{"id":10994,"date":"2010-03-05T18:06:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T18:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/odds-and-ends\/"},"modified":"2010-03-05T18:06:54","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T18:06:54","slug":"odds-and-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/odds-and-ends.php","title":{"rendered":"Odds and Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/1872c_kepler030510.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"273\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><p>Artist's Rendition of the Kepler spacecraft.  Credit: JPL\/NASA<\/p><\/div><p><\/p><p>First, we are into the time period for the GLOBE at Night project.&nbsp; If you have clear skies please participate.&nbsp; You need no special equipment and if you don&rsquo;t know a star from a stone, don&rsquo;t worry, just click on the GAN banner in the sidebar to the right and they will tell you everything you need to know.&nbsp; I think I will get the chance tonight!&nbsp; Last year I noted a drop in the number of stars I could see from the year before.&nbsp;&nbsp; Do it, it&rsquo;s simple.<\/p><p>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.&nbsp; If you are tempted to comment that &ldquo;ah that money could be used for &lt;insert social program here&gt;&rdquo;&nbsp; don&rsquo;t,&nbsp; social programs are ok, but&nbsp;&nbsp; NASA&rsquo;s budget is only one half of one percent of the 3 -TRILLION dollar budget.&nbsp; IMHO we get a lot more goodness for our money with NASA than we do in some other areas &ndash; just saying.<\/p><p><a title=\"Kepler\" href=\"http:\/\/kepler.nasa.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Kepler spacecraft<\/a> started its search for earthlike planets, one year ago this week.&nbsp; Wow, hardly seems possible.&nbsp; The first of the discoveries have been announced, you can<a title=\"See the Kepler discoverys\" href=\"http:\/\/kepler.nasa.gov\/Mission\/discoveries\/\" target=\"_blank\"> see a table of them here<\/a>.<\/p><p>The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has set a record.&nbsp; MRO is going to complete its fourth year at Mars.&nbsp; During that time the MRO has passed 100 terabits of data!&nbsp; NASA is saying that is more than all other deep-space missions combined &ndash; that&rsquo;s every mission that has flow past the orbit of the moon.&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jpl.nasa.gov\/news\/news.cfm?release=2010-073&amp;cid=release_2010-073&amp;msource=2010073&amp;tr=y&amp;auid=6014098\" target=\"_blank\"> Here&rsquo;s the story<\/a>.<\/p><p>And finally:<\/p><p>The <a title=\"New Horizons\" href=\"http:\/\/pluto.jhuapl.edu\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">New Horizons<\/a> probe is now a little better than half way to Pluto.&nbsp; New Horizons is speeding along at 16.35 km\/sec and still won&rsquo;t arrive until July 2015.&nbsp; Wondering about that speed?&nbsp; 16.35 km\/sec is 36,574 miles per hour!&nbsp; So I could fly from New York to the UK in less than six minutes and New York to LA in four!<\/p><p>By the way if you know of anybody born on January 19, 1996 you might be interested in the <a title=\"New Horizons Kids Club\" href=\"http:\/\/pluto.jhuapl.edu\/education\/plutoPals\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">New Horizons Kids Club<\/a>.&nbsp; It also occurs to me they really ought to change that name.&nbsp; Anybody born on that date will soon not be kids anymore.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artist's Rendition of the Kepler spacecraft. Credit: JPL\/NASAFirst, we are into the time period for the GLOBE at Night project.&nbsp; If you have clear skies please participate.&nbsp; You need no special equipment and if you don&rsquo;t know a star from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/odds-and-ends.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10994"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}