Artist's Rendition of the Kepler spacecraft. Credit: JPL/NASA

First, we are into the time period for the GLOBE at Night project.  If you have clear skies please participate.  You need no special equipment and if you don’t know a star from a stone, don’t worry, just click on the GAN banner in the sidebar to the right and they will tell you everything you need to know.  I think I will get the chance tonight!  Last year I noted a drop in the number of stars I could see from the year before.   Do it, it’s simple.

Will the shuttle missions be extended? They could be, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX) is either going to, or already has introduced legislation to do just that.  If you are tempted to comment that “ah that money could be used for <insert social program here>”  don’t,  social programs are ok, but   NASA’s budget is only one half of one percent of the 3 -TRILLION dollar budget.  IMHO we get a lot more goodness for our money with NASA than we do in some other areas – just saying.

The Kepler spacecraft started its search for earthlike planets, one year ago this week.  Wow, hardly seems possible.  The first of the discoveries have been announced, you can see a table of them here.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has set a record.  MRO is going to complete its fourth year at Mars.  During that time the MRO has passed 100 terabits of data!  NASA is saying that is more than all other deep-space missions combined – that’s every mission that has flow past the orbit of the moon.  Here’s the story.

And finally:

The New Horizons probe is now a little better than half way to Pluto.  New Horizons is speeding along at 16.35 km/sec and still won’t arrive until July 2015.  Wondering about that speed?  16.35 km/sec is 36,574 miles per hour!  So I could fly from New York to the UK in less than six minutes and New York to LA in four!

By the way if you know of anybody born on January 19, 1996 you might be interested in the New Horizons Kids Club.  It also occurs to me they really ought to change that name.  Anybody born on that date will soon not be kids anymore.