Space Technology Industry Forum

NASA Chief Technologist Hosts Forum to Discuss New Space Technology Programs

"NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist will host a Space Technology Industry Forum at the University of Maryland on July 13-14 to discuss the agency's proposed new space technology investments. The event will focus on the President's fiscal year 2011 budget for NASA's new Space Technology Programs. Representatives from industry, academia, and the federal government are invited to learn the latest plans for these programs and discuss strategy, development, and implementation of these broadly applicable technology development activities."

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Rosetta sends back gorgeous asteroid closeups | Bad Astronomy

The European space probe Rosetta passed about 3000 km from the asteroid Lutetia on Saturday, July 10, 2010, and it sent back incredible closeup images of the rock. Check ’em out below!

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<p>This series of pictures was taken as Rosetta approached Lutetia.</p><p>The first image in the upper left was taken about 9.5 hours before closest approach, when Rosetta was still 510,000 km (315,000 miles) from the asteroid - more distant than the Moon is from the Earth!</p><p>The last image (lower right) was obtained an hour and a half before the close encounter when the probe was still 81,000 km (50,000 miles) from Lutetia.</p><p>In the first image, details only about 20 km (12 miles) across can be seen, but that improves by almost a factor of 10 in the last image!</p><p><span><em>Credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team. MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA</em></span></p><span>This is the final sequence of images taken right at closest approach. The bottom right image was taken just at the moment that Rosetta passed Lutetia.<em><br /><br /><br />Credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team. MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA</em></span>For the first time ever, a spacecraft approached closely enough to the asteroid Lutetia to see its surface clearly. Craters dot the surface, as well as grooves. Note the elongated crater near the bottom (left of center); was that from a nearly horizontal impact? It's curious that it points almost directly to the crater to the left. That may just be coincidence; the surface is so cratered that some are bound to be in patterns just randomly.<br /><span><em><br />Credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team. MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA</em></span>Another closeup of Lutetia's surface provided by Rosetta. In this shot, you can again see a variety of craters peppering the asteroid, as well as some grooves that follow the landscape. Those curves give a relative age for the grooves: they must have formed <em>after</em> the impact crater on the right, which distorted the landscape. Also, had they formed before, the impact would have eradicated them. Images like this can give scientists a vast amount of insight into the history of the asteroid.<br /><span><em><br />Credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team. MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA</em></span><span>After Rosetta passed Lutetia, its cameras were pointed back to the rock, and therefore back toward the inner solar system. That geometry gives us an amazing, brooding, and lovely view we never get from Earth: a crescent asteroid.<em> <br /><br />Credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team. MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA</em></span><span>When Rosetta was still 36,000 km (22,000 miles) from Lutetia, it snapped this jaw-dropping shot of the asteroid with Saturn in the distant background. This means the spacecraft, the asteroid, and Saturn were almost exactly along the same line, a configuration that probably only lasted for a few seconds. It's remarkable that controllers on the ground were able to take this picture at just the right moment to obtain this amazing picture!<br /><em><br /><br />Credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team. MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA</em></span>

Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog has more details, as always.


Related posts:

- Rosetta takes some home pictures
- Rosetta swings past home one final time
- Rosetta swings by Mars


The Super-Hot Atlantic | The Intersection

And no, I don't mean sexy. This is a NASA image from the start of hurricane season, showing the sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and especially in the main hurricane development region. I got the image from this great analysis over at the WWF Climate Blog, which is mainly devoted to summarizing a recent congressional briefing on why we very likely have a really bad hurricane year to look forward to. Some observations that emerged from that meeting:
* We've never had a pre-season forecast of 23 storms before. Let's hope that is an overshot, rather than an undershot.
* The Atlantic is even hotter than it was before the devastating 2005 hurricane season.
* Oh yeah, and there's oil out there. (The title of the briefing was "Hurricanes and Oil Will Mix: Managing Risk Now.") How much of the Atlantic's current, alarming temperature has to do with global warming? Well, listen to Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research:
When asked about the degree to which rising greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere were contributing to the trend of rising sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean, Holland said the temperatures could not be explained without accounting for rising GHG concentrations. He said that ...


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The Tattoo That Wasn’t There | The Loom

gestalt440Matt writes, “I took an alternate path to understanding the world from most of your readers. I switched from psychology to history in order to better research what really happened as opposed to what kids are taught in school. A concept that stuck with me and in fact is a critical reference point for me in every day life is our tendency to seek patterns and to see things that aren’t there. As a tribute to the fallibility of our complex brains my first tattoo is a visualization of the Gestalt Law of Closure.”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.


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