance Than Humanity Has Ever Seen!

Recently, a shuttle mission was charged with doing the most intricate and exhausting repairs ever done while in "spacewalk" mode. These repairs replaced certain non-functioning components of the Hubble Space Telescope. One of the items replaced was the Wide Field Camera. This is the third Wide Field Camera installed on the Hubble.
One of the most astounding accomplishments of the Hubble were the images called the Hubble Deep Field and the Ultra Deep Field images. These images were taken in 2004 by pointing the Hubble at what appeared to be a relatively empty region of deep space, zooming in, then finding the emptiest part of that deep image, and zooming in yet again. What was found blew the world's mind. More galaxies! Insanity! The Universe is so vast, so confoundingly enormous, that nothing in our human-scale set of reference points can help us visualize it properly. This is the Ultra Deep Field Image.

The first image above was taken this year, at a distance correlating with a time just 800-900 million years after the Big Bang. WOW! (Click on the top image to see the LARGE version. Galaxies, island universes all, abound.)

The photo was taken with the new WFC3/infrared camera on Hubble in late August 2009, during a total of four days of pointing for 173 000 seconds of total exposure time. Infrared light is invisible to the human eye and therefore does not have colours that can be perceived. The representation is "natural" in that shorter infrared wavelengths are represented as blue and the longer wavelengths as red. The faintest objects are about one billion times fainter than the dimmest visible objects seen with the naked eye. - ( Science Daily )

That means that over four days they created a 47 hour exposure! That is some super-faint light! The red-shift on these is immense. To imagine the awe that would be felt by someone such as Copernicus, or even Albert Einstein at these magnificent images. These images say far more about the wonder, skill, and glorious beauty of humanity than most people give them credit for.

-FUPPETS- says LONG LIVE SCIENCE!

-FUPPETS- & Holidays Do Not Mix

Oh man do the holidays throw a monkey wrench into the -FUPPETS- gears. The same thing happens every year. Insanity ensues, and there just seems to not be enough time to do everything that needs to be done.
How does Tiger Woods do it?

Ha Ha.

So much is happening. Scientists of all types keep coming up with amazing discoveries. A near-legendary bar, a hang-out for many astronauts, is closing. The Outpost Tavern has been frequented by many of the NASA community for over three decades.

Before that it was an Air Force barracks. The walls are lined with memorabilia from the space program.

So long, Outpost Tavern.

NASA Unveils Plan to Free the Mars Rover SPIRIT!

It has been months in the making, and countless theories and possibilities brainstormed, but NASA has announced that it has a plan in place to begin what will hopefully accomplish the extraction of the Mars Rover SPIRIT from the "quicksand" trap it has been embedded in.

The "soil" is so fine it more closely resembles talcum powder than what we could call sand or dirt.

Click HERE to see a full circle panorama of Spirit's current location.

Click HERE to see a large image detailing the path of the Mars Rover SPIRIT since arriving at the plateau designated "Home Plate." The yellow line marks the path taken, and you can see the location of SPIRIT's current predicament, labelled "Troy."

They will begin to run the extraction program on Monday. Scientists expect it to be a painstakingly slow process, but little by little, they hope to once again have SPIRIT roaming free on Mars. Even if the worst occurs, and they are not able to extract SPIRIT from it's sandy trap, the area where it is located is highly rich in geological oddities, and much good science could still be done. -FUPPETS- hopes it does not come to that!

Exoplanets All Over The Place

Recently, the announcement of a European exoplanet search discovering over thirty new planets orbiting stellar systems other than our own caused much sensation. Using extremely precise instruments capable of determing minute rotational "wobbles" in distant stars, the managed to find exoplanets much smaller, and hopefully rocky like the Earth, than the gas giant planets first found with this method.
This makes more than 400 known exoplanets. Just twenty years ago it was pure science fiction that we could detect actual planets around distant stars, stars whose brightness overwhelms anything orbiting around it (unless it is a twin-star system!).
Just the other day NASA researchers announced their discovery of organic molecules in the atmosphere of a gas planet, the second such planet they have found. That makes two planets outside of our solar system in which the basic chemical ingrediants of life have been detected, water, methane and carbon dioxide. That may not sound like much but being able to detect these chemical pattersn should one day help us accurately detect smaller, earth-like exoplanets.
For a Flash animated timeline of humanity's history of planet and then exoplanet hunting check THIS from NASA. Good stuff.

Solar Prominence Eruption Captured on Video

Solar Prominences are amazing ejections of solar matter caused by the ever-changing magnetic field of the Sun. These events launch millions of tons of material away from the sun, and can sometimes result in very damaging electrical storms once the ejecta makes it's way to the Earth and collide with the earth's own magnetic field.

The twin STEREO spacecraft have captured one such ejection. The STEREO spacecraft are two separate but identical satellites which are positioned one WAY in front and one WAY behind the Earth as it orbits around the Sun, so, in essence, they follow the same orbit path as us. By positioning these instruments there, it is possible to capture a stereoscopic vision of solar prominences and ejecta, as well as any other solar events that may occur. Enjoy the short clip below.

-FUPPETS- SAYS METEORS RULE!

Oh yeah. There is nothing -FUPPETS- loves more than astronomical phenomena.

On September 25th, in western Ontario, a fireball was seen and filmed by various people. This meteor was estimated to be the size of a child's tricycle. When it entered the atmosphere the friction caused it to grow in brightness until it was about 100 times brighter than a full Moon! Amazing! This bad boy was moving about 13 miles per second, which is haul-ass indeed.

Click HERE to be directed to video footage of this amazing fireball.

Some of this footage comes from cameras at the University of Western Ontario, which luckily were positioned to capture this event.

Thoughts On Recent Events

Just a few days ago a mission to the Moon was completed. This mission sent a vehicle to crash into one of the southern craters on the Moon. Specifically, the LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) spacecraft sent it's spent rocket and then itself, on a collision course to the Lunar surface, with hopes of kicking up first the Lunar topsoil and then the Lunar bedrock. This ejecta would then be measured by spectrometers to determine if there really is some underground water ice on the Moon.
Many people decried this as being a waste of money, as is usual when people do not understand science or scientific endeavors. They rail against spending money on something such as this when there are "poor" and "sick" who need the money. This is a misguided pity.
The LCROSS mission is one of the cheapest missions ever undertaken by NASA. The total cost of the mission was 79 million dollars, most of that cost being getting the LCROSS satellite itself into outer space. 79 million dollars may sound like a ton of money, but it is less than 50 cents from every single taxpayer in the USA. Taken that way, it is not a big expense.
This country is currently spending billions (BILLIONS!) a month to fight a war in Afghanistan and to occupy the country of Iran. The benefits from the LCROSS mission could conceivably allow for the development of a Lunar colony. The benefits from the war and the occupation seem to be very vague, such things as "freedom" and "security for America's interests" (i.e. MONEY).
Where is the rage in that? The money being used for these military actions could easily prop up a brand new health care system in the USA, one which would allow for a public option, so that regular people are not enslaved to the multinational insurance companies whose main goal is to make a buck, not to ensure their clients are receiving quality health care.
No one cries about that, instead, the aim their vitriol at NASA. Morons.

APOLLO 11 launch 40th Anniversary

On this day 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, and Buzz Aldrin set off from the launch pad in Cape Canaveral Florida on a two day trip to the Moon.

These three men, two former Navy test pilots and one Air Force combat pilot, would orbit the Earth one and a half times before igniting their propulsion rockets, sending them on a course to intercept the Moon. On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on a celestial body other than Earth. For two days, Mike Collins circled the Moon, alone, losing radio contact with Earth and the astronauts on the Moon every time he passed "behind" the Moon for 27 minutes at a time.
Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong touched down on the Lunar surface inside the Lunar Module, code-named Eagle. Below is a photograph of Buzz Aldrin and the Lunar Lander, taken by Neil Armstrong.

It is hard to believe that it has been 40 years since humanity first touched another celestial body. -FUPPETS- hopes we go back and beyond, for it is in exploration that humanity achieves it's greatest successes.

Here, for your pleasure, is NASA footage of the Apollo 11 launch. Enjoy and think about what a momentous occasion it was. It was the greatest moment in human history.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Speaks at the MFAH This Friday

-FUPPETS- has long admired the men and women who have travelled away from Earth's gravity well and outside of the tenuous atmosphere that humans require to live. The few humans who have travelled to the Moon, and the even fewer number that actually touched down on that desolate ball of rock, are some of the greatest heroes that humanity has ever known. Their exploration ignited the world, and showed what humans are truly capable of. To think they did this without a single microprocessor aboard their vehicles or suits is astounding. They did everything with transistors!
This Friday, July 10 2009, one of those men, Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., will be speaking at The Museum of Fine Arts - Houston. Buzz Aldrin has co-authored a book recounting,

America´s historic initial moon landing — from takeoff to splashdown — and the two decades of Aldrin´s profound personal struggle that followed. - ( MFAH )

The book is titled MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION: The Long Journey Home from the Moon. The cover appears below.

-FUPPETS- is highly excited and anticipates a mind-blowing evening. Houston's own Ernie Manouse will be leading the conversation. The event is open to the public, is FREE, and doors open at 6:00 PM. Seating and admission is first come, first serve. The talk begins at 7:00 PM. For more information, contact the Museum of Fine Arts - Houston at 713-639-7360.

This iconic image of Buzz Aldrin was taken by Neil Armstrong, who can be seen in Aldrin's visor's reflection. Click the image to enlarge.

Here are a couple of recent interviews with Buzz Aldrin, the second human to ever touch the Lunar surface.

Moon Walker Buzz Aldrin: Time to Settle on Mars Approaching the 40th anniversary of his historic walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin talks about the state of space exploration and his new memoir, "Magnificent Desolation." - ( Wall Street Journal )

The Man on the Moon: Questions for Buzz Aldrin - ( The New York Times )

(Below is an image of astronaut Aldrin's footprint on the Lunar surface, taken by him on July 20, 1969)

Japan's KAGUYA Spacecraft smashes into Moon (on purpose)

The video above is an astounding motion picture taken by Japan's Kaguya Spacecraft, as it neared it's destination, a crash-landing inside a crater on the Moon's Northern Pole.
The Kaguya Spacecraft was launched on September 14, 2007 and it's main orbiter circled the moon for a year and 8 months, taking high-definition images of the Moon's topography. The plan for the end of the mission was to have it collide on purpose into a lunar crater, and to try and study the impact and whatever may be thrown out of the crater. The primary hope was to discover large amounts of subsurface ice.
The Kaguya craft was ordered to degrade it's orbit in February, and on June 10 it crash-landed on the Moon.

Officially named the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), the spacecraft was given the nickname Kaguya after the princess in the Japanese folklore story The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. - ( APOD )

The video is amazing and -FUPPETS- is ridiculously overjoyed to have seen it.
In April of this year, Kaguya captured a most-beautiful Earthrise over the horizon of the Moon.

Supreme ass-kickery.

Herschel Infrared Space Telescope Opens It's Eyes!

The largest Infrared telescope ever flown into outer space opened it's "eyes" on June 14th. The first object to be imaged by the Herschel's cameras is M51, the first spiral galaxy seen by Charles Messier in 1773.

The image above is a very preliminary image, taken just to show the intense resolution capabilities of this telescope's infrared astronomy capabilities. Blue indicates regions of warm dust that is heated by young stars, while the colder dust shows up in red. The image above was taken at three different infrared exposure levels, 70, 100, and 160 microns. Once the Herschel Space Observatory is fully commissioned, the incredible images will just begin to pour forth.
-FUPPETS- will be ready.
Here is an image of the Herschel Space Observatory after completion.

Humanity's Surrogate On Mars Nears It's End *UPDATED*

In January of the year 2004, humans from the country called the United States Of America sent towards Mars two remotely operated vehicles named Spirit and Opportunity whose mission it was to explore the Martian geology with some of the most advanced and innovative equipment they could create.

They landed safely and have been crawling along the surface of Mars for these past five years, surviving broken wheels, dust storms, Martian winters of minimal sunlight to power themselves, ridiculous cold and unbearable heat.

Click here to see an image of Spirit's travel path.

Both rovers were originally expected to fulfill a 90 Martian day mission. They have far exceeded humanity's expectations and hopes for them.
At the start of this month, Spirit became stuck in sand/dust that was described by NASA scientists as akin to the finest of talcum powder.
In the vastness of our solar system and of space it is the small things that can kill you. The other rover, Opportunity, is way too far away on the other side of the planet to come and help in any way. Spirit already had been driving backwards for the better part of three years due to a broken right front wheel it has been dragging along behind it.

The Rover's broken wheel ironically allowed it to make a great discovery when, as shown in the image above, the wheel scraped off the Martian topsoil and exposed a white substance that turned out to be ice. This was a great discovery.
The Rovers have been stuck in dunes before, but this one appears to be too much to overcome. Scientists are busy planning different strategies to try and free Spirit. -FUPPETS- will keep you updated as events occur.

*Below is an image of the MARS Rover Spirit. taken by itself, showing the current situation and the soft terrain it is stuck in. Click the image for a more detailed, and larger version.

This is not a fossilized Death Star. It is MIMAS!

Mimas is one of Saturn's smallest moons, but it bears an uncanny resemblance to the Death Stars from the Star Wars movies. It was discovered in 1789 by astronomer extraordinaire William Herschel. The above image was taken by the spacecraft Cassini in 2005. Cassini now orbits around Saturn, keeping an eye on that most beautiful of planets, and giving us humans a perfect position from which to study the rings, moons, and surface storms of Saturn.
The strange thing about Mimas is that it is composed of mostly water ice, with a very small amount of rock dispersed throughout it. It is essentially one giant dirty snowball, and from the looks of that gigantic crater, spanning about 130 kilometers in diameter, it was almost destroyed by a very powerful collision.
The more we look at our Solar System the more we find the weirdest inhabitants of it. There are moons with volcanic activity rivaling that of the very early Earth. There are moons with volcanoes of liquid methane. There are planets barely big enough to be called a planet, and there are rings around many of the solar system's outer planets, not just Saturn. There are conditions which defy all expectations. What a wonderful world science shows us. -FUPPETS- loves that shit.

The Space Shuttle Heads Out For One Final Hubble Space Telescope Repair Mission

The Space Shuttle Atlantis took off from Cape Canaveral two days ago and headed to the Hubble Space Telescope to do one last service mission, in which cameras will be replaced, and some equipment will be repaired, all in the vacuum of space.
The HST orbits around the Earth 350 miles above, and today is the day that the SS Atlantis will catch up to the HST, latch onto it with the shuttle's robotic arm, and prepare for the mission.

McArthur will use Atlantis' robot arm to pluck the 13-ton observatory from orbit and anchor it onto a work platform in the shuttle's cargo bay.
Five consecutive days of spacewalks will follow to equip Hubble with two new science instruments, six positioning gyroscopes, batteries and fresh thermal insulation.
Astronauts also will attempt to revive two broken cameras, one of which is needed to probe the atmospheres of planets circling in other solar systems.
"On this mission, we're going for broke," said Hubble project scientist David Leckrone. "We set the bar extraordinarily high for ourselves." - ( News Daily )

While -FUPPETS- loves that NASA decided to fund one more mission to repair the aging space telescope, it saddens one to imagine that this is it. There will be no more repair missions and once the HST finally dies, it will degrade it's orbit and burn up in our atmosphere. That will be a sad, sad day of mourning for anyone who has ever enjoyed the beautiful images brought to Earth by humanity's greatest scientific instrument ever, and a terrible day for all the scientists and researchers that rely on the HST for their source material.
Even the shuttles themselves are set to be retired in less than 2 years, once their 8 scheduled missions to the International Space Station are completed. Let us hope that whatever space vehicles are being developed are as valuable and efficient as our space shuttle fleet has been. Space travel, even in low orbit, is a very risky proposition, and never taken lightly. The shuttles we have lost, the Challenger and the Columbia, and the scientists/engineers/astronauts manning them, were lost in the line of duty to humanity. It has been almost 30 years since the first shuttle flight, and the future still looks bright.

NASA hopes that with the upgrades Hubble, which has cost about $10 billion so far, will last until at least 2014, at which time its replacement, the infrared-sensitive James Webb Space Telescope, should be in orbit and operational.

Most Distant Known Object In The Universe

The Universe is a mighty huge place. It is so big as to seem infinite. With human ingenuity we have managed to create telescopes that peer ever farther into deep space. The energy gathered by our telescopes from these objects is as old as it is distant. If we see a galaxy that is 5 billion light years away we are actually seeing the photons that escaped that galaxy 5 billion years ago. It is time travel basically. The farther we look the further back in time we are looking. In deepest space, before the formation of galaxies as we now know them, the things we humans can see are quasars and gamma ray bursts. This is the story of one such gamma ray burst.

On April 23, NASA’s Swift satellite discovered the burst — a 10-second flash of highly energetic radiation believed to mark the explosive collapse of a massive star into a black hole. - ( Science News )

The image above shows the afterglow from the gamma ray burst seen on April 23rd.

Within three hours of Swift’s detection, astronomers recorded the burst’s infrared afterglow using the U.K. Infra-Red Telescope and the Gemini North Telescope, both on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. Those observations, reported online (gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn3_archive.html), suggested that the explosion ignited when the 13.7-billion-year-old universe was only about 630 million years old.

This is an amazing find, and much older than the previous record holder, a galaxy about 12.9 billion light years away. Scientists think that this burst was caused by a giant early star collapsing into a super-massive black hole.
It is truly bad-ass the amount of information that can be gathered about the Universe by sentient bags of meat and water residing in a tiny rocky world, on the edges of a nondescript galaxy, floating among the billions and billions of other galaxies in the Universe. -FUPPETS- loves the future.

The Most Distant Water Ever Detected

-FUPPETS- is always interested in scientific discoveries which expand our world. Recently, it was noted that ever more complex organic molecules are being discovered in inter-stellar space. Now, scientists are announcing the discovery of the most distant water molecules ever analyzed.
The image below (click to enlarge) shows a gravitationally lensed quasar. The galaxy in the center is the one that acts as a gravitational lens. The four lensed images of the quasar are visible.

The water emission is seen as a maser, where molecules in the gas amplify and emit beams of microwave radiation in much the same way as a laser emits beams of light. The faint signal is only detectable by using a technique called gravitational lensing, where the gravity of a massive galaxy in the foreground acts as a cosmic telescope, bending and magnifying light from the distant galaxy to make a clover-leaf pattern of four images of MG J0414+0534. The water maser was only detectable in the brightest two of these images. - ( Science Daily )

This object is so far away that the radiation from the water maser was emitted when the universe was 2.5 billion years old, about a fifth of it's current estimated age. Due to the rapid expansion of the Universe, the quasar is 19.5 Billion light years away, even though the Universe is only around 14 Billion years old. At one time the universe expanded faster than light. Awesome.

Water has been around for a long while.