In these difficult economic times, cap and trade couldn't survive. Wall Street, massive industry opposition, and political polarization were among the leading factors that killed the bill by Waxman and Markey. Now what? Senators Cantwell and Collins have proposed a 39-page plan called "cap and dividend." It's very similar to what Obama discussed during his campaign and would auction 100 percent of pollution permits to producers and fossil fuel wholesalers and return three-quarters of revenue to consumers for high energy costs. Not bad. Additionally, Senators Kerry and Graham are working on a new bill. According to The New York Times, it would:
include a cap on greenhouse gas emissions only for utilities, at least at first, with other industries phased in perhaps years later. It is also said to include a modest tax on gasoline, diesel fuel and aviation fuel, accompanied by new incentives for oil and gas drilling, nuclear power plant construction, carbon capture and storage, and renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
I'll be following the energy policy discussion as it continues with great interest. What do you want to see in the bill?

On April 14th, 1970, a new crater was carved into the surface of the Moon:

How do we know it’s new? Because we made it.

That’s the impact scar of the third stage of the Saturn V rocket (technically designated S-IVB) that carried Apollo 13 to — but sadly, not on — the Moon. Earlier missions had placed seismic instruments on the lunar surface to measure if the Moon had any activity. They found it did, and in fact several moonquakes were big enough that had you been standing there, you would have felt them quite strongly (and probably been knocked on your spacesuit’s backside).

The S-IVB upper stage accelerated the astronauts to the Moon from Earth orbit. Once that was done, they had one final mission: in Apollos 13 – 17 the stages were aimed at the Moon itself, and impacted a few days later. The impacts were detected by the seismometers and could be used to determine how seismic waves travel through the lunar surface, a trick that’s been used on Earth for a long time. This information can be used to figure out what the lunar subsurface structure is like.

The crater image above is from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and shows the Apollo 13 booster impact. The crater itself is a few dozen meters across, and the material ejected forms a blanket around it for many meters more. The bright material indicates this is a fresh crater; note how gray the more distant undisturbed material around the crater is.

The impact site looks obvious in that picture, doesn’t it? But try finding it in the original full-resolution image returned from LRO and see if you can locate it, then! I found it relatively quickly starting at the top, and was shocked at how far I could trace the rays — the linear ejected debris features around the crater — from the impact site. One of them is clearly about a kilometer long… that’s over half a mile! Those rays are from plumes of material ejected from the impact site, a common feature. They also indicate the crater’s youth: over time, cosmic rays, the solar wind, and even thermal stress from the Moon’s day/night cycle slowly erase the rays. Any crater with such extensive rays has to be young.

Some of the other S-IVB impact sites have been identified; the LRO blog has an image of the Apollo 14 S-IVB crater, for example. Knowing where these impact sites are helps scientists understand the Moon better, since it a more precise location means the data from the old Apollo missions can be interpreted more clearly. I wonder if future colonists may visit those sites the way we do Plymouth Rock, or Jamestown, or other early exploration and colony sites on Earth?

Credit: NASA, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

Launched on January 19, 2006, New Horizons robotic spacecraft left the Earth at the fastest launch speed ever recorded for a man-made object – 58,536 km/h (36,373 mph).  It will reach Pluto July 14, 2015.  How fast is New Horizons going?  It took only 9 hours to reach the moon.  Let me rephrase that… IT TOOK ONLY NINE HOURS TO REACH THE MOON.  That’s called hauling the mail.  Yeah, I know what else it’s hauling, but this is a family site.  It’s not the fastest spacecraft ever launched (that would be Voyager I), but it did blaze off the Earth the fastest of any ever launched.

New Horizons Liftoff, Image NASA/KSC

So… New Horizons will fly by and take pictures of Pluto, right?  Well, sure, but it’ll do more than that.  Considering it’ll have only one fly by, then head into the Kuiper Belt, I think the mission objectives are pretty great.  Straight from the New Horizons web site:

New Horizons: Mission Objectives

• Map surface composition of Pluto and Charon
• Characterize geology and morphology (“the look”) of Pluto and Charon
• Characterize the neutral atmosphere of Pluto and its escape rate
• Search for an atmosphere around Charon
• Map surface temperatures on Pluto and Charon
• Search for rings and additional satellites around Pluto
• PLUS… conduct similar investigations of one or more Kuiper Belt Objects
  

By the way, there’s been a lot of talk recently about the cost of these NASA missions; our glorious politicians say it “just isn’t worth it”, and the money could be spent elsewhere.  Okay, the cost of the mission ($700 million), divided by the US population at launch, spread out over a ten year period, comes to a cost of 20 cents per person per year.  Even if you have to pay that all at once, it’s only $2.00 per person.  Oh, wow.  That puts my yearly budget right on into the red, let me tell you.

Good grief.

New Horizons, Image NASA/JPL

Anyway, New Horizons carries some cultural artifacts in addition to all the really cool scientific equipment on board.  It has an American flag, a Florida state quarter, a disk with over 400,000 names (remember waaaaay back before launch when NASA had the “Send Your Name To Pluto” publicity drive?), and some of Clyde Tombaugh’s ashes (he discovered Pluto).

New Horizons, Location on March 29, 2010 credit NASA/New Horizons web site

Right now, New Horizons is a little more than half way to Pluto.  It did receive a gravity boost from Jupiter (and took some really cool images on the way).  Take some time and cruise through the New Horizons web site. There’s an education section that will tell you everything you ever thought you wanted to know about Pluto.  It’s great.

I’m looking forward to 2015 when New Horizons reaches Pluto.  I think it’ll be awesome.